The Third Heaven and Paradise: What Paul and Enoch Reveal About the Heavenly Realms
Updated: Oct 3
The short answer: Scripture speaks of the heavens in the plural, of the highest heavens, and of a third heaven that Paul connects with paradise. When Pastor Chris and Josh compare the Bible with the Enochic writings, a picture emerges of an ordered unseen creation: a royal court, ranks of heavenly beings, rebellious powers awaiting judgment, and a paradise that carries the imagery of Eden. Above it all reigns the One through whom every throne and authority was created, Messiah Yeshua.
Where is heaven, really?
Most of us grew up with a simple picture. Earth is down here, heaven is up there, God and the angels live there, and one day the righteous go to that place. Pastor Chris opens this episode of The Shift Connection by showing that the Bible's own language does not fit that picture.
Moses speaks of the heavens and the highest heavens. Ezekiel sees living creatures, an expanse above them and a throne above the expanse. Daniel prays on earth while a conflict unfolds in the unseen realm. Paul says spiritual forces of evil operate in the heavenly places, and the same Paul says he was caught up to the third heaven and into paradise. So the episode asks three questions: Does Scripture reveal multiple realms? What is actually inside them? And when the Bible is compared with Enoch, can the architecture be traced?
The heavens, plural
Instead of starting with Paul and guessing backwards, Pastor Chris starts at the very first verse of the Bible. Genesis 1:1 says, "In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth." The heavens are plural; the earth is singular. The Hebrew word is shamayim.
Genesis uses that same heavenly language for the expanse above the earth. The lights are placed in the expanse of the heavens, and birds fly across its face. Nobody imagines birds flying around God's throne, so already the word heaven is doing more than one job. Sometimes it describes the created sky we can see with our eyes. Elsewhere it describes the place where God's throne is revealed.
The heaven of heavens
Moses adds another layer. Deuteronomy 10:14 reads, "Behold, to Adonai your God belongs the heavens and the highest of heavens, the earth, and all that is in it." There are the heavens, and there is the heaven of heavens.
Josh pushes back here, and it is a fair challenge: couldn't heaven of heavens simply mean the greatest heaven, the way King of kings means the greatest King? Pastor Chris agrees that this is the safer reading of the phrase on its own; it does not prove another numbered level. But the pattern keeps appearing. When Solomon dedicates the Temple, he says that heaven and the highest heaven cannot contain God (1 Kings 8:27).
That point matters for everything that follows. None of the realms in this study contains God the way a house contains the people living in it. He created the heavens, His throne is revealed in heaven and His glory is manifested there, but even the highest heaven cannot contain Him. Asking where God is is a different question from asking what the heavens are.
Paul's third heaven and paradise
In 2 Corinthians 12, Paul writes of a man in Messiah who was caught up to the third heaven, and then says that this man was caught up into paradise. There is the number: three. Josh asks the obvious question: are the third heaven and paradise the same place?
Pastor Chris sees a strong case that Paul is describing the same ascent in parallel language, but he refuses to settle it from Paul alone. Paul never explains the system. He does not tell us what the first or second heaven is, or whether the count ends at three. The rest of Scripture, and an ancient Jewish text that explicitly places paradise in the third heaven, will fill in more of the picture.
Conflict in the heavenly places
Then comes a detail that breaks the simple picture completely. Ephesians 6:12 describes rulers, powers and spiritual forces of wickedness in the heavenly places. Paradise is connected with heavenly language, and so are evil spiritual powers. If every use of heaven meant the immediate presence of God, Ephesians would be impossible to explain. The biblical category is broader: there is an unseen created order, and not everything operating within it is loyal to God.
Daniel 10 shows it in action. Daniel prays, and the messenger later tells him his prayer was heard from the first day, but he was resisted for twenty-one days by the prince of Persia until Michael came to help. The prince of Greece is mentioned as well. From Daniel's side, he was praying and waiting. When the curtain is pulled back, an entire conflict was taking place in connection with earthly kingdoms.
A royal court above the nations
Before touring the house, Pastor Chris says, we need to meet its inhabitants. And the scenes Scripture gives us look like a royal courtroom.
