BY DR JOHN DUNCAN.
PAUL’S mansion and the Philippian jailor’s mansion are in the same Father’s house—they are not the same mansion. The administration of the progress corresponds with the administration of the completion; and then the completion corresponds with the arrangements on both sides—the above and below. There is therefore one mansion for Paul, who was in labours more abundant—and another for the Philippian jailor. Christ has a mansion for Zaccheus. He got ready a mansion for Zaccheus. And He got ready a mansion, and a peculiar mansion, for that man who was His solitary witness, when all had forsaken Him, and Peter had denied Him. What that mansion is I know not—the mansion arranged of the Father, administered by the Son. That man did a peculiar service—
no man did what that thief did but himself—there is a mansion for him corresponding. And every one will see that his mansion is his prepared mansion—while we who deserve another and a worse, may well be contented to be in that house at all. Well, then, when the mansions are all ready, and the people all ready for the mansions, then comes the end, then Jesus comes again—these two things must go together. When the last elect sinner is gathered in and the last saint fitted for his mansion, for his peculiar mansion—not merely to go to the Father’s house, but to that mansion which the divine arrangement has made—then He comes, then all is ready for His coming again. We sometimes say, in our short-sightedness, that as soon as a man is converted he is ready for heaven. In a sense, it is true. But he is perhaps not ready; nay, if he does not die when he is converted, we may be sure he is not ready yet for his mansion. There is much to do ere he goes to the Father’s house—both in what the Lord has to do in preparing him, and in what He has to do in order to the new state of things in the arranged mansion—and he cannot go yet. He both belongs to the Father’s house, and in the distribution of it has a prepared mansion, and is prepared for that mansion. So he lives on earth—either remains till he dies, or remains till he is changed; and when he is ready for the mansion, then is also the mansion ready for him. He was in the family, he was being prepared for the prepared mansion; when Christ presents him before the Father as one of His children, He presents him as one of the chosen for this place in the Father’s house. And in virtue of his intervention and intercession it was—they together flowed forth in preparing him for this precise mansion.—(Rich Gleanings from “Rabbi” Duncan, pp. 403, 4).