Heaven, The Kingdom Of God

History and tradition relate many interesting changes in human views respecting a future state of existence. The origin of belief in a realm of sorrow and suffering, anciently known as the nether regions, or sheol, is too remote to be distinctly traced, but it is clear that this belief was fixed in the thought of primitive peoples, who held that all humanity went to this region of despair after death and that punishment was there meted out in proportion to their shortcomings on earth. No hope of escape was offered.

Heaven, to be sure, existed in their thought also, but it was the exclusive realm of their gods, to which no being with human frailties could attain. In time, however, thought advanced to the belief that it was possible to experience such purification after death as would admit one to the realm of the gods, and later came the doctrine that by conspicuous service or heroism one might pass direct from the plane of mortal existence to the region of the blessed. Such direct transitions were held to be exceedingly rare, however, and possible only to those who had become so ennobled in the virtues which were then esteemed, as to render them equal to the gods with whom they were to associate.

Belief in sheol, or what later came to be known as hell, as a place beneath the surface of the earth, and of heaven as a locality above the earth’s surface, was in part a product of the accepted teaching that the earth was flat. Light apparently came from above; hence a place of light and beauty must be upward. In the darkness and gloom beneath the earth’s surface was the natural location for hell, according to the prevailing concept of it. Moreover, to primitive people the sky was a solid dome or wall in which the stars were fixed, and this dome or wall separated the region of earth inhabited by humanity from the realm of heaven inhabited by the gods. Absurd as they now seem, such beliefs were adhered to in those times as universally and tenaciously as the more modern beliefs respecting heaven and hell.

To all who accept the Coperniean theory of the universe the absurdity of such beliefs is self-evident, for if the earth revolves on its axis every twenty-four hours, he who points upward toward heaven finds himself pointing in exactly opposite directions at midday and midnight. Yet so reluctantly does superstition yield to reason that fancy still disputes with fact this undebatable ground.

Varied indeed have been the hopes of humanity in a future life of bliss and the means of transportation thither. The Hindu, freed by death, ascended to an abode of happiness by climbing Mt. Meru; the Egyptian sailed to fields Elysian in “the boat of the sun;” the early Greek reached the realm of the gods by scaling Homer’s Olympus; the Athenian of later day was piloted across the dismal Styx to the isle of the blessed, while the American Indian anticipated the joys of a “happy hunting ground.” But none of these understood the meaning of heaven as it was defined by Jesus. Material thought demanded a material heaven, and answered the demand with a material concept. Perhaps the poet Moore was thinking of this when he wrote: —

That prophet ill sustains his holy call
Who finds not heavens to suit the tastes of all.
Vain things! as lust or vanity inspires,
The heaven of each is but what each desires.

“Heaven,” Mrs. Eddy writes (Science and Health, p. 291), “is not a locality, but a divine state of Mind in which all the manifestations of Mind are harmonious and immortal, because sin is not there and man is found having no righteousness of his own, but in possession of ‘the mind of the Lord,’ as the Scripture says.” When this definition of heaven as “a divine state of Mind” was first given, a half century ago, its author was regarded as having challenged one of the most sacred beliefs of the orthodox church. Indeed, a half century ago to deny the existence of heaven and hell as distinet localities meant in a majority of Christian churches to forfeit forever the hope of one and to be consigned eternally to the tortures of the other. What an advance there has been in five decades! True, many still cling to the old material concepts, but in thousands of churches it would now be regarded as a mark of ignorance to insist that heaven and hell are definite localities. One seldom hears the terrible threats of eternal damnation amid literal flames, nor is it customary to regard material splendors as the true representation of the holy city. Before truth, fetish, dogma, and superstition have yielded slowly but surely, especially since Truth as revealed by Christian Science has become known.

But while old beliefs have been crumbling, the organizations which held to them have found it more and more difficult to substitute a satisfactory concept in place of them. So there has come a gradual breaking down of creeds in these churches, an inevitable debacle as reason advanced. The generally recognized decline in interest in church activities outside of Christian Science is one inevitable result of failure to teach that which fears not the searchlight of reason and of truth.

A study of the Scriptures, in which all Christian denominations profess to believe, supplies the true concept of heaven when even a little of the light of Christian Science is thrown on them, for the definition given above, “a divine state of Mind,” is one that coincides fully with Bible teaching on this subject. The terms “kingdom of heaven” and “kingdom of God” occur frequently throughout the Scriptures, especially in the New Testament, where they are synonymous. Jesus rebuked the belief in heaven as a locality when he said, “The kingdom of God cometh not with observation: neither shall they say, To here! or, to there! for, behold, th

This concept of heaven as the realm of divine consciousness is not altogether new. The Israelites advanced beyond the belief in a physical heaven when they gained their lofty concept of the one omnipotent God who is everywhere, and who therefore could not be contained within any bounds. In the later psalms we note frequent references to heaven in language precluding the thought of locality. Mark records in his very first account of the missionary work of Jesus a rebuke of the popular concept of a far-away heaven, when the Master proclaimed, “The kingdom of God is at hand,” and followed this with an appeal to his hearers to repent (literally, to reverse their thinking on this subject). When the Nazarene delivered his first message to his neighbors in his home village, he announced that he had come “to preach the acceptable year of the Lord,” which was equivalent to declaring that God reigns in the present. The apostles were enjoined to preach, “The kingdom of God is at hand,” and Paul repeated the injunction to his followers. We are told in Acts that the disciples went everywhere, proclaiming that God’s kingdom is come, or is at hand.

What do these oft repeated utterances really mean, except that heaven, the reign of divine Love, is a present and eternal fact of spiritual consciousness? If heaven is at hand, we cannot reach it by traveling to some distant realm, much less can we pass to it by dying. If it is within us, it is neither bounded by jasper walls nor threaded by streets of gold. Oriental imagery, which when it is rightly understood pictures a heaven of purified consciousness, sparkling with ideas more precious and beautiful than human language can describe, leads one, when misunderstood, into a sorry mire of superstition.

No message ever heralded to humanity was freighted with greater significance or greater benefits to the race than the insistent declaration of the early Christians, “The kingdom of heaven is at hand.” The mystery of miracles, even to the raising of the dead, is made plain when that statement is understood. Every Christian Science demonstration is based on the understanding of God’s kingdom already established as an incontrovertible fact. It was the clear comprehension of the reign of spiritual law in the present, demonstrated so perfectly by Jesus, which enabled the early Christians for at least two centuries after his time to repeat his works, as he declared all should do who understood his doctrine. It was the loss of this understanding of God’s ever present kingdom that carried with it the loss of the healing power from the Christian church; and it is the restoration of that understanding through Mrs. Eddy’s “Key to the Scriptures” which is restoring that healing power. To deny the present existence of this spiritual kingdom is to challenge the Bible from the story of creation in the first chapter of Genesis to John’s description of the holy city in Revelation.

In this kingdom of God there is no sickness, sin, or death; no matter; neither are there any material laws, conditions, or beliefs. Its walls are the infinite bounds of spiritual beauty and goodness, its gates the portals of purified consciousness, its streets the pure gold of spiritual living, with all the dross of materialism destroyed. We approach its portals as we put off the old man and put on the new, as we cease to believe in things material and learn to know things spiritual. Death brings us no nearer heaven, because the belief in death must be overcome before heaven is readied. We can never see heaven through material eyes or understand it through a material brain. We can, however, bring it into our experience in proportion as we grow in the understanding and practice of truth. As we do this, we find that the kingdom of heaven, “the harmony of being” (Miscellaneous Writings, p. 5.53), is actually within us here and now in the degree that we comprehend it.