Job 1:6: the day came when the sons of God came to present themselves before Adonai, and the satan came among them. They appear before a King.
1 Kings 22:19: Micaiah sees Adonai sitting on His throne with all the host of heaven standing on His right and on His left. A deliberation takes place, a spirit comes forward and a commission is given.
Daniel 7: the Ancient of Days takes His seat, thousands upon thousands serve Him, "the court was seated and the books were opened." There are records, judgment and decisions.
Psalm 82:1: God takes His stand in the assembly of God and judges among the elohim. Psalm 89 describes a council of the holy ones.
Josh is careful with the word elohim, and so is Pastor Chris. It does not mean there are other gods equal to Adonai. He is the Most High and incomparable. In context, elohim can describe inhabitants of the supernatural world who are subordinate to Him. This is His divine council: not because God needs advice, but because the King remains sovereign while created heavenly beings take part in His administration.
Josh also raises a manuscript detail in Deuteronomy 32:8. The traditional Masoretic text says the nations were divided according to the number of the sons of Israel, but an older Hebrew reading among the Dead Sea Scrolls preserves sons of God, and the Septuagint has a related reading referring to divine beings. If that reflects the earlier text, the division of the nations has a heavenly dimension. Pastor Chris sets a boundary here: the Bible never says Deuteronomy 32 is the moment the prince of Persia received Persia. But Daniel establishes the basic point on its own: there are spiritual rulers associated with earthly kingdoms.
Not every heavenly being is an angel
Scripture uses many titles. Daniel calls Michael one of the chief princes and later the great prince who stands over Daniel's people, and Jude calls him the archangel. Isaiah sees seraphim with six wings, two covering their faces, two covering their feet and two for flying, crying "Holy, holy, holy is Adonai." Ezekiel sees four living creatures with multiple faces, wings and wheels, and later identifies them as cherubim. The Hebrew malakh means messenger, a function, like Gabriel's.
So when we say angels, we are often using one English umbrella word for something far more complex. Paul's language confirms an order in the unseen creation. Colossians 1:16 says all things were created through Messiah, "whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities, visible and invisible." Pastor Chris stresses Paul's greater point: these powers are real and powerful, but they are not ultimate. Messiah created every one of them.
He also gives a word of restraint. Scripture never hands us one complete chart of every heavenly rank and how each relates to the others, so we cannot manufacture one. Instead, we let verses from Genesis to Revelation sit side by side and ask the Holy Spirit for understanding. Likewise, fallen angels, demons, watchers and territorial princes should not all be lumped together; Scripture and Enoch distinguish different categories of hostile beings.
First Enoch and Second Enoch are not the same book
This is where two books that constantly get blended together must be separated. First Enoch is what most people mean by the book of Enoch. It takes Enoch through the unseen world: the Watchers, places of judgment, paradise, the tree of life, the heavenly temple and the throne. But it does not take him through numbered heavens one through seven.
The numbered journey comes from Second Enoch, a separate Enochic work preserved mainly through Slavonic manuscripts, in which Enoch is taken upward through numbered heavens. Pastor Chris is honest about its status: its dating and textual history are debated, and the surviving manuscripts are much later than Paul. He sees the traces of the Bible in it, but he cannot say it was part of the Scriptures the way he holds First Enoch, and he does not claim Paul read it. What can be said is that Paul's language fits the same picture.
Paradise in the third heaven
In Second Enoch's third heaven, Enoch is brought into a place of extraordinary beauty, with fruit-bearing trees, fragrant plants, angelic beings and, in the middle, the tree of life. Second Enoch places paradise in the third heaven explicitly, the same pairing Paul gives in 2 Corinthians 12.
Second Enoch also describes a terrible region toward the north within that same section of the journey, a place of darkness and fire prepared as punishment for the wicked. One region is paradise, the inheritance of the righteous; another is associated with punishment. So in this literature, one numbered heaven can contain more than one environment.
Man does not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God.
