Revelation 4:1-3 - Heaven

After this I looked, and there before me was a door standing open in heaven.

The door to heaven is open! It is not closed. Jesus opened the door. Jesus told the church of Philadelphia that He would open a door and it could not be shut. It is open because of the life, death and resurrection of Jesus the Christ. All Christians should celebrate this work of God done solely because He “so loved the world, He gave”.

And the voice I had first heard speaking to me like a trumpet said, “Come up here, and I will show you what must take place after this.”

The voice is described as it was in Chapter 1, as the voice he had heard before like a trumpet, and it is the voice of Jesus calling him. Here we enter a transition point in the writing. In verse 1:19 he is to write “what you have seen, what is now and what will take place later.” Here is a transition to “what must take place after this” or “what will take place later”. The question is after what? It is after what he has seen and what is now.

2 At once I was in the Spirit,

Jesus called John to come “up here” presumably to heaven and immediately John was moved from the physical world to the spiritual world. We should be reminded that in chapter 1 John tells us that he was in the Spirit when this revelation was first presented to him. Yet now he is again put into the Spirit? I believe that he was at first in his physical body but immersed in communion with the Spirit, but here he is moved into this alternate world.

I notice that he could see and hear, he had emotion and was seemingly himself. In other words, his essence is not lost. Whatever doubts we may have about death, it should be somewhat reassuring to realize that when we are transported into the spiritual realm, we will have some essence of who we are. We do not die forever and become erased.

Another observation is that here in the physical world the Spirit is in us (if you believe in Jesus as the Son of God), yet to get to heaven, John was in the Spirit.

and there before me was a throne in heaven with someone sitting on it. 3 And the one who sat there had the appearance of jasper and ruby. A rainbow that shone like an emerald encircled the throne.

Someone sits on the throne. It isn’t us. It’s not me; it’s not you; it’s not any man. It is the one Who Is and has Always Been. There is no one else on the throne. There is one God and He lives! His appearance is as jasper (diamonds) and rubies. Each person will imagine these descriptions as they can. I envision bright light emanating through the multi-facets of diamonds and rubies, yet the glow is as a green rainbow. the rainbow encircles this bright sparkling indescribable appearance. I have no idea how clear and red makes green, but God is not bound by my understanding of colors.

I have read many accounts of people who have died and had experiences that they believe was a brief trip to heaven. In all but one, there was a description of colors that they had a very difficult time explaining. There were too many colors to know how to describe and they were different than we know.