I AM STILL LEARNING

While many Bible versions translated Genesis 1:1 using the word "heavens," the King James Version has the singular "heaven."  For years, I was sure that the KJV had it right, because I assumed the "heaven" where God's throne sits, must have been eternal in order to "house" an eternal God.  I now see there are many flaws in my thinking.  For one, God is Omnipresent, and therefore, when the Word speaks of what we call "the third heaven" (2 Cor. 12:2), it would also have to be omnipresent and eternal, or it had to be created to "house the angelic beings."  After reading an excerpt from The New Answers Book II by Bodie Hodge, as found on Facebook, I have come to the following understanding.  Hopefully, I have finally "got it," but experience has shown me over and over again, that my study of God's Word has barely scratched the surface!

The Bible doesn’t give an exact time of Satan’s creation or of his fall, but it does give some clues. Paul says in Colossians that Christ created all things (Col. 1:16).  So logically, Satan was created, as was the “heaven of heavens.”  We already know that Satan was originally in heaven prior to his fall (Isa. 14:13-19; Lk. 10:18; etc.), so the question becomes, when was the "heaven of heavens" created?
The Bible uses the word heaven in several ways.  The first mention is in the first verse of Genesis.   There, the Hebrew word for heavens is plural (dual form): shamayim, dual of an unused singular shameh.  The word itself can mean “heaven, heavens, sky, visible heavens, abode of stars, universe, atmosphere,” and “the abode of God” (the "heaven of heavens" as seen in 2 Cor. 12:2).  The context helps determine the meaning of a particular word.  According to Nehemiah 9:6, it seems safe to assume that the “heaven of heavens” was created at the same time the physical heaven (the space where the stars, sun, and moon would abide after they were created on day four of the creation week. 

A clear distinction is made between the three heavens - #3 where God's throne is (2 Cor. 12:2); #2 which we call "outer space"; and #1, the physical heaven or Earth's atmosphere.  Since heavens is a dual form, and we know that #1 was not created until day four, the two heavens created on day one have to be #'s 2 and 3!  Another clue that God made the "heaven of heavens" on day one is found in Genesis 1:31-2:1, which says:  "Then God saw everything that He had made, and indeed it was very good. So the evening and the morning were the sixth day. Thus the heavens and the earth, and all the host of them, were finished."  Here, as in Luke 2:13, "host" includes the "angelic host."

I have been a born again believer in Jesus Christ for forty-four years today, and I am just as excited about "new discoveries in God's Word," as I was then!  One thing God's Word is especially good at doing, is humbling God's children!

 

It is humbling to know you are saved by grace, kept by grace, and taught by grace!