I'm still here

[SummerBob]

Hi everyone!

With our company being bought out by another (European) company I've been swamped, plus I had to travel, so I've been away from here for a while.
I'm back from my travels and will be checking in from time to time, maybe not every day though.
I hope everyone here is doing great with your relationships and in life in general.

 

[SummerBob]

Well, I'm checking in here a little more often lately.

Mostly I just log on, see what's going on and responding if something interests me.

To tell you the truth, I'm getting tired of Facebook. Most people here don't know this about me, but one of my other big interests, besides age gapped love, is the idea of marriage in Heaven. I believe in it. If you think about it, the two are kind of related. The idea that love is ageless would follow that it would also be in eternity, right?

The main source of "no marriage in Heaven" theology comes from what I believe is a miss-interpretation of Matthew 22:30, Mark 12:18 and Luke 20:35, where Jesus responds to the Sadducees question about a woman who marries 7 brothers and then dies. The church teaches that there is therefore "no marriage in Heaven". Anyway, I have a Facebook page devoted to that topic.

Since my Marriage IS in Heaven page that is very slow lately, I've decided to give it a rest for the time being so I'm back here more often than usual. That and work is slowing down a little bit.

 

[Gina]

I think I remember you SummerBob. Your name if very familiar to me. I used to post here a few years back, under the name of "Lynn", which is my middle name. Decided to use my first name now.

I don't do Facebook, and probably won't, at least not of a personal nature. It's a wormhole that has sucked in just about everyone else though!

I often come here to lurk, I must admit, hoping to see more familiar faces, but I doubt it will happen.

 

[MissMuffins]

I think that if there is marriage in Heaven, it is not "marriage' in the sense that we understand on earth, where a man and a woman who are "in union" set up housekeeping and sleep together.

I think of "marriage" in heaven is the believer's spiritual union with God and state of communion with other believers.

I think the Sadducees were just being pricks who were tyring to sound smart. That's kind of what they did.

MM

 

[SummerBob]

My whole thing about marriage in Heaven, and again..... I don't mean to hijack the topic of this forum.... is that relationship between man and woman is God's original plan. He said in Genesis, "It is not good for a man to be alone" and created Eve for Adam. He said, "Be fruitful and multiply, and subdue the land" to Adam and Eve before there was sin. The relationship of man and woman is a beautiful thing that God created in the beginning. To say that it is "ruined" by sin and therefore done away with in Heaven paints a picture of God as a God who changes his mind. It is a picture of a God who has lost control.

Some of my favorite YouTube videos on this topic are by GodRules, TheGospelStuff, BeagleMomma, ProphetsAmongUs, and Zo (ruffled some faith feathers). Unfortunately, as much as I love GodRules, he says in other videos that he believes the earth is flat and that the Apollo moon landing was a hoax. Oppps!!!!!

Anyway, that's just my 2 cents.

Gina, thanks for your response. If you think Facebook is a wormhole, you should try the comments on YouTube. They make Facebook look like a church choir.

 

[Slow Worm]

he says in other videos that he believes the earth is flat

At risk of going off-topic, I really cannot see how anyone old enough to be making a video programme can really believe that, when everyday evidence shows the opposite, e.g. anyone who has walked up a mountain and observed the horizon apparently receding, or approached a coastline from the sea and observed that the upper parts of hills appear before the lower ones, has seen for themselves that the Earth is curved.

SW

 

[SummerBob]

What's even more amazing is that there exists several "flat earth" societies of people who believe that.... or they are playing some kind of game. I never know what to believe on the Internet.

It's a shame about GodRules because he sounds like a rational person when talking about scripture, and claims to be an engineer. He also believes the Apollo moon landing was a hoax and that the holocaust never happened. He's probably playing games and saying these sensational things just to get ratings and subscribers.

 

[Slow Worm]

He also believes ..... that the holocaust never happened. He's probably playing games and saying these sensational things just to get ratings and subscribers.

It's hard to believe someone using holocaust denial just to try to get publicity. Holocaust deniers are (occasionally) seriously crazy or (usually) Nazi sympathisers.

SW

 

[SummerBob]

I don't think he's a Nazi sympathizer. He's just a nut job. I say that with regret, because he's a likeable guy.

 

[Slow Worm]

I don't think he's a Nazi sympathizer. He's just a nut job. I say that with regret,

Much better a genuine lunatic than a sane holocaust denier, for that would be truly evil.

