149 Heaven’s for the Birds (Sean Finnegan)

What is heaven? Throughout the bible we find different layers of meaning, including (1) heaven as sky, (2) heaven as God’s throne, and (3) heaven as God’s realm or dimension. Although heaven is a reality, it is not where we go when we die. Rather the bible teaches that the dead are asleep until the resurrection when they inherit the earth, renewed and restored.

—— Notes ——

Louis Armstrong and Ella Fitzgerald famously sang about heaven:

Heaven, I’m in heaven
And my heart beats so that I can hardly speak
And I seem to find the happiness I seek
When we’re out together dancing cheek to cheek
Yes, heaven, I’m in heaven
And the cares that hung around me through the week
Seem to vanish like a gambler’s lucky streak
When we’re out together dancing cheek to cheek[1]

2 Samuel 18.9
9 And Absalom happened to meet the servants of David. Absalom was riding on his mule, and the mule went under the thick branches of a great oak, and his head caught fast in the oak, and he was suspended between heaven and earth, while the mule that was under him went on.

he was between heaven and earth

• what does that mean?
• he was between the sky and the land
• heaven is the sky

Heaven as Sky (Realm of the Birds)

Genesis 1.14-20
14 And God said, “Let there be lights in the expanse of the heavens to separate the day from the night. And let them be for signs and for seasons, and for days and years, 15 and let them be lights in the expanse of the heavens to give light upon the earth.” And it was so. 16 And God made the two great lights– the greater light to rule the day and the lesser light to rule the night– and the stars. 17 And God set them in the expanse of the heavens to give light on the earth, 18 to rule over the day and over the night, and to separate the light from the darkness. And God saw that it was good. 19 And there was evening and there was morning, the fourth day. 20 And God said, “Let the waters swarm with swarms of living creatures, and let birds fly above the earth across the expanse of the heavens.”

Genesis 1.28
28 And God blessed them. And God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it, and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth.”

• this is where my title comes from
• heaven’s for the birds!

Matthew 6.26
26 Look at the birds of the air [οὐρανός]: they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they?

• so heaven’s for the birds
• but, it’s more than that!

Heaven as God’s Throne

Isaiah 66.1-2
1 Thus says the LORD: “Heaven is my throne, and the earth is my footstool; what is the house that you would build for me, and what is the place of my rest? 2 All these things my hand has made, and so all these things came to be, declares the LORD. But this is the one to whom I will look: he who is humble and contrite in spirit and trembles at my word.

• control room (throne): where God makes plans/decisions
• storehouse: where rewards are stored up w/ God
• Jesus says to lay up treasures in heaven where moth and rust cannot destroy (Mt 6.20)
• Peter says we have an inheritance imperishable kept in heaven (1 Pet 1.4)
• Paul says our citizenship is in heaven (Phil 3.20)

N. T. Wright:

“What then do the New Testament writers mean when they speak of an inheritance waiting for us in heaven? This has been much misunderstood…The point of such passages, as in 1 Peter 1.4, 2 Corinthians 5.1, Philippians 3.20, and so forth, is not that one must ‘go to heaven’, as in much-popular imagination, in order to enjoy the inheritance there. It is rather that ‘heaven’ is the place where God stores up his plans and purposes for the future. If I tell a friend that there is beer in the fridge, that doesn’t mean he has to get into the fridge in order to enjoy the beer. When the early Christians speak of a new body in heaven, or an inheritance in heaven, they mean…the new identity which at present is kept safe in heaven will be brought from heaven to earth at the great moment of renewal.”[2]

The bible does not have a collection of precise words to distinguish between air, the sky, outer space, or the realm of God and the other angels.

• the ancients didn’t have our cosmology (cosmic geography)…they thought the sun and moon traveled through the sky…not realizing their true distance, composition, or what held them there.
• we are not smarter because we know more, we’re just better informed b/c we happened to be born now
• a hundred years from now your great grandchildren will probably think you were helplessly primitive and backwards
• my 10 year old is not smarter than Galileo, just b/c he knows about Neptune…Galileo’s telescope (that he invented) just wasn’t capable of seeing it

Heaven of Heavens

• we do get some hints that they recognized God’s “heaven” is actually beyond the sky
• Yuri Gagarin (1961) punctured the heavens and failed to see God’s throne (57 years ago, last Thursday)

Deuteronomy 10.14
14 Behold, to the LORD your God belong heaven and the heaven of heavens, the earth with all that is in it.

1 Kings 8.27
27 “But will God indeed dwell on the earth? Behold, heaven and the highest heaven cannot contain you; how much less this house that I have built!

• One concept that is completely absent from ancient thinkers, but does wonders in explaining a physical reality beyond observation is dimension.
• Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions, a novella by the English Edwin Abbott (1884)

Earth as Future Reward

• however, this is not really what people mean when they talk about heaven
• usually they are thinking of the afterlife
• question is about where God’s people go
• thankfully on this question the bible has amazing clarity

Matthew 5.5
5 “Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth.

