Do we go to a city that's populated by our dead relatives after we die? Or does the afterlife consist of nothing more than an endless, beautiful garden? For those curious about what Heaven is like, the bible offers some clues.
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00:00Do we go to a city that's populated by our dead relatives after we die? Or does the afterlife
00:04consist of nothing more than an endless, beautiful garden? For those curious about what Heaven
00:08is like, the Bible offers some clues.
00:11There's a reason most people envision Heaven as above the Earth, and Hell below it. And
00:16it's not just because John Lennon sang that line. In a very natural sense, the sky is
00:20an unreachable realm where, if gods exist, surely they'd occupy as they oversaw humans
00:24below. And where do dead humans go? In the ground. Gods above, death below. Easy.
00:30In fact, this is precisely the layout defined by Jewish cosmology, which describes our universe
00:35as snow globe-shaped. Sheol is the murky, gloomy dwelling of the dead below the Earth's
00:39surface most commonly translated as the grave. That has its origin in Jewish cosmology, and
00:45obviously that carried over to Christianity.
00:47On the other end of the spectrum, Shemayim is the world above. Think of it like a dome
00:51of water on which the stars, sun, and moon stick, or float. You get the picture. Anytime
00:56we read the heavens, heaven, or even sometimes the air in the Old Testament, this is the
01:01word used. The Old Testament writers thought of Shemayim as the house of God. The New Testament
01:06writers used the word uranos about 274 times to mean sky.
01:10But as the Ancient Hebrew Research Center says, the New Testament writers used the term
01:14more as shorthand, like a euphemism. They were speaking to a largely Jewish audience
01:18and needed to explain their new religion using familiar Jewish terms. But does this
01:22mean that the Bible says that the Christian heaven is in the sky or space? Revelation
01:2621 does. Heaven is described there as being on top of a mountain, physically.
01:31For around the first 400 or so years after Jesus' death, Christians envisioned heaven
01:36as a physical place, and, as you've probably figured out, often in the sky. In the 5th
01:40century AD, St. Augustine went further and played off the kingdom angle by describing
01:44heaven as a city where people walked actual streets and saw dead relatives.
01:49Is this heaven?
01:51It's 13th-century writers like St. Thomas Aquinas who adopted the metaphorical angle
01:55when thinking of heaven, saying that it's a state of being that the soul experiences.
01:59The profession of faith in the Catechism of the Catholic Church likewise says,
02:03"...heaven is the ultimate end and fulfillment of the deepest human longings, the state of
02:07supreme, definitive happiness."
02:08Living in heaven is to be with Christ. Such words summarize the Bible to a degree, but
02:13they also go beyond what biblical text says. At the same time, heaven is sometimes envisioned
02:18as a beautiful garden utopia. Luke 23 recounts one crucified thief asking Jesus to remember
02:23him in Jesus' kingdom. Jesus uses the word paradise in response, translated from the
02:28Greek paradisos. That clearly has ties back to Adam and Eve's original paradise, which
02:33probably conjures up images of a garden, etc.
02:36So what does the Bible say heaven is? It depends on what verse you read.
02:40The very first verse of the Jewish and Christian Bibles in Genesis 1 says,
02:44"...in the beginning God created the heavens and the earth."
02:47So God made heaven, right? Not until we step through some very complicated rationalizations
02:51regarding age-old confusion surrounding the Trinity, God the Father, God the Son, and
02:55God the Holy Spirit.
02:57Biblical verses once again say different things about heaven, in this case about who made
03:01it. Old Testament verses like Isaiah 44 repeat Genesis and say,
03:04"...I am the Lord, the Maker of all things, who stretches out the heavens, who spreads
03:08out the earth by myself."
03:10But when we add Jesus on top of things — that is, an incarnate deity who died and also had
03:14a soul that went to heaven to reunite with itself — things become less clear.
03:19Speaking of Jesus, Colossians reads,
03:20"...for in him all things were created."
03:221 Corinthians 8, however, says,
03:24"...for us there is one God, the Father, from whom all things are, and from whom we exist,
03:29and one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom all things are, and through whom we exist."
03:34So if you know your dogma, that's some Trinity, God, and three persons stuff.
03:38The Trinity didn't come together until 325 A.D. after lots of sectarian disagreement,
03:43and it isn't clearly named as such in the Bible. So there's not a super-clear answer
03:46within the Bible as to who made heaven.
03:49When thinking of heaven, many people might envision an ever-expanding population of souls
03:53increasing in number as people die.
03:55Just think of it this way. You'll go to heaven.
03:58But as the Bible quotes Jesus in John 3.13,
04:00"...no one has ever gone into heaven except the one who came from heaven, the Son of Man."
04:04So does this mean that people who've died aren't in heaven? Do only post-Jesus people
04:09go to heaven?
04:10Such questions have been left to theologians because the Bible isn't clear about them.
04:13For instance, in Luke 23, which we mentioned before, Jesus says to the crucified thief
04:17next to him,
04:18"...today you will be with me in paradise."
04:20Meanwhile, verses like Philippians 1 say,
04:23"...I desire to depart and be with Christ."
04:25This implies that death sends a soul straight to heaven.
04:28Paul similarly writes in 2 Corinthians 5,
04:30We are confident, I say, and would prefer to be away from the body and at home with
04:34the Lord.
04:35So the contradictions are there, but this again might just be in the wording and the
04:39meaning.
04:40Have you figured out this stuff is complicated? Yeah, we're doing our best to explain it.
04:44The book of Revelation takes the question, who is in heaven, and combines it with the
04:48question, when is heaven?
04:49Revelation 20 describes the dead as being judged according to what they've done.
04:53We've covered this in a previous video. I'm sure you've all watched that one, too, but
04:57for a little refresher, here's the deal.
04:59The bad dead get chucked into the lake of fire, while the good dead go to a new heaven
05:03and a new earth.
05:04Presumably, these dead are souls and not bodies, but it's not actually clear.
05:08In 1 Corinthians, Paul writes about such doctrinal confusion regarding Judgment Day and the nature
05:12of the afterlife.
05:13He rhetorically asks,
05:14"...how are the dead raised? With what kind of body will they come? How foolish!"
05:18A dead person is sown a natural body, he says, and raised a spiritual body.
05:23He also says,
05:24Listen, I tell you a mystery. We will not all sleep, but we will all be changed.
05:28These verses all together mean that, allegedly, dead bodies-slash-souls exist in some temporary,
05:33pre-second-coming setting. This includes heaven, whatever and wherever it is.
05:38So if you put them all together, heaven is up, a paradise with maybe cities, made by
05:42God in some form, and you transfer in at the end of days.
05:45We told you it's complicated.
05:47It's probably not the way you're supposed to add them all up, but just following the
05:50text, you can get there.
05:52See? Complicated.