30 May '14 18:51>3 edits
My experiences of listening to the minister's sermons and interacting in Sunday school classes during my churchgoing youth left me with the impression that once the 1000-year reign of Jesus on Earth is completed, all humans become purely spirit and live on forever in Heaven or Hell, whichever may be the case for each individual.
Heaven was not some place occupying our familiar spacetime. Nobody standing on Earth could point to a particular direction in the sky and say, "Heaven is 6,200 light-years in that direction." That left it as plausible to my child self that spacetime ceases to exist after the thousand-year reign. No more galaxies, no more nebulae, planets, comets, asteroids, photons. The Almighty would have no more use for such things, since they had served their purpose of housing flesh-and-blood humans, the pinnacle of Creation.
It seemed to me, as a kid, that since there really was no need for physical objects in our universe to continue on, scientific talk of things like the Andromeda Galaxy striking the Milky Way galaxy in 4 billion years was in vain-- not going to happen, because those objects will not exist. Even 4-D spacetime will not exist.
In recent years I heard Billy Graham's daughter preach a sermon on the radio in which she described heaven as a cube 1,500 miles on a side, made of things like gold and jasper. So Heaven would be a 3-D structure made of atoms. That doesn't mesh well with the idea of spirits, I would say, because spirits shouldn't need floors, walls, doors, ceilings, etc. to house themselves.
What say you of these matters, Believers? Is your understanding of the future and the afterlife different than mine was when I was one of you?
Heaven was not some place occupying our familiar spacetime. Nobody standing on Earth could point to a particular direction in the sky and say, "Heaven is 6,200 light-years in that direction." That left it as plausible to my child self that spacetime ceases to exist after the thousand-year reign. No more galaxies, no more nebulae, planets, comets, asteroids, photons. The Almighty would have no more use for such things, since they had served their purpose of housing flesh-and-blood humans, the pinnacle of Creation.
It seemed to me, as a kid, that since there really was no need for physical objects in our universe to continue on, scientific talk of things like the Andromeda Galaxy striking the Milky Way galaxy in 4 billion years was in vain-- not going to happen, because those objects will not exist. Even 4-D spacetime will not exist.
In recent years I heard Billy Graham's daughter preach a sermon on the radio in which she described heaven as a cube 1,500 miles on a side, made of things like gold and jasper. So Heaven would be a 3-D structure made of atoms. That doesn't mesh well with the idea of spirits, I would say, because spirits shouldn't need floors, walls, doors, ceilings, etc. to house themselves.
What say you of these matters, Believers? Is your understanding of the future and the afterlife different than mine was when I was one of you?