Maybe there is no Heaven. Or maybe this is all pure gibberish—a product of the demented imagination of a lazy drunken hillbilly with a heart full of hate who has found a way to live out where the real winds blow—to sleep late, have fun, get wild, drink whisky, and drive fast on empty streets with nothing in mind except falling in love and not getting arrested . . . Res ipsa loquitur. Let the good times roll.
You have lost your reason and taken the wrong path. You have taken lies for truth, and hideousness for beauty. You would marvel if, owing to strange events of some sorts, frogs and lizards suddenly grew on apple and orange trees instead of fruit, or if roses began to smell like a sweating horse; so I marvel at you who exchange heaven for earth. I don't want to understand you.
25 And the Lord spake unto the Angel that guarded the eastern gate, saying 'Where is the flaming sword that was given unto thee?'26 And the Angel said, 'I had it here only a moment ago, I must have put it down some where, forget my own head next.'27 And the Lord did not ask him again.
The purer your heart, the lighter your spirit will be. The lighter your spirit, the closer to light it will float. The closer to light it is permitted to go, the higher it will float. The higher it floats, the closer to God you will be. Heaven has seven layers. The vibrations of your good deeds, which will be reflected by the weight of your conscience and the purity of your heart, will determine the layer in which your soul will reside. Your goal is to make your heart as light as a feather. The heavier the heart, the more chained to this hell it will remain.
Featherweight by Suzy KassemOne evening,I sat by the ocean and questioned the moon about my destiny.I revealed to it that I was beginning to feel smaller compared to others,Because the more secrets of the universe I would unlock,The smaller in size I became.I didn't understand why I wasn't feeling larger instead of smaller.I thought that seeking Truth was what was required of us all –To show us the way, not to make us feel lost,Up against the odds,In a devilish game partitioned byAn invisible wall.Then the next morning,A bird appeared at my window, just as the sun beganSpreading its yolk over the horizon.It remained perched for a long time,Gazing at me intently, to make sure I knew I wasn’t dreaming.Then its words gently echoed throughout my mind,Telling me:'The world you are in –Is the true hell.The journey to Truth itselfIs what quickens the heart to become lighter.The lighter the heart, the purer it is.The purer the heart, the closer to light it becomes.And the heavier the heart,The more chained to this hellIt will remain.'And just like that, it flew off towards the sun,Leaving behind a tiny feather.So I picked it up,And fastened it to a toothpick,To dip into inkAnd write my name.
There is no other way to determine the difference between the will of God and the crafts of satan... Jesus is the way, the truth and the life... The Holy Spirit of God is the Comforter...
Christianity set itself the goal of fulfilling man’s unattainable desires, but for that very reason ignored his attainable desires. By promising man eternal life, it deprived him of temporal life, by teaching him to trust in God’s help it took away his trust in his own powers; by giving him faith in a better life in heaven, it destroyed his faith in a better life on earth and his striving to attain such a life. Christianity gave man what his imagination desires, but for that very reason failed to give him what he really and truly desires.
Rabe'a al-Adiwiyah, a great woman saint of Sufism, was seen running through the streets of her hometown, Basra, carrying a torch in one hand and a bucket of water in the other. When someone asked her what she was doing, she answered, 'I am going to take this bucket of water and pour it on the flames of hell, and then I am going to use this torch to burn down the gates of paradise so that people will not love God for want of heaven or fear of hell, but because He is God.
Regardless of your chosen faith, at the end of your life's journey, your heart will be measured in two ways. One, the weight of your conscience must far outweigh the weight of a feather. Two, any impurities in your heart must weigh no more than one feather. The purer your heart, the lighter your spirit will be. The lighter your spirit, the closer to light it will float. The closer to light it is permitted to go, the higher it will float. The higher it floats, the closer to God you will be. Heaven has seven layers. The vibrations of your good deeds, which will be reflected by the weight of your conscience and the purity of your heart, will determine the layer in which your soul will reside. Your goal is to make your heart as light as a feather. The heavier the heart, the more chained to this hell it will remain.
My belief is that, morally, God and Satan are vaguely on the same page. According to the common understanding of Satan's origins, holiness must be in his blood: but a corrupted formula. The vital difference is that God is willing to offer grace for our sins; he delights in grace. God is the one and only holy and just punisher of sin, yes, but that is partly so because punishment for the sake of punishment is not something he loves. Whereas Satan, as the accuser, and as it is written, actually seeks God's permission to punish; he, being a seasoned legalist, delights in finding wrongs and will defy his own morality just to expose immorality. This is why both the anti-religious soul and the violently religious soul are, whether consciously or unconsciously, and sadly enough, glorifying their biggest hater: Satan is not only a lawless lover of punishing lawlessness, but also the greatest theologian of us all. He loves wickedness, but only because he loves punishing wickedness.
THE FOUR HEAVENLY FOUNTAINSLaugh, I tell youAnd you will turn backThe hands of time.Smile, I tell youAnd you will reflectThe face of the divine.Sing, I tell youAnd all the angels will sing with you!Cry, I tell youAnd the reflections found in your pool of tears -Will remind you of the lessons of today and yesterdayTo guide you through the fears of tomorrow.
Comparing what we're looking for misses the point. It's wanting to know that makes us matter. Otherwise we're going out the way we came in. That's why you can't believe in the afterlife, Valentine. Believe in the after, by all means, but not the life. Believe in God, the soul, the spirit, the infinite, believe in angels if you like, but not in the great celestial get-together for an exchange of views. If the answers are in the back of the book I can wait, but what a drag. Better to struggle on knowing that failure is final.
The Weight of One Feather"Given.Many fear deathBecause they alreadyFeel ridden with sin,But no man on this earthIs filled with only white lightWithin.Have more faithIn our Maker,For our souls and mindsWere created by Him.Just remember that,When your deedsAre measuredBy the scale – The good sideMust outweighThe bad,And your heartMust be as lightAs a featherTo win.
You know we talked about where people go when they die. I just believe you go someplace and I seen her layin there and I thought maybe she wouldn't go to heaven because, you know, I thought she wouldn't and I thought about God forgivin people and I thought about if I could ask God to forgive me for killin that son of a bitch because you and me both know I ain't sorry for it and I reckon this sounds ignorant but I didn't want to be forgiven if she wasn't. I didn't want to do or be nothin that she wasn't like going to heaven or anything like that.
Our life on Earth is nothing but a reflection of the Heaven above. Our mind is the mirror. Sometimes is peaceful and gentle, sometimes it roars and hollows. The clearer it gets, the more you see Heaven in your life. But when the storm rages on, the reflection is gone and it seems that Heaven is nowhere and has never been. Regardless of whether your mind is clear or not, what you must remember is that Heaven is still there.
If your heart takes more pleasure in reading novels, or watching TV, or going to the movies, or talking to friends, rather than just sitting alone with God and embracing Him, sharing His cares and His burdens, weeping and rejoicing with Him, then how are you going to handle forever and ever in His presence...? You'd be bored to tears in heaven, if you're not ecstatic about God now!
You never enjoy the world aright, till the Sea itself floweth in your veins, till you are clothed with the heavens, and crowned with the stars: and perceive yourself to be the sole heir of the whole world, and more than so, because men are in it who are every one sole heirs as well as you. Till you can sing and rejoice and delight in God, as misers do in gold, and Kings in sceptres, you never enjoy the world.Till your spirit filleth the whole world, and the stars are your jewels; till you are as familiar with the ways of God in all Ages as with your walk and table: till you are intimately acquainted with that shady nothing out of which the world was made: till you love men so as to desire their happiness, with a thirst equal to the zeal of your own: till you delight in God for being good to all: you never enjoy the world.
The world is a goddamned evil place, the strong prey on the weak, the rich on the poor; I’ve given up hope that there is a God that will save us all. How am I supposed to believe that there’s a heaven and a hell when all I see now is hell.
I believe that a godly home is a foretaste of heaven. Our homes, imperfect as they are, must be a haven from the chaos outside. They should be a reflection of our eternal home, where troubled souls find peace, weary hearts find rest, hungry bodies find refreshment, lonely pilgrims find communion, and wounded spirits find compassion.
Do we behave out of fear of punishment, or out of the demands of our heart? For me, it is the latter, as I would hope is true for all adults, thought I know from bitter experience that such is not often the case. To act in a manner designed to catapult you into heaven would seem transparent to a god, any god,for if ones heart is not in allignment with the creator of that heaven, then... what is the point?
Evil demons dwelling in underworlds, Gods sitting on-high, angels battling and protecting. We have become so wrapped up in these stories, and in the in-fighting between the different religions, that the reality of the matter has gone unseen and unresolved. We—humanity—must move out of this adolescence, put down the fairy tales, and take responsibility for our actions. There is no devil to blame, and there is no God to plead to. There is simply you and the choices you make each day—choices that will either make you a force of good in this world or an ill-presence. People are the evil in this world, and likewise we are the divine. “Evil”—all that is detrimental to humanity—has come about as a result of poor choices and, by the same hand, the divine—the immortal goodness—endures as a result of loving, compassionate choices. Heaven is created here—on this earth—by a community of compassionate people, and Hell is created here—on this earth—by a community of greedy, self-centered, apathetic people. Our small choices define the greater picture.
Is it not eminently just that I should give myself entirely and without reserve to Him Who drew me out of nothing, and Who at every moment of my life maintains the existence He has given me; Whom I have received all and from Whom I expect all, and without Whom I can never be happy?
To some believers, being on the pill or using a condom is a nonverbal way of telling God to go to hell.
It goes without saying that even those of us who are going to hell will get eternal life—if that territory really exists outside religious books and the minds of believers, that is. Having said that, given the choice, instead of being grilled until hell freezes over, the average sane human being would, needless to say, rather spend forever idling in an extremely fertile garden, next to a lamb or a chicken or a parrot, which they do not secretly want to eat, and a lion or a tiger or a crocodile, which does not secretly want to eat them.
Mungu hatakubali kuwa na mtu katika ufalme wake ambaye hatakubali kutawaliwa naye. Usikubali kutawaliwa na Ibilisi, kubali kutawaliwa na Mungu. Ni jukumu letu kuanza kuishi sasa kama vile tutakavyoishi mbinguni. Shetani anataka uwe na hekima ya duniani ili akupumbaze. Lakini hofu ya Mungu ndiyo msingi wa hekima ya kweli. Ukitaka asikupumbaze, pokea Roho ya Mungu kwa kubatizwa. Ukiipokea Roho ya Mungu utajua mambo ya Mungu, ambayo dunia haiwezi kujua.
The world you are in –Is the true hell.The journey to Truth itselfIs what quickens the heart to become lighter.The lighter the heart, the purer it is.The purer the heart, the closer to light it becomes.And the heavier the heart,The more chained to this hellIt will remain.
Belief is a wonderful way to pass the time until the facts come in.
...No– but ours is a journey into ourselves, a walk with God every day! Ours is a book that we write, a smile, a love, a tear, a lust, an awakening, a learning, a joy, a laughter, a memory, a dream, a vision, a love, a love, a love and a love. Our life is now. And Heaven is always there, but this life isn't always there, but this life isn't always here. Heaven is always there for us but this life is a gift to us!
I put my hand on the altar rail. 'What if ... what if Heaven is real, but only in moments? Like a glass of water on a hot day when you're dying of thirst, or when someone's nice to you for no reason, or ...' Mam's pancakes with Toblerone sauce; Dad dashing up from the bar just to tell me, 'Sleep tight, don't let the bedbugs bite'; or Jacko and Sharon singing 'For She's A Squishy Marshmallow' instead of 'For She's A Jolly Good Fellow' every single birthday and wetting themselves even though it's not at all funny; and Brendan giving his old record player to me instead of one of his mates. 'S'pose Heaven's not like a painting that's just hanging there for ever, but more like ... Like the best song anyone ever wrote, but a song you only catch in snatches, while you're alive, from passing cars, or ... upstairs windows when you're lost ...
Max." Fang let go of my hand. "Right now, it's really all about—us." He swooped down to the right in a big semicircle, ending facing me. Slowly we climbed upward, until we were almost vertical, flying straight up to the sun. While carefully synchronizing our wings—they almost touched—Fang leaned in, gently put one hand behind my neck, and kissed me. It was just about as close to heaven as I'll ever get, I guess. I closed my eyes, lost in the feeling of flying and kissing and being with the one person in the world I completely,utterly trusted. When we finally broke apart, we looked down at the others, who were way far below us now. Angel was shading her eyes, looking up at us with a big smile. She was sitting on a dolphin's back, and I hoped soon someone would explain to the dolphin that he shouldn't let Angel take advantage of his good nature. Still looking up at us, Angel gave us a big thumbs-up. "She approves," Fang said with a hint of amusement."Jeez," I wondered aloud. "Is that a good thing or a bad thing?
LEONATOWell, then, go you into hell?BEATRICENo, but to the gate; and there will the devil meet me, like an old cuckold, with horns on his head, and say 'Get you to heaven, Beatrice, get you to heaven; here's no place for you maids:' so deliver I up my apes, and away to Saint Peter for the heavens; he shows me where the bachelors sit, and there live we as merry as the day is long.
When God takes out the trash, don't go digging back through it. Trust Him.
The heaven of a grasshopper is the wheat field; the heaven of man is the same place, the very earth itself where we get our food and build our happiness!
At present we are on the outside of the world, the wrong side of the door. We discern the freshness and purity of morning, but they do not make us fresh and pure. We cannot mingle with the splendours we see. But all the leaves of the New Testament are rustling with the rumour that it will not always be so. Some day, God willing, we shall get in.
My days I devote to reading and experiments in chemistry, and I spend many of the clear nights in the study of astronomy. There is, though I do not know how there is or why there is, a sense of infinite peace and protection in the glittering hosts of heaven. There it must be, I think, in the vast and eternal laws of matter, and not in the daily cares and sins and troubles of men, that whatever is more than animal within us must find its solace and its hope.
Remain faithful to the earth, my brothers, with the power of your virtue. Let your gift-giving love and your knowledge serve the meaning of the earth. Thus I beg and beseech you. Do not let them fly away from earthly things and beat with their wings against eternal walls. Alas, there has always been so much virtue that has flown away. Lead back to the earth the virtue that flew away, as I do—back to the body, back to life, that it may give the earth a meaning, a human meaning.
I don’t know why everyoneis still trying to find out whether heaven and hell exist.Why do we need more evidence?They exist here on this very Earth.Heaven is standing atop Mount Qasiounoverlooking the Damascene sightswith the wind carrying Qabbani’sdulcet words all around you.And hell is only four hours away in Aleppo where children’s cries drown out the explosions of mortar bombsuntil they lose their voice,their families, and their limbs.Yes, hell certainly does existright now, at this moment,as I pen this poem. And all we’re doingto extinguish this hellfireis sighing, shrugging, liking, and sharing.Tell me: what exactly does that makeus? Are we any better than the gatekeepers of hell?
O, weary angels, don’t look at me with those eyes.If that is your state then what of our cries?What can I tell you of goodness that you don’t already know?What can I tell you of faith,of hope and lovethat you yourselves bestow?O, angels, don’t pluck another feather,this isn’t the sky, it’s just the weather.Please, angels, try.We are one all together.Look up and listen, I’ll say it once and then put down my pen:We are sorry for our ignoranceand even though we are worldly,it might happen again.We are sorry for your wearinessand even though you aren’t worldly,we are no more than human.
You may have fallen down, but you can get back up again. You may have doors shut, but new doors will open for you. You may have been lied on, but the truth will come to the light. You may have been hurt, but the pain will pass. You are a survivor. You have a history of surviving.
God can take the ordinary and create the extraordinary. Our incredible God has the power to transform your simple life and give you the life of your dreams. Remarkable things happen in your life when you believe.
There once was a girl who found herself dead.She peered over the ledge of heavenand saw that back on earthher sister missed her too much,was way too sad,so she crossed some pathsthat would not have crossed,took some moments in her handshook them upand spilled them like diceover the living world.It worked.The boy with the guitar collidedwith her sister."There you go, Len," she whispered. "The rest is up to you.
I hear my mom pray every night about how she misses meI want nothing to happen to my little brother the way it happened to meI tell my mom, Keep your head up and stay strong, because I am getting good care in heavenI worry about nothing because Jesus has my backI cry and Jesus comes and wipes my tears from my faceI try to make it to the NBA in heavenI hope everyone is not worried about meI am Brandon in heaven, having fun.
Just please understand that everyone is going through a rough time as well. Even if they are hiding behind money or a simple smile. We are all continuously stumbling as we go about our lives. If we had perfect lives we'd all be perfect people. Only thing we can learn to do is endure or we will not be happy and happiness is the closest thing to perfect.
Once you start questioning your beliefs, that's when it's all over. It is truly doubt that kills our conviction.
After you hear and listen. First must come desire. Second must come willingness.Third should come understanding.Fourth should come progression and with progression will come more understanding.
During these hard times in the world we should always remember to keep our families and friends close.
After you hear and listen. First must come desire. Second must come willingness.Third should come understanding.Fourth should come progression and with progression will come more understanding..
You’ve thrown down the gauntlet. You’ve brought my wrath down upon your house. Now, to prove that I exist I must kill you. As the child outlives the father, so must the character bury the author. If you are, in fact, my continuing author, then killing you will end my existence as well. Small loss. Such a life, as your puppet, is not worth living.But… If I destroy you and your dreck script, and I still exist… then my existence will be glorious, for I will become my own master.
I am seldom otherwise than happy while watching in the chamber of death... . I see a repose that neither earth nor hell can break, and I feel an assurance of the endless and shadowless hereafter--the Eternity they have entered--where life is boundless in its duration, and love in its sympathy, and joy in its fulness.
Talk to me about the truth of religion and I'll listen gladly. Talk to me about the duty of religion and I'll listen submissively. But don't come talking to me about the consolations of religion or I shall suspect that you don't understand. Unless, of course, you can literally believe all that stuff about family reunions 'on the further shore,' pictured in entirely earthly terms. But that is all unscriptural, all out of bad hymns and lithographs. There's not a word of it in the Bible. And it rings false. We know it couldn't be like that. Reality never repeats. The exact same thing is never taken away and given back. How well the Spiritualists bait their hook! 'Things on this side are not so different after all.' There are cigars in Heaven. For that is what we should all like. The happy past restored.
One time, two years ago, I took a draught of morphia, meaning to end my life. My mother found me before the life was ended, the doctor drew the poison from my stomach with a syringe, and when I woke, it was to the sound of my own weeping. For I had hoped to open my eyes on Heaven, where my father was; and they had only pulled me back to Hell.
.....listening means learning to hear someone's inner world and deepest feelings with far greater attention in order that we don't let our own assumptions get in the way. The dying may speak in images far more akin to dreamland than the world of everyday reality. In order to understand them we have to make adjustments to comprehend a poetic form of expression that is sometimes elusive but actually far more expressive than the world of facts.
An expensive coffin does not decrease the deceased’s chances of going to hell.
I mean that we here are on the wrong side of the tapestry,' answered Father Brown. 'The things that happen here do not seem to mean anything; they mean something somewhere else. Somewhere else retribution will come on the real offender. Here it often seems to fall on the wrong person.
In my return to church, I had learned the hard way to avoid assumptions about other people's faith. For one thing, people kept surprising me. If I listened carefully to them, my conjectures about what they thought usually turned out to be wrong. For another thing, I was insecure enough about my own faith, such as it was, to resent other people telling me what they thought I believed and why they thought I believed it. So I tried to hear what my friends say about joining their loved ones after death without assuming I knew exactly what they meant.
I believe we are more ready to embrace our lives in the here and now when we are able to recognize the continuity between the immanence of God in our world and eternity. Rather than simply waiting to be liberated to another time or place, we are being invited to collaborate in the healing and redemption of our world.
A young man was sitting at home when a terrible rainstorm began. Within hours, the man’s house began to flood, and someone came to his door offering a ride to higher ground. The man declined, saying, 'God will take care of me.' A few hours later, as the waters engulfed the first floor of the man’s home, a boat passed by, and the captain offered to take the man to safety. The man declined, saying, 'God will take care of me.' A few hours after that, as the man waited on his roof—his entire home flooded—a helicopter flew by, and the pilot offered transportation to dry land. Again the man declined, telling the pilot that God would care for him. Soon thereafter, the waters overcame the man, and as he stood before God in heaven, he protested his fate: 'You promised that you’d help me so long as I was faithful.' God replied, 'I sent you a car, a boat, and a helicopter. Your death is your own fault.' God helps those who help themselves.
We need to go first because we cannot live without your love and care. If we lived longer than you, we would not and could not survive. It’s supposed to be this way. We also need to cross the Rainbow Bridge before you do so that we can be on the other side to greet you when you get there. We wait at home for you here and we wait at Home for you there. It’s just the way it is.
As long as a population can be induced to believe in a supernatural hereafter, it can be oppressed and controlled. People will put up with all sorts of tyranny, poverty, and painful treatment if they're convinced that they'll eventually escape to some resort in the sky where lifeguards are superfluous and the pool never closes. Moreover, the faithful are usually willing to risk their skins in whatever military adventure their government may currently be promoting.
Do you think there is heaven or hell? he signed.‘I don’t know. Not in the Christian way, if that’s what you mean. I think people have a right to believe in whatever they want. I just don’t.’…If someone came in here and gave you positive proof, would you do anything different?She shook her head. ‘I think it’s just as likely that someone could say that this place, right here, is heaven, hell and earth all at the same time. And we still wouldn’t know what to do differently. Everyone just muddles through, trying not to make too many mistakes.
When confronted by a ‘believer’ it is easy for me to contrast the views of the skeptic with those of the rationalist. I simply reach into my pocket and pull out my change.Holding a quarter aloft, I say, ‘This is a most remarkable coin, for it is heavier than all the sins of humanity committed since the beginning of the human race.’I then hold up a nickel and say, ‘This coin is even more amazing, as it is brighter and shinier than the flames that proceeded from the Burning Bush discovered on Mt. Sinai by Moses.’Then I raise a penny and state, ‘This portrait of President Lincoln is more realistic and true-to-life than any portrait of Satan ever painted.’And finally, I hold out a bright, shiny dime and say, ‘And this dime is the most amazing of all because it is heavier and contains more precious metals than all the gold bricks in the streets of Heaven.’I end with ‘Give to Caesar what is his, and hold the rest of it dear—for it is all you see and touch—and the Christian god can take care of all his things, for they amount to less than this 41 cents I hold here in my hand.
My future husband was becoming to me my whole world; and more than the world: almost my hope of heaven. He stood between me and every thought of religion, as an eclipse intervenes between man and the broad sun. I could not, in those days, see God for His creature: of whom I had made an idol.
