What is the second heaven?

But there is another description in Scripture of a positive nature. For fourteen years the Apostle Paul kept the secret of his having been translated to the third heaven. The first heaven, the atmospheric heaven, is that which belongs to this earth in which men can breathe and live; the second heaven, the vast expanse beyond the atmospheric heaven, the stellar heaven, where it is impossible for men to live; the third heaven, the dwelling place of God. A messenger of Satan to buffet Paul, to humiliate him, was given in the goodness of God to keep his flesh from being puffed up.

A positive description of such a scene is found in what the Apostle tells us in 2 Corinthians 12, of how he was caught up to the third heaven. The first heaven refers to the atmospheric heavens the home of clouds and winds; the second heaven is the stellar region, where there are hundreds of millions of stars; the third heaven is the dwelling place of God.

It is worthy of note that the word, Heaven, in Genesis 1:1, in the Hebrew original is in the dual number. Who told Moses to write it thus? What did he know of the atmospheric heaven where life can exist, where the birds fly and the clouds form; of the stellar heaven, those vast spaces where the atmosphere is so rarified that human life cannot exist? Do we not see the hallmark of inspiration here?

It is interesting to note that the Apostle Paul was caught up to the third Heaven (2 Cor. 12:2). The Jews would understand this. The first, the atmospheric heaven; the second, the vast stellar spaces; the third Heaven, the dwelling place of God.

We read in this passage of a “third heaven” into which this man was taken. But can we know, or have some right comprehension of what the third heaven is? By this I do not mean the blessedness of heaven; that, surely, we may regard as impossible. But can we form a satisfactory idea of what the third heaven is in contrast with the first and second heaven? In the first chapter of Genesis we have at least a conception of two heavens. We find there a heaven as the sphere of the clouds, and of the birds of heaven.” Then we find a heaven of the stars; in these, no doubt, we have the first and the second heavens. The sphere of the birds and of the clouds is clearly a physical and created heaven; and so likewise is the second heaven — the heaven of the stars.

How comes this? It is another difficulty at first sight. Did we not hear of heaven in the first verse? To be sure we did; and here we are told of heaven again. What then — contradiction? Not in the least degree; only another heaven — that is all. And is this, then, not true? Why this other heaven? Because man was about to be made. The circumambient atmosphere, extending upwards too, was essential not only to man's existence here below, but to vegetable life, to the due activity of light and heat, as well as to all forms of animated existence.

We find under the second day, then, the lower heaven. And that this is not a merely Jewish idea, but of God, is perfectly certain from the New Testament; for there we read how Paul was caught up (at any rate "a man in Christ," who, I have no doubt, was Paul) into the third heaven. We can easily understand, therefore, that at the beginning God made two heavens, and that in this case He made the lowest one. "In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth." Here we find He made another, man being about to be made. And this is called heaven too. They are all called the heavens. There is the heaven of His presence; the heaven of the stars, planets, and other astronomical objects; and the atmospheric heaven necessary for man and living things here below.

In verse 14 we have the greatness of our High Priest emphasized, both as to His position and His Person. He has passed into (or, more accurately, through) the heavens. He did not stop in the first heaven nor in the second heaven when on His upward way, but into the third and highest heaven He went. Indeed, as another Scripture puts it, He "ascended up far above all heavens" (Eph. 4:10). Still, the position of our High Priest is expressed here in this way so that Jewish readers might be reminded of Aaron going into the holiest of all. In the tabernacle the court, in which stood the altar of burnt sacrifice, was typical of the first heaven. The holy place typified the second heaven, and the holiest the third heaven in which God dwells. In entering the holiest Aaron passed through the heavens as far as the type was concerned. Our blessed Saviour and High Priest has passed through the heavens, not in type but in glorious reality. He is now in a place of infinite greatness and glory.

