How did Paul know the invisible world so well… and what had he actually seen in the third heaven?
How did Paul know the invisible world so well… and what had he actually seen in the third heaven?
Night had fallen on Ephesus, but Paul was not asleep.
Through the small window of the house where he was staying, he could see the lights of the city. In the distance, the great temple of Artemis still dominated the horizon like a mountain of stone and columns.
Thousands of people came to this city every year.
Merchants.
Pilgrims.
Priests.
Magicians.
Philosophers.
Ephesus was rich, noisy, and brilliant.
But Paul knew that a city could show one face in its streets and hide another in the unseen.
He placed a piece of parchment in front of him.
For several days, a phrase had been recurring in his mind.
He took his quill and wrote:
“We don’t have to fight against flesh and blood…”
He stopped.
Then he continued.
“…but against the principalities, against the powers, against the rulers of this darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms.”
He reread it slowly.
Principalities.
Powers.
Dominants.
Spiritual forces.
This was not the vocabulary of a man who imagined a chaos populated by disordered creatures.
It was the language of a hierarchy.
Of a structure.
Almost like an army.
And yet, Paul hadn’t always spoken like that.
Long ago, he had been a young man named Saul.
A brilliant student.
A Pharisee.
A passionate defender of the law.
And if he now knew so much about the invisible world, it was perhaps because his life had begun long before Ephesus at the crossroads of three paths:
the Scriptures he had studied,
the Jewish traditions of his time,
and an experience he would always speak of with a strange restraint.
Third heaven.
Years earlier, in Jerusalem, Saul sat at Gamaliel’s feet.
Around him, other students listened attentively as the old master commented on the Torah.
Saul already knew many passages by heart.
He had learned how to debate.
Compare the texts.
To analyze every word.
On that day, Gamaliel was reading the book of Genesis.
He reached the sixth chapter.
“The sons of God saw that the daughters of men were beautiful…”
Saul raised his head slightly.
He knew that passage.
Every serious student knew him.
But this time, his teacher slowed down.
— What does “son of God” mean here? asked a student.
A few murmurs rippled through the group.
Gamaliel replied cautiously.
— Several interpretations are circulating.
He pointed out that in the book of Job, a similar expression could refer to celestial beings appearing before God.
Some readers therefore understood Genesis 6 as the story of beings belonging to the celestial world having crossed a forbidden boundary.
Others suggested alternative interpretations.
But in the Judaism of that time, one tradition was particularly well known.
She elaborated at length on this old story.
The Book of Enoch.
Saul had heard about it.
Like many Jewish texts circulating at that time, it was not placed on the same level as the Torah.
But it was part of the intellectual universe that religious readers were familiar with.
It was said that beings called the Watchers had descended to earth.
They had crossed the border between their domain and that of men.
The story gave them names.
He described their rebellion.
Their judgment.
Their imprisonment.
And especially their gigantic descendants, the Nephilim.
Saul had read these traditions with interest.
But he remained cautious.
A tradition could help to understand how a generation read a text.
However, she was not Scripture itself.
He did not yet know that one day this distinction would become essential to his own understanding.
A few years passed.
Saul became more zealous.
It’s harder too.
When a new movement appeared around the name of Jesus of Nazareth, Saul did not at first see it as a revelation.
He saw a threat.
These men claimed that Jesus, crucified in Jerusalem, was the Messiah.
Even worse:
They said that He had risen from the dead.
Saul fought against this idea.
He persecuted those who believed in it.
Then came the road to Damascus.
The light.
The fall.
The voice.
— Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me?
From that moment on, his entire world map was shattered.
The Jesus he thought was dead was alive.
And if Jesus was alive, then many things that Saul thought he understood would need to be re-examined.
He resumed reading the Scriptures.
Isaiah.
Daniel.
The Psalms.
Genesis.
But now he read them with a new question in mind:
What had the coming, death and resurrection of Christ changed in the visible world… and in the invisible world?
Daniel’s book often came back to his mind.
Daniel had spoken of a “prince of Persia”.
Then a “prince of Greece”.
Beings described as beings behind the conflicts between human kingdoms.
As if visible empires could be linked to invisible realities.
Saul then understood that the idea of an organized spiritual conflict did not come solely from stories outside of Scripture.
The Bible itself already gave glimpses of this.
But she wasn’t drawing a complete map.
She was opening windows.
Here is a spiritual prince.
There, an angel was sent on a mission.
Further away are the rebellious individuals held for judgment.
Then there were the old traditions that Saul knew as a Pharisee.
The Book of Enoch, in particular, offered a much more developed reading of Genesis 6.
According to this text, the rebel Watchers had been imprisoned.
Their descendants, the Nephilim, had been destroyed in the Flood.
And one particular tradition claimed that the spirits of these descendants had become wandering spirits seeking a home.
Was this the definitive explanation for the origin of demons?
Canonical Scripture did not explicitly state this.
Saul could therefore not transform this tradition into a certainty.
But he also couldn’t ignore something strange.
In the stories about Jesus, unclean spirits behaved in a peculiar way.
They were entering people.
They sometimes begged to be sent into animals.
