Mapping the Three Heavens

Most Christians have heard Paul speak of being "caught up to the third heaven." But if we're honest, we rarely pause to ask the obvious question: if there's a third heaven, what about the first two? And why does it matter?

The answer is more than academic. To understand the architecture of the heavens is to understand where you stand, what you contend with, and how you're called to walk in authority. This is not speculation or mystical fantasy. It's essential knowledge for anyone seeking the inner temple. Because the spiritual landscape is real, layered, and far more complex than most of us have been taught.

The Scriptures never speak of heaven in the singular. Always "heavens," plural. This plurality suggests a cosmic architecture far more layered than the natural eye perceives. Paul was "caught up to the third heaven," which implies that at least two others lie beneath it. While many believers acknowledge this framework in passing, few comprehend its weight. Yet without this understanding, we cannot properly orient ourselves in the spiritual landscape or access what God has prepared for us in the heavenly places.

When Paul speaks of being "caught up to the Third Heaven," where the throne of God is located, he unveils a truth hidden in plain sight: the cosmos contains at least three distinct levels of spiritual reality. These we may call the First Heaven, the Second Heaven, and the Third Heaven. In his letter to the Ephesians, Paul expands the spiritual horizon further when he writes that "we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places." Here we encounter two key insights. First, Paul affirms the plurality of heavens by naming "heavenly places," a term that confirms the existence of layered domains. Second, he reveals that spiritual warfare takes place in an occupied zone. This contested space is the Second Heaven.

The First Heaven is the visible creation, the terrestrial and celestial sphere in which we dwell. It includes the sky above us, the starry canopy beyond, and all that unfolds within the confines of time, space, and matter. Though it is often mistaken for the whole, it is only the outer shell. From the very first verse of the Bible, Scripture bears witness to this layered existence: "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth." The Hebrew word shamayim used for "heavens" is plural, not poetic, and this plural form reveals something of profound significance: the heavenly domain is not a singular plane but a manifold structure.

God, who exists beyond this manifold, brought time, "the beginning," space, "the heavens," and matter, "the earth," into being in a single creative act. He Himself, however, is not bound by them. As Moses wrote in the psalm, "Before the mountains were brought forth, or ever You had formed the earth and the world, even from everlasting to everlasting, You are God." The Lord transcends the cosmos He fashioned. He inhabits the highest realms while sustaining the smallest breath of the physical.

The Second Heaven is that invisible realm which overlays and interacts with our own, an unseen dimension where angels and demons move, contend, and influence human events. It is the realm to which Daniel's prayers ascended and where they were met with resistance. In Daniel 10, we are told that the angel dispatched in response to Daniel's prayer was delayed for twenty-one days by "the prince of the kingdom of Persia," until Michael the archangel came to help. This delay is not metaphorical. It reveals a very real spiritual battleground between divine messengers and hostile forces.

Paul's warning that we struggle not against flesh and blood but against spiritual wickedness in "heavenly places" must be taken literally. Likewise, the phrase "prince of the power of the air" refers not to meteorology, but to the very realm in which these dark powers reside, the Second Heaven. Unlike the Third Heaven, this domain is not governed by divine order but is the site of perpetual contention.

Above these lies the Third Heaven, the highest and holiest realm, the throne room of God, where eternity reigns and all things are brought into submission to the divine will. It is here that God sits enthroned amid the worship of angels, and it is from this place that all authority flows downward. Paul, writing again to the Ephesians, declares that God "raised us up together, and made us sit together in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus." This is not a future reward but a present spiritual reality. Believers are not merely citizens in waiting. They are enthroned with Christ even now.

This makes Paul's earlier vision all the more astounding. The same apostle who was caught up to the Third Heaven and heard inexpressible things declares that we, all of us, are already seated there with Christ. Our physical bodies may occupy the First Heaven, but our spirits are tethered to the Third, and this dual existence is not allegory, but the foundation of our authority in prayer, warfare, and worship.

