ReligionDiscuss General Theology, Religions and Denominations, God's Attributes, Predestination and Free Will, Dispensationalism, Eschatology, Philosophy, Origins, Archaeology, Science, World History and other such topics.
This thread is silly in my humble opinion. It is like asking slaves what they think being free is. It is like asking children what it means to be an adult. It is like asking a wealthy person how it feels to be poor. It is like asking a man how it feels to be a mother. It is a ridiculous question.
Except, we're not completely ignorant. Yes, St. Paul writes "...that eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither hath it entered into the heart of man, what things God hath prepared for them that love him" (1 Corinthians 2:9), but he also says that "to us God hath revealed them, by this Spirit. For the Spirit searcheth all things, yea, the deep things of God" (1 Corinthians 2:10).
We know, as St. Paul writes, that we have "received the spirit of adoption of sons, whereby we cry: Abba (Father)" (Romans 8:15).
I think that, all too often, Christians fail to understand what Heaven is. If they understood, they'd desire it with all their hearts, minds and souls. And when they considered the gravity of their sins, and how their sins threaten to rob them of so glorious a reward, they would hate their sins and pray fervently to God for the grace to amend their lives and sin no more.
Not a day would go by when they don't pray the rosary and ask Our Mother to show us Her Only Son and ask Her to pray for us, that we might enter into the joy of the Holy Family.
Heaven isn't a cloudly place or a city with golden streets. Those are just metaphors for something much more amazing.
Heaven is the ultimate union of the lover to his beloved. Consider how "happy" a man is when he is with his beloved spouse, or when he sees his beloved relatives whom he has not seen in a while. Consider how "absense makes the heart grow fonder." Consider how when we are away from the ones we love, we desire so much more to be with them.
The initial object of love is God. It is God who initially stirs up the human heart to love, and it is only God who can bring the desires of the human heart to rest. Every desire, every appreciation of beauty, every pang of love bespeaks an unquenchable and burning longing for God.
The reason we sin is because we long for God; we have an acute appreciation of a sense of lack. There is a God-shaped "hole" in our hearts. We are missing something. So we try to fill it with all sorts of things with everything but the One who can fill it. We try to replace God with everything from wealth to women to cheap thrills.
But those things can never satisfy us. They always leave us wanting more, and when we choose them instead of clinging ever more closely to God, they just tear open the hole in our hearts even wider. They just leave us more empty. They just leave us ever more in poverty.
Don't you see? Whenever we love, it is God who tugs at our hearts and calls out to us. It is God who is ultimately our Beloved, and we are all restless lovers who can be satisfied with nothing short of embracing the One whom we love.
That's what Heaven is. It is the triumphant union of the human heart to the God it so longs for and desires. No clouds. No gold. No silver. All of those are just metaphors. Heaven is the soul rejoicing forever in the love it has for God, and the love God, in turn, has for the soul.
Have you ever heard about how lovers can get lost in each others' eyes? And about how, in one "perfect" moment, they can be alone together in a crowded room?
That pales in comparison to how the soul will rejoice with God in Heaven.
Conversely, don't you see how great must be the torments of Hell? Consider how much we are grieved at the death of a loved one, and the knowledge that we'll never again be able to speak to him/her again in this life.
Well, the human heart can find rest in nothing but his beloved God.
Consider how much sorrow and pain the soul must feel if it realizes that, because of its own folly, it has lost the One it really loved and desired all along and can never "go home," so to speak? Imagine the burning pangs of conscience when the soul realizes that it is no longer God's child, but has made itself an exile and an outcast for all eternity.
The soul would tear itself to pieces in grief, despair and hatred.
And when you realize what Heaven is, all of a sudden, Purgatory seems like a necessary postulate.
Imagine how the soul must feel when it finally sees the One whom it loves so much, in all of His purity and undefiled majesty, and realizes how it went astray so many times and went after other inferior, unworthy lovers. Imagine what the soul must experience when, though it desires to cling to the Beloved, sees its own sinfulness and impurity.
Wouldn't it rather cast itself into Hell than stain the spotless, uncorruptable purity of God?
Therefore God, in His Infinite Mercy and Love, grants the soul to be purified in the fires of Purgatory.
Stevie would be as good as an authority as any on this question.
Maybe heaven is how ever far away you want it to be.
Ever tried inventing your own religious platitudes? Some christians find them convincing even if they mean nothing to you, the spinner of them.
Stuart
How about, why can't hate be 10 zillion light years away instead?
But I also got that from the same song, just not enough imagination of my own perhaps?
