Heaven

   "Men do not go to Heaven laughing," says an old Dutch proverb, which shows how misguided old proverbs can be. I intend to laugh all the way to Heaven, and still be chuckling after I get there. So much nonsense has been written on the subject of the hereafter that I wonder why I spend time refuting it, and yet something intelligent about Heaven does seem to be called for in a book on ageing.

   What gives it all the more significance is that none of the current books on ageing have a word to say about Heaven. Everything else about the closing out of life on earth is considered: the medical report, the disposal of the remains, the funeral arrangements, the gravesite, the notices in the press, the will, the probate, the insurance, the division of the property, the settling of the accounts, the invitations to the service, the inscription on the headstone, the quarreling among the heirs . . .

   But Heaven? Good heavens! What a thought!

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   No serious student of gerontology would think of including in his discussion of the ageing process a reference to life after death — unless, of course, the gerontologist was a Christian. At this point the unbeliever lays down his pen, and the believer picks his up; the unbeliever switches off his computer, and the believer turns his on.

   The average citizen of the twentieth century, regardless of age, tends to look at life as a boon. He may complain a lot about the way life has treated him, but he is in no hurry to depart it. Soldiers home from the Persian Gulf told us how precious life now seems to them, that it is wonderful just to be able to breathe, to eat and drink, to talk with friends and be with the family. We who are older find it especially true for us. It's so great to be able to do little things: to walk, to shop, to swim, to kiss, to dance, to indulge oneself, to travel, to nap, to eat, to talk, to wear nice apparel, to bask in the sun, to meet interesting people and look at interesting things, even to go to church! Who would want to give up all this? As a mid-century song expresses it:

I love life, and I want to live
to drink of life's fullness,
take all it can give.

   The implication is that when the frolic is over, it's over; and it is at this point that the Christian draws the line and nails his colors to the mast. We have a completely different view of reality. As Francis Schaeffer argues so effectively in

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Death in the City, we believe that the universe has a spiritual dimension and that we live in a supernatural as well as a material environment.¹

   Thus we contend that whatever this life offers us is to be considered only a prelude. For us it is the appetizer, the hors d'oeuvre, the curtain raiser, the prologue, the starter, the introduction. Is life on earth really a plus? Heaven will be better. Is life rich? Heaven will be richer. Is life exciting? Heaven will be more so.

   A song of the Edwardian era used to ask,

In the garden of tomorrow,
will the roses be more fair?

Yes they will.

Will we find relief from sorrow?

Yes, we will.

Will there be no parting there?

There will be no sad partings in Heaven.

   "Come on," the world cries out in protest. "How do you know all this? Where's your proof? You're building castles in the air."

   No, we Christians are not building anything. We simply have a better source of information. We have discovered through our study of the Bible that life on this earth is not an end in itself; it is a road test, a proving ground, a dry run, if you will, a shakedown cruise, a simulator flight.

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We are pilgrims just passing through, making a roadside stop on our way to our destination. We seniors are completing our training for something really big. We pulled in to a doughnut shop called "Planet Earth" for a cup of coffee and a raised doughnut before setting out on the last leg of our journey.

   So when the hair on our heads begins to turn white, and the dewlaps under our chins begin to sag, and our pace becomes slower, and the neurons and dendrites don't convey impulses as they once did, and our brains sometimes need jumper cables to get going in the morning, that tells us something. It tells us there is not much left in the bottom of the coffee cup and about all that remains of the doughnut is the hole. We had better be up and going on that final leg.

   When I was young a popular song about New Orleans carried this line, "Heaven on earth, they call it Basin Street," but that's wrong. Allow me to exercise editorial privileges. Heaven, this place Christians are headed for, is not Basin street; neither is it Broadway, or Hollywood Boulevard, or Piccadilly Circus, or the Champs d'Elysees, or the Yellow Brick Road to the Emerald City of Oz. It is so much better than anything we can imagine, anything this old planet can produce, that comparisons are out of the question.

   J.B. Phillips, an English scholar, is now enjoying the wonders of Heaven; but before he left us he gave us this translation of John's description of Heaven as found in the last two chapters of the book of Revelation:

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   Then I heard a great voice from the throne crying, "See! The home of God is with men, and he will live among them. They shall be his people, and God himself shall be with them, and will wipe away every tear from their eyes. Death shall be no more, and never again shall there be sorrow or crying or pain. For all those former things are past and gone."

