Copyright 2002-2007 by Donald R. Tveter, http://www.dontveter.com, commercial use is prohibited. This material cannot be quoted at length or posted elsewhere on the net or included in CD ROM collections. Short quotations are permitted provided proper attribution is given.

What is Heaven like? First, many familiar features of life here on Earth will be missing. There will no more disease. No more tears. No more pain and suffering. No wars, no crime, no crooked politicians. No more money to have to worry about. No more forms to fill out! No more records to keep. No more machinery breaking down. No more computers breaking down (and of course that means you don't have to read those mind-numbing computer manuals either). People will feel truly liberated. I know I'm going to feel like a kid who is let out of school for summer vacation, in those days we chanted, "No more pencils, no more books, no more teacher's nasty looks".

Second, Heaven will be beautiful. From Isaiah 65:17 we have:

"Look! I am creating new heavens and a new earth - so wonderful that no one will ever think about the old ones anymore."

I have to mention that some people often put limits on what we will find in heaven. I think these limits come from not understanding how great God is. For instance from Revelation 21:1 John describes the new Earth as not having any sea. This has been a great disappoint to my wife who loves the sea. But there is just nothing wrong with the sea, nothing wrong with swimming in the sea, nothing wrong with the beautiful sea creatures and underwater landscapes. OK, the earth John described doesn't have a sea but think how big this physical universe is. We have an uncountable number of galaxies each with an enormous number of stars, each of which can have many planets and each planet can be amazing by itself. There could be whole planets almost covered with oceans but filled with countless tropical islands. Likewise, in the new heaven God can have a huge number of planets all very beautifully landscaped and huge numbers of planets with seas. God is after all, when you look at the Earth, one heck of a good artist and you know how artists are. They always want to show you their latest creations so you can praise their work. My guess is that God is no different and he can out-do every possible human artist. Plus if you look at all the various beautiful life forms we have here on Earth, would He do less in heaven? Not likely! Heavenly creatures will be even more beautiful and more amazing. All of them will be friendly too, dinosaurs, mammoths, snakes, whatever, they will all make splendid pets. Which brings up another point. For some reason the idea has been going around that there are no pets in heaven. I'm not quite sure how this got started. I know of course that humans have souls and the souls will get new bodies over there in heaven. Maybe someone took this thought and figured that pets would not make it because they don't have souls the way humans do. But then I am a rational scientific kind of guy and I figure that an animal is the equivalent of a kind of robot-toy. When a pet dies on Earth it would be easy for God to make another one in heaven that behaves exactly like the one on Earth. One that knows you but not strangers. One that behaves exactly like your Earthly pet. Now the following is really speculation, but I have toI wonder if animals have some sort of spiritual aspect to them as well but one that falls short of what a human being has. For instance they seem to be conscious just like people. Human beings though have the ability to understand good and evil and they are free to choose to be good or evil. But I can imagine animals might have something like a spirit as well but not one that reaches the level of a human being. I think the people who put limits on what we'll find in heaven have a very small idea of what God is like. For instance consider what we find in Psalm 84:1-3:

How lovely is your dwelling place, O Lord Almighty. I long, yes I faint with longing to enter the courts of the Lord. With my whole being, body and soul, I will shout joyfully to the living God. Even the sparrow finds a home there, and the swallow builds her nest and raises her young - at a place near your altar, O Lord Almighty, my King and my God.

And later on it goes to say in verse 11:

... No good thing will the Lord withhold from those who do what is right.

The human environment will also be amazing of course. You can find some more information in Revelation chapters 21 and 22. The center of activity will be a city called the New Jerusalem. It will be something like 1200-1400 miles on each side and 1200-1400 miles high. Some people think it will be a cube while others think it will be in the shape of a pyramid. It's beautiful. The streets are paved with clear gold. There is the River of Life flowing through the center of the city with trees along the banks that will produce a fresh crop of fruit every month.

While the physical surroundings will be astonishing what really matters is what you will be doing. To figure out what's going to be going on in Heaven you pretty much can take the opposite of how things work on Earth. On Earth people are all selfish, all looking out for what they can get for themselves. Thus in Heaven you will have people all eager to help, give and serve other people with no thought of what they will get in return except the happiness that comes from giving. It's really a bizarre concept compared to life on Earth where things go so badly. Once you're used to life on Earth where people are selfish, cynical and insincere you figure this is human nature, it has always been this way and it is always going to be that way, human nature is never going to change. So Heaven will seem fairy-taleish for people this cynical about human nature. But it ought to be fairy-taleish!

The Biblical clues as to how things will be in Heaven come from two metaphors, one is God as our father, as in:

Ask, and you will be given what you ask for. Seek, and you will find. Knock, and the door will be opened. For everyone who asks receives. Anyone who seeks finds. If only you will knock, the door will be open. If a child asks his father for a loaf of bread, will he be given a stone instead? If he asks for fish, will he be given a poisonous snake? Of course not! And if you hard-hearted, sinful men know how to give good gifts to your children, won't your Father in heaven even more certainly give good gifts to those who ask him for them? (Matthew 7:7-11, from The Book)

I will answer them before they even call on me. While they are still talking to me about their needs, I will go ahead and answer their prayers!

