from the desk of . . .
Rande Wayne Smith
D.Min., Th.M., M.Div.
Happens When We Pass? - 1
WHAT IS HEAVEN GOING TO BE LIKE?
… based on The Revelation 22:1-5
On 25 August 2026 Dolly Rebecca Parton passed.
I’ve been a fan for over 50 years, & I’m sad to think that the world no longer has one of “the good guys” to bring joy & peace & love. Now, as I said, I’m a fan, & I’ve heard on numerous occasions, her testimony, so I know where she is. And apparently lots of other people know too, because there have been Facebook posts from every spectrum of society acknowledging it.
With that in mind,
I thought it might be good for us to think about our own death.
So, what I’d like to do over these next few weeks is ponder that subject.
So, let’s begin … what is Heaven going to be like? …
I’m confident that each one of us has, at some time, asked that question.
Throughout the years I’ve overheard a # of people,
especially around funerals, offer some suggestions.
& let me tell you … there are some pretty strange ideas out there.
Somebody has said that what we believe about Heaven tells us more about ourselves than it does about Heaven. Think about that. … What we believe about Heaven tells us more about ourselves than it does about Heaven … because we’re projecting our own desires & wishes & images & perceptions. “I would like Heaven to be …. In Heaven I want to be doing ….”
That could reveal some pretty interesting things if we ever wrote down what we expected would happen in Heaven. We could learn a lot about ourselves & what is really “god” in our lives. (Luke 12:34) Many thoughts have absolutely nothing at all to do with the reality of what Jesus called Heaven.
Is Heaven like an endless Sunday? Worshiping forever & ever?
Is it a big golf course? Is it a family reunion?
A recent Harris Poll reported that 90% of Americans believe in some kind of Heaven. Now most people, when they think about Heaven, can be put into 1 of 2 groups. There are those who believe in a God-centered Heaven,
& there are those who believe in a self-centered/family centered Heaven.
(This is a heaven centered on my family & my friends.) (Matthew 10:37)
And as I’ve listened to people, the vast majority fall into this 2nd group.
And the reason for this is quite simple … most people are self-centered or family-centered here on earth. And if we’re not centered on God here … then why project anything into the future where God is concerned?
But if we live with our lives centered on God here, (Exodus 20:3)
then we’ll think in terms of God in Heaven … of seeing Jesus … & being with Him. Those who love the Lord long to go to Heaven because Jesus is there.
So, we can imagine that people who don’t know much about God, or could care less, aren’t very excited to think about Heaven, let alone, want to go there.
The Apostle Paul was certainly thrilled at the prospect of it. He said, “I want very much to leave this life & be with Christ, which is a far better thing.” (Philippians 1:23)
Now he was writing to new believers, so he added …“For your sake,
it’s probably more important that I remain alive, but … if you’re asking me personally, I think it’s far better to be with Jesus. And I can’t wait!”
What does he mean … “far better”? Far better than anything that this world can offer us. Paul believed that because he was God-centered.
“For what is life? To me, it is Christ. Death, then, will bring more.”
(Philippians 1:21)
A heaven that has nothing to do with Jesus
is a heaven of a person’s own imagining.
And that has nothing at all to do with the Heaven that Scripture describes.
For the Heaven that we read about in the Bible is centered on the Lamb who was slain … & the worship of God Almighty, & His Son, Jesus Christ.
(The Revelation 5:12)
Jesus said to His followers, “I am going to prepare a place for you. …
And after I go & prepare a place for you, I will come back & take you
to myself, so that you will be where I am.” (John 14:2-3)
Jesus & us. Us & Jesus. That’s what Heaven is all about.
Heaven is a prepared place. Jesus describes it as getting a room ready
for us. Jesus is preparing a room for me in His Heavenly Home!
So, listen now to Good News, as recorded by John ofhis revelation from God on the island of Patmos, to us herein Brown County.
Within our hearing comes the Word of the Lord …
The angel also showed me the river of the water oflife, sparkling like crystal, and coming from the throne of God and of the Lamb and flowing down the middle of the city’s street. On each side of the river was the tree of life, which bears fruit twelve times a year, once each month; and its leaves are for the healing of the nations. Nothing that is under God’s curse will be found in the city.
