According to the Bible and Rick Warren, “Heaven is for Real.” It’s not just the name of a book or movie about a young boy’s visit to heaven.
Heaven is for real. It’s true. And it’s true because the Bible claims it to be true. The Bible describes heaven for anyone who wants to read about it. But for those of us who aren’t Bible scholars, there are experts we can learn from, men and women who have studied the Bible and can help us better understand the realities of heaven.
Rick Warren, pastor of the popular evangelical Saddleback Church in Lake Forest, California, believes and preaches three major realities we should understand about Heaven. The realities of heaven include heaven is where God lives, it’s a real place, and it’s designed by God for all believers in His Son, Jesus Christ.
WARREN’S ETERNAL REALITIES SERIES
In Pastor Warren’s sermons from his decades of preaching, and specifically from his Eternal Realities series, he offers up evidence to support his claims that heaven is where God lives, that it’s a real place, and it’s designed by God for us. He also disputes many of the claims made by skeptics about heaven. According to Warren, there are many things that heaven is not. “It’s not a state of mind. It’s not a state of being. It’s not some disembodied condition where you’re going to float around without a body. It’s not nirvana. It’s not nothingness. It’s not a dreamlike state. It’s not something intangible and ethereal. It’s not a feeling.”
God Lives in Heaven
What is heaven? First, heaven is the dwelling place of God. He sits upon His throne in Heaven. The Bible also calls it the “kingdom of Heaven.”
We should find encouragement God lives in Heaven.
The following five verses lay claim to Heaven as the place where God lives.
Psalm 123:1
“Lord, I looked up to you, up to heaven, where you rule.”
Matthew 5:34
“But I say to you, make no oath at all, either by heaven, for it is the throne of God.”
Matthew 23:22
“And whoever swears by heaven, swears both by the throne of God and by Him who sits upon it.”
Acts 7:49
‘Heaven is My throne,
And earth is the footstool of My feet;
What kind of house will you build for Me?’ says the Lord,
‘Or what place is there for My repose?’
Isaiah 66:1
Thus says the Lord,
“Heaven is My throne and the earth is My footstool.
Where then is a house you could build for Me?
And where is a place that I may rest?”
Warren says that although heaven is where God lives, it’s also real.
Heaven is a Real, Tangible Place
Warren’s second claim is that heaven is real place.
In John 14:2, Jesus said, “There are many rooms in my father’s home and I’m going to prepare a place for you.” The fact that there are rooms in heaven implies there are tangible, physical structures in heaven.
“The Bible says that in heaven there are streets, there are trees, there is water, there are homes,” Warren says, “It is a physical place and you will have a physical body. It’s not just some kind of floating around in outer space, which sounds pretty boring to me.”
Heaven is a real place. It’s not a state of mind.
Jesus warns in Matthew 6:19, “Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy, and where thieves break in and steal.” One verse later Jesus suggests we, “Store up for yourselves treasures in heaven.”
Now, if heaven were just a state of mind, you couldn’t store anything up there. But he says you can store up treasure in heaven.
So, God lives in heaven and it’s a real place.
Heaven Was Designed For Us
Warren’s third claim about heaven is that heaven was designed for us.
“It was designed for you and for me, specifically. Designed for us. This is such an amazing thing, that God not only designed the earth for us so we could live and it could sustain life, but he designed heaven for us. Not for himself, but for us.”
It’s an amazing and wonderful claim.
“Heaven was prepared for you and it was prepared for you from the foundation or the creation of the world,” Warren says.
So if heaven was prepared for us, then our lives on earth are only temporary.
“We’re not meant to live here,” Warren says. “This is not all there is. There’s more to life than here and now. There’s more to life than just this life.”
Warren mentions many time during his sermons that most humans live approximately 80 years on this planet. Some a little less. Some a little more. But there’s much more after this life.
“So, you’re going to spend 80, at the most a hundred years, here on the earth,” says Warren. “This world is not my home. I’m just the passing through. I think every believer should be given a green card because this is not your ultimate citizenship. You’re going to spend trillions and trillions and trillions and trillions and trillions and gazillions (of years in heaven). You’re going to live in eternity and God says, ‘I designed it for you.’ This is such an amazing expression of the love of God.”
Why would God design heaven for us?
Warren explains that it’s because He wanted a family.
“The Bible tells us that God created the entire universe because he wanted a family. He wanted a family and he wanted a family that would live with Him forever.”
