Heaven

Demand Some Answers From Your Pastor/Preacher/Priest

Rick TryonLeave a comment

How comfortable is your brand of Christianity?

Do you just sit in a pew on Sunday, or do you stand on the Truth every day?

Do you ask hard questions of the pooh-bahs of Churchianity, or do you just accept the doctrinal traditions they are spoon-feeding their congregations?

Questions like these:

  • Does God send kids who don’t “accept Jesus” to eternal torture in a flaming hell?
  • If Grandma is alive and strumming a harp in heaven right now, why should we mourn her death?
  • Why does God allow so much pain, death, and suffering in the world?
  • If God has already decided everything that’s going to happen, why should I pray for my friend to recover from a disease?
  • Where does the Bible clearly and explicitly teach that God is three-in-one and one-in-three?
  • Why did Jesus have to die in order for me to be saved, and what am I being “saved” from?

Those questions, and many others, should be asked over and over again until the pooh-bahs of Churchianity can answer them with something other than “It’s a mystery we can’t comprehend, brothers and sisters…”

Remember, Jesus reserved some of His strongest words not for pagans or politicians, but for religious leaders.

What is Bible Rebel? Fresh content posted daily (except Sundays) for seekers hungry for truth and relevance outside the stodgy, lifeless confines of Churchianity and the dark, empty hopelessness of atheism and nihilism.

Thursday Watchdog: What Is Heaven?

Rick TryonLeave a comment

Editors note: The following is an excerpt from my book, Your Life And What Comes After: Plugging Into God’s Forever Plan Now

Where exactly is heaven? Is it up in the clouds? In outer space? On another planet, or in a galaxy far away?

Before we can understand where heaven is, we should first know what heaven is. When heaven is mentioned in the Bible, it can either mean any place above the ground or it can mean the realm in which God lives.

Anywhere Above Ground

Genesis 1:20

And God said, “Let the waters bring forth abundantly the moving creature that hath life, and fowl that may fly above the earth in the open firmament of heaven.”

The birds we often see flying above us are in heaven, so to speak. The stars, clouds, and planets are also above the ground, and there are many verses in the Bible that talk about those things being in the heavens.

Where God Lives

Matthew 6:9

After this manner therefore pray ye: Our Father which art in heaven, Hallowed be thy name.

This verse says that our Father, God, is in heaven. Does that mean He’s flying around with the birds that are in heaven? No, of course not.

Here the Bible is talking about a different kind of heaven. This heaven is the realm where God lives—invisible to our eyes, yet very real and near.

Acts 17:27–28

That they should seek the Lord, if haply they might feel after him, and find him, though he be not far from every one of us:

For in him we live, and move, and have our being; as certain also of your own poets have said, For we are also his offspring.

The main idea about heaven that we should understand is that it is not a place up in the clouds where we go someday after we die to get wings and play harps if we’re good in this life.

Heaven is a place we can go to now—and every day—in prayer, to be in the presence of our Father, God.