Where is heaven located?
Question 10169
The question of where heaven is located is asked with genuine sincerity, and the honest answer is that Scripture gives us considerably less spatial information than many assume. The Bible speaks with absolute clarity about the reality of heaven, about what it is like, and about who is there. On the question of where it is in relation to the physical universe, the picture is suggestive rather than definitive.
The Language of “Up”
Scripture consistently uses upward directional language when referring to heaven. Jesus “was taken up” into heaven (Acts 1:9). Stephen, at his martyrdom, “gazed into heaven and saw the glory of God, and Jesus standing at the right hand of God” (Acts 7:55). Paul was “caught up to the third heaven” (2 Corinthians 12:2). The psalms speak of God looking “down from heaven” (Psalm 14:2; 33:13). This directional language is universal in Scripture and has shaped the instinctive understanding of every generation of believers.
The question is whether this language describes a literal spatial relationship between heaven and the physical universe, or whether it functions as a theological description of God’s transcendence, His position of authority, and the distinction between the created order and the uncreated realm in which He dwells. It may, of course, be both. The upward direction may simultaneously convey theological meaning and correspond to some actual spatial reality that we are not currently equipped to understand. The honest position is that Scripture uses the language it uses, and we should not be too quick to strip it of its directional content or too quick to plot heaven on an astronomical map.
The Three Heavens
Paul’s reference to being “caught up to the third heaven” (2 Corinthians 12:2) has traditionally been understood as reflecting a threefold distinction. The first heaven is the atmospheric sky, the realm of clouds and weather. The second heaven is the stellar expanse, the realm of sun, moon, and stars. The third heaven is the dwelling place of God, which Paul equates with “paradise” in verse 4. This framework is not systematically developed in Scripture, but it is consistent with the way biblical language uses “heavens” (shamayim in Hebrew, ouranoi in Greek, both plural) to refer to different realities depending on context.
The third heaven, the dwelling place of God, is described in ways that indicate a genuine place rather than a mere state of mind. It has a throne (Isaiah 6:1; Revelation 4:2). It has inhabitants: angelic beings, the redeemed dead, and the risen Christ. It has features: the temple described in Revelation, the altar under which the souls of the martyrs rest (Revelation 6:9), the sea of glass (Revelation 4:6). Whether these descriptions are of physical realities in a dimension we do not currently perceive, or symbolic representations of realities beyond human language, or some combination, is a question Scripture does not resolve with the kind of precision we might like.
Beyond the Physical Universe?
The most theologically careful statement is that heaven, as the dwelling place of God, is not a location within the created physical universe. God is the Creator of space, time, and matter. Heaven, as the place where God’s presence is manifested in its fullest glory, exists in a dimension that is distinct from the physical creation, though it is not entirely disconnected from it. The interactions between heaven and earth in Scripture, angels ascending and descending, visions in which the heavenly realm is opened, the ascension of Christ, suggest that the boundary between the two is real but not impenetrable. Jacob’s ladder (Genesis 28:12), the opening of the heavens at Jesus’ baptism (Matthew 3:16), and the tearing open of the heavens in Stephen’s vision (Acts 7:56) all point to a relationship between the two realms that is closer and more dynamic than a simple spatial separation would suggest.
The New Testament’s language about heaven being “above” may reflect the reality that heaven exists in a dimension perpendicular to our own spatial experience, one that is genuinely “above” in a way that our three-dimensional vocabulary can gesture toward but not fully describe. This is speculative, but it takes the directional language of Scripture seriously while acknowledging that the created physical universe may not contain heaven within its own boundaries.
The New Heaven and New Earth
The eschatological vision of Revelation 21-22 describes the New Jerusalem descending from heaven to the New Earth. This is a decisive moment in the biblical narrative: God’s dwelling is no longer “up there” but “with man” (Revelation 21:3). The separation between heaven and earth is ended. In the eternal state, the dwelling place of God and the dwelling place of redeemed humanity are united. This means that the current spatial separation between heaven and earth is temporary. It belongs to the present age, not to the age to come. The final picture is not of believers being taken away from the earth to live in heaven for ever, but of heaven and earth being brought together in a new creation where God is present with His people in unmediated, permanent fellowship.
So, now what?
Scripture does not give us a set of coordinates for heaven. What it gives us is something far more important: the assurance that heaven is real, that Christ is there, that the departed in Christ are there, and that our future is there, or rather, that our future is in the new creation where heaven and earth are joined. The location matters less than the reality. The believer’s hope is not in a place on a map but in a Person on a throne. “Where I am you may be also” (John 14:3). That is the promise, and the One who made it is entirely sufficient to keep it.
“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.'” Revelation 21:3