304. A Vision of Heaven

A Vision of Heaven

Eze_1:1 : ’93Now it came to pass as I was among the captives by the River of Chebar, that the heavens were opened and I saw visions of God.’94

Expatriated and in far exile on the banks of the River Chebar, an affluent of the Euphrates, sat Ezekiel. It was there he had an immortal dream, and it is given to us in the Holy Scriptures. He dreamed of Tyre and Egypt. He dreamed of Christ and the coming heaven. This exile seated by that River Chebar had a more wonderful dream than you or I ever have had, or ever will have, seated on the banks of the Hudson or Alabama or Oregon or Thames or Tiber or Danube.

But we all have had memorable dreams, some of them when we were half asleep and half awake, so that we did not know whether they were of shadow or sunlight; whether they were thoughts let loose and disarranged as in slumber, or the imagination of faculties awake.

Such a dream I had this morning. It was about half-past five, and the day was breaking. It was a dream of God; a dream of heaven. Ezekiel had his dream on the banks of the Chebar; I had my dream not far from the banks of the Hudson. The most of the stories of heaven were written many centuries ago, and they tell us how the place looked then, or how it will look centuries ahead. Would you not like to know how it looks now? That is what I am going to tell you. I was there this morning. I have just got back. How I got into that city of the sun I know not. Which of the twelve gates I entered is to me uncertain. But my first remembrance of the scene is that I stood on one of the main avenues, looking this way and that, lost in raptures, and the air so full of music and redolence and laughter and light, that I knew not which street to take, when an angel of God accosted me and offered to show me the objects of greatest interest, and to conduct me from street to street and from mansion to mansion and from temple to temple and from wall to wall. I said to the angel, ’93How long hast thou been in heaven?’94 and the answer came, ’93Thirty-two years, according to the earthly calendar.’94 There was a secret about this angel’92s name that was not given me, but from the tenderness and sweetness and affection and interest taken in my walk through heaven, and more than all in the fact of thirty-two years’92 residence, the number of years since she ascended, I think it was my mother. Old age and decrepitude and the tired look were all gone, but I think it was she. You see, I was only on a visit to the city, and had not yet taken up residence, and I could know only in part.

I looked in for a few moments at the great Temple. The late brilliant and lovely Scotch essayist, Mr. Drummond, said there is no church in heaven, but he did not look for it on the right street. St. John was right when in his Patmosic vision, recorded in the third chapter of Revelation, he speaks of ’93The Temple of my God.’94 I saw it this morning; the largest church I ever saw; as big as all the churches and cathedrals of the earth put together, and it was thronged. Oh, what a multitude! I had never seen so many people together. All the audiences of all the churches of all the earth put together would make a poor attendance compared with that assemblage. There was a fashion in attire and head-dress that immediately took my attention. The fashion was white. All in white, save One. And the head-dress was a garland of rose and lily and mignonette mingled with green leaves culled from the Royal Gardens and bound together with bands of gold.

And I saw some young men with a ring on the finger of the right hand, and said to my accompanying angel, ’93Why those rings on the fingers of the right hands?’94 and I was told that those who wore them were prodigal sons and once fed swine in the wilderness and lived on husks, but they came home, and the rejoicing Father said, ’93Put a ring on his hand.’94

But I said there was one exception to this fashion of white pervading all the auditorium and clear up through all the galleries. It was the attire of the One who presided in that immense Temple. The chiefest, the mightiest, the loveliest person in all the place. His cheeks seemed to be flushed with infinite beauty, and his forehead was a morning sky and his lips were eloquent omnipotent. But his attire was of deep colors. They suggested the carnage through which he had passed, and I said to my attending angel, ’93What is that crimson robe that he wears?’94 and I was told, ’93They are dyed garments from Bozrah,’94 and ’93He trod the wine-press alone.’94

