Improvements in Heaven
Rev_21:1 : ’93And I saw a new heaven.’94
The stereotyped heaven does not make adequate impression upon us. We need the old story told in new style in order to arouse our appreciation. I do not suppose that we are compelled to adhere to the old phraseology. King James’92s translators did not exhaust all the good and graphic words in the English dictionary. I suppose if we should take the idea of heaven, and translate it into modern phrase, we would find that its atmosphere is a combination of early June and of the Indian summer in October’97a place combining the advantages of city and country, the streets standing for the one, and the twelve manner of fruits for the other; a place of musical entertainments’97harpers, pipers, trumpeters, doxologies; a place of wonderful architecture’97behold the temples! a place where there may be the higher forms of animal life’97the beasts which were on earth beaten, lash-whipped and galled and unblanketed and worked to death, turned out among the white horses which the book of Revelation describes as being in heaven; a place of stupendous literature’97the books open; a place of aristocratic and democratic attractiveness’97the kings standing for the one, all nations for the other; all botanical, pomological, ornithological, arborescent, worshipful beauty and grandeur.
But my idea now is to speak chiefly of the improved heaven. People sometimes talk of heaven as though it were an old city, finished centuries ago, when I have to tell you that no city on earth, during the last fifty years, has had such changes as heaven. It is not the same place as when Job and David and Paul wrote of it. For hundreds and hundreds of years it has been going through peaceful revolution, and year by year and month by month and hour by hour and moment by moment, it is changing, and changing for something better. Away back there was only one residence in the universe’97the residence of the Almighty. Heaven had not yet been started. Immensity was the park all around about this great residence; but God’92s sympathetic heart after a while overflowed in other creations, and there came, all through this vast country of immensity, inhabited villages, which grew and enlarged until they joined each other, and became one great central metropolis of the universe, streeted, gated, templed, watered, inhabited. One angel went forth with a reed, we are told, and he measured heaven on one side, and then he went forth and measured heaven on the other side; and then St. John tried to take the census of that city, and he became so bewildered that he gave it up.
That brings me to the first thought of my theme’97that heaven is vastly improved in numbers. Noting little under this head about the multitude of adults who have gone into glory during the last hundred or five hundred or thousand years, I remember there are sixteen hundred millions of people in the world, and that the vast majority of people die in infancy. How many children must have gone into heaven during the last five hundred or thousand years! If New York should gather in one generation two million population, if London should gather in one generation five million population, what a vast increase! But what a mere nothing as compared with the five hundred million, the two thousand million, the ’93multitude that no man can number,’94 that have gone into that city! Of course, all this takes for granted that every child that dies goes as straight into heaven as ever the light sped from a star; and that is one reason why heaven will always be fresh and beautiful’97the great multitude of children in it. Put five hundred million children in a country, and it will be a blessed and lively country.
But add to this, if you will, the great multitude of adults who have gone into glory, and how the census of heaven must run up! Many years ago a clergyman stood in a New England pulpit, and said that he believed that the vast majority of the race would finally be destroyed, and that not more than one person out of two thousand would be finally saved. There happened to be about two thousand people in the village where he preached. Next Sabbath two persons were heard discussing the subject, and wondering which one of the two thousand people in the village would finally reach heaven, and one thought it would be the minister, and the other thought it would be the old deacon. Now, I have not much admiration for a lifeboat which will go out to a ship sinking with two thousand passengers, and get one off in safety, and let nineteen hundred and ninety-nine go to the bottom. Why, heaven must have been a village when Abel, the first soul from earth, entered it, as compared with the present population of that great city!
