“After this I looked, and, behold, a door was open in heaven.”

(Revelation 4: 1-11)

I’ve been privileged, by the grace of God, to be an ordained Presbyterian minister for sixty-two years. During those “three score and two”, many wonderful Christian people have discussed with me their sincere problems of keeping the faith while living in our kind of a world. Surely some of the most frequently mentioned problems I’ve heard devout Christians raise are these three: “Are there many or few that shall be saved?” “Does God really hear and answer my prayers?” “What can we know of what the future holds?”

Surely every person of religious inclinations wrestles with each of these questions, but there is one text from the Book of Revelation which sums up beautifully the Christian, scriptural answer to each one. It’s a bit cryptic, to be sure, as we might expect from John the Revelator, but it is an answer not entirely beyond our deciphering. Here it is: the first verse of chapter 4 where John wrote: “After this I looked, and, behold, a door was opened in heaven.”

Do people ask: “Be there many or few that are saved?” The disciples asked Jesus that very question as Luke recorded the incident in his Gospel, chapter 13, verse 23. The Christian faith answers: “The door of heaven is wide open.” The Eternal God operates his universe on an open door policy. “The love of God is broader than the measure of man’s mind and the heart of the Eternal is most wonderfully kind.” The God and Father of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ is inclusionist, rather than exclusionist.

Don’t let anyone tell you that you have to be baptized just so, or hold your beliefs in a narrow straight jacket of strange patterned words, or have stuck on your forehead a particular denominational label and no other. It just isn’t so. There is in heaven a door wide open to you and me, to Princess Diana and Mother Teresa.

Some untutored readers of the Book of Revelation have got a false impression of the smallness of the number of the redeemed by taking its literal number of 144,000 John uses in Revelation Chapter 7 to be the bottom line of the census count in heaven. But students of apocalyptic literature understand that John’s use of all the numerals in his Book of Revelation is always symbolic rather than literal. Three is the divine number, denoting the Trinity. Four is the earth number, like the four winds and the four corners of the world. Twelve is the church number, which is arrived at by taking the divine number, Three, and multiplying it by the year number, Four, and having as the result, Twelve. The church is the one institution which is both human and divine. The number symbolizing earthly completion is Ten — like ten fingers and ten toes (if a person has all that’s coming to him).

So, when St. John wants to choose the number which will symbolize heaven’s census count he picks the number 144,000 — the number which equals Twelve (the church number) squared or, 144, multiplied by 1,000, the ultimate of earthly completeness. This is John’s way of symbolically stating that the number of the redeemed from all the generations of mankind is the whole body of Christ’s church raised to the ultimate power of earthly completeness across all the centuries of human history.

“Be there many or few that be saved?” The answer of the Christian faith is a resounding: “Many!” “Thousands upon thousands.” Listen again to John in Revelation, chapters 4 and 7: “I looked, and behold, there was a door open in heaven. . . And after this, I looked, and behold, a great multitude which no man could number, from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and tongues, standing before the Lamb, clothed in white robes, and palms in their hands. . . And who are these clothed in white robes, with palms in their hands? . . These are they who came out of great tribulation and washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb. Therefore, are they before the throne of God, and serve him day and night within his temple.”

The Lord of the universe keeps an open house. There are more ways for His mercy to bring men and women to Him and His salvation than the human mind can conceive. And the rebound of such an eschatology, the result here and now of such a faith concerning the hereafter — what should it be? Don’t go putting the statute of human limitations on the grace and goodness of the Almighty. Only proclaim the glorious grandeur of such a fatherly God, and make more and more room in your heart here and now to welcome as your genuine brothers and sisters in this world, those out of every tongue and kindred and tribe whom God has already marked for His kingdom here and hereafter.

The second question people perennially ask of religion is this: “Does God hear and answer my prayers?” This question receives a resounding affirmative reply in the text. “Behold, a door was open in heaven.”

One fundamental doctrine of the Protestant Reformation, spelled out so clearly in scripture, is the doctrine of the Priesthood of all believers. This doctrine asserts “the right of every believer to go straight to God and to find in Him pardon and strength to live.” For long centuries the church (at Rome) had denied this right (to unordained believers). Every approach to God (so people were then taught to believe) was opened up by the church priesthood, or by them was shut fast. So for centuries the way to God was bolted and barred, since the only access to God was the church and its priests. It was to set people free from this ecclesiastical tyranny that the Reformers insisted upon this basic scriptural doctrine, the Priesthood of all Believers. (The Story of the Reformation – Stevenson)

The writer of the Book of Revelation in the 8th chapter pictures the prayers of all the saints on earth as ascending to heaven where they are mixed with the purposes of God and then poured out upon the earth in the form of God’s righteous judgments in the course of human history. This is John the Revelator’s way of saying that the prayers of every righteous person availeth much. No believer has to go through another, be that one clergy or saint, dead or living, to get prayers into God’s presence. There is a door open in heaven through which the prayers of every sincere petitioner pass. God hears and heeds.

