Scott Schuleit
You will make known to me the path of life;
in Your presence is fullness of joy;
in Your right hand there are pleasures forever.
(Psalm 16:11)
The clouds were partially dispersed, and the rain, except for a faint mizzling of mist, was gone. The moon—the ghost of its shell—could now be seen, and stars, like grains of sand reflecting its light, were slowly emerging, glinting and softly glowing, here and there, from out of a vast lavender-gray shore of twilight. Low ribbons of color still threaded the horizon, fading as one watched, dissipating into dusk.
Far beneath the darkening sky, the constellation of the city began to awaken, its inhabitants emerging from the slumber of their workweek to engage in Friday night’s revelry. At its nerve center, the city was already a maelstrom in the making, a swirling mass of desire thronged with thousands of souls. There was also—amidst this lust for activity—within a trash-littered, neon-slicked alleyway, an old Christian woman, lying on her back within a cardboard contraption.
She was clothed in rags, her gray hair in dirty wet clumps and tangles, mouth toothless and trembling, eyes shining beyond drowsy lids with a clear blue light. She brought her cold, bony hand slowly up to her face, brushing the hair away from her eyes before dropping it, exhausted. Through an opening in the roof of her shelter, she stared up at the deepening sky. As one might hold the hand of a loved one while dying, in one gnarled hand she held her tattered Bible. Verses she had read over the years and shared with others, ones that had strengthened and comforted her through various abuses and many other trials moved through her mind.
As she drew closer to the portal of death, a certain calm began to envelop her, and her breathing became faint, almost imperceptible, scarcely enough to tremble a flower’s petals. The cancer that had been gradually devouring her for years was now almost finished with its work. She was nearly there, at the end of her journey, and the beginning.
The sound of passing cars and pedestrians grew dim, receding into one vague, distant murmur of sound. The stars, already slightly hazy from the falling mist, began to pulse and gently splinter diffuse shards of light from their center, slowly expanding, darkening and blurring in her sight.
As she began to pass away, the atmosphere of earth, that dark veil, that fabric of mourning, began to gradually dissipate like mist before the molten sun. It became like an illusion, a mirage, a shadow before the greater reality of the light that was burgeoning beyond it with a glorious splendor.
The feeble efforts of her lungs’ old bellows to perpetuate the smoldering glow of her vitals gently sunk, collapsing into stillness, bearing no more breath, and her eyes, amidst the fading luster of their serenity, became fixed, centered without sight on the brightening stars, the unfurling heavens.
The veil disappeared.
A great saint, unknown by the world and the church, died.
The world continued to wheel, the nightlife of the city, cars flashing by the narrow alleyway, shadowy forms striding past, figures swarming the sidewalks, taverns and clubs in their search for excitement—for new and old sensations—in an attempt to resurrect or bury the deadness they often sensed deep inside themselves.
The body of our saint, like a robe, slipped away as she ascended into another dimension, and like a child on Christmas day acquiring the shining gift of a heart’s deepest desire, her face lit up, eyes bedazzled, as she rose into heaven’s fabulous light.
The shadow of earth had dissolved like wood-smoke in wind, a mist of breath against glass, or a raindrop dripping from a leaf after a midday storm, dropping into the upturned eye, blurring one’s vision until blinked away to behold with clarity—through a space in the leaves—mountains of cloud, edged and luminous with the sun. Earth, for all of its beauties and terrors, pitfalls and pinnacles, dark valleys and golden peaks and its ability to offer dim, flickering interludes into heaven as well as hell, became to the righteous after all those years somewhat similar to that of a dream, the wonderful chrysalis of a dream, from out of which one awakens, breaking free to flutter sunward into the deeper reality beyond the nebulous vision of what was dreamt.
Expressions of sheer, unfettered joy burst from her as she moved through the intense vibrancy—the pure beauty of perfect illumination, and already, the brief moment experienced in heaven, was far more real than the combination of all the most visceral experiences she had ever acquired on earth. This realness, the tangibility of its vivid actuality, the transition from earth to the place of heaven, could be compared to the experience of a daydream or a mythic tale dissolving before the embodiment of something far beyond it, of which the myth only whispered. It was remotely similar to the experience of one who, after hearing about an exotic locale, the words of it conjuring up vague images and sensations, makes the journey and arrives, engulfed by its beauty, immersed within its richness. She was home. She had arrived at the place where she truly belonged.
