IS HEAVEN FOR REAL?

Just before Jesus died on the Cross, He assured His disciples with these comforting words:
"Let not your heart be troubled; you believe in God, believe also in Me.
In My Father's house are many mansions; if it were not so, I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you.
And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and receive you to Myself, that, where I am, there you may be also" (John 14:1-3).
In His prayer recorded in John 17, Jesus made this request of His Heavenly Father:
"Father, I desire that they also whom You gave Me may be with Me where I am, that they may behold My glory which You have given Me; for You loved Me before the foundations of the world." (John 17:24).
When Jesus ascended back into heaven, the angels appeared and gave this promise to His astonished disciples:
"Now when He had spoken these things, while they watched, He was taken up, and a cloud received Him out of their sight.
And while they looked steadfastly toward heaven as He went up, behold, two men stood by them in white apparel, who also said, "Men of Galilee, why do you stand gazing up into heaven? This same Jesus, who was taken up from you into heaven, will so come in like manner as you saw Him go into heaven" (Acts 1:9-11).
And Paul tells the Christians at Thessalonica:
"For the Lord Himself will descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trumpet of God. And the dead in Christ will rise first. Then we who are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. And thus we shall always be with the Lord." (1 Thessalonians 4:16-17).
And the ancient prophet Nehemiah wrote:
"Blessed be Your glorious name, and may it be exalted above all blessing and praise. You alone are the Lord. You made the heavens, even the highest heavens, and all their starry hosts. The earth and all that is in it, the seas and all that is in them. You give life to everything, and the multitudes of heaven worship You." (Nehemiah 9:1).
Our Bible closes with a description of heaven as John saw in his vision:
"Then one of the seven angels who had the seven bowls filled with the seven last plagues came to me and talked with me, saying, "Come, I will show you the bride, the Lamb's wife.
And he carried me away in the Spirit to a great and high mountain, and showed me the great city, the Holy Jerusalem, descending out of heaven from God, having the glory of God. Her light was like a most precious stone, like a jasper stone, clear as crystal.
Also she had a great and high wall with twelve gates, and twelve angels at the gates, and names written on them, which are the names of the twelve tribes of the

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children of Israel; three gates on the east, three gates on the north, three gates on the south, and three gates on the west.
Now the wall of the city had twelve foundations, and on them were the names of the twelve apostles of the Lamb. And he who talked with me had a gold reed to measure the city, its gates and its walls.
The city is laid out as a square; its length is as great as its breadth. And he measured the city with the reed; twelve thousand furlongs. Its length, breadth, and height are equal.
Then he measured its wall; one hundred and forty-four cubits, according to the measure of man, that is, of an angel.
The construction of its wall was of jasper, and the city was pure gold, like clear glass.
The foundations of the wall of the city were adorned with all kinds of precious stones: the first foundation was jasper, the second sapphire, the third chalcedony, the fourth emerald, the fifth sardonyx, the sixth sardius, the seventh chrysolite, the eight beryl, the ninth topaz, the tenth chrysoprase, the eleventh jacinth, and the twelfth amethyst.
The twelve gates were twelve pearls, each individual gate was of one pearl. And the street of the city was pure gold, like transparent glass.
But I saw no temple in it, for the Lord Almighty and the Lamb are its temple.
The city had no need of the sun or of the moon to shine in it, for the glory of God illuminated it. The Lamb is its light.
And the nations of those who are saved shall walk in its light, and the kings of the earth bring their glory and honor into it.
Its gates shall not be shut at all by day (there shall be no night there).
And they shall bring the glory and the honor of the nations into it.
But there shall by no means enter it anything that defiles, or causes an abomination or a lie, but only those who are written in the Lamb's Book of Life."

