Is heaven a real place?

If so, there must of necessity be a resurrection, but how shall each one of us stand before God? Heaven and Hell are realities. And what sinner is fit to be in a Heaven, where the presence of a Holy God is supreme? Is there no prospect of happiness for the individual when he departs from this life and enters eternity? It is to answer these questions that we put pen to paper.

Every Christian looks to spend a glad eternity in heaven with the Lord Jesus. It is unquestionable that it is His desire and intention to have us there. In His wonderful prayer to the Father just before He suffered He thus expressed Himself, "Father, I will that they also, whom Thou hast given Me, be with Me where I am that they may behold My glory, which Thou hast given Me; for Thou lovedst Me before the foundation of the world" (John 17:24). Having said this, He went into death for us. The dread consequences of our sins fell on Him. He took up the cup of Divine wrath on our behalf that our souls might be delivered. All the work being done, every question having been settled, the Father raised Him up from among the dead, and glorified Him at His own right hand in heaven. He has gone up as Man into the glory; and thus, having previously accomplished redemption, has made out a title for all who believe in His Name to be there also. Glorious thought! All who trust in Him are "to live together with Him" in the Father's house for ever (1 Thess. 5:9-10).

Man's thoughts concerning heaven too often are fashioned from earthly moulds. We take of things around us, and, subjecting what we have gathered to a process of mental purifying, cast it into a shape, which our imagination has formed out of the clay of this sin-stained earth, and then we call that which we have fashioned heavenly! Vain are such thoughts! No mere man hath ascended up to heaven. Ideas of heaven without a divine revelation are only things of earth, painted with the colors of earth — the paradise of our inclinations, the fruition of the wishes of our fallen selves. Heaven is the dwelling-place of God, and can only be apprehended as God Himself is known; "Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man, the things which God hath prepared for them that love Him." What is known of them is by revelation: "God hath revealed them unto us by His Spirit." (1 Cor. 2:9-10.) The earthly things of the kingdom of God may well interest true believers, but they do not directly pertain to us. Since Christ went to prepare a place for those who love Him, our place is where He is. We have to do with the heavenly part of God's kingdom, or we have no lot in the matter. A christian is not a Jew; he has not an earthly but a heavenly inheritance.

But observe well where it is He gives us our home, "In my Father's house." Oh, beloved, have our hearts entered into the blessedness of this? The Jewish hopes of the disciples were filled with the displayed glory of the kingdom, as was natural from prophecy; but the time for that display, depending as it did upon the presence of the Messiah, was not come yet, as was evident from Jesus' words, "Yet a little while I am with you." And when all seemed lost to their disappointed expectations in His going away, He unfolds to their faith what prophecy never thought of, the Father's house, and gives them and us our home there, in a love that is beyond all the glory; for the glory can be displayed, the love, never. What rich comfort for our hearts, troubled in this world at the absence of Jesus!

But there is more, and more there must be, to meet the necessities of those to whom, by these very revelations, the Lord Jesus is becoming more precious every day. Is this separation to last for ever? No; He could not bear it any more than we. And, coupled with the home presented to our faith to enjoy, He gives us just what He knows hearts that truly love Him could not do without — the promise (ver. 3), "I will come again, and receive you unto myself;" precious hope for us, beloved, till hope shall be lost in the consummation of it, and we shall see Him face to face. Nor is it only that we shall be with Him — for, "to be absent from the body is to be present with the Lord," and thus in death we go to Him — but His word is, "I will come again, and receive you unto myself," and the promise is as sure today for our hearts as when He first gave it to us.* Beloved brethren, is the coming of our Lord more than a doctrine among us? Is it a deep spring of joy even in hope? Is it a living power in our souls? But the promise goes on, "that where I am, there ye may be also;" and this tells us that the necessity of our hearts is His own, that, not for our joy only but for His, we must be where He is. And, beloved, that is the heaven of the Christian's hope. Man's imagination has pictured a heaven of its own, well suited to it, no doubt, but not the least suited to the desires of Christ for us. Scripture has but little about heaven; for all desire, all joy, all hope, is summed up for any who know Christ ever so feebly, in that "where I am" of His. His presence is the very heaven of heaven to us.

The state of the soul after death is a subject which deeply interests us all. The rejection of the coming again of Christ to receive the saints, and to judge the earth, before the end of the world, and the losing sight of the distinctive importance given to the resurrection in the New Testament, has given in the common evangelical faith, and that where sound in the main, an absolute character to the vague idea of going to heaven, exclusive of all other conception of happiness and glory. But Scripture spoke too plainly of the Lord's coming and the resurrection of the saints, to allow the thought of going to heaven when we die to maintain the absorbing place it held in the minds of the pious. Strange to say, going to heaven is not spoken of in Scripture, unless in the one case of the thief upon the cross going to be with Christ in paradise. Not that we do not go there; but the scriptural thought is always going to Christ. Since He is in heaven, of course we go there; but being with Christ, not being in heaven, is what Scripture puts forward, and this is important as to the state of the spiritual affections. Christ is the object before the soul, according to the word, not simply being happy in heaven, though we shall be happy and in heaven. I speak of it only as characterising our habits of thought. Poor human nature is apt to fall into Scylla to avoid Charybdis. It is apt, too, to follow its own thoughts, not simply to receive the word of God. There was a reaction, and the recovered truth of the Lord's coming and the first resurrection obtained an importance in some minds, which eclipsed the going to heaven when we die, too vague, and too little formally scriptural, to satisfy those awakened to search the word. It was stated that the soul sleeps, is unconscious, till the resurrection, even by some who, in the main, were sound in the faith; while with others this notion carried them on to deny not only the immediate bliss of the departed, with Christ, but that we ever went to heaven, and what constitutes distinctive Christian hope. Alas! soon very many were led to deny the fundamental doctrines of the gospel.

