Will heaven be on earth? from Compelling Truth
The Bible refers to both heaven and hell as real places. In a technical sense, these are better understood as the places where the dead are right now. What we commonly think of as “heaven”—the final, eternal abode of enjoyment in God’s presence of those who are His children through Jesus Christ—is the new heavens and new earth. What we commonly think of as “hell”—the final, eternal abode of torment of all who reject Jesus Christ—is the lake of fire.
First, the explanation for hell. There are several terms in the Bible that are translated as hell (sheol in the Old Testament; gehenna, hades, and tartarus in the New Testament). One of these words, gehenna, includes a facet of torment within its definition. Revelation 20:14 says: “Then Death and Hades were thrown into the lake of fire. This is the second death, the lake of fire.” In practice, people refer to hell as a place of eternal torment when, on a technical level, the lake of fire is the place of eternal torment. What is more important than these semantics is the deeper idea of separation from God and punishment for all of eternity, rather than how this condition gets labeled. More important than that, of course, is recognizing that we are all condemned to the lake of fire apart from Jesus Christ (John 3:16–18). But by God’s grace, we can be saved (Ephesians 2:1–10). Jesus paid the penalty of sin (death) and He conquered death by His resurrection (1 Corinthians 15:3–6). All who put their faith in Him will not be cast into the lake of fire, but will instead be with Him for all eternity.
Now on to heaven. Heaven is not the final eternal paradise for Christians—or, at least, not heaven as it currently is. When the Old Testament talks of heaven it is usually in the context of looking up to the heavens, or, the sky/universe. This location became associated as being God’s home. In Acts 1:11, Jesus ascended “into heaven,” and when He returns, He will come back down to earth from heaven (1 Thessalonians 4:16). In both of these cases, heaven could simply mean the sky, but it has come to be associated as the dwelling place of God, which we see in Revelation 4—5 where it talks about there being worship of God happening in heaven. Hebrews also talks about Jesus and His ministry in heaven (Hebrews 1:3; 8:1; 9:24–26). The apostle Paul said that “we would rather be away from the body” (dead) so that we may be “at home with the Lord” (2 Corinthians 5:8). So, in this we see the reasoning behind saying that a Christian who has passed away is now in heaven with God—he or she is.
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