Cyndi Dale, an author who grew up in a Lutheran church, believes she has found heaven on earth. She understands that most Christians believe heaven is a place righteous people go to after death because they have “earned” it. Dale isn’t so sure about that, and is willing to make the case heaven is right here, an everyday reality.

She says that the Hebrew and Greek words for “heaven” mean “sky.” Dale points out that in many pagan philosophies, earth and the sky are combined to reflect a divine father and a divine mother. She interprets Genesis 1:1 as meaning the heavens and earth were formed simultaneously and that the pure and perfect co-exist side-by side with the fallen and mundane.

Dale relates a personal experience. When one day driving in a car in Minnesota, she witnessed a big white light and heard a voice saying, “I am God. I am love.” Frightened, she pulled off the road, only to feel Jesus entering her body and hearing Him tell her, “See the world the way I perceive it. Heaven is on earth.”

That night, Dale says, she set a goal of knowing the world through a lens of holiness. While admitting she has fallen short of that goal, she nevertheless has been studying Christian and other holy books. She also is researching science for any scientific indication of the coexistence of heaven and earth.

Her studies in science led her to research the types of light embedded in the universe. There is the light which originated in the Big Bang. Many of the units which resulted from this event are polarized, such as negatively charged electrons contrasted to positively charged positrons or matter contrasted to anti-matter. She compares this polarity-based universe to our typical life experiences which include both good and bad.

Dale also believes there was a universe which existed before the Big Bang, a space she thinks of as “heaven” which still exists parallel with the “earthly.” For evidence that this heavenly pre-Big Bang universe still exists, she points to the primordial light lingering in space, the cosmic background, and dark matter. This Absolute Light predates stars, she says, so it doesn’t come from stars. It doesn’t contain atoms and only forms more light.

Dale concludes her essay by mentioning how Jesus related that his heavenly Father is available to all of us. Maybe, she wonders, that means the very heavens are also available to us right now. We have a choice, she says, to live in the earthly or to conform to the heavenly through such activities as prayer, meditation, and contemplation.

Comments: Ms. Dale’s commentary reminds me of St. Paul’s admonition in 2 Timothy 3:7 about people who are “always learning but never able to come to the knowledge of the truth.” Her ideas about heaven are clearly rebuked by Scripture. She doesn’t believe Jesus when He said, “My kingdom is not of this world” (John 18:36a) or “I am going to prepare a place for you” (John 14:2b).

As for her story about Jesus coming to her, it likely wasn’t Jesus she saw. The experienceshe said she had was more likely Satan because of his false statement that heaven is on earth. Not surprising, as St. Paul also says, “Satan himself masquerades as an angel of light” (2 Corinthians 11:14).

Although we may get tastes of heaven at times here on earth, the real heaven is not a place existing in what we understand as spacetime. It is a different dimension withouttime as we know it. However, heaven may be very close to us in the sense that angels and Christ himself can pass back and forth very easily. Remember how the resurrected Jesus suddenly appeared to His disciples behind locked doors (John 20) and how He vanished from the sight of two disciples at Emmaus (Luke 24). Where was He coming from or going to if not His heavenly home?

Ms. Dale is right about an absolute light existing before the sun and stars were created (Genesis 1:3). She is also right about another thing, although likely not in the way she intended. Christians who believe they are going to a place after death called heaven because they have “earned it” are truthfully in error. Heaven, of course, is a gift from Godfor all who believe, and it is not something any sinful human (i.e. all of us) can earn.

“For the wages of sin is death, but the undeserved gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Romans 6:23).

By Warren Krug

Reference: Cyndi Dale, “Heaven on Earth: Spiritual and Scientific Reflectionson Heaven Being ‘Here’,” Patheos (December 20, 2021).

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QUESTION OF THE DAY

How does Jupiter’s size compare to Earth’s?

Jupiter’s diameter is about 11 times that of Earth. More than 1300 Earths could fit inside Jupiter. It has more than 2½the mass of all the other planets combined.

Source: Lita Cosner Sanders and Jonathan Sarfati, “Gas Giants: Jupiter and Saturn,” Creation [January-March, 2022], page 33.

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