We often wonder about heaven.  But I will tell you, Brethren, what I believe about it.  I do believe in my very soul that every Christian man, after the death of his body, finds himself in the very heaven he takes with him from this world; and that every man’s heaven is the LOVE and the TRUTH that abound in his mind and heart.  If his heart is filled with love to God and to his brother, and his mind stored with the truth of God as revealed in his Son Jesus Christ, that man’s heaven is in him.  Do you remember, Brethren, that when Jesus was on earth he said that he was also at the same time in heaven?  Now let me show you this.  He says to Nicodemus:  “No man hath ascended to heaven, but he that came down from heaven, even the Son of man WHICH IS IN HEAVEN.”  John 3:13.

And right here a difficulty confronts us which we must try to settle.  Did not Elijah ascend to heaven?  How about Moses?  These two redeemed saints were both of them in heaven at the very time our Lord said this to Nicodemus.  Very shortly after this conversation they made their appearance, not only to Jesus, but to Peter and James and John on the holy mount in glory.  How had they gotten there?  I will tell you just what I think our Lord meant.  He meant to teach that stupid, materialistic Nicodemus that people do not go to heaven by merely ascending, like as one would ascend or go up from a lower room in a building to a higher one.  He meant to teach him that heaven must be in the man, inwrought into his character and life.  This follows in perfect harmony with what he had just before told him about the new birth and a change of heart.  “That which is born of the flesh is flesh,” and nothing more.  But Paul says:  “Ye are not in the flesh, but in the spirit, if so be that the Spirit of God dwell in you.”  Elijah had not really ascended.  The Lord just took him up as he had taken Enoch many years before.  He was in heaven whilst on earth, just as Jesus was.  The only change he underwent in his departure from this world was a change in the relations of his state.  While here his state was a heavenly state, but surrounded by earthly things.  After his departure from earth his state was the same; but his surroundings were heavenly, and he could feel at home.

THE ANGELS.

No wonder, Brethren, that the angels desire to look into these things.  Some very good and wise men are of the opinion that all the angels of heaven are none other than saints redeemed from the earth.  How this may be I do not know; but some things that the Bible says about angels seem to favor this conclusion.  The main thing in this direction is the deep interest they have always felt, and the active part they have always taken in the things of man’s salvation.  Paul covers this whole ground by a single sweep of his pen.  “Are they not all,” says he, “ministering spirits, sent forth to minister for them who shall be heirs of salvation?” Of course he means by the heirs of salvation those still tabernacling in the flesh, and still exposed to the ups and downs of the waves of life.