(January 1, 2014 at 5:46 pm)xpastor Wrote: Given that our telescopes have peered billions of light-years beyond what the ancients perceived as the vault of the sky, it seems plain that Jesus and the biblical heaven are nowhere to be found.
That always bothered me as a Christian. It always did. Not to mention the importance of the doctrine of the physical resurrection of Jesus. If he rose and ascended as the bible and all the creeds and all the confessions say, where did he go? he needs to be physical mind you and at the same time reign over heaven and earth at the same time.
(January 2, 2014 at 4:26 pm)Drich Wrote: Would you have Him walk away? to where? into the sunset? What ever direction He picked, Heaven would have thought to be in that physical direction. Then what? pray in the direction of heaven two or three times aday like a bunch of shmoes? send people on expidetitions in that general direction? Look at the madness of the dark ages for holy sites, could you imagine the wars fought over the land in the direction Jesus walk off into? Look at the scale and destruction of the crusades? for what the land that these 'things' once happened in? Now imagine the destruction that could be justified for God's land.
Up, is the perfect direction. It was not attainable by any of us until we were sophisticated enough to understand that Heaven does not have to be of this world/realm. "Up" also perserved the idea or need for the physical relocation of a person away from this world this realm in that time and in this.
That's a great rationalization, but it still fails to harmonize how a 'physical' Jesus is in 'heaven' but we can't see him anywhere in the physical world.
