A good friend asked me a question that made me realize how much I still have to learn, the answer to this particular question should have been so obvious that made me re-think if I ever truly sat down to study the bible as a true seeker of the truth, I think I did, anyway…
I don’t remember how we came to talk about religion, because my friend is not a Christian, but at one point he told me:
“I’ve visited many churches over the years, and after all is said and done, I don’t see any real difference in their lives other than the dumb-show and the hypocrisy”…
“I know, sometimes I feel the same way, but it is also true that…”, and he interrupts me with this question:
“And another thing is: Sacrifice and Serve the Lord with my life to gain what? another one just like it, just Eternally?”
I froze, it must’ve been about 2 minutes before I could articulate anything; you see, the real question to me was: “What can I expect of an Eternal Life?”, or even, “What the heck will I do for Eternity here?”… and I was trying to excuse myself for not knowing the answer, it is after all, the goal and reward for accepting and following Jesus Christ, according to the bible. I then introduced my friend to this blog (he didn’t even know I was not going to church anymore), and told him I was going to write about this question, but that I needed to do a bit of research first.
Some descriptions I found about Heaven in the bible:
- Heaven is an Actual Place to and from which Angels, Christ (and supposedly some people have traveled)
- Described as a City (Heb. 11:16; 12:22; 13:14; Rev. 21:12)
- Heaven is the country of citizenship for Christians
- The “redeemed” in heaven shine and/or wear white (Dan. 12:3; Matt. 13:43; Rev. 3:4; 6:11)
- Heaven seems to have a sanctuary ((Heb. 8:5; 9:11,23-24)
- A place we will live in with Jesus Christ (John 12:26; 13:36; 14:2-3)
- It will be possible to Eat and Drink in Heavens (Luke 14:15; 22:18) (pheww!!!)
- We will worship God along with the angels and all other redeemed people in Heaven (Rev. 4:9-11; 5:11-13; 7:9-12)
- We will sing Praises (Rev. 5:13)
- It seems we will have Intellect and some Emotions (Rev. 6:10; 7:10) (although many argue emotions)
- It seems we will have some kind of rewards, possessions and positions (Matt. 6:19-25; 25:20-21; Luke 19:17-19; 1 Cor. 3:12-15; 2 Cor. 5:9,10)
- There will be at least 5 different Crowns you can earn
- We will serve God (Rev. 7:15)
- We will rest from Earth (Rev. 14:13)
- At the center of Heaven will be the “New Jerusalem” (Rev. 22:15-17
- Heaven’s new Jerusalem has streets of Gold and building of Pearls (Rev. 21:19-21)
- Heaven will have Light, Trees, Water and Fruit (Rev. 22:1-2)
- Heaven will have some animals (Isaiah 65:25).
This is by no means an exhaustive search, but you get the picture. I’m sure this is enough for some Believers, but, after giving it some thought, I am a bit scared myself… what if people don’t like heavens? what if after all the effort and sacrifice, people just want Cable TV, Internet, Great Video Games on Big Screen TV’s, Free 5-star food, amazing accommodations, great health, great parties, great friends, great sex, etc… etc… etc…
The bible is a bit vague on what we will do in heavens, but on the other hand, the bible does provide a very definite Idea of what Hell will be like, and it is definitely not pretty nor likeable.
What do you think? Did God and the bible need to create a better picture of what we are going to be doing for eternity in heaven?, you know, to make a more educated decision, or just the fact that you won’t be going to Hell is enough for you? and will you be okay with only praising for eternity? (which by the way, feels a bit like an automaton to me)
What do you think and what would you want to have in Heaven?
Faith Scavenger
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4 comments:
Dear friend.
The key issue here is that God did not created us for us to enjoy us forever, but to enjoy him and worship him forever.
The highest prize we will get when we get to heaven is HIM, and having HIM forever.
You think about the things you are losing from this world when you get to heaven, like TV, cable, videogames, hotels, food, and whatever earthly thing you may think. But you are not thinking about other things that we have here because of sin, but we won´t have in heaven, like death, sickness, problems, conflicts, chaos, injustice, war, pestilence, pain, tears and suffer.
Here are some words of my dear friend Dr. John Piper about the goal of God on creating us:
The Goal of God's Love May Not Be What You Think It Is
Do people go to the Grand Canyon to increase their self-esteem? Probably not. This is, at least, a hint that the deepest joys in life come not from savoring the self, but from seeing splendor. And in the end even the Grand Canyon will not do. We were made to enjoy God.
We are all bent to believe that we are central in the universe. How shall we be cured of this joy-destroying disease? Perhaps by hearing afresh how radically God-centered reality is according to the Bible.
Both the Old and New Testament tell us that God's loving us is a means to our glorifying him. "Christ became a servant ... in order that the nations might glorify God for his mercy" (Romans 15:8-9). God has been merciful to us so that we would magnify him. We see it again in the words, "In love [God] destined us to adoption ... to the praise of the glory of His grace" (Ephesians 1:4-6). In other words, the goal of God's loving us is that we might praise him. One more illustration from Psalm 86:12-13: "I will glorify your name forever. For your lovingkindness toward me is great." God's love is the ground. His glory is the goal.
