HEAVEN

Where is Heaven?

I’m sure you’ve heard about the many books that have been written on life after life, or life after death, the bright light, the tunnel, people waiting to greet us when we cross over, etc. This is not one of those stories. Sorry. But, hopefully you’re ready to know what’s next in Revelation 4 and 5… in Heaven.

The Bible indicates there are three (3) heavens. Paul the Apostle talked about 3rd heaven. In the Book of Revelation, John the Apostle is also taken to heaven - in his spirit. So, where is this heaven? I think, and this is just my opinion, that the first heaven is the sky we see from earth. The second heaven is the cosmos or the universe, where we know we can get in our earthly bodies, albeit not very far. The third heaven is where God resides with angelic beings where we can only go in the spirit as our earthly bodies are not suited for it. When we die, we can’t get to heaven in our earthly bodies. We’ll receive a new, glorified body. If we get to hell, we will also receive a new body that is suitable for the eternal existence.

So, where is this heaven? I believe it’s in a different dimension, unknown and unapproachable to us at this time. Now, did you know that angels can come to earth and assume a human body and be among us and we’d never know..? Also, Satan and the fallen angels (demons) have access to this heaven (Psalms 82, Job 1), but not for long.

After these things

So, why is this blog on heaven so important? Well, because what happens in heaven determines how people are affected on earth.

I’m trying to follow the book of revelation chronologically, however I skipped chapters 2 and 3, which talk about the church. I meant to write about church history first, which should have been written before “The Rapture” chapter. Well, I’m still trying to figure out how to make it an interesting read. So, let’s just say for now, the last person got saved, the church history is complete, and all believers in Jesus (the Lord’s Church) are now in heaven. Those who are alive have been raptured and those who were sleeping have been woken up and together with Jesus met us (the raptured believers) in the clouds and we were taken to heaven. Yay, we made it :-)

OK, now what?!

Now we are in heaven having a feast with Jesus for seven years. But that’s not the only thing that is happening in heaven. We are safely tucked away while God the Father deliberately intervenes at this point and pours out His wrath on the Christ rejecting world, which is called the Great Tribulation, aka Jacob’s trouble, aka the 70th Week of Daniel. During that time the Holy Spirit is taken out of the earth, so this period of 7 years will be a really bad time to hang out on earth. But not to worry, we are in heaven 🙂 A more detailed blog on the tribulation is coming soon…

In Revelation 4 and 5, Apostle John tells us what heaven looks like. Or more accurately, what the throne room looks like. Just FYI, there is so much more to heaven than the throne room described here by John in Revelation 4:1. Anyway, from John’s description we know that we can expect to see:

• the Throne
• a door
• a sea of glass
• 24 elders
• an altar of incense
• 7 lamps (the Jewish menorah)
• the ark of the covenant
• 4 living creatures
• worship

Let’s go over each one of these items and see if we can add some detail and meaning to them.

The Throne Room

Obviously, there’s got to be a throne since Jesus is the King and the One that sits on the throne has to be Jesus. Rev 4:3 describes it as jasper and sardius stones with a rainbow around the throne that looks like an emerald. We know from Exodus 24:10 that when Moses went up the Mount Sinai and saw the afterglow of God, it looked like sapphire stones. In this picture, Jesus looks like a jasper or a clear stone like a diamond, which speaks of light and a sardius or a red stone like a ruby, which speaks of love and blood, and the rainbow around the throne looks like emerald (green) signifying grace and peace. This can be traced to the breastplate of the 12 tribes of Israel and its meaning, therefore traced to the reasoning of why this is Jesus on the throne. In front of the throne is a glassy sea like crystal. The idea is that it’s a glorious scene, shinning and brilliant. Remember, John is a poet…

Whenever the bible talks about someone seeing God, there is a reference to precious stones, which tells me the one sitting on the throne must be Jesus. And because He is sitting on the throne signifies the work is completed (the price is paid at the cross). He’s at rest, at peace as He has everything under control, most likely shown by the glassy sea in front of the throne. This is a huge comfort to those who are being persecuted - remember the Roman persecution on Christians during John’s days..

