One minute after you die you will either be enjoying a personal welcome from Christ or catching your first glimpse of gloom as you have never known it. Either way, your future will be irrevocably fixed and eternally unchangeable. Those who find themselves in heaven will be surrounded with many friends they have known on earth. Every description of heaven they have ever heard will pale in light of reality. But others will find themselves shrouded in darkness in a region of deprivation and unending regret. For them, death will be far worse than they ever imagined. So while relatives and friends plan your funeral, you will be more alive than you have ever been. You will either see God on His throne surrounded by angels and redeemed humanity, or you will feel an indescribable weight of guilt and abandonment. There is no destination midway between these extremes. Unaware of DangerI once read a tragic account about people enjoying themselves on the top stories of a tall apartment building not knowing that there was a fire burning on the lower floors. In a similar way, many people are enjoying life now, comfortably ignoring the fact that their death is not only inevitable, but much nearer than they think. Indeed, this world and all we have accumulated will eventually be burned up (2 Peter 3:10). Don't imagine for a moment that you will get to heaven without the right credentials. You will not be there because your wife has a right to enter. You will not be there because you have a child who is already there. No, this is an individual matter, and only those with the right credentials will be allowed entry. Our problem, of course, is that God will not accept us on our terms. We cannot arrive at heaven's gates hoping for leniency. "It is appointed for man to die once, and after that comes judgment" (Hebrews 9:27). We cannot come pleading for special favors once we have slipped from this life into eternity. Our Only HopeOur only hope is for God to give us credit for righteous perfection we could never attain on our own. Once such righteousness is credited to our account we can enter heaven immediately at death without so much as an intermediate stop. As the Bible says, "away from the body and at home with the Lord" (2 Corinthians 5:8). Here's how that's possible: When Christ died on the cross, He offered himself as a sacrifice for sinners, which God accepted. "For our sake he God] made him Christ] to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the ri