Heaven -- Christianity; Near-death experiences -- Religious aspects; Private revelations
"Many hundreds," he said. "To these poor minds, unenlightened as they
were when they first came, heaven is as beautiful and happy a place as
it is to any who have ascended higher, simply because we can enjoy only
in the capacity to which our souls can reach. There are none of us who
have not much yet to learn of this wonderful country."
In several instances, as we drifted across above the villages, we heard
songs of praise arising from the temples, and from people collected in
different ways. In many cases, to our surprise, the hymns and the
words were those with which we had been familiar on earth, and,
although sung in a strange tongue, we understood them all. That was
another of the wonderful surprises of heaven. There was no language
there that we could not understand.
On, and on, and on, through wonderful scenes of beauty we passed,
returning finally to our own homes by a different way from that by
which we had gone forth, seeming to have made almost a circle in our
pleasant journeyings. When I left my sister in her own home she
whispered to me as she bade me good-by for the present:
"It has been a day of such wonderful rest and pleasure that we must
soon repeat it together." And I answered:
"Yes, dear, we will."
In several instances the subject of dual marriages has been introduced.
More than once it has been suggested, "If a man marrying in early life,
and, being devotedly attached to the woman he has married, should
unfortunately lose her, and after many years of solitary waiting find
another congenial soul to whom his whole heart goes out and marriage is
the result, and they have many years of wedded happiness together
before she, too, is called, to whom will he belong in the other life?"
In the many phases of the divine life that seemed to come to me in my
vision, such thoughts as the above were never by any means suggested.
Speaking from my own natural intuitions, I cannot but think that as
soon as the immortal part of us leaves the earthly tenement, it lays
down forever, with that tenement, all thoughts that embarrassed or
grieved or pained the spirit. In the homes of heaven there was
perpetual love and joy and peace and happiness without measure. This
one thing I know: In heaven are no conflicting ties; no questions that
vex; no conditions that annoy; the whole heart springs up to do the
will of the Father, and nothing less than that will suffice.
In answer to the question in many instances proposed to me, as to
whether I consider this experience as a revelation, I can only say, as
heretofore, that I gave it as it came to me, and every one must draw
his own inference concerning it. I can be the guide for no one.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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