Welcome to Apostolic Life in the 21st Century, a podcast dedicated to helping modern day believers live out the teachings of the First Century.

This podcast is part of the teaching ministry of Dr. David K. Bernard.

Dr. Bernard has dedicated his life to studying the Bible and helping believers apply its message to their daily lives.

In Apostolic Life in the 21st century, Dr. Bernard answers your questions about what the Bible teaches and how those

teachings apply to everyday life. Thank you for joining us for this broadcast. In the popular

imagination, we have this idea of heaven as this faraway place in the clouds where St. Peter meets you at a golden gate and everybody's dressed in a white robe and we're all sitting around on clouds strumming harps for eternity while the angels look on.

And I think that I speak for a lot of people when they say, frankly, that vision of heaven seems kind of boring. What does the Bible say that eternity will be like for believers?

And I know John mentions in Revelation 21 this concept of a new heaven and a new earth. What's

that all about? Can you tell us? To define heaven very briefly, I would say heaven is where God is.

Heaven is the direct presence of God.

Now, what that looks like, we don't know for sure and could be different.

But the Bible talks about the third heaven.

There is the first sense of heaven, which is the sky. So we look up into heaven.

We're just talking about Earth's atmosphere, actually, or the sky. A second definition of

heaven could be outer space. So we look at the stars of heaven. Obviously, that's beyond Earth's

atmosphere. That's outer space. And then the third definition of heaven would be transcending this universe. So I don't think

of heaven that that is where God dwells. And Jesus was a real human being with a glorified body.

I believe he, as all humans, he will have a glorified body throughout eternity. Well, that body has to be in

some place, physical place.

Where is that? Well, we don't know. I don't think it's on some distant planet. I don't think it's

in our universe. I think it transcends our universe. But I do believe he will come back in physical

form to Earth's atmosphere and land on planet Earth. So his body is somewhere.

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