Scary title eh? I just finished listening to a Bill Gaither song. I know I know, putting a title like “visions of heaven”, and then talk about having listened to a Bill Gaither song, seems completely mix matched given my age and demographic. Yet, I stand by it. The particular song that I listened to was a medley of Amazing Grace/Old Rugged Cross/Because He Lives/Revive/How Great Thou Art, an incredible line-up of powerful hymns of glory. I am not afraid to say it, it brought me to tears.
I was imagining what it would be like to be in a choir with millions of people singing in worship of God, with God right there. Picture it for a moment. We are in this incredible place of heaven where the glory of God is the sun, we can stand and be in this presence because we are now in heaven and the fetters of sin no longer veils us from seeing God. Now imagine thousands of tenor 1’s and 2’s, soprano’s, alto’s, the in between bass and tenor guys, and basses. Not to mention the incredible array of instruments, all singing of God’s incredible glory, with God right there, along with all those who are dancers being in front of us, all the musicians from the dawn of time till the end of time!
I find that I am an incredible imaginative person, the pictures in my mind can be really powerful, to the point where I question whether or not it is my imagination or a “vision”. I have been moved to strong emotions through what I have visualized. My favourite is the picture of worship in heaven. I know that it will be beyond what I can even think to conjure up in my mind. What sorts of colours, how much better will our natural talents be, what sort of clarity will we have unhindered by sin? What will our excitment be like, what will our emotions feel like? What will it be like to feel the only kind of fear that is acceptable for a Christian, that is the fear of God? Conversely, what will it be like to experience pure joy and happiness?
I cannot wait to see how much more our talents and passions will come alive when we get to heaven. I want everyone I know to be with me in heaven. I know it’s selfish. I cannot wait to see how God will use us, what place He has for us in heaven.
Blessings,
David
Drake says:
One question Dave–How is wanting everyone you know to be in heaven selfish (or did I misread that statement)? Would not that be your heart and wants linging up with God’s, isn’t that what Christianity about [Us carring about the things God cares about, us carring about the people God cares about]?
david says:
It was actually more of a “tongue-in-cheek” comment, meant to be more sarcastic. I was more pointing towards the attitude that yes my religion is the right one, and as such I want everyone to be in heaven with me. If that makes sense!
Drake says:
Just checking…
MrMalone says:
It seems to me that you’re assuming we will have bodies in heaven. This seems to be a curious thought considering all the people who’s bodies have flaws and imperfections so to speak. What about the people that currently can’t sing, or see or both. What will they experience? How do you know? Is it possible your perception of heaven is biased?
What about all the people that died a long time ago. Their bodies have become part of the earth and subsequently have indirectly become a part of us. They obviously wouldn’t get “resurrected” because parts of us would have to be taken out to recompose their original bodies.. so they obviously must get new bodies.. so it’s not really them that gets resurected. Do we all get new bodies? How do you know? If I was 3′4″ with short limbs all my life. Would I get to experience heaven from a 5′11″ perspective? Is your visions of heaven perhaps narrow or are they inclusive of all scenarios. Or is it more of a gut feeling, similar to how people have visions of Nirvanah?
David says:
Mr. Malone! I haven’t seen you in awhile. I was actually just thinking about what had happened to you the other day since you had commented on my Academia post.
Interesting questions. My view of heaven is not “perhaps biased” it is biased. My view of heaven is filtered through Scripture and therefore all subsequent reactions and assumptions are what I have ascertained through my limited understanding of Scripture.
Some pretty good questions, I will do my best to answer them. To the first, what we will experience. Obviously, I do not know. Certainly much of my ideas are based off of church traditions and ideas. As for singing, I look in Revelation 15:2 where it talks about “those who have been victorious over the beast and his image and the number of his name, standing on the sea of glass, holding harps of God. And they sang the song of Moses…” and it goes on to describe the song that sing. I believe that everyone has a unique gifting or offering to present “worship” to God in what ever form that may hold. Does everyone sing? No, but could there be an incredible choir drawn from saints who have died before us and who can and will sing. Probably.
We also see angels rejoicing and praising God, at the proclaimation of Jesus’ coming (Luke 2:13). I believe that this sets up or at least point to the idea of music being in heaven.
As for those who have already died. We can first of course look to Jesus. There was a bodily resurrection. Luke 24:38b-39, “Why are you troubled, and why do doubts arise in your hearts? See My hands and My feet, that it is I Myself; touch Me and see, for a spirit does not have flesh and bones as you see that I have.” He then proceeded to eat fish with them (Luke 24:41-42).
Bodily resurrection could probably be a doctoral dissertation, so in like one possibly two paragraphs, I will give a bare bones answer. Job 19:25, “As for me, I know that my Redeemer lives, And at the last He will take His stand on the earth. Even after my skin is destroyed, Yet from my flesh I shall see God.”
Words from Jesus’ own mouth, John 5:25-29, “Truly, truly, I say to you, an hour is coming and now is, when the dead will hear the voice of the Son of God, and those who hear will live. For just as the Father has life in Himself, even so He gave to the Son also to have life in Himself; and He gave Him authority to execute judgment, because He is the Son of Man. Do not marvel at this; for an hour is coming, in which all who are in the tombs will hear His voice, and will come forth; those who did the good deeds to a resurrection of life, those who committed the evil deeds to a resurrection of judgment.”
1 Corinthians 15:51-52, “Behold, I tell you a mystery; we will not all sleep, but we will all be changed, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet; for the the trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised imperishable, and we will be changed.”
Revelation 20:12-13, “And I saw the dead, the great and the small, standing before the throne, and books were opened; and another book was opened, which is the book of life; and the dead were judged from the things which were written in the books, according to their deeds. And the sea gave up the dead which were in it, and death and Hades gave up the dead which were in them; and they were judged, every one of them according to their deeds.”
