At some point doesn’t the dialog go like this:
Moore: Oh, you’re great, you’re wonderful, ocean breezes and rainbows, great stuff, I can’t think of all the wonderful things to praise you for.
Cook/Devil: Not bad, but more fulsome, please.
Moore: (more fulsome praise for a while).
Moore: Here, that’s kind of boring, can’t we switch places?
Cook/Devil: That’s what I said!
Roddy
My sister often mentions that in heaven, you’ll get to see all the people you’ve loved in your life and spend forever with them.
I keep thinking but I don’t even visit them that often NOW.
Eternity with my sister… uggh. :smack:
That is was rewritten and tampered with by lots of people, is the only truth I know about the bible.
I heard that when you go to heaven you get to look down on everybody and watch ‘em masturbate and stuff. That would be entertaining for a while, I guess. Not for a billion-billion years or nuthin’ but for a while maybe.
Or maybe not.
A few years ago I decided to read the Bible from start to finish. About two thirds into the Old Testament it struck me that heaven had not been mentioned at all except as the place where God lived. Those who were faithful to God were rewarded by long lives, lots of children and material wealth. Eternal life in heaven was not part of the deal. Eternal salvation seems to have been a rather recent marketing strategy.
[racism] Of course the Jewish scripture would be all about winning material weath:p[/racism]
Seriously though, there is a big change between the old and new testament, Jesus refered to heaven and hell a lot more.
pfft depends on how you read the scripture.
What most sects would agree on is that it is the end of suffering and you will be embraced by god’s love, that sums it up pretty much.
That’s cool, nice and ambiguous.
Well the greatest thing would be eternal life. Never having to worry about death or having any kind of pain.
But is it possible to be unhappy in heaven? According to the Bible, Satan convinced 1/3 of the angels to rebel against God. If heaven is perfect bliss, why would they do this? Also, Christians will be rewarded in heaven based on their actions. It would be shameful to make it to heaven by the skin of your teeth, but receive no rewards in front of everyone.
I guess my biggest encouragement is with the NDE stories. One common element is the person loves it there so much that they don’t want to return or leave that place.
Where in the Bible is this?
Wrong. There is an inexorable change in our being by virtue of the fact that we recognize Jesus Christ as God. That invites the change in our being that will occur in heaven. To say that we have no free will is simplistic. To say that we can still sin is equally simplistic. I think it’s important to recognize (see Paul) that we are trying to evaluate heaven from an earthly, mortal, sinful perspective. You’ll remember that Paul went to heaven? He seemed to want to say good things about it, but was prevented in doing so.
But they aren’t human beings, God’s greatest creation. It’s unfair to compare the two.
On another point, the reward we receive are manifest in our responsibilities of the administrations of heaven - see the thousand year reign of Christ.
So you’re saying that we have Free Will in heaven? Therefore God could create a place that has both Free Will and a lack of suffering. Why don’t you take up that issue with the theologians who say that is impossible (and its impossibility is the reason we’re burdened with suffering in this life), then when y’all get it all sorted out, come back and let us know what you decided.
The Free Will thing is a nonstarter. The people who choose to good go to Heaven, and so Heaven ends up being a pretty nice place. The folks in Heaven don’t do evil, not because they can’t, but because if they did, they wouldn’t be in Heaven.
And don’t confuse “eternity” with “forever”, either: They don’t mean the same thing. Eternity is not just a long time; it’s a state beyond the concept of time. All times are the same, in eternity. Thus, the notion of “boredom” becomes irrelevant.
I would if that’s what I was saying.
??
I saw heaven in that Robin Williams movie, What Dreams May Come. Your wife goes to hell because she despaired after her kids died and that’s some sort of very bad sin and she has to live out eternity buried up to her chin while Robin goes to heaven which is living eternity inside an impressionistic painting. So it would stand to reason that any pain or sadness Robin felt over his wife’s fate would soon be numbed out from huffing all that oil paint everyday, and in time would render him brain dead. Say no more.
So the instant they have a “bad” thought, they just disappear?
If the good people who go to heaven always choose non-evil, then God could have created everyone that way in the beginning and saved a lot of suffering.
You just can’t reconcile suffering in this life with complete lack of suffering in heaven.
What is a good person? I’m certainly not one and I’m going.
Would you really want to live in a world that had no evil? Even stipulating that we could agree what evil is?
Why do you think there’s no beer? Jesus was a wine-drinker, and he ate and drank post-resurrection, so I would think beer in heaven is not out of the question.
Your understanding, unsurprisingly, is wrong.