Revelation 21:1-23 (selected)
"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…"
"And he carried me away in the Spirit to a mountain great and high, and he showed me the Holy City, Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God. It shone with the glory of God…"
"The city does not need the sun or the moon to shine on it, for the glory of God gives it light, and the Lamb is its lamp."
In 1961 Russian cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin became the first man in space. When he returned to earth he earned points with the atheist communist regime by saying, “I looked around, but I didn’t see God out there.”
To which Ruth Graham (Billy Graham’s wife) reportedly responded, “If he’d stepped outside that spaceship without his space suit he would have seen God very quickly!”
Where is heaven? Is it in the sky? Is it somewhere in outer space?
We tend to think of Heaven as “up there somewhere” – and there are plenty of scripture texts to support this assumption.
Psalm 53 says, “God looks down from Heaven on the sons of men…”
In Acts 1 we read, “He was taken up before their very eyes…”
In 1 Thessalonians 4, Paul states, “The Lord himself will come down from Heaven with a loud command…”
So it does sound like Heaven is “up there” somewhere.
But read again the words of Revelation 21:
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…
Notice that the Bible seems to refer to two Heavens; or at least to one heaven in two different ways!
First, God’s word seems to tell us that Heaven is “up there”; that heaven exists right now where God dwells in the fullness of his power and presence. Scholar and theologian Randy Alcorn, along with many others, refers to this as the “Present Heaven”.
This is where we, as believers in Christ, go when we die. This is what the Apostle Paul meant when he said that to be absent from the body was to be present with the Lord (2 Corinthians 5:8). This is why Jesus could promise the dying thief, “Today you will be with me in paradise.”
Then also notice that the Bible seems to say that this heaven that is “up there” will “come down”
Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away … I saw the Holy City, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God…
What does this mean?
Scripture uses a number of images –
The New Heaven
The New Earth
The Holy City
The New Jerusalem
- to refer to what God is going to do AFTER Jesus returns; after Christians receive their resurrection bodies; AFTER the final judgment.
This is what can be called the “eternal Heaven”, and is what we usually mean when we say the word “Heaven”.
While we cannot say with certainty where Heaven will be or how Heaven will come down, we can begin to imagine what the New Heaven and New Earth will be like. The Bible is telling us that Heaven is real; more real that the chair you are sitting in at this moment; more real that the relationship you have with the person who knows you best in this world.
The Bible is teaching us that Heaven is a place; a city with walls and gates and streets and buildings. Heaven is a country with rivers and mountains and trees and magnificent creatures.
The Bible is teaching us that Heaven is the resurrection, redemption and restoration of all things!
In Revelation 21:5 Jesus says, “I am making all things new.”
Randy Alcorn summarizes Biblical teaching on Heaven like this:
“What God made us to desire, and therefore what we do desire if we admit it, is exactly what he promises to those who follow Jesus Christ: a resurrected life in a resurrected body, with a resurrected Christ on a resurrected Earth.”
Doesn’t that sound good?!
Pastor Brian Coffey
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