Keryg 2021: What will happen to the Earth if everyone is to go to Heaven (or somewhere else)?
I am an agnostic (I think) sometimes I am positive there is a God and other times positive there is not a God. Am doing a degree in Philosophy and thought it was time I read the scriptures for myself, and wow did I get confused, so much seems to be at variance to what most churches teach as truth.
I get the impression that most seem to have the belief that when they die they will go somewhere but if that is true there is some scripture that doesn't make sense (to me) as so much appears to indicate that righteous people will live on the Earth!!!
Blessed are the meek:
for they shall inherit the earth. Matthew 5:5
In 2 Peter, Isiah and Revelations it talks of God creating a new Heaven and a new Earth where righteousness will dwell so this indicates there must be people on the Earth to be righteous.
The righteous themselves will posses the Earth and they will reside forever upon it. Ps:37:29
For the upright shall dwell in the land, and the perfect shall remain in it.
But the wicked shall be cut off from the earth, and the transgressors shall be rooted out of it. Proverbs:2: 21-22 (doesn't say the perfect will return but will remain)
For behold, I will create new heavens and a new earth. They will build houses and dwell in them; they will plant vineyards and eat their fruit.
No longer will they build houses for others to inhabit,
nor plant for others to eat. For as is the lifetime of a tree, so will be the days of My people,
and My chosen ones will fully enjoy the work of their hands. Rev: 21:17-21-22
Have lots more confusion.
I get the impression that most seem to have the belief that when they die they will go somewhere but if that is true there is some scripture that doesn't make sense (to me) as so much appears to indicate that righteous people will live on the Earth!!!
Blessed are the meek:
for they shall inherit the earth. Matthew 5:5
In 2 Peter, Isiah and Revelations it talks of God creating a new Heaven and a new Earth where righteousness will dwell so this indicates there must be people on the Earth to be righteous.
The righteous themselves will posses the Earth and they will reside forever upon it. Ps:37:29
For the upright shall dwell in the land, and the perfect shall remain in it.
But the wicked shall be cut off from the earth, and the transgressors shall be rooted out of it. Proverbs:2: 21-22 (doesn't say the perfect will return but will remain)
For behold, I will create new heavens and a new earth. They will build houses and dwell in them; they will plant vineyards and eat their fruit.
No longer will they build houses for others to inhabit,
nor plant for others to eat. For as is the lifetime of a tree, so will be the days of My people,
and My chosen ones will fully enjoy the work of their hands. Rev: 21:17-21-22
Have lots more confusion.
Comments
Given these two states (some Christian groups believe in more, such as the whole purgatory process), it becomes a bit easier to accommodate the different pictures Scripture gives us. Many of those passages about earth specifically can easily be referred to the final, perfect state which has a perfected human race inhabiting a remade cosmos (no doubt with any number of other creatures).
To be sure, we must always keep in mind that parts of Scripture are poetry, metaphor, parable, etc. and be careful about just how literally we take them--but that's true for any text ever. Still, the problem is more acute when you have a text attempting to describe the almost-indescribable.
But we get hints.
I do know not to believe anyone who claims they have the definitive answers
However, my two favourite biblical verses on this subject are
For now we see in a mirror, darkly, but then we will see face to face. Now I know only in part; then I will know fully, even as I have been fully known.
Listen, I tell you a mystery: We will not all sleep, but we will all be changed— in a flash, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, the dead will be raised imperishable, and we will be changed.
Starting with the Bible, I'd say that as a rule the Bible is agnostic about life after death with the concern throughout the Bible being how we live today rather than promises for some after-life experience (or warnings about 'the other place'). In the OT, what there is relating to a promised golden future is for the nation, for the people who will be living then, a concern with national repentance leading to a better future life for the children and grandchildren of those who need to repent. The NT tends towards offering visions of a personal future after-life, the resurrection of individuals rather than future generations of the nation, but is still somewhat enigmatic with messages that are mostly "trust that God will care for you" without anything specific about exactly how that will be.
The Church teaching contains some total tosh that's simply wrong (eg: the concept of Rapture as portrayed in "Left Behind" has no Scriptural warrant and support at all). In a lot of cases there's a pastoral concern that creates pious fiction to provide consolation to those who are grieving (and, I have no problems at all with that - provided we don't get all dogmatic about things offered in the context of pastoral consolation). One could even argue that when Jesus talks about going ahead to prepare a place He's doing so as an expression of His pastoral concern for His disciples, providing them with a pious fiction to help them through the dark days to come. To try and build a dogmatic theology on that passage seems to miss the point big time, rather like spending time working out whether the parable of the Good Samaritan relates real events or whether there was a road between Jerusalem and Jericho that was the haunt of thieves and bandits missing the point about love expressed as caring for anyone in need.