Soon after I entered this temple they began to chant the celestial litany. It was unlike anything I had ever heard for sweetness or power, and I have heard the most of the great organs and the most of the great oratorios, I said to my accompanying angel, ’93Who is that standing yonder with the harp?’94 and the answer was, ’93David!’94 And I said, ’93Who is that sounding that trumpet?’94 and the answer was, ’93Gabriel!’94 And I said, ’93Who is that at the organ?’94 and the answer was, ’93Handel!’94 And the music rolled on till it came to a doxology extolling Christ himself, when all the worshipers, lower down and higher up, a thousand galleries of them, suddenly dropped on their knees and chanted, ’93Worthy is the Lamb that was slain.’94 Under the overpowering harmony I fell back. I said, ’93Let us go. This is too much for mortal ears. I cannot bear the overwhelming symphony.’94

But I noticed as I was about to turn away that on the steps of the altar was something like the lachrymal, or tear-bottle, as I had seen it in the earthly museums, the lachrymals, or tear-bottles, into which the Orientals used to weep their griefs and set them away as sacred. But this lachrymal, or tear-bottle, instead of earthenware as those the Orientals used, was lustrous and fiery with many splendors, and it was towering and of great capacity. And I said to my attending angel, ’93What is that great lachrymal, or tear-bottle, standing on the step of the altar?’94 and the angel said, ’93Why, do you not know? That is the bottle to which David the Psalmist referred in his fifty-sixth Psalm, when he said, ’91Put thou my tears into thy bottle.’92 It is full of tears from earth; tears of repentance; tears of bereavement; tears of joy; tears of many centuries.’94 And then I saw how sacred to the sympatheitic God are earthly sorrows.

As I was coming out of the Temple I saw all along the pictured walls there were shelves, and golden vials were being set up on all those shelves. And I said, ’93Why the setting-up of those vials at this time? They seem just now to have been filled,’94 and the attending angel said, ’93The Week of Prayer all around the earth has just closed and more supplications have been made than have been made for a long while and these new vials, newly set up, are what the Bible speaks of as ’93golden vials full of odors, which are the prayers of saints.’94 And I said to the accompanying angel, ’93Can it be possible that the prayers of earth are worthy of being kept in such heavenly shape?’94 ’93Why,’94 said the angel, ’93there is nothing that so moves heaven as the prayers of earth, and they are set up in sight of these infinite multitudes, and, more than all, in the sight of Christ, and he cannot forget them, and they are before him world without end.’94

Then we came out, and as the Temple is always open and some worship at one hour and others at other hours, we passed down the street amid the throngs coming to and going from the Great Temple. And we passed along through a street called Martyr Place, and we met there, or saw sitting at the windows, the souls of those who on earth went through fire and flood, and under sword and rack. We saw John Wickliffe, whose ashes were, by decree of the Council of Constance, thrown into the river; and Rogers, who bathed his hands in the fire as though it had been water; and Bishop Hooper and McKail and Latimer and Ridley and Polycarp, whom the flames refused to destroy as they bent outward till a spear did the work, and some of the Albigenses and Huguenots and consecrated Quakers who were slain for their religion. They had on them many scars, but their scars were illumined and they had on their faces a look of especial triumph.

Then we passed along Song Row and we met some of the old Gospel singers. ’93That is Isaac Watts,’94 said my attendant. As we came up to him he asked me if the churches on earth were still singing the hymns he composed at the house of Lord and Lady Abney, to whom he paid a visit of thirty-six years, and I told him that many of the churches opened their Sabbath morning services with his old hymn, ’93Welcome, Sweet Day of Rest,’94 and celebrated their Gospel triumphs with his hymn, ’93Salvation, O the Joyful sound,’94 and often roused their devotion by his hymn, ’93Come we that Love the Lord.’94

