A Misconception of Heaven

This evening I was watching The Book of the Dead on the History Channel. I'm a sort of history buff and I generally like the programs on History Channel. Tonight's show about the ancient Egyptian Book of the Dead brought up an interesting misconception. The point is made in this show that Christianity owes its understanding of heaven...."a place where you'll be with your loved ones and be able to do whatever you like" to the Egyptians conception of the afterlife. That many of the early church Fathers were Egyptian,(Alexandria was a center of Christian learning and scholarship in the early centuries) is given as further "proof" of this idea. The only probelm here is that the idea of heaven being "a place where you'll be with loved ones and be able to do whatever you like" isn't the Christians idea of heaven, certainly not as presented in scripture. Indeed we may be with loved ones if they were "in Christ" when they died, but the notion that'll we'll be wandering around a paradise of sorts doing "whatever we like" is certainly not scriptural and really just plain silly! In the presence of God we will be worshipping, if you read Revelation chapter 4, you'll get the idea. Heavenly worship is also revealed in passages such as Isaiah 6:1-8. In heaven, Jesus himself who instituted the New Covenant with his shed blood serves as our High Priest and minister forever, and we are occupied with the opus dei, the work of God. Our Sunday morning worship services are meant to be a reflection of this everpresent and ongoing worship in heaven, that being more easily seen in churches of a liturgical nature, but also in the plainer worship forms of protestant denominations. For surely where ever two or three are gathered in His name, he is there with them, see Matt. 18:20. Also don't forget that "great cloud of witnesses" (Heb. 12:1) who are even now worshipping in heaven as we are worshipping on earth. It's all about Him and being with him throughout eternity. It's really amazing how many misconceptions people have about heaven, and actually those misconceptions have their roots in pre-Christian paganism and ancient religions as the Book of the Dead , and the History Channel expert so aptly demonstrate.

Christianity
heaven
Book of the Dead
ancient Egypt