I know what you’re thinking: Is this guy crazy? I can barely make it through the day without my “plan” falling apart.

Besides, isn’t there the little matter of physically dying before I could ever reach my decamillennial goals?

But I am being serious here. If you are a Christian, then you believe in a hereafter, an eternal one. And you would be wise to start living in the light of that fact right now. 

I got the 10,000-year bit from the last stanza “Amazing Grace,” of one of Christendom’s most treasured hymns, which echoes a similar thought:

“When we’ve been there (Heaven)
Ten thousand years,
Bright shining as the sun,
We’ve no less days
To sing God’s praise
Than when we’d first begun.”

One of the prices we pay for living frenzied lives chasing a buck and accumulating stuff is that little thought goes into matters of eternal value. Nevertheless, it is a fact that each day we live we are moving another step forward into eternity.

It’s Closer Than You Think

Do you picture eternity as just an extension of time? Such that when you die (the only way to enter eternity), you would have to wait a very long time to get to the 10,000-year mark?

Not so. We’re talking about two completely different realms of existence.

In my book, My Origin, My Destiny, I wrote:

“Dr. Arthur Custance, a Canadian anthropologist, scientist and author specializing on science and Christianity, in Doorway Papers, described the difference between the realms of time and eternity this way:

“The really important thing to notice is that time stands in the same relation to eternity, in one sense, as a large number does to infinity. There is a sense in which infinity includes a very large number, yet it is quite fundamentally different and independent of it. And by analogy, eternity includes time and yet is fundamentally something other.

“The reduction of time until it gets smaller and smaller is still not eternity; nor do we reach eternity by an extension of time to great length. There is no direct pathway between time and eternity: they are different categories of experiences.

“The fundamental point to grasp in all this is that when we step out of time, we step into eternity, and we cannot be in them both at once. But God can.”

What will it be like when we get there

I’ve already quoted the last stanza of “Amazing Grace.” Now here is the first stanza:

“Amazing Grace
How sweet the sound,
That saved a wretch like me!
I once was lost,
But now am found;
Was blind, but now I see.”

We tend to think of ourselves in earthly terms, especially when it comes to our past sins and failures. So, when we get to Heaven, will we have to enter by the Service Entrance?

Again, Arthur Custance: 

“When I find myself in his (God’s) wonderful presence, it will not be as a miserable wretch, apologizing before God for my ragged soul that would seem scarcely worth the price of its purchase.

“No, it will be a glorious new me! It will be a perfected spirit (with all that belongs to the old sinful self — buried and done with forever) reunited with a resurrected body made like unto his ‘glorious body’ (Philippians 3:21) to form in some wholly satisfying way a new, yet identifiable, Arthur C. Custance.

“But because that name represents the old person and not the new, that name, like the old person it represents, will no longer be used or even remembered. I shall have a new name (Revelation 2:17).

“This is the promise of eternity … a glorious new nature worthy to behold the Lord in his glory and to form a part of his royal court.”

How About You?

Still thinking of yourself as a miserable wretch, barely squeaking into Heaven by the skin of your teeth?

If you are a believer in Christ, you are bound for glory, made “fit” to be there, not based on our merit, but by the blood of the Lamb of God.

Heaven is about Christ. It is where we finally get to see Him face-to-face. Ten thousand years won’t be enough to satisfy our longing to be with Him.

As foretold in John 14:1-3:

“Do not let your heart be troubled; believe in God, believe also in Me. In My Father’s house are many rooms; if that were not so, I would have told you, because I am going there to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I am coming again and will take you to Myself, so that where I am, there you also will be.”