June 14, 2017 Show with C. Matthew McMahon on “‘Heaven’s Glory’ by Christopher Love”

Live from the historic parsonage of 19th century gospel minister George Norcross in downtown

Carlisle, Pennsylvania, it's Iron Sharpens Iron, a radio platform on which pastors,

Christian scholars and theologians address the burning issues facing the church and the world today.

Proverbs 27 verse 17 tells us, Iron sharpens iron, so one man sharpens another.

Matthew Henry said that in this passage, we are cautioned to take heed whom we converse with and directed to have in view in conversation to make one another wiser and better.

It is our hope that this goal will be accomplished over the next hour, and we hope to hear from you, the listener, with your own questions.

Now here's our host, Chris Arntzen. Good afternoon,

Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, Lake City, Florida, and the rest of humanity living on the planet

Earth, listening via live streaming on ironsharpensironradio .com.

This is Chris Arntzen, your host of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, wishing you a happy Wednesday on this 14th day of June, 2017.

And I just came back from a delightful lunch with a member of Grace Baptist Church in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, where I'm a member, a brother who is an usher there, very soft -spoken, quiet individual, who

I just recently found out is one of the greatest minds in the

United States involving the Soviet Union and Russia. He is a thoroughly knowledgeable expert on the theme of Russian military history and Slavic military history.

He's the author of numerous books. I knew nothing about this until very recently, and I intend to have him on Iron Sharpens Iron Radio in August to discuss his insights as to what's going on in our government today in regard to Russia, also to give us a background of Russia today in contrast to the years of the

Soviet Union, and we'll learn what, if anything, we should be fearful of, what fears we have that are exaggerated, and so on.

So I hope to have a delightful and thoroughly educational and edifying discussion with Brother David Glantz in the near future, in August, as our schedule permits.

But today I am so delighted to have returning to Iron Sharpens Iron Radio one of my favorite guests,

Dr. C. Matthew McMahon, founder of A Puritan's Mind. Today we are going to be addressing one of the books that he has brought back into print through Puritan publications,

Heaven's Glory by Christopher Love, and it's my honor and privilege to welcome you back to Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, Dr.

C. Matthew McMahon. Brother, glad to be here and happy to talk about this most comforting subject.

Amen, amen. I could use some comforting subjects in the midst of a lot of, what's the word

I'm looking for, there's a lot of turmoil going on in the Christian apologetic world involving people that I know and love and respect, and it sometimes can be quite disturbing to see bitterness well up amongst the

Brethren and strife and so on. But so this will be a good temporary vacation from all that.

And for our listeners who are discovering you for the first time, tell us about A Puritan's Mind.

Well, A Puritan's Mind began in 1997, and what happened in bringing that to light was

I started reading William Ames and Francis Turretin and Christopher Love.

And in reading those three, I thought to myself, boy, more people need to read these jewels, because they're just sitting on the shelf collecting dust, and just a few scholars here and there reading them, they're filled with practical information.

So I started taking little excerpts here and there and began posting on A Puritan's Mind various pieces out of Ames's Marroweth Theology and various pieces out of Turretin's Institute, and Christopher Love, he's about as practical a preacher as you can get for the short time that he lived.

And so gleaning little pieces here and there to be able to put those out were not only a blessing to me, but I think in turn they began to be a blessing to others, because at that time there was nothing on the internet.

And so the three of them have over the years turned into dozens and dozens and dozens of various Puritan books and such.

About 2005, I started a Puritan publication and said, boy, there's only a few publishers putting out good, solid

Christian books on some of these most excellent topics that we hardly ever hear preached from the pulpit, and we need to be reading some more of this great literature from our heritage.

And so I decided, well, not only am I going to start publishing a few of these books, but I'm going to update the books as well, so that they're an updated language, so that they're easy to understand.

No doubt there are scores of sets of books that are extremely helpful to the

Christian walk, the Christian life. John Owen, Thomas Manson, Thomas Goodwin, all sorts of big sets.

You could sit and read them for days on end. Sometimes, though, people have a difficult time kind of wading through some of the old

English. And so I thought, you know, not only are these really helpful, but after having read so much of them, let's take them and make it simple for everybody to enjoy.

And so all of the books that, I would say, after about a year of starting at all the books from that point onward, we decided, hey, let's do them an language and make them easy to understand.

So I think that is a great help to people who would regularly not go to the

Puritans. They think that Reformed writing from that era and from the era before is difficult to understand, even in, you know, grabbing something like Calvin's Institutes off the shelf.

It's big, and people have to wade through a lot of that information. So one of the things that we've been doing, as much as we have published long books, we tend to gravitate towards things that are 100 to 125 pages long, somewhere in there, sometimes a little longer, depends upon the book itself.

But we want to make it easier to understand and more accessible that way. And so a

Puritan's mind has grown enormously. There are thousands of free pages and books and articles and things on the

Puritans and by the Puritans, all over a Puritan's mind. And then some of the more niche -y, important books that we've been putting out in Puritan publication generally come from the era of the

Westminster Assembly. And so we've published about 60, 62 of the

Assembly members themselves, things that, you know, have never been published before.

Thomas Valentine, fabulous work. We put out just a little while ago called

The Church Has Needed Jesus Christ. And Hannibal Gammon, fabulous work.

But they're relatively small. You know, there's just a few things by these men scattered around the planet, and so gathering them up, putting them in a volume, reading some of those things, they're just a delight to our soul.

I wish that some of them had more. I think one of the interviews that we'll have in months to come is by Michael Harrison.

And Harrison was one, he only has two works. There's nothing else available from him anywhere on the planet.

And those works are basically cliff notes of larger preaching series that he did.

And it's like you read that and you just say, this is gold. This is gold for the

Christian. You know, we tend to live in a sea of difficult, convoluted, or shallow preaching today.

And finding things that are going to be light to our soul in that way, you know, you just can't find anything better than the

Reformers and the Puritans. And those who are, you know, super influenced by them, like Edwards and Whitefield and Spurgeon and such.

So, you know, that's part and parcel of what a Puritan's mind is about. We want to take these old great works and make them available to people and, you know, be able to see

Christ formed greater in them today than yesterday or last week or last month and press them on towards heaven, which is our topic for today.

Amen. Well, I'm going to give our listeners our email address if they have questions for you.

Our email address is ChrisArnzen at gmail .com, C -H -R -I -S -A -R -N -Z -E -N at gmail .com.

Please give us your first name, at least, your city and state of residence in your country, a residence if you live outside of the

USA. And some of my listeners may recall the name Christopher Love because they may have heard me from time to time explain the origin of the, or reveal the origin of the quote that I conclude every single

Iron Sharpens Iron radio broadcast with, and that is, Jesus Christ is a far greater savior than you are a sinner, which is a paraphrase of a quote from Christopher Love.

Tell us about this great Puritan, something about his own personal background and why we should value what he wrote so long ago today.

Well, Love got somewhat of a bad rap because he seemed to have been involved in what history calls

Love's plot, and I'll talk about that in a moment, but he didn't live very long because, and people will be shocked to hear this, that he was beheaded because of treason against the king.

By a fellow Puritan, Oliver Cromwell, right? Yes, by Oliver Cromwell, Lord Protector, didn't like the idea that anyone was sympathetic to bringing back the monarchy, and in the midst of doing that,

Love and others like Thomas Watson and some others that were involved in that,

Love was the only one that was convicted because of these certain letters that wound up circulating around his house.

But yeah, he wound up spending a lot of time in the dungeon and a lot of time thinking and using.