The angelic visitations recorded in Scripture offer practical insight into the structure and interaction of these realms. Consider the Annunciation. In Luke 1, the angel Gabriel appears to Mary with a divine message. One moment, she is alone; the next, she beholds a shining figure speaking words of eternal import. How did he arrive? Gabriel departed the throne of God in the Third Heaven, passed through the contested territory of the Second Heaven, and emerged into the First Heaven, into Mary's room, visible and tangible. After delivering his message, he reversed his path, disappearing from Mary's sight as he stepped once more into the Second Heaven and returned to the courts above. The event is dramatic, but the pattern is consistent. Angels travel. They are not omnipresent. They are dispatched. Their movement is purposeful, and their ability to inhabit all three realms is a mark of their design.

The implications for believers are staggering. Angels are not the only ones who possess dual citizenship. Paul tells the Philippians that our "citizenship is in heaven." This is not a poetic turn of phrase. It is a declaration of spiritual identity. We too are meant to traverse the realms, not through bodily ascension, but by the spirit. Our inheritance in Christ is located in heavenly places, and it is there we must go to retrieve it. "Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ," Paul writes, "who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ." These blessings are not reserved for the end of days. They are ours now. Like all heavenly treasures, however, they must be sought, apprehended, and stewarded.

Understanding the architecture of the heavens reshapes our theology. Prayer is not the cry of an earthbound petitioner. It is the speech of one seated with Christ. Spiritual warfare is not waged upward from the trenches, but downward from the throne. Worship does not attempt to scale the heavens. It flows from within them. We do not pray to reach God. We pray from union with Him, because He is already within us, and we are in Him. This changes everything.

Many believers live as if the earth were their point of origin and heaven their final reward. The Gospel overturns this. We begin in Christ, in heavenly places, and from that exalted reality we are sent as ambassadors into the chaos of earth and the contested airspace of the Second Heaven. To map the heavens is not to theorize. It is to participate. Every believer is invited to speak not just to heaven but from it, to war not in fear but from victory, and to walk the earth not as paupers but as those who carry royal authority. The heavens are layered with glory, and if Paul is to be believed, we are already there.

To speak of the heavens is not merely to chart a geography, but to describe a dynamic, living order, one in which the human spirit is not trapped below but called to ascend. The believer is not confined to the First Heaven. Scripture and spiritual testimony alike reveal a startling truth: the spirit of man can traverse the three heavens. This is no fringe mysticism. Paul himself writes of being "caught up to the third heaven," and again in 1 Corinthians he says, "the Spirit searches all things, even the deep things of God." The inner man, our reborn spirit, is not earthbound. It is drawn to God, moves by the Spirit, and is capable of receiving things not taught by human wisdom.

This mystery finds expression in the Psalms: "All the days ordained for me were written in Your book before one of them came to be." This is not poetic flourish but theological architecture. The book is real, and there are places in the heavens where these realities are kept, waiting to be accessed by those who know how to enter.

Throughout the history of the Church, seers and intercessors have borne witness to this reality. They have spoken of being taken up in the Spirit to chambers filled with books, vaults brimming with scrolls, rooms where blueprints unfurled like maps of fire. These were not the inventions of mystic imagination or poetic excess. They were glimpses of the Storehouse, glimpses of places where heaven keeps what earth has only begun to remember.

Access is not achieved through striving, but through surrender. The Kingdom is within, the veil has been torn, and in Christ, we are already seated in the heavenly places. Our movement across realms is not astral projection or esoteric ritual, those belong to witchcraft. Rather, it is spiritual alignment: the return of the believer to his original design, communion across dimensions.

Just as Jacob dreamed of a ladder connecting earth and heaven, with angels ascending and descending, we too discover that the inner life is built for movement. Not chaos, but ordered traversal. Not escapism, but participation in the life of God. This is where design comes in. God is not a God of randomness. The places we access, the encounters we experience, and the revelations we receive are not accidents. They are drawn from a pattern, a blueprint. A heavenly architecture that includes the Inner Room, the Storehouse, and more.

The movement of the spirit of man is not a fringe idea. It is foundational. It is how we abide, how we intercede, how we hear, and it is how we begin to recover the inner temple, by returning to the designs that God set in place from the beginning. To understand this movement is to begin to live heaven-down, and to live heaven-down is to finally walk in the rhythm for which we were made.

The heavens are not closed. They are calling.