The Three Heavens

Some of you might remember this, but in March 1997, we were shot when we turned on the news, turned on the radio, and there was a mass suicide in California. 39 people had committed suicide together. They all were dressed in black. They had brand-new tennis shoes on. And they all laid down. They had taken a poison. All of them laid down on a bed. They had a commune type thing. And they all died together. And the reason they died together is because they wanted to go to heaven. And they were part of some kind of cult that had mixed a little bit of Christianity, a little bit of New Age, a little bit of paganism all together.

And they knew that God was coming to get them because the Hale-Bopp comet was coming through at the time. And if you went out at night, you could see the comet streaking across the sky. And that was the sign that they were about to be raptured up to this, whatever it was, to the comet, I guess. And so in order to go to a better place, in order to go to heaven, they all committed suicide. And it was such a tragedy because they believed that that was their route to heaven.

What is heaven? If you ask people, are you going to heaven? I saw a survey recently where they asked people, do you believe in heaven? And the 80% of Americans said, yes, they believe there's a heaven and that God is there. And then they asked, are you going there? And they weren't sure because they weren't even sure what it meant. And there was the mainstream Protestants and many of the Catholics and evangelicals, and they said, oh yeah, we're all going to heaven. Well, then some of them weren't sure because some of them, well, you might have gone to purgatory.

And then you get what? Describe what heaven is. You know, when I was thinking about this Hale-Bopp comet situation with these people, if you go back to the first and second century, you know, what we're covering in the Bible studies, one of the things I don't cover in the history of the early church series that I'm going through is that in the first and second centuries, because people were persecuted and because there was so much death, you know, people were martyred, that there was this sort of obsession with martyrdom, that you could go to heaven this way.

You got to go to heaven. So it was better. In fact, it was considered that if you had never been baptized, but you accepted Christ and you were killed for it, that that was your baptism. They called it the Second Baptist.

And it became known as the baptism of blood. And with the obsession, you can imagine if, you know, you live in part of the Roman Empire where there are lots of persecutions, some places that were more than others, and you'd seen your friends and maybe family members torn apart by animals in the arena, you'd watched them go through these horrible things burned at the stake. The obsession with death. I'm going to join them in heaven. So this sort of philosophy began, and it really grew in the second and third centuries, that the purpose for the Christian life was to prepare for your martyrdom.

Get rid of all your goods. Get rid of all your gold and silver. Live a very frugal life, very strict, disciplined life, preparing yourself for the torture you were going to have to go through. And once again, that seems strange to us, but we haven't lived in a culture where you've been persecuted for three and then four and then five generations. Where death by martyrdom became such a reality that preparing for it became the reason for the Christian life. One of the writers from the second century, I said first century, this is the second and third centuries, but in the second century actually was so fascinated by it, he wrote an entire part of a book he wrote on preparing to be torn apart by wild animals.

And how he was looking forward to it, and how he was going to rush upon them and make them tear him apart for Christ. Because the moment he died, he went to heaven, and there he would have any more troubles.

What is heaven?

And what do we do with the concept that you go to heaven? Now this is tied into a number of different concepts. Do we have an immortal soul? The concept of hell, what's hell? Are rewards in the resurrections?

But I'm going to zero in today on the biblical concept of heaven. What is heaven? And really what I'm going to talk about is what are the heavens? Because there's more than one heaven in the Bible. Now that wasn't a new idea when the New Testament writers, or Paul specifically, talked about more than one heaven. In the Jewish world, in the first century, they believed there were seven heavens.

And even today, people are really happy. They're in the seventh heaven. I don't know if people use that term today. I heard it when I was a kid. The seventh heaven was a state of real happiness. So it was sort of like a shorthand saying, you're really happy. A nice way of saying you're really happy. You're in seventh heaven. Well, the idea that there were seven heavens, different stages of heaven. And that eventually, in the Middle Ages, there were different stages of hell.

And then it got to there was purgatory. Stages of heaven, purgatory, stages of hell.

And then it became a very complex doctrine in the Middle Ages.

But the Jewish rabbis, they said there were seven heavens.

And the Bible doesn't say that there are seven heavens, but they do say that there's more than one when you simply look at what it says. Let's go to Deuteronomy 10. We're going to go through a lot of scriptures here.

This is just a basic doctoral sermon on the heavens.

And unlike some doctrines, this isn't outlined in one place.

Deuteronomy 10. And let's go to verse 14.

Because we see these statements, and you'll start to see them mentioned throughout the Old Testament.