When people want to be rid of Heaven it is logical to start by creating an atmosphere in which spiritual things appear out of place; in order to be able to declare successfully that God is unreal they have to construct around man a false reality, a reality that is inevitably inhuman because only the inhuman can exclude God. What is involved is a falsification of the imagination and so its destruction.
There are some doubters even in the western villages. One woman told me last Christmas that she did not believe either in hell or in ghosts. Hell she thought was merely an invention got up by the priest to keep people good; and ghosts would not be permitted, she held, to go 'trapsin about the earth' at their own free will; 'but there are faeries,' she added, 'and little leprechauns, and water-horses, and fallen angels.' I have met also a man with a mohawk Indian tattooed upon his arm, who held exactly similar beliefs and unbeliefs. No matter what one doubts one never doubts the faeries, for, as the man with the mohawk Indian on his arm said to me, 'they stand to reason.' Even the official mind does not escape this faith. ("Reason and Unreason")
So many people will be lost to the fires of hell and ultimately experience the loss of their spiritual life because of this completion of pride, which is lust. Heaven is not about the physical; it’s about the spiritual, the completion of love, which is the opposite of lust. Hell, on the other hand, is all about the physical; it’s all about how you and I deal with the challenges we face daily here in this physical world. Do we lust after the pleasures of the flesh, or do we respond to the physical in a spiritual manner? That’s the greatest judgmental factor.
Dad?" Jesus asked."Yes, son?" God asked."Why do people get sick?" Jesus asked."When they live, life is all about learning so that when the are ready, they can join us here," God said."But, doesn't it hurt?" Jesus asked."Yes, it does. But, to learn about life you have to learn of pain and suffering or else you don't learn what life is all about," God said."Will I suffer like that one day?" Jesus now asked his dad."Yes, because we all have to learn, and that includes me too," God replied sadly.
Until every soul is freely permitted to investigate every book, and creed, and dogma for itself, the world cannot be free. Mankind will be enslaved until there is mental grandeur enough to allow each man to have his thought and say. This earth will be a paradise when men can, upon all these questions differ, and yet grasp each other's hands as friends. It is amazing to me that a difference of opinion upon subjects that we know nothing with certainty about, should make us hate, persecute, and despise each other. Why a difference of opinion upon predestination, or the trinity, should make people imprison and burn each other seems beyond the comprehension of man; and yet in all countries where Christians have existed, they have destroyed each other to the exact extent of their power. Why should a believer in God hate an atheist? Surely the atheist has not injured God, and surely he is human, capable of joy and pain, and entitled to all the rights of man. Would it not be far better to treat this atheist, at least, as well as he treats us?Christians tell me that they love their enemies, and yet all I ask is—not that they love their enemies, not that they love their friends even, but that they treat those who differ from them, with simple fairness.We do not wish to be forgiven, but we wish Christians to so act that we will not have to forgive them. If all will admit that all have an equal right to think, then the question is forever solved; but as long as organized and powerful churches, pretending to hold the keys of heaven and hell, denounce every person as an outcast and criminal who thinks for himself and denies their authority, the world will be filled with hatred and suffering. To hate man and worship God seems to be the sum of all the creeds.
The first men to be created and formed were called the Sorcerer of Fatal Laughter, the Sorcerer of Night, Unkempt, and the Black Sorcerer … They were endowed with intelligence, they succeeded in knowing all that there is in the world. When they looked, instantly they saw all that is around them, and they contemplated in turn the arc of heaven and the round face of the earth … [Then the Creator said]: 'They know all … what shall we do with them now? Let their sight reach only to that which is near; let them see only a little of the face of the earth!… Are they not by nature simple creatures of our making? Must they also be gods?
Positive energy radiates from every word you share to a magnitude that can not be measured on scale. The vibrations he sends your way are received and absorbed into the very core of your existence. The power within his words quench the areas of your spirit that only God knows. Mortality thrives on the very essence of Godly Love
Each of those churches shows certain books, which they call revelation, or the Word of God. The Jews say that their Word of God was given by God to Moses face to face; the Christians say, that their Word of God came by divine inspiration; and the Turks say, that their Word of God (the Koran) was brought by an angel from heaven. Each of those churches accuses the other of unbelief; and, for my own part, I disbelieve them all.
Good gods are scarce because the majority of gods are created by evil men
Why do religious believers hate unbelievers? The feel threatened by them, they feel besieged by them. Religions consider themselves as separate tribes in their own rights and feel like unbelievers will one day overrun their strongholds
Every word that comes after "And the Lord told me. . . “is a pious lie
Some people are so stiff and inhumane as the dogma's they believe in
Give me something to worship whatever.” Cries the human soul
Spiritual leaders, priests and prophets are lamps burning in the dark, seeking meaning for humanity.
Science cannot disprove god. Science studies the things that are. The eternal question is who or what made them to be
Why doesn't the pope convert to Calvinism? Why doesn't the Dalai Lama, convert to Christianity, why doesn't Billy Graham convert to Islam, Why doesn't the Ayatollahs convert to Buddhism, Why isn't Buddhism swept away? Religious leaders know that all religions are equal; they know that no one of them has the monopoly to the knowledge of God. They know that each religion is trying to find the hidden God and that no one religion can claim to have found him beyond doubt. That's why they remain where they are and respect each other.
Can really anybody put his hand on his heart and profess to know beyond doubt what happens on the other side of this life?
There is nothing behind the curtains of religions, people put there whatever their imaginations can fathom
Once you believe that god is not a private property of anybody, you are on your way to becoming a new messiah. Maybe your own if not the world's
Theology is like assuming that there is a black cat in a dark room where in fact there is no black cat, and endeavoring to study the cat's properties and how it may have evolved from its ancestors.
The eyes of god are upon you, I mean the eyes of society. We are prisoners of societies in which we live
You take away my golden dreams and my visions of paradise, in its place you wake me up and hand me your reasons and facts and crude reality. You have ruined my life. If I commit murder or hang myself, let the god I used to pray to repay you in full.
If you believe that God is good and that He loves you without regard to whom you are or what you do, you will worship Him wholeheartedly. You will praise him with thanksgiving. If you believe He is angry against you, you will come to him with fear and trying to appease his anger. And you don't know when His anger will be over. Such a god keeps you in a perpetual psychological anguish. That is the typical kind of god we usually worship. That is the typical god approved by authority.
Each mind conceives god in its own way. There may be as many variation of the god figure as there are people in the world
God has not yet revealed himself to no one in no unclear terms. Religions are attempts to find him on that level they are all equal
What is needed is not that a religion be true, meaning that what it claims exist beyond the ink it is written with in a holy book. That is hard to prove. What is important is that a religion be a good system to help us mere mortal deal with our short and troubled life in the universe. Whether what we hope for in the afterlife materializes or not is not important, what is important is that we believe it will materialize and that gives us hope.
Much terror in religion is not the will of god, it is created by power hungry clerics who thirst for absolute power and claim it for god. God does not seek power, he is already powerful.
No one knows what god thinks of anything. He only knows and no one can claim to penetrate into his mysteries. Those who do that are liars and must be avoided at all costs
It's utter arrogance to think that we can know what god ought to be or do. If we don't understand we must continue our search or recognize our ignorance
All religions are "revealed" and "inspired". After all nothing happens without the "will" of god.
If we believe that god is the creator of evil, maybe there is evil also in heaven, if that is the case, we are not out of the woods yet
Don't create unbelief or doubt in people's minds. When you do so you ruin their lives and you have nothing to give them in its place. It's ok if people delude themselves those delusions keep their day running.
An atheist is a disappointed true believer he is an angry and hungry soul who has failed to find a real god to whom he can anchor his hope
All religions are man-made God has not yet revealed himself beyond doubt to anybody.
When you have doubts about God, the right position to take is agnosticism, atheism is outright arrogance
The more time you invest into studying religion, the more likely you are to disbelieve in the gods
Religion is a theory about everything that needs to be proved only after death those who prove or disprove it never come back to us to tell the story
It's impossible to do science without faith. Sometimes scientists build theories on the premises of faulty assumptions until they discover they were in error and begin again from square one until they discover the true theory. It's quite different with theologians, they build false theory upon false theory until they give you detailed descriptions of heaven and hell and construct dogmas to protect their errors and if you dare say they are in error they condemn you to eternal damnation they arrived at through false theories
I believe only in one God, creator of everything that exists, visible and invisible, good and evil. I believe that he will ultimately save every soul and give it eternal life.
We all want to become more than we are, we want to live forever, that is why we hate death and create the afterlife.
All religions are guesswork
My gut instinct is that these heavens and hells exist nowhere else except in our hearts and minds
Don’t curse the gods you will feel shame when you have to call on them for help
God is powerful. Even those who claim not to believe in him fear him. Though their mouths may confess to disbelieve in him, their hearts yearn for him.
All atheists will go to heaven. If god exists, not believing in him does not take him away and he cannot justly condemn those who seek him earnestly and cannot find him. He would even reward their earnest search for him.
He is an atheist anyone who does not believe in my god and the wrath of god is upon him; I am in my right to meet that wrath on him," thunders the fanatic
You can't have it both ways. Either you believe in my god or you go to hell
Atheists are the most honest of the human race. These people are unable to live a double life; they are unable to lie to themselves. Of course it's an evolutionary handicap, and if that handicap was widespread, our species would run the risk of extinction
From the club of what atheist call false hope and false god (which offer solace to weak minds), atheist are calling you to their club of no god and no hope (which offers nothing in return. Join the club only if you are a strong minded individual capable of handling your life alone without the help of gods. )
An atheist is someone who is disappointed in his search of god. He is a man who strongly needed god but couldn't find him. Atheism is a cry of despair
I know what is going on in the heart of an atheist. Deep anguish that there is nothing beyond, nothing to live for, nothing to give him hope. I know because I endured the same predicament.
After losing faith, even an atheist feels a yawning void in his soul that needs filling; there is nothing imaginable that he can fill with it. It was all along meant to be filled with the sacred, with the unknown and unknowable power. That's the curse or blessing of humanity
Blessed and fortunate creature, your eyes shall behold Him and not another's. All that you are, sins apart, is destined, if you will let God have His good way, to utter satisfaction. The Brocken spectre 'looked to every man like his first love', because she was a cheat. But God will look to every soul like its first love because He is its first love. Your place in heaven will seem to be made for you and you alone, because you were made for it--made for it stitch by stitch as a glove is made for a hand
In my experiences, the common critic of Christianity, when he thinks of Christianity, imagines a sort of elementary, Sunday School blunder of elements: fiery Hell, an angry God, 'try not to sin', 'be good so that you can go to Heaven', absurd miracles, hyper-fundamentalist tales, religious hypocrites, and Jesus telling people not to judge. There is no horse more dead than such. I maintain that understanding Christianity and the Bible is quite like painting a piece of art. Let a toddler paint a puppy; then let an adult who is a long-time painter paint the very same puppy. They are both paintings of the puppy, but one is far more detailed, rational, realistic, and believable than the other. One is distorted and comical; the other is proportional and lively. One can write off Theology if he so pleases, but he might not be very wise in using the toddler's painting when it comes time to identify the real puppy or when trying to confront actual men of the Faith.
Speak peace unto the world and good souls will stand.
How easily such a thing can become a mania, how the most normal and sensible of women once this passion to be thin is upon them, can lose completely their sense of balance and proportion and spend years dealing with this madness.
I write about myself so you can fathom a personification of sadness. About God because when you asked me if I were religious I told you faith is what I try my darndest to keep dearest. About fear so that I gradually gain perspectives between the night sky and stars. About love because that concept seems out of reach I am not built with the capacity for much. About a leaf falling because tears are pretty much similar. About romance because hope sometimes settles in the dark. About nature because forces are both abstract and concrete it blows the temple in my heart. About loneliness so I can hear you say I am not the only one feeling that way. I write about feelings so I can cope with the fear that they might one day not be able to come again. About hell because there are odds and possibilities. About us because there are odds and possibilities, albeit lesser. About heaven because days are too warm here I hope it rains tonight. I write about death so when it comes it tastes like rain, at night, in heaven. I write about you so perhaps you won't forget to remember me.
Even those who want to go to heaven would rather kill than be killed.
If we really believe what we say we believe- if we really think that home is elsewhere and that this life is a "wandering to find home", why should we not look forward to the arrival. There are, aren't there, only three things we can do about death: to desire it, to fear it, or to ignore it. The third alternative, which is the one the modern world calls "healthy" is surely the most uneasy and precarious of all.
Even in your hobbies, has there not always been some secret attraction which the others are curiously ignorant of--something, not to be identified with, but always on the verge of breaking through, the smell of cut wood in the workshop or the clap-clap of water against the boat's side? Are not all lifelong friendships born at the moment when at last you meet another human being who has some inkling (but faint and uncertain even in the best) of that something which you were born desiring, and which, beneath the flux of other desires and in all the momentary silences between the louder passions, night and day, year by year, from childhood to old age, you are looking for, watching for, listening for? You have never had it. All the things that have ever deeply possesed your soul have been but hints of it--tantalizing glimspes, promises never quite fulfilled, echoes that died away just as they caught your ear. But if it should really become manifest--if there ever came an echo that did not die away but swelled into the sound itself--you would know it. Beyond all possibility of doubt you would say 'Here at last is the thing I was made for.' We cannot tell each other about it. It is the secret signature of each soul, the incommunicable and unappeasable want, the things we desired before we met our wives or made our friends or chose our work, and which we shall still desire on our deathbeds, when the mind no longer knows wife or friend or work. While we are, this is. If we lose this, we lose all.
Friendship exhibits a glorious "nearness by resemblance" to Heaven itself where the very multitude of the blessed (which no man can number) increases the fruition which each has of God. For every soul, seeing Him in her own way, doubtless communicates that unique vision to all the rest. That, says an old author, is why the Seraphim in Isaiah's vision are crying "Holy, Holy, Holy" to one another (Isaiah VI, 3). The more we thus share the Heavenly Bread between us, the more we shall all have.
We cannot control the way people interpret our ideas or thoughts, but we can control the words and tones we choose to convey them. Peace is built on understanding, and wars are built on misunderstandings. Never underestimate the power of a single word, and never recklessly throw around words. One wrong word, or misinterpreted word, can change the meaning of an entire sentence - and even start a war. And one right word, or one kind word, can grant you the heavens and open doors.
It is not the dead rather the ones who lives through war have seen the dreadful end of the war, you might have been victorious, unwounded but deep within you, you carry the mark of the war, you carry the memories of war, the time you have spend with your comrades, the times when you had to dug in to foxholes to avoid shelling, the times when you hate to see your comrade down on the ground, feeling of despair, atrocities of the war, missing families, home. They live through hell and often the most wounded, they live with the guilt, despair, of being in the war, they may be happy but deep down they are a different person. Not everyone is a hero. You live with the moments, time when you were unsuccessful, when your actions would have helped your comrades, when your actions get your comrades killed, you live with regret, joyous in the victory can never help you forget the time you have spent. You are victorious for the people you have lost, the decisions you have made, the courage you have shown but being victorious in the war has a price to pay, irrevocable. You can't take a memory back from a person, even if you lose your memory your imagination haunts you as deep down your sub conscious mind you know who you are, who you were. Close you eyes and you can very well see your past, you cant change your past, time you have spent, you live through all and hence you are a hero not for the glorious war for the times you have faced. Decoration with medals is not going to give your life back. the more you know, more experiences doesn't make it easy rather make its worse. Arms and ammunition kills you once and free you from the misery but the experiences of war kills you everyday, makes you cherish the times everyday through the life. You may forgot that you cant walk anymore, you may forget you cant use your right hand, you may forgot the scars on your face but you can never forgot war. Life without war is never easy and only the ones how survived through it can understand. Soldiers are taught to fight but the actual combat starts after war which you are not even trained for. You rely on your weapon, leaders, comrades, god, luck in the war but here you rely on your self to beat the horrors,they have seen hell, heaven, they have felt the mixed emotions of hope, despair, courage, victory, defeat, scared.
The blood of the setting sun suddenly spilled out on the western horizon like that of millions of people who have died in some violent war that has broken out between Earth and Heaven. Suddenly the war ended in defeat and all-embracing darkness descended and pervaded all four corners of the globe, wiping out the sadness and shyness that was in her eyes.
He meant the Kingdom was over, the Kingdom of Heaven, it was all finished. We shouldn't live as if it mattered more than this life in this world, because where we are is always the most important place.... We have to be all those difficult things like cheerful and kind and curious and patient, and we've got to study and think and work hard, all of us, in all our different world, and then we'll build... The Republic of Heaven.
You think the final act of love is setting them free to Rainbow Bridge? That is not the final act of love. The final act of love is releasing them from your leash of grief so they can be free in the heaven on the other side of the Bridge. Until you resolve your grief, you bind them to you in the land between Heaven and Earth while they wait, suspended between the worlds, for you to heal. When you are free of your grief, they are free of your grief.
Of course, if one does not fully trust the promise of God's Kingdom, he will have a hard time taking risks and making sacrifices in this life. A gospel centered around the temporal self - fleeting happiness, earthly success, vain prosperity, things such as these - is the primary ambition of the half-hearted Christian; the one who somewhat believes he is subject to an eternal death; the one who just might believe in men before God, who morbidly fears seeming less than anyone else. The man of this school feels deeply that he has but one life to live, that this must be his only chance, and therefore must have it all in his favor - from glory to comfort to riches - and have it right this instant. He is but hinting that he is overcome because he insists always that he must overcome, that his judgment comes now and by the persons around him. The point is, however, in this sense, that by grace the Christian is indeed free, but only for as long as he wants to be free - the practicality of true freedom: that of God which offers not so much freedom to be like the world as it does freedom from the pressures of having to be like the world. For Divine Law is based solely on love and freedom; whereas secular law, pressure and imitation.
We the living are to blame for the painfulness of being dead.
Death would be an extremely bad thing like most of us paint it, if being dead were painful.
Now, if we are made for heaven, the desire for our proper place will be already in us, but not yet attached to the true object, and will even appear as the rival of that object […] If a transtemporal, transfinite good is our real destiny, then any other good on which our desire fixes must be in some degree fallacious, must bear at best only a symbolical relation to what will truly satisfy.
After Hatuey, a fifteenth-century Indian insurrectionist, had been fixed to the stake, his Spanish captors extended him the choice of converting to Christianity and ascending to Heaven of going unrepentantly to Hell. Gathering that his executioners expected to go to heaven, Hatuey chose the other
I believe, to be sure, that any man who reaches Heaven will find that what he abandoned (even in plucking out his right eye) has not been lost: that the kernel of what he was really seeking even in his most depraved wishes will be there, beyond expectation, waiting for him in ‘the High Countries’.
To be the salt, you also need to be the shaker. To shake the world. Shake the truth. Shake the people. Shake the word. Have it sprinkle, melt and preserve humanity.
There is no imagination wherewith man is besotted, more foolish, none so pernicious as this,- that persons not purified, not sanctified, not made holy in their life, should afterwards be taken into that state of blessedness which consists in the enjoyment of God. Neither can such persons enjoy God, nor would God be a reward to them. Holiness is perfected in heaven: but the beginning of it is invariably confined to this world.
Refusal to engage in spiritual warfare does not exempt you from being among the next casualties of war
In reality, the damned are in the same place as the saved—in reality! But they hate it; it is their Hell. The saved love it, and it is their Heaven. It is like two people sitting side by side at an opera or a rock concert: the very thing that is Heaven to one is Hell to the other. Dostoyevski says, 'We are all in paradise, but we won’t see it'…Hell is not literally the 'wrath of God.' The love of God is an objective fact; the 'wrath of God' is a human projection of our own wrath upon God, as the Lady Julian saw—a disastrous misinterpretation of God’s love as wrath. God really says to all His creatures, 'I know you and I love you' but they hear Him saying, 'I never knew you; depart from me.' It is like angry children misinterpreting their loving parents’ affectionate advances as threats. They project their own hate onto their parents’ love and experience love as an enemy—which it is: an enemy to their egotistic defenses against joy…Since God is love, since love is the essence of the divine life, the consequence of loss of this life is loss of love...Though the damned do not love God, God loves them, and this is their torture. The very fires of Hell are made of the love of God! Love received by one who only wants to hate and fight thwarts his deepest want and is therefore torture. If God could stop loving the damned, Hell would cease to be pure torture. If the sun could stop shining, lovers of the dark would no longer be tortured by it. But the sun could sooner cease to shine than God cease to be God...The lovelessness of the damned blinds them to the light of glory in which they stand, the glory of God’s fire. God is in the fire that to them is Hell. God is in Hell ('If I make my bed in Hell, Thou art there' [Ps 139:8]) but the damned do not know Him.
The heavens declare the glory of God.The heavens declare the majesty King.The heavens declare the marvellous Lord.The heavens declare the mighty Saviour.
I was only going to say that heaven did not seem to be my home; and I broke my heart with weeping to come back to earth; and the angels were so angry that they flung my out into the middle of the heath on the top of Wuthering Heights; where I woke sobbing for joy. That will do to explain my secret, as well as the other. I've no more business to marry Edgar Linton than I have to be in heaven; and if the wicked man in there had not brought Heathcliff so low, I shouldn't have thought of it. It would degrade me to marry Heathcliff now; so he shall never know how I love him: and that, not because he's handsome, but because he's more myself than I am. What ever our souls are made of, his and mine are the same; and Linton's is as different as a moonbeam from lightning, or frost from fire.'Ere this speech ended, I became sensible of Heathcliff's presence. Having noticed a slight movement, I turned my head, and saw him rise from the bench, and steal out noiselessly. He had listened till he heard Catherine say it would degrade her to marry him, and then he stayed to hear no further.
...[W]hen death comes to a man, the mortal part of him dies, but the immortal part retires at the approach of death and escapes unharmed and indestructible... [I]t is as certain as anything can be... that soul is immortal and imperishable, and that our souls will really exist in the next world.
...The fact is that Dale and Grady had made a pact long before they ever came into this earthly existence. This is why so often there is one physical death that follows another. They are from the same soul family. They are so intertwined that they need to leave together. They are all returning home together.
She's my pride, my winning prize, always a surprise, to look into her eyes, see her free soul, as soap that slips from the grip of control; a stroll through the park on a dark night with stars to spark the sky, heaven with no price tag I realize, love is the same: endless, priceless, full bliss; to have this princess I pinch myself thinking this is a dream, but to my reprise, I can only say I am now, at last, alive.
Who art thou then, O my soul!" (and here [Zarathustra] became frightened, for a sunbeam shot down from heaven upon his face.""O heaven above me," said he sighing, and sat upright, "thou gazest at me? Thou hearkenest unto my strange soul?When wilt thou drink this drop of dew that fell down upon all earthly things—when wilt thou drink this strange soul——When, thou well of eternity! thou joyous, awful, noontide abyss! when wilt thou drink my soul back into thee?