The throne of God and of the Lamb will be in the city, and his servants will worship him. They will see his face, and his name will be written on their foreheads. There shall be no more night, and they will not need lamps or sunlight, because the Lord God will be their light, and they will rule as kings forever and ever. (The Revelation 22:1-5)
Jesus said … “Happy are those who hear
the word of God & obey it!” (Luke 11:28)
May the Lord grant that we may engage in contemplatingthe mysteries of His Heavenly wisdom with really increasing devotion, to His glory and to our edification. Amen
There are other passages in Scripture that describe Heaven,
but this is a great one.
I would love to have been standing behind John’s shoulder as God opened the door of Heaven … & peaked inside. I try to imagine what He saw.
Well, that’s what the Scriptures allow us to do here.
Heaven is not only a prepared place; it’s a pretty place.
John gazes upon this scene, & then struggles to try to describe it for us …
the fruit, the river, the combination of colors, the limitless perfect harmony of everything he sees … we just have to let our imagination run wild.
Heaven will be an incredibly beautiful place.
As I was driving past the overlook to get here this morning,
I thought of how beautiful that will be next month when the leaves turn.
People will come from all over to take in that view. Scripture describes Heaven with a myriad of colors, many we have never seen or even imagined.
Heaven will be an awesome place to gaze at.
It’ll also be a place of plenty. 2/3’s of our world is malnourished. We sit here with our stomachs full, whilebillions of people endure a compulsory fast. Well, Heaven, as it’s described here, will be a place of plenty. With trees that symbolically bear different kinds of fruit to satisfy our hunger.
Scripture teaches that those who live there shall hunger no more.
(The Revelation 7:16)
And there will be pure water, living fountains of water.
Again, we simply turn our facets on & expect that.
And if it isn’t pure we’re on the phone to complain.
But most of the world doesn’t have the opportunity to drink pure water.
I have a friend, Dave Carwell, who is a missionary in Haiti.
He’s told me how people in Haiti bath in the same water that is drawn to drink … & do everything else in it as well. He described a manhole in the street where people went to draw water. It was a sewer! Are you visualizing this? Here’s a hole in the ground in the middle of the street where people go & get water to cook, bath, & drink. And we think, “that’s absolutely gross” … & it is. But that’s our world. So, no wonder John describes clear,
crystal, pure water … the river of life. And for many in ourworld …
that’s something to really look forward to.
½ of the world needs to know that when they get to Heaven, they will have pure water to drink. They will be satisfied. (John 4:14) They will be experiencing something that absolutely defies their imagination because … they’ve never known anything like it here on earth. That’s Heaven! If defies our imagination because we have nothing we can possibly compare it to.
It’s a pretty place. It’s a place of plenty, of satisfaction.
Heaven is a place that is permanent. It’s builder & maker is God.
(The Psalms 146:6) There’s a stability about Heaven … or it wouldn’t be Heaven.
What I also love about this passage is that it describes all kinds of things that I don’t like to do down here that I won’t have to do up there.
I hate keeping track of my keys. I won’t have to lock upthe house anymore.
I must do it here because we have crime & violence. We have to lock our homes, our cars. We must lock the Church! In Heaven we won’t have to lock up anything. We won’t have to lock our room in the mansion.
We can leave our rooms open because there will be no crime.
We will never be attacked. Every woman who has ever been raped shall never be raped again. She will never be abused. She’ll never be robbed or mugged. (FYI … here’s another difference between us & Islam.) Muslims have doubts about women even being in Heaven, except for the wide-eyed whores or maidens who will be present for man’s pleasure.
We won’t hurt each other either anymore … physically, mentally, emotionally, financially, relationally. We won’t be putting each other down,
because there won’t be any sin. …
(Now this is where the Baptists say “Amen!”) … This is good stuff!
In fact, Scripture reports that nothing that is defiled will enter in. (1 John 3:2) Think of the Garden of Eden, & multiply it by a million billion trillion …
& that’s Heaven.
We won’t pay health insurance anymore. We won’t lose our hair because of chemotherapy anymore. We won’t have a bad back anymore.
We will never have another toothache or a splinter. No more aches & pains. No more medicine!
We won’t do all the things that have come to us as a matter of course because we live in a sin-sick universe … because there was a fall,
& the world itself fell with the sin of humanity. (Romans 8:21)
We won’t commit anyone to a hole in the ground anymore.
All the funeral directors will be out of work. And so will us preachers.
And so will the medical Drs. There won’t be any hospitals or sickness or death. (The Revelation 21:4) We won’t say “goodbye” anymore. We won’t be lonely.