Not convinced this verse is aimed at everyone as in Revelations it seems to indicate we do not all have the same hope.
I think that when a scripture requires an explanation it is not helpful to come along with a different verse which at first glance might appear to be contradictory but means something quite different. It still does not answer numerous verses in scripture which indicate the righteous will inherit the Earth not go to heaven.
I could respond with "And no man hath ascended into heaven, but he that descended from heaven, the Son of man who is in heaven." (Where is Moses, Job and the OT prophets)
Why did Jesus weep over the death of Lazarus if he was with God, if Lazarus had died and gone to heaven why on his return didn't he rave about how great heaven is?
In her radio plays The Man Born To Be King, Dorothy L Sayers has Lazarus asking permission from Jesus to describe his (Lazarus') experience of death. IIRC, Jesus says something to the effect of *Go ahead - but no state secrets!*...
Jesus' weeping over the death of Lazarus may have been largely in solidarity with the grief felt by Mary and Martha, BTW. We weren't present at the time, so we don't really know.
Perhaps that is because the scriptures have been corrupted over the centuries so it has caused confusion but I think there is a truth in there it is just a case of finding it. Jesus told his disciples back when he was on the Earth that the antichrist was already in the world.
No-one should change' scripture' because it helps to accommodate their beliefs, shouldn't it be the other way around. Only, works if we have a soul and I am doubtful of that.
There are other places in scripture where visions of heaven are described so it would be unlikely that Lazarus would not have been 'allowed' to share his experience.
As Mary and Martha were followers of Christ and if they believed Lazarus had gone to heaven and was with God why were they weeping?
Seems those who believe we go to heaven have to find ways of explaining 'away' incidents like this because it comes into conflict with what they want to believe.
I won't quote the play (possible copyright Stuff), but it's worth reading as a fresh look at the gospel accounts, and was regarded as quite radical at the time (1940s).
Heaven may, of course, simply be Earth revived, renewed, and enlarged, so to speak (see C S Lewis' *The Last Battle*).
Mary and Martha were weeping possibly because they were grieved at the loss of their brother. It happens sometimes that people do this, perhaps at the same time believing that their loved one is with God, but grieving nevertheless.
Because they loved him and missed him? Are you seriously suggesting that people who believe we go to heaven don’t have any basis for grief, any sense of loss?
It seems to me that you’re finding conflicts that don’t actually exist. I don’t see anything to “explain away” here.
We usually hear people say *IT'S IN THE BIBLE, SO IT MUST BE TRUE!*, rather than the reverse...
There's no such conflict. Today there are any number of Christians (millions, if not billions) whose loved ones die in the faith, and the family believes they have gone to heaven, and they still weep. Why not? We weep at separations, particularly those that we don't know how long the separation will last. And death (dementia to a lesser degree) is pretty much the only such separation anymore that does not allow for ongoing communication. I suspect that in the old days of overseas immigration, when letters were few and far between and easily lost, there might have been a similar sense of grief when family members said their last goodbyes to someone headed for another continent, whom they would likely never see again. (With the rise of phones etc. this is quite a bit better now, though still a wrench.)
tl;dr: People can truly believe "she's with God now" and still have a terrible sense of loss and grief because the person is out of reach.
That makes no sense if people truly believed their loved ones are in heaven and with God, as a nurse I have cared for people who on one hand say they can't wait to 'see' lost family members who have gone to heaven and yet these same people well into their eighties who will go through horrible surgeries and treatments for a few more months of an uncomfortable life. I think people weep because in their hearts they do not believe those they have lost have gone to heaven, they hope but that does not make it so and they know that.
I have never said that, what I am saying is that people choose to believe what they want and say it is what the scriptures say when it actually does not and often condemn the very practises the churches embrace.
It's sort of troll-y of you to simply contradict me on my own experience without giving any reason or additional data. You might want to re-examine how you're coming off to people.
I tell you now, flat out, that I am convinced that my sister is with the Lord, and I do in fact occasionally ask him to pass messages to her (yeah, that's cheeky of me, making the Lord of Everything my messenger boy), BUT I grieved when she died, of course I did, how should I not? Death is a horrible thing. Dying is a horrible thing. Not seeing someone I love for how long? is a horrible thing. Heaven is NOT a horrible thing, but when you have to go through all of the aforesaid to get there, it's not surprising that people put it off.
