Plus Ultra: More Beyond

Plus Ultra: More Beyond

The path of the righteous is like the light of dawn, that shines brighter and brighter until the full day.

— Proverbs 4:18, NASB

What is the essence of heaven? . . . [It is the] beatific vision, love, and enjoyment of the triune God. For the three divine persons have an infinitely perfect vision and love and enjoyment of the divine essence and of one another. And in this infinite knowing, loving and enjoying lies the very life of the triune God, the very essence of their endless and infinite happiness. If the blessed are to be endlessly and supremely happy, then, they must share in the very life of the triune God, in the divine life that makes them endlessly and infinitely happy.^a

— E. J. FORTMAN

After Columbus discovered the new world, Spain minted coins with the Latin slogan Plus Ultra. It meant “More Beyond.” This was a horizon-expanding message to people who’d always believed that the world they knew was all there was.

Plus Ultra—there will always be more to discover about our God. In his new universe, there will always be more beyond.

I had the privilege of spending two hours alone with Campus Crusade founder Bill Bright six months before he died. As he sat with tubes running to his oxygen tank, he almost jumped out of his chair as we talked about Heaven and the God he loved. This wasn’t a man past his peak; he was leaning toward it. “But the path of the righteous is like the light of dawn, that shines brighter and brighter until the full day” (Proverbs 4:18, NASB). This was true of Bill Bright. Though he was nearing death, his eyes and smile looked younger. This was a man who knew there was “more beyond.” And now he knows it more than ever. One day all followers of Jesus will know it. But the good news is that we don’t have to wait to die to figure that out! (Bill Bright knew it before he died—and we should know it too.)

Five minutes after we die, we’ll know exactly how we should have lived. We’ll know how we should have given, prayed, shared our faith, meditated on Scripture. But then it will be too late to go back and live our lives over again. We won’t have a chance to become sold-out disciples of Jesus Christ in a fallen world. Here and now is our only opportunity to do that.

Ask yourself, “Five minutes after I die, what will I wish I would have done in this life while I still had the chance?” When you come up with the answer, why not do it now? Why not spend the rest of your life closing the gap between what you’ll wish you would have done and what you actually did?

If dying and going to be with Christ is really “better by far,” as Paul tells us in Philippians 1:23, why are so many Christians today afraid to die? I think the answer is that we have stored up our treasures here on Earth—and we don’t want to be separated from our treasures.

Jesus commanded us, “Store up for yourselves treasures in heaven” (Matthew 6:20). His logic was that treasures on Earth won’t last, and treasures in Heaven will. Hence, storing up treasures on Earth isn’t just wrong, it’s foolish. And storing up treasures in Heaven isn’t just right, it’s smart.

Tragically, many Christians store up most of their treasures on Earth. So every day that moves them closer to death moves them farther from their treasures. They end up backing into eternity, heading away from their treasures, clinging to a fallen world that hasn’t been especially kind to them.

Christ calls us to turn it around—to store up our treasures in Heaven. That way, every day we get closer to our deaths, we move toward our treasures.

People who spend their lives moving away from their treasures have reason to despair. People who spend their lives moving toward their treasures have reason to rejoice. Are you moving away from your treasures or moving toward them? Are you despairing or rejoicing?

At 2:30 a.m., on November 19, 2002, I stood on our deck gazing up at the night sky. Above me was the Leonid meteor shower, the finest display of celestial fireworks until the year 2096. For someone who has enjoyed meteor showers since he was a kid, this was the celestial event of a lifetime.

There was only one problem: clouds covered the Oregon sky.

Of the hundreds of streaking meteors above me, I couldn’t see a single one. I felt like a blind man being told, “You’re missing the most beautiful sunset of your lifetime. You’ll never be able to see another like it.”

Was I disappointed? Sure. After searching in vain for small cracks in the cloud cover, I went inside and wrote these paragraphs. I’m disappointed, but not disillusioned. Why? Because I did not miss the celestial event of my lifetime.

My lifetime is forever. My residence will be a new universe, with far more spectacular celestial wonders, and I’ll have the ability to look through the clouds or rise above them.

During a spectacular meteor shower a few years earlier, I had stood on our deck watching a clear sky. Part of the fun was hearing oohs and aahs in the distance, from neighbors looking upward.

Multiply these oohs and aahs by ten thousand times ten thousand, and it’ll suggest our thunderous response to what our Father will do in the new heavens as we look upward from the New Earth.

Just as we are not past our prime, the earth and planets and stars and galaxies are not past their prime. They’re a dying phoenix that will rise again into something far greater—something that will never die.

I can’t wait to see the really great meteor showers and the truly spectacular comets and star systems and galaxies of the new universe. And I can’t wait to stand gazing at them alongside once-blind friends who lived their lives on Earth always hearing about what they were missing. Some believed they would never be able to see, regretting the images and events of a lifetime beyond their ability to perceive. The hidden beauties will be revealed to them, and to us.

Plus Ultra. There is more beyond. Much more. Those of us who know Jesus will be there to behold an endless revelation of natural wonders—likely including spectacular meteor showers that display God’s glory—with nothing to block our view.

Are you investing in the world beyond, which promises so much more than the present world? Are you making choices today to put your treasures in Heaven, not on Earth?

Lord God, help us, with the time and gifts and money you have entrusted to us, to lay up our treasures in Heaven, so that every day we are moving toward our treasures, not away from them. May those things that will be most important to us five minutes after we die become most important to us now.