(Concluded from page 32)
The Lord is capable of taking food. He partook of a piece of honeycomb and a fish; but this was not because He required them, but because they required to learn that He was truly risen from the dead. His, we know, is a spiritual body glorified in heaven. And so shall we be; but the Lord here speaks of our faith meanwhile. “Ye believe in God, believe also in me.” Although He had taken a body, and although He was to take that body after the resurrection, still He would be invisible by going to heaven. It is the Christian's faith contrasted with Jewish sight of the Messiah reigning visibly over the earth. “In my Father's house are many mansions.” He was going thither. Observe the statement, “there are many mansions,” signifying that there is room for you as well as for Him. Room enough and to spare—room for all the faithful. “If it were not so, I would have told you.” I would not implant in you a desire that could not be realized. “I go to prepare a place for you.”
Now, the Chiliasts were quite wrong in thinking that heaven would be merely this earth in a renewed condition. Perfectly true that the earth is to be renewed—perfectly false that we are not to be in heaven. Thus to be with Christ in heaven is true, and is the truth which is taught here; and there is where our hope should be resting. Only it is wrong to disconnect heaven then from the earth. This will be the peculiarity of the kingdom, that it will not be as now—the heavens separated from the earth by the sin of man, but heaven and earth both put under the Lord Jesus Christ, the glorified Son of God, the Head of both heaven and earth. Those who now believe in Him, those who have believed in Him from the beginning—we shall all be with Him. “In my Father's house are many mansions. I go to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again— (not you will come to me, but) —I will come again and receive you unto myself, that where I am, there ye may be also.”
Death is never the hope of the Christian. There is the hope of the resurrection of the body; but the turning-point is Christ's coming. When the Lord takes the rule, we shall share along with Him. When the Lord comes in judgment to the world, we shall follow Him out of heaven, but we shall always be with Him— “Forever with the Lord.” There is our proper place. Where He has now gone—where He is now in the presence of the Father—there we shall be. How simple! Would not a father love to have his children near him? So we shall be. But is there not One above all nearest to the Father? It is He, the Son of God, and He will introduce us there—the fruit of His infinite work, and the objects of His Father's love, even as He Himself is.
Now that is the hope of the Christian, the coming of the Lord Jesus—that, and not changes on the earth. There is to be great glory to God, and, let me tell you, there are to be evil and judgments first. I quite admit that truth will surely prevail in the end; but “the end!” that is a serious word. And, further, I quite admit that the Lord is to bless the world. There will be the power of the Holy Ghost, and on the ground of Christ's redemptive work all the earth will be blessed. But, still, it will be the reign of Jesus. How infinitely more blessed that will be than if we could do it ourselves! As the Apostle says “Not having mine own righteousness, which is of the law, but that which is through the faith of Christ, the righteousness which is of God by faith.” He would not like anything that detracted from the Lord Jesus. And is it not most suitable and worthy that He who was crucified should be exalted? that He who was rejected should be glorified in this very scene of His shame and suffering? This is our hope, and surely it is one not to make the Christian ashamed, although it may well shame those unbelieving believers who put proud aspiring man in the place of Christ. Amen.
W. K.