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Would Someone Please Describe Eternity to Me? - 7/29/2008 8:16:04 PM
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atruefaith
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It can be quite mind boggling. <-- Tongue planted firmly in cheek, but seriously, let me know how you'd describe it.
Oh, one more thing...you can't use "a thousand years is as a day to the Lord..." Peter already used that one.
< Message edited by Conquered -- 7/29/2008 8:25:03 PM >
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RE: Would Someone Please Describe Eternity for Me? - 7/29/2008 8:18:51 PM
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SavedByGraceMD
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I guess that depends on where you are spending it. Heaven or hell. With God or without Him. In paradise, with never ending joy, or in the lake of fire with never ending torment. So which are you asking.
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RE: Would Someone Please Describe Eternity for Me? - 7/29/2008 8:18:54 PM
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Liveloved
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Knowing God
John 17:3
and as the Westminster Catechism says, enjoying Him forever
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RE: Would Someone Please Describe Eternity for Me? - 7/29/2008 8:22:10 PM
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atruefaith
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quote:
and as the Westminster Catechism says, enjoying Him forever
"....and enjoy him forever." Yes, but that speaks to where you'll spend eternity, not fathoming what eternity is to a finite mind. Yes, it's unfathomable, but should it stop us from trying?
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RE: Would Someone Please Describe Eternity for Me? - 7/29/2008 8:23:38 PM
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atruefaith
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quote:
I guess that depends on where you are spending it. Heaven or hell. With God or without Him. In paradise, with never ending joy, or in the lake of fire with never ending torment. So which are you asking.
MD...good, you're on to me. But in answer to your question: Both.
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RE: Would Someone Please Describe Eternity for Me? - 7/29/2008 8:36:47 PM
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SavedByGraceMD
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well then
what do I think heaven will be like. First and foremost, the savior will be there. To be in His presence and to see Him face to face. That would be heaven for me. No pain, no sorrow, no tears, and no death. Only joy, peace, happiness, and the love of God. To imagine what it will be like, or to try to fathom what eternity will be like, is something my mind has a hard time grasping. Will time be absent. With the Lord present, there will never be darkness. You are right, to finite minds, who think in terms of minutes, hours, days, and so on, eternity is unfathomable. I do know where I want to be though. The other place does not sound like somewhere I want to be for even a nano second.
what do I think hell would be like
again first and foremost, the savior will not be there. No Jesus, No peace, only pain, tears, sorrow, and unhappiness. Satan and his minions will be there, and I guess it will be really hot  . Again, it deals with things our minds can not begin to understand. To be with the people that will be there, unforgiven murderers, rapists, molesters, cheaters and liars. Will they still be like that?
So I then am eternally grateful for the grace afforded to me, by God, by Him going to the cross, by Him taking my place and forgiving my sins, washing me clean in the blood of the Lamb. I no longer have to worry about such a place thanks to what He did for me.
Heaven is where I want to be, so I can spend eternity saying thank you to the one who bore my shame, and paid the penalty for my sin.
I don't know if this is what you are looking for, but it is what I could come up with.
_____________________________
Isaiah 41:10
"Fear not for I am with you,
Do not be dismayed for I am your God,
I will strengthen you and help you,
I will uphold you with my righteous right hand"
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RE: Would Someone Please Describe Eternity to Me? - 7/29/2008 8:57:42 PM
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TMeeks
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Eternity, for the believer, could be a never ending learning and growing experience as God continues to reveal Himself and his creation in ways that we cannot imagine for now.
Hell could be never ending self recrimination, since all those in hell will know, without a shadow of a doubt that they and they alone are responsible for their state.
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Galatians 6:7 Do not be deceived: God cannot be mocked. A man reaps what he sows. 8 The one who sows to please his sinful nature, from that nature will reap destruction; the one who sows to please the Spirit, from the Spirit will reap eternal life.
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RE: Would Someone Please Describe Eternity to Me? - 7/29/2008 9:56:35 PM
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URForgiven
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quote:
Would Someone Please Describe Eternity to Me?
"The present is the point at which time touches eternity." C. S. Lewis
Eternity has no beginning and no end, it is existence in the eternal now.
Eternity is being in the moment permanently. There are no other moments, there is just the one moment you are in, and that moment is called eternity.
At least that is what I think it is today...