And there is our biblical description of heaven! Any careful student of Christian doctrine who wishes to obtain a well-balanced knowledge of the great basic truths set forth in the Scriptures will soon discover how little has been written on the subject of Heaven as set forth in the Bible in spite of its hundreds of statements pertaining thereto!
In fact, almost all Systematic Theologies devote infinitely more space to Hell than Heaven as, for instance, Shedd, who assigns two pages in his Dogmatic Theology to Heaven, and eighty-seven pages to Eternal Punishment. In Dr. Reinhold Niebuhr's exhaustive work, THE NATURE AND DESTINY OF MAN, there is no treatment of Heaven whatever, and the only reference appears in a single sentence, which in itself many will think a regrettable statement. "It is unwise for Christians to claim any knowledge of either the furniture of heaven or the temperature of Hell!" Professor John Baillie wrote an article in which he expresses his regret that the subject of Heaven is so infrequently discussed: "I will not ask how often during

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the last twenty-five years you and I have listened to an old-style warning against the flames of hell. I will not ever ask how many sermons have been preached in our hearing about the future day of reckoning when men shall reap according as they have sown. It will be enough to ask how many preachers, during these years, have dwelt on the joys of the heavenly rest with anything like the old ardent love and impatient longing, or have spoken of the world that now is as a place of sojourn and pilgrimage."
And another writer observes:
"It is surprising how seldom nowadays we see or hear any theological discussion of the goal to which all Christians are presumably striving; how seldom do we hear a sermon on the beautific vision, the essential characteristic of heaven? Ah! there is lack of emphasis on heaven and joys awaiting us!"
In the early eighteen hundreds, a preacher by the name of Richard Baxter wrote these words on the subject of heaven:
"If it had not been to make comfortable our present life, and fill us with the delights of our foreknown blessedness, He might have kept His purpose to Himself, and never let us know till we came to enjoy it, nor have revealed it to us till death had discovered it, what He meant to do with us in the world to come, yea, when we had got possession of our rest, He might still have concealed its eternity from us, and then the fears of losing it again, would have bereaved us of much of the sweetness of our joys.
But it hath pleased our Father to open His counsel, and to let us know the very intent of His heart, and to acquaint us with the eternal extent of His love; and all this that our joy may be full, and we might live as the heirs of such a kingdom. And shall we now overlook all, as if He had revealed no such matter? Shall we live in earthly cares and sorrows, as if we knew of no such thing? And rejoice no more in these discoveries, than if the Lord had never written it? If thy prince had sealed thee but a patent of some lordship, how oft wouldst thou be casting thine eye upon it, and make it thy daily delight to study it, till thou shouldst come to possess the dignity itself. And hath God sealed thee a patent of heaven, and dost thou let it lie by thee, as if thou hadst forgot it! O that our hearts were as high as our hopes, and our hopes as high as these infallible promises."
HEAVEN...IT IS A SUBJECT THAT SHOULD FILL, OUR MIND AND HEART FREQUENTLY AND JOYFULLY!
Heaven!
Of the hundreds of occurrences of the word HEAVEN in an English Bible, almost all of them are translations of the Hebrew word SHAMAYIM and the Greek word OURANOS. The Hebrew word means literally "THE HEIGHTS," while the Greek word has a related but slightly different meaning, "THAT WHICH IS RAISED UP." Considering all the various shades of meaning which may be said to attach to the original words, and to the English word, it is undeniable that the primary meaning of the actual word HEAVEN is "THAT WHICH IS ABOVE."