(Vv. 1-6.) Thus he passes on to speak of "visions and revelations of the Lord." He recounts a remarkable experience he had enjoyed 14 years previously. The carnally-minded Christian would doubtless at once, and again and again, have boasted of such an experience. But the Apostle, realising that it is not expedient to boast, had refrained from any allusion to this experience for fourteen years. He has just told us of a humiliating experience as in the body; now he tells us of a wonderful experience that had been his as "a man in Christ." The one who had known what it was to be "let down" in a basket upon earth, had experienced also the immense privilege of being "caught up to the third heaven." The third heaven speaks of the dwelling-place of God. There are the atmospheric heavens, then the starry heavens, and then the third heavens wherein is the throne of God. The Apostle speaks of the third heavens as paradise, indicating the blessedness of the third heavens as a scene of joy, and beauty, and glory — a garden of delights, where no shadow of death will ever come. He is careful to tell us that it was not as a man in the flesh that he was caught up, but as "a man in Christ." Of his natural advantages as a man in the flesh, he tells us, in another epistle, that he counts them but filth: but of position and privileges as a man in Christ he can rightly glory, for all the blessings of our place in Christ we owe to Christ. Caught up into paradise he was no longer conscious of the body, with its needs and weaknesses. There he had heard things of which it would be wholly out of place to speak, even to Christians while on earth and in these mortal bodies. Nevertheless, let us remember that though we have no such miraculous experiences, as being caught up into the third heavens, yet all that was revealed to the Apostle, when caught up, belongs to the simplest believer as being "in Christ."

But here is a great high priest who entered in where? Not into sanctuaries made with hands, but into heaven itself, and He has passed through the heavens. The heaven of the atmosphere above us, in which the birds fly and the clouds of heaven float, is what we may call the first heaven. Above that is the starry heaven, the firmament which showeth His handiwork; but far as eye can reach, as far as telescope can discover the most distant heavenly bodies, beyond even the reach of our thoughts, our great High Priest has passed through all the outer courts into the very presence, into the very sanctuary of God, where the throne of God itself is. "Now that He ascended, what is it but that He also descended first into the lower parts of the earth? He that descended is the same also that ascended up far above all heavens, that He might fill all things" (Eph. 4:9-10).

If in chapter 11 we have seen God's grace in sustaining the vessel through all adversity, Paul now speaks of the other side of this, the grace which gives unspeakable blessedness in being "caught up" above all earthly things and occupations. He speaks of this as "visions and revelations of the Lord." It is not that he is basing any Christian teaching whatever upon this experience, but rather indicating thereby that such things may be in measure known to anyone who is "in Christ." Verse 2 is rightly translated, "I know a man in Christ." It is manifestly he himself of whom Paul speaks (as verse 7 proves); and he does not write of this until fourteen years after it happened, for it did not involve anything that, as an apostle, he was bound to communicate. The experience was simply that of "a man in Christ," and written now no doubt as an encouragement to all who are "in Christ," not as a revelation to others of the will of God. But the occasion was so sublimely that of spiritual blessedness, that he was not at all conscious of whether or not his body was present with him. This is repeated in verse 3, no doubt to press home the fact that this was something above and outside of the flesh. First it is said he was caught up to the third heaven; and this is further described in verse 4 as "paradise." This is one of three times that paradise is mentioned in the New Testament, and each indicates the presence of God, the meaning being "a garden of delights." If the first heaven is that of earth's atmosphere, and the second the astronomical heaven, then the third is higher than human intellect reaches, indescribable therefore by material comparisons.

356 The third heaven here is in a different character from paradise. The third heaven is going on high - a degree of exaltation; paradise is rather the character of the thing. Our Lord went to paradise, but paradise is the character. The word "paradise" means nothing but a Persian garden; there they had beautiful gardens. The third heaven is hardly the heaven of heavens. There are the sky, the created heavens, the starry heavens, and then the heaven where the throne of God is placed, though this again is a figure no doubt. "Heaven itself" in Hebrews 9 means the reality, and not the figure. We see the same thing in Ezekiel, where he saw the covering of the cherubim and above that the throne of God or the figure of it. These have not exactly to be atoned for; but wherever any creature has been, it has to be cleansed.