by Honesty 11 Replies latest watchtower beliefs
What is it?
Some common perceptions of heaven include the following:
Heaven is not a real or literal place.
When a person dies and goes to heaven, he/she becomes an angel with wings.
All people will go to heaven when they die.
Heaven is a paradise existence here on earth achieved by only a few persons.
Before a person can get into heaven, he/she must wait in a place to be purged of his or her sins.
Heaven is a place of sensous pleasure.
What is your opinion?
Does the Bible have the answers?
You forgot my alternative: A huge plate of pasta with sauce and meatballs, a bottle of chianti, and chocolate mousse desert. All served by a waitress dressed in a tiny, black miniskirt, high heels and stockings.
Hellrider... are you per chance an Italian Muslim? ...
bebu
Does the Bible have the answers?
Why did you pick the bible as the only choice for an answer? All cultures had/have their ideas of heaven and they have written books that describe their opinion.....just as the jews had their OPINION and put those OPINIONS in a book. You happened to pick the book that is the most popular to your culture.....so your limiting yourself to only one answer.
That's like saying the beatles were the greatest band in history....... but an African might tell you different.
Gumby
For me the jury is still out about heaven and even an afterlife.
Not to change the subject, but in Ray Franz's book COC, he talks about how he believes that all men who love God and follow Christ have a heavenly hope, and that the two classes (heavenly & earthly) are not scriptural teachings.
Where does that leave people like me, who don't WANT to go to heaven? That's one reason I thought I had found where I belonged, among the JWs, because I KNEW I didn't want to go to heaven. I don't belong there. I love God, but I LIKE IT HERE, and I belong here. No matter how you cut it, Christianity doesn't give you many options, it seems...
I am truly a daughter of the earth; guess I belong with the "nature religions..."
rhian
I'm in, heaven, and my heart beats so that I can hardly speakkkk! And my heart can find the happiness I seek, when we're out there dancing cheek to cheek. Sorry guys for being off topic--I'm in a weird mood tonight. ;-)
I agree with this position: http://www.400monkeys.com/God/
Hi, Honesty, since you asked for the Bible's perspective on what constitutes heaven well, for better or worse, [I can only provide the Evangelical point of view - there are minor variants of the following] here it is:
1 Heaven is a created reality beyond the matrix of the earth.[Gen 1:1] In the Bible, the expression "Heaven and earth" circumscribes the entire creation, the whole cosmos, what we may term "the Universe"
2 In a way that is not detailed in the Bible, God dwells there, though He does not need heaven as a spatial unit in which to exist. Because God is infinite, and self-existent, He exits continuously in a realm which includes heaven and earth and which is beyond human capacities to comprehend. "Place" is an accommodation of God to His finite creatures.Thus, God Himself transcends both heaven and earth.
3 Whereas we are of the earth, the Bible also reveals that there is within the human species a spiritual potential that yields to a heavenly need. Man was not designed to live on physical realities only, but to respond to a deeper, more potentially glorious destiny that is intuitively beyond the carnal and material.
4 Unlike in Plato, which describes "heaven" as a place in which naked minds will intellectually contemplate the eternal world of unchanging ideas, the Bible reveals that the whole person of the "redeemed" survives. Even the body is raised again, to be transformed to that which Christ now possesses. Evidently not made up of flesh and blood, since this kind of body does not exist in heaven, it is "changed" as Paul describes it, [1Cor 15:50] to conform to heavenly patterns. This resurrection body is composed of flesh and spirit, not flesh and blood. It is this dynamic that gives the resurrection body such power which is beyond physical comprehension.
5 Christ the first to possess such a body, could appear and disappear at will, He did not need to travel, ie "Move" through space He simply WAS. One moment He was on Mt Carmel the next, millions of miles away in heaven. The Bible does not explain how this was done, only that it was.This eventuality is the promise given to believers, those who are "in Christ" [not those who are in the RC church or the Baptist church etc] and is certainly not restricted to simply 144,000.[ 2Cor 5:1] The resurrection body which Paul described as being "glorious" cannot be defined within human limitations.
6 No details are presribed as to heavenly existence, beyond the fact that physical distinctions which make up the pattern of earthly life, will be abolished. There will be neither male nor female [Yup- no sex you carnal heathens], nor black nor white. Evidently in a reality that sees even the suspension of time, there will be no concept of ''Age" or "Aging"
7 There are things that the eye has not seen, nor the ear heard, and which have not entered the heart of man, that God has prepared for those who love Him. [1Cor 2:9] The obsenity of the WTS is to restrict those who "love" God to the 144000
Cheers
Hellrider... are you per chance an Italian Muslim? ...
Nope, I just love their food. ( And italian ladies are hot... )
If there really is a "perfect paradise" heaven, then it must exist in one of two possible states:
Bottom line: All conflict is a side effect of freewill. If you want to eliminate all conflict then all free will must be removed or all but one person must be removed.
