Where is Heaven

Where is Heaven?

Robert C. Newman

[Transcribed (with editing) from the IBRI cassette tapeBRN-06]

Early in the space age -- back in the sixties -- when theRussians were ahead of us, one of the Russian astronauts came back from hissuborbital mission and announced to the press that he was now sure that God didnot exist -- after all, he had looked around carefully and not seen Himanywhere!

This incident illustrates an opinion on the location ofheaven is that has been very common throughout history. It is often being used today byunbelievers against those who believe the Bible is true. We would like to deal with thisquestion here, Where is heaven?

Which Heaven?

The first thing we ought to ask ourselves before we try toanswer this question is, Which heaven are we talking about? Turn with me to Paul's second letter tothe Corinthians, chapter 12. Iwould like to look at a section there that shows us that the Bible makes adistinction, using the word "heaven" for three differentobjects. Paul is speaking here toone of the churches he started -- at Corinth. This particular church has been bothered by persons claimingto be great apostles and spiritual men on the basis of various visions andthings of that sort that they have seen. As a result, Paul finds it necessary for himself to speak a little bitabout the experience he has had, though he points out again and again that heis uncomfortable with doing this, and that such boasting is not a goodthing. Well, he says then in 2Corinthians 12:1 and following:

Boasting is necessary, though itis not profitable, but I will go on to visions and revelations of theLord. I know a man in Christ who14 years ago, whether in the body I do not know or out of the body I do notknow, God knows, such a man was caught up to the third heaven, and I know howsuch a man, whether in the body or apart from the body I do not know, Godknows, was caught up into Paradise and heard inexpressible words which a man isnot permitted to speak. On behalfof such a man I will boast, but on my own behalf I will not boast, excepting inregard to my weakness.

We are not really clear whether Paul is talking abouthimself here or not, though it appears from his remarks in verse 7 of the samepassage that he is. In any case,he is talking about someone who was carried up to the third heaven -- caught upinto Paradise -- and this suggests that the Bible distinguishes at least threeuses of the word "heaven". As I have studied the Bible over theyears, I am quite satisfied that the Bible does not picture seven heavens, assome ancient texts do, with Paul only making it up to the third, but ratherthat the third heaven is what Paul means by the place where God especially is,the abode or dwelling place of God.

Paul calls this place "paradise". We see from elsewhere in Scripture that"Paradise" is the name given for the place where God is present withman. The Garden of Eden is calledParadise. The word"paradise" is actually an old Persian word for garden. So the garden in Eden was calledParadise, and since God and man had direct communion with one another in thegarden, the word comes to be extended to places like this. When Jesus was dying on the cross andthe thief asks that Jesus might remember him, Jesus says, "Today you willbe with me in Paradise." Jesus and the thief would be together with the Father that veryday. Then we see that in the bookof Revelation, when man is going to be brought into the new heavens and newearth, that this place, too, is called Paradise. Paradise is apparently the word the Bible uses for beingwhere God is. So I think we cansay that one of the uses of the word "heaven" -- and what Paul callsthe "third heaven" -- is where God is, the abode of God. We hear again and again in Scripture thephrase "the God of heaven" or of "heaven, God's dwellingplace."

Well, if that is the third heaven, there must be at least afirst and a second heaven. Whatare these? As we look throughScripture, we do find two other uses of the word heaven that do not refer toGod's dwelling place in this special sense. First, there is the use of the word heaven that occurs inphrases like "the birds of heaven." Basically the idea here is that there is a heaven in whichthe birds fly, what we today would call the atmosphere or the air. This, I think, is what the Bible wouldmean by the concept of the first heaven.

Besides this, there are other phrases like "the starsof heaven," "signs in the heavens," and so forth. These implythat the place we call outer space -- where the stars and planets are -- isalso called heaven. We suggestthis is the second heaven.

So I think, on the basis of 2 Corinthians 12:1-5, we have arather definite picture of three heavens. And the third heaven is where God is. Other uses in Scripture then suggest that the first heavenis the atmosphere and the second is outer space. Our concern here is not where the atmosphere is -- that isnot too hard to find -- nor where outer space is -- also not so hard to locate,though the boundary between atmosphere and space might be fuzzy -- but ourconcern is, where is the abode of God?

Where is the Third Heaven?

Where is this "heaven" that is the subject of mostof the passages in Scripture that use the term? The Bible again and again tells us that heaven is"up." That theme is oneof the commonest in Scripture -- going up to heaven, coming down from heaven,and so forth. As a result, it hasbeen rather common to think of heaven as being up in the sky somewhere. As man has gone out into space furtherand further and has not seen any obvious evidence of God or the angels, therehas been a tendency either to push heaven further and further away (as manyChristians have done) or to deny the existence of such a heaven altogether, asthe Russian astronaut did.

However, it might be helpful to ask ourselves, what does theword "up" mean? How farup, for instance, does the Bible represent heaven being? It is true that there are manyChristian hymns that talk about "somewhere beyond the blue," "beyondthe sunset," "I've got a home in glory land, way beyond theblue." But what does theBible say about how far up heaven is?

