Illusions of the Grave Cave

The twelve gates are twelve pearls; each individual gate was made of a single pearl. The broad street of the city was pure gold, like transparent glass. – Revelation 21:21

Abraham lived in tents because he was looking for a city with foundations, whose architect and builder is God (Hebrews 11:9-10). When Moses was told to build the Tabernacle, he was instructed to make the Holy of Holies a perfect cube of ten cubits, about fifteen feet high, wide and deep – to house the Ark of the Covenant on which God’s Presence dwelt. The City of God as described in Revelation is a cube as well, though a massive one – fifteen hundred miles across and high. The Lord seems to be telling us that His city, the kingdom, or heaven is very much a Most Holy Sanctuary wherein His Presence truly dwells. The size of the city hints at the grandeur and majesty of God. All the gold and the pearl gates and the twelve foundations of glorious stones are elements reflected in the types Moses created for the Tabernacle and the priestly attire of Aaron.

Consider for a moment that good, old-fashioned and endangered incandescent light bulb. In its small, humble way, it is a little like the sun, for it burns, giving off light and some heat. Still, if I were to say to someone who is unfamiliar with light bulbs that they are like the sun, when that person saw a bulb for himself, he might be justifiably disappointed. On the other hand, suppose somewhere a person lived who was familiar with the various kinds of artificial light sources but had never seen the sun, the moon, or the stars. Perhaps he is a cave-dweller living an exclusively subterranean existence. If we met this denizen of the caverns and began to tell him of the great light that illuminates the world, we might compare it to one of his little light. We might tell him to imagine a huge floodlight set high above his head. We might be poetic, eloquent and inspired in our description, yet when he saw the sun with his own blinking, shuttered, aching eyes, he would be stunned by the reality. No description could prepare him for the brilliance of the light or the burning heat of a deep summer day.

“Our God is a consuming fire” – You may have looked into the heart of a live volcano, but it will seem a tea candle compared to the fire of God. “Jesus is the light of the world” – We will know that metaphor for the pitiful thing it is when we face Him and, like John the Revelator, fall helpless at His feet unable to bear the brightness of His visage. We will know gold, pearls, and diamonds for the weak comparisons they are when we see the living Sanctuary in all its glory.

Even when we are blessed with glimpses through the fog, when we see a flash of glory in a dream or a vision, when our eyes are opened and we see “the chariots and horsemen of God” or “His train filling the temple”, it is hard to hang on to it. Others will tell us we have an overactive imagination. They will say we are extrapolating from the ‘real’ – the cave-dweller might say the same thing about our ‘sun’, if he never ventured to ascend. Someone will tell us that we just believe in such things because we want them to be so. In a way, that, at least, is true – except these are not self-indulgent, self-glorifying daydreams. If we think of self at all in the face of that glory it is to recognize our unworthiness and be humbled. Again, as my friend Eddie said, God will not allow us to think better of Him than He can be to us. He will not show us visions of stars when all He has to give us are 40-watt bulbs. If my dreams exceed the limitations of the world, then it is the world that needs to be cracked open.