Where is heaven?

Where do you get all this junk? Orion, along with the Pleiades, is referred to in Job and Amos, but nothing in the passages says He will "pass through" Orion. For that matter, in 3-d time/space those stars wouldn't be Orion; that's only from the contemporary vantage point of earth.

As a related aside, since I don't know Hebrew, did these OT references actually say Orion and Pleiades, or was that modified in the Septuagent for familiarity with Greeks readers? The Hebrews should not have had any legends about 7 sisters being turned into stars or a nightsky hunter with a club.

 

Petersburg WV!!!!
John Denver was right!

I always assumed it was beyond the universe..
Think of the universe as a balloon, with all the planets inside, or even on the surface of the balloon, now anything above the balloon is above all that is inside. So Heaven can still be "up" in relation to the universe...

either i just said something i understand, or my fever is getting to me.

 

I would agree with those who say it is another diminsion. Heaven might be right in front of you in a different realm. God is Spirit, I have a very hard time believing heaven is a physical place. I don't think our minds can come close to comprehending the spiritual realm.

Jim1999 is some ways I envy you. You will probably have the answers years before me. At least I hope so.

Wasn't it "almost heaven"?

 

WEll if Heaven can get any better, I can't wait to go..

 

well, I want to go and all, but i dont wanna be on the next train out...

 

dont yall know...Heaven is on the planet Kolab.

Really, i am not sure that heaven is "up" and hell is "down", but really, it doesnt matter that much to me.

 

I don't know where heaven is located, but according to John Denver it must be somewhere near West Virginia.

 

Ooops...

I guess that I should have read the entire thread before posting my joke. Someone beat me to it!

 

- heaven is not the reward of the saved.


"the meek shall inherit the EARTH."


the redeemed ".....shall reign on the EARTH" - rev 5:10.


"the dead in Christ shall RISE FIRST....."


We'll all have a nice long SLEEP before we see Jesus ---

"Many who SLEEP IN THE EARTH shall awake, some to EVERLASTING LIFE....." - Daniel 12:2.


we get everlasting life AFTER our long SLEEP in the ground.

 

N T Wright has written some interesting stuff on this. He holds to a modified version of what was known as "soul sleep". Then at some point Jesus will return to earth in a final decisive renewal of creation. At this point there will be a full bodily resurrection for all those that "sleep" in Christ. Although he seems to think we will be concsious and "with Christ" during this "soul sleep" since Paul speaks of departing and "being with Christ" as being better than being on earth in the current world.

 

No such thing as 'soul sleep.' The soul leaves the body at time of death.

 

we don't have a soul, we are a soul (nephesh, hebrew --- psuche, greek).


The soul (nephesh) that sins, it shall DIE (Ezekiel 18:4, 20).


http://bible.crosswalk.com/Lexicons/Hebrew/heb.cgi?number=05315&version=nas


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http://www.studylight.org/dic/hbd/view.cgi?number=T5974

 

http://www.west.net/~antipas/books/soul/soul_chart.html -- souls going to grave (Job. 33:22).


http://www.learnbible.net/soul.html -- Deut. 27:25: "Cursed be he that taketh reward to slay an innocent person (nephesh, soul)."

 

The Apostle Paul referred to dead Christians as sleeping until awakened by the last trump at the resurrection (1Cor 15:51 and 1Thess 4:14;5:10).

Daniel wrote of both believers and non-believers as sleeping — until they are resurrected: "Mutitudes who sleep in the dust of the earth will awake: some to everlasting life, and others to shame and everlasting contempt" (Dan 12:2).


Notice, that the focus is on the resurrection — not on a reward in heaven or punishment in hell experienced by a conscious immortal soul at death.


Matthew records that at the time of Jesus’ death, "… the graves were opened; and many bodies of the saints which slept arose, and came out of the graves after his resurrection, and went into the holy city, and appeared unto many" (Matt 27:52,53).


These saints were not already experiencing bliss in heaven; they were asleep, unconscious.

 

As to what/were "Heaven" (god's realm of existence) is, I always liked this explanation:

What are Space and Time, Really, and Can We Do Without them?

(From The Elegant Universe, Brian Greene, Vintage Books, p.376-78)

