Is Third Heaven a Near Death Experience?

by cameo-d 23 Replies latest watchtower bible

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  snowbird

  BTS, that's some powerful and sobering stuff.

  Sylvia
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  Witness 007

  I was in "third heaven" when I got my plasma T.V.......mmmmmm nice!
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  BurnTheShips

  BTS, that's some powerful and sobering stuff.

  http://archive.southcoasttoday.com/daily/01-04/01-31-04/c04rg223.htm

  My Aunt had an NDE when she was kidnapped with her daughter and left to die in the trunk of a car. The experience changed the focus of what she did. It led her to publish a spiritual book. She also subsequently started a women's magazine.

  BTS
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  snowbird

  http://archive.southcoasttoday.com/daily/01-04/01-31-04/c04rg223.htm

  "He can heal addictions, broken relationships and poverty. I broke every one of the Ten Commandments. Jesus can fix what's wrong with us."

  Amen.

  Sylvia
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  snowbird

  Your aunt is a remarkable woman.

  Here's my widow's mite:

  snowbird	Re: Christians - Convert me! I'm Pagan!
  Post 1284 of 5927 since 01-May-07 55 y 30 d	Sirona, I'm a Christian. I'm a slave of Jesus Of Nazareth, the Christ. I say this with an open mind and heart. I grew up in a Baptist church, but found the hellfire and damnation teaching incompatible with the Bible. I converted to the JW's because at the time I found their brand of theology appealing. Later, I came to the conclusion that their teachings were full of holes. I went back to the Bible, rediscovered Jesus again for the first time, and have been on the road to healing ever since. I've never mentioned this on the board; in early 2005, I was in a bad place - emotionally and spiritually. I cried out to Jesus for help and comfort because I knew He could understand what it was like to be at the end of your rope. I was ready to throw in the towel so to speak. It was in the wee hours of the morning. I'd been discharged from the ER after presenting with a bp reading that was off the charts. I sat in my dining room and prayed like I'd never prayed before because I honestly felt like I was losing my mind. As I was praying, I felt a warm and comforting Presence behind me. I didn't need to turn around to see or even ask Who it was. I knew! I felt a gentle, reassuring squeeze of my shoulders that let me know everything is going to be alright. I simply said, "Thank you." That experience taught me two things: Organized religions are not the way to God, and the process of conversions starts with us. We have to recognize our need for God; call out to Him for direction; then follow His leading. It is a personal, not organizational, thing. I also found out that reading the Gospel of John is the best way to find the real Jesus. I hope this isn't too jumbled. I always get emotional when I relate my experience, but believe me when I say that I'm not delusional. My hope is for your journey to be filled with peace. Sylvia
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  civicsi00

  That's funny. I pointed this scripture out to my mom about 2-3 months ago and it stumped her. It was as if she had never read this particular scripture before. JW's stick to certain texts for so long, they forget that there's other scriptures around them.
• 

  Mary

  Here is a collection of Near Death Experiences from a Christian perspective. These are accounts of those that claim they had an NDE. One of them was a Jehovah's Witness. What she learned when she left her body made her turn her back on the JWs for good.

  I actually know of 3 JW's who had Out of Body experiences while they were Witnesses. Naturally they figured it was the demunz trying to mess with their minds but it freaked them all out just the same.

  Of course, the Borg would never conceed to the idea that the term "paradise" could mean anything like an NDE or OBE. According to the October 15, 2004 Watchtower, this "third heaven" is actually talking about the uh, 'spiritual paradise' that the WTS runs today. Paragraph 9 says "....It would involve the Christian congregation......When was that vision to be fulfilled? Paul called what he saw a 'revelation', something future. He knew that after his death an extensive apostasy would develop........Yet the time would come for true worship to be elevated again...That actually came to pass a few years after God's Kingdom was established in heaven. And with the passing of the decades, it becomes very evident that God's people enjoy a spiritual paradise which Paul foresaw in that vision."

