Welcome back to James Popery. I'm Joe Heschmire, and I want to talk today about a Christian doctrine that sounds heretical.

If I just go around saying, I believe that if I'm holy, when I die, I'll become a God or I'll become God,

many people's heresy alarm is just going off completely and understandably. That sounds polytheistic.

That sounds like a repudiation of pretty

core tenets of Christianity. What if I were to tell you that this is the historic Christian

understanding of what happens when you die? And that if you understand this properly,

it'll change how you understand a whole slew of Christian doctrines for the better.

But I want to start with a problem.

And that problem is our view of heaven is too small. That I think one of the reasons that we don't strive for heaven as hard as we could, we don't strive for holiness as much as we could,

is that we just don't desire it enough. And we don't desire it enough, in part, because I has not seen and ear has not heard what God has ready for those who love him.

And it's hard to desire an unknown gift.

We know it's great, but our vision of it is often pretty limited.

Maud Simpson, welcome to Protestant heaven.

Ruin one, hurrah!

Where's Homer and Bart?

Oh!

Even Billy Graham in his early early days when he was trying to describe heaven said we're going to

sit around the fireplace and have parties and the angels will wait on us and we'll drive down the

golden streets in a yellow Cadillac convertible now leave aside how tacky it is to drive on

golden streets and a yellow convertible,

they're going to clash horribly. The point is, that's obviously too small a vision of heaven.

And in Billy Graham's defense, like he evolved from that. He developed as he matured as a Christian,

...