Lost Stories Gem #38
Why All the Confusion About Heaven and Eternity
For thousands of years, nearly every human culture has imagined a transcendent realm beyond this earthly life. Heaven, Paradise, Valhalla, Elysium, Asgard, Mictlan, Vaikuntha, the Otherworld: call it what you will, but the concept is nearly universal. A place untainted by suffering, sorrow, and pain. A home for the Divine and the righteous dead.
Yet for all this consistency across cultures, Christians today seem oddly confused about what The Bible actually says about Heaven and eternity. We cling to ideas about the eternal nature of Heaven and the human soul without ever noticing that Scripture itself contains obvious contradictions on the subject. And the strangest part? Jesus Himself negated the eternal nature of Heaven in one of His most famous pronouncements, yet most Christians simply skip right past it.
This isn’t a matter of carelessness. It’s a matter of how we approach Scripture when it challenges our deepest assumptions.
What The Bible Actually Says About Heaven
Here’s where the confusion begins. Jesus made a remarkable statement: “Heaven and Earth will pass away, but My words will never pass away.” Then, in the final book of Scripture, John the Revelator described his vision: “Then I saw a new Heaven and a new Earth, because the first Heaven and the first Earth had passed away.”
Think about that. From the first book of The New Testament to the last, we’re told that Heaven itself will cease to exist and be replaced. Yet ask most believers what they think about Heaven, and you’ll hear about its eternal, unchanging nature.
The problem deepens when we look at how theologians try to reconcile this. They claim that when The Bible speaks of Heaven and Earth together, it’s referring not to the abode of God but to the Universe in general. But this interpretation breaks down under scrutiny. The Greek word we translate as “Heaven,” ouranos, comes from the same root regardless of whether it appears alone or paired with “Earth.”
The prophet Isaiah faced the same issue centuries earlier, speaking in back-to-back chapters about God’s plan to create a new Heaven and a new Earth. And centuries before that, Solomon prayed that God would “listen to the supplication of Your servant and hear from Heaven, Your dwelling place.” Same Hebrew word, shamayim. Same concept.
Yet somehow, when these passages are discussed, believers who once insisted on taking Scripture literally suddenly embrace symbolic interpretations. All to preserve a pet doctrine.
Understanding Paradox, Not Contradiction
So how do we make sense of this? The answer lies in recognizing that The Bible doesn’t contradict itself. Rather, it speaks in paradoxes.
A paradox is “an apparently contradictory statement that, when investigated or explained, may prove to actually be true.” The difference between contradiction and paradox matters immensely. A contradiction means something is false. A paradox means we need to investigate deeper.
Jesus taught almost entirely in paradoxes:
He told His disciples to “seek and you will find,” yet He also said “whoever seeks to save their life will lose it”
He called Himself the “Prince of Peace,” yet declared He came not to bring peace but a sword
He commanded His followers to be “harmless as doves, yet wise as serpents”
Jesus wasn’t confused. He was intentionally revealing truths that lie beyond simple either-or logic. And He was Himself the greatest paradox of all: fully God and fully human. Capable of performing miracles at will, yet capable of suffering and death. Greek philosophers would’ve called this impossible. The Jews of His day certainly did. Yet Scripture records it as fact.
The Immortal Soul Question
Now, here’s what makes the Heaven question even more complex. Tradition teaches that humans possess immortal souls by nature. This belief is so deeply embedded in Christian thinking that questioning it is considered heresy. Yet The Bible itself doesn’t actually teach this.
Don’t misunderstand. Scripture is clear that believers in Christ receive eternal life. Jesus said explicitly:
“Whoever believes in Him won’t perish but will have eternal life”
“Whoever hears My word and believes in Him Who sent Me has eternal life”
“Everyone who looks on the Son and believes in Him will have eternal life”
However, there’s a crucial difference between the idea of the immortality of the human soul on one hand and the immortality of God on the other. In short, just because God is said to grant eternal life to believers as a gift, it doesn’t mean that human souls are inherently eternal in nature.
In short, The Bible tells us that Adam and Eve were originally created with immortal souls, but all that changed when they disobeyed God in the Garden, and so forfeited that immortality. The result? They became mortal, and in turn their descendants inherited that mortal nature. Thus, all subsequent humans possess mortal souls, not immortal souls.
This is why the promise of eternal life is so significant. It’s not a restoration of what we never lost; it’s a restoration of something that humans once had but tragically gave away.
What This Means for Heaven
So, if humans don’t possess immortal souls by nature but only through God’s grace, then what does that tell us about Heaven itself?
As it turns out, the same principle applies. Heaven isn’t eternal by nature but only through its connection to the Eternal God. And this doesn’t apply to our typical understaning of Heaven in the singular. That’s because there isn’t just one Heaven but there are actually several levels of Heaven, as Scripture indicates. Paul spoke of being caught up to the “third Heaven.” What’s more, The Secrets of Enoch describes Enoch ascending through ten levels of Heaven to encounter the very Face of God in the highest level of Heaven.
What all these levels of Heaven share in common is their complete dependence on God’s presence for their existence. Remove God’s sustaining power, and what’s left? Nothing. As such, Heaven—just like the human soul after the Fall—requires the constant life-giving intervention of God in order to endure.
This is why Jesus said Heaven and Earth will pass away. Not because they’re temporary in a careless sense, but because they’re not self-sustaining. They exist as a function God’s power and presence, not by some inherent eternal property in and of themselves.
Said Jesus: “I am the Vine; you are the branches. Whoever abides in Me and I in them, it is they who bear much fruit, because apart from Me you can do nothing.” Heaven itself, then, depends entirely on that abiding relationship with God.Seeing the Real Truth
Once you fully grasp this, the apparent contradictions dissolve into coherent truth. Heaven isn’t eternally fixed. Neither is the human soul eternally fixed. Both are utterly dependent on God’s sustaining presence.
This doesn’t diminish Scripture or faith. It liberates them both from the burden of defending impossible doctrines. It means our hope doesn’t rest in a place called Heaven that exists somewhere out there—independent and unchanging. Our hope rests in the Eternal God Himself. Heaven will be replaced with a new Heaven. Earth will be replaced with a new Earth. But God remains forever.
Seen in this context, the notion of the so-called “immortal” soul of human beings, apart from the abiding presence of God, is reduced to the sham that it is, and so, too, the assumed “eternal” nature of Heaven. Then, we’re finally able to see that our deepest hope isn’t a place of eternity where we all yearn to go someday; it’s the very heart of the Eternal God. Then and only then, there and only there, will we really know what it means to be … in Heaven.
