"After this I looked, and behold, a door was opened in heaven" (Revelation 4:1)

You at once recognize our text as the word of the Apostle John who was banished to the Isle of Patmos because of his fealty to Christ. On this island there were given unto him visions and revelations of God and of the eternal glory probably beyond those ever vouchsafed to any other person in the flesh.  John seems to have been greatly loved by Jesus.  You remember that on one occasion John leaned his head on Jesus' breast.  On that island, with all its isolation and loneliness, wonderful visions were given John of Christ and the glory above.  He recounted in the Scripture a number of things he had seen, and then said: "After this, I looked, and behold, a door was opened in Heaven." We do not know much about Heaven, and all that we do know is revealed to us here in the Bible.  This is the sure word of prophecy, and we are not following cunningly devised fables when we follow this sure word of the long centuries.  The only clear Teacher concerning the life beyond was Jesus.  All else has largely been guesswork and speculation, except as the Holy Spirit inspired certain writers to set down in the Bible glimpses concerning the world beyond.  We do not know about the world to come, but we do know some things by intimations, by glimpses, and by certain point blank statements that Christ Himself made.

The awful things we know about hell are things told us by Jesus. I will not flout His teaching, plain as sunlight, clear as words can make it, that there is an eternal difference between the man who accepts Christ as his personal Savior and the man who rejects Him. Christ is the only clear Teacher as to that great truth.  And He is the one clear and informed teacher about the fact of Heaven.

In dark and challenging days like these, through which we are passing, we do well to rest our hearts by frequently letting our thoughts dwell on the revelations we have as to the reality and blessedness of Heaven.  Long ago the devout Jew had an expression strikingly significant: "Let Jerusalem come into your mind." And no matter where the Jew went, nor what his battles and burdens, nor what the pressure upon him, that expression summoned him, inspired him, aroused him, challenged him, cheered him.  "Let Jerusalem come into your mind." So should we let the Heavenly Jerusalem come often into our minds. As we go our ways, with our battles and talks and questions and responsibilities, often we need to pause and earnestly ponder the fact of the Heavenly Jerusalem which Christ has arranged for His friends.

What does the Bible teach us about Heaven?  Several answers are available.  Let us glance at them briefly this hour.  For one thing, it teaches that Heaven is a place.  There is a great deal of loose talking about Heaven being merely a state, merely an abstraction, merely an idea. Jesus teaches that Heaven is a place.  One may say that patriotism is a mere abstraction, but if there is not a country in which people may live and upon which they may bestow their love, then there would be no patriotism.  Heaven is not merely a state.  It is that, but it is so much more than that!  Heaven is a place, and the Bible sets forth that fact in words clear and unmistakable, again and again.

Heaven is called a house.  Jesus says: "In my Father's house are many mansions; if it were not so, I would have told you.  I go to prepare a place for you.  And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again, and receive you unto Myself, that where I am, there ye may be also." And in another place, Heaven is called a city - "the city which has foundations, whose builder and maker is God." And John here in the last book of the New Testament in words glowing and glorious gives us an earthly description of that marvelous place called Heaven.

What kind of a place is it?  It is a holy place.  That truth should delight our hearts as we aspire after purity, holiness and righteousness unalloyed!  I think that of all the glimpses I have had here in this Book of that world where Christ shall gather His friends to be with Himself forever, to my own heart the most revealing of all the pictures of Heaven is that it is to be a place where nothing that defileth shall ever come.  Oh, at last to be holy and to be perfect even as God is holy and perfect!  Nothing that defileth shall enter Heaven.  Nothing that is unclean, unholy, impure, unchaste, shall ever cast its black shadow athwart that world of love above.  Heaven then is to be a holy place. Here we have warfare because of dual personality.  We have the flesh warring against the spirit, and the spirit warring against the flesh.  We often cry out: "Who shall deliver me from this dead body?" We are delivered, by and by, from all that defiles and pollutes.  The friends of Christ are destined for a place perfect in its righteousness.