...we have freely made use of the concepts of space and of spacetime...envisioning the fabric of space and space-time as if it were somewhat like a piece of material out of which the universe is tailored. These images have considerable explanatory power; they are used regularly by physicists as a visual guide in their own technical work. Although [this] gives us a gradual impression of meaning, one can still be left asking, What do we really mean by the fabric of the universe?
This is a profound question that has, in one form or another, been the subject of debate for hundreds of years. Newton declared space and time to be eternal and immutable ingredients in the makeup of the cosmos, pristine structures lying beyond the bound of question and explanation. Leibniz and others disagreed, claiming that space and time are merely bookkeeping devices for conveniently summarizing relationships between objects and events within the universe. The location of an object in space and in time has meaning only in comparison with another. Space and time are the vocabulary of these relationships, but nothing more. Although Newton's view held sway for more than 200 years, Leibniz's conception, further developed by Austrian physicist Ernst Mach, is closer to our current picture. As we have seen, Einstein's special and general theory of relativity firmly did away with the concept of an absolute and universal notion of space and time. But we can still ask whether the geometrical model of space-time that plays such a pivotal role in general relativity and in string theory is simply a convenient shorthand for the spatial and temporal relations between various locations, or whether we should view ourselves as truly imbedded in something when we refer to our immersion within the space-time fabric.
Although we are heading into speculative territory, string theory does suggest an answer to this question. The graviton, the smallest bundle of gravitational force, is one particular pattern of string vibration. And just as an electromagnetic field such as visible light is composed of an enormous number of photons, a gravitational field is composed of an enormous number of gravitons—that is, an enormous number of strings executing the graviton vibrational pattern. Gravitational fields, in turn, are encoded in the warping of the space time fabric, and hence we are led to identify the fabric of space-time itself with a colossal number of strings all undergoing the same, orderly, graviton pattern of vibration. In the language of the field, such an enormous, organized array of similarly vibrating strings is know as a coherent state of strings. It's a rather poetic image—the strings of string theory as the threads of the space-time fabric—but we should note that its rigorous meaning has yet to be worked out completely.
Nevertheless, describing the space-time fabric in this string-stitched form does lead us to contemplate the following question. An ordinary piece of fabric is the end product of someone having carefully woven together individual threads, the raw material of common textiles.
Similarly, we can ask ourselves whether there is a raw precursor to the fabric of space-time; a configuration of strings of the cosmic fabric in which they have not yet coalesced into the organized form that we recognize as space-time. Notice that it is somewhat inaccurate to picture this state as a jumbled mass of individual vibrating strings that have yet to stitch themselves together into an ordered whole because, in our usual way of thinking, this presupposes a notion of both space and time; the space in which a string vibrates, and the progression of time —that allows us to follow its change in shape from one moment to the next. But in this raw state, before the strings that make up the cosmic fabric engage in the orderly, coherent vibrational dance we are discussing, there is no realization of space or time. Even our language is too coarse to handle these ideas, for, in fact, there is even no notion of before. In a sense, it's as if individual strings are "shards" of space and time, and only when they appropriately undergo sympathetic vibrations do the conventional notions of space and time emerge.
Imagining such a structureless, primal state of existence, one in which there is no notion of space or time as we know it, pushes most people's comprehension to their limit (it certainly pushes mine).
The hope is that from this blank slate starting point—possibly in an era that existed before the big bang or the pre-big bang (if we can use such temporal terms, for lack of any other linguistic framework)—the theory will describe a universe that evolves to a form in which a background of coherent string vibrations emerges, yielding the conventional notions of space and time. Such a framework, if realized, would show that space, time, and by association, dimension, are not essential defining elements of the universe. Rather they are convenient notions that emerge from a more basic, atavistic, and primary state. ...whereas strings show us that conventional notions of space and time cease to have relevance below the Planck scale [10-35 m], studies show that ordinary geometry is replaced by something known as non-commutative geometry. [such as matrices, as opposed to normal Cartesian coordinates]. In this geometrical framework, the conventional notions of space and of distance melt away, leaving us in a vastly different conceptual landscape.
Nevertheless, as we focus our attentions on scales larger than the Planck length, physicists have shown that our conventional notion of space and time does re-emerge.
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(However, these scientists seem to have abadoned the direction this was leading into in favor of a "membrane theory" that just attributes the creation of this universe to the energy released by a collision of two other universe's "fabrics" in an 11 dimensional space.)

 

Spatial terms are preserved for heaven by Christ Himself - no sense in second guessing God on the subject of "Where is heaven".

See John 14:1-3 "If I GO -- I will COME AGAIN that WHERE I am there you may BE also".

This promise so full of spatial reference is at the core of the Gospel. It is true. Heaven is a real place!

 

John 14

 

where will Jesus be but in Jerusalem being King over all the Earth - Zech. 14:9 / Rev. 2:6; 5:10.

ROOMS - CHAMBERS - RANK


But what is the Father’s house? What does the Bible declare the Father’s house to be?

When in the Temple, Jesus said to the Jews who were selling doves and cattle: “Make not my Father’s house a house of merchandise” – John 2:16.


Here is a simple Bible definition of the Father’s house.

Did the Temple have many “mansions” or rooms and chambers in it?


Jeremiah 35:2: “…..speak with them and bring them to the house of the Lord, into one of the chambers ….” (English Standard Version).


Different chambers were for persons of different rank. Hanan, a man of God, had his chamber or room “near the officials' chamber, which was above the chamber of Maaseiah son of Shallum the mere doorkeeper.” -- Jeremiah 35:4.


At the time of William Tyndale and the King James Version "mansion" meant a dwelling place or stopping place. It could also be used of the physical dwelling place or of the manor house of a lord, but these seem to be secondary to the earlier uses as in the Greek. Now, however, we understand a mansion as being limited to a physical dwelling and having specific socioeconomic implications.

The idea is "not mansions in the sky, but spiritual positions in Christ" (Gundry 1967:70; cf. Brown 1970:627).

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You miss the part where He says "I GO" to prepare "a Place for you".

Your argument would have it say "I STAY here to prepare a place here for you and If I stay here so will you".

I don't see how that rework is possible. The spatial references in John 14 are clear. Christ GOES to the place that is the Father's house, and there "prepares a place" for us.

He says "I GO to the Father" WHERE I GO you can not now go --

There is no escaping the fact that He actually, physically, literally, bodily left. He went TO the FAther - TO His Father's House - THERE to prepare "a place" for us. The spatial references are all throughout the text.