Ok, so why is this important? First of all, the scene is a representation of the tabernacle: the ark of the covenant with the throne as the mercy seat, the lampstand, the alter of incense. When God instructed Moses on how to build the tabernacle, or the tent, which was to be a home (shekinah), for presence of God during their wondering around the desert (Exodus 19:16-18; Exodus 40:34-38). Even the temple Solomon built for God in Jerusalem looks exactly the same and was constructed to depict the heavenly tabernacle (since heaven is real and always was, is, and will be). Anyway, it’s a beautiful, inviting depicture of “come boldly unto the throne of grace”. God is telling you and me that there is nothing you have to do to get there, Jesus absorbed all your sins and mine on the cross, there is nothing to fear, it’s all grace, just believe and receive. Beautiful!!

24 Elders

Who are these??

Hmm, it sort of feels like the 12 Apostles and the 12 sons of Jacob, which became the 12 tribes of Israel. The twelve sons of Jacob represent the Old Testament, and the twelve apostles represent the New Testament. They are clothed in white robes, which says to me that they have been washed of their sins and they are wearing crowns of gold. The crowns are important, because these are available to us, the believers, to gather now so we have something to give to Jesus when we see Him in heaven, just like the 24 elders do in Rev 5:10. We’ll talk a little later in more detail about the 5 different crowns and how to earn them. So, we don’t know for sure who the 24 elders are, but Jesus gave us a pretty good insight in Matthew when He talked about the 12 Apostles sitting on the 12 thrones..

4 Living Creatures

Now, these creatures may look sort of freaky on the outside, however, these are angelic beings, and not the ones that fell, but the good ones, Cherubim (plural for Cherub). What we perceive to be weird and ugly for us now will be beautiful and different as we now see darkly and in heaven we’ll see clearly or face-to-face. Again, keep in mind that John is a poet… I do want to explain some things about these creatures and their appearance. They are full of eyes, which speak of insight and superior intelligence, not weirdness or ugliness. They are in appearances of like a lion, a calf, a man, and an eagle. The four different looks correspond with the four Gospels:

• Matthew - shows Jesus in light of a king, or a lion
• Mark - shows Jesus in light on a servant, or a ox
• Luke - shows Jesus in light on a human being, or a man
• John - shows Jesus in light of a divine being, or an eagle

What are they doing?

Let me just say this once. The program in heaven is praise and worship. Period. You can’t see God in all His goodness, and pureness, and glory and not fall down on your face and worship. So, why do we have to worship? What if I don’t like to do that? You don’t have to…But you need to… God created worship for us, because this is something we crave. He doesn’t need it. He doesn’t need anything. He’s perfect and perfectly complete without our praise, or worship, or prayers. Any god that “needs” something from us, the humans…hmm 🤔 should probably make us think about his divinity. You know, each service always begins with half an hour of worship, right? I remember when I first started going to church and whenever anyone pointed out that I shouldn’t be late, I always responded with sarcasm: “it’s that loud singing I don’t care for very much”. We can laugh about it now, but I got to appreciate “the singing” when I can feel the Lord’s presence, feel free to raise my hands, talk to Him directly, and have a really great spiritual connection with an overflowing peace.
So, the angelic beings and the 24 elders praise and worship constantly and can’t seem to stop. But that’s not the only thing happening in heaven. The time has come to reclaim the earth from Satan. Here’s a little backstory of how the earth had transferred from Adam to Satan:

Adam and Eve eat the apple

Now, whether it was an apple or avocado or passion fruit or something else, we do not know; it was pleasing to the eye therefore enticing. God told Adam and Eve not to eat from one of the trees in the Garden of Eden - that tree was the tree of knowledge of good and evil. Until then everything they knew was good. Then Adam and Eve were cast out of the garden and were told they’ll need to work hard (“at the sweat of your brow”) to make a living. No more freebies. God placed two cherubim at the gate to the garden so no one could go back in and eat the fruit of the tree of life. Why did He do that? Well, at this point the humanity, Adam and Eve, were in their sinful state, which means their bodies would have started decaying, their skin sagging, their bones hurting, their eyes going blurry, their noses growing hair uncontrollably, etc. Not a pretty picture. So, our wonderfully merciful Heavenly Father allowed humanity to die in old age instead of having corpses walk around the planet. Back then, before the flood, people lived about 900 years, so they had plenty of time to get wrinkly old.

It’s important to go back to the beginning for a moment and mention that Satan tricked Eve to eat the forbidden fruit, however Adam consciously rebelled against God and consequently “signed” over the title deed to the planet Earth to Satan. Why is this important? Because God will take it back from Satan and we’ll see exactly how He’s going to do that.

