MANSIONS AND ROOMS IN GOD (Part 2)

QUESTION: Hello good evening, there’s this text John 14:1-3 that I have been battling with but can’t understand, are there mansions in heaven or what was Christ referring to when He talked about going to prepare a place for us so that where He is we be also.

My questions.

1. Can mansions be built in a house?

2. Where was Christ that He wanted us to be as well?

3. Has He gone to the father to build these mansions or not yet

4. Which kind of mansions could these be and when shall we get into them if at all?

Feel free to share your thoughts, mine will come later. All thoughts are welcome.

Pr Collins Odero

RESPONSE: We looked at the text in the first episode, and now we’ll look at the:

THE THEOLOGY

Theology’s first and most important subject is God. Before we can address the other topics on the table, we must first comprehend how that subject matter is presented in the topic at hand. God is the determining agent of everything discussed in John 14:1-3. He is the exclusive object of belief for whoever wishes to believe; he is the owner of the house in which there are mansions, and he is the only one who receives believers; and only where he is, believers dwell.

Now that we have a better understanding of God, we can put to rest all of our preconceptions and prejudices about Heaven. The important question for all of us to ask, and one that can get us all started, is: When we talk of Heaven, do we mean a place in God or a habitation of God? Is God housed in his house (father’s house= oikia) in the same way that we are housed in ours, or does the father’s house house the father?

The truth of creation and God as the creator provide the answer to this question. What exactly do you mean when you say God is the creator? This signifies that God is the uncaused cause of everything and the foundation of everything. That is, when God spoke/created everything, he spoke it into an ALREADY EXISTING EXISTENCE, none other than Himself. As a result, when the Bible’s first verse declares, “In the beginning, God created Heaven and Earth” (Genesis 1:1). It means that God existed before Heaven, and that when Heaven was formed, it was placed within/on an already existent existence (God). From this point forward, we know that even the heavens, which we and early Bible readers believed to be God’s abode (as other verses reveal), are unable to contain him (1Kings 8:27, Isaiah 40:12-25). This means that Heaven does not house God in the same way that our homes do, but rather God has housed the universe (including the Heavens) since the beginning of time. All of creation was built on top of and within God.

Now that the matter of Heaven and its geographical interpretation has been resolved, we can return to God’s language in John 14:1-3. God is informing his audience that those who trust in him will be accommodated in him immediately. The same theme is continued by the author of John’s Gospel in John 15:1-6, when the same God asks all his believers to abide in him.

The significance of the father’s house is an issue of Eternal Existence and Eternal Extinction, not of gain and loss, reward and punishment, as we have always understood Heaven and Hell to be. In John 14:1-3, God teaches us that eternal existence is only possible within God, whereas eternal extinction is a reality outside of God. If anybody does not abide in me, he is put out as a branch and withers, and they gather them and throw them into the fire, where they are burned, according to John 15:6.

GOD AND THE BELIEVER AS DWELLING PLACES

Heaven is not God’s container, but rather God’s content, and God is Heaven’s container. You must believe in God and Him alone for God to prepare a place (Topos) for you IN HIM (John 14:1-2). This brings us to another intriguing topic that we must all address: one of the Mansions. Mone is a Greek term that means abiding, dwelling, to make an abode, or God indwelling in the believer as a Spirit, as referenced in John 14:18-20: ¹⁹ “A little while longer and the world will see Me no more, but you will see Me. Because I live, you will live also. ²⁰ At that day you will know that I am in My Father, and you in Me, and I in you. (NKJV)

We already know that a believer is a dwelling place for God, just as the Temple was a dwelling place for God in the midst of a community of his worshippers (Exodus chapters 25-31 fulfilled John 2:17-21). Later in the New Testament, believers outside of Judaism build a new dwelling place for God as a corporate body of believers wherever they are assembled (Ephesians 2:19-22). Individuals are also God’s dwelling place (1Corinthians 6:19-20). It’s crucial to realise that Mone-Mansions (dwelling places) aren’t just for us in God; God, too, should have mansions in us, just as we have mansions in him. John 15:4 says, “Abide-(mone) in me, and I in you.”

Now, Pastor Collins, I’ll respond to your questions:

1. Can mansions be built inside a house?

If the home is God himself, the answer is YES. In a House, mansions can be built. In John 14:1-3, God was speaking to a culture that possessed a Bet’av, which may have been changed in style and name in modern Israel. A Bet’av, on the other hand, was a homestead in which the father’s house was surrounded by the residences of his children and extended family, and the entire settlement was regarded THE FATHER’S HOUSE.

In Uganda, there is a Jewish Bet’av equivalent to the Karamajong culture, which they call the Ere or the Manyatta, and it looks like this:

God utilises such a settlement to illustrate to his audience what he means when he talks about Him dwelling in them and them dwelling in him at the same time and all the time. To this audience, a settlement like this may be found among the Old Testament tribes who settled around the Terbanacle, as shown in this illustration:

2. Where was Christ that he wanted us to be as well?

Christ is present in us, and he desires for us to be present in him as well (John 14:20, 15:4; Galatians 2:20, 4:19; Ephesians 3:17; Colossians 1:27)

3. Has he gone to the father to build these mansions or not yet?

He is the father, and wherever there is faith in him, mansions already exist.

4. Which kind of mansions could these be and when shall we get into them if at all?

These mansions are God’s eternal dwelling place for believers exclusively, as well as believers’ dwelling place for God as long as they believe.

CONCLUSION

Allow me to conclude by reminding myself and all other troubled believers that God has asked us not to be troubled. Our destiny is secure as long as we abide in him and he in us, and after this fallen and sinful geography is gone, we who believe in him and him in us will have a new field where we can continue to practise our dwelling in him and him in us. This is why he declares, “Behold, I create new heavens and a new earth; and the former shall not be remembered or recalled” (Isaiah 65:17). It is in this new geography that free-will beings like you and me can now construct the brick-built mansions of our dreams, and we can and will do it without interruption because the setting will be sin-free.

If you want it, follow the imperative to BELIEVE IN GOD.

God bless you,

I invoke TRUTH, WISDOM and FAITH (2Tim 2:7)

Priest M.I.T White (+256-775 822833)

iTiS Well of Worship Fellowship (John 4:24)

Questioning to Believe and Believing to Live