The resurrected people of God will dwell in the New Heaven and New Earth. Contrary to popular Christian piety, the Bible does not envision humans floating away from the temporal order to an immaterial and disembodied heaven. Rather, Revelation describes the New Jerusalem as coming down from heaven (Rev. 21:2). The presence of God fills all creation as a cosmic Temple paralleling the way the Lord had earlier filled the Tabernacle/Temple. St. John records that the New Jerusalem, which will be like an arboreal Temple (i.e., a new Eden), will have no Temple. Rather, God and the Lamb will be its Temple (Rev. 21:22).1
Heaven is the Direct Presence of God
In this sense, it is not so much that humans leave earth for heaven, but that heaven and earth merge. Heaven is not a separate ontological realm, or physical created space. Instead, it is simply the unmediated presence of God. Daniel describes the ascension of the Son of Man as movement into the presence of the Ancient of Days (Daniel 7). Hebrews reinforces this point by noting that Jesus’s ascension into heaven is one into the presence of God (Hebrew 9:24). In the same epistle, the author reminds readers that heaven “is not a part of this creation” (Heb. 9:11). In other words, heaven is God’s direct and unmediated presence; it is not a distinct created realm.
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