A Prospect of Heaven # 2

A Prospect of Heaven # 2

Let this teach us to moderate our sorrow over departed Christian friends. Do we sigh and lament when any of the family are gone to bed before us, in the evening? Do we cry out, "Woe and alas! My father is fallen asleep, my mother is gone to rest, my sweet child, the delight of my eyes, has closed his eyes, the curtains are drawn about him?" Do we, I say, afflict ourselves in this case? No, surely not. Why, then, do we so here? The case is the same, only if the night is a little longer, the morning will be infinitely more joyous, making us more abundant compensation for our patience and expectation.

We call also the absence of our friends by a wrong name. We say, "My father is dead, my mother is dead, my Isaac is dead." Dead! The letter kills. Death is the most terrible of all things - the very name of it strikes a chilliness and coldness into our hearts. Let us, then, call things as God calls them, and use the notions God has suggested to us. Let us say, "My gracious parent is at rest," and behold, the terror of death will cease.

If God has clothed this horrid thing, death, with softer notions for our comfort - then let not the consolations of the Almighty be a small thing with us. O, what comfortable lives might we live, had we but the right apprehension of things, and faith to realize them! Our friends are not dead, but asleep. "Comfort one another with these words."

2nd. The next consolatory argument is, the hopeful condition of our sleeping gracious relations. Blessed be God, we are not without hope of their happiness, even while they thus sleep.

There are, indeed, those who die, and neither carry away any hope with them, nor leave any hope behind them, to their surviving relations - but "the righteous has hope in his death." 

When our gracious relations die there is hope; they are infinite gainers by their death. Sometimes they die full of hope (Job 19:25-27).

Thus, holy Paul: "Now we know that if the earthly tent we live in is destroyed, we have a building from God, an eternal house in heaven, not built by human hands. Meanwhile we groan, longing to be clothed with our heavenly dwelling, because when we are clothed, we will not be found naked. For while we are in this tent, we groan and are burdened, because we do not wish to be unclothed but to be clothed with our heavenly dwelling, so that what is mortal may be swallowed up by life" (2 Cor. 5:1-4).

Glorious triumph! Again we find him in his own name, and in the name of other his brethren and companions in tribulation, and in the kingdom and patience of Jesus Christ, marching out of the field of this world in a victorious manner, with colors flying and drums beating; and thus exulting over death as a conqueror: "Where, O death, is your victory? Where, O death is your sting? The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law. But thanks be to God! He gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ!" (1 Cor. 15:55-57).

O, the superabundant consolation of the heirs of promise! And if the departure of any of the saints of God is under a cloud, so that they are not able to express their own hopes - yet they leave behind them solid scripture evidences of their interest in God's everlasting electing love, and of their effectual calling out of the world into the kingdom and fellowship of His dear Son Jesus Christ, our Lord (Galatians 5:22, 23). Such evidences as:

their poverty of spirit;
their holy mourning for their sins;
their hungering and thirsting after righteousness;
their purity of heart, visible in the holiness of their lives;
their peaceable and peace-making dispositions;
their patience bearing of the cross;
their keeping the precepts of the word of God;
their superlative love to Christ;
their cordial love to the saints;
their contempt of the world;
their desire for Christ's appearance;
in a word, their conformity to Christ, their head.

The remembrance of these graces of the Spirit may well administer abundant matter of hope and rejoicing to surviving friends - that those relations who are fallen asleep were a people whom God has set apart for Himself, precious in His sight, honorable, and beloved by Him; a people formed for Himself, to show forth His praise, and made fit to be partakers of the inheritance of the saints in light.

They who bury their relations and their hopes together in one grave, have just cause for mourning. But with you who, upon these Scripture evidences, have good hope concerning your deceased friends, it is otherwise. You know that while you are mourning on earth - they are rejoicing in Heaven. Do not then, I beseech you, profane your scriptural hope with an unscriptural mourning; give not the world occasion to judge either yourselves to be living without faith, or your relations to have died without hope. Let your Christian moderation be known to all men, that it may be a visible testimony to all the world of God's grace in them, and of your hopes of their glory with God. Therefore comfort one another with this word also.

~Thomas Case~

(The End)