KEYWORDS: god, earth, jesus, world, heavenly, city

Story of Heaven's Children, The

David Berg

ML#2100

1. I'm Grandfather, & I'm going to try to tell you a story about the future of our children! They say that the greatest fear is fear of the unknown, so I'm going to try to wipe away your fears & tears of the unknown future by telling you that it is not as unknown as you might think it to be!—Especially to us who know God's Word, the Bible, & the clear description of the Future by His Prophets! (2Ti.1:7; Amos 3:7; Jn.15:15; 1Co.2:9-10)

2. The basic events, characters & conditions of the Future have already been clearly revealed in the Bible & by His Prophets, the foretellers of the future! (Eph.1:9; Isa.42:9; Num.12:6)

3. So this story is based on the facts that God has already revealed in His Word & the prophecies which have already been predicted.—Prophecies, some of which have already come to pass & been fulfilled‚ proving that God's Word is true! Therefore we can just as surely expect the remaining prophecies of God's Word about the Future, that they too will be completely fulfilled, just as those have been in the past! (2Chr.20:20b; Jn.16:4a; Isa.34:16; Isa.40:8; Ez.33:33.)

4. There are thousands of prophecies in the Bible which have already been fulfilled by past history, including prophecies about the history of nations, the rise & fall of empires, even the names of great kings & the amazing fulfilments of prophecies in the little land of Israel, particularly those concerning Jesus Christ, the Messiah‚ about Whom hundreds of prophecies in the ancient writings of the Prophets have all been fulfilled in His birth, life & death for you & me! (Isa.44:28; Dan.8:20-21; Isa.9:6; 11:1-5; 53:2-4.)

5. His was a life of love!—Born in love, living in love & dying in love for you & me, that we too might live in love for Him & others. (Jn.3:16; 1Jn.4:9-10; Eph.3:19; Rom.8:38-39; 1Jn.3:16.)

6. But His story does not end there, because He rose again!—And He made many other promises & predictions to His disciples before He finally ascended on high, caught up in the clouds in the air to depart to be with His Father God in Heaven!—And His precious Holy Spirit‚ the Mother of the Trinity! (Mt.28:1-7,18-20; Mk.16:16-18; Jn.11:25,26)

7. For before He went away, He promised His disciples, saying, "I go to prepare a place for you that where I am‚ there ye may be also!" For He said that: "In My Father's house are many mansions‚ & if it were not so‚ I would have told you." (Jn.14:2-3)

8. And that place that He is going to prepare for us, that paradise in Heaven, that Heavenly City is clearly & explicitly & specifically described in detail in His Holy Book, the Bible, in its last Book, the prophecies of the beloved disciple John, Saint John the Revelator. (Rev.21-22)

9. Dear John, who went there‚ saw it & described it exactly as being 1500 miles long, 1500 miles wide & 1500 miles high!—The greatest, most enormous city every built & that could only have been built by God Himself with the help of His Son Jesus & the Mother Holy Spirit & all of His holy angels! Thank God!

10. It is surrounded by a beautiful over-200-foot-high wall composed of 12 layers of precious jewels & having 12 gates, each gate a single gigantic pearl!—And filled with beautiful parks & buildings & mansions for His beloved children who have loved Him & been saved through faith in His death for them on the cross!

11. And only they will be permitted to live within it, in its Heavenly beauty of gorgeous splendour & paradise!—Free forever from pain or sickness or death or evil, to live with Him & each other forever in Eternal happiness! (Rev.21:4; 22:5,14)

12. Only they can walk its crystal golden streets & enter its beautiful buildings & live in its gorgeous mansions, enjoying ecstatic pleasures of paradise forever! (Rev.21:24,27)

13. Each gate is guarded by a mighty angel, for outside, upon the surface of a new Earth without seas but watered by rivers & lakes, there are still nations with kings, populated by people who are not yet ready to enter that beautiful City. (Rev.21:24-26)

14. For they are not yet prepared for its purity & holiness, as they at first did not receive Jesus as their Saviour because they had never heard of Him. No Christian from the churches had ever come to them & told them of His Love & His wonderful free Salvation & this beautiful Heavenly City that they can see from afar! (Jn.1:12; 3:16-17; Act 4:12; 10:35; Rom.6:23; Heb.11:13‚16.)

