Early in His ministry, Jesus began preaching to the crowds using only parables. He told His disciples that He was teaching in this way even though He realized that His listeners could not understand the sermons He was offering them. In private, He taught the disciples the meaning of every parable. It is left for you, He told them, to understand my teachings. Yet, amazingly, the most important of Jesus' words regarding the nature of Christianity have been handed down to us, today, encoded in the very parables and allegories that He once preached to the people of Israel. A brief review of the New International Version of the Bible shows that it contains some 32 parables that are preceded by a title line naming the parable. Only one of these 32 parables describes an aspect of the kingdom of heaven and is accompanied by Jesus' own explanation. Fifteen others that describe the kingdom of heaven are presented without explanation. And of the 16 remaining parables, which do not describe an aspect of the kingdom of heaven, only nine are explained. And now consider that more than one third of Jesus' teachings recorded in the Gospels have been handed down to us in the form of parables. Consequently, as we read the Bible, we often find ourselves confronted with the same parables that the crowds, in the time of Jesus, could not comprehend; parables that the disciples, who, despite a daily relationship with Jesus, often required a private explanation in order to understand. And, as we read the Bible, we can see plainly that Jesus used parables as His only means of teaching the crowds regarding the nature of the kingdom of heaven. The assumption that many of today's Christians make is that the Bible's parables can be easily understood. But, now, consider this comment by Jesus: [Matthew 13:10 The disciples came to him and asked, "Why do you speak to the people in parables?" 11 He replied, "Because the knowledge of the secrets of the kingdom of heaven has been given to you, but not to them. 12 Whoever has will be given more, and they will have an abundance. Whoever does not have, even what they have will be taken from them. 13 This is why I speak to them in parables: "Though seeing, they do not see; though hearing, they do not hear or understand. 14 In them is fulfilled the prophecy of Isaiah: "'You will be ever hearing but never understanding; you will be ever seeing but never perceiving. 15 For this people's heart has become calloused; they hardly hear with their ears, and they have closed their eyes. Otherwise they might see with their eyes, hear with their ears, understand with their hearts and turn, and I would heal them.' 16 But blessed are your eyes because they see, and your ears because they hear. 17 For truly I tell you, many prophets and righteous people longed to see what you see but did not see it, and to hear what you hear but did not hear it. (Mat 13:10-17) NIV] "Heaven is in Your Future" presents many novel interpretations of the Bible's parables. One of these is that Jesus taught the people that human souls are eternal, not God created, and that the souls of our world are now traveling a long, winding path that will lead each to sinlessness and salvation. [John 3:8 The wind blows wherever it pleases. You hear its sound, but you cannot tell where it comes from or where it is going. So it is with everyone born of the Spirit." (John 3:8) NIV)] There is perhaps no other Christian book available today which makes such an eloquent and convincing case that the parables of the Christian Bible are more complex and profound than scholars of the past have ever dared to imagine.