For much of her life on earth she had been homeless, a stranger—an exile, a wanderer in a thorn-rich land. Now, she was finally home, arriving after a long sojourn through harsh, hostile country. She had been translated from the streets of an earthly city—an alleyway—to the city of the living God. Earth was now like a phantom, a fading memory, a pleasant dream in comparison to the reality, the spiritual solidity, the immutable firmness of heaven. And she was only at the beginning of her never-ending journey. In one sense, it would always have the freshness of beginning for her; yet in another sense, she would always be learning, maturing into the fullness of everlasting life. Her ascent had only just begun. Ever-expanding worlds throughout all eternity awaited her discovery. She would never exhaust them all, for each imparted some measure of awareness, some facet among the infinite facets, of the perfect, peerless, resplendent jewel of the triune God’s holy nature and character.
The supernatural light in heaven is of a far superior order than the kind of light derived from any natural element in the universe. If every single source of illumination in the natural order—stars, suns, lightning, supernovas, and nebulae—were gathered and its intensity combined into a vast corporate brightness, it would not compare to the tiniest speck of light from heaven. It would be as the deepest, darkest hue of blackness, a tiny shadow of insignificance in contrast to the strength, the glory, the immensity, the power and perfect purity contained in that single ray of heaven’s light. It was a touch of this kind of luminosity that enveloped our saint. It permeated her. This light illumined her whole being, not just a portion of her inner person. Its streams suffused her soul. Laughing with joy, she was engulfed. A flicker from one fleck of this kind of light was easily capable of quickening into radiant life millions and millions of galaxies frozen in icy death, for the direct source of this light is the Creator, the Eternal One—this same God who had called the worlds out of nothingness, out of the dark void, commanding them to arise into existence, to emerge into being.
The joy that she now had was quite unlike the type of joy we experience on earth, which could be regarded as merely a foretaste, a tiny sip—if even that—of the kind of joy experienced in heaven. Within heaven, rather than lasting for merely a moment or even a prolonged period, joy was just one part, among many aspects, of the overall state of existence there and immune to dissolution in any way, a state impervious, except for the particular capacity granted to each for growth. There were moments on earth when joy pierced her and seasons when it was a fairly steady condition despite difficult circumstances, but here it was as if she had plunged into a perpetual pool of joy, its waters filling her, welling up from the Spirit of the living God inside of her, brimming into streams to join with other streams moving through other souls blending into a mighty confluence—the immensity of an unending and ever-growing river of joy flowing throughout the region of heaven.
The depths of each redeemed saint’s joyful fullness, this particular aspect of their eternal reward, is derived from several factors, including the fact that God sovereignly fashions each for a diversity of purposes and in a vast multiplicity of sizes. Each jar holds oil, but for different purposes and in different measures. Some of the jars are magnificent, others less so, but all beautiful in their way. The capacity of each heavenly vessel depends on the measure of various external and internal graces given to each and the degree to which every pilgrim had died to their own desires, taken up their cross to follow Him, abided in Christ, and undergone sanctification’s merciful, fruitful deepening of soul.
A crowd of souls, shining in their disembodied state and accompanied by angels of mighty stature, rushed with great joy to meet her. Somehow, instinctively, with enlarged understanding, she knew each of them. This was a knowing far beyond anything she had known on earth. Christian relationships on earth had been like the hull; this was the golden kernel—various circumstances on earth the acorn, the experiences here a lofty sun-crowned oak. The most casual acquaintance on earth, even if only the partner of a passing exchange, when met in heaven, became known in a spiritual way far more intimately than the two closest individuals on earth could possibly know each other. This sense of unity was transcendent and rich and full. Relationships on earth had always been darkened by sin, plagued with many problems causing divisions and occluding genuine interaction, and when wonderful had only offered a glimpse, and a very distant one at that, into the heavenly kind of communion. But now, here in heaven, our saint, with perfect (though limited) knowledge was communicating precisely the right things in precisely the right manner to render the fullest measure of edification possible to perfectly receptive participants to the utmost glory of God.
Each person in heaven somehow reflected the glory of God in a similar but different way than the others, a way particular to the unique manner in which each was fashioned. Rivers of Christ’s light coursed through each one of them, rivers of sheer joy, love, delight, and revelation—their wills completely and joyfully aligned with the will of their Lord.
