Heaven, it will be readily admitted on all sides, is of universal interest. Men always have believed in the existence of heaven; they have differed widely and variously in their concepts of it, but they have, each in his own fashion, looked up and looked forward to some vision of enduring rest, peace, pleasure, or bliss. Even those who deny positively and emphatically the existence of heaven and postulate annihilation for man, unconsciously make this supposed peace and rest in extinction their concept of heaven. Though it be but a negative heaven, it is none the less the negator's heaven. If it be only "a fool's paradise," it is manifestly the heaven of the fool. In spite of all this phantasmagoria of human beliefs, it should be possible to reach, with the aid of reason and revelation, an intelligent, correct, and satisfying concept of heaven. Let us make the effort; let us think calmly and fearlessly of heaven.
If a premise may be found upon which there is general agreement, we have then a good starting point for our reasoning; and we may find such a premise in the following statement of truth: Heaven is where God is. This statement is almost axiomatic, self-evident. God's abode must be the perfection of harmony; for to admit the possibility of less than this is to deny that He is God, supreme good. God must be perfect, and cannot be less than omnipotent; hence, in His presence must be always "fulness of joy," as the psalmist declares. Manifestly, the "fulness of joy" must be heaven; hence, wherever God is, heaven is.
We are taught in the Scriptures that God is omnipresent; and reason assures us that He must be omnipresent. God must be unceasingly and eternally conscious of all His universe, otherwise the universe could not be enduring: it could not be free from friction, discord, disintegration, and destruction, except for God's eternally sustaining presence; and, inasmuch as God's universe is universally sustained by Him, He must be universally present. It follows, then, assuredly, that God's entire universe is heaven, because there is no part or place therein from which God is absent; and therefore, since God is omnipresent, heaven is omnipresent.
