A noted Christian theologian from Germany, Professor Jurgen Moltmann, recently said, "We can have but little to say about the 'new earth' until we realize that the heaven of our religion has also become old and repressive and that we need a 'new heaven.'" ^{Address to the World Student Conference, Turku, Finland, quoted in The Christian Science Monitor, Aug. 7, 1968;}

Perhaps we do not realize how much our concept of heaven influences our human experience, our hopes, our fears, our progress or our lack of it. In childhood the writer's misconception of heaven gave her no hope of approaching that exalted state until after death and made her afraid that she might not be good enough to enter. Much of the fear in her thought came from the teaching that God knew all of her misdeeds and that He would punish her for them. To know God seemed a remote possibility, for He lived in that faraway heaven. Those who taught her urged her to be good and have faith. However, her faith waned to the extent that for many years she had little interest in religion.

Then the joy expressed by a new acquaintance, a Christian Scientist, led her to begin the study of this religion. It was not long until a whole new world opened before her and she found a new heaven as a divine state of Mind. Joy and comfort came as she learned that it was not a rarified atmosphere that separated her from heaven but wrong thinking and ignorance of the true nature of God. She found that as thought, desire, and action are purified we begin to gain more and more of heaven.

How wonderful it is to learn that death is neither a God-ordained means through which we must find our heaven nor an event preventing us from continuing our progress toward perfection! Death is an enemy that must ultimately be destroyed through the right thinking and acting that result when we learn to understand true selfhood as the reflection of God, who is Life. How much nearer heaven then seems! As the little Sunday School boy put it, "Heaven is not a where. It's a when." He came very close to Mrs. Eddy's revealing statement in Science and Health, "Heaven is not a locality, but a divine state of Mind in which all the manifestations of Mind are harmonious and immortal, because sin is not there and man is found having no righteousness of his own, but in possession of 'the mind of the Lord,' as the Scripture says." ^{Science and Health, p. 291;}

The only death required to reach heaven, harmony, is the death, or destruction, of erroneous beliefs about God and His spiritual creation. In truth, we move and have our being here and now in perfect Mind, which is God. This divine reality is hidden from view by material sense, which seems to shut out, but can never destroy, the light of Truth. As here and hereafter we keep our thought and action at one with the fact of man's harmonious, perfect sonship with God are we not gradually lifting the veil of ignorance and making a new heaven?

The darkness of ignorance and materiality constitutes the hell that mankind have been educated to fear. Hell is not a place or a final disposition of condemned mortals. It is the torment of those who have not yet learned to understand and obey God. It is the lying suggestion that evil is more desirable or powerful than good. The love or fear of evil is the torment, which is evidenced in sin, sickness, and death. Animal magnetism is the mesmeric attraction of thought to the lie that evil gives pleasure or has power. Mrs. Eddy states, "The sinner makes his own hell by doing evil, and the saint his own heaven by doing right." ^{p. 266;}

Have we been afraid to pray that the Father's will be revealed to us? Are we afraid that it can be other than good? Are we reluctant to draw close to God, thinking of our Father-Mother as a judge who keeps a record of our wrong and right doings? One of the greatest blessings Christian Science has given to the world is the knowledge that God, infinite good, cannot know evil. Can the all-good Mind think of its beloved ideas as evil or as involved in evil? The love of God is boundless, and man is safe in His love.

Through right thinking and living, through reformation and regeneration, let us prove false the suggestions that we can ever be separated from God. All our punishments stem from a sense of separation from Him, from allowing evil to possess our thoughts, motives, and acts. We learn in Christian Science to condemn evil, separate ourselves from it, and thus prove our unity, or oneness, with God. As we see ourselves and others as forever complete and harmonious, we will heal as Christ Jesus healed and lift the heavy burdens of mankind.

No one is excluded from heaven, the harmony that belongs to all by right of divine sonship. Should error suggest that anyone can be hopelessly lost, let us lift our concept of man from the mortal to the immortal. Mrs. Eddy writes: "Man is the idea of Spirit; he reflects the beatific presence, illuming the universe with light. Man is deathless, spiritual. He is above sin or frailty. He does not cross the barriers of time into the vast forever of Life, but he coexists with God and the universe." ^{p. 266;}

How does a new concept of God affect our daily lives? Think of it! No more fear of God, but great gratitude for His ever-present goodness. No more wondering how we can reach heaven. Within the Bible and Science and Health we find clear directions out of the darkness of ignorance into the light of understanding and living our true selfhood, at one with God. How wonderful! Divine Love is right at hand, here and hereafter, waiting to be accepted as thought is purified to receive the right idea.

Day by day, moment by moment, we learn that man always has been and always will be in the heaven of God's love and care. As we grow in understanding and prove our true identity in God's likeness, we can say with John, "I saw a new heaven and a new earth." ^{Rev. 21:1.}