Podcasts about golden staircase

We're headed up the Golden Staircase! After a cold, late morning the sisters head up one of the iconic passes of the JMT. They enjoy the sunshine and surprise food gifts as they climb. Enjoy our inaugural FarOut comment of the week segment!

Take the golden staircase to complete relaxation.

Doc and the guys cover three passes in this 31-mile stretch of the John Muir Trail Join the trek to hear about Starr Camp, the Forbidden Adirondack chairs, the Golden Staircase, Starsky and Hutch, and one of the most treacherous water crossings yet. Will they survive? --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/johnfreakinmuir/support

Jim meets up with Patti, Debbie, and Ted at Le Conte Ranger Station. Over the next three days, they go up and over three major passes on the John Muir Trail: Mather, Pinchot, and Glen. Along the way they experience many fine sections of the JMT, including the Golden Staircase, the Palisade Lakes, and the Rae Lakes. On the fourth day, their last together, they exit over Kearsarge Pass, down to the Onion Valley trailhead above the town of Independence.

The Klondike was the "big stampede on 1897". Thousands left Dyea and Skagway to began the "big climb," 1000 feet up the Golden Staircase to the summit, some never made it, buried by an avalanche. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome to episode 40 of the Mountain Nature and Culture Podcast. I'm your host, Ward Cameron, and I record this on August 16, 2017, we've finally received a bit of rain in the Canadian Rockies. Every drop is a gift at this point and hopefully it will reduce our explosive fire hazard and let us stop worrying about unplanned fires. This week, I take a look at the fire fears in Jasper as an increase in pine beetle killed pines has added vast amounts of fuel to an already tinder dry forest. I also continue the story of Major A.B. Rogers, the surveyor responsible for designing the route that the Canadian Pacific Railway follows as it traverses the Rocky and Selkirk Mountains of western Canada. Pine Beetles Wreak Havoc on Jasper's Forests I just returned from 4-days of hiking in Jasper National Park, and I was horrified by the damage being done by mountain pine beetle in the park. In a summer plagued by an almost endless drought, thousands of dead pine trees simply adds fuel to the potential for a huge fire in the park. Mountain pine beetle (Dendroctonus ponderosae) is a natural pest of the mountain forests of western Canada and the U.S. but historically they were only found in very low numbers in the park. The beetles create tunnels behind the bark in the layer of cells called the phloem, the thin layer of cells that transmit sugars within the plant. As they mine this layer, they may end up killing the tree, but they also carry with them a blue stain fungus. This fungus finishes the job by interrupting the ability of nutrients to move up and down the tree trunk. It also stains the wood blue, destroying any potential commercial value that it might have. If you have any doubt about the impact of a warming climate, just take a drive towards the town of Jasper. Warmer temperatures have allowed the beetles to explode in numbers and infest enormous numbers of lodgepole pine as well as western white pine. The lack of sufficiently cold winters is coupled with decades of fire suppression to provide plenty of food for them to take advantage of. The beetle is now expanding its range eastward out of the Rockies while also affecting trees at higher and higher elevation. As populations grow, the beetles disperse in one of two ways. In the first, dispersal within stands, they usually just travel a short distance, up to 30 metres or so, but when they move above the canopy into a long-distance dispersal, they can travel hundreds of kilometres. Long-distance dispersals are difficult to stop, so many of the management decisions are based on stopping dispersal within stands as the infestation spreads from tree to tree. Prior to fire suppression, many of the valleys in the mountains would have had far fewer trees as the flames would kiss the forests every 15 years or so. Today, we've created a massive monoculture of huge stands of lodgepole pine and the beetles are loving them. The simplest solution to this problem is to bring more fire, much more fire to the landscape to try to restore some of that balance. Back in episode 35, I talked about how fire is an integral part of the mountain landscape. The wildlife benefit from fire, the plant communities are refreshed and the mosaic of forest stands of different ages also helps to challenge insect pests. These regular fires, also help to protect communities like Jasper from the potential for large conflagrations like the one that the town is currently afraid could occur. Because of the huge amount of fuel that has built up over time, these fires may need to be tempered by some selective logging in areas that are too sensitive to burn. In some areas, the beetles have killed 70% of the lodgepole pine trees and the infection is spreading quickly. Experts believe that the number of infected trees could increase exponentially over the next few years, continually increasing the fire risk to communities like Jasper. Surprisingly, at a meeting in Jasper recently CAO Mark Fercho talked about his experience fighting the pine beetle when he worked in Prince George, B.C. He was quoted in the Fitzhugh newspaper as saying: “It’s the green trees that are full of beetles, not the red ones,” Each one of those live trees can infect a dozen or more additional trees. The area of infected trees has tripled since 2014 to some 21,500 ha. Back in the day, when we had proper winters, it was the cold that helped keep the beetles at bay. On average, mid-winter temperatures in the range of -37 C are sufficient to kill 50% of the beetle larvae. Earlier in the season, temperatures as low as -20 C can also be effective. Communities like Prince George were forced to cut down thousands of trees in order to reduce the fire hazard in and around the community. They followed that by a replanting program to help replace the lost trees. Standing dead trees, like those left behind by pine beetles are capable of sending sparks high into the sky allowing fires to spread. Natural fires are not quite as explosive simply because they lack the tinder dry, standing, dead wood. Jasper has a lot of work ahead of it, and the character of the place will also change. If Parks is able to combine increased prescribed burns along with selective clearing of standing dead trees, the future may not be as bleak as it seems at the moment. Across North America, fire experts are beginning to realize that the biggest challenges faced by