While we were talking he introduced me to another of the song writers, and said, ’93This is Charles Wesley, who belonged on earth to a different church from mine, but we are all now members of the same Church, The Temple of God and the Lamb.’94 And I told Charles Wesley that almost every Sabbath we sang one of his old hymns, ’93Arm of the Lord, Awake!’94 or ’93Come, Let us Join our Friends Above’94; or ’93Love Divine, All Love Excelling.’94 And while we were talking on that street called Song Row, Kirk White, the consumptive college student, now everlastingly well, came up, and we talked over his old Christmas hymn, ’93When Marshalled on the Nightly Plain.’94 And William Cowper came up, now entirely recovered from his religious melancholy, and not looking as if he had ever, in dementia, attempted suicide, and we talked over the wide earthly celebrity and heavenly power of his old hymns, ’93When I can Read my Title Clear’94 and ’93There is a Fountain Filled with Blood.’94

And there we met George W. Bethune, of wondrous Brooklyn pastorate, and I told him of how his comforting hymn had been sung at obsequies all around the world’97’94It is not Death to Die.’94 And Toplady came up and asked about whether the Church was still making use of his old hymn, ’93Rock of Ages, Cleft for me.’94 And we met also on Song Row, Newton and Hastings and Montgomery and Horatio Bonar, and we heard floating from window to window snatches of the old hymns which they started on earth, and started never to die.

’93But,’94 say some of my hearers, ’93did you see anything of our friends in heaven?’94 Oh yes, I did. ’93Did you see my children there?’94 says some one, ’93and are there any marks of their last sickness still upon them?’94 I did see them, but there was no pallor, no cough, no fever, no languor about them. They are all well and ruddy and songful and bounding with eternal mirth. They told me to give their love to you; that they thought of you hour by hour, and that when they could be excused from the heavenly playgrounds they came down and hovered over you and kissed your cheek and filled your dreams with their glad faces and that they would be at the gate to greet you when you ascended to be with them forever.

’93But,’94 say other voices, ’93did you see our glorified friends?’94 Yes, I saw them, and they are well in the land across which no pneumonias or palsies or dropsies or typhoids ever sweep. The aroma blows over from orchards with trees bearing twelve manner of fruits, and gardens, compared with which Chatsworth is a desert. The climate is a mingling of an earthly June and October’97the balm of the one and the tonic of the other. The social life in that realm where they are is superb and perfect. No controversies or jealousies or hates, but love, universal love, everlasting love. And they told me to tell you not to weep for them, for their happiness knows no bound and it is only a question of time when you shall reign with them in the same palace and join with them in the same exploration of planets and the same tour of worlds.

But yonder in this assembly is an upturned face that seems to ask how about the ages of those in heaven. ’93Do my departed children remain children, or have they lost their childish vivacity? Do my departed parents remain aged, or have they lost the venerable out of their nature?’94 Well, from what I saw I think childhood had advanced to full maturity of faculty, retaining all the resilience of childhood, and that the aged had retreated to mid-life, freed from all decadence, but still retaining the charm of the venerable. In other words, it was fully developed and complete life of all souls, whether young or old.

Some one says, ’93Will you tell us what most impressed you in heaven?’94 I will. I was most impressed with the reversal of earthly conditions. I knew, of course, that there would be differences of attire and residence in heaven, for Paul had declared long ago that souls would then differ ’93as one star differeth from another,’94 as Mars from Mercury, as Saturn from Jupiter. But at every step in my dream in heaven I was amazed to see that some who were expected to be high in heaven were low down, and some who were expected to be low down were high up. You thought, for instance, that those born of pious parentage and of naturally good disposition and of brilliant faculties and of all styles of attractiveness will move in the highest range of celestial splendor and pomp. No, no! I found the highest thrones, the brightest coronets, the richest mansions were occupied by those who had reprobate father or bad mother, and who inherited the twisted natures of ten generations of miscreants and who had compressed in their body all depraved appetites and all evil propensities, but they laid hold of God’92s arm, they cried for special mercy, they conquered seven devils within and seventy devils without and were washed in the blood of the Lamb, and by so much as their contest was terrific and awful and prolix their victory was consummate and resplendent, and they have taken places immeasurably higher than those of good parentage, who could hardly help being good, because they had ten generations of preceding piety to aid them. The steps by which many have mounted to the highest places in heaven were made out of the cradles of a corrupt parentage. When I saw that, I said to my attending angel, ’93That is fair; that is right. The harder the struggle the more glorious the reward.’94

