“At thy right hand there are pleasures for evermore” (Ps. 16: 11)
The Basket Case Chronicles #16
“But as it is written, Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man, the things which God hath prepared for them that love him. But God hath revealed them unto us by his Spirit: for the Spirit searcheth all things, yea, the deep things of God” (1 Cor. 2:9-10).
It is very easy to take the words of verse 9—eye has not seen, ear has not heard—and kick the fulfillment of them “upstairs.” Heaven, and the time of the resurrection, is far enough away to enable us to believe things about what it will be like, without actually thinking too much about what it will be like.
But the glories after the resurrection are too distant for this passage. We look at those through a glass darkly, as Paul says later in this book. The apostle John says that it does not yet appear what we shall be like, and yet we long for it. On that subject, the Spirit helps us with groans too deep for words. But here, Paul is talking about something that has been revealed. God has prepared something for the human race, and what He has prepared will come to a glorious fruition in the course of history, prior to the resurrection. And it is that which will stagger the imagination. Eye hasn’t seen it yet, and ear has not heard about it, and yet God is in the midst of doing it.
How can we know about it then? God has revealed it to His apostles, by His Spirit, and they wrote it down. There is a glory coming, in which the deep things of God are manifested in human history.