“Don’t let your hearts be troubled. Trust in God, and trust also in me. There is more than enough room in my Father’s home. If this were not so, would I have told you that I am going to prepare a place for you? When everything is ready, I will come and get you, so that you will always be with me where I am.”
John 14:1-3 NLT
We wonder sometimes about what the home, the one that Jesus is preparing for us, will be like. There are some facts that we do know. For a start, God and Jesus will be there. And because God is holy and pure, so will our home be. The location of our future spiritual home will be in Heaven, because that is where Father God lives. We know that wherever Jesus is, there we will be as well. Some translations refer to the “room” being a “mansion”, but because God is wonderful, our new home will be as well. We can also assume that because we are not there already, Jesus is still in the process of preparing the new home.
We can find a few hints of the process before we enter our new home from other places in the Bible. In Acts 1:9-11 we read, “After saying this, he was taken up into a cloud while they were watching, and they could no longer see him. As they strained to see him rising into heaven, two white-robed men suddenly stood among them. “Men of Galilee,” they said, “why are you standing here staring into heaven? Jesus has been taken from you into heaven, but someday he will return from heaven in the same way you saw him go!”” Jesus will return to Planet Earth for a second time, the angels at the Ascension said, and it will be just in the same way that He left. If we had taken a video of the way Jesus left this world, ascending into the clouds, then if we replayed it backwards, that would be how He will return. In 1 Thessalonians 4 we can read what the Holy Spirit revealed to Paul, “For since we believe that Jesus died and was raised to life again, we also believe that when Jesus returns, God will bring back with him the believers who have died. We tell you this directly from the Lord: We who are still living when the Lord returns will not meet him ahead of those who have died. For the Lord himself will come down from heaven with a commanding shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trumpet call of God. First, the believers who have died will rise from their graves. Then, together with them, we who are still alive and remain on the earth will be caught up in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. Then we will be with the Lord forever. So encourage each other with these words” (1 Thessalonians 4:14-18). It will be noisy time when Jesus returns, with shouting and trumpets. Will that occasion be the time when we are allocated our new bodies? John 6:40, “For it is my Father’s will that all who see his Son and believe in him should have eternal life. I will raise them up at the last day“.
But to find out where are new bodies will live, we need to turn to Revelation 21:1-2, “Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the old heaven and the old earth had disappeared. And the sea was also gone. And I saw the holy city, the new Jerusalem, coming down from God out of heaven like a bride beautifully dressed for her husband”. And to cap it all, God will set up His home on the new earth with His people. Revelation 21:3, “I heard a loud shout from the throne, saying, “Look, God’s home is now among his people! He will live with them, and they will be his people. God himself will be with them.” For all those people who perhaps think that when they die they will live with God in Heaven forever, there may be a bit of a shock!
Father God. We only see dimly those parts of our future that You have revealed to us through Your Word. But come what may, we trust in You. Amen.
Being a Pilgrim 