most forests is NOT forest fires, but the lack of them. More and more fire ecologists are suggesting that fires be simply left to burn themselves out - at least those that don't threaten human lives or property. These same scientists suggest that if some of the money being spent on suppression were actually devoted to fireproofing homes in communities then these towns may actually be much safer than they currently are. With changing climates and increased beetle expansion, fires are coming. I applaud the work Parks Canada is doing in recognizing the growing challenges that our western forests are experiencing and, for Jasper, I hope that they have received some of the rainfall that finally soaked my hiking group over the past few days. I'm happy to walk in the rain, and even the snow that we had yesterday, if it helps to reduce the fire hazard that we have all been worried about in the mountain west. A.B. Roger's Line Last week I talked about Major A.B. Rogers and his quest to find a route through the Bow Valley and the Selkirk Mountains in B.C. Well, by the end of the 1882 season he'd found a route…or had he? Unfortunately for the Major, his unlikeable personality meant that he had a long line of rivals that considered him to be all bluster and no substance…and then there was the fact that he was…oh, what's that word? Oh, yah…American! Even back then, there was that inherent rivalry, although we would see more American involvement in this line before the last spike would be driven home. By the start of the 1883 season, nobody BUT Rogers had actually traversed his route through the Selkirks, the Kicking Horse Pass route was far from finished, and finally, there was the matter of some inconvenient tunnels to be corrected. All in all, it was just another frantic year of exploring, confirming, and changing the slowly coalescing line on a map that would, just a few years down the road, become the tie that binds this nation together. In addition, Rogers was acting as a pathfinder as opposed to a proper surveyor. The fact that he forced his way through some mad wilderness, that didn't mean a train could follow his trail of tobacco stains. Any potential route still needed axe men, transit men, and the levelers before a real route could be confirmed. It really needed more than that. It needed a sober investigation to prove that the route down the Bow River, through the Kicking Horse Pass, and across the Selkirks was indeed possible. Too much money and time were being invested in this commitment to risk any chance of error. Rogers had his detractors. Perhaps it was his gruff nature, or his penny-pinching way of economizing on supplies, leading many of his expeditions to retreat on the verge of starvation. One of those was Jon Egan, the western Superintendent of the railway. He was unwavering in his assessment of the route through the Selkirks: "I want to tell you positively that there is no pass in the Selkirk Range...It has to be crossed in the same manner as any other mountain. The track must go up one side and down the other." At the same time, the Governor General of Canada, the Marquis of Lorne, the husband of Princess Louise (after whom Lake Louise is named), also was concerned about the potentially steep gradients that might be involved, but he was more concerned with the time constraints. As he put it: "It would be better to have them than further delay, with the N. Pacific gaining Traffic." Any fan of TV shows like Hell on Wheels, coincidentally filmed along the route of the Canadian Pacific Railway, can understand the focus on time and money. This was the biggest investment this young nation had embarked upon and, quite frankly, we couldn't afford it. Time was money and every dollar spent was not easily replaced down the road. While some may have underestimated Rogers because of his American birth, there was one American that nobody dared underestimate, the General Manager of the line, William Cornelius Van Horne. Van Horne is the star of the show, and I'll devote an entire episode to sharing his story but at this point, he pondered: "we must take no chances on this season's work because any failure to reach the desired results and have the line ready to put under contract will be serious if not disastrous. I think it important that you should take an extra engineer, who is fully competent, to take charge of a party in case of sickness or failure of any of your regular men." Van Horne was also concerned about the fact that Rogers often pushed his workers in difficult conditions with few rations. He added: "It is also exceedingly important that an ample supply of food be provided and that the quantity be beyond a possibility of a doubt. "Very serious reports have been made to the Government and in other quarters about the inadequacy of the supplies provided last year and a good many other reports have been made tending to discredit our work. The officials in Ottawa, as a consequence look upon our reports with a good deal of suspicion... "We cannot expect to get good men for that work at as low or lower rates than are paid further East and we must feed the men properly in order to get good service. It will be cheaper for the Company to pay for twice the amount of supplies actually necessary than to lose a day's work for lack of any." To understand his caution, we need to remember that the ribbon of steel that was the Canadian Pacific was winding westward day after day after day, mile after mile, creeping ever closer to this question mark on the map. Every rail cost money. Every railroad tie cost money. The further west the line progressed, the more committed they were to a route for which some still harbored doubt. Despite this dispatch, Van Horne fully trusted Rogers, he just came from a very different point of view. He defended Rogers to a businessman in New York: "There has been a good deal of feeling among some of the Canadian Engineers particularly those who have been accustomed to the Government Service against Major Rogers, partly from natural jealousy of one who is looked upon as an outsider, partly from his lively treatment of those whom he looks upon as shirkers or 'tender feet' and partly from his somewhat peculiar methods of securing economy, but more that all perhaps from his having succeeded, as is supposed, in doing what was unsuccessfully attempted by the Gov't Engineers, namely, in getting through the Rocky and Selkirk Mountains by a direct line. "I believe him to be capable and I know him to be thoroughly honest. He is something of an enthusiast and is disposed to undertake himself and put upon his men more severe duties than most engineers are accustomed to and I have reason to believe that in his anxiety to economize in every