Seeing Heaven by Faith: What the Bible Says About the Third Heaven
"Now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I have been fully known." — 1 Corinthians 13:12
There's an old story about a group of blind men who are brought to an elephant and asked to describe what they're touching. One touches the trunk and says it's a snake. Another touches the leg and says it's a tree. On the side, a wall. Each is experiencing something real, something true, but none has the full picture.
That's a picture of how we see heaven from here.
Paul describes three heavens in Scripture. The first is the visible sky, the atmosphere, the clouds, everything you can see when you step outside and look up. The second is the cosmos, the stars, the galaxies, the vast expanse of the universe that becomes visible by night. Astronomers can study these. Telescopes can probe their depths. We can take photographs of galaxies 13 billion light-years away.
The third heaven is different. It is the dwelling place of God, the throne room of the universe, where Jesus sits right now in a resurrected physical body. And it is seen only by faith.
You can't photograph it. You can't calculate its location with a telescope. You can't measure it, map it, or verify it through any instrument we currently possess. To access the third heaven, you need something science cannot provide: faith.
And here is the extraordinary thing about faith: it doesn't just give you information about heaven. It gives you a relationship with the One who lives there. When you pray, you are not sending a message into the void. You are speaking directly to the God of the third heaven. When you worship, you are participating in something that is happening simultaneously in a realm you can't see. When you trust God with the things that keep you up at night, you are placing them into the hands of Someone who exists beyond the limits of time and space.
Paul says in 1 Corinthians 13 that right now we see dimly, like a reflection in an ancient bronze mirror, blurry and incomplete. But then, when we get there, we will see each other face-to-face. We will know fully, even as we have been fully known.
Fully known. That phrase is worth sitting with. God already knows everything about you — every secret, every failure, every longing, every prayer you started but couldn't finish. He knows you completely. And He loves you completely. And one day you will know Him the same way, face to face, without the dim glass, without the partial view.
Until then, faith is not a consolation prize for people who can't have certainty. Faith is the faculty that gives you access to the most real thing in existence, a relationship with God, whose house you are going to.
See by faith today. It reaches further than your eyes ever could.
REFLECTION
Write down one thing in your life right now that requires faith, something you cannot see but are trusting God for. Then write 1 Corinthians 13:12 beside it as a reminder: the same God who prepared a place you can't yet see is working in the places you can't yet see here.
TODAY'S PRAYER
Lord, I choose today to see by faith what my eyes cannot reach. Thank You that faith is not wishful thinking. It is real access to the most real thing that exists. You are in the third heaven. You are on the throne. And You are not distant from me. You are near, even now. Help me live today from that nearness. Amen.
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