Does Scripture speak of the life after death? Most distinctly and plainly. We have no need to go to spiritism to find out whether the dead survive. That has been the faith of God's saints from the very beginning. It is recorded in Matthew 22. that the Sadducees came to Jesus hoping to trip Him up, and they told that "cock-and-bull" story about a woman who had seven husbands. I have no doubt it was an absolute fiction; but they concocted this story in the hope of trapping the Lord, and they said, "In the day of resurrection whose wife shall she be?" And the Lord Jesus replied, "Ye do err, not knowing the Scriptures or the power of God," and then He went on to say, "Have ye not read that which was spoken to you by God, I am the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob." When did God say that? Centuries after those patriarchs had been laid in their graves, and He said it to them through Moses, whom the spiritists would laugh out of court. He did not say, "I was the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob." That disposes of the false notion that the dead have no consciousness, or cease to exist until the resurrection of the body. God is not the God of the dead but the living. If they for the time being had been extinct, He would have said, "I was their God." If He looked forward to the resurrection He would have said, "I shall be," but He said neither; He said, "I am the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob." God is not the God of the dead but of the living. All live to Him. With that agrees most beautifully Romans 14:7-9, where we read, "For none of us lives to himself, and no man dies to himself. For whether we live, we live to the Lord; and whether we die, we die to the Lord: whether we live therefore, or die, we are the Lord's. For to this end Christ both died, and rose, and revived, that He might be Lord both of the dead and living." A wonderful passage, full of the deepest possible comfort to the heart. I shall never forget how in a time of deepest distress and darkness, that one passage sang its comfort into my soul "Whether we live or die, we are the Lord's." I speak now to those who have trusted in Jesus, those who have come to His feet as poor sinners, and cast their souls upon Him, and can say, "He is my Saviour." "Whether we live or die, we are the Lord's." Yes, those loved ones who have passed out of our sight trusting in our one and only Saviour, have gone beyond our ken, but they have not passed out of the Lordship of Christ. Whether we live or die we are His, He is Lord both of the dead and the living. John 10:27-28, will fit in here, "My sheep hear My voice, and I know them, and they follow Me: and I give to them eternal life; and they shall never perish, neither shall any man pluck them out of My hand." Have you been confining that to the living saints? Don't confine it to them any longer; it includes those fallen asleep in Jesus, they are in His mighty hand even as we are. And none can pluck us from that hand, and none can pluck them from that hand. They shall never perish, neither shall any man pluck them out of His hand. The hand that broke the power of death holds in absolute and everlasting safety all those who have put their trust in Him. Safe, eternally safe, and in His hand! So near to Him they are in His keeping, and we are also. Thank God, they could not be in a better place, could they? They could not be in safer keeping, for none, either in this life or the next, shall take His blood-bought sheep from Him.

There is one passage only that gives us information as to the intermediate state of these; but we need no more. That is Luke 16:19-31: "The rich man also died and was buried; and in hell [hades] he lift up his eyes, being in torments." The words of the Lord speak for themselves. We accept them as He spoke them, without either cavil or comment. Love lies behind the warnings that fell from His lips just as truly as behind the wooing words of grace. "In My Father's house are many mansions: if it were not so, I would have told you," He said; and equally true is it, that if there had been no hell to dread and shun He would have told us. He has told us in definite terms about both heaven and hell, and wise are all they who heed His words.

Hence, then, there is the fullest harmony between "we know" and "we groan." If we did not know for a certainty that we have a building of God, we should like to hold our earthly house as long as possible. We see this constantly. Men cling to life. They leave nothing untried to keep body and soul together. They have no certainty as to heaven. They cannot say, "we know" that "we have" anything there. On the other hand, they have a terrible dread of the future, which to their vision is wrapped up in clouds and thick darkness. They have never committed themselves in calm confidence to God and His word; they have never felt the tranquillising power of His love. They have viewed Him as an angry Judge instead of seeing Him as the sinner's Friend — a just God and a Saviour — the righteous Justifier. No marvel, therefore, if they shrink with terror from the thought of meeting Him.

But have we been left in the midst of this prevailing darkness without any revelation from God? Is it so that He who made us, and who put into our hearts the strong conviction of a future life, has left us to grope about in our blind night for some clue that would solve the mystery of that shadowy land that is so fearsome to the children of men? The worlds that He has made speak of His power and wisdom, and His providences reveal both care and kindness unto all; and that we are accountable to Him for our behaviour while on earth seems deeply graven on our inmost souls. But none of these things is capable of casting one ray of light across the gloom that hides the secret from the gaze of men. None of these things has power to rend the veil, and bring the future into evidence.

The subject is one that must give all thinking persons much concern, it is one that cannot really be ignored, for sooner or later this life must come to a close for all, and we want to have certainty as to what the future may be, if there is a future. But we can have no certainty about it at all without reliable authority. This we must have or be the victims of continual and distressing doubt.