Now what do those bodies look like? I have no idea. It seems rather clear to me that there is a resurrection of the physical body. Looking at the story of the Road to Emmaus (Luke 24:13-35), these disciples did not recognize who Jesus was, until later. In John 21 He appears to the disciples and they do not recognize Him until He told them to cast in their nets and they caught the fish. What I take from this is that there has been some sort of a physical change, yet there is something recognizable about Him.
How do we change? I don’t know. The point of my blog was not to figure out the logistics of how everything will work out, instead I was reflecting on what worship unfettered by sin will be like. How we will worship? I don’t know. My “visions”, (I would never claim to be in heaven), are imperfect and limited by my sinful scope of understanding, 2 Corinthians 3:18.
I just want to stress to for those who read my blog, my ideas, especially on this particular blog, will be said from a standpoint that believes the Bible to be the inspired word of God, and I believe it to be truth. Therefore all of my arguments come from that particular standpoint. It will be hard to interact about matters of heaven, theology, etc, not believing that the Bible is truth.
MrMalone says:
Sorry I haven’t visited your blog. I wish there was a way msn could update a person when there are new comments on a blog you’ve visited. I also reply to many, many people who don’t think of returning to continue discussion. Alas I will probably find myself absent from here as things go.
Regardless, thank you for your reply. To take the Bible as true based on whatever criteria you wish is fine and it would be an excercise to show the strength of logic that contradicts Biblical claims, to override Biblical claims for a person such as yourself. As in the case of this topic, a thing could be logically impossible, and yet if you believe it to be a fact from the Bible, it is then somehow just true. I suspect you don’t get a lot of challengers to your faith as they see reasoning with a person with this approach to be rather useless. I suspect you would feel the same if you had a good chat with a good old Muslim who held similar value in exclusivity in his texts of choice and had simply decided that no matter what, his understanding of his text is true.
For certain things, I am willing to play in the realm of pure scripture to discuss certain challenges it presents in historical consistency and accuracy. (Yes including the new testament). But what the heart of the matter really rests on is in fact the grounds for which you believe the Bible to be truth, as you say.
Perhaps this is something we could chat about at your leisure. If you feel more comfortable doing it here or my blog, due to the subject matter and audience, I’m happy with whatever you prefer. Most of my friends and readers are still Christians so perhaps you can bolster their faith with strong discussion.
David says:
I would love to continue to engage you, although I must say I am at the beginning of my educational career, and as such there will be times were I may not be so eloquant. I will however to the best of my ability attempt to continue in discussion. I do think however, either my msn blog (which I am assuming is how you got to this blog), or your blog may be a slightly better place for these types of conversations, just for the sake of length and things like this.
I enjoy your challenges. I imagine engaging in Christians in what you presume to be “ignorance” can be rather frustrating. I would never presume to say that any other person of another religion is following it out of ignorance. I honestly would talk about it in faith.
“Faith” is definied as;
1. confidence or trust in a person or thing: faith in another’s ability.
2. belief that is not based on proof: He had faith that the hypothesis would be substantiated by fact.
3. belief in God or in the doctrines or teachings of religion: the firm faith of the Pilgrims.
4. belief in anything, as a code of ethics, standards of merit, etc.: to be of the same faith with someone concerning honesty.
5. a system of religious belief: the Christian faith; the Jewish faith.
6. the obligation of loyalty or fidelity to a person, promise, engagement, etc.: Failure to appear would be breaking faith.
7. the observance of this obligation; fidelity to one’s promise, oath, allegiance, etc.:
Based upon this definition, I would imagine that it would be logical to assume that even a person without any belief in any particular religion or religious systems would also need a measure of faith to believe that there is no particular deity in existence. That is to say, I would argue and believe that it takes as much faith to believe in atheism as it does to believe in the existence of God. I could follow an argument that the subject matter of faith can be “blind faith”, I however would never say that decisions for beliefs in a system, even atheism, is never borne out of ignorance.
I find it interesting that you are so assured that because there are apparent inaccuracies contained within the bible, (on these matters I have zero expertise, and very little training, although I have sources that I can tap into), the Bible carries very compelling and excellent princepals to live by. These princepals have proved to be true over and over in my life.
The existence of God and the power of transformation in the belief in Christ is firmly planted within my life. The grounds for which I hold the Bible to be true is because the promises contained within Scritures have been proven again and again within my life.
Why have I decided to place my faith within the Christian God and hold to biblical truths? For the simple fact that God called me unto Himself. He called me to Him in a real tangible way. Not only that, couple it with the amount of people who were praying for me, there is no accounting for the power of prayer.
Blessings Mr.Malone, I hope we can continue, and I do not mind engaging in further blogs on here. I appreciate having to think through what I believe. Perhaps could we wait till I post the next blog?
MrMalone says:
David,
I don’t understand your claim that a person that doesn’t have a diety-based faith system needs to have faith in order to not have faith. Unless you can say that you have faith that Josfnnvos does NOT exsit. You don’t even know what it is or could be so faith in it is not an issue. It begs that it is defined and explained and there is good reason to believe that it exists. You see, we are both atheists; I just believe in one less god than you do. In the same way, when you understand why you reject all other possible gods, you’ll understand why I reject yours.
I would not want to discount that you find great value or even that there is not great value to be found in many principles presented in the Bible. I too have lived and continue to live my life by most of them. I think it’s the foundation for which people rally to presume that they can know anything about a spiritual realm based on it’s contents that I would have a bigger problem with. It’s a very human book, if it is wrong about things we can test. If it’s wrong about such things, then it’s quite likely that what it claims about spiritual things is equally as flawed and/or contrived.
For our discusions, I’ll do my best to stick to the realm of your strengths, Sola Scriptura.