God's Roadmap to Heaven: Connecting the Dots

By Carol Lynn Bowman

God has a plan to get us into Heaven. His plan is in the Bible (His Roadmap) and we just need to connect the dots. Unfortunately, the Bible seems overwhelming and the dots are not easy to find. That’s why this book was written.

This easy to follow book takes the clues (dots) in the Old Testament and connects them to Jesus Christ in the New Testament. Using the major events of the Bible, you will understand God’s plan to get us into Heaven. While connecting the dots you will also read the Bible's answers to different questions, for example:

Why was it wrong for Adam and Eve to eat the fruit?
What is sin?
What was a Bible covenant?
Why was Passover important?
What was the purpose of the animal sacrifices?
Why did Jesus have to be a Jew?
How is Jesus' death on the cross part of God's plan?

So, are you ready to start connecting God’s dots and discovering His plan?

For answers to FAQ, videos & my story go to - http://godsroadmaptoheaven.blogspot.com/.

Note: This book is divided into 55 Days, but please read it at your own pace.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Carol Lynn Bowman
• Release date: Jun 9, 2014
• ISBN: 9781310492488

Carol Lynn Bowman

I want to share God's plan of getting to Heaven with everyone. My way of sharing is through "God's Roadmap to Heaven: Connecting the Dots." The book started with a simple question, "Why did Jesus have to die on the cross?" I knew the answer was in the Bible, but it can be overwhelming. So, one day I started writing a rough draft to help me understand how the Old Testament clues (dots) connect to Jesus Christ in the New Testament. After the rough draft was done, my PTO Ladies and I spent a year focusing on every detail. Then it was used it as a Bible study to complete the finishing touches.This easy to follow book takes God's clues (dots) and explains how we can know Jesus Christ is God's plan. Jesus Christ is the only way to Heaven and our trust in God's plan is the final dot on God's roadmap.Jesus Christ said, "I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one can come to the Father except through me." (John 14:6 NLT)

Book preview

Our Guide: God

We first need to decide who will be our guide on our journey to Heaven. If we were to go on a journey to visit a friend, we’d ask our friend to give us directions. Our friend would know the best route, the roads to avoid and the landmarks to guide us along the way. For our journey, our goal is Heaven, God’s holy, glorious home. God knows the best route, roads and landmarks to get us to His home. Since Heaven is God’s home, God will be our Guide on our journey.

God not only knows the way to Heaven, but He’s also completely dependable. He will not let us down or lie to us. How do we know this about God? It’s because He gives us His word. In the Old Testament of the Bible, in the book of Numbers (chapter 23, verse 19) it says:

God is not a man, so he does not lie. He is not a human, that he should change his mind.

Changing His mind and lying are not in God’s nature. He doesn’t choose not to do these things … He just can’t do them. Remember, we are going somewhere we’ve never been and we need to know that the One who’s guiding us will not let us down. There may be times when we will not understand why He takes us certain places, but we will continue to follow Him because we know we can completely trust Him. Any time we have doubts along our journey we need to go back to this fact: God CANNOT lie. He will always tell us the true way to go.

So who will be our guide? God! Now that we’ve chosen our Guide we need to make sure we take along two more items on our journey.

Our Map: The Bible

We’ve chosen our Guide and now we will get a map from Him. What map does God give us to follow? The Bible. During our journey we will continually check His map (the Bible) to make sure we are following God’s directions.

Why is the Bible so important? In the New Testament of the Bible, in the book of 2 Timothy (chapter 3, verse 16) God tells us,

All Scripture (every word of the Bible) is

1) inspired (given to man) by God and is

2) useful to teach us what is true …

First, we need to know God gave the Bible to man. One way of explaining it is to say God breathed it. He breathed it into different people to write down. Here’s an example to help us understand. Let’s say someone wants to write a book about you. He or she spends time with you and listens to you talk about your memories. The person then writes a book using the information you gave. The writer is the person who writes the words down, but the information is all yours. In the case of the Bible, the thoughts are all God’s, but He used different people to write them. Remember, there’s only one true Bible and it has one true source: God.

Second, we need to know that the Bible’s purpose is to teach us what is true. God gave us the Bible for a purpose and He will do what he promises. He will use it to teach us the truth. The way to Heaven is not a secret and God wants us to know it. Even though other books claim to be from God, only the Bible says it is from Him. God wants to teach us the truth so much that He took thousands of years to put it all down in one convenient book: the Bible. God’s done His part and now we need to do our part: Believe Him. That should be easy because God cannot lie!

Let’s take a minute to look at the Bible. It is a collection of sixty six, written by more than 40 men over 1,600 years. The Bible is broken into two parts, the Old Testament and New Testament. The Old Testament tells us how everything began, how things became messed up, and how God plans to fix the mess. The New Testament shows how God carried out His plan.

