In this clip, Cy Kellett welcomes Jimmy Akin to discuss the concept of different levels of heaven. Jimmy reassures the caller, Rhonda, about God’s love and addresses her concerns about anxiety and the afterlife, providing clarity on the topic.
Transcript:
Caller: It was in Revelation, and it was about like three levels of heaven. Yes. My parents, you know, both passed away, and I’m hoping to see them one day in heaven. I believe in my heart that that’s where they are in heaven. I don’t know where.
Jimmy Akin: But first let me address the issue you just brought up, and then I’ll get to the question about third heaven. So God loves all of us, and he loves us so much that he sent his son, who actually died on a cross, to save us. And so we can be very confident in God’s love of us, and we shouldn’t be fearful in that way. So I would have great hope of seeing your parents again in heaven and just do what seems right at the time to try to follow God. And even if you make a mistake, God knows you’re trying to follow Him. And God doesn’t hold people’s honest mistakes against. So I would say be at peace and don’t worry yourself about matters like this. As Jesus points out, it doesn’t help us to worry, and we’ve got enough different problems in life that we need to deal with. Worrying extra isn’t going to help us. So just trust God and trust in his love and rest in his love for you, and just do your best to love him and take care of you, and he’ll take care of you, and you don’t need to have anxiety about this. When it comes to your question about the different levels of heaven, it wasn’t the book of Revelation where that’s mentioned. It’s 2 Corinthians. There’s a passage in 2nd Corinthians where Paul is talking about himself, and he’s actually doing it in the third person. He’s not saying, this was me, but you can tell from the passage he’s really talking about himself. And Christians all the way down through the centuries have recognized he is talking about himself here. But he says, I know this man who several years ago was caught up to the third heaven. Whether it’s in the body or not in the body, I don’t know. He says, but he was caught up to the third heaven. And he then says he can’t reveal most of what he experienced in this case. He says he heard things that people aren’t allowed to talk about. And he, you know, he was in the paradise of God, but he can’t really talk about a lot of this. But he can talk about the fact that he did go to the third heaven, although he says he doesn’t know whether he was in his body or not. So what that tells us is that there is a sense in which there are at least three heavens. The question is, what’s the nature of these heavens? Now, one idea that has been proposed is that the third heaven represents where God is. And you could try to support that by saying, well, okay, we sometimes hear about, because the term heaven is used both for the atmosphere and for outer space. Like we hear about the birds of heaven, they live in the atmosphere, they fly in the atmosphere. And then we hear about the stars of heaven, they are in outer space. And then we hear about the angels of heaven, and they’re where God is. So you could propose that there are these two physical heavens, the atmosphere and outer space. And then there’s also the spiritual heaven where God and the angels are. And if that’s the case, well, then there aren’t different levels in heaven, meaning different levels in the spiritual heaven. So that’s a possible interpretation that’s been proposed. But when you study other literature from this period, from the first century and surrounding centuries, there’s actually a very common idea that there are multiple heavens and there are different numbers of them. In one of the most common numbers is seven heavens. And there’s actually a survival of that today where people who are like really happy, you’ll say, oh, he was in seventh heaven, or she was in seventh heaven, meaning they were really happy because the seventh heaven would be the highest of the heaven on this system. There are other numbers, though. Sometimes you might read about nine heavens or five heavens or three, three heavens or whatever. But there is an idea in some literature from this period that there are multiple layers in the spiritual heavens. An example of a work that takes that approach is a first century Christian writing. It’s not part of the Bible, it’s not part of the New Testament, but it’s called the Ascension of Isaiah. And the way the Ascension of Isaiah works, it envisions our atmosphere as below all of the spiritual heavens. And then there are seven spiritual heavens stacked on top of that. And as you go through the seven heavens, you get closer and closer to God and his glory, and it gets more and more wonderful. And in the Ascension of Isaiah, an angel escorts Isaiah up through through the seven heavens to meet God and then escorts him back down again. So there was this idea of multiple spiritual heavens. My thought is that there is a sense in which you can conceive of heaven as having multiple different levels, but it’s oversimplified or it’s simplified when you hear about three heavens or seven Heavens or whatever to make it easier for us to understand. The driving principle is that we’re told in the New Testament that God is going to reward us according to what we do. If we do good in cooperation with his grace, we’ll get more rewards. And the more good you do, the more more rewards you’re going to get. And so you can picture that as being higher in heaven, the more good you do. Heaven is not actually a spatial realm that has high and low in it, but that’s an image that we can use to make some sense out of the idea that some people are going to be more rewarded than others. I would say though, there wouldn’t be be three divisions or seven divisions, there would be as many divisions as there are people because everyone’s going to have their own individual level of reward based on what they did and they’re not going to naturally fall into just three buckets or seven buckets or nine buckets or whatever. That’s really a simplification to make it easier for us to imagine because our imaginations are not set up to work with the afterlife. It’s outside of our experience. So we use images to help us imagine it, even though we shouldn’t press the images too far. And I would say that’s what the levels are. Also, I would not worry if you might, and I don’t know that you were wondering about this, but based on the way you asked the question, it occurred to me that a person might might wonder, well, like what if I get assigned to the fifth heaven, but my mom is assigned to the sixth heaven and my dad is assigned to the fourth heaven? Will we be separated in eternity? No, we won’t. One of the things that is emphasized, for example in the book of Revelation, is how all of God’s people are going to live together in joy and be together. So even if sometimes levels in heaven can be use to depict the amount of rewards you receive, not going to stop you from being able to get together with and communicate with other fellow Christians. It’s kind of like psychellid and I might have different rewards in heaven that you could picture as levels or you could picture it as wearing fancy clothes. Maybe Psy has done more good than I have and Sai gets to wear fancier clothes than I do. But that doesn’t stop us from getting together and having sushi in heaven or whatever. It’s just, you know, I just want to get up to where I’m king of all Londinian and get to wear a shiny hat. But that Seems reasonable. Yeah, but these images do not represent barriers between Christians that will keep them apart or make them sad or anything like that. Because the whole point of being in heaven is being united. United with God. Enjoy. So don’t worry about. Will I not see someone because they’re in a different level of heaven? No, no, no, no. You’ll be able to see them. You’ll be able to communicate with them. It’ll all be great. And you’ll be happy about whatever level of reward they’ve received. And they’ll be happy about whatever level of reward you’ve received. Does that make sense to you, Rhonda?
Caller: Go ahead. What I’ve always had hope for in my heart is not only, you know, to see my family, but my most favorite thing that our Lord God made is. Is. Is rainbows. I’m kind of hoping I’ll see rainbows in heaven.
Jimmy Akin: What do you think, Jimmy? Well, I would say that union with God is the greatest joy of all. So, you know, it’s even better than seeing a rainbow, is seeing God. But God has created realities that reflect his goodness. And so I wouldn’t rule out seeing rainbows in heaven at all.