Rightwing megachurch pastor Robert Jeffress, formerly a frequent guest on Lou Dobbs's now-cancelled Fox Business program, turned up on Jim Bakker's cable TV show recently to plug a book he's written about what Heaven is like, because some people just know these things. While the show aired back in February, this clip just turned up on the Twitters this week, and it includes pretty big news for the faithful: When you die and go to your final reward, God doesn't want you just lazing around for eternity. Nope! You're gonna have a job, and since it's heaven, you're going to love working. After explaining that heaven won't just be an eternal church service (a true worry for Mark Twain), Jeffress got to the important labor report: Heaven is definitely not a place where nothing ever happens.

We're also going to work in Heaven! Now, that may sound even more like Hell to some people — you know, working in Heaven?! But remember, God created us to be workers. Work was a gift from God before the fall of Adam and Eve. God meant for us to find fulfillment in our work. He's a worker; He created us to be workers.

Fortunately for people who think God is a Republican, work in heaven will have one really great benefit that can't be said of our fallen Earthly realm: no meddlesome government regulation!

But in Heaven, the new Heaven and the new Earth, all of the things that drain the joy out of our work — bodies that grow tired, strained relationships, government regulations — all those things will be removed and we're going to enjoy work like God intended us to enjoy it.

So we'd presume that if your heavenly enterprise creates a lot of toxic waste, you can just go right ahead and dump it in a river, we guess, though we don't know whether that would be the river Styx or perhaps the Cuyahoga.

In case you're wondering what followed that, it was a studio shot of Jim Bakker and his wife, Lori, kvelling about how neat it will be to get to work in heaven, building a new TV studio — and if you give right now, you can help them build a new palace of evangelism, the "Hall of the Prophets Studio," right now, here on Earth! it's just an empty field at the moment, but for just $1000 you can be a Hall of the Prophets Ground Breaker, and you'll receive two lovely blankets and two mugs with the logo, to boot.

Bakker knows a thing or two about just how burdensome government regulation can be, having gone to prison for fraud after a worldly court convicted him of scamming donors. So you can see why being free of intrusive interference from the government might be appealing to him.

The Bakkers then moved on to flogging Jeffress's book (just $20, you can order it from the show website, makes a great gift!), and eventually got back to Jeffress, who was apparently done with what work in heaven will be like, and was ready to explain that in the afterlife, we'll be exactly who we are on Earth, with our families and everything. He didn't go into detail on whether folks who've been married more than once will be going through eternity with all their various spouses. Certainly not if you were married to an OSHA inspector who shut down a productive business, because they'll surely go to the other place.

Later in the show, Jeffress explained that the "passport" you need to reach your heavenly unregulated workplace is, ironically, subject to approval by heavenly bureaucrats of some sort.

The only passport that will get you into Heaven is not one that is stamped "Catholic," or "Baptist," or "Jewish." The only passport that will get you into Heaven is one that is stamped "Forgiven by Jesus Christ."

That's a slightly softer version of one of Jeffress's greatest hits, which a bunch of scoffing heretics pointed at when he and another far-Right preacher helped Donald Trump ring in Hanukkah in 2019. The guy has a habit of explaining that Jews, Muslims, and Hindus just plain won't make it to heaven unless they accept Jesus. Back in 2009, Jeffress sermonized that no heathens, including Jews, will be making it to heaven, because that's just how salvation works.

Not only do religions like Mormonism, Islam, Judaism, Hinduism, not only do they lead people away from the true God, they lead people to an eternity of separation from God in hell. You know, Jesus was very clear. Hell is not only going to be populated by murderers and drug dealers and child abusers. Hell is going to be filled with good religious people who have rejected the truth of Christ.

Jeffress repeated the point in 2010, when he explained that Islam and Mormonism are "a heresy from the pit of hell," and added that "you can't be saved by being a Jew."

So we're guessing there won't be a lot of kosher delis in Heaven, government food inspectors or no.

[Christian Nightmares on Twitter / Friendly Atheist / Jim Bakker Show]

Yr Wonkette is funded entirely by reader donations! You should money us if you can — perhaps with a monthly love offering of $5 to $10.

How often would you like to donate?

Just once Monthly

Select an amount (USD)

$2$25$5$50$10$100$15$500$20$1000