The vast expanse of the heavens attests to God’s glory and excites us for what awaits believers for eternity. However, even the vastness of heaven cannot contain God.
The Bible does not provide a direct answer to the size of heaven, but it portrays it as vast and incomprehensible. Heaven refers to the universe, the dwelling place of God, and the eternal home for believers, each emphasizing God’s greatness. Old Testament passages highlight the infinite nature of God and His creation, while New Testament visions describe heaven as immense, including the New Jerusalem, a city about 1,400 miles in every direction. The heavens, as observed through tools like the Hubble Telescope, reveal a universe stretching millions of light years, underscoring the vastness of God’s handiwork. Though its exact size is unknown, heaven is presented as far greater than human understanding, glorifying the power and majesty of God.
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!