possible way he has gone too far in some cases and that a good deal of unnecessary discomfort, although no suffering, has resulted from it." The route was to be scrutinized from east to west, beginning with the area closest to the westward moving rails, the Bow Valley, beginning at Fort Calgary and extending westward. Charles Shaw was asked by James Ross, the western division manager to look at Rogers line covering the first 60 miles to the west of Calgary. He was unimpressed. He stated: "It's a nightmare to me and I'm afraid it will hold us back a year." Shaw felt he could improve on the line when Roger's who was present at the time leaped to his feet and blurted: "That's the best line that can be got through the country. Who in hell are you, anyway?" Undeterred, Shaw claimed that if he could not only find a better line, but: "If I don't save at least half a million dollars over the estimated cost of construction, I won't ask for pay for my season's work." There was another tunnel to the west, around a mountain in Banff. Van Horne knew it would delay work so Van Horne demanded: "Look at that," the general manager exclaimed. "Some infernal idiot has put a tunnel in there. I want you to go up and take it out." He was talking to his locating engineer J.H.A. Secretan, never a fan of Rogers, yet Secretan responded: "Mr. Van Horne, those mountains are in the way, and the rivers don't all run right for us. While we are at it we might as well fix them, too" In the end, Roger's nemesis Shaw, found a way to just go around the mountain which still bears the name 'Tunnel Mountain" in Banff although the tunnel was never actually built. Shaw was very critical for Rogers because he missed this option. He stated: "Roger's location here was the most extraordinary blunder I have ever known in the way of engineering" To make matters worse, Shaw was now sent to examine Rogers route through the Selkirks. This was easier said than done. To get to the Selkirks, you first needed to cross the Kicking Horse…and it held its own special brand of challenges. One did not just stroll, down the Kicking Horse, no more than Albert Rogers strolled, er crawled up. To traverse the Kicking Horse, you had to survive the Golden Staircase. Essentially, you had to survive a two-foot wide trail carved into the cliffs several hundred feet above the raging waters of the Kicking Horse River. The surveyors that plied these mountains were some of the toughest men these mountains have ever seen, but some were so terrified by the Golden Staircase that they would literally shut their eyes and hold on to the tail of their horse for guidance. As Shaw descended, he encountered a packer with a single horse ascending the staircase while he had an entire packtrain. As they mentally went through the arithmetic, one horse, several horses, one horse, several horses. In the end, they had no other option than to push the one horse off the cliff to its death. You simply can't turn a horse around on a 24 inch ledge. To attempt it risked spooking the entire pack train and risking much more dire consequences. So Shaw gets to the bottom and he bumps into the old man. I know, what are the odds. An entire mountain range and…oops, what brings you here. Rogers, in his usual congenial manner offered up a pleasant greeting that went something like: "Who the hell are you, and where the hell do you think you're going?" Thankfully, Shaw was a more reasonable man…or maybe not. The exchange continued. "It's none of your damned business to either question. Who the hell are you, anyway?" "I am Major Rogers." "My name is Shaw. I've been sent by Van Horne to examine and report on the pass through the Selkirks." That was a name that Rogers knew. Rogers was not a man to forgive a slight and he virtually exploded: "You're the…Prairie Gopher that has come into the mountains and ruined my reputation as an Engineer" Shaw was a big man, a much bigger man than Rogers and so he wasted no time jumping off his horse and grabbed Rogers  by the throat, shaking him and threatening? "Another word out of you and I'll throw you in the river and drown you" Rogers, not a big fan of water since his incident in Bath Creek in last week's episode, decided to back down. He claimed that he had been let down by an engineer and agreed to show him the route through the Selkirks. Rogers dragged Shaw up the Beaver River to the divide and then down to the Illecillewaet River. Shaw constantly criticized the route. At every turn, Shaw was there to dismiss Rogers and demean his progress. Simple things could add fuel to the fire…even former fires. As the story goes, Rogers gestured to the great Illecillewaet Glacier and exclaimed: "Shaw, I was the first white man to ever set eyes on this pass and this panorama." Shortly after this happened, Shaw found the remains of a campfire along with some rotted tent poles and asked Rogers where they had come from. The hatred continued in the exchange. Rogers replied: "How strange! I never noticed those things before. I wonder who could have camped here." To which Shaw countered: "These things were left here years ago by Moberly when he found this pass!" This was a world of egos and it usually seemed that one surveyor could never praise commend or support the work of another. Rogers was an easy man to hate and it brought him great grief. Stories like this sowed doubt in the Canadian Pacific and this pass had to be carefully scrutinized before the line could continue. After Shaw departed Rogers, heading eastward towards the Kicking Horse Pass, they encountered a second party dispatched to check up on Roger's route, led by none other than Sandford Fleming himself. Fleming had been dispatched by George Stephen, one of the two main financiers of the railroad; and if Stephen suggested an outing, you kitted up and headed for the hills. Shaw enjoyed telling Fleming that the route was impassable and that Rogers was a charlatan. As it turned out, Fleming ignored most of Shaw's stories because he had just descended the Kicking Horse and it had been the most horrifying experience of his many years in the wilderness. Nothing could possibly be worse…or could it? Descending the 'golden staircase, he later stated that he could not look down. If you did: "gives one an uncontrollable dizziness, to make the head swim and the view unsteady, even with men of tried nerve. I do not think that I can ever forget that terrible walk; it was the greatest trial I ever experienced." It was also a scorching hot summer, much like this one, and he added:  "I, myself, felt as if I had been dragged through a brook, for I was without a dry shred on me," Now let's back this up a little. All this happened before they met Rogers. As they continued on, Shaw's