Perhaps this question sounds rather silly. Heaven is high up in space, isn’t it? But what if two people are on different sides of the globe? Then where is heaven? Dwight L. Moody, the great evangelist of the late 1800s, said, “We talk about heaven being so far away. It is within speaking distance to those who belong there.”
Actually, the Bible speaks of three “heavens” in a similar way to how we use the word. The first heaven is our atmosphere where the birds fly and from where the clouds give us our rain. The second heaven is outer space, the place of the stars and planets in the universe. When God speaks of creating the “heavens and the earth” in Genesis, the first book of the Bible, he is talking mostly about the universe and the galaxies of space. But when we say that a family member who knows the Lord has gone to heaven, we are speaking of a place of great happiness in the very presence of God. This is the third heaven. This heaven is not the permanent place for those who have believed in Jesus as the Messiah (i.e., the Christ). This is a temporary place we call “heaven,” but it is not our final, eternal home. Some Christians call it “the present heaven” or “the intermediate heaven.”
Our final “heaven” is actually on earth. That may be surprising, but it’s true. God is in the business of renovating, restoring, remaking, regenerating, resurrecting, and many other good actions like that which begin with re-. He is not one to discard and destroy without cause or purpose. So he fully intends—and promises—to remake the old earth into a new earth. That is the final “heaven” for all who have come to faith in Christ. That is why the “heaven” to which a believer in Jesus goes when he or she dies is not their final, eternal home. God has not yet made our final, eternal heaven—the new earth. We can go to live with God and Jesus in the temporary heaven even though we do not yet have a resurrected body. But for the new earth, the final “heaven,” we will need a resurrected body, which the Lord will give to us. We will receive this body at the final stages of world history when Jesus returns.
The temporary heaven and the eternal heaven are somewhat different. We call both of these places “heaven” because in each of them God himself will be there. Right now, God is in heaven. Have you heard the prayer that Jesus taught his disciples to pray? It is sometimes called the Lord’s Prayer. It begins, “Our Father who is in heaven . . .” (Matt. 6:9 NASB). God is in heaven, but so is Jesus since the time he was lifted up to heaven forty days after his resurrection. Two angels told the disciples who were watching him go, “Why stand looking into the sky? This same Jesus who has been taken up from you into Heaven will come in just the same way as you have seen Him going into Heaven” (Acts 1:11 WEYMOUTH).
So we can see from this passage that heaven is up, but it isn’t absolutely clear what “up” means, since God is not limited to our dimensions. Heaven may also be much closer than we think, but in a realm invisible to us. There are several places in the Bible that describe how God opened up heaven for someone to see. Stephen, the first believer who was martyred in the newly formed New Testament church, saw heaven opened. He was about to be killed by some of his fellow Jews. But filled with strength by the Spirit of God, he gazed into heaven and saw God’s glory. “Look!” he said. “I see the heavens opened and the Son of Man standing at the right hand of God!” (Acts 7:56 NKJV). If Stephen could see heaven, Jesus, and God the Father in his vision, they may be closer than we imagine. Perhaps heaven is close, but just in another dimension that we cannot see unless God “opens” it for us.
Several Old Testament prophets had visions of heaven: Elisha, Isaiah, Ezekiel, and Daniel. Elisha saw his predecessor, Elijah, taken “up to heaven” (2 Kings 2:11). The “heavens were opened” to Ezekiel (Ezek. 1:1), and he saw the throne room of the Lord. Daniel had a vision he describes this way: “I kept looking in the night visions, and behold, with the clouds of heaven One like a Son of Man was coming. And He came up to the Ancient of Days and was presented before Him” (Dan. 7:13 NASB). The “Son of Man” is Jesus before he took on a human body. In Daniel’s vision, the Son of Man was “riding” the clouds, so to speak. The “Ancient of Days” refers to God the Father.
The amazing fact is that the final “heaven,” the new earth, is the future place that God will live too. God, of course, does not need a physical place to stay. His very nature is to be eternally everywhere at once. But he often displays himself in a specific place and time. He has chosen to be visibly present with us on the new earth. In other words, instead of our going up to live with God somewhere, he will come down to live with us! In the book of Revelation, John wrote about a vision he had of this future event. “Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and earth had ceased to exist. . . . And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying: ‘Look! The residence of God is among human beings. He will live among them, and they will be his people, and God himself will be with them’ ” (21:1, 3 NET).
So where is the temporary or intermediate heaven where those who have believed in Jesus go after death? The Bible says that it is in the presence of Jesus. Paul wrote that as believers, “we know that when this earthly tent we live in is taken down (that is, when we die and leave this earthly body), we will have a house in heaven, an eternal body made for us by God himself. . . . Yes, we are fully confident, and we would rather be away from these earthly bodies, for then we will be at home with the Lord” (2 Cor. 5:1, 8 NLT).
FOR FURTHER STUDY
Isaiah 14:12–15; 65:17–19; Joel 3:17–21; Revelation 14:1–3, 14–16; 21:1–27