Personal Item: Our Faith.

There’s one other item we need to take along with us on our journey: our faith. The dictionary defines faith as a trust in somebody or something, especially without logical proof. In the New Testament of the Bible, in the book of Hebrews (chapter 11, verse 1) gives God’s definition of faith:

What is faith? It is the confident assurance (certainty) that what we hope for is going to happen. It is the evidence (proof) of things we cannot yet see.

God describes our faith as our certainty that what we hope for is going to happen. We can be certain that our hope of finding God and the true way to Heaven will happen because of our faith. Our faith is also proof of something we cannot see. We haven’t seen heaven yet, but our faith proves we will see it. At times we may question our journey because we don’t see something or we can’t touch something. But God says it’s not important that we see, touch or feel something. He says it is important to have faith even when we can’t see, can’t touch and can’t feel. He says this is true faith. So, when we start to question our Guide or our journey, it’s important to hold onto our faith and continue step-by-step. God will reward us for our faith and the reward will be that what we hope for will happen.

We have our Guide, our traveling items and we are ready to start on our journey. Where do we start? The same place we start all our journeys, the beginning.

DAY 1: God Creates Day and Night

(Date: First Day of Creation / 4000 B.C.[4])

Let’s trust our Guide and start our journey

Our journey starts with how everything began. Why is it important to start here? We need to understand where we came from before we can understand where we’re going. If we start in the middle, we only have half the story. If we start at the end, we won’t know how we got there. So we start at the beginning. We need to go to our Guide, get the directions from Him and grab our map (the Bible).

The beginning of our journey starts with the Bible’s first verse. The Old Testament book of Genesis (chapter 1, verses 1-2) says:

In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. The earth was empty, a formless mass cloaked in darkness.

Okay, take a deep breath because here’s our first step of faith. First, God tells us He is the creator of the heavens and the earth. If it weren’t for God, the heavens and the earth wouldn’t be here. This means that the heavens and the earth have a Maker. God decided and He made them, no one else. He gets all the credit for what we see. We need to remember this and make sure we don’t give credit to anyone (or anything) else. If we do not give God credit then we are not doing what we promised to do: believe the truth. The truth is God chose to make the heavens and the earth. The Old Testament book of Isaiah (chapter 45, verse 18) says God made the earth for us to live in it:

For the LORD is God, and he created the heavens and earth and put everything in place. He made the world to be lived in, not to be a place of empty chaos.

What’s the second thing we see in Genesis (chapter 1, verses 1-2)? We see the heavens and the earth have a beginning. Their beginning was the instant they came into existence. God even describes what earth was like before: empty, a formless mass. How can we possibly believe this huge earth was formless? God sums it up in one word: faith. In the New Testament book of Hebrews (chapter 11, verse 3), God reminds us that to understand this we need to have faith:

By faith we understand that the entire universe was formed at God’s command, that what we now see did not come from anything that can be seen.

God tells us how the earth started in the Old Testament and He repeats it in the New Testament. He tells us we need faith. Are we going to believe God or not? If we choose to not believe Him then our journey stops here. Is that really what we want? No, we want to believe the truth and continue on our journey. What’s our choice? We can almost hear God encouraging us, Trust me. I do not lie to you. You just need to choose to trust me. He knows this is our decision, and He won’t make it for us. So, what do we do? We take the faith we have, whether a little or a lot, and we continue. Remember: it’s not the amount of faith we have, but the Object of our faith that’s important. Let’s stay on the road and continue by faith.

The first two sentences of Genesis give us an overall description of the creation of heaven and earth, but the rest of Chapter One fills in the details. God does not keep the truth a secret. He puts it all in black and white. God’s done His part and now we just need to do our part: trust Him and believe the truth no matter what. So, let’s see the details of God’s first day of creating everything. In the Old Testament book of Genesis (chapter 1, verses 3-5) God tells us:

Then God said, Let there be light, and there was light. And God saw that it was good. Then he separated the light from the darkness. God called the light day and the darkness night. And there was evening, and there was morning - the first day.

Let’s review the details of the first day:

• What happened?

God made the earth out of a formless mass. He also made light. The earth started in darkness then there was light. Did you notice what was missing? The sun. We don’t know how He did it, but we know there was light without the sun.

• How did it happen?

God spoke (or commanded) it to happen and the light appeared. He called it into being and there it was. He could have created light in any number of ways, but He chose to speak a command. His next step was to separate the light from the darkness. He even named them: day and night.

• How long did it take?

It took 24-hours. How do we know it was 24-hours? It’s because in the original language, when the words evening, morning and day were put together it always meant 24-hours. We have to check our way of thinking against God’s word, the Bible. It was written as 24-hours and God means 24-hours.

Creation timetable:

Day 1: God created the day and night.