You realize that they believed or had a concept, a more complex concept.

Deuteronomy 10.14 says, Indeed heaven and the highest heavens belongs to the Lord your God, also the earth with all that is in it.

There was a concept that the earth and then above the earth was the heaven.

But notice there's the heavens, and the highest heavens.

Look at 1 Kings 8.

The highest heavens is an interesting concept, and we see it pronounced here by Solomon. This is the dedication of the temple, Solomon's Temple. In 1 Kings 8, verse 27, and this is the prayer dedication that he gives, it starts to close up in verse 22. In verse 27 he says, Well, will God indeed dwell on the earth? So he said, I built this temple. And when we went through Solomon's Temple and the Bible studies on the temple, we went through this prayer a little bit where he knew God could be contained in a building. He wasn't trying to do what pagans do. You know, we're going to contain God somehow and control the gods. He realized that this was just a symbol, and God's presence did fill that temple when it was dedicated.

He says, Well, God indeed dwell on the earth. Behold, heaven and the heaven of heavens cannot contain you. How much less this temple which I have built.

Heaven and the heaven of heavens.

What we really find in more detail is in the New Testament with the Apostle Paul. The Apostle Paul had a vision. And in this vision, God took him someplace. And let's look at what he says in 2 Corinthians 12.

So we have heaven, we have heavens. In the Old Testament you'll see heaven, heavens, plural. You'll see the highest heaven or the heaven of heavens.

So you'll see there's some kind of concept of strata, if you will, of what the heavens contain. In 2 Corinthians 12...

And one reason that's important to go through this from time to time is because if you talk about going to heaven to anybody who knows the scripture, who's basically from a Protestant background, and he tried to explain to them that you don't die and go to heaven, what two instances are they going to bring up to prove you wrong? Well, that wasn't on my mind, but there's two more. Lazarus and the rich man, yeah, that's one of them. But there's two that I used to get hit with right away. Elijah and Enoch. Enoch and Elijah. And then Lazarus and the rich man come up. So you get three. We're going to talk about Enoch and Elijah, but to talk about Enoch and Elijah and what do those passages actually mean, because you can look at them and see what they say. I mean, they're not stupid people that look at that and say, oh, look what this says. But they're approaching it with a preconceived idea. What happens if we approach this from a different viewpoint? Let's look at 2 Corinthians 12, verse 1. Paul says, it is doubtless not profitable for me to boast. He's being sarcastic here. It's not good for me to boast, so I'm going to tell you about somebody, somebody I know, a friend of mine. Well, you know who he's talking about. I will come to visions and revelations of the Lord. I know a man in Christ, and 14 years ago, whether in the body I do not know or whether out of the body I do not know, God knows. Such a man was caught up to the third heaven. And I know such a man, whether in the body or out of the body I do not know, God knows. How he was caught up into paradise and heard inexpressible words, which is not lawful for a man to utter. So in this vision, he was taken to the third heaven, which is also called paradise.

Now, when we look at where paradise is used in the Bible, it can be a reference to Eden. We find in Revelation, it is a reference to where the tree of life is.

And then when you look at Revelation 20 and 21, the tree of life is at the throne of God.

And it comes down with New Jerusalem, when God brings his throne to this earth. And at the end of what we know is the great white throne judgment.

So he was taken to paradise. He was taken to the throne of God, the heaven of heavens, the third heaven.

We do get a little description of the third heaven from John in Revelation, because he saw vision of the third heaven. Let's go to Revelation 4. The discussion of heavens in the Bible is not a scientific discussion.

