Tag: Third heaven

God, History, Time and Eternity

Before the mountains were born or You gave birth to the earth and the world, even from everlasting to everlasting, You are God. (Ps. 90:2)

     The Bible is a record of what matters most to us.  It gives us insights into realities we could never know except that God has revealed them to us in understandable terms.  God has not revealed everything to us, but what He has revealed is perfectly true.  Scripture gives us insight into things eternal and temporal, heavenly and earthly, angelic and human, good and evil, and above all, the thoughts, character, and actions of the Triune God.  We live in time-space history, which is driven by divine choices, angelic choices, human choices, and natural causes.  God’s choices are always supreme, all creatures being subordinate, influenced and controlled.  The Lord allows fallen angels and humans to produce sin and evil, but never beyond or against His sovereign will (Job 1:1-21; Ps. 105:12-15; 1 Kings 22:19-23; 2 Cor. 12:7-10).  God’s providential control over creation guarantees there are no accidents in history, but that all is within His sovereign plan.  “Whatever the LORD pleases, He does, in heaven and in earth, in the seas and in all deeps” (Ps. 135:6).  There is no one who can comprehend all His ways, or who can stand against Him when He acts.  “All the inhabitants of the earth are accounted as nothing, but He does according to His will in the host of heaven and among the inhabitants of earth; and no one can ward off His hand or say to Him, ‘What have You done?’” (Dan 4:35).

     Most of us think about history in time and space, which began when “God created the heavens and the earth” (Gen. 1:1).  However, according to Scripture, history moves backward and forward beyond time and space and touches things heavenly as well as earthly.  The heavens and earth in Genesis 1:1 refers to material heavens and planet earth.  The Hebrew word translated heavens is plural (שָׁמַיִם shamayim) and refers to:

  1. The atmosphere around the earth (where birds fly; Gen. 1:20).
  2. The stellar heaven which is the universe beyond the earth (Gen. 1:14; 15:5).

Paul mentions a third heaven (2 Cor. 12:2), which is the heaven beyond the universe, and is the place where God rules all things (Dan. 2:44).  Most Christians think of heaven as the place where God rules from His throne.  “Scripture implies the existence of three heavens. The first is the atmosphere above us, that is, the blue sky. The second is the stellar heaven. The third is the highest heaven where the throne of God is.”[1] 

     It is important to be aware of these distinctions because there is both an earthly history and a heavenly history (i.e. the third heaven).  These are connected and touch each other, for things which occur in heaven have direct impact on the earth (Job 1:1-20; 2:1-7; 2 Chron. 18:18-22; Luke 22:31-32), and things which occur on the earth impact things heavenly (Matt. 18:10; Luke 15:10).  The fall of Satan first occurred in heaven (Isa. 14:12-14; Ezek. 28:11-18), and afterward he came to earth and influenced the fall of Adam and Eve (Gen. 3:1-7; Rom. 5:12; 1 Tim. 2:13-14).  On the other hand, God the Son came to earth and became a man (John 1:1, 14; Gal. 4:4), lived a righteous life (2 Cor. 5:21; 1 John 3:5), died a substitutionary death on a cross (Mark 10:45; Rom. 5:6-11; 1 Pet. 3:18), was buried in a grave, and rose again to life on the third day after His crucifixion (Matt. 20:18-19; 1 Cor. 15:3-4).  In His resurrection body, Jesus bore the wounds of the cross (John 20:24-28) and carried those wounds with Him when He ascended into heaven (Acts 1:9-11).  All this reveals that heaven touches earth and the earth touches heaven.

     In the Bible, God occasionally pulls back the curtain of time and space and gives us glimpses into things eternal, revealing a history before time, before the creation of the world.  We learn that God Himself is eternal, for “Before the mountains were born or You gave birth to the earth and the world, even from everlasting to everlasting, You are God” (Ps. 90:2; cf. Deut. 33:27; Ps. 93:2; Isa. 40:28; Jer. 10:10).  From eternity past there was a loving and glorious relationship among the members of the Trinity, who exist as three distinct Persons (Matt. 28:19; 2 Cor. 13:14; 1 Pet. 1:2): God the Father (Gal. 1:1; Eph. 6:23; Phil. 2:11), God the Son (John 1:1, 14, 18; 8:58; 20:28; Col. 1:17; 2:9; Heb. 1:8; 1 Pet. 1:20), and God the Holy Spirit (John 14:16-17; Acts 5:3-4; 1 Cor. 2:11-12; 2 Cor. 13:14; Heb. 9:14).  All three Persons are co-equal, co-infinite, co-eternal, and worthy of all praise and service.  The Persons of the Trinity communicated with each other, loved each other, and made decisions and promises which impacted the world and entire course of history.  There was forethought and intentionality to the creation of the heavens and earth, to mankind, to permit the fall of Adam and Eve, and to provide a monergistic solution that righteously judges sin and saves lost sinners.  To deal with sin, the Father designed and prepared a body for Jesus, and this decision was made in heaven, for “when He [God the Son] comes into the world [time and space], He says, ‘Sacrifice and offering You have not desired, but a body You have prepared for Me’” (Heb. 10:5).  God the Holy Spirit created Jesus’ body in the womb of the Virgin Mary (Isa. 7:14; Matt. 1:23; Luke 1:26-38), for an angel from heaven told her, “The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you; and for that reason the holy Child shall be called the Son of God” (Luke 1:35).  During His time on earth, Jesus lived a sinless life and walked in perfect obedience to God the Father (2 Cor. 5:21; Phil. 2:8-11; 1 John 3:5).  Jesus offered a prayer just a few hours before going to the cross, a prayer spoken among His friends, a prayer in which He mentions a glory and love He enjoyed with the Father before the world existed.  Jesus said, “Father, glorify Me together with Yourself, with the glory which I had with You before the world was” (John 17:5), “for You loved Me before the foundation of the world” (John 17:24).  This prayer reveals a wonderful relationship that existed from eternity past, which relationship broke into time and space for our benefit, and resumed its full expression when Jesus returned to heaven.  It was also from their relationship in eternity past that God “chose us in Him before the foundation of the world” (Eph. 1:4), which choosing was secured by means of the cross.  From His eternal choice, God promised us eternal life, which speaks both of a current relationship with the Father (John 17:3), as well as an eternal destiny forever in heaven (John 3:16). 

     Our current experiences are connected with our eternal destiny which is assured to us who are in Christ.  Throughout our earthly life, God works through His Word, through others, and through circumstances to grow us spiritually in order to form the character of Christ in us.  All of God’s work in us is intentional, designed to prepare us for the life we will come to know when we leave this world and enter into His eternal presence.  Life on earth—in time and space—becomes more meaningful when we live beyond ourselves, beyond our struggles, beyond our circumstances and see everything within the context of eternity to which we belong right now.  I say we belong to eternity “right now” because as Christians we possess eternal life from the moment we believed in Christ as our Savior (John 10:28).  Eternal life is not what we can have, but what we have from the moment of salvation onward.  Our eternal life is the forever-life that finds its greatest experiential expression when we leave this world and enter into the presence of God in heaven.  At death, the flow of time ceases and all worldly experience comes to an end when we pass into eternity.  Until then, we enjoy eternal life here and now with God who has saved us and adopted us as His own.

Steven R. Cook, D.Min.

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[1] William MacDonald, Believer’s Bible Commentary: Old and New Testaments, ed. Arthur Farstad (Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 1995), 1865.