I don't know what heaven is. I don't think anybody does. And I don't really care. I am glad that so many people here are life oriented and not death oriented.
How about, why can't hate be 10 zillion light years away instead?
But I also got that from the same song, just not enough imagination of my own perhaps?
Not bad! But I think perhaps neither banal nor chilling enough for an Abrahamic platitude. If it was "God has placed hate 10 zillion light years away" it would have the additional virtues of being both meaningless and obviously wrong.
I'm only an amateur at this though. Could this be worth a new thread?
May god be the curry powder in your chocolate eclair.
Slogan/motto:
love others as u love yourself... and thank God you dont have to like them
Reputation:
June 21st, 2012, 08:43 AM
Quote:
Originally Posted by chair
I don't know what heaven is. I don't think anybody does. And I don't really care. I am glad that so many people here are life oriented and not death oriented.
Trad- I think you need help.
anyone who tries to be Liberal AND Catholic (Trad)
Slogan/motto:
Being led into relationships by urgings of love which arise and are sustained naturally and spontaneously within my heart, is always 'God-righteous' even if I have to transgress the Ten Commandments.
Reputation:
June 21st, 2012, 12:09 PM
Heaven is achieved on earth or elsewhere, when one expresses, materializes and fulfills the ideas, beliefs, interests, needs, desires and aspirations of one's own heart or spirit without accruing sin.
Therefore heaven is a state in which one has God given freedom, liberty and justification to express, materialize and fulfill the ideas, beliefs, interests, needs, desires and aspirations of one's own heart or spirit without accruing sin, here on earth or elsewhere.
There is only one path to this. One must be led into all of one's activities by precisely what the Spirit of Jesus has in mind for one to pray for, say and do as discerned within one's own heart or spirit. One must do this while one is alive in a physical body on earth and one must also do this when one no longer has a physical body (i.e. after death).
The Spirit of Jesus justifies and is also the liberator and the redeemer. Jesus returned a second time in His Spirit to liberate and redeem our bodies and delivers us into salvation and heaven. Only the chosen few pick up this offer and gained a redeemed body, salvation and heaven.
Slogan/motto:
I know a lot of fancy dancers
People who can glide you on a floor
They move so smooth but have no answers
When you ask "Why'd you come here for?"
~ Cat Stevens
Reputation:
June 21st, 2012, 12:48 PM
Quote:
Originally Posted by OMEGA
TTruscott is Pre-Conceptionist ??
Does that mean that he was Conceived before he was Conceived.?
YEP!
It means exactly that...
I was created in spirit before I was conceived in body.
Peace, Ted
Wheat are NOT reborn tares !!!
Matt 13:36-43 good seed are sown by the Son of man tares are of the wicked one 39 sown by the devil and, as per
Matthew 15:13 …Every plant, which my heavenly Father hath not planted, shall be rooted up!
Slogan/motto:
Being led into relationships by urgings of love which arise and are sustained naturally and spontaneously within my heart, is always 'God-righteous' even if I have to transgress the Ten Commandments.
Reputation:
June 21st, 2012, 06:53 PM
Quote:
Originally Posted by ttruscott
YEP!
It means exactly that...
I was created in spirit before I was conceived in body.
Peace, Ted
Everyone, including Jesus, is fashioned the same way.
We are all witnesses who posses a soul which is a set of ideas. From our soul our spirits are created and sustained. Therefore we are witnesses who posses a individual souls and a individual spirits. And our individual spirits drives us to seek individual physical bodies on earth and sustain them. So humans and Jesus are witnesses who posses individual souls, individual spirits and individual physical bodies, from time to time.
Jesus' soul is Truth which is actually a set of ideas which comprise the mysteries of God's kingdom of heaven, in totality, accuracy and clarity. From these ideas the Spirit of Truth or the Holy Ghost arose and is now sustained.
When Jesus or Truth needed to come to earth, He was in His Spirit and He needed a physical body of a certain standard. Mary provided this body and Jesus though His Spirit (i.e. the Holy Spirit) sustained this physical body whiles He needed it on earth.
Humans are different from Jesus, in that the ideas which comprise our souls are not quite the mysteries of God's kingdom of heaven, in totality, accuracy and clarity.
Humans are also different from Jesus in that the soul of Jesus came directly from God. Where as the soul of humans came from Jesus. Our souls are comprised of only some of the ideas which make up the mysteries of God's kingdom of heaven.
However Jesus is the totality of ideas which makes up the mysteries of God kingdom of heaven. Only the flawless totality of ideas which make up the mysteries of God's kingdom of heaven came from God. This set of ideas is called Jesus. We got our ideas which make up our souls from Jesus. Everything in the creation came form Jesus.
