00A.19 CHAPTER XVI.—Heaven:What Will It Be to Be There?

CHAPTER XVI HEAVEN AND WHAT WILL IT BE TO BE THERE?

We have read tonight in your presence the entire twenty-first chapter of the Book of Revelation and down to the seventh verse of the twenty-second chapter. This is a beautiful description of the city that hath foundation, whose builder and maker is God, to which city we all hope to come some day, there to abide forever. This, however, is a material description of something that is spiritual—not material. I do not suppose that anyone who thinks would contend that this city is a literal city, with literal walls around it, as if there would be enemies to shut out; or that the street is of literal gold and the precious stones of the walls are the literal stones that we know in this material earth. When we speak of this city as spiritual and of the description as figurative, some people may think that we do not accept this description or believe these statements. But no one who thinks straight would reach such a conclusion. Certainly the Home of the Soul will be equal in beauty, majesty and glory to the description. Yea, and it will even go far beyond anything that mortal mind can grasp. God accommodated himself to man’s understanding and described spiritual things on a material basis. The place where the wicked go is described as a lake of fire, and again it is described as a place of outer darkness. This, therefore, proves that the description is figurative, as we would know when we consider that a spiritual being could mot be* effected by a material element. But if the fire were literal liquid fire, the place would certainly not be one of outer darkness, but it would be one of great light as well as of great heat. It does not change the teaching of the word of the Lord to understand that these are simply pictorial representations of things that are real. If the place of punishment is not equal in suffering to a place of fire, then God has overdrawn the picture and the description is exaggerated. This, of course, is not true. Therefore, whatever hell is, it is understood by us to be equal with the burning of the flesh in physical fire.

Likewise, we know that the joy of heaven is equal and goes far beyond any impressions that we receive, or any emotions of joy and rapture that are stirred in our souls by the description. If we tried to conceive of these wonderful things of the spirit and bring them down to a material basis, we would destroy their beauty and even destroy our faith.

I once knew a man who had been a good Christian for many years and an elder in the church, but he began to study the Bible with a sort of literalistic and materialistic view of the spirit world, and when he read that heaven is a city that lies four-square twelve thousand furlongs every way, he consulted an encyclopedia to find out what a furlong is, and then he reduced the dimensions of heaven to terms with which he was acquainted and estimated the number of square miles in the city. He found that heaven is fifteen hundred miles square. He then reduced this to square feet and estimated how much space it would take for a soul to stand throughout all eternity, and he found by the process of mathematics how many souls heaven would contain. He thought he knew, therefore, exactly how many people would be saved. And then he compared that number with the vast billions of people that have lived and are living and may live, and he said the number of the saved was so small that it was negligible or that it didn’t count. He, therefore, gave up his faith and said there was no use trying to be saved. When he told me this, of course, I knew his mistake was in trying to measure the great Spirit World by metes and bounds of a material meaning, but I knew it would be useless to try to convince him of that mistake. Therefore, I simply met him on his own ground and said, “Brother, you have made a mistake in your calculations; you have only figured on the ground floor of the city. You must remember that the walls are fifteen hundred miles high. Now, you will put another floor every ten feet and run your stories up fifteen hundred miles and multiply the number of floors by the number of people on your first floor, and you will find that you have a bigger percent of humanity in heaven than you had estimated.” Of course, this was foolish, but it paralyzed him. His eyes opened wide with wonder and he said, “We can get the whole human race in on that kind of calculation.” But I am sure, my friends, that you see it is foolish to try to figure on things of the spirit in any such manner as that. It is because men are materialistic in their thinking that they can not make real to themselves the idea of an immortal spirit living on apart from the physical body.

Men have attempted to find the soul in the anatomy of a human’ being. They have even undertaken to weigh the soul. They have placed the body of a dying person upon the scales to see how much less it will weigh after death than before, and thus to determine the weight of the soul. I think they claim that the soul weighs four ounces. However, I have seen some people whose souls would not weigh anything like that much. But because men can not find the soul by any method of physical research or analysis, is no argument at all that the soul does not exist. For neither can they find the mind of man which, after all, is another term for the soul.

Let’s take Mr. Thomas A. Edison, if you please. Suppose when that great man has died, the physicists should take his body into a chemist’s laboratory and analyze it by every method known to science. Let them take the brain, and can they by any method of analysis find any tract of the mind that gave to us so many marvelous inventions? No, they can not. The brain of Mr. Edison will show the same analysis that the brain of any other human being would show. There is something connected with that brain which is not physical, not visible or tangible or in any way discernible by physical analysis.