Then I pointed to one of the most colonnaded and grandly-domed residences in all the city, and said, ’93Who lives there?’94 and the answer was, ’93The widow who gave two mites.’94 ’93And who lives there?’94 and the answer was, ’93The penitent thief to whom Christ said, ’91This day shalt thou be with me in Paradise.’92’93 ’93And who lives there?’94 I said, and the answer was, ’93The blind beggar who prayed, ’91Lord, that my eyes may be opened.’92’93

Some of those professors of religion who were famous on earth I asked about, but no one could tell me anything concerning them. Their names were not even in the City Directory of the New Jerusalem. The fact is, that I suspected some of them had not got there at all. Many who had ten talents were living on the back streets of heaven, while many with one talent had residences fronting on the King’92s Park and a back lawn sloping to the River Clear as Crystal and the highest nobility of heaven were guests at their table and often the white horse of him who ’93hath the moon under his feet’94 champed its bit at their doorway. Infinite capsize of earthly conditions! All social life in heaven graded according to earthly struggle and usefulness as proportioned to talents given!

As I walked through those streets I appreciated for the first time what Paul said to Timothy: ’93If we suffer, we shall also reign with him.’94 It surprised me beyond description that all the great of heaven were great sufferers. ’93Not all?’94 Yes, all. Moses, he of the Red Sea a great sufferer. David, he of Absalom’92s unfilial behavior and Ahithophel’92s betrayal and a nation’92s dethronement, a great sufferer. Ezekiel, he of the captivity, who had the dream on the banks of the Chebar, a great sufferer. Paul, he of the diseased eyes and the Mediterranean shipwreck and the Mars Hill derision and the Mamertine endungeonment and the whipped back and the headman’92s ax on the road to Ostia, a great sufferer. Yea, all the apostles after lives of suffering died by violence, beaten to death with fuller’92s club or dragged to death by mobs or from the thrust of sword or by exposure on barren island or by decapitation. All the high up in heaven great sufferers and women more than men, Felicitas and St. Cecelia and St. Agnes and St. Agatha and St. Lucia and women never heard of outside their own neighborhood, queens of the needle and the broom and the scrubbing brush and the washtub and the dairy, rewarded according to how well they did their work, whether to set a tea-table or govern a nation, whether empress or milkmaid. I could not get over it as in my dream I saw all this, and that some of the most unknown of earth were the most famous in heaven and that many who seemed the greatest failures of earth were the greatest successes of heaven. And as we passed along one of the grandest boulevards of heaven, there approached us a group of persons so radiant in countenance and apparel I had to shade my eyes with both hands because I could not endure the luster, and I said: ’93Angel! do tell me who they are?’94 and the answer was: ’93These are they who came out of great tribulation and had their robes washed and made white in the blood of the Lamb!’94

My walk through the city explained a thousand things on earth that had been to me inexplicable. When I saw up there the superior delight and the superior heaven of many who had on earth had it hard with cancers and bankruptcies and persecutions and trials of all sorts, I said, ’93God has equalized it all at last; excess of enchantment in heaven has more than made up for the deficits on earth.’94

’93But,’94 I said to my angelic escort, ’93I must go now. It is Sabbath morning on earth and I must preach to-day and be in my pulpit by half-past ten o’92clock. Good-by,’94 I said to the attending angel. ’93Thanks for what you have shown me. I know I have seen only in part, but I hope to return again, through the atoning mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ. Good-by.’94

Then I passed on amid chariots of salvation and along by conquerors’92 thrones and amid pillared majesties and by windows of agate and under arches that had been hoisted for returned victors. And as I came toward the walls with the gates, the walls flashed upon me with emeralds and sapphires and chrysoprases and amethysts, until I trembled under the glory, and then I heard a bolt shove and a latch lift and a gate swing and they were all of pearl and I passed out loaded with raptures and down by worlds lower and lower and lower still, until I came within sight of the city of my earthly residence and until through the window of my earthly home the sun poured so strong upon my pillow that my eyelids felt it and in bewilderment as to where I was and what I had seen, I awoke.