You can't stop the thought about hell, probably you know that it doesn't exist as far as I can tell you and some other type of sources. But what happen with the serial killers?? THe brutal killers, they go to heaven??? - Really??So there isn't communication between hell and heaven so they put all in one place?? - WTF, how big this soul planet is it?200000000000000000000000000 People even and more are there and everyday you see new born child or children and old people or young people die.... Okay some die because of start of smoke at early age, other people start to smoke and drink alcohol because other have said them it's incrediable to drink, you aren't a human without a drink, you can't be in our group if you don't drink and many other stuff (as Alan Macmillan Orr said in his book The Little book of life)... - Did you knew that there are stuff which believers don't know or know and still believe??You should check out the holy book what's said think little and then do whatever you are on the way to do.- As first I just read a an article called "Souls do not Exist Evidence from Science & Philosophy Against Mind-Body Dualism" what I read it will blow your mind. I'm sure if you believe in god the % will go low or probably you will change you direction...As far as I'm on the road I can tell that there are people which read this and this and this and continue to believe, but it's WRITTEN BLACK ON WHITE THE TRUTH AND THEY PREFER TO STAY IN THE COMFORT ZONE, BECAUSE THERE IS COMFORT IF THEY COME HERE THERE WON'T BE COMFORT FOR THE FEW WEEKS, MONTHS OR EVEN YEARS, THEY NEED TO BUILD EVERYTHING LIKE AGAIN, LIKE YOU HAVE RESET YOUR SCORE AT GAME AND YOU START AGAIN AND AGAIN...
If I were to believe in God enough to call him a murderer, then I might also believe enough that he, as a spirit, exists beyond death; and therefore only he could do it righteously. For the physical being kills a man and hatefully sends him away, whereas God, the spiritual being, kills a man and lovingly draws him nigh.
I would love to think that the essence of who we are continues after we die. Maybe our soul moves on somehow, and eventually we are reborn. Or maybe, we get absorbed into god like a drop of water into the ocean.I think it’s more believable than floating into the sky and entering heaven. I’ve looked up and I’ve never seen heaven the way religions describe it. But, I can tell you that I’ve looked around down here, and I’ve found many places that have appeared as if they could be heaven.
The black of the ocean waves was the color of the sorrow in my breast, a sorrow that was never far away and always visible.
God himself had sent me away. I was truly now among the damned.
I was once a man, not a great man, not a saintly man, but a good man, and a man nonetheless.
I did not choose to be a monster—a shell of a man—half-human, half-fiend. I am a tiefling. I am what I am.
My life was going exactly where I wanted it to until the Devil showed up.
Iona stared at me for a long time. “You are going to leave me a widow before I have a chance to become a bride.
Then it kissed me—not as a man would kiss a lover, not with tenderness or even passion. This was a kiss that stole the soul of men. Revulsion at this creature’s kiss was instantly replaced by the warmth stealing through my veins, as if my missing blood were being replenished and contrived to heal me. I craved to keep kissing the beast. My entire being awakened to that kiss feeding me ecstasy, feeding me life.
The purpose of art is to create heavens to balance the world because there are so many hells in the world, there are wars, tortures and oppressions, there is unhappiness etc.
Echo of the waves appears in the sky, their lights reflected in your eyes. I'm back in our world and happy again. The sound of your voice, compassionate embrace... The power in your touch, serenity of stride... The beating of your heart calms down my presence, gracing with eternal peace of mind... Bathing in the sunshine of your arms I'm deeply aware of the melodic stream that has no language...gliding beneath the quiet Heaven of your eyes...
When human knowledge could create mass ignorance in the physical plane of existence, those righteous souls who have earned the wisdom either in their evolving and upgrading process of cosmic consciousness or who have dwelled in the truth consciousness, are the last hope for the mankind on earth to eradicate the mass ignorance”.
Heaven is thine and so it's mine. Elated, I cannot give to thee but receive it sublime. And if it's there to shine for all to see,.. Vast sea of love for us to seize. Ease the pain with a sweet kiss, water the Flowers...No shadows of a perfect bliss but the sunshine of ours.
-That's when I realized that Heaven doesn't exist in another place, and neither does Hell. It's all here on Earth. We live them both right here with one another. It's just sometimes we have to go through Hell to get to Heaven. - Eoghan (The Last Princess - page 255)
Augustine recast how people should view history, that history was not the story of the rise and fall of empires because those are human things. Those are the city of man. Rather, true history should be the history of salvation, of man moving toward God. It's a focus that takes the light off of this world and shines it much more brightly on the next world.
Thus, Christ making His human divine and taking it into heaven is the central event of all time. It is the miracle of all miracles. The resurrection bursts like a sun on the timeline of history, which means this innermost event shines light on all points in history leading up to it and after it.
Once the creator was removed from the creation, divinity became only a remote abstraction, a social weapon in the hands of the religious institutions. This split in public values produced or was accompanied by, as it was bound to be, an equally artificial and ugly division in people's lives, so that a man, while pursuing Heaven with the sublime appetite he thought of as his soul, could turn his heart against his neighbors and his hands against the world...Though Heaven is certainly more important than the earth if all they say about it is true, it is still morally incidental to it and dependent on it, and I can only imagine it and desire it in terms of what I know of the earth. (pg. 23, "A Native Hill")
Heavens is here 'neath the mountain walls,In the song of the wind and the waterfalls,In the watchful stars that blanket the nightAnd the music of birds before the dawn light.Heaven is here in our mountain keep.In the silence and dim of the forest deep,From the chestnut tall as the mightiest mast,To the laurel flowers in the shadow it casts.Heaven is here on theses mountains high, In ancient stone castles that challenge the sky,In the thunder and flash that ring from their fightAnd the meadows made gold by the day's final light.
Then she opened her eyes, Veronika did not think 'this must be heaven'. Heaven would never use a fluorescent tube to light a room, and the pain - which started a fraction of a second later - was typical of the Earth. Ah, that Earth pain - unique, unmistakable.
I knew then why I had to suffer. The older we get, the more reasons God gives us to seek His comfort. In the end, He sends us just enough pain and suffering so that we will want to leave. If everything were perfect, we would never choose to go. He wants us to seek an end to our suffering because He wants us to want to come Home.
The settled happiness and security which we all desire, God withholds from us by the very nature of the world: but joy pleasure and merriment, He has scattered broadcast. We are never safe, but we have plenty of fun and some ecstasy ... Our Father refreshes us on the journey with some pleasant inns, but he will not encourage us to mistake them for home.
Heaven left a hole in your heart. But it’s up to you to choose if that hole will be filled with pain, anger, and the eternal darkness of loss . . . Or if you will choose to fill it with light and love and have that hole shine out of you like a spotlight into your life, keeping their memory alive . . .{It’s up to you.}
She hoped that her baby was happy and would be waiting for her when she herself left Botswana and went to heaven. Would Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni get round to naming a wedding date before then? She hoped so, although he certainly seemed to be taking his time. Perhaps they could get married in heaven, if he left it too late. That would certainly be cheaper.
Colour outside the lines, live outside the box. Don’t let anyone tell you what to do, or not. Don’t be afraid, listen to your heart. Heaven is a state of being – of one-ness, and Hell is a state of being – lost. We simply need to live as we best define ourselves, find our own ways of being who we are in our world. There is no requirement - only freedom of choice. We should not be judged if we are doing what we think best according to our perceptions at any given time. Guilt should be discarded, moved beyond - what matters is who we choose to be in the next moment, given what we might have learned. We continually create ourselves anew. Forgiving someone is a great way to show love, and forgive yourself too for the hurt you held onto far too long. Take back the energy you have wasted on these things and reclaim your power to be your next best self. Honour the past but refresh, expand, renew, fulfill. Heaven is within us, always reachable.
The sun's rays have vision and give us vision. However, it is the birds' eyes and the two invisible angels by your side that record everything. Nothing goes unnoticed throughout the universe. Wherever there is a vibration, there are eyes and ears. Some energies don't need ears or vision to see or hear, they can feel what is in your heart and tap into all your sins and fears.
Every one of us can do something about the truth. You can at least stand for the truth wherever you are. You can refuse to compromise the truth. Of course you can tell the truth. Truth could be proclaimed. Truth could be protected. There are so many responses to the truth that would please the heart of our master. Heaven awaits only your decision
Every one of us can do something about the truth. You can at least stand for the truth wherever you are. You can refuse to compromise the truth. Of course you can tell the truth. Truth could be proclaimed. Truth could be protected. There are so many responses to the truth that would please the heart of our master. Heaven awaits only your decision.
While his body was left behind, his soul soared into the heavens. He did not pause at Celestia’s gates. No, that was not the true Celestial realm. Even as it floated among the skies and hosted its angelic ward, it was nothing more than a city. The place the Hallowed sought was beyond such petty creatures. He did not give it another passing glance as he ascended.
You are more than likely thinking by now that all of this sounds somewhat fanciful, perhaps over the top, all too complicated and even perhaps at times chaotic. It may seem so at first glance, but life here is a complex and intriguing happening, with never a dull moment to be had. And why should it not be so? “Death” as you have named it, is not the end of life. It is to us a birth back here once again to our side, to our true home. So it is a rebirth in a sense.
Have you ever been in a situation where you had to choose between your loved ones, knowing that whatever you decided, you would have to lie to one of them?’‘Yes. More than once.’ Elijah’s words sounded far too cold in the sudden silence. His finely chiselled face tensed up and his eyes grew cold. ‘And before you ask, I chose you every time.
Always look heavenward in any situation.Trust God to grant you the needed grace and strength to overcome the situation.
Faustus, who embraced evil and shunned righteousness, became the foremost symbol of the misuse of free will, that sublime gift from God with its inherent opportunity to choose virtue and reject iniquity. “What shall a man gain if he has the whole world and lose his soul,” (Matt. 16: v. 26) - but for a notorious name, the ethereal shadow of a career, and a brief life of fleeting pleasure with no true peace? This was the blackest and most captivating tragedy of all, few could have remained indifferent to the growing intrigue of this individual who apparently shook hands with the devil and freely chose to descend to the molten, sulphuric chasm of Hell for all eternity for so little in exchange. It is a drama that continues to fascinate today as powerfully as when Faustus first disseminated his infamous card in the Heidelberg locale to the scandal of his generation. In fine, a life of good or evil, the hope of Heaven or the despair of Hell, Faustus stands as a reminder that the choice between these two absolutes also falls to us.
As for the secularist belief that says 'if we were to eliminate all religions, the world would know peace,' this is the Atheist Heaven; thus it is so important to him (although perhaps more laughable than some say the Christian Heaven). It is about as useless as saying 'if all people were true Christians, the world would know peace,' or 'if all people were devout Muslims, the world would know peace.' And even yet, the secular dream could remain active only for a time before generational rebellion and freedom of thought were to kick in anew.
Why is it that people talk about death, as if it is a part of life, when it is entirely separate? Someone passes on into the never ending void, where the living aren't allowed. We can't see, hear, touch or feel those who have succumbed to the eternal sleep, but we comfort ourselves with thoughts of a grander plan. We tell ourselves that they are in a better place, but what could be greater than breathing the same air, as those loved ones? Their pain may be gone, but pleasure can only be when it is stark against the hurt that life brings?
My spiritual journey really started when I was a sophomore in High School. I came home from basketball practice one rainy evening and a friend of the family was waiting in the living room for me. He said he just wanted to talk to me for a minute or two. We went down stairs and he posed this question to me; “Michael, If you were to die tonight and to stand before God, why should He let you into heaven?
But books were full of stories and stories were full of lies and lies hurt Jesus's feelings, so I didn't know what to think. I blamed my family. They were the ones who taught me so much about telling stories, and how not to do it, and then, in inspired moments of surprise, how to tell one so good you forgot what day it was, and I liked forgetting what day it was, so I made certain life choices that would allow me to get paid to forget what day it was and teach others to forget what day it was, which is, after all, what I think heaven probably is: the whole world, forgetting what day it is. You have to, I bet, with an endless supply of them.
All roads out of hell lead home.
There is a strange intangible place on the outside edges of the human mind. It hangs there like a constant witness. It judges a person's every move, every thought and every action. Some people think it is “big brother” or God, but it is just a critical place inside the person’s own mind that judges and condemns. It is the very place where we judge ourselves when we cross Rainbow Bridge into Heaven.
Follow the path that leads to understanding. Only then, will you illuminate the way for others. Once you open your mind and gain knowledge, truth, you'll leave the darkness and enter into the light of wisdom.
Christians must show that misery fits the good for heaven, while happiness prepares the bad for hell; that the wicked get all their good things in this life, and the good all their evil; that in this world God punishes the people he loves, and in the next, the ones he hates; that happiness makes us bad here, but not in heaven; that pain makes us good here, but not in hell. No matter how absurd these things may appear to the carnal mind, they must be preached and they must be believed. If they were reasonable, there would be no virtue in believing. Even the publicans and sinners believe reasonable things. To believe without evidence, or in spite of it, is accounted as righteousness to the sincere and humble christian.In short, Christians are expected to denounce all pleasant paths and rustling trees, to curse the grass and flowers, and glorify the dust and weeds. They are expected to malign the wicked people in the green and happy fields, who sit and laugh beside the gurgling springs or climb the hills and wander as they will. They are expected to point out the dangers of freedom, the safety of implicit obedience, and to show the wickedness of philosophy, the goodness of faith, the immorality of science and the purity of ignorance.
If the Pentateuch be true, religious persecution is a duty. The dungeons of the Inquisition were temples, and the clank of every chain upon the limbs of heresy was music in the ear of God. If the Pentateuch was inspired, every heretic should be destroyed; and every man who advocates a fact inconsistent with the sacred book, should be consumed by sword and flame.In the Old Testament no one is told to reason with a heretic, and not one word is said about relying upon argument, upon education, nor upon intellectual development—nothing except simple brute force. Is there to-day a christian who will say that four thousand years ago, it was the duty of a husband to kill his wife if she differed with him upon the subject of religion? Is there one who will now say that, under such circumstances, the wife ought to have been killed? Why should God be so jealous of the wooden idols of the heathen? Could he not compete with Baal? Was he envious of the success of the Egyptian magicians? Was it not possible for him to make such a convincing display of his power as to silence forever the voice of unbelief? Did this God have to resort to force to make converts? Was he so ignorant of the structure of the human mind as to believe all honest doubt a crime? If he wished to do away with the idolatry of the Canaanites, why did he not appear to them? Why did he not give them the tables of the law? Why did he only make known his will to a few wandering savages in the desert of Sinai? Will some theologian have the kindness to answer these questions? Will some minister, who now believes in religious liberty, and eloquently denounces the intolerance of Catholicism, explain these things; will he tell us why he worships an intolerant God? Is a god who will burn a soul forever in another world, better than a christian who burns the body for a few hours in this? Is there no intellectual liberty in heaven? Do the angels all discuss questions on the same side? Are all the investigators in perdition? Will the penitent thief, winged and crowned, laugh at the honest folks in hell? Will the agony of the damned increase or decrease the happiness of God? Will there be, in the universe, an eternal auto da fe?
His eyes went again to the crucifix above his head, reflected in the mirror. The strained arms, the arched spine. All that effort to open the gates of heaven for us and we (he thought) probably spend out first hours among the heavenly hosts settling old scores with relatives.
The Bible tells us, "blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven", which means heaven that is the true world will become one's own when he discards his false mind completely.
Believe in yourselves as sons and daughters of God, men and women with unlimited potential to do good in the world. Believe in personal virtue. There is no substitute for it anywhere under the. heavens. Believe in your power to discipline yourselves against the evils which could destroy you. Believe in one another as the greatest generation ever yet to live upon the earth.
And the priests looked down into the pit of injustice and they turned their faces away and said, 'Our kingdom is not as the kingdom of this world. Our life on earth is but a pilgrimage. The soul lives on humility and patience,' at the same time screwing the poor from their last centime. They settled down among their treasures and ate and drank with princes and to the starving they said, 'Suffer. Suffer as he suffered on the cross for it is the will of God.'And anyone believes what they hear over and over again, so the poor instead of bread made do with a picture of the bleeding, scourged, and nailed-up Christ and prayed to that image of their helplessness. And the priests said, 'Raise your hands to heaven and bend your knees and bear your suffering without complaint. Pray for those that torture you, for prayer and blessing are the only stairways which you can climb to paradise.'And so they chained down the poor in their ignorance so that they wouldn't stand up and fight their bosses who ruled in the name of the lie of divine right.
i didn't choose dark , neither dark chose mei didn't choose lonely , neither lonely choose mei didn't choose pain , neither pain choose me i didn't choose to live in hell , neither hell chose mei'm thrown there and force to be in that and i cant oppose Because you can't oppose when Something God Do for you.And i keep that person near to my God i trusted and love Even more then God.
To love at a distance and without hope; never to possess; to dream chastely of pale charms and impossible kisses extinguished on the waxen brow of death: ah, that is something like it. A delicious straying away from the world, and never the return. As only the unreal is not ignoble and empty, existence must be admitted to be abominable. Yes, imagination is the only good thing which heaven vouchsafes to the skeptic and pessimist, alarmed by the eternal abjectness of life.
Come back to me.Where have you gone?And why so long?I miss the star below your lip,the constellation on your chest.I miss your ways,how you net butter-flying words and release themfor others to enjoy.I miss your tenderness,the sweetness of your breathand the song of your voice.I miss howyou worship me.Come back to me once more.Why did you go?And whatever for?The heavens plotted against us.The clouds came andpissed on our lives.The smell of charged particlesstill lingers in the air.What will become of you and I?Come back to us.
Young man, be of good courage. Care not for what the world says or thinks: you will not be with the world always. Can man save your soul? No. Will man be your judge in the great and dreadful day of account? No. Can man give you a good conscience in life, a good hope in death, a good answer in the morning of resurrection? No! no! no! Man can do nothing of the sort. Then "fear not the reproach of men, neither be afraid of their revilings: for the moth shall eat them up like a garment, and the worm shall eat them like wool" (Isa. 51:7,8). Call to your mind the saying of good Colonel Gardiner: "I fear God, and therefore I have none else to fear." Go and be like him.
A utopian system, when established by men, is likely to be synonymous with a dystopian depression. The only way for perfect peace by man is absolute control of all wrongs. Bully-cultures find this: with each and every mistake, another village idiot is shamed into nothingness and mindlessly shut down by the herd. This is a superficial peace made by force and by fear, one in which there is no freedom to breathe; and the reason it is impossible for man to maintain freedom and peace for everyone at the same time. Christ, on the other hand, transforms, instead of controls, by instilling his certain inner peace. This is the place where one realizes that only his holiness is and feels like true freedom, rather than like imprisonment, and, too, why Hell, I imagine, a magnified version of man's never-ending conflict between freedom and peace, would be the flesh's ultimate utopia - yet its ultimate regret.
We think that we are living when we walk upon the earth but the very moment we “die” there, we wake up here! This life on the other side of the Rainbow Bridge is the real one. We find that our life on earth was just a dream, a dream designed to lead us further and further into love. True love grows and then cannot be destroyed. It grows and grows until it is stronger than death.
It comes out from no source, it goes back in through no aperture. It has reality yet no place where it resides; it has duration yet no beginning or end. Something emerges, though through no aperture - this refers to the fact that it has reality. It has reality yet there is no place where it resides - this refers to the dimension of space. It has duration but no beginning or end - this refers to the dimension of time. There is life, there is death, there is a coming out, there is a going back in - yet in the coming out and going back its form is never seen. This is called the Heavenly Gate. The Heavenly Gate is nonbeing. The ten thousand things come forth from nonbeing. Being cannot create being out of being; inevitably it must come forth from nonbeing. Nonbeing is absolute nonbeing, and it is here that the sage hides himself.
I hope you're at peace. I hope you... I hope you're in heaven, and you fell in love with someone who treats you better than I ever did, and that they're fucking your brains out and then fucking your brains back in after that on a daily basis. I'll always miss you, Lucille. I'm sorry I named a fucking baseball bat after you.
And yet all loneliness, angers, hatreds, envies, and itchings that (Hell) contains, if rolled into one single experience and put into the scale against the least moment of the joy that is felt by the least in Heaven, would have no weight that could be registered at all. Bad cannot succeed even in being bad as truly as good is good.
As much as what I can think of life, it is more of a poetic journey with emotions & experience packed up in the form of livelihood. When it starts, it brings confirmation of a new soul entering into the world. But when it ends, it takes away not just soul, but happiness of those related to that life. It’s in the middle of this journey that the best poems get their sequence of words.
I Love You! Three words that mean nothing if not followed through with actions. It seems to be more relevant in the terms of showing verses saying. Anyone can say it, because there are different kinds of love. But, few are willing to actually show it. Saying is one thing. Living proof is another.
Happiness gives you the freedom to enhance your ability to achieve success. Your choices in life are a direct reflection of your level of happiness. It's the sunshine for your soul that you need in order to grow
Heaven is not heaven without Christ. It is better to be in any place with Christ than to be in heaven itself without him. All delicacies without Christ are but as a funeral banquet. Where the master of the feast is away, there is nothing but solemnness. What is all without Christ? I say the joys of heaven are not the joys of heaven without Christ; he is the very heaven of heaven.
A godly man in the midst of the waves and storms that he meets with can see the glory of heaven before him and so contents himself. One drop of the sweetness of heaven is enough to take away all the sourness and bitterness of all the afflictions in the world. We know that one drop of sourness, or one drop of gall will make bitter a great deal of it; but if you put a spoonful of gall into a cup of sugar, it will embitter that. Now it is otherwise in heaven: one drop of sweetness will sweeten a great deal of sour affliction, but a great deal of sourness and gall will not embitter a soul who sees the glory of heaven that is to come.
Dance,' they told me, and I stood still,and while I stood quiet in line at the gate of the Kingdom, I danced.'Pray,' they said, and I laughed,covering myself in the earth's brightnesses,and then stole off gray into the midst of a revel,and prayed like an orphan.
What a shame it would be, if upon death, one who lived his life following his religion, were to find out that there is no Heaven and no Hell and that all souls just go out and back to the places where they came from, finally free from the monsters that hung onto their backs while they were in this world! And what a shame it would be, if upon death, one who lived life with no thought of her own soul, were to find out that some souls go to some place wonderful and some souls go to some place horrible! But what a shame it would be, for anyone, to live a life here on this Earth full of fear, void of freedom and happiness, meaningless and empty, due to either the probability of Heaven and Hell or the absence thereof! So what is really true, is that you and I have bones in our bodies and have flesh under our skin and we ought to live this life right here in such a way that creates Heaven on Earth and puts Hell far away.
