Dove Award for Christian Website Design
Please contact us for our affordable advertisement rates today.
Please enable your Active X controls or add our website to your Trusted Zone to display picture.
Listed in the Top 100 Christian Websites
© 2003 WHATAGOD. All Rights Reserved
What STRENGTH, what PASSION, what LOVE... WHAT A MIGHTY GOD we serve!
Help Desk (Q&A)
You'll find many Q&A on various topics found here. Our hope is to help you find Godly answers to questions that may be of interest to you! You can submit your own Q&A by sending us an email to preacherslink@whatagod.com
E-mail
Please enable your Active X controls or add our website to your Trusted Zone to display picture.
Help Desk (Q&A)
What is Heaven?
Is heaven a real place?
If you are looking for a one word answer - Yes!
How can we know this? If I were going to explain a place to you to which you had never been, I would use terminology with which you were familiar. At the same time, I would know that because of your limited knowledge and exposure, while you could gain a better understanding of what the place was like you would never have a full appreciation of what I had seen and experienced. Since none of us have been to heaven, Jesus used the same approach to give us some insight as to what heaven may be like. In so doing Jesus used a means of communication called parables. The Holman Bible Dictionary describes parables as "stories, especially those of Jesus, told to provide a vision of life, especially life in God's kingdom. Parable means a putting alongside for purposes of comparison and new understanding."
So Jesus used parables to give us a better understanding of things we had not been exposed to and to correct our misguided perceptions. Jesus used the phrase "heaven is like". In fact He used that phrase eight times in the book of Matthew. You can check the verses and His sayings in chapters 13:31, 33, 44, 45, 47, 52; 20:1, and 22:1. In the same book at 4:17, He said "Repent: for the kingdom of heaven is at hand." In 5:48 He exhorts us to "Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect." Prior to His crucifixion, Jesus told his disciples "I came forth from the Father, and am come into the world: again, I leave the world, and go to the Father." (John 16:28). Jesus had a definite place in mind.
I want to invite your attention to Matthew 22, in particular verses 26-32. The Saducees (a Jewish religious order of the day) did not believe in the resurrection (some say their unbelief is really what made them sad you see). So, they quarried Jesus with a hypothetical situation wherein seven brothers had died. In fulfillment of Jewish law, each of the brothers married the same woman in an effort to bring up children for the first deceased brother. Their question was; whose wife would she be in the resurrection?
Jesus answered this question by saying that in the resurrection there would be no marrying but we would be as the angels. Notice that Jesus confirmed that there would be a resurrection. To be as the angles may be exciting but what followed in verse 32 is the most exciting and important part of the passage. Jesus said that He was the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob - not the God of the dead but of the living. This sheds light of Paul's writings in 2 Cor 5:8 where he said that he would rather be absent from the body and present with the Lord. It's the resurrection power of Christ that gave Paul his assurance that when he died he wasn't going to lie in a grave until the resurrection but he would immediately be with the Lord.
continued...
If you are looking for a one word answer - Yes!
How can we know this? If I were going to explain a place to you to which you had never been, I would use terminology with which you were familiar. At the same time, I would know that because of your limited knowledge and exposure, while you could gain a better understanding of what the place was like you would never have a full appreciation of what I had seen and experienced. Since none of us have been to heaven, Jesus used the same approach to give us some insight as to what heaven may be like. In so doing Jesus used a means of communication called parables. The Holman Bible Dictionary describes parables as "stories, especially those of Jesus, told to provide a vision of life, especially life in God's kingdom. Parable means a putting alongside for purposes of comparison and new understanding."
So Jesus used parables to give us a better understanding of things we had not been exposed to and to correct our misguided perceptions. Jesus used the phrase "heaven is like". In fact He used that phrase eight times in the book of Matthew. You can check the verses and His sayings in chapters 13:31, 33, 44, 45, 47, 52; 20:1, and 22:1. In the same book at 4:17, He said "Repent: for the kingdom of heaven is at hand." In 5:48 He exhorts us to "Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect." Prior to His crucifixion, Jesus told his disciples "I came forth from the Father, and am come into the world: again, I leave the world, and go to the Father." (John 16:28). Jesus had a definite place in mind.
I want to invite your attention to Matthew 22, in particular verses 26-32. The Saducees (a Jewish religious order of the day) did not believe in the resurrection (some say their unbelief is really what made them sad you see). So, they quarried Jesus with a hypothetical situation wherein seven brothers had died. In fulfillment of Jewish law, each of the brothers married the same woman in an effort to bring up children for the first deceased brother. Their question was; whose wife would she be in the resurrection?
Jesus answered this question by saying that in the resurrection there would be no marrying but we would be as the angels. Notice that Jesus confirmed that there would be a resurrection. To be as the angles may be exciting but what followed in verse 32 is the most exciting and important part of the passage. Jesus said that He was the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob - not the God of the dead but of the living. This sheds light of Paul's writings in 2 Cor 5:8 where he said that he would rather be absent from the body and present with the Lord. It's the resurrection power of Christ that gave Paul his assurance that when he died he wasn't going to lie in a grave until the resurrection but he would immediately be with the Lord.
continued...