What kind of a place is Heaven?  Heaven is to be a busy place.  His servants shall serve Him, we are told here in this Book - have you ever tried to fancy what that service will be?  Can you not imagine yourself on eagle's wings, flying through infinite space, when you try to fancy what your service is to be when you get home to be with Christ?  You see this planet on which we live is relatively a very small place - twenty-five thousand miles around it, they tell us, and yet a speck in God's universe.  Yonder, in the immeasurable and infinite immensity's of the eternal spaces of God, are worlds and worlds and worlds - worlds by the million, it may be. And it may be that one of the services on which He will send us, when we come to the cloudless, sinless, perfect land is to go here and there, not limited as we are now, and declare the riches and wonders and glories of God, as we can never declare them while we are here fettered in the flesh.  His servants shall serve Him.  Give fancy free rein when you think about the unalloyed, the unlimited, the immeasurable service which throughout the ages eternal we are to render when we get to yonder land.

Have you thought that He may send us forth as missionaries to proclaim salvation to unknown multitudes who sit in spiritual darkness?  How I should like to go, leading this great Church family from this height to that, from this place to that, to say "We have tasted of the riches of the glory of God, for when once a baleful thing went out to the earth and put the shadow of its black wings upon us, and smote us to death, the name of which awful thing was sin, God sent His only begotten Son to come to earth and die for us, and we believed on Him, and He made us victors even over sin."

A busy place Heaven is to be, without any weariness.  Here we are wearied.  Oh, the pressure of life's battle is such, the work to be done is such, the call is such, that the brain gets tired, the head bows with weariness, the limbs drag with burdens, and the spirit cries out its pain because of exhaustion.  There shall be none of that in God's house above.

One day I visited at the cottage of a seamstress of our Church family who was very, very poor, fighting then a hard battle for herself and her children.  She is now in the better land where the battles do not wear and tear the flesh any more.  I said to her as she sewed away busily: "What feature of Heaven appeals most to you, my friend?" And the tears came in a rush to her tired eyes, as she laid down her sewing and said: "Oh, sir, the feature of Heaven that most delights me is that some day I shall rest.  I am tired all the time.  You see, I sew until late in the night, to get food for these children, and I get up early in the morning, and by the early light I sew for my children. I have sewed until my fingers are bloodless. Oh sir, in Heaven I shall rest and the weariness and the pain of this body of mine will be gone forever." Bless her precious memory!  She will rest, and she does rest.

There will be rest for the weary, in the sense that no weariness, no drudgery, no burden shall ever be felt in Heaven by us for one moment.

What kind of a place is Heaven?  Heaven is a populous place.  Oh, there will be many people in Heaven.  A man asked Jesus: "Will there be few saved?" Well, now that is not a practical question to ask Jesus. He turned and said to him: "Strive to enter in at the strait gate." He said a stronger word than that.  He said: "Agonize to enter in at the strait gate." Do not ask a speculative question like that.  Be sure of getting there yourself.  How wisely and instructively Jesus answered the numerous questions asked Him.  But the Bible does tell us that Heaven is to be a populous place.  Oh, the children that will be there!  I like to fancy them playing, as in the streets of a city, where no auto will crush them, and no horse's hoof will trample them down. Oh, the children that shall be in that cloudiest land!  All of the blessed little fellows who die before they can discern between right and wrong, before they can discriminate, before they can pass morally and personally on the question of the call of God to repentance and faith - all of them dying this side that line of personal accountability, every one, shall pass through the gates into the city of God.

That doctrine once preached by some that there would be infants in hell is a doctrine of devils. It is not taught in the Word of God.  It is nowhere hinted at in the Word of God.  But the Word of God, with a breadth of mercy like the wideness of the sea, indicates for us clearly that these blessed children, dying this side the age of personal accountability, shall every one be carried into the realms of the blessed forever.  Will it not be glorious to see the children there?

And then, oh, the multitudes of adults who shall be there!  Down the long ages, even from before Abraham's time, there have been those who looked toward the coming of the Messiah, and then for these nineteen centuries, millions untold have looked backward at the fulfillment of their hope in the coming of that Messiah, the Deliverer, the Light of the world, the Refuge for the oppressed, the Redeemer of the sinful and lost.  Oh, the hosts that shall be there, who believe on Christ! John, this same John said: "I looked and saw a great multitude," through that open door of Heaven, which was flung ajar for him one day, in his loneliness, on the Isle of Patmos.  He "looked and beheld a great multitude, which no man could number," and they were gathered out of every tribe and kindred and tongue and people in all the world. Blessed be God, there will be many in Heaven. I do not believe that hell shall have a majority at all, not at all, not at all. What a host, illimitable, immeasurable, shall be yonder in that blessed land!  A populous place Heaven is to be.