So, we know the earth now belongs to Satan. Wait! How did Satan just happen to be there in the garden? Yeah, that’s a whole different topic altogether. I’ll just mention that Satan was called Lucifer and he was the most beautiful angel in heaven. He was in charge of worship, specifically music - I’m thinking he still is, but here on earth and keeps manipulating all of us with it by influencing the nice sounds we love so we hear the deceiving and corrupting lyrics that come with the sound. Anyway, he was so proud of his beauty and talents that he wanted to be like God and to be worshiped. So God threw him out of heaven down to earth and Lucifer took 1/3 of the angels with him. I believe Satan fell and existed on earth long before Adam and Eve were created. And so was the Garden of Eden. Perhaps when he fell, the impact was so great that it killed all the dinosaurs..? I’m just speculating. But wait, right after Adam and Eve ate the fruit, Satan was cursed by God and part of that curse meant that Satan would lose a war between good and evil, which we will talk about in the blogs ahead. Now for over six (6) thousand years Satan has had ownership of the planet earth, but he’s also had access to heaven (Job 1:6, Psalms 82). By the way, sons of God are angels, those good ones and those that have fallen with Lucifer. Basically, any angelic being created by God is a son of God, not to be confused with Jesus as the only begotten Son of God. Just FYI, some of the angels were so bad and disobedient that they seduced the human women and had sexual relations with them that produced giants (Gen 6:4) who are now demons, blah, blah…Wait, what?! Whose bath water is she drinking now?? Yeah, this is important when talking about the curse and how Satan will have an offspring or anti-Christ (Gen 3:15)still deceiving himself that he can win. C’mon, everything that is happening on earth for thousands of years is allowed by God. As soon as God says “enough” Satan with his demons will be locked up in hell in a blink of an eye. There is no war… An upcoming blog about that. I’m also thinking about writing about the ancient past - extremely interesting.

Jesus reclaims the deed to Earth

Okay, we agree that Satan owns the earth and has been called prince and ruler of this world (Matt 12:24, Mark 3:22, Luke 11:15, John 12:31, 14:30, 16:11, Eph 2:2, 2 Cor 4:4) and we can say he is the one who has a deed to the earth. Jesus who is sitting on the throne is holding a scroll that has writings on the back and the front and is sealed with seven (7) seals. It is obvious that the scroll is the deed to the planet earth, but why are there writings on front and back? Knowing from ancient history reading, any scroll of a papyrus had writings on a single side. One explanation could be that in Jewish land laws, the deed to a property had writings on both sides when they owner could not pay a mortgage (in our modern terms) for the property. When the property was in bankruptcy then the deed had markings on the other side as well indicating the amount owed. Also, in their law, the property could not be repossessed for seven years and if the owner happened to win a lottery or get a large sum of money through inheritance, he was allowed to purchase his property back within those sever years. I like that law, BTW.

Anyway, evidently, Jesus is the one person worthy to reclaim the earth from Satan. He is the slain Lamb, the One who died for humanity. At that time, He reclaimed us, now He reclaims the earth. He opens the scroll and breaks each seal individually. With each broken seal a judgment is poured out on earth and those who reside there. Now, we already established that while this is happening, we (the church) are in heaven and people on earth are going through terrible ordeals just because they chose not to believe in Jesus. I hope that’s not you. If it is, please get saved now!

After all the seals are broken, the trumpets are blown. With each trumpet more afflictions and sufferings are poured out on earth. Hail, fire and brimstone, lightnings, noises, thundering, earthquakes, sun and moon eclipse, people tormented and killed. Mass hysteria. After the trumpets come seven plagues, much like those in Moses' time in Egypt. The plagues are manifested as bowls of God’s wrath the angels pour out on the world. This will be covered in more detail in the post about the tribulation period.

While all this is happening on earth, we are rejoicing in heaven. We are having a feast with Jesus, our groom. Once the tribulation is completed and we end our marriage supper (lasting for seven years), we join our Lord, who on a white horse in the clouds goes down to earth with ten thousand of His saints - that’s us This is called the second coming. Everyone will see the Lord Jesus in His glorified body and everyone will know that’s Him. He will end the reign of Satan on earth with a two-edged sword (His word) and lock him up in the lake of fire aka hell for a thousand years.

This blog was really supposed to be what’s going on in heaven. I spoiled the blog about the tribulation on earth a bit, but please read it next. After that I will post a blog about the anti-Christ.

So, where would you like to spend your eternity? I don’t want you to have to go through the tribulation and I definitely don’t want you to end up in hell. It’s a place of torment that was created for the fallen angels and Satan himself. God does not want you to go there either.