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About the Book
"The Results of Neglect" by Creflo Dollar explores how neglecting important aspects of our lives, such as our spiritual health, relationships, and personal growth, can have negative consequences. The book offers practical advice on how to prioritize and nurture these areas to achieve success and fulfillment.
Katharina Luther
Katharina von Bora (l. 1499-1552, also known as Katherine Luther) was a former nun who married Martin Luther (l. 1483-1546) in 1525. She, along with some fellow nuns, escaped their convent with Luther's help in 1523 in response to his reform movement. Katharina is recognized as the stabilizing force in Luther's life, enabling his later works.
Almost nothing is known of her life prior to 1523, and the details of her married life come mostly from Luther's letters. She was the undisputed administer of their home and finances, tending to all the necessary practical matters and allowing Luther the time and space to write, preach, and lecture. In addition to her domestic duties, she also bore Luther six children, ran their farm, supervised servants, operated a successful brewery, and assisted Luther in developing his Church. Her marriage to Luther – a former nun to a former priest – set the paradigm followed by many others and established the model of an ecclesiastical marriage.
After Luther's death, she was forced to leave Wittenberg during the Schmalkaldic War (1546-1547) and fled to Magdeburg. Upon her return, she found her lands destroyed and struggled to make a living until 1552 when she left for the city of Torgau. She died there on 20 December 1552. She is celebrated annually on 20 December by some, though not all, Lutheran denominations, though all recognize her contributions to the Protestant Reformation.
Katharina von Bora is thought to have been born on 29 January 1499, though her birth date is not recorded. Her parents were untitled lesser nobility, but who they were is debated. Based on different documentation, they were either Johan von Bora (also given as Jan von Bora) and his wife Margarete of Lippendorf or Hans von Bora and his wife Anna von Haugwitz of Hirschfeld. When her mother died c. 1504, her father remarried and sent Katharina to the cloister of Saint Clemens in Brehna to be taken under care and raised as a nun.
Sending one's daughter off to a convent was an option taken by many parents who either had too many girls and not enough resources to provide dowries for them all or who wanted to provide them with security and education, or both. A young girl like Katharina would have been admitted as an oblate, studied to become a novice, and then would take the vows to become a full nun sometime around the age of 20. Many women, of any age, chose the monastic life for themselves, however, preferring it to the uncertainty of married life and the dangers of childbirth. Scholars Frances and Joseph Gies comment:
For upper-class women, the convent filled several basic needs. It provided an alternative to marriage by receiving girls whose families were unable to find them husbands. It provided an outlet for nonconformists, women who did not wish to marry because they felt a religious vocation, because marriage was repugnant, or because they saw in the convent a mode of life in which they could perform and perhaps distinguish themselves. (64)
Convents were also used by the upper class to protect their daughters from political rivals who might try to abduct them and, conversely, to hold powerful or potentially powerful women who had already been abducted, but for many women, the daily life of medieval nuns was freely chosen. In Katharina's case, the decision was made for her. She was educated by the nuns at Brehna until she was around ten years old when she moved to the convent of Marienthorn in Nimbschen, where a maternal aunt was in residency.
Katharina would have had to submit to the authority of the abbess who ran the convent and live the monastic life obediently, which included daily routines of prayers, services, tending gardens, domestic chores, and, in some cases, illuminating manuscripts or preparing prayer books. Nuns were also expected to learn needlework so as to embroider the vestments of priests and, in most cases, perform outreach incentives in the community and tend the sick. Nuns could come and go from the convent, but their interactions with the outside world were strictly monitored.
Based on later evidence from her married life, Katharina became adept at this time in nursing, administration, agriculture, domestic chores, and beer brewing, as she showed exceptional skill in all these areas, and more, shortly after her marriage to Luther. After Martin Luther's 95 Theses had been translated into German and published in 1518, news of his conflict with the Church would have reached Nimbschen in 1518 or 1519 at the latest. The conflict escalated throughout 1520, culminating in Luther's burning of the papal bull in December and his excommunication in January 1521.
Katharina's Escape
After Luther's appearance at the Diet of Worms in April 1521, where he defied papal authority and defended his works criticizing Church policy and practice, his popularity – and notoriety – grew. He was already a well-known figure prior to Worms, and the Church and civil authorities, recognizing him as a threat to the status quo, declared him an outlaw and heretic through the Edict of Worms in May 1521. Luther's regional sovereign, Frederick III (the Wise, l. 1463-1525) secured him in his castle at Wartburg, where Luther continued to write and translated the New Testament into German.
