Heaven And The Angels
By H. A. Baker
Although for many years I have been a missionary in China for the express purpose of guiding man
out of darkness into the land of endless light, at the same time, I must confess, I had most vague ideas of that land toward
which we journeyed. I believed heaven was a land of eternal bliss where we worshiped God in His presence. The saints in heaven
were, in my opinion, airy angel-like beings who were inexpressibly happy. There was, of course, the New Jerusalem with golden
streets and the Throne of God. Beyond these conceptions of heaven all else was vague, misty and unreal in my mind.
The baptism of the Holy Spirit had made Jesus and life in Him very real, and heaven and eternal
life had also become living realities. But I had few definite ideas of heaven.
Then there came a mighty outpouring of the Holy Spirit upon the orphanage of Chinese children that
we conducted for ten years. At that time these children who had even more vague ideas of heaven than I had were, day after
day and night after night, caught away in the Spirit to see realms of the eternal worlds. The curtain that separates the temporal
from the eternal was drawn aside and the children saw wonders of heaven and the life beyond the grave. The account of these
experiences is written in my book, VISIONS BEYOND THE VEIL, now in its fourth edition, and translated into three languages.
My eyes were opened to the wonders of the life beyond the grave. The importance of a better knowledge
of these realities having to me strongly, it seemed to be the work of the Lord to bring to my hand tracts, letters and books
from different corners of the earth, dealing with the visions beyond the veil, such as had come so unexpectedly to our orphan
children. It was marvelous to read how the experiences of others checked in detail with those given the Chinese children.
Nowhere was there disagreement.
I was amazed, too, to find that most wonderful and detailed visions of the life to come had been
given to saints of God from time to time and that some inspiring books and tracts have been circulated in various lands in,
or before, the last century. The reading of these revelations, as well as the visions given our orphan children, under the
anointing of the Holy Spirit, have made to me the life beyond the grave a land of realities, while the things of this earth
have become more and more the misty shadows.
Because I had been in such ignorance of the life of the world to come, and because these revelations
have so transformed my own life and my work on the mission field, I felt led to gather together the best of the things that
had come to my knowledge in one way and another, and to put the material in book form available to my friends at home.
The Lord has greatly blessed with gifts of the Holy Spirit many of the people of the ten tribes
with whom I work in the mountains of Yunnan, West China. Many who formerly had no conception of a Paradise and the City of
God have been caught up in the Spirit to see the very things related in this book.
In view of these experiences, I firmly believe that, although the reader may find many things herein
related new to him, as they were to me, nevertheless, they will be found to be true revelations from God of the life beyond
the grave.
Will the reader first of all please read the “Cloud of Witnesses” and note the books
quoted, and the tracts, and publications from well-known publishers, whose publications in their time were considered orthodox
by the churches of their day. It will be seen, too, that many of the writers from whom I quote were men whose sane views of
the things of God and whose spiritual life were not questioned.
