HEAVEN AND HEAVENS

KEY VERSES: He will bless them that fear the Lord, both small and great… Ye are blessed of the Lord which made heaven and earth. The heaven, even the heavens, are the Lord's: but the earth hath he given to the children of men. (Psalm 115:13,15-16)

  The word “God” in the Bible is in Hebrew, ‘el, which is singular. Also, “God” is found in the plural form, 'elohiym. Hidden within those two words is one God with three substances in homeostasis; that is stable equilibrium between independent substances. 'Elohiym is the stasis; and the Father, Son, and the Holy Ghost are the three “substances” in stasis. Since all three Substances complement each other, the “godhead” is in homeostasis.
  There are three “Substances” in stasis: the invisible, the visible, and the power. The Father is invisible and resides in heaven, the Son is the visible and resides in earth, and the Holy Spirit is the power, and is the intermediary between the heaven and the earth, or the Father and the Son. The godhead is called the Holy Trinity by theologians because God is three-in-one, or three “Substances” in one Existence.
  However, theologians seem to have it wrong! God is not three “persons” with three “personalities,” but one person with one personality. A “person” is a human being, and the “personality” is how persons interface with their existence, or state of being.  Of course, the basic definition has been stretched by early church fathers to include the other substances as “persons.” That leads to confusion as some visualize God as three separate and distinct physical persons. However, a better description of God is that He IS according to His Purposes. For instance, to plan the Creation, God IS Mind; to mold God used His Hands (He IS Flesh); and to twist the mold God IS Power.  In all three substances, God IS in each! “IS” is the One Existence. Therefore, Existence IS three substances.
  In order to remold mankind again, God used His Flesh and manifested His physical “substance” (Jesus) as a person and revealed His Personality. Jesus, God’s physical substance; was good, perfect, innocent, charitable, humble, gracious, and so forth. He showed Himself in the Flesh to transmit those qualities to preserve His “images” (mankind). When the time comes for the Re-creation, God will show Himself in the Flesh again. Note that in all cases, God is not three different “persons” but manifests Himself for different Purposes. His Purpose in all Substances is to serve and preserve His creatures!
  That background is presented so as to understand the plurality within the singularity of God. ‘El IS God’s Oneness, and ‘Elohymn IS His Plurality.
  In like manner, shamayim is plural and is translated as either “heaven” or “heavens,” and although there is a singular form of that noun, the Hebrew never uses it in scripture. Just as ‘elohiym means either “god” or “gods,” because of God’s Oneness, shamayim means either Heaven or heavens for the same reason. There is one Heaven with multiple substances. Just as God is God whatever His Substances, heaven is Heaven in all its substances. Its substances are the heavens. The one overall “Heaven” is capitalized because it describes the totality of the heavens.
 What am I inferring? That as God has three substances, but is still One God, Heaven has multiple substances but is still One Heaven. The individual “heavens” are its substances. Two substances are obvious; the visible and the invisible, just as with God. Power is difficult to physically comprehend. It must be sensed. The Holy Spirit, the “power” substance of God is sensed by the sixth sense – “proprioception,” and that is how the physical interacts with the space surrounding it. That grandiose word describes quite well, “the Comforter,” the substance of God interacting with people, and is descriptive of God’s Holy Spirit.
  Christians not only interact (proprioception) with the physical “space” (the environment), but the spiritual environment as well. Christians interact with the unseen as well as the seen. Christians sense God as He silently tests, reproves, and comforts us. Non-Christians seem to not have a fully developed sixth sense because theirs is limited to the visible “space” surrounding them. The Books of Adam and Eve refer to “bright natures.” That was Adam’s and Eve’s ability, after they were converted, to sense God’s Holy Spirit. They also saw “the Word,” Jesus, with bright eyes because of their bright natures, or a spiritually aided sixth sense.