One evening last summer my wife and I were wandering around in Vienna and came into a square surrounded by old houses. In the middle was a huge block of dark stone. Getting closer we could see it was engraved with lots of columns of short phrases of two or three words in Hebrew. We can't read Hebrew but these were obviously names and it was obvious what the stone was. Names of people who were there before the Anschluss but were gone by the liberation: they existed, they went somewhere.

SW

 

[SummerBob]

Exactly.

To be fair to GodRules, the discussion about holocaust denial was from his followers on his video comment page. I didn't hear he himself talk about that.

His main focus is that the earth is flat, the planets and stars revolve around the earth and the Apollo moon mission was a hoax. He talks about those topics in several videos. Real nut job stuff. What's a shame is that he makes such good arguments in his marriage in Heaven and female angel video. Given his other content, however, I have no choice but to discount his opinions as coming from a source of information that has no credibility.

I can only say there is some truth in everybody, even if they are wackos. A stopped clock is right twice a day.

 

[SummerBob]

I'm back again after a short absence.

I've been very busy with the company merger, a lot of things need to change with our web site and a whole new server with a new collection of European clients has been added to our system.

Then, at 3 a.m. Wednesday morning I got a call from my father who needed to be rushed to the hospital from a fall he took (he's 83) and I had to drive to Maryland, about 35 miles, to be with my mom while my dad was in the hospital. Thankfully he was released from the hospital but I was there for the better part of a day. So my life has been pretty hectic, but I'm still around.

 

[SheLikesKitties]

I am glad your dad is better.

I am sorry but I do not believe people interact with each other in heaven. I think that you die, and there is peace and you live in that timeless peace. Interacting with other people would mean that there would be no peace, even if the interaction is one of love.

I have been married twice, I am not sure how many times my dad married, but I think at least 3. He had children by at least 4 women. I am sure these women went on with their lives. My maternal grandparents were only married to each other, but if there is marriage in the afterlife for them it would be in hell. They fought constantly, not good.

Having said that, I never felt I was part of another person as with my husband.

 

[SummerBob]

I'm sorry to hear about your difficulties.

I only brought up marriage in Heaven because that's been my focus lately. When I was a young adult I was very far behind in life. I didn't get my degree till age 30 and could only afford to move out of my parents' house a year later, at 31. Not only was a single, but didn't get dates at all during that entire time. I was nearly 36, almost 2 decades into adult life if you go by "18", before I finally met the first woman who really loved me. Therefore, I had a strong interest in AGRs, because I was seeking one myself. That interest lasted for years after because of how strongly I felt about it.

However, now my life is pretty much a done deal. My wife and I have a stable, long-lasting marriage and we have two kids; one grown and the other one growing up fast. I love my wife and would never think of leaving her for someone else, and I know she feels the same about me. At nearly 60, I feel the end of my life looming. I still support AGRs because I will always believe people should be free to seek their happiness as long as it's legal and they're not hurting anyone. However, that 60-year old marker is really hitting me right now and it has me thinking about things beyond this life.

Your belief is not what I would consider the standard church teaching. The standard church teaching is that marriage is not in Heaven because there is no "need" for it. We will be "married to Jesus", and our earthly marriages dissolved because they were only a picture or signpost of our greater marriage to Jesus. They hinge all of that belief on three verses of scripture where Jesus answers a trick, heckling question by the Sadducees asking Him to solve an impossible puzzle about seven men who married the same woman. "Who's wife will she be in Heaven?" If you grew up in the (Catholic?) church I'm sure you're familiar with the story. I'm a subscriber to several YouTube videos that discuss this topic. They argue that our marriage to Jesus is symbolic, and that Jesus (nor the Bible) never says any of the things "the church" says about "why" there is no marriage in Heaven (no need for it because of no procreation, no loneliness, we'll be with Jesus, etc.). They further argue that the "marriage" Jesus referred to in that story was only a legal contract and not the union of souls that Adam and Eve had in Eden. I could go on, but this is not a forum for theological discussions so I'll end it here.

During the first nearly 2 decades of my adult life, not only could I not get a girl, was stuck living at home, saw all the guys in my college classes and church youth groups with their girlfriends/fiancés and getting married; but I then had to go to church or read Christian books that shoved the theology down my throat that when we go to Heaven we "won't be married" and we'll be "married to Jesus instead". You can imagine how all of that made me feel!