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What about the pearly gates?

July 29, 2007

One of the difficulties with summarising what happens after death is the wide variety of images that are used to describe it. The difficulty is made worse by the fact that many of the passages in the Bible are not focussed on us, or what we experience.

Take the pearly gates for example. Theses gates are described in Revelation 21. There were twelve of them and they were never shut. Each gate was a single pearl, and they were set in the walls of the city (three on each side). Each wall measured about 2,200 kilometres long – about from Jakarta to Ambon (the city wall was also 2,200km high!). One presumes this is not describing what was actually there, but rather giving us a picture of perfection and magnificence (the city is a cube).

These were the walls of the holy city, the new Jerusalem, which had come down out heaven from God. So presumably it was not in heaven but on the new earth. Also the city happened to be the bride, the wife of the Lamb (all this is in Revelation 21). The bride of the Lamb also appears to be the church (in Revelation 19 the bride’s clothes are made of fine linen , which are the righteous deeds of God’s people).

And the wedding involves a wedding feast, which Jesus spoke about a number of times as an image of the blessings of being in the kingdom of God (Luke 14). Indeed the idea of a great feast occurs back in the Old Testament as well (Is 25.6ff). There are other images that describe the state of being in God’s presence. Some are taken from the picture of the Garden of Eden, with its trees and river. Some are to do with what is not there: tears, death crying, pain, evil-doers.

This whole set of images focusses on the blessings of being in the presence of God. This in fact is the main blessing. But there is another set of ideas which focus more on what will happen to us. These are mostly connected with death and resurrection. We already referred to the images in 2 Cor 5 of the putting off of the temporary tent-like body we have now and receiving instead a heavenly (solid) house to live in. In 1 Cor 15 Paul uses the image of a grain of wheat which dies but then grows into a new plant. He is saying that the body we will have in heaven is one which is suitable for heaven. And he suggests that it will be more rather than less than what we have now. More solid, more real, as CS Lewis pointed out.

So where is heaven? And do we go there? Next week

Dale

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