No One Has Ascended to Heaven

No one has ascended to heaven but He who came down from heaven, that is, the Son of Man who is in heaven.

(John 3:13) NKJV

If no man has ascended up to heaven, except Jesus Christ who came down from heaven, then we have a few questions to ask… For instance:

1. if no man has ascended to heaven, what happened to all of the Old Testament saints like Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. Where did their souls go when their bodies died? Or:
2. what about the first two chapters of Job when Satan appeared in the presence of the Lord and had the fascinating conversations about that old saint? Or:
3. what about John the Divine, who wrote the Revelation?

Part of what heaven must be like can be learned by understanding what or who can and can’t exist there. The universe has been designed as a refining process in order to meet the requirements of a just and holy God. Holiness is purity. No impurity can exist in the presence of God.

The First Refining

The first part of the refining of creation was the creation of gravity on the second day. This caused the Earth below and the heaven above to form. The Earth was mostly impurities, with a little goodness in it. The heaven was mostly pure, with a little impurity in it.

The Second Refining

The second phase of purification was the banishment of Satan and his rebellious angels from heaven. We’re told that Jesus saw this happen:

And he said unto them, I beheld Satan as lightning fall from heaven.

(Luke 10:18) KJV

Did this take place before or after the fall of man? Many people believe that Satan was cast out of heaven and it was he, as a serpent, who tempted Eve. This interpretation is not necessary. The serpent which tempted Eve was the original cockatrice, a bipedal reptile with language capabilities. It’s offspring were condemned to be limbless and this gives the origin of snakes. It may be just as likely that Satan observed the rebellion of mankind, and the punishment which resulted, and then decided that he could rebel too because the punishment wouldn’t be that bad.

The Third Refining

The third phase of purification is the Old Testament dispensation when the saints of old believed God, like Abraham did. However, this was before the blood of Christ had been shed on the cross. It wasn’t yet available as the propitiation for our sin, yet God showed mercy to the saints and promised that they would not see corruption. How is this resolved?

In Matty’s Paradigm there is a place which we refer to as Abraham’s Bosom. This is a chamber in the lower mantle of the Earth that overlooks hell below. The name is taken from the passage in Luke 16:19-31 which describes the fate of the rich man and Lazarus. The rich man, in hell, looked up to see Lazarus in Abraham’s bosom. Now Lazarus was quite literally in Abraham’s bosom because he was being given a hug by Abraham, but since this physical arrangement resolves so much scriptural uncertainty we’ve adopted the name. So all of the Old Testament believers, on the death of their body, would be carried by the angels into Abraham’s Bosom, the chamber in the Earth that Jesus referred to as paradise. It’s also referred to as sheol in Hebrew and Hades in Greek.

When Jesus was crucified and his blood was made available for the purification of the saints he descended into the Earth to this place. There preached to the spirits in hell (1 Peter 3:19), and gathered up the souls of the saints to take them to heaven. They couldn’t have gone before that, they weren’t pure.

Where was Satan?

Now there was a day when the sons of God came to present themselves before the LORD, and Satan came also among them. And the LORD said unto Satan, Whence comest thou? Then Satan answered the LORD, and said, From going to and fro in the earth, and from walking up and down in it.

(Job 1:6-7) KJV

It doesn’t say that this took place in heaven. The sons of God isn’t referring to angels, but men. This is a manifestation of Christ before he was incarnate as a baby, which was much later. There are several instances in scripture when the Lord is manifested on Earth.

Where was John?

John the Divine did not actually go to heaven. He saw a vision and went, in the Spirit, into heaven. Nothing earthly can go to heaven. No one with a body made of the clay of this world. At least, not until the soul is free of the body and purified by the blood of Jesus Christ. Yet again, the ultimate goal of the plan of redemption is not that we should all be purified so that we may enter heaven, the goal is that, when the time is fulfilled, God will bring heaven down to us.