It is an explanation of the reality that there's a physical realm and there's a spiritual realm. When you say, where is the third heaven? I don't know. Is it another dimension? I don't know. You see what I mean? It's not a scientific discussion. It was never intended to be a scientific discussion. It is an explanation of some reality. There is a place called heaven. It's an actual place. And it's beyond the other heavens. We can come up with all kinds of attempts to scientifically explain this. Was it Einstein said he thought there were 10 dimensions? I don't even know what that means. We need to know that whatever dimensions there are, God fills all of them. Space, time. He fills all of them. So where heaven is, I don't know. We do know, though, that it is a place and it is outside the physical realm of heavens that we experience with our senses. Because here's what John says in Revelation. He says, after these things I looked and behold a door standing open in heaven. And the first voice which I heard was like a trumpet speaking with me saying, Come up here and I will show you the things which must take place after this. And it's interesting that heaven, the throne of God in the Bible is always above the earth. It's always above the earth. But once again what does that mean? I don't know. It's not a scientific explanation. People go up there. They go up to this heaven when they have this vision. Immediately I was in the Spirit, behold a throne said in heaven, And one who said on the throne, He who said it was like a jasper, a sardust stone, in appearance. And there was a rainbow around the throne, in appearance like an emerald. Around the throne were twenty-four thrones, and on the thrones I saw twenty-four elders sitting, clothed in white robes. They had crayons of gold on their heads. And from the throne proceeded lightnings and thunderings and voices. And seven lamps of fire were burning before the throne, which are the seven spirits of God. Before the throne was a sea of glass like crystal. And in the midst of the throne and around the throne were four living creatures full of eyes and front and back. I can't even explain that. I can try to. But then I got a defined creature. And then I got to define what it means to be covered with eyes. What do those eyes look like? We're looking into a realm that's not anything alike where you and I live, where you and I exist. This is where Paul went to. He didn't explain it. He said, I got to see that. Here John says, I saw it and I was supposed to write it down. He's trying to explain. What is the sea of glass? As far as you can see, angels coming back and forth, lightning and thundering and rainbows. That's the only way he can describe the color, the sights, the sounds.

There weren't even things within his understanding. He did the best he could. He says the first living creature was like a lion covered with eyes. The third living creature had a face like a man and the fourth living creature was like a flying eagle. I'm sorry, the second living thing. It was like a calf. The four living creatures, each having six wings, were full of eyes around and within.

They do not rest day or night saying, Holy, Holy, Holy, Lord God Almighty, who was and is and is to come. He goes on and further describes this place he calls heaven, which is the third heaven. It is the place of God's throne. Now, God isn't limited, by the way, to that throne. David said, if I go to the highest mountain, you're there, and if I go to the deepest ocean, you're there.

But there is a place, a realm, a dimension, whatever, beyond our physical experience, where God is there and this exists. Paul got a vision of it and John received a vision of it. And Paul calls it the third heaven. So if that's the third heaven, what's the other two heavens? Let's go back to Genesis.

Let's go to the beginning, where we have a little bit of explanation of this. Once again, as a way of seeing, in this case, the physical universe, the physical creation. What we have in the third heaven is an explanation of this realm, this place beyond our experience. And it's called heaven. Genesis chapter 1, verse 6. Then God said, let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it divide the waters from the waters.

Thus God made the firmament and divided the waters which were under the firmament from the waters which were above the firmament. So in other words, he's creating an atmosphere around the earth. And God called the firmament heaven. So the evening and the morning were the second day. You and I call it sky. It's interesting, in Hebrew, you have one word for everything. There's the heaven that's the atmosphere. It's interesting when you look at, if you go through the Old Testament, you will find references to the birds of heaven. Where they fly is called heaven.

It's not the heaven of God's throne. They knew that. They understood that this word heaven can have different applications. The birds of heaven weren't at the throne of God, what Paul calls the third heaven. They were in what we call the atmosphere. You don't think there is, in Hebrew, a word for atmosphere. It's a different concept.

It's a scientific understanding. But they understand that if you, you know, this place that you see, this blue sky with the clouds and with the birds, the mountains reach up into, that's heaven. And the birds of heaven, there. So that's the first heaven. Second heaven, verse 14, that God said, Let there be lights in the firmament of the heavens to divide the day from the night, and let them be for signs and seasons, and for days and years, and let them be for lights in the firmament of the heavens to give light on the earth.

And he goes on and he talks about the sun and the moon and the stars. He creates these things in the heavens. Now that's beyond the place, and they understand that. I mean, these aren't stupid people. Sometimes because of our understanding of certain scientific things, we think these people were stupid. They weren't. They understood that the place of the birds of the heaven only went so far. Beyond that, there's all these incredible lights. And they studied their movement. Their ancient astrologers, I mean astronomers, well astrologers too, studied the movement of the stars.

They studied the movement of the stars and of the planets. They actually figured out long, long time ago that there were planets. They understood that long before Christ came. They understood that there were planets. So they understood that you have this heaven in which the birds fly in and the mountains go up to, and it's not the earth. You're standing on the earth, what we would call atmosphere. Then beyond that is this huge realm that they could have no comprehension of.

We have all these telescopes and satellites and it's beyond our imagination. That's the second heaven. So now we have three heavens that are clearly shown in the scripture, not as like, okay, here's a doctrine of the three heavens, but in how they use the word. How they use that word. And you notice, a couple of places that we've read here, heaven is plural. Because they're using the word to mean the atmosphere, what we call outer space, and the realm where God lives.