Among his many criticisms of church policy was monastic life, which he claimed was unnatural and unbiblical. These views may have circulated around Marienthorn prior to 1521 but certainly would have afterwards, even if the abbess had tried to silence them. Exactly how Katharina first learned of Luther's criticisms is unknown, but she had embraced them by 1523 when she wrote him directly asking for his help. She and a few other nuns of Marienthorn (the number of them is given at either eight or twelve) wished to leave the convent and required his assistance. This was no small matter since abducting a nun or helping her leave the monastic life was a criminal offense. Scholar Gwen Seabourne comments:
The gates of the convent allowed movement in both directions, and both church and secular authorities had an interest in keeping them under surveillance. Royal concern was with disorderly conduct and security of convents at a time when they might be used to house royal or noble women and also to confine the daughters of dangerous opponents. A statute of 1285 made removal of nuns from their convents an offense which might result in a prison sentence, compensation to the convent, and a payment to the king. The offense was that of the person removing the nun, rather than the nun herself, so liability was incurred whether or not the nun consented to her removal. (2)
This statute could only be enforced by the authorities of the region in which the offense took place, however, and if one could remove the nun to another principality, which chose not to enforce it, punishment could be avoided. Luther arranged to have a well-respected merchant, Leonard Kopp, help free the nuns in the region under Duke George and bring them to Wittenberg, which was controlled by Frederick III. Kopp regularly delivered herring to the convent, and on the Eve of the Resurrection (Easter Eve) 1523, Kopp made his delivery and then hid the nuns in his wagon and rode out through the gates. Scholar Roland H. Bainton, who maintains the number of the nuns was twelve, writes:
Three returned to their own homes. The remaining nine arrived in Wittenberg. A student reported to a friend, "A wagonload of vestal virgins has just come to town, all more eager for marriage than for life. God grant them husbands lest worse befall." Luther felt responsible to find for them all homes, husbands, or positions of some sort. An obvious solution was that he should dispose of one case by marrying himself. (293)
As Luther had hoped, Frederick III did nothing about the statute of 1285, and the newly arrived nuns were free to marry or return to their families. Luther first tried to place them back with their parents, but this did not work as the families refused to be implicated in a crime, and further, many simply could not afford to support a daughter, much less one who had renounced her vows and would be difficult to find a husband for.
Marriage
After exhausting the option of returning the women to their former homes, Luther set about finding them husbands himself. Scholar Lyndal Roper observes:
Luther needed to settle the women in respectable marriages as soon as possible to avoid malicious gossip, and thus found himself in the unexpected position of marriage broker. As a result, the situation forced him to think about female desire…It may have been that the subject came to mind because he was beginning to be tempted himself. (264)
By 1525, Luther had found respectable matches or positions for all of the nuns except Katharina, who was first placed as a servant in the home of the clerk Philipp Reichenback and then of the artist Lucas Cranach the Elder. Luther arranged at least two matches for her, neither of which worked out, and heard from his friend Nikolaus von Amsdorf that she had said she would marry only Amsdorf or Luther, but preferred Luther.
Luther, although he had advocated for the marriage of former priests and nuns, did not consider it an option for himself as he had been condemned as a heretic and an outlaw in 1521, knew there was always the chance he could be arrested and executed, and did not want to inflict that loss on a wife. There was also the concern, voiced by his friend Philip Melanchthon (l. 1497-1560) and others that marriage would detract from his public image as a selfless champion of the faith and possibly derail the reform movement.
Still, some of his friends, like Amsdorf, suggested he marry Katharina to resolve her problem and also make a statement for the new faith on the respectability of a marriage between two former ecclesiastics of the Church. Luther, Amsdorf suggested, should practice what he preached and show others by example how a marriage could work. Bainton notes:
[Luther] did not respond seriously to the suggestion until he went home to visit his parents. What he related, probably as a huge joke, was taken by his father as a realistic proposal. His desire was that his son should pass on the name. The suggestion began to commend itself to Luther for quite another reason. If he was to be burned at the stake within a year, he was hardly the person to start a family. But by marriage he could at once give a status to Katherine and a testimony to his faith. In May 1525 he intimated that he would marry Katie before he died. (294)
Katharina von Bora and Martin Luther were married on 13 June 1525 in a small ceremony and held a larger celebration on 27 June. They were given the former Augustinian dormitory (the so-called Black Cloister) as a home by John, Elector of Saxony, brother of Frederick III. The Black Cloister was a large building surrounded by fertile land, which the Luthers immediately opened to anyone in need of lodging, a policy that would remain in effect for the next 20 years.
