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—