Reflection the first: The superiority of our heaven to all other heavens. The Scandinavian heaven: The departed are in everlasting battle, except as restored after being cut to pieces, they drink wine out of the skulls of their enemies. The Moslem heaven as described by the Koran: ’93There shall be Houris with large black eyes like pearls hidden in their shells.’94 The Slav’92s heaven: After death the soul hovers six weeks about the body and then climbs a steep mountain, on the top of which is Paradise. The Tasmanian’92s heaven: A spear is placed by the dead, that they may have something to fight with, and after a while they go into a long chase for game of all sorts. The Tahitian’92s heaven: The departed are eaten up of the gods. The native African heaven: A land of shadows, and in speaking of the departed they say, all is done forever. The American aborigine’92s heaven: Happy hunting-grounds, to which the soul goes on a bridge of snake. The Philosopher’92s heaven: Made out of a thick fog, or an infinite don’92t know. But hearken! and behold our heaven, which, though mostly described by figures of speech in the Bible and by parable of a dream in this discourse, has for its chief characteristics separation from all that is vile, absence from all that can discomfort; presence of all that can gratulate. No mountains to climb; no chasms to bridge; no night to illumine; no tears to wipe. Scandinavian heaven, Slav’92s heaven, Tasmanian heaven, Tahitian heaven, African heaven, aborigine’92s heaven, scattered into tameness and disgust by a glimpse of St. John’92s heaven, of Paul’92s heaven, of Christ’92s heaven, of your heaven, of my heaven!

Reflection the second: You had better take patiently and cheerfully all pangs, affronts, hardships, persecutions, and trials of earth since if rightly borne they insure heavenly payments of ecstasy. Every twinge of physical distress, every lie told about you, every earthly subtraction, if meekly borne, will be heavenly addition. If you want to amount to anything in heaven and to move in its best society you must be ’93perfected through suffering.’94 The only earthly currency worth anything at the gate of heaven is the silver of tears. At the top of all heaven sits the greatest sufferer, Christ of the Bethlehem caravansary and of Pilate’92s Oyer and Terminer and of the Calvarean assassination.

What he endured, oh, who can tell?

To save our souls from death and hell.

Oh, ye of the broken heart and the disappointed ambition and the shattered fortune and the blighted life, take comfort from what I saw in my Sabbath morning dream.

Reflection the third and last: How desirable that we all get there! Start this moment with prayer and penitence and faith in Christ, who came from heaven to earth to take us from earth to heaven. One summer I preached on a Sabbath afternoon in Hyde Park, London, to a great multitude that no man could number. But I heard nothing from it until a few weeks ago, when Reverend Mr. Cook, who for twenty-two years has presided over that Hyde Park outdoor meeting, told me that last winter going through a hospital in London he saw a dying man whose face brightened as he told him that his heart was changed that afternoon under my sermon in Hyde Park, and all was bright now at his departure from earth to heaven. Why may not the Lord bless this as well as that? Heaven as I dreamed about it and as I read about it is so benign a realm you cannot any of you afford to miss it. Oh, will it not be transcendently glorious after the struggle of this life is over to stand in that eternal safety. Samuel Rutherford, though they viciously burned his books and unjustly arrested him for treason, wrote of that celestial spectacle:

The King there in his beauty,

Without a vail is seen;

It were a well-spent journey,

Though seven deaths lay between.

The Lamb with his fair army

Doth on Mount Zion stand,

And glory, glory dwelleth

In Immanuel’92s land.

Autor: T. De Witt Talmage