A MESSAGE FROM HEAVEN

A MESSAGE FROM HEAVEN

The presence of these men suggests A MESSAGE FROM HEAVEN. This was a vision as made known in Matt. 17:9. The teaching of this last article is infer­ential rather than direct, but may not on that account be the less valuable. Looking upon them something is learned about the condition of the departed, showing those who exist in glory, and revealing something about their knowledge, and something about the central interest of their existence.

"There talked with Him two men, who were Moses and Elijah." (Luke 9:30) Only Luke states the matter exactly in this form, and the statement is of value. Note the absence of wings. "Two men," that is to say, they still were what they had been in the essential fact of their being. Their presence in heaven was not due to a change in essential nature.

Then, notice that they were in a conscious state. Their minds still followed the same line as when upon the earth, though now they saw and understood clearly. Matters at which Moses had looked in his own economy through a glass darkly, he now saw face to face. (1 Cor. 13:12) Gleams of truth that had fallen upon the soul of Elijah and compelled obedience, even while he knew there were infinite possibil­ities beyond which he could not fathom, now fell in full radiance upon his mind. The presence of these men sug­gested not merely existence after life, but conscious ex­istence, and not conscious existence only, but the con­tinuity of the same existence with enlarged powers.

It is evident that Peter, James, and John knew Moses and Elijah. How they knew them, of course, cannot be told. But the fact that they knew them suggests that the identity of personality is maintained in the world that lies beyond, and in some wonderful manner, men know those whom here they never saw. Men will certainly then know their own loved ones when they meet them in the Father's home. The holy mount lights for a moment the land where our loved ones wait for us. They are still human, they are still conscious, and they are what they were. We shall know them. Our minds will work much better then than now.

There is yet another suggestion here in the interest these men took in the earth and what was passing on it. They came and talked to Him of His exodus, spoke of the mys­tery of His passion, of the joy of His resurrection, of His loving lingering amid the ways of men, and His triumphant ascension to the Father's right hand. These are only sug­gestions. Sometimes the question is asked, if the loved ones in the heavens know what is going on upon the earth. The answer seems to be that upon occasion, under the ex­press command of God, they are able to find their way back and watch the process of the spirits that yet move amid probationary things. It is sometimes declared that if this be so, then there must be sorrow in heaven. And why should men shrink from this conclusion? Faber was surely right when he said

“There is no place where earth's sorrows are more felt than up in heaven."

Let it be remembered, however, that it is always sorrow in the light of joy, the sorrow of a present sympathy with pain, in the knowledge that the pain moves towards a pur­pose which in its blessedness far outweighs the present en­durance. Moses and Elijah could talk of His coming sorrow, because with Him they looked on to the joy that was yet to be revealed.

If today men pass through sorrow, and the loved ones beyond the vale, visiting them, feel the sorrow in comrade­ship, they also joy, knowing that soon the song of triumph shall end the sigh of trial.

"Hath it ever been granted those who have passed
The River, to appear and show themselves,

Unchanged in form, in heart unchangeable,

To loved ones they have left behind?' It is true

It hath been so.

But only by His sovereign will and word

Who holds the keys of Hades and of death,

And opens, as He wills, the mortal eye

To see the mysteries of things unseen.”

Bishop Bickersteth.