Evangelical rediscovers the Communion of Saints...

...and realizes that the saints in Heaven know what's happening on Earth.

Laurie preached that he is not the only one fascinated with the topic of the afterlife. "There are a lot of books that have been written on this subject. If you go over to Amazon right now and type in the word 'heaven' you'll find 200,000 options ranging from books to music to different things that you could purchase about the subject of heaven.

"My belief is everything I need to know about heaven is found in the pages of the Bible," he said.

Laurie's message on Sunday was a continuation of the series he is doing on the book of Revelation. He asked by way of the title of his sermon, "What do people in heaven know about what is going on here on earth and do they even care?"

"There are two trains of thought on this topic. For some it would seem like that once we're in heaven we will be so preoccupied with worshipping God that the last thing in our mind would be what's happening on earth – besides, with all the tragedy and sadness in this world, heaven would just not be heaven if we were made aware of it," Laurie described.

"Then, the other train of thought is pretty much the opposite of that. People would think that folks up in heaven are sitting and watching our every move almost like it's their form of entertainment," he said. "They would even think that sometimes those in heaven might be intervening in our lives and directing our steps and helping us to know what to do."

Laurie added, "You might be surprised to know that I believe both views are actually incorrect."

"The question might be well, why would you even care about this? The answer is you will care if you have a loved one in heaven," he said.

Pointing to scripture found in Revelation, Luke chapters 15 and 16, Laurie explained that he believes that people in heaven have knowledge of what is happening on earth.

I was at an Evangelical study recently where the Evangelical pastor explained - perhaps stunned - his Evangelical audience with the suggestion that the Orthodox/Catholic idea of praying to saints has a biblical foundation, pointing to Revelation 15, 16.

The big drawback is occasionally the question of "how do people in Heaven hear prayers on Earth."

The answer is obviously, "they have really good hearing."

Actually, there are a variety of answers from various Church Fathers, but the gist is, "God makes sure that they know what they need to know."