Was Heaven Created as a Result of The Fall?

No, there is no indication that Heaven was created as a result of the Fall. Certainly it was created at some point. God needs no dwelling place, and no place is eternal, only God is eternal. Creatures however, do need a place, so when God created angels, likely he created Heaven as a place for them to be. This creation of Heaven would have preceded the fall of mankind and also the fall of Satan and the evil angels.

There are different uses of the word “Heaven”. In Genesis 1:1 God created the “heavens and the earth.” This would indicate that there were heavens before the fall, but I’m guessing this is not what you meant. The fall has affected the state of humanity because we are now in a position to be redeemed and the earth renewed.  The chart Three Eras of Earth and Mankind may be helpful.

For further elaboration on the nature of Heaven, see the following:

Does Heaven Really Change? (from Heaven, chapter 5)

Only God is eternal and self-existent. All else is created. Heaven is not synonymous with God, nor is it part of his essential being. Therefore, God must have created Heaven. It is not a place where he must dwell, but it is where he chooses to dwell. Because Heaven is a place where angels live, where finite beings come and go, it appears to be a finite environment, a specific location.

Because God created Heaven, it had a beginning and is therefore neither timeless nor changeless. It had a past (the time prior to Christ’s incarnation, death, and resurrection), it has a present (the present or intermediate Heaven, where believers go when they die), and it will have a future (the eternal Heaven, or New Earth). The past Heaven, the present Heaven, and the future or eternal Heaven can all be called Heaven, yet they are not synonymous, even though they are all God’s dwelling places.

Books on Heaven often fail to distinguish between the intermediate and eternal states, using the one word—Heaven—as all-inclusive. But this has dulled our thinking and keeps us from understanding important biblical distinctions. In this book, when referring to the place believers go after death, I use terms such as the present Heaven or the intermediate Heaven. I’ll refer to the eternal state as the eternal Heaven or the New Earth. I hope you can see why this is such an important distinction. The present Heaven is a temporary lodging, a waiting place until the return of Christ and our bodily resurrection. The eternal Heaven, the New Earth, is our true home, the place where we will live forever with our Lord and each other. The great redemptive promises of God will find their ultimate fulfillment on the New Earth, not in the present Heaven.

When we speak about the future New Earth, as we’ll do in most of this book, much of what we say about it may not be true of the intermediate Heaven. (For instance, we will eat and drink in our resurrection bodies on the New Earth, but that doesn’t mean people eat and drink in the present Heaven.) And when we describe the present Heaven, it will not necessarily correspond with what the eternal Heaven, the New Earth, will be like. Once we abandon our assumption that Heaven cannot change, it all makes sense. God does not change; he’s immutable. But God clearly says that Heaven will change. It will eventually be relocated to the New Earth (Revelation 21:1). Similarly, what we now refer to as Hell will also be relocated. After the Great White Throne Judgment, Hell will be cast into the eternal lake of fire (Revelation 20:14-15).

From 50 Days of Heaven, day 7

Because God created Heaven, it had a beginning and thus is neither timeless nor changeless. It had a past the time prior to Christ’s incarnation. It has a present the intermediate Heaven, where believers go when they die. And it will have a future the eternal Heaven, or New Earth.

The past Heaven, the present Heaven, and the future Heaven can all be called Heaven because they are God’s central dwelling place. Yet they are not synonymous. The present, intermediate Heaven is in the angelic realm, distinctly separate from Earth. By contrast, the future Heaven will be in the human realm, on Earth, in a resurrected universe. The dwelling place of God will be the dwelling place of humanity: “Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth. . . . I saw the Holy City, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God. . . . And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, ‘Now the dwelling of God is with men, and he will live with them. They will be his people, and God himself will be with them and be their God’ ” (Revelation 21:1-3).

 

Randy Alcorn (@randyalcorn) is the author of over sixty books and the founder and director of Eternal Perspective Ministries

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