He wrote many letters to his wife, which we've published that particular whole historical account called the

Vindication of Christopher Love, and he lived from 1618.

He died in 1651. He was from Wales. He was a very powerful preacher and theologian in the sense that he was not superficial in the things that he wrote, preached, or said, and even after he had to deal with all of that historical difficulty and what

Cromwell thought was plotting against the Commonwealth, he was arrested, thrown in dungeon, and it was about, boy, he was thrown in the dungeon in May.

I believe he was beheaded in July. No, he was beheaded in August. He was supposed to die in July, but he wound up having from May to August to sort of deal with speaking with his wife, writing letters, writing some different treatises and such.

But the account is very moving because of what he does in constructing his wife, writing letters to his wife, speaking with his wife and such.

While he was alive, there were six works that were published in his living lifetime, but most of his works were published by his executors, and these were people like Edmund Calamey, who was on the

Westminster Assembly, Simeon Ash, who was on the Westminster Assembly, Jeremiah Whitaker, William Taylor, Alan Gere.

They published a number of ridiculously good works after his death.

Grace, the Truth and Growth and Different Degrees Thereof, Heaven's Glory, this was one of the published afterwards,

A Treatise of Effectual Calling and Election, Christian's Duty and Safety in Evil Times, The Hearer's Duty, and the

Christian's Directory, the Doctrine of Mortification, the Combat Between the

Flesh and the Spirit, Hell's Terror, which by Jonathan Edwards was hailed as one of the greatest works outside the

Bible on that particular topic. So, Love became very popular after his death because these works began to be circulated, and, you know, seeing the importance of them, they just could not not put them into print.

Get them into the hands of the people, got to get them circulated, got to get them so that people can read some of these wonderful works.

That's kind of just a little bit of background on Love. Do you know if anybody has published any of the letters, perhaps compiled together in a single volume that he wrote to his wife while in prison?

Yes, that is in our book, The Vindication of Christopher Love. We've done that.

All of his letters are in there. Like I said, it's extremely moving. His letters are deep, very powerfully written to his wife, instructive, so that's part of his vindication.

That was one of the things that was actually published when he was alive, before he was beheaded, because he wanted to let people know, you know, just like with a lot of the political stuff that's going on today, just because the media might say something doesn't necessarily mean it's true, just because all of these rumors were flying around about him in all of these different ways, making him out to be a bad sort of guy, so to speak, bad enough to be thrown in the dungeon and be beheaded.

He had a vindication about those things to kind of set the record straight. So not only the record is there, but also the letters and everything that happened during that time between him and his wife is also in that volume.

And by the way, if our listeners want to investigate a Puritan's mind after the program, if you want to find out more about what they offer and, of course,

Puritan publications, go to apuritansmind .com. That's apuritansmind .com,

obviously no apostrophe in that, and you can find out much more about this wonderful ministry.

And before I go into, or have you go into, the main contents of the book about heaven, we've already got several listeners that have written in within the last five minutes or so, and I think their questions will help set the stage for giving our listeners a little bit more of the background of love, so they know the source of what you're talking about.

We have Ronald in Eastern Suffolk County, Long Island, New York, who says,

How can we separate the brilliance and the valuable truths that the

Puritans have left to us as their legacy from some of the horrible and perhaps even horrific things that they were involved in, including the aforementioned execution of love by a fellow

Puritan? How can we convey to our friends and family and loved ones and brothers in Christ who have so far not delved into the

Puritans that these are worthy sources of great truth in spite of anything negative that has tarnished their reputation in history?

Well, I think you get a dichotomy there that you have to deal with, and that's one, dealing with the

Christian side of that viewed from the Christian perspective, and two, viewed by the world.

I think we've talked in the past about how the world basically views the Puritans.

Why are they so disparaged that car companies would make commercials about how the

Puritans have no fun driving our car because it's fun and they weren't?

Why would they set that as an equal ultimacy, so to speak, between those two positions?

Well, when you think about what it is that they've done in terms of taking

Scripture and making Scripture plainly understood in terms of the ministers preaching the sermons that they gave,

I mean, this is some of the best literature that you'll ever read in the history of the Church. And so, certainly, on the worldly side, the devil wants to squash that as quickly and as hard as possible.

That doesn't mean that the Puritans were perfect or that certain things that are said about them didn't occur, like off of a crumb while having

Christopher Love killed. Yet, there's more than simply the idea of Christian fellowship occurring in the time that Christopher Love, in particular, lived and what

Oliver Cromwell did, which was basically take over England, Ireland, and Scotland, so to speak, with the army, behead the king, and become

Lord Protector to kind of permeate his view, his political view, of how those things should go.

So, once you start getting into some of those historical aspects, you begin to see why certain things happened like that.

Yes, men are still men. Men still sin. Things are not going to be perfect until we get to heaven, which may be a good segue into this, but in looking at some of the difficulties that surrounded, historically, the

Puritans, you don't necessarily need to divulge every single jot and tittle of everything that happened to all of the

Puritans, historically, before you read a work like this. And if you're sharing some of the information, if a

Christian sits down and they take Christopher Love at face value and read through heaven's glory, for example, and study it a bit with love and go through that doctrine and come up the other side and have some of those things set in their mind and in their heart, that when they go talk to someone and they begin explaining a particular theological doctrine or point, they're going to have

Colossians 3 -4 set in their mind, when Christ, who is our life, shall appear, then we also appear with him in glory.

You're going to have that implanted in you, because as you go through this teaching with him, these things are going to be embedded in the way that they work so well in exegeting

Scripture. So when somebody says, oh, well, we're the Puritans, and such and such, well, no, no, let me explain what

Christopher Love said on this particular topic and deal with that. When Christians begin to get the flavor of how powerful, deep, and important these works are, some of those things that are colorful in the historical aspect of what happened to them, they take a far back seat.

You know, I don't think about Love getting his head chopped off every time I go read one of his works.

And of course, he was the victim in that case. Yeah, I mean, you know, I'm not thinking about the historical aspects of that,

I'm thinking about, I've read all of Love's stuff, so I'm thinking about, boy, when

I get to his work on the combat between the flesh and the spirit, I cannot wait to read that again, or read it afresh, because I know

I've read these other things, and they're so deep and powerful, that once I get to that particular point,

I know he's going to take me on a really solid Biblical journey through those texts in order to come out the other side a better Christian.

And that's the point with dealing with this. Even if you were to take all of the quote -unquote colorful problems that the

Puritans face in the history aspects of Puritanism, if you take all of that out, you're left with thousands of great men who never had any problems with anything that you could read, listen to, glean from, hear their preaching, grow in Christ.

You don't have to divulge yourself in the midst of all of the difficulties of the Puritans. I mean, they were

Puritans because they were looking to purify the Church. So they had to be really, really precise in their understanding of theological ideas.

And because of that, that translates into great sermons, great treatises, great books.

Even some of the short books that some of the Puritans wrote, like Christopher Love wrote this short work that was on buying and selling.

It's called, Scripture Rules to be Observed in Buying and Selling. It was actually a poster.

It was turned into a poster -sized piece, very big, all of these columns. It was one page, but if anybody's going to go out and buy and sell anything, really, really, they should read it.

Because the biblical principles that Love explained in that work are so excellent that it helps you to gain a better insight into Scripture.

So I don't think that as much color as there is in Puritan history, and for those who like to read that, you know, you can kind of weed through the good and the bad and such.

But I think we need to really concentrate more on the practical aspects of what they do.

