What do you think heaven and hell looks like surroundings and feelings

of course Heaven is stereotypically displayed as being white, light and cloudy
and hell and endless rocky underground haven of pain and torture

I guess no one would know what they look like until your actually there. But I guess Heaven would be somewhere were you can jst be yourself. No sickness no nothing. Hell well to tell the truth I have no idea what Hell would look like.

personally I don't believe in hell. Nor do I believe there is a 'heaven' where souls are put on different levels according to deeds ect ....... I believe 'heaven' is just where we all end up. All meaning from the so called saints to Hitler. What was done or happened on this earth is left behind. Over 'there' it makes sense.

what happens there or if we can choose to come back or go elsewhere ? don't know.

Likewise, I do not believe in Heaven or Hell but if I had to guess I’d say that Heaven is white, fluffy and full of Catholics and Protestants beating the sh** out of each other, segregating clouds, whilst the Muslims quietly seethe in a corner due to the fact that, for all their devoted exploits, they've ended up with the rest of them.

Hell is probably red and flamey with entertainment from George Formby.

Pitch black dark, and you're completely alone. That would be hell to me.

In Heaven, pomegranates and The Lost World are readily available.

I really doubt Heaven is white, with white fluffy clouds every where. In Heaven all questions would be answered. Nothing would be a mystery to you anymore. A place were everything makes sense.

Heaven --> beach with nice ladies
Hell --> Office (workplace), and dirty public restroom

It can't be that good or it wiil be a case of "ee bah gum things have turned out nicely"



fullywired

you reckon God's got more of a terracotta thing going on up there? Actually, that might work! You know it just hints of irony.

lol. Also to me Hell would be all your worst fears come true.

Ex: Your scared of spiders. For all eternity there would be spiders crawling over you and all around you. Or your scared of the dark. You will never see one speck of light. And maybe Satan is there to make it worse or maybe he's not. It all depends on what you believe in.

So if one really IS scared of George Formby he would....my goodness, it's to horrid to contemplate!

I think there is only you and I know what we are talking about

lol. Yea say you were are scared of George Formby then you would be seeing him every single day!!! Say your scared of Michael Jackson.............. I would be very sorry for you.

hmm... interesting.. maybe after 1000 years of spiders your fear would subside and your be like.."oh look more spiders":\

but i think there is no hell... but.. god does judge...>.> some live forever on earth while others die.. with no after life to speak of

True. But maybe in Hell your fear would never subside. Maybe it won't let you. But truth be known we will never know until we get there. To me there is Heaven and Hell. And yes God does judge. Some say he will come one day and judge us all. To me I seriously doubt that. Why come when everyone is going to die anyway. If there is a Hell than I wouldn't want to be there.


P.S. Ok I heard something from church and I wanted peoples input on it. Here it is: When you go to Heaven and your family goes to Hell then you forget everything about them. You will never remember them because in Heaven it's peaceful so if say your sister doesn't come then that would cause you pain. And being in Heaven that can't be so God wipes your memories of that person that doesn't make it. Seem fair?? I think not. I would rather remember the good times we had then forget about that person entirely. So what do you guys think?

mhm. To me heaven would be absolute nothingness. Death should be the end. To continue onward would be torment I feel as it would cheapen the life I now live.

lmao, if ever God needed a deterrent, the threat of GF and MJ for eternity would be it.

That puts a new view on it for me. I never thought about it like that before. But I understand were your coming from. Why live longer when you lived already? But maybe you have no choice about the matter. What if you just went to Heaven even though you didn't want to? Would you have a choice on what happened to you? Or would God choose it for you?

lol. So true. It would be Hell if you had to look at either one for eternity. I think I would rather take Satan then them.

I think it's pretty safe to say when you die ..
Thats the END of you..

Your consciousness ceases to exist..

But what if there is an after life like Heaven and Hell. Some people believe in it. That's what wre discussing. Why do you think we don't have consciousness when we die? Just curious.

What makes you think we're so special..?

If we have an afterlife -- Wouldn't you think every OTHER mammal would too?

Because, after all, We ARE mammals ..

What if they do to? Who's to say they don't and we don't. There is a possibility that we all do. Theres no proof that we don't and theres no proof that we do. It's all about faith. And if you don't have that then that's your decision.

Humans created Heaven & Hell ..

Animals say like .. The Koala hasn't thought up anything like because they are not afraid to die .. Heck,
They don't even know that they will.

Humans are the only species that is so far capable of that. We know that we will die.
Hence why we thought up Heaven and Hell..

Because, in the long run .. Who wants to die?


PS, I don't like blind faith .. It's blind.

