This morning, I was listening to Pandora while browsing
college stuff online. Jack Johnson’s
cover of John Lennon’s “Imagine” started playing. The song opens with, “Imagine there’s no
heaven…” and then goes on to describe a utopia that he and others dream of
without hell, poverty, religion, war, material possessions, etc. As I sat there trying to imagine this world
that Lennon is describing, I suddenly became overcome with the irony of it
all.
So imagine there’s
no Heaven. How can we imagine something
doesn’t exist when we’ve never seen it? I
think we first need to imagine what Heaven is like.
The Bible describes it as being a house in which God has
prepared many rooms for us (John 14:2, 2 Cor 5:1, Rev 21:3). If Heaven is a house big enough to fit the
Being who imagined and created the entire universe, that’s got to be a HUGE
mansion. It would put Oprah Winfrey’s
pad to shame. Just try to wrap your head
around that with me, and we’ll keep going.
Heaven is referred to as a kingdom that the adopted sons
and daughters of God will inherit (John 1:12, Hebrews 12:28, 1Thes 2:12, Eph
5:5, Luke 12:32). It also says that God
is a great King who rules over all (Psalm 47:2, Psalm 103:19). Knowing this, my imagination is now shifting
from picturing an enormous mansion to a glorious castle. If a perfect and powerful King has limited
resources and space, He is probably going to go all out in designing His home.
As far as we know for sure, no one has seen Heaven and
lived to talk about it (John 3:13).
However, a man named John was given a dream – a vision – in which he
caught a glimpse of the glory of Heaven.
He describes it as:
“Having the glory of God, its radiance like a most rare
jewel, like a jasper, clear as crystal. It
had a great, high wall, with twelve gates, and at the gates twelve angels, and
on the gates the names of the twelve tribes of the sons of Israel were inscribed—
on the east three gates, on the north three gates, on the south three gates,
and on the west three gates. And the
wall of the city had twelve foundations, and on them were the twelve names of
the twelve apostles of the Lamb.
And the one who
spoke with me had a measuring rod of gold to measure the city and its gates and
walls. The city lies foursquare, its
length the same as its width. And he
measured the city with his rod, 12,000 stadia. Its length and width and height are equal. He also measured its wall, 144 cubits by human
measurement, which is also an angel's measurement. The wall was built of jasper, while the city
was pure gold, like clear glass. The
foundations of the wall of the city were adorned with every kind of jewel. The first was jasper, the second sapphire, the
third agate, the fourth emerald, the
fifth onyx, the sixth carnelian, the seventh chrysolite, the eighth beryl, the
ninth topaz, the tenth chrysoprase, the eleventh jacinth, the twelfth amethyst.
And the twelve gates were twelve pearls,
each of the gates made of a single pearl, and the street of the city was pure
gold, like transparent glass” (Rev 21:11-21).
If you ever wanted an intricate description of what
Heaven looks like, there it is. I don’t
know about you, but this exceeded my imagination by far.
Now we just need to understand one more thing about
Heaven before we start imagining life without its existence. In Heaven there is no death, sickness, pain,
war, sadness, hunger or thirst (Rev 7:17, Rev. 21:4, Job 3:17, 2 Thess. 1:7, Luke
20:36, Rev 7:16-17). This is where I can’t
help but laugh at the song “Imagine.” In
a song that starts out saying, “Imagine there’s no Heaven,” it goes on to
describe everything that Heaven is! A
perfect, peaceful world.
I think we’re thoroughly informed at this point, so let’s
imagine. Heaven doesn’t exist. Would our world be better? Oops, forgot something. “In the beginning God created the heavens and
the earth” (Genesis 1:1). Chances are if
God didn’t create Heaven, He didn’t create the earth either.
Awkward… we just imagined ourselves out of
existence.