Dr. Charles Mayo says he knows that man has a soul, for he has seen preachers go into his hospital and do things for a patient that he could not do. Dr. Mayo certainly knows the human anatomy and yet by his science he can not get hold of that which responds to the sympathy, the hope and the consolation that a spiritual adviser or comforter can bring to the patient.

I have one key which unlocks to me the door of all mystery connected with things of the spirit. This key proposition is the belief that there is in the universe an Infinite God. If you grant me that premise, I see no reason to deny any conclusion, for if God is infinite then nothing is impossible to him. If we should grant that man is wholly mortal and that at death he ceases to be, if there is an Infinite God who created man, there is no reason to believe that that God can not retain the memory of him and re-create him whenever he should see fit to do so. Allow me to illustrate this point. My father has been dead more than a quarter of a century. His body has long ago returned to the dust, yet I can speak the word tonight and he stands there before me. I see his form. I see the expression of his face, the curl of his mustache, the color of his hair, the twinkle of his eye. I can hear the tone of his voice and recognize it. That, of course, is only an image of my father. He stands there in this pulpit before me. You can not see him, but I see him. By a moment of concentration, I can bring the picture of my father before my mind. If then my finite mind can retain the complete image and personality of my father for a quarter of a century, and then cause him to re-appear before me in mental image, how easy it would be for the Infinite Mind to cause him to re-appear in reality!

I once used this illustration in the pulpit. There sat before me in my audience Brother J. O. Blaine, who was then ninety years old, but whose mind was still alert. After the sermon, Brother Blaine came to me and said, “Brother Brewer, I can distinctly recall the image of a man who stood in the pulpit and preached here seventy- five years ago. He has been dead seventy-five years and yet I can hear him speaking. I remember the quality and tone of his voice. I see the size of his stature, the color of his eye and the expression of his face.” This very thought seemed so to thrill that good old brother that he realized in a way that he never did before that the Infinite Mind of our Father could retain the image of all things that it had created and known, and could therefore, in a second of time, re-create or restore to life those persons in reality as we poor finite beings can restore them in mental picture. But the question comes into the minds of people as to how the dead are going to be raised up, and with what body will they come. The Apostle Paul said this was a foolish question, and he argued from the fact that there is such a variety of bodies and such a variety among all things in this material world that the Maker of all these things could easily have us exist in different bodies—one a terrestrial body and the other a celestial body. But while we all understand that our bodies will be spiritual and celestial and like the glorified body of our Lord, yet it seems difficult for us to grasp the idea that we shall retain our identity or our personality without our hody as it -now is, without our now well-known physical features. But with a little thought, this does not appear at all unreasonable, certainly not impossible. I believe that our personalities shall persist; that we shall retain our identity throughout all eternity; otherwise, the future life or heaven would have no meaning to me, for if I am so changed that I will be an entirely different individual, with no memory of my present self and no recollections of my earthly life and my earthly associations, then I, this being, will not live; that will be an entirely different being and there would be no need of calling it a spirit being. I would just as well die and cease to be and some entirely different being live on here in this earth with no relation to me. The very idea of personal immortality, the very idea of eternal life makes necessary the idea that I as a living, rational being, must continue to live and must retain my individuality. This is ’not unreasonable, for our personality, whatever that is, is not dependent upon our physical organism. We know each other by certain physical markings, yet we recognize spiritual values and mental characteristics in each other. Furthermore, man’s body is not the same during his life. It is undergoing changes all the time. Here is a feeble, tottery aged person. Yet this man can remember himself when he was not feeble and tottery. He can remember himself when he was a stalwart young man, proud of his physical strength and ready to put it to test in various contests with other young men. He knows that he is the same individual that did those things, but he also knows that his body now is entirely different Yea, his memory can go farther back than young manhood. He can remember himself as a barefoot, ruddyfaced boy of ten years. He can remember that he would climb trees and throw stones, run and jump, and climb a fence when a gate was in ten feet of him, or even climb a gate in preference to opening it- He knows he is the same individual. But the body is entirely different. The changes have been so radical that his own mother who knew him as a child, if she had not seen him as the changes came along through the years, would not after the passing of three or four decades recognize her own child. He is the same being. He knows he is the same being and he is conscious of his identity through all the changes of his body. This proves that identity or personality is not dependent upon the body.

