Google Heaven and go to Images. What do you see? A lot of clouds. Is Heaven a shiny city on clouds? If so, that isn’t very exciting. The description of Heaven as cloudy is a misunderstanding of the Biblical text. The Bible speaks of Jesus coming on the “clouds of heaven”. This is a reference to our atmosphere and that Jesus will return to Earth from above. Heaven, the throne room of God, does not have a cloudy floor like a bad heavy metal concert.
Physical descriptions of Heaven are very few. You have from Revelation 4: “Before the throne seven lamps were blazing. These are the seven spirits of God. Also before the throne there was what looked like a sea of glass, clear as crystal.” This “sea” may correlate with what the Elders of Israel saw when they went to meet God. From Exodus 24:9f, “Moses and Aaron, Nadab and Abihu, and the seventy elders of Israel went up and saw the God of Israel. Under his feet was something like pavement made of sapphire, clear as the sky itself.”
The point is don’t get mislead by cultural representations of Heaven that feature mostly clouds. If you want some picture focus in on the word, “paradise”.
What meaning is loaded into this term? The term is only used two other times in the Bible. In 2 Corinthians 12, Paul talks about his vision of heaven by saying that he was caught up into paradise—clearly a reference to Heaven. Revelation 2:7 speaks of the tree of life as being in the paradise of God. In this case it may be referring to the New Earth, but why not also Heaven?
The word itself comes from the Persian language and refers to a pleasure garden. That is why it is often used outside of the Bible to refer to the Garden of Eden. The few descriptions we have of Heaven are devoid of plants and geographical features. Because of this we are prone to fill in the blanks with clouds. If you have a drab and unexciting mental image of Heaven, then you have overlooked the word “paradise”. Keep in mind the Biblical descriptions of Heaven only give a cursory description of God’s throne room. They do not suggest that Heaven is only God’s throne room, nor do they do justice to the glory of this throne room. Some things words will just fail to adequately describe.
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