Wednesday, July 13, 2011

More Normal Than You Might Think

It's interesting to hear people's concept of heaven. I've got to admit that I wish I knew what we're going to do there and what life will be like there. The Bible gives us some idea, but some people either ignore what it says or they read more into what it says than I think is really there.

One idea that people have is that we're going to be spirit beings in heaven. The Stargate television series had this view of heaven with the concept of the Ancients' ascension. Some people have the idea that as spirit beings we'll be in a state of eternal bliss. And even if that isn't how people view heaven, it amazes me that some people think it is obvious that there will be no time in heaven. Granted, I don't have a complete understanding of heaven, but I don't find any of this to be obvious.

I realize the Bible uses the phrase "that there should be time no longer" (Revelation 10:6), but the Bible also tells us that we will have resurrected bodies. If time doesn't exist, what need have we of bodies? I think a better understanding of this verse is that this current season of time will be over. The time of delay will be over and the judgment will come. It is more like a person who is racing against the clock. The buzzer rings and there's no more time for him to do what he was doing. But we can't take that to mean that time itself disappeared when the time ran out.

The concept of time as something that can exist or not exist is a fairly recent concept. But it could be that many preachers have latched on to this idea and it flavors their understanding of the Bible. But the Bible talks about a New Jerusalem, a new heaven, and a new earth. While I don't fully understand what we'll be doing, we'll have physical bodies with which it is conceivable that we will be able to explore these places. It takes time for a physical body to move from one place to another.

We're going to be in heaven for a very long time. I can't fully imagine what it would be like to be without the fear of death. Nothing will harm us. We will have as much time as we need to do whatever it is we'll be doing. As millions upon millions of years go by(I can't even imagine that.), it seems to me that we will continually be searching for something new to understand. There is only one thing in heaven or on earth that is so fascinating that we can never understand it, no matter how much time we have to study it. That is God himself. So whatever else we do with our time, I think we'll reach the point where most of our time will be spent trying to understand God better.