JESUS HEAVEN’S GREETER: “Look! I see the heavens opened and the Son of Man standing at the right hand of God!” (Acts 7:56). These are the words of martyr Stephen as he approached the moment of his passage Home. But I thought His Father had said, “SIT at My right hand, till I make Your enemies Your footstool” (Heb 1:13). Why did Stephen see Him standing? Is it not because He rises to greet each saint as they step through the portals of glory, at the instant we are “present with the Lord”? And in that moment we “shall see His face” (Rev 22:4). And that will change everything! Around 125 A.D., a Greek by the name of Aristeides wrote to a friend, trying to explain the extraordinary success of the “new religion,” Christianity. In his letter he said, “If any righteous man among the Christians passes from this world, they rejoice and offer thanks to God, and they accompany his body with songs and thanksgiving as if he were setting out from one place to another nearby.”