Christians: what is heaven like?

Christians, I’m told you all believe that heaven is what awaits (most of) you after your brain activity fades to zero.

What do you believe heaven is like? Either in a general sense, or just subjectively for you? What will you be able to do? What will you want to do? How will you spend your time? Is it possible to do things there that would get you kicked out?

If I’m lucky enough to make it there, I’ll try to find some way to let you know, from Beyond.

More seriously, I have no idea what Heaven is.

We all do? :wink: A lot of us believe there will be a new heaven and a new earth when Jesus returns and the dead will be resurrected at that time (as Revelation 20-21 talks about).

Maybe that sounds semantics to you, so I’ll address the rest:

I have no idea about what activities are at the end, I just believe that there will be a new heaven and a new earth, and God will once again live with His people.

I also believe everyone gets to participate in the Age to Come.

I do not think it is possible for me to know what heaven is “like”, but I do believe that every desire it is right and proper for me to have while I am alive is an image of something that will find its complete fulfilment in heaven. I like the idea that, having once chosen to obey God while it was possible for me to refuse, I will reach a state in which I am no longer capable of desiring to choose wrong over right - which means it is not possible for me to get kicked out, as every want I have will be one that it is proper for me to have.

I might say that heaven would be “like” having the freedom and ability to explore every star and planet in the Universe and more than enough time to do so, until I understand every one of them as well as I understand the room I am sitting in right now - but that is not to say that I think that heaven will be literally like that, only that whatever is presently in me that would find the walking-the-stars afterlife utterly fulfilling will actually discover what it was looking for all along, and be able to pursue it at last.

Or it’s a giant barbecue with no indigestion and no hangover afterwards, but I don’t rate that as especially likely. :slight_smile:

*Ain’t never been there, they tell me it’s nice. *
-Joe Walsh

Well, I’ve never been to heaven, but I’ve been to Oklahoma.
-Three Dog Night

All I want to know about is the food plan: Can you really eat anything you want without gaining weight?

I just figure it will be the absence of hell. So if it’s true that I’d spend eternity in agony if I were to end up in hell, as long as I don’t go there, I’m in heaven.

Okay, but that’s when Jesus returns and brings pie.

But what’s it been like for the past 2000 years and what’s it like NOW?

Some believe its a “soul sleep” and some believe that maybe the spirits of bodies are in the heavenly plane waiting. I don’t know which is occurring and would be fine with either.

I offer only my personal thoughts. Psychologist Abraham Maslow defined the concept of a “peak experience” as an occasion where a person feels intense joy and happiness unmixed with any negative emotions. I believe that for those who have entered Heaven, existence consists of permanent peak experiences, nothing else. In our current world, we have all been separated from God by sin. When we enter Heaven, God effects changes within us so that we are no longer sinful, and our natures are entirely in harmony with God’s nature, in the way that God originally intended.

There are no library cards in heaven … there is a war going on down here on the earth. If you want to read it, in fact if you want to read anything, you better read it now.

Many people think that when they die they go to heaven, but they don’t go anywhere. It is the Holy Spirit that goes back to where He came from taking your personality with him.

Heaven is where you get judged and reassigned. It is not a place of rest, not yet at least. Rest will come later after the war is over.

What war?

The war for men and women’s souls that’s what war.

There is no time or distance in the spirit world … heaven is not all that far away. Many people have had near death experiences that describe heaven as a very beautiful place with a beautiful valley.

There is a war going on … Jesus said that the kingdom of heaven has been under attack since the days of John the Baptist. Perhaps a better place to think about is the new Jerusalem that comes down out of heaven at the end of the thousand years of peace. I can’t get anyone else to agree, but I think that it will also go back up taking us with the city.

Here is the city as described on the book of revelations near the end of time as an know it.

Iowa. :smiley:

It’s good . As opposed to hell (which is bad).:mad:

I imagine that it’s as difficult for us to comprehend heaven as it is for a fetus to comprehend life after the womb. We thought we had it pretty good when we were in the womb because that was all we knew. We couldn’t even fathom light, music, love, food, colors, other people, etc. Same thing with heaven.

True: 1 Cor 2:9
“No eye has seen, no ear has heard,
and no mind has imagined
what God has prepared
for those who love him.”

Perfect

Yes, I see it that way too. We will see the face of God and know the truth and that’s all we’ll need or want. Our will will be one with God’s so there is nothing to do wrong.

As Happy Lendervedder says, beyond that ideal I can’t comprehend how it all works but I trust God will take care if it!

I’ll tell you what it is like, though I am not christian. It is traveling from star system to star system using FTL technology, meeting wonderful new ‘people’ aka ‘beings’, exploring new places never imagined, and new experiences deep inside the soul that makes sex look like a kindergarten kiss, it is touching souls advanced 1000’s of years past your level of technology and they wish to help you. It is also deeply caring for beings, like we are on earth, for what they will become one day, and that becoming depends on the care shown.

On the contrast, in Hell one can expect to stand around the throne of Satan sing to him ‘holy, holy holy’, night and day, and regressions of technology.

On a treadmill?

Is that the same as the soul? Or does your soul go one place, and your personality to another?