He says: "And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again, and receive you unto Myself; that where I am, there ye may be also!"
So He bids us to look forward in the trials and sorrows which will come to all of us, as we pass through life to the Father's Everlasting Home—to His being there to get ready that Home for all who love Him—and then He promises to come back and fetch His people, and take them to be for ever with Himself!
John, the disciple whom Jesus loved, who had sat close to his Lord, and had leant on His breast, heard all these heart-cheering words, as Jesus uttered them. But little did he know, then, that he would be chosen to write all these lovely words down in his Gospel; nor that by and by he should be a prisoner for years in the rocky Isle of Patmos, and see glorious visions of "the Father's House, and the many Mansions."
There, in the loneliness and solitude, the glorified Saviour came to His loved disciple and said to him these wonderful words:
"I am the First, and the Last, and behold I am alive for Evermore."
He told John that many sorrows and difficulties would beset His followers, but that those who overcome shall sit down with Him on His Throne, even as He had overcome and is seated with His Father on His Throne.
By and by, near the end of these wonderful Revelations, John was allowed to have a glimpse into Heaven itself, and he saw a vision of the many mansions which Jesus is preparing for us!
Here are the words—
"And I John saw the Holy City . . . and I saw no temple therein: for the Lord God Almighty and the Lamb are the temple of it. And the city had no need of the sun, neither of the moon, to shine in it: for the glory of God did lighten it, and the Lamb is the light thereof."
"And God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes; and there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain: for the former things are passed away.