Do we go straight to heaven when we die? Will everyone we love be there? What does heaven look like? What will I look like in heaven? RD and Greg tackle all these questions and more in this episode.

In the early days of Christianity, many people picked up ideas and ideologies from things like Greek mythology and popular opinions of the day. For example, the idea of Gnosticism entered the Roman world and tried to twist our understanding of who Christ was. So a lot of our societal understanding or way of thinking about heaven is actually incorrect. Heaven is not a place of clouds and harps and angels with wings flying around like it's depicted in movies. In fact, the phrase "go to heaven when you die" is not even in the Bible. While we don't know everything or even a lot about what heaven looks like from the Bible, we do know that heaven is a place where we will be with God; Jesus told His disciples that He was preparing a place for them there. We also know that this place is where we will go (at least for a time before the New Heavens and New Earth) when we die, as Jesus tells the man on the cross next to Him.

While we know these things about heaven, the Bible doesn't seem concerned with what heaven looks like or how it functions; the Bible is much more concerned about us being aware of our eternal reality and putting our trust in Jesus no matter what. Throughout the Bible, we are told that we should be living for the Kingdom now, because the Kingdom is where God rules and reigns forever. Our life with God now is preparing us for our life with Him later in the Kingdom.

Once Greg and RD set these thoughts and facts about heaven straight, they take the time to answer some common questions they receive about heaven.

34:52 - Will I get an answer or know why this particular thing happened to me?

Paul says that in heaven, we will know as we are known. While there is nowhere in the Bible that explicitly states that God will answer all of our questions in heaven, this passage from Paul does lead us to believe that we will understand why things happen to us because God will explain it to us.

40:02 - Will this particular person be in Heaven?

We know that all those in Christ will be with Him in heaven. Through stories in the Bible like that of Abraham, we can see that it is more about believing God's promise and about believing God saves you than about if someone lived before or after Jesus was alive. So if someone believes that it is God alone who saves them and puts their trust in Him, then they will be in heaven.

42:10 - What's going to happen with the New Earth? What will heaven be like?

All we really know is that the New Earth will be God setting things right. However, we can read books by authors like Randy Alcorn to get an idea of what the New Earth could be.

43:58 - Will we know each other in heaven? And what will we look like? Will we have jobs in Heaven?

We know that the disciples knew who Jesus was in His resurrected body but besides that, we don't know exactly what we will look like. We can guess that the New Earth will look something like what we have now, except perfect.