Matthew 6.9-11
9 Pray then like this: “Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name. 10 Your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. 11 Give us this day our daily bread

Matthew 19.28-29
28 Jesus said to them, “Truly, I say to you, in the new world, when the Son of Man will sit on his glorious throne, you who have followed me will also sit on twelve thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel. 29 And everyone who has left houses or brothers or sisters or father or mother or children or lands, for my name’s sake, will receive a hundredfold and will inherit eternal life.

The Intermediate State

Genesis 3.19
19 By the sweat of your face you shall eat bread, till you return to the ground, for out of it you were taken; for you are dust, and to dust you shall return.”

Ecclesiastes 9.10
10 Whatever your hand finds to do, do it with your might, for there is no work or thought or knowledge or wisdom in Sheol, to which you are going.

Psalm 146.3-4
3 Put not your trust in princes, in a son of man, in whom there is no salvation. 4 When his breath departs, he returns to the earth; on that very day his plans perish.

John 5.28-29
28 Do not marvel at this, for an hour is coming when all who are in the tombs will hear his voice 29 and come out, those who have done good to the resurrection of life, and those who have done evil to the resurrection of judgment.

• where are the dead?
• according to Jesus, they’re in their tombs
• dead people don’t go anywhere
• they are “asleep” until Christ comes to “wake them up”
• In between death and the resurrection on the last day, the dead are unconscious and inactive. Perhaps this is where the epitaph “RIP” originated.

Justin Martyr:

“For I choose to follow not men or men’s doctrines, but God and the doctrines by him. For if you have fallen in with some who are called Christians, but who do not admit this, and venture to blaspheme the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob; who say there is no resurrection of the dead, and that their souls, when they die, are taken to heaven; do not imagine that they are Christians. (Dialogue with Trypho, chapter 80)”

Egyptian: At death, the soul goes to the kingdom of the dead where it must recite secret formulae from the Book of the Dead. Judgment involves the demon Ammit devouring an unworthy soul, whereas the good would live on in the Fields of Yalu and accompany the sun on its daily ride. Only those who could secure embalming and a sarcophagus had a way into the afterlife.

Greek: On death, Hermes takes the dead soul to the shores of the river Styx in the realm of the god Hades. Charon, the ferry-man, brings the deceased across the river. Based on how someone lived, he or she would go to Elysium (paradise for the good and heroic), the Asphodel Fields (for people who did as much bad as good), the Punishing Fields (for the mediocre bad), or Tartarus (a place of torment by hot lava or the rack).

Norse: The soul stays in the body until released through decay or cremation. It goes to one of four places: Valhalla (where warriors who die in battle join Odin in Asgard), Folkvangr (a great meadow where Freyja reigns), Hel (a place where those who are neither good nor bad go to reunite with loved ones), or Niflhel (punishment for those who break oaths or commit wickedness).

Zoroastrian: Zoroastrians are dualists who believe that matter itself is a corruption. At death, Ahirman, the evil god, enters the body and contaminates it, whereas the immaterial spirit escapes to remain in the vicinity for three days and nights and suffers anxiety from the recent separation. The angels Vohuman and Mithra prepare an account of good and evil the person committed. Once Daena leads the soul into the spiritual world, it must cross a Bridge of Judgment. Good souls enter a paradise, and evil ones a realm of punishment.

Buddhist: At death, the person reincarnates based on the qualities of that one’s actions (karma) to higher or lower forms of life. For Buddhists, the soul is not eternal, and believing so is a prime consequence of ignorance. When one succeeds in eliminating desire, delusion, and ignorance, he or she can escape the cycle and cease existence.

Hindu: After death, an immortal soul reincarnates, based on one’s deeds. Eventually one can escape the cycle by improving his or her karma over many lifetimes and enter a state of perpetual disembodied bliss.

Taoist: A goal for Taoists is to achieve immortality through breathing techniques (meditation), sexual practices, physical exercises (yoga), purified metals ingestion (gold), and moral living with the goal of eliminating impurities and demons from their bodies to increase their soul’s energy.

• What do these all have in common?
• they are locate the arena of final redemption off world
• the bible is radical, but it makes sense
• it says God is able to fix this old place and restore it to paradise

[1] originally Fred Astaire sang “Cheek to Cheek” in 1935

[2] N. T. Wright, “Jesus’ Resurrection and Christian Origins,” Gregorianum, 2002, issue 83/4, pp. 615-635, accessed April 13, 2018 at http://ntwrightpage.com/2016/07/12/jesus-resurrection-and-christian-origins/.

—— Links ——

• See podcast 110 Heaven Is Not My Home for more on heaven and the kingdom
• More posts about conditional immortality (the sleep of the dead)
• Listen to an excellent debate on hell (eternal conscious torment vs. annihilationism) Podcast 10: Is Hell Forever? Chris Date vs. Phil Fernandez
• Check out the kingdom of God class podcasts
• Intro music: Jazzy Frenchy by bensound.com. Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License.