An Atheist Went To Heaven… (pt. 1)

Jeremiah 1:5 and the Claim of Pre-Existence

Do atheists go to heaven? In episode 311 of the Holy Note, the creator by the name of Big Nick suggests that the testimony of a former atheist who died and went to heaven proves the pre-existence.

Of our souls. The Bible says in Jeremiah 1 .5, before I formed you in the womb, I knew you. Meaning that God knew us before we were formed here on this physical earth, right? He's right.

That Jeremiah 1 .5 says, before I formed you in the womb, I knew you. God created Jeremiah and God elected Jeremiah. He says that this means that God knew us before we were ever formed here on this visible earth.

While it is true that the New Testament speaks of God's people as those who were known in Christ before the foundation of the world, we will see that Nick is taking this to mean that we actually existed in heaven before we were formed on this earth.

Now, he started with Jeremiah 1 .5 and immediately went off the rails, but to prove his point,.

He doesn't turn to scripture, but to a testimony. Meaning that God knew us before we were formed here on this physical earth, right? There's a testimony of an atheist who had passed away and had an out-of-body experience where he was sent up to heaven.

And when he was sent up to heaven, these angels around him, they were calling him a general. And he's like, why are you calling me by that name? And they're like, you don't understand. Before you were put here on this earth, you were a high ranking general in the kingdom of God.

Came back into his body and became a born again.

On fire believer. Now this will probably shock you, but I'm pretty skeptical of people taking trips to heaven or hell and coming back to sell their books. I mean, tell their stories. There's something incredibly wrong with this testimony that Nick shares.

The Fate of an Unbelieving Person

Not only that someone went to heaven and came back, but that this person was an atheist. If an atheist dies, he is dying in his sin. He is an unbeliever. Jesus says, unless you believe that I am, you will die in your sin.

This means that he bears the guilt and stain of his sin. His sin has not been washed away by the blood of Jesus. He has not been cleansed by sin's defiling effects. He wears, as Isaiah describes, the filthy rags of his self-righteousness, and he is not clothed with the righteousness of Christ.

He is not justified. He is not forgiven. He is not acceptable. If a man dies in this state, he does not go to heaven. He cannot enter into the presence of the Lord in his unfit condition, his sinful condition.

When Adam and Eve sinned, they were cast out of the garden and cherubim with flaming swords guarded the way back to it. The angels cry out around the throne of God, holy, holy, holy. His holiness causes a sharp divide between him and a sinful human being in his fallen condition.

When Uzzah reached out his hand to touch the ark, the Lord struck him dead, because the ark was holy. It was the place of his presence. Psalmist writes, you are not a God who takes pleasure in wickedness.

No evil dwells with you. The boastful shall not stand before your eyes. The prophet Isaiah, an incredibly righteous man, is undone by his vision of the throne, crying out, woe is me. Back at Christ's hour, your eyes are too pure to look on evil, and you cannot look on wickedness with favor.

There is nothing in the scripture to suggest that an unjustified person could enter the presence of God. And at this point, I think I should highlight a very important difference between the testimonies of people today who have supposedly gone to heaven and returned, and the apostle Paul.

Paul's Vision in 2 Corinthians 12

Some people in the comments were saying, didn't the apostle Paul take a trip to heaven? Well, first, Paul was not an atheist. He was a justified man. Second, Paul is an apostle, and the only apostle who was not taught by the Lord Jesus in person.

He didn't walk with Jesus for three years like the others, and I wonder if this could be part of the reason why he would have this experience as a man sent to teach the Gentiles. Third, when Paul writes about this in 2 Corinthians 12, he says he doesn't know whether he was in or out of the body.

Fourth, while the majority of people today who claim to have had these experiences write and talk about them all the time in books and movies, the apostle Paul brought it up once, and with a certain reluctancy in the context of defending his apostleship against his detractors back at Corinth.

He describes what he heard as that which cannot be told and which man may not utter. I hope it's clear that the apostle Paul is not a fitting comparison to the stories we hear today, and take notice of this also.

Many false teachers in the charismatic movement, as well as those caught up in the charismatic movement and the new apostolic reformation, talk about their visions and revelations on a daily basis. People claim to get visions and revelations, if not daily, then regularly.

What's interesting is that these are the very claims of those who Paul sarcastically calls super apostles in verse 11 of 2 Corinthians 12. While Paul preached the gospel at Corinth, deciding to know nothing among them except Jesus Christ and him crucified, the super apostles arrived and claimed greater revelations and to have visions and knowledge that Paul did not have.

And the church at Corinth was no doubt fascinated with these things. I would encourage you to perhaps pause this video and read quickly 2 Corinthians 12, 1 through 13, and then listen to Walter Chantry's paraphrase of Paul's words, which I think really captures what's going on here.

He writes, in chapter 12, Paul continues his defense. I will go on to visions and revelations, verse 1. It was the current fashion at Corinth. The people would hang on to the edges of their seats to hear of such things.

But again, there is the cutting sarcasm. We may justly read between the lines of the first six verses of chapter 12 in this manner. I had an extraordinary revelation 14 years ago. Your new apostles have them daily and parade new visions at every meeting, but I'm afraid I must go back in my memory 14 years to recall a significant mystical experience involving revelations.

I hope it does not disappoint your keen curiosity, but I must be very negative. I am not certain what state I was in, and I cannot tell you anything I saw. How that must injure your raging thirst for the sensational.

As a matter of fact, I'm going to change the subject quickly. By 55 AD, about when 2 Corinthians was written, the apostle had gone 14 years without having a visional or revelational experience, and he didn't even talk about it.

Repentance, the Mind of Christ, and Pre-Existence

So be wise around anyone who claims to have visions and revelations on the daily, especially those who love to talk about it. Well, this video is already getting pretty long, and we haven't even covered the.

Definition of repent that is given. God literally had assignments for us in the spirit realm before we were born. Because think about it, when we're told to repent, we're told to do something again. We are having the mind of Christ again.

But how could we have the mind of Christ if the book of Psalms says that we were born into sin and iniquity? The only way that that's possible is by us existing in the spirit with God. I truly believe that.

And the conclusion that is drawn from that.

About the pre-existence of souls. So what I'm going to do is make this part one and a two-part Holy Note breakdown, in which maybe I can answer some of your questions on this video, as well as tackle the other points.

Did this atheist go to heaven? I say, Holy Note.