Knowledge of Heaven

“Fasten your grips fast on Christ. Let not this clay portion of earth take up your soul. It is the portion of bastards, and ye are a child of God. Therefore, seek your Father’s heritage. Send up your heart to see the dwelling house and fair rooms in the New City. Fy, fy, upon those who cry, ‘Up with the world, and down with conscience and heaven!”

SAMUEL RUTHERFORD.

HE Christian’s attitude to heaven is one
of knowledge.

“For we know that, if our earthly house of this tabernacle were dissolved, we have a building of God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens” (2 Cor. 5:1).

The Christian stands in regard to the certainty, of death as all the living do. A frail fleeting Arab tent is his body, the heir of death and hastening to decay. But the Christian knows that “if this earthly house were dissolved, he has a house not made with hands eternal in the heavens.”

It is real knowledge about heaven, not a mere wish, or hope so, or a happy guess, but assured knowledge, a fact communicated, knowledge imparted. God has committed Himself in the strongest way to give knowledge and assurance of heaven to every child of God. “The Spirit himself bears witness” to our adoption and heirship. In regard to this great fact of our names being written in the Book of Life, we are not left in ignorance. God seals us with the Holy Spirit which is the earnest as well as a witness. A witness bears testimony. ‘The earnest is both the pledge of heaven and its foretaste. Heaven he has in conscious realization, not in full measure, but in a measure realized. The true Christian is no agnostic. He knows some things.

Heaven in this life is not to him as large a reality, but as much a reality as it will be when his feet are on the gold pavement of the heavenly city. Heaven pervades and sweetens his whole life. His faith brings to him the very substance of things hoped for, and his hope makes the present luminous by its light and strong by its strength. Christian faith and hope make the things of heaven real, conscious, tangible, experimented. How the knowledge of his home in heaven defies death, change, and misfortune! How attractive that knowledge makes it! A “building of God, eternal in the heavens!”

Human hands poison with decay our fairest earthly homes. The touch of human hands has defiled them. Death awaits them. Our palace across the river draws us without regret, but with delight, away from our earthly tent, our clay hut. He has had but little of God, and none of the sweets of faith, who has not anticipated in the earthly the reality and joy of the heavenly. Are we to be tossed in uncertainty as to our home on high? Is there no blessed surety? Yes, we know. The Word of God tells us so. The Spirit of God has spoken it to our hearts, and left its sweetness and its picture there. We have been examining our title deeds lately. They are heavenly deeds, signed and sealed. The house is built, the lot is numbered, all named in our bond, and “we know that if our earthly house of this tabernacle were dissolved, we have a building of God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens.” Death makes no bankrupt of the Christian. It only brings him to his inheritance. Death is the best thing that can come to the Christian. It puts him in possession of his great fortune. It brings him to his home. We ought never to sigh; we should go through with radiance and triumph. We ought always and everywhere, like the saints of old, “to take joyfully the spoiling of our possessions, knowing in ourselves that in heaven we have a better and enduring substance.”

Thine earthly Sabbaths, Lord, we love;
But there’s a nobler rest above:

To that our lab’ring souls aspire,

With ardent pangs of strong desire.

KNOWLEDGE OF HEAVEN
No more fatigue, no more distress;
Nor sin nor hell shall reach the place;

No sighs shall mingle with the songs
Which warble from immortal tongues.

No rude alarms of raging foes;
No cares to break the long repose;
No midnight shade, no clouded sun,
But sacred, high, eternal noon.

O long-expected day, begin;

Dawn on these realms of woe and sin:
Fain would we leave this weary road,
And sleep in death, to rest with God.