Heaven Series #7
Where is heaven?
You may remember the Los Lonely Boys hit song, “How Far is Heaven?” Well, to answer that, we would have to ask, “Which one?”
The Bible actually speaks of 3 heavens. “Seeing then that we have a great High Priest who has passed through the heavens, Jesus the Son of God, let us hold fast our profession”. (Heb. 4:14) The fact that Jesus passed through the “heavens” gives evidence there is more than one heaven.
The first heaven is what we would call the “atmospheric heaven”. This is the air above us… where birds and planes fly… where storms and rain and snow and blue bird skies are seen. “And he (Elijah) prayed again, and the heaven gave rain, and the earth produced fruit” (James 5:18) This is the area beneath that beautiful halo of blue light that surrounds the earth when we observe it from space…
The second heaven is the “stellar heaven” or “celestial heaven”. This would extend to our entire universe, including our sun and moon and planets and myriad of countless galaxies between earth and its farthest reaches. “When you look to the heavens and see the sun, moon, and stars… all the array of heaven…” (Deut. 4:19)
The third Heaven is where Paradise is, and New Jerusalem, the city of God. Paul said that he actually went there, but wasn’t sure whether he was there in his body or not. (2 Cor. 12:7). He described it as being, well “indescribable”. This Heaven is the dwelling place of God Himself… where He is seated upon His throne… at the pinnacle of all creation. One verse, (Heb. 12:22), gives us a powerful and stunning perspective of the third Heaven. “But you have come to Mount Zion, to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem. You have come to thousands upon thousands of angels in joyful assembly… to the church of the firstborn, whose names are written in Heaven. You have come to God, the Judge of all, to the spirits of the righteous made perfect, to JESUS the mediator of a new covenant, and to the sprinkled blood that speaks a better word than the blood of Abel.” Wow!
This is the Heaven we will be exploring over the next few weeks in this study… And this is the Heaven where, until Christ returns, we as Christians all go when we die!
The Bible also records in three different books, that God will create “New heavens and a New earth”. We will be covering this amazing topic soon…
Blessings, Mike
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