Okay. So we have three heavens. Then we have two interesting statements made in the New Testament that we have to reconcile with the doctrinal understanding of what happens to us when we die.

Once again, I'm not going into the immortal soul today. I actually plan on doing that sometime in the next, hopefully, year. Go through the doctrine of the immortal soul. Hell. Where did that come from? What does that actually mean? But let's look at two statements. One is in John 3.13.

John 3.13. Jesus says, and he's proving who he is. John 3.13. No one has ascended to heaven, but he who came down from heaven, that is, the Son of Man who is in heaven. Now, that who is in heaven, a lot of the ancient manuscripts don't even have that phrase in there. There's various explanations of what it means, but that's not the point of today's sermon. The point of today's sermon is, no one, this is Jesus Christ, no one has ascended to heaven, but he who came down from heaven, that is, the Son of Man. Nobody's been where God is except me. Now, we have a real problem with then where is everybody who died, if you believe they went to heaven. So there are certain explanations for this. One is that everyone who died before Jesus, Abraham, Moses, all the great Misera, all the great women of the Bible, didn't get to go to heaven until after he was resurrected. They went to another place and they hung around in Sheol until Jesus finally let them come to heaven. That's one explanation. But then those same people will say, except for Enoch and Elijah. But how could Enoch and Elijah gone to heaven when he says no one's gone to heaven? Yet it is almost universal belief among Protestantism that Enoch and Elijah went to heaven. So there's this inconsistency we have to deal with. Now, I hate inconsistencies. I don't understand the Bible entirely, so I have inconsistencies in the Bible. I deal with it. But this one isn't that hard unless you have a preconceived idea. One of our biggest problems in life is we come in with a preconceived idea, so we read everything into it that we think is there. Acts 2. Acts 2. Verse 29. Peter here is giving his sermon. The Holy Spirit was poured out on Pentecost, and people thought these people were drunk because they were suddenly speaking in other languages. And verse 29 says, Peter's doing is the Messiah. So Peter's proving Jesus is the Messiah. And in doing so, he's putting Scriptures together, and he's telling them, you have to understand, all of us here have seen the resurrected Jesus. So his argument is, either we're all nuts, or because all these people, all of us here that you see speaking in languages, all of us that are gathered together, we all have personally seen him resurrected.

And he says, Man and brother, verse 29, let me speak freely to you on the picture of David, that he is both dead and buried, and his tomb is with us today. Therefore, being a prophet, and knowing that God had sworn with an oath to him that of the fruit of his body, according to the flesh, he would raise up the Christ to sit on the throne. So now he goes to and he explains how the Christ was going to go into, he was going to die and be buried, but he was not going to seek corruption. His body was not going to decay. He would be resurrected before it reached that point of total decay, terrible decay.

And he says, And David was the prophet who foretold this. So, verse 34, For David did not ascend into the heavens, once again, it's plural, but he says himself, The Lord said to my Lord, Sit at my right hand, till I make your enemies your footstool. And then he goes on and says, See, Jesus was resurrected. He fulfilled that. And the proof that Jesus is the one is because we've seen him, and let's face it, David never made it. David never went to heaven. He never ascended to heaven. So his argument is based on the fact that Peter believed that David did not go to heaven. Only Jesus did. Right? Look what it says. Remember verse 34, For David did not ascend into the heavens. So, Jesus says, Nobody has gone to heaven except I who came down. I go back. But here we have a direct statement, David is not there. So where is David? That's the question. Where is David? Then we get into the concept of the resurrection. So now we have a problem. A belief that when you die, you immediately go to heaven. And there are two or three passages in the New Testament that are used to quote unquote prove that. None of them prove that you go to heaven. What they do prove is that the people in the New Testament, like Paul said, it'd be better for me to die and be with Christ than to keep living like this. See, he wanted to go to heaven. It doesn't say die and go to heaven. This is die and be with Christ. If you understand the resurrections, that's not a problem. Because when you die, your next thought is in the resurrection. So those scriptures which are used have a... once you understand the resurrections, and when we go through the resurrections as a doctrine, I'll show you that those are easily answered. They're statements by people who believe something very definite. But he doesn't say, when I die, go to heaven. It doesn't say that at all.

He says be with Christ. When he is with Christ, according to what he wrote in 1 Corinthians 15, it's because Christ is coming to the earth to resurrect. So then we're left with... what about Enoch and Elijah? I mean, these guys went to heaven, at least according to the way it's interpreted.

