What Is The Third Heaven? | (un)ANSWERED

Apologia Utah

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We've all experienced the odd occurrence of the Bible, and was left with fringe questions.

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Watch and listen, as we leave no questions unanswered.

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What comes to your mind when you hear the words out -of -body experience? Do you think of astral projection?

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Do you think practices of the occult in which people believe that they can separate their spiritual body from their physical body in order to enter into a realm of higher knowledge?

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An ethereal place where entities can speak to you? Where these entities can give you revelations or pass on secret information in which you then tell others?

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Or do you think of near -death experiences? YouTube is full of videos about people who claim to have died and went to hell, or have died and seen

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God and have come back to life, and then they tell you what God says. In reality, there is a cornucopia of content out there to which you can fall prey to.

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When it comes to thinking about the spiritual realm, or to what is not seen, people have set out to experience what ought not be experienced.

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But why is that? Well, we all long to have answers to these various questions. Why are we here on earth?

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Where do we go when we die? And why do things go bump in the night? In order to answer these questions, some will go to means that, again, have been deemed off -limits by God.

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These methods include hallucinogenic drugs like ayahuasca, DMT, mushrooms, and LSD.

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Other methods include demonic contact and occult practices and magic. In point, people have been long devoted to pushing their soul and body to the separation point to understand the afterlife.

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You could say that they believe that there is some type of spiritual astronaut, in a way, right, that dances with the spiritual world, spinning through webs, so to speak, with the invisible world that is entangled with the physical all around us.

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That is, until what they thought they had control over then turns on them and holds their soul captive like prisoners in their own bodies.

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Here's the truth. The Bible is not silent on these topics. The methods used to gain knowledge about the spiritual world, like pharmakia, the use of drugs, the occult, sorcery, divination, they are all condemned as an abomination by God.

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Dr. Walter Martin, and I'm paraphrasing this here, he said there are different levels of reality that are deemed off -limits by God.

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And God wanted us to be free from those levels so much that he sent his only son to die so that they may not have power over us.

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The truth is that the Bible also gives us answers to the questions that are constantly pulling at the minds of men.

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One such answer is found by Paul in 2 Corinthians 12, 2 -4. Using this scripture, we're going to be digging into these questions.

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Well, who is being spoken of here, where did this person go, and what are the three levels of heaven?

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Here is the scripture in question, 2 Corinthians 12, 2 -4.

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I know a man in Christ who 14 years ago was caught up to the third heaven. Whether in the body or out of the body,

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I do not know. God knows. And I know that this man was caught up into paradise. Whether in the body or out of the body,

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I do not know. God knows. And he heard things that cannot be told, which man may not utter.

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The context here is that Paul has just made his case against the super apostles who were seeking to undermine the word of God in Paul.

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They doubted his authority, and they were trying to get the church in Corinth to follow after a different Jesus, different spirit, and different gospel.

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He details this in chapter 11, right? The false apostles, what do they do? They masquerade, just like the devil, as angels of light.

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It appears that they're doing righteous deeds, but since all of these things are done to subvert the gospel, they are wolves masquerading as followers of Jesus.

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Their deeds are done in death. They mean nothing to God. Understand that this battle of authority would ultimately lead to different conclusions about life, death, and salvation.

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Furthermore, in Galatians 1 .8, Paul states that even if an angel from heaven comes down and preaches to you, but if the gospel that they teach is contrary to that of the gospel according to the scriptures, let them be accursed.

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So when thinking of out -of -body experiences, visions, whether voluntary or involuntary, we must first be cautious in gathering any shed of truth from the experience.

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We must test the spirits, for they masquerade as angels of light. Going back to our section of scripture, though, in question, we find

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Paul speaking in such a way where we would not think that he's speaking of himself. Words are used like,

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I knew a man, or this man and he. These are all third -person phrases or words that would make us think that he is not, you know, speaking of himself.

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But within the greater context of 2 Corinthians 11, just a chapter prior, we find that Paul was speaking about his own personal authority, the life that he had suffered for the sake of the gospel, because he was indeed an apostle of Christ.

