Today in the Christian community some of the most basic and plain truths of the Bible are being challenged. I have read and listened to people who are claiming there is no heaven nor hell. They are not real places and the kingdom of heaven is found here on earth. The people who are making this claim are not atheist but people who claim to be Christians living for Jesus.

Why are these basic foundations of the Bible being challenged by people.? How do you possibly read scripture and say there is no heaven or hell? What the heck is scripture talking about when it speaks of these terms? Is it just symbolic, a metaphor, an analogy or is it just what it says it is?

I am tired of these people saying I can’t know the Bible. I have read the Bible, I can understand lots of things in the Bible. I can understand its plain teachings about what Christ has done for us, how I should behave, what it means to be a true follower of Christ and so much more, just by reading it! Did God create the Bible and sit back and start laughing and say lets see if they can figure that thing out? Or did he provide His Word to communicate the truth of His will? I would say the later then the former. It is amazing to me that people take simple truth and say that is not what God meant. I will say the creator of the universe is able to speak to us in terms we can understand. His basic message is so clear.

Lets take a look at what God says about heaven and hell and see the plain teaching of God’s Word on this subject of heaven and hell. Because it is a real place whether you want to believe it or not.

Heaven (266 References to Heaven in the New Testament alone)

Matthew 7:21
Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven

Mark 13:31
Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will not pass away.

John 3:13
No one has ascended into heaven except he who descended from heaven, the Son of Man.

Acts 7:49
“‘Heaven is my throne, and the earth is my footstool. What kind of house will you build for me, says the Lord, or what is the place of my rest?

Philippians 3:20
But our citizenship is in heaven, and from it we await a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ,
2 Timothy 4:18
The Lord will rescue me from every evil deed and bring me safely into his heavenly kingdom. To him be the glory forever and ever. Amen.

Revelation 10:6
and swore by him who lives forever and ever, who created heaven and what is in it, the earth and what is in it, and the sea and what is in it, that there would be no more delay,

Revelation 21:1
Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more.


Lets take a look at a very serious place called hell.

Matthew 5:29
If your right eye causes you to sin, tear it out and throw it away. For it is better that you lose one of your members than that your whole body be thrown into hell.

Matthew 23:3
You serpents, you brood of vipers, how are you to escape being sentenced to hell?

Luke 12:5
But I will warn you whom to fear: fear him who, after he has killed, has authority to cast into hell.[1] Yes, I tell you, fear him!

Matthew 25:46
And these will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life.”

2 Thessalonians 1:9
They will suffer the punishment of eternal destruction, away from[1] the presence of the Lord and from the glory of his might,

Matthew 25:41
Then He will also say to those on His left, 'Depart from Me, accursed ones, into the eternal fire which has been prepared for the devil and his angels;

This set of scriptures is just a very small set of the passages that describe heaven and hell. There will be a day of judgment and you will either be judged to eternal life with Christ or you will be judged to eternal punishment without Christ.

John 5:24
"Truly, truly, I say to you, he who hears My word, and believes Him who sent Me, has eternal life, and does not come into judgment, but has passed out of death into life.