Dear friend,
I want to talk to you about something this Monday morning that most pastors avoid.
Not because it is controversial. Not because it is difficult. But because it requires them to sit with something that makes people uncomfortable in a world that has decided death is not polite conversation.
I am an old man. I have sat with the dying more times than I can count. I have held hands that were letting go. I have prayed over people in their final minutes. I have watched the moment when this world ends for a person and something else begins.
And I want to tell you what Scripture actually says is waiting on the other side.
Not clouds. Not harps. Not an eternity of sitting still.
Something far better than that.
First — let me tell you what heaven is not.
The image most people carry around in their heads was not given to them by Scripture. It was given to them by greeting cards and old paintings and a Church that stopped reading Revelation carefully sometime around 1950.
The idea of floating on clouds in white robes playing harps forever — that is not in the Bible. Not one verse of it.
I want to replace that image with what the Bible actually says. Because what the Bible actually says is so much more extraordinary that I genuinely do not understand why we do not talk about it every single Sunday.
What Revelation actually describes.
In Revelation chapter 21, John writes about what he saw. And what he saw was not a spiritual waiting room. It was a city.
A real city. With walls and gates and foundations. With streets. With light that does not come from the sun because God Himself is the light. A city so large that John could barely describe its dimensions. A city coming down from heaven to earth — not souls floating up to some distant cloud but God Himself coming down to be with His people permanently.
Verse 3 says this — and I hear a loud voice from the throne saying, look, God's dwelling place is now among the people and He will dwell with them. They will be His people and God Himself will be with them and be their God.
Read that slowly.
God's dwelling place among the people. Not people arriving at God's house. God coming to live with His people. The separation ended. Permanently. Finally. Without any possibility of reversal.
That is what is coming.
What you will feel.
Verse 4 is the verse I have read at more bedsides than any other in Scripture.
He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain for the old order of things has passed away.
Every tear.
Not most tears. Not the big ones. Every single one.
The grief you have carried for years. The loss that never fully healed. The prayers that felt unanswered. The relationships that broke and never got repaired. The years that felt wasted. The body that slowly stopped working the way it used to.
All of it wiped away. Not suppressed. Not forgotten. Healed. By the hand of God Himself.
I have sat with people in their final moments who were frightened. And I have read them this verse. And I have watched something change in their face. Not because they stopped feeling the pain of leaving. But because they remembered where they were going.
What you will do.
This is the part nobody talks about enough.
Heaven is not passive. It is not an eternal Sunday afternoon with nothing to do.
In Revelation chapter 22 John describes the river of the water of life flowing from the throne of God. He describes the tree of life bearing fruit every month. He describes God's servants — and that word is important, servants, people with purpose and work — serving Him and reigning with Him.
Reigning. Active. Purposeful. Meaningful.
Isaiah chapter 65 gives us another picture. God describing the new creation where people build houses and live in them. Where they plant vineyards and eat their fruit. Where the work of their hands has meaning and the labour is not wasted.
You were not made for an eternity of stillness. You were made for an eternity of meaningful work in a world where nothing is broken and nothing is wasted and everything you build lasts forever.
That is what is waiting.
Who will be there.
In Hebrews chapter 12, verse 22 and 23, Paul describes what we are approaching as believers. He says we have come to thousands upon thousands of angels in joyful assembly. To the church of the firstborn whose names are written in heaven.
The people who went before you are there. The ones you buried. The ones you prayed over. The ones whose absence left a hole in your life that nothing has filled since.
They are not gone. They are ahead. And the distance between you and them is temporary in a way that eternity makes almost embarrassingly small.
I think about this often now. At my age you cannot help it. The list of people waiting on the other side gets longer every year. And I find that instead of making death feel more frightening it makes it feel — I am going to use an unusual word here — interesting.
Not something to rush toward. But something to not be afraid of.
What this means for your Monday morning.
I did not write this letter to make you think about death. I wrote it to make you think about what death is the door to.
Because I have noticed something in the letters you send me. A heaviness. A feeling that this world is getting darker and the fight is getting harder and the end is not yet in sight.
I want you to carry something different into this week.
The God who prepared what I just described for you — that city, that healing, that reunion, that meaningful eternal life — is the same God who is watching over this country right now. The same God who has kept His promises to His people for thousands of years without exception. The same God who is not surprised by anything you are going to read in the news this week.
If He prepared that for you, do you really think He has forgotten you now?
He has not.
Go into this week with that settled in your chest. Not as a wish. As a certainty.
Before I close — many of you have been writing to me asking how to make sense of what is happening in this country in the meantime. While we wait. While the fight continues. I wrote something called They Tried To Stop Him: What The Bible Says About Donald Trump that gives you the Biblical framework for exactly that. It will show you where we are in God's plan right now and why the outcome is not in doubt. You can find it here: https://fatherthomasletters.com/products/they-tried-to-stop-him-what-the-bible-says-about-donald-trump.
Or, you may click on the image below:
God bless you, friend. It is going to be a good week.
With you in prayer, Father Thomas
This week I want you to do three things:
One. Read Revelation chapter 21 slowly this week. Not as a prophecy study. As a promise made specifically to you. Let it replace whatever image of heaven you have been carrying around with the one God actually described.
Two. Think of one person who is no longer here that you loved. Spend five minutes this week just remembering them well. Not in grief. In anticipation. Because if they knew the Lord, they are not gone. They are ahead.
Three. Write down the thing you are most afraid of right now. Then write next to it — the God who prepared heaven is handling this. Put it somewhere you will see it every morning this week.