allegations faded and they began to recover from the terror of the Kicking Horse Pass. After connecting with Rogers, he dragged them up to the pass and Fleming, happy to see a way over the ramparts pulled out a box of cigars and toasted Rogers accomplishments and proposed that a Canadian Alpine Club be formed. Fleming was immediately voted in as president. The concept did not really take shape though until 1906 when former railroad surveyor A.O. Wheeler and reporter Elizabeth Parker took this spark and created the Alpine Club of Canada on March 27, 1906. Of course, this is a story for another episode. Things took a turn for the worse when they began the descent down the western side, into the dense interior rainforest of the Columbia Mountains. Along with Fleming was his former Minister George Grant and the experience was so harrowing that Grant would never return to such a wilderness again. As he described it: "It rained almost every day. Every night the thunder rattled over the hills with terrific reverberations, and fierce flashes lit up weirdly [sic] tall trees covered with wreaths of moss, and the forms of tired men sleeping by smoldering camp fires." In the following 5 days, they travelled only 27 km. How bad could it be? According to Grant, they pushed their way: "through acres of densest underbrush where you cannot see a yard ahead, wading through swamps and beaver dams, getting scratched from eyes to ankles with prickly thorns, scaling precipices, falling over moss- covered rocks into pitfalls, your packs almost strangling you, losing the rest of the party while you halt to feel all over whether any bones are broken, and then experiencing in your inmost soul the unutterable loneliness of savage mountains." Essentially, a good time was had by all. In this time of catered tourism with 5 million visitors a year swarming over routes that caused terror, hardship, privation, and death. It's important at times to stop, step back and wonder…if these forbearers could see what we have done with their legacy what would they think? As they see the landscape trampled and the wildlife sequestered, what would people like Rogers and Fleming say? They saw the landscape in its rawest form when even the idea of a national railway was simply a fanciful idea. Today, we don't have room for a single grizzly. We think it's more important for our dog to pee than it is for black and grizzly bears to be able to feed on the single food that allows them to exist on the landscape. Rogers was a miserable curmudgeon. He loved neither man nor beast, but he loved one thing…wilderness. As a guide, I spend a great deal of time relating the stories of those that came before. At the same time, I've written three books on the trails of western Canada and designed a 7-day mountain bike race that both Bike Magazine and Mountain Bike Magazine called 'North America's Toughest Race'. This meant that I had to explore thousands of kilometres alone in the wilderness. During this time, I often reflected on the experiences of these explorers and pioneers…the men that came before. To them, the wilderness was not something to be appreciated, it was something to be conquered…or was it? People often ask me about these men. I reply that" "Lots of people want to know what these men thought when they tore through that last tangle of wilderness and encountered an emerald green lake that had a glacier capped peak at the far end. To the left was a sheer vertical wall, and to the right was a matching vertical wall. What did they really think? Damn, another dead end!" These mountains were not something to be appreciated, they were something to be survived. Yet today, we see them with an eye of entitlement. The journals of these explorers describe a landscape of hardship and terror, but also one full of wonder and opportunity. As I look at the decisions being made just on local levels when it comes to preserving these landscapes and the ecosystems and animals that call them home. I fear that I may be one of the storytellers writing the last chapter… chroniclers of the end of our local wilderness and the animals that define it.  And with that said, it's time to wrap this episode up. I want to thank you for sharing your time with me and if you like the stories, please share the episodes with your friends. Stories are always best when shared. At Ward Cameron Enterprises, we sell wow! As a tour operator for the last 30 years, we can make sure your visit to the mountain west is one that you'll never forget. We specialize in hiking and step-on guides as well as speaking programs, nature and culture workshops and guide training. Drop us a line at info@wardcameron.com if you'd like to book your mountain experience. Today I took clients up to Mirror Lake and along the Highline Trail in Lake Louise. It's a classic trail that offers the option to crest the Big Beehive and offer panoramic views for miles. I'll post a picture in the show notes at www.mountainnaturepodcast.com/ep040.

With dreams of striking it rich in the Yukon, thousands made the trek to Alaska. An avalanche on the "Golden Staircase" was another hazard the minors faced. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

sermon transcript The Need for a Stairway to Heaven Andy read the scripture beautifully for us. This morning, I came up to him during the break and asked if he would also add the John reading. I was just going to have him read Genesis, but we really have before us the Old Testament shadow and the New Testament reality. We have the Old Testament vision and dream fulfilled in Jesus Christ, and we had to read both of them, didn’t we? And to have a clear sense of how Jesus Christ is for us the stairway to Heaven. The ladder that Jacob dreamed about has come true. There is a way for sinful people like you and me to go to Heaven. Isn’t that the central message of Christmas? That people like you and me, sinners, we can go to heaven because Jesus descended from Heaven to lift us up. And to me, that’s the joy and delight of this season. And all the other things are either blessings or distractions, depending on how you look at them. I choose to look on them as blessings and they’re a delight and a pleasure, and that’s a good thing. But the center of it all is that people like you and me, sinners, can be lifted up out of the dust, really, end up in the glory of Heaven. When I think of Christmas, I think of it as a season of dreams. I remember when I was a child, I had a hard time sleeping. I don’t know if you remember that. I was always waiting for Christmas. We were a home and a family that talked a lot about Santa Claus, I’m not speaking at all on that topic this morning, but I do know that I was wanting to be the one that would see