Well, let's look at Enoch and lie to him.

Enoch... or Genesis chapter 5 talks about Enoch, but we're going to go to the New Testament too, because in the New Testament we really get an explanation of this.

Genesis 5.

I think it's real important that we occasionally go through some of these basic concepts. Three heavens. Simple concept. But we have to understand when we put that together with resurrections, with you don't have an immortal soul, when you put that together, you still have to explain other scriptures. We can't do what is called proof texting. I will line up all the scriptures that prove my point, and then somebody else lines up all the scriptures that proves their point. And we ignore each other's scriptures. That's what we'll proof text.

We actually have to deal with the intelligent arguments on the other side, if we're going to be honest. Enoch. We have his story here in Genesis 5, verse 21.

Enoch lived 65 years and begot Methuselah. After he begot Methuselah, Enoch walked with God 300 years and had sons and daughters. So all the days of Enoch were 365 years. In Enoch walked with God, and he was not for God took him. For God took him. And so the belief is, God took him to heaven. Now, I want you to stop for a minute. It doesn't say God took him to heaven, but it does say God took him. So we're going to have to explain what that means. But it is a real jump to say God took him to heaven, because the scripture doesn't say where he took him. We have to be careful even ourselves. Sometimes we'll read in the scriptures things that aren't there. So what does the New Testament say about Enoch? Hebrews 11. Hebrews 11, of course, is the faith chapter. It is in Hebrews 11 that we have listed all these great people of the Old Testament that we know there were people who followed God, who obeyed God. People who, like Abraham and Sarah and Moses, all these great people. Now, notice what it says. Hebrews 11. 5. By faith, Enoch was taken away so that he did not see death, and was not found, as God had taken him. For before he was taken, he had this testimony that he pleased God.

So they say, well, see, he did not see death. Well, what does it mean? He was taken away. He was taken away. Once again, we get this, well, taken away. I think in the Old King James it's translated. Is that what it says? Translated from one place to another. So, you know, maybe it was like the old Star Trek, you know, just... and he disappeared. He translated from one place to another.

What does that mean? He's taken away, that he should not see death. Well, translated, or what we see here, taken away, does not of itself mean he went to heaven. If you look up the way that word is used in other places, because it's a simple study, you find out what a word means in a Greek dictionary, then you go to Strong's Concordance and you find all the places it's used. And where this word is used, it simply means that you're taken from one place to another. It doesn't tell the place. See, he was taken from one place to another, but it doesn't tell the place. So he should not see death. Now, they say, say he had to go to heaven or he would die. There are many, many places in the Bible where a person is moved by God from one place to another so that they won't see death. Peter had an angel come, put the guards to sleep, unlocked the doors, and lead him someplace out. So he transported him. He translated him. He moved him to someplace else so he would not see death. It does not mean that Peter didn't eventually die, because he did. God moves people from one place to another throughout the Bible. You see it happen so that they don't suffer immediate death. So when it says that he did not see death, there's nothing in the statement that means it's permanent. Just like there's nothing in the statement that says he had to go to heaven. It's just that he went from one place to another. And then you have the statement that he did not see death. Okay, well he did not die at that point. He was moved from one place to another so he did not see death. We have here in Hebrews, though, another statement that's very important in this context, which is often ignored when this is discussed. In Hebrews 11 we have Abel and Enoch and Noah and Abraham and Sarah, and you go through all these great people who were looking for an inheritance. They were looking for a city of God, the great New Jerusalem. And that's why this chapter is so inspiring. These people were looking for the city of God. They did not receive their inheritance. They were waiting for it. They wanted it. Well, they lived on this earth. They wanted to be with God. They wanted to receive what God was going to give them. He goes on and he talks about how the walls of Jericho fell and all these people. Now let's skip down to verse 39. They are promised by God to be part of New Jerusalem. They are promised by God the city that they seek for, whose foundations and builder and maker is God, it says in Hebrews. They are looking for heaven, the throne of God. They want to be at the throne of God, immortal. This is what these people long for, just like we long for. And these, verse 39, having obtained a good testimony through faith, did not receive the promise. They have not received the throne of God yet.

They have not received what they longed for, the city, which is New Jerusalem. They have not received it yet. Why? God, having provided something better for us, that they should not be made perfect apart from us. Abraham is not perfected yet. Now this is where you have a problem with, well, okay, Abraham and all the other people, and Sarah and all them, they're in some other state right now of imperfection, waiting to go to heaven, where Enoch and Elijah got to go.