15. They are the resurrected good of all ages who did not rise in the first resurrection at the Second Coming of Jesus Christ in the beautiful rapture of His saints, the Bride of Christ, after the terrible Tribulation! (1Th.4:16-17; Rev.20:4-5)

16. They are the unsaved dead of the first 6,000 years of World history who have been brought back to life & placed upon the Earth's new paradisical surface because their names were found written in the Book of Life & therefore deserve their very first chance to hear the Gospel of Jesus & His Love & of the wonderful Love of God, His Father, Who created all things & made all things for our benefit & our pleasure to know & to love Him!

17. Here on the surface of the New Earth they are being prepared to be made more holy & pure by being saved & trained to know the Lord so that they also can enter that beautiful City of God! (Rev.21:25,27; 2Pe.3:9; 1Ti.2:4; Ph.2:10-11; Heb.13:14.)

18. Meanwhile they live in this paradisical New Earth with all of its unspoiled, recreated beauty like the Garden of Eden of old!—Perfect in every respect with no evil, no curse, no thorns‚ no evil varmints & poisonous serpents & insects & the horrors of the cursed Earth that had gone before! (Rev.22:3)

19. Here in this perfect environment they are receiving Jesus as their Saviour & finding Christ as the Son of God, the Lover of their souls, & preparing to enter that beautiful Heavenly City prepared for those that love Him! (Jn.14:3; 1Co.2:9-10)

20. But before they arrived in this beautiful paradise of God, several great periods of World history had passed by. There was the fall from grace of man & woman, Adam & Eve‚ in the Garden of Eden for disobedience in eating of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good & Evil. (Gen.3; Ro.5:12-14)

21. Driven out then into a hostile World full of curses & a difficult environment, they now must eat of their bread in the sweat of their face, & work hard to earn a living, because they had lost the favour of the Lord through such awesome disobedience! Tempted by Satan, the King of Evil‚ they passed on to all mankind the vicious sin of unbelief & disobedience to God! (Gen.3:19; Heb.3:12,19; 10:35-39; Ro.5:12.)

22. Finally man became so evil that God decided that He must send a great flood of water upon the Earth to destroy them all! All, that is, except one man & his family alone. That man was Noah & his wife & his three sons & their three wives. Eight souls in all were all that were savedfrom that great Flood,in an ark which God told Noah how to build. (Gen.7; 1Pe.3:20)

23. After the Flood, over a year later, the ark landed upon the top of Mount Ararat on the border of Turkey & Russia. And as the Earth's surface became dry enough to walk upon it, Noah & his family & all of the animals that they had saved left the ark & spread down the river Euphrates toward the Persian Gulf.

24. But they had not gone far nor lived long before people had become evil again, this time building a mighty tower which they thought was going to reach up to Heaven so that they would be like gods in their pride & their earthly might! But God was angry with them for it, & so He confused their tongues & their languages & divided them into all the various languages that are spoken upon the Earth today. So they could no longer communicate with one another nor understand each other to finish the tower.

25. So they left off building the tower of Babel & drifted on down the river Euphrates in their evil & their sin & their iniquity & began to spread out further across the surface of the Earth in all directions. (Gen.8,11:1–9)

26. The children of Noah's son Japheth spread northward & westward into Europe & from there eventually to North America & South America. The children of Noah's son Shem spread into the Mideast into the little land of Israel & also into North Africa as the Arabs & also eastward into the Orient, Asia & all the lands of the East. Whereas the sons of Ham‚ the black one, spread into Africa & populated that great continent with their black descendants.

27. And it seemed the more man multiplied & populated the Earth‚ the more wicked he became & the more evil, so thatthey even worshipped devil-gods & idols & images & practised horrible religious worship of these demons, even including human sacrifice & the sacrifice of their very own children to these demonic gods! (Lev.18:21; 2Ki.17:14-17; Jer.32:35; Ps.106:35-39.)