him, and I had a hard time sleeping. I knew that I had passed on from childhood to adulthood when I collapsed in bed, Christmas Eve, delighted at last for a chance to sleep and didn’t want to be awoken early the next morning. Now I know I’m an adult, all I want is a good night’s sleep. But when I was growing up, it was just a time of dreams. And they weren’t sleeping dreams, there were wakeful dreams, excited to think about what the day would bring. Now, the dreams were always materialistic, I have to be honest with you. There were things that I wanted, there were certain things, and also even now, that’s not necessarily a bad thing. To be with relatives and friends, to have occasions together, memorable occasions, times with loved one, all of those things are good things. But I think that ultimately Christmas is a story of a dream fulfilled, and we’re looking this morning at Jacob’s dream, a vision of a stairway to heaven. Jacob’s Flight and Nathanael’s Unbelief Now, to begin with, we have to understand why we need a stairway to heaven. Well, why is it necessary? And I think a good place to start is with the character of Jacob himself. Why was Jacob in that place that he eventually named Bethel? He was traveling through the desert, and he lay down on the ground with a rock for a pillow. Now, I’m going to say more about that in a moment, but he was literally running for his life. And why? Because he was a con artist, he was a schemer, a deceiver, and he had burned his bridges at home, and so he was running for his life. The name Jacob literally means one who grasped the heel, and in Jewish idiom, that’s a sense of a deceiver, a con artist. And his brother, Esau, had said, “Rightly is he named deceiver, the one who grasped the heel because he has swindled me twice.” He swindled Esau out of his birthright when Esau was famished and he was willing to trade it for a bowl of stew, Jacob was more than willing to make the exchange. Actually, he somewhat goaded him into it, suggested it. But even worse, just before his flight that led to this vision, he lied to his father, his blind and dying patriarchal father. He lied to him that he might steal Esau’s first-born blessing. “I am Esau, your first-born,” he said to his father. That’s a lie. And as a result of that, his bridges were burned, specifically with Esau more than anything. Esau wanted to kill him, and so Jacob was fleeing for his life. In Genesis 28:10, it says, “Jacob left Beersheba and set out for Harran, and when he reached a certain place, he stopped for the night because the sun had set. Taking one of the stones there, he put it under his head and lay down to sleep.” The big problem was not Esau, the big problem was his own sinfulness, his own wickedness. Michael Cardon, in writing a song about this, said, “A stone for a pillow as hard as his head, he lay on holy ground.” But I don’t really think that Jacob’s problem was a hard head, I think it was a hard heart. It was a hard heart. And Jacob was a sinner, and he needed a Savior. The same is true of Nathaniel in the New Testament story. Now, Nathaniel is the best that Israel has to offer. Jesus said, “Now, here is a true Israelite in whom there is no guile.” He’s exactly the opposite of Jacob. He’s really the best that Israel had to offer. And yet he also needed a Savior. Nazareth, can anything good come from there? Come and see, he was told. An initial disposition of disbelief. Now, I don’t blame him for it. There was nothing in the Old Testament prophecy about the Messiah coming from Nazareth. But I guess my point is that even the best that Israel had to offer, he needed a Savior as well. And this is why we must have a ladder to heaven, a stairway to heaven, because God lives in a high and lofty place. God is Exalted and Lives in a High and Holy Place Look at the verse in your outline there in Isaiah 57:15, this is a magnificent verse. It says, “This is what the high and lofty one says. He who lives forever, whose name is holy, I live in a high and a holy place.” I’ll stop there. The rest of the verse is magnificent. But this is a statement of God’s exalted nature. He is a high and lofty God, He is the God above all gods, the name above all names. And it says that he lives in a high and holy place. High and lifted up. That’s the way Scripture portrays our God. Isaiah 6:1, “In the year the King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord seated on a throne, high and exalted, and the train of his robe filled the temple.” This is our God, a high and exalted God. And the Scripture says He’s exalted far above all other gods, which we know are false gods, really demons masquerading as deities. Psalm 97:9 says, “For you, O Lord, are most high above all the earth. You’re exalted far above all gods.” He’s an exalted God, and He’s exalted above all the puny nations of earth. Psalm 113:4, “The Lord is high above all nations. His glory is above the heavens.” And then Isaiah 40 makes this very clear, “Surely the nations are like a drop in the bucket. They are regarded as dust on the scales. He weighs the islands, as though they were fine dust. Lebanon is not sufficient for altar fires nor all of its animals for burnt offerings. Before him, the nations are as nothing. They’re regarded by him as less than nothing. To whom then will you compare God or who is his equal? He sits enthroned above the circle of the Earth, and its people before him are like grasshoppers. He stretches out the heavens like a canopy, and lays them out like a tent to live in. He reduces the princes of the world to nothing. No sooner are they planted, no sooner are they sown, no sooner do they take root in the ground than he blows on them and they wither and become like dust.” Dust, dust, dust. That’s what the nations are to God. They’re nothing, they’re small. This is our God. He’s a high and exalted God, far above all gods and far above all the nations of men. And he lives, it says, in a high and holy place. Now, for myself, I love history. I like to read about exploration in particular. I like to read, for example, the journeys of Marco Polo as he went along what became the Silk Road. And I’ve been to Kashgar in China and some other places where Marco Polo traveled. Well, he ended up in the capital city of the greatest empire in terms of land mass that the world had ever seen, the grandson of Genghis Khan, the great Kublai Khan. And he ended up in a province in Northern China called Shantou, we know it is Xanadu, and there was this magnificent palace in which 6000 guests could come and have all their needs and wants met. And this is what Marco Polo wrote. He said it was a huge palace of marble and other ornamental stones. There are fully 16 miles of parkland well