# Is heaven empty (except for God and his angels)? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [June 15, 2002, 1:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-heaven-empty-except-for-god-and-his-angels/114210 "2002-06-15T13:22:57Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 16\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![pluralgravity](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/2bfe46/32.png) [@pluralgravity](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pluralgravity)\ **Post date:** [June 17, 2002, 12:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-heaven-empty-except-for-god-and-his-angels/114210/21 "2002-06-17T00:28:08Z")
Count to infinity, there may be a problem or two later but it’ll be sorted after a few googles surely. The journey to Heaven is just long haul, read a book, watch the movie, sleep Time must pass in Heaven, the gaurantee is eternity is’nt it- it does’nt matter. When Iwas a kid I went to th National Gallery in London. Two paintings there made lasting impressions on me. One was a huge canvas by a Victorian painter called Danby called ‘The Plains of Heaven’. It depicted, in holiday brochure terms, the view from your 72\* room at the ultimate (literally) resort. In a great, sweet, English garden white- robed people gathered to sing hymns of praise to God, others warmly greeted old friends or enemies from their bum- wiping days or found a gassy knoll to do a David Beckham (YESSSS!!) God, cooler than an iceberg wearing Gucci shades, sits by the VIP pool broadcasting enlightenment and paternal forgiveness. My reaction was then, and is now 48 years on, ‘Fuck that for a game of soldiers!’. I think you’re right, Aldiboronti, Heaven only homes God and His minders, but for the reason that there is no place for us greedy, envious, deceitful, lustful, humerous, skeptical human entities. ---
**Author:** ![Joe\_Cool](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/ecb155/32.png) [@Joe\_Cool](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Joe_Cool)\ **Post date:** [June 17, 2002, 12:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-heaven-empty-except-for-god-and-his-angels/114210/22 "2002-06-17T00:57:34Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by Czarcasm \* > \*\*I’m sorry, but the common definition of time is the most useful way to discuss the situation precisely because it is the only one we currently have a chance of understanding. If you apply the “time flows in all directions and thus everything can-will-did happen-already happen” definition, you play havok with most discussions. Besides, it’s still iffy that Heaven(if it exists) exists outside of space and time, so bringing that possibility into the discussion can only muddy the waters. > Using the common(and most understood) definition of time as we now know it, it does seem that Heaven is pretty empty right now. \*\* I’m sorry too, but the standard definition of time is an utterly useless way to discuss events that happen in eternity, which is timeless. Evidently, you don’t even understand the “standard definition” of time very well, anyway, since the standard definition of time is one where the observer’s position, gravitational reference, and velocity relative to the event being observed make all the difference. Is time the same for a photon travelling through empty space as for a neutron at the Sun’s core? Is it the same inside the event horizon of a black hole as for a rock on the Moon? Is time the same for a rock as for a living being? The same for a fly as for a human? Even standard time isn’t as cut and dry and easy to understand as you seem to think it is. You say that heaven isn’t known to be in a different spacetime, but you obviously are here to enlighten us all, and prove that there is no heaven. So how can you make the claim that a place you don’t believe exists is likely in our same plane of existence? Give me a break. > [@](#): > > **No, by my wanting to limit the definition of time to the common one, I have “disqualified” any answer that is off-topic to the actual question asked.** No, what you have done is “disqualified” any answer that is outside the window of your “willing suspension of disbelief”, and attempted to stack the argument unfairly in your favor. My answer is that **Mangetout** explained it perfectly, as far as my understanding is able to reach. When you’re talking about a Spiritual (by definition, not physical) event, you cannot arbitrarily place physical limits on it. **BUT…** since you asked for a reference from the Bible to show that it says anything more than “You sit in the ground until the Judgment,” here you go: > [@](#): > > (Luke 23:43 NIV) Jesus answered him, “I tell you the truth, today you will be with me in paradise.” ---
**Author:** ![caracal](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/91b2a8/32.png) [@caracal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/caracal)\ **Post date:** [June 17, 2002, 1:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-heaven-empty-except-for-god-and-his-angels/114210/23 "2002-06-17T01:34:20Z")
after searching the internet, it would seem that an intermediary place, Hades, is a popular consensus among many faithful. Here is an exerpt with plenty of biblical references from [one site](http://www.bibletruths.net/Archives/BTAR130.htm)-although most seem to say about the same thing: > [@](#): > > The fact of the presence of hades where all spirits of men go immediately upon death and that hades or sheol is not heaven or hell is clearly taught (Lk. 23: 43, Acts 2: 31, Jn. 20: 17, Lk. 16: 19-31, etc.). Hades is the waiting place for all souls (cp. 2 Pet. 2: 4, 9). While in this waiting or holding place (waiting the official sentencing of the Judgment), the saved will be comforted and the lost tormented (Lk. 16: 19-31). Some have suggested that hades is a type of the antitypes heaven and hell. If this is true, heaven and hell will be comparatively more blissful and horrible, respectively, than the place of comfort and torment in hades. Personally, I’m not trying to debate the issue. I want to know what most people think about it. But I think that we should view the question from our mortal still-alive-and-here-on-Earth POV. In other words, when someone says “I know my dearly departed wife/husband/son/whatever is watching down on me”, are they right (from a biblical perspective)? After all if one of my loved ones dies today, and this alledged Judgment day happens on January 1, 2050, then where is that persons soul from now until then from my perspective? If I look up to heaven to talk to that person, I wouldn’t think they would be there. This is starting to sound a lot like the Schrodenger’s Cat debate now-kinda happy to be a non-believer sometimes:). ---
**Author:** ![Czarcasm](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/czarcasm/32/4050_2.png) [@Czarcasm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Czarcasm)\ **Post date:** [June 17, 2002, 2:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-heaven-empty-except-for-god-and-his-angels/114210/24 "2002-06-17T02:39:08Z")
It just seemed pretty obvious to me that the OP was from the perspective of humans on Earth who travel through time in a pretty linear direction, _not_ from the pespective of heavenly creatures in heavenly places who view time ghod knows how. ---
**Author:** ![Joe\_Cool](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/ecb155/32.png) [@Joe\_Cool](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Joe_Cool)\ **Post date:** [June 17, 2002, 4:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-heaven-empty-except-for-god-and-his-angels/114210/25 "2002-06-17T04:53:32Z")
Ok, from the point of view of ME - a person experiencing time in a linear fashion: (1) There is no interval between MY death and appearing at the judgement. (2) There is an apparent interval between the death and appearing at the judgement for somebody who died before me. In other words, if somebody dies exactly ten years before I die, it will appear TO ME that there was a ten-year interval between their dying and the judgement. From their point of view, there is no interval. (3) (From 2) There is NO apparent interval between the death and judgement of everybody who dies after me. From everybody’s POV, we all arrive at the judgement simultaneously. If you chain (2) and (3) together, starting at the last human who ever dies, and working your way back to the first person who ever died, you build a logical chain that says this: Everybody appears to arrive at the judgement at the same time. No problem here, since many people think we all get called out of the ground at the same time at the end. Everybody perceives a time interval between the death and appearance at the judgement for everybody who dies before them, but no interval for those who die after them. This shows that the time interval between death and appearance at the judgement is an error in perception, based on the fact that we and our perceptions are all bound to linear time. We’re all stepping out of time at different places, but we all arrive in eternity at the same time – because time isn’t binding in a timeless state, and there is in fact NO TIME there. What’s really happening is that we all get off the subway at Canal Street at the same time (Is Canal street the actual location of the judgement? Or is it where hell is? Or maybe we all just need to buy a counterfeit purse or cd on the way to the judgement. Who knows?). Some of us leave from the front of the train, and some of us leave from the back of the train. But we all get out at Canal. But if you don’t believe in heaven or God at all, why do you get so worked up about where heaven is, anyway? Ghosh. ---
**Author:** ![Czarcasm](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/czarcasm/32/4050_2.png) [@Czarcasm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Czarcasm)\ **Post date:** [June 17, 2002, 5:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-heaven-empty-except-for-god-and-his-angels/114210/26 "2002-06-17T05:38:33Z")
Because the question isn’t when I will leave for Heaven, and it isn’t when I arrive in Heaven. It is, _according to the Bible_, when Jough Blough dies, does he immediately leave his earthly body and ride the Escalator To Eternity(using the perspective of Jough Blough’s earthbound nephew who cut the brake lines in hope of getting Mr. Blough’s millions, not realizing that ol’ Jough changed his will recently to leave everything to local chapter of Radical Women), or does his soul stick with the buried body until God decides its a nice day for an Apocolypse? ---