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He even talks of his accomplishments, meaning that there could be a lack of humility sensed when speaking of yourself as an apostle.

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So Paul, in humility, refers to himself in the third person as to express what? Humility to the reader of this epistle.

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The key of how we know Paul is indeed speaking about himself here is also by reading further on. 2

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Corinthians 12, 7 states this. We see that this man heard things not utterable to any other men.

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Therefore, as verse 7 states, to keep Paul from becoming conceited with these revelations that he had, whether in the body or out of the body, a thorn in the flesh was given him, a messenger of Satan, to keep him from what?

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Becoming conceited. Now we could do a whole other episode of Unanswered on this part, but using this verse, we find that Paul was indeed speaking about himself in what?

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In the third person. Now that we know that it is Paul who had this experience, what did he mean by third heaven?

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Such a weird phrase. Well, the answer is in the verse, actually, because we know for certain that this man what?

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Was in paradise. And if you watched our Unanswered on whether or not Jesus descended into hell, you would understand that paradise is synonymous with heaven, where God dwells.

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For the tree of life is in paradise. Now let's take a look at what Paul means when he states third heaven.

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So in order to do this, we must be internally consistent within the word of God in order to interpret the

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Bible with the Bible, avoiding any outside system or authority from clouding our view.

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So the question is, what does the Bible detail as heaven? Well, the Bible actually details three different categories of creation with the title heaven.

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Deuteronomy 11 .11, Psalm 104 .12, Isaiah 13 .10, all detail the sky and the earth's atmosphere as what?

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Heaven. Psalm 8 .3 and Isaiah 13 .10 detail outer space, where we find the planets and stars as heaven as well.

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Furthermore, we find in scripture the other use for the word heaven details the place where God dwells. Psalm 33 .13

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-14, Isaiah 66 .1, Matthew 6 .9, Hebrews 7 .26, and Revelation 11 .19.

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So if we were to break these down as levels, we would have the first level, the sky, the second level, space, and the third level, where God dwells.

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This is consistent as well with the internal interpretation of 2 Corinthians 12 because Paul states that this man was indeed where?

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In paradise, the third level of heaven, where God dwells. But now let's go to Greek thought.

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Within the context of the Greek world, there were two levels of heaven. The first was the sky. Some even believe that it stretched from the sky to the moon, and they called this the sublunary world.

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The second was everything that spanned beyond that. They would call it a crystal sphere which circled the earth with stars embedded in it.

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So they had two levels of heaven. So thinking within the context of biblical thought and even the Greek thought of the day, the third level here would be where God dwells, a transcendent place, right?

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Above the physical known universe. So it's a place that is holy and separate, other in the sense of where we are physically here in the present.

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This is important to understand for the Bible states that when we are absent from the body, we are what?

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Present with the Lord. It's there where Paul heard things that could not be uttered to men, similar to John who had visions of heaven, meaning that there is a third heaven.

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This is being present with God, a dimension in which we only have access to truth through the way, the truth, and the life.

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In this, we find that when we die, we will be with God in the third heaven, outside of what we would know as the physical universe.

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Now, we talked about magic, the occult, and pharmakia earlier, and how people seek ways to access the heavenly realm by means condemned by God.

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And the question we should ask though is, well, what are they accessing? Well, one thought of mine would be that the realm that they are accessing is not necessarily the third heaven, not at all.

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Though it is a heavenly realm, the realm that they are accessing is that of the in -between, which is what scripture calls the power of the air, where demons lurk in waterless places looking to influence people and spread evil, a realm so closely linked and tangled within the fabric of this fallen world.

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Note, note, think about this, it's crazy. Scripture talks about the third heaven as something other than the world, outside the physical universe, a place where God dwells.

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Whereas, what is used to describe the realm of Satan is that of the air, a worldly term, meaning that it is not a holy place, there is no otherness there.

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So when individuals are astral projecting, whether through guided meditation, drugs, or even having NDEs, right, near -death experiences, the realm in which they are gaining access to is one in which evil is manifested, a realm where the beings that inhabit it are seeking to masquerade as angels of light in order to manipulate, control, and lead the individual after false gods and false gospels.