But remember, Enoch is in this list, and it says none of these people have been perfected. None of these people have received the promise of the throne of God. None of these people have gone to what Paul called the third head. None of them. So either you have to continue to create some convoluted concept of what happened to Enoch and what happened to everybody else, or you have to simply accept Enoch was moved from one place on the earth to another place on the earth so that he'd not die at that time, just like Peter did, just like Peter was moved from one place to another so that he did not die at that time.

And you have to accept what it says here that he's not perfected. Because it says none of these people are perfected. That includes everybody in the list. And Enoch's in the list. So once you come at this without a preconceived idea, it starts to unravel. It really starts to unravel because he will be perfected at the same time the saints of the church are perfected. And when are the saints of the church perfected? When Christ returns. And there's a resurrection. So this one comes apart fairly easy if you're able to set aside, like I said, it's hard to set aside preconceived notions.

It's really hard to do that. So now we have to go to Elijah. 2 Kings 2. 2 Kings 2. At the Bible study, if you have any questions about Edict and Elijah, we can talk about it. But like I said, I don't think this is that hard. It unravels pretty easily.

So what we have, look at verse 1. And it came to pass when the Lord was about to take up Elijah into heaven by a whirlwind, then Elijah went with Elijah from Gilgal. So if you read through this, Elijah is about to be taken up in a whirlwind to heaven. See? What more proof do you want?

He's about to be taken up into heaven. And he has to ordain Elisha as the one that would now take his place. So 2 Kings 2 is all about Elijah taking Elisha and ordaining him and making him. And so he's going to take his place. Elijah was sent to Israel as a major prophet to Israel. Not specifically to Judah, but specifically to Israel. And he had been doing that for years, starting with Ahab. Different kings. And now he's retiring. And according to this, he's going to go to heaven. So let's look at verse 11.

Then it happened, as they continued on and walked, this is Elijah and Elisha, that suddenly a chariot of fire appeared with horses of fire, and separated the two of them. And Elijah went up by a whirlwind into heaven. Now, you see, there's the absolute proof. There's absolute proof that Elijah ascended into heaven. But then we have Jesus saying, No one has ascended into heaven except me, who came down from heaven. But remember, heaven, and really, in the New Testament, really in the Old Testament, it's even more, there's more than one definition of heaven, because there's more than one heaven.

So what we have to decide is, did he go to the third heaven? Did he go to the third heaven? No. Paul says that, I'm sorry, Peter says that David hasn't. And the writer of Hebrews was probably, Paul says, none of the people on this list. He said, well, Elijah wasn't on the list. Enoch was. So now we're downloading one guy that got to go to heaven. Only one, because we just proved he knocked it. So we have to define what it means here by heaven. What's very interesting is what happened after he went.

Now you think about this. There's a tornado, and in it, what looks like a chariot of fire. And Elijah steps on it, waves to it, and off he goes. Now, I guess what you would expect is for him to go up, and the clouds to pull back, and him to go off, you know, up towards wherever God is. But that's not exactly what the people who were there experienced. 2 Kings 2, 15. Now when the sons of the prophets who were from Jericho saw him, they said, the spirit of Elijah rested on Elisha.

And they came to meet him and bowed down to the ground before him. And they said to him, look, now, there are fifty strong men with your servants. Please let us go and search for your master, lest perhaps the spirit of the Lord has taken him up and cast him upon some mountain or into some valley. And he said, you shall not send anyone. But when they urged him, till he was ashamed, he said, send them. Therefore they sent fifty men, and they searched for three days, but did not find him. When they came back to him, for he had stayed in Jericho, and they said to him, or he said to them, did I not say to you, do not go.

They looked for him. They thought, they had not thought he would be on this first heaven. Right? He's got to be up in the mountains. Where did you see the chariot go, Elisha? Which direction did it go in? Well, we're going to go find him. No, God's taking him so we can't find him. No, we're going to go find him. Now, what we have here is, understand the perception of those people that he never left the first heaven.

That of itself doesn't prove he didn't go to the third heaven. It just proves that that's what those people thought. So the weight of the argument now is Jesus says nobody's done it. Peter says only even David didn't do it. Hebrews 11 says nobody on this list did it. Well, see Elijah's not on the list, maybe him. Well, the people there didn't think that's what happened to him. They did not believe he went to the throne of God. He physically got into this fiery chariot, whatever that is, and he went where they thought they could find him. But there's something else that's very interesting about this, that leaves biblical interpreters and a quandary.

