{"id":3820,"date":"2008-07-03T00:10:50","date_gmt":"2008-07-03T00:10:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/jesuscreed\/2008\/07\/heaven-4.html"},"modified":"2008-07-03T00:10:50","modified_gmt":"2008-07-03T00:10:50","slug":"heaven-4","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jesuscreed\/2008\/07\/heaven-4.html","title":{"rendered":"Heaven 4"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Here are some texts from Mark 13 that muddy the clear waters of tradition when it comes to the meaning of &#8220;heaven.&#8221;<!--more|inline--><br \/>\nMark 13:25: the stars will fall from the <strong>sky <\/strong>[heaven], and the <strong>heavenly <\/strong>bodies will be shaken.<br \/>\nMark 13:27: And he will send his angels and gather his elect from the four winds, from the ends of the earth to the ends of the <strong>heavens<\/strong>.<br \/>\nHere&#8217;s a very interesting statement:<br \/>\nMark 13:31 <strong>Heaven <\/strong>and earth will pass away, but my words will never pass away.<br \/>\nMark 13:32 No one knows about that day or hour, not even the angels in <strong>heaven<\/strong>, nor the Son, but only the Father.<br \/>\nFirst, heaven here refers to what is up, the sky.<br \/>\nSecond, heaven is in contrast to earth.<br \/>\nThird, skipping to 13:32, heaven is where the angels are.<br \/>\nFourth, this statement, taken literally, means &#8220;heaven&#8221; is not eternal. It is no more eternal than earth. The word of Jesus is eternal but heaven is not.<br \/>\nThis could be the discovery of a gold nugget. Does this text teach that heaven is not eternal, that it is a &#8220;temporary&#8221; abiding place of God and the angels? Or, is this simply a trope, a figure of speech? But quite odd for someone like Jesus even to say that heaven is not eternal if it really is. I suggest, the former &#8212; heaven is the temporary abiding place of God and the angels, a place to which some go, but it is not the eternal resting place.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Here are some texts from Mark 13 that muddy the clear waters of tradition when it comes to the meaning of &#8220;heaven.&#8221;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":298,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[52],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3820","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-heaven"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Heaven 4 - Jesus Creed<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jesuscreed\/2008\/07\/heaven-4.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Heaven 4 - 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