Some skeptics believe religious people are religious because they fear Hell. It's about as fair as saying skeptics are skeptics because they fear the ridicule of modern society.
Law reflects but in no sense determines the moral worth of a society. The values of a reasonably just society will reflect themselves in a reasonably just law. The better the society, the less law there will be. In heaven there will be no law, and the lion shall lie down with the lamb. The values of an unjust society will reflect themselves in an unjust law. The worse the society, the more law there will be. In hell there will be nothing but law, and due process will be meticulously observed.
It’s weird like, you can see the cruelest part of the world. The cruelest part. But then on the other side you see the most beautiful part, do you know? And it’s like you go from one extreme to the next and they’re both worth it, because you wouldn’t see one without the other. But that cruel part, is damn cruel and you’ll never forget it. But that heaven…is heaven.
I have drunk the night and swallowed the stars. I am dancing with abandon and singing with rapture. There is not a thing I do not love. There is not a person I have not forgiven. I feel a universe of love. I feel a universe of light. Tonight, I am with old friends and we are returning home. The moon is our witness.
Now I knew that life and truth were one; that life mere and pure is in itself bliss; that where being is not bliss, it is not life, but life-in-death. Every inspiration of the dark wind that blew where it listed went out a sigh of thanksgiving. At last I was! I lived, and nothing could touch my life! My darling walked beside me, and we were on our way home to see the Father!
Our Master can see it all. If you drive down a long curvy road, you don’t see the twists and turns until you are on top of them. But when you see things from a much higher perspective, you can see the whole road and the twists and the turns and the beginning and the end. In Heaven we can see where you are in relation to where you’re going and we can make things happen along the way at the intersections of life. We can create the right time and the right place and we can already see how it all ends. We can see the whole story of your life while you are living it in little bits and pieces.
The consequence model, the logical one, the amoral one, the one which refuses any divine intervention, is a problem really for just the (hypothetical) logician. You see, towards God I would rather be grateful for Heaven (which I do not deserve) than angry about Hell (which I do deserve). By this the logician within must choose either atheism or theism, but he cannot possibly through good reason choose anti-theism. For his friend in this case is not at all mathematical law: the law in that 'this equation, this path will consequently direct me to a specific point'; over the alternative and the one he denies, 'God will send me wherever and do it strictly for his own sovereign amusement.' The consequence model, the former, seeks the absence of God, which orders he cannot save one from one's inevitable consequences; hence the angry anti-theist within, 'the logical one', the one who wants to be master of his own fate, can only contradict himself - I do not think it wise to be angry at math.
A writer reports on the universe. When he presents his credentials, the gates of heaven and hell are equally opened to him. He can hear the devil’s defense and god’s accusations. The guards at the king’s heart let him in. The writer can be anything and any one he wants. When he writes he is a god, he creates.
Who do people say the Son of Man is? ...But what about you? Who do you say I am?' (Mt 16:13,15). In the end, people's answer to this question will be the only thing that matters; it alone will determine people's eternal destiny.
In the past the need for a hierarchal form of society has been the doctrine specifically of the High. It had been preached by kings and aristocrats and the priests, lawyers and the like who were parasitical upon them, and it had generally been softened by promises of an imaginary world beyond the grave.
Every time someone reaches out to you, even if it's to point out your sin and they seem to be judging you, it is a token of God's mercy. He sees the past, present, and future. He knows that you're headed for an eternity of pain and sorrow and He's begging you to turn to Him for salvation. Jesus is the only way to Heaven: the Way, the Truth, and the Life. He is your only hope. He is your Creator and He loves you more than you could ever love yourself. Please turn to Him. Please don't be deceived into thinking your way is better than His. God's way is perfect.
I believe God himself will someday debate with and answer every objection arrogant men can come up with against him; I believe he will humble us and humor himself. Know-it-alls, pseudo-intellectuals, militant anti-theists, for Christ's sake, or rather their own sake, best beware of getting roasted by their own medicine. Ah! Our delusions of trying to argue against an omniscient Creator.
Embracing doubt is sometimes threatening, as we fear losing our faith if we explore our doubts. Following that thought, if one loses one’s faith, then as some religions dictate, that individual cannot enter heaven. Since heaven is the reward of an earthly existence, doubt becomes the enemy of this reward.
It appears now to be universally admitted that, before the exile, the Israelites had no belief in rewards and punishments after death, nor in anything similar to the Christian heaven and hell; but our story proves that it would be an error to suppose that they did not believe in the continuance of individual existence after death by a ghostly simulacrum of life. Nay, I think it would be very hard to produce conclusive evidence that they disbelieved in immortality; for I am not aware that there is anything to show that they thought the existence of the souls of the dead in Sheol ever came to an end. But they do not seem to have conceived that the condition of the souls in Sheol was in any way affected by their conduct in life. If there was immortality, there was no state of retribution in their theology. Samuel expects Saul and his sons to come to him in Sheol.
No parent should have to bury a child ... No mother should have to bury a son. Mothers are not meant to bury sons. It is not in the natural order of things.I buried my son. In a potter's field. In a field of Blood. In empty, acrid silence. There was no funeral. There were no mourners. His friends all absent. His father dead. His sisters refusing to attend. I discovered his body alone, I dug his grave alone, I placed him in a hole, and covered him with dirt and rock alone. I was not able to finish burying him before sundown, and I'm not sure if that affected his fate ...I begrudge God none of this. I do not curse him or bemoan my lot. And though my heart keeps beating only to keep breaking--I do not question why.I remember the morning my son was born as if it was yesterday. The moment the midwife placed him in my arms, I was infused with a love beyond all measure and understanding. I remember holding my son, and looking over at my own mother and saying, "Now I understand why the sun comes up at day and the stars come out at night. I understand why rain falls gently. Now I understand you, Mother" ...I loved my son every day of his life, and I will love him ferociously long after I've stopped breathing. I am a simple woman. I am not bright or learn-ed. I do not read. I do not write. My opinions are not solicited. My voice is not important ... On the day of my son's birth I was infused with a love beyond all measure and understanding ... The world tells me that God is in Heaven and that my son is in Hell. I tell the world the one true thing I know: If my son is in Hell, then there is no Heaven--because if my son sits in Hell, there is no God.
You may have noticed that the books you really love are bound together by a secret thread. You know very well what is the common quality that makes you love them, though you cannot put it into words: but most of your friends do not see it at all, and often wonder why, liking this, you should also like that. Again, you have stood before some landscape, which seems to embody what you have been looking for all your life; and then turned to the friend at your side who appears to be seeing what you saw -- but at the first words a gulf yawns between you, and you realise that this landscape means something totally different to him, that he is pursuing an alien vision and cares nothing for the ineffable suggestion by which you are transported. Even in your hobbies, has there not always been some secret attraction which the others are curiously ignorant of -- something, not to be identified with, but always on the verge of breaking through, the smell of cut wood in the workshop or the clap-clap of water against the boat's side? Are not all lifelong friendships born at the moment when at last you meet another human being who has some inkling (but faint and uncertain even in the best) of that something which you were born desiring, and which, beneath the flux of other desires and in all the momentary silences between the louder passions, night and day, year by year, from childhood to old age, you are looking for, watching for, listening for? You have never had it. All the things that have ever deeply possessed your soul have been but hints of it -- tantalising glimpses, promises never quite fulfilled, echoes that died away just as they caught your ear. But if it should really become manifest -- if there ever came an echo that did not die away but swelled into the sound itself -- you would know it. Beyond all possibility of doubt you would say "Here at last is the thing I was made for". We cannot tell each other about it. It is the secret signature of each soul, the incommunicable and unappeasable want, the thing we desired before we met our wives or made our friends or chose our work, and which we shall still desire on our deathbeds, when the mind no longer knows wife or friend or work. While we are, this is. If we lose this, we lose all.
The desire for glory is no different from that instinct for preservation that is common to all creatures. It is as if we enhance our being if we can gain a place in the memory of others; it is a new life that we acquire, which becomes as precious to us as the one we received from Heaven.
The only thing I can recall is that it rained all day and all night, and that when I asked my father whether heaven was crying, he couldn't bring himself to reply. Six years later my mother's absence remained in the air around us, a deafening silence that I had not yet learned to stifle with words.
…Do you think there’s somewhere else, some other place to go after this one?” Mandy blurted out.“You mean when you die, where will you end up?” Alecto asked her. “…I wouldn’t know… back to whatever void there is, I suppose.”“I’ve thought about it… every living thing dies alone, it’ll be lonely after death,” Mandy sighed sadly. “That freaks me out, does it scare you?”“I don't want to be alone,” Alecto replied wearily. “We won’t be, though. We’ll be dead, so we’ll just be darkness, not much else, just memories, nostalgia and darkness.”“I don’t want to be any of that either though,” Mandy exclaimed, bursting into tears and crying, keeping her eyes to the floor, her voice shaky as she spoke to him. “When we die, we’ll still be nothing, the world will still be nothing, everything’ll just be nothing!”“You’re real though, at least that’s something,” Alecto pointed out, holding his hand out in front of her. Smiling miserably, Mandy took his hand in her own and sat there beside him quietly.
I had great Reason to consider it as a Determination of Heaven, that in this desolate Place, and in this desolate Manner I should end my life; the Tears would run plentifully down my Face when I made these Reflections, and sometimes I would expostulate with myself, Why Providence should thus compleately ruine its Creatures, and render them so absolutely miserable, so without Help abandon'd, so entirely depress'd, that it could be hardly rational to be thankful for such a Life.
Hunter’s entire body writhed and squirmed.The side of his head was partly gone. A creature, like some monstrous melding of insect and eel, protruded from Hunter’s shoulder and as they stood there rooted in horror it took a vicious bite of Hunter’s flesh.Taylor was suddenly gone.Dekka’s face was grim, her eyes wet.“I tried . . . ,” Hunter said. He held up his hands, mimicked pressing them against his head. “It didn’t work.”“I can do it,” Sam said softly.“I’m scared,” Hunter said.“I know.”“It’s ’cause I killed Harry. God has to punish me. I tried to be good but I’m bad.”“No, Hunter,” Sam said gently. “You paid your dues. You fed the kids. You’re a good guy.”“I’m a good hunter.”“The best.”“I don’t know what’s happening. What’s happening, Sam?”“It’s just the FAYZ, Hunter,” Sam said.“Can the angels find me here so I can go to heaven?”Sam didn’t answer. It was Dekka who spoke. “Do you still remember any prayers, Hunter?”The insectlike creature was almost completely emerged from Hunter’s shoulder. Legs were becoming visible. It had wings folded against its body. It looked like a gigantic ant, or wasp, but silver and brass and covered with a sheen of slime.It was emerging like a chicken breaking out of an egg. Being born. And as the creature was born, it fed on Hunter’s numbed body.Jerky movements beneath Hunter’s shirt testified to more of the larvae emerging.“Do you remember ‘now I lay me down to sleep’?” Dekka asked.“Now I lay me down to sleep,” Hunter said. “I pray the Lord my soul to keep.”Sam raised his hands, palms out.“If I should die—”Twin beams of light hit Hunter’s chest and face. His shirt caught fire. Flesh melted. He was dead before he could feel anything.Sam played the light up and down Hunter’s body. The smell was sickening. Jack wanted to look away, but how could he?Sudden darkness as Sam terminated the light.Sam lowered his hands to his side.They stood there in the darkness. Jack breathed through his mouth, trying not to smell the burned flesh.Then they heard a sound. Many sounds.Sam raised his hands and pale light glowed.Hunter was all but gone.The things that had been inside him were still there.
And why had those prayers been focused heavenward? Well, it kind of made sense, didn't it? Even when there were no more options for the body, the heart's wishes find a way out, and as with all warmth, love rises. Besides, the will to fly was in the nature of the soul, so its home had to be up above.
Wealth earned may disappear, beauty will fade, honor may recede and fame diminish; all that shall remain, is a soul that is humane within that would leave a trail in the thoughts of your loved ones;And even if that fails,your God in heaven above will never fail you or fail to rejoice in a life you've managed to live worthy of His praise.
Do You Know That By Just Saying "I WANNA DIE" Or "I WISH I COULD DIE" ...God Can Answer That Prayer???You Will Be Cancelled In The Book Of Life And At Heaven You Will Be Dead, But You Will Just Be Walking On Earth Waiting To Go To Hell. Thats What Most People Call HELL OF A LIFE... A Life Of Someone Who Is Not Written In The Book Of Life.So People Stop Playing With Those Words.And If You Once Said That, PRAY TONIGHT SO THAT GOD RE-WRITES YOU IN THE BOOK OF LIFE.
A worshipper perceives that he is near to God because he is awake all night worshipping God. But after worship, your prayers are for health, long life, wealth, and for the damsels and slaves of the Paradise. Ponder! Did you ever pray to God, ‘O’ God, I desire from Thee nothing but Thee’?
I feel the reason we are all here, our purpose of being, is to help others find their little piece of happiness and heaven right here on earth...
Atheism rises above creeds and puts Humanity upon one plane.There can be no 'chosen people' in the Atheist philosophy.There are no bended knees in Atheism;No supplications, no prayers;No sacrificial redemptions;No 'divine' revelations;No washing in the blood of the lamb;No crusades, no massacres, no holy wars;No heaven, no hell, no purgatory;No silly rewards and no vindictive punishments;No christs, and no saviors;No devils, no ghosts and no gods.
Here is to all the brilliant minds that love deeply, for they write the stories that make us dream of true love. Here is to all the visionaries that create a miracle when others give up hope. Here is to all the artists, musicians, actors, singers, songwriters, dancers, screenwriters, philosophers, inventors and poetic hearts that create a perspective of heaven we can experience in this lifetime. But most of all, here is to the wild souls that the world calls broken, insane, abnormal, weird or different because they are the ones that renew our faith, by what they overcome and create, in a world that needs a sign that God doesn’t forget the least of us.
He gazed up at the blue sky and knew that heaven—at least in this life—was neither a time nor a placeto be grasped and made into a possession. It came in fleeting moments and then went away again toleave one nostalgic and yearning and on the verge of tears.Very much on the verge of tears.And very frightened.
Who says you cannot hold the moon in your hand?Tonight when the stars come out and the moon rises in the velvet sky, look outside your window, then raise your hand and position your fingers around the disk of light.There you go . . . That was easy!
In the radiance of His light the world is not commonplace. The very floor we stand on is a miracle of atoms whizzing about in space. The darkness of sin is clarified, and its burden shouldered. Death is robbed of its finality, trampled down by Christ's death. In a world where everything that seems to be present is immediately past, everything in Christ is able to participate in the eternal present of God.
The boy knelt, shoulders bowed, on the sand in the grey of morning, moaning softly, fearfully. Glowing tendrils of energy streamed across the agitated sky, converging high above him in a vortex of brightness. He flung his hands heavenward and a sheet of blinding brilliance descended from the vortex. It enveloped him and from its core a pulsing sphere of light fell, entering his body and almost tearing him apart. He went rigid, screaming to shatter the heavens, his dark eyes bulging from their sockets, his mouth wide in a rictus of agony. Sirius exploded in a burst of silver-blue radiance, as his howl rose to a shriek beyond hearing and endurance. Out of the light and the sound and the anguish, two names imprinted themselves on his mind. One of them, he knew, was his own. The other floated for an instant above his consciousness like a fugitive white dove in the morning.
Through the Mud (from the book Blue Bridge)A line of robots,We approach a wall of mud,Some of us carrying flowers.The others laughBit when we enter that wallIt is the flowersThat will make us an arkTo carry us on through the darkness,Sailing throughWith our symbols the only lightUntil we flyOut over the fieldsOn the other side of midnightAnd all our wires And bits of metal fall off.-And our souls are bright again,So new and lightThey shoot up –Up to plant our brilliant flowersLike starsIn the face of heaven.
SUN, MOON, AND STARRY SKYEarly summer evenings, when the first stars come out, the warm glow of sunset still stains the rim of the western sky.Sometimes, the moon is also visible, a pale white slice, while the sun tarries.Just think -- all the celestial lights are present at the same time!These are moments of wonder -- see them and remember.
For those of you out there today who have already been through hard times and are desperate for a word of encouragement, let me assure you that you can trust this Lord of heaven and earth. Remember that Scripture warns us to “lean not on your own understanding” (Proverbs 3:5).
Live in the Godliness.Our immature, ignorant and egoistic death as an earthly human identity is a setback to our own mankind, if a revolution in higher consciousness is not reached or achieved to unite &dissolve in the Supreme Power, our Creator - God, Lord, Allah, Bhagwan, my holy godfathers, the Omnipresence...Author(My name or yours doesn’t matter, we all are mere drops in the ocean of divine consciousness, an extension of Supreme Power).
Believe in the sacred word of God, the Holy Bible, with its treasury of inspiration and sacred truth; in the Book of Mormon as a testimony of the living Christ. Believe in the Church as the organization which the God of Heaven established for the blessing of His sons and daughters of all generations of time.
We must experience Heaven on earth;May your homes, surroundings and work places portray a safe clean environment.
Now we come to forgiveness. Don't worry about forgiving me right now. There are more important things. For instance: keep the others safe, if they are safe. Don't let them suffer too much. If they have to die, let it be fast. You might even provide a Heaven for them. We need You for that. Hell we can make for ourselves.
Intentionally or involuntarily, your earthly and spiritual fathers will lead you the perfect Father. You might not recognize it, but even when they fail, they create the perfect scenario for you to run into your Heavenly Daddy’s arms. When they reject you, He will receive you. When they fail at meeting you, He will open up His schedule. When they miscommunicate with you, He will share His heart of love for you and, His heart of love for them.
A dying man asked a dying man for eternal life; a man without possessions asked a poor man for a Kingdom; a thief at the door of death asked to die like a thief and steal Paradise. One would have thought a saint would have been the first soul purchased over the counter of Calvary by the red coins of Redemption, but in the Divine plan it was a thief who was the escort of the King of kings into Paradise. If Our Lord had come merely as a teacher, the thief would never have asked for forgiveness. But since the thief's request touched the reason of His coming to earth, namely, to save souls, the thief heard the immediate answer:'I promise thee, this day thou shalt beWith Me in Paradise'(Luke 23:43)It was the thief's last prayer, perhaps even his first. He knocked once, sought once, asked once, dared everything, and found everything. When even the disciples were doubting and only one was present at the Cross, the thief owned and acknowledged Him as Saviour.
Simply having the courage to say senseless things made me euphoric. I was free, with no need to seek or to give explanations for what I was doing. This freedom lifted me to the heavens - where greater love, one that forgives everything and never allows you to feel abandoned, once again enveloped me.
I have seen enough, too, to know that it is not always the youngest and best who are spared to those that love them; but this should give us comfort rather than sorrow, for Heaven is just, and such things teach us impressively that there is a far brighter world than this, and that the passage to it is speedy.
The truest form of love is where you are able to put your own needs aside to do what is best for the one you love. If you could know where I am now and if you love as you say you do, you would never ever wish me back from the love and the comfort and the bliss of where I am and where I wait for you.
Sometimes a tragedy must happen to keep a soul on schedule. This is the reason for things that seem to have no reason. This is the reason that we cannot fathom when we are going through it.Perhaps I will get very sick. People wonder why cancer exists when it is just a clever method to teach people lessons about love and loss. It borrows time or steals it depending on the needs of Heaven. It is a vehicle to get us where we need to be. It calls us home because something needs us there.
You don't even have a cross," he said. His beloved was silent. "You don't even have any candles, no face of Christ, no tears. What can I say?"Then she began to murmur and he was astonished."I'm sorry. I will believe in the eternity of souls, I am bereaved. I will see those places where death talks solemnly to the years, where the breakers roll over their sins and their regrets, where the valley of Heaven lies before the crag of immortality, and I will believe my mother has gained peace. I have lost her. Has anyone felt such terrible grief, known that for all earthly time the eyes shall never see, the heart never beat except with her shadow? What an unhappy loss, the candles are gutted, and the face wanes for this immortality. I have lost my mother."This was her only glimpse of Heaven, and she wept so much that he was afraid. Finally she held his hand. The two brothers fired the cannon at the burial.
On the seventh day of the Seventh-month, in the Palace of Long Life,We told each other secretly in the quiet midnight worldThat we wished to fly in heaven, two birds with the wings of one,And to grow together on the earth, two branches of one tree."Earth endures, heaven endures; some time both shall end,While this unending sorrow goes on and on for ever.
Remembering that only a few years ago men, women, and even children, were imprisoned, tortured and burned, for having expressed in an exceedingly mild and gentle way, the ideas entertained by me, I congratulate myself that calumny is now the pulpit's last resort. The old instruments of torture are kept only to gratify curiosity; the chains are rusting away, and the demolition of time has allowed even the dungeons of the Inquisition to be visited by light. The church, impotent and malicious, regrets, not the abuse, but the loss of her power, and seeks to hold by falsehood what she gained by cruelty and force, by fire and fear. Christianity cannot live in peace with any other form of faith. If that religion be true, there is but one savior, one inspired book, and but one little narrow grass-grown path that leads to heaven. Such a religion is necessarily uncompromising, unreasoning, aggressive and insolent. Christianity has held all other creeds and forms in infinite contempt, divided the world into enemies and friends, and verified the awful declaration of its founder—a declaration that wet with blood the sword he came to bring, and made the horizon of a thousand years lurid with the fagots' flames.
What is so sweet as to awake from a troubled dream and behold a beloved face smiling upon you? I love to believe that such shall be our awakening from earth to heaven. My faith never wavers that each dear friend I have “lost” is a new link between this world and the happier land beyond the morn. My soul is for the moment bowed down with grief when I cease to feel the touch of their hands or hear a tender word from them; but the light of faith never fades from the sky, and I take heart again, glad they are free. I cannot understand why anyone should fear death…Suppose there are a million chances against that one that my loved ones who have gone on are alive. What of it? I will take that one chance and risk mistake, rather than let any doubts sadden their souls, and find out afterward. Since there is that one chance of immortality, I will endeavor not to cast a shadow on the joy of the departed…Certainly it is one of our sweetest experiences that when we are touched by some noble affection or pure joy, we remember the dead most tenderly, and feel more powerfully drawn to them.
Death will paint everything a different shade of remorse. You’ll feel guilty that you’re still breathing. But you can’t stop.You’ll feel guilty for wanting to laugh again. And it will be awful the first time that you do. You’ll feel guilty for just about everything at first.And someday, at some point, you’ll start to feel guilty . . . for forgetting to feel guilty.But of all Heaven’s lessons, guilt isn’t one of them. You don’t need to hold on to it. It doesn’t need to be a practice and it shouldn’t be your life. Heaven would never approve of your guilt.Because Heaven has no regrets.
