I read two interesting things today which I feel are worth repeating here. The first one was in Word Live (Scripture Union’s online bible notes): “The realm where God is, which we call heaven, touches earth. One day when heaven and earth are made new there will be no division.” This fits with something Gerard Kelly said at Spring Harvest last week concerning God coming down to us, rather than us going up to heaven. The standard Christian view is about ‘going to heaven when we die’, which the world imagines to be sitting on a cloud playing a harp. But the teaching in Revelation is that there will be a new heaven and a new earth, and “God’s dwelling place is now among the people, and he will dwell with them.” (Rev. 21: 3) God restores all things, starting right here and right now.
Secondly, in a book of imagined dialogues between Jesus and Peter, Peter asks Jesus these questions concerning his well-known answer to the Pharisees about paying taxes to Caesar: “What if Caesar wants what belongs to God? … And what if God wants what Caesar thinks is his?” The oft-quoted ‘render unto Caesar’ thing is not about paying taxes, but it is about what we give to God.
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