If we look in the book of Genesis, chapter 28, we find adream of Jacob. He has just lefthome, leaving his father and mother to escape the anger of his jealousbrother. He is traveling to livewith a distant uncle, probably leaving home for the first time, and perhapsvery concerned about his future. On the way he stops for the night near Bethel and sleeps out in theopen. "s he sleeps he beginsto dream, and in his dream he sees a ladder. Let me read you the passage from Genesis 28:12-13:

And he had a dream, and beholdthe ladder was set up on the earth with its top reaching to heaven. And behold, the angels of God were ascendingand descending on it, and behold the Lord stood above it and said, "I amthe Lord, the God of your father Abraham, the God of Isaac. The land on which you lie I will giveto you and to your descendants."

It is interesting to see here that as Jacob dreams, he seesGod standing at the top of the ladder and speaking to him. We might ask ourselves, How does Godappear in something like this? Weare not told, but elsewhere in the book of Genesis when God appears, he appearsin human form, with human size. Here in this dream Jacob is able to see this human form at the top ofthe ladder. He is told that it is God, so I guess we don't have to wonder howhe knew it was God, but at least he was able to see the form. If you ask yourself, how far off can Isee a human form and recognize that it is a person, the answer is, not veryfar. So this dream pictures heavenas not being very far up. There isa ladder going up and Jacob can see someone standing at the top of the ladder,and he can hear someone talking to him.

Now of course this is a dream, and we've all had dreams inwhich unrealistic things happen. It might also be the case that something which in reality is quitestrange is represented in a familiar way in the dream so that Jacob couldunderstand it. But by making suchan assumption we can avoid paying attention to almost anything the Bible says,so instead we will assume it means what it says, and see where that leads. Taking the dream picture as it stands,we get the idea that heaven is not so far away. We don't know how many rungs the ladder had, but it isapparently far less than a mile long.

There is likewise the passage describing Jesus' ascension inActs 1:9. There we are toldof Jesus, "after he hadsaid these things, he was lifted up as they were looking on and a cloudreceived him out of their sight." Some have supposed that as Jesus setoff for heaven here, that heaven is many, many light years away, that he wentout through the atmosphere, through outer space, until he finally reachedheaven. But the picture itself isthat he disappears into a cloud. Now, of course, when we send off our spaceships from Cape Kennedy, it isnot unusual for the ship to disappear into a cloud; it would be even morecommon except that we don't often launch them when it is cloudy. One might argue that we are looking attravel to something a long way off when Jesus sets out for heaven, but I don'tthink so.

I think it is rather significant that this whole idea ofclouds appears again and again in the biblical pictures of our interaction withheaven. Not only did Jesusdisappear into a cloud at his ascension, but he is going to come on the cloudswhen he returns. A cloudovershadows him at his transfiguration. Moses and the Israelites were led by a cloud in the wilderness. We sometimes call this cloud the glorycloud, or the Shekinah glory. In this cloud phenomenon, I think, wesee something that is apparently rather close down to the earth and yet seemsin some way to be heavenly. Heavenis apparently up, but not very far up.

The only passage I can think of which might suggest thatheaven is way out there somewhere is in Isaiah 14. The king of Babylon speaks of himself as setting up histhrone above the stars of God. This might imply that heaven is at a great distance, beyond the stars,but perhaps it is only claiming that the king's throne will be more gloriousthan the stars and planets. Whether or not this passage suggests that heaven is at an astronomicaldistance, there are a number of others that seem to indicate that (at least thecloser) parts of heaven are very close by, and that sometimes the direction"up" is not even necessary. Let's have a look at a few of these.

Is the Third Heaven Necessarily Up?

In 2 Kings 6 the prophet Elisha has been defending theNorthern Kingdom of Israel by telling its king what the king of Syria isplanning in the way of military actions. The king of Syria has repeatedly triedto ambush the Israelites, but it has not worked because Elisha somehow knowswhat the Syrian forces are going to do in advance. The Syrian king decides to ambush Elisha. (Just why he thinks this will work --when Elisha knows what he is thinking in his own bedroom -- is beyond me!) But in any case, the king sends troopsand they successfully surround the town of Dothan, where Elisha and his servantare spending the night.

When the servant comes out on the wall the next morning andsees all these troops, he is terrified. There are doubtless many fearsome things about warfare, but one of thesewould be to see a lot of angry armed men awaiting you outside a city. Even knowing you have pretty good wallsprotecting the city wouldn't be much comfort if you suspect that theinhabitants would sooner throw you over the walls than let the army outsideattack their city. So the servantruns in and tells Elisha what it going on. Elisha's answer is "Don't be afraid. Those who are with us are more thanthose who are with them." Probably the servant wonders who "those who are with us" are. But Elisha prays in verse 17, "'OLord, I pray, open his eyes that he may see,' and the Lord opened the servant'seyes, and he saw, and behold the mountain was full of horses and chariots offire all around Elisha."

The mountain mentioned here is presumably the hill on whichthe city of Dothan was set. If so,then the hill, surrounded as it was by the Syrian forces, was filled withheavenly forces ready to defend Elisha. Elisha's servant could not normally see these forces, but by God's powerhe was made able to do so. Here heis seeing the armies of heaven. Now of course, one could argue that this doesn't tell us anything aboutwhere heaven is because they have come from heaven to earth to defend Elisha,just as the Syrian armies have come from Syria to attack him. This may be so, but one might equallywell argue that heaven is in some sense all around us, and heaven's forces everready to defend us, but we can't see them unless our eyes are opened. Though this passage is no guaranteethat heaven is all around us, it certainly is consistent with such a view.

