Now let us consider what God does with our tears. Psalm 56:8 says, "You have counted my wanderings./Put my tears into Your bottle./Are they not in Your book?" From this we see that God remembers and counts our tears. God has not forgotten one drop of our tears.
Psalm 80:5 says, "You have fed them with the bread of tears/And have made them drink tears in large measure." Psalm 116:8 says, "For thou hast delivered my soul from death,/mine eyes from tears,/and my feet from falling." These two verses show us that God seems to give us tears as our food and drink, that we should eat and drink of them. Oh, we should live our days on earth in tears, and we should have tears as our companions. This world is a place of tears. Almost every patch of earth has been soaked with tears; hardly one place is dry. Here everything gives us heartaches, and every circumstance causes pain to our hearts. There is no peace on this earth. In spite of this, He will deliver our eyes from tears, and our feet from falling. That day will come. We will not be in this tearful world forever.
Revelation 7:17 says, "God will wipe away every tear from their eyes." The group mentioned here is the church. God will wipe away every tear from the eyes of all the believers on earth. This is the Lord’s promise during the great tribulation and before the millennium.
After the millennium, the Lord promises another group of people, saying, "And He will wipe away every tear from their eyes; and death will be no more, nor will there be sorrow or crying or pain anymore; for the former things have passed away" (Rev. 21:4). This group of people are those who will be the citizens in the millennium. This means that all the saved ones, whether they are the church, the Jews, or the Gentiles, will have the Lord’s promise: "God will wipe away every tear."
I love the New Jerusalem, not for its street of gold and gates of pearl, but for the Lord’s presence. There will be no tears there. When we die, we are not going into sorrow, but resting. When a person is tired from walking, he goes away to sleep for a while. Everyone is waiting for that day to come. We are not waiting to die. Some have rested today. If the Lord delays His coming, some will rest for thirty years or fifty years. Some, like Paul, will have to rest for two thousand years before that day will come. Thank the Lord, we can cease from our tears when that day comes and the world passes away.
The Lord bore our sufferings so that we would not have to suffer anymore. Thank the Lord that there will be no more sorrow and no more sin there. Trouble, suffering, and tears come from sin. Because there will be no more sin there, there will be no more tears forever. Thank God that the days of sorrow and the things of sorrow will not last. The New Jerusalem is coming soon, and the tearful world will soon pass away. When we arrive there, all the sufferings will be gone because when sin is removed, sufferings will be removed also.
In that day the Lord will give us a resurrected body. One brother in the Lord said that to him that body will be the same as the body we have today, that is, all the members will be there, and everything will be the same except that they will all be transformed. However, in the transformed body, one thing will be missing—tears in the eyes. Tears belong to the night, and there will be no need of them any longer.
Thank God that we are blessed, for the earthen vessel will not be working and praying here all the time. But while we are still here on earth, we are satisfied in God. Yet this will not be long either. Oh, that day will come. I hope that day will come quickly.
Finally, I will close my message with a story. At the end of the European War, casualties were great on both the French and the German sides. Many were seriously wounded on the battlefield and were dying. Among them one wounded French soldier who was a Christian held up a bottle of water to a German soldier who also was a Christian. At that time, both were dying. After they drank the water, the French soldier held the hand of the German soldier and said, "In that place, there will be no war." At that word, both turned over and died. Oh! Let us also say here today, "In that place, there will be no more tears."
(Collected Works of Watchman Nee, The (Set 1) Vol. 19: Notes on Scriptural Messages (3), Chapter 5, by Watchman Nee)