  So there you go. The "Third Heaven" and "Paradise" that Paul was caught away to, was really just a vision of one of the congregations (no doubt in Crooklyn). Maybe Paul was watching them get ready for the Instruction Talk. Or maybe he was watching someone getting counselled on going overtime on their talk. Maybe he was watching 15 people at the Bookstudy. Yes, it must have been awfully exciting for Paul to watch all this excitement----it was so exciting watching these drones that he recorded for all mankind to read..........
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  Leolaia

  The reference to "third heaven" is a reminder that we do not belong to the culture and conceptual context that the people who originally received the NT writings were in. The epistles and other books in isolation contain a number of obscure references that cannot be understood from the NT alone, as they allude to things outside what was later determined to be the canon. It was a common concept in Jewish and Christian writings of the first and second centuries AD that Paradise (that is, the Garden of Eden) was located in "third heaven," and the older concept was that heaven contained a number of different levels, whether three, four, or seven levels of heaven. These were described in detail in apocalyptic and hekhalot literature. Paul and his readers shared this understanding of heaven and similar journeys to the heavenly Eden were attributed to contemporary rabbis and figures from the OT. For a good example of a journey "out of the body", see the Vision of Isaiah portion of Ascension of Isaiah, in which the prophet fell as if dead while his "mind" was taken up into the heavens on a tour of God's abode.
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  cameo-d

  Thank you all for the responses.

  In continuing the next couple of sentences, it seems that perhaps some "information" is found in the third heaven.

  2 Corinthians 3-4:

  And I knew such a man, (whether in the body, or out of the body, I cannot tell: God knoweth;)

  How that he was caught up into paradise, and heard unspeakable words, which it is not lawful for a man to utter.

  Why would whatever this man learned in 3rd heaven be unlawful to speak???

  Would it be because he learned something pertaining to the future?

  Would it be because he actually "met his Maker"?

  Why would the information gained in third heaven be unspeakable and unlawful to tell?
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  Leolaia

  Paul is being very coy here. He insisted that he wouldn't boast, and then he gave in and boasted about himself in the previous chapter, and now he is giving the ultimate boast -- so he refers to himself in the third person. So he is very meager on the details and is intentionally obscure about his revelatory experience. The clue however is the word arrhétos "unspeakable" which is a hapax legomenon in the NT and which had a technical meaning in Hellenistic mystery religions, referring to secrets too sacred to be divulged to others. Paul may use it in the same sense, or he means that the words themselves are impossible for humans to utter or hear. In the latter connection, it is worth noting that Philo of Alexandria (first century AD) believed that the sound of angelic singing would have such a quivering, body-shattering effect that the visitor to heaven, once returned to earth, would yearn for and crave the music and neglect such terrestial and fleshly yearnings like hunger and thirst and eventually would die from starvation. Thus, in his dicussion of Exodus 24:18, he claimed that Moses listened to heavenly signing on Mount Sinai and "having laid aside his body, for forty days and as many nights he touched neither bread nor water at all" (De Somniis 1:35-36). If Paul had a similar notion, he would have either thought that it was impossible for a mere human to reproduce such speech, or that it would have harmful results to those hearing it.

  But the first possibility is also viable. It is worth noting what Paul quotes here to the Corinthian Christians: "However, as it is written: 'No eye has seen, no ear has heard, no mind has conceived what God has prepared for those who love him', but God has revealed it to us by his Spirit. The Spirit searches all things, even the deep things of God" (1 Corinthians 2:9-10). This is not a quote from canonical scripture, but from the lost Apocalypse of Elijah as the early fathers recognized (cf. Origen, Commentary on Matthew, 27:9, Jerome, Commentary on Isaiah 64:4, Epistle 57:9, Ambrosiaster, Commentary on 1 Corinthians, 2:9), although Jerome notes that the same phrase also occurs in the Ascension of Isaiah. In that work, the Vision of Isaiah concludes with this statement:

  "This angel said to me, 'Isaiah, son of Amoz, it is enough for you for these are great things, for you have observed what no one born of flesh has observed, what eye has not seen, nor ear heard, nor has it entered into the heart of man, how great things God has prepared for all those who love him. And you shall return into your robe [i.e. earthly body] until your days are complete; then you shall come here [i.e. to heaven].' " (Ascension of Isaiah 11:34-35).

  It is worth considering whether Paul alludes to a similar thing in his quoting of this memorable line and that what he heard in heaven is what "no ear has heard", and whether the things heard in heaven have anything to do with "God's secret wisdom, a wisdom that has been hidden before time began" (v. 7). But it is ultiamtely a moot question since only Paul knew what he was referring to and he was intentionally obscuring the nature of his revelation.