The Eternal State

Selected Scriptures

Tonight our study is on the subject of heaven as we close out our prophecy series.  And I can't help but realize in my own mind and I have all week long in preparation for this study, that you just cannot really give an adequate presentation of heaven.  It can't be done.  There are no words really to express it.

Paul expresses the fact that he knew a man that was caught up in the third heaven and he came back and he couldn't speak the things he saw.  There was no language for those things.  And so if you go away tonight somewhat disappointed at the presentation of heaven, recognize that it's impossible to give you more than what scripture says.

And I think if you really know and love the Lord Jesus Christ and you're really sensitive to the Holy Spirit, you can catch something of the magnificence and something of the glories of heaven just by the simple statements made in scripture regarding it. 

Now let me add a thought just to begin with to help you to understand this.  Heaven, of course, is a level of existence that we cannot, at this moment, comprehend.  We all have strange ideas.  I'm sure you maybe grew up like I did thinking that heaven would be just a very boring place.  I mean, who wants to live forever where everything is good and you know there's just nothing but the same kind of thing.  And I used to think like that.

And I'd think well, I used to love sports, you know, and I think well, maybe we could play ball.  But if we did that everybody would be perfect and wouldn't be any contest.  And then I used to have these terrible visions of being bored forever.  And I suppose we've all had some kind of a thought like that in one sense or another.  But remember that heaven is a dimension of existence that we cannot conceive. 

Now for example, there are all kinds of dimensions functioning in our world.  We happen to live on a very physical dimension. We sort of sense things like the floor and the chair and the person next to us and our hands and anything that is tangible and physical.

But do you realize that an interesting thing that this room is filled with other things that you can't sense?  For example, every radio station and every television station in L.A. is now live in this building.  And if you just had a little portable radio you could pick up anyone you wanted.  If you had a portable television, you could tune them and watch.  Because all of those waves are running through this room at this very instant.  You just are not attuned to that dimension.

To give you another thought, do you realize at the same time that I say that that there are spirit beings that occupy this room?  The Holy Spirit for one is here.  Do you believe that?  The angels are here and believe that the demons are here.  And the war is going on.  And you and I don't know it, because we're not on that level of perception.

And believe this, God is here "for where two or three gathered there am I in the midst."  But you and I cannot perceive of that consciousness, because we are trapped in a third dimensional world.  Heaven is going to be the release to a level of consciousness that totally appropriates everything that is God.  That's the only way I can explain it.  And that is a stab believe me.

But you can't conceive of it now because you have no capacity for that level until you're glorified in your glorified body.  And then you'll have perception.  Then said the apostle Paul, "you shall know as you are known."  You will perceive God in the fullness of His existence.  That is something about what heaven is like.  It is total perception of all that is holy and all that is God.

Now, in a sense in our world this is all veiled and as we try with concrete terms and even as we sort of scratch the verge of the abstract and we try to formulate a concept of heaven we're still playing around in a kindergarten of concepts when there is a universe that we can't tap.  But the best we can do is fiddle around with the ABC blocks.  And realize before you disqualify heaven because you can't fit it into your three dimensional world that it's a level of existence that you don't have the apparatus to proceed.

And that's why it has to be referred to in symbols.  I think about Ezekiel.  In Chapter 1, if you want to read a chapter that is one of those chapters you can read and reread and then go away and still not understand it, read Ezekiel 1.  Ezekiel tried to describe the glory of God.  He tried to describe what God would be like.  What it would be like to perceive God.  And incidentally, that's what heaven is.  Heaven is where God is and where I am in full perception of Him.

And so Ezekiel tried to concede to the glory of God and all he could come up with was the most fantastic, and to be honest, confusing picture of a blazing sun, splashing it's light off polished jewels and the light came off like spinning wheels of color.  And all of this was mingled with a whole bunch of angels.  See?  Then you get to Revelation 21 and 22, which is going to be our text for tonight and John tries to describe heaven and he tries to describe the new Jerusalem and he sees it as a prism of light of jewels and gold and pearls and every bit of it is transparent and God's blazing light just scatters itself through a heaven that is nothing but polished diamonds and jewels and the color splatters throughout eternity.

It's staggering, but let me just come down off of that to some concrete things that maybe we can get a grip one.  One, heaven is God's presence fully manifested.  That's what heaven is.  Heaven is God's presence fully manifested.  The veil is gone.  In a glorified body we can take God's presence.  In this world we couldn't, right?  God even said in Exodus, "No man shall see me and live."

But in that day with a glorified body we could handle God's glory.  And so we will be where God is in full manifest glory.  That's heaven.  Now secondly, heaven is a place.  I believe that heaven is somewhere.  Heaven is not an attitude.  Heaven is not just a figment of the imagination.  Heaven is a place.  It's where Jesus is, and believe me, Jesus is in a glorified body, right?

You know, when Jesus ascended into heaven, He was in a glorified body.  The body of resurrection, that's the same body you and I are going to be in and heaven will be a place where a glorified body can exist.  And when we see Jesus coming again, the Bible says that in Acts 1:11, this same Jesus shall so come having been all this time in the Father's house, He will return in the same glorified body that He left in, indicating that whatever heaven is, it's a place where glorified bodies can exist.  It must be a place.

So then it is a place where God is.  Now above that, I can't tell you what it is.  It is a place where God is in full manifest glory.  In John Chapter 14, just a familiar passage that may give you a little insight.  "Let not your heart be troubled.  You believe in God, believe also in and my Father's house are many dwelling places."  Now unfortunately, the old authorized version says mansions.  And we have all gone through that little routine about you're going to have a nice big mansion and if you're not a good Christian, you're going to get a crummy little place across the tracks.  And I've heard all kinds of sermons about sending up wood, hay, and stubble and what kind of a deal can you build with that?  And you're going to spend all eternity wishing you lived on easy street, you know, and all that.

That isn't so.  It says "In my Father's house are many dwelling places."  What it means is apartments.  We're all going to be living in the Father's house just in different apartments.  And I'm not convinced that they're going to be furnished any differently.  I think they'll be the same.  The joy of it's in the Father's house, not down the street and to the left.  It's right in the Father's house.

All right, he says, "If I go and prepare a place for you," it's a place.  It's a place that has to be prepared and He's going it now.  "I will come again and receive you unto myself that where I am there ye may be also."  It's a where place.  It's not a state of mind.

So heaven will be an actual place and you and I will live there in actual glorified bodies and it will be where God is.  Now let me give you another thought that I think is exciting.  Nowhere in the Bible does it say Jesus is going to come and take us to heaven.  Did you get that?

You say oh, no.  Nowhere in the Bible does it say Jesus is going to come and take us to heaven.  You know what it says?  Jesus is going to come and take us to Himself.  Take us to the Father's house.  The emphasis is the fact that heaven is where God is and where Jesus is and where the Spirit is.

So though it is a place, most of all heaven is the full presence of the Trinitarian glory of God.  You say, well, how do you get there?  Well, that's exactly what the question was in John 14.  Jesus said, "I am the way.  I am the way."  Well, those of us who have received Jesus Christ, those of us who know and love Him, we are already citizens of heaven, right?  Paul said our citizenship is not here, it's in heaven.

You know, I get excited about thinking about home.  I can't remember one time when I was back in college and Lenny has reminded me of this a couple of times, we were back in college and we were in a quartet together and he was playing the piano and I was singing with