So too are Jesus' post-resurrection appearances in Luke 24and John 20. Here Jesus appears tohis disciples while they are in a closed, probably locked room (the Greek isambiguous). Basically the pictureis that the disciples were afraid of being arrested, so they are in these roomsout of sight, probably with the door bolted to make sure that if the enemyarrived they couldn't get in too quickly. But here is Jesus and he appears to them. Although it has been common to think that somehow Jesus camethrough the wall or the closed door, the passage doesn't really say. Jesus somehow appears in their midst. If we are to understand that Jesus iscoming from heaven, then apparently heaven is near enough that he just shows upand disappears. I am going tosuggest further on that this helps us understand something about the nature ofheaven. But these passages are notconclusive either. One mightperfectly well argue, "Well, heaven is still way out there somewhere, butthere is this power of invisibility, and the armies of heaven are normallyinvisible, and a person's resurrection body can be invisible whenever he wantsit to be. So Jesus came down fromheaven first (or hadn't gone there yet), and he is moving around on earth,invisible most of the time, but he appears just when he wants to. The armies of heaven are down here onearth on assignment, but they are invisible except to those whose eyes God hasopened."

However, there are three passages that speak of God'sappearances at Mount Sinai that seem to indicate rather strongly that heaven isright around us in some important sense. Let's have a look at these. The first is found in Nehemiah 9:13, a psalm-type passage in which theLevites are praising God for what he has done. "Thou didst come down on Mount Sinai and didst speakwith them from heaven." If we take the natural understanding ofthis, it would suggest that when God was on Mt Sinai, there was heaven as well,so that he simultaneously spoke with them from heaven and was down onSinai. It is true that this is notthe only way the passage could be understood. For instance, I can say Walter Cronkite came into my TV setand spoke with me from New York. That would not be saying that my TV set and New York are the sameplace. Yes, it is possible thatour passage could be understood this way, though it doesn't seem to me to be asnatural as the former suggestion. In fact, my way of speaking about Walter being in my TV set would strikemost English speakers as rather strange.

However, there are other passages that continue in the samevein, and I think (if anything) they press more strongly toward heaven being atSinai, at least at that time. InDeuteronomy 4, where Moses is recounting what happened at Sinai, he sayssomething of the same sort: He says in Deuteronomy 4:32-33, "Indeed,ask now concerning the former days that were before you, since the day that Godcreated man on the earth, inquire from one end of the heavens to the other, hasanything been done like this great thing? Or has anything be heard like it, has any people heard the voice of Godspeaking from the midst of the fire, as you heard it and survived?" Here wesee a picture of God speaking from the midst of the fire, while the Nehemiahpassage pictures him as speaking from heaven. Same incident. Deuteronomy represents him speaking from the midst of the fire,suggesting that in fact this fire was there on the mountain at Sinai, that Godwas speaking from that and yet he was speaking from heaven. One might still object, "Well,yes, but Walter Cronkite is speaking from New York and he is speaking from theTV set, so we are really not saying that they are the same place, but that somekind of transmission is going on."

Well, let's look at one more passage, and that is found inExodus 20:21-22 -- the actual narration of the incident at Sinai. The people are afraid of God'sappearance on Sinai, the thunder and the lightning, and the trumpet, and sothey say to Moses, "You speak to us yourself, and we will listen. Don't let God speak to us lest wedie!" Moses then responds,"Don't be afraid, for God has come in order to test you, so that the fearof God may be with you so that you may not sin." In verses 21 and 22, we are told, "so the peoplestood at a distance while Moses approached the thick cloud where God was." Nowhere are the people at a distance, here is the mountain, here is Moses going upthe mountain approaching the thick cloud on the mountain where God was(explicitly) there, and then verse 22, "Then the Lord said toMoses, 'Thus shall you say to the sons of Israel, you yourselves have seen thatI have spoken to you from heaven...'"So here God is speaking from heaven, but the narrator of Exodus says Moses wentto where God was, obviously on the mountain.

Various Views on the Location of Heaven

Well, we have looked rather quickly at the kind of data thatthe Bible gives us regarding where heaven is. What I would like to do now is look at some varied suggestionsthat have been made regarding the location of heaven and see how they fare inrelation to what the Bible says about this.

The Attic Model. Let's look first at what we might callthe attic model of heaven. Thisview was probably held by many believers at one time or another for manycenturies back in history. Basically the idea was that the sky is some kind of a roof over ourhead, and that angels come down through holes, either flying down to the surfaceor lowering a ladder or something of that sort. I don't think there is too much question that people haveheld that view, and it certainly is common today to find liberal theologianssaying that's what the Bible teaches, even though these liberal theologiansdon't believe that's what the actual case is.

I would say there are several serious problems with thisview, although it perhaps has the advantage that there is a passage about aladder between heaven and earth. One of the big problems is that it requires the roof to be awfullylow! The roof must be low so thatyou can have a relatively short ladder to get up to it, and yet surely any ofthe ancients knew that there were mountains that were very high compared withthe places where God was understood to have appeared. For instance, Jacob -- seeing the ladder at Bethel with Godstanding at the top -- must certainly have known that Mount Hermon, about 50miles to the north, was a far higher mountain than Bethel, and yet here he seesthis incident with no enormously long ladder. So I think even this one case suggests that what we areseeing is not quite what the liberals have suggested. Likewise, if this picture was really the view of the Biblewriters, why is it presented so vaguely in the Bible? You can certainly find very many writings from antiquitythat definitely speak about a hard, dome sky, that definitely speak about thesky resting on the mountains, about gates in the sky for the sun to comethrough so that it can go across the sky and out the other side, and otherthings of this sort. You don'thave such material in the Bible, and that fact that it is not there may verywell suggest that we have read something into the Bible that it does not reallyteach at all.

