FOR what is purely spiritual, we are without form of representation.
Everything that is visible, tangible and corporeal has in the vision-field of our imagination outlines and tints, but when you undertake to think of a soul, you stand confused. When you would represent an angel to yourself, you take the human form as a help and enrich it with wings. And when you ascend still higher and try to lift up your worshiping thought to the Eternal Being, you lose yourself in the formless Infinite.
And so it is, when with your thoughts you endeavor to place yourself in Heaven.
You have indeed read of a Throne of God, and of the Thrice Holy, the train of Whose garment covers the steps of the throne. But that is imagery, and no reality in plastic sense. And when you then hear of the ten times ten thousand angels that surround the throne, and of the altar of prayers that stands before that throne, and of the four and twenty Elders from God’s people who kneel at that altar, there is design in the representation, and in and with it all you can think also of the Assembly of the just made perfect and of the “saints in white raiment,” but in the end there is always again a cruel shock that draws everything away from before your eye. For it is and remains figurative language, and as, judging by these images, you would represent it to yourself, it is not.
Of course it is the height of all superficialities, when the doubter exclaims: Then your faith in a soul, a spirit, a God, a heaven is nothing but imagination. For a power, like the power of attraction, and the power of repulsion, and the power of growth and so much more can as little be seen or handled or represented, and yet you feel and see every moment that that multiplicity of powers truly exists in nature and operates.
And likewise, courage, will-power, enthusiasm, inspiration and so much more are phenomena in life, which also you never observe otherwise than by the effect, and yet that effect shows that these spiritual powers really exist.
The fact is, that we, as regards our representation are bound to the sensual and visible side of things, and therefore can neither think nor speak about the spiritual otherwise than in figurative language, in imagery, and in image-terminology borrowed from what we see and observe.
Now this would be very poor, if there were no inner and original connection between the spiritual fact and this figurative language. Or to say it still more clearly, if that spiritual world and the visible world stood disconnectedly side by side, and if the traits of similarity which we observe between the two, and with the help of which we form our figurative language, were purely accidental.
A conqueror is crowned with a wreath of laurels about the temples, yet every one feels, that inwardly this laurel-branch and the victory have nothing in common with each other.
When on the other hand we call upon God as our Father Who is in heaven, we remind ourselves that man is created after God’s Image, and that therefore the father-name among men is nothing but a weak expression for what the eternal Fatherhood in God is.
On the ground of the creation of man after God’s Image we may say, that the figurative language for the spiritual world, borrowed from our human life, does not rest upon purely accidental similarity, but upon similarity in origin and substance. He who considers, moreover, how all nature, and the vegetable-world and the animal-world exhibit a certain undeniable relation with man, surmises naturally, that also in that world of nature there lies a reflection of the Eternal. And when we read, that Moses had to make the tabernacle after the pattern which God had shown him in the mount, we go yet further, and dare conjecture, that the works of man also reflect something of what is real above.
Does not St. Matthew tell us, that when Jesus spoke in parables, He brought out things that “had been hidden from the foundation of the world?”
And, what finally ends all, you believe that Jesus is in heaven, not merely as a spiritual being, but glistening in His glorified body, and does there not follow from this, that with Jesus also there must be certain relation and certain coherence between His glorified body and the spiritual world in which He dwells?
Otherwise that being in heaven of Jesus becomes purely magical, and almost absurd.
THIS now must stand in the foreground, when we overhear from Jesus’ lips the glorious words, that in the Father-house above there are many mansions, and that He went thither before us there to prepare a place for us (John 14, 2).
To this figurative language there must be a corresponding reality in heaven.
When of fallen angels it is said, that they have left their own habitation (Jude 6) it tells us that they had an habitation of their own, and that thus the angels that did not fall still possess that habitation.
Without thinking in connection with this of tabernacles, of tents or houses in a literal sense, so much is here implied that angels as well as the blessed have their own place, in which they dwell. Hence, there is in heaven not only one hovering sphere in which everything mingles itself, but in heaven there is also what we would call length and breadth, there are extensions, and in that extended domain there are distinctions and divisions, places for one which are not for the other, distinguished for angels and distinguished for the blessed.
And with respect to this Jesus says three things. First, that for the blessed there are many mansions. Then, that these mansions together form the one Father-house. And thirdly, that in one of these many mansions there is a separate place for every elect, which Jesus prepares for him.
Consider each of these three.
FIRST: there are many mansions for the blessed.