  Paul said that a person he knew years ago had a blessed experience: “I knew a man in Christ above fourteen years ago, (whether in the body, I cannot tell; or whether out of the body, I cannot tell: God knoweth;) such an one caught up to the third heaven” (2 Cor 12:2). The point is that “the third heaven” is a substance within the Heaven. There are many different ideas about where the heavens are and how many. Paul spoke of three. Enoch spoke of ten heavens, and indicated that the third heaven contains both Paradise and Hell, and are separated by a barrier of some type.
  Scripture speaks of “Hell” as if its location is beneath the earth. Perhaps a better description is within the earth. I am implying that the earth and the heaven may coexist in the same place in different substances. Theologians, at least some, believe that the first heaven is the waters of planet Earth, the second heaven is what is seen above (the lofty), and the third heaven is the unseen realm aloft. The unseen substance is what Christians call “Paradise” or “Heaven.” Heaven (with a capital “H”) may consist of ten individual heavens, or substances.
  The best or most elementary meaning of shamayim is “water is there.” We know that God “divided the waters from the waters” or the mayim from the mayim, which is the root noun of shamayim. Judaism believes in three shamayim, or three places of waters. Shamayim, by direct translation, means “waters aloft” (Wikipedia; “shamayim”). In their viewpoint, Heaven consists of the unseen bliss – the heavens, Sheol – the unseen place of punishment for the dead, and the earth (the physical existence.) The three substances of Shamayim is much as the substances of God. However, Heaven contains Hell as a place, but God contains Paradise instead of Hell as there is no death in Heaven, or Paradise.
  From the key verses, “The heaven, even the heavens, are the Lord's: but the earth hath he given to the children of men.” I believe that means that the “waters” belong to the Lord, but the matter (material) belongs to mankind in their natural state. More directly, “waters” is “semen.” The “semen,” so to speak, is God’s waters generating the unseen (the heaven) and the seen (the earth). Perhaps that means particles in their streams, and hence we have bosons, fermions, and hadrons as “cosmic semen”, the latter of which divides the waters from the waters (Gen 1:6), or hadrons divided the bosons from the fermions. Fermions are unseen and bosons are the seen, and both are particles, or elements as is the earth.
  Fermions exist in the heavens, and are assumed to exist in the earth as well since the atoms of the earth are as the systems of the suns and planets.
  Rather than the heavens, Hell, and the physical being three separate locations, perhaps they are three realms, or substances, in one just as God IS. After all, God IS Existence, and so are the various heavens in one Heaven.
  We know from scripture that Jairius’s daughter died, and when Jesus wakened her from her “sleep” that her spirit returned. She didn’t seem to GO anywhere. She was merely translated from a seen state to an unseen state, and back again. The same happened to Jesus. He told the repentant thief that, that day they would be together in Paradise. It was at the end of the day they were crucified. They did not seem to GO anywhere, but were possibly translated from one substance, or realm, to another.
  Some sense angels and loved ones. I know of a man who sensed Hell and Satan before he died. Perhaps they are around us just as Jesus resides within Christians. I submit that if you can’t sense the Holy Spirit – the Ghost of Jesus – that perhaps God’s Spirit is not in your “temple.” With God’s Temple empty adversaries always move in. In the Old Testament, oftentimes evil people left the Temple empty, and at other times, it was defiled. The human soul (God’s Temple within us) can either be vacated or filled with other spirits. The man of Gadarene had his empty soul filled with demons, but Jesus cast them out into hogs. The demons were translated from one existence to another immediately. Time for spiritual travel was nil.
  My hope is for the reader to consider Heaven and Hell. Just because they cannot be seen or detected with instrumentation, does not make them not real substances. Just because God is unseen at the present does not make Him non-Existent. I presented the case for science because it makes sense if scripture is interpreted literally. However translation from one substance to another does not necessarily take time. The barrier between science and creationism is time. Can you see time? No. Do you believe in time? Surely, because you have experienced it! Well, Christians with that sixth sense have experienced the unseen; we have experienced God!

Abraham's Bosom (credit: clseducation.org)