watered with streams and springs diversified with lawns. Within the parkland grazed animals of all sorts, such as heart and stag and roebuck, which the Khan kept for recreation and sport. Musicians would play, entertainers, dancers. The palace hall was richly adorned with tapestries from all over the region. A magnificent place, the kind that just defies description. But if you tried to get in there without an invitation, those Mongol warriors would shoot you down. They were the best archers in the world. Impossible to get in and see it if you were not welcome. Now, God regards that like dust on the scales. That’s nothing. How then will you, a sinner, get to heaven? How are you going to get there? He lives in a high and holy place. He lives, it says, in unapproachable light. You can’t get close to him. You can’t see his face and live. Now, how are we going to get close to this lofty God? How are we going to see him? How much more? If you can’t get to see the Kublai Khan, how much more can you not see the high and holy God? That’s why we need a stairway to heaven. Heaven is Closed to Sinners Now, the angels that were ascending and descending on that staircase, they were awesome, much more powerful than the Mongol warriors. Their arrows more deadly and more sure. But how much more powerful is God Himself? Look at the vision in verses 12 and 13. He had a dream, Jacob had a dream, in which he saw a stairway resting on the Earth with its top reaching to Heaven, and the angels of God were ascending and descending on it. There above it stood the Lord and He said, “I am the Lord, the God of your father, Abraham, and the God of Isaac.” And so he had a vision and a dream of God standing at the top of the stairway to heaven, looking down at him. And this holy God looks on us sinners and sees us as we really are. God will not accept us just as we are. We must be atoned for. We must be cleansed of our sins. We must have a way to be lifted up off the dust and make it up to this high and holy place. The Deceptive Stairway to Heaven Now, we have this sense inside us, don’t we, of a separation between us and God? And along with it, an equally strong pride that we’re going to overcome that separation, we’re going to build ourselves our own stairways. False stairway #1: Human Religions And so, we make these deceptive stairways. For example, human religion. Human religion, the essence of that is building your own way up to the holy God, a stairway to heaven made through your own good works and achievements and religious regulations and observances and duties and prayers, all of these things. And sometimes you can see it even in the architecture. Like in Central America, you look at some of the Mayan temples, they’re pyramids with stairs going really right up to the heavens, 91 stairs on a side, the top platform, four times 91 plus the last one, 365, one for each day of the year. They were great astronomers. And they were looking at the stars, which we are testifying to them of their own puniness, testifying to them of the greatness of God, and yet the priests, as they would go with every step, would offer a sacrifice to the serpent God that they were worshipping. They’re building a stairway to heaven, so they think. Closer to home, something we would be perhaps more familiar with, Medieval Roman Catholicism, a system of works, a system of obediences set out by the Pope and by the councils that they would follow. In Rome, there was an actual staircase, the Scala Sancta, the holy staircase. Supposedly, Jesus had gone up these stairs to be judged by Pilate, and I guess the idea is that in the Crusades, they were actually removed to Rome, and you could go there. And the Pope offered an indulgence: Nine years for each prayer prayed on each step on your knees, and you could work your way or you could work your loved one’s way out of purgatory step by step. Perhaps some of you saw the Martin Luther film this summer, it was out, and Luther himself did it. He went up that stairway step by step, praying to God for the indulgence, to get the nine years for each step, and then he could go back and start it again and again and again, just like a machine reducing time in purgatory, a stairway to heaven. False stairway #2: Human Achievements and Acquisitions Another stairway would be human achievements, accomplishments. It’s a different kind of heaven, the heaven of earthly pleasure and pride. Perhaps ultimately, heaven itself. As Psalm 73 says, “They lay claim both to Earth and to heaven, the wealthy oppressors.” But there was a stairway to wealth and riches during the Klondike gold rush in 1898. They called it The Golden Staircase. 1500 steps cut in ice and rock, very steep, very slippery. And these gold rushers were climbing up it step by step with heavy packs on their backs, hoping to make something of themselves, make something of their lives. Every step perilous. At any moment, they might slip right back down to the valley and be killed. A stairway, a golden staircase to a different kind of heaven. Perhaps the most famous stairway to heaven of all in the Bible is the Tower of Babel. Human achievement and accomplishment. “Come, let us build bricks and bake them thoroughly, and make a tower that reaches up to heaven and make a name for ourselves and not be scattered over the earth.” That’s what we’ll do. And so they made a stairway to heaven, so they thought. And God said, “Well, let’s go down and see that little tower that they’re making. Let’s go all the way down and see how much progress they’ve made.” Now, they never did reach heaven that way, and they won’t. False stairway #3: Human Experiences Or you could follow Abraham Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs. Start with physiological needs, and then your needs for love and belonging, and then your needs for esteem, and ultimately the highest pinnacle of that pyramid, self-actualization. Being all you can be. It sounds like the army, but that’s literally what it was, that you would be everything you could be. A stairway to a different kind of heaven. Or human experiences, just collecting them in life, whether religious experiences like meditation with Zen and all that kind of thing, or pilgrimages, you could do that, or just travel, been there and done that. Collecting a life full of experiences, a different kind of staircase. The Builder of False Stairways: The Devil Himself Now, behind all of these false staircases is the ultimate stairway-to-heaven builder himself: The devil. Isaiah 14, he said, “I will ascend above the tops of the clouds. I will make myself like the Most High.” And he’s the one that’s suggesting all of these false ways that none of them will get us to Heaven. The true stairway to Heaven, the