Board index ‹ Heaven and Hell

[Commentator]

That's all. What is heaven?

[Jeff the Jedi]

Heaven is a "spiritual" realm that is not tainted by sin and is where God's presence dwells among angels. The Bible only ever discusses Heaven in abstract and metaphorical terms because it's not exactly something we can easily understand. It's very different from our "physical" world. It is NOT a "place" exactly. It's not a part of our universe. And it does not "contain" God. Heaven was created by God just as our universe was.
Heaven is usually mentioned in the Bible in one of two ways.

On one hand, it's sort of a place that God rules from. The main idea is that God's presence and righteousness is there in full force. Jesus often talked about God's kingdom coming to Earth. We see Heaven as a place which is already entirely God's kingdom. And he is always being worshiped there, by angels. So presumably it's where angels generally exist- they're only ever seen on Earth when given a specific mission or responsibility here I suppose.

So then Heaven is also seen as sort of an... ideal place. It's synonymous with God's kingdom in a more general sense. That's why we say something like "Heaven come to Earth." Heaven and Earth are entirely separate. The point is that God's kingdom is coming to Earth. And in this same sense, Heaven is also used as a place that we want to go in the afterlife. (There's a lot of this in the Bible. See uses of "Zion" for a similar concept.)

The truth is, Biblical speaking, Heaven is NOT our ultimate destination. There's this idea that Jesus didn't come to lead us away from Earth and off to Heaven. He died physically and was raised back to life as something new... but still physical. Revelation talks about how there will be a New Heaven and New Earth in the end, that God will dwell here on Earth just as he dwells in Heaven, and that we will live (in resurrected bodies like Jesus') in New Earth. So the common equivalency between Heaven and the afterlife is a bit of a mistake. Heaven was being used in this sense to refer to God's kingdom in general, but it became twisted into this idea that we would just leave Earth and spend eternity in Heaven. That's not biblical. There is some evidence in the Bible which suggests that the souls of God's people dwell in Heaven between the time of death and New Earth. But we can only really guess what's going on there, in my opinion. In any case, our ultimate destination is a new (perfected in some way, but still physical) Earth.

There will also be a New Heaven. We can only really guess at what will make it new or how it will be different.

Question answered?

[jimwalton]

Good answer, "Jeff". I agree with you. Heaven is just the place where the writers of the Bible perceived that God had his residence. In the OT, heaven was a throne on top of the dome that they called the firmament, and God sat on that throne. By the time we get to the gospels, Jesus speaks of it as the place where God rules over his kingdom—a more abstract reference than anything we see in the OT. By the time we get to Revelation, heaven is, as you say, the "ideal" place where God, his purposes, his people, and eternity merge. And I also agree that God's people will spend eternity on a renewed earth, not "in heaven", as you say. Great answer.