She was now pure, perfectly pure, without a hint of evil, without the burden of wicked inclinations—the shadow of pernicious motivations—and she became more aware by the moment that her motivations on earth had always been a mixture of good and evil, that her most magnanimous gestures and thoughts had been, to some extent, corrupted by the flesh, by the deceitful desires of the old man. With this growing realization, she came to a deeper gratitude and wonder at God’s goodness and grace, a gratitude and wonder which would gradually increase during the everlasting summer of heaven.
Purified so, she could now both receive and give greater amount of love as the manifold and ever-ripening fruits of the Spirit grew up in abundance within her, and this love that she was now experiencing for her Lord and for others was spotless, unmarred by the flesh. She had been delivered from her body of death and soon would receive her glorified body with its various benefits. The immutable, inexhaustible source—the fountainhead—of this love was God himself, for he is love, and it could not help but flow out, moving through his people as if each one were a branching tributary, a channel to express the love of God, the understanding of which—the heights, depth, and breadth of it—would continually grow within them as they journeyed throughout eternity. This love was a humble, unmixed, bountiful extravagance, vast, vibrant, and sincere, expanding in spaciousness throughout the eternal adventure, a love that would remain undimmed and would only grow in greatness through our saint’s life as she continually strode higher and higher up the ever-ascending steeps of paradise.
One of the individuals from the crowd was a woman who had lived on the streets for a season, during which time our saint had led her to the Lord. Back on earth this woman had been filthy, diseased, and disheveled, but now she was perfect, pure, and wonderfully radiant, beaming with childlike exuberance and unfettered joy. They embraced and much was exchanged in their heavenly communication. Others embraced and surrounded our saint, individuals who had been on the receiving end of her various kindnesses, some who cited her as seeding their desire to hear more about Christianity, and others who had received great encouragement to continue in their Christian walk by witnessing the astonishing perseverance of her faith and hope despite the severe difficulty of her many trials. There were also individuals there who, though she had never actually known them on earth, had received something beneficial from her. These were souls who had enjoyed blessings from those she had blessed, and there were also those who had received blessings from others who were the recipients of benefits showered on them from others still who had bestowed these benefits due to direct contact with our saint. All this was just one leaf within the fragrant forest of her good works, only a small portion of the branching, blossoming, arboreal splendor of her righteous deeds. As the crowd welcomed our saint, cheering in their love and respect for her, more people began arriving, moving towards this one who had—at times, unwittingly—ministered to so many.
After a while, our saint and the crowds surrounding her began to move up towards the city, and as they did, she became more aware that she felt light in limb and step, her movements tireless, restful yet animated, effortless and brimming with energy, for she was in a state of profound alertness, never again to grow tired or fall asleep. Compared to the energy she currently felt and would ever feel, her most active, energized days on earth were as days of radical exhaustion, of stumbling about in a bone-weary stupor. She was now perfect and thus perfectly at rest while at the same time perfectly energized in God.
And then, suddenly, in the midst of their journey, the day had come—the hour, the moment, had arrived—for Christ to return like a thief in the night and manifest the kingdom of heaven fully upon earth. She heard the blast of a trumpet, the peal of which reverberated throughout the heavens, as she found herself shooting down to earth with millions and millions of saints and angels in a triumphal escort for the King—the King of kings and Lord of lords—as he descended with the clouds of heaven, his eyes blazing with blinding holiness, sword unsheathed and bathed in righteousness, shining with justice as he fell upon his enemies, on the unregenerate, on those who thought their sins would never find them out, sins harbored away deep in the darkness of their hearts—in the twisted labyrinth therein—sins decaying, covered with the dusts of time, souls that had gorged on the temporal, denying that such a moment would ever occur, a moment when the sky would split open from east to west and their souls, like the flinging open of gilded coffins, would be revealed, souls laid bare, adversaries consumed by the glory of Christ.
Those who had already died, including our saint, were the first to receive their glorified bodies—the rest of the saints on earth following, instantly changed, suddenly transformed, rising into the air. She slipped into her glorified body and knew a sense of completeness, that for the first time in her life she was totally complete, absolutely perfect, glorified, flawless in her uniqueness, a state that she was immediately accustomed to yet would forever enjoy in ever-increasing measure. With her new body, pleasures and sensations awoke which had previously lain dormant. Wondrous impressions impossible to imagine erupted before her, engulfing her, as joy burst from her glorified heart. The church was finally perfect! All of its members were completely unified—no divisions whatsoever! All the fractures plaguing the true church on earth had dissolved in the flicker of a moment.
