i am having trouble comparing heaven and earth?

Question

i am really interested in science and technology. i am always reading,researching,etc about science. i have a very strong relationship with god but what is heaven, will the joys of earth be there. i don't think our life on earth is all that bad but i still want to go to heaven.

Answer 1

Earth is the one that exists.

Answer 2

First, if you are uncertain of your position regarding Heaven then you need to do a lot more concidering about you relationship with God and your own Salvation.... Then concider this... All Science is from God... Thus, all science is good. It is only because mankind dose not understand even the smallest part of the science that God has put in place to operate this univere, that mankind is in the mess it's in. If it were not for man mucking up the science all of mankind would be living in peace and plenty... not in the poluted mess we have made of God's Gift.

If you think the pitifully small amount of science we do understand now is so fantastic... What do you think it will be like to see God's Science in full and perfect operation in Heaven.?

Answer 3

Paul talked about the "third heaven". He considered our atmosphere to be the first heaven, what we consider "outer space" would be Paul's second heaven, and the third heaven is the dimension of God.

God is outside our time/space/matter dimension. Since He created it, it poses no limitations upon Him. That's why He can see the end from the beginning, and why 1000 years is as a day, and a day as 1000 years to God. He's not trapped in our material dimension.

You're informed about things scientific, consider Genesis 1:1. Right there you have the four components of our material universe. In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. Time, space, matter and energy. By the power (energy) of God, matter (earth) and space were created, and by this act, time began. Outside the limitations of a material universe, time is irrelevant because it only affects/effects temporal beings.

Answer 4

God didn't create us to go to heaven. We have a strong desire (as you so excellently demonstrate) to live right here on earth. He has made a provision for us to live here forever in paradise conditions. (Rev 21:3-4) You just need to learn what He requires of you to be a part of that.

Answer 5

Heaven will be beyond your wildest imagination. Science is fun. But heaven is much more exciting. Ask God to reveal the answers to the questions you search for. He definitely answers if you seek Him in earnest.

Answer 6

I do know a little about Heaven

It's like earth, same creator... it's larger, beautiful gorgeous trees, mountains, no shadows, just light, more newer brighter colors, plants that turn as if they see you as you walk by them, flowers that when you walk on them, they don't smash, basically float through your legs, the river of life, with crystal clear water. ALL KINDS OF ANIMALS some you never seem before, people everywhere, babies and children from abortions, buildings, houses, your hearts desires, Angels, some with wings flying over God at his throne, Jesus is coming as a glories light through the the crowds of people. trust me this and so much more.

Answer 7

I recommend the book HEAVEN by Randy Alcorne, he feels the things that resonaate with the human heart of earth will have things somewhat like them only better

It's a little bit like CS Lewis last chronicle of Narnia, The Final Battle when they went to "Narnia Heaven" and everythign was like before only better

Since you like to explore and learn, heaven is the best plalce for that. We are finite and God is infinite. It will take forever to get to know Him and will be the inexaustibly great adventure

Answer 8

The book of Revelation discusses the new Jerusalem as the heavenly kingdom.

Answer 9

Ditto

Answer 10

In biblical times, people thought that the earth and heaven were all that there was... and that the earth was essentially a 'terrarium' (you might want to look that up). They thought that the sky was a solid object, called the 'firmament', and that the sun, moon, and stars were affixed to it. So, essentially, heaven is 'on the other side of the sky'.

The story of Genesis is comprised of the myths, superstitions, fairy tales and fantastical delusions of an ignorant bunch of Bronze Age fishermen and wandering goat herders, lifted from the oral traditions of other cultures, and crafted into a tale that incorporated some of their own folk tales and pseudo-history. This collection of ignorance provides the basis for the Abrahamic death cults of desert monotheism... Judaism, Christianity and Islam.

The cosmological aspects of Genesis are perfectly understandable, if you contemplate it in the proper context. At the time the bible stories were concocted, the perception was that the earth was the object and the center of creation. Why? Because they had no reason to think otherwise. Today, as we advance science, we stand upon the shoulders of all the scientists that came before. Back then there were no shoulders to stand upon... so they did the best they could with what they had... their senses and their imaginations.

* They had no concept of 'outer space', and so they conceived that in the beginning all that existed were dark waters.

* They had no concept of 'nothingness'. Remember, the concept of 'zero' wasn't invented (discovered?) until thousands of years later. With that in mind, the term 'void', as it is employed in Genesis, can not refer to 'nothingness'... it can only be applied in its alternative definition, which is 'empty'. So, the waters were dark, formless and empty (devoid of content).