Notice also that this attic model does not fit the Sinainarrative very well either -- where you have God coming down on the mountain,you have these clouds, and so forth. With the attic model, one must also add the idea of invisibility,because you still have the angelic army around Elisha that couldn't beseen. He doesn't say, "NowLord, let down the ladders and send your troops down here so that my servantwon't be worried." Instead heasks that the servant's eyes be opened so that he can see these forces that arethere already. Thus, to hold anattic model, one must add as a separate category this idea of invisibility --that the heavenly army climbed down ladders or descended by flying, but theywere invisible, so no one saw them. This model, I say, has been held by liberals rather regularly andfirmly, yet when the Scripture is examined in detail, it has some very severedifficulties. I have preparedanother talk on the whole area of the Biblical firmament -- is it a dome orsomething else? -- where I deal with some of these problems, so I am not goingto go further in that direction in this talk on the location of heaven.

The Way-Out Model. Let's look at a second model. This model, I would say, has come to beone of the standard Bible-believing reactions to the Biblical material as wehave come to see in recent centuries that the universe is quite a bit largerthan most people had thought in earlier times. As men have begun to build telescopes and see that the starsare really much further away than the ancients had thought, the Evangelical hasoften tended to adopt what we might call a "way-out" model forheaven. In this view, heaven isbeyond the stars, beyond the galaxies, perhaps beyond the universe, or perhapshidden away inside some dark gas cloud a bit closer. Some of the features of this model arise by using passagesabout God dwelling in thick darkness or such, which I think probably refers tothe darkness of the Holy of Holies, rather than a dark gas cloud. In any case, the idea is that heaven isway out there somewhere. I haveheard various speakers and writers trying to suggest which direction heavenmight be, how far away, and even suggesting particular locations. Others say, "No, it is beyond theuniverse, millions or billions of light years away."

This model certainly has some problems in handling the Sinainarratives. One must say,"Well, God was at Sinai in some sense, but heaven was not there in anysense." And yet thenarratives speak again and again of God speaking from heaven, so that one mustresort to the Walter Cronkite type explanation to handle them. I believe a couple of models I am goingto suggest in a bit really do explain how the concept of heaven and theomnipresence of God (that he is present everywhere) are closely related, andhow God can simultaneously be speaking from heaven and yet be speaking fromSinai, but the distant heaven model really doesn't fit this material. Like the attic model, the way-out modelmust add the factor of invisibility as a separate factor. In both cases one must deal with thearmy at Dothan and angelic visibility as some separate category. The angels not only have to travel allthis long distance from heaven, but they travel down invisibly and then theyturn off their invisibility and show up at the right place. In the two other models I would like tomention, we don't have to add invisibility as a separate category.

This way-out model likewise has what we might call atransport problem. From thebiblical accounts in general, it appears that (by and large) the contactbetween heaven and earth is quite rapid. It doesn't seem to be something that takes a long time -- "today,you will be with me in Paradise." We could say, "Oh, well, God has no problem with instantaneoustransport -- like Star Trek or such you get into a warp and 'zap' you are rightwhere you want to be." Idon't have time to explain all of that, if you haven't seen any of the numerousStar Trek episodes. I can think ofonly one passage that speaks of some delay in someone coming from heaven toearth, and that delay was occasioned not so much by the distance as by angelicinterference. I am speaking of theincident in Daniel chapter 10, where the angel coming to speak to Daniel isresisted for 21 days by the Prince of Persia, apparently a fallen angel of somesort. So the Bible does notsuggest that there is any time lapse regarding transport from heaven to earth,nor even any great distance involved.

Well, there are two other models which avoid, I think, someof the problems we have seen with the attic model and the way-out model. Let's take a look at these othertwo. I did not invent these views,but I think they make good sense of the biblical material on the location ofheaven. I can't tell you for surewhich of these two is really the better view, or which is the correct view, ifeither of them is, but I think that both of these show us that the biblicalpicture of heaven is more sophisticated that unbelievers would like us to thinkit is.

The Interaction Model. Let's call the first of these theinteraction model. It wassuggested by Dr. Irwin Moon, who was then head of the Moody Institute ofScience, a professional physicist who devoted his life to preparing MoodyScience films. His view is basedon the fact that the only way in which we see, hear, feel, or experience ouruniverse around us is by means of the interaction of forces. We see each other and objects around usbecause these objects either emit or reflect light. And we see them because that light not only interacts withthem by bouncing off or being sent out from them, but also because the lightinteracts with our eyes, causing signals to be sent to our brains. Just what happens in the brainscientists don't know, and though theologians may have a few extra hints, wedon't know either, but that's how we see -- by interaction.

