What are the heavenly places/realms?

b) The Heavenly Places

This expression, characteristic for the Epistle to the Ephesians, is used only here as a designation for heaven. If occurs five times. Only the adjective "heavenly" is found in the text, the word "places" (or: realms) is supplied by translators to aid understanding. Other translations have “heavenly world”, “heavenly regions”, “heavenlies” or simply “heaven”.

In the heavenly places, believers are blessed with every spiritual blessing in Christ (Eph. 1:3), for there their glorified Lord is also as head over all things (Eph. 1:20). There God, the Father, allows them to be seated in Him already now – for Christ's position as the glorified Son of Man is also their position (Eph. 2:6). The manifold and eternal wisdom of God shall now be proclaimed to the principalities and powers in the heavenly places (i.e. the angelic worlds) through the unity of the assembly (Eph. 3:10). Finally, the Christian's fight is against the spiritual powers of evil in the heavenly places, i.e., Satan and his demons (Eph. 6:12). These cannot rob him of the possession of the spiritual blessings in the heavenly places (for these are secured “in Christ"), but they can deprive him of the enjoyment of them. Therefore, the Christian needs the "whole armour of God" to be able to fight against Satan.

But the heavenlies are an extensive region, and at present are not only the dwelling-place of God and the home of the elect angels, but they are also inhabited by wicked spirits, and will be till Satan is cast "out of heaven" (Rev. 12:8-9.) Being in the heavenlies, then, speaks of being in a region beyond and above earth. His place there is accurately defined. He has a place which we have not, nor ever can have; for He is there at the right hand of God, which is explained to us as "far above all principality, and power, and might, and dominion, and every name that is named, not only in this world, but also in that which is to come." This, as the teaching of the Ephesians shows, is true of Him and of Him only. We are in Him who is there (i.e. at the right hand of God), but we can never sit down at the right hand of God. Of Him the epistle declares the very place where He is (1:20). Of us it states that we (i.e. those once Jews and those once Gentiles) sit together in the heavenlies in Christ Jesus (2:6).

Heavenly Places, p. 79, has an uniform meaning in Eph. 1:3, 20; Eph. 2:6; Eph. 3:10; Eph. 6:12; and this, the heavens as the church's sphere of blessing in Christ, as well as of conflict with spiritual wickedness, in contrast with Israel, who were blessed on earth, and fought there with flesh and blood (i. e. the Canaanites).

We have considered in this paper the meaning of the expression "heavenly places" as the spiritual arena. We have learned that it is the realm of spiritual things, spiritual blessing, spiritual action, and spiritual conflict. We can be active there because we, like God and His angels, the devil and all demons, we are capable of action, and accessible to influences in that realm. Perhaps the greatest impress we should take away is the privilege and importance of prayer, especially in terms of the prayers in this epistle, so that we may see the glorious Christ, live in His love, and be strong in His strength.

It is important to see that, in forming the present system of this world, God made a heaven to this earth, so that the earth should be ruled from heaven. The blessing of the earth, either materially or morally, depends upon its connection with heaven. This blessing will be full when the kingdom of the heavens is established in the Son of man, and He will come in the clouds of heaven. Ps. 68:32, 35. It is the place of angelic power, 'the principalities and powers in the heavenly places' being angelic, Satan and his angels, though fallen, still being among them. Job 1:6; Job 2:1; Rev. 12:7-9.

Now it is this lower place, this lower place of government, or of connection with the earth, this region occupied by the Lamb's wife in the day of her manifested glory, which constitutes the heaven or the heavenly places of the principalities and powers of darkness in the present time. From that heaven they will be cast down: and then, in due season at last, that place will be occupied by the redeemed and glorified Church, the Lamb's wife, which is to have the government of "the world to come."

Now the earth is made miserable, and men hardly know how far they are gone in rebellion through sin. This is not all; for there is an unseen enemy, a dark and untiring adversary of God and man, who has his hosts of wicked angels subject to himself (Rev. 12), and uses them as the instruments of his seduction. All this will pass away; and those very scenes which are now filled by wicked spirits, the heavenly places (not of course the place where God dwells in His unapproachable glory, but the lower heavens that are connected with the earth) will be a part of the dominion of the church in glory, and the heavenly saints will be as much used to be the means of joy and blessing to the world as the wicked spirits are now the chief agents of all its misery. They may for a little season emerge from their prison after the millennium, to lead the distant nations of the earth into a last conspiracy against the Lord; but they will never regain their former access to the heavenly places, where their influence was the more subtle and dangerous.

Satan accuses the brethren before the throne. We have Satan in the opening of Job coming among the sons of God, where the government of God is carried on. "Spiritual wickedness in heavenly places" is in contrast with earthly things. Joshua wrestled with flesh and blood, we do not; but it is where our blessings are, and this does not say anything, except that they are not on earth. We shall rise into the air, and meet the Lord there first; we shall be in the Father's house, and we shall be free of all the heavens then; the Father's house is the highest thought we can have.

We know that demons are in the heavenly places because the word of God says "we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against wicked spirits in heavenly places" (Eph. 6:12). The Lord Jesus said to His disciples when they told Him the demons were subject unto them, "I beheld Satan as lightning fall from heaven." He was looking forward to the time of Rev. 12:9. Satan is not in paradise, the third heaven. We get light from 2 Cor. 12 as to what paradise is. It is the immediate presence of God, the highest place of blessing, and that is where the poor thief went! Satan has access to accuse the saints. We see his access in Job 1, 2. And he accuses "day and night" (Rev. 12:10). It is after the rapture of the saints to heaven that he is cast out. I take it to be the middle of Daniel's seventieth week, and the last half of that week is the time of "the great tribulation."

As to us, it is in the "heavenly places" that we shall find our abode. The spiritual blessings in heavenly places which we enjoy even now in hope, though hindered in many ways, will be for us, in that day, things natural to our physical and normal state, so to speak; but the earth will not fail to feel the effects of it. "Wicked spirits in heavenly places" (see margin, Eph. 6:12), whose place will be then filled by Christ and His church, will cease to be the continual and prolific causes of the misery of a world subjected to their power by sin. The church, on the contrary, with Christ, reflecting the glory in which she participates, and enjoying the presence of Him who is at once to her its source and fulness, will beam upon the earth in blessing; and the nations will walk by her light - "help meet for him" (Gen. 2:18) in His glory, full of thoughts of her beloved, and enjoying His love, she will be the worthy and happy instrument of His blessings; whilst, in her condition, she will be the living demonstration of their success. For God has done these things, "that in the ages to come he might show the exceeding riches of his grace in his kindness towards us through Christ Jesus," Eph. 2:7. The earth will enjoy the fruits of the victory and of the faithfulness of the last Adam, and will be the magnificent testimony of it in the sight of principalities and powers, as it is at present, in the chaos made by sin, of the ruin and of the iniquity of the first Adam. Without doubt, the crowning joy - the joy of joys - will be the communion of the Father and of the Bridegroom; but to be witness of His goodness, to have part in it, and to be an instrument of it towards a fallen world, will certainly be to taste of divine joys, for "God is love."