XVIII.
HEAVEN.
“Therefore are they before the throne of God.”—Revelation vii. 15.
Let us think of Heaven this morning. The verses of which the text is a fragment will help us to do so.
The hope of heaven is the crowning hope of the Christian. It ought at all times to be an important element in his joy. All the pleasant things of earth should be made brighter by the reflected light of the world beyond the grave. It is common, however, for us to live in a sort of unconsciousness of this. Within proper limits this is not to be complained of. For our duties are here, and we are not fitted for there by “looking too eagerly beyond.” Besides, earth is the training-school for heaven, and unless we would enter into heaven as into “a vast abrupt,” obviously our present duty is by all means to cultivate that life which shall fit us for it.
There are, however, certain lulls in the rush of life which seem to draw us to the contemplation of the future. We find them sometimes in seasons of repose, but more especially in seasons of sorrow, and more especially still in seasons of bereavement.
I am not anxious to form an argument this morning. I have little disposition to argue about heaven. But I want to express some thoughts, disjointed perhaps, but I trust suggestive, and each one carrying its message to our weary hearts.
What may we know? We often ask this question with hope that is tremulous—or it may be with tremulousness that is hopeful. What may we know? Certainly not all that we sometimes wish to know; but then we sometimes wish to know things the knowledge of which would be useless, or curious, or beyond our reach until we can see with tearless eyes, and realise with sinless hearts. There are certain aspects under which heaven seems to be altogether visionary. Where is it? We are not told. What are the dimensions and outlines of it? We do not know. It is described under a great variety of material figures. We read of its gates of pearl, its walls of jasper, its streets of gold, its river of the water of life, its tree of life; but we know that these descriptions symbolise the spiritual. Not that they are mere riddles, however. Some of their truth may be confidently guessed. There is one important fact of which we cannot be in doubt. Heaven is the place in which will be developed and perfected a certain character—certain moral and spiritual qualifications. Heaven is where perfect goodness is, just as on earth happiness is where godliness and Christlikeness are. We may, therefore, put heaven where we will, and think about it almost as we please, provided we put the right sort of character there, and remember what sort of discipline here must prepare for it. This is the essential point in the revelations of this book: “There shall in no wise enter into it anything that defileth, neither whatsoever worketh abomination, or maketh a lie: but they which are written in the Lamb’s book of life.” There must be a heaven for the good.
I shall not stop to point out what a wreck our common Christianity would be if there were no future life of blessedness for the Christian. In contemplating such a possibility, the apostle Paul exclaims: “If in this life only we have hope in Christ, we are of all men most miserable.” We: for we have expected heaven; the fair vision has been put before us as a great hope, and we lose in proportion to what we thought we had gained. We: for we have prepared for it, through a life—in many instances a long life—of self discipline, of loyalty to God, of the mortification of sin, of the cultivation of goodness. We: for we have suffered for it, sometimes directly through ills endured for Christ’s sake, and always indirectly by the sacrifice of that which the world distinctively calls its own, and on which it sets its supreme regard. Our Christianity has promised this heaven to us; and the promise has enhanced many an earthly joy, and charmed away many an earthly sorrow. No heaven? Then we have been shamefully deceived—miserably disappointed; and there is no hope for us any more! But no! The words of the great consolation are sounding still, and we can trust them: “Let not your heart be troubled: ye believe in God, believe also in me. In my Father’s house are many mansions: if it were not so, I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you. 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.”
It is one of the characteristic glories of the Bible that it meets the renewed heart’s desires in regard to the future, by revealing, not only the fact of the future, but also some of its resplendent mysteries; so that, after taking man through the several stages of his progress on earth, it conducts him at last to the heaven of his hopes, the home of the good. Perhaps no Scripture disclosure of Heaven is more wonderful, more complete, more entrancing than the one we have in the vision of the apostle John as recorded in the verses before us. True, it is put before us, like the other revelations of this book, in poetical and pictorial form. Nevertheless, the spiritual teaching is sufficiently plain. Let us seek the help of that good Spirit by whom John was inspired, whilst we try to learn something of that which is revealed to us in this chapter. In the light of it we see an innumerable multitude of persons who, having travelled this world in trial and in sorrow, are now before the throne of God, safe in the heaven of the redeemed.
So we see, at the very beginning, that the Heaven which is here presented to our view is no solitary place. It is not peopled merely by a few. John says he saw “a great multitude whom no man could number.” In the Old Testament a similar phrase is used to denote Israel, the representative of the Church of later times. The numberless stars of heaven, and the sands on the seashore are the parallels of the idea we find here. The Church on earth, sometimes not unfitly described as “a garden walled around,” and as “a little flock,” is not, in this sense, the representation of the Church in heaven. We see, further, that the heavenly territory embraces the representatives of every earthly human condition: they gather from all ages and all climes of the world—from all “nations and kindreds, and peoples, and tongues.” In this great fact we have the basis of the theory of our mission work, and our hope of its ultimate success.