The kindness sent from one compassionate soul to another during the time of loss of one held so dear allows the sorrow-filled heart to open wide, filling the space of emptiness that grief may have created with a renewed sense of peace, compassion, and love.
By infusing Jesus the man with the divine magic – by making him capable of earthly miracles as well as his own resurrection, the early church turned him into a god within the human world. Thus, the church reinforced the monopoly on the so-called route to heaven, i.e. salvation only through Jesus Christ. And during those days, whoever kept the keys to heaven would rule the world.
The flowers are so beautiful, but God's love is infinitely stronger for us than the beauty of ALL flowers and all beautiful things combined!
I feel the reason we are all here, our purpose of being, is to help others find their little piece of happiness and heaven right here on earth.
I'm selling Jarod's life today. I mean virginity. He has no life. Email admin@allthegoodonesarealreadytaken.com for more information and please try to catch our special delivery at double-price deals, which will be posted somewhere on the internet at random, every other Tuesday, for half a night (on the previous day), unless it’s a Saturday, in which case you’ll have to wait and hope until the destined day comes and takes you away to heaven, which unfortunately, does not exist, except in the imagination of carefully selected individuals.
And once their imaginations are liberated, they begin glimpse the grand interconnectedness of all things. Eternity begins to peek out from behind the everyday things and they see the trappings of any earthly moment as the stage and props for Heaven to reveal itself. There is now nothing ordinary. Everything is being used and spun out for His vast scheme and in His eternal economy, nothing is wasted. Suddenly, all the myriad moments and minutiae of a lifetime show their orchestration —there was nothing that did not lead to this! They look over all their time to find that His redemption has always been rushing, swooping, swerving through their experience, racing to and fro to intervene and infuse Grace.
People will say,"there's heaven and hell", and they take it so serious that they look so sorrowful with penitence. I would rather ask them to show me the route that leads to heaven or hell.
But there you put your finger on what it is that separates the sheep from the goats, and vice versa: imagination. Those who possess it have an afterlife; those who don't possess it, or in whom it has greatly atrophied, are reborn as plants or animals. It's as simple, and unfair, as that. You could almost say that heaven is no more than a fantasm generated by the excess energies of the pooled imaginations of the blessed.
THE ORGANIC FOODS MYTHA few decades ago, a woman tried to sue a butter company that had printed the word 'LITE' on its product's packaging. She claimed to have gained so much weight from eating the butter, even though it was labeled as being 'LITE'. In court, the lawyer representing the butter company simply held up the container of butter and said to the judge, "My client did not lie. The container is indeed 'light in weight'. The woman lost the case.In a marketing class in college, we were assigned this case study to show us that 'puffery' is legal. This means that you can deceptively use words with double meanings to sell a product, even though they could mislead customers into thinking your words mean something different. I am using this example to touch upon the myth of organic foods. If I was a lawyer representing a company that had labeled its oranges as being organic, and a man was suing my client because he found out that the oranges were being sprayed with toxins, my defense opening statement would be very simple: "If it's not plastic or metallic, it's organic."Most products labeled as being organic are not really organic. This is the truth. You pay premium prices for products you think are grown without chemicals, but most products are. If an apple is labeled as being organic, it could mean two things. Either the apple tree itself is free from chemicals, or just the soil. One or the other, but rarely both. The truth is, the word 'organic' can mean many things, and taking a farmer to court would be difficult if you found out his fruits were indeed sprayed with pesticides. After all, all organisms on earth are scientifically labeled as being organic, unless they are made of plastic or metal. The word 'organic' comes from the word 'organism', meaning something that is, or once was, living and breathing air, water and sunlight.So, the next time you stroll through your local supermarket and see brown pears that are labeled as being organic, know that they could have been third-rate fare sourced from the last day of a weekend market, and have been re-labeled to be sold to a gullible crowd for a premium price. I have a friend who thinks that organic foods have to look beat up and deformed because the use of chemicals is what makes them look perfect and flawless. This is not true. Chemical-free foods can look perfect if grown in your backyard. If you go to jungles or forests untouched by man, you will see fruit and vegetables that look like they sprouted from trees from Heaven. So be cautious the next time you buy anything labeled as 'organic'. Unless you personally know the farmer or the company selling the products, don't trust what you read. You, me, and everything on land and sea are organic.Suzy Kassem,Truth Is Crying
People who chase money without chasing any good reason for it are always brought down by the money they chase. Yes! If God gives you a gift, he adds it's manual that contains how to use it to it. However, if you chase something without receiving any authority from above, you will be tempted to throw it away because you can't find any good manual for it; Go, ask Judas Iscariot. He has more to say!
There’s something about the amount of time that has gone by that makes her feel like a survivor. There’s something in the way that following her heart, despite it being perpetually broken, has made her feel like a success. And something about letting go of pain and letting love in has made her feel happy again.
Love in this life is expanded by our anticipation of the next life. Those who love under God are never satisfied with small love, or love bound by the flaws of human emotion. Those who love under God dream of another life where they can experience it and live it in God's perfect form, so they seek to build it in this life as much as possible.
The last slide is Main Street at night, with the castle lit silver blue in the background. In the sky, fireworks are going off, cresting, cracking open the darkness, shooting long tendrils of colored light down to the buildings, way longer than I’ve ever seen for fireworks… I linger on this slide. I study that blue castle and those fireworks and realize that this is the image I’ve had in my head of Disneyland for all these years. Just like the beginning of the Wonderful World of Disney TV show. Maybe that’s why I wanted to head here this time. I know it’s ridiculous, but part of me wants to think that the world after this one could look like that.Like I said before, I stopped having notions about religion and heaven long ago—angels and harps and clouds and all that malarkey. Yet some silly, childish side of me still wants to believe in something like this. A gleaming world of energy and light, where nothing is quite the same color as it is on earth—everything bluer, greener, redder. Or maybe we just become the colors, that light spilling from the sky over the castle. Perhaps it would be somewhere we’ve already been, the place we were before we were born, so dying is simply a return. I guess is that were true then somehow we’d remember it. Maybe that’s what I’m doing with this whole trip—looking for somewhere that I remember, deep in some crevice of my soul. Who knows? Maybe Disneyland is heaven. Isn’t that the damnedest, craziest thing you’ve ever heard? Must be the dope talking.(pp.253-254)
Jesus's resurrection is the beginning of God's new project not to snatch people away from earth to heaven but to colonize earth with the life of heaven. That, after all, is what the Lord's Prayer is about.
Part of the treasure in heaven that Jesus talks about is the feeling of purpose and satisfaction a person has when they know they are performing the will of God. Those who put themselves and money first often complain about life feeling empty and meaningless. Jesus pays those who serve him with meaning and spiritual abundance in their lives and hearts instead of money.
Because of Jesus’ supposed predestination, God would have had to choose the people who would kill and betray his son, choose the method by which he would be killed (crucifixion), and the time at which the event would occur. Those guilty of killing Jesus would therefore be simply carrying out God’s wishes without the free will to have chosen a path for themselves.
The telescope destroyed the firmament, did away with the heaven of the New Testament, rendered the ascension of our Lord and the assumption of his Mother infinitely absurd, crumbled to chaos the gates and palaces of the New Jerusalem, and in their places gave to man a wilderness of worlds.
Choosing one thing over another doesn't necessarily mean we love the thing we choose. If given the choice to eat spinach or broccoli, you may choose broccoli. It may only mean you don't want to eat spinach. Heaven is not for people who just want to skip Hell. Heaven is reserved for those who love Jesus, who have been rescued by Him and who long to praise Him. If someone doesn't have much use for praising Him now, it's foolish to think they're ready for Heaven.
Jesus was stoned, but no rock hit him. He slipped into the crowd and was found later teaching on a hill somewhere. History tells us that he did nothing wrong, and we sacrificed him anyway. The day my father died, I assured him he was headed for heaven, though I had a hard time believing in something that floated so aimlessly through the minds of children. The concept seemed fair and unfair in such equal amounts that it appeared to cancel itself out. I’d never met someone so deserving of eternal bliss, yet from the time I was a child I was taught we all deserve hell. I wondered if heaven existed at all. But I wanted everlasting life to be real for the man who let me lie on his chest on a hammock in the backyard and taught me not to fear thunder. One of the many things my father taught me not to fear. His breaths were labored and aided by machines. He wore a white hospital gown. I remember thinking, “I can’t believe my father’s going to die in a gown.” “Are you afraid?” I asked.“Not at all,” he strained. “I’m going to be with the Lord.”I wished I shared his confidence. For him, it was a priceless thing no one could take. I wished the fear of death was like the fear of a passing storm cloud—something we outgrow with understanding. For men like my dad, I guess it was.
We read about the name Jesus was given at his birth; Immanuel, meaning “God with us”. This God wasn’t content with dwelling in fiction, this God wasn’t content living with the seraphim and this God wasn’t content with bulls and goats anymore. This God wanted to dwell with you, with all of your mess, with all of your failures with all the dirtiness that is you; he wanted to sit with you. Here’s the amazing thing, God doesn’t care if you’re a catholic, a Lutheran, Post modern or Emergent; he wants to sit with you.
The Bible says that each person is a sinner and everyone is wicked in the sight of God. God cannot allow sin into Heaven, so we must get rid of our sin somehow. If we don’t, then we have no hope of Heaven.”Jesus is the only one who can take our sins away. The Bible says that God is not willing that any should perish but that all should come to repentance. Jesus came down from Heaven and died on the cross for our sins.
Intellectualism is a poor master over passion
Like many others who have gone into prisons and jails with us, Chuck and Carol Middlekauff demonstrate what our ministry is all about. We train Christian ‘teammates’ to share the good news and love of Christ with ‘the least of these’ so they can continue to do it with others they encounter as they go along. In this book, Carol has written the stories of some of those encounters so you can appreciate how easy it is to tell people about Jesus. It happens when you realize God does all the work, and all you have to do is show up. I hope you will be encouraged by reading the book and then join us soon for a Weekend of Champions to find out for yourself.”Bill Glass, retired NFL all-pro defensive end, evangelist, founder of Bill Glass Champions for Life prison ministries, and author of numerous books, including The Healing Power of a Father’s Blessing and Blitzed by Blessings
To be good, is to be like God. Our purpose in life is to try and reach that standard. We will always fall short, but in our lifetime if we try our best to make a world where everyone is treated equally with respect, empathy, and compassion, the big payoff is that we will be rewarded with that exact thing in Heaven.
You are funny like a kid and awesome like a princessUnseen like an angel, like the morning sunshine… Kindness like a river and highness like a mountain, In the middle of the Rheine, the cute face and sweet lips …(La la la la, La la , mmmm , mm …)Keep the lovely smile, in your juicy icy eyes Open the heaven for my eyes, forever angel voice Never angry never harsh, never mad never marsh Dear or darling, either diamond or dime, Overall the dream of the world
Roots cannot grow into trees if there are no supernatural elements in the soil. Man cannot grow wealthy and famous if he doesn't contribute to either, the good or evil.
it will make sense the moment you come Home. I could see it all so clearly. I could see what it is that we are waiting for. I knew in one solitary moment why I had learned obedience and why I valued nothing on the earth but love. It’s all that matters. It is all there is.
...All who ever died, live; they are reborn and have no end, nor will there ever be an end. All, save you. For you would not have death. You lost death, you lost life, in order to save yourself. Yourself! Your immortal self! What is it? Who are you?""I am myself. My body will not decay and die-""A living body suffers pain, Cob; a living body grows old; it dies. Death is the price we pay for our life and for all life.""I do not pay it! I can die and in that moment live again! I cannot be killed; I am immortal. I alone am myself forever!""Who are you, then?""The Immortal One.""Say your name.""The King.""Say my name. I told it to you but a minute since. Say my name!""You are not real. You have no name. Only I exist.""You exist: without name, without form. You cannot see the light of day; you cannot see the dark. You sold the green earth and the sun and stars to save yourself. But you have no self. All that which you sold, that is yourself. You have given everything for nothing. And so now you seek to draw your world to you, all that light and life you lost, to fill up your nothingness. But it cannot be filled. Not all the songs of earth, not all the stars of heaven, could fill your emptiness.
How miserably hypocritical, you might say, but no sooner am I offered a chance to flee Hell than I yearn to stay. Few families hold their relations as closely as do prisons. Few marriages sustain the high level of passion that exists between criminals and those who seek to bring them to justice. It’s no wonder the Zodiac Killer flirted so relentlessly with the police. Or that Jack the Ripper courted and baited detectives with his - or her - coy letters. We all wish to be pursued. We all long to be desired.
Are you prepared to follow the Lamb whithersoever? The Lord does as He chooses. He dispenses miracles as He chooses for His own glorious purposes. He doesn't always give us what we asked for. He doesn't always give that healing and even when He does we still become sick and die eventually. Do we trust in His sovereign choices or trust only in getting what we want? Will we fix our eyes on the storm in this fading world or on the Christ of heaven?
If you are poor and go without food and clothes, don't hope for wealth in paradise, you are already forsaken
I knew then that I would devote every minute we had left together to making her happy, to repairing the pain I had caused her and returning to her what I never known how to give her. These pages will be our memory until she drows her last breath in my arms and I take her forever and escape at last to a place where neither heaven nor hell will ever be able to find us.
Then I fell at his feet and thought, Surely this is the hour of death, for the Lion (who is worthy of all honour) will know that I have served Tash all my days and not him. Nevertheless, it is better to see the Lion and die than to be Tisroc of the world and live and not to have seen him. But the Glorious One bent down his golden head and touched my forehead with his tongue and said, Son, thou art welcome. But I said, Alas Lord, I am no son of thine but the servant of Tash. He answered, Child, all the service thou hast done to Tash, I account as service done to me. Then by reasons of my great desire for wisdom and understanding, I overcame my fear and questioned the Glorious One and said, Lord, is it then true, as the Ape said, that thou and Tash are one? The Lion growled so that the earth shook (but his wrath was not against me) and said, It is false. Not because he and I are one, but because we are opposites, I take to me the services which thou hast done to him. For I and he are of such different kinds that no service which is vile can be done to me, and none which is not vile can be done to him. Therefore if any man swear by Tash and keep his oath for the oath’s sake, it is by me that he has truly sworn, though he know it not, and it is I who reward him. And if any man do a cruelty in my name, then, though he says the name Aslan, it is Tash whom he serves and by Tash his deed is accepted. Dost thou understand, Child? I said, Lord, though knowest how much I understand. But I said also (for the truth constrained me), Yet I have been seeking Tash all my days. Beloved, said the Glorious One, unless thy desire had been for me thou wouldst not have sought so long and so truly. For all find what they truly seek.
...it is a mistake to reduce every decision about Christian living to a "Heaven-or-Hell issue."For example, some ask if the Bible specifically says a certain action is a "sin" or will send them to "Hell." If not, they feel free to indulge in that action unreservedly and ignore any scriptural principles involved. But this approach is legalistic, which means living by rules or basing salvation on works. It treats the Bible as a law book, focusing on the letter and looking for loopholes.By contrast, the Bible tells us that we are saved by grace through faith, not by our works (Ephesians 2:8-9). Grace teaches us how to live righteously, and faith leads us into obedience. (See Titus 2:11-12; Romans1:5; Hebrews 11:7-8.)
Yet her experience had consisted less in a series of pure disappointments than in a series of substitutions. Continually it had happened that what she had desired had not been granted her, and that what had been granted her she had not desired. So she viewed with an approach to equanimity the now cancelled days when Donald had been her undeclared lover, and wondered what unwished-for thing Heaven might send her in place of him.
The first verse that comes to mind that refutes all of Calvin’s points is “Whoever calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved.” Whoever means whoever. Not just some, not just the elect; that means that anyone who wants to come to God and repent may do so. There is not a certain group that is predestined for hell and they can't do anything about it. How then would God be just? Knowing God’s nature, and that he IS love, I simply cannot believe that and believe it to be a completely false teaching.
Hell wasn't a major reservoir of evil, any more then Heaven, in Crowley's opinion, was a fountain of goodness; they were just sides in the great cosmic chess game. Where you found the real McCoy, the real grace and the real heart-stopping evil, was right inside the human mind.
I wrought me a lyric of fire and fear,And called on the world to heed —Till strong men blenched at my haggard faceAnd shuddered, but would not read.So I stole me the gold of the mines of JoyAnd fashioned a conscious lie —And they gave me the wreath of the kings of SongAnd prayed that I might not die!(For the lie that I wrought was as old as the worldAnd dear as the vision of Heaven —Of the crimson lure of a maiden's lipsAnd the myth of a sin forgiven!)But my heart was sick, and my soul grew less, With the light of my failing days,Because I had lied to my Knowledge-GodFor the pottage of human praise.O I clung to the rim of the cliffs of HellAnd called on an empty Name —Till there dropped the tears of a weeping TruthAnd saved my soul from the flame.So I hid my soul in a maiden's hair,And climbed to a clearer view —And I found I had lied to a lying God,And the myth I had sung - was true!
Liz: What's it like in hell?Ketut: Same like heaven. Universe is a circle, Liss. To up, to down -- all same, at end.Liz: Then how can you tell the difference between heaven and hell?Ketut: Because of how you go. Heaven, you go up, through seven happy places. Hell you go down, through seven sad places. This is why it better for you to go up, Liss.Liz: You mean, you might as well spend your life going upward, through the happy places, since heaven and hell -- same destinations -- are the same thing anyway?Ketut: Same-same. Same in end, so better be happy on journey.
The point is: what happens in heaven?''Unknowable wonderfulness?' 'Nonsense. The answer is nothing. Nothing can happen because if something happens, in fact if something can happen, then it doesn't represent eternity. Our lives are about development, mutation and the possibility of change; that is almost a definition of what life is: change.''If you disable change, if you effectively stop time, if you prevent the possibility of the alteration of an individual's circumstances - and that must include at least the possibility that they alter for the worse - then you don't have life after death; you just have death.
When I speak of God, I mean that god who prevented man from putting forth his hand and taking also of the fruit of the tree of life that he might live forever; of that god who multiplied the agonies of woman, increased the weary toil of man, and in his anger drowned a world—of that god whose altars reeked with human blood, who butchered babes, violated maidens, enslaved men and filled the earth with cruelty and crime; of that god who made heaven for the few, hell for the many, and who will gloat forever and ever upon the writhings of the lost and damned.
In the aftermath, she (Misty) still felt as though she were floating and as Leone shifted back from her she leant over him, silver-grey eyes bright with emotion, and whispered, ‘I died and went to heaven the day I found you.’ A wolfish grin of appreciation slashed his wide, sensual mouth. ‘Are you sure you’re feeling all right? You don’t sound at all like yourself.’ ‘Enjoy it while it lasts,’ she advised, happiness flooding through her as he curved her close and pressed a slow, sweet kiss to her reddened mouth. ‘I didn’t realise I’d found heaven until I stumbled into hell,’ Leone traded feelingly.
The water cleansed his soul of the clutter and junk he had acquired through advice from those who were loud, but wrong. Many who had claimed to be wise had filled him, like so many others, with fear, hate, and judgement - all emotions that could not be carried be carried into Eternity.
A man without god is a lost man. Every man believe in something. We CANT live by ourselves thinking only in money and possesions. We HAVE to live WITH others and love each other, and NEVER hate, because when you hate someone, you destroy your soul a little bit every day, and when the last day of our live come, we dont have the energy or the strenght to forgive, and repent of our sins, and thats whats kill us FOREVER, leading us to a eternal prision inside us, called "Hell". Hope you understand my perspective of life, that I assume is right.
The questions of God – meaning in Milton’s phrase “The god who hung the stars like lamps in heaven” – I don’t think psychedelics can address that definitively, but there is another god, a goddess, the goddess of biology, the goddess of the coherent animal human world, the world of the oceans, the atmosphere, and the planet. In short, our world! The world that we were born into, that we evolved into, and that we came from. That world, the psychedelics want to connect us up to… Our individuality, as people and as a species, is an illusion of bad language that the psychedelics dissolve into the greater feeling of connectedness that underlies our being here, and to my mind that’s the religious impulse. It’s not a laundry list of moral dos and don’ts, or a set of dietary prescriptions or practices: it’s a sense of connectedness, responsibility for our fellow human beings and for the earth you walking around on, and because these psychedelics come out of that plant vegetable matrix they are the way back into it.
I fear no hell, just as I expect no heaven. Nabokov summed up a nonbeliever’s view of the cosmos, and our place in it, thus: “The cradle rocks above an abyss, and common sense tells us that our existence is but a brief crack of light between two eternities of darkness.” The 19th-century Scottish historian Thomas Carlyle put it slightly differently: “One life. A little gleam of Time between two Eternities.” Though I have many memories to cherish, I value the present, my time on earth, those around me now. I miss those who have departed, and recognize, painful as it is, that I will never be reunited with them. There is the here and now – no more. But certainly no less. Being an adult means, as Orwell put it, having the “power of facing unpleasant facts.” True adulthood begins with doing just that, with renouncing comforting fables. There is something liberating in recognizing ourselves as mammals with some fourscore years (if we’re lucky) to make the most of on this earth.There is also something intrinsically courageous about being an atheist. Atheists confront death without mythology or sugarcoating. That takes courage.
I was brought up to be honest; the trouble is it gets me nowhere." Liking her better, he smiled and said, "It'll get us to heaven." "Will it?" "If heaven existed." "Do you not believe in heaven, Mr. Fielding, may I ask?" she said, looking at him shyly. "I do not. Yet I believe that honesty gets us there.
Some are born to greatness; some achieve greatness; some have greatness thrust upon them.' It is in this way that the librarian has become a censor of literature... books that distinctly commend what is wrong, that teach how to sin and how pleasant sin is, sometimes with and sometimes without the added sauce of impropriety, are increasingly popular, tempting to the author to imitate them, the publishers to produce, the bookseller to exploit. Thank heaven they do not tempt the librarian.
So, is there an afterlife, and if so, what will it be like? I don't have a clue. But I am confident that the one who has buoyed us up in life will also buoy us up through death. We die into God. What more that means, I do not know. But that is all I need to know.
See, Brutus, for me, it’s not good enough to just guess as to whether there’s a heaven or how to get there. I’m not going to take Julian’s word for it, or Aaron’s word for it, or anyone else’s word for it. I’m going to find out for myself whether I believe there’s a heaven or not, and then I’m going to spend the rest of my life doing everything I possibly can to get there. We don’t get that long on earth, and heaven is forever, so if there’s anything I can do, anything at all, even if it takes my entire life, then it’s worth it,” Elena said.
What if love is this fun game that started from heaven with you and I, perfectly together. And then, at some point, we agreed to play a game, to be tossed into a world in which we would spend the rest of our lives trying to find each other.Wouldn't it be fun to know that no matter what, no matter when, no matter how, and no matter where, at some point I'd find you, and say ... "Hello.