The surface of the earth was burned away, scoured clean before its renewal, its transfiguration—the world seething, the heavens boiling, receding, like a million earthquakes combined into one mighty rumbling of fury. Nothing like this had ever been seen before, not even in the days of the flood.
And then the heavens and the earth started to change, transforming, transfiguring, the earth flourishing and blossoming with astonishing swiftness and splendor, flowers pluming and trees towering into the air and creeks shimmering and flowing through hills and valleys larger and steeper than anything ever seen on the previous earth. Mountains rose to staggering heights, purple and blue, their tops rising dozens and dozens of miles into the richness of a newly forming sky, a world surging up into such greatness and abundance that one fleck of its color would enliven the old earth. The sight was staggering to saints and angels alike.
The new earth was teeming with many kinds of creatures, some prehistoric, others new and never seen since the birth of time. A vast myriad of intricate, beautiful, living minutiae—things of wonder and delight—emerged, creatures to be understood and communicated with, for now in her glorified state she was capable of communicating with and understanding all of the creatures from the tiniest to the most colossal. Plains were now populous with herds as deer went bounding about fertile hills and gazelles leapt a hundred feet into the air beneath swarms of birds moving through the everlasting sky, from pterodactyls to sparrows and many other kinds, sweeping and playing with each other without a hint of estrangement amongst themselves, for in the new heavens and new earth, never again would animals kill or rend each other, nor harm man. The wolf could dwell with the lamb, and a child could handle the asp.
The celestial universe was also transformed, its planets swirling and dancing, some celestial bodies more immense than ever, moving, spinning, yielding kaleidoscopic colors throughout the beauty, the elegance of space. Comets blazed about; nebulae leapt as if suddenly budding out of the dark seedbed of the universe, beautifully enflamed with hues of emerald, sapphire, and crimson. Supernovas burned brilliantly yet would never smolder out. New constellations arose, vivid and resplendent, trembling with excitement at their birth, the new heavens and the new earth erupting with boundless beauty into a perfectly orchestrated explosion, a slowly unfurling cosmic combustion of light and color and substance.
And like a gorgeous bride prepared for her husband, the new Jerusalem, the holy city which was now complete—every one of its lavishly adorned rooms furnished—descended, lowering amidst the wonders of the new heavens down to the new earth, its massive, resplendent opulence casting brilliancies of light, new spectrums of color and luminosity, dimensions derived from the boundless reservoir of his radiance, the immeasurable loveliness of the blessed Trinity.
In her glorified body, our saint became more fully human than she had ever been before. She was now truly, gloriously, wonderfully human, more full in her humanity and individual personality than previously. And it would grow—she would ever ripen into a deeper fullness of her humanity throughout eternity.
She now held a higher capacity to receive the glorious impressions surrounding her than in her previously joyful yet disembodied existence. The pleasures of heaven became far more intense than before. She was in heaven—the focal point of pleasure—and each experience among the infinite variety conveyed in various measures different kinds of pleasure, each augmenting the others so that every singular experience along with the whole became heightened in a perpetually increasing sweetness of sensation and apprehension. Not only did she see beauty, but she also felt as if she were entering into it, into the pleasure itself, immersed. This sense sprung completely from being in Christ, for through the joy of that mystical union she felt engulfed by the universe he had created in an astonishing, wonderful, glorious way. The universe, to some degree, under God’s allowance, became her playground. Worlds upon worlds and worlds within worlds awaited her exploration, from iridescent valleys to massive mountains to clouds to nebulae to planets, comets, and supernovae.
In time, our saint was gathered back to the crowd she had been with before, and they resumed their grand procession to the city, continuing their journey with even more joy and astonishment, taking in the even greater wonders and splendor of the new heavens and the new earth. They began to move down streets of a pure, unique kind of gold. This gold was completely transparent, pulsing with the glory of God. In a sudden, spontaneous impulse, she stooped to press her hand upon the gold, and it seemed to respond to her touch with a wholly desirable sensation. The sky was a continual wonder, as was everything there—its brilliant, blazing colorful expanse a vast, sunless engulfment of pure illumination, its brightness far beyond the brightest day on earth, though without any discomfort of any kind. The perfected souls she fellowshipped with were fascinating, each expressing awareness of the character of God, friends she would spend an eternity getting to know. Angels moved over the land and sometimes leapt into the air, their wings resounding with a thunderous rush as they went to fulfill various tasks. One of the larger angels stood close by, tall as a towering tree, its wings unfurled like cathedral arcs, white robe rippling, luminous, the golden hilt of its sword gleaming, form beaming with light, face fierce and gentle.
