KindiakMath

Where do we go after we die? Christians believe in “heaven” and “hell”, and unfortunately, have loaded these words with unhelpful imagery. Some pictures are somewhat accurate: heaven being a place of pure bliss and hell being a place of pure torment. Others are unhelpful and even hurtful: heaven is for morally superior humans and hell is for morally inferior humans.

While this post won’t describe heaven and hell in its totality, it aims to describe these ideas in their essence, and outline their prevalence in the Bible. Furthermore, the creators of the Bible Project do a far better job of illustrating these ideas than I.

I’m here to just give a brief outline of the key ideas.

Definition 1. Define the proper noun Heaven to be God’s personal dwelling place.

Consequently, all joys, small or large, are simply instances of Heaven.

While the word “heaven” appears in many contexts apart from Definition 1, we will use the proper noun Heaven to refer to any place where God personally dwells. This use is justified by the patriarch Jacob’s reference:

And he was afraid and said, “How awesome is this place! This is none other than the house of God, and this is the gate of heaven.” [Genesis 28:17]

Lemma 1. The Garden of Eden was an instance of Heaven. Human rebellion against God (i.e. sin) has led them to be removed (i.e. exiled) from the Garden of Eden.

Proof. For a direct reference, we see God walking in the Garden of Eden, denoting His personal presence there:

And they heard the sound of the LORD God walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and the man and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the LORD God among the trees of the garden. [Genesis 3:8]

After humanity’s rebellion, God banishes them from His good garden:

Then the LORD God said, “Behold, the man has become like one of us in knowing good and evil. Now, lest he reach out his hand and take also of the tree of life and eat, and live forever—” therefore the LORD God sent him out from the garden of Eden to work the ground from which he was taken. He drove out the man, and at the east of the garden of Eden he placed the cherubim and a flaming sword that turned every way to guard the way to the tree of life. [Genesis 3:22–24]

The rest of the Bible describes God’s rescue plan to restore humanity to Heaven as per Definition 1. The next direct instance of God’s plan to dwell with people is in the time of Moses. Here, God has just freed them from a 400-year-long slavery in Egypt through Moses, and we see God detailing the construction of a tent (i.e. a tabernacle).

Lemma 2. The tabernacle in the book of Exodus functioned as a portable Heaven. God confirmed His dwelling through fire. Wilderness Israel was almost banished from this Heaven.

Proof. When detailing God’s agreement (i.e. covenant) with Israel, the people whom He saved out of mercy and consistent loyalty to His promises, God instructs the building of the tabernacle as His dwelling place:

And let them make me a sanctuary, that I may dwell in their midst. Exactly as I show you concerning the pattern of the tabernacle, and of all its furniture, so you shall make it. [Exodus 25:8–9]

This tabernacle, also known as the tent of meeting, after being cleansed and set apart for special use, serves as God’s dwelling place with His people:

I will consecrate the tent of meeting and the altar. Aaron also and his sons I will consecrate to serve me as priests. I will dwell among the people of Israel and will be their God. And they shall know that I am the LORD their God, who brought them out of the land of Egypt that I might dwell among them. I am the LORD their God. [Exodus 29:44–46]

This tabernacle was designed to move together with Israel’s travels. One can even strengthen the statement to mean that Israel moves only wherever God’s presence goes, and hence, where the tabernacle goes:

Then the tent of meeting shall set out, with the camp of the Levites in the midst of the camps; as they camp, so shall they set out, each in position, standard by standard. [Numbers 2:17]

However, while God was giving the terms of agreement to Israel through Moses, the people of Israel rebelled by setting up a golden calf. God resisted traveling with Israel, and Moses interceded with Israel not for God’s blessings, but for God’s presence:

And he said, “My presence will go with you, and I will give you rest.” And he said to him, “If your presence will not go with me, do not bring us up from here. For how shall it be known that I have found favor in your sight, I and your people? Is it not in your going with us, so that we are distinct, I and your people, from every other people on the face of the earth?” [Exodus 33:14–16]

God even confirmed His presence by visible fire:

And fire came out from before the LORD and consumed the burnt offering and the pieces of fat on the altar, and when all the people saw it, they shouted and fell on their faces. [Leviticus 9:24]

Many generations later, after King David unified Israel into a nation and declared Jerusalem as its capital (that he named Zion), King David sought to build God a house, rather than a portable tent. Due to the many wars that David fought, this task was relegated to his son Solomon instead:

Then he called for Solomon his son and charged him to build a house for the LORD, the God of Israel. David said to Solomon, “My son, I had it in my heart to build a house to the name of the LORD my God. But the word of the LORD came to me, saying, You have shed much blood and have waged great wars. You shall not build a house to my name, because you have shed so much blood before me on the earth. Behold, a son shall be born to you who shall be a man of rest. I will give him rest from all his surrounding enemies. For his name shall be Solomon, and I will give peace and quiet to Israel in his days. [1 Chronicles 22:6–9]

Lemma 3. The temple of Solomon functioned as Heaven for national Israel, confirmed by fire again. This time, the temple was destroyed, and Israel was completely exiled from the temple, due to their rebellion against God.

Proof. The temple was described as the “house of the LORD”:

In the four hundred and eightieth year after the people of Israel came out of the land of Egypt, in the fourth year of Solomon’s reign over Israel, in the month of Ziv, which is the second month, he began to build the house of the LORD. The house that King Solomon built for the LORD was sixty cubits long, twenty cubits wide, and thirty cubits high. [1 Kings 6:1–2]

To be sure, Israel’s God did not literally or metaphysically dwell in the temple. Nevertheless, the temple functioned as Heaven in that God’s name would be the defining feature of that place, from which God listens to the prayers and pleas of His people:

“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! Yet have regard to the prayer of your servant and to his plea, O LORD my God, listening to the cry and to the prayer that your servant prays before you this day, that your eyes may be open night and day toward this house, the place of which you have said, My name shall be there,’ that you may listen to the prayer that your servant offers toward this place. And listen to the plea of your servant and of your people Israel, when they pray toward this place. And listen in heaven your dwelling place, and when you hear, forgive. [1 Kings 8:27–30]

Furthermore, God approved of Solomon’s prayer by responding by fire, just like in Lemma 2:

As soon as Solomon finished his prayer, fire came down from heaven and consumed the burnt offering and the sacrifices, and the glory of the LORD filled the temple. And the priests could not enter the house of the LORD, because the glory of the LORD filled the LORD’s house. When all the people of Israel saw the fire come down and the glory of the LORD on the temple, they bowed down with their faces to the ground on the pavement and worshiped and gave thanks to the LORD, saying, “For he is good, for his steadfast love endures forever.” [2 Chronicles 7:1–3]

The corresponding account in the older book of Kings records a cloud as well, mirroring the pillar of cloud by day and the pillar of fire by night in Exodus:

“And when the priests came out of the Holy Place, a cloud filled the house of the Lord, so that the priests could not stand to minister because of the cloud, for the glory of the LORD filled the house of the LORD.” [‭‭1 Kings‬ ‭8:10–11‬]

However, Solomon turned away from God and set a downward-spiral rampantly-accelerating rebellion among subsequent kings, princes, fathers, and all the people of the land. According to God’s loyalty to His covenant with Israel, he destroys their shared dwelling place with Him and banishes them from the land:

In the fifth month, on the seventh day of the month—that was the nineteenth year of King Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon—Nebuzaradan, the captain of the bodyguard, a servant of the king of Babylon, came to Jerusalem. And he burned the house of the LORD and the king’s house and all the houses of Jerusalem; every great house he burned down. And all the army of the Chaldeans, who were with the captain of the guard, broke down the walls around Jerusalem. And the rest of the people who were left in the city and the deserters who had deserted to the king of Babylon, together with the rest of the multitude, Nebuzaradan the captain of the guard carried into exile. But the captain of the guard left some of the poorest of the land to be vinedressers and plowmen. [2 Kings 25:8–12]

The separation from God’s dwelling place, effectively, could be described by the proper noun “Hell”, even if this particular word is rendered in other words in the Old Testament, such as Sheol or the grave.