And they have to come up with multiple explanations to try to answer this. Remember I said Elijah was sent to the northern tribes of Israel. He prophesied to Ahab. And we could talk about these dates, but the dates aren't as important as the order of events we're going to talk about. There's a certain order of events here that are very important. Ahab was followed by Ahaziah in Israel. And we know that Elijah spoke to Azahiah. He told him he was going to die. We know that the king of Judah during much of this time was Jehoshaphat. What's that have to do with anything? We know about when Jehoshaphat died. We can pinpoint that within probably three years. Usually it's considered 847 or 848. There are certain things in the Bible you can sort of pinpoint. So we know that Jehoshaphat is alive during the time that Elijah is the prophet in Israel. What's interesting is 2 Kings 3. Now, Elijah is taken up in a whirlwind. In 2 Kings 3, Jehoshaphat, along with the king of Israel and the king of Edom, decide to get together and fight the Moabites. So the three kings come together. They bring their armies together and they run out of water. And Jehoshaphat says, okay, where's the nearest prophet we can go to? And so there's this Elisha guy. They didn't say Elijah. See, there's a chronological order of things here that's going on throughout this book. And so Elijah is already gone. He's gone. And Jehoshaphat's still alive. So he's still the king over here. So he had to be taken up in this whirlwind sometime before Jehoshaphat died. Because Jehoshaphat goes and talks to Elisha. He says, oh, you're the great prophet of Israel. He said, yes, but you know what? It's pretty useless to talk to you because you're a rotten guy. I mean, he really puts you down, okay? Second Kings 3 is fascinating. Yeah, you don't know what you're doing. But God's going to save you. God's going to get you out of this. You and the king of Israel and the king of Edom are going to get saved from this mess. And it's a fascinating story of what God does here. How the Moabite army comes up. God gives them water. The Israelites and the Jews and the Edomites water. And the Moabites come up and they see it. And the water looks like blood. And they decide that the three kings have turned their armies on each other. So they do this headlong attack, not realizing that they're all in battle array waiting for them. And they just slaughter them. But the important thing is, who is the prophet? It's Elisha. So Jehoshaphat is still alive when Elijah goes. Elisha is the prophet he goes to. You're with me so far. Now let's go to 2 Chronicles 21.

Kings and Chronicles basically tell the same events, but they go with different details.

Chapter 21, verse 1. And Jehoshaphat rested with his fathers and was buried with his fathers in the city of David. Then Jehoram, his son, reigned in his place. By the way, when you go through the kings of Israel and Judah, it gets a little confusing. The king of Israel and the king of Judah are both named Jehoram that are reigning about the same time. Sometimes the Bible, some translators will deliberately spell one of them different so you can tell the difference between them. Some don't, so you think you have sentences with two Jehoram in it. Well, there's one king in Israel, one in... But what we have here is, Jehoshaphat dies, and he's buried in the city of David. So he's remembered the king of Judah. And Jehoram, his son, reigned in his place. And he had all these brothers. He gets all the names of his brothers. And these were all sons of Jehoshaphat, the king of Israel. I'm sorry, the king of Israel. Sometimes Israel and Judah are interchanged. Their father gave them great gifts, silver and gold, and precious things, which fortified cities in Judah. And he gave the kingdom of Jehoram because he was the firstborn. Now when Jehoram was established over the kingdom of his father, he strengthened himself and killed all his brothers with the sword, and also others of the princes of Israel. Jehoram now goes and kills all his brothers and princes. So he has total control of Judah. Once again, it's the cities of Judah he's talking about. But Judah, Israel, Judah, sometimes those two things get interchanged in discussion. But we do know who the king of Israel was at this time. And we know who the king of Judah is at this time. So Jehoshaphat dies. His son comes along, and he's just horrible. He also worships foreign gods. I mean, this man is just horrible. Now, you say, well, this can't have much to do with Elijah because, remember, it's been years since Elijah was taken up with the whirlwind.

Elijah's taken up with the whirlwind. Elijah, right before he does, he ordains Elisha. And Elisha is now the famous prophet of the day. Jehoshaphat comes along and has Elisha prophesied to him. And then Jehoshaphat dies, and then his son gets in charge. And then his son does all these horrible things. So this is a fairly good period of time. And he added up, it can be anywhere from three to five years, maybe even more, since Elijah went up with the whirlwind.

