Heaven Today, Tomorrow and Forever
Lesson Overview
Heaven Today, Tomorrow, and Forever with Dr. Jimmy DeYoung
This standalone message surveys what the Bible teaches about heaven across three eras: heaven as it is now, heaven during the coming kingdom, and heaven in the eternal state. Dr. DeYoung organizes it around the biblical idea of three heavens and urges listeners to test everything against Scripture rather than against popular books about heaven. Use this overview to review the key points after watching the full video.
Defining Heaven
DeYoung begins with four dictionary senses of the word heaven: the home of God, the paradise of the afterlife, the location of departed souls, and the sky. He connects “paradise” and “Abraham’s bosom” to the afterlife, and explains his understanding that before Christ’s resurrection the departed were in Hades, with a great gulf between the place of comfort and the place of torment, until Christ (per his reading of Ephesians 4) led the righteous captives into the third heaven. He stresses that to be absent from the body is to be present with the Lord (2 Corinthians 5:8).
He pointedly cautions against the popular genre of “I went to heaven and came back” books, arguing they contradict themselves, contradict each other, and go beyond Scripture, and he commends a critical analysis of them by Justin Peters. His own source, he says, will be the Bible.
The Three Heavens
From 2 Corinthians 12:2, where Paul speaks of a man caught up to the “third heaven,” DeYoung infers three heavens. The first heaven is the daytime sky (sun and clouds), the second is the night sky (stars, planets, galaxies), and the third is the dwelling place of God. As he puts it, we see the first heaven by day, the second by night, and the third by faith. He notes this arrangement is temporary, lasting until Christ establishes His kingdom.
What Is Happening in the First and Second Heavens
Drawing on Ephesians 6:12, DeYoung argues the first and second heavens are currently the domain of Satan and his fallen angels, the “spiritual wickedness in high places” believers wrestle against. He recounts his understanding that Lucifer, the most prominent creature, rebelled with a third of the angels sometime after the sixth day of creation, which he connects to resentment over the dominion God gave Adam and Eve.
He describes Satan dispatching demonic powers to control political leaders, citing Daniel 10 (the “prince of Persia” and “prince of Greece”), which he links to Haman in Esther and to Antiochus Epiphanes, whose desecration of the temple and the later Maccabean rededication he ties to the origin of Hanukkah. He also argues Satan dispatches spirits to control religious leaders, citing 2 Corinthians 11, where Satan disguises himself as an angel of light and his ministers as ministers of righteousness. His practical exhortation: keep your Bible open and test every preacher against it.
Some of these identifications (linking the “princes” of Daniel 10 to specific historical figures, and details of the angelic fall) are DeYoung’s interpretive positions rather than points all Bible teachers share.
Heaven Today: The Rapture and the Judgment Seat
DeYoung lays out his prophetic timeline: creation, the first coming, the present age, then the rapture, a seven-year tribulation, the return of Christ, the thousand-year kingdom, the Great White Throne judgment, and the eternal state. At the rapture, believers are changed “in the twinkling of an eye” and stand before the judgment seat of Christ (Romans 14:10, 2 Corinthians 5:10). He is careful to say this is not about salvation, which is by grace through faith (Ephesians 2:8-9), but about works done since conversion, since believers are created for good works (Ephesians 2:10).
Using 1 Corinthians 3, he describes works tested by fire: “gold, silver, and precious stones” (done in God’s power for His glory) survive and are purified, while “wood, hay, and stubble” (done in our own power for our own glory) are consumed. He argues these righteous acts become the “fine linen” wedding garment of the bride in Revelation 19:8, prepared at the judgment seat.
As before, he explains that the tribulation begins not with the signing but with the confirming of a covenant (Daniel 9:27, the Hebrew gabar meaning to strengthen or confirm), and that three peace agreements already exist awaiting a world leader to confirm them. This is his interpretation of contested current events.
The Jewish Wedding Picture
DeYoung illustrates the believer’s future with the three stages of a traditional Jewish wedding: the engagement arranged by the fathers, the ceremony (when the groom, at his father’s command, comes for the bride as the best man cries “behold, the bridegroom comes”), and the seven-day celebration. He maps these onto the church’s story: believers are betrothed to Christ now, He has gone to prepare a place (John 14), the Father will one day send the Son for His bride, and the marriage supper of the Lamb follows the rapture and judgment seat, spanning the seven years while the tribulation unfolds on earth. He uses this to affirm that loved ones who have died in Christ are present with Him now, awaiting reunion.