And what they do is they bring us closer to the Lord Jesus Christ and their work. Amen.

And men are men of their times, and they have inherited things that surround them from infancy.

People were far more readily executed for things like heresy in a bygone era.

And even, you know, not only do we have the Reformers and their own problems, we have Martin Luther, a great hero of the faith, who had problems with remarks and writings that could be very easily deemed as anti -Semitic.

And you have, even in much more recent history, in the 19th century, some of the great

Reformed heroes of the United States were slaveholders and defended slavery.

And so, you know, you have all kinds of things that you would have to weed through because all Christians are sinners until we enter glory.

So it's one of those things that you're not going to have perfect people presenting us with these truths from the scriptures that they glean.

But thank you Ronald from Eastern Suffolk County, Long Island, New York, and you have won a free copy of Heaven's Glory by Christopher Love with chapters by our guest

Dr. C. Matthew McMahon. Please make sure you give us your mailing address so we can have that shipped out to you by our friends at Cumberland Valley Bible Book Service, CV for Cumberland Valley, bbs for biblebookservice .com,

cvbbs .com, they will be mailing you out your free copy. And we thank Todd and Patty Jennings who own cvbbs .com

for their faithful support of Iron Trump and Zion Radio. I am going to email you,

I'm going to forward you the email for our next listener question because she actually asks three very good questions and we're going to go to a break and have you answer the questions when we come back.

This way you have time to mull over what she has written and when we come back from the break you can answer them.

I'm just going to start off by reading you on the air the first question. This is

Jenny in Ben Salem, Pennsylvania. She says, is it true that Christopher Love rejected the view of a new heaven and earth and favored in traditional pure written thought that there was a three -tier system in which the saints and the holy angels occupied the highest strata with Christ?

Can you elaborate a little on this three -tiered system? And as I said I'm going to be emailing you this question and the two other questions that Jenny from Ben Salem, Pennsylvania has written and we will have you respond when we return from the break.

If anybody else would like to join us on the air and we still have a couple of other listeners with their questions who are waiting to have them asked and answered by you, if you'd like to join them on the air with a question of your own our email address is chrisarnson at gmail .com

chrisarnson at gmail .com. Please don't go away. We will be right back,

God willing, with Dr. C. Matthew McMahon and our discussion on Heaven's Glory by Christopher Love.

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This is Chris Arnsen. If you just tuned in to Iron Sharpens Iron Radio today, our guest today is

Dr. C. Matthew McMahon of A Puritan's Mind. We're discussing Heaven's Glory by Christopher Love.

And yes, I know Christopher Love was my DJ name in the 70s, but that's not what we're talking about. We're talking about a great puritan of history who has left a legacy for us that we should not ignore.

And if you'd like to join us on the air, our email address is ChrisArnsen at gmail .com. ChrisArnsen at gmail .com.

And please give us your first name, city, and state, and country of residence if you live outside of the good old

USA. As you know, Dr. McMahon, the first of three questions that Jenny from Ben Salem, Pennsylvania has written to us is, is it true that Christopher Love rejected the view of a new heaven and earth and favored in traditional puritan thought that there was a three -tier system in which the saints and the holy angels occupied the highest strata with Christ?

Well, on that question, I mean, I've read all of Christopher Love's works, and I don't find any three -tiered system in that particular manner.

All of the puritans thought that when scripture, I mean, this is just rightly utilizing scripture depending upon its context, that there are three uses of the word heaven, in that the sky is called the heaven, or where the celestial bodies, the terrestrial bodies float, where the planets are, those are the heavens, and then there's the celestial heavens where God resides, the holy angels and the saints.

So if that's that aspect, that's fine. I mean, all of the puritans believe that, but I don't find anything in Love's works that caused him to have some kind of odd idea about heaven in that particular way.

What he does do, and he takes a couple of his works to do it, is he will militantly write against the

Millennial view, like the pre -Millennial view, Christ coming, reigning on the earth for a thousand years, and that being some kind of temporary heavenly state or something like that.

But in terms of the three -tiered system, something of that nature, I don't find that at all in his works.

And he has as orthodox an idea of heaven as any of the other puritans that I've read.

Now, I know that many of the puritans were post -Millennial. Where did he fit in the eschatological scheme?

He was post -Millennial, and he also took great pains in both this work, which is the substance of the

Middle Sermon, and his work on Christ's ascension and second coming from heaven, which we've also published.

He spends a great deal of time talking about how Christ's second work.

So, yes, as a post -Millennialist, even above many of the other puritans, he took his pen and really hammered through dealing with the pre -Millennial idea and how he says that Christ's thousand -year reign is a complete and total myth and misunderstanding of the

Scriptures, and spends quite a bit of time doing it. And in the beginning of our program, you already addressed a lot of what

Jenny asked about in her second question, but do you have anything to add about how Love's religious conviction played out against the political upheavals in his time?

Well, a hundred percent. His religious convictions were going to come out in his preaching, and a couple of times in the course of his ministry, he was thrown in jail for preaching a just defensive war, and a lot of the puritans did that, though.

He was accused of treason at that particular time, and then acquitted of that completely, and was even paid by the state back for any monies that he lost from being in prison for that amount of time.

So, yeah, he definitely was involved in politics, so to speak, and he biblically preached through ideas, so there is a bit of religious conviction that built out over into his politics that way.

But once you hit Love's plot, so to speak, and deal with him plotting against the commonwealth on purpose and such, that,

I think, blown a little bit out of proportion, as you can see, from his vindication and such. And her last question is, why do you think

Christopher Love has been forgotten by most Christians, and what was it about Christopher Love that drove you to write books about him?

And obviously, you've also partially answered that last part of her question in the beginning of the program, but if you could comment any further.

Yeah, I mean, in terms of why he's been lost, the puritan works are hard to get a hold of, and much less hard to get a hold of, even harder to wade through the difficulty of reading them written in Old English or in bad copies and such, so it's just very difficult to get those.

I think with the way that technology occurs today, and how those things can occur for, like, what we do in terms of publications and print -on -demand and such, that it's made being able to take these works, put them in print, and not lose them out of print much easier, and which, to me,

I think is a great blessing, because at any time, regardless of the work that we do, we can always order a copy of a book.

And just the way that print -on -demand makes that very easy. What drove me to publish his stuff and write about him?

I mean, he is the epitome of a great practical, yet theological, on -the -level -of -the -people kind of preacher.

You know, don't take this the wrong way, anybody who's listening, I love John Owen. John Owen is heavy, and he is thick to read through.

His books are dense with theological points. You know, he's like on point 12 of use 25, sub point 39.

Christopher Love does not do that. He preaches plainly and faithfully according to the

Scriptures, yet boldly in his works. And regardless of whether you're reading a work by him that's made up of a series of sermons, or a book by him that has been turned into a book from a series of sermons, it's on the level of the people.

So anybody can go and read him and say, wow, that applies to me. Wow, I need to be doing that.

Oh, I didn't even think of that. I'm glad he pointed that out. And it's very practical in that particular manner.

Yeah, in fact, I had Michael Haken on recently, and he was talking about that it would not be uncommon to find a sentence 25 lines long from the writings of John Owen.

But thank you, Jenny, for your insightful questions, and you have also won a free copy of Heaven's Glory by Christopher Love with chapters by Dr.

C. Matthew McMahon, complements of Puritan Publications, and also complements of Cumberland Valley Bible Book Service, cvbbs .com.

cvbbs .com, please make sure that we have your full mailing address so that could be shipped out to you.