Likewise we also hear by interaction of forces, but adifferent set of interactions. Itis an electromagnetic interaction that we see by. Light and several other shorter-wave things like x-rays andsuch are electromagnetic waves; so too are longer-wave things like radiowaves. We see by means of theseforces, but we hear by a fairly similar set of forces, also basicallyelectromagnetic, which occur between the molecules in the air. You see, most of our hearing is donethrough the air, and in that case one object is sending the sound -- whether itbe a fire siren or automobile or someone speaking -- the sender includes adevice that vibrates rapidly and sets the air into wave motion. These waves spread out like ripples on apond when you throw a pebble into it, and they come over to where you are, gointo your ear, and set some machinery vibrating inside your ear that sendssignals to your brain so that you hear. So there are interactions. The interactions are largely the bumping or other forces betweenmolecules causing them to vibrate and spread a vibrating wave through the air,so we also hear by interactions.

We touch also, we feel, by interaction. When you feel a solid object, what youare doing is trying to make your fingers press against it, and it is resistingthe pressure. The reason theobject resists, and you fingers resist, and they don't pass through oneanother, is that the electromagnetic forces that hold solids together(including your fingers) do not allow the material either to be stretched orsqueezed more than a certain amount -- unless you apply enough force to breakthe thing.

So all our ways of observing -- seeing, hearing, touching,tasting, etc. -- and all our ways of experimenting are based on the interactionof forces. Now in our universe weknow of four different types of forces with which we interact and have beenable to detect and study. We callthese forces electromagnetism, gravity, the strong nuclear force, and the weakforce. We have already spokenabout electromagnetism a bit; nearly all of our bodily senses operate throughinteraction with this force. Gravity is also very important to us, though it is not the major way welearn about our surroundings (it is significant in regard to detecting up anddown, and thus in balancing). Butit does keep us on our planet, and air on our planet so we can breathe. It keeps our planet near enough to thesun so that we get enough heat to survive. The strong nuclear force holds the nucleus of each atomtogether. The fourth force, theweak interaction, we don't know quite as much about; let's just say it holdsthe neutron together.

Now we could perfectly well have another universe rightwhere we are, a universe that didn't have the same set of interactions that wehave, and that didn't interact with us at all. It would have its own interactions and we would have ours,but there might be no cross-interaction at all. That could mean that you might be sitting here reading thisarticle and in this other universe a motorcycle rider might be driving rightthrough you and you wouldn't hear or feel a thing! You couldn't hear him, see him, smell him, feel him,etc. Thus, it is possible inprinciple to have a number of universes occupying the same space, one right ontop of the other, mixed in with one another, but have no way of detecting theothers because the forces between our universe and the other universe do notinteract.

Well, Irwin Moon's suggestion is this. Heaven is right around us, but it has adifferent set of forces that don't interact with our forces, or at least withany of our sensory apparatus. Inaddition, the beings who live in this other universe (heaven) have an abilityto turn on or turn off their interaction with the forces in our universe. So by turning on the interaction theybecome visible to us, and by turning it off they become invisible.

Notice how this interaction model handles Sinai. Here is heaven and it is around ourearth in some way. Parts of it, infact, most of it, may be up relative to us, so that travel from heaven to earthis often down. But some of it maybe on the same level as we are. Sowhen God comes to Sinai, he basically turns on an interaction and then he, orsome manifestation of him, is visible to the people. Though he is equally present on mountains in the UnitedStates and elsewhere, there is nothing to be seen in those places because hehas not manifested himself there. But he manifests himself on Sinai, and yet he speaks from heaven onSinai because heaven is there at Sinai and he is in heaven as well. Heaven is this other sphere, this otheruniverse, and we are not in it because we don't interact with it. But when God has this interactionturned on, he interacts with us and we with him, and there is then some sensein which the person interacting with him might be said to be in heaven. Perhaps this is one reason Paul is sovague on whether he was bodily in heaven in 2 Corinthians 12. He didn't know what his state was, justthat he had been carried into this other sphere. We can see how this interaction model would explain theincident with Elisha's servant as well. Here are these angelic beings with horses and chariots all around thehill on which Dothan is located. They are not going to turn on a general interaction, so the Assyriansnever see them, but Elisha's servant is given the ability to interact with themtemporarily. Then he is able tosee this army all around.

Notice, then, that the interaction model has a built-ininvisibility. You don't have totack it on to the model, as you do in the attic model and the way-outmodel. It also has got what onemight call permeability built in. Jesus, in coming to appear to his disciples in a closed room, couldperfectly well have walked through a wall (door, floor, ceiling, etc.) and thenturned on his interaction with our universe when he gets inside. So, all of these features will fit whatwe see in the biblical picture regarding heaven.

Likewise this model will explain the rather fuzzy cloudinesswe often see in connection with appearances of God and angels (Sinai, thetransfiguration, ascension, second coming, etc.). It may be that while the interaction is turned on, thatillumination from the "other side" now seeps into our side. This illumination would look ratherstrange to us, since it is coming into our world from an unseen source, and itmay appear either to block a light that would be beyond it in our world(producing a darkening) or to produce a light where there wasn't anybefore. So during the daytime, itlooks like a cloud blocking light, but at night it looks like a glowing cloud,just the sort of phenomenon we see described in connection with the guidingpillar in the wilderness.

Now there is a problem with this model we should mention,perhaps not a real problem. Iwould call it a simplicity problem. With this model, one needs to have some sort of switch, some way ofturning the interaction between our world and the other on and off. Thus, at first Elisha's servant can seenothing of the other world; then a switch is turned on in his head, and now hecan see the heavenly army. Atfirst Jesus cannot be seen when he comes into the room, but then he turns onthe switch and he is visible. Sothat would be about the only problem that I see with this model. I think it has less problems in fittingthe data than either of the two previous models we have suggested, the atticmodel and the way-out model.