**Author:** ![Mangetout](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mangetout/32/19_2.png) [@Mangetout](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mangetout)\ **Post date:** [June 17, 2002, 7:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-heaven-empty-except-for-god-and-his-angels/114210/27 "2002-06-17T07:39:57Z")
With respect **Czar** , I think that’s a rather one-sided interpretation of the OP, but I’ll be happy to concede that it just looks that way to me because I’m biased; perhaps **aldiboronti** would deign to return to this thread and sort the wheat from the chaff. ---
**Author:** ![aldiboronti](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/9fc348/32.png) [@aldiboronti](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/aldiboronti)\ **Post date:** [June 17, 2002, 11:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-heaven-empty-except-for-god-and-his-angels/114210/28 "2002-06-17T11:45:12Z")
I just wondered how Christians reconciled the two traditions, of a future Day of Judgement and the soul ascending to heaven or descending to hell at the time of death. It may well be, as some have pointed out, that heaven exists outside of time and thus there is no contradiction. But Christianity teaches that it is not just the soul that appears before the heavenly tribunal, but the actual body as well: the physical resurrection is one of the main tenets of mainstream Christianity. As Dryden describes the Day of Judgement, “And rattling bones together fly, From the four corners of the sky”. Now it is evident to sense that the physical remains of our ancestors have not been resurrected, and they lie there awaiting some future date for their reassembly. Thus, from our point of view, they have not yet been judged, nor yet assigned to heaven or hell. Having said that, and not being up to date on these things, do Christians still believe in the actual physical resurrection of the body? ---
**Author:** ![Mangetout](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mangetout/32/19_2.png) [@Mangetout](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mangetout)\ **Post date:** [June 17, 2002, 12:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-heaven-empty-except-for-god-and-his-angels/114210/29 "2002-06-17T12:38:54Z")
The problem with the idea of literal resurrection of the actual body that died is that the atoms that the body is made up from are re-used and so there would be a big problem deciding whether it’s me or Leonardo Da Vinci that takes posession of a particular atom of carbon that resides in my elbow, but was once in his foot. If the account of Jesus’ resurrection is to be believed then the resurrected body is not the same (in terms of properties) as the mortal one. But in any case, if the bodily resurrection takes place in a completely different and non-parallel domain, then there’s no problem; the remains of our ancestors have not been resurrected from our point of view only. ---
**Author:** ![Polycarp](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/82dd89/32.png) [@Polycarp](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Polycarp)\ **Post date:** [June 17, 2002, 6:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-heaven-empty-except-for-god-and-his-angels/114210/30 "2002-06-17T18:57:25Z")
Well, of course, **Czarcasm** , if everyone bought into the sort of straw-man set of beliefs that you find it fun to ridicule, they would of course not experience what **Mangetout** is attempting to describe. Do you write nasty letters to Stan Schmidt every time he publishes a time-travel story, on the grounds that nobody has developed a practical means of time travel yet, so it cannot have happened? What **Mangetout** , **Jersey Diamond** , and **Joe Cool** are attempting to describe to you is a concept that at every person’s death, at a different point in a sequential linear time, they are taken, as though by a time machine, to a time and place of Judgment existing outside that time continuum. Seems to me much simpler to grasp than much of current physics, to be blunt. ---
**Author:** ![Czarcasm](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/czarcasm/32/4050_2.png) [@Czarcasm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Czarcasm)\ **Post date:** [June 17, 2002, 11:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-heaven-empty-except-for-god-and-his-angels/114210/31 "2002-06-17T23:42:43Z")
To be blunt, I found that their answers had very little to do _with the actual question being asked_. It seems that **aldoboronti** wanted to find out which of two stories were true-do we ascend to Heaven when we die, or do we ascend to Heaven on the Day Of Judgement? When we _arrive_ in Heaven didn’t seem to part of the question to me. He wanted to know when the train leaves, not what route it takes or when it arrives. ---