She was beginning to become slightly more aware of the perfect simplicity-yet-complexity of the designs surrounding her, of the patterns intermeshed within the ever-unfolding vastness—the stunning richness and grandness of the overarching design of paradise. Each particle, down to the most minute, was woven flawlessly within the harmonious whole and imprinted with some semblance, some facet, that bore elegant witness to the master design. Nothing in paradise was unnecessary. Everything served a function—or a multiplicity of functions—and revealed in its glories the glories of its Creator.
One of the more simple things in heaven, a leaf for instance, would unfurl before her, unveiling, to some degree, its essence and external elements in an unfolding array—a slow, precise revelation of texture and form, imparting a kaleidoscopic awareness, for not only were her senses of touch and sight stirred but all her senses at once and something deeper within, something far beyond them, as if she were beginning to truly know the leaf. It was nearly overwhelming, the likes of which would overload one’s system on earth. It would be the impartation of simply too much reality. The ecstasy of colors and textures in fine shades and nuances, in a thousand details which would have remained unperceived by the most trained artistic eye on earth, awoke before her, exposing an undying tapestry of delight and wonder to her whole person. A thousand hues from the intense colors in the sky engulfed her. Stars revealed some of their most concealed secrets. Trees unfurled the previously shrouded mysteries of their vivid actuality. She envisioned, for a few moments, the rainbow-iridescence of a tiny beetle crawling over the vibrant, fragrant grass of this new world, and that brief experience loomed far more intensely and powerfully than all the combined aesthetic pleasures of nature she had ever experienced on earth.
Her sense of hearing was now so sensitive that she could perceive faint sounds from extraordinary distances without any pain at all. On the contrary, it was a profound delight! A whole world of sounds, once dormant, burgeoned forth: birdsong from miles away, a song she could understand and enter, relishing beneath its seeming simplicity the hidden complexities of its music. She could hear a distant waterfall as if it were nearby—its thunderous joy, its rhythmic drumming beating down against rocks. The strange, wondrous sound of clouds coalescing together called to her. Even the faint resonances from the inching of a snail and the movements of its feelers were perceptible, unfurling a unique melody, a kind of music.
She could also hear a deep undercurrent of praise emerging from every element in creation, each offering its own song, a song pulsing at the very core of their respective natures, and though each voice held its own precious peculiarity, they all blended into a perfect symphony extolling the greatness, holiness, and splendor of their Creator—the One who reigns from everlasting to everlasting. If it were possible to hear but a fraction of that heavenly chorus, that glorious song, it would render vulgar the various melodies of nature on earth, for it was music of an almost entirely different order, exceeding our capacities to take in, and a little touch would gloriously engulf with euphonious ecstasy. It was incredibly complex, yet it intermeshed and crystallized into a river of the profoundest and richest harmony.
The scents that blessed her were so magnificent that the sweetest scented flowers on earth exuded only a phantom, a faint dream of their pervasive extravagance. There were many kinds of flowers in the new heavens, some as high as a tree, canopying whole landscapes, others tiny, and the rest a diversity of shapes and sizes in between. She noticed a cluster of flowers near her that rose to her height. They had translucent, leafy emerald stems feeding huge raindrop-shaped lavender and blue petals and succulent gold stamens at their center standing amidst silken pistils, their fine filaments trembling in a heavenly breeze.
In heaven, creation’s revelation of God’s character augmented to a much greater degree than on earth her understanding of every other facet of him, and though the sight of the redeemed was perfect and pure, there was an everlasting increase in their ability to see more and more of him, for the more one experienced, the more one saw, and the more one saw, the more each singular experience deepened the other gathered experiences. Though each aspect of creation retained its special nature and individual qualities, they were all in harmony and united in their ability to impart their knowledge—indirectly unveiling treasures regarding their Creator. In one sense, the saints saw God in his unveiled beauty; in another sense, there was an infinite amount of veils to be shed, each newly lifted veil more sharply illuminating their previous experiences and knowledge. The saints were engulfed within a wondrous, joyful growth in their ability to see further and further, a process lasting throughout paradise’s perpetuity—throughout their eternal ascent higher and higher up the spice-laden mountains.
