Heaven

by Robert Bolton
(Continued from page 8)

The Saints in Heaven

Let us next consider the saints in heaven; and first, the beauty and blessedness of their glorified bodies. I do not here curiously inquire whether the glory of the body doth spring from the blessedness of the soul by a constant influence, or whether its excellent endowments are implanted immediately by the hand of God; but sure I am that the bodies of the saints shall be made like the glorious body of Christ (Phil. 3:21). And this is honour and happiness enough, inexplicably, supereminently!

But certainly, we shall not suffer from want of meat, drink or marriage; for we shall hunger no more, neither thirst any more (Rev. 7:16), and shall be like the angels of God (Matt. 22:30). Nor shall we suffer from want of sleep or medicine; for living by the all-sufficient Spirit of God, who never needs refreshing, we shall know no weariness, and shall enjoy perpetual impregnable health. Neither shall we suffer from want of dress; for we shall be clothed in long white robes of immortality (Rev. 7:9), which can never wear out, and shall be adorned with our own resplendent majestical brightness. Neither shall we suffer from want of the sun; for our God shall be our glory, and our everlasting light (Isa. 60:19). Indeed, we shall not suffer from want of anything; for God shall be unto us All in All (1 Cor. 15:28).

Besides their freedom from all defects and diseases, infirmities and deformities, ills, pains and miseries, our bodies shall be gloriously crowned with many positive and high, heavenly endowments.

1. They shall be immortal (1 Cor. 15:54). Glorified bodies can never die. They shall last as long as God Himself, and run parallel with the long line of eternity. In this respect, our condition will be a thousand times more happy and glorious than if we had stood with Adam in his innocence. We shall shine forever in the highest heavens with no possibility of perishing.

2. They shall be incorruptible (1 Cor. 15:42). Every glorified body shall forever be utterly impassible, and unimpressionable with any corrupting quality, action or alteration. And this will be from an exact subjection of the body to the soul, as of the soul to God. The testimony of God’s never-erring Spirit, in the text cited, is more than sufficient to assure every Christian heart that our raised bodies, re-formed by the almighty glorious hand of God, shall never more be exposed to violence or hurt from any external agent, nor become liable to the least disposition towards any inward decay, putrefaction or dissolution.

3. They shall be strong (1 Cor. 15:43). The substance of our souls is immaterial, like the angels of God, one of whom killed 185,000 in one night (2 Kings 19:35). But little know we, now that their excellency is dulled by sin, what strength they had originally in Adam. But when to the soul’s native strength there is added a glorifying vigour, and the plentiful inhabitation of God’s mighty Spirit, and a re-formed body which brings with it a serviceableness and sufficiency exactly apportioned to the soul’s highest abilities, how incredibly powerful shall a saint in heaven be!

4. They shall be spiritual (1 Cor. 15:44) — not that our bodies shall be turned into spirits, but they shall be employed spiritually; first, because they shall be fully possessed with the Spirit, who dwelling primarily and above measure in Christ our Head, is communicated from Him to us His members, so that then we shall no longer live by our former natural helps, but shall be spiritual and heavenly, like the angels; second, because they shall in all things become subject to the Spirit of God, and be wholly, perfectly and willingly guided by Him, with a spiritual, angelic, most absolute and free obedience. ‘As the spirit serving the flesh may not unfitly be called carnal,’ saith Augustine, ‘so the body obedient to the soul is rightly termed spiritual’; third, by reason of their nimbleness or agility, they shall be able to move from place to place with incredible swiftness, not being at all hindered by their weight. The body will be in an incredibly short time where the soul would have it be!

5. They shall be glorious (1 Cor. 15:43). The bodies of the saints in heaven shall be surpassingly beautiful, shining and amiable. Three things, according to Augustine, constitute beauty: a due and comely proportion of congruent symmetry; amiableness of colour; and a lively, lightsome aspect. All these concur eminently in glorified bodies: they shall be beautified by God’s own blessed almighty hand with the utmost of created comeliness and matchless proportion; they shall possess the sweetest mixture of the liveliest colours; and they shall be preserved in perpetual freshness, being continually quickened with new supplies of heavenly vigour by a more glorious soul and by the infinitely more glorious Spirit of God, who shall plentifully dwell in them forever.