And I promised Dr. McMahon that after the next couple of questions, we will give you free reign to really get into the content of the book.

But since there seems to be so much interest among our listeners, I don't want to block them out and might as well let them have their questions, as many of their questions asked and answered before we have you delve into the book.

Brandon in Fullerton, California says, It seems like many evangelical churches over the past 60 years have largely forgotten about the

Puritans and church history in general. Why do you feel that is?

And have you noticed a large returning of Christians to the Puritans over the past handful of years?

You've already answered in large part the first half of what he asks, but the second part is interesting.

Have you noticed a large returning of Christians to the Puritans over the past handful of years?

I want to say yes and no, in the sense that when

I would say from like 1980 until 2000, there was a resurgence that seemed to be gaining a lot of speed.

And then something happened at that point, and some of the book publishers that were putting out a lot of Puritan books, some closed, some went into certain financial difficulties and such.

And so less and less and less started being published or republished with the myriad of books that could be published.

And so I think in terms of the way things have shifted, a lot of ministers that I talk to will say to me, you know, it's really hard for me to justify spending money on a hardback book when

I can buy an e -book. So I think that the electronic change in what's going on with the internet and what's going on with e -books and what's going on with what you can get online and touch,

I think that surging is starting to raise the bar for gaining that momentum back.

But I think it was going well, it got lost a little bit, and then the whole idea of the electronic book where,

I mean, I can have my entire library practically on my phone wherever I am on the planet, which is an amazing thing.

And I don't think we've ever been anywhere in the history of the Christian Church, historically speaking, that could do anything even remotely like that.

I mean, at your fingertip you can have all of the works of whoever that you have on the internet downloaded to your phone, and it's just an amazing thing to be able to do research that way.

So I think now, I think we're getting some speed back up again, and I think the availability of those works is making that more and more accessible to people, and people are excited to be able to have those in their hand.

I visit a brother at church who a year ago, which I remember the conversation, and he'll remember that I had this conversation with him.

He's like, there's no possible way that you'll ever get me to read an e -book. I want a book in my hand.

I want to take my highlighter and highlight it right in that book. And now, and this is only in the last couple of weeks, he's like, you know,

I can have all these books on my phone. Yeah, he's like 180 degrees in the opposite.

He's like, he's ready to get his library and move that over and just get his iPad or his

Android or his computer or his tablet and put his books on that and have them wherever he's at.

Loves that idea. I think it's a good compromise to have a little bit of both.

You know, I had probably 8 ,000, 9 ,000 books myself.

That was my library, and I've sort of dwindled that down to about 1 ,000 and kept only the things that are most important to me.

Other things that, you know, you can get easily or retrieve easily, those

I think, you know, just simple to go out on the internet. You can read Calvin's Institute. You can read

Calvin's Commentaries. All of them, they're all on the internet, you know, so the internet has really exploded the ability of having things right at your fingertips.

What people don't like is a lot of them don't like having to wade through the difficulty of the old scan.

Sometimes it's not scanned well. Sometimes they're difficult to read. Sometimes whole pages are blotted out or pages are missing or things of that nature that, you know, we're trying to correct in some of the e -books and print books that we're doing, but I think that electronic revolution has really changed things for people, and I think that is probably an uptick for us in what we can do.

I mean, I personally, even with the 1 ,000 books that I have in my library, as I'm, like, looking at them right now,

I have a scanner that I bought, a special scanner. It's a book scanner, and it actually sits where the head of the scanner is up in the air, just like in the old days where you'd see an overhead projector, and as the book lays on the desk, as fast as you can flick the pages and press the pedal with your foot, it will take a picture of the book.

So I can take a book off my shelf that I don't have in my computer, and I can put it into my computer inside of two minutes, if that long.

So scanning books and being able to take books and put them in your computer that way and have them at your fingertips, have them to your phone,

I think that's really where people are ultimately going, but the thing is, with that, there's also the danger of not spending time with the work itself and kind of being barraged by too much information, where if you, you know, there was something about this, you have a book in your hand and you're working through that particular book,

I think that people who have a good devotional and study time can do that with e -books, but people want to slow down and not just have this barrage of all of this information at their fingertip, but they want to take time to take that stuff and place it in their heart and their mind so that it actually improves them as Christians.

Well, Brandon, in Fullerton, California, thank you so much for your question, and please give us your full mailing address because you have just won a free copy of Heaven's Glory by Christopher Love with chapters by Dr.

C. Matthew McMahon, compliments of Puritan Publications, and compliments of Cumberland Valley Bible Book Service, cvbbs .com,

so give us your full mailing address and that should get to you, God willing, in a week or so, compliments of cvbbs .com,

who do not charge you or I, or me, I should say, for the shipping cost.

I'm going to ask one more question for now, which will enable you to dovetail into the contents of the book, and then if we have time later, we'll take some of the other listener questions.

We have John in West Peoria, Illinois, who's with Samaritan Ministries International.

John asks, does Christopher Love's treatise on Heaven distinguish itself from other

Puritan works on Heaven in any notable ways? Oh yes, most assuredly.

One of the things that, I'm going to answer that in two parts. Some of the

Puritans, in writing certain treatises on certain subjects, like for example, and we've covered this, the

Doctrine of Divine Meditation, all of the Puritans knew about it. All of them would preach at some point about it or catechize on it at some point, but there's only about 40 to 45 works on that particular subject.

The same is true in dealing with the Doctrine of Heaven, and when you deal with that doctrine,

Heaven as Heaven, you're often dealing with the idea of, what is

Heaven going to be like? And what Christopher Love does that sets his work apart from all of those other, what will

Heaven be like, idea is his scripture and where he begins and how he dives into the subject, because it comes from Colossians chapter 3, verse 4.

When Christ, who is our life, shall appear, then shall we also appear with Him in glory.

And so his starting point in this wonderful work is basically taking the context of Paul's letter to that church and enforces what it means that Christ is glorious, that He is our life, and that we then will be in glory with Him one day if we are

Christian. He explains what is meant when Christ is said to be our life.

He explains that Christ, who is our life, shall appear and what that means, and then what is meant that we will also appear with Him in glory.

So those are his three main ideas in explaining to you Heaven's glory, because once you get into the immediate context surrounding

Colossians 1 to 4, it's all about having your minds set on the

Lord Jesus Christ. If then you were raised with Christ, seek those things which are above what Christ is sitting at the right hand of God, and so he is focused in on Christ as our life.

Now the Puritans wrote on that particular topic with many treatises, but he is particularly taking the idea that Christ is our life and applying that to the idea of glory.

So that is what really separates Love's work on Heaven from just the what is

Heaven treatises, many of which are out there. Well, John in West Peoria, Illinois, we thank you for your question, and you have also won a copy of Heaven's Glory by Christopher Love with chapters by Dr.

C. Matthew McMahon, and please give us your mailing address so we can have

Cumberland Valley Bible Book Service, cvbbs .com, ship that out to you.

And we are going to now delve into the book itself after our station break.

This is our elongated station break because we have to give Grace Life Radio, 90 .1

FM in Lake City, Florida, our program in two 54 -minute segments. So we have an elongated break in the middle, so be patient with us, but we will be back as soon as possible, and when we return we will have our guest,

Dr. C. Matthew McMahon, actually begin to explore in more depth specifically the contents of Heaven's Glory by Christopher Love.

