What and where is heaven?
Your Life and What Comes After
Saturday Watchdog: Gen Z Revival?
Is religion is dying, and is atheism winning?
Today, TIME is asking whether a religious revival is happening among Gen Z. Young people are filling Christian conferences and talking openly about faith again. Gallup found that 42% of American men ages 18–29 now consider religion “very important,” up from 28% just a few years earlier.
But pump the brakes on the revival parade. Researchers say there’s no clear evidence—yet—of a nationwide spiritual awakening. Interest is rising in some circles, but curiosity about God isn’t the same as real revival.
Still, something is stirring.
Maybe “create your own truth” hasn’t delivered the meaningful life advertised. Nihilism sounds edgy until you actually have to wake up every morning believing nothing ultimately matters.
Our risen and returning Lord offers something sturdier:
“I am the way, the truth, and the life.” — John 14:6 (KJV)
Christianity doesn’t offer a customized truth. It offers a living Christ—and asks you to follow Him.
Sources: TIME, August 14, 2026 and Gallup.
Video Mini Message: Restoring Creation
God’s restoration shop and you.
Video Mini Message: Be Fruitful
Your Life And What Comes After: Be fruitful, multiply, and fill the earth.
Thursday Watchdog: What Is Heaven?
Editors note: The following is an excerpt from my book, Your Life And What Comes After: Plugging Into God’s Forever Plan Now
Where exactly is heaven? Is it up in the clouds? In outer space? On another planet, or in a galaxy far away?
Before we can understand where heaven is, we should first know what heaven is. When heaven is mentioned in the Bible, it can either mean any place above the ground or it can mean the realm in which God lives.
Anywhere Above Ground
Genesis 1:20
And God said, “Let the waters bring forth abundantly the moving creature that hath life, and fowl that may fly above the earth in the open firmament of heaven.”
The birds we often see flying above us are in heaven, so to speak. The stars, clouds, and planets are also above the ground, and there are many verses in the Bible that talk about those things being in the heavens.
Where God Lives
Matthew 6:9
After this manner therefore pray ye: Our Father which art in heaven, Hallowed be thy name.
This verse says that our Father, God, is in heaven. Does that mean He’s flying around with the birds that are in heaven? No, of course not.
Here the Bible is talking about a different kind of heaven. This heaven is the realm where God lives—invisible to our eyes, yet very real and near.
Acts 17:27–28
That they should seek the Lord, if haply they might feel after him, and find him, though he be not far from every one of us:
For in him we live, and move, and have our being; as certain also of your own poets have said, For we are also his offspring.
The main idea about heaven that we should understand is that it is not a place up in the clouds where we go someday after we die to get wings and play harps if we’re good in this life.
Heaven is a place we can go to now—and every day—in prayer, to be in the presence of our Father, God.
Armchair Apocalypse: The Big Questions
As we continue, just a reminder that this isn’t going to be another verse-by-verse commentary on the Book of Revelation. There are already shelves full of those.
Instead, Armchair Apocalypse is about tackling the questions everyone actually asks when they discuss, hear about, or open Revelation and wonder, “What in the world is going on here?”
We’ll dig into topics that include:
- The Four Horsemen
- The Antichrist
- The Mark of the Beast
- The Great Tribulation
- The Rapture Debate
- The 144,000
- The Two Witnesses
- Armageddon
- The Millennium
- The Final Judgment
- The New Heaven and New Earth
- Why Revelation Is Ultimately a Book of Hope
We’re not going to sketch out prophecy timetables or prediction charts and we won’t be trying to identify every politician or global figure as the Beast or Anti Christ.
Here’s what we will be doing.
First, we’ll ask a simple question: How would the first Christians who received this letter have understood it?
Revelation wasn’t originally written to twenty-first-century Americans with social media and a well-fed comfortable church on every corner. It was written to real people in the first century facing pressure, persecution, false teaching, and the overwhelming power of the Roman Empire. Before we ask what Revelation means to us, we should understand what it meant to them.
Second, we’ll explore how Revelation has encouraged and challenged believers in every generation since. God’s new creation people, made up of both Jews and Gentiles, have faced, and still face tyrants, wars, persecution, deception, and suffering for nearly two thousand years. Revelation has never belonged to just one century.
Finally, we’ll consider what these visions may teach the generation that will actually witness the return of Jesus Christ. Whether that’s ours or one still far in the future isn’t something we’ll pretend to know. Jesus Himself warned against date-setting. But He also told His followers to stay awake, stay faithful, and stay hopeful.
The goal of Armchair Apocalypse is to help you understand one of the Bible’s most fascinating books without needing a PhD or even a long theological background.
