Heaven or Hell?

Ultima, the firmament in Genesis is not described as being the atmosphere. It is very clearly stated that the firmament sparated to waters and that the solid firmament contains the sun to rule the day and stars to rule the night. Clearly outer space IS what is supposed to be the firmament. To me, it is obvious that people back then thought that the sky was blue because there was a body of water up there separated from them by a solid structure structure which contained the sun and stars. This is an example of why information in the Bible is often unreliable - it was written by people who didn't know any better, and so they wrote what they believed to be true.
 
grand i think you should read genesis 1:6-11 in the NIV (new international version) that may clear things up with what you have just stated. There are 3 heavans or firmaments whatever you wish to call them 1: our atmosphere. 2: space 3: Heaven where god is right now. I cant remember where it talks about the three heavans but ill post it later when im less tired
 
I....I...I can't see anything relating to space being the firmament. I see the waters divide from the waters and one of the waters is Heaven (cloud area...maybe? Often the skies are referred to as the heavens, and not as God's kingdom...so we have the heavens and the seas as the two waters) and then we have the ocean and seas, the other waters.
God made sun and moon before he made the sky.
I'll need you to point out exactly what it is determining as outer space being the firmament.
 
Write out 1:1-11 for me GM in the King James and I'll see what your consternation is...I believe the King James to be the most reliable, personally.
 
1:1 In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.
1:2 And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.
1:3 And God said, Let there be light: and there was light.
1:4 And God saw the light, that it was good: and God divided the light from the darkness.
1:5 And God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And the evening and the morning were the first day.
1:6 And God said, Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it divide the waters from the waters.
1:7 And God made the firmament, and divided the waters which were under the firmament from the waters which were above the firmament: and it was so.
1:8 And God called the firmament Heaven. And the evening and the morning were the second day.
1:9 And God said, Let the waters under the heaven be gathered together unto one place, and let the dry land appear: and it was so.
1:10 And God called the dry land Earth; and the gathering together of the waters called he Seas: and God saw that it was good.
1:11 And God said, Let the earth bring forth grass, the herb yielding seed, and the fruit tree yielding fruit after his kind, whose seed is in itself, upon the earth: and it was so.
1:12 And the earth brought forth grass, and herb yielding seed after his kind, and the tree yielding fruit, whose seed was in itself, after his kind: and God saw that it was good.
1:13 And the evening and the morning were the third day.
1:14 And God said, Let there be lights in the firmament of the heaven to divide the day from the night; and let them be for signs, and for seasons, and for days, and years:
1:15 And let them be for lights in the firmament of the heaven to give light upon the earth: and it was so.
1:16 And God made two great lights; the greater light to rule the day, and the lesser light to rule the night: he made the stars also.
1:17 And God set them in the firmament of the heaven to give light upon the earth,
1:18 And to rule over the day and over the night, and to divide the light from the darkness: and God saw that it was good.

Lines 1:15 - 1:17 describe what I am talking about.
 
I'm having a late lunch here, so thought would take this time and respond with some thoughts for your consideration.  
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mrpopdrinker, The verse you're looking for is, I believe, 1Corinthians 12:2  where Paul is talking about knowing a man who was caught up to the third heaven. (as it is, most think it was himself he was referring to.)  

The word 'heaven' definitely has different meanings, typically 3, as you said.

Ultima, based on what Paul speaks about in 1 Corinthians 12:2 regarding the 'third heaven', as well as different applications of the word 'heaven' throughout scripture, one can see that there are at least 3 meanings: Sky/Atmosphere, Outer Space, and God's dwelling place (and our future home).

I'll do my best to extrapolate:  (KJV will be used)

Genesis 1:8 - ..."and God called the firmament heaven"... pretty clean statement, but as of this point in the creation process we have: Light, Darkness, lots of Water, and some sort of 'divider' if you will...water, divider, and more water.

[fun digression]
As an aside, this divider is considered by many to actually have been a support structure for the water above the earth and therefore solid.  Physics tells us that when you compress a gas it can displace solids (think of gas shock absorbers). Strictly IMO, I think it would plausible to assume that this 'divider' between the water above and the water below the earth could have been a gas, so compressed that it could keep the two barriers seperate, as well as nicely explain some of the postdiluvian atomospheric, climatic and physical constraints...depending on the type of gas it was...say...Argon gas for instance???  

Incidentally, Argon gas is part of the air we now breathe.
...Think about it; a thin, highly compressed concentrated layer of argon that we *didn't* breathe (yet), a more concentrated oxygen (et al) that we do breathe because of the heavily vegetated world, controlled temperature and greenhouse-like environment = no UV rays, longer life...

::and that my friends, was the first argon gas window...created by God himself, thus keeping the UV rays to a minimum and letting us all live to ripe old ages. There really *is* nothing new under the sun::  
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[/fun digression]

Now.. where was I?

