XIX “In My Father’s House Are Many Mansions”
The very last evening that our dear Lord was on earth before His death, He and His twelve disciples were gathered together in that upper room to eat the Passover.
On the morrow he was to die! But though He had told the disciples very often of His death, they had failed to believe it.
Peter had said “That be far from Thee, Lord!” and had, like the other disciples, dismissed the fear from his thoughts.
It had only been a few days before this Passover night that Mary, the sister of Lazarus, had poured the sweet-smelling spikenard ointment on our Lord’s Head at the supper table; and He, knowing all things that were coming to pass, said she had anointed His Body for His burial. But still, the listening disciples paid no heed.
But now the last evening had come.
The Passover supper was over, and Judas had left them and gone out into the darkness. If no one else expected the death of the Lord of Glory, Judas knew in his heart that he had sold his Lord for thirty pieces of silver, and that the Jews would surely kill Him!
But Judas was gone out; and now our Lord turned to the eleven who were left, and began to comfort them, with words of strength and hope.
He had just told His over-confident disciple, Peter, that before the cock should crow in the morning he would thrice deny Him! And all the disciples were full of dismay at such a possibility.
So our Lord’s first words, in His talk with His own, we read in the 14th of St. John’s Gospel; and they come as a wonderful comfort to all sorrowing and fainting ones, from that holy hour down to this time which seems so hard to us! He said these words to His eleven disciples and to all who love Him: “Let not your heart be troubled; ye believe in God, believe also in Me.”
And then, because of the coming trials which He knew His disciples would have soon to pass through, He gives them the wonderful promise, which has comforted thousands and thousands of weary hearts since then: “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.”
He seems in these words to say something like this: “My Father’s House” is safely Above, where no storms can touch its security. It is an Everlasting abode—one that will not pass away with the ravages of time, or the thunders of war. It is an Everlasting Home; and I go to get it ready for each one of you.
And then He points them on to another great thought—
He says: “And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again, and receive you unto Myself; that where I am, there ye may be also!”
So He bids us to look forward in the trials and sorrows which will come to all of us, as we pass through life to the Father’s Everlasting Home—to His being there to get ready that Home for all who love Him—and then He promises to come back and fetch His people, and take them to be for ever with Himself!
John, the disciple whom Jesus loved, who had sat close to his Lord, and had leant on His breast, heard all these heart-cheering words, as Jesus uttered them. But little did he know, then, that he would be chosen to write all these lovely words down in his Gospel; nor that by and by he should be a prisoner for years in the rocky Isle of Patmos, and see glorious visions of “the Father’s House, and the many Mansions.”
There, in the loneliness and solitude, the glorified Saviour came to His loved disciple and said to him these wonderful words:
“I am the First, and the Last, and behold I am alive for Evermore.”
He told John that many sorrows and difficulties would beset His followers, but that those who overcome shall sit down with Him on His Throne, even as He had overcome and is seated with His Father on His Throne.
By and by, near the end of these wonderful Revelations, John was allowed to have a glimpse into Heaven itself, and he saw a vision of the many mansions which Jesus is preparing for us!
Here are the words—
“And I John saw the Holy City... and I saw no temple therein: for the Lord God Almighty and the Lamb are the temple of it. And the city had no need of the sun, neither of the moon, to shine in it: for the glory of God did lighten it, and the Lamb is the light thereof.”
“And God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes; and there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain: for the former things are passed away.
“And He that sat upon the throne said, ‘Behold, I make all things new.’ And He said unto me, ‘Write: for these words are true and faithful.’”
More than six hundred years before these visions to John in Patmos, the Prophet Isaiah wrote—
“For since the beginning of the world, men have not heard, nor perceived by the ear, neither hath the eye seen, O God, beside Thee, what He hath prepared for him that waiteth for Him.”
And our Lord Jesus, in the Revelation, says to every one who reads these words—
“Behold, I stand at the door and knock. If any man hear My Voice, and open the door, I will come in to him, and will sup with him, and he with Me.”
The entrance to that Everlasting Home is in listening to this loving Voice of Jesus Christ now, and by opening the door of our hearts, to let Him in!
Jesus says: “I am the Door; by ME if any man enter in, he shall be saved.”
MANY MANSIONS.