What will Heaven be like?

Question

From most people, I've basically heard that we will lead boring lives. I heard that we will be like angels, not married, and possibly have unisex bodies. I saw pictures of Heaven in Jehovah's Witness pamphlets. In the pictures were beautiful nature scenes with different animals and people dressed in modern clother. Can somebody clarify any of this?

Answer 1

Jehovah's Witnesses understand the Scriptures to teach that God's Kingdom will soon replace all earthly governments.
(Daniel 2:44) God of heaven will set up a kingdom... It will crush and put an end to all these kingdoms, and it itself will stand to times indefinite

That Kingdom will rule over the vast majority of mankind, most of whom will have been raised from the dead after Armageddon.
(John 11:23,24) Jesus said to her: “Your brother will rise.” Martha said to him: “I know he will rise in the resurrection on the last day.”
(Acts 24:15) There is going to be a resurrection of both the righteous and the unrighteous.

Until that resurrection, there is no suffering in "hell", or the grave. Sometime after the resurrection, death and "hell" will themselves be destroyed.
(Ecclesiastes 9:5) For the living are conscious that they will die; but as for the dead, they are conscious of nothing at all
(Ecclesiastes 9:10) there is no work nor devising nor knowledge nor wisdom in Sheol ["hell"]
(Revelation 20:14) And death and Hades ["hell"] were hurled into the lake of fire

While a limitted number of humans will be resurrected to heaven to share in ruling over mankind, the vast majority (literally more than 99.9%) of Jehovah's Witnesses expect an EARTHLY hope, the same hope given to Adam and Eve.
(Genesis 1:28) God blessed them and God said to them: “Be fruitful and become many and fill THE EARTH and subdue it [caps added]
(Genesis 2:17) You must not eat from it, for in the day you eat from it you will positively die [so never eating from that tree means never dying]

Interestingly, the Scriptures are full of references to this earthly hope.
(Psalms 37:11) 'the meek will possess the earth'
(Proverbs 2:21) 'upright will reside in the earth'
(Isaiah 45:18) 'God formed the earth to be inhabited'
(Matthew 5:5) 'the mild will inherit the earth'
(Revelation 21:3) The tent of God is with mankind

Jehovah's Witnesses' official website:
http://watchtower.org
http://watchtower.org/library/jt/index.htm

Answer 2

If you have a Bible available, the best description is in the Book of the Revelation. That one's easy to find: it's the last book in the Bible. I think the place that talks about what Heaven looks like is chapter 20 and 21. It tells about what we'll see and how worship is done there and other things like that. There are other references to Heaven given throughout the New Testament. If you use a concordance (printed or online) you can find them all and see for yourself.

Rick Joyner has written a couple of books on some visions he was given about heaven and the end times and such. These might be interesting reading for you.

Answer 3

The Witnesses view of heaven in their phamphlets is based on a "heaven" (which they term as 'paradise') on a revamped Earth were all nations will be in peace together for eternity and were wild animals would apparently turn to grass. The flaw in this view is that they always show small children (i mean how many kids can these survivors have if they're living forever - the planet has a limit, right?), and next is the way they're pictured as you said in modern clothing and building houses, etc. - If all are living in eternal peace (i.e. man and beast) where are they getting their clothing, their leather, the wood and all their tools? (Never saw any slaughter-houses/factories/power generators/etc in their 'rosy' pics)

Your description of like angels, not married, and possibly have unisex bodies is the most plausible description. However keep in mind that the key to being in heaven is to be in the presence of God which is meant to be fulfilling in itself. In any case no one's been there to tell us exactly so I'm not complaining as long as i can live on in some form eternally.

Answer 4

An explanation I read was that we are greeted by someone close to us in our current life, then go to our spirit guide, take our place in our group of souls that we have connected with in past lives and then spend our time learning from our actions in our most recent and what we would like to learn in the next one. Kind of like karma.

Heaven is supposed to be similar to earth, but without the problems. Souls are supposed to be unisex, but apparently we won't care. Also, even if we die at 85, we'll appear younger in heaven at an ideal age of 30. We won't care about clothing. In fact, it is not clear whether we will have an actual body. It could be more of a presence.

Answer 5

The Happiness of Heaven
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When we get to heaven (if we are found worthy), what we will see and experience there will be so original, so novel, and so wonderful, that one might think that it is the supreme heresy. But it will be the supreme truth.

Heaven has an inconceivable subtlety and lightness of being that will give an inconceivable pleasure to the soul.

A friend of someone died and went to heaven. That friend appeared to that someone and that someone asked if heaven is *like* what they had discussed, or *other.* The friend replied: "totally other." St. Thomas Aquinas, the prince of theologians, near the end of his life, said that he could no longer write because compared to what he saw in visions, all he had written was straw.


Jim McCrea
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"Eye has not seen, nor has ear heard, nor has it even dawned on man what God has prepared for those who love Him." (1 Corinthians 2:9)

"At your right hand, there are pleasures for ever more" (Psalms 16:11)










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Answer 6

In the new testament. Paul tells of being swept into the 4 th heaven. This is heaven in reality.
He says he saw wonders to wonderful for him to describe. You will not be bored, if you think this then think again. We will have work, and we will sing and we will eat and we will do a lot of fantastic things only dreamed about on earth. Our purpose will be to help those who are on earth to God's good purpose.
I am sure you think this is boring. But if you take away the desire to sin, as you have now which is makeing it all seem boring to you, then you will understand how great it will be.

Answer 7

"The kingdom of God is within you." I presume that refers to heaven. I think you have to discover it yourself. Apparently it's not easy because only parsimonious pipsqueaks standing up in front of churches claim to have found it -- although none of them agree on anything. It's not in dogma. It's not in Greek, Latin, Sanskrit, English, or Arabic. It's nowhere near any sermon. It's not in any book. I think it's a very personal search. I think it requires curiosity. The search requires you to question... everything. Stuff you KNOW to be true -- question that too. Question the truth? Sure; How else do you know it's true? If it doesn't stand up to mere mortal scrutiny, what chance does it really have to be absolutely true? But truth will keep coming back. You can't get away from it. So, if, in your journey to heaven, you accidentally throw away some truth, you'll run across it again. Maybe, in that way, you'll recognize it as the truth.

Answer 8

no where does it say our work will be over when we get to heavemn. We may just be in training for heaven. The boring idea comes from the days when most had to do very hard work each day and considered a long rest their idea of what they wanted heaven to be, that was just a hope of a certain culture at a certain time

Answer 9

Jehovah's witness claim that heaven will be on our planet, in a way they show,definitely it will boring, and it doesn't make sense at all since no need to eat to survive cz there is no death for example,and no need to sleep,u can stay millions of years awake and nothing will happen to u,cz u wont get tired... Where Christians believe that heaven will be somewhere where we have a peacefull life for our souls, it is more spiritual and not materialistic....

Answer 10

The Witnesses' conception of people going to heaven is mostly a hand-picked by their overseers few who are going to heaven. 144,000, I believe. But their ideals are constantly changing, so who knows what they really believe now. The scenes you see in their mags are their illustrations of the rest of the Jehovah's Witnesses who did'nt go to heaven, enjoying an earthly paradise. I know all this because I was forced by mother to be part of this organization, when I was a kid. I'm an atheist, and grown now, but their mind control tactics are still in my head.