The idea of heaven is necessarily a blurry concept to
earthly beings. We navigate the world around us via our senses, so it is
unsurprising to find a certain conceptual impenetrability to those things we
cannot see, touch, taste, smell or hear in this present life. Those who are
unacquainted with the Lord might well say, “The reason you can’t conceive these
things is that they don’t exist”.
Except they do. We have our Lord’s word on it. He tells his
disciples explicitly that “In my Father’s house are many rooms. If it were
not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you?” And
he says it as if he’s wondering why on earth we would for a moment expect
anything else.
This conceptual fuzziness about heavenly things is a
consistent feature of prophetic revelation, both Old Testament and New. Ezekiel
peppers his description of the heavenlies with the words “appearance” and “likeness”,
as if to say, “I know my account is hopelessly inadequate, but this is the
closest I can get”. John, in Revelation, does exactly the same thing, using the
word “like” over and over again.
To the believer, it’s emotionally stirring, certainly, but I
have to admit to a certain intellectual dissatisfaction with the lack of
detail.