What else about Heaven?  The Bible has another word for us.  Heaven is to be a perfectly happy place.  Read John's description here in the last book - glimpse after glimpse.  "There shall be no night there." Night is the symbol of sorrow.  Night carries with it terror.  In the night we are afraid.  In the night the children cry out in their fear for the touch of hand, for the voice of a father or mother.  In the night the sick one wearily longs for the light of the morning.  "There shall be no night there." "They need no candle, neither light of the sun." Christ, the Light of the world, shall Himself be the light in that world beyond.  No night, no pain, no tears, no suffering, no sorrow, no death shall ever enter that happy place called Heaven.

Would you not like to go to a land where there is no death?  I came back just a little while ago from one of our young men, ill with pneumonia, whose life hangs in the balance.  The doctor said: "It looks like any five minutes may be the last." The young wife, in her desperate grief, asked as I left to come to this service: "Why is this?  Why is this?" All I could do was try to turn her thoughts to a land where death shall never come.

O Death, thou art an enemy to the race!  What carest thou for the blessed babe?  What carest thou?  Thou dost take it out of the hands of love and carry it away, and though they cover the body with flowers, yet it is dead, and to the grave it must go.  What carest thou that a little woman go robed in widow's weeds, battling in loneliness to the last? What carest thou for her, 0 Death?  No respecter of persons art thou! Blessed be God, yonder is a land where no hearse shall pause at any cottage in God's fair country.  Yonder is a land where no crepe will ever be seen on any door.  Yonder is a land where no physician nor kindly nurse shall ever be needed. All the conditions of life are perfect forever.  I do not wonder that Ponce de Leon was happy in the thought that he had found the fountain of youth.  Yonder is a land where people never grow old, infinite in blessedness!  That is Heaven!

What else?  Heaven is our real home.  Oh, that comes close to us. Heaven is to be our home, our final, permanent, eternal home.  "They shall go out no more forever," is what Jesus promised.  That is home. This is not our home.  We are strangers and pilgrims here.

Our tents shall soon be folded.  Heaven is our home.  "I go to prepare a place for you," said Jesus.  Be not agitated.  This is not your home at all. You are camped here for a few hours, and the camp must soon be broken up and you must move home.  Oh, the melody in the word "home"!  There is music and sweetness immeasurable in the word "home"!

The man with his small salary, struggling To make ends meet for himself and his wife and several little children, says: "What does it matter?  The children will have their little faces at the window when I come home tonight, waiting to welcome me, believing that I am the finest man earth ever saw, and that beats all of the money in the world." That is home.  There the wife, with a trust that would make an angel look on with a smile of infinite blessedness, says: "This man is dearer to me than all the earth beside." That is home, that is the right kind of wedded love.  That is where the children ask: "Did anybody ever have such a daddy and mother as we have?" Yes, that is an earthly home.  But, alas, how quickly the scene can change.  How quickly the clouds can come down with their blackness and empty their fearful fury on defenseless heads, and that home be shattered and despoiled. This world is not our real home.  Heaven is that.  Cloudless, blessed forever!  No sorrow nor disappointment nor death can enter there.

Not long ago a boy from Georgia was slowly dying in a Dallas hospital.  He kept saying to me, as I visited him repeatedly, "If I could just get back to the old home in Georgia!" I wrote his father and said: "Edgar's case is incurable.  He wants to die at home." Soon the plain old farmer came across the long miles from Georgia.  I did all I could to help and comfort that fine old father who tenderly tried to be mother and nurse and doctor, all through the long train journey from Dallas to Georgia.  As they were leaving I said: "Write me about it when you get home."