   Then he who is seated upon the throne said, "See, I am making all thing new!"

   Then he carried me away in spirit to the top of a vast mountain, and pointed out to me the city, the holy Jerusalem, descending from God out of Heaven, radiant with the glory of God. Her brilliance sparkled like a very precious jewel with the clear light of crystal....

   The one who was talking to me had a golden rod in his hand with which to measure the city, its gateways and its walls.

   The wall itself was built of translucent stone, while the city was of purest gold, with the brilliance of glass.

   The foundation stones of the wall of the city were fashioned out of every kind of precious stone. The first foundation-stone was jasper, the second sapphire, the third agate, the fourth emerald, the fifth onyx, the sixth carnelian, the seventh goldstone, the eighth beryl, the ninth topaz, the tenth green goldstone, the eleventh zircon, and the twelfth amethyst. The twelve gates were twelve pearls, each gate made of a single pearl. The street of the city was purest gold gleaming like glass.

   I could see no Sanctuary in the city, for the Lord, the Almighty God, and the Lamb are themselves its Sanctuary. The city has no need for the light of sun or moon, for the splendor of

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God fills it with light and its radiance is the Lamb....

   Nothing that has cursed mankind shall exist any longer; the throne of God and of the Lamb shall be within the city. His servants shall worship Him; they shall see His face, and His name will be upon their foreheads. Night shall be no more . . . for the Lord God will shed His light upon them and they shall reign as kings for timeless ages.²

   What a dazzling prospect! And it's all true. That is, it's true for those whose names are in the Book of Life. By faith we know that we are sinners who by the grace of God have become children of the Most High, born from above to eternal life. If that isn't cause for thanksgiving and laughter I don't know what is. John's vision of the new Jerusalem suits us perfectly. We are prepared for joy and more joy.

   All those unfulfilled prospects of earth will come to us fulfilled in Heaven. Birth defects we carried through life will disappear forever. Medals we strove for and failed to win will be pinned on us. Poetry we couldn't seem to write will flow from us. Skills we struggled unsuccessfully to master will be ours to use. Fellow Christians we found it difficult to like will become our bosom friends. The ravages of disease will disappear along with the resulting pain. Migraine headaches, deformities, missing limbs, mental handicaps, weight problems, gloomy depressive

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states, and even hangnails will all be corrected and vanish forever.

   But just a moment — an old Negro spiritual contains these words, "Everybody talking 'bout Heaven ain't going there."

   And that's right. Millions of people for whom the Bible is trash think that Heaven is theirs by right; they earned it and deserve it just because of what they had to put up with on earth, and they certainly don't intend to let anyone deprive them of it. When the saints go marching in, they'll be right in that number, you bet. Or so they think.

   That is probably as big a mistake as it is to believe there is no Heaven. What happens to us after death is in God's hands, not ours, and God has His own agenda. Roland Bainton tells us that when Thomas Hooker, the liberty-loving English preacher who brought his flock to the new world and became one of the founders of Connecticut, lay dying in his Hartford home in 1647, his friends sought to comfort him.

   "Mr. Hooker," they said, "you are now going to receive your reward."

   The rugged old Puritan pioneer and statesman turned, looked sternly at them, and said, "I go to receive mercy."³

   Those same people who are so sure that Heaven is a place people attain on their own merits, and that they themselves are supremely qualified to enter, are in for two surprises. First, they will learn that we are saved by grace and not by works.⁴ Second, they will learn that Hell is

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not a warped figment of the human imagination.

   Hell, while it is referred to millions of times every day by human beings in rather uncomplimentary tones, does not have the good press that Heaven gets. Many, if not most, Americans have serious doubts that Hell even exists. However, two pretty obvious facts about life, as well as several authoritative statements of Scripture, have convinced Bible Christians that Hell is a very real place.⁵

   The first fact is that we have freedom to choose. If there were no Hell, there would be no such freedom. We would all be universalists and would be on the bandwagon to glory no matter what kind of life we live on earth. We would be so eager to rehabilitate God's character as Celestial Lover that we would vitiate His character as Judge. Our moral choices would be meaningless since ultimately morality would count for nothing. Distinctions between good and evil would be merged into a gray area in which it would be impossible to tell right from wrong because to a loving God everything would be right. To borrow from a bit of Pish-tush's inimitable logic in The Mikado:

And I am right
and you are right
And all is right as right can be.⁶

But all is not right. In all-out universalism nothing is ultimately right — or wrong, but universalism itself is wrong! Only if Hell is a distinct

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alternative can we be free to choose good over its opposite, evil. Only if we realize that the Devil is after our immortal souls, can we exercise the spiritual liberty that takes us on the narrow path to mercy and redemption.