The second metaphor is the wedding metaphor where the Church is the bride of Christ. As in a bride who is happy to serve her husband and make him happy and where the husband dedicates his life to making his wife happy. This reinforces the first metaphor where it's the giving and serving that charges people up. (This theme will get some developing.)

The first thing to notice is that God's people will be getting gifts and blessings from God. I can live with that :-) but there is an even more important conclusion to draw. Since we will be like Him we will end up doing the same kinds of things He does. That is we will be giving to other people. In effect, people, like God, will be getting a charge out of giving and serving, you might even say a "high" out of giving and serving. (Remember it's better to give than receive!) In fact a nice analogy here is the human tendency to fall in love. So when a guy sees a pretty girl with a wonderful personality he starts to dream up ways to make her happy some of which might even be quite silly. Now in one case with someone who shall be nameless I made a home-made Christmas card and a home-made Valentines day card in order to get her attention. Which was kind of silly because I am not an artist and what I produced was something like you'd get from a 3rd grader. Sad to say, the cards idea didn't get her attention but I had an absolutely delightful time making the cards and just thinking about making her happy. Besides having a wonderful time making those I do think God used the situation to point out to me that he's just as silly. No, no doubt he is even more silly than me. In fact I think making other people happy even in silly ways is one of the most important personality trait found in God's family.

In addition I think the arts will be big in Heaven. People who love to sing will sing to God and to others. People who love to dance will dance for God and others. People who like to compose music will compose for God and others. People who paint will do more than just paint, they will create whole worlds filled with plants and animals. But just doing these things is not enough, to be really meaningful you have to be doing these things for God or for other people.

Another aspect of Heaven pops up in Hollywood and in musicals. Take the scene from near the beginning of White Christmas where Danny Kaye, Bing Crosby, Rosemary Clooney and Vera Ellen are at the nightclub in Florida. And Danny Kaye and Vera Ellen simply go out dancing on the pier in the kind of fantasy scene. That's not something that happens in real life, that's something that has to be carefully scripted and rehearsed but in Heaven even people who on Earth could not walk down the street and chew gum at the same time (me) will be able to spontaneously go out and dance up a storm when the thought strikes. Or if you haven't seen White Christmas take any good musical where the stars spontaneously burst into some wonderful song and dance at the right time. Hollywood and Broadway have special effects like confetti or rose petals or snow falling or fireworks or whatever. Anything Hollywood and Broadway can do in the way of special effects, God can do better. Again a celebration of life and a praise the Lord experience.

In Christian circles it is pretty common for a teacher or preacher to urge his audience "to become more Christ-like". This can be a horrifying thought to many people who figure Christ and Christians are some of the most boring people around. Yet to "become more Christ-like" is only to have that selfish nature stripped away, it doesn't mean you can't have any fun or pleasure. (This theme will get some developing.)

Another seemingly terrifying aspect of Heaven will be the worship of God. This is because typically worship here on Earth in your average church is rather dull and dry. You show up, go through the motions of sitting, standing, kneeling, singing and prayer. This can be quite boring. Heck, it is positively mind-numbing. Yet there is another definition of worship. As one example consider the guy who falls in love with the girl may end up worshiping the ground she walks on, in effect worshipping her. In effect he wants to spend time with her and do nice things for her. In another case it is common for teenage girls to worship a famous singer or movie star. In this case the girl gets pictures of, reads stories about, daydreams about, sends fan mail to, listens to music from and attends concerts produced by the object of her affections. If she could she would spend time with him, give him things, talk to him and tell him how wonderful he is. In effect she is worshipping the famous person as an idol. So when it comes down to worshipping God in Heaven what people will be doing is spending time with Him, learning about Him, learning about what He does, talking to Him. So the worship of God is all voluntary and something people do because they love Him. Indeed I think God created beings like himself just to have people to talk to, to listen to and to show things to. In terms of showing things to, I'm thinking of how an artist always wants to show off his or her latest work of art or a chef wants you to taste his or her latest creation. (Heaven will not be low-cal and you still won't get fat and, oh, yes, there is some very nice wine in Heaven as well.) So what we're dealing with is not the empty go-through-the-motions type of worship that is so mind numbing but a celebration of life type of worship that charges you up.

I would say in conclusion that if you're not delighted to make other people happy (loving them) and in loving God then Heaven is not the place for you, your place is elsewhere. Meditate on these thoughts. Just what would it take to make Heaven heavenly and if it is not all this love going around then just what would you want? Isn't this what is most missing from Earth? Also notice that one of the beautiful consequences of this is that you don't have to wait to get to Heaven to get a taste of Heaven, you can start being nice to people now. And you can also worship God right now.