Definition 2. Define the proper noun Hell to denote the sum total of existence without God’s personal presence. In a somewhat tongue-in-cheek manner, Hell can be defined as maximal non-Heaven-ness.

If we accept that God is omnipresent, then strictly speaking, God is present in Hell. Nevertheless, it could still be said that His personal presence is absent. By implication, every joy that one can experience, small or large, is non-existent in Hell.

Remark 1. The word “hell”, in common polite society, is tragically loaded. Many societies view the phrase “X is going to hell” as “X is morally deficient”. In that manner, the discussion on hell is inherently offensive. However, in this blog post, we are strictly using the word ‘Hell’ in the sense of Definition 2, and do not use ‘Hell’ as a moral evaluator (using some meaningless arbitrary socially-contracted moral standard in the first place).

The experience of life, joy, and vitality are all samples of Heaven:

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.” And God said, “Behold, I have given you every plant yielding seed that is on the face of all the earth, and every tree with seed in its fruit. You shall have them for food. And to every beast of the earth and to every bird of the heavens and to everything that creeps on the earth, everything that has the breath of life, I have given every green plant for food.” And it was so. And God saw everything that he had made, and behold, it was very good. And there was evening and there was morning, the sixth day. [Genesis 1:28–31]

The experience of pain and suffering are all samples of Hell, as humanity gets exiled from God’s personal dwelling space:

And to Adam he said, “Because you have listened to the voice of your wife and have eaten of the tree of which I commanded you, ‘You shall not eat of it,’ cursed is the ground because of you; in pain you shall eat of it all the days of your life; thorns and thistles it shall bring forth for you; and you shall eat the plants of the field. 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.” [Genesis 3:17–19]

We can therefore conclude that God created His good world to be part of Heaven, but sin has infected this good world with elements of Hell. God’s heart is not to plunge the world further into Hell, but to redeem this world and turn it into fully part of Heaven once more:

“It is too light a thing that you should be my servant to raise up the tribes of Jacob and to bring back the preserved of Israel; I will make you as a light for the nations, that my salvation may reach to the end of the earth.” [Isaiah 49:6]

How does God accomplish this lofty goal? That is, what is God’s plan to purify this sin-infected world into His dwelling place? While many details take a long time to unpack, the centre of His plan is to enter our world in His Son:

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through him, and without him was not any thing made that was made….And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth. [John 1:1–3; 14]

In Lemmas 2 and 3, God details elaborate ceremonies involving animal sacrifices in order to purify the shared space between people and His holy personal presence:

Then he shall go out to the altar that is before the LORD and make atonement for it, and shall take some of the blood of the bull and some of the blood of the goat, and put it on the horns of the altar all around. And he shall sprinkle some of the blood on it with his finger seven times, and cleanse it and consecrate it from the uncleannesses of the people of Israel. [Leviticus 16:19]

Therefore, if Jesus were to really bring humanity to God’s personal presence, He needs to cleanse the shared space of humanity’s filth of sin and rebellion.

Theorem 1. Jesus brings Heaven to humanity, and grants humanity access to Heaven by cleansing them of their sin through His blood.

Proof. The word “dwelt” in John 1:14, in the original language, is the same word as “tabernacled” in the sense of Lemma 2:

And the Word became flesh and dwelt (i.e. tabernacled) among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth. [John 1:14]

Jesus cleanses humans by the shedding of His perfect blood:

For if the blood of goats and bulls, and the sprinkling of defiled persons with the ashes of a heifer, sanctify for the purification of the flesh, how much more will the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered himself without blemish to God, purify our conscience from dead works to serve the living God. [Hebrews 10:13–14]

Therefore, humans can be made clean to enjoy a shared space with God’s personal dwelling, being declared as having right standing before Him:

For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God. [2 Corinthians 5:21]

