Learning and Growth in Heaven

[Travisdt]

I love discussing theology with others and I often picture in Heaven we will all still communicate with each other in Spiritual matters and discuss along wit Jesus the different things God has shown each one of us about himself. Image no more disputes just edification and learning from each other for all eternity the endless aspects of God that God shows each one of us each day(assuming time in Heaven. Lets not debate that) about his infinite being.

 

[Saint Beloved]

A godly man once told me that Hades is like a palacial garden with a jail next to it where everyone in it is fully conscious and able to communicate but separated according to how they lived their lives. I like that picture of a garden very much.
Though I haven't found the above idea specifically in Scripture yet so please no one go counting it as the gospel truth. ^

As for Heaven he also said that there are three stages of our existance:
Embodied spirit (earth) physical place
Disembodied spirit (hades) not a physical place
Embodied spirit (heaven or hell) physical place
For in our resurrected bodies we will eat and drink as Jesus ate the fish after his resurrection and the New Jerusalem will be a physical city in the new physical earth.

 

[Kenny'sID]

Mild disputes maybe but all in all, yes, we'll have the same mind but things will be different over all.

Also, think of the things we may be able to accomplish, not only in a forever world, but in a world where our minds aren't constantly on the junk we have to deal with in this age.

 

[Another Lazarus]

Rev 19 10 And he carried me away in the spirit to a great and high mountain, and shewed me that great city, the holy Jerusalem

20:2 In the midst of the street of it, and on either side of the river, was there the tree of life, which bare twelve manner of fruits, and yielded her fruit every month: and the leaves of the tree were for the healing of the nations.

 

[Another Lazarus]

Matthew 13:43
Then the righteous will shine forth like the sun in the Kingdom of their Father

 

[Shane R]

This is the last petition from the Prayers for the Whole State of Christ's Church:

And we also bless thy holy Name for all thy servants departed this life in thy faith and fear; beseeching thee to grant them continual growth in thy love and service, and to give us grace so to follow their good examples, that with them we may be partakers of thy heavenly kingdom.
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I have underlined the phrase which I find the most interesting. This was a controversial prayer when it was added to the longer series because it is a prayer for the dead. Protestant theology has tended to look at death as an endpoint and is typically uncomfortable with praying for or to the dead (except at the funeral, of course). Folk religion has led the general populace, such as are spiritual anyway, to believe that one either goes to heaven or hell after death -probably heaven. And then everything is essentially over and done.

But the prayer above posits growth in virtue after death. Some have found enough wiggle room in the underlined clause to argue purgatory, which an informed Catholic will tell you is a place of final purification of the dead. I'm not uncomfortable with that as long as no element of suffering is introduced into the description of the place.

 

[Saint Beloved]

I can only speak to my understanding, which is limited, that death is the endpoint for communication purposes because it is also the endpoint in a marriage.
A widow is free to remarry because death ends the union.
So to does death end that particular communion of intercessory prayer for each other.
That is how I understand it though I currently hold no Scriptural proofs of that to offer you.