Question: Where will we be raptured to when the Lord comes back? Today the Lord is in heaven; one day He will come down from heaven and take us up. In the end, where will we be exactly?

Answer: The Bible says that the New Jerusalem is the place where God and the believers dwell. In the new heaven and the new earth, the New Jerusalem will descend from heaven to the new earth. Prior to the new heaven and the new earth, we do not see the New Jerusalem descending from heaven. From this, we can say that prior to the new heaven and the new earth, the New Jerusalem is still in heaven. Therefore, we should believe that when the Lord comes back, although He will leave heaven and take us up, we will still dwell together with Him in the place where He dwells. We cannot say that this place is a “heavenly mansion”; heavenly mansion is not a term in the Bible. The Chinese Union Version translates heaven as heavenly mansion in two places. According to the original text, heavenly mansion in the Chinese Union Version should be translated heaven. The first place is Hebrews 9:24: “Christ did not enter into a holy place made by hands...but into heaven itself, to appear now before the face of God for us.” The second place is 1 Peter 3:22: “Who is at the right hand of God, having gone into heaven, angels and authorities and powers being subjected to Him.” Today our Lord dwells in heaven, and one day He will come to receive us into heaven. Then we will dwell together with Him in heaven. At the time of the new heaven and new earth, the New Jerusalem will be manifested on the new earth.

However, we need to pay attention to this one thing. Although we are not in heaven today, the Lord’s work is to work Himself into us, that is, to work heaven into us. The more we grow, the more the element of heaven is in us; the more mature we become, the more the element of heaven is in us. According to the aspect of subjective experience, heaven and God cannot be separated. To be spiritual is to be heavenly, and to be of God is to be of heaven. The parable of the prodigal son in Luke 15 shows that to sin against heaven is to sin against God. Verse 18 says, “I have sinned against heaven and before you.” Therefore, it is hard to separate God and heaven. When God works Himself into us, He works heaven into us. Adam is earthy, and Christ is heavenly (1 Cor. 15:47-48). Christ’s working Himself into us is to make us heavenly. Thus, we should not speak of heaven as a doctrine or a place. We fully acknowledge that heaven is a place and that one day we as believers will go there. However, according to the light in the Bible, heaven is a reality in the believers.

While God is working Himself into us, He is working the element of heaven into us. Formerly, the elements in us were of the earth, earthy; however, from the time of our salvation, God has been working His element into us so that the elements in us become heavenly. When we are fully mature and are thoroughly worked on by God, the element in us will be heavenly. At that time, we will be part of the New Jerusalem. This is a mystery that cannot be fully explained with human words and is difficult to understand, but it is our experience. Whenever the elements of Christ increase in us, we feel that we are more heavenly.

The place where we will be for eternity in the future, where we and God will be completely mingled, is the New Jerusalem. Therefore, we cannot say that the New Jerusalem is a place in heaven; the New Jerusalem is a constitution of the believers and the Triune God. At that time, the element in all of us will be heavenly, without any earthy flavor. We cannot see earthy things in the New Jerusalem. In the New Jerusalem there will be no brick, but everything will be pure gold, pearls, and precious stones. These items indicate that the earthy elements in us will be gone. Every part of Adam in the garden of Eden was of the earth, and to this day our body is still of the earth. However, we should believe that after the Lord has worked on us, when He comes again, we will be completely transformed; we will no longer have any earthy elements in us. The Bible says that at that time, our body will be redeemed and transfigured into a body of glory (Phil. 3:21). To be glorified is to be of God, and to be of God is to be of heaven. There will then be no element of the earth in us; rather, the element in us will be heavenly. Thus, strictly speaking, we should not be concerned with the matter of whether we will go to heaven but with the matter of whether heaven has been constituted into us.

Today in Christianity there is a deeply rooted concept of going to a heavenly mansion; however, there is no place in the Bible that says the Lord’s believers will go to a heavenly mansion. Going to a heavenly mansion is the thought in Buddhism and Catholicism; it is not a thought in the Bible. The thought in the Bible is that God will make all of us, who are earthy, into heavenly people. The Bible does not say that simply by being washed in the precious blood, men of clay will be able to go to a heavenly mansion without any change in their element. This is the Catholic thought, not the scriptural thought.

The thought in the Scriptures is that from the day a created, earthy person is saved, God not only cleanses him with the precious blood but also puts His life into him. This life is like pure gold, and it can produce pearls as well. God desires to transform earthy persons with the divine life so that all that they are naturally, including their earthy thoughts, earthy emotions, and earthy will, can become heavenly. This transforming life operates in man. The meaning of transform in the original Greek and in the English translation is to change from one state to another; that which is of clay becomes pure gold after transformation.