If I may use another illustration, I will tell of a little incident of my own life that brought to my mind this conclusion with a force that I had never felt before. I hope you will not think this illustration too intensely personal and I use it in the hope of making you see the point as I felt it, I was born in Tennessee not many miles from the town of Lawrenceburg. When I was a child my father sold his farm and moved over into the State of Alabama. I had not been back to the old homestead until I came into that region preaching the gospel. It had been some thirty years since I had seen the place of my birth and early childhood, but while I was near it I planned to visit that old home. A company of young people went with me and we planned to have dinner on the ground out near the old spout spring. One of the things that lived in my memory was that old spout spring, I remembered very distinctly standing upon my tiptoe, holding to the old trough with both my hands while I drank water that flowed from under the hill. That picture was so distinct in my memory that I fully intended to repeat that action and I was in a hurry to reach that spring and I could see myself standing tiptoe and grasping the trough with my two hands and drinking the clear, cold water. When we reached this place I sprang out of the car and rushed to the spring. I can not express to you the feeling I had when I came to that old trough. There it was, but it was away down about my waist, or even below. I was disappointed and almost paralyzed. I stood still and tears came into my eyes. I could not realize what had happened. There was no denying the fact. My memory would not be refuted, I was the same person who once drank from that trough by standing on tiptoe, but now I must bow down and bend my body to drink out of that old spout. I km the same individual, but my body has undergone a marvelous change.

, You can see, my friends, that our identity is not dependent upon our body, and even if this old body should be brought back into existence, to what stage of its existence would it be restored? Would the old physical body of the aged map come back into the existence that it had in its last days, or would it come back into the condition of childhood or young manhood? Ah! this physical body will have no more existence for which we may thank the Lord, but we will have a spiritual body and with the same individuality will live on and on forever. Is this not to you an enkindling thought, my friends ? With the fact established that our identity persists, then the question of future recognition and of the memory of this life is answered. That we shall know each ether is a necessary conclusion from this problem. If I know you here and I meet you over there, and we are the same individuals, certainly we shall know each other there. There is not a great deal said in the Scripture on this point, but all that is said is in favor of the idea that we shall know each other. But I reach this conclusion by the process of reasoning to which you have just listened. But some one will say, if we know each other there and if we remember ourselves and the conditions in which we lived here upon the earth, we should know all the ties that exist here. For example, a man would know that a certain woman was his wife upon earth and she would know that he was her husband. Mothers would know their children; children would know their mothers. Yes, this also follows as a necessary conclusion. I think there is no doubt but that we shall know that such relationships existed between us here upon earth. Those relationships will not exist there, and none of these ties will bind us together and therefore, separate us from others in that Fair Land. Now, you say you can mot understand how that the memory that such ties existed upon this earth could exist, and at the same time the ties themselves no longer exist. I think you can. Let me illustrate that. You remember your mother. You remember when you ran to her with every little complaint and when she kissed away the hurt. You remember when she rocked you to sleep upon her bosom and when she tucked you away at night with a motherly kiss. Yet, the years have come and gone and their cruel changes have broken up all such associations. No longer do you go to your mother to kiss away your hurt. No longer does she rock you to sleep upon her bosom or tuck you away at night. Yet you can look at your mother sitting there and know that she is the same woman that once did those things. You remember that those conditions existed and yet they no longer exist. And as the years go on, the situation is not only changed, but the conditions are reversed. Your mother becomes childish and helpless and dependent. Then you must humor her and take care of her. Your memory tells you that she is the same woman that once took care of you and on whom you were wholly dependent, and you and she, the same individuals, are living together in the same house, but the conditions have changed. The relationship that once existed no longer exists. It has even been reversed. Then if your memory can hold relationships, when those relationships no longer exist and all that has taken place in the short space of a lifetime, how easy it will be, you see, when all the conditions of earth have been changed and we no longer live in flesh and blood, for us to remember what once existed even though such things no longer exist.

