When our son was four years old, he asked my wife and me, “Can you drive to heaven?” From the mouths of babies, right?
It’s a question only a child would ask, but it raises a very adult question: Where exactly is heaven described in the Bible?
As a scientist, I understand the importance of definitions. According to the Bible, the lowest level of heaven is the earth’s atmosphere. The mid-level heaven is space. We are talking about heaven at the highest level: that is where God lives.
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Regarding the location of heaven, the Bible contains many verses that describe us looking “up” to God in heaven, and God as looking “down” to us on earth.
Imagine boarding a nuclear-powered rocket and traveling straight “up” into space. Will you ever reach a point so far into space that you finally reach heaven?
Think about this before you laugh off the idea.
In 1929, American lawyer turned amateur astronomer Edwin Hubble discovered that galaxies rush away from each other like shrapnel from a bomb. Hubble also discovered that there is a clear pattern in the way galaxies are speeding away from each other, namely: the further “up” in space a galaxy is – the further away it is from Earth – the faster it is moving away from Earth and everything else. It’s called Hubble’s law.
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But here’s where it gets really interesting.
Theoretically, a galaxy 273 billion trillion (273,000,000,000,000,000,000,000) miles away from Earth would be moving at a speed of 300,000 kilometers per second, which is the speed of light. That distance, all the way ‘up’ in space, is called the Cosmic Horizon.
That means you and I can never reach the Cosmic Horizon – not even aboard the most souped-up, nuclear-powered rocket you can imagine – because, as Einstein explained in his special theory of relativity, only light and certain other non-material phenomena can travel at the speed of light.
So where exactly is heaven located? It is entirely possible that the sky is on the other side of the Cosmic Horizon. This is why.
One: According to modern cosmology, there exists an entire universe beyond the Cosmic Horizon. But it is permanently hidden from us because we can never reach, let alone cross, the Cosmic Horizon.
Two, our best astronomical observations – and Einstein’s theories of special and general relativity – indicate that time stops at the cosmic horizon. At that special distance, way ‘up’ in deep, deep space, there is no past, present or future. There is only timelessness.
Three: Unlike time, however, space exists on and beyond the Cosmic Horizon. This means that the hidden universe beyond the Cosmic Horizon is habitable, albeit only by light and light-like entities.
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Four: According to modern cosmology, the Cosmic Horizon is lined with the very oldest celestial bodies in the observable universe. That means that everything that exists outside the Cosmic Horizon predates these oldest objects… predates the so-called Big Bang… predates the beginning of the observable universe.
All of these modern scientific realities, and others, are why it is perfectly reasonable to speculate that:
1. Heaven is indeed “up there” – far above our heads and far beyond the visible, starlit universe – just as the Bible indicates.
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2. Heaven is inaccessible to us mortals during our lifetime, just as the Bible indicates.
3. Heaven is inhabited by non-material, timeless beings, just as the Bible indicates.
4. Heaven is the home of the One who is older than the universe – the One who created the universe – just as the Bible indicates.
