What The Bible Says About Heaven預覽

At Home in Paradise

‘At home with the Lord’ is the metaphor that Jesus used with his disciples, and through them for us. I remember Joel’s last moments on earth with us as if they were yesterday. Joel took advantage of these moments to prepare us, his family, with carefully thought through conversations, audio recordings for us to listen to later, and practical preparation. Those moments were bittersweet; they were charged with unforgettable emotion, importance and impact. Jesus chooses a similar moment to prepare his disciples for the reality of their location after death. These words were carefully chosen words, preparing his friends, his closest ones, for his impending death and departure. He wanted to give his disciples and us something tangible to look forward to – an actual place where they and we would go to be with him. Like the thief, he was giving the disciples a promise, a location and a description.

Let not your hearts be troubled. Believe in God; believe also in me. In my Father’s house are many rooms. If it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you?

Here is a moment where the words would never be forgotten, a bittersweet moment of high importance and high impact. And at that moment, Jesus deliberately chose common, physical terms – house, rooms, place – to describe where he was going and what he was preparing for us. 

‘I go to prepare a place for you’. This is a promise that touches the heart. This is a promise that adds strength to a future beyond this life that is different, better and purpose-made, purpose-built. Doubly meaningful to the disciples who, together with Jesus, were on the move. Doubly meaningful because it comes from the lips of Jesus, who had nowhere to lay his head. This is a purpose-built place with a purpose-built location. The writers of scripture present heaven in a variety of ways, including a garden, a city, a kingdom and a home. These are metaphors we can all relate to, but they can create a challenge. It’s easy to make the mistake of believing that these things are just analogies, metaphors. We can spiritualize these things and somehow perceive that they are less than real and in so doing, we lose the wonder of the place and lose our longing to be there.

Our senses are conditioned to think of earth as real but heaven somehow as less real, less physical. And yet, as we shall see in the next few pages, after visiting paradise Paul called what he saw ‘surpassing greatness’. To be with Christ is better by far – that’s not a dry theological dogma, that’s a sensory explosion better than anything we have ever seen or could ever imagine. If it’s better by far, if it is a place of ‘surpassing greatness’, then expect to be blown away. 

Please don’t tell yourself that the garden called paradise is no better than your garden. Please don’t ever believe even for a second that the most spectacular views you have enjoyed in forests, mountains, valleys, canyons, oceans and in the skies are the best. No! Those wonderful experiences are not the reality, they are the shadow, the pale reflection of the real thing.