God’s intention is not to transfer men of dust into heaven; that is not God’s thought. Rather, God desires to work heaven into men of dust and transform them into gold, pearl, and precious stones. God indicated this desire in Genesis 2. He first created Adam with the dust of the ground, and then He placed Adam in front of the tree of life with the river of water of life flowing forth gold, bdellium, and precious stones. This is a very meaningful picture that reveals God’s intention. God desired that Adam, who was a man of dust, would eat the fruit of the tree of life to obtain life and would allow the water of life to flow in him. This causes men of dust to be transformed into gold, pearl, and precious stones. This picture reveals the record in the entire Bible.

We, as the descendants of Adam, are that earthy man. The tree of life is Christ and His cross, and the water of life is Christ’s life and the Holy Spirit. When we, the earthy people, receive Christ and the cross and thus have His life and the Holy Spirit within us, we begin to experience transformation. We will be transformed to the extent that the New Jerusalem, a city of gold, pearls, and precious stones, will be manifested. Thus, the man of clay in the garden of Eden becomes the New Jerusalem, a city of gold. This is the divine concept.

We should never consider that as long as we are washed by the blood and regardless of our transformation, the Lord Jesus will transfer us to heaven when the fullness of the times comes. This will never happen. God’s salvation is objective to us because our thoughts, our emotions, and our decisions are all still earthy, and we have not been transformed. The thought in the Scriptures focuses on what is subjective, that is, the gradual working of heaven into men. We may use Solomon’s building of the temple as an illustration. Solomon’s father, David, prepared stones in the mountains even before the building work began (1 Chron. 22:2, 14; 1 Kings 6:7). These prepared stones were not unrefined, useless stones; rather, they were stones that had been smitten, dealt with, and made useful. Then at a certain point in time, Solomon came, took the prepared materials, and used them to build the temple. The materials became the temple. We can say that Solomon moved the stones that were formerly in the mountains to the temple. However, to be more accurate, this is not merely a matter of moving stones; rather, it is a matter of making stones that are smitten and dealt with part of the temple.

Today our Lord, as David, is preparing us as the materials in this world, which is a wilderness. After He has prepared us individually, the harvest will be ripe, and heaven will have been wrought into us. That will be the time for Christ as Solomon to come forth. When the days of David are over and the age of Solomon arrives, the Lord will come and take us, the prepared materials, to build us up into a holy place, a holy temple. Although some people say that we will be moved from earth to heaven, we must pay attention to this basic matter—the earthy men cannot be moved to heaven objectively. Heaven must be worked into them even before there is any movement. This can be compared to the fact that before the stones were moved to the temple, they were already transformed to become part of the temple.

Never understand the New Jerusalem in only an objective way. We need to know that we are a part of the New Jerusalem. We acknowledge that we will temporarily go to a place called heaven and that the New Jerusalem will ultimately come down out of heaven; however, it is not sufficient only to believe this. This is a subjective matter. The God in heaven desires to work the heavenly nature, heavenly reality, and heavenly content into us through the divine life and the divine Spirit. He does this so that every part of our being can be transformed, becoming heavenly, until one day we are completely ripe and ready for harvest. Before we go to heaven, heaven will have already been completely wrought into us.

We can say that before we go to heaven, we have already become heavenly. This is the thought of the Bible. Before the Lord takes us up into heaven, He has worked the heavenly nature and reality into us through His heavenly life and the Holy Spirit. We become completely heavenly, which is also to make us a part of heaven. When we arrive at this stage, the harvest will be ripe and the heavenly Solomon, Christ, will come to consummate the spiritual building of His heavenly dwelling, the New Jerusalem, where God and we will be together eternally. Then we who have been saved and worked on by God will be a part of heaven. Therefore, heaven is not an objective matter but a subjective matter.

The thought of God working Himself into us is very deep and strong in the Bible. We know that one day God will take us up to heaven, but we should pay attention to this one thing— everyone who goes to heaven must become a part of heaven. If we have not become heavenly, and instead keep our earthy nature, we cannot enter into heaven. Heaven desires only men of gold, not men of clay. Heaven desires only heavenly things, such as gold, pearls, and precious stones; heaven does not want anything of earth. The things of earth must remain on earth; whatever is in heaven must have the heavenly nature. If we wish to go to heaven, we need to let God work heaven into us. This is a very important thought in the Bible.

We need to see this subjective matter and allow the Lord to daily work in us in order to daily transform us from earth into gold. He needs to transform us until we have His glorious image, until He is able to come back and transform our earthy body into a glorious body like unto His own. We will then be with Him. Some people say that this is to enter into heaven, and we cannot say that this is wrong; nonetheless, we need to realize that heaven is already in us before that time arrives. Thus, subjectively speaking, entering into heaven does not contradict the mingling of God with man. It actually refers to the same thing.