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It is within this realm where the elemental spirits twist truth and seek to further corrupt any individual who dares to enter.

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It is literally the domain of darkness referred to in Colossians 1 .13. And we as Christians must preach

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Christ crucified to those who are dabbling in that domain, for it is only through Jesus that they can be brought from the domain of darkness and transferred into the kingdom of his beloved

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Son, in whom there is redemption and the forgiveness of sins. Now it is crucial to have this correct biblical understanding of the levels of heaven that Paul speaks about, and being in Utah, I must briefly mention this.

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There is one group specifically, the Mormon organization, that will take 2 Corinthians 12, 2 -4, and apply 1

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Corinthians 15, 40 -41 to it, and assume that there are three levels within what we would call the third level of heaven.

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So let me go ahead and read to you 1 Corinthians 15, 40 -41 so we can get a good understanding of what they believe.

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Here it is, here's the scripture. For star differs from star in glory.

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First level of glory, that they believe, is the telestial kingdom. The second level is the terrestrial, and the third level is the celestial level.

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Meaning, to them, that there are levels of the afterlife where according to your deeds and obedience to what they call the gospel ordinances and principles, that determines where you will end up after the return of Christ.

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The highest level, the third heaven, where they become gods and beget spirit children, that's the celestial kingdom.

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Needless to say, this interpretation of the text is a massive stretch, and comparing it to the correct rendering of what we just observed, the

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Mormon interpretation holds no water. Here's how you can spot a big red flag during biblical interpretation. Ask yourself, are they interpreting difficult sections of scripture with more difficult sections of scripture?

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If so, you may be speaking to someone who is proof texting. They're taking an idea that's not from the text, but they're actually forcing one into the text, and they choose specific texts in order to reinforce that.

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Actually, what we find in 1 Corinthians 15, 40 -44, is that Paul is building the argument that we will be given an imperishable body of glory in the resurrection, and not one person will have the same body.

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He compares and contrasts our earthly bodies to that of the heavenly bodies with stars and glory. Not each one is the same, which in reality is a beautiful picture of the intimate relationship that God has with each one of his people.

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So as we wrap up, let's consider what we know based on the text. The unidentified man is Paul himself, caught up into the third heaven, and in one verse is expanded to show exactly where that was.

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Caught up where? That's right, into paradise, which is heaven, the third heaven. We know the three levels of heaven in scripture are the sky, the cosmos, and heaven where God dwells.

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And finally, we know that this could be a cause for boasting in which the Lord decides to keep Paul humble from such surpassing greatness.

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Now what we don't know, and what you wish I would tell you, is what are the inexpressible words, the things that Paul was not permitted to speak.

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The truth is no one but Paul and God know these words, and God meant to keep it that way since it is so greatly impressed upon the apostle.

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It makes you think twice when someone says that they went to heaven and talked with God and made a book about it. That earned them millions when this humble disciple of Christ thought the words he heard unsuitable for any other human's ears.

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Where is their fear of God like Paul's? The point is Paul got to go to a place where we will all get to go.

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We were created upon the earth and in Christ, destined for heaven and the resurrection. The Bible shows the believer is either on God's earth or in God's heaven.

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Don't ever try to go anywhere else. Now we know that God is the God over every heaven.

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That is the power of Satan has been thwarted by the death, burial, and resurrection of Christ. Even the powers that lurk in the air have been disarmed.

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Let us as Christians be not ashamed to speak upon the matters that the secular world thinks they have control over. The truth is that only in Jesus Christ we can be set free.

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No sacrifice of our own bodies through drug use will ever get us closer to knowing God. No sacrifice of our spirits through demonic contact and occult ritual magic will ever span the distance between God and man.

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The only way to have a reconciled relationship to God is through the one mediator between God and man and that is

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Jesus Christ. In order to access the third heaven, to dwell with God for all eternity, is to be covered in the sacrifice, the blood of Jesus Christ.