One main benefit of doing public talks – and something I quite look forward to – is having discussions with those in attendance when the meeting is over. Some will come up to me and say they were a student of mine decades ago, and they still recall me and some of my lectures. Or they will come and share with me that they recently lost a loved one, and so on.
Both of these things happened to me again yesterday when I gave a talk to some 80 people in Melbourne. Indeed, let me give it a plug: Lyle Shelton of Family First held his Victorian conference, and I, along with Bernie Finn, Jasmine Yuen were the speakers.
Because I am getting older, often of late when other more elderly folks come up to have a word with me, they will share stories of how a spouse or loved one recently passed, and how they are coping. I can certainly relate, with my own wife having gone to glory some 16 months ago now.
So we will often speak of things like looking forward to heaven, where we Christians will be reunited with those who have gone before. That is indeed a blessed hope for the believer. And it helps us endure the grief, suffering and pain that we may now be experiencing.
Among them I listed a modern classic by Randy Alcorn, Heaven (Tyndale House, 2004). Some of you might know that in 2011 he released another volume on heaven, but this one was a devotional featuring 50 of the best writings by Charles Spurgeon on the topic: We Shall See God: Charles Spurgeon’s Classic Devotional Thoughts on Heaven (Tyndale).
I have often penned pieces featuring quotes by Spurgeon, and I have some articles featuring quotes about heaven. I am happy to see the two combined in Alcorn’s volume, and here are just some of Spurgeon’s terrific quotes as compiled and slightly modernised by Alcorn:
From “Longing for Our Resurrection Bodies”
The body is redeemed with the precious blood of Christ. It is redeemed by a price, but it has not as yet been redeemed by power. It still lingers in the realm of bondage and is not yet brought into the glorious liberty of the children of God. Now this is the cause of our groaning and mourning, for the soul is so married to the body that when it is itself delivered from condemnation, it sighs to think that its poor friend, the body, should still be under the yoke.
Will it ever be set free? Oh my beloved, do not ask the question. This is the Christian’s brightest hope. Many believers make a mistake when they long to die and long for Heaven. Those things may be desirable, but they are not the ultimate for the saints. The saints in Heaven are perfectly free from sin and, so far as they are capable of it, are perfectly happy. But a disembodied spirit never can be perfect until it is reunited to its body.
God made man not pure spirit but body and spirit, and the spirit alone will never be content until it sees its physical frame raised to its own condition of holiness and glory.
Think not that our longings here below are not shared in by the saints in Heaven. They do not groan so far as any pain can be, but they long with greater intensity than you and I for the “adoption … the redemption of our bodies” (Romans 8:23). (pp. 26-27)
From “Seeing Our Loved Ones in Heaven”
Did you ever notice, concerning Job’s children, that when God gave him twice as much substance as he had before, he gave him only the same number of children as he formerly had? The Lord gave him twice as much gold and twice as much of all sorts of property, but he only gave him the exact number of children that he had before. Why did he not give the patriarch double the number of children as well as twice the number of cattle? Why, because God regarded his children as being Job’s still.
They were dead to Job’s eyes, but they were visible to Job’s faith. God still numbered them as part of Job’s family, and if you carefully count up how many children Job had, you will find that he had twice as many in the end as he had in the beginning! In the same way, consider your friends who are asleep in Christ as still yours—not a single one lost. (p. 55)
From “Present and Future Rest”
If God should help me to raise but one of his feeble saints on the wings of love to look within the veil and see the joys of the future, I shall be well contented to have made the joy-bells ring in one heart at least, to have set one eye flashing with joy, and to have made one spirit light with gladness. The rest of Heaven!
Here, too, on Earth, the Christian has to suffer. Here he has the aching head and the pained body. His limbs may be bruised or broken; disease may rack him with torture. He may be an afflicted one from his birth. He may have lost an eye or an ear, or he may have lost many of his powers. Or if not, being of a weakly constitution, he may have to spend most of his days and nights upon the bed of weariness.
Or if his body be sound, yet what suffering he has in his mind! Conflicts between depravity and gross temptations from the evil one, assaults of Hell, perpetual attacks of diverse kinds—from the world, the flesh, and the devil.
But in Heaven, no aching head, no weary heart. There, no palsied arm, no brow plowed with the furrows of old age. There, the lost limb shall be recovered and old age shall find itself endowed with perpetual youth. There, the infirmities of the flesh shall be left behind, given to the worm and devoured by decay.
