This is part 6 of my Actual Good News series of articles on the topic of biblical soteriology (the study of salvation).
Please note that I’m including many of my scriptural references in the links (which are are the underlined words throughout the article), and they also link to studies with extended details that I couldn’t fit into the article, so please be sure to click all the supporting links in order to get the full picture, as well as all the Scripture references.
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 above us, where the birds and clouds are (earth’s 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 we can now see that it isn’t only a reference to our 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” God created, which means there are only two 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. We can see that, after Jesus ascended up into heaven, the disciples were gazing up into the sky (heaven), as the angels also confirmed they were (while also confirming that a prophecy of Zechariah is about Him and when He’ll one day return to the exact same spot He left from, which was the Mount of Olives). 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 anyone goes to a place called heaven while dead (which makes sense, considering the fact that the dead are unconscious, as we now know from the previous articles in this series), thus making the word “heaven” another example of those False Friends found in the Bible that I mentioned in Part 1 of this series (which, as I explained there, is a term that is sometimes used to refer to English words we still use today, but which can now mean something very different — in ways that the average reader is unlikely to be aware of — from what they could mean when our English Bibles were first translated). The truth is that only the living can go to heaven, at least in a conscious state, and those in the body of Christ will go there when our Lord comes for His body, and we’ll finally “ever be with the Lord” there. That said, heaven isn’t a place you’d want to go right now in your current body (aside from a short trip there in an aircraft or a space shuttle), because one needs a quickened (meaning immortal) body that could survive and thrive out there if you were planning to stay long, considering the fact that you’d suffocate from lack of oxygen, or freeze to death, or die from radiation poisoning out there in the heavens without either an immortal body or some sort of vehicle or structure to protect you from death (this is at least partly why Paul wrote that “flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God” — we’ve already learned in a previous article in this series that flesh and blood will inherit the part of the kingdom of God which will be on earth, meaning the kingdom of heaven in Israel, so this was clearly only about the part of the kingdom that will be in heaven, not the part that will be sent from heaven). It also isn’t the perfect, sinless place most people think it is, at least not yet, since the devil and his angels haven’t been cast out of heaven yet, for one thing, 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 spiritual beings residing there. This means, by the way, that Christians who like to claim that God can’t allow sin into heaven (which is not an assertion I’ve ever seen made in Scripture) seem to have forgotten that, if Satan needs to be cast out of heaven, it means sin has already been in heaven, as is also confirmed by the fact that the book of Job says he was there too. Similarly, the claim they often make that sin can’t exist in heaven because God can’t look upon sin is also an unscriptural one, since the words “to behold” in Habakkuk 1:13, which they like to quote to try to prove this assertion (and which actually says, “Thou art of purer eyes than to behold evil”), are simply an expression in the KJV that means “to give attention to” or “to look upon approvingly” (which is what the Hebrew word רָאָה/“raw-aw’” that “behold” in this verse is translated from means). Satan’s presence in heaven, not to mention God’s omnipresence and the fact that “The eyes of the Lord are in every place, beholding the evil and the good,” as Proverbs 15:3 tells us (with “beholding” in this verse translated from the Hebrew word צָפָה/“tsaw-faw’,” literally meaning “observing”), would make this a very problematic (not to mention contradictory) verse as well, if most Christians were correct about what that verse in Habakkuk meant. I should probably point out that this is obviously only referring to the sort of evil that falls under the category of moral evil rather than morally-neutral evil, since few people remember that not all evil is sinful, as I mentioned previously in this series — unless you believe that animals can sin, of course (the word “evil” just means “harmful,” “calamitous,” or “destructive,” and not all actions that cause destruction or damage are inherently sinful, since otherwise it would mean that it was immoral to ever break anything, and that even popping a balloon would be a sin; simply put, the word “evil” in Scripture is basically just referring to anything that breaks something or causes suffering, whether with good intentions or bad — but we’ll get more into that topic in an upcoming article in this series, where we’ll learn a lot more details about both evil and sin, including their origin). Still, this does bring up the question of where people got the idea that the righteous dead go to a place called heaven in the first place from. There are a few reasons for this, but the main two reasons are verses that refer to God being in heaven, as well as a misunderstanding of the word “paradise.”
Since we know that the body of Christ will go to heaven, 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 heaven to complete a ministry there, but not until after they’ve been resurrected from the dead and/or quickened; and the New Jerusalem later descends from heaven/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. (And just as a quick aside about God manifesting a part of Himself in a manner that the spiritual beings in heaven can perceive, there are some people who believe that because the Bible says God is invisible and that nobody has ever seen him, this must then apply to the celestial beings in heaven too — and some even insist that those of us in the body of Christ won’t ever see God either, even after we’re quickened and living up in heaven — and while it’s possible that this interpretation of these passages is correct, I’d suggest that these verses were more likely written from a relative perspective, in that it’s really only speaking of mortal humans who can’t currently see God, because something being “invisible” to us doesn’t mean that such things can’t be seen by means other than the naked eye of a mortal human, or that something other than a human can’t see it either, the way some animals can see things that are invisible to us; besides, spiritual beings do interact with Him now anyway, and one generally sees somebody that they’re standing next to, not to mention the fact that Micaiah — who gave the prophecy about the spirits interacting with God — said he saw God in the vision too, so I think it’s safe to say that we’ll see Him as well, when we’re in heaven, as will the people residing on the New Earth too.)