And if we have time later, we will take more listener questions. If you have any questions, our email address is chrisarnson at gmail .com,

chrisarnson at gmail .com, and those of you who are already waiting for your questions to be asked and answered, we will try to get to you towards the latter part of the program.

chrisarnson at gmail .com, chrisarnson at gmail .com, don't go away, we'll be right back,

God willing, with Dr. C. Matthew McMahon and more of our discussion on Christopher Love. Paul wrote to the church at Galatia, For am

I now seeking the approval of man, or of God? Or am I trying to please man? If I were still trying to please man,

I would not be a servant of Christ. Hi, I'm Mark Lukens, pastor of Providence Baptist Church.

We are a Reformed Baptist Church, and we hold to the London Baptist Confession of Faith of 1689. We are in Norfolk, Massachusetts.

We strive to reflect Paul's mindset to be much more concerned with how God views what we say and what we do, than how men view these things.

That's not the best recipe for popularity, but since that wasn't the Apostle's priority, it must not be ours either.

We believe, by God's grace, that we are called to demonstrate love and compassion to our fellow man, and to be vessels of Christ's mercy to a lost and hurting community around us, and to build up the body of Christ in truth and love.

If you live near Norfolk, Massachusetts, or plan to visit our area, please come and join us for worship and fellowship.

You can call us at 508 -528 -5750, that's 508 -528 -5750, or go to our website to email us, listen to past sermons, worship songs, or watch our

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Welcome back. This is Chris Arns, and if you just tuned us in, our guest for the full two hours today, with one hour to go approximately, is

Dr. C. Matthew McMahon, founder of A Puritan's Mind. We are addressing the book

Heaven's Glory by Christopher Love, with chapters by Dr. C. Matthew McMahon, published by Puritan Publications.

And if you'd like to join us on the air, our email address is chrisarnsen at gmail .com. Before we return to Dr.

McMahon and his introductory thoughts on this book, if you would like to join me at the

Foundations Conference in New York City next week, that's June 22nd through the 23rd, please register at thefoundationsconference .com.

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Executive Director of Grace to You, the Ministry of John MacArthur, and Todd Friel of Wretched TV and Wretched Radio, and a number of other speakers.

I will be there, and I hope to see as many of you as possible there. Go to thefoundationsconference .com

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Chelsea area of New York City. And thefoundationsconference .com

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and put advertising in the subject line. But we are now back with our guest,

Dr. C. Matthew McMahon, to discuss the book Heaven's Glory by Christopher Love, and Dr.

McMahon, it seems that you have compiled a summary of 10 sermons by Christopher Love that delve into the subject of Heaven's Glory.

Is that correct? That is correct. A lot of the works that Christopher Love put out were, in fact, a series of sermons, and this particular one is a series of sermons on Colossians 3, specifically with verse 4.

The immediate context is verses 1 through 4, and Love talks a little bit about them.

If then you are raised with Christ, seek those things which are above, where Christ is, sitting at the right hand of God.

Set your mind on things above, not on things on the earth, for you die, and your life is hidden with Christ in God.

When Christ, who is our life, appears, then you also will appear with him in glory.

Now, interestingly, you know, just the way that we think about heaven nowadays, what does a

Christian think about heaven? You know, what, really, when we say that, we want to say, what is the

Bible's teaching about heaven? You know, it's possessed by Christians, and it's deposited as an advantageous hope in us, an abiding possession, as Hebrews says.

What is heaven not may be a good starting point, because love is going to dispel all sorts of odd ideas about what

Christians might think, or just what people in general might think that heaven is about.

For example, you know, today, heaven is the place where everybody goes when they die. People think that the prerequisite today for getting into heaven is simply to die, and that is not true.

People think that heaven is some kind of fantasy realm, where material ideas are manifested in the best possible way.

So if you're a golfer, you're going to go to golfer's heaven. That's where you're going to go.

It's where the best golfing will ever take place. It'll be the nicest day for eternity, and you'll have the greenest grass.

So whatever man's delight is here, that's what heaven will be like for them there.

Is watching golf on TV purgatory? Right. You know, one of the reasons,

I think, why modern man rejects heaven, even if it's given in some worldly manner like that, is because he's prone to the idea that heaven is where people with harps sit on floating clouds and just strum their harps all day.

And you hear the ludicrous ideas of people saying,

I'd rather go to the party that's in hell where my friends are than float around with a harp on a cloud.

So even in terms of what they're thinking, just some kind of small mention of some kind of religiosity is so abhorrent to them.

Even that fictional idea that harps and clouds are really what makes up heaven, it's repulsive to them.

But that's why Love deals with the verse that he does in verse 4, that Christ is our life.

Because if Christ isn't in us now, if heaven in that particular manner isn't in us now, then we're not going to be in heaven.

We need to have that now while we're here. There's another point that he alludes to throughout the first few sermons, and that is the inadequacy of language about heaven.

It's not the intention of the biblical writers to create some kind of mythology about heaven.

They were carried along by the Holy Spirit. They desired to set down God's mind in what we call accommodated language to describe enough of heaven so that the church may understand that it is truly the place that the

Christians possess. That's the place where they will go, where God is, and that they will see

God fully in the face of Jesus Christ. And in thinking about that, there is a certain amount of skill that's needed to deal with the prospect of heaven in this accommodated language.

God, so to speak, dumbed down a little bit. These biblical images for men to grasp so that something of heaven might be intelligible to them.

And even when you read Pilgrim's Progress and Christian and Hopeful are on Mount Clear, they look through the glass, and the shepherds say to them, let us show to the pilgrims the gates of the celestial city if they have skill to look through our perspective glass.

You know, you have Christians that think, for some reason, that when they go to heaven, they're going to live in a square box that heaven, this

New Jerusalem is 1 ,500 miles wide and 1 ,500 miles long, and oh yeah, by the way, it's 1 ,500 miles across, and they live inside of this

Star Trek -ian kind of org cube. That's not what is going on.

The language that Scripture uses is accommodating language.

It says that the streets are made of gold, but they're clear like glass. So are they gold or are they not gold?

The idea that set down in many places concerning heaven is looking at how

God has accommodated that language to us. Now, the interesting part about how

Love deals with that is that he deals with it out of Colossians 3, 1 -4, because he's trying to guide the

Christian who's thinking about heaven towards the Lord Jesus Christ. Even when you deal with the text of Colossians 3, where it says, set your mind on things above, not on the things on the earth, the previous verse says that, seek those things which are above where Christ is, and then there's like a comma sitting at the right hand of God, but the comma shouldn't actually be there.

It's not in the Greek text. If you remove that comma, it reads better. Seek those things which are above where Christ is sitting at the right hand of God.

So when Christians think about heaven, they're thinking about Christ's heavenly intercession for them, because he is their life.

And as a result of being their life, certain benefits are going to come out of Christ as the indwelling life of the

Christian. When Christ returns, so you who have died, your life is hidden with Christ in God right now.

When he appears, who is our life, then you also will appear with him in glory, because of what he's done, who he is, and how he's accomplished those things on behalf of the

Christian. So Paul commands, he doesn't advise, in Colossians 3,

Paul commands the setting of the mind through seeking something very specific.

The flesh, the world, all of those things that are temporary, those are distractions. They distract the

Christian from accomplishing what God has intended, and they do that through bad theological ideas, false doctrines, false apostles, false teachers.

All of those Paul had discussed in the previous chapter of Colossians 2.

In contrast, there is a fullness of life that's given wholly over to Jesus Christ by the

Christian. Wholly. You could say completely. The Christian's life is to be given to Christ without reservation in any way.

