All thanks and praise to our Lord for His calling to connect and fellowship with the churches in Kenya. I was both humbled and joyous to fellowship with the humble servant leaders of this denomination of 28 churches. I was hosted by their bishop and county (provincial) chaplain. We had the pastoral conference for a day in which I shared about the impending Rev 18:17-19 judgment and the necessity to prepare for it. The next day, I joined the regular worship session in which the bishop hosted leaders from other denominations. The messages I have heard all day were about fearing God and living in holiness. And I saw the one-ness and brotherly love in the churches between the leaders and the congregation when they honoured one another. (I am not making a pious courteous comment for I have seen most church leaders in the affluent countries are more of status seekers with their lofty protocol than humble servants.)
St Paul had ever been to the third heaven. (The third heaven refers to the place where God dwells.) He wrote in the third person in 2 Cor 12:2-4,“I must go on boasting. Although there is nothing to be gained, I will go on to visions and revelations from the Lord. I know a man in Christ who fourteen years ago was caught up to the third heaven. Whether it was in the body or out of the body I do not know—God knows. And I know that this man—whether in the body or apart from the body I do not know, but God knows—was caught up to paradise and heard inexpressible things, things that NO ONE IS PERMITTED TO TELL.” While he was there in heaven, he saw and heard things which he could not describe and was forbidden to relate. Scripture made it clear in 2 Cor 12:4 that NO ONE IS PERMITTED TO TELL of such experience.
Only 6 persons in Scripture had visions of heaven but not near death experiences – Isaiah, Ezekiel, Micaiah, Paul, John and Stephen. And possibly three wrote about the glory of God and their own fear in the presence of God. And all those who were brought back to life by our Lord Jesus or Paul did not have their post mortem experience mentioned in Scripture. Moments after our Lord died, many dead saints came out of their tombs and went into the city and appeared to many. Neither were their post mortem experience mentioned in Scripture.
Alex Malarkey was six years old when a car crash put him in a coma for two months, during which time he said he went to heaven and visited angels. The resulting memoir, co-authored with his father, was a best-seller. But five years after its publication in 2015, Alex says he made the whole thing up, NPR reports. “I did not die. I did not go to Heaven,” he wrote in an open letter to Christian books retailers. “I said I went to heaven because I thought it would get me attention.” The story was believable because it was related by a 6 year old boy whom hardly anyone would suspect he could have the guile to invent such a story to get attention. If a young boy could do that, surely there would be many charlatans today doing so for money and fame whose heaven visitation stories could not be verified by anyone, except himself or herself.