Another objection that is sometimes raised when we say that we shall know each other in the Glory World is that if we should miss some of our loved ones from that happy home we would know that they were in the other place and, therefore, we could not be happy in heaven. Sometimes we hear a man say, “If my wife is not in heaven, I would not be happy there”. Or, “If my mother is not in heaven, I do not want to live there”. This objection is illogical. It is nothing more than an effort to put God in a dilemma, as though we said, “God has promised this, but we know he can not perform it”. This is the wrong attitude to have toward God. And it is a little strange that people will get so solicitous about their loved ones and their friends when they get to talking about living in heaven, and yet they pay so little attention to the welfare of such friends and loved ones here upon this earth. That only shows that this is a suggestion of the evil one to tfy to discourage, us in our efforts to go to heaven. A man once said to me that he could not be happy in heaven if he realized that there was suffering in the other place. But people do not find any trouble being happy on this earth in the midst of want and woe, sin and suffering. You could climb to the top of a building in any city and within the scope of your view, there is misery mountain high. Nevertheless, we live on in the midst of this in good homes and enjoy life, but when we come to thinking of heaven, we get all concerned about the suffering of those who do not go to heaven, and imagine that our happiness would be de- stro3red by the knowledge of the fact that some are lost. But some say, “Doesn’t the thought ever come to you that you might miss some of those whom you love and do you not imagine that your heart would feel a pang?” Oh, yes, this thought comes to me. I explain it by my key proposition, Right here I solve all riddles. tou remember my statement. There is an Infinite God. God is not only infinite in power and wisdom, but he is infinite in power and mercy. Shall I imagine that I shall ever reach a state in which I have more sympathy and love for fallen man than our Father has? Shall I imagine that I will have greater tenderness and greater solicitude for souls than our Lord Jesus Christ had when he left heaven to come to earth and die for man, and when he prayed on the cross for those who crucified him? Then if he, with his great heart of compassion, with his tenderness and love—if Hebrews , 1 say, can be happy there, why should I worry or trouble myself with doubts as to my own condition? Ah, we shall not only see him and be like him, but we shall then see things as he sees them and he is happy, so shall we be happy. Don’t let these doubts trouble you, my friends. Whatever God says is true and whatever God does is right. Let us bring ourselves into harmony with him and then we shall be prepared to live with him forever.

If we are correct in these conclusions, we can begin to see something of what it will be to be in heaven. We will meet our loved ones who have gone before and be reunited with them forever. We shall meet our friends that we have known upon this earth and I take a good deal of pleasure in imagining myself bringing together there my friends and brethren in Christ whom I have known in different parts of the earth. What a pleasure it will be to say I knew this brother in Texas, I knew this brother in Tennessee. I labored with this brother in Alabama, and we shall sit down together at the feet of our Lord and talk of our trials, now forever passed, and rejoice in the redemption that was made possible for us through the death of our Savior. We shall sing the song of the Lamb and that song, of course, will be the sweet old story of the Lamb that was slain, that we, through his blood, might be cleansed.

You may call these thoughts speculative, and perhaps they are, but this is one field in which speculation can do no harm, for we are told in the Scriptures that “Eye hath not seen, ear hath not heard, neither hath it entered into the heart of man what God hath in store for his children". Then, if our hearts can not conceive of the wonder and glory of the Home of the Soul, certainty we can not overdraw the picture. We can not get out of bounds in our descriptions of the happy conditions that will exist there. We may cut our fancies loose and let them fly. We can give our imaginations free play, and yet we can not go beyond the wonder of that world, for it is not possible for our hearts to conceive of what it will be in all of its fullness and glory. No poet’s dream is comparable with the sublime pleasures and joys of that Happy Home. Our ears have never heard anything that is comparable with the music of that Celestial Home, and yet our ears have heard sweet music that hath stirred the emotions of our souls until we were filled with raptures of bliss.

We have heard music of the song birds. We have listened to the melodies of the woodland. We have been entranced by the joys of an early spring morning, when the earth is vibrating with song, but no sounds of earth, no harmonies of nature can compare with what we shall hear when we reach that far away shore. Our eyes have not seen anything that is equal to the beauty that shall burst upon our enraptured vision when the curtain is lifted. Yet think of the things upon which we have looked with wonder and awe. You have climbed to the top of some mountain and looked far away over the landscape as it rolled away to meet the sky in the dim distance. You have seen the little brooklet like a thread of molten silver wending its way across the meadow. You have seen a fleck of cloud hanging out beneath the blue vault of heaven and shimmering in the rays of the rising sun and the glory of that view has lifted you out of yourself and translated you into a world of wonder and of beauty sublime! And yet, you have never seen anything that is comparable to the glory of heaven. Go out at night and look up into the skies and see the stars hanging like pendent gems in the liquid turquoise of the sky, and again you are lost in wonder at the glory of the view. But your eye hath not seen anything comparable to the glory of heaven.