Again: I remark that heaven has vastly improved in knowledge. Give a man forty or fifty years to study one science, or all sciences, with all the advantages of laboratories and observatories and philosophic apparatus, he will be a marvel of information. Now, into what intelligence must heaven mount, angelhood and sainthood, not after studying for forty or fifty years, but for thousands of year’97studying God and soul and immortality and the universe I How the intelligence of that world must sweep on and on, with eyesight farther reaching than telescope, with power of calculation mightier than all human mathematics, with powers of analysis surpassing all chemical laboratory, with speed swifter than telegraphy! What must heaven learn, with all these advantages, in a month, in a year, in a century, in a millennium? The difference between the highest university on earth and the smallest class in a primary school cannot be a greater difference than heaven as it now is and heaven as it once was. Do you not suppose that when Dr. James Y. Simpson went up from the hospitals of Edinburgh into heaven he began to learn more than ever the science of health; and that Joseph Henry, graduating from the Smithsonian Institution into heaven, awoke into higher realm of philosophy; and that Sir William Hamilton, lifted to loftier sphere, understood better the construction of the human intellect; and that John Milton took up higher poetry in the actual presence of things that on earth he had tried to describe? When the first saints entered heaven, they must have studied only the A B C of the full literature of wisdom with which they are now acquainted.
Again, heaven is vastly improved in its society. During your memory how many exquisite spirits have gone into it! If you should try to make a list of all the genial, loving, gracious, blessed souls that you have known, it would be a very long list’97souls that have gone into glory. Now, do you not suppose they have enriched the society? Have they not improved heaven? You tell of what heaven did for them. Have they done nothing for heaven? Take all the gracious souls that have gone out of your acquaintanceship, and add to them all the gracious and beautiful souls that for five hundred or a thousand years have gone out of all the cities and all the villages and all the countries of this earth into glory, and how the society of heaven must have been improved! Suppose Paul, the apostle, were introduced into your social circle on earth; but heaven has added all the apostles. Suppose Hannah More and Charlotte Elizabeth were introduced into your social circle on earth; but heaven has added all the blessed and the gracious and the holy women of the past ages. Suppose that Robert M’92Cheyne and John Summerfield should be added to your earthly circle! but heaven has gathered up all the faithful and earnest ministry of the past. There is not a town or a city or a village that has so improved in society in the last hundred years as heaven has improved.
But you say: ’93Has not heaven always been perfect?’94 Oh, yes! but not in the sense that its glories and delights cannot be augmented. It has been rolling on in grandeur. Christ has been there, and he never changes’97the same yesterday, today, and forever; glorious then and glorious now and glorious forever. But I speak now of attractions outside of this, and I have to tell you that no place on earth has improved for you as heaven has within the last seventy years; for the most of you within forty years, within twenty years, within five years, within one year; in other words, by the accessions from your own household. If heaven were placed in groups’97an apostolic group, a patriarchal group, a prophetic group, group of martyrs, group of angels, and then a group of your own glorified kindred’97which group would you choose? You might look around and make comparison, but it would not take you long to choose. You would say: ’93Give me back those whom I loved on earth; let me enter into their society’97my parents, my children, my brothers, my sisters. We lived together on earth; let us live together in heaven.’94 Oh, is it not a blessed thought that heaven has been improved by this colonization from earth to heaven?