Daily Life, Children, & Table Talk
Luther gave three reasons for his marriage: "to please his father, to spite the pope and the Devil, and to seal his witness before martyrdom" (Bainton, 295). At first, he gave no indication that he actually cared for Katharina herself, but soon after their marriage, he declared "I would not exchange Katie for France or for Venice, because God has given her to me" (Bainton, 294). Luther's affection for his wife is evident in his letters in which he praises her as a treasure, as "Doctor Luther," "The Lady of Zulsdorf" (their farm), "My Lord Katie," and "My Katie". Katharina's affection is evident in how she cared for her husband, even though he presented a number of challenges.
Bainton comments:
Marriage brought new financial responsibilities because neither of them started with a cent. Katherine's mother died when she was a baby. Her father consigned her to a convent and married again. He did nothing for her now. Luther had only his books and his clothes. He was not entitled to the revenues of the cloister, since he had abandoned the cowl. He took never a penny from his books and his university stipend was not enough for matrimony. In 1526 he installed a lathe and learned woodworking that in case of need he might be able to support his family. But one may doubt whether he ever took this thought seriously. He was minded to give himself exclusively to the service of the Word and he trusted that the heavenly Father would provide.
His faith in God's providence placed Katharina in the role of provider and sustainer of the household, which would eventually include their six children – Hans, Elizabeth (who died young), Magdalena (who died at age 13), Martin, Paul, and Margarete – four orphans they took in from Katharina's side of the family, and assorted others seeking temporary or long-term shelter. Additionally, there were Luther's friends, students, and admirers, who came to hear him speak around the dinner table and had to be provided with food and drink. Student boarders provided steady income, but at various times, there were as many as 25 people in the home who needed to be fed.
Katharina tended a small farm, cultivated an orchard, created a fishpond for fresh catches, maintained a yard of hens and ducks, and kept cows and pigs, which she slaughtered and dressed herself. She also brewed her own beer, said to be of high quality, which she sold and also used for the household. Further, she took great care of Luther's health which was never robust. Bainton writes:
He suffered at one time or another from gout, insomnia, catarrh, hemorrhoids, constipation, stone, dizziness, and ringing in the ears. Katie was a master of herbs, poultices, and massage. Her son Paul, who became a doctor, said his mother was half one. (299)
She supported her husband completely and was treated by him as an equal, always present at the gatherings which came to be known as Table Talk, during which Luther would hold forth on various issues after dinner and plenty of his wife's beer. Those in attendance would write down anything he said and later edited and published their collected pieces totaling 6,596 entries. Katharina told Luther at the time he should charge them for taking down his words, but he would not allow it. As usual, she complied with his wishes and continued her support, allowing him the intellectual and financial freedom to pursue his work.
Throughout their marriage, Katharina was keenly aware of her husband's importance, but he was equally aware of how her support enabled him to pursue his work. His opponents regularly mocked and insulted Katherina personally and their marriage generally in pamphlets which Luther responded to with far greater wit and insight in defending her. Their happy marriage served as a model and inspiration for many others of the time and afterwards.
Conclusion
Luther died of a stroke on 18 February 1546, and Katharina, in a letter to her brother's wife, Christina von Bora, vented her grief over the loss, saying she could not eat or drink or sleep. Her loss was compounded by financial problems. Luther had left everything to her in his will but had not executed it properly, and she was denied her inheritance. While she was appealing to the authorities to rectify this, the Schmalkaldic War erupted between Luther's followers and the Catholic forces under Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor.
She fled to Magdeburg until the conflict ended with a Lutheran defeat in 1547 and then returned to Wittenberg, only to find the Black Cloister destroyed, her lands torn up, and all the animals gone. She was able to sustain herself there through the generosity of John Frederick I, Elector of Saxony, son of John the Elector who had given the Luthers the cloister when they married. In 1552, the plague reached Wittenberg, and Katharina left for Torgau, where she hoped to find better fortune and safety. She fell from her wagon outside the city's gates, breaking her hip, and then contracted an unknown disease which she died from on 20 December, aged 53.
