you have to have heaven in you now to be there when you die 1

One thing that's come into focus is this: just why I see doctrine(Biblical doctrine formulated into theological propositions and description and exposition) as being a thing that is tangible and *substantial*... It's because of this:

To become something or enter something you have to be able to visualize it. Theology gives you deovional material (high level, pactical, true, devotional subject matter) for this effort to visualize. Meditate, ponder, visualize.

For instance: a glorified body. I presented this subject on one of my work forums several years ago using Aquinas' terms defining a glorified body. In Francis Turretin's massive Institutes of Elenctic Theology he has a detailed section on the nature of glorified bodies. This knowledge, this detail, can be used for visualizing that which you expect to have yourself when you die. If you can't visualize that, and you never do visualize that, you most likely are asleep to it and not on course to attain it. You are most likely on a mechanical course to recur rather than be glorified.

So it becomes very practical and tangible to use true theological doctrine for material to meditate upon and actually visualize that that you expect - Christian faith and hope - to enter into and have yourself.

This is how doctrine becomes more than words or philoophy or theory but becomes that which actually BECOMES you. It's why on-the-mark doctrine is so important (and why the forces of darkness are so active in attacking true doctrine in a million ways, and why regenerate believers who can see the truth are so vigilant to defend true doctrine). If you believe wrong doctrine you are in a prison of nothingness and illusion. True doctrine becomes literally your body via understanding.

Justification is another example. It's an abstract word and thing, but it becomes a tangible real state when you meditate upon it and visualize it (perhaps visualize standing before God as Judge) and realize just what it is you have with justification.

This all requires learning theological doctrine to the point of understanding it so that you can use it like this.

Because the fact is: until you have this material in you and you focus on it in terms of pondering/meditating/visualizing it you can't achieve/enter in to it. You can't be what you're asleep to.

It gets back to the thought of a Christian who has died and you sense that it's difficult to imagine him in a higher state BECAUSE he didn't have that higher state IN HIM when alive in the flesh. He wasn't awake to it while in the flesh, because he didn't value it enough to be actively awake to it and visualizing it while in the flesh. You have to have heaven and glorification and justification, etc., IN you now to have it when you physically die.