Such perfection the ancient fathers likened to the brightness of the sun. ‘If we should compare,’ saith Chrysostom, ‘our future bodies even with the most glistening beams of the sun, we shall yet say nothing towards the expression of the excellency of their shining glory.’ ‘The beauty of the just in the other life,’ saith Anselm, ‘shall be equal to the glory of the sun, though seven-fold brighter than now it is.’ ‘The brightness of a glorified body,’ saith Augustine, ‘doth as far excel the sun as the sun our mortal body.’ ‘Then shall the righteous shine forth as the sun in the kingdom of their Father’ (Matt. 13:43).

But how can there be so much beauty and delight in such intense and extra-ordinary brightness?

1. The glorified eyes of the saints shall become impassible, elevated far above all mortal passibility, and fortified by a heavenly vigour to apprehend and enjoy all celestial light and glory with much ravishing contentment and inexplicable delight.

2. That omnipotent merciful hand of God which will raise our bodies out of the dust and re-form them anew, shall cause every one of our members to concur and consist in excellency. The eye shall delightfully contemplate Christ’s glorious body, the shining bodies of the saints, and the beauty of heaven; the ear shall drink up with infinite delight the vocal harmony of hallelujahs with which heaven shall be filled, and every sense shall be inebriated with all possible perfection and pleasure.

Now, if the brightness of the body shall match the light of the sun, what, do you think, will be the glory of the soul?

I would be endless if I undertook to pursue the several glories and excellencies of every faculty of the soul, and when I had done, I would have come infinitely short of expressing them to the life. I will at this time, therefore, give you a taste only, with regard to the understanding.

And that shall be extra-ordinarily and supernaturally enlarged and irradiated with the highest illuminations, largest comprehensions, and utmost extent of all possible comfortable knowledge of which such a creature is capable.

1. Human knowledge, of the arts, nature and created things, is delicious and much to be desired. Now in heaven, this kind of learning shall be fully perfected and raised to the highest pitch, so that the least and lowest of the saints there shall surpass in clear contemplation the deepest philosophers, greatest artists and most learned linguists who ever lived.

2. We shall be exactly acquainted with the causes, natures, beginnings, continuations and ends of all creatures, even the angels and our own souls.

3. We shall clearly see and comprehend the vanity and rottenness of all heresies, anti-Christian depths, Popish imposture, the very bottom of that most wicked and abhorred mystery.

4. We shall grasp the true, full and sweet meaning of all God’s blessed Book — whether Jephthah sacrificed his daughter or only consecrated her to virginity; whether Naaman was a true or unsound convert; what is the meaning of 1 Corinthians 11:10 and 15:29 — and we shall with wonderful ravishment of spirit be admitted to the sight of those sacred secrets and glorious mysteries — of the Holy Trinity; of the union of Christ’s humanity to the divine nature, and of the faithful to Christ; of the causes of God’s eternal counsel in election and reprobation; of the angels’ fall; and of the manner of the creation of the world.

5. We shall know one another; for as all comfortable knowledge shall in heaven be perfected, so our knowledge of one another, which is comfortable knowledge, shall be perfected. ‘We shall know as we are known’ (1 Cor. 13:12). And since we shall know every good thing which may increase our joy, then meeting, knowing and conversing forever with our old dear Christian friends, and all the glorious inhabitants of those sacred palaces, will mightily please and refresh us with sweetest delight. Society is not comfortable without familiar acquaintance. Be assured then, heaven shall not be wanting in the height and perfection of all glory, bliss and joy.