* They thought that all of creation consisted of the earth and an unseen 'heaven', and they thought that the sky was a 'thing'... a substantive 'firmament' that was created by god to separate the waters and differentiate earth from heaven, when both were created.

# They had no idea that Earth was a planet, orbiting the sun.

# They had no idea that there is no firmament... that the sky is not a 'thing'.

(If you don't believe that they thought the sky was an object... a solid barrier... consider the Tower of Babel, that they were building to reach heaven. Apparently, God ALSO thought that the sky was an object, since it concerned him so much that he confounded their speech, so as to disrupt their project and keep them from reaching his domain. God must be pretty much of a dumbass, if he doesn't even know the actual configuration of the universe that he created. So much for the 'inerrant' bible.)

* They thought that the sun was a light that god had placed upon the 'firmament' to differentiate night from day.

# They had no idea that the sun is a star... the center of our solar system.

# They had no concept of 'stars' in the same sense that we understand them today.

* They had no idea that night and day were a consequence of the earth's rotation.

* They thought that the moon was a 'lesser' light that god had caused to travel across the firmament to enable man to differentiate the seasons, and provide illumination at night.

# They had no concept of the moon as a satellite.

* They thought that the stars were tiny lights that god had placed upon the firmament to provide for omens. (Some thought that the stars were 'holes' in the firmament that allowed the 'light of heaven' to shine through.)

# They had no idea that the stars were suns, just like our own sun.

# They thought the eyeball-visible planets (Mercury, Mars, Venus, Jupiter, Saturn) were 'wandering stars'.

# They had no idea that the planets were actually sun-orbiting bodies, just like earth.

* They had no idea that the earth, itself, is a planet.

# They had no clue as to the actual nature of the earth, our solar system, the place of our solar system in the galaxy... or even of the existence of our galaxy. (Up until very recently, we didn't even know that there were other galaxies. Our galaxy, when it was first known that there actually WAS a galaxy, was thought to be the whole universe.) From their perspective, the 'earth' and 'heaven' (i.e., whatever existed on the other side of the sky) represented all that there was. A terrarium.

I do not say this things to disparage what they thought back then. They were trying to do what science is trying to do today... trying to understand nature and reality. Today, we have technology and disciplined meta-procedures (scientific method) to help us extract answers from nature.

Back then, they did not.

Today, we have 'theories' to provide a consistent explanatory framework for what we are able to observe in nature, supplemented and validated by the additional information that we are able to extract from nature by means of our technology, our disciplined methods and our intellectual tools (mathematics, logic). Most of our theories are incomplete, so we continue to work on them... because we know that they are incomplete.

Back then, they did not have disciplined methods, and they did not have the technology to extract answers from nature. The only information they had access to was what they could see with their own eyeballs. There was no technological knowledge base or scientific context in which to interpret their observations, so they had to appeal to their imaginations... and the 'supernatural'... in order to make sense out of what they saw. Actually, what they really achieved was deluding themselves into thinking that they knew the truth. Amazingly, over time, this delusion has become codified, institutionalized, and incorporated... complete with franchises.

Basically, Genesis can be thought of as a 'theory', concocted by people who were constrained by lack of technology, methodology and intellectual tools... but they sure weren't constrained by lack of imagination.

Today, we try to interpret Genesis in the context of what we KNOW about the universe... galaxies, stars, planets, moons, gravity, orbits, inclination of the earth's axis, planetary rotation, etc. They problem is that Genesis can't be interpreted in terms of those things, because Genesis was written by men, based on oral traditions, and those men DID NOT KNOW about those things. They could only write about what they could see and what they could guess about the reasons that lay behind what they saw. In any event, it provided them with a mechanism to quell the innate anxiety that comes with fretting about how and why they came to be here.

They guessed wrong.

So... the cosmological aspects of Genesis require a literal interpretation... no metaphors... no allegory... no hidden meaning. The key, though, is in understanding that the literal interpretation does not lead to a description of the way things ARE... it leads to a description of the way they THOUGHT things are. It leads to a naive description of reality, concocted by people who were doing the best they could with what they had.

It is absolutely appalling, though, to realize that hundreds of millions of people, TODAY, including participants in this forum, ACTUALLY BELIEVE that this mythological nonsense is actually TRUE.


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"Myth has been needed precisely because we were not in a position to understand the universe on its own terms, through the language of natural law and direct examination of its workings on a material, rational level. Once that process of understanding is completed—and we are well on our way to achieving that—the use of myth can be discarded. Its continuing retention is already proving to be counter-productive." - Earl Doherty
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