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I once asked an old man, ‘What is heaven like?’ Someone dear to me had just died and I had stood by the graveside wondering where she might be, what she might be doing. Was she watching me as my heart ached? How could she be happy, removed from the world she once knew and yet unable to communicate?

 

I asked the old man because I thought the Bible was silent on the subject of heaven, but he disagreed; ‘The Bible tells us all we need to know about heaven,’ he assured me, and he gave me a recording of a series of lectures he had given on the subject. So I hurried home, unearthed my tape recorder, and listened with bated breath. And the old man was right, he read from the Book of the Revelation; ‘The city is as long as it is wide, about fifteen hundred miles square with walls of jasper two hundred feet thick. The city was of pure gold, as pure as glass. The foundations of its walls are decorated with every kind of precious stone. There are twelve foundations, each of semi-precious stones; amethyst, beryl, topaz, jacinth... There are twelve gates, each made of a single pearl and the Great Street of the city is of pure gold, like transparent glass.’

 

Yes, there’s lots of information, but if that’s what heaven is all about its inhabitants will quickly become bored; Western Capitalism has taught us nothing if we don’t know that gold and jewels can never satisfy the human heart. So what is heaven like? You could say that if God wanted us to know he would have told us, and he didn’t. Or did he?

 

There are those who believe that when God placed Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, that was to be their eternal home, and we all know they messed up and were unceremoniously evicted, but there’s a clue in there. In the Garden was perfect harmony, and God met with them every day as they walked and talked in the cool of the evening. But there’s one thing Eden had in common with heaven as described in the Book of the Revelation; there was something significant missing from both. John describes what he saw; the size of the place, the gemstones, the gold, the twelve gates of pearl, the Great Street of purest gold, and then he adds this; ‘... and I did not see a temple in the city, because the Lord God Almighty and the Lamb are its temple.’

 

What about that then, no religion in heaven? In Eden as in the city in John’s dream there’s no need for a system to teach us how to be God’s family, there’s no need for instruction about how to worship him, because in each, men walk with him in the cool of the evening. Isn’t that a wonderful picture of heaven? And it’s not pie-in-the-sky-when-we-die, it’s the here and now, it’s days of heaven on earth.