Peace
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RE: Would Someone Please Describe Eternity to Me? - 7/29/2008 11:55:46 PM
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whisperingwaters
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Well one thing for certain is there will be no remembrance of former things so this earth will be gone and forgotten.
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RE: Would Someone Please Describe Eternity to Me? - 7/30/2008 12:56:47 AM
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MrFribbles
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Here's another good one - imagine traveling to the edge of an infinite universe. ; ) But seriously, it's a good question. I don't think it's one we can answer properly, but it's still a good question.
I think one of the difficulties is that so much of what we do in this life is time-goal oriented. I live in the DC area, and like many big-city areas in the US (and other places, I'm sure!), traffic is a major headache. Why? Because we have to get somewhere by a certain time. But in eternity, our concepts of time constraints will be different. I believe that we will still experience time, to some extent, but without the imposed limitations of false goals we have here in this finite world. I think it will be extremely liberating having a life where we are free to live without worrying about getting everything done in time, or in a broader sense, worrying about that all-consuming (for now) enemy, death, waiting to cut our life's work short in 70-or-so years.
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You've made a holy fool of me,
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RE: Would Someone Please Describe Eternity to Me? - 7/30/2008 3:25:09 AM
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FurGodWurLivin
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"Eternity is like sticking your head in a brass smoker and having a friend strike the outside with a hammer. It messes with your head and has a heckuva ring to it..." --Anonymous
Adam
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RE: Would Someone Please Describe Eternity to Me? - 7/30/2008 7:02:37 AM
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Walker311
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Being stuck behind an extremely old dude(conserving gas) on a very busy two lane and I'm in a big hurry.
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RE: Would Someone Please Describe Eternity to Me? - 7/30/2008 8:36:15 AM
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rcjames
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forever and ever and ever and ever and ever and ever and a day.
Thanks
RC
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RE: Would Someone Please Describe Eternity to Me? - 7/30/2008 10:38:57 AM
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Liveloved
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quote:
Yes, but that speaks to where you'll spend eternity, not fathoming what eternity is to a finite mind. Yes, it's unfathomable, but should it stop us from trying?
Knowing God and enjoying Him forever (based on John 17:3) was my original answer.
I think knowing God IS eternity and you're right, it is so huge, we can't wrap our minds around it. . . Him. But that is what LIFE is all about. The moment we truly believe we are living the eternal life, the NOW, and God is it.
So knowing Him, seeking to know Him as He is and as He longs for us to know Him, is what eternity is all about. And as we seek Him, He will be found. And as we know Him, we will enjoy Him. More and more. On and on. Forever.
I know this doesn't sound like enough. But that is where our finite minds are leading us astray. God is enough because He is EVERYTHING. And it is only as we begin to comprehend this, little by little, that we enter into ETERNITY, enjoying Him and all He is and all He has done and all He is doing and all He is yet to do.
That's my description of eternity. It's all about Him.  LL
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RE: Would Someone Please Describe Eternity to Me? - 7/30/2008 10:58:30 AM
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JimboFletch
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I heard it described like this: If a bird moved this earth one grain of sand at a time to a galaxy 100 light years away (about 5,878,625,373,183.61 international miles times 100), when it had finished, the second hand of eternity would not have perceptively moved.
Or from the great hymn "Amazing Grace"
When we’ve been there ten thousand years,
Bright shining as the sun,
We’ve no less days to sing God’s praise
Than when we’d first begun.
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RE: Would Someone Please Describe Eternity to Me? - 7/31/2008 7:12:50 PM
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upNORTder
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quote:
Would Someone Please Describe Eternity to Me?
I would, but it would just take forever!
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RE: Would Someone Please Describe Eternity to Me? - 7/31/2008 7:15:01 PM
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BenQuebec
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My definition: Eternity is where time doesn't exist, nor does it matter. :-)
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RE: Would Someone Please Describe Eternity to Me? - 8/2/2008 7:26:04 PM
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BillBaileyBFAFan
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Eternity is really the opposite of everything we have ever known. From birth to death everything in our lives starts and stops. We get up at a certain time, eat at certain times, go to work, church everything at certain times. Days have a set amount of hours, and weeks a consistent amount of days.
In eternity past, and eternity future, there are no beginnings and no ends, no starts or stops. Calling eternity past and future, though, is probably not a good description. To us, God WAS, God IS, and God WILL BE, when in all honesty all we can really say is that GOD REIGNS Period. He knows no beginning or end.
