I saw this quote by Charles Spurgeon on the Pyromaniacs blog , you can find the rest of it there, but this portion was particularly striking.
"Men by nature need something to be done for them before they can enter
Heaven, and something to be done in them, something to be done with them, for by
nature they are enemies to God."
That a great change must be wrought
in us, even ungodly men will confess, since the idea of the heaven of the
Scriptures has always been repulsive, never agreeable, to unconverted men and
women.
When Mahomet would charm the world into the belief that he was the
prophet of God, the heaven he pictured was not at all the heaven of holiness and
spirituality. His was a heaven of unbridled sensualism, where all the passions
were to be enjoyed without let or hindrance for endless years. Such the heaven
that sinful men would like; therefore, such the heaven that Mahomet painted for
them, and promised to them.
Men in general, be they courtly, or be they
coarse in their habits, when they read of heaven in the Scriptures with any
understanding of what they read, curl their lips and ask contemptuously, Who
wants to be everlastingly psalm singing? Who could wish to be always sitting
down with these saints talking about the mighty acts of the Lord and the
glorious majesty of his kingdom? Such people cannot go to heaven, it is clear;
they have not character or capacity to enter into its enjoyment.
From The Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit, volume 62,
sermon number 3,538, "Preparation for Heaven."
Also consider the video posted here from John Piper on the same subject, but from a different, yet parallel perspective.
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