vision was had by Jacob himself. Look again at the text in Genesis 28. He had a dream in which he saw a stairway resting on the Earth with its top reaching to Heaven, and the angels of God were ascending and descending on it, and there above it stood the Lord, and He said, “I am the Lord, the God of your father, the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac. I will give you and your descendants the land on which you are lying. Your descendants will be like the dust of the earth.” Interesting phrase, “And you will spread out to the west and to the east, to the north and to the south. All peoples on earth will be blessed through you, and your offspring. I am with you and will watch over you wherever you go, and I will bring you back to this land. I will not leave you until I have done what I promised you.” The True Stairway to Heaven Understanding Jacob’s Vision: An Unfinished Dream Look at Jacob’s lowliness. He’s lying on the ground, on the dust of the ground. He’s got a rock under his head for a pillow. He is corrupted inside, he’s a deceiver and a con artist. He’s running from his own family, he has an uncertain future. And to this man, God appears. And it says that the stairway was resting on the earth right near him. It came right down to where he was, right down to the dust of the earth, that’s where the stairway reached. And it successfully reached all the way up to God, and there were angels ascending and descending, moving from the hidden heavenly realms to the lowly, dusty, earthy realm, and the Lord himself at the top of the ladder looking down at him. And along with it comes a magnificent promise, the promise of God. I am the God of Abraham and Isaac, I am the God of the covenant. I am the God who will give you a vast number of descendants, as numerous as the dust of the earth. But even within this, there’s a hint of Jacob’s lowliness. Do you remember what God said to Adam in the curse? He said, “By the sweat of your brow, you will eat your food until you return to the ground, since from it you were taken. For dust you are and to dust you will return.” Moses said in Psalm 90:3, “You turn men back to dust, saying, ‘Return to dust, O sons of men.’” In Ecclesiastes, it says, “Man’s fate is like that of the animals. The same fate awaits them both. As one dies, so dies the other. All have the same breath. Man has no advantage over the animal. Everything is meaningless. All go to the same place. All come from dust and to dust, all return.” So we have a vision of a stairway that reaches from the dust and from a dusty man all the way up to the glories of heaven, but you know it’s just a vision. It’s just a dream. Interestingly in his dream, he doesn’t actually get to ascend the staircase, he wakes up lying on the ground because it’s not yet been fulfilled. The prophecy is fulfilled by Jesus Christ. Jesus is the seed through whom all nations will be blessed, He is the one who came to earth to Nazareth. He is the one who ministered physically, took on a human body. Understanding Christ’s Statement: A Self-Fulfilling Prophecy (John 1:46-51) Now, Nathanael, look over at John Chapter 1, Nathanael had utter disdain for Nazareth. He said, “Can anything good come out of Nazareth?” This was a small precursor of the kind of reception that Jesus would get from the Jews, from his own people. “He came to that which was His own, but His own did not receive Him.” Phillip says the right thing, “Come and see.” So he’s doing evangelism, “Come and see, come and look at this one who we think is the messiah, come and see.” And so he came and saw. When Jesus saw Nathanael approaching, he said of him, “Now, here is a true Israelite in whom there’s nothing false, in whom there is nothing false.” Not, “Here is an Israelite who is about 5 foot 8 inches tall,” or “Here’s an Israelite who’s wearing a red turban,” or “Here’s an Israelite who’s got three sheep with him.” No, “Here’s an Israelite in whom there’s no guile, no trickery.” Well, that’s rather striking. Nathanael doesn’t deny that it’s true. So Nathanael wasn’t that kind of guy. He wasn’t going to play a game saying, “Oh, it isn’t me, I’m not really like that.” He wasn’t that way, that’s exactly who he was. But the question in Nathanael’s mind is, “How do you know me? How do you know me? We’ve never met.” Very much like later with the Samaritan woman at the well, He knew everything about her. He knew that the man that was waiting for her at home wasn’t her husband. He knew that. And Nathanael has the same question, “How do you know me?” And Jesus said, “I saw you, I saw you while you were under the fig tree.” Now, we don’t really know, and Spurgeon goes on at length about what Nathanael was doing under the fig tree. We could sit down and kind of debate, “What was he doing under the fig tree? We don’t have any idea what he was doing.” It was a secret between him and Jesus, perhaps he was on his face praying that the Messiah would come. We have no idea. But he said, “I watched you while you were under the fig tree, I saw you.” Well, that was enough for Nathanael, and he gave him lavish praise. “Rabbi,” he said, “You were the Son of God, you are the king of Israel.” Jesus also is a true Israelite in whom there’s no guile. He’s not going to say, “No, it isn’t so.” He’s going to say, “I wonder how you believe with so little evidence. You believe because I told you I saw you while you were under the fig tree, you shall see greater things than that.” What a magnificent promise, because Jesus has come to earth because of the miracle of Bethlehem, because of the incarnation, you believers in Jesus, you’re going to see greater things than you have ever seen in your life. You shall see greater things than that. He can say that no matter what you would say to him. No matter what your reasons are for believing right now, no matter what your testimony, you shall see greater things than that, no matter what it was that ultimately led you to faith in Christ, you shall see greater things than that. You who believe, you shall see, and that Greek is plural, “you all,” all of you will see heaven opened, and you will see the angels of God ascending and descending on the Son of Man. O come, Lord Jesus. Aren’t you hungry to see it? Heaven opened the veil between us and the invisible world removed, and the welcoming God at the top of the stairway, saying, “Come, enter into your rest. Enter into the joy of your Master. Come up here,” Revelation 4:1. Enter and come in. “Therefore, since we have been justified through faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now gained introduction and access by faith into this grace in which we now stand” (Romans 5:1-2). And so, He says, you’re going to see greater things