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The word HEAVEN in the Bible may refer to one of three major realms: (1) The atmospheric heavens which are immediately above us, in which we live and move: (2) the stellar heavens, which ultimately must include the entire universe; and (3) the heaven of heavens, THE ABODE OF GOD.
Think with me just for a moment about the ATMOSPHERIC HEAVENS. All normal clouds are within a distance of seven miles above the earth. From twenty to thirty miles beyond, the space is known as the stratosphere, while the space from thirty to fifty miles high is known as the mesosphere. The ionosphere ranges from fifty, up to three hundred miles. The exosphere, beginning at two hundred or three miles can be argued as extending from eight hundred to twenty thousand miles.
At seven miles up the temperature is normally about fifty-five degrees below zero, centigrade. Above this, the temperature does not decrease until beyond the stratosphere, when, strangely enough, the temperature begins to rise. The exosphere gradually merges into interplanetary space. It is generally recognized that what we call air, ends at about one thousand miles above sea level.
THE CELESTIAL HEAVENS are of course, the sphere in which the sun and the moon and stars appear.
Our interest today is to learn about heaven, the abode of God!
Even though we are told in the Scriptures that the "HEAVEN OF HEAVENS CANNOT CONTAIN GOD" (1 Kings 8:27; 2 Chron. 2:6), and that God is everywhere present, on the earth, as well as in heaven (Deut. 4:39), nevertheless, the same Scriptures clearly teach that God does dwell particularly in heaven, a place often designated as HIS HABITATION. (Isaiah 57:15).
Isaiah 63:15 says: "Look down from heaven, and behold from the habitation of Thy holiness and of Thy glory; where are Thy zeal and Thy mighty acts? The yearning of Thy heart and Thy compassion are restrained toward me."
Some of the very titles of God imply His heavenliness, embracing the factor that He is lifted high above all mankind. Often, He is referred to as "THE GOD MOST HIGH." In the Hebrew text, the title...EL ELYON, as applied to God, reveals that "because He is the highest, He has power to rule and turn His people as He will should they be disobedient or seek to exalt themselves against Him.
There are a great number of statements, both in the Old and New Testaments, which find their real meaning in this concept of heaven being the abode of God. Jehovah said to the children of Israel at the time of their sojourn at Sinai, "I have talked with you from heaven" (Exodus 20:22). Later Moses reminded the Israelites, "Out of heaven, He made thee to hear His voice." (Deut. 4:36).
HEAVEN IS A PLACE! Heaven in the Bible is represented as a place in contrast with earth. The earth is a place, but unstable, insecure and fleeting. Heaven is stable, secure and eternal! 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.
When Jesus said..."I go to prepare a place for you"...He meant a place where the saints of the ages would dwell for all eternity.

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In God's House, Jesus declares, there are many mansions or abiding places. In heaven no tears will be shed, for God will wipe all tears from their eyes. "There shall be no death, neither sorrow nor crying nor pain."
What a changed world! How difficult to imagine such a world. Tears are the sad heritage of this life. Sorrow and pain flow from a thousand sources, and deepen and widen and darken earth's sorrow. Our sweetest relations give birth to our greatest sorrows. Our distresses often flow from our joys.
Death reigns. All this will be changed, and everything which gives pain and sorrow will be forever barred from heaven. God will shut it out. How bright the eyes undimmed by a tear! How strong and free our souls and bodies will be, utter and eternal strangers to pain! How bright and joyous our hearts, with never a cloud, never a sorrow. How full of richest and largest life, untouched by decay, unshadowed by death, will heaven be!
Peter views heaven as a place, an inheritance to be sought for, a possession awaiting us. He is scarcely less enraptured by the glorious vision and reversion, its location and certainty than Paul.
Peter writes: (1 Peter 1:3-5)
"Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, which according to His abundant mercy hath begotten us again unto a lively hope by the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, to an inheritance, incorruptible, and undefiled, and that fadeth not away, reserved in heaven for you, who are kept by the power of God through faith unto salvation ready to be revealed in the last times."
In the Revelation, John had another vision of heaven which describes for us; (Revelations 7:9-17) "After this I beheld, and lo, a great multitude, which no man could number, of all nations, and kindreds, and people, and tongues, stood before the throne, and before the Lamb, clothed with white robes, and palms in their hands; And cried with a loud voice, saying. Salvation to our God, which sitteth upon the throne, and unto the Lamb. And all the angels stood round about the throne, and about the elders and the four beasts, and fell before the throne on their faces, and worshipped God. Saying, "Amen, blessing and glory and wisdom, and thanksgiving, and honor, and power, and might, be unto our God for ever and ever. Amen.
And one of the elders answered, saying unto me. What are these which are arrayed in white robes? and whence came they? And I said unto him, Sir, thou knowest.
And he said to me, These are they which came out of great tribulation, and have washed their robes, and made them white in the blood of the Lamb. Therefore are they before the throne of God, and serve Him day and night in His temple: and He that sitteth on the throne shall dwell among them. They shall hunger no more, neither thirst any more; neither shall the sun light upon them, nor any heat. For the Lamb which is in the midst of the throne shall feed them, and shall lead them unto living fountains of waters; and God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes."
A WORD THAT APPEARS WITH GREAT FREQUENCY IN REFERENCE TO HEAVEN, AS WELL AS EARTHLY SACRED STRUCTURES, IS