Thus the one heaven is not a distinctionless whole. Not one nebulous sphere in which everything dissolves itself without distinction. But there are divisions, each with its boundaries, and by these bounded divisions there originates multiplicity. There is mansion alongside of mansion, and those mansions are not all alike, but have a peculiar something of their own, by which one distinguishes itself from the other.
They are not levels, or empty places, but mansions. Not like our houses, which must protect us against wind and rain and cold and heat, but yet mansions in which a life-milieu forms itself, and within which a social life, a coöperation, an enjoying together is possible. Heavenly families, in which group-wise the blessed are put together according to their nature, according to their talents, according to their gifts. And all of that social life in those mansions is one life for God’s honor and in heavenly joy.
Heavenly families in heavenly mansions, which are not placed together according to their origin from one and the same blood, but after the plan of God’s election. There is no death-sleep, neither is there a sitting in rows, and an endless singing of psalms. No, there is life and social life as in a family, and in that heavenly family-life a restless working, without ever becoming exhausted or weary. There is no day there and no night, but an eternal existence in glory.
In my Father’s house are many mansions.
BUT also, and this is the second: These many mansions together form the one Father-house.
There is distinction, but in that distinction glorious unity.
There are no mansions alongside of the Father-house, or round about the Father-house, but all together they are included in the one Father-house. So far as the glorious circle of those mansions extends itself, so far also the Father-house extends itself.
On this earth the child leaves his father’s house, to live in a house of his own. But it is not so in heaven. There is distinction there, but no separation. The blessed remain eternally in their Father’s house, but in that one Father-house they have group-wise a mansion of their own.
The Temple at Jerusalem imaged this in a weak form.
There was the Holy of Holies, where God dwelt. And around that Holy of Holies there were rows of dwellings and upper-rooms, in which families came together, to keep the sacrificial feasts. And all this together formed the one temple.
Hence it is not so improbable, that Jesus borrowed His figurative language of the Father-house with its many mansions from the temple at Jerusalem.
But then this figurative language also implies, that in every mansion of the blessed above family-fellowship is enjoyed with the Eternal Being, and that in every mansion God indwells with His blessed, and that the blessed indwell with their Father.
More yet.
If all the mansions together form the one Father-house, it implies at the same time, that though the blessed dwell in mansions of their own, they have brotherly fellowship with the blessed in all the other mansions.
A fellowship between mansion and mansion, not to go in and out, but all together dwelling in the one Father-house.
Not a fellowship that annuls the particularization of the separate groups, but also no separation of groups that excludes the most intimate fellowship.
TO this is added finally, that in those mansions Jesus prepares His blessed a place.
Upon this promise follow these words: “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.”
Hence our dying waits and tarries, until Jesus is ready with that preparing of our place. Then, in that hour of our death, He comes to us, takes us unto Himself, and leads us to that place, which He has prepared for us in the mansion assigned to us.
So He has not called all His apostles out of this world at once, but each in turn, and taken him to Himself, and given to each one the place prepared for him in the mansion assigned to him.
Bring to mind the white stone, with a name on it, which no one can read, save he who receiveth it, and you understand, that every one of the blessed is something different from every other one of the blessed, and correspondingly shall have eternally a task, which no other one receives, save he.
They are not all engaged in the same work, but in the one great work of the Kingdom of heaven, each blessed one has his own calling, his own destiny, his own life’s task, and for that life’s task his own gift, his own talent, his own grace.
There can no one be missed. For in that case the work would remain incomplete, and the coöperation of all must take place in blessed, Divine, perfect harmony.
This requires ordering, disposition, an impenetrable rich counsel. And Jesus as Head of the church brings this ordering, this disposing to pass, and He knows, at what given moment the heavenly task of every blessed must begin.
When that moment is come, it coincides absolutely with the hour of our dying, which is known unto God and His Christ.
And also, at the moment of our dying, the one great work of the Kingdom must have advanced so far, that our task in it can begin.
He who entered too early, would not find his place prepared. He who entered his mansion too late, would find the work marred by an irreparable blank.
And this is “the preparing a place” on the part of Jesus, that as Head of the Body, and as King of the Kingdom of God, He so directs the great work of the Kingdom, that at the very moment of our dying the moment has also come, when our task above must make a beginning; for which everything is prepared, to make our entrance upon the great work possible; and at which moment the work of the Lord Jehovah would not be able to go on, without our taking our place in our heavenly mansion, and in that mansion entering upon our task.
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