than that, you will see heaven itself, and so he makes this astonishing promise, and He speaks of heaven open and the angels ascending and descending. And so it was in Christ’s life, the angels were all over Christ’s life, just like they were all over the staircase. They descended on the night He was born, there were shepherds watching their fields out at night, and an angel of the Lord appeared to them and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were terrified. But the angel said to them, “Do not be afraid, I bring you good news of a great joy that will be for all the people. Today in the town of David, a savior has been born to you. He is Christ the Lord, this will be assigned to you, you will find a baby wrapped in cloths and lying in a manger.” Suddenly a great company of the heavenly host appeared with the angel praising God and saying, “Glory to God in the highest and on earth, peace to men on whom His favor rest.” When the angels had left them and gone back into heaven, do you see the ascending and descending? When they had gone back into heaven, they said, “Come, let’s go see in Bethlehem this thing that has happened, which the Lord has told us about.” And so, the angels descended that night to announce Christ’s birth, the angels descended to minister to Jesus when He was suffering and tempted in the wilderness, the angels descended to minister to Jesus when He was wrestling, and great drops of blood were coming from him in Gethsemane. The angels came down and announced his great resurrection when He had risen from the dead, the angels were there, and then when Jesus ascended from his chosen apostles and was going up to heaven, and the cloud hid Him from their sight, the two men in white, two angels came and said, “Jesus will return in the same way you’ve seen Him go.” The angels were ministering all over the Son of Man, Jesus Christ, but the magnificent central truth is Jesus is Jacob’s stairway. Christ’s Credentials: Heaven-Descended, Heaven-Ascending He is the stairway to heaven, the angels of God ascend and descend on the Son of Man, and they wouldn’t be coming if it weren’t for me, they’d be coming with judgment and wrath, but not as ministering spirits, because that’s what they are. What are Christ’s credentials? Well, he’s heaven descended. He’s come down from heaven. It says in John Chapter 6, “I have come down from heaven not to do my will, but to do the will of Him who sent me. And this is the will of Him who sent me, that I shall lose none of all that He has given me, but shall raise them up at the last day. For my Father’s will is that everyone who looks to the Son and believes in Him shall have eternal life, and I will raise him up at the last day.” Do you understand? Jacob’s vision, left him in the dust with a stone for a pillow, Jesus raises us up and takes us to heaven. “I will raise them up in the last day, I’ll take you not just from the dust of Palestine, I’ll take you from the dust of the grave. And when you see heaven open with your own eyes, no longer by faith, but now at last by sight, you will know how great I am, and then you will say, ‘Rabbi, you are the son of God, you are the king of Israel,’” and the evidence will be complete. “You will know when I take you to heaven, that I am the Stairway to Heaven. When I lift you up from the very dust of the grave, when I give you resurrection bodies, and when you live with me forever, from the dust of the grave to the glory of Heaven, I am the Stairway to Heaven, I and no other.” Hebrews 4, “Therefore, since we have a great high priest who has gone through the heavens, Jesus the son of God, let us hold firmly to the faith we profess. For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who has been tempted in every way just as we are. He came down to earth and walked the walk we walk in every way, yet was without sin. Let us then approach the throne of grace.” What was forbidden for us in the old covenant is now commanded in the new: “Let us approach the throne of grace so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need” (Hebrews 4:16). Hebrews 10:“Therefore brothers, since we have confidence now to enter the most holy place by the blood of Jesus by a new and living way open for us through the curtain, let us draw near to God.” But we’re not there yet, are we? We still got a journey to travel. We’re still more dusty than glorious. Christ’s Achievement: Building a Stairway to Heaven The transition hasn’t fully occurred yet, and you feel the dust of Jacob, don’t you? You feel the sin and the pull downward, and Jesus knows all about that, and so He has ministered to you and He will continue to minister to you. As a matter of fact, he’ll even send the angels as ministering spirits to help those who will inherit salvation. And so, the angels will be around and they’ll ascend and descend and they’ll be busy around you your whole life, protecting you and keeping you safe, and he’s going to send them one more time. It says in Matthew 24:31, “He will send His angels with a loud trumpet, and they will gather his elect from the four winds from one end of the heavens to the other.” And so the angels will be sent forth that final time to gather up his children and they’ll take you to heaven, and so then you will see that Jesus is that stairway to heaven. He is the way, He is the truth and the life, and no one ascends to heaven except through Him. And what are we going to do about it? How are we going to understand this? Application Well first, trust in Christ, not in your own Stairway to Heaven. Can you build a stairway to heaven through your religious efforts, through your achievements, through your experiences, through all of the things you do? It’s high and lofty, you’ll never get there. And the Scripture testifies that every building you do is a stairway down descending away because of arrogance and pride. Give it up. Through simple faith in Christ, trust in Him that you might have eternal life. If you’re a believer in Jesus Christ today, can I ask for the rest of the holidays, focus on the promise that He gives in John Chapter 1. You shall see heaven opened. You’re going to be there. What was just a vision in the Old Testament, well, for you will be fulfilled sight; now we walk by faith, not by sight, but some day you will see with your own eyes Jesus sitting on his throne, and then just worship Christ, worship Him constantly as the angels do, that’s their number one job in heaven. And frankly, all their ministry to us is just a subset of their worship of Him, they love Him and they do what He says. And so focus on Him and worship Him as they do, make Christ the center. He is the only one who can take you from the dust of the earth to the glory of Heaven.