Imagine.

I have never been a fan of this song.  I never got into the hippy-dippy mindset from which this song came from, the peacenik, hippy, free-love age.  I was thinking about these words this morning and have often wondered:


Imagine there's no heaven
It's easy if you try
No hell below us
Above us only sky
Imagine all the people
Living for today...


Why would you want to even ENTERTAIN THE THOUGHT of there not being a heaven?  There are days in this putrid, sin-filled world that the thought of heaven is the ONLY thing that gets me from wake up to good night.  There IS a heaven and it was created for us to walk with our Lord and Savior after we leave this awful place called earth and all the pain and illness and sin and darkness.  Contrary to popular thought, there is ONLY way to heaven, scripture tells us this in John 14:6:  Jesus answered, "I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me,” and John 10:1, "Truly, truly, I say to you, he who does not enter by the door into the fold of the sheep, but climbs up some other way, he is a thief and a robber.”  


Hell is very real and it was created for the final resting place of satan at the end of the age, but society today doesn’t want that reality to cloud their view of hedonism and debauchery.  It’s not cool to have to deny yourself that pleasure.  You’ve earned it.  Imagine all the people living for today?  That’s what a majority of the world is doing.  While it’s convenient, while they’re able, while they can.  Live for today with no thought or consideration of tomorrow.  How shallow, how empty, how lonely.  Matthew 6:19-21 tells us, ¹⁹ “Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moths and vermin destroy, and where thieves break in and steal. ²⁰ But store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where moths and vermin do not destroy, and where thieves do not break in and steal. ²¹ For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.  Heaven may or may not come for you today.  But do you really want to live for today—to sacrifice eternity at the altar of the temporary?


Imagine there's no countries
It isn't hard to do
Nothing to kill or die for
And no religion too
Imagine all the people
Living life in peace...
Sorry, John, there are countries for a reason. 

 
On the planes of Shinar, Nimrod, the king of Babylon, built the Tower of Babel.  This was the symbol of Nimrod’s desire to establish himself as ruler of the world, a one-world government.  God wasn’t having any of that and scattered man across the world, confusing races and tongues.
God seeks us, our hearts.  He created us to have a relationship with Him.  Imagine no religion?  Ok.  I can live with that.  What I can’t live without is faith.  I have to have faith that He created me, He loves me, He numbers my steps and my days, He sent His Son to the cross for me to pay the price for all of man’s sin, and as Jesus said, He’s created a place for me to live eternally.  How do I know this?  Hebrews 11:1:  Faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see.  I have faith.  I don’t have religion.


Until satan is bound and chained to hell, there will be no peace on earth.  Man is born with a sin nature.  You can remove all of us pain in the behind Christians and you will STILL have that sin nature permeating every inch of this earth because Ephesians 6:12 tells us:  ¹² For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places.


You may say I'm a dreamer
But I'm not the only one
I hope someday you'll join us
And the world will be as one


Dreams aren’t going to bring peace to this world.  Dreams are plans of happiness and success and peace and fortune.  Dreamers are the ones that will likely be the first to fall should there be an attack or their lives have been destroyed by war because they did nothing to prepare.  The definitions of “dreamers”—there are so many, some are happy and some are ridiculous, but a dreamer isn’t going to bring peace.  The world won’t be as one as long as the sin nature of man still exists on this planet.  I have yet to get through a day through the last several years where you don’t hear about a Muslim killing, raping, murdering, burning, stoning, hanging, or beheading someone that stood up to him or didn’t agree with him.  While some do go off the reservation, you won’t hear of a believer, a true-saved-by-the-blood-of-Christ believer killing, raping, murdering, burning, stoning, hanging, or beheading someone that stood up to him.  Woe to the man that calls himself one and then does any of those things.  God’s righteous judgment is so much worse than anything a court of man can construct and anyone calling himself a child of God, yet commits any of those acts of aggression listed above is an unconverted convert and and an antichrist and will be keeping satan company in his final resting place.  The world will NEVER be as one as long as man’s sin nature exists.


Imagine no possessions
I wonder if you can
No need for greed or hunger
A brotherhood of man
Imagine all the people Sharing all the world...


Amazing.  He’s describing heaven.  The same heaven he denied in the first sentence of this song.  If you wish to look cynically and humanistically at that paragraph, you have Section 8 ghetto housing.  It’s called welfare.


You may say I'm a dreamer
But I'm not the only one
I hope someday you'll join us
And the world will live as one

Unless he’s talking about a commune, it’s not going to happen as long as evil walks among us.  Even the Rajneeshies had some with loose screws and they were supposed to be a commune of peace, happiness, and love, as long as you gave up all your worldly possessions for money which was then given to the Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh for another Rolls Royce.  I believe he had something like 96 of them.  But that totally blows the “Imagine no possessions” part of this song.

 

Imagine this.

 

Imagine one day all believers, Bible-believing Christians are gone.  It may be coming sooner than you think.  I can just hear some of you now.  She’s gone.  She’s totally blown an o-ring and is thumping on that Bible again.  I’ve lost so many so-called “friends” for my unyielding beliefs that I refuse to tone down or apologize for that it no longer bothers me.  But think about this.

 

You have a friend.  That friend may not have been the one that you could run around with and have a good time with a bottle or two of beer, but he or she was the one you could always count on for an ear or to offer a prayer for you when life had you down or you were experiencing hurt or pain.  Imagine that friend is gone.  Disappeared.  Who do you have left to turn to?  You have other friends, the ones with the beer bottles.  Ask them to pray for you or with you?  How many ways can they tell you no and laugh at you?  That’s what THOSE people did.  The ones that believed in God.  They don’t want any part of that.  Now, where’s that bottle of beer I had…….

 

There’s now an ache in you.  You need that friend, the one that tried to show you God’s love through Christ and you rebuffed them.  Joked.  Laughed.  Admit it, you laughed at him or her behind their back most likely.  And that was probably the one person that would have been there for you during this time of pain or question or hurt.  That faith they had isn’t looking so bad now, I would imagine.  

 

So, imagine a world with no heaven, no hell, none of the boundaries that make for a civilized society.  It isn’t hard to do.  And we are living in it and it’s getting worse each passing day.  A world where heaven and hell are laughed at and mocked.  Where Christians are killed, shouted down, harassed, arrested, sued, made fun of, and turned away.  Not quite as pretty as a song now, is it?  Not quite the utopia he had in mind when he wrote those lyrics. 

 

Imagine.