Today we present to you some of the words of His Holiness the Pope in his lectures on the Book of Revelation, especially concerning these two verses:
(A) “See, I have set before you an open door, and no one can shut it.”
(B) “After this I looked, and behold, a door standing open in heaven” (Rev. 4:1; 3:8).
(A door open in heaven)

God stands before the doors of our closed hearts, knocking and saying, “If anyone opens to Me, I will come in to him and dine with him.” And while our doors are closed, He reveals to His servant John a door open in heaven! And He says to the angel of the church in Philadelphia, “Behold, I have set before you an open door.”

It is a wondrous expression of reproach, by which God shows that His dealings with us are unlike our dealings with Him. For He opens to us the doors of heaven while He stands knocking at our closed doors, asking us to open to Him and not to harden our hearts:

His door is always open before us. By His cross, He removed the dividing veil and opened the way to the Holy of Holies. He opened the gates of Paradise before Adam, the gates that had been closed since his sin, and said to him, “Behold, I have set before you an open door.”

It is a comforting expression, that we see before us a door open in heaven, no matter how all doors on earth may be closed…

No matter how the world narrows before you, and no matter how complicated the paths become, and people close their hearts and compassion, and you call and no one answers, and you seek and find no friend, then you are comforted by the words of John the beloved: “I looked, and behold, a door open in heaven.” It is a phrase spoken by a person in distress…

Indeed, it is spoken by every sinner who has found the doors of repentance closed before him:

Sin dominates him… he tried many times to rid himself of it and could not, and he almost despaired… he knocked on the door of spiritual disciplines and every personal struggle, and knocked on the doors of fasting and self-control… yet he did not find the door of repentance open before him… then this sinner lifts his eyes upward and says in hope, “I saw a door open in heaven… My help comes from the Lord who made heaven and earth”…

The important thing in all our problems is that we lift our eyes upward, to heaven, so that we may see this open door and be comforted…

Our problem is that in all our afflictions, we look to earthly help, we look to our intelligence and cunning, to the human arm, to people’s help, and to circumstances and resources. Because of this, we may fall into confusion, anxiety, and . All this vanishes and we are reassured when we lift our eyes upward to see the open door in heaven…

How many examples are there in the Scripture of this open door:

Take for example Moses and his people at the Red Sea. They looked, and the sea was before them, and Pharaoh and his chariots behind them, and they were trapped between two dangers, with no strength to fight. But Moses saw a door open in heaven, and said to the people, “Stand still and see the salvation of the Lord… The Lord will fight for you, and you shall hold your peace” (Ex. 14:13–14).

John the seer said, “I looked, and behold, a door open in heaven…”

Notice that he saw this door without knocking or asking… the door was not opened by his prayers, but it is open by its nature, by divine love.

He did not say, “Open for me, O Lord, a door in heaven, that I may see Your throne and Your hosts.” Rather, God showed him of Himself, so that we may know that His gifts flow from His love and grace. Indeed, to the weary He says, “Knock, and it will be opened to you.” But to those who live in faith, He says, “All these things shall be added to you.” They come to you without asking, from the heavenly Father who loves His children.

This heavenly door God opens, “and no one can shut it,” as He promised the angel of the church in Philadelphia. For He “opens and no one shuts.” If God opens a door for you, you will find all your matters made easy… “no one can stand against you… the gates of Hades shall not prevail against you”…

Therefore, do not waste your time digging in the earth, hewing for yourself broken cisterns that can hold no water. It is enough that you secure divine help, that you secure the open heavenly door, and then everything will be yours…

And the question now is: “How do you keep this door always open?”

When we close the door of the sanctuary (the veil), we pray saying, “O Lord, make the door of Your church open before us at all times, and unto the end of the ages. Do not close the door of Your church in our faces.” For this church is a symbol of heaven, and we wish that its door remains open before us as “a symbol of the open door of heaven.” The church is the gate of heaven as our father Jacob said: “How awesome is this place! This is none other than the house of God, and this is the gate of heaven” (Gen. 28:17). And he consecrated this place as a church for the Lord…

When did God show John this door in heaven?

He showed it to him while he was exiled on the island of Patmos, and persecuted for the Word.