As for my own eventual death, I'm not in a super hurry to get there. That's because I fear the dying experience--I have asthma, and breathlessness is pretty much my worst fear. If I could guarantee that I would die in some way that did not involve breathlessness (say, a nuclear bomb or something), I might feel easier about it. (I'm used to pain, though I don't like that either.)
I also dislike the aesthetics of death and dying--nobody can look her best in a hospital bed, and no corpse looks anything like so well as a living person no matter what you do (which is why I'm having closed casket or cremation). And the whole decay and stink bit is definitely off-putting, which is why I'm toying with cremation, though there are disgusting aspects to that as well that I'll not go into here in case someone is having lunch.
With all of that said, are you still surprised that Christians avoid death and dying as long as they can?
I expect to see my sister again eventually--almost certainly within the next 50 years, given actuarial statistics--and I will be glad when I do. But if I could do it without having to go through the mess and pain of dying first, I'd be happier.
"Brothers and sisters, we do not want you to be uninformed about those who sleep in death, so that you do not grieve like the rest of mankind, who have no hope". 1 Thessalonians 4:13
You might not see conflicts but I do, I am approaching the scriptures a little like Descartes, try to forget all the 'baggage' I have been told and approach it with an objective mind. I have no axe to grind with anyone other than it appears that many do not base their beliefs on what the scriptures say. It is a lot of 'skirting' around and "Ah well you can't take the scriptures literally, or it doesn't mean that, or perhaps he did, or.......
2 Timothy 3:16-17 "All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, so that the servant of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work."
"Now these Jews were more noble than those in Thessalonica; they received the word with all eagerness, examining the Scriptures daily to see if these things were so." Acts 17:11
This is also a bit ... odd. You seem to have come here with a predetermined idea of what everybody believes, and are intent on holding to that regardless of what anybody tells you. And you've chosen the Bible as your fighting ground, which is ... unwise... because basically you're gearing up for a prooftext war, if anybody can be bothered to oblige you. (Prooftext wars are not a favorite on the Ship, and most people will simply wave you away if it's clear your mind is made up, rather than go through the trouble of handing you a long list of texts.)
Why not try asking people what they believe and then believing them, rather than telling us you know better than we what we believe?
Death always brings a loss, and it's right and appropriate to grieve for what you've lost - even if you believe that the person you've lost has moved onto somewhere better, even if you believe that you will also join them again. That's as true of the grief of death as it is of the grief of a child moving on from being a dependent at home to independence setting up a new life on their own (there are people who struggle with an "empty nest" even if their children are just down the street).
This.
Hence the general resurrection. There is no intermediate state. There is oblivion. Which Jesus, of course, partook of. So the hundreds of billions of intentional hominids are all backed up in every sense? Until Earth burns up in five billion years? So Jesus was being a tad economical with the vérité to the penitent thief?
What?
And when my 88 year old mother died of severe dementia after I'd had the quiet nightmare of caring for her for 18 months, I cried like a little boy.
Ah-ha! I have it! If after death comes oblivion, the awakening at the General Resurrection will feel as though it's only been a moment since death, and is therefore still *today*.
Does that make sense? It might also explain why Lazarus didn't say anything about Heaven, because he hadn't been there yet. Miss Sayers' portrayal of him in her play was, perhaps, a bit of artistic licence.
And yes - it seems only natural and human to grieve for an elderly mother's passing, even though it may have been a happy release for her.
He would not have been in heaven. He would have been 'asleep' waiting for the general resurrection
Aye, always made sense to me. But it's an imputed sense. Also, as there's no punctuation in Greek as we all know, could it have meant “And Jesus said unto him, Verily I say unto thee, To day>,< shalt thou be with me in paradise.”?
So when is the general resurrection for humanity? When the last of our intentional line is dead? In a few hundred thousand years? From ennui?
Doesn't work either does it?
I am totally agnostic on the existence of heaven, no idea whether there is anything after death or not, and not sure it really matters. I also think that the promise of heaven, see groups such as the Left Behind cult, is a way of not doing things on Earth to improve the lot of our fellow man. It was very convenient for the rich men in charge to preach that heaven in the future would improve the lot of the working men in front of him, so it didn't matter a lot if their lot on Earth didn't improve much - see also Karl Marx and religion is the opium of the masses quotation.