There is none other like me. There is none other like her. We are unbelievable, impossible. I fly as high as the Heavens which cast me out. I have run out my comet's course: she is the world, I have sought out. Round her I have cast the loop of my orbit, and am held fast and safe; she is my Sea of Tranquility, my Milky Way, bearded with Berenice's Hair. I am a new constellation, pegged out in the sky. I am joy. Complete. For ever.
Say it.""Don't do this to me..." I whispered painfully. "We can't do this again.""You're a horrible liar," Eli growled as he pressed his fingers into my thighs. He watched me, his gaze all-consuming, and said, "Your eyes are as dark as a castle moat by midnight, mi cielo. Lower your drawbridge and let me cross; let me in.""Eli, I-""Forget him. For the next hour and a half, you're going to do everything that makes you wonder in this world. And then I'm going to love you again.
God does not exist, as neither does our hereafter, that second bogey being as easily disposed of as the first. Indeed, imagine yourself just dead—and suddenly wide awake in Paradise where, wreathed in smiles, your dear dead welcome you. Now tell me, please, what guarantee do you possess that those beloved ghosts are genuine; that it is really your dear dead mother and not some petty demon mystifying you, masked as your mother and impersonating her with consummate art and naturalness? There is the rub, there is the horror; the more so as the acting will go on and on, endlessly; never, never, never, never, never will your soul in that other world be quite sure that the sweet gentle spirits crowding about it are not fiends in disguise, and forever, and forever, and forever shall your soul remain in doubt, expecting every moment some awful change, some diabolical sneer to disfigure the dear face bending over you.
A couple of months ago I had a dream, which I remember with the utmost clarity. (I don't usually remember my dreams.) I dreamed I had died and gone to Heaven. I looked about and knew where I was-green fields, fleecy clouds, perfumed air, and the distant, ravishing sound of the heavenly choir. And there was the recording angel smiling broadly at me in greeting. I said, in wonder, "Is this Heaven?" The recording angel said, "It is." I said (and on waking and remembering, I was proud of my integrity), "But there must be a mistake. I don't belong here. I'm an atheist." "No mistake," said the recording angel. "But as an atheist how can I qualify?" The recording angel said sternly, "We decide who qualifies. Not you." "I see," I said. I looked about, pondered for a moment, then turned to the recording angel and asked, "Is there a typewriter here that I can use?" The significance of the dream was clear to me. I felt Heaven to be the act of writing, and I have been in Heaven for over half a century and I have always known this.
He tells people that they can no more expect justice in the afterlife than in the mortal plane, but he doesn't do this to dissuade them from worshipping God; on the contrary, he encourages them to do so. What he insists on is that they not love God under a misapprehension, that if they wish to love God, they be prepared to do so no matter His intentions. God is not just, God is not kind, God is not merciful, and understanding that is essential to true devotion.
No doubt it is true that there is more rejoicing in heaven over one sinner repented than over all the saints who consistently remain holy, and the rare, sudden gentlenesses of arrogant people have infinitely more effect than the continual gentleness of gentle people. Arrogance turned gentle melts the heart.
On the way home from church, I felt like I was walking on clouds, as pure as an angel. I wished a car would run me down at that very instant, so I could die and go straight to heaven before I had a chance to sin again.
My simple explanation of why we human beings, the most advanced species on earth, cannot find happiness, is this: as we evolve up the ladder of being, we find three things: the first, that the tension between the range of opposites in our lives and society widens dramatically and often painfully as we evolve; the second, that the better informed and more intelligent we are, the more humble we have to become about our ability to live meaningful lives and to change anything, even ourselves; and consequently, thirdly, that the cost of gaining the simplicity the other side of complexity can rise very steeply if we do not align ourselves and our lives well.
A child's cry touches a father's heart, and our King is the Father of his people. If we can do no more than cry it will bring omnipotence to our aid. A cry is the native language of a spiritually needy soul; it has done with fine phrases and long orations, and it takes to sobs and moans; and so, indeed, it grasps the most potent of all weapons, for heaven always yields to such artillery.
Endeavor to create heaven on earth and turn your heart into the new Jerusalem
When the sun of consciousness first shone upon me, behold a miracle! The stock of my young life which had perished, steeped in the waters of knowledge grew again, budded again, was sweet again with the blossoms of childhood. Down in the depths of my being, I cried, ‘it is good to be alive!’ I held out two trembling hands to life, and in vain silence would impose dumbness upon me henceforth! The world to which I awoke was still mysterious; but there was hope and love and God in it, and nothing else mattered. Is it not possible that our entrance into heaven may be like this experience of mine?
What you do in your house is worth as much as if you did it up in heaven for our Lord God. We should accustom ourselves to think of our position and work as sacred and well-pleasing to God, not on account of the position and work, but on account of the word and faith from which the obedience and work flow.
Even heaven would become hell if you were alone in it, or away from a loved one. And even if you were with your loved one, but in hell, eventually you would cry to have you and your loved one together in heaven. So to create your own heaven on earth, make sure you and your loved one are in a place you both love, because what could be heaven for one, could be hell for the other.
Come back to me, Tessa. Henry said that perhaps, since you had touched the soul of an angel, that you dream of Heaven now, of fields of angels and flowers of fire. Perhaps you are happy in those dreams. But I ask this out of pure selfishness. Come back to me. For I cannot bear to lose all my heart.
I don't wonder anymore what I'll tell God when I go to heaven when we sit in the chairs under the tree, outside the city........I'll tell these things to God, and he'll laugh, I think and he'll remind me of the parts I forgot, the parts that were his favorite. We'll sit and remember my story together, and then he'll stand and put his arms around me and say, "well done," and that he liked my story. And my soul won't be thirsty anymore. Finally he'll turn and we'll walk toward the city, a city he will have spoken into existence a city built in a place where once there'd been nothing.
Few religions are definite about the size of Heaven, but on the planet Earth the Book of Revelation (ch. XXI, v.16) gives it as a cube 12,000 furlongs on a side. This is somewhat less than 500,000,000,000,000,000,000 cubic feet. Even allowing that the Heavenly Host and other essential services take up at least two thirds of this space, this leaves about one million cubic feet of space for each human occupant- assuming that every creature that could be called ‘human’ is allowed in, and the the human race eventually totals a thousand times the numbers of humans alive up until now. This is such a generous amount of space that it suggests that room has also been provided for some alien races or - a happy thought - that pets are allowed.
The critical question for our generation—and for every generation—is this: If you could have heaven, with no sickness, and with all thefriends you ever had on earth, and all the food you ever liked, andall the leisure activities you ever enjoyed, and all the natural beautiesyou ever saw, all the physical pleasures you ever tasted, and nohuman conflict or any natural disasters, could you be satisfied withheaven, if Christ were not there?
There is no safe investment. To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything, and your heart will certainly be wrung and possibly be broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact, you must give your heart to no one, not even to an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements; lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket – safe, dark, motionless, airless – it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. The alternative to tragedy, or at least to the risk of tragedy, is damnation. The only place outside Heaven where you can be perfectly safe from all the dangers and perturbations of love is Hell.
Why does that kid think so highly of himself?""Kids that think they're so smart.They're everywhere! Destroy is self-esteem!""Yes...I really do think highly of myself.People like me should get a taste of the ups and downs of life! Sorry I'm so envious.I will reflect upon this. Please don't be angry."Ah..um..""There, I said it now. Are you satisfied?" ........"Bye
Belize: Hell or heaven? [Roy indicates "Heaven" through a glance]Belize: Like San Francisco.Roy Cohn: A city. Good. I was worried... it'd be a garden. I hate that shit.Belize: Mmmm. Big city. Overgrown with weeds, but flowering weeds. On every corner a wrecking crew and something new and crooked going up catty corner to that. Windows missing in every edifice like broken teeth, fierce gusts of gritty wind, and a gray high sky full of ravens.Roy Cohn: Isaiah.Belize: Prophet birds, Roy. Piles of trash, but lapidary like rubies and obsidian, and diamond-colored cowspit streamers in the wind. And voting booths.Roy Cohn: And a dragon atop a golden horde.Belize: And everyone in Balencia gowns with red corsages, and big dance palaces full of music and lights and racial impurity and gender confusion. And all the deities are creole, mulatto, brown as the mouths of rivers. Race, taste and history finally overcome. And you ain't there.Roy Cohn: And Heaven?Belize: That was Heaven, Roy.
Heaven, such as it is, is right here on earth. Behold: my revelation: I stand at the door in the morning, and lo, there is a newspaper, in sight like unto an emerald. And holy, holy, holy is the coffee, which was, and is, and is to come. And hark, I hear the voice of an angel round about the radio saying, "Since my baby left me I found a new place to dwell." And lo, after this I beheld a great multitude, which no man could number, of shoes. And after these things I will hasten unto a taxicab and to a theater, where a ticket will be given unto me, and lo, it will be a matinee, and a film that doeth great wonders. And when it is finished, the heavens will open, and out will cometh a rain fragrant as myrrh, and yea, I have an umbrella.
I hoped he'd take his dog and drive down to the ocean. I hoped there was still time. I pictured him sitting on the gray rocks with the waves crashing and spraying white foam. Maybe he'd hear something in the roar of the ocean, feel some limitless power, believe that there's something greater. Something more. Maybe his heaven was at the coast, with a dog's head in his lap, with nothing but water and depth from there to the horizon." -Delaney
I don't really like this song," Emma had said."You told me it was your favourite.""It's beautiful. But it always makes me sad.""Why, love?" he'd asked gently. "It's about finding each other again. About someone coming home."Emma had lifted her head from his shoulder and looked at him earnestly. "It's about losing someone, and having to wait until you're together in heaven.""There's nothing in the lyrics about heaven," he'd said."But that's what it means. I can't bear the idea of being separated from you, for a lifetime or a year or even a day. So you mustn't go to heaven without me.""Of course not," he had whispered. "It wouldn't be heaven without you.
Any love is natural and beautiful that lies within a person’s nature; only hypocrites would hold a man responsible for what he loves, emotional illiterates and those of righteous envy, who, in their agitated concern, mistake so frequently the arrow pointing to heaven for the one that leads to hell.
Be sure that the ins and outs of your individuality are no mystery to Him; and one day they will no longer be a mystery to you...God will look to every soul like its first love because He is its first love. Your place in heaven will seem to be made for you and you alone, because you were made for it--made for it stitch by stitch as a glove is made for a hand.
They don't live here. They live in Heaven.'Where's that?'I don't know,' I said. 'Enos says it's right here, on this side of the wall, but I never saw an angel over here. Kuba says it's in Russia. Olek says Washington America.'What's Washington America?'Enos says it's a place with no wall and no lice and lots of potatoes.
It may be possible for each to think too much of his own potential glory hereafter; it is hardly possible for him to think too often or too deeply about that of his neighbor. The load, or weight, or burden of my neighbor's glory should be laid daily on my back, a load so heavy that only humility can carry it, and the backs of the proud will be broken. ... "It is in light of these overwhelming possibilities, it is with the awe and the circumspection proper to them, that we should conduct all our dealings with one another, all friendships, all loves, all play, all politics. There are no ordinary people. You have never talked to a mere mortal. Nations, cultures, arts, civilizations -- these are mortal, and their life is to ours as the life of a gnat. But it is immortals whom we joke with, work with, marry, snub and exploit. ... Next to the Blessed Sacrament itself, your neighbor is the holiest object presented to your senses.
The Expulsion from Paradise is eternal in its principal aspect: this makes it irrevocable, and our living in this world inevitable, but the eternal nature of the process has the effect that not only could we remain forever in Paradise, but that we are currently there, whether we know it or not.
This is a book about Heaven. I know it now. It floats among us like a cloud and is the realest thing we know and the least to be captured, the least to be possessed by anybody for himself. It is like a grain of mustard seed, which you cannot see among the crumbs of earth where it lies. It is like the reflection of the trees on the water.
We are afraid that Heaven is a bribe, and that if we make it our goal we shall no longer be disinterested. It is not so. Heaven offers nothing that the mercenary soul can desire. It is safe to tell the pure in heart that they shall see God, for only the pure in heart want to. There are rewards that do not sully motives. A man's love for a woman is not mercenary because he wants to marry her, nor his love for poetry mercenary because he wants to read it, nor his love of exercise less disinterested because he wants to run and leap and walk. Love, by definition, seeks to enjoy its object.
I seen hundreds of men come by on the road an’ on the ranches, with their bindles on their back an’ that same damn thing in their heads . . . every damn one of ’em’s got a little piece of land in his head. An’ never a God damn one of ’em ever gets it. Just like heaven. Ever’body wants a little piece of lan’. I read plenty of books out here. Nobody never gets to heaven, and nobody gets no land.
I beseech you, my brothers, remain faithful to the earth, and do not believe those who speak to you of otherworldly hopes! Poison-mixers are they, whether they know it or not. Despisers of life are they, decaying and poisoned themselves, of whom the earth is weary: so let them go. Once the sin against God was the greatest sin; but God died, and these sinners died with him. To sin against the earth is now the most dreadful thing, and to esteem the entrails of the unknowable higher than the meaning of the earth... What is the greatest experience you can have? It is the hour of the great contempt. The hour when your happiness, too, arouses your disgust, and even your reason and your virtue.
I believed, from the solitary and thoughtful way in which my mother murmured her song, that she was alone. And I went softly into the room. She was sitting by the fire, suckling an infant, whose tiny hand she held against her neck. Her eyes were looking down upon its face, and she sat singing to it. I was so far right, that she had no other companion. I spoke to her, and she started, and cried out. But seeing me, she called me her dear Davy, her own boy! and coming half across the room to meet me, kneeled down upon the ground and kissed me, and laid my head down on her bosom near the little creature that was nestling there, and put its hand up to my lips. I wish I had died. I wish I had died then, with that feeling in my Heart! I should have been more fit for Heaven than I ever have been since.
When I am a good host, I can order the world precisely as I believe it ought to be. It is a world that I have created in my mind and in my own image, and it gladdens me profoundly to see it unfold without original sin, without expulsions and floods and disobedience and illness. When I am a good guest, I have returned to Eden, where everything I need is provided for me, including companionship and a benevolent deity at my shoulder serving me and protecting me. The concept of paradise may be backward-looking but the concept of heaven is anticipatory. Perhaps this is what heaven will be like? A great table of oak worn smooth with age and candle wax; a dimly lit room, a quartet of angels playing Sarah Vaughan in the corner; this blissful throb of quiet, intelligent conversation; bubbling pots and aromatic stews that no one seems to have worked to prepare; and you - you have nothing to worry about, not now, not here, not for all eternity. Leave it all behind at the threshold, forget everything, for here in heaven, you are my guest.
If you read history you will find that the Christians begin the most for the present world are just the ones that thought the most of the next. The Apostles themselves, who set on foot. in the conversion of the Roman Empire, the great men who built up the Middle Ages, the English Evangelicals who abolished the Slave Trade, all left their mark one Earth, precisely because their minds were occupied with Heaven. It is since Christians have largely ceased to think of the other world that they have become so in effective in this. And that Heaven and you'll get the earth "thrown in": aim at earth and you'll get neither.
You can grieve for me the week before I die, if I’m scared and hurting, but when I gasp that last fleeting breath and my immortal soul flees to heaven, I’m going to be jumping over fire hydrants down the golden streets, and my biggest concern, if I have any, will be my wife back here grieving. When I die, I will be identified with Christ’s exaltation. But right now, I’m identified with His affliction.
I’ve always been fascinated by science—anatomy, quantum physics, space and time theory. I don’t understand these things, but the mystery is a part of what attracts me to them. That the world I live in now is complex beyond my understanding only encourages me to believe that there are wild possibilities in creation beyond even the things of this dimension of time and space. If this universe has alternate dimensions outside of our understanding, isn’t it possible that we might exist in a life beyond this one, in another kind of dimension that is fuller and more alive than the one we know?
He that asks me what heaven is, means not to hear me, but to silence me; He knows I cannot tell him; when I meet him there, I shall be able to tell him, and then he will be as able to tell me; yet then we shall be but able to tell one another, this, this that we enjoy is heaven, but the tongues of angels, the tongues of glorified saints, shall not be able to express what that heaven is; for, even in heaven our faculties shall be finite.
He did not seek to efface pain in forgetfulness, he sought to elevate it and to dignify it with hope. He would say, "Be careful how you turn to the dead. Don't think of the rotting. Hold your gaze and you will see the living light of your dearly loved departed up above in heaven.
You can pull people to your own winter and freeze them up or you can take your sun to people’s own winter and warm them up! It is up to you to bring hell or heaven to people’s life!
Heaven. You. Your beauty and peace. In all small details. From which, I bite with hunger, small seconds revealed...on this Earth. You Heaven. I am longing after you continously, with so much hunger, with so much missing...craving after you and full with the hope and the desire to get more seconds from you Today. Next hour. Next minute. You...Heaven. The love and beauty and everything that addresses you with everything. You...Heaven.
The secret is here in the present. If you pay attention to the present, you can improve upon it. And, if you improve on the present, what comes later will also be better. Forget about the future, and live each day according the the teachings, confident that God loves his children. Each day, in itself, brings with it an eternity.
End? No, the journey doesn't end here. Death is just another path, one that we all must take. The grey rain-curtain of this world rolls back, and all turns to silver glass, and then you see it. White shores, and beyond, a far green country under a swift sunrise." ― J.R.R. Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings
Superhuman' is an extraordinary personality living in the godliness and wisdom taking over the human intelligence, a pure eternal life, driven by the divine force, living for the welfare of the mankind unconditionally. Superhumans are those who live to unite with the Supreme Power.
Our planet for Superhumans.Let us change the name of our planet as Divine Home,Let us compel the higher consciousness to descend upon our divine home, Let us change the United Nations to United Humans. When the self ignorance, ego and immaturity is removed from mankind, politics and religion will no more exist,When politics is removed, borders won't be required, When the religion is removed, hatred, misbelief and mass ignorance will not exist, god as dual wont exist.Let us live on the 29% earth as one Home, the divine home.Welcome Superhumans”.
Once we get to Heaven we know everything there is to know. We remember every life we've ever lived. We recall everyone we've ever loved. There is much to know here, but there is not too much to learn. That's why we have to do our learning before we get here.
Heaven is all around you. You just can’t see us because we are vibrating at a higher level than you are. It’s kind of like a dog whistle. There is a noise, a pitch so high that the human ear cannot detect it but it is there nonetheless, for don’t you see all the dogs come running!When we cross Rainbow Bridge we become only love and love is the highest level of vibration; the highest “pitch” so to speak. This is why you cannot see us. We are here, only gone from your sight until one day you are the same vibration as we are. When you vibrate in love all the time you will not have to ask again if I am here, you will know that I am here with you.
GOD is The Author of Life.He is The Author and Finisher of Our Faith. GOD is not the author of confusion. Satan the devil is the author of confusion. the Pope does not speak for GOD. The Pope does not speak for Bible Believing Christians. The Babylonian System of Religion is a system that is based on the web of lies from the pits of hell. The Pope is part of that system.
Some men are sent to heaven by torturers who thought they were doing god's work by sending them to hell
Every beautiful place is your temple, you can always visit them; every useful book is your holy book, you can always read them; every place you find love is your heaven, you can always go there! Don’t get stuck in the temples, in the so-called holy books and heavens of the religions because life is much richer, much superior and much intelligent than all the religions because life is alive, it is dynamic and it continuously develops itself!
Here's my question: What age are you when you're in Heaven? I mean, if it's Heaven, you should be at your beauty-queen best, and I doubt that all the people who die of old age are wandering around toothless and bald. It opens up a whole additional realm of questions, too. If you hang yourself, do you walk around all gross and blue, with your tongue spitting out of your mouth? If you are killed in a war, do you spend eternity minus the leg that got blown up by a mine?I figure that maybe you get a choice. You fill out the application form that asks you if you want a star view or a cloud view, if you like chicken or fish or manna for dinner, what age you'd like to be seen as by everyone else. Like me, for example, I might pick seventeen, in the hopes I grow boobs by then, and even if I'm a pruny centegenarian by the time I die, in Heaven, I'd be young and pretty.Once at a dinner party I heard my father say that even though he was old old old, in his heart he was twenty-one. So maybe there is a place in your life you ear out like a rut, or even better, like the soft spot on the couch. And no matter what else happens to you, you come back to that.The problem, I suppose, is that everyone's different. What happens in Heaven when all these people are trying to find each other after so many years spent apart? Say that you die and start looking around for your husband, who died five years ago. what if you're picturing him at seventy, but he hit his groove at sixteen and is wandering around suave as can be?Or what if you're Kate, and you die at sixteen, but in Heaven you choose to look thirty-five, an age you never got to be here on Earth. How would anyone ever be able to find you?
The Bird of Paradise, it seemed, had beckoned us on and led us in, to stand here in this place high in the land of volcanoes. It was here in Bali, after returning from the Toraja Star Children, that I first recognized what they meant by us all being born half of heaven and half of earth. And after the mounted warsports of Sumba it was in Balinese ritual that I saw with new eyes the battle for balance between light and darkness. And after Borneo, returning to the sacred Banyan tree and its simian custodians, I had felt that all great trees, what’s left of them, do indeed link heaven and earth in a single forest of life.
His biggest gripe with religion was the concept of heaven, of paradise, that we could only get there after we died. He said any philosophy that cared more about life after death than life before death wasn’t anything he could believe in. That’s why he called this farm Paradise. He said Paradise was ours if we wanted it. It was ours to make in the here and now, not something out there in the future that we had to wait for.
How can a full grown man carry bomb and kill many innocent people including himself? He was promised life after death. Many Virgins, no sickness. No pain. Because he hates his life on earth here. Sad no? No man is really looking for religion, we're all looking for a better life here and beyond.WHAT AM I DOING FOR TO GAIN THIS LIFE ETERNAL? IT WAS GIVEN ME FREELY BY GRACE BUT WHAT AM I DOING? HOW FAR CAN I GO?
Though every man naturally abhorreth sorrow, and loves the most merry and joyful life; yet few do love the way to joy, or will endure the pains by which it is obtained; they will take the next that comes to hand, and content themselves with earthly pleasures, rather than they will ascend to heaven to seek it ;l and yet when all is done, they must have it there, or be without it (491).