The ideas of heaven and hell is what keeps society going; people are good because of the reward of heaven in the afterlife, Hell is there to stop people from breaking morals. It's always gonna be the fundamental idealism for moralistic laws.

They may have been useful in the past.

But in most advanced societies .. You don't need it..

Since morals do not come from religion, or the ideas of heaven and hell.
As Richard Dawkins explains in his latest book, The God Delusion ..

Heaven is where we all end up. If you've learned what you were suppose to learn, you stay in heaven. If you've failed, you come back(reincarnation into Hell on earth).

Most think heaven is cloudy, puffy, and white. But I think that idea is a bit Hollywood. I think Heaven would be every color you could imagine, as if your sight was magnified by 1000.

GOD is love - I think no hells. He gives us chances to learn and to educate our selves.

I look at this concept in a different light.

In our physical existence, we become stronger healthier, or become weak and unhealthy. We all know it is not very fun being weak and unhealthy.

While we are here we are to know and love ourselves, in essence we are to know and love God.

As with physical attributes, our spiritual attributes need to be cared for, after all, once we shed our material body we are left with our spiritual existence.
If our spiritual existence is what we are left with for the rest of our "life", then having a weak and unhealthy spiritual existence would be like being sick or disabled in the physical sense.

This would be what I would equate to your concept of heaven and hell. (I believe scripture was originally written as this concept, however rewritten to suit man and quasi-religion propagation)

There you go, thats my view.

I see heaven/hell, as nothing more than a tactic to get people to follow a religion.

I agree.

I really don't like how most people conceive of the ideas of heaven/hell in terms of earthly, material ways. Just about everything seems to be nothing more than an extension of silly material pleasures or ways of harming the body. If the material universe is really just a (13.7 billion year old) creation of God and we only temporarily take on bodies here, why should we expect EITHER to be ANYTHING like this universe in ANY way?

I definitely believe in God, in recent years primarily because of a profound personal event which occurred when I was in late middle school (see post 566 on http://www.unexplained-mysteries.com/forum...6010&st=560 for it ). That being said, I don't think hell exists. Or really heaven for that matter - there is just the place we all go. And that is what we make of it. After living here for however long, we see what kind of people we act like. We see how good we could've been, things we could've realized, how much BETTER we could've been - and how much worse. It seems to me that looking back on yourself and how your life as affected others and how you could've acted and thought and done things... most people would feel horrible shame, and wish they'd done better. THATS the origin of the idea of a torturous hell, I think - anyone will feel terrible about various things they've done, both to other people and to God, but some more than others.

The idea of an eternal (either infinite time or just timeless) punishment for something done in the short ~70 years spent here just does not make SENSE to me though! I can understand punishment if it is an attempt to get someone to do better in the future. But an unending punishment, with no possibility of someone redeeming themselves? To me, that is the most unjust thing imaginable and completely incompatible with a loving, God that is fundamentally good in any way.

To some people you have to earn your way to Heaven. Why spend the rest of your life trying to be perfect to go to Heaven when there could be none. I would like there to be one. I think we all want one. But there's a huge chance that it was made up so our lives could be more meaningful. To help others be more Christian so they could go to Heaven and not Hell. To tell the truth I don't know if there is a Heaven or Hell and I'm not going to know until I die.

Heaven is an Etereal kingdom where nothing is impossible you can fly and live forever but hell is the total opposite where you die and suffer forever it was meant for bad Angels

ITs not possible to be sent to heaven without my consent. Were one of the various gods to do so then it would not be heaven. Unless your idea of heaven is a prison with pretty bars.

If heaven is eternal satisfaction and happiness and my idea of such a thing is eternal nothingness then any god could have no choice other then to grant me such or reveal himself as a tyrant. All experiences get boring eventually so eternity in heaven would be eternal boredom sooner or later.

I knew at a very young age that Christianity wasn't for me by the fact that the way heaven was portrayed sounded like eternal torture for me. Hell sounded the same way. Heaven sounded like an eternal prison of boredom.

Eventually I started to develop my own beliefs of the afterlife which are more etheric. That when we die our spirits are released into a dimension without mass.

as if, god wouldnt let murderers and such into heaven

did he let hitler into heaven and give him a mansion with a hot tub and champange along a nice stretch of beach with white sand

If you apply biblical principles. Hell does not exist. It was a later construct of the church. Heaven is clearly described in revelation.(although it is possibly a human approximation of the glory of heaven, using gold and pearls etc as symbols to interpret the beauty and glory revealed in visions) It is the home and seat of government of god. It is not the ultimate home of "saved" people, although they spend 1000 years there. Until the resurrection, all humans, good and evil, "rest in their graves" ie. they are in a state of sleep.