In about a week after he reached home, I had his letter saying: "We have just come from Edgar's funeral.  As we neared home, we propped him on pillows in the carriage which brought us from the railroad station across the hills and the mountains.  When he got in sight of his old home here among the trees, he did his best to shout; and when at last he was in the home and mother had kissed him, and the sisters and brothers had kissed him, he said: 'I can die in perfect peace, because I am at home."' Oh my soul, how sweet it will be at last to be at home!  As the shades of night are lowered about us, we parents have a way of saying: "Are they all in?  Are our loved ones all in?  Is anyone near and dear to us absent?" Oh, to have reunited homes when we cross the tides separating us and the other world!

I have just one more word.  Are you on the road that leads home to Heaven?  You should be altogether sure about that.  There ought not to be guesswork about that.  Are you on that road to Heaven?  There is just one road, just one.  The Italians have a way of saying: "All roads lead to Rome." "All roads lead to Rome - all roads." There is just one, my fellow men, that leads to Heaven.  My authority for that statement is Jesus, and His word is as clear as light.  Thomas saith unto Him, "Lord, how can we know the way?  You are leaving us, and you are saying to us as you go, 'You know the way that I am going' and I answer, How can we know the way?  Oh tell us the way, ere you leave us for good." Jesus replied: "I am the way, the truth and the life. No man cometh unto the Father, but by Me." And He also said: "I am the door. By Me, by Me, if any man enter in, he shall be saved. He that climbeth up some other way is a thief and a robber."

You cannot steal your way into that blessed world.  You cannot buy your way into Heaven.  Salvation which Christ gives is without money and without price.  It is of Christ, free and full and sufficient, God's own Grace, in Christ Jesus the Savior.  Have you believed on Him as your Savior?  Have you turned your case over to Christ?  He is the great Physician for the soul, and none other can suffice.  Priests cannot, and Preachers cannot, and the pope cannot, and the Church cannot.

O Church, I love thee as I love no other institution in all the earth. Christ's masterpiece is the Church. I am not depending on the Church one iota to get me to Heaven. O Baptism, beautiful symbol of the burial and resurrection of our glorious Lord, I delight in thee, but I am not depending one iota on baptismal waters to get to the land above the stars.  Oh, good men all about me, whose fellowship is sweet, and whose counsels priceless, I treasure them all, but there is just one door to Heaven and that door is Christ Jesus.  Have you chosen that door?  Have you put your case in His hands?  "He that believeth on Me hath everlasting life.  He that believeth not is condemned already." Have you believed on Jesus?

Yonder at Gettysburg an army surgeon came back at the close of the battle looking for the wounded and suffering, and he found the dead on every side.  He rode his horse, looking to see if somebody was still living unto whom he could minister.  Presently he saw a man down in a little trench, lying on his back.  The army surgeon reined up his horse and looked at the man and said: "I am too late.  He is evidently gone." But as he said that to himself, a smile played around the lips of that dying soldier.  The army surgeon dismounted and knelt down by him. Every minute or two that smile played upon those dying lips, and every time the smile came, the lips parted, and one little word was whispered and that word was: "Here!" "Here!" "Here!" There the surgeon shook the soldier gently, if haply he might rouse him to consciousness of earthly things, and succeeded.  The surgeon said; "Why are you saying 'Here'?" And with faint whispers he said: "Oh, Doctor, they were calling the roll in Heaven and I was answering to my name, for long ago, I gave my heart to Christ."

Here tonight, if they called the roll, would you say: "Here"?  I would. God knows I would hurry to say it!  Oh, if they called roll tonight for eternal issues, would you answer: "Lord Jesus, Thou knowest all things.  Thou knowest that I love Thee, and Thou knowest that I have put my trust in Thee as my Savior forever"?

There is one door to Heaven and that door is Christ.  Have you chosen that door?  Are you trusting in Christ as the Savior of your soul for this world and for the next?  Does your heart say: "Sir, I am"?  Every one whose heart says, "I am trusting my case to Christ for time and eternity," stand to your feet.

Oh, that is a great company.  Are there those here who say: "I can not stand on that, but I can tell you that I want that Savior for mine before it is too late.  I wish you, O Preacher, and you, O Christians, who speak with God, would offer one prayer for me, that I may not miss entrance into that door, that I may not miss the way of life." Do you say: "I can go that far"?  You stand with us! God bless you!  God bless you, all.  Let us pray.