Warren continues. “In Ephesians 1:5, God’s unchanging plan has always been to adopt us into his own family by bringing us to himself through Jesus Christ. And this gave him great pleasure. You were planned for God’s pleasure.”
But Warren makes clear that we are going to be human in heaven, although glorified humans.
“You’re never going to be a god. You’re not going to be a God in heaven and you’re not going to be an angel in heaven. You’re going to be a human being in heaven.”
And in the end, earth will no longer be what we know it to be today.
“One day this earth is going to burn up and the only thing that’s going to last is the people who are part of God’s family,” Warren says.
When will this occur? Warren says that “when the time is right, he will gather us all together from wherever we are and into heaven. Those who have already died, or are on earth – those who haven’t died yet – to be with him in Christ forever. And notice it says forever.”
And it appears human beings were made to last forever.
“That’s why you’re made in God’s image,” Warren says. “And the implication is you’re going to last forever.”
Where Is Heaven?
Now the question is: Where is heaven?
According to Warren, no one knows where heaven is. But we do know one thing:
“We know that it’s out of this world. We definitely know that it is not on earth. Heaven is not a place on earth, regardless of what the songs say. It is out of this world and that’s why the Bible says in many places, like Psalm 53:2, ‘God looks down from heaven to see if any are wise and worship Him.’”
How Do We Get to Heaven?
Although we don’t know where heaven is, we do know the way to heaven.
The Old Testament teaches that human beings must be good enough to get into heaven. According to Warren, “In Romans 3, God offers us a different way to heaven, not by being good enough, which none of us can be.” There’s no way we can be good enough to get into a perfect heaven by keeping all of God’s laws. But the scriptures offer us a new way to heaven.
Warren points out that all humans, according to the Bible, have a choice between only two alternatives. He says that there are two doors we get to pick from. Door one opens up instantly in heaven,. The second door leads to hell. It’s our choice to make.
“You get to choose which door you’re going to go out,” Warren says.
You can pick your way by doing your own thing your entire life and not relying on God’s son for forgiveness, or you can pick God’s way.
Jesus said in John 14:6, “I am the way, the truth and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me.”
So if you’re interested in being a part of God’s eternal family, you must choose Jesus in order to get to heaven.
What is Heaven Like?
“The Bible says that heaven is a mystery,” Warren says. “It is a mystery. And part of it is, we just don’t have the mental capacity to understand other dimensions.’
The Bible says this in Job 11: “Can you understand the mysteries surrounding God Almighty? They are higher than the heavens and deeper than the grave.”
Although the Bible does offer descriptions of heaven, Warren points out that any description will never do justice to the wonders and magnificence of heaven. It’s impossible to describe. So he offers a personal illustration from childhood.
“When I was a little boy, we lived in Northern California. One time we took a family vacation into Southern California and my dad was trying to explain to me what Disneyland was going to be like,” Warren says. “What a waste of time. You can’t understand Disneyland until you go. No matter how well my dad tried to describe it, he could not communicate to me how cool Disneyland was going to be.
“There are some experiences in life that are simply indescribable,” he continues. “You just can’t describe it.”
He offered another illustration of how his wife tried to describe her feelings immediately following the birth of their three children. As a man and father, his experience was totally different from hers. He just couldn’t adequately relate to her experience of carrying their children for nine months and finally seeing each one for the first time.
“You know I had my own feeling as a dad,” he says. “I was there, but she had a different feeling having carried those babies inside of her that is an indescribable feeling. And there are some things in life you simply have to experience.”
It’s the same with all attempts to describe heaven. It’s impossible.
“The truth is there’s really nothing on earth to compare heaven to,” he says. “We are a poor carbon copy, a Xerox. We’re an imitation of something much, much greater, more fulfilling, more beautiful, more exciting, and the Bible tells us this.”
In 1 Corinthians 2, “No eye has ever seen and no ear has heard and no mind has ever imagined what God has prepared for those who love him.”
It sounds like an awesome place.
One final thought, and I’m not sure how I feel about it. Warren claims that there is evidence that animals may be in heaven. For all pet lovers, that’s great news.
In Summary
God says your ultimate home is in heaven. It’s a real place. It’s where God lives. It was designed for us (believers in Jesus Christ). But the only way to arrive in heaven and enjoy the benefits promised by Jesus, we must put our faith and trust in Him as the son of God, who took away our sin.