Heaven

Without doing any kind of street interviews myself, I could venture a guess that if you asked any random person what heaven is, they would say it’s the place you go after you die if you’re good enough to earn it. Heaven is commonly seen as a reward for good action because it’s been used as the bargaining chip to get people to behave for years in the church. This view must be interrogated because scripture itself seems to present a far different view and understanding of heaven. My goal in this blog post is to provide a new understanding of where heaven is and when we get to experience it. My general thesis is that heaven is the realm where God is 100% in control and we can experience the glory of heaven right now.

Moses and the blueprint of Heaven

Moses had many encounters with God throughout his time as the leader of Israel. During one of these encounters, God says this Moses in Exodus 25:8-9: “…have them make a sanctuary for me, and I will dwell among them. Make this tabernacle and all its furnishings exactly like the pattern I will show you.” A sanctuary was a sacred dwelling place fit for a deity. God expresses his desire to dwell among his people and needs them to build a place for him to do so. He does not leave this design up to them though. He tells Moses to build it “exactly like the pattern I will show you.” This means that a sacred dwelling place for God already exists, it’s just not on earth. God is going to show Moses this other dwelling place so that he can order the new one according to its existing pattern.

We learn where this existing dwelling place is when we recognize where this conversation between Moses and God is taking place. If we back up to Exodus 24:15-18, we read that Moses climbed to the top of Mt. Sinai. Mountains were significant places for divine encounters and revelations all throughout the old and new testament. God descends in all of his glory on top of this mountain and then calls Moses to enter the cloud. It’s from within this place of God’s glorious presence that he sees the pattern that he is to model the earthly tabernacle after. God brought Moses into heaven. This messes with us because we’ve been taught that heaven is where you go when you die, so how could Moses go there without dying? Heaven is not a place, but a realm. It’s where God’s glory fills all things and where he reigns unconditionally. The earthly tabernacle was a physical structure that was created to house God’s glory. Within this tabernacle, God dwelled and reigned unconditionally. It was the same glory in the tabernacle that was also on the mountaintop.

The pattern that God was showing to Moses was not the physical structure, it was his uninterrupted glory. God said, make me a place where I can dwell in all my glory among my people. So we see, heaven is anywhere that God reigns, whether on the mountaintop or in the tabernacle.

Jesus as the living tabernacle

This understanding of heaven is even more profound when we look at the life of Jesus. John begins his gospel by stating, “The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the one and only Son, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth.” Jesus housed God’s presence and glory the same way the tabernacle that Moses built did. Within Jesus, heaven dwelled because God reigned unconditionally. God was honored in Jesus’ life. Jesus created a place for the Father to dwell and to work.

From Jesus’ life flowed love, peace, mercy, healing, compassion, and every other substance of heaven. Because the reality of heaven ruled in Jesus, the reality of heaven flowed out from Jesus.

Heaven is not a place, it’s a realm.