The Narrow Path Ministries

Allyn wrote:My real point, since no one wishes to otherwise respond to my nudging, is if Heaven is a place created then how is it determined to be eternal? By what criteria does one use to say, beyond doubt, that anything created will last eternally? If God did not create heaven, then who did? Does it come as standard equipment with God?

Two misunderstandings need clearing up at once. First, despite what some later theologians seem to have imagined, the ancient biblical writers did not suppose that, had they been able to travel in space, they would have come sooner or later to the place where God lived. Granted, the word "heaven" in Hebrew and Greek can mean, effectively, "the Sky"; but the biblical writers move more effortlessly than most modern readers between that meaning (a location within the world of space, time and matter) and the regular meaning of "God's dwelling place" - that is, a different sort of "location" altogether. "Heaven" in this latter, very common biblical sense is God's space as opposed to our space, not God's location within our space-time universe. The question is then whether God's space and our space intersect and if so how, when and where.

...in our culture when we use the language of heaven and earth, we still tend to think about an 'upstairs/downstairs' thing. But for the Ancient Jew, heaven is not another place within our cosmos - upstairs somewhere. Heaven is another dimension of present reality, so that for instance if you went to the temple it wasn't as if you were in heaven. They really believed you were in heaven because the temple was the place within our geography which overlaps with God's geography, as it were.