All of that is in the final chapters of The Revelation.
But above all … we will see God’s face. On the last night of His earthly life Jesus prayed for us. “I’m praying not only for my disciples, but also for those who will believe in me because of their message.” (John 17:20) You understand, He was praying for us, & everyone else who has come to faith because of the witness of the disciples down through the ages.
What did Jesus pray for us?
“I want them (us) to be with me where I am, so that they (we) may see my glory.” (John 17:24) Imagine what that’s going to be like!
I love the song, “We Shall Behold Him.” Listen to the words as Laura sings it.
The sky shall unfold … Preparing His entrance
The stars shall applaud Him … With thunders of praise
The sweet light in His eyes, shall enhance those awaiting
And we shall behold Him, then face to face
We shall behold Him, we shall behold Him … Face to face in all of His glory
We shall behold Him, yes we shall behold Him … Face to face, our Savior & Lord
The angel shall sound, the shout of His coming
The sleeping shall rise, from their slumbering place
And those who remained, shall be changed in a moment
And we shall behold Him, then face to face
We shall behold Him, o yes we shall behold Him … Face to face in all of His glory
We shall behold Him, o yes we shall behold Him
Face to face, My Savior & Lord … We shall behold Him, our Savior & Lord
I love Roman history, & so 1 of the places I wanted to see when we were in England was Hadrian’s Wall. This is a stone wall that goes across northern England that the Romans built in A.D. 122 to keep out the barbarians from the north, i.e. Scotland.
So, we saw that & the Roman fort at Corbridge.
Now I’m walking through this fort that was built 1,900 years ago, & at one point I just sat down & gawked at it for 15 minutes. I was enthralled by a bunch of stones, for Heaven’s sake! I can imagine my 1st year in Heaven, just sitting there gazing at Jesus! We will behold His face! We will be eternally occupied. We’re not going to be on fluffy clouds playing harps.
There will be work to do, & we’ll talk about that in the coming weeks.
What we need to know now is that Heaven will be far, far,
far better than anything we’ve ever experienced here on earth.
And that’s something we’ve got to begin recognizing at funerals.
If the person who passed was a believer … they’re not in a worse place …
they are in a far, far, far better place.
And once we accept that it’s better for them, & if we truly love them
(1 Corinthians 13:4-6) … then that’s where the comfort & healing begins.
So, how do we enter Heaven? Well, Scripture teaches that there are gates,
many gates. John, in fact, sees 12. (The Revelation 12:12)Multiple entrances leading into Heaven … in the sense that people “from every race, tribe,
nation, & language” (The Revelation 7:9) (not every religion) … will be there.
People from the 4 corners of the world (Luke 13:29)
will enter Heaven through these 12 gates.
John witnesses this. The gates are described as pearls. (The Revelation 21:21) (This is where we get the idea of “pearly gates” by the way.)
And these openings cannot be gatecrashed. We cannot demand an entrance.
We cannot buy our way in. We cannot push our way in. There’s no chance that we can force our way into Heaven by anything good we have ever done,
by the times we’ve come to worship, by the amount we’ve read in the Bible, by the prayers that we’ve prayed, by money we’ve given. (Ephesians 2:8-9)
None of that is going to make the gates fly open for us.
Jesus’ blood, shed on the cross, is what it takes. (Ephesians 1:7)
God’s hand is on the latch, & we depend totally on Him to open the door.
When our time comes, we can know that our place
has been purchased if we’ve come to faith. (The Acts 16:31)
That’s why Jesus came to earth.
What did John the baptizer say when he 1st saw Jesus?
“The Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world!”(John 1:29)
So, Heaven’s a pretty place, a pleasing place, a place of plenty,
a permanent place, & it’s prepared by Jesus for those who’ve been purchased by His blood. Again, the words of the Apostle Paul …
“For what is life? To me, it is Christ. Death, then, will bring more.”
I’ve shared with you my experience with my Mom when she passed.
I was holding her hand & Jesus came. (John 14:3) She was “born” by death into a whole new experience … more real than this one.
This is the “dream” right now, & one day we’re going to “wake up” to reality.
The act of dying itself is a terrible thing, a dreadful thing. (1 Corinthians 15:26)
But we can endure the pain if we truly believe that death is the process to being “born” into eternity … which is a far, far, far better thing.