Eventually god restores the earth for human habitation. It will closely resemble the garden of eden, and again some descriptive clues are given in the bible. Our souls will be resurrected into sinless and incorrutible bodies, and live quite human lives, with normal human relationships and meaningful work/purpose in our lives.

Earth will be restored to its place among the people/kingdom of heaven. To achieve this, of course, one must believe that a god exists who is capable of manipulating/altering the laws of physics as we know them. For those who believe in or have experienced any of god's "miracles" this is not much of a "leap of faith."

Heaven is "your imagination set free."

There is no such place as hell. Men created it to instill fear if they would not follow the church's commands. Simple history.

This is what I said in another topic but I think its relevant here.

Eternal life in hell is eternal physical torture.
But eternal life in heaven is eternal MENTAL torture. No matter how wonderfull heaven maybe, after a trillion trillion years you will be weeping for your own "death".

I CHOOSE DEATH!

Ok this actually replies to about seven or eight posts i briefly read.

All of you seem to be thinking like a three dimensional human and while thats understandable its also the problem. Heaven and Hell are real places if you believe in the bible. The question here is the nature of both, not simply the existence. I will explain the probable nature of both starting with Hell.

Hell:
Hell is not a fiery pit of doom rife with suffering and torture. Hell is Nothing Absolutely nothing at all. You could even say there is no hell because quite honestly thats what it would feel like to any who are there. You are stripped of your body, a spirit with full and perfect knowledge of every complete aspect of your life here on earth. You are completely cut off from God whom you now know to be the supreme creator of the universe and the one being in existence who loves you unconditionally. You have had your chance, you did not believe and so you are sent to Hell. More than that you can never become numb to this hell because you are completely outside Gods creation, part of which is time its self. There is no time or concept of time in hell! You do not feel the years pass because there are no years. No words can really express the complete and total Horror of this concept. You are completely alone, Never to forget, Never to grow numb, Never to do anything Ever. Time does not even exist. A second? A day? A year? a million years? None of it means anything. Its as if you just got there and you had been there for a billion years all at the same time from the very second you get there. You want a real picture of hell? Thats hell.

Heaven:
You don't actually go to heaven at the end. Heaven is still for God and the angels. At the end of time the earth is remade as it should have been, All the believers are given new (multidimensional) bodies and sent back to earth to live for eternity. When we get new bodies we gain a new perspective of time and existence. You don't get bored because everything is perfect! Floating from cloud to cloud eating toasted bagels and cream cheese is how heaven is portrayed in the media and by most Christians who for some reason have never bothered to read revelation. There is so much more that we can not even imagine because quite literally our bodies can not think in terms of eternity. Go ahead and try to think about eternity and what that actually means. Humans in our current form can not fully imagine it. It is certainly not your imagination run wild. God is more clever than that and you know it.

Touché!

Matthew 13:50 “furnace of fire…weeping and gnashing of teeth”
Revelation 20:14 “This is the second death, the lake of fire”
Revelation 20:15 “If anyone’s name was not found written in the book of life, he was thrown into the lake of fire”
Revelation 14:11 “the smoke of their torment goes up forever and ever and they have no rest day and night”
Mark 9:48 “where their worm does not die, and the fire is not quenched”

Nope, nope. No suffering or fire here!

Or are you not a Biblical Christian?

Or are these verses just poorly translated?

Yes you have fallen into a fallacy that many Christians fall into so I will forgive the sarcasm and the condescending tone for the moment. The Book of revelation, although accurate in its descriptions, is a vision of the future given to man by the divine. I am a biblical Christian however there is a lot in the book of revelation that is said to describe something that is by nature indescribable. Heaven and Hell are extra dimensional places, the human mind is just not equipped to comprehend the true nature of Hell in this case, so we get the worst thing that our human minds can imagine, which for most people is a lake of fire where eternal torment is the thing.

Ask yourself this, is timelessness where nothing happens and you are cut off from God eternal torment? For me it would be.

The fire in this case is being consumed by the absence of God. Recall the verse (im not going to look it up right this second) where a man in hell begs one of the men in heaven for one drop of water to sooth his tongue. Did you think this was literally what was happening here? The man in hell is begging for one drop of the presence of god to sooth his complete and total loneliness. in this case water = god.

You can believe that hell is a pit of fire, i really don't care, but i honestly think in this case that the biblical description of hell is metaphorical.

