Ed and Patsy now live in Athens, Alabama and are members at the Pepper Road church. As administrator of this blog, he enjoys sharing thoughts about spiritual maters. Not only his thoughts but good articles from other authors. He is also thankful to have been able to preach the unsearchable riches of Christ for over sixty years.
In John 14:2, Jesus said, “In my Father’s house there are many mansions, if it were not so, I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you,” in the King James Version and a few others. Some of the later translations render it rooms or dwelling places instead of mansions. According to Strong it is from the Gr. Mone which means, “a staying, i.e. residence (the act or the place) — abode, mansion”
Whether it is mansions, rooms, or shacks, for that matter, is of little consequence to me. What really matters is that it is a place prepared for me. It is a place where I will be with God for eternity without any of the evil that goes with this world and with all the good that God has in store for me in heaven – which is far greater that all the good that we have in this life.
Some of the older brothers used to close their prayers with “And Lord when this life is over, give us a home in heaven, and that will be enough.” When I would hear that, I usually would think “Isn’t that the truth.”
Most of that which we know about heaven is given to us in figurative language. We are told “Beloved, now we are children of God; and it has not yet been revealed what we shall be, but we know that when He is revealed, we shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is.” (1 John 3:2 NKJV) If we don’t know what we will be like, how can we know what God, heaven and all the heavenly host will literally be like? We can be content with a knowledge of what it will be kind of like from reading the figurative descriptions of it and wait to see what it is really like when we are privileged to enter into that glorious abode. Enough is revealed to whet our appetites for it.
When men begin to speculate about the things of heaven, identifying them with the same literacy as things in this material universe, they reveal that they have a much greater imagination than knowledge of what the Bible reveals. Whether one thinks of it as a mansion, a room, or a dwelling place he needs to understand he is thinking of figurative descriptions rather than literal – of spiritual things and not material. The same is true of the “streets of gold” and other figures in the book of Revelation. We need to understand that we are only capable of understanding so much. God has given us as much as we are capable of understanding by His figurative descriptions of the place prepared. Once there, we will be capable of seeing Jesus as he is. Likewise, we should be able to see heaven as it is.