My dear readers,

(Extracts from “HEAVEN – a place, a city, a home” by E M Bounds in RPG December 1991, Edited by Dr SH Tow)

1. HEAVEN HAS MANY MANSIONS (1 Peter 1:1-25)

On the eve of His death, our Lord Jesus had a last most important conversation with His disciples. They were sorrowful, deeply troubled, by the fact of His leaving them. Jesus, the God of all comfort, spoke comforting words: "Let not your heart be troubled: ye believe in God, believe also in me. 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" (Jn 14:1,2).

Mansions in God's Heaven surpass and excel the best on earth. For the disciples' comfort and consolation, our Lord promised them a place, a home prepared for them. This was the solace to the sorrowing disciples. Every parting of friends is painful. But our Lord's parting had a purpose that soothed the pain. His going away was for their good: I go to prepare a place not just any sort of place, but heavenly mansions, superior God-designed, custom-built princely palaces!

Nothing can be simpler, more plain, more downright honest and "matter of fact" than this revelation of Christ's purpose and plan. In effect He was saying, "Earth is a temporary place where we have been abiding. We can abide here no longer, but we must be on our way. Good-bye, perishing earth! Welcome, Heaven's glory! Up there with God are many abiding places. I go to prepare a place for you; when it is ready I will come and take you there, that where I am, there ye may be also. And once re-united, we shall never part again!"

And how can we know that Heaven's mansions are for real? Simply because He who promised always spoke the truth, and only the truth. His promise began to be fulfilled in His Resurrection, and His Ascension. As He said, He would die and rise again, so He did. As He said "I will come again", so we look for His Return! He will gather us to His Father's house. And His many mansions!

THOUGHT: All His promises are yea and amen.
PRAYER: Thank you Lord for including me.

2. HEAVEN IS OUR HOME - I (Revelation 7:9-17)

Heaven is home to "a great multitude, which no man could number, of all nations, and kindreds, and people, and tongues ..." Home is where every family loves to be, together in peace and harmony. But homes on earth come and go: sooner or later, its happiness is shattered by sickness, accident, parting, and death. Our home in heaven is different: it is beyond the reach of earth's corruption and change. It is one perfect, blissful, complete, happy family, never to be diminished or disrupted.

In Heaven we shall be singing songs of salvation: Salvation to our God, which sitteth upon the throne, and to the Lamb. In Heaven our travelling days will be over. The glorified saints will not be pilgrims and sojourners, visitors or tenants, but settled, permanently titled and established in mansion abodes. There will not be renters or lessees in Heaven; only property-holders and home-owners. And you need pay nothing, for it comes by an inheritance!

Even more wonderful, our home in heaven is ours even before we get there! How do we know? God says so, of course! 1 Peter 1:4 tells us clearly that our inheritance is "reserved in heaven for you," and for me! The angels of God have inscribed our names of ownership, engraved on our heavenly homes. Knowing this must change our whole outlook on life and our attitude toward the world. Indeed, such knowledge is too wonderful for me! Our broken "dream homes" on earth must make us yearn and long for our Home in Heaven. If so, death holds no terror for the believer but becomes a gateway to the Home beyond.

Can you echo the words of Paul: "We are confident, I say, and willing rather to be absent from the body, and to be at home with the Lord" (2 Cor 5:8)?

QUESTION: Is your name written there?
PRAYER: Lord, make me to long for Heaven and Home.

3. HEAVEN IS OUR HOME - II (Matthew 6:9-18)

The Christian is bound to Heaven by seven golden links.

1. Our Father is there, seated on His "glory circled throne" surrounded by 24 elders clothed in white, and the angelic spirits saying, "Holy, holy, holy, LORD God Almighty, which was, and is, and is to come" (Rev 4:1-8).
2. Our Saviour is there to appear in the presence of God for us (Heb 9:24). Wherefore he is able also to save them to the uttermost that come unto God by him, seeing he ever liveth to make intercession for them (Heb 7:25).
3. Our name is there. Our Lord said, "... Rejoice, because your names are written in heaven" (Lk 10:20). None whose name is not written in heaven shall enter therein: but they which are written in the Lamb's book of life (Rev 21:27).
4. Our life is there. The Apostle Paul exhorts us to set our affection on things above, where Christ sitteth on the right hand of God, for "your life is hid with Christ in God. When Christ ... shall appear, then shall ye also appear with Him in glory (Col 3:3-4).
5. Our heart is there (Matt 6:19-21). The true child of God lays up treasures in heaven, beyond the reach of moth, rust, and thieves, "For where your treasure is there will your heart be also."
6. Our inheritance is there (1 Pet 1:3-5). The Christian is begotten unto a lively hope by the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, to an inheritance incorruptible, and undefiled, and that fadeth not away, reserved in heaven.
7. Our citizenship is there (Phil 3:20,21). For our citizenship is in heaven; from whence also we look for the Saviour, the Lord Jesus Christ, who shall change our mortal body, like unto His glorious body, and thus be fitted for heaven.

PRAYER: Thank you, Lord, for reserving me a place in heaven.

God bless all readers.

Yours faithfully in the Saviour’s Service,
Dr SH Tow, Founding Pastor