**Author:** ![YHWH\_Messenger](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/y/ccd318/32.png) [@YHWH\_Messenger](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/YHWH_Messenger)\ **Post date:** [June 18, 2002, 1:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-heaven-empty-except-for-god-and-his-angels/114210/32 "2002-06-18T01:47:52Z")
I think that the problem here is that our view of time is rather like an ant views its hill: We see time in a way that only considers what happens on here on earth, however we fail to realize that our time her on earth is nested in a period of time with both no beginning and no end. When you view time from this prospective, you see that if any length of time is nested in eternity, it becomes, in comparison, Infinitely small. In the same note, however, you can also see that a single moment in time is a universe in itself, in which God may do anything he wishes, simple because he is God. This is why [2 Peter 3:8b](http://www.biblegateway.com/cgi-bin/bible?passage=2PET%2B3%3A8&showfn=on&showxref=on&language=english&version=KJV&x=10&y=9) says :"…be not ignorant of this one thing, that one day is with the Lord as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day." When you look at time from this prospective, you can see that it doesn’t really matter who is in heaven right now because[Psalm 90:4a](http://www.biblegateway.com/cgi-bin/bible?passage=PS%2B90%3A4&showfn=on&showxref=on&language=english&version=KJV&x=19&y=7) says: “For a thousand years in thy sight are but as yesterday when it is past…” Which means that even if you have to wait a thousand years to enter heaven, it will appear instantaneous in the context of eternity. In the end, All that really matters is weather you are going to heaven or hell, and the biblical answer to that question can be found here. I hope that this has been helpful to you guys in some way! [attempted url fix-Czarcasm] ---
**Author:** ![Kirkland1244](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/dc4da7/32.png) [@Kirkland1244](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kirkland1244)\ **Post date:** [June 18, 2002, 3:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-heaven-empty-except-for-god-and-his-angels/114210/33 "2002-06-18T03:01:44Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by YHWH Messenger \* > \*\*In the end, All that really matters is weather you are going to heaven or hell, and the biblical answer to that question can be found here. > \*\* You mis-spelled “in my opinion the biblical answer to that question can be found here.” ---
**Author:** ![Mangetout](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mangetout/32/19_2.png) [@Mangetout](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mangetout)\ **Post date:** [June 18, 2002, 7:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-heaven-empty-except-for-god-and-his-angels/114210/34 "2002-06-18T07:42:28Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by Czarcasm \* > To be blunt, I found that their answers had very little to do _with the actual question being asked_. It seems that aldoboronti wanted to find out which of two stories were true-do we ascend **to Heaven** when we die, or do we ascend **to Heaven** on the Day Of Judgement? When we _arrive_ in Heaven didn’t seem to part of the question to me. He wanted to know when the train leaves, not what route it takes or when it arrives. \*\* (bolding mine) I have repeatedly been trying to point out that death happens in this world and judgment happens in another; it is therefore necessary to consider the entire journey. ---
**Author:** ![Czarcasm](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/czarcasm/32/4050_2.png) [@Czarcasm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Czarcasm)\ **Post date:** [June 18, 2002, 12:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-heaven-empty-except-for-god-and-his-angels/114210/35 "2002-06-18T12:37:43Z")
While I realize that according to some religions, death in this world means a rebirth in another, it is entirely possible to have a conversation about one without discussing the other. You can talk about the birthing procedure without talking about funeral rites, even though it’s part of the same journey. You can talk about when a train departs without talking about the route it’s going to take or when it will eventually arrive, even though it 's part of the journey. The OP was about the details of the _departure_ from the prospective of those still here, not the details of the route taken nor the final arrival time. According to the Bible, do our souls: 1. Depart for Heaven immediately following death 2. Depart for a mass gathering immediately following death, to be judged later 3. Stay grounded on Earth until the Final Call. 4. (fill in the blank) ---
**Author:** ![Mangetout](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mangetout/32/19_2.png) [@Mangetout](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mangetout)\ **Post date:** [June 18, 2002, 12:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-heaven-empty-except-for-god-and-his-angels/114210/36 "2002-06-18T12:52:08Z")
Well, if we are only going to talk about the departure (which I read as only _part_ of the OP) then it happens when the individual dies; not a very satisfying or complete answer. Honestly **Czar** is it such a bad thing to try to volunteer more information than a question asks (even though I don’t believe this to be the case here), if you feel that information is indeed relevant? [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-heaven-empty-except-for-god-and-his-angels/114210.md?page=1)