Footsteps #435. In his last weeks and days, Paul was looking up not around. Yesterday we contemplated heaven and eternity. Ask yourself, where does all that fit into your plans? God is seeking to save individuals, that’s you and me. Each of us has a distinct place in heaven for heaven is like a symphony that takes a multitude of different instruments to make it function. You will never hear me sing solos in church, but in a group where I can’t hear myself sing, I don’t sound so bad. So it will be when I join the angelic choir, with all the redeemed on the sea of glass (Revelation 4). 

The day is coming when you will wake to find, beyond all hope, that you have attained the ultimate joy, or else that it was within your reach and you have lost it forever. The price has been paid and the invitation comes across the centuries of human time: “The Spirit and the bride say, “Come.” Let anyone who hears this say, “Come.” Let anyone who is thirsty come. Let anyone who desires drink freely from the water of life.” Revelation 22:17. The ‘C’ in ‘come’ stands for children, the ‘O’ for older people, the ‘M’ for middle-aged people, and the ‘E’ stand for everyone!

Paul stood before Nero the second time. He stood as God’s representative and his voice was the voice of heaven. The narrative can only be imagined, (based on testimonies before Felix, Festus and others) but the truths spoken on that day were destined to shake nations and to live through all time, influencing the hearts of men when the lips that uttered them should be silent in a martyrs grave. As Paul stood before Nero, under the power of the Holy Spirit, Paul would have revealed truths the Emperor had never heard before. Never had the enormous guilt of his own life been so revealed to him under the Spirit’s conviction. As Paul spoke, the light of heaven pierced the sin polluted chambers of Nero’s heart and he would have trembled with terror as the thought of a tribunal before which he, the ruler of the world, would finally stand. He feared the apostle’s God and he dared not pass sentence upon Paul against whom no accusations had been sustained. A sense of awe would have been restraining for a time his bloodthirsty spirit. As Paul always did, he would have extended to Nero the invitation of God’s mercy. For that moment, heaven would have opened to the guilty, hardened emperor of Rome.