How does that have anything to do with heaven? Well, what love is showing you is that seeking and setting the mind on Jesus Christ, who is our life, he is heaven to the

Christian. Heaven now, heaven then. Yes, he's certainly going to talk about that heaven is a place, and there are certain things that occur there, and what it's called, and what it may be like, but his focus is that Christ in and of himself is what makes heaven heavenly.

So in thinking about that, Jesus Christ is the author and the cause of the

Christian's life. That's the first doctrine that he's going to cover in the first two sermons.

He's the Christian's life in the sense as our current life, but he's also our life in that he brings us to eternal life, the life of glory.

Now, glory in Scripture is a descriptive aspect of God that God in and of himself will share with no one.

It is his character in terms of his presence. The Hebrew idea behind glory means weightiness, or the presence of God.

God will share his Son. God will share his Spirit. God will share his heaven, but God will never share his glory.

In and of himself, his presence is that which

Moses longed for, show me your glory, and he gives him a short glimpse of the backsides or the hind parts of God in that instance, because Moses is up on the mountain, typically or figuratively in that way.

He's up there with God in a heavenly perception, and he wants to see the glory of God expounded.

Well, God says you don't get to see that. I'll give you a little bit of a glimpse of my backside, my hind parts, the

Hebrew says, but he doesn't get to see God in that particular way. The only way that heaven becomes heavenly for the

Christians, as Love says, is that Christ is our life, and that in Christ, in himself, is the one that we see the fullness of God in the face of Jesus Christ.

So, when Christ appears, that's basically a summary of the first two sermons that Love has in the book.

The next three sermons really deal with Jesus Christ, who is the life shall one day have a glorious appearing to judge the world.

And so he talks about how the Lord Jesus Christ is going to return, the place from where he returned, that is, he comes down from heaven as the

Son of Man, who had come down from heaven and done what he needed to do as the suffering servant, then died, was buried, was raised, stamp of approval of God raising him from the dead, and he ascended into heaven and goes into the glory clouds of God, he will return from heaven and bring his people to heaven at the consummation, the end of the world.

Like Acts 111 says, as you see him ascended to heaven from thence also shall you see him descend.

So Christ is going to come back, and he's going to come back, and this is interesting, he's going to come back unexpectedly, he's the thief who comes like a thief in the night, so to speak,

Jesus's words about his return, but yet at the same time he tells us that that's how he's going to come.

So there's a grace in being prepared and understanding that the

Lord Jesus will return at any time, and when he appears he's going to come to judge the world, and in that judgment he is going to judge everything.

All judgment has been given to God the Son, for God the

Father judgeth no man that day, but hath given over all judgment to his

Son, John 5 29. And so we're all going to appear, which is a scary prospect, we're all going to appear before the judgment seat of Christ.

See that's why like right here we need to pause, and we need to jump over to Michael Harrison's book on imputation, which we'll have a maybe another time we'll be able to talk about that, because there's safety in appearing at the judgment seat of Jesus Christ wrapped in the imputed righteousness of Christ, and we need that.

That's the only safety. The only safety. That's the only place on the day of judgment that you're going to be able to stand safely.

So the Lord, in that particular way, comes back, comes to judgment, and judges everything.

All judgment has been given over to Him. And in that practical aspect, love takes a great amount of time and really presses home the idea that Jesus Christ, who is the

Christian's life, shall one day appear in glory to judge the world. That should move us to a number of considerations in terms of examining ourselves as to whether or not we are actually in the faith or not, because even at that particular time, the

Lord Jesus says, many will say to me on that day, Lord, Lord, did we not do all of these things?

Did we not preach in your name? Did we not do many miracles? I mean, all the big stuff.

And Jesus says, not depart from me, you workers of iniquity, or those who work lawlessness, those who take the law and throw that law away.

I never knew you. And so it's going to be a surprise in terms of the way for many that the

Lord Jesus will come and judge. And yet, there's still a great amount of hope that the

Christian can glean from judgment. The Son of Man comes to judge, yet the

Christian in and of himself is comforted by that judgment. All of the things that occur day to day, all of the listeners who are listening, thinking about how you've been abused at work, or have injustices done to you, or dealing with the difficulty of the world, the flesh and the devil and all of those ways, on the day of judgment, the

Son of Man will judge righteously, which will be a comfort to Christians, because they will be able to be vindicated from everything that oppresses them here, which is why heaven is a place where tears are wiped away, where we are renewed and changed, and where we are made perfect.

Given new robes, so to speak, the old robes of this life are thrown off, cast off, and we get these new names and these new robes and these new garments that we don't ever want to lose, which we'll never lose, will be in heaven for eternity, looking fully into the face of the

Lord Jesus Christ forever. That should be a great comfort in that particular way.

And go ahead, what were you going to say? I was actually just going to see if before the break

I could read you a short question from another listener. Sure. Okay, we have

Arnie in Perry County, Pennsylvania, who asks, I know that Christopher Love's sermons on heaven are largely based on the

Apostle Paul's writing to the Church and Colossae, as you've mentioned. Can you tell us something about the

Church and Colossae and about Colossae in general in regard to the mix of Jewish and Gentile individuals, knowing that Paul was the apostle to the

Gentiles? The reason why I ask this is I was wondering how much revelation were the

Jews hearing for the first time that was absent from the Old Testament or Hebrew Scriptures in regard to heaven?

And maybe we could have you answer that when we come back. Okay, great. This is our final break.

If you'd like to join us on the air, our email address is chrisarnson at gmail .com. chrisarnson at gmail .com.

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Harvey Cedars, where Christ finds people and changes lives. Welcome back, this is

Chris Arnzen, and this is the last 26 minutes or so of our program today with Dr.

C. Matthew McMahon of A Puritan's Mind. We are discussing Heaven's Glory by Christopher Love.

If you'd like to join us on the air with a question, our email address is chrisarnzen at gmail .com.

C -H -R -I -S -A -R -N -Z -E -N at gmail .com. And I would do so quickly if you intend to join us with a question, because we're running out of time.

And Dr. McMahon, before the break, we had Arnie in Perry County, Pennsylvania, ask about, as far as Paul's writings, the

Apostle Paul, how much of what he was revealing about heaven was absent from the

Hebrew Scriptures? How much of it was new revelation? Of course, both the Jews and the

Gentiles of his day had the Septuagint, the Old Testament in the Greek language. What was not in there that was brand new revelation unheard of before in the

Old Covenant? The answer to that question is nothing.

Here's why. The idea that when Paul opened his

Bible to explain something to the Christians at Colossae or to someone at Ephesus or wherever it is that he's writing or explaining, he's opening his

Bible, it's the same Bible that Jesus carried, so to speak.

It was the Old Testament Scriptures in that particular way. It's like when Jesus speaks to Nicodemus and he says,

Listen, unless a man is born again, he cannot enter the kingdom of God in this life or the life to come.

He has to be born again before he enters the kingdom of God. Nicodemus doesn't understand, and so forth and so on.

But Jesus says to him in verse 10 of John 3, he says, You're Israel's teacher, and you don't understand these things.

These things, being born again, are Old Testament ideas.

These are circumcision of the heart ideas. You're Israel's teacher. You're supposed to be teaching the basics of theology to the people of God.

So when Paul gets around to talking about heaven, what he does when you're looking at specifically and thinking about Christ, who is our life, it's really an exposition of understanding what the

Son of Man does. See, for the Jews, and this is where you can think Jews, Gentiles, and consider a little bit of that.

