Illusion is related to mystery. I was sent an email of an entertainer who took silk cloths and turned them, through various simple gestures, into doves, or from doves to silk cloths. By the time he finished, a cage was full of variously colored doves. He concluded by throwing one of them into the air. The bird disappeared, showering down a snow storm of white feathers. My constant thought in viewing the act was: How did he do all this? My email friend, adept at doing magic acts himself, and sending the recording of the act, was also taken with the same question. He didn’t know either. And, the entertainer is not going to tell. His livelihood may depend upon keeping his secrets. We know it is clever trickery – known to few.
In my lifetime, the culture has moved from the old-time magician to the modern illusionist. The old now seems to be so physical, the new seems to touch on the mystery of things, far more challenging to the mind than Houdini escaping a straitjacket while submerged in water. The illusion, so mysterious, seems to us to point toward some higher meaning. If we only knew what it is in truth. Is heaven an illusion, born of wishful trickery? Many skeptics believe that it is that. They usually begin their rebuttals on the illusion of space. Why do people point upward to the sky when they think of heaven, and downward to the earth when they gesture for hell? There is a funny thing in the illusion. Upward there is coolness in the air, downward there is a cauldron of red fire in the heart of the earth. At times it breaks through in a volcanic eruption. The Hawaiian Islands have been formed and are growing from cooled, and cooling, lava.
The human being tends to use gestures to indicate meaning. Literature holds the analogies that up means good and down means bad. Such is not always the case, but in the arena of communication, we have generally agreed on some signs so to communicate sensibly. When something doesn’t fit our experience, or made-up experience, we have trouble with it. I would no more want to prove heaven or hell by direction than I would want to prove love by hating. Opposites do not prove opposites. Heaven needs no opposite to function with the truth and holiness of God. For some persons heaven is simply the opposite of hell.
Jesus was not an illusionist when he walked the earth. The miracles were not illusion, the words he spoke were not spiels to cover sleight of hand. The commitment on his part was to communicate, and show in the model of his life, that the earth is the illusion. It will pass away. What we should look for is that which will not pass away. True faith will stand the tests, and the answer will be clear for: How did he do it?
Heaven is going to be a transition from the earth’s ultimate illusion to the reality of eternity. There will be a last meal, noted as the Marriage Supper of the Lamb. It will be the celebration of the reception of the Church for the eternal purpose. No meals will follow. There will be a unity of family and friends, and from there the illusion will be lost and all will be taken up with God and his creativity, of which we shall share – if we are in God’s heaven. There will be no sickness, no sorrow – no factors that are a part of the present natural illusion. The holiness of God, with no opposite condition, will be the reality and norm in that which has been virtuous, but often violated by mankind. There will be no night there, no seas, no oxygen, no sex, no families, no murder, and so the story may be extended. We shall have what is real and lasting needing nothing more than the power of God for sustenance. All other will have become illusion. In its time warp, it was real. Time has passed and ended. It could be explained if we only had the information available to the Miracle Worker, the Savior, the Author of Faith, Hope and Love. The atmosphere will be love, the replacement for oxygen. Love will be the elixir of the environment. It will emanate from the nature of God. There is more but I may have already tested too greatly the reader’s capacity to believe. The narrative tests my own, but it is my narrative gained from biblical faith. If it is a dream, permit me to dream on. We want to formulate it as best we can. For much of the world the Bible is a novel, and for much of the world it contains real biography that recites the story of every person at this or that period of his or her life – with the real faith of a fulfilling forevermore. *Mark W. Lee, Sr. — 2016, 2020