The Dimensional Model. There is a fourth model, which we mightcall the dimensional model. This,I think, fits the biblical data about as well as the interaction model and doesnot have to have the switch. Howdoes this model differ from the interaction model? The interaction model postulates another world or universethat is in the same three-dimensional space as our is, but that has a differentset of forces that do not normally interact with ours. The dimensional model suggests theexistence of at least one more spatial dimension than the three we know about,and that heaven is in this fourth dimension. Now it is rather hard to explain this without diagrams, butwe will give it a try. This worksbest by trying to imagine that we live in two dimensions and see what thedifference of adding a third dimension would be.

There is a nice little book that you should read sometime tohelp you visualize this. It isfictional, but not exactly a novel -- sort of a short story -- and somewhathumorous. The title is Flatland and it was written by a mathematician-theologian EdwinA. Abbott late in the nineteenth century. But last I heard it was still inprint. It tells a story about agroup of beings who live in Flatland, a world of only two spatial dimensions. Imagine living in a sheet of paper,since that has two dimensions. Youhave to stay in the sheet (it can be quite large, or even infinitely extended,in those two dimensions, though). You can't see out of it, or think out of it. That's what you grew up in, that's the only thing you haveever known. But of course we areoutside of it, so we know what three dimensions are. Now imagine a visitor coming from three dimensions to visitthis Flatland. That's what Abbotthas happen in his story. He hasall these different sorts of people who live in two dimensions and one day oneof them is visited by a being from three dimensions. Well, of course, a threedimensional being can't make himself two dimensional and so get into thesmaller space. But such a beingcan come down and interact with the two-dimensional beings. For example, our floor is atwo-dimensional object, but we step on it and so the sole of our shoe in now inthis two-dimensional space. Therest of us just sticks up in the three-dimensional space above it. Well, Abbott had these two-dimensionalbeings all shaped like triangles, squares, hexagons, and such, all flatobjects, but the visitor was a sphere. When this sphere came down into the two-dimensional space, he firstappeared as a dot. Then as hecomes down a little further, he appears to be a small circle. The circle then gets bigger and biggeruntil it is the same size across as the sphere. If the sphere keeps moving downward through the space, thenit now gets smaller until it is a dot again, and then disappears.

The story Abbott tells is really a lot of fun, and thewriter draws some spiritual applications from it. I'm sure I got some of my ideas from this dimensional modelof his. Basically the picture hereis that heaven is in a four (or higher) dimensional space of which our world isonly a three-dimensional part. Wecannot point or look or even think very well in this fourth dimension. Some mathematicians, though, can thinkabout four dimensions. Some caneven think about twenty dimensions, and they can work out all sorts of geometryproblems somewhat like the things we struggled with in plane geometry -- exceptthat their problems are in 4, 5, 15 or 20 dimensions, but I am not one ofthem! Some of them even claim tobe able to visualize in four dimensions. Not me. Whatever, the picturehere is, heaven is a space of larger dimensions of which we are just threedimensions. Heaven has got 4 or 5or 10 or who knows how many dimensions, so a visitor from heaven will just comeover to where our space is located. Then the visitor will step into our space and suddenly he appears. He steps out of our space and just assuddenly disappears.

Now we can easily visualize this for a visitor from threedimensions visiting a space of two dimensions. Just take a piece of paper, if you like, and hold it flat,and that will be the two-dimensional space. If you like, you can draw a little house there, say arectangle. Now imagine sometwo-dimensional person living in that house. You are going to enter their house without going through thedoors or walls or such. Well,since it is a two-dimensional house, all the doors and walls and windows are inthe surface of the paper. When youenter, you can come in from above it, and they won't have any roof or such onthat side since it is outside their space and they don't know anything aboutthat direction. So you can comeinside, and appear suddenly inside the house just by touching the paper withyour finger. And you can make youfinger disappear from their space just by moving it upward a very tiny bit fromthe surface of the paper. You canmove over to another location above this space and enter it by touching thepaper again. What you have done ismoved from one spot in the two-dimensional space to another without passingthrough any of the intervening locations in that two-dimensional space. So, for instance, you move from outsidethe house to inside the house without passing through any of the walls, doors,or windows.

So at least in two dimensions, we can easily visualize a wayin which the resurrected Jesus might have done the same thing when he appearedto the disciples in the closed room. He had appeared to the disciples in Emmausa couple of hours earlier and then just disappeared. Now he just appears in the room in Jerusalem. He does this by coming in from thefourth (spatial) dimension. In our houses, no matter how well they are built,they are not constructed so as to have walls blocking the fourth direction ordimension, because we can't see it, point at it, or even (very easily) visualizeit.

This particular model, the dimensional model, handles theSinai situation in a similar way to that of the interaction model. God causes some manifestation ofhimself to appear in our space – and therefore we can see it – bymoving it "down" from the fourth direction until it intersects ourspace. By moving it back"up" in this fourth direction just an infinitesimal distance, it isout of our space and so disappears. We can see something here that might very well fit with the picture ofthe last judgment given in the book of Revelation, chapter 20, where it tellsus that the heavens (probably sky) will roll up like a scroll, that heaven andearth will flee away and no place will be found for them. We can imagine that all of us are movedjust a quarter of an inch in this fourth direction, and suddenly we are out ofour universe. It has justdisappeared, just like turning off a TV set, when the picture shrinks down to adot and disappears. So the wholeworld around us, all that we have ever known, just disappears. We are moved over a bit and out of ourspace.