Our saint also began to taste the pleasures of the various fruits in paradise. The variety and richness of her initial discoveries in tasting the fatness of that land were nearly indescribable. On earth, it is common to generally label foods as sour, sweet, salty, or spicy, among other classifications, but here, whole new categories awoke, new dimensions of taste. The taste of one of that world’s fruits—instead of being creamy and sweet—might encompass a vast range of levels of sweetness and creaminess far beyond earthly pleasures, heightening the partaker’s perceptions so that each taste became not only a bodily experience but one that was nourishing and delicious to the whole person. Here, a second taste was not dimmed by the fact that it followed the first, as things generally go on earth, but each taste brought an increase in its wild pleasure, its profound extravagance.
Despite all the diverse grandeur of paradise, there was a kind of simplicity in the life that the inhabitants lived there. It was simple in the sense that the saints simply lived in bounty. It was natural to be immersed within prodigious pleasures. It was part of the very nature of the place, an aspect interwoven within its very fabric. Though there was a variety of things to experience and do, there was no separation in modes of living—of work and play—for all experiences were joyous, carrying with them, in varying degrees, the pleasure of simply living in the land of overwhelming abundance.
Memories rose within her and blessed her, even the seemingly bad ones. The bad memories were transfigured, for now—from the vantage point of heaven—she could see more clearly that God’s sovereign, providential hand had ordained all of her circumstances, even the difficult things that befell her. The sparks and flickers of her past understanding grew into a blaze of revelation here. She passionately thanked God for the grace to respond in godly fashion to her various trials and the occasions of his loving chastisement, for they had produced in her great perseverance and deep holiness, shaping her to influence the lives around her to the expansion of God’s kingdom and the glory of his holy name. She also discovered that these trials had been worked together to multiply her heavenly treasure, treasures not temporal but eternal, stored up where neither moth nor rust could consume, treasures waiting to be stewarded throughout a thousand forevers.
Her good memories became greater, such as the day when she was a young girl and the Lord—solely by his grace—resurrected her dead spirit into newness of life, regenerating her and enlivening her heart and giving her the gift of faith. On that day, some faithful old minister in an out-of-the-way Baptist church in New York preached with passion to the congregation, and she responded to the call of the gospel, the call to repent and trust in Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of her sins and rest in Him alone, in Christ, the Son of the living God—rather than in anyone or anything else—to the salvation of her soul and the joy of her inmost being.
One of the greatest blessings of heaven was simply the overwhelming fact of its eternality. She would be with her Lord for more than a billion eons, far more—an eternity. This reality, a joy of this magnitude, even for the glorified saint, can only be taken in (like all the other joys of paradise) gradually throughout infinity. The awesomeness of this truth will dawn upon her again and again. Eternity! Such a thought was difficult to apprehend. Like one moving over endlessly sloping hills blending into ever-rising mountains she would journey through eternity, ascending to greater blessings and revelations, her feet stirring the fathomless enchantment of those eternal hills, the immensity of mountains brimming with beauties on the way. Rather than growing cold or experiencing fatigue during this climb, the higher she climbed, the greater energy and joy she would receive and the further she would be able to see, fueling her desire to climb higher and to see even further.
And there it was, in the distance, shining with great splendor: the New Jerusalem, the heavenly city, the fulfillment of God’s promise filling our saint with incomprehensible wonder. Who can imagine the feelings, the thoughts, wheeling in the minds of the saints before such a sight? She stood in awe at its blinding incandescence and size, at the sheer, staggering magnitude of it. It was simply immense, reaching hundreds and hundreds of miles in length, width, and height. The most massive megalopolis of earth’s prior age appeared as a tiny toy city in comparison. She was overcome by how incredible, how gorgeous it was. It was simply the most amazing city ever raised, gloriously constructed by the Supreme Artist, the Master Carpenter himself. It was like an enormous, flawlessly cut diamond, radiant and clear, illuminated from within and blazing with rainbows of light, shining out and manifesting the wonder of its boundless beauty.
