Is Heaven a Planet?

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Donna_P

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May God be with you.

An evangelical friend says they believe that Heaven is a planet.

2Cor 12:2 …was caught up to the third heaven.

Catholic Study Bible says - God himself dwelt in the third of these (meaning number of heavens). WIth out giving us any clear picture of the cosmos, Paul indicates a mental journey to a nonearthly space, set apart y God, in which secrets were revealed to him.

Then in the New American Standard STudy Bible…there explaination regarding 2 Cor 12:2-4 says; caught up to the third heaven…caught up into Paradise. Paul is sure of this remarkable experience, but he is unsure whether this rapture (being caught up) was on that included the body or one that took place in separation from the body. The Third Heaven disgnates a place behond the immediate heaven of the earth’s atmosphere and beyond the further heaven of outer space and its constellations into the presence of God himself.

Then in a concordance of of his it lists 50 facts about the Planet Heaven???

Weird or what??!!!

Please respond and God bless you!
 
Hello ~

This idea of “planet heaven” appears to derive from the theology of Finis Jennings Dake (1902-87), a Pentecostal preacher whose Dake’s Annotated Reference Bible has been used by some Pentecostal, Charismatic, and Word of Faith proponents over the past thirty years or so. Its unorthodox doctrinal ideas are popular especially within this latter group. For more information:

learntheology.com/bible/finis_jennings_dake_and_the_dake_bible.html
sites.onlinemac.com/trwmainst/dake.html
deceptioninthechurch.com/dakes.html
jesus-is-savior.com/Bible/dakes_bible.htm

Blessings,

Don
+T+
 
I think Paul is using a Jewish idiom when he mentions the “third heaven”. I’m not sure of the details, but he was following the commonly held Jewish belief of the time.
 
Our universe is a place of imperfection, where things decay, die, change from more to less perfect and back again, is a place where we can fall in and out of love, be separated, change what we want. Such an idea, that of heaven being a planet, runs against the conditions of existence in our universe. Heaven must lack the conditions of our universe.
 
If I’m not mistaken, my namesake’s structure of heaven in The Divine Comedy is not entirely inaccurate.

Insofar as heaven is not a physical place, it still has a hierarchy, if I recall correctly. Those who are the most sanctified are “nearer” to God, while the rest are varying degrees of “less close” to God.

In other words, a dedicated and holy disciple who is martyred might fall into the first category, while a life-long womanizing atheist who experiences a deathbed conversion would fall into the second – after purifcation in Purgatory, of course.

Could be wrong; I seem to remember reading something about this in the CCC, though.

In any case, to the OP: heaven is NOT a planet; all of the universe is part of creation and therefore temporary. Heaven is eternal, and is a state of being that can be described as wholly other than that to which we are accustomed – namely in that it is complete union with God.

Peace,
Dante
 
Donna_P said:
May God be with you.

An evangelical friend says they believe that Heaven is a planet.

2Cor 12:2 …was caught up to the third heaven.

Catholic Study Bible says - God himself dwelt in the third of these (meaning number of heavens). WIth out giving us any clear picture of the cosmos, Paul indicates a mental journey to a nonearthly space, set apart y God, in which secrets were revealed to him.

Then in the New American Standard STudy Bible…there explaination regarding 2 Cor 12:2-4 says; caught up to the third heaven…caught up into Paradise. Paul is sure of this remarkable experience, but he is unsure whether this rapture (being caught up) was on that included the body or one that took place in separation from the body. The Third Heaven disgnates a place behond the immediate heaven of the earth’s atmosphere and beyond the further heaven of outer space and its constellations into the presence of God himself.

Then in a concordance of of his it lists 50 facts about the Planet Heaven???

Weird or what??!!!

Please respond and God bless you!
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Donna, St. Paul writes of his experience of being in God’s Presence in the language familiar to the Jews who spoke of the three heavens after the imagery of Genesis. The first heaven is the sky we see in the daytime; the second - and farther - is what we can see at night. Above these two “levels” is where God dwells. So, St. Paul isn’t saying that there are three levels within Heaven itself, but is merely saying that it was into God’s presence that he was drawn. (As you may know, this passage of St. Paul’s is used by Mormons in an attempt to uphold their teaching on three levels of Heaven: Telestial,Terrestrial and Celestial.)

So, no, Heaven isn’t a planet (does your friend think that God’s nature is physical and thus has need of a planet on which to live and which to welcome us to?).
 
Donna_P said:
May God be with you.

An evangelical friend says they believe that Heaven is a planet.

2Cor 12:2 …was caught up to the third heaven.

Catholic Study Bible says - God himself dwelt in the third of these (meaning number of heavens). WIth out giving us any clear picture of the cosmos, Paul indicates a mental journey to a nonearthly space, set apart y God, in which secrets were revealed to him.