This model, as I said, handles Sinai. God is actually in heaven (afour-dimensional space), but yet he is also on earth, so to speak, because thetwo are touching. In this way, theytouch at all points in our space. It handles the matter of Elisha's servant, though you have to turn onthe effect in a rather strange way. Here is Elisha's servant, and Elisha prays to God to open his eyes. God"opens his eyes" by moving them a millionth of an inch in this fourthdirection, and now he can see things that he could not see so long as he wasconfined to our three-dimensional space. Whether God actually did it this way I do not know. But this is a way we may suggest howthese things could have been done. Moving in and out of the three-dimensional space makes an object firstvisible and then invisible to beings who are confined in the space. Moving out and then back into thethree-dimensional space makes a traveller able and then unable to see thelarger four-dimensional space outside. Notice then that this model has invisibility built in. It also has permeability built in, soto speak, in the sense that there is always this fourth direction into which wecannot see, move, or barely think. So we cannot build anything to protect against movement from this fourthdirection. Thus God and any beingwho is free to move in this fourth dimension (angels, Satan, demons) can seeinside our heads, so to speak. Hecan be inside us without having to look in from outside. Rather scary, frankly! Yet comforting, when we realize thatthe Lord is in control of all this, and we are accepted by him if we are restingin what Jesus has done. If we are in right relation to him, he is there toprotect us, and nothing that occurs (no matter how disastrous it seems) is outof the category of all things working together for good to those who love God.

So this model has built in invisibility and built inpermeability. Jesus can appearinside a closed room without having to come through the doors, windows, walls,ceiling or floor. This is not amatter of coming in through some such route and then turning on theinteraction, as in the interaction model. Rather Jesus comes in from the fourth direction, and can appear at anypoint in the room without having come through any other point in the room..

The clouds likewise follow very naturally in thismodel. These "clouds"are places where light from this other dimension is allowed to come into ourthree-dimensional space, which it would otherwise not normally do. God has moved us over a little bit ormoved the other dimension a little bit so that there is an interaction takingplace. I think this dimensionalmodel does all the same things that the interaction model does. It has a slight advantage that thetransition from the unseen realm to the seen, from heaven to earth, isautomatic for a being who can travel in all four directions, but impossible fora being who cannot travel in this fourth direction. The model has the disadvantage of being somewhat harder tovisualize than the interaction model.

Conclusions

Well, we have discussed where heaven is. I would have to say that I think ouruniverse is a rather complicated place, and we don't know for sure where heavenis. The Bible is very explicitthat heaven is a real place. It isthe place where God dwells in the sense of manifesting himself, appearing tothe angels and apparently to those who have died trusting in the Lord and havegone to be with him. It is not thesame thing as our atmosphere nor outer space. It is once called the "third heaven," apparentlyto distinguish it from these other two. It does not appear to be very far up, though the preposition"up" is frequently used with it. Of course, whatever place it would be that could contain Godin some sense would have to be infinitely large, and therefore all but a minutepart of it is going to be up from where we are (i.e., further from the centerof Earth than we are). So we cansee how the preposition "up" might come into play. But travel to the closest part of itmight not be up at all, and to nearby parts might not be very far up. I would suggest that the interactionand dimensional models have the least problems in fitting the biblical data,and both of these suggest that the Russian astronaut's trip into space is of novalue for finding out where God is. The astronaut has in fact misunderstood the biblical picture.

I think we can also see an answer to the liberal theologianswho somehow always manage to picture the ancients as very primitive, evenstupid, much of the time. Doubtless the ancients had some superstitions we do not, though we mayhave some they did not. But itseems to me that the Bible does not share in the cosmological mistakes of theancients. Rather, the biblicalpicture of the location of heaven is very sophisticated, and it is consistentwith the discoveries in physics during the last century or so as we have begunto discover what types of forces there are, how the basic forces interact withone another, and that we can have situations in which one type of object doesnot interact with another because they are not subject to the same forces. I really didn't discuss this mattermuch.

In mathematics we have begun to think through theimplications of having spaces of various numbers of dimensions, with differentsorts of curvature, and so forth. Besides mathematical theorizing, we have begun to see that some of thismay be applicable to the actual universe we live in, as Albert Einsteinsuggested nearly a century ago in his General Theory of Relativity. Einstein suggested that the presence ofmatter causes space to bend. Whenyou have a little bit of matter, you get a little bit of bending, but when youhave a lot of matter in a small volume, the bending can be very great, even tothe extent of bending space back on itself to form a sort of closed sack, ablack hole. Einstein's modelsuggested the existence of at least four dimensions, and his theory has beenwell supported by observations since he first propounded it. Other cosmologists are now suggestingas many as ten spatial dimensions.

Where is heaven? I think the Bible suggests that heaven is a place at least ascomplicated as the world we know about, maybe far more complicated. It is big, and it is around us veryclose. But being around us doesn'tmean that we can automatically get there, because we do not have the ability,the power, or the knowledge to be able to travel in this fourth direction, orto be able to turn on the right interactions. Only God has got that power, and he will give it to those hejudges are fit to go to heaven.