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THE WORD...HOUSE, the Greek word being OIKOS. This is the word used in the first occasion in the Scripture when a child of God speaks of the heavenly abode. It occurs, as all will recall, in Jacob's exclamation as he awoke after the vision at Bethel and cried out, "How dreadful is this place! This is none other than the house of God, and this is the gate of heaven" (Genesis 28:17)
Paul writes in 2 Corinthians 5:
"For we know that if our house, this tent, is destroyed, we have a building from God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens."
"We are always confident, I say, and willing rather to be absent from the body and to be at home with the Lord" (2 Corinthians 5:6).
HEAVEN IN THE TEACHING OF JESUS IS GOD'S THRONE, EARTH IS HIS FOOTSTOOL. Sometimes Heaven is actually designated as the THRONE OF GOD (Isaiah 61:1; Matt. 5:34) which is closely related to the term that the throne of God is in heaven (Psalm 103:19), sometimes called THE THRONE OF THY GLORY (Jeremiah 14:21).
All the words we have found to be synonyms for heaven set forth four concepts permeating the whole revelation concerning our future life.
To speak of a habitation, a dwelling place, a house, first of all connotes intimate relationship of individuals, not a collection of inanimate objects. This great group of individuals enjoy the most intimate and precious fellowship with God and with one another. In contrast to the temporalness of our pilgrimage here on earth, this fellowship will abide forever, never interrupted by sickness, change of character, alienation or death!
John, in the Revelation, writes: (Rev. 21:1-5)
"Now I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away. Also there was no more sea.
Then I, John, saw the holy city, New Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband.
And I heard a loud voice from heaven saying, Behold, the tabernacle of God is with men, and He will dwell with them, and they shall be His people. God Himself will be with them and be their God.
And God will wipe away every tear from their eyes; there shall be no more death, nor sorrow, nor crying. There shall be no more pain, for the former things have passed away."
Then He who sat on the throne said, "Behold, I make all things new."
HEAVEN! It was the dwelling place of Christ from the eternities before His incarnation. The Gospel of John begins with these words: "In the beginning was the Word, and Word was with God, and Word was God. He was in the beginning with God" (John 1:1).
Six times in the great discourse on the bread of life, our Lord refers to Himself as that bread which came down from Heaven (John 6:33-51). One writer remarks that "what Christ was teaching in the John 6 discourse was the counterpart or complement of the doctrine of the Virgin Birth. One who is born of a virgin—and who, accordingly, never had a human father (in the ordinary

