Thoughts from Mark "Hat" Rackley

Praise be to the Lord, the God of Israel, from everlasting to everlasting. Then all the people said “Amen” and “Praise the Lord.”

• 1 Chronicles 16:36

But the holy people of the Most High will receive the kingdom and will possess it forever—yes, for ever and ever.’

• Daniel 7:18

Lord, are you not from everlasting? My God, my Holy One, you will never die. You, Lord, have appointed them to execute judgment; you, my Rock, have ordained them to punish.

• Habakkuk 1:12

He has made everything beautiful in its time. He has also set eternity in the human heart; yet no one can fathom what God has done from beginning to end.

• Ecclesiastes 3:11

“To Infinity and Beyond”

• Buzz Lightyear, the Toy Story franchise

Okay, I threw in the Buzz Lightyear because it might get to my point…

My favorite television show is a four-pastor panel that answers viewer questions.  They even added a hotline, but not live.

On one show that I have seen a few times, so probably not recent, the question was will we have face-to-face time with Jesus?  And what about face-to-face time with the Holy Spirit?

The first pastor talked about how you can be in a sermon with a hundred people, and it sounded like you were the only person the pastor was talking to.  The second pastor mentioned how eternity was a really long time and even if we do not see Jesus face-to-face, it will seem like it.  The third pastor talked about whatever Heaven was like, we would not be disappointed…

Okay, I was disappointed with their explanations.  Do we know what Heaven is like?  No.  But God is a personal God, and I really do think that we will get face-to-face time with Him.  Why beat around the bush?  Yes, there answers on the show are supposed to be “straight from the Bible” but I think they either do not understand infinity, or they were convinced that the caller would not understand a discussion on infinity.  Either way, I was disappointed.

In a recent Stinker Sunday School Class, my fictional Sunday school class, I had Easy ask someone in class if taking a bucket of water out of a nearby lake would change the water level in the lake?  Eventually, Easy got up to everyone in the entire world taking a hundred buckets of water out of the ocean.  Of course, the “wise guy” in the class had to ask where all these buckets were coming from. When you start an argument like this with a bucket of water out of a bathtub, you can agree that the water level changes.  But even every human being taking a bathtub of water out of the oceans might change the water level.  Infinity is that you could take one hundred oceans of water out of an infinite ocean, and you still have an infinite ocean of water left.  Infinity is not a finite number.  (Thus, the word infinity – not finite.)  Infinity is not “a whole bunch.”

Infinity is limitless.

Thus, if I take Jesus off to the side, and I stare into His face for one thousand years, and everyone else who ever became a Christian did the same thing, there would still be an infinite amount of time left in eternity. Even if there are billions of Christians who do that.

With that in mind, Jesus is a personal God.  He would have died on the cross if you were the only sinner that needed saving.  Yes, you will get all the face-to-face time you want with Jesus – but be reminded that our wants will be in line with God’s desires at that point.  But however much personal time we get with Jesus, there will be an eternity in Heaven left over.

And another thing that was mentioned, I think, but it was lost in their wishy-washy responses, was that regardless, we will love whatever Heaven has in store.

And even with this “rant”, I love those four pastors.  None of us bats a thousand, and we do not throw a touchdown pass on every play.

I have a horribly outdated encyclopedia of baseball stats.  I was thumbing through the book decades ago and I found a famous manager.  In this manager’s playing days, he got one at bat his last year before he retired, and he hit a home run.  One at bat, batting average one thousand, one RBI, slugging average of 4000 (four bases, one hit, one at bat).  Ever since, I have wondered if he saw his stat line and thought he could never beat that, so he retired and took up managing the team.

Most of us do not get that option.  I will continue to watch the show.  It is still my favorite show.  And they may have had their reasons for giving the answers they gave.

Soli Deo Gloria.  Only to God be the Glory.