What if you had seen haven open as Stephen did, and all the saints there triumphing in glory, and enjoying the end of their labours and sufferings, what a life would you lead after such a sight as this! Why, you will see this with your eyes before it be long.Thou hast the more cause to doubt a great deal, because thou never didst doubtl and yet more because thou hast been so careless in thy confidence. What do these expressions discover, but a wilful neglect of thy own salvation? As a shipmaster that should let his vessel alone, and mind other matters, and say, I will venture it among the rocks, and sands, and gulfs, and waves, and winds; I will never touble myself to know wheter it shall come safe to the harbour; I will trust God with it; it will speed as well as other men's vessels do. Indeed, as well as other men's that are as careless and idle, but not so well as other mens's that are diligent and watchful. What horrible abuse of God is this, for men to pretend that they trust God with their souls only to cloak their own wilful negligence! (290-291)
I am persuaded our discontents, and murmurings with out unpleasing condition, and our covetous desires after more, are not so provoking to God, nor so destructive to the sinner, as our too sweet enjoying, and rest of spirit in a pleasing state. . . . Our rest is our heaven, and where we take our rest, there we make our heaven(457).
I'm not sure why God made us the way He did... As to why we're here, well, I think maybe we're here to learn to love Him. To learn to love God and to want to be with Him. I think we're here to cultivate our longing for heaven. 'Luke sighed. 'Heaven,' he said, 'seems like a long, long way off, Dad.'Jack nodded. 'It does. But I think God gives us glimpses of heaven from time to time to help up nurture the desire... I see glimpses every spring when the earth renews itself. And sometimes I see glimpses in a worship service when I'm singing about Jesus and all of a sudden I feel like I'm right there in His arms.
What if heaven is just a vast consciousness that the dead return to? And their assignment is to report on the experiences they collected during their time on earth?...The spring mornings they woke up to a million birds singing their hearts out, and the summer afternoons with the swim towels hung over the porch rail, and the October air that smelled like wood smoke and apple cider, and the warm yellow windows of home when they came in on a snowy night. "That's what my experience has been,' they say, and it gets folded in with the others--one more report on what living felt like. What it was like to be alive.
There Peter was, looking straight into the very eyes of God, walking the Sea of Galilee and then all of the sudden up to his neck in water. Some would argue he lacked the true believing, I say he had enough faith to go it a ways, and when he couldn't go farther Christ fetched him up.What am I saying? I'm saying that the walk to God ain't easy for the best of us. Now some would say, Preacher, if Peter had misdoubts there in the very glory of the Lord, what of us left here that ain't seen the dead raised nor the leper folk healed. All we seen is hard trial and sorrows. I'd not deny it.Burdens are plenty in this world and they can pull us down in the lamentation. But the good Lord knows we need to see at least the hem of the robe of glory, and we do. Ponder a pretty sunset or the dogwoods all ablossom. Every time you see such it's the hem of the robe of glory. Brothers and sister, how do you expect to see what you don't seek?Some claim heaven has streets of gold and all such things, but I hold a different notion. When we’re there, we’ll say to the angels, why, a lot of heaven’s glory was in the place we come from. And you know what them angels will say? They’ll say yes, pilgrim, and how often did you notice? What did you seek?
Tacitus laughed at the Germanic tribes who tried to stop a torrent with their shields, but it is no less naive to believe in planetary migration or to believe in the establishment by purely human means of a society fully satisfied and perfectly inoffensive and continuing to progress indefinitely. All this proves that man ,though he has inevitably become less naive in some things, has nonetheless learned nothing as far as essentials are concerned; the only thing that man is capable of when left to himself is to "commit the oldest sins the newest kind of ways," as Shakespeare would say. And the world being what it is, one is doubtless not guilty of a truism in adding that it is better to go to Heaven naively than to go intelligently to hell.
I lack nothing, I tell you!”“Nothing?” I asked. “Not even heaven?”He lowered his head and was silent. But after a moment:“Heaven is too high for me. The earth is good, exceptionally good–and near me!”“Nothing is nearer to us than heaven. The earth is beneath our feet and we tread upon it, but heaven is within us.
There is no greater heaven than the heart of a loving motherShe takes care of you when you are still in her womb.She nurtures you after you are born.She hurts when you fall,She celebrates when you make your first steps.She is the only person who genuinely cares about you.She loves you as she loves herself.Her heart is your true paradise.I love you mama.
It all begins with faith. If we believed animal went to heaven, we wouldn't send them there prematurely
There are three heavens. The first heaven is the earth and the world of mankind, and the third heaven is where God dwells. However, the second heaven is a place of time and space, where both demons and angels tread, plot, and fight against each other.
Until your our last breath, lots of surprises waiting for you each day, and at those points you can't do anything, just wait, watch and react according to the situation like helpless kid.After the last breath also, you don't know, even more surprises are there for you like heaven or hell.. Hahaha, it's the true meaning of life....
Oh, Heidi! Heidi!" Marta exclaimed at last. "This is your garden. I know it even though you have not told me. Do you suppose in Heaven it is any more beautiful than this?""I sometimes think that Heaven is all around us, if we only have eyes to see it," Heidi said softly."And on the Alm too?" questioned Marta."Yes, and in Dorfli. Even in the chateau which seems so gloomy now. There must be a little Heaven there as well. And if not, Marta, why not make it so?
So across the chaos, the Devil looks at God and falls deeply in love with Her. She looks at Him, and the same thing happens. They get married and have some children—first light, then the dry land, and all the trees, and so on and so forth. Last of all, She gives birth to Adam and Eve. They worship their mother, but not their father. He gets jealous. God and the Devil fight. They agree to split up. She gets to keep heaven, and He has to move in to hell. Then she talks bad about Him to their children, makes them hate Him.
There is, though I do not know how there is or why there is, a sense of infinite peace and protection in the glittering hosts of heaven. There is must be, I think, in the vast and eternal laws of matter, and not in the daily cares and sins and troubles of men, that whatever is more than animal within us must find its solace and its hope. I hope, or I could not live. And so, in hope and solitude, my story ends.
The Protestant church today need to borrow a leaf from the actions of the Protestants of old. We need to preach the gospel not just from the aspect of selfish gains and profit, but from the kingdom perspective whereby we strive to build the kingdom of God through each believer on the earth as it is in heaven.
Nothing you did could have changed anything. And that being angry and blaming yourself for not being able to control the past or the future is only going to hurt worse. If you keep thinking like this, you will only be re-inventing pain.Heaven would tell you that it’s just a little rain. And it’s not the rain that kills you, it’s the pain of wanting to control the sun.
Deeply immersed in a constant bubble bath of sin, you cannot communicate with Jesus Christ unless you are ready to get out of the bath. John 1:9
Heaven” is actually a country that we build within ourselves, or that we continue to build. We come from it, and we harvest materials for it while we are here, doing this through sharing our talents with others, and through being dedicated to our relationships in life, through loving others and through strengthening our ability to believe, through our faith. What is faith? Faith is the strength to believe even when believing is a very difficult thing to do! I think that faith is acquired here in this world, because there is no need to have faith in our eternal countries. But here, as we acquire faith in the midst of our hardships, we are begetting unto our eternal countries the strong glue that holds some buildings and some temples together.
-"Do people look the same when they get to heaven?"-"I don't know. I don't think so."-"Then how do people recognize each other?"-"I don't know, sweetie."She sounded tired."They just feel it.You don't need your eyes to love,right? You just feel it inside you. That's how it is in heaven. It's just love, and no one forgets who they love.
Do people look the same when they get to heaven?""I don't know. I don't think so.""Then how do people recognize each other?""I don't know, sweetie."She sounded tired."They just feel it.You don't need your eyes to love,right? You just feel it inside you. That's how it is in heaven. It's just love, and no one forgets who they love.
I believe - I daily find it proved - that we can get nothing in this world worth keeping, not so much as a principle or a conviction, except out of purifying flame, or through strengthening peril. We err; we fall; we are humbled - then we walk more carefully. We greedily eat and drink poison out of the gilded cup of vice, or from the beggar's wallet of avarice; we are sickened, degraded; everything good in us rebels against us; our souls rise bitterly indignant against our bodies; there is a period of civil war; if the soul has strength, it conquers and rules thereafter.
He turned to leave when arms suddenly wrapped around him from behind, stalling him. Sighing, he closed his eyes, taking a moment to savor her touch. "Angel.""Luce."He pulled her into his arms as he whispered, "I love you.""I love you, too." Serah said, clinging to him. "When I opened my eyes, I didn't want to be here, because I didn't think you'd be here. I thought you'd be down there again, back in the pit, and I'd take an eternity in your Hell before I took a single second in my Heaven without you.
Once there was and once there was not a devout, God-fearing man who lived his entire life according to stoic principles. He died on his fortieth birthday and woke up floating in nothing. Now, mind you, floating in nothing was comforting, light-less, airless, like a mother’s womb. This man was grateful.But then he decided he would love to have sturdy ground beneath his feet, so he would feel more solid himself. Lo and behold, he was standing on earth. He knew it to be earth, for he knew the feel of it.Yet he wanted to see. I desire light, he thought, and light appeared. I want sunlight, not any light, and at night it shall be moonlight. His desires were granted. Let there be grass. I love the feel of grass beneath my feet. And so it was. I no longer wish to be naked. Only robes of the finest silk must touch my skin. And shelter, I need a grand palace whose entrance has double-sided stairs, and the floors must be marble and the carpets Persian. And food, the finest of food. His breakfast was English; his midmorning snack French. His lunch was Chinese. His afternoon tea was Indian. His supper was Italian, and his late-night snack was Lebanese. Libation? He had the best of wines, of course, and champagne. And company, the finest of company. He demanded poets and writers, thinkers and philosophers, hakawatis and musicians, fools and clowns.And then he desired sex.He asked for light-skinned women and dark-skinned, blondes and brunettes, Chinese, South Asian, African, Scandinavian. He asked for them singly and two at a time, and in the evenings he had orgies. He asked for younger girls, after which he asked for older women, just to try. The he tried men, muscular men, skinny men. Then boys. Then boys and girls together.Then he got bored. He tried sex with food. Boys with Chinese, girls with Indian. Redheads with ice cream. Then he tried sex with company. He fucked the poet. Everybody fucked the poet.But again he got bored. The days were endless. Coming up with new ideas became tiring and tiresome. Every desire he could ever think of was satisfied.He had had enough. He walked out of his house, looked up at the glorious sky, and said, “Dear God. I thank You for Your abundance, but I cannot stand it here anymore. I would rather be anywhere else. I would rather be in hell.”And the booming voice from above replied, “And where do you think you are?
I don't know what actually goes down in heaven, if heaven has a grand staircase or a theater where you get to see your impact in a "Crash" kind of cinematic adventure, but I do know our stories work that way--the imprints of ourselves we press into the palms of others have the power to be passed and passed through the hands of many. That the smallest things we do, never thinking twice about them, might be the very things that keep a person alive, and breathing, and standing on that day. I've stopped doubting that kind of impact because believing in it - believing in miracles in the mud of the mundane - gives you so much more purpose than not believing in it at all.
I asked, "You mean, you might as well spend your life going upward, through the happy places, since heaven and hell - the destinations - are the same thing anyway?""Same - same," he said. "Same in end, so better to be happy on journey."I said, "So, if heaven is love, then hell is...""Love, too," he said.
It is indeed a song of steps. And as I have often said to you, these steps are not made to descend but to ascend. The questioner wishes then to ascend; and where does he wish to ascend if not to heaven? What does this mean—to ascend to heaven? Does he wish to ascend so as to be in the heavens with the sun, the moon, and the stars? Far from that! But there is in heaven an eternal Jerusalem where the angels, our co-citizens, are. From these co-citizens we on earth are estranged. In this exile we sigh; in the city we shall have joy.
She said, "Well, that's right, she's going to heaven very soon. And now it's time for us to say good-bye to her and tell her how much we love her."Mary martha nodded and looked at the needlepoint in her hands."Will her brain still be hurt, in heaven?" she asked.[Rebecca]....said, "Do you remember that time at the beach, when you went into the water with Gran-Gran and the waves were too big and she lifted you up over them? And you two were laughing so much and you said she was the coolest grandmother in the world?"Mary Martha smiled. "Yes""That is how she will be in heaven," Rebecca said.
I like pros, especially when it comes to tennis and rent boys” — and here I’m really wondering if the pun on prose consolidates Bruce’s feeling toward it versus poetry under the sign of sex, which Bruce sometimes pays for, in order to direct us toward the pleasure of its use-function when monetised, a pleasure seldom associated with poetry, and one that might lead to the company of more pros. He continues: “If I can get a twofer, and the trick looks like Rafael Nadal, I’m in heaven.
I walked slowly to enjoy this freedom, and when I came out of the mountains, I saw the sky over the prairie, and I thought that if heaven was real, I hoped it was a place I never had to go, for this earth was greater than any paradise.
Poor Cook, thought Captain, I must be kinder to her. She makes a splendid pet. How faithful she is! I always say you can't get the same love from a dog that you can from a human. So clever, too. I believe she understands every word I say. I believe they have souls, just like dogs. It's uncanny how canine a human can be, if you are kind to them and treat them well. I know for a fact that when some dogs in history died, their humans lay down on the grave and howled all night and refused food and pined away. It was just instinct, of course, not real intelligence, but all the same it makes you think. I believe that when a human does, it goes to a special heaven for humans, with kind dogs to look after it.
Chaucer, like Homer, writes about a journey, but as a Christian he has a different goal. Homer wanted to go home, but Chaucer's pilgrims want a place of man's true home: paradise
Can I ask you something very personal while you try things on?”“Yes, of course, what do you want to know?”“…well, it’s just that… I don’t want to offend you,” she said uncertainly. “Oh come on, Akane, out with it!” Mitsuko prompted her, “I want to know the answer too!”“Very well,” agreed the little auburn pixie and cut to the chase: “Where are your wings?”The question was so unexpected that I burst out laughing. “I had to part with them when I came down to Earth. “It’s something every angel has to deal with if they’re planning to spend any length of time down here.”“And what’s your life like, up there?” Akane asked. “In the Kingdom of Heaven, we live as beings of pure light.” “Up there, there’s no such thing as fear, pain, hot or cold. We don’t know hunger, suffering, ageing or death. We have no need of food and we don’t sleep. We are the messengers of God and we watch over the lives of mortals. We come to Earth often, but only as spirits, and once we’ve completed our task down here, we always go back to the White Woods.
It's an unholy crusade against good people everywhere, all in my name. If I had a stomach, I'd be sick to it. You see now why so many good people just give up out there? You can only take so much evil pretending to be good. You can only handle so many broken souls acting as if good people are the evil ones, before you raise your hands and claim defeat. But I want you all to understand something. There is evil happening. There are spirits from Hell demonizing. There are even wars planned, and dark judgments justified by the self-righteous fanatics. But none of that means good can't also triumph. None of that means good cannot rise up against hatred, against judgment, against the armies of Hell itself, and bring about a tidal wave of joy and love. Evil does, but good always is.
You have to love and respect your body, just as you must love and respect your soul, before you can truly love and respect the bodies and souls of those you care for. Of course the body itself is no matter to Heaven for the same reason that matter is no matter. Your gluten and your gluttonous maximus are a corporeal issue. Only your gluttony is an affair of the soul.
C.S. Lewis in his second letter to me at Oxford, asked how it was that I, as a product of a materialistic universe, was not at home there. 'Do fish complain of the sea for being wet? Or if they did, would that fact itself not strongly suggest that they had not always been, or would not always be, purely aquatic creatures? Then, if we complain of time and take such joy in the seemingly timeless moment, what does that suggest? It suggests that we have not always been or will not always be purely temporal creatures. It suggests that we were created for eternity. Not only are we harried by time, we seem unable, despite a thousand generations, even to get used to it. We are always amazed by it--how fast it goes, how slowly it goes, how much of it is gone. Where, we cry, has the time gone? We aren't adapted to it, not at home in it. If that is so, it may appear as a proof, or at least a powerful suggestion, that eternity exists and is our home.
In order to mount to heaven, you used the Inferno to give you momentum. "The further down you gain your momentum," you often used to tell me, "the higher you shall be able to reach. The militant Christian's greatest worth is not his virtue, but his struggle to transform into virtue the impudence, dishonor, unfaithfulness, and malice within him. One day Lucifer will be the most glorious archangel standing next to God; not Michael, Gabriel, or Raphael—but Lucifer, after he has finally transubstantiated his terrible darkness into light.
O, the sorrow of us all,to wander the earth in a shell.And looking to the heavens,we lay to rest in hell.The suffering of the innocentin the midst of Jacob’s well.How the miles fled between us,and that distance is still great.Though on the same shore we now sit,in temporal quietude to wait.The moon is our bright witness;it will lead us to the gate.
We are people-trees. Our roots are hidden in Earth .The branches spread out on Heavens.The fruits are our energy.Two different energies: The positive and negative ones.The balance of both carries the progress.Article by Author Katerina Kostaki :The Tree of Gnosis in the Garden of Eden
According to your holy book, every single Buddhist, Jew, Hindu, Muslim, follower of various minor traditions or sects, those who do not affiliate themselves with a religious tradition and the approximately 2.74 billion humans who have never had the 'privilege' of hearing the word of your Messiah will be sentenced to eternal damnation in a lake of fire—regardless of moral standings or positive worldly accomplishments. If this sounds like a fair proposition to you, then I bite my tongue—but I honestly believe that the majority of Christians do not agree with these doctrinal assertions, and instead categorize themselves as 'Christians' out of cultural familiarity or perhaps out of complete ignorance in regards to the topic.
We love Christmas presents but not Christ; Easter baskets but not crosses. We want to tell our friends with cancer that we will pray for them (we don’t) and our puddle-eyed children that their goldfish have gone to heaven (doubtful). When we lose our jobs we want to take comfort in the idea that God doesn’t give us more than we can handle, but really, how can we? We have absolutely no idea what God has given us or what it might be for. We haven’t talked to Him in ages.
There was never meant to be death, he told them, and now there would be no more death. There was never meant to be war, and now there would be no more war. There was only meant to be peace, and now there would only be peace. There was never meant to be Hell. There was only meant to be Heaven. Now there was no Hell, there was only Heaven. There was only meant to be God. There was never meant to be Satan. Now there was only God, there was no Satan. Hell had to end. It was now on fire and would burn forever. Heaven had now no opposite. It was unopposed. It shone in first light and first colours. The Father's pattern had been broken by Satan, he told them, but now it had been restored. His tapestry had been torn, but now it had been repaired. There was only meant to be love, he reminded them. There was never meant to be hate. Now there was only love. There was no hate. There was only meant to be good. There was never meant to be evil. Now there was only good. There was no evil. The cosmic wheel turned in unhindered harmony, perpetual perfection.
It was at a concert of lovely old music. After two or three notes of the piano the door was opened of a sudden to the other world. I sped through heaven and saw God at work. I suffered holy pains. I dropped all my defences and was afraid of nothing in the world. I accepted all things and to all things I gave up my heart. It did not last very long, a quarter of an hour perhaps; but it returned to me in a dream at night, and since, through all the barren days, I caught a glimpse of it now and then. Sometimes for a minute or two I saw it clearly, threading my life like a divine and golden track. But nearly always it was blurred in dirt and dust. Then again it gleamed out in golden sparks as though never to be lost again and yet was soon quite lost once more.
And in front of it all are the pearly gates: the proverbial entrance to Heaven that she, in earthly life, thought might not exist. But they are real, not myth or fantasy.As she passes through them, several people greet her. In foreign tongues even, but she understands. Language no longer matter. There are no barriers between herself and others, just love.The gorgeous views seem to go on forever. Ornate structures, mansions, banquet halls, and natural beauty, orchards, gardens. People congregate around huge marble fountains. In the distance are snow-capped mountains of the purist white. She can hear the sounds of rushing rivers and the surf of the ocean at once.Everyone around her is happy, loving, thankful. A choir sings songs of joy and peace while others play musical instruments of every kind in perfect harmony. Children laugh and play in the streets as well as in the clouds above her head.
SOON, he replied, which makes better sense under the rules of that country than ours. VERY SOON! he added, clasping my hands; then, unable to keep from laughing, he pushed off from the rock like a boy going for the first cold swim of spring; and the current got him. The stream was singing aloud, and I heard him singing with it until he dropped away over the edge.
People do not know what Truth is and what false is. Truth knows both Truth and falseness. However, the false know neither the false nor Truth. People do not know what Truth is, nor do they know what they are being deceived by. When they have a bigger mind and become Truth, they will know the wisdom of the world and will live without death.
Such fatigues and hardship as these serve to wean me more from the earth; and, I trust, will make heaven the sweeter. Formerly, when I was thus exposed to cold, rain, etc., I was ready to please myself with the thoughts of enjoying a comfortable house, a warm fire, and other outward comforts; but now these have less place in my heart (through the grace of God) and my eye is more to God for comfort. In this world I expect tribulation; and it does not now, as formerly, appear strange to me; I don’t in such seasons of difficulty flatter myself that it will be better hereafter; but rather think how much worse it might be; how much greater trials others of God’s children have endured; and how much greater are yet perhaps reserved for me. Blessed be God that he makes the comfort to me, under my sharpest trials; and scarce ever lets these thoughts be attended with terror or melancholy; but they are attended frequently with great joy.
I’ve heard it said many times when talking about going to heaven, ‘You can’t take it with you.’ It’s true that you cannot take with you your house, car, money, or other things you have valued here on earth, but how about your husband, wife, parents, children, friends, and acquaintances? You personally will never be able to get someone into heaven, but God certainly can use you as a tool to spread the good news as He brings more people to Himself.
I don’t reckon it’s allowed, going round setting fire to people,” said Adam. “Otherwise people’d be doin’ it all the time.”“It’s all right if you’re religious,” said Brian reassuringly. “And it stops the witches from goin’ to Hell, so I expect they’d be quite grateful if they understood it properly.
I don't have to worry about Madame Ouche! she'll still be robbing me blind when she's dead!...having made her last confession and received extreme unction...all the cataclysms will pass over her without harming a single gray hair on her head! it's a paradise here for scum like her, on earth as there is in heaven...they don't really die, the sluts, the hussies, the really awful ones, they just go from one paradise to another, with their money, servants, cars...just buy their cute little ticket and off they go! final absolution and see you later! they shit in your hands!...they're born to slip out of both hells - the one here and the one in the next world...all they do is fuck and whine...loads of cash! never broke!...cheers! here's to you! no regrets! you realize too late...
It is often thought that spirits in the after-world do not breathe as we might do - and that in being dead, one does not require inhaling and exhaling anything.Well, they do exchange ethers, and the body of a soul does in fact breathe, and talk and sing - though not with oxygen, but a rarefied vitality. And just as a newborn, the very first impulse that comes when one crosses over to the other side, past the veils of death, is to inhale deeply - and then relax.