Within this section he includes a strong exhortation to parents to teach their children biblical sexual purity rather than leaving it to schools, framing the consummation of marriage as its God-designed seal. This is his personal application.
The War in Heaven
From Revelation 12, DeYoung describes a future war in heaven at the midpoint of the tribulation, when Michael and the good angels cast Satan (who still has daily access to the third heaven as “the accuser,” verse 10) down to the earth. Cast down, Satan turns his fury on the Jewish people (Revelation 12:13-17), because if he can destroy them, God’s covenant promises fail. DeYoung reviews those promises, including the Abrahamic covenant (a nation forever) and the land covenant, and describes the full biblical borders of the land he believes Israel will one day possess. He notes that because the third heaven has been touched by the accuser, it too must one day be cleansed by fire.
The Throne Room Today
From Revelation 4 and 5, DeYoung shows what the third heaven contains now: God the Father on the throne holding a sealed scroll (which he calls the title deed of the earth), and Jesus, the Lion of Judah, coming to take the scroll. He stresses a doctrinal point: Jesus is currently seated at the Father’s right hand (Hebrews 1, 8, 10, 12) and is not yet reigning as King of kings; that title is applied at His return (Revelation 19:16). Getting this wrong, he warns, is a serious doctrinal error.
Heaven Tomorrow: The Kingdom on Earth
DeYoung’s striking claim is that “heaven tomorrow” will be on the earth. Citing the Lord’s Prayer (“thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven”), he argues that when Christ returns and receives the kingdom (Daniel 7:13-14), the third heaven is evacuated: the church, the Old Testament saints (Daniel 12), and the tribulation saints (Revelation 20:6) all come to reign with Christ on earth, while God dwells in the New Jerusalem, which hovers above the earth.
He describes the millennial earth “refurbished” to Edenic condition, using Matthew 19:28 and the Greek word he renders as “genesis again,” and repeats his signature view that the kingdom will be administered from the Garden of Eden, which he identifies with the Temple Mount (citing the Gihon spring as the surviving Eden river). He describes people in natural bodies during the kingdom eating from the tree of life (Revelation 2:7), bearing children who live long lives (Isaiah 65:20), and a temple with reinstituted sacrifices (Ezekiel 45) that memorialize rather than remove sin. Several of these are his particular interpretive positions, including the Garden of Eden identification, which is not widely held.
Heaven Forever: The New Jerusalem
Finally, after the Great White Throne judgment, the present heavens and earth are burned up (2 Peter 3:10) and replaced by the new heavens and new earth (Isaiah 66, Revelation 21). DeYoung marvels at the dimensions of the New Jerusalem, roughly 1,500 miles in each direction, and notes there is no temple there because God and the Lamb are its temple. From Revelation 22 he highlights the tree of life, the single “street” (his playful point that everyone lives “downtown”), the end of the curse, and the promise that God’s servants will see His face and serve and worship Him forever.
He closes with Christ’s threefold “I come quickly” from Revelation 22, noting that our future reward (tied to the judgment seat of Christ) becomes our “job description” forever, and leads the audience in praying “even so come, Lord Jesus.”
Key Terms
The three heavens: the day sky, the night sky, and the dwelling place of God, from 2 Corinthians 12:2.
Judgment seat of Christ: the evaluation of a believer’s works (not salvation) that prepares the wedding garment.
Gold, silver, precious stones: works done in God’s power for His glory, which survive the testing fire.
Marriage supper of the Lamb: the celebration of Christ and His bride following the rapture.
Paleogenesia (regeneration): the term in Matthew 19:28 DeYoung renders as the refurbishing of the earth for the kingdom.
New Jerusalem: the eternal city, described in Revelation 21 and 22, where God dwells with His people.
Verses to Know
2 Corinthians 12:2, the third heaven. Ephesians 6:12, wrestling against spiritual powers in the heavenlies. 2 Corinthians 5:8, absent from the body, present with the Lord. 1 Corinthians 3:11-15, works tested by fire. Revelation 19:7-9, the marriage supper and the fine linen. Revelation 12:7-10, the war in heaven and the accuser cast down. Revelation 4 and 5, the throne room and the sealed scroll. Revelation 21 and 22, the New Jerusalem, the tree of life, and no more curse.
Takeaway
DeYoung argues that heaven has three phases: today it is God’s dwelling place while the church awaits the rapture and the judgment seat, tomorrow it comes to earth in Christ’s thousand-year kingdom, and forever it is the new heavens and new earth with the New Jerusalem, so believers should live now for the works that will last and pray “even so come, Lord Jesus.”