Again: I remark that heaven was greatly improved in the good-cheer of announced victories. Where heaven rejoiced over one soul, it now rejoices over a hundred or a thousand. In the olden times, when the events of human life were scattered over four or five centuries of longevity, and the world moved slowly, there were not so many stirring events to be reported in heaven; but now, I suppose, all the great events of earth are reported in heaven. If there is any truth plainly taught in this Bible, it is that heaven is wrapped up in sympathy with human history, and we look at those inventions of the day’97at telegraphy, at swift communication by steam, at all these modern improvements which seem to give one almost omnipresence’97and we see only the secular relation; but spirits before the throne look out and see the vast and the eternal relation. While nations rise and fall, while the earth is shaking with revolution, do you not suppose there is arousing intelligence going up to the throne of God, and that the question is often asked before the throne: ’93What is the news from that world’97that world that rebelled, but is coming back to its allegiance?’94 If ministering spirits, according to the Bible, are sent forth to minister to those that shall be heirs of heaven, when they come down to us to bless us, do they not take the news back? Do the ships of light that come out of the celestial harbor into the earthly harbor, laden with cargoes of blessing, go back unfreighted? Not only ministering spirits, but our loved ones, leaving us, take up the tidings. Suppose you were in a far city, and had been there a good while, and you heard that some one had arrived from your native place’97some one who had recently seen your family and friends’97you would rush up to that man, and you would ask all about the old folks at home. And do you not suppose when your child went up to God, your glorified kindred in heaven gathered around and asked about you, to ascertain as to whether you were getting along well in the struggle of life; to find out whether you were in any especial peril, that with swift and mighty wing they might come down to intercept your perils? Oh, yes! Heaven is a greater place for news than it used to be’97news sounded through the streets, news ringing from the towers, news heralded from the palace gate. Glad news! Victorious news!
But the vivacity and sprightliness of heaven will be beyond all conception when the final victories come in, when the Church shall be triumphant everywhere. What a day in heaven it will be when the last throne of earthly oppression has fallen, when the last chain of serfdom is broken, when the last wound of earthly pain is healed, when the last sinner is pardoned, when the last nation is redeemed! What a time there will be in heaven! You and I will be in the procession; you and I will thrum a string in that great orchestra. That will be the greatest day in heaven since the day when the first block of jasper was put down for the foundation, and the first hinged pearl swung. If there is a difference between heaven now and heaven as it was, oh, the difference between heaven as it shall be and heaven as it is now! Not a splendor stuck fast, but rolling on and rolling on, and rolling up and rolling up, forever, forever.
Now, I say these things about the changes in heaven, about the new improvements in heaven, for three stout reasons. First, because some of you are impatient to be gone. You are tired of this world, and you want to get into that good land about which you have been thinking, praying, and talking so many years. Now be patient. I could see why you would want to go to an art gallery if some of the best pictures were to be taken away this week or next week; but if some one tells you that there are other beautiful pictures to come’97other Kensetts, Raphaels, and Rubens; other masterpieces to be added to the gallery’97you would say, ’93I can afford to wait. The place is improving all the time.’94 Now, I want you to apply the same principle in this matter of reaching heaven and leaving this world. Not one glory is to be subtracted, but many glories added. Not one angel will be gone, not one hierarch gone, not one of your glorified friends gone. By the long practising, the music will be better, the procession will be longer, the rainbow brighter, the coronation grander. Heaven, with magnificent addenda! Why will you complain when you are only waiting for something better?
Another reason why I speak in regard to the changes and the new improvements in heaven, is because I think it will be a consolation to busy and enterprising good people. I see very well that you have not much taste for a heaven that was all done and finished centuries ago. After you have been active forty or fifty or sixty years it would be a shock to stop you suddenly and forever; but here is a progressive heaven, an ever-accumulative heaven, vast enterprises on foot there before the throne of God. Aggressive knowledge, aggressive goodness, aggressive power, aggressive grandeur. You will not have to come and sit down on the banks of the river of life in everlasting inoccupation. O busy men, I tell you of a heaven where there is something to do! That is the meaning of the passage, ’93They rest not day nor night,’94 in the lazy sense of resting.
