They found the door to heaven this week! A gentleman named User served as the chief minister to the powerful and long-ruling Queen Hatshepsut of Egypt (15th century BC). In fact for twenty years he was “vizier” (an Egyptian civil officer having viceregal powers) in her palace. Along the way he also acquired the titles of prince and mayor of the city. So while he wasn’t royalty, he hobnobbed with them. In life, and even in death. For archaeologists have found his tomb on the west bank of the Nile at Luxor, the burial ground reserved for kings and queens. User had connections.

But what is intriguing is the ultimate connection he sought. On Monday the Egyptian antiquities authority announced the discovery of a 3500 year old pink granite door that archaeologists have determined belonged to the tomb of User. Nearly six feet tall, the granite slab is a carved “false door” that was placed in a recessed niche inside User’s tomb. No door handle, no hinges, just a tall slab of granite inscribed with enough hieroglyphics to determine that User intended the door to represent a gateway into the afterlife. In front of the door was an offering table upon which food and drink were left for his departing spirit, a bit of refreshment on the way to heaven.

Two thousand years ago another slab of rock was rolled across the mouth of a garden tomb. Inside lay the body of the Deceased, clearly a victim of Roman crucifixion. Buried late Friday afternoon, the body lay at rest through the long Sabbath hours, the sepulcher door sealed shut by the nervous Jewish and Roman hierarchy. But nobody—not even the Dead Man’s closest followers—anticipated that explosion of lightning outside the grave just before dawn on Sunday. And when the towering angel tossed aside the sealed stone and with the voice of a thousand trumpets shouted into the sepulcher, “Son of God, Your Father calls You”—only then was the truth about the door to heaven at last unearthed. Not pink granite, the true door to the afterlife. Just the living, pink flesh of the “I was dead, but now I am alive” resurrected Christ! The same Christ, who two millennia later still proclaims, “I am the door. If any enter by Me, they will be saved” (John 10:9).

If User walks into heaven one day, it will be this Door—and only this Door—that will be his gateway to eternal life. Because the Door to Heaven has always been and will always remain the person of Christ. “I am the resurrection and the life. Those who believe in me—though they die—yet shall they live” (John 11:25). Which means that if you choose to live close to the Door now, it won’t matter which side of the river they bury you . . . or me.