He says: "And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again,
and receive you unto Myself; that where I am, there ye may be also!"
So He bids us to look forward in the trials and sorrows which will
come to all of us, as we pass through life to the Father's Everlasting
Home—to His being there to get ready that Home for all who love Him—and
then He promises to come back and fetch His people, and take them to be
for ever with Himself!
John, the disciple whom Jesus loved, who had sat close to his Lord, and
had leant on His breast, heard all these heart-cheering words, as Jesus
uttered them. But little did he know, then, that he would be chosen to
write all these lovely words down in his Gospel; nor that by and by he
should be a prisoner for years in the rocky Isle of Patmos, and see
glorious visions of "the Father's House, and the many Mansions."
There, in the loneliness and solitude, the glorified Saviour came to
His loved disciple and said to him these wonderful words:
"I am the First, and the Last, and behold I am alive for Evermore."
He told John that many sorrows and difficulties would beset His
followers, but that those who overcome shall sit down with Him on His
Throne, even as He had overcome and is seated with His Father on His
Throne.
By and by, near the end of these wonderful Revelations, John was
allowed to have a glimpse into Heaven itself, and he saw a vision of
the many mansions which Jesus is preparing for us!