There is no need to be worried by facetious people who try to make the Christian hope of ‘Heaven’ ridiculous by saying they do not want ‘to spend eternity playing harps’. The answer to such people is that if they cannot understand books written for grown-ups, they should not talk about them. All the scriptural imagery (harps, crowns, gold, etc.) is, of course a merely symbolical attempt to express the inexpressible. Musical instruments are mentioned because for many people (not all) music is the thing known in the present life which most strongly suggests ecstasy and infinity. Crowns are mentioned to suggest the fact that those who are united with God in eternity share His splendour and power and joy. Gold is mentioned to suggest the timelessness of Heaven (gold does not rust) and the preciousness of it. People who take these symbols literally might as well think that when Christ told us to be like doves, He meant that we were to lay eggs.
Unbelief
Alexander MacLaren
With dreadful reciprocity of influence, the less one trusts, the more he disobeys; the more he disobeys, the less he trusts.
Os Guiness
When you believe, you are in one mind and accept something as true. Unbelief is to be of one mind and reject that something is true. To doubt is to waver between the two, to believe and disbelieve at the same time, and so to be in “two minds.” That is what James calls, in Chapter 1, a ‘”double minded man,” or as the Chinese say, “Doubt is standing in two boats, with one foot in each.”
A. W. Tozer
The unbelieving mind would not be convinced by any proof, and the worshipping heart needs none.
Vance Havner
When Bible believers take a stand against false doctrine, they are accused of rocking the boat. It is better that belief should rock the boat than that unbelief should wreck the boat.
George MacDonald
God is ever seeking to get down to us – to be the divine man in us. And we are ever saying, “That be far from Thee, Lord!” We are careful, in our unbelief, over the divine dignity, of which He is too grand to think. Better pleasing to God…is the audacity of Job, who, rushing into His presence, and flinging the door of His presence-chamber to the wall, like a troubled – it may be angry – but yet faithful child, calls aloud in the ear of Him whose perfect Fatherhood be has yet to learn, “Am I a sea or a whale, that Thou settest a watch over me?”… The devotion of God to His creatures is perfect; He does not think about Himself, but about them; He wants nothing for Himself, but finds His blessedness in the outgoing of blessedness. Ah! it is a terrible – shall it be a lonely glory, this? We will draw near with our human response, our abandonment of self in the faith of Jesus. He Lives Himself to us – shall we not give ourselves to Him? Shall we not give ourselves to each other whom He loves?
Theophilus of Antioch
Friend, it is through him that you are speaking, it is he whom you breathe, and you do not know it! For your eye is blind, your heart hardened. But, if you wish, you can be cured. Entrust yourself to the doctor, and he will open the eyes of your soul and your heart. Who is the doctor? God, using his word and his wisdom.
Andrew Murray
The chief thing is, not to know what God has said we must do, but that God Himself says it to us. It is not the law, and not the book, not the knowledge of what is right, that works obedience, but the personal influence of God and His living fellowship. It is only in the full presence of God that disobedience and unbelief become impossible.
A. B. Simpson
It is very sad and humbling to see the tendency of… those who, if they do not reject the Bible altogether, will compromise its supremacy and question its infallible authority. The Bible is either everything or nothing. Like a chain which depends upon its weakest link, if God’s Word is not absolutely and completely true, it is too weak a cable to fix our anchorage and guarantee our eternal peace. Thank God, we have reason to accept it as the supernatural revelation of a supernatural God, the word not of man, but the Word of God that lives and abides forever.