I agree with Alan Cresswell's point above that we should be working for heaven on earth - or improving the lot of humankind (and the planet) here and now, rather than perfection as a pie in the sky heaven.
Same here. I can’t really imagine a heaven. It makes no sense to me. I’d prefer complete oblivion. But if God has worked out a way to make heaven work for everyone then that’s fine too.
As for the Earth - it would have been better for the planet if humans had never evolved. We seem to be very keen on making it uninhabitable for humans so, if that happens, the planet will be just fine. We will die out, the plant animal and life will adapt, evolve and eventually thrive again and, hopefully, the ecological balance will be restored. Then - with luck - a tool using, sentient, destructive animal won’t evolve again to ruin the place.
That said, I’m with those who say we’re meant to focus on the here-and-now and leave what comes next in God’s hands.
FWIW, if there's a God, for me there has to be more than this life.
I also can't see how humans can exist without bodies, so whatever hope there is for a life beyond the grave is a hope for resurrection. As far as I can tell, everything that has ever been ascribed to a "soul" is actually a function of the brain. We can change people's personalities by damaging their brains. If we cut their optic nerves they cannot see. As far as I can tell if a soul was a thing that could exist outside of a body it would have no sight, no hearing, no way to sense the material world at all. If souls can see without eyes why can blind people not do the same, if they are souls inhabiting physical bodies?
I wonder whether there isn't something non-substantial (call it "mind") that gets coupled with the physical brain in a kind of partnership, which can be injured in either direction--or even in the coupling between them. I have trouble imagining that one's mind/psyche/spirit/whatever arises wholly from the brain, because that would make us basically non-existent during the time between death and the general resurrection--and there are bits in Scripture that suggest we still exist during that time. How, I don't know. I'd really like a spiritual anatomy book, if that makes sense. Part of the difficulty with psychology as a science IMHO is that we are so entirely groping in the dark--making (probably) wild assumptions about the nonphysical part of us, because we can't see or touch or get to grips with it in any semi-objective way.
An RC priest teaching RCIA (catechism for adults) of all people once told me that maybe all of our experience of the afterlife between death and the resurrection of our bodies is actually taking place in our brains in the fraction of a second before we lose consciousness at death (since our mental experience of time is relative, as anyone who has had a dream where it seems days have gone past in a single night can attest).
You may not need to engage in hermeneutical gymnastics to explain the existence of a soul without a living body in the pre-resurrection afterlife if you think of heaven as outside time or timeless, as stated above. In heaven, our souls are not existing in a time "after" our death or "before" the resurrection of our bodies - since heaven itself is outside time. So our the existence of our souls is still linked to the existence of our living bodies. If that makes any sense.
Character (who has just died): I thought your life was supposed to flash before your eyes before you die!
Death: IT DOES. IT'S CALLED *LIVING*
(Apologies to Sir Terry P for possibly misquoting him...)
For mind and personality to persist after the brain ceases to function would appear to require some form of miracle, to replace the brain with something non-physical that functions the same as the physical brain - and not just any brain, but the specific brain that that mind and personality were emergent properties of. Resurrection would require a very precise recreation of the original brain, with the neurons that hold memories intact and those that govern thinking so close that the personality and mind that emerges is indistinguishable from the person who had died.
Demented? Psychotic? With PTSD? Or are they healed? It really does beg the question of how supernatural reality can work at all doesn't it? It requires magic for everyone. All at once? Or as they germinate, coalesce in supernatural substance next door at least past biological resuscitation plus a few days for putrefaction time. The few formerly weeks, months dead and buried camping out in Jerusalem's graveyards notwithstanding.
I've always sort of assumed that, if we somehow survive after physical death, whatever brain we possess will be the one we should have had, but minus any mental/physical problems which may have assailed us in life. IYSWIM.
I also trust that God will provide me with whatever body is most appropriate for me when the time comes.
This.
I'm reminded of a Youth Club meeting many years ago, when one of those present asked our young Curate (he went on to be a Bishop) much this same question. I'll always remember his reply *I know what I would do, and God is so much more loving and caring than I am*.
I'm assuming that all the little niggly aches and pains that accumulate with age aren't an essential part of anyone's psyche, so they all go. I'm pretty sure my wheelchair-using friend who hasn't walked since he was "a young idiot with a motorbike" would be glad to have useful legs again.
We've had the discussion before about what disabilities are part of a person's identity and what ones aren't - and I'm not sure there's a hard rule. @Heavenlyannie's "I also trust that God will provide me with whatever body is most appropriate for me when the time comes" seems like a good place to start.