Then in the New American Standard STudy Bible…there explaination regarding 2 Cor 12:2-4 says; caught up to the third heaven…caught up into Paradise. Paul is sure of this remarkable experience, but he is unsure whether this rapture (being caught up) was on that included the body or one that took place in separation from the body. The Third Heaven disgnates a place behond the immediate heaven of the earth’s atmosphere and beyond the further heaven of outer space and its constellations into the presence of God himself.
**
Then in a concordance of of his it lists 50 facts about the Planet Heaven???**
Weird or what??!!!

Please respond and God bless you!
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I wonder what he is smoking??
 
mdgspencer said:
Our universe is a place of imperfection, where things decay, die, change from more to less perfect and back again, is a place where we can fall in and out of love, be separated, change what we want. Such an idea, that of heaven being a planet, runs against the conditions of existence in our universe. Heaven must lack the conditions of our universe.
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Amen - including all the planets it contains. Planets themselves are formed, change and die over time. Jupiter, for example, is in fact a failed star (never got the right conditions to become a flaming ball of gas as the Sun did). And anyone who’s done geography knows how the continents have drifted apart from each other, how mountain ranges and ocean trenches have formed and changed and so on.
 
Donna_P said:
May God be with you.

An evangelical friend says they believe that Heaven is a planet.

2Cor 12:2 …was caught up to the third heaven.

Catholic Study Bible says - God himself dwelt in the third of these (meaning number of heavens). WIth out giving us any clear picture of the cosmos, Paul indicates a mental journey to a nonearthly space, set apart y God, in which secrets were revealed to him.

Then in the New American Standard STudy Bible…there explaination regarding 2 Cor 12:2-4 says; caught up to the third heaven…caught up into Paradise. Paul is sure of this remarkable experience, but he is unsure whether this rapture (being caught up) was on that included the body or one that took place in separation from the body. The Third Heaven disgnates a place behond the immediate heaven of the earth’s atmosphere and beyond the further heaven of outer space and its constellations into the presence of God himself.

Then in a concordance of of his it lists 50 facts about the Planet Heaven???

Weird or what??!!!

Please respond and God bless you!
Click to expand...
I believe that is a 7th day Adventist and Mormon teaching. Perhaps your friend has such a background and was never properly catechized in the mainstream Protestant beliefs.
 
"Donna P:
An evangelical friend says they believe that Heaven is a planet.
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Is he pentecostal? I have heard this, a long time ago, from a friend at school, who was an Assemblies of God pastor’s son…
I thought it was weird then, and it still sounds weird to me now!!
Donald45 said:
Hello ~

This idea of “planet heaven” appears to derive from the theology of Finis Jennings Dake (1902-87), a Pentecostal preacher whose Dake’s Annotated Reference Bible has been used by some Pentecostal, Charismatic, and Word of Faith proponents over the past thirty years or so. Its unorthodox doctrinal ideas are popular especially within this latter group…

Don
+T+
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:eek: Yikes!! :eek:
That is wilder than I thought!!!
 
CapIV said:
Heaven is not a planet. It is not a physical place.
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Huh? No, it has some physical characteristics, as our ressurected bodies will reside there. Although, admittantly, it’s in a realm outside of our universe, and is probably uncomprehesible to us in our current state.
 
CapIV said:
Heaven is not a planet. It is not a physical place.
Click to expand...
Wouldn’t it have to be a physical place as well as a spiritual place in order for Christ to reside there with both body and spirit?

**Oh, heck, blame the whole thing on Galileo!! 😛 **
 
Donna_P said:
May God be with you.

An evangelical friend says they believe that Heaven is a planet.

2Cor 12:2 …was caught up to the third heaven.

Catholic Study Bible says - God himself dwelt in the third of these (meaning number of heavens). WIth out giving us any clear picture of the cosmos, Paul indicates a mental journey to a nonearthly space, set apart y God, in which secrets were revealed to him.

Then in the New American Standard STudy Bible…there explaination regarding 2 Cor 12:2-4 says; caught up to the third heaven…caught up into Paradise. Paul is sure of this remarkable experience, but he is unsure whether this rapture (being caught up) was on that included the body or one that took place in separation from the body. The Third Heaven disgnates a place behond the immediate heaven of the earth’s atmosphere and beyond the further heaven of outer space and its constellations into the presence of God himself.

Then in a concordance of of his it lists 50 facts about the Planet Heaven???

Weird or what??!!!

Please respond and God bless you!
Click to expand...

In one word: Yuck !​

In more than one word: That is not is the sort of thing that St. Paul points to (1 Corinthians 2.9). It sounds like the “heaven” of spiritualists - which is apt to be described as though it were rather superior but somewhat dull hotel.

