How big is heaven?

from the old testament

• God lives in heaven. He is infinite with no beginning and no end to His years (Psalm 102:27), and He is the Creator of earth and heaven (Genesis 1:1).
• Of God’s creation of the stars, Isaiah says, “Lift up your eyes and look to the heavens: Who created all these? He who brings out the starry host one by one and calls forth each of them by name. Because of his great power and mighty strength, not one of them is missing” (Isaiah 40:26, NIV).
• David wrote of God’s vast creation in Psalm 8:3-4: “When I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars, which you have set in place, what is man that you are mindful of him, and the son of man that you care for him?”
• Psalm 147:4 tells us that “He determines the number of the stars; he gives to all of them their names.” It is impossible for mankind to know how many stars there are, not to mention the “name” of every star!
• All of heaven is created and controlled by the Lord. God said, “My hand laid the foundation of the earth, and my right hand spread out the heavens; when I call to them, they stand forth together” (Isaiah 48:13).

from the new testament

• John, who was given a look at heaven, writes, "After this I looked, and behold, a great multitude that no one could number, from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages, standing before the throne and before the Lamb, clothed in white robes, with palm branches in their hands, and crying out with a loud voice, 'Salvation belongs to our God who sits on the throne, and to the Lamb!'" (Revelation 7:9–10).
• John is later given a vision of the new heavens and new earth, which is where believers will ultimately spend eternity. Out of the new heavens, a New Jerusalem will descend (Revelation 21:2).
• In John 14:2, my Father’s house refers to heaven, where there are many rooms or dwelling-places. It is an assurance that ample provision has been made to secure space for all believers in heaven.

implications for today

No one really knows how big heaven is, and the Bible doesn't give us a direct answer. But we can surmise that heaven is quite large. We should clarify that there are a few different things meant by the word "heaven." We talk about heaven in the sense of where the stars reside, where God dwells, and where those who have put their faith in Jesus will dwell for eternity. Each of these is a large place.

When we look at the word "heaven" in the Bible we see a vastness that the writers could not explain. In Hebrew, the word shameh or shamayim refers to the sky or everything above the earth and all that is visible from it—beyond the atmosphere, stars, and all that can be seen. In Greek, ouranos means the sky or the place where God lives, or even "an eternal realm of happiness and glory." When the writers chose the word meaning sky or everything above the earth, they were saying that heaven is vast, lofty, and of God.

When you look literally at what they described, you can see that anything larger than what we can see is beyond comprehension. We have been able to see, with the Hubble Space Telescope, parts of the universe so far away it is hard to understand. The nearest galaxy to our own, Andromeda, would take us 2.2 million light years to reach—or 37,200 years at the rate of 18,000 miles per hour.

Though we don't know the measurements of heaven—where God and His followers who have died are—we do know it is big enough to fit a great multitude that cannot be numbered. The New Jerusalem is only one part of the new earth, but the Bible does give its measurements as approximately 1,400 miles in each direction. When we see the vast number of stars, then read that scientists have discovered thousands upon thousands of galaxies, each containing millions of stars, we should be standing in reverent fear of a God so immense to make all that and call it the work of His fingers!