So What?
Open your Bible. Bring a curious mind and forget about what you may have heard third or fourth hand about Revelation.
Let’s read Revelation the way its first readers would have heard it—and discover why its message is intended to give courage, hope, and endurance, rather than fear and confusion, to believers for nearly two thousand years… and will continue to do so until He comes.
Our Free Monthly Newsletter: Called To Someone
We are called as God’s people, and we are each called individually. But what is it that we are called to?
I always come back to something I read in the Os Guinness book, ‘The Call’: “…we are not called to something or somewhere, we are called to Someone.“
When I think about that truth, I picture a child playing in the backyard on a sunny day, and a father coming outside through the back screen door of the house into the yard, opening his arms and calling to his child by name.
The child stops playing, turns his head to his father’s voice, and runs joyously across the yard straight into his father’s arms.
And I see my whole life as running across the yard into my Father’s arms. That’s what we’re called to.
What you do in life isn’t as important as who you are in life.
You can have the desire and talent to be a doctor, or a teacher, or a plumber, or a dancer, or an engineer, or whatever, but your career or job isn’t really your calling. Your calling is to Him.
Your life is a journey. It’s not a dead end, it’s a race across the years God is giving you and it will end up with you leaping into His loving arms. Hold that picture in your mind’s eye every day.
Subscribe here to our FREE newsletter coming to your email box every month.
Rick Tryon
Editor/Publisher Bible Rebel
June/July Highlights
Armchair Apocalypse: Revelation Mail Call
Questioning The Assumptions Of Religious Tradition
They Said It: Four Quotes On The Book Of Daniel
Video Mini Message: Why Are You Here?
Ten-episode Bible 101 video series completed
Watchdog Alert: Why God Allows The Earth To Shake
Looking For Heaven In Washington DC?
Coming in July/August
More of our Armchair Apocalypse series.
“Your Life and What Comes After” book available.
More in-depth content on deeper biblical studies and theological issues.
More Video Mini Messages like this – Does What You Do Matter?
You can find all of the current Bible 101 episodes and One-Minute Mini Messages here on our YouTube Channel, and you can subscribe to our YouTube channel here.
We’ll also be continuing our regular features, guest articles, and series:
- Your Life And What Comes After: Plugging Into God’s Forever Plan Now
- Armchair Apocalypse
- They Said It: Poignant quotes on a variety of topics
- Guest articles
- And more…
Watchdogs
As always, we’ll be keeping a watchdogs eye on all of the latest political, religious, biblical archaeology, and cultural news and events from around the world and bringing to you in bite-size chunks to keep you informed.
Finally, are you interested in contributing content to Bible Rebel?
Bible Rebel is always looking for interesting, compatible content for our biblerebel.com website/blog. We are accepting writing and video submissions for review and possible publication on our platform.
If you have a teaching series, opinion piece, research piece or other content that fits with the Bible Rebel mission we’d like to see it!
If your content fits our mission and creed, included below, then email it to us at in**@********el.com. Written pieces should be no more than 500 words and video content no longer than 7 minutes – either can be submitted as part of a longer series for consideration.
Thanks, and stay tuned for our next newsletter.
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Rick Tryon
Editor/Publisher
Bible Rebel & biblerebel.com
Tuesday Watchdog: You’re Not Promised Tomorrow
A legendary actor, Sam Neill, is here one day and gone the next. A prominent politician/U.S. Senator, Lindsey Graham, is taken from us overnight.
Deadly flash floods in Missouri have taken lives and forced hundreds of emergency rescues. Families woke up expecting an ordinary day… and by nightfall, everything had changed. (The Washington Post)
That’s the uncomfortable, unfortunate reality in this current dark and broken world.
Our culture acts like we’re guaranteed another summer, another birthday, another chance to text, “Sorry,” or finally start asking life’s biggest questions. The Bible says otherwise.
“Boast not thyself of to morrow; for thou knowest not what a day may bring forth.” — Proverbs 27:1 (KJV)
Life is incredibly fragile. Your next breath isn’t something you earned—it’s a gift. The question isn’t, “How long will I live?” The wake-up call is, “What am I living for?”
God is real—Jesus really conquered death—and the smartest thing you’ll ever do isn’t building the perfect career or chasing viral fame. It’s getting to know the One who holds your life in His hands.
So, seize the day. Seize every day, starting today.
Read Proverbs 27. You’ll be glad you did. And you’ll be better able to understand that today is all you have—and even that is a little iffy. Trust God.
Video Mini Message: Does What You Do Matter?
Think about who you are and what you do. Because as someone (Socrates?) once said, “The unexamined life is not worth living.”