I want to be damned, if the sort of thing described in your post is heaven: it is appalling & horrible that preachers should be so successful in making heaven so pedestrian - C.S. Lewis’ Mountain of Aslan has more holiness about it, than the dull thing this preacher has thought up. It’s as bad as the idea that God occupies a throne located in space. Why are people incapable of seeing that Heaven cannot be described, & that God cannot be described ? If they kept their ideas to themselves, that would be their business alone - but when they spread them, people are entitled to object. 😦

The idea of nine heavens, each one moved by an angel or angelic “choir”, with the Empyrean Heaven “enclosing” them, is better than any of that silliness. It’s alsovery useful for helping memorise the order & names of the angelic choirs - which is more than can be said for the “Heaven-as-planet” idea. Since Heaven is not located in place anyway, not only is the whole idea absurd, but God is the “location” of Heaven: all creation is “in” God. As Dante saw in Canto 33 of the Paradiso 🙂
 
To be honest with you, I don’t know, and I doubt anyone truly knows the answer to this question. However, in the late 80’s I heard a former NASA official speak as he attempted to relate science to the Bible. He stressed that these were only his hypotheses, and no one elses, and that he had no proof. It’s just what made sense to him, and as he spoke, it made sense to me. It is the search for this man’s information that led me to this forum.

His hypothesis was this:

Somewhere out there is a galaxy that is larger than our own. Within this galaxy are two (2) planets. From our perspective here on earth, these two planets are up and down from one another. The top planet glowed with the whitest light anyone (at that time) had ever seen. The bottom planet glowed with a red-orange light. The distance between the two plantes was greater than the distance from one end of our own galaxy to the other.

The Bible always refers to Heaven as being “up”. The Bible always refers to ‘heavenly lights’, etc. as being the purest white.

The Bible always refers to Hell as being “down.” The Bible always refers to ‘hell’ as a “Lake of Fire”, which would glow red-orange.

The Bible says there is a “great divide” between Heaven and Hell.

It was this man’s hypothesis that this galaxy contained the physical location of Heaven and Hell. The two planets fit the description given in the Bible of the two places. Whether or not his hypothesis is true, I don’t know. I do, however, believe that it is plausible.
 
I have sometimes wondered “where” heaven and hell are located.
However, the dead do not have bodies until the resurrection at the end of the world. So there is no need to speak of a physical place for the dead at present. Being in such a place, in fact, would be pointless, being without bodies.
The Book of Revelation seems to indicate that the world will be remade after the end and those who serve God will be there. But perhaps this is an erroneous interpretatation. But it is more likely, at least, than this idea created out of the blue that no one had thought of before or come up with since he spoke.
 
terryobrien80 said:
Correct. Heaven is union with God, and hell is eternal seperation from God.
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And therefore does not exclude us from all being plonked on a planet if it pleases God to arrange our union or separation from him in such a way - as our life of grace (or not) in this present age involves us being plonked on a planet.

The good within these types of beliefs is that they are emphasizing the concrete reality of heaven - there seems to be zero authority for them though and there are other means for experiencing directly that reality whilst here on earth.
 
The ancient cosmology of the Jews that is reflected in Genesis is very different than what we know scientifically today. It is a religio-mythological interpretation of what was believed back then; it wasn’t science.

First, they believed that God created everything. In the beginning, as it says in Scripture, the earth was without its form, and it was void of everything, until God said “Let there be light,” and then things started to happen. God’s light on the earth (sun) began the process and is recorded in the first chapter of Genesis.

Looking up into the sky, they believed that the blackness of the universe, and the stars which shown through it, was the portal from where one finds God. The stars were like windows from which the light of Heaven shown through to the earth. It was all a solid mass. Then, below that, between Heaven and the earth, was a firmanent, or expanse, like an arch, where one found water and rain, air, demons, etc. The water found in this area was separated from the water found on the earth, which was believed to have come about from vast underground geisers. The earth was the other solid mass upon which everything grew.

At no time did the ancient Jews ever believe that there existed a ‘planet’ for Heaven or Hell, and the postulation of such today by a supposed NASA scientist is way out in left field some where. There are too many scientific problems with that proposal as is outlined.
 
I recently read From Fanny Moisseieva’s near-death experience in 1928 comes one of the earliest recorded NDE dealing on all these events in a balanced and down-to-earth manner. It has the NIHIL OBSTAT/IMPRIMATUR Nihil Obstat: 10-04-2002 Imprimatur: 10-05-2002
Rev. Msgr. J.C. Abriol Rev. Fr. Francis Gustilo, SDB
Vicar General of the Archdiocese of Manila Provincial

in it she describes some of places hell, purgatory, heaven etc as “Planets” now…whether that is indeed what they are/were I don’t know. It is however a very fascinating read. I’ve read it 3 or 4 times and I’m sure I will read it again.

visionofeternity.blogspot.com/
 
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