Where is heaven?

I attended a seminar where the speaker argued that heaven is not above us, but amongst us. That is partly supportable because Jesus said, “The kingdom of God is amongst us”.

The argument extended to a view that the church will mature to become a heavenly place or light amongst men and, as such, when darkness does cover the earth at the end of this age, the light of the world will be reflected through the church, not through the glory of Christ as He appears in the skies. There is some support for that too, as the Psalmist said, “Arise, shine, thy light has come, and the glory of God has risen upon you”.

Some of the issues I have with this line of argument are the fact that Jesus “ascended to heaven”, that the creation separated the heavens above from the heavens below, the Talmud describes seven dimensions of heaven, Zion is a place, above us and on the sides of the North, Ezekiel 28 showed a covetous cherub seeking to “ascend” to the throne or above it, and Paul saw us seated with Christ in heavenly places. I could go on.

I have been toying with this debate from a logical perspective. Jesus always stood between God and men and between heaven and earth: as the great mediator. That may place heaven and Jesus at some cross-over point between the physical universe and whatever is beyond. That said, some would argue in terms of so-called “string theory”, that what we don’t see is merely composed of an atomic structure that enables other dimensions to live alongside us yet beyond our experience – a kind of parallel universe.

That argument is not outrageous. There are wavelengths of light that are real enough and measurable enough, but still remain beyond the visible spectrum. We could say that of the spirit of God too – real enough, measurable enough, yet invisible to our humanity. That respects a higher order of life, but spares us from speculating about quantum theories, exotic matter or parallel universes. However, it still does not describe spiritual life, which is able to transcend physical laws (Jesus walked through walls) and yet live within us as a palpable reality.

Question: I won’t go further now, suffice to ask what your own perspective is – where is heaven and where does Christ rule?

(c) Peter Eleazar @ www.4u2live.net