By John the Apostle, published in The Gospel of God’s Love, pages 305-309.
“I was with you tonight and heard the sermon of the preacher on the question: “What is heaven?” And his text was founded in a book of the Bible ascribed to me, so I thought it fitting that I should come and write as to the truth of that sermon. And to its value as descriptive of what heaven is, what its appearances are, and what the spirits are doing in what the preacher called ‘service.’
“I first want to say that, while I did write a book similar to the one called Revelation, yet this one does not contain my writings to any great extent. In my time and a long time previous, the Jewish writers, because of great troubles their nation was undergoing, were accustomed to write books in the nature of the one contained in the Bible (and also called “revelations”), for the purpose of encouraging their people to believe that the wrongs they were suffering would be avenged by God, and their enemies made to suffer and be destroyed. And that in the end their nation would be rescued and become the ruling nation of the earth. These writings were always ascribed to some prophet, seer or man of God through mysterious visions.
“These writings were intended to encourage the Jews to establish faith in God, and in their belief that He would send them a Messiah who would have the power to redeem them from the punishments they were undergoing under the tyrnny of their captors. Always were these writings prophetic, holding forth these promises for the future, without ever fixing a time for their fulfillment. So that, as time went on and promises were not fulfilled, hope continued to exist and their belief was not lessened.
“This hope upon hope was a wonderful force in keeping up the beliefs and expectations of the Jews; and so effective was it that to this day they remain in expectation of this coming Messiah. Many books and manuscripts were written, holding forth the results of visions claimed to have been experienced by these writers. But these prophecies, in the sense that the Jews understood them, have never been fulfilled, neither will they ever be in the future.
“This custom continued from these early times down to the time in which I wrote my book of prophecy. To be continued…