Board index ‹ Heaven and Hell

[Newbie]

Let's say I die and go to Heaven right now. My wife and family are still here on earth. How can I be happy in Heaven, if not only because they they are not there with me, but I have to know that they are all sad and grieving on earth? I've never understood that.

[jimwalton]

Great question. We're not told a whole lot about heaven, and probably not enough to answer your question. C.S. Lewis speculates that heaven is a timeless existence, just as God is not bound by time, and therefore as far as our personal perspective from there is concerned, we will all arrive at the same time because there is no past, present, or future. That's a concept that's impossible for us to grasp because we can't even think outside of time, and it seems only logical that what I'm planning to do next in heaven has to come in time after what I'm doing now. Revelation 22 seems to indicate that we'll be absorbed with where we are and our focus (at least for a period of time) will be on God himself, and we won't be thinking about each other.

We will, at some point, be aware of each other (Rev. 22.14 and others), so we're not to think that family and friendship have no place there. They do. Possibly Lewis is right. In the Chronicles of Narnia, in "The Last Battle" he has all inhabitants arrive in heaven simultaneously because there is no time there. These are intriguing thoughts, but there isn't any biblical teaching to really give us much information about it.

[Benjy5959]

Ah, OK, this is really the only thing that would make sense. Thanks for that.