DAY 2: God Creates the Sky

(Date: Second Day of Creation / 4000 B.C)

On the first day God formed the earth. He also created light and set up the timing for our day and night. Let’s see what He does next. In the Old Testament book of Genesis (chapter 1, verses 6-8) he tells us:

And God said, Let there be space between the waters, to separate water from water. And so it was. God made this space to separate the waters above from the waters below. And God called the space sky. This happened on the second day.

Not much to it, was there? But picture when God spoke the sky into existence. It would have been so amazing to have watched Him do it!

Let’s review the details of the second day:

• What happened?

God made a space between the waters above and the waters below. He also named it sky.

• How did it happen?

God spoke a command and then it happened.

• How long did it take?

It took 24-hours.

Creation timetable:

Day 1: God created the day and night.

Day 2: God created the sky.

DAY 3: God Creates Land, Sea, Plants and Trees

(Date: Third Day of Creation / 4000 B.C.)

God then tells us what he did after He created the sky. In the Old Testament book of Genesis, (chapter 1, verses 9-13), He tells us:

And God said, Let the waters beneath the sky be gathered into one place so dry ground may appear. And so it was. God named the dry ground land and the water seas. And God saw that it was good. Then God said, Let the land burst forth with every sort of grass and seed-bearing plant. And let there be trees that grow seed-bearing fruit. The seeds will then produce the kinds of plants and trees from which they came. And so it was. The land was filled with seed-bearing plants and trees, and their seeds produced plants and trees of like kind. And God saw that it was good. This happened on the third day.

Let’s review the details of the third day:

• What happened?

God gathered the waters beneath the sky into one place and dry ground appeared. He then named the ground land and the water seas. Did you notice God’s reaction? He saw that it was good. This must have pleased him because he used the word good to describe it. He wasn’t done with his day yet. He also created grass, plants and trees. Do you see God’s order? He created the land and the water before He created the things that would need them. He is a God of order, not of chaos. The Old Testament book of Isaiah (chapter 45, verse 18) says:

For the LORD is God, and he created the heavens and earth and put everything in place. He made the world to be lived in, not to be a place of empty chaos.

• How did it happen?

He spoke a command and it happened.

• How long did it take?

It took 24-hours.

Creation timetable:

Day 1: God created day and night.

Day 2: God created the sky.

Day 3: God created the land, seas, plants and trees.

DAY 4: God Creates the Sun, Moon and Stars

(Date: Fourth Day of Creation / 4000 B.C.)

God’s done a lot in three days, but He wasn’t done yet. Now we’re going to see what He did on the fourth day. In the Old Testament book of Genesis (chapter 1, verses 14-19), He tells us:

And God said, Let bright lights appear in the sky to separate the day from the night. They will be signs to mark off the seasons, the days, and the years. Let their light shine down upon the earth. And so it was. For God made two great lights, the sun and the moon, to shine down upon the earth. The greater one, the sun, presides during the day; the lesser one, the moon, presides through the night. He also made the stars. God set these lights in the heavens to light the earth, to govern the day and the night, and to separate the light from the darkness. And God saw that it was good. This all happened on the fourth day.

Let’s review the details of the fourth day:

• What happened?

God made the sun, the moon and the stars. What was God’s reaction? God saw that it was good.

God not only created the sun, moon and stars, but He also controls them. In the Old Testament book of Joshua (chapter 10, verses 12-14), the following event is recorded:

…Joshua prayed to the LORD in front of all the people of Israel. He said,

Let the sun stand still over Gibeon, and the moon over the valley of Aijalon.

So the sun and moon stood still until the Israelites had defeated their enemies.

…The sun stopped in the middle of the sky, and it did not set as on a normal day. The LORD fought for Israel that day. Never before or since has there been a day like that one, when the LORD answered such a request from a human being.

Note: We need to remember the sun, moon and stars were created by God for His purpose: to mark off the seasons, the days, and the years. It is okay to study them (as done by astronomers), but not to attempt to tell the future (as done by astrologers). In the Old Testament book of Jeremiah (chapter 10 verses 2-3), He warns us:

This is what the LORD says: "Do not act like other nations who try to read their future in the stars. ... their ways are futile (useless) and foolish."

• How did God create the sun, moon and stars?

God spoke a command and it happened.

• How long did it take?

It took 24-hours.

Creation timetable:

Day 1: God created the day and night.

Day 2: God created the sky.

Day 3: God created the land, seas, plants and trees.

Day 4: God created the sun, moon and stars.

DAY 5: God Creates Fish and Birds

(Date: Fifth Day of Creation / 4000 B.C.)

The next thing God did was to start filling the earth with living creatures. In the Old Testament book of Genesis (chapter 1, verses 20-23), He tells us:

And God said, "Let the waters swarm with fish and other life.