1) How long is forever?
What is the longest thing you can think of? Is it how long it is until Christmas? Or until your next birthday? Or is it as long as your great-grandfather has been alive? All of those things are tiny when compared to forever. To us people forever seems like just a really long time. But it’s even more than that! Forever has no start and no finish. When we think about races like a marathon race or a running race at school there is always a start and a finish. You know where to start and when. You also know when you finish. Forever is not like that. Forever just keeps on going and going and going. It never stops. So, how long is forever? It never ends.
2) What is the definition of Hallelujah?
This is a very interesting word. Did you know that it sounds almost the same in Chinese? They don’t say the “h” part of it but otherwise it’s exactly the same. I learned that when we were in China and sang some songs there. In the dictionary it says it means “praise the Lord.” It’s used to express praise, joy or thanks. Sometimes people who don’t even believe in God say “hallelujah” when they are excited about something good that happens. They don’t know it but they are really saying praise to the Lord! It means the same in every language and is pronounced almost the same, too. I like that word very much.
3) When is God (Jesus) going to come down on the earth?
Lots of people try to answer this question but I’ll share a secret with you….well, it’s not a secret, it comes from the Bible,…..anyone who says that Jesus will come on this day or at this time is making a mistake. They might even be trying to trick you. Why do I say that? Because in the Bible it says that no one will know the day or the time of Jesus’ return. There will be signs that show it might be soon but we won’t know for sure when it will be. No matter how smart we are or how much we study the Bible the answer to that question is something only God knows. Some people think that the time might be very soon. That could be true. Some of the signs of Jesus’ return are all around us. Bad weather, wars, earthquakes, and things like that are signs. We have those things. So it might be soon. But these things have happened before, too, so it might be a long time away. Whether Jesus comes soon or a long time from now, even after all of us have died, isn’t as important as how we live our lives now. Jesus told us to be telling others about him and his kingdom. He told us to live in ways that are a blessing to others. He told us to love God and to love our neighbors. These things are what are important to Jesus. If he comes soon it will be good if he finds us doing what he wants us to do!
4) Where in the Bible does it explain the description of heaven?
There are several places where heaven is described. You can find them by looking in a concordance. A concordance will list all the Bible verses that talk about heaven. Some of them give us a word picture of heaven. It might not be the actual way that heaven will look but it gives us the idea that heaven will be wonderful. Ask your mom or your grandma or grandpa to help you look in a concordance to find these verses. You can read them together and talk about them. A concordance is a good way to find verses about things you are interested in. But it’s important to read the other verses near the verse you find. It helps to understand what the Bible is teaching. Sometimes people will take one little verse and decide something important from that verse. They might miss the real message which comes from all the verses around that one verse. So when we read that God will cover them with his wings we might think God has wings if we don’t read the rest of the psalm where that is written. Reading the rest helps us to see that the writer is writing a poem and making a word picture to help us understand how loving and kind God is. Other things are like this. It’s important to remember that the Bible teaches truths about God and man and we need to read and understand the whole Bible, not just some small parts.
5) How big is heaven?
My, that’s a hard question. We can read in the Bible about heaven and it describes it as having many dwelling places for the people of God. It also is described as having streets paved with gold which shows us heaven will be beautiful and wonderful. But I don’t remember any verse that says heaven will be this size or that. You can be sure that heaven will be big enough for whatever God has planned for us who believe. In my imagination I see wonderful places to visit, huge waterfalls like Multnomah Falls only bigger and better, large grassy fields and hills where we can roll down them and laugh and laugh. I also imagine libraries with many wonderful books to learn more and more from, I imagine that we will keep learning more and more about God as we get to know Him more and more. I like sports so I imagine wonderful games to play and fun playing them. I also imagine lots of good things to do that will be good work for us so that we can continue to develop and grow and experience God and His creation. I even imagine me being able to sing well and play a musical instrument which is something I admire and would like to be able to do. I don’t know if my imagination is really what heaven will be like but you can see that if some of these things are part of heaven it will need to be very big! How big? I don’t think anyone but God knows that!
6) How many people are in the world?
Long ago, at the time of Noah there were only 8 people in the world. Before Noah there were many people but not so many as we have these days. Today the report is that there are more than 6,500,000,000! More than six-and-a-half BILLION! That’s a lot of people. A good thing is that more than 2 billion call themselves Christians. I can’t see into anyone’s heart so I don’t know if all the people who say they are Christian are really Christian but it’s a good thing that so many do say they are Christians. In America many people say they are Christians. There are more people who are Christian than any other faith in the world. This is good…but it’s also sad in one way. Even though there are so many who are Christian there are many who are not Christian. Some of them don’t really believe anything much about God. Others follow a false god or false ideas. It’s important for us to be ready to help people get to know Jesus so they can understand about God and how much we are loved by Him. They can also be friends of Jesus and grow in many good ways. They can receive forgiveness and be clean in God’s eyes. These are much more important than anything else.
7) How does God exist?
This is a very interesting question. When we ask about something that exists we think of where they live or what they do or how long they have been alive or things like that. For example, if we think of elephants we might ask “How long have elephants existed?” We could ask, “Where do elephants live?” Or “What do elephants eat?” Or “Where did elephants come from?” All of these are good questions about elephants but they are not good questions about God. If we ask how does an elephant exist we will say it is born and then grows up. It’s parent elephants take care of it. It eats hay and other things. When it gets older it will have baby elephants to take care of for a time. When an elephant gets old it will die. An elephant exists by doing elephant things and living in elephant ways.
But God is not like elephants. Elephants were created by God and some elephants have lived and died throughout many, many hundreds and even thousands of years. But God was not created. God never had a start. God always was and God will always be. God will never die. So God isn’t like elephants. God is what started everything that we know. God created everything we can see and experience. God has a plan for our lives and He hopes we will follow according to what He wants. I don’t know if this answers your question about how does God exist. Maybe you meant something else in that question. If you have other ideas I can try to answer them.
Note from the author, Director of Children's Ministry, Trish Rondema:
When I was a child I had many questions about God and things I was hearing and learning at church and at school. It’s always good to ask questions. Sometimes people might have a good answer but other times they might not really know. I’m not completely sure that all of my answers are 100% right but they are ideas that I have learned over my years of life from studying the Bible and listening to God's voice. Some of your questions are just like questions I asked when I was young. That’s why I have ideas about them. I hope this helps you think about things. Someday you will be able to answer questions of other people because you asked questions when you were young. And when you get older there will be other questions to ask and find answers to. Keep on asking!