Perhaps you have sat upon the brow of a hill at the end of a perfect day and looked away to the gorgeous sunset. You saw it shooting its shafts of glory to the zenith. You saw the cloud islands of ruby and amethyst floating in a sea of gold. The glory of that scene defies the efforts of any artist to reproduce it and renders the tongue of an orator speechless when he undertakes to describe it. He is dumb and awed to silence. But there is a greater glory than the sunset, for our eyes hai’e not yet beheld what is to be in that world. Perhaps, you have sailed over the bosom of the ocean and have seen the sun go down at sea. You have seen it form a path of gold from your feet over the rolling billows to its far away grave in the depth of the sea. You have seen the changing colors as the night comes over the mighty deep, and again your soul has been transformed by the glory of the scene and your sense of appreciation of its wonder makes you realize that there must be a power and a wisdom beyond the ken of man. And it makes you feel that there is something in you that craves to be away from the sordid things of earth and out of the narrow limits of human experience, to be lost in that sublime world that has appealed to your inner nature. All of these beautiful things upon which our eyes have looked are only suggestions of the glory that we shall know, and the emotions that are stirred in our soul by the wonders of nature and the glory of the visible creation are only foretastes of the joy divine that shall be ours when this life is over. And his servants shall serve him and they shall see his face. Does that not appeal to your soul? Are you not happy in the thought that you shall serve the Lord throughout all eternity? Oh, yes, it is wonderful to think that when all the singers reach home, when all the imperfections have been taken from our voices and all discords removed, that we shall join in one sweet song of praise. That fills our souls with joy and makes us impatient for the Dime to come. But I am glad it $hall not be one day of endless song-singing, and that eternity shall not be spent in idleness. I am happy to think that the Lord will have work for me to do and that I shall serve him even there. I love that old song that said, When we see thee as thou art, then we’ll serve thee as we ought.

We realize that at best, we are unprofitable servants here. We know that our efforts are very feeble and our lives are full of faults. But there, when we shall join that band of the spirits of just men made perfect we shall serve the Lord perfectly. None of us who have the ideal of Christian perfection are very satisfied with our services here. We are not satisfied with our singing, with our preaching, or with anything we do. We are always wanting to do better and that is as it should be, but, like the Psalmist of old, we say, “When I awake In thy likeness then shall I be sacisfied”, and then shall we serve him as we ought. 1 know not what ministrations he shall have for me off other stars. I only know that I shall serve him and that means that there will be something for me to do. Oh, may I be prepared for that great promotion and be sent on a greater mission than any mortal of earth was ever trusted with. And then that thought that we shall see his face. Can you realize what that means? Do you get the vision ? It was said that it was worth a trip across the Atlantic Ocean to look upon the face of Mr. William E. Gladstone. If the face of a mortal man was so wonderful in expressions of intelligence, of kindness, of human sympathy and love, that other mortals delighted to look upon it, and would travel far to see that countenance, what will it be to look upon the face of our Blessed Lord? What will it mean to see the expression of his eye and to meet his smile of approval. Ah, that means more to me. friends, than any walls of jasper or gate of pearl or street of gold. Have you ever been away from home and then at last the day has come for you to return and you are homeward bound? You are impatient with your journey. You are anxious to reach that home that you love. You know that there will be those who love you to welcome you at the gate, and that the association will be sweeter because of the separation, and as you get near the old home you see the form of a loved-one standing in the door looking up the road, shading the eyes with the hand from the rays of the setting sun, anxiously looking for you to come. Then, when at last that loved one recognizes you, you see the smile of recognition and of welcome as it plays across the face. How sweet it is to be received into the arms of that loved one! That is what it will be when at last our earthly pilgrimage shall have come to an end. As we are passing down through the valley into the shadows, as our loved ones are standing about our bedside, weeping because there is nothing else they can do—loving hearts and tender hands have done all that can be done. Then, as they stand about the dying bed, helpless, going with us as far as they can, as their faces and all of the scenes^f earth begin to grow dim to our eyes and the sounds of their voices are dull upon our ears, we are drifting out with the tide and all suddenly the curtain drops upon the scenes of earth—we are out of sight of the shore. Then what a beautiful thought, my friends, that there will burst upon our enraptured vision the face of the Blessed Lord. A smile of recognition and welcome will play across his countenance and he will touch us with bis rod and say, “Be not afraid, it is I”. He shall take us across the valley and over the river into that Home of the Soul. Does this mean anything to you, my friends? What are the brief moments of sinful pleasure to compare with this? Do you want to see that face ? If so, the opportunity is yours. Salvation is full and free. Jesus is anxious now to save you from your sins, to guide you through life, and to take you to glory when life is over. To see that face, what does it mean? Perhaps, you can begin to imagine the glory of the face when you realize that it shall be the light of that city, for they need no sun there, neither moon, for the glory of God and the Lamb shall light the city from center to circumference. And the gates of that city shall never be shut and there shall he no night there. No good byes will ever be said. No crepe will ever hang upon the door and no hearse shall roll down the golden street; and there will be no sin and no sorrow. No heart will ever ache, or bleed or break.

Perhaps, the things that we have said tonight may cause you to have some idea of what it will be to be there, and may the Lord bless this message to the good of your soul and may he bring us all at last into that Happy Land, is my prayer.