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 the fact that there would be no need to eat from the tree of life in an ethereal afterlife realm as a ghost in order to remain “alive,” if the immortality of the soul were true. 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 (and anyone who wants to insist that Jesus was speaking about something other than a future state of the earth will need to provide some scriptural references with solid exegesis of those passages to prove that assertion, not to mention explain away all the proof we’ve already covered in the previous articles in this series that the dead really are unconscious — and before someone brings up 2 Corinthians 12:4, in light of everything we’ve just covered, this being a reference to Paul having a vision of the future splendours of the New Jerusalem on the New Earth, and not a reference to the supposed afterlife dimension we’ve now learned from those articles and this one that there’s no basis for believing exists anyway, makes far more sense than any other interpretation I’ve ever heard). Since we have to interpret this verse in light of everything else we covered in the previous articles, based on the way it renders Jesus’ statement, we’re forced to interpret this verse in the KJV figuratively, meaning that, from the thief’s perspective, it would feel like the same day when he woke up from his sleep and began to live with Jesus in paradise, either in Israel after Jesus returns, or on the New Earth (and for those who think it would mean that Jesus was being less than truthful by speaking figuratively here, ask yourself if that means He was also being untruthful when He spoke figuratively to call Himself a door?). This is also confirmed by Jesus’ statement that He hadn’t ascended to the Father yet in John 20:17, not to mention the fact that we’re told His “soul” went to “hell” when He died (which simply means that His consciousness ceased to exist when He died, based on what we learned in the last couple articles in this series), not to heaven (or paradise), and if Jesus did not go to paradise on that day (which He really couldn’t have without time-travelling to the future when paradise finally exists on earth), the thief couldn’t have been with Him there either, verifying that this could only be a prophetic statement about a time in the distant future when paradise begins on this earth or the New Earth. (And yes, I know that Jesus had been resurrected when He made that statement about not having ascended to the Father yet, but it’s still not a statement He could have made honestly if He had ascended as a ghost, which we know He Himself didn’t do anyway since His body was in the tomb and His “soul” was figuratively “residing” in “hell” while He was dead.)
I should say, there are also those who understand what death and paradise are, but who think this passage should be translated differently rather than interpreted differently. You see, there are no commas in the original Greek that this part of the Bible was translated from, so Luke 23:43 could just as legitimately be translated as saying, “Verily I say unto thee today, thou shalt be with me in paradise” (just like Paul used similar expressions in Acts 20:26 and Acts 26:2, not to mention all the times expressions like this were used in various parts of the Hebrew Scriptures — meaning the books of the Bible that are generally referred to as “the Old Testament” — such as in Deuteronomy 4:26, 39–40, and 5:1, to list just a few examples), simply meaning the thief would be with Jesus in paradise, either in Israel after Jesus returns, or on the New Earth, in the future (lining up exactly with the malefactor’s request that Jesus remember him when He comes into His kingdom, telling us that he was expecting Jesus to either escape the cross or to be physically resurrected after he died — something even Jesus’ disciples didn’t believe was going to happen at that time, which means he might have been the first convert to believe in the resurrection if that was the case — and to inaugurate the kingdom of heaven on earth in the future regardless of whether He died or not, which makes sense considering the fact that no Israelite back then would have been expecting the kingdom to be anywhere other than in Israel, as we learned in Part 1 of this series, least of all in the “hell” also known as “sheol/hades” where Jesus and everyone else who died “ended up,” so to speak, and which he would have had literally zero scriptural basis for assuming the kingdom was going to be located). That said, while we certainly can if we want to, without doing any violence to the original Greek, we don’t actually have to change the punctuation at all in order to understand what Jesus was getting at since, regardless of where the comma is located, we still have to interpret this verse in light of the rest of Scripture, which means that whether we move the comma (as some translations do) and interpret Jesus’ statement literally, or leave it where it is in the KJV and interpret Jesus’ statement figuratively, the only possible valid interpretation (in light of what we’ve now learned from the articles in this series about heaven, “hell,” death, and immortality) is still the exact same no matter where the comma ends up (at least if we’re taking the rest of Scripture into consideration), with the thief not ending up in paradise with Jesus until he’s resurrected from the dead to live either in Israel or on the New Earth, so I’ll leave it at that.