The Son of Man is only mentioned in Daniel 7, and Ezekiel is called the

Son of Man, but only in Daniel 7 is Christ like the

Son of Man. The only Hebrew construction in all of Scripture, and it's Jesus' favorite designation of himself.

Now, the Jews all knew who this was, and they knew the difference between how Ezekiel, as the

Son of Man associated with Adam and the fall, which is the idea in his book, with who this divine

Son of Man coming down from heaven who rides on the glory clouds of God himself, they knew that that particular figure was going to come down from heaven, and they thought that he was going to rescue them from their temporary troubles with Rome and the difficulty of the culture and the oppression that they were going through.

They completely missed what Christ came to do. Paul doesn't.

What he does is he says, listen, the Anointed One, the Christ who comes down from heaven, who shall appear in glory, who is in heaven right now,

Gloria, interceding on behalf of the people, he is your life, and so his concepts of heaven surround seeing that Son of Man in all of his glory.

It's what Moses asked. Every single time somebody runs into a theophany in the

Old Testament, any of them, that run into the living Word that speaks to them, the theophic

Christ, the appearance of Christ before Christ is incarnate, he's the

Word. He's the one with the message. He's the one that comes down and gives that message. Every single one of them, same exact response.

They're bowing low to the ground. They're falling like dead men. Manoah, when he hears the angel say, why do you ask my name for it is wonderful, he goes back into his wife and he says, we're going to die.

We've seen God. Now, wonderful Counselor, mighty God, everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.

This is Christ in Christ's manifestation of himself. So Paul, writing to the

Colossians in this section, says, this Son of Man, this

Christ, this anointed one who rides the glory clouds of heaven, who comes to judge, the one who died was raised, he is your life.

So the conception, if the Jewish person would sit down with the scriptures, and if they have

Old Testament eyes being born again, they have that, then they're going to come to the same conclusions that Paul comes to.

The New Testament doesn't suddenly invoke a myriad of new things that have never happened before.

What they do is they rightly understand and interpret the things that God has said, which is why you'll hear a lot of theologians when they start talking about New Testament, Old Testament, people say the

New Testament are the answers to the questions of the Old Testament, or the answers to the test, so to speak.

So what Paul, what Christopher Love does is that when

Christ returns, and when he ushers in the final consummation of the ages, and he takes his people to heaven, he's going to change them, and he's going to make them perfect in this place which is called the

Kingdom of God. Through much tribulation you shall come to the Kingdom of God, Jesus says, and it's called the

Kingdom of God by way of its eminence being far above all the other kingdoms of the world.

Of Christ's kingdom there is no end, and so they will be made glorious.

It's a glorious kingdom. Christ comes to take his people to that glorious kingdom.

It's also called the third heaven, or heavens of heaven. And like the question earlier, the idea of you have the sky, you have the place where the planets fly, but the heaven of heaven, that is a place where the elect are blessed.

It's a special place called paradise that Christ speaks to the thief on the cross, this day you shall be with me in paradise.

Having a relation to the place of glory where the elect are. It's also called, here's part of Jesus' interpretation of trying to get people to understand what the

Old Testament teaches, it's called Abraham's bosom. Abraham's bosom is not this intermediate place where the dead go to await

Jesus' raise from the dead, he goes and preaches to people and all of that stuff is silly, mythological fable kind of stuff that's been invented by people who really just don't understand the continuity of what's going on in scripture.

Abraham's bosom is called that because it's the place and receipt of love and friend of your dearest friend and covenant.

Abraham is the father of our faith. Not Paul, Abraham is. We go to the place where Abraham is.

God will love and shelter his elect friend, his dearest friend in his bosom and so we go to Abraham's bosom.

Jesus talks about the rich man who saw Lazarus in Abraham's bosom, the place of covenant fulfillment and Jesus calls it many mansions.

A lot of people at that time didn't have a mansion and the mansions of God in my father's house are many mansions, in the father's house there are many mansions and I go to prepare a mansion for you that is a dwelling place in that particular place.

It's an eternal house, eternal in the heavens. When this earthly tabernacle is dissolved, we have a building made by God, a house eternal in the heavens.

It's also called an everlasting habitation. They shall receive you into everlasting habitation in opposition to all of our earthly dwellings which though some of them are definitely very nice and very beautiful, might be a little bit glorious, they're all going to be laid in the dust and they shall receive you.

That is, it may be as love says, a reception into that glorious place in that particular way.

For such an entrance shall be ministered to you abundantly into the everlasting kingdom of our

Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. That verse should echo in the mind of the Christian. It's called a city to come to.

We look for a city to come whose builder and maker is God. It's called a rich and glorious inheritance.

Colossians 1, previous to his verse, who hath made us meet to be partakers of the inheritance of the saints.

It's abstractly called the joy of the Lord. Enter thou into thy master's joy.

And so all of these ideas demonstrate that this particular place is special, spinal, and abundant.

And yet, the idea behind what makes heaven heaven is that God is there.

That's what makes heaven heaven, which is why love spends those first couple of sermons saying, listen, if you as a

Christian are not seeking those things above where Christ is seated at the right hand of God, now you're not going to like heaven.

Because heaven is all about that. It's all about the Lord Jesus Christ. That is what makes heaven awesome.

Christians will be ravished with the enjoyment of Christ.

We call that in theology, the beatific vision, the most beautiful vision that we can have.

Because if you just take Paul's word at face value and you say, set your mind upon the things above where Christ is seated at the right hand of God, and you say, well, what is it that he wants us to set our mind on?

Well, there's a city and there's dwelling places. Maybe he wants us to set our mind there.

No, that's not it. Well, there are angels there in heaven. Maybe he wants us to set our mind on the angels in heaven.

No, that's not it either. Well, the saints are in heaven. Well, that's not the idea.

It's where Christ is seated at the right hand of God. The center point of heaven is the

Lord Jesus Christ. And that joy, that joy in the

Lord will swallow up everything that we call sorrow in this life.

And we will see the beatific vision of the almighty anointed

Christ, the Son of Man, riding on the glory clouds, the Ancient of Days forever.

That is what makes heaven heavenly. And we think about that and we say, you know, that is the saint happiness.

That is what makes us happy. The unapproachable light that God dwells in is revealed in the person of Jesus Christ, in the fullness of the face of Jesus Christ.

And we look upon him in this vision in heaven, in seeing him face to face, and we will be completely and totally satisfied.

In every way. When Peter, James, and John were up on the mount and Christ was transfigured before him as the centerpiece, the law and the prophet who appeared within Elijah and Moses.

The text says that Peter spoke in a manner in which he didn't even know what he was saying, that he said, it's good to be here.

Shall we set up some tabernacle and make this stay a little bit longer?

He was overwhelmed with the transfiguration of Christ who shone with the glory of God.

And so, this is the place that Christians are going to go if they're converted, if they're saved, if they're changed.

That beatific vision of God is what we're after. That's what Moses was after. That's what all of those saints were after in the

Old Testament. They wanted to see God clearly. They wanted to see the purity and the holiness and the light of the

Almighty. Jesus says in the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew 8, he says, Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see

God. When he shall appear, we shall see him as he is.

First John 3, 2. Here, we see only what God is not.

There, we're going to see him as he is. Job said that.

I know that my Redeemer liveth and that he shall stand upon the earth the last day.

And with these eyes, I shall see God. So, Paul doesn't introduce newfangled ideas.

He exegetes the Scripture so that we have the answers to the question.

So, if we ask, what is it to see God as to make it the chief blessedness of the soul in glory, there are two things that love says are implied in that idea.