There, they shall flit, as on the wings of angels, from pole to pole and from place to place, without weariness or anguish. There, they shall never need to lie upon the bed of rest or the bed of suffering, for day without night, with joy unflagging, they shall circle God’s throne rejoicing and ever praise him who has said, “No inhabitant will say, ‘I am sick” (Isaiah 33:24). (p. 78)
We Shall See God: Charles Spurgeon’s Classic Devotional Thoughts on Heaven (50 Daily Reflections on Eternity from the Prince of Preachers with Additional Insights from Randy Alcorn)by Alcorn, Randy (Author), Spurgeon, Charles H. (Author), Alcorn, Randy (Editor)
From “Not Just a State of Being”
When the prodigal son came back to his father, there was the preparation of the fatted calf, the music and dancing, and the gold ring and the best robe. Then what will be the preparation when we come home not as prodigals but as the bride prepared for her husband or as the beloved children, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, returning to the Father, who shall see his own image in us and rejoice over us with singing?
It is a grand place that Christ prepares for us, for never was there such a royal host as he is. It is a mansion of delights that Christ prepares, for never was there another architect with thought so magnificent as his. Never were other hands so skilled at quarrying living stones and putting them one upon another. This thought ought to cheer us much. It must be something very wonderful that Christ prepares as a suitable place for his people.
And it must be something very sweet when it is finally prepared. An honored guest cannot help observing that he is being treated with special recognition. That guest room appears newly furnished, and everything that was possible has been put there to do him honor. If you were such a guest, you would take pleasure in the fact that so much had been prepared for you. When you get to Heaven, you will be astonished to see this and that and the other joy that was prepared for you because Christ thought of you and provided just what you would most appreciate.
You will be no stranger there, beloved. You will say, “There has been over here a hand that helped me when I was in distress. There has been over here, I know, an eye that saw me when I was wandering far from God. There has been, in this place, a heart that cared for me—that very same heart that loved me and bled for me down below upon the cross. It is my Savior who has prepared this place for me!” (pp. 199-200)
From “Obtaining Promises”
And you! Saints of God, look to your noble ancestors. What a pedigree you have! Through what a host of martyrs, confessors, prophets, and apostles has our blood descended, and all these bear their testimony that not one good thing hath failed of all that the Lord God hath promised. Among them all there is no exception. Not one of them will question the truthfulness of God. They tried him on the rack, in the gloomy dungeon, and at the stake. They tried him in the Roman amphitheatre, when their bones were cracking between the jaws of lions.
They tried him in Nero’s garden, when the pitch smeared on them was flaming up, an awful sacrifice to God. They tried him when then they lay in moldy dungeons rotting or burning with fever. They tried him in the tracks of the wild goats, when they wandered about in sheepskins and goatskins, destitute, afflicted, tormented.
They tried him in the bitterness of life, and in the agonies of death, and they all say to you, “Trust in the Lord; believe in him, so shall he bring it to pass, and you shall attain the promise. Falter not, hesitate not: waver not, but with the unstaggering faith of Abraham, say, ‘He that hath promised is able also to perform,’ and thou shalt see it with your eyes and you shall eat thereof. Thou shalt have his presence and blessing in this world, and in the world to come life everlasting.” God help us so to do for Jesus’ sake. Amen. (pp. 239-240)
From “Wedding Preparations”
I should like you for a minute or two to think of that perfected church as she is described in this chapter in Revelation 21, for it is a description worthy of the most profound study. What glory will surround the risen saints in their role in the city of God: “having the glory of God,” saith the eleventh verse. What a glory of glories is this! Even now, my brothers and sisters, you who are in Christ possess the grace of God, but you shall by and by conspicuously shine with the glory of God.
At present you share in the dishonor which falls on your Master and his cause among a wicked generation, but then you shall share in the glory which is the reward of the anguish of his soul. “Then the righteous will shine forth as the sun in the kingdom of their Father” (Matthew 13:43).
How glorious will that church be whose light shall be the presence of God himself — light in which the nations of the redeemed shall rejoice. Oh my God, write my name among them! And to that end, write me among the persecuted saints below. We should be content to endure what little of shame shall come upon the active church on Earth if we may participate in the honor of the church glorified above, for this is an excellent glory.
What a church will that church of God be in those happier days! We watch the church of God sometimes with trepidation and alarm, for though we know that the gates of Hell shall not prevail against her, yet her feebleness makes the timid tremble. But in her state after the Resurrection there shall remain no signs of feebleness, for that which was sown in weakness shall be raised in power. She shall be a city the like of which has never been beheld, whose foundation shall be deeper than the depths beneath, and whose towers shall reach above the clouds.
No institution shall exist so long or flourish so abundantly as the church of the living God…. (pp. 250-251)
