This question has been asked a number of times by our Years 5 & 6 kids. I said that it was clear that we’d meet Jesus the God/man, but would get back to them on other “details” of heaven.

God is omnipresent. Will we ever “see” his omnipresence? Will we ever “see” the Holy Spirit? Or is that still just too much reality for us frail humans to handle… has God become incarnate man for all eternity to give us access to God in a form we will not be “burnt up” by?

Probably all sorts of heresy in the way I’ve phrased things… but words fail me at a very practical level when kids sincerely ask what we are going to “see” of God in heaven, when God is also Trinity.

The short answer is Yes, no - or maybe. I cannot speculate on what is unknown and unrevealed. Let’s all just await a nice surprise. What else can we say that is not just mere speculation - or keen anticipation ?  Is this another case for Deut 29 : 29 ?

So the imagery in Revelation is just imagery? Don’t we get some idea...?

1 John 3:2 “We shall see Him as He is”.

In heaven we will have spiritual bodies and be able to ‘see’ things that are impossible to see now. We will see God, be in His presence, in ways that we can’t even begin to imagine now, limited as we are by our finite, created, mortal bodies.

What we ‘see’ now is actually invisible to the physical eyes anyway. We walk by faith, not by sight. Colossians 3 speaks of setting our minds on things in heaven, where Christ is, but that doesn’t mean we get an eyeful of pearly gates or whatever. It means that we focus on the sort of people we are - the practical outworking of “seeing” heaven is character transformation. Putting off things of the old nature like evil desire and idolatry, and putting on love, compassion, etc.

It’s tough talking about this with younger kids who don’t have the abstract thinking capacity that we develop later in life. So it’s probably best to just assure them that Jesus will be there and He will show us lots of new, exciting things. Like people all liking each other and not fighting; everyone happy, not sad. They’ll understand those concepts, I’m sure.

Dave it is a good question.
Just having a quick look at Revelation;
God’s glory appears to be in Heaven and it surrounds Jesus, called the ‘Lamb’.  God’s glory is represented as light.  However we know from Colossians 1:15 that God is invisible.  He has no form.  Which is part of the reason why an idol could never represent God, that and an idol is mute.  So in Heaven we get to see everything that is able to be seen of God, but the only person of the Trinity that is visible is the Lamb.

This does not mean that the Father and the Spirit are not experienced in Heaven.  They will have a very real presence, but there presence will not be in the shape of a person.

Yeah, I was sort of expecting something like that but if the bible doesn’t say much more on it than that in Revelation, then maybe we can’t read too much into it hey?

I wonder how it works. We are physical beings, but will finally be up “in heaven” with Jesus the God-man.

But what about angels? Do we really see them? How? They are spirit, we are matter.

In a similar way, God is Spirit, the fundamental self-existent essence that started all being and existence. Do we really get to encounter God at that level, or does he “stoop down” to us in His Incarnation, even in heaven?

Many unanswered questions. I think I’ll keep it simple about meeting Jesus in heaven, and we’ll find out more then. Cheers all, and please add any further comments if you think of anything during the week.

I had a go at this question on my blog a while back in which I made reference to Augustine’s answer. Here is the relevant post.

please add any further comments if you think of anything during the week.

Hi Dave,

I thought of this whilst driving around. Just one thing has me bothered. If we run out of “ --- “, will we still be allowed to sing “Give me oil in my lamp, keep me burning.. keep me burning till the break of day” ?

Sing Hosanna, Kevin

1 John 3:2 is a most wonderful verse, Warren.

1John 3:2 Beloved, we are God’s children now, and what we will be has not yet appeared; but we know that when he appears we shall be like him, because we shall see him as he is.

Dave, if a year 5 or 6 child asked me the question he asked you, that is one verse I might use to answer. “We shall see him as he is.”

It’s surely true that we will see Jesus face-to-face. And that when this happens, we will not desire or expect to see anything else.

How happy we will be!

Thanks Byron, that’s an amazing series you’ve got going there and I’ll try and visualize that when I think of heaven and meeting God. For my Scripture kids I think I’ll take Gordo’s suggestion about seeing Jesus as he really is.

Thanks all.

My two cents worth…

I think it was CS Lewis who told the parable which was something along the lines of a woman who is imprisoned while pregnant and has her son while in jail.

She and her son are kept in the dungeon for many years, and the mother doesn’t want her son to be ignorant of the outside world do she draws her son pictures of what life is like outside the cells.
The mother is quite an artist and she is able to sketch her memories of the outside world - forests, the ocean, great cities, animals
Things go well and they often discuss what life in the outside world is like, until suddenly, one day, it becomes apparent that the son has failed to understand something.
“What do you mean there are no ‘lines’ in the outside world?” he says.
“How can things exist? How can you see them unless they have ‘lines’?”
[/CS Lewis]
[my musings]
God is invisible to us now because we are sinful mortals and we are unable to see into the heavenly realm, but at various times in the Bible heaven is revealed to humans - Moses, Isaiah, Ezekiel, the ‘dove’ at the baptism of Jesus, Pentecost… they were not complete revelations, but they were visions of the ‘invisible’ God.

I see no reason why, when Christ returns and our salvation is revealed, that we shall not be able to perceive God with the Spirit-empowered eyes of the resurrection body we shall inherit. Does Christ behold his Father and his Spirit? We will share a body like his, with ‘eyes’ like his.
I suspect it won’t be quite like “seeing” is for us now, but I believe we will “see” God.

A difficulty with Lewis’s analogy is that what we see of God now (in his analogy) is not true seeing.

But what we see is true seeing.

Although you have not seen him, you love him; and even though you do not see him now, you believe in him and rejoice with an indescribable and glorious joy… (1 Peter 1.8)

“If you have seen me, you have seen the Father.”

1 Peter 1:8 refers to a physical seeing, and it is fairly clear that we have not seen Jesus in this sense.

But what we now see of Jesus is true seeing.

CS Lewis = neo platonist!

I have edited my previous post to clarify where Lewis’ parable ended and my musings began- I believe that CS Lewis used the parable in response to people’s concern that there would be no marriage in heaven.
I really should have had a look at the link that Byron gave to his blog before I posted - that way I could have expressed myself in a way that didn’t make it look like I was trying to imitate Augustine

Gordon Cheng - 23 August 2007 09:47 PM

A difficulty with Lewis’s analogy is that what we see of God now (in his analogy) is not true seeing.

But what we see is true seeing.

A difficulty with Gordon’s post is that I have no idea what he means by “true seeing”.

CS Lewis = neo platonist!

So, by the same measure, Cheng=Spanish Inquisitor?
;)

The images of lines are true images in Lewis’ account. But they are only partial.

“For now we see in a mirror, dimly, but then we will see face to face.” (1 Cor 13.8)

Having said this, I do think that Lewis has platonic tendencies in his thought (and he would have been the first to admit it - check out the final couple of chapters in The Last Battle).