This is shocking. The love of God is not God's making much of us, but God's saving us from self-centeredness so that we can enjoy making much of him forever. And our love to others is not our making much of them, but helping them to find satisfaction in making much of God. True love aims at satisfying people in the glory of God. Any love that terminates on man is eventually destructive. It does not lead people to the only lasting joy, namely, God. Love must be God-centered, or it is not true love; it leaves people without their final hope of joy.
Take the cross of Christ, for example. The death of Jesus Christ is the ultimate expression of divine love: "God demonstrates his own love toward us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us" (Romans 5:8). Yet the Bible also says that the aim of the death of Christ was "to demonstrate [God's] righteousness, because in the forbearance of God he passed over the sins previously committed" (Romans 3:25). Passing over sins creates a huge problem for the righteousness of God. It makes him look like a judge who lets criminals go free without punishment. In other words, the mercy of God puts the justice of God in jeopardy.
So to vindicate his justice he does the unthinkable - he puts his Son to death as the substitute penalty for our sins. The cross makes it plain to everyone that God does not sweep evil under the rug of the universe. He punishes it in Jesus for those who believe.
But notice that this ultimately loving act has at the center of it the vindication of the righteousness of God. Good Friday love is God-glorifying love. God exalts God at the cross. If he didn't, he could not be just and rescue us from sin. But it is a mistake to say, "Well, if the aim was to rescue us, then we were the ultimate goal of the cross." No, we were rescued from sin in order that we might see and savor the glory of God. This is the ultimately loving aim of Christ's death. He did not die to make much of us, but to free us to enjoy making much of God forever.
It is profoundly wrong to turn the cross into a proof that self-esteem is the root of mental health. If I stand before the love of God and do not feel a healthy, satisfying, freeing joy unless I turn that love into an echo of my self-esteem, then I am like a man who stands before the Grand Canyon and feels no satisfying wonder until he translates the canyon into a case for his own significance. That is not the presence of mental health, but bondage to self.
The cure for this bondage is to see that God is the one being in the universe for whom self-exaltation is the most loving act. In exalting himself - Grand Canyon-like - he gets the glory and we get the joy. The greatest news in all the world is that there is no final conflict between my passion for joy and God's passion for his glory. The knot that ties these together is the truth that God is most glorified in us when we are most satisfied in him. Jesus Christ died and rose again to forgive the treason of our souls, which have turned from savoring God to savoring self. In the cross of Christ, God rescues us from the house of mirrors and leads us out to the mountains and canyons of his majesty. Nothing satisfies us - or magnifies him - more.
Originally published in Dallas Morning News.
http://www.desiringgod.org/ResourceLibrary/Articles/ByDate/2000/1515_The_Goal_of_Gods_Love_May_Not_Be_What_You_Think_It_Is/
A Tolkien Taste of Heaven
By: Tyler Kenney
Perhaps the best paragraph in the whole Lord of the Rings trilogy is when Frodo is honored with a song to celebrate his success in destroying the Ring of Doom.
"And all the host laughed and wept, and in the midst of their merriment and tears the clear voice of the minstrel rose like silver and gold, and all men were hushed. And he sang to them…until their hearts, wounded with sweet words, overflowed, and their joy was like swords, and they passed in thought out to regions where pain and delight flow together and tears are the very wine of blessedness." (The Return of the King, 933)
Like those who listened to the minstrel’s song, we who see our Savior in the last day will also be made merry with the story of his victory. And we too will be hushed by and wounded with the sweet words that are sung of his self-sacrifice on our behalf.
We will have joy like swords—bright and piercing—and all of the pain and loss of Christ’s death (and our daily dying with him) will only mix with and enhance our bliss.
http://www.desiringgod.org/Blog/1119_a_tolkien_taste_of_heaven/
Dear friend,
thanks for your post, but with all due respect I see it as an extension of mine.
You see, the point I tried to make was precisely that, regardless of why we were made for, we live in a world in which we find pleasure in a lot of different things, evidently, not only confined to the small amusing list I wrote in the original post, but, I'm sure you will agree there are people that find their purpose and pleasure in doing good onto others as well.
We might have been created to Worship God, in the "design papers", but evidently, we don't live like that, and this is why God has needed to come up with ways to allows us to go back to him again.
This is the whole purpose of my question, Isn't God setting us for failure? In our current nature we like what we like... what happens when we get to heavens? Does God changes us? and if he does, then does Free-Will goes out the window? Or we will magically change and stop wanting what we want today?
The bible is an inspiration of God (2 Timothy 3:16 and 2 Peter 1:20-21), in original Greek all of the scriptures are theopneustos (breathed out by God) not written by the hand of God itself. By the time the bible was written they didn’t know/have all the things we have today and all they desired was having a more peaceful life. Think about it for a second, if we were to write a new bible today saying things like “the heaven will be like a 5-stars resort, a super computer lab with 200 clustered computers, internet access running at the speed of light, 500 inches plasma TV, etc… ALL FREELY AVAILABLE!!!” maybe in year 4000 the people will say, uh? That’s so boring; we already have much more than that today…
To me inspiration most of the time can be blocked by ignorance or the perception of reality, even if I get inspired to talk about cars, AI and cyberspace in the year 1450 B.C.; will I write about this non-sense stuff that even myself can't understand nor describe? People will think I’m crazy!!!… Maybe I’m just not inspired today.
If there really is a heaven it will be a MUCH BETTER place than this in all the aspects of life!
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