What is heaven like? And where is it, anyway? Nearly everyone who believes in God has asked these questions at some point in their lives. The answers they’re normally given, unfortunately, are generally vague guesses or assumptions, or simply statements saying “we can’t know for sure.” The truth, however, is that Scripture actually answers these questions for us, and the answer is so simple that I can actually show you heaven right now. How? Well, let’s take a look at some of the passages of Scripture which tell us the answer to that question:
And God said, Let the waters bring forth abundantly the moving creature that hath life, and fowl that may fly above the earth in the open firmament of heaven. — Genesis 1:20
And then shall appear the sign of the Son of man in heaven: and then shall all the tribes of the earth mourn, and they shall see the Son of man coming in the clouds of heaven with power and great glory. — Matthew 24:30
So when we see the word heaven, we can see that it’s sometimes referring to the sky, where the birds and clouds are (the atmosphere, in other words).
When I consider thy heavens, the work of thy fingers, the moon and the stars, which thou hast ordained — Psalm 8:3
And God said, Let there be lights in the firmament of the heaven to divide the day from the night; and let them be for signs, and for seasons, and for days, and years: And let them be for lights in the firmament of the heaven to give light upon the earth: and it was so. And God made two great lights; the greater light to rule the day, and the lesser light to rule the night: he made the stars also. And God set them in the firmament of the heaven to give light upon the earth — Genesis 1:14-17
As we’ve already determined, heaven is “above” us, but it isn’t only a reference to the atmosphere, but to outer space as well.
In the beginning, God created the heaven and the earth. — Genesis 1:1
This tells us that there are only two overall “places” one can be: on earth, or in heaven. And if one is in the sky or in outer space, they’re not on earth, which only leaves heaven for them to be in.
And it came to pass, while he blessed them, he was parted from them, and carried up into heaven. — Luke 24:51
And when he had spoken these things, while they beheld, he was taken up; and a cloud received him out of their sight. And while they looked stedfastly toward heaven as he went up, behold, two men stood by them in white apparel; which also said, Ye men of Galilee, why stand ye gazing up into heaven? this same Jesus, which is taken up from you into heaven, shall so come in like manner as ye have seen him go into heaven. — Acts 1:9-11
This also reaffirms that heaven is a reference to what is “up above” the ground we stand on. As we can see, after Jesus ascended up into heaven, the disciples were gazing up into the sky (heaven), as the angels also said they were. So, simply put, if someone wants to see heaven now, all they have to do is look up at the sky.
Most people, of course, think of heaven as a place the righteous dead go to, but you won’t find any Scripture that tells you the dead go there (the truth is, only the living can go to heaven, at least in a conscious state, and those in the body of Christ will go there at the Snatching Away). That said, it isn’t a place you’d want to go right now in your current body either (aside from a short trip there in a plane or a space shuttle), at least not without either a space suit or a vivified (immortal) body that could survive and thrive out there. It also isn’t the perfect, sinless place most people think it is, at least not now (the devil and his angels haven’t been cast out of the heavens yet, for one thing, and many celestials there still haven’t been reconciled to God yet either), although it will be pretty great for the body of Christ when we have our new bodies that can enjoy it out there with our Lord as we fulfill our impending ministry to the celestials there.
Of course, some of you are probably now wondering what the “third heaven” is a reference to, or the reference to the “highest heaven” in other passages. The first one is likely simply a reference to the third heaven in time rather than in space, and the highest heavens is a figure of speech that generally refers to the farthest reaches of outer space (although it’s possible to also use it figuratively of the highest ranking of governments among the celestial beings in the heavens), so when Scripture says that the highest heavens can’t contain God, it’s simply telling us that God ultimately transcends the physical universe.
This, of course, raises the question of where people got the idea that the dead go to a place called heaven from in the first place. There are a few reasons for this, but the main two are verses that refer to God being in heaven, as well as a misunderstanding of the passage where Jesus tells the thief on the cross that he’d be with Him in paradise.
Since we know that the body of Christ will go to the heavens, and also that people will be living with God in the New Jerusalem, most Christians have assumed that these references must be talking about a place the dead go, not realizing that these things both take place within the physical universe, experienced by living people, rather than in an ethereal afterlife dimension experienced by the dead (the body of Christ goes to the heavens to complete a ministry there, but not until after they’ve been resurrected from the dead and/or vivified; and the New Jerusalem later descends from the heavens/outer space to the New Earth rather than being a place anyone who is dead goes to). That said, yes, God indeed is in heaven. He has a throne room (which can also be referred to figuratively as “heaven”) and a throne somewhere out there in outer space, presumably in the city that will one day be called the New Jerusalem, while it waits to descend to the New Earth, and it also seems likely that He manifests a part of Himself in some sort of manner that the spiritual beings there can perceive, but He ultimately transcends the whole universe at the same time.
As far as the second misunderstanding goes, paradise is a reference to a future state of the earth where the tree of life will be, both after Jesus returns and also later on the New Earth, which makes sense considering there would be no need to eat from the tree of life in an ethereal afterlife dimension as a ghost. This means that Jesus’ statement to the thief on the cross about being with Him in paradise couldn’t mean what most Christians assume it to mean, because paradise doesn’t really even exist yet, at least not outside of the Jerusalem which is currently above as it waits to descend to the New Earth, I suppose. Most people completely misunderstand the punctuation in that passage, not realizing Jesus wasn’t saying it would happen on that day. Simply put, Christian assumptions about the immortality of the soul (which is a concept that contradicts Scripture, but that’s a whole other topic) forced them to have to figure out where the supposedly conscious dead souls went, and it made sense to have them go to where God was, and since God was said to be in heaven, they decided that must mean heaven is a realm where the dead go rather than outer space as Scripture tells us it is.
This all means, by the way, that it’s also time to rethink the term “the kingdom of heaven,” or “the kingdom of the heavens” (which is simply a reference to the future kingdom coming from the heavens to Earth, specifically to Israel), since this might actually be better translated as “the kingdom of outer space,” or perhaps simply “the kingdom above/the kingdom from above.”