She was buried in the cemetery of Saint Mary's Church in Torgau and was largely forgotten afterwards as attention continued to be lavished on her husband. Scholarly studies of Katharina Luther in her own right only began in earnest in the 20th century and have been hampered by the scarcity of primary sources concerning her. Even so, her reputation has grown in the past 100 years as she has come to be better recognized. Torgau now hosts the museum dedicated to her as well as preserving the house she died in. Beginning in 2011, Torgau instituted an annual award for outstanding female achievement in social causes in Katharina's name, and she is celebrated as a strong woman of conviction and the emotional and practical support that allowed Marin Luther to fully develop his vision.
the father's house and the way there
"Let not your heart be troubled: ye believe in God, believe also in me. In my Father's house are many mansions: if it were not so, I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you. 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. And whither I go ye know, and the way ye know. Thomas saith unto him, Lord, we know not whither thou goest; and how can we know the way? Jesus saith unto him, I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me" (John 14:1-6). In these verses, there are two outstanding truths emphasized: first, that of the Father's house, and second, our Lord's personal return for His own. We are all familiar with the fact, I presume, that the Bible was not written in chapters and verses. These breaks in the text were put in by editors, and that in rather recent years, some of them as late as the time of the Protestant Reformation. And sometimes the chapter breaks seem to come at rather unfortunate places. I think such is the case here. Who, for instance, beginning to read the first verse of chapter fourteen, connects it in his mind with our Lord's words to the Apostle Peter at the close of chapter thirteen? And yet, there is a very real connection. The Lord Jesus had been giving His last messages to His disciples. He had intimated that soon they would forsake Him and flee. He had told them that He was going away and for the present they could not come where He was to go. And in verse thirty-six of chapter thirteen we read: "Simon Peter said unto him, Lord, whither goest thou? Jesus answered him, Whither I go, thou canst not follow me now; but thou shalt follow me afterwards." He was going, you see, to the Father's house. He was going home to God by way of the cross and resurrection, and Peter could not follow immediately. But the Lord says, "Thou shalt follow Me afterwards." Peter did not understand that, and he said to Him: "Lord, why cannot I follow Thee now? I will lay down my life for Thy sake" (John 13:37). "Jesus answered him, Wilt thou lay down thy life for My sake? Verily, verily, I say unto thee, The cock shall not crow till thou hast denied Me thrice" (John 13:38). And then He immediately adds: "Let not your heart be troubled: ye believe in God, believe also in Me." You see, the Lord Jesus is addressing these words, of course, to all His disciples, but directly — directly — to the disciple who was to deny Him in so short a time. And this is surely very comforting for our hearts. Peter was to fail the Lord — Jesus knew he would fail — but deep in Peter's heart there was a fervent love for the Lord Jesus. And when he said, "I will lay down my life for Thy sake," he meant every word of it. But he did not realize how untrustworthy his own heart was. It was a case of the spirit being willing, but the flesh weak. And Jesus knew something of the fearful discouragement that would roll over the soul of Peter when he awoke to the realization of the fact that he had been so utterly faithless in the hour of his Master's need. In the very time that Jesus needed someone to stand up for Him and to say boldly, "Yes, I am one of His, and I can bear witness to the purity of His life and to the goodness of His ways" — at that time Peter, frightened by the soldiers gathered about, denied any knowledge of his Saviour. And, oh, the days and nights that would follow as he would feel that surely he must be utterly cast off, surely the Lord could never put any trust in him again! But if he remembered these words, what a comfort they must have brought to his poor aching heart! For Jesus is practically saying, "I know all about it, Peter. I know how you are going to fail, but I want you to know this; in My Father's house are many mansions, and you are going to share one of those mansions with Me some day. I am not going to permit you, Peter, to be utterly overcome. I am not going to permit you to go into complete apostasy. You will fall, but you will be lifted up again, and you will share with Me a place in the many mansions." When He says, "Let not your heart be troubled," He does not mean, "Do not be exercised about your failure," for He Himself sought to exercise the heart of Peter, and in a wonderful way restored him by the Sea of Galilee later on. But He means this: "Do not be cast down. Do not allow the enemy of your soul to make you feel there is no further hope, there is no opportunity for you." I wonder if I am speaking to someone this evening who has failed, perhaps, as Peter failed. Under the stress of circumstances you, too, have denied your Lord, denied Him in acts if not in words, and the adversary of your soul is saying to you now, "It