‘In that place they
shall forget this world. There they have no want; and they shall love one
another with an abundant love. In their bodies there shall be no
heaviness... In their thoughts they
shall not there remember wickedness at all, nor shall anything of uncleanness
arise in their heart. In that place there shall be no natural desire, for
there they shall be weaned from all appetites. There shall not arise in
their heart anger or lasciviousness; also they shall remove from them all
things that engender sins. Fervent in their heart will be the love of
each other; and hatred will not be fixed within them at all. They shall
have no need there to build houses, for they shall abide in light, in the
mansions of the saints. They shall have
no need of woven raiment, for they shall be clothed in eternal light.
They shall have no need of food, for they shall recline at His table and be
nurtured for ever. The air of that region is pleasant and glorious, and
its light shines out, and is goodly and gladsome. Planted there are
beautiful trees, whose fruits fail not, and whose leaves fall not. Their
boughs are glorious, their perfume delightful, and of their taste no soul shall
grow weary for ever. Spacious is the region, nor is it limited; yet its
inhabitants shall see its distance even as that which is near. There the
inheritance shall not be divided, and no man shall say to his fellow: “This is
mine and that is thine.” They shall not be bound there in the desire of
covetousness, nor shall they go astray there concerning remembrance.
There a man shall not love his neighbour with especial reverence, but
abundantly shall they all love one another after one fashion. They shall
not marry wives there, nor shall they beget children…
In that place there is
no deficiency, but fulness and perfection. The aged shall not die and the
young shall not grow old. And it is in expectation of growing old and
dying that young men take wives and beget children, that when the fathers shall
have died the children may rise up in their stead. Now all these things
have their use only in this world, for in that place there is no want, nor any
deficiency, nor concupiscence, nor generation, nor ending, nor failure, nor
death, nor termination, nor old age. There is neither hatred, nor wrath,
nor envy, nor weariness, nor toil, nor darkness, nor night, nor
falsehood. There is not in that place any want at all; but it is full of
light, and life, and grace, and fulness, and satisfaction and renewal, and
love, and all the good promises that are written but not yet sealed.
For there is there that “which eye hath not seen and ear hath not
heard, and which hath not come up into the heart of man,” that which
is unspeakable and which a man cannot utter… But this is right for a
speaker, to liken and call that place the abode of God, and the place of life,
the perfect place, the place of light, the place of glory, the Sabbath of God,
the day of rest, the repose of the righteous, the joy of the just, the abode
and dwelling-place of the righteous and the holy, the place of our hope, the
sure abode of our trust, the place of our treasure, the place that shall
assuage our weariness and remove our afflictions, and soothe our sighs.
To these things it is right for us to liken, and thus to call, that place
[heaven].’
St. Aphrahat, Demonstration XXII: Of Death and the Latter Times,
sections 12-13.
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