W it h in A PEW VERSES in this chapter (II Cor. 6:1-10), Paul goes from height to depth and rises then to greater height than ever. He relates an experience in the third heaven now fourteen years past. From vision to valley he drops to tell of his thorn in the flesh. He sought deliverance which was not granted. He asked for subtraction but he got addition! He is made to realize that the grace of the Lord is sufficient and he rises again to glory in God’s strength made perfect in weak ness. This passage ought to settle forever the ques tion, “What is the Christian’s greatest experience?” One thing ought to be clear at the very outset: IT IS NOT A TRIP TO THE THIRD HEAVEN. There has been a lot of useless discussion of what Paul actually experienced. If he could not tell it him self, we need not pry into it to find out more than his bare statement. Was he bodily present there or did his spirit take a brief sojourn? He did not know, so how can we? Where is the third heaven? Does Paul have in mind here the Jewish idea of a first heaven, the aerial heaven; a second, the side real heaven; a third, the spiritual heaven? All of this is beside the point. Paul had a supernatural experience. Let it go at that. We like visions and raptures and sensational revelations.^ From childhood we are always trying to get into one third heaven or another. As a small boy I read the adventures of Alice Through the Looking Glass and wished I might somehow get through our old dresser mirror into all the won ders of Looking Glass Land. Some time ago the papers told us of little Dickie Bonham who wanted to fly like some of the comic book characters. He leaped off a cliff, injuring himself fatally. In the hospital he said, “Mother, I almost did fly.” Well, we almost do fly at times and we are always try ing to get up into some exalted state above the hum drum range of day-by-day. The drunkard seeks escape through his bottle. The theater-goer gets a “ lift” vicariously through the screen. A good love affair transplants a romantic swain out o f this world. The religious mystic takes a better road in contemplation of the Divine. Anyhow, we are always trying to “get away from it all” in some sort of third heaven. Some have been granted real and rich spiritual
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