The fact of the matter is, nobody mentioned anywhere in the Bible was ever recorded as looking forward to an afterlife in a place called heaven, or as being afraid of being punished consciously in an afterlife realm called hell, nor had any Scripture prior to Jesus supposedly unveiling it to Israelites for the first time in the story of the rich man and Lazarus in Luke 16 ever even suggested that people would go to an afterlife realm to live happily or to suffer in while dead either (until Jesus told this very figurative story, anyone who based their theology entirely upon what the Scripture which was available to them at that time said would assume nobody is even conscious when they’re dead, as we’ve already learned in the last couple articles in the series — and, as I mentioned in Part 2 of this series, when I discussed the supposedly figurative usage of the Valley of Hinnom to describe a fiery afterlife realm, it seems extremely unlikely that the Person who corrected people for teaching extrabiblical theological concepts by saying things like “have ye not read…?” and “it is written…” would suddenly turn around and teach a concept of an afterlife that is not only found nowhere in the Hebrew Scriptures, but which also seems to contradict everything the Hebrew Scriptures said about the state of the dead, as well as what he told the Sadducees about God being the God of the living rather than of the dead, a few chapters later, as we also already learned in Part 4 of this series, which would mean God couldn’t have been the God of Lazarus while he remained dead, if the “events” in this story actually took place), and the fact that the concept of an afterlife realm for ghosts wasn’t ever taught in the Hebrew Scriptures should really tell you everything you need to know about the idea. What they were looking forward to was a physical, bodily resurrection in the distant future, so figurative stories such as the one in Luke 16 have to be interpreted in light of this fact. The story of the rich man and Lazarus wasn’t a new revelation to replace the scriptural doctrine of unconscious death until resurrection, so one has to figure out what it means without creating an entirely new theology that not only hadn’t ever even been hinted at prior to it in Scripture, but that would also contradict other parts of Scripture, which also means that any scriptural references to the version of “hell” that dead souls are in can’t be talking about a place any human will actually suffer in, and neither can any passages that talk about the lake of fire (at least they won’t be able to suffer there any longer than it takes for a mortal body to die in that fire, as we also learned in the previous articles in this series). And so, the simple fact is, every single person who dies goes to “hell” (meaning the “hell” used as a figure of speech for the state of being unconscious because one is dead, as we also learned in Part 4) whether they’re a believer or not. And only those who do understand and believe what it is Paul meant when he wrote that Christ died for our sins, that He was buried, and that He rose again the third day, will get to go to heaven, but not until after they’ve been resurrected and/or made immortal, because the only way for someone who is dead to go to heaven would be to put their corpse on an aircraft or space shuttle, but they wouldn’t enjoy it particularly much (although this does mean that someone who has died can technically be in heaven and “hell” at the exact same time, even if they couldn’t know they were in either “location”).
This also means that Enoch and Elijah didn’t go to live in heaven rather than dying either (at least not the same “part” of heaven that Jesus is now living in, which is presumably the Jerusalem which is above), contrary to the way Christians assume they did, since whatever happened to them can’t contradict what you’ve already learned from this series of articles. Genesis 5:24 is not an easy verse to understand, but based on everything we‘ve covered throughout these articles so far, we know that Jesus is the only human living in heaven (at least in the part of heaven outside of earth’s orbit where certain humans will go to live eventually), so they couldn’t have, which means that Enoch had to have gone somewhere other than heaven when he “was not” and was “taken by God.” The most probable explanation is that he was simply “caught away” from a dangerous situation where he would have been killed, to live out the rest of his life in safety somewhere else, similar to the way Philip was “caught away” after baptizing the eunuch, which seems to line up with the fact that the book of Hebrews includes Enoch in a list of people who lived by faith while also saying that everyone in the list died without having received what they were promised yet. And it’s recorded that King Jehoram received a letter from Elijah after the time that Elijah was caught up in the whirlwind to heaven, so, again, based on everything we now know about who is in heaven, this means that Elijah pretty much had to have been deposited somewhere else on earth to live out the rest of his life in safety too, just like Enoch, and that he then also eventually died, just like Enoch. There’s also the factor of how one has to have been quickened in order to live permanently in heaven/outer space, and 1 Corinthians 15 gives us a specific order of when each person will be “made alive” (which refers to being made immortal, as I’ll prove from Scripture in an upcoming article in this series), and outside of Jesus, nobody has been quickened yet, so they definitely can’t be immortal yet and hence can’t be living in heaven where Jesus is, but you’ll learn more about this aspect of salvation in that upcoming article.
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 could actually be more literally translated as “the kingdom of/from outer space,” or perhaps simply “the kingdom from above.”
And this also all means that you can now be free from the fear of either you or any of your loved ones suffering in hell, because you now know that nobody is conscious while dead, and hat none of the biblical “hells” are anything even close to what we’ve been taught they are by our religious leaders anyway.
Please click here for Part 7 of this series.