Light Bulb Moments

I thought I'd set a personal record for posting twice in one week. As I was reading the Book of Revelation, I had one of those "light bulb" moments. In cartoons since I was a kid, if any character died or pretended to die, an angel-version of that character (Wiley Coyote, for example) with wings and a harp would slowly ascend up to heaven. I never thought much of it. There are angels in heaven, harps are peaceful instruments, heaven is peaceful; there you go!

In Revelation, St. John has a number of visions of heaven. In Rev 14:2, he describes a voice coming from heaven that "was like the sound of harpers playing on their harps." Later in Rev 15:2, there are "those who had conquered the beast... with harps of God in their hands."

I found that very interesting! What better place to look for a visual image of death & heaven than the book of Revelation? I don't know what it says about me that my first thought was in the direction of cartoons rather than anything pious. Still, I think it's a reasonable conclusion that someone on the Looney Tunes animation team was a Christian. There may be other reasonable explanations, but I haven't consulted the omnicient Google yet...