Nay, our minds being abundantly and beautifully illuminated with all wisdom and knowledge, we shall be enabled to know, not only those of former holy acquaintance, but also strangers, such as we never knew before, even all the faithful who ever were, are, or shall be. We shall be able to say: ‘This was Father Abraham, this King David, this the Apostle Paul; this was Luther, Calvin, Bradford; this my father, this my son, this my wife, this my pastor, this the occasioner of my conversion.’ ‘If Adam, created in the divine image, knew Eve as one taken from his body (Gen. 2:23), shall not we, being changed into the same image from glory to glory by the Spirit of the Lord, recognise his bodily features, made holy and blessed?’ (Chemnitsius). ‘By all means! Those who in future shall be filled with the Holy Spirit and wisdom . . . shall both see and recognise one another.’ (Buchanan). If the apostles who accompanied Christ in His transfiguration, being vouchsafed but a glimpse of glory, were able thereby to know Moses and Elias, whom they had never seen (Matt. 17:4), how much more shall we, being fully illuminated and perfectly glorified in heaven, know exactly all the blessed ones, though never acquainted with them on earth? Christ tells the Jews (Luke 13:28) that they shall see Abraham and Isaac and Jacob and all the prophets in the kingdom of God; they shall therefore know them. And if the rich man, being damned, is said to know Abraham and Lazarus, who were saved, at so great a distance (Luke 16:23), much more shall the glorified saints know one another, being plentifully endowed with all knowledge and supernaturally enlightened by the Holy Ghost.

Many of the ancient fathers are of the same mind. There was a widow in Augustine’s time, who, craving consolations under that incomparable cross of her widowhood, desired him to tell her whether she would know her husband in the after life. In reply, he hits upon the sweetest, mightiest and most sovereign comfort which could possibly be imagined: ‘You can by no means think yourself desolate,’ saith he, ‘who enjoy by faith the presence and possession of Jesus Christ, in the inmost closet of your heart,’ and adds: ‘This thy husband, by whose death thou art called a widow, shall be most known unto thee . . . There shall be no strangers in heaven.’ ‘There,’ saith Anselm, ‘all men shall be known by each particular man, and each particular man shall be known by all . . . Conceive, if thou canst, how comfortable that knowledge will be!’

Yet let me tell you, before I pass from this point, that we shall not know our old acquaintances by their former stature and features, neither in a worldly manner. For Paul saith: ‘Henceforth know we no man after the flesh: yea we have known Christ after the flesh, yet now henceforth know we Him no more’. (2 Cor. 5:16). Our mutual knowledge in heaven shall not be in outward and worldly respects, but divine and spiritual, as we know one another in Christ, by the illumination of the Spirit.

1. Lastly, we shall be beatifically enlightened with a clear and glorious sight of God Himself, which divines call Beatific Vision.

In a word, we shall know all things knowable.

But how shall God be known in heaven? Some say that God shall be known by a form or appearance representing the divine essence, and by a light of glory elevating the understanding with a supernatural strength. Others, that the divine essence shall be represented to the glorified understanding, not by any form, but immediately by itself, yet still with a light of glory to illumine the understanding. Still others hold that to the clear vision of God there is required only that the divine essence be immediately represented to the glorified understanding, without either form or light of glory.
But it is sufficient for a sober man to know, that in heaven we shall see Him face to face.

Meditation, on the folly of carnal people, who feed falsely their presumptuous conceptions of the world to come with golden dreams and vain hopes, in the meantime using no means and taking no pains to enter into the holy path which leads to that blessed place: O what fools are they, who willingly deprive themselves of this endless glory for a few stinking lusts! O what mad men are they, who bereave themselves of a room in this city, for a few carnal pleasures! O what beasts are they, who shut themselves out of these everlasting habitations, for a little transitory pelf! O what senseless wretches are they all, who wilfully bar themselves out of this palace of infinite pleasure, for the short fruition of worldly trash and trifles!

Meditation on the glory of heaven

O with what infinite sweetest delight may every truly gracious soul bathe itself beforehand (even in this vale of tears), in the ravishing contemplation of this most glorious place, in which he hath already an eternal blissful mansion, most certainly purchased and prepared for him by the blood of Jesus Christ! Let us therefore spend many thoughts upon it; let us enter into deep meditations of the inestimable glory of it; let us long until we come into the possession of it, even as the heir longeth for his inheritance; let us strive and strain to get into this golden city, where streets, walls, gates and all is gold; let us eagerly anticipate that confluence of all possible heavenly delights, when Jehovah, God blessed forever, shall familiarly and freely communicate Himself to us, to be beatifically seen and fully enjoyed face to face by all the elect forever!