Where is heaven?

If asked, some of you might say, ‘it’s up there somewhere” as you point a finger to the sky!

Now by 'up there' do you mean ‘up in space’, somewhere out in the universe?

If yes, then why can’t we see it through Hubble or the James Webb telescope?

So, for me ‘up there’ can’t be right!

Or some might say, ‘Heaven is where God is”

But here’s the thing, God is omnipresent, meaning he’s everywhere at the same time all the time! So that can’t be right either!

Or some might say ‘Heaven is in the Spiritual realm’, a realm invisible to us right now in this physical reality! The “Spiritual realm” is where spiritual beings, things like angels, demons, and the souls of the dead exist!

Now we’re narrowing things down a bit!

Putting aside the location for a second or two, we Christians believe that ‘Heaven’ is a place of eternal life and communion with God, a place of perfect happiness, peace, joy, and where there is no suffering and sin! It’s a place that we can only access after we’ve placed our trust and faith in Jesus as our Lord and Saviour and where we go after we die, or if Jesus returns before then!

Jesus talked about Heaven, when He told the disciples about his forthcoming death in John 13 the disciples were so concerned that Jesus comforted them by telling them and us about Heaven. We read in John 14:1-3 that Jesus said,

“Do not let your hearts be troubled. You believe in God; believe also in me. My Father’s house has many rooms; if that were not so, would I have told you that I am going there to prepare a place for you? And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come back and take you to be with me that you also may be where I am.

When we place our faith in Jesus, death for us is ‘the gateway’ to heaven, there is no fear in death for believers! 

In Luke’s gospel chapter 23: 42-43 we read about one of the criminals who hung beside Jesus asking,

“Jesus remember me when you come into your kingdom”

Jesus answered him, “Truly I tell you, today you will be with me in paradise”

That repentant criminal was the first to receive God’s forgiveness through Christ and be welcomed back into communion with the Father! Did you ever think of it like that? (probably yeah!)

But what’s also interesting here is that the word ‘paradise’ both in Hebrew and Aramaic means “a walled garden”

Furthermore, when we consider that for the Jewish people heaven is referred to as the ‘Garden of Eden’, or ‘Gan Eden’ as they call it, we start to see a connection!

For in Judaism ‘Gan Eden’ means the Garden of Eden, or paradise in the world to come, the spiritual realm where souls who have lived their lives according to God’s laws enjoy eternal closeness to Him as their reward for living a righteous life in this physical realm!

Going back to the book of Genesis or ‘Beginnings’, in Chapter's 1&2 we read God’s creation narrative. Using mostly poetic language, we're told how God created everything, our entire universe and everything in it!

In this story, we read in Gen 2:8 and 2:15

[8] Now the Lord God had planted a garden in the east, in Eden; and there he put the man he had formed.

[15] The Lord God took the man and put him in the Garden of Eden to work it and take care of it.

This implies that at the very beginning, ‘Gan Eden’, the Garden of Eden, Paradise, or Heaven, whatever you want to call it was right here on Earth!

And it gets even better still because in Gen 3:8 we read,

Then the man and his wife heard the sound of the Lord God as he was walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and they hid from the Lord God among the trees of the garden.

God liked to walk in the Garden in the cool of the day! How cool’s that?

But as we know disaster struck and humanity fell, Adam and Eve sinned and as a result got kicked out of the Garden!

Gen 3:23-24

So the Lord God banished him from the Garden of Eden to work the ground from which he had been taken. After he drove the man out, he placed on the east side of the Garden of Eden cherubim and a flaming sword flashing back and forth to guard the way to the tree of life.

Kicked out of the garden because of our sin! but thankfully God had a plan, and that plan was Jesus Christ (Messiah), God’s only Son, who laid down his perfect life as an atonement offering and redeeming us from our sins. And nailed to that cross of death, one of the Criminals who hung beside Him received God's forgiveness and was allowed back into God’s presence, into paradise!

After he ascended we’re told that when Jesus returns again in the ‘Book of Revelation’ the last book of the Bible in chapter 21:1-2 that the Apostle John wrote,

Then I saw “a new heaven and a new earth,” for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and there was no longer any sea. I saw the Holy City, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride beautifully dressed for her husband.

A new heaven, a new Gad Eden, from which comes the New Jerusalem, God’s Holy city.

Heaven, the Garden of Eden, is the place of eternal life and communion with God, a place of perfect happiness, peace, and joy, where there is no longer any suffering or sin. A new Eden, here on a new earth, that’s where heaven is and where by the grace of God one day we’ll be, (I do like gardening!)

Have a great week, and God bless,

Trev.