You see, I cannot share my space with them. Not only am I severely claustrophobic but I abhor the mass. In general, I do not like people very much. Those I cannot sand are the average ones that eat with their hands out of plastic plates and travel in buses to work. I am horrified of them. "Mr. Wesley
No ancient Jew was ever promised, or expected, a heavenly life. That was a wild and outrageous teaching of Jesus. Holy text never offers a heavenly hope--before Jesus. Think about it: No matter how faithful Adam would have been, he could never graduate to heaven. Going to heaven was a 'Jesus teaching.' It simply does not exist in Torah.pg xxvii
Well, Hell was worse, of course, by definition. But Crowley remembered what Heaven was like, and it had quite a few things in common with Hell. You couldn’t get a decent drink in either of them, for a start. And the boredom you got in Heaven was almost as bad as the excitement you got in Hell.
Ramadi’s sky was generously filled with stars. Celestial ornaments set against a banner of a deep blue velvet sky. It was a place where hell, death, and heaven were so clear and the closest I’ve felt to all three in my life.
I know after all the awful places you've had to go, it's hard to imagine how good heaven can be, but I've seen it, and no words can describe it...It's worth it all. We've both lost a parent, we've been beaten and bruised, and we've done through hell together. I even died. And I can tell you...giving up everything to serve God is worth it all.
Golden Rule Living is the great simplifier. It places us in another soul’s shoes, taking what can appear to be a com- plex decision that involves another and streamlining it to a one-step process of deciding, “If I wouldn’t like this done to me, then I shall not do it to another.
Many people don't fear a hell after this life and that's because hell is on this earth, in this life. In this life there are many forms of hell that people walk through, sometimes for a day, sometimes for years, sometimes it doesn't end. The kind of hell that doesn't burn your skin; but burns your soul. The kind of hell that people can't see; but the flames lap at your spirit. Heaven is a place on earth, too! It's where you feel freedom, where you're not afraid. No more chains. And you hear your soul laughing.
That infinite and indescribable good which is there above races as swiftly to love as a ray of light to a bright body.It gives of itself according to the ardor it finds, so that as charity spreads farther the eternal good increases upon it,and the more souls there are who love, up there, the more there are to love well, and the more love they reflect to each other, as in a mirror.
I feared the defining point of this Hell was its unrelenting uniformity, its lack of variation from type. If there was a heaven at the end of this, it must be filled with great variety, perhaps a multiplicity of intelligent species spread across universes. Yes, heaven would be as full of difference as Hell was of sameness.
I would I were in the kingdom of heaven if it be as you and Mr. Graham take it for!" said Clementina."You must be in it, my lady, or you couldn't wish it to be such as it is.""Can one be in it and yet seem to himself to be out of it. Malcolm?""So many are out of it that seem to be in it, my lady, that one might well imagine it the other way around with some.
My experience showed me that the death of the body and the brain are not the end of consciousness, that human experience continues beyond the grave. More important, it continues under the gaze of a God who loves and cares about each one of us and about where the Universe itself and all the beings withing it are ultimately goind.
To regret the exchange of earthly pleasures for the joys of Heaven, is as if the grovelling caterpillar should lament that it must one day quit the nibbled leaf to soar aloft and flutter through the air, roving at will from flower to flower, sipping sweet honey from their cups, or basking in their sunny petals. If these little creatures knew how great a change awaited them, no doubt they would regret it; but would not all such sorrow be misplaced?
They told me that nothing was a sin, just a poor life choice. Poor impulse control. That nothing is evil. Any concept of right versus wrong, according to them, is merely a cultural construct relative to one specific time and place. They said that if anything should force us to modify our personal behavior it should be our allegiance to a social contract, not some vague, externally imposed threat of flaming punishment.
I'm not interested in absolute moral judgments. Just think of what it means to be a good man or a bad one. What, after all, is the measure of difference? The good guy may be 65 per cent good and 35 per cent bad—that's a very good guy. The average decent fellow might be 54 per cent good, 46 per cent bad—and the average mean spirit is the reverse. So say I'm 60 per cent bad and 40 per cent good—for that, must I suffer eternal punishment?"Heaven and Hell make no sense if the majority of humans are a complex mixture of good and evil. There's no reason to receive a reward if you're 57/43—why sit around forever in an elevated version of Club Med? That's almost impossible to contemplate.
There's just something about the way he sings. It makes me think of when it snows outside, and the fire is warm, and Podo is telling us a story while you're cooking, and there's no place I'd rather be--but for some reason I still feel... homesick.
Christ makes Heaven the standard for God's will be done on Earth. What a high ideal is this! What power it would take to bring such a thing about! Nothing short of the Kingdom of God pulling down strongholds, overthrowing bastions of deeply entrenched sin, and then conquering this present world in such a way as to establish righteousness – nothing short of such things as these can meet the standard that Christ sets before us.
God prevented Adam & Even from ETERNAL SINFULNESS by giving them the gift of death, the ability to exit this life & arrive safely in the wondrous life to come. Death, though it would appear to be man's greatest enemy, would in the end, prove to be his greatest friend. Only through can we go to God.
The strength of the familiar electromagnetic force between two electrons, for example, is expressed in physics in terms of a constant known as the fine structure constant. The value of this constant, almost exactly 1/137, has puzzled many generations of physicists. A joke made about the famous English physicist Paul Dirac (1902-1984), one of the founders of quantum mechanics, says that upon arrival to heaven he was allowed to ask God one question. His question was: "Why 1/137?
To long for the dawning of the light is to long for the casting out of darkness. To hope for the resurrection of life is to hope for the banishment of death. To dream for the healing of the body is to dream for the excising of the disease.
But at this point an objection is frequently raised. The "otherworldliness" of Christianity is objected to as a form of selfishness. The Christian, it is said, does what is right because of the hope of heaven, but how much nobler is the man who because of duty walks boldly into the darkness of annihilation! The objection would have some wight if heaven according to Christian belief were mere enjoyment. But as a matter of fact heaven is communion with God and with his Christ. it can be said reverently that the Christian longs for heaven not only for his own sake, but also for the sake of God. Our present love is so cold, our present service is so weak; and we would one day love and serve Him as His love deserves.. it is perfectly true that the christian is dissatisfied with the present world, but it is a holy dissatisfaction; it is that hunger and thirst after righteousness which our Savior blessed. We are separated from the Savior now by the veil of sense and by the effects of sin, and it is not selfish to long to see Him face to face.
St. Augustine says something which is a great thought and a great comfort here. He interprets the passage from the Psalms ‘seek his face always’ as saying: this applies ‘for ever’; to all eternity. God is so great that we never finish our searching. He is always new. With God there is perpetual, unending encounter, with new discoveries and new joy. Such things are theological matters. At the same time, in an entirely human perspective, I look forward to being reunited with my parents, my siblings, my friends, and I imagine it will be as lovely as it was at our family home.
... something wholly new in religious thought. All other heavens have been gardens, dreamlands: passivities, more or less aimless. Even to the majority among ourselves, heaven is a siesta and not a city.The heaven of Christianity is different from all other heavens, because the religion of Christianity is different from all other religions. Christianity is the religion of cities. It moves among real things. Its sphere is the street, the market-place, the working life of the world... Try to restore the natural force of the expression - suppose John to have lived today and to have said 'I saw a new London.
Pye turned his paw over and chewed his claws. “Humph. What you think of me is none of my business.”“You don’t know, do you?”“Know more than you . . . Know what?”“You are dead.”Pye patted his paws. “No, I’m not.” He rolled on his back and stretched, enjoying the warmth of the fire.“I’ve been here since 1665.”Pye chuckled. “You are, if I may so, in remarkably good condition.” Apart from the hole in your head, missing tail, and pulmonic plague cough.“I’ve seen them come. Seen them go. Seem them hang around in limbo. That’s what it’s called when beings don’t leave this Earth.”“Purgatory!”“I am responsible for many deaths,” Rita said.“You!?”“They couldn’t build the graves fast enough to bury the bodies.”“I don’t understand how a mere stump-tailed fur ball could endanger life.”“If I were you I'd think that.” A silence followed before Rita said, “I did not work alone.”“Oh?
When you're dying, the unicorn up in heaven gets a note from an angel telling her there's a person who's going to need a ride up soon. The unicorn finds out what the person likes. Favorite foods and books, colors and activities, pets and games. She gets a room ready for him, or her, near people who she knows they'll enjoy being with, maybe other friends and family who have died before.When the unicorn is done, she jumps off of heaven's perch, flies through the blue sky, around the clouds, over any rainbows, and down to the person. She's invisible to everyone. She patiently waits. When the person dies, she gathers them up on her back, using her hooves and horn. All of a sudden, they sit up straight and smile, they laugh, because they're on top of a unicorn and alive again. They hold on tight to her golden reins and the unicorn takes them to their new home, where they're happy.
God has blessed the vale of Kashmir with grace and grandeur. It is a land of lush green meadows, crystal clear springs and lakes, the majestic rivers and streams, the snow white and roaring cataracts, sweet waters, high snow-covered peaks make it a perfect archetype of the promised land of God.
The future glories of heaven have been overshadowed by the present glitter of earth, and many Christians have sunk into a health-wealth-and-prosperity comfort zone from which only death itself or the rapture of the church would dare remove them - and even those would be unwelcome intrusions to some. Few people long for heaven. (pg. 158).
Today the journey is ended,I have worked out the mandates of fate;Naked, alone, undefended,I knock at the Uttermost Gate.Behind is life and its longing,Its trial, its trouble, its sorrow;Beyond is the Infinite MorningOf a day without a tomorrow.Go back to dust and decay,Body, grown weary and old;You are worthless to me from today—No longer my soul can you hold.I lay you down gladly foreverFor a life that is better than this;I go where partings ne'er severYou into oblivion's abyss.Lo, the gate swings wide at my knocking,Across endless reaches I seeLost friends with laughter come flockingTo give a glad welcome to me.Farewell, the maze has been threaded,This is the ending of strife;Say not that death should be dreaded—'Tis but the beginning of life.
God forbid we should both go to heaven. Its endlessness would make us hate each other. Better for you to be in heaven and me in hell. We would long for each other, dream of each other, idealize each other. You would rail against God, since he was keeping you from consummating your love. I would send smoke signals from my pit of brimstone - love letters that smelled like sulfur and made you choke. Maybe we would even try to sneak off to purgatory for illicit rendezvous.
I’ll tell you what I don’t believe, Alwyn. I don’t believe there’s a pretty forest in the sky with castles and a white light and God and all his angels waiting to welcome all the good people in. And you and me standing there sick with nerves while they check us out to see if we’ve made the grade. That sounds too much like immigrating to Australia.
You see, Squirt, there's heaven, and then there's hell. Hell is where they send all the bad people, like criminals and con artists and parking inspectors. And heaven is where they send all the good people, like you and me and that nice blonde from MasterChef.What happens when you get there? In heaven, you hang out with God and Jimi Hendrix, and you get to eat doughnuts whenever you want. In hell, you have to, uh . . . do the Macarena. Forever. To that "Grease Megamix." Where do you go if you're good and bad? What? I don't know. IKEA?
Over the years of being stuck in this shit hole called life, I had debated religion and church, souls and freewill, heaven and hell. I had come to a few conclusions. Mankind was too self-serving to understand what He had wanted from them. It wasn’t a million dollar church, it wasn’t perfection, it wasn’t about how many times you prayed or apologized or that one day a month where you fed the homeless. And you weren’t banished to hell for that one time you told someone to fuck off. You didn’t end up in hell for that time you were a bitch to your fellow man. It took a lot to end up there, and man worked at it with crazed enthusiasm. They worked harder at chiseling their way into hell, than any other action.
I got a kick out of those who whined about their soul. Worried they were losing it. Let’s get one thing straight, you didn’t lose your soul. You always knew where it was or where it went, you cannot lose something you gave away or sold or had broken past repair. Your soul was like your arm, you didn’t lose your arm. Your arm was either there or it wasn’t, and you usually knew why it wasn’t there
In front of us, Annabelle and Aspen argue over whether black-and-white movies are amazing or archaic. Blue walks a few feet behind like he’s waiting for the pair to transition from verbal zingers to hair pulling. He wants a front-row seat for that show, and I don’t blame him.
In the beginning, there was the earth, formless and empty. Darkness hung over the surface of the deep. And then there was light. It spilled over the waters, vast and powerful, and its creation severed the unity that had come before. This light was a separate entity from the darkness. Something novel and cruelly different. The spirits called it “day.” Its opposite was called “night.” Between them was evening and morning—the First Day. This division marked the end of peace in the universe. Everything has been pretty much fucked up since then.
Heaven is closer and more real than anything we experience in this life. And ultimately, I think that's why I've seen these glimpses---I'm always on the lookout for them. I believe if you look closely, you can clearly experience them too.
Why are we here? Why didn't God just make us and place us in Heaven? What is this place called Earth we're sent to reside in until we're called to live in Heaven for eternity? Training Camp Earth...it is the reason we're here. It is simply a training camp of lesson after lesson to build strength and our relationship with God before we go home. What lesson is God working on in your life today?
For it is good to cleave to God, and to put our hopes in the Lord, so that, when we have exchanged this poor life for the kingdom of heaven, we may cry aloud: 'Whom have I in heaven but thee? There is none upon earth that I desire beside thee.' Assuredly, when we have found such wealth in heaven, we may well grieve to have sought after poor passing pleasures here on earth.
The Albion was a spacious pub, built in the days when a public house with any pretensions to gentility had to have fourteen foot ceilings, brass taps and a polished wooden bar you skate down. ... Bert, in his reflective moments, considered that if heaven didn't have a well-appointed pub where a man could sit down over a beer for a yarn with the other angels, then he didn't want to go there.
When a man falls in love, he sees the beloved in an idealized vision which to the rest of the world seems unjustified by the facts of the woman's character and appearance. The lover feels towards his beloved, thus idealized, a rapture of devotion, which seems to blend humility with exultation, self-giving with grateful receiving, in a joyful interchange of laughter and courtesy. What is the real significance of this vision and the mutual relationship which can emerge from it? [Charles] Williams tells us that the lover sees his beloved as all men would see one another, and all things, had not man fallen from his state of original innocence. He sees his beloved as all men ought to see their fellow-men 'in God'. The relationship between lover and beloved which emerges is (at its best) the relationship of joyful giving and receiving which ought to join all men together. Already such relationships exist among the perfected in Heaven. And the archetype of such perfected relationships is the coherence of the Three Persons of the Trinity.
They call each other `E.’ Elvis pickswildflowers near the river and bringsthem to Emily. She explains half-rhymes to him.In heaven Emily wears her hair long, sportsLevis and western blouses with rhinestones.Elvis is lean again, wears baggy trousersand T-shirts, a letterman’s jacket from Tupelo High.They take long walks and often hold hands.She prefers they remain just friends. Forever.Emily’s poems now contain naugahyde, Cadillacs,Electricity, jets, TV, Little Richard and RichardNixon. The rock-a-billy rhythm makes her smile.Elvis likes himself with style. This afternoonhe will play guitar and sing “I Taste A LiquorNever Brewed” to the tune of “Love Me Tender.”Emily will clap and harmonize. Alonein their cabins later, they’ll listen to the riverand nap. They will not think of Amherstor Las Vegas. They know why God made themroommates. It’s because Americawas their hometown. It’s becauseGod is a thing withoutfeathers. It’s becauseGod wears blue suede shoes.
Mr. Pritchard! What are you doing? Is that O-soto-gari? No! It is not! It is a yak mating with a tractor! That is really very very not very good! My grandfather is weeping in Heaven, or he would if there were such a place, which there is not because religion is a mystification contrived by monarchists! Again! Again, and this time do it properly!
Gazing around, looking up at the lofty pinnacles above, which seemed to pierce the sky, looking down upon the world,--it seemed the whole world, so limitless it stretched away at her feet,--feeling that infinite unspeakable sense of nearness to Heaven, remoteness from earth which comes only on mountain heights, she drew in a long breath of delight, and cried: "At last! at last, Alessandro! Here we are safe! This is freedom! This is joy!
It is more magnificent than what I thought heaven might be, and yet it is all of its wonder, as well.”... "Iris, we are shut off from it in this life because if any knew its magnificence, life itself would end, for all who are living would seek death. But as the egg must be in the nest for the bird to fly from it, so the living must live and die when nature intends so that the shell may be broken at the point when the living have wings to fly. It is as if in life we are blind, and in death we see. In life we think in error, but in death we know and love and understand.
I gaze up at the ceiling. Through it. Past Kim and Chip's room on the second floor into the sky, space, heaven, hell. Who says hell is down? It could be up. It could be next door to heaven. Hell could be a subset of heaven, like a ghetto in the middle of a glass city.
These are the folk who may pass into the kingdom of heaven: the grief-stricken, lovers, scholars of a certain obsessive disposition. Brute beasts. Women who have become as men and men who have become as women. Writers of books with long titles. Only those knights who have failed to touch the Grail. Industrious women. You, and I, and a boy named Oleg, and a girl with blue hair.
Our poor human heart is flawed: it is like a cake without the frosting: the first two acts of the theatre without the climax. Even its design is marred for a small piece is missing out of the side. That is why it remains so unsatisfied: it wants life and it gets death: it wants Truth and it has to settle for an education; it craves love and gets only intermittent euphoria’s with satieties. Samples, reflections and fractions are only tastes, not mouthfuls. A divine trick has been played on the human heart as if a violin teacher gave his pupil an instrument with one string missing. God kept a part of man's heart in Heaven, so that discontent would drive him back again to Him Who is Eternal Life, All-Knowing Truth and the Abiding Ecstasy of Love.
And what percentage of people take up the option to die off?’ She looked at me, her glance telling me to be calm. ‘Oh, a hundred per cent, of course. Over many thousands of years, calculated by old time, of course. But yes, everyone takes the option, sooner or later.’‘So it’s just like the first time round? You always die in the end?’‘Yes, except don’t forget the quality of life here is much better. People die when they decide they’ve had enough, not before. The second time round it’s altogether more satisfying because it’s willed.’ She paused, then added, ‘As I say, we cater for what people want.’I hadn’t been blaming her. I’m not that sort. I just wanted to find out how the system worked. ‘So … even people, religious people, who come here to worship God throughout eternity … they end up throwing in the towel after a few years, hundred years, thousand years?’‘Certainly. As I said, there are still a few Old Heaveners around, but their numbers are diminishing all the time.
When I came out into the outside room again, I saw her shoe still lying there, where it had come off in the course of our brief wrestle. It looked so pathetic there by itself without an owner, it looked so lonely, it looked so empty. Something made me pick it up arid take it in to her. Like when someone's going away, you help them on with their coat, or their jackboots, or whatever it is they need for going away.I didn't try to put it back on her, I just set it down there beside her close at hand. You're going to need this, I said to her in my mind. You're starting on a long walk. You're going to keep walking from now on, looking for your home.I stopped and wondered for a minute if that was what happened to all of us when we crossed over. Just keep walking, keep on walking, with no ahead and no in-back-of; tramps, vagrants in eternity. With our last hope and horizon - death - already taken away.In the Middle Ages they had lurid colors, a bright red hell, an azure heaven shot with gold stars. They knew where they were, at least. They could tell the difference. We, in the Twentieth, we just have the long walk, the long walk through the wispy backward-stringing mists of eternity, from nowhere to nowhere, never getting there, until you're so tired you almost wish you were alive again. ("Life Is Weird Sometimes" - first chapter of unpublished novel THE LOSER)
The most tragic strain in human existence lies in the fact that the pleasure which we find in the things of this life, however good that pleasure may be in itself, is always taken away from us. The things for which men strive hardly ever turn out to be as satisfying as they expected, and in the rare cases in which they do, sooner or later they are snatched away.... For the Christians, all those partial, broken and fleeting perfections which he glimpses in the world around him, which wither in his grasp and he snatches away from him even while the wither, are found again, perfect, complete and lasting in the absolute beauty of God.
When Isaiah predicted that spears would become pruning hooks, that's a reference to cultivating. Pruning and trimming and growing and paying close attention to the plants and whether they're getting enough water and if their roots are deep enough. Soil under the fingernails, grapes being trampled under bare feet, fingers sticky from handling fresh fruit. It's that green stripe you get around the sole of your shoes when you mow the lawn. Life in the age to come. Earthy.
We all have a suspicion and hope that we've just been part of something special, something that may eventually change our lives. That no one else knows this makes it seem like we are living with a secret that we would like to share, but can't, sort of like having a superpower that's not come online or being president elect. For the moment, our lives proceed as usual, but within a month, we think, everything will change. It's a frustrating, if exciting, disconnect.
I have heard your orators speak on many questions. One among them the so-called vital question of money which is above all things the most coveted commodity but I, as a Jainist, in the name of my countrymen and of my country, would offer you as the medium of the most perfect exchange between us, henceforth and forever, the indestructible, the unchangeable, the universal currency of good will and peace, and this, my brothers and sisters, is a currency that is not interchangeable with silver and gold, it is a currency of the heart, of the good life, of the highest estate on the earth.
If you're a child of God, you do not just "go around once" on Earth. You don't get just one earthly life. You get another-one far better and without end. You'll inhabit the New Earth! You'll live with the God you cherish and the people you love as an undying person on an undying Earth.
Every kingdom work, whether publicly performed or privately endeavored, partakes of the kingdom's imperishable character. Every honest intention, every stumbling word of witness, every resistance of temptation, every motion of repentance, every gesture of concern, every routine engagement, every motion of worship, every struggle towards obedience, every mumbled prayer, everything, literally, which flows out of our faith-relationship with the Ever-Living One, will find its place in the ever-living heavenly order which will dawn at his coming.
Lord Foulgrin: "You must not let him see Charis as a place of learning, exploration, duties, travel, companionship, banquets, celebrations, and productive work. A low view of heaven is our ace in the hole." (conspiring to bring Fletcher down after salvation)
Yeah, but what does that even mean... heaven? Because see, I need to be able to put him somewhere, Zo. In my head, I mean. I need to be able to close my eyes and picture him and know he's okay. And just saying the word heaven doesn't help that much. Because like what is heaven, exactly? And where is it? And what do you do there?
Have you ever had somebody grip you with a passion you never thought existed outside the fucking movies? As though they found you the most precious thing in the world? I felt it then, and couldn't believe that somebody would actually want me that much. I don't believe in Heaven as a place, but I sometimes think that if a person could write down how I felt at just that moment - if they could describe it perfectly - then that sentence would be something like Heaven to me. And as a final resting place, I'd be happy to have my name shrunk down and rested, invisibly, on the collar of the full stop at the end.
A little girl and her father were walking along in the evening. She was fascinated by the stars, and kept looking up at them, but made no comment until her father asked what she was thinking. She replied, "If the bottom side of heaven is so beautiful, how wonderful the other side must be
A saving, though an immethodical knowledge of Christ, will bring us to heaven, John 17: 2, but a regular and methodical, as well as a saving knowledge of him, will bring heaven into us, Col. 2: 2, 3.