A Prospect of Heaven! # 1

A Prospect of Heaven # 1

"I do not want you to be ignorant, brethren, concerning those who have fallen asleep, lest you sorrow as others who have no hope. For if we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so God will bring with Him those who sleep in Jesus. For this we say to you by the word of the Lord, that we who are alive and remain until the coming of the Lord will by no means precede those who are asleep. For the Lord Himself will descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of an archangel, and with the trumpet of God. And the dead in Christ will rise first. Then we who are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. And thus we shall always be with the Lord. Therefore comfort one another with these words." (Thessalonians 4:13-18).

What words are these!

Herein does the apostle, by the dictate of the Holy Spirit, lay down a model or platform of consolatory arguments - as so many sovereign antidotes against immoderate sorrow for our godly relations which are departed; and with these words the apostle would have Christians to comfort themselves and one another: "Therefore comfort one another with these words!"

I will improve these:
1st, for Comfort;
2nd, for Counsel.

The words of comfort laid down by the apostle in this model may be reduced to ten heads, some of them very comprehensive, and all of them exceedingly cordial and consoling.

1st. The first word of comfort is this, namely, that our gracious relations, over whose departure we stand mourning and weeping, are but fallen asleep: "I would not have you ignorant, brethren, concerning those who are asleep." We may say of departed saints, as our Saviour said concerning the damsel (Matt. 9:24), they are not dead, but sleep; and as he spoke of Lazarus, "Our friend Lazarus sleeps." (John 11:11).

That which we call death - is not death, indeed, to the saints of God; it is but the image of death, its shadow and metaphor, death's younger brother, a mere sleep, and no more. There are two main properties of death which carry in them a lively resemblance of sleep:

1st. That sleep is nothing else but the binding up of the senses for a little time - a locking up of the doors and shutting the windows of the body for a season, so that nature may take the sweeter rest, being forced from all disturbance and distractions; sleep is but a mere parenthesis to the labors and travails of this present life.

2nd. Sleep is but a partial privation of the act of reason - not of the habit of reason. Those who sleep in the night do awake again in the morning; then the soul returns to the discharge of all her offices again, in the internal faculties to the act of judging, and discourse in the intellect; to recall things for the present and record things for future use in the memory; to its empire and command in the will; to its judicature in the conscience; so also the soul returns to the execution of her functions in the external senses - to seeing, hearing, tasting; to working with the hands, walking, and the rest. In a word, the whole man is restored again to itself, as it were, by a new creation. That which lay as senseless and useless all the night, is raised again more fresh and active in the morning!

Such as this is what we commonly call death, but with this considerable advantage - that in the interim of death the soul acts more vigorously than before, as being released from the weights and entanglements of the body.

First, it is but a longer and closer binding up of the senses, nature's long vacation. The grave is a bed wherein the body is laid to rest, with its curtains drawn close about it, that it may not be disturbed in its repose - so the Holy Spirit pleases to phrase it: "He shall enter into peace, they shall rest on their beds, each one walking in his uprightness" (Isaiah 57:2).

Death is nothing else but a writ of ease to the poor weary servants of Christ - a total cessation from all their labor of nature, sin, and affliction: "Blessed are the dead who die in the Lord, that they may rest from their labors," etc. (Rev. 14:13). While the souls of the saints rest in Abraham's bosom, their bodies sweetly rest in their beds of dust, as in a safe and consecrated dormitory. Their death is but a sleep.

Secondly. Then again, as they who sleep in the night awake in the morning, so shall the saints of God do! This heaviness may endure for a night (this night of mortality), but joy comes in the morning; in the morning of the resurrection they shall awake again. (Psalm 17:15). It will not be an everlasting night, an endless sleep; but as surely as we awake in the morning, when we have slept comfortably all night - so surely shall the saints then awake, and shall stand upon their feet, and we shall behold them again with exceeding joy.

Oh, blessed morning! How should we long and wait for that morning, more than those who watch for the dawning of the day!

~Thomas Case~

(continued with # 2)