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Most of us have a rather vague concept of heaven. It is necessarily so. We can understand new things only in terms of something we already know.

Thus, for instance, we have difficulty telling someone what an exotic tropical fruit tastes like. How can we describe it? It does not taste like an apple, a pear, a tomato, or anything else. To know how it tastes, one must taste it.

Imagine trying to describe a sunset to someone born blind. He has never seen a glow, a light, or a fire, and does not know red from black or green. Our terms are but empty words to him. Thus heaven is indescribable. It is not like anything we have already known or experienced. It is a new realm beyond our comprehension.

To some, "heaven" means nothing more than streets of gold. Some whose loved ones have gone on ahead think of heaven primarily as a grand reunion. Others think of it as the final great escape, with no more sorrow and sickness (a desirable state, to be sure, but a wholly negative concept). There are also those who feel the proper expectation is that of being with Jesus.

Much of the biblical description that we apply to heaven, however, does not refer explicitly to heaven at all! No death, no sorrow, no pain; walls of jasper, streets of gold, gates of pearl, foundations of precious stones; lighted by the glory of God, and free from all defilement—all this is spoken of the "holy Jerusalem, descending out of heaven from God" (Rev. 21). The description is not of heaven but of the capital city of the new earth. "And the nations of them which are saved shall walk in the light of it: and the kings of the earth do bring their glory and honor into it" (v. 24).

Yet we are told that "they which are written in the Lamb's book of life" will enter into it (v. 27). Shall we conclude, then, with the Jehovah's Witnesses that e are not going to heaven but to a new, redeemed earth? By no means!

True, we shall have access to the city; but we are nowhere limited to it. The description in verse 25, "the gates of it shall not be shut at all," suggests exit as well as entrance.

Who knows what starry vistas will be ours? It is not likely that man, already reaching into space, will in his perfect state be bound to this earth. We shall be like Christ, and he ascended bodily into heaven before the very eyes of the disciples. And what will heaven be like? Who knows? But surely it will exceed in glory the new Jerusalem, and that is saying a great deal!

While heaven will be glorious for circumstance, however, the greater glory will consist in our transformation. Things, after all, have never brought happiness. If "a man's life consisteth not in the abundance of the things which he possesseth" here, how can abundance of things there make a heavenly life? Some here have everything and are miserable, while others are quite content with meager fare.

Glory all around us will never make a heaven unless there is glory within us, too. After all, we shall still have to live with ourselves, and that can be pretty miserable. We should therefore be more interested in becoming wonderful people than in going to a wonderful place. And a study of the Scriptures reveals that it is exactly at this point that God puts his emphasis.

Now, so far as the body is concerned, the transformation will occur at the return of our Lord. Although in one sense our salvation was complete when Jesus Christ cried out upon the Cross, "It is finished," in another sense our salvation is still not complete. We are yet "waiting for the adoption, to wit, the redemption of our body" (Rom. 8:23). Our bodies are still under the curse of sin.

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June (Web-only) 2003, Vol. 47