Individuals who regard this Jesus as their saviour, king, and God are called Christians. Some individuals are, by this definition, regarded as Christians, even though they do not yet know the Jesus that needs to be believed on. Yet, Jesus is regarded as their saviour, king, and God, on account of their confidence that God will carry out His promise to personally bring the king that saves humanity, even though not yet in their lifetimes:

And all these, though commended through their faith, did not receive what was promised, since God had provided something better for us, that apart from us they should not be made perfect. [Hebrews 11:39–40]

Nevertheless, such individuals, like Abraham are counted as having right standing before God on the basis of conviction in God’s good character to certainly carry out His promises:

No unbelief made him waver concerning the promise of God, but he grew strong in his faith as he gave glory to God, fully convinced that God was able to do what he had promised. That is why his faith was “counted to him as righteousness.” [Romans 4:20–22]

Corollary 1. Christians today have first-hand access to Heaven right now, as if they are already a part of Heaven.

Proof. God has guaranteed Christians with the fullness of His in-dwelling by giving them His gracious gift of His Spirit:

In him you also, when you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation, and believed in him, were sealed with the promised Holy Spirit, who is the guarantee of our inheritance until we acquire possession of it, to the praise of his glory. [Ephesians 1:14]

Furthermore, the Holy Spirit dwells in Christians as one body, just as though Christians were part of Heaven:

So then you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God, built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus himself being the cornerstone, in whom the whole structure, being joined together, grows into a holy temple in the Lord. In him you also are being built together into a dwelling place for God by the Spirit. [Ephesians 2:19–22]

For this reason and more, Jesus’ earliest followers endlessly exhorted virtuous lives, not in order to qualify to enter Heaven, but to live out part of the new identity as a child of God, and therefore, a citizen of sorts of Heaven:

Brothers, join in imitating me, and keep your eyes on those who walk according to the example you have in us. For many, of whom I have often told you and now tell you even with tears, walk as enemies of the cross of Christ. Their end is destruction, their god is their belly, and they glory in their shame, with minds set on earthly things. But our citizenship is in heaven, and from it we await a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ, who will transform our lowly body to be like his glorious body, by the power that enables him even to subject all things to himself.
Therefore, my brothers, whom I love and long for, my joy and crown, stand firm thus in the Lord, my beloved. [Philippians 3:17–4:1]

Corollary 2. Jesus promises Christians that the fullness of Heaven will come on earth, and that Christians will certainly be welcomed into Heaven.

Proof. Jesus is the first who resurrected from the dead, and promises that all Christians will be resurrected from the dead as well:

But in fact Christ has been raised from the dead, the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep. For as by a man came death, by a man has come also the resurrection of the dead. For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive. But each in his own order: Christ the firstfruits, then at his coming those who belong to Christ. Then comes the end, when he delivers the kingdom to God the Father after destroying every rule and every authority and power.

When Christ returns, Christians will be with Him forever—i.e. in God’s personal presence forever, and therefore, in Heaven forever:

Then we who are alive, who are left, will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air, and so we will always be with the Lord. [1 Thessalonians 4:17]

This kingdom will never be shaken, that is, it will last forever:

But you have come to Mount Zion and to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to innumerable angels in festal gathering, and to the assembly of the firstborn who are enrolled in heaven, and to God, the judge of all, and to the spirits of the righteous made perfect, and to Jesus, the mediator of a new covenant, and to the sprinkled blood that speaks a better word than the blood of Abel….Therefore let us be grateful for receiving a kingdom that cannot be shaken, and thus let us offer to God acceptable worship, with reverence and awe, for our God is a consuming fire. [Hebrews 12:22–24; 28–29]

Christians will never be rejected from Heaven:

Jesus said to them, “I am the bread of life; whoever comes to me shall not hunger, and whoever believes in me shall never thirst. But I said to you that you have seen me and yet do not believe. All that the Father gives me will come to me, and whoever comes to me I will never cast out. For I have come down from heaven, not to do my own will but the will of him who sent me. And this is the will of him who sent me, that I should lose nothing of all that he has given me, but raise it up on the last day. For this is the will of my Father, that everyone who looks on the Son and believes in him should have eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day.” [John 6:35–40]

Finally, God will eventually dwell with humanity forever, eliminating all pain, suffering, and death:

Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more. And I saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, “Behold, the dwelling place of God is with man. He will dwell with them, and they will be his people, and God himself will be with them as their God. He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away.” [Revelation 21:1–4]

Corollary 3. Any person who is not in Jesus will not be permitted into Heaven, and thus exist in a state of Hell as per Definition 2.

