We wrapped up the 18 weeks of the Christian Essentials course with a review of the last two chapters of our book: “What is the final judgment?” and “What is heaven?” We had a good discussion over our author’s view of rewards in heaven and levels of punishment in hell. Of course the time we had didn’t allow us to get into the depth we would like to do the topic justice. I’ve been thinking about the subject since then and am doing some further study on it.
I’ll post my thoughts later on in the week (or maybe next week). In the meantime, I’d like to offer an excellent collection of resources available on the Internet (all from a generally reformed perspective) at Monergism.com.
I see you are currently carrying on the topic but I thought I’d post this back at the beginning of the subject.
I watched the Barbara Walter’s special called Heaven: Where Is It and How Do We Get There? Everyone’s viewpoint was pretty sad as most were about Heaven being an a place where you have full sensual pleasure with no downside — no one gets fat or catches a VD.
The most amusing comment to me was from a Jewish comedian saying in all seriousness that he hopes Heaven is like his life in America now because he doesn’t want or need for anything.
Here are a few recap articles:
http://abcnews.go.com/International/Beliefs/story?id=1374010
http://www.beliefnet.com/story/181/story_18118_1.html
I caught that show a little past half way through. I was disappointed that I didn’t know about it before hand. I always find it interesting and informative to see how lost people process the reality of their own mortality.
Seeing how (almost) universally people are drawn to believe in some version of a heavenly afterlife (though they reject the Bible and a worldview that makes heaven plausible), it really is true that God has written eternity in our hearts.