John 14 v 1 – 6 NIV
“Do not let your hearts be troubled. Trust in God, trust also in me. In my Father’s house are many rooms, if it were not so, I would have told you. I am going there to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come back and take you to be with me that you also may be where I am. You know the way to the place where I am going.”
Thomas said to him, “Lord, we don’t know where you are going, so how can we know the way?”
Jesus answered, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No-one comes to the Father except through me.”
This passage has become special to me since 1998 when I read it at my father’s funeral service, and again at my mother’s in 2012. It makes me think of heaven and how big it must be to accommodate all the Christians who have been born again in the years since Jesus came to earth. It says in Revelation 21:16 that the height, length, and width are of equal dimensions – as it was with the Holy of Holies in the Tabernacle and First Temple – and they measure 12,000 furlongs (which is approximately 1500 miles). Heaven is a place of peace, love, community, and worship, where God is surrounded by a heavenly court and other heavenly beings.
Some questions immediately come to mind, the first being: who will go to heaven?
Many that we expect to be there include those mentioned in the Bible who did God’s work on earth. There are many verses in the Bible which tell us who will go to heaven. The following are just a few:
“For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life. -John 3 v16
And there is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved.” -Acts 4v12.
If you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. -Romans 10 v 9.
For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own efforts; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast. -Ephesians 2 v 8-9.
Next question: will we recognise people in heaven?
The Bible says that Christ, "by the power that enables him to bring everything under his control, will transform our lowly bodies so that they will be like his glorious body" (Philippians 3:21). That sounds good to me! The Bible indicates we will know each other more fully than we do now. The Apostle Paul declared, "Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.” (1 Corinthians 13:12).
Next question: will we work in heaven?
The Bible says, “They will rest from their labour” (Revelation 14:13). So maybe we will not do the same work as on earth. At the same time, the Bible also says that God will have work for us in heaven. Revelation 22:3 says, “His servants will serve Him.” For those of us who have spent a great amount of time working on earth, the idea of working in heaven may seem frustrating but it shouldn’t be. We should rejoice and be glad in it. There are no shortage of tasks in heaven but the work we will be performing there will be to the glory of God— and we ought to be glad for this. After all, if all we did in heaven was sit around with nothing to do, we'd get very bored.
We may be surprised to see certain people in heaven, death-bed conversions are not rare, but conversely it may be that people we expected to see are not there.
“Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven. Many will say to me on that day, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name and in your name drive out demons and in your name perform many miracles?’ Then I will tell them plainly, ‘I never knew you. Away from me, you evildoers!’ -Matthew 7 v 21 – 23.
“The LORD does not look at the things people look at. People look at the outward appearance, but the LORD looks at the heart.” -1 Samuel 16 v 7.
My father served in the Royal Engineers in the Middle East in World War II. The ‘Sappers’, as they are known, provide military engineering and other technical support to the British Armed Forces. He may have experienced, or witnessed the atrocities of war, but never, never talked about it. My parents never spoke of having faith in God, which may have been because of his experiences, but they sent me to Sunday school, and to a Church of England Junior school. Much of this may have been the influence of my maternal Grandmother, who attended services at Wesleyan or Methodist churches all her life until she was too frail. Just before I was baptised at Parkwood one Easter in the late 1970’s I told my Mum that I was going to be baptised, because they were going to be with us for the holiday weekend, and she asked me if I was changing my religion. Both Mum and Dad were at my baptism, but said nothing about it afterwards.
I don’t know if I will see my parents in heaven. I hope I will. Some people keep their faith very much to themselves, and maybe they did just that. As verse 6 in John 14 above says, Jesus answered, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No-one comes to the Father except through me.”
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