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The Daily Word of Righteousness
Mansions in Heaven?
In my Father's house are many mansions: if it were not so, I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you. (John 14:2)
The original "blessed hope" of the Christian Church was the return of the Lord Jesus Christ to the earth to set up His Kingdom. This is the teaching of the Hebrew Prophets and also of the writers of the New Testament.
Our traditions have changed the original, scriptural hope. We of today are looking for the Lord Jesus to come and carry His Church up to Heaven so the believers can live forever in mansions in the spirit realm. It may shock Christians for us to say so but our traditions in this regard are incorrect and misleading.
The teaching that the Lord Jesus Christ returned to Heaven in order to build mansions for the believers is based on only one verse of Scripture—John 14:2. There is no other verse in the entire Scriptures that so much as suggests that Christ is building mansions for us in Paradise. All experienced saints know we must not base any doctrine, much less a doctrine that establishes the goal of our salvation, on a single verse of Scripture.
John 14:2 is the only verse that appears to support the idea that Christ is building mansions for us in Heaven. In fact, a careful examination of John 14:2 will demonstrate that not even it is suggesting Christ is building mansions for us in Heaven.
In actuality there is not one verse in the Scriptures that states Christ is constructing mansions for the believers in Heaven and that one day He will appear and carry us up to our mansion. This belief may be one of our strongest traditions but it is unscriptural. Furthermore, it has eclipsed the true goal of the Christian redemption—the establishing of the Kingdom of God on the earth.
The view of a mansion in Heaven as the goal of salvation actually leads away from the redemptive purposes of God. It contributes to the spiritual immaturity we see all about us.
Let us examine John 14:2 from a contextual standpoint and then in terms of the word mansion.
The fourteenth chapter of the Gospel of John has much to say about the new covenant fulfillment of the old covenant feast of Tabernacles. Christ is teaching that as the Father dwells in Him, the Father and He desire to dwell in us. In the Father's House (Christ) there is room for us too. In Christ there are many places of abode, of rest, of refuge.
Christ is the House of God. He went to the cross, and then to the Father, in order to prepare a place for us in Himself.
This same idea is repeated in the invitation to abide in Christ (John 15:4-7) and is brought to a climax in the holy prayer of the Lord's that we become an integral part of the Personality of Christ and God (John 17:21-23).
Notice in John, Chapters 14 through 17 that Christ never once speaks of His going to Heaven or of our going to Heaven. We say, no one goes to Heaven except through Christ. Christ says, no one comes to the Father except through Him. There is a difference between going to Heaven and coming to the Father (John 14:6).
To be continued.