28. Finally God decided He had to do something about these horrible people, the descendants of the two perfect creatures that He had created in the beginning, led astray by the deceitfulness & the wickedness of the Devil! So He selected a people who would receive His Words & write the Bible—the Jews of Israel—& produce the Messiah, Jesus Christ! (Ro.3:1–2)

29. But then again even these chosen people, sons & daughters of Abraham the faithful, were led astray by Satan, inspired & Satanically-possessed to slaughter the Son of God, Who had been sent to them only to show them love & explain God to them! Their jealous, wicked, evil religious leaders had Him crucified‚ & tried to destroy His disciples! (Mt.27:17-25; Acts 8:1)

30. But God blessed Jesus' Disciples & the Christians multiplied & spread throughout the Earth until their love had finally conquered the Roman Empire & Christianity became the official religion of the Western World! (Acts 8:4; 28:30-31)

31. But as the Christians became rich & powerful & corrupt, they too began to build temples to worship their God, like the templesof other gods, & developed a priesthood who also became evil & corrupt & forsook the way of Jesus & His Love & wrote their own laws & rules & traditions by which they lived & sinned & died! (Acts 7:48-50; 17:24-25; Mark 7:6–13)

32. Until the great church of this new religion became even more wicked than their forebears, & slaughtered & martyred & persecuted the true Christians, the genuine‚ living saved Children of God of their day! (Ro.2:28-29; Gal.3:26–29; 2Ti.3:12)

33. Finally, again God sent great men of God & the reformers such as Martin Luther to preach again the Truth throughout the World & reveal again the free gift of God's Salvation by grace through faith, & that not of themselves but the gift of God, not of works lest any man should boast, but the free gift of Salvation paid for by Jesus Christ with His blood shed on the cross of Calvary! (Ro.10:9–10; Eph.2:8-9; 2Ti.1:9; Tit.3:5; Rev.3:20)

34. These new Protestant Christians, as they were called‚were also persecuted & slaughtered & martyred by this evilchurch, until there were so many millions of them that the church could no longer conquer them nor extinguish them‚ &the Protestants began to spread throughout the Roman Empire & throughout Europe & to North & South America & throughout all the known World, until there were true Christians in almost every land & many Christian missionaries going throughout all the World to heathen nations & nations that the church had failed to evangelise because of its wickedness!—Nations which had gotten into other evil religions & worship of devils & cruel religious practices!

35. But there these missionaries gained many converts to the true Saviour of the World, Jesus Christ, & won many of them with the Love of God into true faith in the true Messiah, the true Saviour of the World, Jesus Christ! (Jn.14:6; Acts 10:34–35)

36. However, it seemed that the wicked multiplied even more rapidly & spread into every nation on Earth & became the majority of the world's population in the very last days!Finally Man becomes so wicked that only a few million true Christians are left on Earth & the vast majority of the Earth's population is wicked & evil & as bad or worse than they were in the days just before the Great Flood destroyed the World's first population!

37. Finally the wicked of the World even choose acompletely godless government, an anti-Christ government & an Antichrist dictator, a false Messiah who pretends to be their saviour but is Satan incarnate, the Devil in person! And he declares that he is God & that they must all worship him or die! (2Th.2:3-4)

38. He establishes a worldwide government & insists that there be no other religions but the worship of himself & his own image‚ which is set up by the rebuilt Jewish temple in Jerusalem wherein he is on a throne inside, claiming to be God!

39. The evil, wicked insane satanic tyrant then begins to persecute all who will not worship him & kill & slaughter & martyr them, fighting great wars against the religious nations who oppose him, & trying to conquer the entire World & slaughter all who will not follow him, bringing great Tribulation to the Earth! (Mt.24:15,21; Da.11:31-37; Rev.12:13-17, 13:6-7)

40. But God spares His Christian children throughout the Earth & gives them places of refuge & havens in the mountains & dens& caves of the Earth & in the nations which refuse to follow the Antichrist & who fight against him in the great wars of the Endtime! (Psa.91:1-2; Psa.46:1–2; Pr.14:26; Rev.12:6,14)

41. However, just after the Antichrist & his kings & forces of Europe destroy North America in a great nuclear war, there is such great darkness over all the Earth that it begins to freeze & it seems that everyone will die! (Rev.18:8,23; Isa.13:9-11)

42. But suddenly there appears in the Heavens the sign of the Son of Man, the Heavenly City of God‚ the beautiful golden pyramid-shaped City riding in a gorgeous crystal blue orb called the Crystal Sea! It is the City of the Great King, the King of kings, Jesus Christ, & He Himself appears in the sky in the clouds! And there is a great shout & the trump of God & the voice of the archangels calling the people of God to "Come up hither to your Heavenly reward to be with your King forever!"

