Reaching For Heaven

A little girl was taking an evening walk with her father. Wonderingly, she looked up at the stars and exclaimed; "Oh, Daddy, if the wrong side of heaven is so beautiful, what must the right side be!"

III. Heaven Will Be Rapture.

Two things are found in Heaven which cannot fail to make its inhabitants happy: the first is the absence of all evil; and the second is, the presence of all good. The one prevents sorrow; and the other brings fullness of joy.

It will be all joy and rapture to hear the angels song reverberate throughout the city.

It will be rapture to meet the saints of old.

It will be rapture praise our Redeemer for all eternity.

IV. Heaven Will Be Restoration.

There will be a day, for those who live right and make it to Heaven, where the blinded eyes will see, the deaf ears will hear, the muted mouth will speak, the crippled feet will run, … it will be a place of restoration!

John Bradford (1510-1555), less than five months before his death, wrote of the glories of heaven he anticipated:

I am assured that though I want here, I have riches there; though I hunger here, I shall have fullness there; though I faint here, I shall be refreshed there; and though I be accounted here as a dead man, I shall there live in perpetual glory.

Heaven is the city promised to the captives whom Christ shall make free; it is the kingdom assured to them whom Christ shall crown; there is the light that shall never go out; there is the health that shall never be impaired; there is the glory that shall never be defaced; there is the life that shall taste no death; and there is the place that passes all the world's imaginations.

There is the world that shall never decline; there is every want supplied freely without money; there is no danger, but happiness, and honor, and singing, and praise and thanksgiving unto the heavenly Jehovah, "to him that sits on the throne," "to the lamb" that here was led to the slaughter, that now "reigns" on High.

D. L. Moody gave a vivid description of Heaven when he wrote, "A city without pain, a city without sorrow, without sickness, without death. There is no darkness there. The Lamb is the light thereof. It needs no sun, it needs no moon. The paradise of Eden was as nothing compared with this one. The tempter came into Eden and triumphed, but in that city nothing that defileth shall ever enter. There will be no temper there. Think of a place where temptation cannot come. Think of a place where we will be free from sin; where pollution cannot enter, and where the righteous shall reign forever. Think of a city that is not built with hands, where the buildings do not grow old with time; a city whose inhabitants no census has numbered except the Book of Life, which is a heavenly directory. Think of a city through whose streets runs no tide of business, where no nodding hearses creep slowly with their burdens to the tomb; a city without griefs or graves, without sins or sorrows, without marriages or mournings, without births or burials; a city which glories in having Jesus for its king, angels for its guards, and whose citizens are saints!"