Home at Last

In 1810, a frontiersman, John Colter, took refuge from hostile Indians in a remote corner of Wyoming. What he discovered there astounded him. There were holes in the ground which suddenly shot up a fountain of water one hundred feet into the air and then quieted again. Hot springs formed vast fields of orange and white and black that seemed like landscapes from another world. And nearby, a huge, thundering waterfall poured down into a deep canyon that zigzagged toward the horizon.

No one believed John’s tall tales. They thought he’d spent too much time in the sun.

In 1829, a trapper named Joe Meek visited the region and claimed to have seen the same unearthly formations. No one believed him either.

In 1852, Father De Smet, a Jesuit missionary, put together a report based on the extensive descriptions of the region by an Indian scout. This was discredited as well.

It wasn’t until 1870 that a well-equipped expedition led by Washburn and Langford established the facts beyond dispute. Their report led to the creation of the first national park in the United States—Yellowstone National Park.

In actual fact, those first explorers had simply seen too much to be believed.

John’s glimpses of the glories of heaven place him in a similar predicament. He has seen more than human eyes ever have. In vision he has looked on a place so brilliant, so fantastic, that he can put into words only a fraction of what he’s seen. There is nothing on Earth you can really compare it to. Everything pales in comparison. But John the Revelator, like John Colter, keeps trying to tell us, “It’s very real. All this really does exist.”

Heaven is not some vague spot in the clouds where spirits sit around playing harps. Revelation presents us with a heaven that’s a very real place for very real people. It’s a place of wonderful activity. John fills us in on some important details.