43. And suddenly all those who had died as Christians rise from their graves with new Heavenly bodies & begin to fly skyward‚ followed by the living Christians who are instantly changed in the twinkling of an eye at that last trump & rise together with them to meet the Lord in the air & join Him in His Heavenly Feast, a Wedding Feast of the Bridegroom, Jesus with His Bride, the true Christians, the true Church of Jesus Christ from every faith all over the World! (Mt.24:29-31; 1Co.15:51-52; 1Th.4:16-17)

44. Andwhile they are feasting & rejoicing in their great salvation & receiving their rewards for faithfulness, having done their Master's will, God is raining horrible judgements & His great wrath upon the wicked left behind on the face of the Earth in great scourges & great plagues & great judgements! So the wicked gnaw their tongues for pain & yet repent not of their evil deeds! (Rev.19:6-9; Rev.15-16; Isa.13:11-13)

45. So finally God mounts His children upon Heavenly white horses of great power & supernatural strength, & with this mighty army of Saints & angels they ride out of the Heavenly City through the skies to invade the Earth & destroy the evil empire of the Antichrist & all of his wicked followers in the Battle of Armageddon!—Until only the good & the religious who had resisted the Antichrist & resisted his Mark are left, even though they do not yet know Jesus nor have been saved in the time previous! Yet the Lord is going to give all these living their opportunity to hear the Gospel about Jesus & His Love & His Salvation! (Rev.19:11-21; 2Pe.3:9; 1Ti.2:4; Phil.2:10-11)

46. So He sends His angels & His Saints to rule over the Earth & clean up the mess that has been left behind by wicked Man, the evil pollution & all of the remnants of Man's unrighteousness, to make it a New World, a cleansed Earth! It is the same Earth, but its surface purified & with the curse of God against evil lifted, & the Devil & his demons bound in Hell for a thousand years!—And the Earth is again restored to the beauty & perfection of the Garden of Eden!—And now without the curses & plagues which God had visited upon the wicked! (Rev.20:1–4)

47. And those still living are given a chance to receive Jesus‚ the King of kings, the King of the World in the Kingdom of God, & to love Him & follow Him & do His will! (Jn.6:39-40)

48. So for a Thousand Years the Earth is restored to its original beauty & purity & wonder & pleasure, so that all Mankind rejoices in the Kingdom of God on Earth ruled by its King of kings, Jesus Christ, & His Saints & angels! (Rev.2:26-27; Rev.5:10, 20:4)

49. And all men still living are given an opportunity to know & to love Him & to follow Him‚ & many multitudes of millions are saved & regenerated, made new, living wonderful lives of righteousness & unselfishness & love for one another! (2Co.5:17)

50. But even amongst these in this perfect World of perfect men & women & angels & the perfect King of kings, there are many who still have evil hearts & reject Him & resent Him & desire to go their own wilful wicked ways, as they had before! So that now‚ at the end of that Thousand Years of giving them an opportunity to be saved, many were still not regenerated & have rejected the Lord & resented His will! Until finally the Lord again decides to give Man his last chance! (Isa.26:10)

51. So He allows Satan to be loosed from the Pit of Hell & to come back with his evil angels to go out abroad through all the Earth & deceive as many men & nations as he possibly can until Satan gathers followers from all nations to follow after him in a great war against the Saints of God, the rulers of the Earth!

