Heaven on Earth

God called the Firmament Heaven

By Pastor Bob Enyart

At Denver Bible Church, we teach Dr. Walt Brown’s Hydroplate Theory as the best understanding of Noah’s Flood, geology and the relevant scriptures.  On Day Two of creation, God formed the crust of the earth, the firmament, miles above a massive subterranean ocean.  “Thus God made the firmament, and divided the waters which were under the firmament from the waters which were above the firmament,” (Gen. 1:7).  The global flood began when these “fountains of the great deep were broken up,” (Gen. 7:11).  Dr. Brown’s book, In the Beginning, demonstrates powerfully that the world’s major geologic features flow logically from these initial conditions.  But some creationists who disagree point out that, “God called the firmament Heaven” (Gen. 1:8), claiming that this firmament must be either the atmosphere (Morris) or outer space (Humphreys).

However at DBC we show that, whether figurative or literal, the crust of the earth is the boundary between heaven and hell.  It is consistent with the Bible story that God would originally call the crust of the earth “heaven.”  Everything below the crust can be referred to as hell, the prison God had planned for any future unrepentant beings.  “Hell from beneath is excited about you, to meet you at your coming” (Isa. 14:9, etc.).  For the newly-made earth, the Lord logically referred to everything from the crust and above as heaven.  Hence dozens of verses indicate that heaven also refers to the earth’s atmosphere as in “rain from heaven;” the “dew of heaven;” “birds of heaven;” “dust from the heaven;” city walls “fortified up to heaven;” smoke rises “to the midst of heaven;” “the heavens are shut” in drought; “frost of heaven;” “clouds of heaven;” “snow from heaven;” “hail from heaven;” and the east winds “blow in the heavens.”  Thus even after the Fall, from Genesis and Job, through the Gospels, Acts and Revelation, the Bible continued to refer to the atmosphere, one molecule above the ground, as heaven.  Also, the Bible’s thirty-two occurrences of the phrase “kingdom of heaven” appear only in the royal Gospel of Matthew, and some of these (Mat. 11:12; 13:24 with 13:38; 16:19; Mat. 18:1 with Luke 9:46; etc.) locate this kingdom of “heaven” at least partially on earth.

“God called the firmament Heaven,” because the earth’s crust formed the border between heaven and the future hell.  The firmament divided the waters of the earth (Gen. 1:2, 6) which even reserved the floodwaters of judgment below ground.  And after the Fall earth permanently lost its heavenly designation, for apparently God will never fully replicate the first earth.  Only two detailed Bible passages report on events prior to the Fall, the Genesis creation account and Isaiah’s record of Lucifer’s fall, and both of these passages refer to earth as heaven.  Isaiah 14:12 describes “Lucifer” as “fallen from heaven,” yet Scripture places him on earth at the moment of his fall.  “You were in Eden, the garden of God,” (Ezek. 28:13), and “you have said in your heart: ‘I will ascend into heaven… I will ascend above the heights of the clouds,’” (Isa. 14:13‑14), “yet you shall be brought down to Sheol, to the lowest depths of the Pit,” (Isa. 14:15).  Even though he was on earth, Lucifer fell “from heaven,” because prior to the Fall, the surface of the earth was part of heaven’s realm.  Notice that just as gravity pulls our physical flesh down toward the center of the earth, the Fall created the world system which relentlessly pulls our spiritual flesh, drawing us down toward the lowest depths until death, and then the believer’s released spirit soars upward to heaven, whereas the unbeliever’s unfettered spirit falls downward, the firmament no longer keeping him out of Hades, thus his soul plummets into hell.  C.S. Lewis wrote the preface to D.E. Harding’s esoteric The Hierarch of Heaven & Earth in which Harding wrote that “Hierarchy is… something like the ancient circles of heaven and earth and hell” (1952, p. 27), and that the “narrowest Hell would be widest Heaven if the Devil could only bring himself to turn round and look out from the Centre instead of in at himself” (p. 187).  In the modern classic, Soul of Science, (1994, p. 38), Pearcey and Thaxton describe the view of Christian “medieval cosmology,” that “at the very center of the universe was Hell, then the earth, then (moving outward from the center) the progressively nobler spheres of the heavens.”  Christians continue to affirm this hierarchy quoting Paul who was “caught up to the third heaven” (2 Cor 12:2), the first being the sky, the second is space, and the third God’s habitation.  King David even seems to refer to the “earth” as “the foundations of heaven” (2 Sam. 22:8).

Moses used the word firmament nine times in the creation story.  He intentionally distinguished the last four occurrences from the first four, all of which pivot around the central instance where God called the earth’s firmament Heaven.  Each of the four in the second grouping (vv. 14, 15, 17, 20) is qualified separately by an exceptional repetition.  The prepositional phrase “of the heavens” makes a distinction between the first firmament of the earth, and the second “firmament of the heavens,” so that the reader will not confuse this firmament of sky and space with the previous firmament of earth.  Thus, readers alien to the notion of “heaven” on earth should nonetheless be able to separate the two firmaments, and understand God’s meaning.  Now, millennia after the Fall, God’s own record of creation notwithstanding, sin has almost completely obscured the original perspective of the earth’s surface as “heaven.”

When man rebelled, earth became more like hell than heaven.  So the Fall narrowed the spheres of heaven but only by a single molecule, which now begin at the atmosphere.  Thus man’s habitation lost its heavenly designation.  The Bible describes Hell as below, bounded by the firmament.  However in the beginning “God called the firmament Heaven” because that’s where He placed Adam and Eve, above ground on the surface, in the heavens, in fellowship with Him, not in any other realm but in His kingdom, in heaven on earth.

© 2005 Bob Enyart, KGOV.com

Notice: Walt Brown's website, and the upcoming 8th edition of his book In the Beginning, now mentions Pastor Bob's "Heaven on Earth" article as a possible solution and he credits pastors Rodriguez and Enyart for this idea.

Email: From Walt Brown to Bob Enyart on March 22, 2005:
Dear Bob,  I like your proposal concerning Genesis 1:8a, and after much thought, have decided to include it in the draft of the 8th edition (and at our web site) as one of five possible explanations for Genesis 1:8a.  In the attachment, I have credited Pastor Diego Rodriguez and you as the originators of this very attractive explanation.  As you will see in Endnote 24 on page 316, a similar suggestion was made by Pastor Diego Rodriguez.  I am writing a similar email to Diego and enclosing an up-to-date pdf of the canopy section of In the Beginning.  Are there any changes that you feel should be made?  (Notice that space is at a premium.) If both you and Diego would like me to forward to each of you the other's email, I will do so.  That way you can correspond directly with each other.  Thank you for sending me your explanation.  -Walt

BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH

Bob Enyart pastors Denver Bible Church.  Bob first had a technical career working: at McDonnell Douglas Helicopter Company on the Army’s Apache helicopter; as a systems analyst for “Baby Bell” U S West; as a program manager for Microsoft; and as a senior analyst for PC Week.  Bob became a believer in 1973 entered full-time Christian work in 1989, and in 1991 began hosting a daily show on America's most powerful Christian radio station, the 50,000-watt AM 670 KLTT.  In 1999, the elders and pastor of Denver’s Derby Bible Church ordained Bob into the ministry.  In 2000, Derby planted Denver Bible Church with Bob as pastor.