Are heaven and hell real places? And what are they like? Today on Pastor Rick's Daily Hope,

the Bible teaching ministry of Rick Warren, we continue his series called Eternal Realities,

Heaven and Hell. In these lessons, Rick shares what the Bible says about heaven and hell,

and how you can be absolutely certain

you'll go to heaven. Up next, here's part one of a message called The Reality of Heaven.

Now, the truth is, a lot of times we're just not too excited about heaven. I mean, we're much more

interested in Earth than we are about heaven, and really, that's too bad because we have been sold a bill of goods about heaven.

The fact is the reason we don't get excited about heaven is we have a faulty image of it.

We don't realize how cool, how exciting, how incredible, how so much better than Earth it's going to be.

I like Earth.

Do you like Earth?

I like Earth.

I love the sunsets.

I love the sky.

I love the water.

I love the weather.

Shoot, we live in California.

I mean, come on.

You know, my idea of winters, I put on socks. This is an incredible place.

We live in paradise. And I like this place a lot, in spite of the fact that it's broken, that nothing actually works the way it ought to work. No relationship is perfect. No body is perfect, except mine.

No, you know, no weather is perfect. Nothing is perfect on this planet because sin has broken the planet.

But this is all we know, so we can't understand how cool heaven really is. And as I said, most of our ideas are warped because they came from Hollywood. Now, let me just say it again. I told you many times, when you get to heaven, it's not going to be all white, you're not going to have wings, you're not going to be an angel, you're not going to be a little chubby cherub. You're not going to wear a white robe. You're not going to float on clouds, and you're not going to play a harp. As I've told you many times to me, that would be hell. I can't think of anything more boring than to be in a colorless place having to play a harp. Oh, just, that would make me not want to go to heaven.

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