3:24), and we learn from Ezekiel that it was located on a mountain (Ezek. We learn in Genesis that the garden of Eden’s entrance faced east (Gen. (For more on this, see our first blog from The Royal Priest series, “ Were Adam and Eve Priests in Eden?”) And in the middle of this cosmic dwelling, God creates another temple-the garden mentioned above, called Eden. Recognizing this helps us better understand not only the Garden and temple, but also what it means to say that Jesus “ascended.”Īll of creation is God’s temple. God’s space and our space are to overlap, “on Earth as it is in Heaven” (Matthew 6:10), which is what the world looks like in the Garden of Eden as the creation story begins. God’s vision for Heaven and Earth-God’s space and humanity’s space-is that both would be fully integrated as one. The most important thing to see here is that God is not ultimately creating a supernatural place where he lives separated from humans. And because God is transcendent, or above all, his space is described metaphorically as being above, or up, or in the heavens. For example, death and emptiness are down or under in Sheol.

When ancient Hebrew writers talk about geographic locations and spatial relationships in the physical world, they often use these physical descriptions to represent a higher, transcendent reality. So why do we say that God is “up there” when he is also right here? The key here is that both spaces were included in the natural, created world. And they use “land” or “the earth” to refer to the place where people live-humanity’s space. Throughout the Bible, the biblical authors use “the skies” or “the heavens” to refer to the place where God lives-God’s space.

In Hebrew, the word “heavens” (Hebrew, shamayim) literally means “the skies.” In modern English, we usually use the word “earth” to refer to the whole planet or globe, but the Hebrew root word, ehrets, simply means “land.” So the heavens and the earth are most basically the skies and the land, but there’s more. But what is meant by “heavens” and “earth”? The biblical story opens with God speaking order into chaos, creating the heavens and the earth.

Christ ascension into heaven