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sense of the term), and is not a human person (though He has a human nature)--must have come down out of heaven. The descent of Christ from heaven must be acknowledged as something quite different from His later ascent into heaven. Our Lord ascended after the resurrection in bodily form, and visibly. This is not the way He descended. His entrance into the world of humanity was through being conceived by the Holy Spirit in the womb of the Virgin Mary and born of her. The subject of heaven is inextricably identified with the ascension of our Lord; and how one interprets the full meaning of the ascension will depend in large part upon his conception of heaven itself, whether it is merely a state or a place. One writer states: "The Resurrection accomplished the vanquishing of death, and through it the humanity of Christ was transformed so that it was no longer subject to the conditions of mortality; hence the Resurrection was the necessary precondition of the Ascension when that transformed humanity entered upon new conditions of existence in heaven.
The one established the hope of immortality, the other the certainty of reconciliation through the Lord Jesus. It is of profound significance that the New Testament distinguishes the resurrection from the exaltation of Christ.
CHRIST IS NOW MINISTERING AS OUR GREAT HIGH PRIEST IN HEAVEN. "Seeing then that we have a great High Priest who has passed through the heavens, Jesus, the Son of God, let us hold fast our profession. For we do not have a High Priest who cannot sympathize with our weaknesses, but was in all points tempted as we are, yet without sin. Let us therefore come boldly to the throne of grace, that we may obtain mercy and find grace to help in time of need" (Hebrews 4:14-16).
THE PRESENT WORK OF CHRIST IN HEAVEN ALLOWS US THE GLORIOUS PRIVILEGE OF PRAYER.
"And every priest stands ministering daily and offering repeatedly the same sacrifices, which can never take away sins. But this Man, after He had offered one sacrifice for sins forever, sat down at the right hand of God; from that time waiting till His enemies are made His footstool. For by one offering He has perfected forever those who are being sanctified. But the Holy Spirit also witnesses to us; for after He had said before, This is the covenant that I will make with them after those days, says the Lord; I will put My laws into their hearts, and in their minds I will write them. Then He adds, "Their sins and their lawless deeds I will remember no more."
Therefore brethren, having boldness to enter the holiest by the blood of Jesus, by a new and living way which he consecrated for us, through the veil, that is, His flesh, and having a high priest over the house of God, let us draw near with a true heart in full assurance of faith, having our hearts sprinkled from an evil conscience and our bodies washed with pure water " (Hebrews 10:11-22).
HEAVEN! WHO PRESENTLY ABIDES THERE? WHO ARE THE PRESENT INHABITANTS?
Of all the supernatural beings mentioned in the Bible,

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it is the angels who are constantly depicted as being identified with heaven. A word often used for angel, generally in reference to a large group of them is the word HOSTS, as toward the end of the Psalter: "Praise ye Him, all His angels; praise ye Him, all His hosts" (Psalm 148:2). So, the HOSTS OF HEAVEN are angels. The function of the angels is of a duel nature, toward God and toward man. The writer of the epistle to the Hebrews reminds us that "when He again bringeth in the firstborn into the world, He said, And let all the angels of God worship Him" (Hebrews 1:6).
THE ANGELS OF GOD AND SAINTS WHO HAVE DIED IN THE Lord MAKE UP THE OCCUPANTS OF HEAVEN...WITH CHRIST! The writer to the Hebrews states: (Hebrews 12:18-25) "For you have not come to the mountain that may be touched and that burned with fire, and to blackness and darkness and tempest, and the sound of a trumpet and the voice of words, so that those who heard it begged that the word should not be spoken to them anymore. (For they could not endure what was commanded: And if so much as a beast touches the mountain, it shall be stoned or shot with an arrow. And so terrifying was the sight that Moses said, "I am exceedingly afraid and trembling.") But you have come to Mount Zion and the city of the Living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, to an innumerable company of angels, to the general assembly and church of the firstborn who are registered in heaven, to God the Judge of all, to the spirits of just men made perfect, to Jesus the Mediator of the new covenant, and the blood of sprinkling that speaks better things than Abel. See that you do not refuse Him who speaks. For if they did not escape who refused Him who spoke on earth, much more shall we not escape if we turn away from Him who speaks from heaven.
AN IMPORTANT QUESTION...WHAT WILL WE DO WHEN WE GET TO HEAVEN? The Scriptures do not give us much specific data regarding the actual occupations of the redeemed in heaven, so that what we do have we must consider as particularly precious and important.
WORSHIP! Perhaps the first great and continuous activity for the redeemed will be worship of the triune God. Throughout the Book of Revelation, we have glimpses of scenes in heaven where there is rejoicing and worship.
AUTHORITY! In two of His eschatological parables our Lord speaks of assigning certain authority to His faithful servants. Some, says Christ, will rule over cities and He will set us over many things as we enter into the joy of our Lord. Over and over again, we are told that we will reign with Christ.
SERVICE! In Revelation 22:3 it says HIS SERVANTS SHALL SERVE HIM. The concepts of service and rewards for faithfulness are basic themes in our Lord's teaching concerning His return. (Matt. 24:45-46). The word used for SERVE is generally used in reference to service carried on in the House of God, in the Temple, or in the Church.
My most sincere prayer is that you are making preparation to live in heaven for all eternity with Christ. If you have believed and received Him as your Lord and Saviour, you now possess the promise of eternal life in heaven!