In Genesis 1:9 he moves all the water under the argon gas window and it is "gathered together unto one place" and makes dry land appear...now critters have air to breathe and birds can fly, as it speaks of in verse ...wait...we'll get there;

So far we only have "the firmament" defined as "heaven". It's a work in progress. This could be likened to a wrapper of sorts.  A general term. It gets more detailed what God does with it as you read on.

So then read on; in verse 14 we now introduce another layer: a 'firmament of heaven'... or firmament of the already existing firmament if you will.
Into this expanse, God puts "the lights in the firmament of the heaven to divide the day from the night; and let them be for signs, and for seasons, and for days, and years:"  Enter stars and constellations!  And in verse 16 and 17, he creates the moon and the sun and sets them in place.  This is Space...the final frontier...the firmament of heaven.

These few verses make it cool enough, but to make it even clearer, verse 20 really states the difference: God created "fowl that may fly above the earth in the open firmament of heaven."  This is correlating to verse 9, the 1st heaven, AKA our atmosphere.

So far, we have two layers of the word heaven in a general sense:
Firmament of heaven (outer space)
Open firmament of heaven (air space, where the birds fly)

Thus it is established in different degrees or levels:
Sky/Atmosphere = the "open firmament of heaven" or simply put; heaven, the heavens, and where we get 1st heaven.
Space = "firmament of heaven" or also referred to as heaven, the heavens, and where we get 2nd heaven.
God's Dwelling place = yet again called heaven, the heavens or the third heaven (according to Paul).  

Isaiah however, tells us that God's dwelling place is located above the stars.

Summing up, the Bible usually just refers to it simply as 'heaven'.  We have to take it contextually.

Biblical references:
( [ ] are my emphasis and for clarity only )

Reference to heaven as the sky:
Gen 7:23 - ..."the fowl of the [1st] heaven;"  (we know birds are confined to our atmosphere)

Reference to heaven as outer space:
Isa 13:10 - For the stars of [the 2nd] heaven and the constellations thereof shall not give their light: the sun shall be darkened in his going forth, and the moon shall not cause her light to shine.

And God's dwelling place is heaven:
2Ch 6:30 - Then hear thou from [the 3rd] heaven thy dwelling place, and forgive, and render unto every man according unto all his ways, whose heart thou knowest; (for thou only knowest the hearts of the children of men:)

Ps 33:13 - The LORD looketh from heaven; he beholdeth all the sons of men.

And of course..."Our Father, which art in heaven..."  from Matthew 6.
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And in this passage, we see that God's dwelling place (heaven) is *not* actually in space, it is actually *above* the stars:
Isa 14:13 - For thou hast said in thine heart, I will ascend into heaven, I will exalt my throne above the stars of God: I will sit also upon the mount of the congregation, in the sides of the north:

My deux one hundredths of a buck...
 
If only I spoke Greek and Hebrew...I betcha there are THREE firmaments they speak of ("hammered-out bracelet" is one definition...).
Yeah Grand. Umm. I think if you read above, it says there was a firmament of water from water, and then a sun and moon in another firmament (space, as we know it).
However, my version (NKJV...okay, not as good as KJV) says, in verse 14: "Then God said, 'Let there be lights in the firmament of the heavens to divide the day from the night; and let them be for signs and seasons, and for days and years; (15) and let them be for lights in the firmament of the heavens to give light on the earth'; and it was so."
So we have a firmament of heavens (who in their right mind at the beginning of the world is going to say: "Ahh, yes...Earth is in and of itself one part of a revolutionary solar system whole...there is the sun above to pull is an elliptical pattern..." We didn't even figure out we were heliocentric until sometime in the 1000s or thereabouts.)
a firmament of watery sky, and a firmament of God.

Man could not have known by a solitary glance up that he was part of a solar system of stars and moons and planets and a sun. He just couldn't have. So it might have been to King James that the sun and moon were somewhere in the sky of Earth (could they judge depth and distance of the atmosphere? I think not. They might have thought the blue went on forever with the sun, and when that disappeared, came the moon in the darkened sky (which went on for how long, to their uneducated eyes?)...I think that's the problem: the writing and the writer and the writer's knowledge.

And thanks, Enigma.
 
actually, if we really think about this, there's not much difference from a human point of view between the ocean and space.

They're both inimical to human life. We cannot survive in either environment. Thing's 'Float' in both environments (yes I know the floating is different). And in fact, training for space travel, is done in water.


oh well....enough of my fun digression
 
thank you enigma. Im not sure but that may be the verse i was looking for but it just seems like i read somthing that went into detail about it but it was a long time ago.
 
Kidan...I'm going to go stick my head in the toilet...my eyes...they are open.

Though still, in the 1500s, they really couldn't get into space all too easily...
 
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