“Yes,” I said. “This is papa’s home; papa has to come back always to his home,—don’t you see?”
Then she said, “Well, then, you all say mama is gone to heaven from here; and if she really went there, and is living there now, why can’t she come back, as you always do from a faraway place? Why can’t she come home again from heaven?”
I could not answer such a question. But simply to comfort her, I said:
“Oh, I see! Perhaps God has some work for your mama in heaven. Therefore he is keeping her there, and your mama cannot come back here. You know, mama must obey God; whatever God says mama must do. God does not want your mama to come back to this world, so she cannot come home.”
I said this simply to satisfy her childish mind, which was wondering why her mama, if she is really living in heaven with God, cannot come back once more to her old home.
Instantly she said, “All right, papa. Then why can’t you go now to heaven yourself, and do mama’s work and serve God in her place, and let mama come down here for one month? And when you get tired of heaven, papa, you might come down, and then we will send mama up again to heaven. It is very good to have papa with us always, but we want mama also.”
You see, in her childish mind there was no partition between heaven and earth. Heaven is joined to the earth by her dear mother being there. She could see now right through to the throne of God, and her dear mother there. In those days they underwent various spiritual experiences in a most wonderful manner.
Every evening their favorite hymn was that one which has in its chorus, “Our friend is waiting on the other side.” In Japanese “friend” is tomo, and my children changed that tomo into “mama,” almost the same sound, and were singing, “Our mama is waiting on the other side.” To them the unseen world seemed so near and real that they felt as if they themselves were living in the same spiritual world with their departed mother.
In the midst of such a spiritual atmosphere, how could I resist the influence pouring in upon me from the other side? You know, I had been a pastor at one time, as well as a professor of theology, so I must have known intellectually things pertaining to the spiritual world. I had not forgotten them, only they were clouded by doubt. Thus, while I was watching these spiritual experiences of my children, gradually the clouds of doubt and unbelief began to disperse, and once more heaven opened, and with my spiritual eyes I saw Jesus Christ, my Saviour and Lord, whom New Theology had taken away from me, still sitting at the right hand of God: “Jesus Christ the same yesterday, and to-day, and for ever.”
Then I could exclaim with doubting Thomas when he saw the prints of the nails in the hands of Jesus, “My Lord and my God!” Jesus is my God, my very God. “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.”