Matthew 13:50 - It's a Parable. Not a description of how things will be. Read up on Parables sometime. Verse 44-46 deal with one parable, verse 47-50 comprise the second, both describing the Kingdom of Heaven. It could be suggested that verse 50 is not part of the parable, but concluding remarks describing both parables. However, this is inconsistent with Jesus' parables. Jesus never told a parable and then explained it straight away (this would be the only time in scripture if it were so). Jesus stated that he spoke in parables so that people would not be able to understand him (interestingly enough, this passage is found in the exact same chapter as these parables - part of the same conversation - verse 13-15). So it would not make sense that this be a conclusion. It is part of the parable. And as we all know (or should by now) - parables are FICTIONAL stories told to make a theological truth. They are not actual descriptions of real events.
Conclusion: incorrect application of passage, misunderstanding of "parable".

Revelation 20:14-15 - The Lake of Fire is not a place of eternal torment. There is no reference in this chapter anywhere that those who are cast in the Lake of Fire will suffer. IN FACT, if you read verse 14, it states quite clearly "This is the second death". It does not say "this is the place of eternal torment". Death and Hades are cast in there, the fire sweeps them all away.
Conclusion: Misunderstanding of the "Lake of Fire".

Revelation 14:11 - This is not referring to Hell. It is referring to the Fate that awaits those who "...worships the beast and its image and receives a mark on his forehead or on his hand," (14:9). If you take a literal interpretation of Revelation, this won't happen until the Rapture and seven-year reign of the Beast and rise of the False Prophet. However, I find it very difficult to use anything in Revelation literally. It is a symbolic book, filled with numbers, signs, images, that could mean many things. What is the "Beast" and how do we worship this? How do we receive the mark of the beast? Until you can show me with absolute certainty what that is, then the passage is (at best) ambiguous.
Conclusion: Literal interpretation - misapplication of passage (it does not refer to Hell). Figurative interpretation - ambiguous.

Mark 9:48 - Verse 47 states that it is speaking of Gehenna (translated as "Hell"). Gehenna was a very real place - a valley in fact, near Jerusalem. It was where people would take the dead and burn them - many of the common-folk who were listening would be destined to have that Valley as their final resting place. Hence the imagery people have of a fiery hell. This passage is speaking of a very real and physical place, not a spiritual plane of existence. If what I believe about hell is right, then this passage is simply saying that if you die without God, then the Valley of Gehenna is your final resting place (a cultural reference that they would all understand) - but why would you choose that when eternal life is on the offering?
Conclusion: misunderstanding of the Greek work Gehenna, translated into English as "Hell".

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

As I have stated previously, there are three biblical interpretations of Hell (a place of fiery torment being one of those). However, I believe it has the least amount of biblical support, based on misuse of Parables, dubious interpretations of Revelation, and misunderstandings of the Original Greek language. All passages you quoted suffer from those flaws.

But then again, I'm just rationalizing the Bible, aren't I.........

~ Regards, PA

Just to follow up on my last post, to clarify my own position - I do not believe the soul is immortal. I believe that eternal life is a gift from God, and if you have not got that gift, then you are going to simply cease to exist. Therefore I think "hell" for me is closest to the Atheists belief on the afterlife (ie, it doesn't exist). Atheists believe and take comfort from the belief that this life is all there is and dying is the end of it all. WanderingGypsy even said as much in his earlier post - he'll be getting exactly what he wants.

Heaven is a little harder to describe. Because it is a spiritual plane, not physical, there is no way I can give a description of what heaven will be like. I could say it will be a place of eternal joy, peace, happiness, yada yada. But this would be only a physical description of the intangible. As such, it suffers its flaws - primarily that even the most enjoyable event will be boring after an eternity. I therefore cannot tell you exactly what it will be like. But if it is where my God is, then that's where I want to be

~ Regards, PA

I don't see heaven as the place as it's potrayed in religon.

I belive in a higher being a higher state of mind I see the afterlife as a realm in which unanswered questions get answered We are no longer hindered by our physical exsistance we are free to do as we wish without physical restricitons i.e body, organs, etc,

Divine love is the essence which will be important in this place people will respect each other and factors such as conflict , bloodshed, greed, and other negative factors which plauge society will cease to be exsist.

We will all live in harmony under the guidance of the higher being.

I've never really had an idea about the afterlife, just didn't seem important, because I use to think that when i go, I'll cease to exist, so there's no real point for me to contemplate what it will be like.
But recently, I've thought about it more, and I've come up with that once I'm officially dead, my consciousness will become one with the universe, I'll be everywhere at the same time all over the universe, kinda like god, lol, except I won't have any cosmic powers of any sort. It'll just be my consciousness without physical form.

Well, I hope that's how the afterlife will be.

Hell: Spend Eternity listening to Bob.
Heaven: Spend Eternity Water Boarding Bob.

Arkansas is Hell -- everyone is ignorant, gap-toothed and prone to lying about the simplest things.
Heaven is the Playboy Mansion.

And yes I am serious, because I believe that if there are such things as Heaven and Hell then they are personally tailored.