Welcome to Heaven, may I see your passport?

What is heaven? Check Yes ___% or No ___%

But seriously, I've been thinking about the question of what is heaven really actually going to be like. I've decided to ask everyone around me "what in the world is heaven like?", and by that, I mean I've asked the god of the internet, Google. Now, unless you've been living in Hogwarts your whole life, you'll know that Google is this dude that you can ask questions to and he goes and gets advice from all corners of the globe, so that, as one voice, they can answer your question as inaccurately as possible.
So, after asking Mr. Google, he says that heaven is:

A place with extra-dimensions that our own galaxy cannot physically contain. (http://www.godandscience.org)

It's also a place where you aren't bogged down by a body, but can move throughout space and time without that horrible enslaving physical reality that a creator needlessly submitted you to.
(mormon.org)

Another thing that heaven will unquestionably be is....well, whatever your mind can possibly invent based very very loosely on things barely hinted at in the Bible.
(http://ad2004.com/prophecytruths/Articles/Heaven/heaven.html)

And don't forget to be notified by text message when heaven officially meets earth. (heaven.com)

-----Each of these sites are real and claim both Christianity and a biblically based theology.

Everyone has an opinion about heaven, and the only source for most of their knowledge is a decayed cultural influence and a lot of wishful thinking. Is heaven really where God is now your magic genie, only with unlimited wishes? If heaven is anything like what I've seen from Christians so far on earth, it's a place where every Nike sign is turned into a cross and the phrase "happy holidays" is punishable by a slow lethal injection.

Now, I'm much better at asking questions than giving answers, and that's ok with me. This is because truly living is more about the asking of questions rather than the giving of answers, isn't it? I believe it's the questioning that teaches us much more than the answering. Because without questions there can be no answers. And without questioning we have no reason to hold to the truth we find in answers that are too easily received.

Because the Bible has much more to say "about" heaven than actually "describing" it, this question is therefore definitely easier to ask than answer. Because of this, I'll talk a lot more about what we know that heaven isn't, instead of rambling on just thoughts of what it could be.

Ok, I'm going to preface my argument by giving an explanation of the two things that absolutely must be present in sound discussion. Those two things are Source and Logic.

You can't form a solid argument using only one of these things. When you have Logic but no Source, you will find yourself arguing away meaningless ideas that have their entire existence in an abstract world, and therefore cannot relate to us in a real reality. Logic but no Source commonly has the attribute that truth is not the end goal, and is rather non-consequential. It is instead a competition of argument, it isn't about working through the a problem to find truth. It's essentially a peeing contest of the mind. Whatever is the best constructed argument wins, instead of whichever is true. In order to have a discussion where truth is the end goal, we have to define our Source.
Now, if you have Source, but no Logic, you come into a plethora of problems. These problems in the biblical area give birth to lots of deconstructive, and sometimes even heretical, theology. Case and point, every single one of the "the end is (insert this date)" people. The mere fact that there have been hundreds of these cultists who have proclaimed this with all assurances, and been completely false, Every, Single, Time, before now should be enough clue to the logical person that this is shady business.

But on top of that is the fact that you have to completely throw-out Jesus' own words when he says, "But of that day and hour no one knows, not even the angels of heaven, nor the Son, but the Father alone." And just in case you think, well, that maybe out of context, Jesus solidifies it with the next couple verses. "For the coming of the Son of Man will be just like the days of Noah. For as in those days before the flood they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until the day that Noah entered the ark, and they did not understand until the flood came and took them all away; so will the coming of the Son of Man be." (Matthew 24)
Jesus is saying that just like no one knew when the flood came, no one will know when his second coming will be. No one, in fact, the Bible instead says that we are to treat everyday as if it's our last day to do the work of God, because "the day of the Lord will come just like a thief in the night." (1 Thess.)

Jesus also specifically warns his disciples that people like this will come, but he says not to listen to them, he says, "People will tell you, ‘There he is!’ or ‘Here he is!’ Do not go running off after them." (Luke 17, Matt 24)
Jesus obviously, and easily foresaw all of these false-prophets that look to the Bible as a magic puzzle and say that they have personally decoded it in order to give the final equation as to what the very last day on earth is. And each time they fail. Jesus foresaw this and knew that because we look forward so much to his coming, that these would be huge temptations for us. We want him to come back and complete this great work he started in us so much that we follow with no logic the people who take a proverbial machete to the Bible in order to lead us to a dead end.

The people who do this have a source, the Bible, but absolutely no logic to guide them in understanding. They say the bible is a big jigsaw puzzle that needs to be assembled, so they take unrelated bits of scripture and with zero competence take it to mean something that it absolutely doesn't. Scripture is here for a purpose, and this is not it.

And if you haven't already deduced this by the time I've spent on this topic; this issue is happening right now (at time of being written) by a group with no inkling of scriptural truth, following the man Harold Camping. A man who has already proven himself to be a false-prophet. They are claiming with all confidence that God will rapture his believers (and some have said to me only those who believe that this day is his coming) on May 21, 2011. And I am just as certain that when he does not, they will do just as their predecessors have, and say, "oohh, we were just barely off, this (insert random date) was really (insert random date) and therefore we now know for sure that he will instead come back on this (slightly later than previously called for date)." And then they will hold to the new date all the more boldly, and in the end, when he hasn't come back (unless he really does come back before all of this takes place), they become depressed and burn not only this teaching, but the entire Bible with it.

So, to recap what heaven isn't #1:
Heaven isn't something that you will know ahead of time when it will come. It will be as a thief in the night.


This post is too long so I leave you with this:
Think about the content! Is the content using both Logic and Source. Do you agree with both the Logic and the Source. And do they agree with each other.


FOR NEXT TIME!!

Next time we'll discuss some more things that heaven isn't, like;


What heaven isn't #2:
Heaven is not for good people.