You Can't Scare Me to Heaven

By Martijn van Tilborgh

I recently watched a popular evangelist preach to a massive crowd.

He leaned into the microphone and asked,

"What would you do if you only had 30 seconds left to live?"

Then he assured them that God does not promise tomorrow, but that he had good news for us.

I know he meant well.

But that was not good news.

That was fear.

So let me ask a different question.

What happens if you wake up alive tomorrow?

That question exposes how shallow much of our preaching has become.

Jesus was not obsessed with the afterlife.

We are.

He did not terrify people into belief.

We try to.

He did not offer escape from the world.

He announced transformation within it.

Jesus spoke very little about what happens after death. And when He did, His words resisted clarity.

That alone should tell us something.

When you read the Gospels without filters, it becomes obvious that Jesus cared far more about how people live than where they go after they die.

Notice something else.

Jesus never prayed for the lost to be saved.

Not once.

He never instructed His followers to do it either.

When He taught us to pray, the focus was not heaven.

Heaven does not seem to be the focus.

Earth does.

"Your kingdom come. Your will be done. On earth as it is in heaven."

That was His obsession.

The Kingdom of God is not about getting people out of earth.

It is about getting heaven into it.

So let us be practical.

Love your neighbor.

Care for the poor.

Refuse retaliation.

Give water to the thirsty.

These are not afterlife instructions.

They are resurrection practices.

And let's face it.

None of this can be done once we are dead.