52. So that God again has to rescue His Saints from the Earth in another great Rapture of catching His Millennial children out of this Earth & lifting them on high to be with Him in that beautiful Heavenly City in that globe above! But this time He finishes off Satan & his wicked followers & demons once & for all & forever, & completely destroys the surface of the Earth & all of Satan's evil rebels with a great flood of fire which completely burns up the entire surface of the Earth & its atmosphere, the polluted heavens & junk-filled space & all of the wicked who still remain! (Rev.20:7-10; 2Pe.3:10-13)

53. Then He renews the Earth & remakes it into a New Earth completely, more beautiful & more perfect than ever, with no more dangerous seas & no more foul weather & no more evil of any kind, an even more perfect paradise on Earth than it has ever been before! (Rev.21:1-5; Isa.60:19-22, 65:17-25)

54. And now that the surface of the Earth is purified & made perfect again, the Lord sees fit to permit His beautiful Heavenly City to descend from the Heavens & settle upon the Earth itself, so that His habitation could be with His beloved people on this New Earth in the New Jerusalem‚ the Heavenly City!—Their Home Forever! (Rev.21:2; Heb.12:22-23)

55. In the great White Throne Judgement of God, He has raised from the dead all of the other people of the Earth who have ever died, &, sending the wicked to Hell, He saves the righteous to live upon the surface of the Earth to learn about Him & His Love & His Son Jesus & His wonderful Salvation from sin that they too might be saved & join the already-saved Children of God who are living in the City! (Jn.10:16,27-29; Acts 3:21; 2Co.5:19; Eph.1:10; 2:7)

56. And so all the saved peoples of the Earth & Heaven live happily with the Lord & His angels in the beautiful Paradise of the New Earth & the City of God with Him forever in an Eternity of Love & Life Eternal! (Rev.22:3-5)

57. That is very briefly the story of God & the Earth & Man's history & the Endtime of Man's rule on Earth & the establishment of the Kingdom of God in the Thousand Years called the Millennium, & that final destruction of the surface of the Earth & its atmosphere & all its pollutions & all of its evil in a flood of fire, only to be remade anew for God & His children & their Heavenly City forever!

58. And as we have said before‚ these basic events & major periods of Earth's history & Man's activities upon it right through to the Heavenly City itself have all been vividly described by His Prophets throughout the entire Bible!

59. The horrible history of evil Man & the beautiful story of the sweet, good Children of God & their Heavenly ending are then really only beginning! These are generally the events & the circumstances & the characters of the history of this entire Earth & its peoples from Beginning to End!

60. However, many of the tiny details & actual experiences of His children during some of these periods have not been made completely clear. That has been left for us to find out‚ & some of these secrets have not yet been revealed, of the experiences that we are actually going to live through & feel & see & live in the wonderful World yet to come! (Deu.29:29; 1Co.13:12)

61. We have given you many beautiful pictures to illustrate these events & conditions & experiences, to try to help you see the realities of it all, & particularly the beauties of the Heavenly Earth & the Heavenly City & its people, & the stories of some of their lives & experiences through these times!

62. But we have yet to give you in the greatest of detail some of these stories & their experiences which God is revealing to us day-by–day, even now, as we face these events of the future.

63. Some of you have already read the stories of my own family & my children, which have already been written, such as "The Story of Our Children" & "Life with Grandpa" & similar accounts of our past history & lives on this Earth.

64. But now we feel that there is a real need to envision their lives in the Future yet to come as they grow older & as they live through this terrible period of Great Tribulation & the last death throes & agonies of Man's wicked World, & then our wonderful rescue from it in the beautiful Second Coming of Jesus & the Rapture of His Saints! How will it really feel & what will it look like & how will it be when these things occur & we pass through them with our own children during these periods!?

65. We are now going to try to envision these events & experiences as relating to us & how we will live through them into the beautiful World of Tomorrow!

66. We're going to skip over much of the worst part of the story of the Great Tribulation & how they survive it, because that story is being told in another fascinating account known as "Heaven's Girl"! So if you want to read the details of the Great Tribulation & how God's people survive it, you must surely read that beautiful story of that Heavenly Girl, which has been so thrillingly written by John Weaver & beautifully illustrated by Al Eastman! Be sure to read that story if you possibly can!

67. The continued story of our children & their life with Grandpa we hope to begin at the end of that horrible period of Great Tribulation, with their Rapture into the Heavens at the coming of the Lord! We're going to try to help you really see & feel those experiences as they pass through these tremendous events of the Future! So God bless you & help you to understand & thrill to the wonders that are before us!

68. We hope that you'll enjoy it & will be encouraged by it & thrilled & inspired with its beautiful story about these wonders to come! God bless you, & may you be one of these who will live such a life & experience such thrills in such a glorious & wonderful Future!—In Jesus' name, amen.