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Heaven is Nearer Than You Think…Right, Scott Adams? She held the page like it might vanish if she let go. It wasn’t a cartoon sketch or a punchline. It was a final confession from a man who built his life drawing cubicles and cynics. A man who mocked corporate madness with deadpan brilliance. A man who now faced death himself. Scott Adams, creator of Dilbert, left a statement to be read by his wife when the dying was done. “I accept Jesus Christ as my Lord and Savior, and look forward to spending an eternity with Him.” She read it aloud. A room that had once held doctors and diagnostics and sterile light now held something heavier. Eternity. Not the idea, but the threshold. It caught me off guard when I first read it. I’d grown up seeing his comic strips boxed between Garfield and Beetle Bailey, just a few inches wide, full of sarcasm and shoulder shrugs. But now there was no shrug. No satire. Just a man who had stared down the last hallway and named the One waiting at the end of it. Scott signed it with eternity in mind. But what does it look like, really, when the veil lifts? John the Apostle was exiled to a rocky island when he heard a voice behind him like a trumpet. He turned. And the sky broke open. “I saw the Holy City, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God.” The city of God doesn’t drift like mist. It descends. It has weight. Foundation. Direction. The throne of the universe isn’t stashed behind a cloud or flung across galaxies. It’s arriving. Here. Heaven doesn’t take us out of earth. It remakes the earth until God dwells with man. That’s the miracle John saw: two worlds where one physical and one spiritual are merging. The city where death has no key. The city without night. We tend to think of heaven as far. We imagine it tucked beyond the solar winds, somewhere past the edge of the knowable. But Jacob, with nothing but rock for a pillow, opened his eyes one morning and trembled. He’d seen a ladder stretch from that very patch of wilderness to the throne of God. Angels ascending. Descending. The ground hadn’t shifted, but something had. He said, “Surely the Lord is in this place, and I did not know it.” Heaven isn’t measured in miles. It’s the world right next to this one, separated not by space but by blindness. Stephen, crushed beneath stones, looked up and saw Jesus standing. Not floating. Not imagined. Standing. And he said so aloud before the last blow landed. The dimension that holds glory is not out there. It’s here, folded into the one we know and hidden only from unseeing eyes. The problem isn’t that heaven is far. The problem is that sin makes us forget it’s near. Scripture says we live, move, and have our being in God. Every breath happens in the presence of eternity. But we treat life like it’s made of granite and heaven like it’s made of air. We chase promotions. We defend our image. We keep our heads down in the cubicle. And then we die. Sometimes we meet the Lord by surprise. Sometimes, like Scott Adams, we write it down before we go. But, not everyone enters that city. Jesus said, “You must be born again.” Not improved. Reborn. The gates of the New Jerusalem are wide, but they are not unlocked by good intentions. This is a city entered through blood…Christ’s blood, shed for the guilty. You do not drift into heaven. You are drawn. You are raised from death to life. You are made new. There are only two kinds of people in the end: those whose names are written in the book of life, and those who stand outside the gates with nothing but their good intentions. Revelation is clear. The wrath of God comes from heaven against all unrighteousness. That judgment isn’t future. It leaks into the present. Minds darken. Desires twist. People start calling bitter things sweet and holy things oppressive. And they call it progress. But it’s just the evidence that heaven has spoken already and the sentence is echoing through their lives. When the city comes down, there will be no sea. The restless abyss will be gone. No more graves with fresh dirt. No more morphine drips or biopsy calls. No more fathers burying sons or wives reading last words in a hospital room. God will wipe away every tear. The Lamb will be the light. The gates will stay open because there’s nothing left to fear. This is not myth. It’s the end of history and the start of joy that never creaks or rusts. I can’t tell you what Scott Adams saw in his final moments. But I can tell you what he believed. And belief matters. He put it in writing: “I accept Jesus Christ.” He didn’t earn heaven. He didn’t deserve it. He received it the only way any of us can: as a man who brought nothing but need to the throne and found mercy waiting. That throne is closer than you think. You might scroll past this today, eat dinner, get on with your evening, and forget. But the veil is still there. And it still trembles. The Bible ends like this: “They will see His face.” Not feel His presence. See. Not imagine. Behold. The face of Christ, the same one who wept at Lazarus’s tomb, who set His face toward Jerusalem, who died with spit on His beard and blood in His eyes, that face is the final vision of the saints. We will see Him. If you are not ready for that, don’t wait for cancer to make it urgent. Don’t wait for your breath to shorten and your hands to cool. Don’t wait for a wife to read your last words. Call on Christ now. Heaven is not far. And He is nearer still. @w_bitterman