The heavens are not the realms of the dead
First Enoch 22 gives another example of separated regions: Enoch is taken to a great mountain and shown hollow places where the spirits of the dead are kept apart while awaiting judgment. The Bible also speaks of Sheol and Hades, of the abyss, of Tartarus for the angels who sinned (2 Peter 2:4), and finally of the lake of fire in Revelation.
These are unseen realities, Pastor Chris explains, but that does not make them heavens. Otherwise we end up counting Sheol as heaven number four, the abyss as heaven number five and paradise as heaven number six, and Scripture never does that. In Luke 16, Yeshua describes Lazarus carried to Abraham's side and the rich man in torment in Hades, with a great chasm between them. The passage clearly shows separation after death, but it does not number Abraham's side as a heaven. These texts overlap around the question of the dead, yet they should not be forced into one location unless the text establishes it.
Paradise takes us back to Eden
The word paradise has an older biblical history. The Greek paradeisos is used in the Septuagint for the Garden of Eden. Genesis begins with humanity in a garden where God's presence was experienced; sin brings exile, and cherubim guard the way to the tree of life. Then Yeshua tells the man beside Him on the cross, "Today you shall be with Me in paradise." Paul is caught up into paradise. And Revelation ends with the tree of life appearing again.
First Enoch 24 carries the same symbol: Enoch sees a magnificent, fragrant tree by God's holy mountain, and Michael explains that it is reserved for the righteous in connection with the great judgment. Genesis, Enoch and Revelation all circle the tree of life. As Pastor Chris puts it, this is not merely a climb higher; it is a story of access lost and access restored. In Revelation 2:7, Yeshua Himself says, "To the one who overcomes, I will grant the right to eat from the tree of life, which is in the paradise of God."
Josh notices the movement in both directions: Enoch ascends and Paul is caught up, but in Revelation the holy reality comes down to a renewed heaven and earth where God dwells with His people.
The first heaven: storehouses and stars
Having jumped ahead to the third heaven, the episode goes back down to where Enoch's journey begins. Second Enoch's first heaven is surprisingly close to the created world: an enormous sea, angelic rulers associated with the stars, and storehouses connected with snow, ice, clouds and dew, with hundreds of angels described as governing the stars.
That language echoes Job 38:22, where Adonai asks Job, "Have you entered the storehouses of the snow, or have you seen the storehouses of the hail?" Pastor Chris reminds us that this is ancient cosmology, not a modern astronomy textbook. The point is not to force it into a NASA model, but to see what they believed lay behind creation: in the first heaven, administration. Creation is not an abandoned machine; heavenly beings are associated with its operation. The second heaven, a prison for rebellious beings awaiting judgment, is where Part 2 of this series picks up.
Who reigns over it all
Every part of this study comes back to authority. Who reigns in these heavens, who serves, who rebels, who is judged, and who has been given authority over all of it? The answer is Messiah Yeshua, through whom thrones, dominions, rulers and authorities were created. The paradise that was closed in Eden is promised again to those who overcome in Him.
Frequently asked questions
How many heavens does the Bible describe?
The Bible speaks of the heavens in the plural, the highest heavens (Deuteronomy 10:14) and a third heaven (2 Corinthians 12:2). It never gives a complete numbered chart. Second Enoch describes numbered heavens, but Pastor Chris treats that book with care because its dating and status are debated.
Is the third heaven the same as paradise?
Paul mentions both in the same passage, and Pastor Chris sees a strong case that he is describing one ascent. Second Enoch explicitly places paradise and the tree of life in the third heaven.
What is the divine council?
Scenes like Job 1, 1 Kings 22, Daniel 7 and Psalm 82 show the Most High seated as King and Judge with heavenly beings standing before Him. They are created and subordinate; He alone is sovereign.
Are First Enoch and Second Enoch the same book?
No. First Enoch is what most people call the book of Enoch. Second Enoch is a separate work preserved mainly in Slavonic manuscripts, and it is the one with the numbered journey through the heavens.
Are Sheol, Hades and the abyss part of heaven?
No. They are unseen realities connected with the dead or with judgment, but Scripture does not count them as heavens, and Luke 16 does not number Abraham's side as a heaven.
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