is all up with you; your case is hopeless. You knew Christ once, but you have failed so miserably, He would never own you again." Oh, let me assure you His interest in you is just as deep as it ever was. If you truly trusted Him as your Saviour, the fact that you failed so grievously, and the fact that you mourn over it, only emphasizes the truth that you belong to Him. Still He says, "[Return], O backsliding children, [unto Me]; for I am married unto you" (Jer. 3:14) — not, "I am divorced from you." And therefore He waits for you to come back and confess your failure and your sin, and He has promised complete restoration, for, "If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness" (1 John 1:9). And some day for you, too, there will be a place in the Father's house. "Let not your heart be troubled: ye believe in God, believe also in Me." You see, in the days gone by before Jesus came to them at all, the people of Israel did have faith in the one true and living God. Now they had never seen Him, and Jesus is saying to His disciples, "You have believed in God when you couldn't see Him, now I am going away in a little while and you won't be able to see Me, but I want you to trust Me just the same as when I was here. Just as you have believed in the unseen God through the years, I want you to put your faith in Me, the unseen Christ, after I have gone back to the Father." Do we have that implicit trust and confidence in Him, realizing that He is deeply interested in every detail of our own lives? The Word says, "Casting all your care upon Him; for He careth for you" (1 Pet. 5:7). There is absolutely nothing that concerns His people that He Himself is not concerned about. And therefore He would have us put away all the stress and all the anxiety. He says, "Be careful [anxious] for nothing; but in every thing by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known unto God" (Phil. 4:6). "Ye believe in God, believe also in Me." And then He adds, "In My Father's house are many mansions." "My Father's house," and by that of course He means Heaven, and He is speaking of a place, a place to which He was going, and a place into which some day He will take all His own. I often hear people say, "Heaven is a condition rather than a place." Heaven is both a place and a condition. It is true we do not read a great deal about Heaven in the Bible. Somebody has said, "Heaven is the land of no more." We have more in the Bible about what will not be in Heaven than about what will be there. Remember in the book of Revelation we read that there will be no more sin, there will be no more tears, there will be no more pain, there will be no more sorrow, there will be no more curse, there will be no more darkness, there will be no more distress of any kind in the Father's house. The Father's house is the place where Christ is, and that is the place to which the redeemed are going. Some of you may have thought the expression here, "In My Father's house are many mansions," is rather peculiar. Somehow or other, the word mansion to most of us in the United States has an accustomed meaning that it did not originally have. When we see a great building we call that a mansion. But the word as originally used did not have that meaning at all. It had rather the meaning of an apartment, as we use that word today, a splendid apartment. So one building might have many mansions in it. And Jesus is telling us, "In My Father's house are many apartments, many resting-places." There is a place, an individual place, for every one of His own, all in that Father's house. "If it were not so, I would have told you." What does He mean by that? The Jews had had a belief in a heaven of bliss after death, and Jesus said, "If you had been wrong in that, I would have corrected you." But because He didn't correct it but rather affirmed it, we know that it is true, that there is a glorious home beyond the skies for the redeemed which we shall share with Him by-and-by. He adds, "I go to prepare a place for you." What does He mean by that? You see the mansions are different from what they were before He went back there. Before He went back to the Father's house, the sin question had never been settled. Before He went back to the Father's house, the veil had not been rent, the blood had not been sprinkled on the mercy-seat. So the saints of old went to Paradise on credit. They did not have the same blessed access into the immediate presence of God that the saints have now. We read in the Epistle to the Hebrews that we have now come to the spirits of just men made perfect. They were the spirits of just men of all the centuries before the cross; God had redeemed them and taken them to Paradise, but they were not yet made perfect. They could not be until the precious blood of Jesus was shed on the cross. Now having settled the sin question, He entered into the holiest with His own blood in antitypical fashion, sprinkled His own blood on the mercy-seat above, and now a place is prepared in the holiest for all of His own, and the spirits of just men of the past have been perfected and we who believe now are perfected forever. So we are all suited to that place to which we are going. "I go to prepare a place for you." And then He said, "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." Now I know that a great many people think of this as a word in regard to death, and of course, when a believer dies, that believer goes to