Jesus is not his soul, He is not His Spirit. He is not the physical body which He used on earth. Jesus is a witness as all humans. As witnesses we are all the same as Jesus. We are without distinction or individuality. Our purest distinction or individuality is one step down for being the witness. This is at the level of our soul. Jesus' final individual distinction is the Truth, i.e. the totality of the mysteries of God's kingdom of heaven. This is His Soul.
Our souls are varying permutations and combination of the totality of mysteries of God's kingdom of heaven. Our souls are not as complete as that of Jesus.
Jesus (i.e. the totality of the ideas which comprise God's kingdom of heaven) was born directly from God. Then everything, including humans was born from Jesus.
This made Jesus the only begotten son of God. For only He came directly from God. Everything, including humans came from Jesus.
This is why, as humans in physical bodies on earth, we have to go through Jesus, (in His Spirit) to have connection or communion with God. . . . no one come onto God but through Jesus. Jesus is the way only through His Spirit.
Stop looking forward to Jesus' return in a physical body. That will profit you nothing. Seek out Jesus in His Spirit now.
2000 odd years ago, after Jesus rose to heaven God sent Him Back.
2000 odd years ago, after Jesus rose to heaven, God sent the Spirit of Jesus into the hearts of those under laws so that they might become adopted children God.
You will find Jesus (in His spirit) and have direct intuitive communion with Jesus and God if you seek ye first the kingdom of heaven within your own heart. Then All things will be added.
The idea of looking forward to Jesus returning in a physical body is for the unaware. Although they are told to not look at things which are 'seen for these are temporal, but instead look at things that are not seen for these are eternal they did not listen. They, i.e. the very great majority (i.e. all but a few) of those in traditional Christianity have ignore this call. They are all still spiritually dead. Their hearts are still waxed gross.
The great majority (i.e. all but a few) of those in traditional Christianity are like Peter and not Paul. They are still looking for physically discernible signs. They are still looking at things which are 'seen' (i.e. physical) like Jesus in a physical body. These things are temporal. They do not look at thing "not seen", like Jesus in His Spirit. Jesus in His Spirit is Truth and Eternal. These very great masses of people are called but they not be chosen. They will not make it.
They were told to seek ye first the kingdom of God within their own hearts or spirit, then all things will be added. Then God sent Jesus in His Spirit into their hearts, so that they might become adopted children of God. They (i.e. the very great majority in traditional, Christianity) ignored this precious offering from God, of Jesus' Spirit and they when about their own righteousness, as goats and not sheep. Only sheep are on God's right hand side. Only they make it. At best the individual spirits or hearts of some in Peter's church many be saved in the day of our Lord Jesus. Their spirits or hearts may be saved. However it is not carded for those in traditional Christianity (which is totally fashioned after the ideals of Peter) to have salvation and deliverance into heaven. They are carded to have only spiritual awareness, i.e. awareness of their own hearts or spirits eventually when they are awaken at some future day. Hell is sill their very real destination.
On the other hand, God's heaven and only His heaven is the destination for Paul's people. Paul's people cannot go to hell. Simply because they are spiritually aware while they live on earth and they are practiced in being led by the Spirit, as a their life style as humans on earth.
Peter and those like Peter are on God's left hand side. Paul and people like Paul are on God's right hand side. Peter's people are led intellectually by ideals, laws, canons, the written scriptures, the Pope and other humans. Paul people are led intuitively by the Spirit even if they have to transgress ideals, laws, canons, the written scriptures, the Pope and other humans. Only Paul's people are saved and delivered.
I reveal to you the Gospel of Truth, as confirmed by Jesus through His Spirit, to Paul and me . . . not the gospel of parables as delivered in physically spoken and physically written, words by Jesus and others to Peter and others who were unaware and needed physical signs. The gospel of parables is founded on less than Truth in totality, accuracy and clarity. This is given for those who are not given by God to know Truth. Those who are not given by God to know Truth included Peter (i.e. Satan). Peter knew Jesus only in the physical. Satanic Peter's heart was waxed gross, he was not given by God to know Truth. He could not know Jesus in His Spirit and he did not know Jesus in His Spirit.
On the other hand, Paul knew Jesus in His Spirit. Paul's heart was not waxed gross. He was given by God to know Truth. And he communed with Jesus, in His Spirit intuitively, through his (Paul's) own heart or spirit.
The fullness of time is at hand.
Please wake up and smell the aroma of Truth, before too late will be the cry.
Last edited by Gurucam; June 22nd, 2012 at 05:52 AM.
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