Heaven: A Place, a City, a Home

“If God had told me some time ago that He was about to make me as happy as I could be in this world, and then had told me that He should begin by crippling me in all my limbs, and removing me from all my usual sources of enjoyment, I should have thought it a very strange mode of accomplishing His purpose. And yet, how is His wisdom manifest even in this! for if you should see a man shut up in a close room, idolizing a set of lamps and rejoicing in their light, and you wished to make him truly happy, you would begin by blowing out all his lamps; and then throw open the shutters to let in the light of heaven.”

—SAMUEL, RUTHERFORD.

RAVEN isa place. Out of the region of
all fancy it is taken and put into the
realm of the actual, the local. ‘The

revelations of the bare fact that death does not end all, death cannot end all; that man must exist to all eternity, that the future may be one of unutterable bliss, — that is the fact. This fact may have many colorings, many symbols, but these are not the main things, nor of the main thing. Heaven does not float around. It is not made of air, thin air. It is real, a country, a clime, a home sacred affinities draw to the spot. Divine assurance settles and fixes the fact.

Heaven might be a reality, but simply a state. In its location and grasp it might be airy, volatile. The Bible statement is of a place. One of the main ideas contained in the heavenly symbol, of a city, is place, location, a settled place, in contrast with a pilgrim state, unsettled and temporary.

The strong argument for heaven as a place centers in, and clusters about Jesus. The man Jesus, bearing a man’s form, the body He wore on earth, has a place assigned Him — a high place.

“‘ Wherefore God also hath highly exalted him, and given him a name which is above every name: That at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of things in heaven, and things in earth, and things under the earth; And that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father” (Phil. 2: 9-11).

“Whom he raised from the dead and set him at his right hand in the heavenly places, Far above all principality, and power, and might, and dominion, and every name that is named, not only in this world, but also in that which is to come: And hath put all things under his feet, and gave him to be head over all things to the church, which is his body, the fulness of him that filleth all in all” (Ephes. 1: 20-23).

This excellence and dignity is all conclusive of a place of high honor, the best, the most royal in the heavenly world.

“God who at sundry times and in divers manners spake in time past unto the fathers by the prophets, Hath in these last days spoken unto us by his Son, whom he hath appointed heir to all things, by whom also he made the worlds; Who being the brightness of his glory, and the express image of his person, and upholding all things by the word of his power, when he had by himself purged our sins, sat down on the right hand of the Majesty on high” (Heb.

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These all bespeak His place among the home places of God’s many mansioned country. ‘Who is gone into heaven, and is on the right hand of God; angels and authorities and powers being made subject unto him.”

These are figures of Christ’s exaltation and location. ‘They are figures of a place. Jesus wants us with Him. To see and share His glory. He dwells ina place. A place which honors and glorifies His person and presence. His business is not to be enthroned and receive honor, but He is there for us, to prepare a place for us.

“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” (John 17:24).

Heaven in the Bible is represented as a place in contrast with earth. The earth is a place, but unstable, insecure, fleeting. Heaven is stable, secure, eternal.

“For here have we no continuing city, but we seek one to come” (Heb. 13:14).

How marked the contrast between earth and heaven! Earth is but a pilgrim’s stay, a pilgrim’s journey, a pilgrim’s tent. Heaven is a city, permanent, God-planned, God-built, whose foundations are as stable as God’s throne.

“By faith Abraham, when he was called to go out into a place which he should after receive for an inheritance, obeyed; and he went out not knowing whither he went. By faith, he sojourned in the land of promise, as in a strange country, dwelling in tabernacles with Isaac and Jacob, the heirs with him of the same promise: For he looked for a city which hath foundations, whose builder and maker is God”

(Heb. 11: 8-9).

The Bible reveals heaven as a place. It is measured off, has its appointed metes and bounds, as definite place as a city, a walled city. It has its inside and its outside. Heaven is within the city, hell is without.

“For without are dogs, and sorcerers, and whoremongers, and murderers, and idolaters, and whosoever loveth and maketh a lie” (Rev. 22:15).

Heaven is a place. Not airy, impalpable, delocalized, is heaven. “TI go,” said Jesus, “to prepare a place for you.” That means locality, something settled. Heaven has its deep, strong colorings, its metes and bounds on God’s map.

In God’s house, Jesus declares, there are many mansions. ‘The New Version has it in the margin, “abiding places.” In God’s many homes, one home was to be theirs, a place, a home prepared for them. This was the solace to the disciples, saddened as they were. “Going to prepare a place for them,” is the purpose and fact in regard to the going of Christ. Nothing can be simpler, more explicit, more downright honest than this revelation to them of Christ’s purpose and plans. As though He had said, “Earth is a place where we have been abiding. We can abide together no longer here, but God has many other abiding places. I go to select one of these places for you; when it is ready I will come and take you there, and we will be together in place as well as in spirit, ‘that where I am, there ye may be also.’” “United again,’ Alford says, commenting on this statement of our Lord. “His taking His people to Himself to be where He is,” is begun in His Resurrection, carried on in the spiritual life, the making them ready for the place prepared. Jesus uses the term, “prepare a place.” The

term means, make the necessary preparation, get ‘everything ready, a figure drawn from the eastern custom of sending on before kings persons to level the roads and make them passable. Jesus is our pioneer, gone to prepare heaven for us. A place made ready it will be. Its antitype was Canaan, a place and a prepared place. Israel did not have to pioneer the way, build cities, or homes. Homes and cities were already built for them. They had to do nothing but simply to enter in, possess and enjoy. As Canaan was but a feeble type of heaven, so its preparation was but a faint shadow of the preparation which will be made for us in heaven, a city God-built, homes not made with hands, eternal in the heavens.

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