Will People Be Able to Fly in Heaven?

(By Pastor Mark Fontecchio)

Question: When we receive our glorified bodies will we be able to fly?

Answer: I have noticed over the years that there is a lot of confusion on this subject. I tend to think that some of this stems from the influence of the culture around us. Certainly movies and books portray inconsistent theology regarding what happens to believers in Christ after they pass on.

In all matters of our faith we must seek the answers to our questions from the Word of God. It would be disingenuous to suggest that we know everything about what our future bodies will be like, but we do know enough to be able to directly answer your question. There are principles within the Bible that guide us on this issue.

Perhaps the most significant teaching on this topic that we find in the New Testament is that our bodies will be like Christ’s after His resurrection. Consider the instruction of the New Testament:

For our citizenship is in heaven, from which we also eagerly wait for the Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ, who will transform our lowly body that it may be conformed to His glorious body, according to the working by which He is able even to subdue all things to Himself (Phil. 3:20-21).

Beloved, now we are children of God; and it has not yet been revealed what we shall be, but we know that when He is revealed, we shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is (1 John 3:2).

Recognize that our future bodies will be like Christ’s body after His resurrection. This is one of the guiding principles in the Word of God that unlocks our understanding of our future. We can study about the Lord’s glorified body and know that when we receive our bodies they will be similar.

This takes us to examining the resurrected body of Jesus in Luke 24. The disciples were huddled up in Jerusalem. Jesus appeared to them, and notice what He said, “Why are you troubled? And why do doubts arise in your hearts? Behold My hands and My feet, that it is I Myself. Handle Me and see, for a spirit does not have flesh and bones as you see I have.” At the crucifixion the Roman soldiers pierced the hands and feet of Christ. The scars would have identified that this was in fact the Lord Jesus Christ.  Remember that Thomas said, “Unless I see in His hands the print of the nails, and put my finger into the print of the nails, and put my hand into His side, I will not believe” (John 20:25).

At the heart of the text in Luke 24 is the understanding that Jesus was showing His disciples the proof of who He is. Out of His interaction with the disciples we learn that our future bodies will not just be spirits. Notice that Jesus stated that He had flesh and bones. He was not referring to a fallen natural body. The meaning is that our glorified bodies will have substance. We know this because Jesus could be touched and handled. The body of Jesus had depth, height, and flesh which gave it the appearance the disciples saw. In verse 30 Jesus sat at a table and ate bread. There will be a physical element to these bodies.

Yet, it needs to be recognized that the future glorified bodies of believers will be cable of abilities that we cannot even comprehend. Paul taught that our bodies are going to be, “raised a spiritual body” (1 Cor. 15:44). We need to be careful as we look at this verse to make sure we understand that this is not teaching that we will be disembodied spirits. As we just saw, the resurrected body of Christ demonstrated that He had a physical body. Even though He was able to do some pretty amazing things, He still had a material body. The bodies we have now were created for life in this realm of existence, but our future bodies will be perfectly created for living in the Kingdom of God. Right now our spirits live in bodies created for earth. In the future, we will live in bodies made for us to dwell with God, and we will walk in perfect harmony with the Lord.

This brings us directly to the point of confusion for many believers. Our future glorified bodies will be unlimited by time, space, and gravity. This does not, however, mean that we will be able to fly like the birds in the air. Remember the principle that the Bible reveals that our future bodies will be like the body of Jesus after the resurrection, and we see in Scripture that Jesus was able to appear and vanish right before people. Let us look again to the account in the Gospel of Luke:

Then their eyes were opened and they knew Him; and He vanished from their sight. And they said to one another, “Did not our heart burn within us while He talked with us on the road, and while He opened the Scriptures to us?” So they rose up that very hour and returned to Jerusalem, and found the eleven and those who were with them gathered together, saying, “The Lord is risen indeed, and has appeared to Simon!” And they told about the things that had happened on the road, and how He was known to them in the breaking of bread. Now as they said these things, Jesus Himself stood in the midst of them, and said to them, “Peace to you” (Luke 24:31-36).

Jesus, in His resurrected body, appeared suddenly in rooms with locked doors and then disappeared just as quickly as He came. We see this repeated pattern in the Gospel accounts of Jesus after the resurrection (John 20:19, 26).

I believe the evidence of Scriptures suggests that our future bodies will be spirit controlled. This would mean that our bodies will be able to travel by the will of the spirit. Right now our spirit is within our flesh, and the flesh transports or carries the spirit from place to place. But in our new glorified bodies the spirit will transport the flesh.

This teaching has led some people to think that we are going to have wings and fly like a bird. We are not. Instead, we will be able to transport ourselves by thought through the will of the spirit. In other words, you will simply have to think that you want to be at a certain place and you will be there.

We remember that Christ ascended into heaven (Acts 1:9). Further, we know that at the return of Christ at the Second Coming we will be with Him on white horses (Revelation 19:14). There is no doubt that at times we will be in the air. Yet, we must not think of it as having wings like a bird built to fly.

More importantly, we will be able to use these bodies to praise the One who made it all possible. These new bodies will be given to believers at the Rapture and they will be ours forevermore.

Our loving Father in Heaven stands ready to give every man and every woman in Christ something much better than what we have right now. So, when your body hurts, when your body fails, when your sin nature is raging, look to the day and hold on to the truth that God is about to give us something far better than these fallen vessels. Look to the day when, “the Lord Himself will descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of an archangel, and with the trumpet of God. And the dead in Christ will rise first. Then we who are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. And thus we shall always be with the Lord” (1 Thess. 4:16-17).