This week on Things Unseen, our theme has been the four last things, the traditional topics

in the Christian Church for the Sundays and Advent. And today we've come to the third

of these four things, death, judgment, and now heaven. And I can almost hear a corporate

desire of relief, because it's been a week of heavy reflections and there's still one

more to come. But today the clouds part, the sun shines, glory appears, heaven is our

theme. And who doesn't want to go to heaven? Actually I think that's a more searching

question than we might at first think. What do I mean? Well years ago I was driving

some distance at home in Scotland to speak at a weekend conference and as I was listening

to BBC Radio in the car, I was surprised to discover a programme about heaven. And of

course it attracted my interest immediately. And so for the next 30 minutes I listened

to a series of interviews with very well-known personalities who were all asked the same

question, what do you think heaven will be like? And I began to notice a consistent pattern

in the replies. It was the same in every single interview. It wasn't what was said. It

was what was never said, not even once. Not even once in all the descriptions of heaven

did anybody mention the presence of God. I was reminded of the words of the Samus God

is not in their thoughts. But I thought this is a staggering illustration. If you don't

want God at the centre of your life now, then you'll not want him at the centre of the

world to come. The person who lives without God naturally imagines a heaven without God.

But as we'll see tomorrow, a future world without God can't possibly be heaven.

The programme I was listening to was an illustration of a puzzle we often encounter. Why do people

who have not wanted God in their lives think that dying will change all that, and that

they'll then trust and love and adore him? And here was the answer in this programme.

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