Unity is what heaven is going to be all about. In Revelation, you have people from every tribe, tongue, nation surrounding the throne of God in utter, all-consuming worship. But when you look at the state of God’s church today, we fall so short of this glorious portrait of unity. There are countless denominations and sects and church splits and factions within churches. We have failed God miserably in this area of witness when it comes to our lack of unity.
2 Corinthians 5 talks about a new creation. This applies not only to individual believers but to the entire world. When Christ returns, God will bring heaven down to earth. There will be a complete restoration of how things were in the Garden of Eden in Genesis 1 and 2. Therefore, as Christians, we have a responsibility to care not only for the souls of others, but also issues of our environment, societal injustice, poverty, prejudice and racism.
Each church is a little pocket of heaven where we display to the world a foretaste of heaven on earth. No single church can do it alone. We need to work together to have our little pockets intersect and overlap so that we can grow our sphere of influence in our respective communities. And of course, we can testify through working together on ecumenical projects that in the end we will be in fact worshiping side by side in the throne room of God on earth.