Beyond the Mountain-Top

Dear friends, what wonder is this!  Never forget what it’s like to be raised to life�"the exhilaration as we open our eyes, blink, sit up, and then stand for the first time.  Always remember what it’s like to be given breath�"the burden that’s lifted as the pressure is relieved, letting our mouths and noses pull air into stale lungs that hadn’t breathed before.  Keep in mind that we are fulfilled in the Spirit with a satisfaction so great that we need nothing else, for if He has given us our very lives, what more could we search for outside of Him?  Our God has done all these things!  He has raised us to life, breathed air into our stale lungs, and satisfied us beyond what we could ever ask for.  Dear friends, are you not full?  Are you not bursting?

          Yet this joy we share now is only a glimpse of what is still to come!  Oh, the wonders there have been and will yet be!  I could rejoice forever�"and to think that soon I actually will!  Our God has spoken, for He will open our graves and bring us up from them.  We will know that He is the Lord and that we are His people, for He will dwell with us in our own land.  Oh friends, companions on my journey, smile with me!  Be glad, for there is Life and Light.  There is Hope and Healing.  There is Love and Liberty.  

          Can’t you feel it?  Don’t you know?  We are free now.  After all this darkness, after all this pain, we can finally let go of our guilt and sin and shame.  Here on top of the mountain, Jesus Christ has come!  We are undone, for Love has won!  Let our songs be of worship and praise.  No longer must we lament, for the God of Angel Armies has rescued us.  He heard our cries and has saved us.  And even beyond the mountaintop, there awaits us a glory and splendor that no man or power can take.  We will dwell in the Holy City with our God, and He will dwell with us.  We will be His people, and God Himself will be our God!

          He will wipe every tear from our eyes.  There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain!  For the old way of things is gone�"never to return again.  Christ is making everything new!  He who is the Alpha and Omega, the Beginning and the End, is renewing and restoring us till we stand perfect before our Father on that glorious day when all is finished.  He will freely quench our thirst with His living water that flows from the spring of life.  We will inherit this, for we are victorious through Him.  He is our Father, and we are His children!

          That city will be a square, as long as it is wide.  It will be seven hundred and seven hundred miles long and high and wide, made of pure gold like pure glass.  Its wall will be a hundred and a hundred feet thick, made of jasper�"and there will be decorations of every kind of precious stone.  The foundations of the wall will be adorned, the first with jasper, the second sapphire, and then agate, emerald, onyx, ruby, chrysolite, beryl, topaz, turquoise, jacinth, and amethyst.  Twelve pearls will make the twelve gates, each one made from a single pearl.  The great street of our city will be made of gold, as pure as transparent glass.

          In that new city, that Holy Place, there will be no need for a temple.  The Lord will dwell with us, and we with Him.  We will have no need for sun or moon or star, for the glory of God will shine its light everywhere.  The gates to the city will never shut, because there will be no night there.  Nothing impure will enter it, and it will be free from all wickedness and evil.  Those whose names are written in the Lamb’s Book of Life will dwell in that city, in the midst of pure glory forevermore.  Death will have no victory, and we will not feel its sting!  Great thanks be to God our Father!  He has given us victory through Christ our Life, so that we do not love our lives so much as to shrink from death.  Instead we will overcome by the blood of the Lamb and the Word of our testimony!

          Oh dear friends, set your hearts on these good and pure and lovely things.  We dwell with in the midst of glory now, with glimpses of Beauty to lead us.  But soon�"soon!�"we will be with Glory, fully alive and completely restored.  May God’s Love pour out in our lives.  May we all know His perfect peace.  May His grace and His mercy never run out, and may we be continually drawn to He who is the Good and the Beautiful and the True.  It is both my hope and my prayer that we will always know how it feels to be raised to life, to breathe, to be full.  We are unfathomably loved by our Great Father.  Though the day nears ever closer, let us share our stories.   Let us work as we watch and wait for the rising sun to break over the horizon.  Glory is on His way.

Author's Note

this is the last piece in my project, and contains much of the description of what the biblical heaven will be like. even if you don't agree with any of it, I would love to know what you have to say