   The second fact is that the choices of time are binding in eternity. To cite an extreme example: We take a gun and shoot someone. If that person dies, the death cannot be undone. It is forever. All our tears will not wash out the fact that a foul deed was perpetrated, a crime was committed. God is indeed a good God. He sent His Son Jesus Christ to die for us and for our sins and to prepare us for Heaven. We can by repenting receive the gift of divine forgiveness, but what was done — what we did on earth — cannot in the nature of things be undone. That is frightening.

The moving finger writes, and having writ, moves on.⁷

   If our physical actions by nature leave their scars forever, what shall we say about the choices we make with our wills? All the predestinarian doctrine in the world (and I sincerely believe God is running this show) cannot wipe out the fact that we face a decision with respect to Jesus Christ's claim on our lives. That decision will determine our immortal destiny. There will be no second chance once we leave this sphere, no agonizing reappraisal, no probation, no reversal of opinion. It will be either-or, or as the

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Germans say, entweder-oder. And just as Heaven is no myth, so also Hell is no joke.

   What these facts spell out is that Heaven is not all that easy. Entry is selective; its gates are not open all that wide. The great preachers of the Cross remind us that only the blood shed at Calvary can wipe out the sins for which you and I are guilty in this life. Satan, it is clear, would give anything to drag us down into eternal perdition. But God did not create us for perdition; He created us to share His joy, and that is why He sent His Son to reclaim us.

   But God did more than that. He sent His Holy Spirit to fill us with love, so that we might be enraptured by all the blessings of the here and the hereafter. Are you filled with the Spirit? Has the love of God been poured out into your heart? Then come, join us. We are old, but we are new, and are young in heart. See, the party is about to start! It's time for joy and laughter. Satan is defeated, Christ is Victor, Heaven is just around the corner.

  Back in the early 1950s, when I was a young pastor in a small church, one of our most loyal members died. This dear old grandmother, Grace Hubbard, spent her last years "tunking" up and down the front stairs of wooden houses, inviting everyone in our not-too-affluent neighborhood to come to our services. She had such a sweet nature! How we loved her, and how she loved Jesus!

   In spite of my deep sense of loss, I conducted Grace's funeral in a state of elation. I couldn't help it.

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I knew that death meant absolutely nothing to Grace Hubbard, that she was winging it in celestial spheres and having the time of her life, and I turned that funeral as best I could into a celebration of triumphant joy.

   In John Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress, when Christian and Hopeful finally enter the gates of the Heavenly City, they are greeted with harps and crowns, and "all the bells in the city rang for joy." When Mr. Valiant-for-Truth passes over the river of death, "all the trumpets sounded for him on the other side."⁸

   We who are still here and up in years know that our summons will soon be coming — unless the Lord meanwhile intervenes. But what of it? Instead of it being a "way to dusty death,"⁹ it is a call to everlasting joy in the presence of the One who made us. And praise God, we're going to join all the wonderful saints who went before us. What a blast.

   Hallelujah!

___________________________

1. Francis Schaeffer, "Death in the City," Complete Works (Westchester, IL: Crossway Books, 1982), vol. 4, 288-98.

2. Rev. 21:3-5, 10-11, 15-23; 22:3-5, J.B. Phillips.

3. From a lecture delivered by the late Dr. Bainton in Berkeley, California, about 1955. See Wirt & Beckstrom, Topical Encyclopedia of Living Quotations (Minneapolis: Bethany, 1982), no. 2068.

4. See Ephesians 2:8-9.

5. See Luke 16:19-31.

6. W.S. Gilbert, The Mikado, Act 1, The Savoy Operas (London: Macmillan, 1977), 318.

7. Edward FitzGerald, The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam.

8. John Bunyan, The Pilgrim's Progress (Chicago: John C. Winston, 1933), 168, 328.

9. William Shakespeare, Macbeth, act 5, scene 1.

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