We should say a word about this here, as we don't want toleave this as merely an academic exercise. The Bible says only a certain type of people are going toheaven -- the righteous. Thewicked will not be there. Youmight well ask, "How righteous do you need to be to go to heaven? If you are more righteous than average,will you go to heaven? If you aremore righteous than the person next door, will you go to heaven? If you have done more good deeds thanbad deeds will you go to heaven? What is it?"

Well, the Bible says some scary things about this. The Bible says God looked down fromheaven to see if there was anyone that was seeking him, and found that nonewere seeking him, they had all gone astray. You will find this developed in some detail in Psalm14. When God looks at what we arereally like (remember, he can see inside us, behind the masks and facades weput up to hide ourselves from others), he sees that we are not as good as wewould often like to think. TheBible says again and again that there is no one righteous, not one. We are all like our ancestor who turnedaway from God at the beginning. Now,we may be righteous by our own standards, if we fudge them a little bit. We may say, "Well, I'm better thanhe is," or "I'm upstanding, and not like the scum who does this orthat sin which I don't do." But God looks inside us, and he can see all our motivations. He sees that, again and again, withevery action we take, there are things about why we do it that are not whatthey ought to be. God has set us astandard for righteousness that is pleasing to him, not because it isarbitrary, but because it is how we ought to be. He commanded us to love God with all our heart, all ourmind, all our soul. That is, weought to love God with 100% of what we are. He doesn't say we should love God as much as we can, becausewe might not be able to do something because we don't want to do it. As we look honestly at our own lives,we see that we don't love God with all our heart, mind, and soul. Otherwise we would certainly bethinking about him a lot more than we do. Otherwise every decision we make would put him in the central place inthat choice. We certainly don't dothat.

The other commandment that summarizes our duty to God isthat we must love our neighbor as we love ourselves. This sounds like it is a lot easier, since we only have tolove them on a lower level, like we love ourselves, not with all ourheart. But when we look at ouractions in this light, we again see that we don't do it. When we are hurting, when we've got aheadache, when we are short of money, when something disastrous has happened tous, we really feel bad, we're really concerned until this gets straightenedout, we really put a lot of time and effort into resolving the problem. But when someone else is hurting, wemay be somewhat sympathetic, but not like when we are the ones hurting.

So, basically all those promises of the Bible that speakabout the righteous inheriting eternal life, going to heaven, they don't applyto us. If we are depending on ourown righteousness, we don't qualify. It is all those passages about the wicked that apply to us. If we are depending on our ownrighteousness, we are in bad shape. God is a God of justice, a God who cannot lie, a God who cannot pretendthat wickedness is righteousness.

But he is also a God of mercy! He has made a way by which he can be perfectly righteous andstill forgive those who don't measure up to his commandments. He made it possible for him to countthem as though they were righteous, and one day to make them completelyrighteous so that they would be fit to go to heaven and live with him. How could he do this? Well, you see, there are the sins thatwe have done, and those that we are still going to do before we die. They have to be paid for. Then there is the righteousness that weowe to God as those who have been made by him, that we have not provided, andwon't provide before we die. Thathas to be provided. Now God is aGod of truth and righteousness. Hecannot forget these things, nor ignore them, nor say that they don'tmatter. So God himself, the secondperson of the Trinity, God the Son, became a human. As a human, he lived a life of complete obedience to all hisown laws. He loved God with allhis heart, mind and soul. He lovedhis neighbor as himself. If wetrust in Jesus as our savior, our rescuer, our deliverer, then hisrighteousness will be counted as though it were our righteousness. When we stand before God in judgment,he will see the righteousness of Jesus as having paid the debt of righteousnessthat we owe. And then Christ diedon the cross, suffering in several hours a punishment that would take usforever to suffer. In doing this,he made it possible for us, when we trust in him, to have his punishment countas though it were ours.

But God does not intend to leave us to continue sinningforever, though our sins have been paid for and our righteousness supplied byJesus. If we are trusting in Jesusas our savior, God has begun already to change us on the inside. He has sent the Holy Spirit to workwithin us, so that we are already beginning to want to do what Jesus would haveus do, what God has commanded us to do. One day, when we go to stand before God, we will be entirely changed,and we will ourselves be righteous, as God intended. We look forward to that day, when he will change us, when hewill not only give us a body that is able to enter heaven, that will be able toleave this sphere we now live in, but he will give us a soul and spirit thatwill be fit to live with God in the new heavens and new earth, where we willhave great joy, the joy that we were designed to have, and that we can onlyvaguely imagine in the greatest joys we ever have here on earth.

So. We havetried to discuss here where heaven is, for which we do not have a completeanswer, but we have some suggestions. Certainly this world is a very complicated place, but it is notnecessary for us to understand it completely in order to live in it. Likewise heaven. We don't need to know exactly where itis in order to get there, because it will not be up to us to find it or toconduct ourselves there. It is farmore important that we know how to get there than it is to know just where itis. Jesus says, AI am the way." How do we get to heaven? He is the way. Whoever trusts in him will have eternallife, will be in heaven with God.

Let's pray. OurFather, we pray that you will use these words and use our study of your Wordthat we might come to trust you more and more. We pray that if there be anyone hearing (or reading) thiswho is not trusting in Jesus alone for salvation that you might give them nopeace until they come to find the Prince of Peace, until they come to findpeace with you through forgiveness in Jesus Christ, through the righteousnessof Jesus Christ. We ask thesethings in his name, Amen.