One of the cool
things about a daily walk with God is that if you will let Him lead you through
the guidance of the Holy Spirit, you will get to learn some interesting
things. Here is what I mean.
2 Corinthians 12:2(NKJV)
2I know a man in Christ who fourteen years
ago—whether in the body I do not know, or whether out of the body I do not
know, God knows—such a one was caught up to the third heaven.
When I saw the
phrase "the third heaven" I thought what the heck is that? This is where letting the Holy Spirit lead is
important. I felt prompted to go learn
what it meant. As I've written before,
the internet is an incredible resource for your faith walk.
I went to Yahoo and
searched on the following phrase: the third heaven
I got back
188,000,000 hits. Apparently I'm not the
only person who has had this question because there are a lot of pages out
there with this phrase on it. So I just
started at the top with the first article.
I then read a couple more of the articles. If two or three sources seem to be saying
pretty much the same thing then I accept that as the answer.
Where it gets really
interesting is when you start getting somewhat different answers. That can lead you into many different areas
as you try to get the what the Holy Spirit leads you to believe is the correct
answer. How does He do that? Well in my view He does that by guiding you
on what links to click and read and what "rabbit trails" to follow as
you do your research.
One of the first
places I like to go is Wikipedia. While
I detect a bit of subtle anti-Christian bias in some of their articles I find
it is a great place to pick up a lot of knowledge quickly. This again is where the guidance of the Holy
Spirit is so important. Wikipedia
articles are loaded with links to other info.
You could waste a whole day clicking on all of the links. Let the Spirit guide you on which ones are
worth the time and which ones aren't.
As I read about
"the seventh heaven" I learned about superapostles, shamayim, the
incident at antioch, judaizers, and many other interesting things. These are things that I probably wouldn’t
have normally ever read about but they definitely deepened my understanding of
God's Word.
Now to get back to
the original question, what the heck is the third heaven? Would you like to know the answer? Then I invite you to enjoy the journey and
find out. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third_Heaven
I really liked the article, The "Third Heaven" by Douglas Ward. I found that it realy helped me understand the background more and that it wasn't really about the number of layers of heaven but that it was Paul explaining his experience of seeing God. It sort of took the controversy out by explaining that in Paul's time, the belief was that the Third Heaven was where it was possible to see God. Since this was the belief, he used this idea to explain to the Corinthians what he had experienced.
ReplyDeleteIt really helps the understanding when you get it in historical context doesn't it?
ReplyDelete