be with Christ. But we are never told in Scripture that in the hour of death Christ comes for His people. If we may draw an analogy from something our Lord said when He was here on earth, we gather that that is hardly true. We are told that a dear child of God was dying — he was a beggar, it is true. He was an outcast, lying at the rich man's gate, but he was a real son of Abraham. He had faith in the God of all grace. And the beggar died, we are told, and was carried by the angels into Abraham's bosom. Angels carried the poor beggar — poor no longer — into Paradise. What I rather gather from that, is that the last ministry of angels, who are ever keeping watch over the people of God, will be to usher them into the presence of God. He is yonder in the Father's house, and His angels usher His saints into His presence. But He is speaking of something different here. Death is the believer going to be with Christ. That is what the Scripture tells us — "Absent from the body ... present with the Lord" (2 Cor. 5:8); "To depart, and be with Christ; which is far better" (Phil 1:23). But a believer going home to be with Christ is spoken of as being unclothed, having laid his body aside. He is there in the presence of the Lord a glorified spirit, but he is there waiting for his redeemed body. When the Lord Jesus fulfils that which is spoken here in the fourteenth chapter of John, then believers will receive their glorified bodies and will be altogether like Him. This coming, referred to here, is developed for us more fully in the fourth chapter of the First Epistle to the Thessalonians. There we read in verse thirteen: "I would not have you to be ignorant, brethren, concerning them which are asleep" —that is, saints whose bodies are sleeping in the graves but whose spirits are with Christ— "But I would not have you to be ignorant, brethren, concerning them which are asleep, that ye sorrow not, even as others which have no hope. For if we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so them also which sleep in Jesus will God bring with him. For this we say unto you by the word of the Lord, that we which are alive and remain unto the coming of the Lord shall not prevent them which are asleep. For the Lord himself shall descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trump of God: and the dead in Christ shall rise first: Then we which are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air: and so shall we ever be with the Lord" (1 Thessalonians 4:13-17). This is the coming our Saviour refers to when He says: "If I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and receive you unto Myself" (John 14:3). It is at that coming that the expectation of our completed redemption will be fulfilled. In Romans eight the Apostle Paul tells us in verse nineteen: "For the earnest expectation of the creature waiteth for the manifestation of the sons of God." Verses twenty-two and twenty-three: "For we know that the whole creation groaneth and travaileth in pain together until now. And not only they, but ourselves also, which have the firstfruits of the Spirit, even we ourselves groan within ourselves, waiting for the adoption—" What does he mean by that? —"to wit, the redemption of our body." Our spirits have already been redeemed, we have already received the salvation of our souls, but we are waiting for the complete salvation of the body, the redemption of the body at the coming of the Lord Jesus Christ. "For we are saved by hope: but hope that is seen is not hope" (Rom. 8:24). What hope is it then? The hope of the coming of our Lord. And to this He refers again in the third chapter of the Epistle to the Philippians, where we read in verse twenty: "For our conversation is in heaven; from whence also we look for the Saviour, the Lord Jesus Christ: Who shall change our vile body, that it may be fashioned like unto his glorious body, according to the working whereby he is able even to subdue all things unto himself." This is the glorious event that will take place when the Lord comes back again, when He comes back for us. There is the widest difference, you see, between this and the time when He is manifested as the Son of Man to deal in judgment with the godless world and eventually to set up His kingdom. This was a little secret the Lord was revealing to these apostles that night in the upper room. In the three Synoptic Gospels it was not mentioned. It was the Apostle Paul who was the chosen instrument to develop it, but it seems that the Lord Jesus, just before He went away, had a secret welling up in His heart, as it were, which He could not hold back any longer and He must tell them a little about it, so He says, "I am going away, but I am going to prepare a place for you. But if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and receive you" — not, "I will send the death angel for you," or any other angel, but "I will come again, and receive you unto Myself, that where I am there ye may be also." You see, He will never be satisfied until every one of His redeemed people is with Him in the glory in the Father's house. His heart is yearning for that. Now a word about the Father's house. Notice it is the Father's house, and the Father's house is for all the Father's children. We hear a great many strange things these days. Some people would try to tell us that it is only the deeply spiritual people of God that will be caught up with the Lord Jesus at His coming. When