"Show me Your ways, O Lord; Teach me Your paths" (Psalm 25:4)

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SECRET ROADS ON EARTH

By Rt. Rev. Peter M. Buss

Do you remember about the wonderful roads that lead people to their homes in heaven if they have been good? From the moment good people come into the world of spirits, they are led on roads that take them slowly from place to place. Each place teaches them something new and brings them a new happiness, until at last they come to a beautiful home in heaven where they will live forever with their conjugial or marriage partners.

Now I want you to think of something almost as wonderful as that. On earth we actually start to walk along that road to heaven! If we start to follow the Lord here on earth, and do it with a full heart, then our spirits are walking along a road in the spiritual world all the time that we are living in this world. Each time we learn something right and do it, we are walking along a road in the world of spirits, coming closer to heaven.

This really is true! The thing is, the more we walk the Lord’s roads here on earth, the shorter our road will be in the world of spirits. Remember that some people come into the world of spirits and are taken straight into heaven. Why? Because on earth they had followed the Lord with all their hearts, and so they had walked all the roads that they needed to walk. They were ready for their beautiful home in heaven right away. Some people only spend a short time in the world of spirits and some people, although they do get to heaven, have to spend a long time there.

The roads in the world of spirits can be walked here on earth. Each time you do what the Lord says, your spiritual body is walking closer to heaven. If people do what is wrong then, of course, they are walking the other way, away from heaven.

Think of your life as walking a road—a happy and wonderful road—that starts when you are born and takes you all the way to that home which the Lord has made especially for you and your husband or wife in heaven. When you do what is wrong, you are walking the wrong way, and then you have to turn around, and say you are sorry to the Lord, and walk back toward Him. That’s wasting time, isn’t it—going over the same part of the road again. But the Lord is very patient with people who walk the wrong way, and He works very hard to turn them around.

Each time you do what is right, you come a bit closer to heaven. This means that you will have a shorter road to walk in the world of spirits. We are told that the angels of heaven can look down and actually see us walking on these paths, and they try all the time to guide our steps, and so does the Lord Himself. He says in His Word, “The steps of a good man are ordered by the Lord, and He delights in his way.” Also He says, “All the paths of the Lord are mercy and truth, to such as keep His covenant and His testimonies.”

FROM THE WORD:

“The steps of a good man are ordered by the Lord, and He delights in his way. Though he fall, he shall not be utterly cast down; for the Lord upholds him with His hand. I have been young, and now am old; yet I have not seen the righteous forsaken, nor his descendants begging bread. The law of his God is in his heart; none of his steps shall slide” (Psalm 37:23-25,31).


“When angels see any spirit walking below them they instantly perceive, from the path in which he is walking, and the bending of the path hither and thither, of what quality he is, and what he is thinking” (Spiritual Experiences 5583).


“In the world of spirits ways are seen, some leading to heaven and some to hell, and each to some particular society. Good spirits go only in the ways that lead to heaven, and to the society there that is in the good of their love; and do not see the ways that lead elsewhere; while evil spirits go only in the ways that lead to hell, and to the society there that is in the evil of their love; and do not see the ways that lead elsewhere; or if they see them they do not want to enter them” (Heaven and Hell 479).

From Life Is Forever: An Introduction to the Spiritual World for Children by Rt. Rev. Peter M. Buss, published by the General Church of the New Jerusalem, Bryn Athyn, Pennsylvania, 1984.


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