So let's notice verse 12. And a letter came to him, Jehoram, from Elijah the prophet. But Elijah was gone. Elijah went to heaven, saying, That says the Lord God your father David, because you have not walked in the ways of Jehoshaphat your father, in the ways of Asa the king of Judah, but have walked in the way of the kings of Israel, and have made Judah, and the inhabitants of Jerusalem will play the harlot. He says, you're just as bad because of the Israeli kings, the kings of Israel, which should be even worse than the kings of Judah.

And he says, you're now just like the kings of Israel, but made Judah, and the inhabitants of Jerusalem will play the harlot, like the harlotry of the house of Ahab. He really did not like it. He and Ahab had constant wars, Elijah. Ahab went to kill him. Elijah kept God doing miracles through him. You have killed your brothers and those of your father's household, who are better than yourself.

Behold, the Lord will strike your people with a serious affliction, your children, your wives, and all your possessions. And you will become very sick with the disease of your intestines, until your intestines come out by reason of the sickness day by day. And you read this exactly what happened. His family was struck with all kinds of horrible things. There were wars during his lifetime, and then he got sick, and his intestines literally came out of his body.

He died, and it says a very painful death. Well, where did Elijah's letter come from if he was in heaven? Now, here's the explanation that comes from, you know, interpreters of the Bible will say, although Elijah's in heaven. Well, one, Elijah had written this letter before he went to heaven, and it was just kept until all these future events took place.

There's nothing—if that miracle had taken place, that would have been set. I mean, can you imagine? Here's a letter written by a man years ago that foretells all these things. It doesn't say that. It says, Elijah sends him a letter. So the other explanation is it's really not written by Elijah. It's written by someone else who forged his name. Now, you're just taking the Bible and saying the Bible's not true. So the third explanation is, Elijah sent him a letter from heaven.

I'm sorry, that one just doesn't work. That dog won't hunt. I think God sent angels from heaven. God has never sent someone who died back in some positive way. That just doesn't happen. So the only possible explanation, unless you want to believe one of these, is that Elijah never left the first heaven. He simply got on this chair in a fire, went across the sky someplace, and God landed in someplace else, and years later, God said, you got to write a letter to the general room.

I'm not going to send you there, but you're going to send him a letter. He won't know where it came from, but there's no postmark on it. He didn't have to buy a stamp, okay? A courier shows up and says, I have a letter. From who?

Elijah. Now that had to scare him a little bit. Elijah was taken up in a chair in a fire and taken by God someplace. Yep. And he's still with God with him, and he knows what's going on. And here's a letter. So we have, and it's obviously after Jehoshaphat dies, right? I mean, you just think of the order of things. Elijah is sent to Israel, and he's transported to the world. Elisha takes his place. Jehoshaphat, king of Judah, talks to Elisha.

Right? Jehoshaphat dies! His son becomes king! All these events have happened after he was taken up in the whirlwind. And now he gets a letter from him. So when you look at this together, if you just put this together, the whole idea that he has to be in heaven is not biblically provable. It's an assumption. I'm not saying it's a stupid assumption.

I'm saying that it is an assumption. So there's a number of important teachings that I want to go through this simple lesson today. Simple understanding, because there's a number of important teachings that we really get when we understand the three heavens and then the truth of Elijah and Elisha. They were both moved by God. Enoch, I'm sorry Elijah and Elijah, Enoch and Elijah, Enoch may have never went up in the heaven at all and just says he was moved from one place to the other.

He may have walked, just like Peter walked out of the prison, right? God moved him from one place to the other with an angel or to drag him along, but Elijah never left the first heaven. He was just moved by God supernaturally from one place to another. Both of them died and in accordance with Hebrews, neither of them have been perfected. It's horrible to think that maybe they're hanging around heaven in an imperfect state. What's that mean? Oh yeah, they hang around heaven, but they're in an imperfect state. Now they have not been perfected. They don't have their spirit bodies. They're asleep, like everyone who dies, awaiting their resurrection.

So when we understand this, there is no contradiction to Jesus' statement that no one is ascended into heaven, the third heaven, because neither of these men went to the third heaven. Nobody has, except the one who came down from heaven. There's no need to try to explain why Enoch and Elijah went to heaven, but David and all those other people in chapter 11 of Hebrews didn't go to heaven.

You're going to have to explain that. Also, this understanding supports the doctrine of the resurrections that's taught in both the Old and New Testaments. So I hope you found it helpful. I know some of this is stuff most of you probably knew, but I do think it's important that we go through every once in a while some of this basic information to be reminded of the remarkable truth and understanding that we have.