Three heavens

Three heavens

There are three heavens: The heaven where birds are, the heaven where stars are, and the heaven where God is ^[1]. This is a common teaching, but it causes confusion. Since the heaven where stars are is above the heaven where birds are, we reason that the heaven where God is must be above the stars. This is false.

Gen 1:1 says that God created the heavens. The word used shamayim שמים is a dual form of 'heaven'. He created two heavens; where the birds are ^[2] and where the stars are. ^[3] But the third heaven is not where God is. "The heaven of heavens cannot contain thee...". ^[4]There is nothing bigger than God to contain God.

If the third heaven was not created; how many things are self-existent? Nothing in the heaven; where the birds are, is self-existent; they were created. Nothing where the stars are is self-existent; they were created. Only God is self-existent; the third heaven is God himself. When you are in the third heaven, you are in God. It is imprecise to say that God is everywhere. It is better to say that everywhere is in God. Nothing is bigger than God. And if everywhere is in God, then every-thing is in God. It is imprecise to say that God is in everything. ^[5]

1. ↑ 2Co 12:2 I knew a man in Christ above fourteen years ago, (whether in the body, I cannot tell; or whether out of the body, I cannot tell: God knoweth;) such an one caught up to the third heaven.
2. ↑ Jer 4:25 I beheld, and, lo, [there was] no man, and all the birds of the heavens were fled.
3. ↑ De 1:10 The LORD your God hath multiplied you, and, behold, ye [are] this day as the stars of heaven for multitude.
4. ↑ 1Ki 8:27 But will God indeed dwell on the earth? behold, the heaven and heaven of heavens cannot contain thee; how much less this house that I have builded?
5. ↑ Ac 17:28 For in him we live, and move, and have our being; as certain also of your own poets have said, For we are also his offspring.