I Will Show you the Bride
And he carried me away in the Spirit to a great, high mountain, and showed me the holy city Jerusalem coming down out of heaven from God, having the glory of God, its radiance like a most rare jewel, like a jasper, clear as crystal. It had a great, high wall, with twelve gates, and at the gates twelve angels, and on the gates the names of the twelve tribes of the sons of Israel were inscribed–on the east three gates, on the north three gates, on the south three gates, and on the west three gates. And the wall of the city had twelve foundations, and on them were the twelve names of the twelve apostles of the Lamb. And the one who spoke with me had a measuring rod of gold to measure the city and its gates and walls. The city lies foursquare, its length the same as its width. And he measured the city with his rod, 12,000 stadia. Its length and width and height are equal. He also measured its wall, 144 cubits by human measurement, which is also an angel’s measurement. The wall was built of jasper, while the city was pure gold, clear as glass. The foundations of the wall of the city were adorned with every kind of jewel. The first was jasper, the second sapphire, the third agate, the fourth emerald, the fifth onyx, the sixth carnelian, the seventh chrysolite, the eighth beryl, the ninth topaz, the tenth chrysoprase, the eleventh jacinth, the twelfth amethyst. And the twelve gates were twelve pearls, each of the gates made of a single pearl, and the street of the city was pure gold, transparent as glass. And I saw no temple in the city, for its temple is the Lord God the Almighty and the Lamb. And the city has no need of sun or moon to shine on it, for the glory of God gives it light, and its lamp is the Lamb. By its light will the nations walk, and the kings of the earth will bring their glory into it, and its gates will never be shut by day–and there will be no night there. They will bring into it the glory and the honor of the nations. But nothing unclean will ever enter it, nor anyone who does what is detestable or false, but only those who are written in the Lamb’s book of life.
Revelation 21: 10-27
Many of our concepts about what heaven is like come from this scripture. If you look in your concordance for streets of gold or pearl gates, this is the only scripture in the Bible that talks about these things. This is where the hymns come from that talk about how great heaven is. All from this scripture in Revelation.
There’s only one little problem with this concept. This passage has absolutely nothing to do with Heaven. Let me say this another way: There are no streets of gold and pearly gates in Heaven.
How do I know this? The Bible tells me so. If you want to see what heaven looks like, read Revelation 4 onward. It talks about the throne and about what surrounds the throne–increasing circles of a sea of people singing praises to God. This is what Heaven is like.
I Will Show you the Bride
So how do I know that this scripture in Revelation 21 has nothing to do with Heaven? Because I read verse 9 that introduces this section.
Then came one of the seven angels who had the seven bowls full of the seven last plagues and spoke to me, saying, “Come, I will show you the Bride, the wife of the Lamb.”
Revelation 21:9
Everything in this scripture is a prophetic vision of the Bride of Christ. It’s all about who we can become if we allow Christ’s nature to be worked in us.
You become the bride by finding and entering into wisdom, which is what pearls always symbolize in scripture.
Do not throw your pearls before pigs, lest they trample them underfoot and turn to attack you.
Matthew 7:6b
As you become the Bride, all of your ways will be purest gold, which, in scripture, is symbolic of the nature of God.
I don’t have revelation on all of this scripture, but it doesn’t take a scholar to read verse 9 and know what this is about.
So how is it possible that all of the denominations have written books about what Heaven is like based on this scripture and they’re wrong? I can’t answer that. I simply read the verse before it that explains it. It’s been right there all along.
Mansions
What about my mansion? In all of scripture, there’s only one reference to mansions, and it’s this one.
In my Father’s house are many mansions: if it were not so, I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you.
John 14:2, KJV
This is a mistranslation of the Greek word mone, which actually means rooms. What’s more, this mistranslation is probably deliberate, because even in the early 1600s, they knew that this word should be translated rooms.
Remember that, unlike modern versions of the Bible that are translated for profit, the KJV was translated as a political maneuver. The only answer I can come up with is to deceive people into thinking they had mansions in heaven so they’d put up with more here. Here is this same passage from the ESV.
In my Father’s house are many rooms. If it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you?
John 14:2, ESV
There is no translation of the Bible that I’m aware of that translates this word as anything but rooms. There’s simply no one that thinks that’s what that means. So, sorry, no mansions either.
Visions of Heaven
“But what about Kenneth Hagin’s vision of heaven?” You might ask. He saw his mansion of gold with roses in the walls.
The spirits of prophets are subject to prophets.
1 Corinthians 14:32
This scripture talks about a truth about prophecy and visions and dreams. The spirit realm is alien to us who have not yet gotten our glorified bodies. A person sees into the spirit realm, but everything has to be processed through that person’s brain. The purer our mind is, the purer the things that we are going to see, but as long as we live in this body this is always the case.
This is why God and angels ask the prophets in the scriptures “What do you see?” and the prophet explains what he’s seeing before the interpretation is given. You can see this here Revelation, Isaiah, Zechariah, Daniel and others. The question should be read as, “How do you perceive what I’m showing you?”
The reason that Kenneth Hagin saw mansions of gold is because his mind was programmed that he would see mansions of gold there. When God showed him heaven, that’s how his brain interpreted what he was seeing.
This is why prophetic visions cannot be the final authority on doctrine. This is why God gave us the scriptures to be the final authority. Checking the scriptures, there are no mansions referred to in Heaven, so Hagin’s vision must have meant something else.
What’s Cool about Heaven?
So the cool thing about Heaven is not the furniture. The cool thing about Heaven is that we get to spend eternity with our creator. We get to praise and worship Him forever. That’s what we look forward to, our reunion with Him and never leaving Him again.
In the meantime, we get to learn how to be part of the Bride so that we “will bring into it the glory and the honor of the nations.”