people talk like that, how little understanding they have of the Father's heart! You think of a normal father or mother here on earth, with, say, eight or ten children, and that is quite a family, isn't it? The father's house is open to all the children. I pity the home, and pity the children where the father or the mother makes distinctions among their children. I think it is a sad thing when out of a number of children one perhaps occupies a special place in the heart of the father and the others are held at a distance. "Oh," but you say, "maybe one or two are naughty children. Of course the father couldn't love naughty children as much as he loves the good children." Is that true? Why, even the naughty children are so dear to the father's heart that they give him many sleepless nights as he thinks about their naughtiness. He loves them and truly longs to see them all that they ought to be. There is always a welcome for them at the father's house. We need to remember, too, that in the Father's house above, there is no distinction. People often say to me, "Oh, if I can just get into Heaven and get a seat behind the door, I shall be satisfied. I know I don't deserve anything better." My dear friend, you don't deserve to get there at all. I don't deserve to go there. But I am not going there because I deserve to go, but I am going to Heaven because I have been born again, and the Lord Jesus Christ is preparing a place for me, and the Father's house is for all the Father's children. Another thing is this: There are no seats behind the door over yonder! I wish I could say it so loudly that everybody would get hold of it. There is nothing like that in the Word of God. There are no distinctions in the welcome that believers will have in the Father's house. I repeat, the Father's house has the same welcome for all the Father's children. You say, "Well, but doesn't the Bible indicate some will have greater rewards than others?" Oh, yes, but rewards have nothing to do with the welcome into the Father's house. The rewards especially have to do with the coming glorious kingdom, of course given in Heaven, given at the judgment-seat of Christ, but the differences are in the kingdom. For instance, look at the Second Epistle of Peter: "So an entrance shall be ministered unto you abundantly into—" Into what? Into heaven? No; it is not true that some people will get an abundant entrance into Heaven and other folk will not have anything like so warm and cordial a welcome. What does it mean? It says that some people have an entrance ministered unto them abundantly. Yes, but into what? "Into the everlasting kingdom of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ" (2 Peter 1:11). Do not confuse, or confound, in your thinking, the Father's house with the everlasting kingdom. The Father's house is the home of the saints; the everlasting kingdom is the sphere of service and rewards, where through all eternity, first in the Millennium and then in the ages to come, we shall be serving our blessed Lord who has prepared a place for us in the Father's house... The Father's house is the home of all the Father's children. But we make our own places in the kingdom by our own devotedness to the Lord Jesus Christ. Do you get the difference? So there is a place for all in the Father's house. About the way there. Will everybody get to the Father's house? I wish that they would. Richard Baxter used to pray, "Oh, God, for a full Heaven and an empty hell!" But alas, alas, many persist in rebellion against God and so that prayer can never be answered! There is only one way to the Father's house. And what is that way? I have had people say to me so many times, "We are traveling different roads, but we will all get to Heaven at last." No, no; I don't find that in my Bible. My Bible says, "There is a way that seemeth right unto a man, but the end thereof are the ways of death" (Prov. 16:25), and it warns me against taking the broad way that leads to destruction and tells me to take the narrow way that leads to life. And so here Jesus says, "And whither I go ye know, and the way ye know. Thomas saith unto Him—" Thomas was honest and he was never afraid just to blurt out all the truth. He said, "We don't know what You are talking about. We have to confess we are ignorant, and we don't know where You are going, and how can we know the way?" Jesus said unto him — and, oh, dear friends, you get what He said, for it is for you as well as for Thomas — "Jesus saith unto him, I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by Me" (John 14:6). Oh, don't talk about many ways. There is only one — Jesus is the only way. There is none other name under heaven given among men whereby we must be saved, but the name of Jesus. Have you come to Him? Are you trusting Him? If you are, you are on the way to the Father's house, and now you can wait with equally glad expectation for the hour of His return, for He said, "If I go, I will come again, and receive you unto Myself." When will He come? We can't tell that, but we are waiting for Him day by day. "I know not when the Lord will come Or at what hour He may appear, Whether at midnight or at morn, Or at what season of the year. I only know that He is near, And that His voice I soon shall hear. I only know that He is near, And that His voice I soon shall hear." From Care for God's Fruit Trees and Other Messages by H.A. Ironside. Rev. ed. New York: Loizeaux Brothers, [1945].
