June (Web-only) 2003

ARTICLE TOOLS

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Most of us have a rather vague concept of heaven. It is necessarily so. We can understand new things only in terms of something we already know.

Thus, for instance, we have difficulty telling someone what an exotic tropical fruit tastes like. How can we describe it? It does not taste like an apple, a pear, a tomato, or anything else. To know how it tastes, one must taste it.

Imagine trying to describe a sunset to someone born blind. He has never seen a glow, a light, or a fire, and does not know red from black or green. Our terms are but empty words to him. Thus heaven is indescribable. It is not like anything we have already known or experienced. It is a new realm beyond our comprehension.

To some, "heaven" means nothing more than streets of gold. Some whose loved ones have gone on ahead think of heaven primarily as a grand reunion. Others think of it as the final great escape, with no more sorrow and sickness (a desirable state, to be sure, but a wholly negative concept). There are also those who feel the proper expectation is that of being with Jesus.

Much of the biblical description that we apply to heaven, however, does not refer explicitly to heaven at all! No death, no sorrow, no pain; walls of jasper, streets of gold, gates of pearl, foundations of precious stones; lighted by the glory of God, and free from all defilement—all this is spoken of the "holy Jerusalem, descending out of heaven from God" (Rev. 21). The description is not of heaven but of the capital city of the new earth. "And the nations of them which are saved shall walk in the light of it: and the kings of the earth do bring their glory and honor into it" (v. 24).

Yet we are told that "they which are written in the Lamb's book of life" will enter into it ...