As I sat there in the church staring at the CROSS up front.

I thought about a recent broadcast about Heaven from a world-famous MEGA-Church, led by a christian couple, well known and followed by christians on their trips for Jesus throughout the world.

(I don’t remember a cross in their church, just a big dove.)

They promoted their books and ‘mission trips,’ telling how we could have a Heaven we deserve, NOW. Just buy their books and follow the steps and join them, or send money to them to help the poor in these poor non-christian countries.

The Pastor in the tycoon’s best suit seemed to be constantly smiling, as he preached a sermon in which he seemed to say * ‘that the end of all being is the happiness of man,’ just like in my philosophy class; except he used a lot of evangelical terms and biblical doctrine which seemed to say about Heaven

• *“God reigns in heaven for the happiness of man.
• We can have our best life NOW with Jesus.

*Jesus Christ was incarnate for the happiness of man.

All the angels exist in the…everything is for the happiness of man.”

(They sure can quote scripture… but could they take up their cross? …)

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[QUOTES from: “Ten Shekels and a Shirt,” Paris Reidhead, (1919-1992) Sermon on Judges 17, c.1945-47]

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One other time, a friend insisted that I had to hear a missionary just returned from Africa.

I agreed, thinking of pictures from National Geographic and Albert Schweitzer.

*The missionary had actually met this famous man and told a couple of stories about shooting crocodiles for sport; but how later this famous man in Africa, not only wouldn’t kill a nest of cockroaches inside his organ at home, but refused sterilization in surgery so he wouldn’t kill living bacteria. (The missionary called it ‘the dirtiest hospital in Africa.) Then he said how the philanthropic doctor hated any suggestion of being called a christian.

On the other hand, this missionary had gone to Africa to tell them about heaven, but in that he also became disillusioned. He witnessed:

*“I had seen pictures of lepers. I had seen pictures of ulcers. I had seen pictures of native funerals and I didn’t want my fellow human beings to suffer in hell eternally after such a miserable existence on earth.”

*“And when I got to Africa I discovered that they weren’t poor ignorant little heathen running around in the woods waiting for…looking for someone to tell them how to go to heaven, that they were monsters of iniquity that were living in utter and total defiance of far more knowledge of God than I ever dreamed they had… When I got there I found they knew about heaven and didn’t want to go there and that they loved their sin and wanted to stay in it.”