Coming out of the River on the other side of death, they are greeted again by the Shining Ones, who escort them to the Gate, carrying these immortal Pilgrims up the Hill of the Lord (Ps.24). Bunyan does his best to catch us up into the sense of anticipation they feel as they approach the ramparts of heaven. It’s worth going back and reading this section again and again, as Bunyan piles up passage after passage, image after image (all of them drawn from Scripture) to awaken in us the joy of those who share the same hope! We would do well to meditate deeply on such passages with regularity. They will cause our spirit to soar, and to tremble.
Christian and Hopeful are met by ‘a company of heaven’ who come out to meet them. They are welcomed with benediction and a trumpet voluntary that must have shaken the foundations of the City! The gladness and celebration of their arrival before the Gate of Heaven is one of the most touching and compelling scenes in the whole book. And it leads us into an aspect of Christian experience that we may not be overly familiar with. When you imagine your arrival at those ‘ancient doors’, what happens? Do you see yourself standing sheepishly outside, while some conference is held within, deciding whether you made the mark or not? Do you expect to be welcomed grudgingly, with an air of dissatisfaction and disappointment? Do you expect to skulk into heaven, let in by someone who really should know better?
All of which would betray a tragic lack of awareness of the completeness of Christ’s work for us as our Mediator and Great High Priest. He has provided everything that is needed for every aspect of our Pilgrimage, and has given all we need for a triumphal entry to glory. I wonder if we dare to believe that Heaven will be glad to see us? … that the doors will be flung wide and that our arrival will be celebrated and rejoiced in? …that there will be angels, and saints who have gone before, who have rejoiced to see Christ’s grace worked out in our lives, and who delight now to see that grace brought to fruition in even such as us? …that even now they wait with eager anticipation for our arrival?
Perhaps even yet, our focus is too much on our own performance rather than on Christ’s? We pilgrimage in Him. And our welcome at Heaven’s Gate is the welcome He Himself has received. We are adopted in Him, and the greeting we receive is that of children coming home to a loving Father, of a family that have missed us, but tracked our progress on the way home. Angels who have ministered, unheeded and neglected by us, will line the way delighting in our salvation, and in the power and wisdom of Him who had sent them to our aid.
In a deep sense of course, the celebration of our arrival is an act of worship. None of us on that day will seek to take the accolades to ourselves. This isn’t our great Oscars moment, where we take the award and thank everyone who helped make it possible. Never will we be so humbled as on that day, never so grateful, never so meek. As we step out of the River, we will (in ways we can barely imagine now) know how fully we have needed His compassion and mercy, how every step along the Path was enabled by His strength and goodness, how every battle won and trial overcome was by His power and might. We will know for the first time what it means for us to have trusted in the grace of Christ, . As we gaze fully on the glory of heaven, and begin to enjoy the communion of saints, witness the ranks of angelic beings who ceaselessly declare the glory of the God who sits on the throne, and of the Lamb, in that moment the single great and overwhelming desire of our heart will be to stand in that magnificent congregation and to add our redeemed voice with theirs as we sing:
Worthy is the Lamb, who was slain, to receive power and wealth and wisdom and strength and honour and glory and praise!
Rev.5:12
Questions to ponder:
Dare you believe this?
As you contemplate such a scene, how does it shape your engagement with the congregation of the saints in the much more mundane context of Ipswich?
Why not memorise Jude 24-25:
To him who is able to keep you from stumbling and to present you before his glorious presence without fault and with great joy — to the only God our Saviour be glory, majesty, power and authority, through Jesus Christ our Lord, before all ages, now and forevermore! Amen.
(emphasis added)
