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the sky was a disaster: exactly the same as fire from the sky. God often uses fire to destroy sinners, he could also use snow or ice (Genesis 19:24).

      Here, in this second heaven, are the extreme weather conditions that can only be acts of God. So, when God wants to destroy a city, what does he do? Simple. He lets some of these heavenly stores fall upon the earth. We might think this is too simplistic, but at the same time it makes a certain type of sense. The reasoning has a certain elegance.

      What else is in this second heaven? Spirits (i.e., angels) who punish the wicked. This is harder to understand. Not many people nowadays would say that angels punish people, demons do that in hell. It might help to notice that the angels only punish the evil people, the wicked. When God stops time, when God finally destroys all evil, these angels are the ones responsible for the wicked, for the people who do not want to know God. The angels of punishment stand at the ready in the second heaven.

      That is the second heaven, and Levi continues upward:

      In the third are the warrior hosts appointed to wreak vengeance on the spirits of error and of Beliar at the day of judgement. (Testament of Levi 3:3a)

      The third heaven is similar to the second. Once again there are armies of angels, but these angels will attack Beliar (another name for Satan, 2 Corinthians 6:15) and his spirits. In the great, final battle between good and evil, these angels will fight on the side of good (see Revelation 19:11–21). They will destroy the evil angels, and they will avenge all the ages of misery that these evil spirits caused.

      In order to achieve their mission, the warrior hosts need to be ready to attack. So here they are in the third heaven, just above the snow, ice, and fire. As close to humanity as possible, so that there needn’t be any waiting.

      Higher Heavens

      Levi’s trip continues with the fourth, fifth, sixth, and seventh heavens:

      But the heavens down to the fourth above these are holy [. . . .] And in the [fourth] heaven next to it are thrones and powers, in which praises are offered to God continually. (Testament of Levi 3:3b, 8)

      Levi doesn’t give us much information about the fourth heaven. What we do see is that there are heavenly thrones and powers. All of these thrones aren’t for God; he doesn’t even live in the fourth heaven. It is not entirely clear what or who these heavenly kings are who have these heavenly thrones. They are not the archangels, because they are higher up. Soon we will run into the archangels.

      While the heavenly kings might be a bit of a mystery, we do see heavenly rulers every now and then in the New Testament. Paul talks about powers, authorities, rulers, and dominions that are not earthly (Colossians 2:10, Ephesians 1:21, Romans 8:28). These heavenly powers, whatever they are, live in the fourth heaven—at least according to Levi. They do more than just ruling; they spend most of their time praising God without ceasing.

      By this time, halfway through the heavens, we see that the heavens have become holy. There is no more talk of sin or punishment. These things are no longer discussed. We have started to move on to praising and holiness. And the fifth heaven is even more holy, it is filled with angels:

      And in the heaven below it [i.e., the fifth heaven] are the angels who bear the answers to the angels of the Lord’s presence. (Testament of Levi 3:7)

      The word “angel” in Greek just means “messenger.” We have taken the Greek word for messenger “angellos” and bastardized it to “angel.” We then stopped translating the Greek into English. We do this quite often: Christ (christos means anointed), synagogue (synagoge means gathering), Satan (satanas means adversary). Despite that the word “bastardize” sounds quite harsh, there is nothing wrong with this practice. Christ is not just any anointed person and an angel is much more than an earthly messenger. But, as we read the Bible we should always remind ourselves of these original meanings.

      An angel was originally a messenger between God and humanity. The angels that went among humankind were exposed to the sins of humanity. This means that these angels would have been seen as unclean—just like the first heaven was unclean. These messenger angels were too unclean to enter the presence of God. That’s why they could only reach the fifth heaven. There they could, as it were, shout up to the sixth heaven. The angels of the presence of God, who are in the sixth heaven, can hear them:

      And in the heaven next to it [i.e., the sixth] are the angels of the Lord’s presence, who minister and make expiation to the Lord for all the sins committed unwittingly by the righteous: and they offer to the Lord a soothing odour, a spiritual and bloodless offering. (Testament of Levi 3:5–6)

      In the sixth heaven, we see a special type of angel: the angels of the presence of the Lord. Literally the testament speaks of “the angels of the face of the Lord.” Often these angels are called archangels (Revelation 8:1). The Bible only ever calls one archangel by name—Michael (Jude 9)—and tells us that he is one of the chief princes (Daniel 10:13). Gabriel, another famous angel, is called an angel of the presence in the Bible, never an archangel (Luke 1:19). Outside of the Bible, Gabriel, Rafael, Uriel, and Jeremiel are often called archangels.

      These angels do three things that are all related: they minister, they make expiation for humanity’s sins, and they offer sacrifices. In this respect, they look very much like the Old Testament priests, who—just like these angels—ministered in the temple, made atonement for the sins of the people, and brought sacrifices to the Lord. It seems that the Jews and Christians back then imagined that there was a temple in heaven, just like on earth, where angels organized similar services to those in the earthly temple. This is not totally unexpected, whoever reads Hebrews 8 and 9 would come to a similar conclusion.

      What is unexpected, however, is the sacrifice the archangels bring. This is a sacrifice with two characteristics: it is a spiritual or rational offering, and it is a bloodless offering. The first characteristic, “spiritual,” is something that Paul also talks about (Romans 12:1). It is “spiritual” or “true” worship that we ourselves give to God. The other characteristic, “bloodless,” is stranger. If you think about it carefully, a bloodless sacrifice is hard to imagine. On the other hand, you can imagine that a bloody offering is equally hard to imagine in heaven. Nowhere do we read “and this is where the bulls and lambs are kept for the sacrifices.” There are no sacrificial animals in heaven, patiently awaiting their fate. In fact, there isn’t any death at all in heaven. So, these archangels have to be sacrificing something else, something that wouldn’t die. Something spiritual, something without blood. What that is exactly, the testament does not tell us. Maybe it is a good and godly life, just like in Romans 12. Maybe the angels’ lifestyles are the sacrifice, or maybe it is something else altogether.

      The Highest Heaven

      God lives above the sixth heaven, in the seventh and highest heaven. The seventh heaven is a very holy place:

      For in the highest of all the Great Glory dwells, in the holy of holies, far above all holiness. (Testament of Levi 3:4)

      God lives far above all creation, above even the highest angels. It seems as if the author doesn’t have words to describe how holy the seventh heaven is. The language has to become strange and awkward to even get close to describing God properly: he lives in the holy of holies, far above all holiness. That is how holy God is, how holy the place where he lives is.

      A bit later Levi describes the seventh heaven in more detail:

      And the angel opened to me the gates of heaven, and I saw the holy temple, and the Most High sitting on a throne of glory. (Testament of Levi 5:1)

      God sits on a throne of glory in the highest heaven. There is also a temple in the seventh heaven. So God sits on a throne next to, or inside of, a temple. This must be the original pattern that Moses copied when he built the earthly sanctuary (Exodus 25:9). The heavenly temple has not been made by human hands. A temple, where—we might assume—no one, not even the archangels, is worthy of ministering.

      That concludes Levi’s trip through the heavens, there and back again, from the first heaven to the seventh. We joined him, looking over the shoulders of ancient readers, and had our own voyage of discovery. We started in 2 Corinthians,

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