The Beauty Of Heaven Series

Among the world's famous short stories is the one called, The Lost

Words Of Love, by the French writer, Mendes. It is the fascinating tale of

how an evil spirit sought to ruin man by stealing three words out of his

vocabulary. The three words were, I love you. The spirit succeeded in this

vicious vocabulary vanishing trick, and the results were tragic. Friends

drifted apart, couples broke up, and quarreling and depression spread like a

plague. People stopped singing, poets stopped writing, and it appeared that

hell on earth would soon be a reality. The story ends happily, however,

because the spirit himself falls in love, and the world recovers the lost

words of love.

It may sound weird, but it does have a message of profound truth. For

if you destroy man's love he is as good as in hell, and without love there

can be no heaven. In verse 8, John lists for us those who are excluded from

heaven and cast into the lake of fire. They are all products of hatred.

They hate God, and do not believe; they hate man and thus they murder; they

hate what is pure, and thus they pollute and corrupt the beauty of human

love; they hate the truth and thus they are habitual liars. Hatred on earth

is the beginning of hell, just as love on earth is the beginning of heaven.

Love and hate--heaven and hell, are almost parallel phrases.

The ugliness of hate is what will determine the environment of hell.

Earl Panzram murdered 23 people, and was executed in 1930. His last words

were, "I wish the whole human race had one neck and I had my hands around

it." God will cleanse the new heaven and the new earth of all such hate.

The world itself will be cleansed by fire, and all that blots the beauty of

God's creation will be eliminated. Love only, will be allowed in heaven,

and they result will be beauty beyond our wildest dreams. Love will reign

supreme and no evil spirit will be able to rob men of it. D. L. Moody

recognized the connection of love and beauty in heaven. He wrote, "Heaven

is the only place where the conditions of love can be fulfilled." Then he

quotes the poet-

Beyond these chilling winds and gloomy skies;

Beyond death's cloudy portal,

There is a land where beauty never dies-

Where love becomes immortal.

Heaven began in the beauty of God's love. John 3:16 begins with God's

love, and ends with God's heaven--everlasting life. In between is the gift

that links us to both His love and His heaven--God's Son. He is the source

of all that is beautiful in both time and eternity. Just looking at the

beauty of this fallen and this sin stained world, is enough to make us

marvel at what the beauty of heaven must be. Someone looking up at the

stars said, "If the suburbs are so beautiful, how beautiful the city of

heaven must be. All of our enjoyment of the beauty of this world is a mere

faction of the creative work of God. Much is never seen by anyone.

Full many a gem of purest ray serene

The dark, unfathomed caves of ocean bear;

Full many a flower is born to blush unseen

And waste it's fragrance on the desert air.

Since we know this to be true, we know by God's own handiwork that He

is a lover of beauty. This means, even if the Bible had nothing in it about

heaven, we would still know that James Montgomery spoke true theology when

he wrote--

If God hath made this world so fair,

Where sin and death abound,

How beautiful, beyond compare

Will paradise be found!

The Bible tells us much about the beauty of heaven. John was caught up

to see it for himself, and he tells us much of what he saw. First of all,

he compares the holy city to a bride in verse 9. Back in verse 2 he had

stressed the beauty of the bride by saying she was adorned for her husband.

The bride adorned is the universal symbol of beauty. She represents not

only the beauty of love, but the beauty of the physical. Her gorgeous gown

and magnificent jewelry set her apart as the object of adoration.

All commentators agree that the bride represents the church in it's

ideal state. This being the case, the beauty of this heavenly bride is

relevant to all believers. They will be a part of the beauty of heaven just

as the lost will be a part of the ugliness of hell. The eternal destiny of

all men is either beauty or ugliness. It is safe to say that every

Christian will be eternally beautiful. The Bride of Christ will be without