My name is Herb, and I lead a small congregation of the Church of Heaven. We are a faith-based fellowship, and we welcome all faithful believers into our fellowship. We draw the principles by which the Church lives entirely from the inspired words of God, and we depend on the Lord alone to direct the Church through the Spirit. We meet regularly according to biblical instruction, so we do not forsake the assembling of ourselves together. (Heb 10:25) As an obedient fellowship, we do not lay up any treasure on earth, (Matt 6:19) so we do not take up offerings in our meetings. As a faithful church, we do not enter into covenants with civil governments, (2 Cor 6:14) so the Church is not required to obey the civil laws of man or submit to any government oversight. Adherence to these and other biblical instructions allows the Church of Heaven to live entirely by faith.

Although the Church of Heaven as a spiritual body lives entirely by faith, the individual members of the Church are physical human beings and necessarily live by sight. We live in the world, and scripture requires us to function cooperatively in society, so our individual lives in the world are subject to human laws and human direction. We readily submit our individual lives in this world to the "higher powers" of human authority according to Paul's inspired direction for "every soul" in Romans 13:1. 

The apparent contradiction created by the requirement for the Church to live entirely by faith and the requirement for members to submit themselves to human authority is resolved by realizing that the members of the body of Christ live two lives, one spiritual life in the Church and one physical life in the world. Each of these lives is directed by a different set of laws, and, although both are generally governed by the same great principles of love for God and love for neighbor, many of the biblical instructions which govern the Church as the united body of Christ in the spiritual realm are different from those instructions which govern the separate, independent, self-directed members living in the world. These different types of instructions should not be confused or blended together. Understanding the differences between them is key to resolve a number of difficulties many professing Christians encounter as they attempt to interpret the words of the Lord and the apostles in scripture.

Local congregations of the Church of Heaven are house churches, not organized churches. You may have noticed that the address for this website is dot com, not dot org. You should not infer from the domain name of this website that our fellowship has been incorporated under the name "Church of Heaven." We do not use this name as the name of our church, but rather simply to indicate the location of the greater Church as it is described in scripture. Scripture does not assign any name to any of the first century congregations, and even the biblical expression "Church of God" only indicates that God is the creator and owner of the Church, not that any of the churches of the Bible held that name. The existence of different church names is an overt indication of the more deep-rooted division existing in the Christian community. The biblical prohibition of division in the Church combined with the lack of church names in scripture implies that local congregations should not use church names. 

Most church websites describe what they believe and how they function, but this website describes what every church must be in order to enter salvation as part of the one and only body of Christ. Most churches apply contextually diverse biblical instructions from a single perspective, but this website highlights the differences in these various biblical instructions in order to distinguish instructions for the Church from instructions for its individual members living in this world. Most churches use their websites to draw members to their local congregations, but the information on this website is primarily intended to serve as a roadmap to help other churches remain faithful to the Lord through a deeper understanding of the spiritual realm. In order to more fully understand how your life in the spiritual realm differs from your life in the world, click on any of the links below to begin exploring the freedom available to all believers who are willing to embrace a life of faith in the Church of Heaven.