As swiftly as they could, the excited procession emerged into the vast, teeming center of the city—into its vaulted spaciousness—where access to the throne of God was unimpeded, its clear walls releasing stunning profusions of light, a limitless ocean of ineffable resplendency wholly derived from the presence of the almighty, triune God—from the presence of the Father on his throne, the Son at His right hand, and the Spirit of glory. Around the throne there was a rainbow colored like a brilliant emerald, and from the throne came flashes of lightning and rumblings and peals of great thunder. Flowing down through the middle of the street of that majestic city there was a river, the river of the water of life, like sparkling crystal, pure, bright, and beautiful. On either side of the river was the tree of life, a tree with twelve kinds of glorious fruit, yielding its fruit each month, its leaves for the healing of the nations. Night was banished, vanquished, and nothing accursed or defiling, in any shape or form, would ever be allowed within.
Millions upon millions of the redeemed were there in the grand diversity of their uniqueness, worshipping the Ancient of Days—the God of the living—exuberantly praising and worshipping him with their whole being. It was an innumerable multitude, a great host of souls from every nation, tongue, and tribe standing before the throne and before the Lamb, clothed in radiant white robes and waving palm branches and crying out with a loud voice “Salvation belongs to our God who sits on the throne and to the Lamb!” The four living creatures were also there, their six wings full of eyes all around and within, each of them rendering their service to the king, never ceasing to say, day or night,
“Holy, holy, holy
is the Lord God, the Almighty,
Who was and Who is
and Who is to come.”
The beatific vision: beholding the unveiled glory of God, that eternal longing, that ultimate desire within the obedient saint of which all other desires were mere shadows, that deep thirst for the reality of him—the sight of whom no one was allowed to lay eyes upon without perfect purity—that Person at the center of the saints’ hungers, that great hope, now finally, fully fulfilled.
Truly no eye has seen, nor ear heard, what God has prepared for those that love him. Beholding Him face to face, our saint now became more profoundly aware that the most severe of trials, the most difficult of circumstances and savage of persecutions against the saints, were truly as a momentary light affliction, one single sigh of sorrow amidst the refreshment of an eternally gusting wind. Every trial could now be seen in a fuller light, each circumstance taking on the hue of heaven, appearing beautiful—for they had produced great benefit in her life and in the life of the true church, to the glory of God.
All of the promises of God truly find their yes in Christ! In heaven there was no more sorrow, pain, or death! The weight of glory in heaven was tangible, spiritual, eternal, and enormous, looming in comparison to the virtually weightless, ephemeral mote of sufferings borne on earth. She stood before the boundless glory of his presence. Nothing could compare to this.
At the judgment, our saint had been given much in the way of crowns and other rewards, which she had gladly, passionately thrown at the feet of her Lord and Savior, but the greatest moment for her during that judgment, the most wondrous moment, had simply been the sound of his pronouncement: “Well done good and faithful servant.”
The voice had been thunder-strong yet tender, mixed with merriment. They were words every saint longs to hear, words of which only faint echoes reach us on earth. As a little girl she had striven for approval from her peers but had rarely received it. More often she had received rejection and a torrent of abuse. But upon hearing those words she had realized far more intensely than ever before that approval from him was ultimately, truly, all that mattered. It was an encompassing, eternal approval that could only come from him—from her Creator, from the only one who knew her completely, from the one who had predestined her before the foundation of the world, knitting her fearfully and wonderfully in her mother’s womb, weaving her with intricate care—and that longing for approval had been finally fulfilled.
Now perfect and in paradise, completely cleansed of shame and guilt, she was capable of receiving the fullness of the Father’s love and acceptance—an acceptance based solely on what his Son had done for her—relishing for all eternity his divine favor, relishing with unfettered delight forever and ever the presence of the Lover of her soul.
This essay is an adapted excerpt from a piece originally published by Reformed Perspectives Magazine.
Scott Schuleit (M.A., Knox Theological Seminary) is the Associate Pastor at North Palm Baptist Church. His poems have appeared in The Penwood Review, Christianity & Literature, Critique, and Ekstasis, and his non-fiction has been published in Tabletalk, Reformed Perspectives Magazine, and Modern Reformation. He is the author of A Pernicious Correspondence: Letters from a Devil (Prevail Press, 2021).
Image: John Martin, The Plains of Heaven