One of the neat things that many hospitals have started doing is over the loudspeaker play a lullaby tune when a baby is born. It’s a reminder that in the midst of whatever pain & suffering is going on in other parts of the hospital, there is joy & new life. There have been times when I’ve been with someone in their final moments of life, & I’ve thought that the tune “I’ll Fly Away” should be played when they pass reminding everyone in the hospital that someone has just been “born” into Heaven & eternal life.
I thought as I was preparing this message, how presumptuous I was even with the title … “What Is Heaven Going To Be Like?”
How can I possibly even begin to imagine this awesome place?
Heaven is a little bit like twins in a womb, & one of them gets born & the other isn’t born yet. And the one who is born tries to describe what it’s like to the one who hasn’t been born. Impossible … right?
“It’s wonderful! I’m breathing with lungs!”
“What do you mean … breathing with lungs?”
“And it’s all light!” “What do you mean … all light?”
“And there are people like me, only all grownup here!”
“What do you mean … people like you?”
It’s impossible, & yet we try. Heaven is the other side of the tunnel.
And when we get there, we will find all the people who have loved Jesus.
The Apostle Paul writes, “We know that as long as we are living in these bodies, we are living away from the Lord.” (2 Corinthians 5:6)
I remember exactly when the reality of that statement hit home to me.
Actually, it was one of the building blocks in my own pilgrimage of coming to faith. I was 12-years-old & I saw Denny Brown’s dead body.
Denny had been sitting right beside me in S.S.
And we were behaving like any 2 12-year-old boys. Laughing. Joking.
Fooling around. 2 hours later he was killed in a car accident. 12-years-old!
And as I stood there at Robinson & Lytle Funeral Home & looked at his dead body, with the Bible he had received in our Confirmation Class, lying across his chest, I realized that Denny was no longer living in the “casing” that lay in that casket.
So, where was he? Where did Denny go? Paul writes, “We know that as long as we are living in these bodies, we are living away from the Lord.”
Well, if he was no longer living in that body … he must now be living with the Lord. What comfort there is if we’re truly certain of that reality!
I remember when my Dad passed, & at the wake I wasstanding next to my Mom, holding her hand. And for the 1st time, I guess, was exposed to the incredible things that people say when they come & look into a casket …
mainly because they don’t know what to say. So instead of not saying anything, which is what people should do, they say something stupid.
Well, one lady came & looked down at my Dad & said …
“there he is, there he is, there he is.”
And my Mom looked at me, & looked into the casket,
& looked at this lady, & said … “there he isn’t!”
I’ll never forget that. My Mom said to this lady,
“If I truly believed that ‘there he is’ … I’d be gone. No, he’s with Jesus.”
My Mom believed that Jesus Christ was the resurrection & the life (John 11:25) for her husband.
The word that’s used, “Stop making my Father’s house(οἶκον) a marketplace!” (John 2:16) when Jesus cleared the Temple, is the same word that He uses when He says, “There are many rooms in my Father’s house.”
(John 14:2) Jesus is using the image of the Temple,
which is also found in The Revelation, as a picture of Heaven.
Heaven is like the Temple. The earthly Temple when it was built had many courts & chambers & walkways. And no matter how many worshippers were there … it was never crowded. There was room for everyone.
That represents, in a tiny way, the spaciousness of our Heavenly home.
And when our spirit leaves this body … that’s where we’re going.
Jesus assured the criminal on the cross,
“I promise you that today you will be in Paradise with me.”(Luke 23:42)
Physically we may be unconscious, but we never stop being spiritually alive. And the spirit that is safe in the hands of Jesus Christ is safe indeed.
(The Psalms 121:7)
Heaven is a people place, & the follower of Jesus will be with Christ,
& with everyone else who loves Him.
What is Heaven going to be like? Close your eyes, & visualize this …
Then the angel showed me the river of the water of life, as clear as crystal, flowing from the throne of God & of the Lamb down the middle of the great street of the city. On each side of the river stood the tree of life,
bearing 12 crops of fruit, yielding its fruit every month.
And the leaves of the tree are for the healing of the nations. No longer will there be any curse. The throne of God & of the Lamb will be in the city,
& his servants will serve him. They will see his face, & his name will be on their foreheads. There will be no more night. They will not need the light of a lamp or the light of the sun, for the Lord God will give them light.
And they will reign forever & ever.
MARANA THA
