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NASB | 1 Corinthians 2:9 but just as it is written, "THINGS WHICH EYE HAS NOT SEEN AND EAR HAS NOT HEARD, AND which HAVE NOT ENTERED THE HEART OF MAN, ALL THAT GOD HAS PREPARED FOR THOSE WHO LOVE HIM." |
AMPLIFIED 2015 | 1 Corinthians 2:9 but just as it is written [in Scripture], "THINGS WHICH THE EYE HAS NOT SEEN AND THE EAR HAS NOT HEARD, AND WHICH HAVE NOT ENTERED THE HEART OF MAN, ALL THAT GOD HAS PREPARED FOR THOSE WHO LOVE HIM [who hold Him in affectionate reverence, who obey Him, and who gratefully recognize the benefits that He has bestowed]." [Is 64:4; 65:17] |
Subject: What does heaven look like? |
Bible Note: Dear Karen, God bless you in your ministry to the sick and dying. We will be praying for you in this endeavor, knowing that God ministers to us in our dying and sick condition (both physically and spiritually) out of His kindness, mercy, and grace. You might want to take a concordance and lookup every reference to heaven. I've found that this is the only certain way to know all that the Bible teaches on a topic. Look at each verse and carefully read the context. Then write down all of the things you can glean about heaven. If you go through this exercise, you might want to share it with the forum. It could be a blessing to us all. The Bible seems to give only sparse details about heaven. At least, not the kind of details that would enable us to adequately picture the place. I believe that this is because it is so entirely different from anything that we can conceive in our present state. Let me present a simplistic analogy. Of course, realize that every analogy is limited. :-) Let us imagine a very primitive cave man. He lives in a world where he regularly hunts and gathers what he needs from the countryside around his cave. We now know that hunting and gathering tends to leave a lot of spare time for those who lived in verdent areas. The cave man finds a few unusual rocks, pieces of interesting drift wood, and maybe some bones of the creatures that inhabit his world. He carves them and treasures them. He really thinks that he's wealthy. His stuff, in his own estimation, is pretty neat stuff. Now let's say we bring this cave man forward in time to Time Square in Manhattan, New York. Assuming it didn't scare him to death, but we managed to get him calmed down enough to just look around, what would he make of it? Lights, motion, right angles, noise, etc. It would take him a while to be able to absorb just a little of what he was seeing. (In philosophy we say that perception is more than just seeing. It is comprehending what we see. Perception usually takes a certain amount of knowledge for us to actually "see.") He wouldn't even know what things were significant and what things were insignificant. What would cave man now think of his "neat stuff" back home? Especially when he'd seen perfectly smooth cave "walls" that were completely transparent, "carvings" in a million shapes, and lights in a thousand hues, flashing in incomprehensible patterns? What we are today -- and the most primitive people you can imagine -- are a whole lot more alike (almost indistinguishable) than what we will be like in our glorified state! So, I think that is why the Bible doesn't try to go into more specifics than it does. The best that we can understand is that heaven will be the absence of sin, sickness, sorrow, suffering, death, poverty, and war. (Big, significant things to the people in this world.) But best of all, it is the actual immediate presence of our Lord, in all His glory. What that will be like, I don't think we can even imagine (1 Cor 2:9). I hope this helps a bit. Again, God bless you in your ministry of service to the suffering of this world. In Him, Doc |