It is John who said, “I, John, your brother and companion in tribulation,” while he was imprisoned and persecuted, “finding no compassion or justice on earth,” in a situation where another person might think that God had abandoned him and left him into the hands of his enemies to humiliate him… at that time, when the doors of the earth were closed, John looked and saw a door open in heaven, and heard a voice saying to him:

“Come up here, and I will show you…” And He showed him the throne of God…

How wondrous You are, O Lord! You raise the poor from the dust… I, the miserable poor one, who am not worthy to approach the throne of Trajan the emperor, am made to ascend to heaven to see the throne of God!!

Yes, come and ascend, that I may show you the throne of the King of kings, so that you may be assured that all the emperors of the earth are merely a handful of dust and ashes.

How did John ascend to heaven? … Here language stands عاجزة!

Yes, how?! I am not able to answer… the best answer is to say: I do not know… I do not find words in the Arabic language, nor in any other language, that can express this meaning… therefore I leave it to your spiritual contemplation.

“Come up here” is a command. How did John execute it? Or how was it executed in him? How did he ascend to heaven? How did he enter through this open door? How did he see the throne of God and the heavenly hosts surrounding it? How did God transform John’s sorrow into joy, his ignorance into knowledge, and his exile into elevation and grace? This I do not know.

Let me come down a little and ask a question on our level of thinking:

Where was John enabled to ascend to heaven and see the throne of God?

This did not happen in Jerusalem, the city of the great King, nor in the temple, nor in the Holy of Holies, nor beside the Ark of the Covenant. Not in all those great places, but in the land of exile.

Indeed, the kingdom of God does not come with observation…

We do not know when or where God visits us with His grace and His Holy Spirit… we do not know when heaven opens its doors, or when the voice comes like a trumpet, or like a mighty wind, or like the sound of many waters.

We do not know. But what matters is that we be ready for the work of the Spirit within us. We open our hearts, and the Lord opens for us a door in heaven…

We ascend with our spirits to heaven while our bodies are still on earth. The Lord lifts us to heaven even if we remain outwardly on earth… “whether in the body or out of the body, I do not know. God knows.”

The vision of John carries for us the greatest joyful hope, which is:

That the doors of heaven have become open. Stephen saw them before.

When the Jews were enraged at him to kill him, the Scripture says, “But he, being full of the Holy Spirit, gazed into heaven and saw the glory of God, and Jesus standing at the right hand of God. And he said, ‘Behold, I see the heavens opened and the Son of Man standing at the right hand of God’” (Acts 7:56).

This open heaven before us is our great hope which we seek, that we may see in it the glory of God and behold the Lord Jesus…

Stephen saw it, and John the beloved saw it, open, and they beheld something of the coming glory as a pledge of the Kingdom…

And it is remarkable that both saw it while in a state of suffering, persecuted and rejected by people, so that we may understand that the way to this heaven is the cross: “Through many tribulations we must enter the kingdom” (Acts 14:22).

Before Stephen and John, the prophet Ezekiel saw heaven:

He saw the throne of God carried on the cherubim (Ezek. 1). He saw this vision while he was among the captives by the river Chebar…

It is remarkable that he saw this vision while in captivity… like John in exile. In the same situation, Daniel saw a similar vision while in captivity. He saw the Son of Man coming with the clouds of heaven before the Father, and He was given dominion and glory… He also saw the four beasts (Dan. 8)… heaven was also open before him…

God’s heaven and His throne were seen by John in exile, by Stephen before stoning, by Ezekiel in captivity, and by Daniel also in captivity…

These heavenly visions which God allows His saints to see in their sufferings for His name are a kind of divine consolation in affliction. But those who live in luxury, I fear they may hear from Him that fearful phrase: “Assuredly, I say to you, they have received their reward.”

And you, brethren, have you seen this open heaven? Or do you have eyes but do not see?! Then when will this veil be lifted from our eyes, that we may see what the spiritual can see?!…

As carnal people, we do not see… but when we become in the Spirit, as John was “in the Spirit on the Lord’s Day,” then we shall see…

As long as our eyes are occupied with the body, with matter, and with the world, and covered with material things, we cannot see heaven open…

Look at the ark which withdrew from the world and rose above the waters that covered everything… this ark resembled heaven. And Noah opened in it a window like a door open in heaven. From that window came out a dove carrying an olive branch, a symbol of divine peace in the new earth that the Lord blessed.

An article by His Holiness Pope Shenouda III – in El-Keraza Magazine – Eighth Year (Issue No. 50), December 16, 1977.
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