The first implies that you have a real enjoyment of the favor and love of God to you in Jesus Christ.

And that in and of itself should cause us to just contemplate that idea often.

That, you know, the Lord would not show his face to him that does evil, but he will show his face, the love and the favor of God to those that love him.

And God will be very angry and wrathful with those who do evil.

But seeing the God, seeing this vision of God in this way is to contemplate the enjoyment of that right now.

The meditation of him would be sweeter than sweet if we continue to think about the beautiful vision that one day we will have to learn more about him now.

When we get there, the Scriptures, the faith will be made sight. We won't need the

Bible anymore. We will be seeing him as he is face to face. The other thing that love says is that it implies a perfect knowledge of God in his nature.

And that is the chief importance of this idea of seeing God. Not as if we should see his defined essence with bodily eyes, because God's invisible, and then in heaven, he is still immortal, invisible,

God only wise. But we see it, his divine essence in the face of Jesus Christ.

We'll see more of God there. One of the ideas I've always thought about is that heaven is the place where God manifests himself most.

And so we'll see God with a more perfect knowledge than we see right now.

So now we only see him darkly, as in a glass. Somewhat of a riddling statement that's given by Paul.

But when we get there, and we get to see it by sight, it's an amazing idea that we'll have real enjoyment in the perfection and fruition of our seeing in Jesus Christ in heaven.

So, here's the other thing, and this is something that both Christopher Love talks about in,

I believe it's Sermon 7, and Jonathan Edwards also talks about. Heaven will be enjoyed as heaven by everyone.

And you will enjoy God insofar as your nature is capable.

And Love talks about what that means. I'm going to use Edwards' illustration, because they both say the same thing, but Edwards' illustration is just easy to understand.

Edwards says that, listen, you're a 50 -gallon drum, or you're a 5 -gallon bucket, or you're a glass.

Take any one of those three objects and throw them into the sea. Pretend for a moment the sea is heaven.

All of them will be filled to the brim. All of them will be completely satisfied, but there are degrees of happiness in that way in heaven.

And so, that's why Love says we are going to enjoy God immediately, face -to -face.

We are going to see God face -to -face in the Lord Jesus Christ, but the capacity that we have to enjoy

Him may be larger or smaller in degrees as a result of what it is that we do now and how we are sanctified now.

And so, here we enjoy God with many interruptions and many difficulties.

There it will be no interruption. We will all be satisfied, but there are degrees.

Just as there are degrees in hell, there are degrees in heaven. And Jesus says about the

Pharisees, He says, you will receive greater condemnation. There's greater condemnation for people who commit greater atrocities before the faith of God.

In the same way, Paul talks about having a reward in heaven. When we get to heaven, different people will be rewarded in different ways.

Heaven will be heaven for everyone, and everyone will be able to see the fullness of the Lord in Jesus Christ.

But at the same time, He uses this as a press to press us to run the race in a way in which we can gather up as much as we possibly can now so that we can be as fit as we can be in our sanctification for heaven.

You know, it's like one of the things that I've been contemplating is time and how much time we have here.

Let's say we just only live for 75 years. If we were to have a godly preacher who, as the

Lord Jesus Christ, took Paul, the Lord of Damascus, and said to him, I'm going to make you one to demonstrate forgiveness of sins to the

Jews and Gentiles, and I will send you to the Gentiles and protect you from the Jews, and you will proclaim the forgiveness of sins, and you will proclaim light.

If we sit under a preacher of light all the days of our life, as many times as we can in the course of our lifetime, and I worked this out on the calculator and such, if we would attend every single sermon, every single

Lord's Day with every minister who is a top -notch, one -in -a -thousand kind of rare minister, if we were to sit under that guy, we would only listen to 3 ,750 sermons in the course of our life.

And you think to yourself, well, you know, that's sort of a lot, but those are the things that God uses as a means of grace to prepare us for heaven.

And that's if we're sitting under that preaching week in and week out.

We're never sick. We never miss. The sermons are always great. The light is always clearly seen.

The Lord's voice is in the mouth of His prophet, and we're hearing that, being sanctified like that, being washed by the regenerating power of the

Spirit every Lord's Day. And then we're reading our scriptures daily, and we tend to think of, like, how many times are you going to read the scriptures in the course of your life?

So let's say you pick one of these Bible -reading outlines, and you read the scripture one time from beginning to end every—that's only 75 times.

Seventy -five times you're going to read the Bible, and you're going to sit under 3 ,750 sermons. Maybe you'll sit under some

Sunday school classroom. Maybe you'll have some conversations with your husband or your wife or your children.

You'll read some books, buy some Puritans that will be very helpful for your sanctification.

All of that, you know, all of that, we're thinking, this is the time when we are to seek and set our minds on the things above where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God, because it prepares us for the day in which the

Son of Man returns. He brings us to heaven, and we forever then are set in that ecstatic joy wrapped in His righteousness, seeing

God face -to -face forever. But our sanctification happens now. Our sanctification and mortification of sin and growth in the

Lord Jesus Christ, He specifically tells us that we are to grow in the grace and knowledge of our

Lord Jesus Christ. And we're to do that constantly, because we're being prepared right now for heaven.

And so, in heaven, our knowledge will be perfected. Here, we know in part by that imperfect glass, but at that time, we're going to know

God as He is, and we're going to see all the rays of glory and majesty, which right now sort of dim our eyes, and we're not able to behold just in the right way.

We have to struggle because of our flesh, because of our sin, because of our fallenness, and yet God is preparing us for that place to be ready to see

Him face -to -face. And so, that place of joy will swallow up all the difficulties, all of those things will disappear, and we will then see the beauty of the

Savior face -to -face forever. Now, let me say, if that doesn't excite you to death,

I don't know what would excite you as a Christian. I mean, that is, in and of itself, the heart of what love is trying to exemplify and talk about in this work.

You want people to see Christ clearly, and we need more preachers of light like Christopher Love today, who will preach things clearly to us and aid us on our journey to heaven, so that when we're up on the mountain with the shepherds and they say, let them look through our glass, see if they can see the gates of the celestial city, if they have the ability to do so.

That is what we're working on here and now, because we don't know. Lord, come back today.

Lord, come back tomorrow. Lord, come back in 50 years, 100 years. We don't know. We're to be prepared and pressing on vigilantly to take the kingdom of God by violence and the kingdom of heaven by force, because in our mind, and this is another one of the ideas that love presses us, in our mind, this should be our all.

Christ is our life. He's our everything. He should be our everything.

Without reservation, our lives are wholly given over to Him. It's a life of contemplation on the wonders and excellencies of who

Christ is as the Savior. And one day, most amazingly, we'll see

Him face -to -face in heaven forever, and we'll always be seeing Him. Amen.

Well, we're going to have to conclude it right there, a perfect place to conclude it. And Joe in Slovenia, we didn't have time to ask your question, but I did forward your question to Dr.

McMahon, and perhaps he can answer you via email after the program. And I want to make sure that you have

Dr. McMahon's websites. We have apuritansmind .com

is one of them. apuritansmind .com, and then of course we have puritanpublications .com,

puritanpublications .com. And Dr. McMahon, if you could hold on, I would like to schedule you for another interview.

And I would like to thank everybody who took the time to write in with your questions, and I want you all to always remember for the rest of your lives that Jesus Christ is a far greater

Savior than you are a sinner. I look forward to hearing from you and your questions for our guests tomorrow on Iron Sharpens Iron Radio.