The third persistent question in all religion is: “What does the future hold and how much of it can we know now?” Human attempts to pierce the veil that hangs between today and tomorrow are relentless. More often than not the assistance of religion has been summoned, for it is reasoned thus: “If religion is our approach to God, and if God holds in his hands the future, what better avenue can we take than the way of religion to foretell the future? So astrology and spiritualism and the ancient Roman auguries and the predictive school of prophecy have developed their techniques for satisfying our concern: “What does the future hold and how much of it can we know now?”

John, in Revelation, says: “I saw a door open in heaven and I heard a voice saying: ‘Come here and see what will shortly come to pass.’”

“According to astral theology, everything which is to take place on earth, has already taken place in heaven. Therefore, if one wished to know what the future would hold, if he could only get to heaven, he could see a preview of it exactly. So, since John has been gathered up and ushered into heaven and given a preview of coming earthly events, he can write with clarity and certainty on what is coming to pass.”  (Interpreters Bible on Text)

But neither John nor any other inspired Biblical writer pretends to set down in detail future coming events. It is just not there. Rather, John and all the others affirm that this is what has been revealed to them: God is on His throne in the heavens. He rules His universe. Ultimately all shall be subdued to His righteous rule and the events and purposes of history shall be judged and rewarded by the righteousness and mercy he has shown in Jesus Christ.

So, Christ is the one open door in heaven through whom the whole divine purpose in creation and history is glimpsed. Christ is the open door of salvation — “no man cometh unto the Father but by me.” Christ is the open door to communion with God in prayer — “whatsoever ye ask the Father in my name shall be given thee.” Christ is the key to the riddle of the future — “this Jesus, whom ye crucified, God hath raised from the dead and highly exalted . . . and made him to be the judge of the quick and the dead . . . that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, whether of things in heaven, or things on earth, or things under the earth.” Every turn of history, every moment of experience, is to be understood in the light of Christ’s truth, and redeemed by the power of Christ’s sacrificial death.

So, the door that John saw open in heaven, stays open. It is open wide for you, for me — for our eternal salvation, for our continual intercession and communion with God, for our daily enlightenment on the meaning of our experience and destiny. But no one is going to push us through that open door. God’s great open house is only for those who determine to enter. If we have no stomach for the righteousness, mercy, and integrity of that household and prefer the pig-wallow of our double-dealing and carnal lusts and unbrotherliness, we can keep what we desire. Let us never forget that heaven is the Kingdom of the God and Father of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ — the place preeminently where His holy will is joyfully performed.

When the Prodigal returned from the far country, and there was feasting and merrymaking in the Father’s house because the lost son had returned, the older brother in the family was angry and would not go in for the party celebrating the family reunion. The Father came out and entreated his son, but no servants were summoned to overpower the ill-tempered one and force him to come in where he did not want to go.

Heaven’s door is open wide to us. There is a larger world than we ever dreamed existed beckoning us now to enter and enjoy the many rooms of our Father’s house. But we must bestir ourselves and make the proper entrance at the right place.

We all know that if a free trip were offered us to sail across the seas and visit a vast new continent where we have never been before, and there were innumerable new, exciting adventures there, we could not go unless we made the necessary preparations. We must secure passports and undergo inoculations. We must carry with us negotiable currency for use abroad. We must arrange for reservations in reputable hotels through a reliable travel agency. Though the free trip to a whole new world we’ve never seen is offered us, we will never go unless we make the necessary preparations.

So, in the great travel plans of the Sovereign of the Universe, the door has been opened to every one to cast off from the shores of life in this world with the bright prospect of travel abroad and more time, deeper joys and wider privileges than life here has ever offered. But it is ours only if proper preparations are made. We must claim our personal passports certified to us through our trust in the atoning death of Christ. We must have in our possession negotiable currency of love and faith and hope and righteousness, for that is the only kind of pocket change acceptable. We must make full use of the only registered celestial travel agency in the business, the Church of Jesus Christ. Will we come through the door that is open for us?