Proof. Jesus came to save humanity from perishing:

For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him. [John 3:16–17]

Jesus taught that He was the only way to God the Father:

Thomas said to him, “Lord, we do not know where you are going. How can we know the way?” Jesus said to him, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. If you had known me, you would have known my Father also. From now on you do know him and have seen him.” [John 14:6]

Furthermore, Jesus’ earliest followers taught that there was no salvation (i.e. entry into Heaven) outside of Jesus:

Then Peter, filled with the Holy Spirit, said to them, “Rulers of the people and elders, if we are being examined today concerning a good deed done to a crippled man, by what means this man has been healed, let it be known to all of you and to all the people of Israel that by the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, whom you crucified, whom God raised from the dead—by him this man is standing before you well. This Jesus is the stone that was rejected by you, the builders, which has become the cornerstone. And there is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved.” [Acts 4:8–12]

Each person stands condemned if and only if he does not believe in Jesus:

Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe is condemned already, because he has not believed in the name of the only Son of God. And this is the judgment: the light has come into the world, and people loved the darkness rather than the light because their works were evil. For everyone who does wicked things hates the light and does not come to the light, lest his works should be exposed. But whoever does what is true comes to the light, so that it may be clearly seen that his works have been carried out in God. [John 3:18–21]

In that sense, we do not believe in Jesus because we loved the darkness rather than the light, and if this is our commitment until we breathe our last breath, God will give us up to the results of our passions:

Therefore God gave them up in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, to the dishonoring of their bodies among themselves, because they exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever! Amen. [Romans 1:24–25]

And since Heaven will not contain the sins that we revel in, we can only be cast out of God’s personal space, and end up in Hell:

Now the works of the flesh are evident: sexual immorality, impurity, sensuality, idolatry, sorcery, enmity, strife, jealousy, fits of anger, rivalries, dissensions, divisions, envy, drunkenness, orgies, and things like these. I warn you, as I warned you before, that those who do such things will not inherit the kingdom of God. [Galatians 5:19–21]

Corollary 3 is a warning to every human being, especially those who identify as Christians in a formal sense: the belief that “Jesus is technically my saviour so I’m off the hook”. No, but unless Jesus is truly our saviour, king, and God, we will only keep on living our Hell-bound sin-lusting lives, and have no place in Heaven. And unless we turn to Him now, we remain on the road to Hell and end up there, willingly or not.

The issue isn’t the moral superiority of some humans over others; it’s the other way around. It’s about the moral inferiority of all humans—regardless of race, language, or religion—when compared to the perfect moral goodness of the God who created us. Furthermore, God’s heart isn’t to keep us condemned. His heart is to save us through His Son, and welcome us back into His presence: Heaven:

Father, I desire that they also, whom you have given me, may be with me where I am, to see my glory that you have given me because you loved me before the foundation of the world. [John 17:24]

We get to experience samples of Heaven now, and the fullness thereof when He returns. But with longings to save even more people, Jesus delays His return, so that more people can return to Him:

But do not overlook this one fact, beloved, that with the Lord one day is as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day. The Lord is not slow to fulfill his promise as some count slowness, but is patient toward you, not wishing that any should perish, but that all should reach repentance. But the day of the Lord will come like a thief, and then the heavens will pass away with a roar, and the heavenly bodies will be burned up and dissolved, and the earth and the works that are done on it will be exposed. [2 Peter 3:9]

This is the Christian message: we all need saving, and Jesus is God’s solution to save us from our sin and rebellion against Him (and Hell and its road to it) and bring us into His full and personal presence (i.e. the real Heaven).

—Joel Kindiak, 27 Nov 25, 2242H