In all the descriptions so far there is a benchmark. One response about the grains of sand still referenced time, but I feel that eternity is a place where time has no place. It is a concept that our minds WILL NOT understand until we are released from this world of constraints at the Rapture of Christ's Body.
The Word of God says that to be absent from the body is to be present with the Lord, and yet in another place says that we will be resurrected at the Rapture. Therefore to us, the moment we die, we are in God's presence, but if you die today and Jesus doesnt return for 100 yrs, how does that coexist with being absent from the body and present with the Lord. Only if the moment we die, we are not constrained by time and at that moment, we are IN the moment of the Rapture. Meaning that the events are not experienced in a linear fashion as everything here in this life is.
Just my 2 cents.
God Bless
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RE: Would Someone Please Describe Eternity to Me? - 8/2/2008 9:55:34 PM
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HisFish
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My wife rented "The English patient" some years ago, it's akin to watching that.
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The theology of the present aims at the deification of man, but the truth of all time
magnifies God . C. H. Spurgeon
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RE: Would Someone Please Describe Eternity to Me? - 8/2/2008 10:46:04 PM
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colliefan
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A place where time doesn't exisit or matter.
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RE: Would Someone Please Describe Eternity to Me? - 8/3/2008 1:12:40 AM
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atruefaith
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Eternity...
In heaven, it's where you first ask the question "How long have I been here?" and are told 600 billion years.
In hell, it's where you first ask the question "How long have I been here?" and are told about 4 1/2 minutes.
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RE: Would Someone Please Describe Eternity to Me? - 8/3/2008 11:40:22 AM
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solomonsprayer
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I recently read a piece by renowned Christian philosopher/scholar and public speaker Peter Kreeft on Christianity Today in which he discusses/answers 35 of the most frequently asked questions about Heaven:
http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2003/juneweb-only/6-2-51.0.html?start=1
(link above)
There are all sorts of neat and interesting topics like boredom (lack of and why), sex, magic (something I never thought about until reading this), clothing, language, music, etc. Kreeft also has an entire book on the subject titled, Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About Heaven. There's a lot there that you may be interested in.
On a personal level, though, I think the most exciting thing in all of eternity in Heaven is God Himself. To imagine finally being in the presence of the most beautiful, powerful, loving Being that created us simply gives me chills. Likewise, it is equally amazing to me to imagine having all of our sinful nature (thoughts, desires, and actions) completely stripped from us and being in perfect and pure communion with Christ and all of our Christian brothers and sisters. The unbelievable joy and esctasy that would bring is also unimaginable. There are so many more details about Heaven that are awesome, but in short it is pure and perfect joy in communion with God and other brothers and sisters in Christ that does not end.
solomonsprayer
[edit: Conquered - I realized in re-reading your question and other members' posts that you were asking about eternity and not Heaven per se. I'm sorry if I misinterpreted your question. My thoughts on eternity would be that it would be unconscious in that we would not be counting time so to speak. When you're in everlasting joy and busy loving God and others, time would seem to fly and be irrelevant. But just like I mentioned in the above thoughts and comments on Heaven, we will all be in perfect union with God and other Christians in a state of joy and when you're having a good (an understatement) time, who would ever want that to end or even think about time (imagine being a small child and enjoying your favorite game or activity and not having a care in the world about time)? If all eternity in Heaven is filled with joy, then time would not matter. If we could somehow move forward and backwards in time in eternity in Heaven, it would all be the same - awesome, everlasting joy and happiness! I'm sure some of this we may not be able to completely grasp until we are actually enjoying eternal happiness in Heaven with God, but we can rest assured that it will be an unimaginable awesome blast once we are there!]
< Message edited by solomonsprayer -- 8/3/2008 12:14:48 PM >
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RE: Would Someone Please Describe Eternity to Me? - 8/3/2008 12:24:31 PM
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mvic
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My Oxford Dictionary says this:
Eternity = a visit from the mother-in-law.
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RE: Would Someone Please Describe Eternity to Me? - 8/3/2008 2:30:30 PM
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armydude
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quote:
ORIGINAL: mvic
My Oxford Dictionary says this:
Eternity = a visit from the mother-in-law.
AMEN!
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