I speak these words on the changes in heaven and the new improvements in heaven, also, because I want to cure some of you of the delusion that your departed Christian friends have gone into dulness and silence and unconsciousness. They are in a stirring, picturesque, radiant, ever-accumulative scene. When they left their bodies they only got rid of the last hindrance. They are no more in Oakwood, Laurel Hill, or Mount Auburn, than you, in holiday attire, having seated yourself at a banquet, can be said to be in a dark closet, where you have left the old apparel that was not fit to wear to the banquet. A soldier cannot use a sword until he has unsheathed it; and the body of your departed was only the sheath of a bright and glittering spirit which God has lifted and is swaying in the heavenly triumph. According to what I am telling you at present, your departed Christian friends did not go so much into the company of the martyrs and the apostles and the prophets and the potentates of heaven, as into the company of grandfather and grandmother, and the infant sister that tarried just long enough to absorb your tenderest affection, and all the home circle. When they landed it was not as you land in Antwerp or Hamburg or Havre, wandering up a strange wharf, looking at strange faces, asking for a strange hotel. They landed amid your glorified relatives, who were waiting to greet them. Does not this bring heaven nearer? Instead of being far off, it comes down just now, and it puts its arms around our necks, and we feel its breath on our faces. It melts the frigid splendor of the conventional heaven into a domestic scene. It comes very close to us. If we had our choice in heaven, whom would we first see? Rather than look at the great potentates of heaven we would meet our loved ones. I want to see Moses and Paul and Joshua; but I would a great deal rather see my father, who went away many years ago. I want to see the great Bible heroines, Deborah and Hannah and Abigail; but I would rather see my mother than to see the archangel.
I do not think it was superstitious when, one Wednesday night, I stood by a death-bed within a few blocks of the church where I preached, and on the same street, and saw one of the aged Christians of the church going into glory. After I had prayed with her I said to her, ’93We have all loved you very much, and will always cherish your memory in the Christian church. You will see my son before I see him, and I wish you would give him our love.’94 She said, ’93I will, I will’94; and in twenty minutes she was in heaven’97the last words she ever spoke. It was a swift message to the skies. If you had your choice between riding in a heavenly chariot and occupying the grandest palace in heaven, and sitting on the throne next highest to the throne of God, and not seeing your departed loved ones; and on the other hand, dwelling in the humblest place in heaven, without crown or throne and without garland and without scepter, yet having your loved ones around you, you would choose the latter. I say these things because I want you to know it is a domestic heaven, and consequently it is all the time improving. Every one that goes up makes it a brighter place, and the attractions are increasing month by month and day by day; and heaven, so vastly more of a heaven, a thousand times more of a heaven, than it used to be, will be a better heaven yet. I say this to intensify your anticipation!
I enter heaven one day. It is almost empty. I enter the temples of worship, and there are no worshipers. I walk down the street, and there are no passengers. I go into the orchestra, and I find the instruments are suspended in the baronial halls of heaven, and the great organs of eternity, with multitudinous banks of keys, are closed. But I see a shining one at the gate, as though he were standing on guard, and I say, ’93Sentinel, what does this mean? I thought heaven was a populous city. Has there been some great plague sweeping off the population?’94 ’93Have you not heard the news?’94 says the sentinel. ’93There is a world burning, there is a great conflagration out yonder, and all heaven has gone out to look at the conflagration and take the victims out of the ruins. This is the day for which all other days are made. This is the Judgment! This morning all the chariots and the cavalry and the mounted infantry rumbled and galloped down the sky.’94 After I had listened to the sentinel, I looked off over the battlements, and I saw that the fields of air were bright with a blazing world. I said, ’93Yes, yes, this must be the Judgment’94; and while I stood there I heard the rumbling of wheels and the clattering of hoofs, and the roaring of many voices, and then I saw the coronets and plumes and banners, and I saw that all heaven was coming back again’97coming to the wall, coming to the gates, and the multitude that went off in the morning was augmented by a vast multitude caught up alive from the earth, and a vast multitude of the resurrected bodies of the Christian dead, leaving the cemeteries and the abbeys and the mausoleums and the graveyards of the earth empty. Pro-cession moving in through the gates. And then I found out that what was fiery Judgment Day on earth was Jubilee in heaven, and I cried, ’93Doorkeepers of heaven, shut the gates; all heaven has come in! Doorkeepers, shut the twelve gates, lest the sorrows and the woes of earth, like bandits, should some day come up and try to plunder the City!’94
Autor: T. De Witt Talmage