If you believe in God, his word speaks of heaven.
Kind of.
The Scriptures are replete with the language of "heaven", or perhaps more accurately "the heavens" (in Hebrew it is always the plural
shamayim, "heavens").
What the Scriptures don't talk about is "heaven" as a location in the afterlife that is treated as an eternal reward for the righteous.
Rather "heaven" is taken to talking about God's authority over creation. The Jewish Tabernacle, and later Temple, was understood in a sense to be God's heavenly HQ on earth. The way in which God's royal power and dominion was present in the midst of His people on earth. The Holy of Holies, in this way, functioned as the point where heaven and earth converged--the high priest entering through the veil into the Holy of Holies was stepping into the direct Presence of God, into what later Jewish writers called the
Shekinah, the "Presence" or "Dwelling" of God, the reality of God's in-habitation of the world in His Presence in the Holy of Holies.
When we get to the Gospels we find Jesus proclaiming the good news of God's kingdom coming to earth. In Matthew's Gospel the Evangelist uses a slightly different construction of the same phrase, "kingdom of heaven". But the "kingdom of heaven" and "the kingdom of God" are synonymous, "heaven" is here merely another way of talking about God.
Jesus is not talking about a literal place somewhere "out there" called "heaven" or the like; He is instead talking about God's
basileia, God's royal power,
God-as-King. Thus the kingdom of God simply (but not shallowly) meant, in the context of the Jewish Scriptures and the general Jewish hope of redemption for Israel, the return of God as King.
What the Jewish expectation of what that looked like, however, was off the mark. Hence the Jewish expectation was often built around the hope of a great military messiah who would overthrow the Pagan oppressors and God would through that return in the great spectacular way that He once was present in Israel--in the Shekinah of the Temple.
Because even after the end of the Babylonian Exile the Jews were still a subjected people, ruled over by the foreign powers to the east in Persia, which lasted until Persia's collapse at the hands of Alexander the Great. Then ruled by foreign Greeks, first the Ptolemies and then the tyrannical Seleucids which they freed themselves from in the Maccabean War. And for a short time Judea was independent, until Rome came.
This is why we see in the Prophets the hope and anticipation that YHWH Himself would return on that "Great and Terrible Day of YHWH". That the end to Exile would come at last in a great big way, and that through the agency of the messiah all the disparate and scattered peoples of the Diaspora would be brought together, the Shekinah would come again to the Temple, and all the nations would tremble before Israel's God, ushering in peace and prosperity not only to the nation of Israel, but to all nations as a blessing to them.
The message of the Gospel is not that this Jewish expectation was all wrong. The message of the Gospel is that God
has done this. But the way God has done this is radically different than what anyone expected.
YHWH did come on that "Great and Terrible Day of YHWH", with the promised Elijah figure as forerunner, St. John the Baptist. Jesus
is God come down into the midst of His people. God does bring end to Exile, a new Passover, and a restoration of the Shekinah to Israel--but not in a building made of stone in Jerusalem, but in the Person of Jesus Christ and all who are united together with Him as His Church. God has, and is bringing together all the scattered people, through the going forth of the Gospel throughout the world, literally being preached in the synagogues and Diaspora communities. And the promise to Abraham and the blessing of the nations is fulfilled, as Christ is the Promised Seed of Abraham, by Whom all nations are blessed. God is drawing all nations to His Holy Mount Zion, not to the earthly Jerusalem, but the "Jerusalem that is above" as St. Paul calls it.
That's the kingdom of God, God's invasion of the world in Jesus Christ, and His ministry, His work, His Person, His own sufferings, death, and resurrection is the inauguration of that kingdom right here.
And this Jesus, having risen from the dead, and ascended to the right hand of the Father, is reigning as the King Messiah even now; the Son of Man coming into His kingdom, when He was lifted up before the Ancient of Days and given all power, authority, and everlasting kingdom. This same Jesus will return, and on that Day there will be judgment, resurrection, and the restoration of all creation. The fullness of the kingdom coming on earth, where as the Prophet Habakkuk spoke of so long ago, the knowledge of the glory of YHWH will cover the earth even as water covers the seas (Habakkuk 2:14)
And in that great marriage of heaven and earth, illustrated in the New Jerusalem descending out of the heavens upon the earth, the City of God in which there is no sorrow, no harm, no death, no sickness; in which there is no need of a temple, because God Himself shall be ever and eternally present with His people here on the earth.
So the Scriptures have things to tell us about "heaven". But what the Scriptures are saying is, frankly, very different than the usual "go to heaven when you die" language popular in the last couple centuries in the West. The biblical view is far more robust, far bigger, and far more expansive than that. It's also what, if we are paying attention, what the Creeds of the Church are telling us, what all the ancient fathers were teaching, it's what the Church from the beginning has always believed.
But so much of that has been layered on top with innovative ideas and doctrines, and the result has been a shallowing of the Christian faith, reducing Christianity very often to little more than a personal esoteric spirituality built upon moralism in which the point is to have a good afterlife by having the right religious values, opinions, or attitudes. We turn the Cross of Jesus Christ into a purely transactional move in which God is excused from having to be mean and nasty to us, because all that nastiness was transferred to Jesus instead. The Cross becomes a bartering chip to get God to stop bullying us into hell; rather than the Climax of the story of Creation, the Patriarchs, and Israel all coming into its own; and God Himself coming in, as He promised, to pick up all the broken pieces of the world, not just healing the world, but bringing all of creation into that Good New Day--
New Creation-- in which life is true, abundant, and everlasting; truly world without end.
EDIT: I feel it is really important here to add an addendum to my post. I want to be clear that I am not advocating "soul sleep" or some other such view. I am not denying that, after death, we shall be consciously in the Lord's presence. And we can call that being with the Lord "going to heaven" if we like. I'm not arguing against that. Rather I am trying to point out that the "going to heaven when we die" thing is far removed from being the point of the Gospel, the point of Christianity, and the point of salvation. That interim between death and resurrection is like a waiting lobby outside of a concert hall. The lobby isn't the show itself, it's just the lobby.
Both we here in this life, and those who have already reposed in the Lord are both sharing in the same Hope and same Anticipation. In such a way both what has often been called the Church Militant (the Church on earth, facing the tribulations of the present age) and the Church Triumphant (the Church "in heaven" in the restful presence of the Lord already) are together the Church
Expectant. We, with the saints "in heaven", and indeed the entire host of heaven look forward to what is yet to come.
-CryptoLutheran