They feared the Abyss.
They were talking about a future “time” of judgment.
They seemed to be perfectly aware of Jesus’ authority.
In Gadara, some had shouted:
— Have you come to torment us before our time?
Before its time.
Saul knew the Scriptures well enough to understand the weight of such a statement.
These beings knew that a judgment had been made.
They may not have known every detail of the divine calendar.
But they knew that their freedom was only temporary.
Then came the experience that Paul would speak of years later with almost painful restraint.
He didn’t even use the first person directly.
He wrote:
“I know a man in Christ…”
But those who knew him understood.
That man, that was him.
Fourteen years earlier, Paul had been over the moon.
He didn’t explain how.
— Was it in my body? I don’t know.
— Outside my body? I don’t know.
God knew.
He simply said he had been taken to heaven.
And to have heard words that a man could not express.
Paul never recounted exactly what he saw.
This is precisely where the mystery begins.
Later, readers would try to fill his silence.
Some might imagine thrones.
Rows of angels.
Hierarchies.
Celestial regions.
But Paul himself gave no detailed description.
He did not say:
“Here is what I have seen concerning each principality.”
He did not say:
“This is the exact organization of the invisible world.”
He imposed a boundary on the narrative.
There were things he wasn’t allowed to talk about.
However, after this experience, something appeared in his letters with a particular force.
One thing is certain.
The spiritual world was real.
Structure.
Active.
But entirely subject, in the final analysis, to the authority of Christ.
In Ephesus, Paul would discover that this invisible world was not a subject for libraries.
This was a reality on the ground.
The city was known for its magical practices.
Formulas were circulating.
Religious items were being sold.
Some men claimed to be manipulating invisible powers.
But when Paul proclaimed Jesus, something happened.
People were abandoning their old practices.
Some of them publicly burned valuable magic books.
Then came an episode that no one present that day ever forgot.
Itinerant Jewish exorcists had seen what was happening around Paul’s ministry.
They had heard the name of Jesus.
They had witnessed the authority with which Paul cast out spirits.
They decided to use the same name as a formula.
— I adjure you by Jesus whom Paul preaches!
They believed the name functioned like an incantation.
But the evil spirit answered.
— Jesus, I know Him.
Silence.
— Paul, I know who he is.
Then the question came:
— But you… who are you?
What followed was humiliating.
The possessed man threw himself upon them.
They had to flee, wounded.
When Paul heard this story, he was probably not surprised.
He knew that spiritual authority was not a formula.
You couldn’t steal the name of Jesus and use it as a technique.
The invisible world, in the account of Acts, made the difference between knowing a name and truly belonging to the One who bears that name.
The spirit had recognized Jesus.
He had also heard about Paul.
This phrase fascinated those who told it:
“Paul, I know who he is.”
How could a spirit know Paul?
Because Paul had become a threat in this conflict.
Not by its own power.
But by the One he served.
It was perhaps in Ephesus that Paul formulated most precisely what he wanted to convey to the believers.
He didn’t want them to become fascinated by demons.
He didn’t want them looking for secret names.
He didn’t want them spending their days building speculative maps of the invisible world.
His conclusion was much more practical.
“Put on the full armor of God.”
Then he described a suit of armor.
The truth.
Justice.
The announcement of peace.
Faith.
Salvation.
The word of God.
Prayer.
Each element corresponded to a form of combat.
If the lie attacked, the truth became a belt.
If the accusation sought to crush the believer, justice was a shield.
If “flaming arrows” struck the mind, faith became a shield.
If thought was threatened by despair, salvation became a helmet.
And the word of God became a sword.
But Paul immediately added prayer.
Always.
With perseverance.
Because the goal was not to become obsessed with the enemy.
The goal was to remain devoted to God.
Paul also knew of an important distinction.
Not all rebellious spiritual beings were presented in the same way.
Peter and Jude spoke of angels who had sinned and were now kept in darkness awaiting judgment.
They were prisoners.
Paul, in Ephesians, spoke of principalities and powers still active in the heavenly places.
These forces were therefore not described as being confined in the same state.
And the Gospels also spoke of unclean spirits acting directly on individuals.
Should we have constructed three absolutely separate categories from these passages?
Some readers would do that.
They would say:
the angels of Genesis 6 who were imprisoned,
the active spiritual principalities,
and the demons seeking bodies.
Others would be more cautious.
Paul himself never gave a systematic picture explicitly stating that these three groups necessarily had three totally different origins.
But one thing was certain:
The spiritual rebellion did not present itself as a simple, uniform mass.
There were differences in authority, function, and situation.
And Paul used terms that suggested an organization.
One evening, while he was teaching a small group of disciples, a young man asked him a question:
— Paul, should we be afraid of them?
Paul immediately understood who he was talking about.
— Powers?
The young man nodded.
— You say they rule in the shadows. You say they are organized. You say they can act against us.
Paul remained silent for a few seconds.
Then he asked:
— Have you ever seen a soldier run after an already defeated army simply because it’s still making noise?
The young man hesitated.
Paul continued:
— Noise is not the same as victory.
He thought of the cross.
In his letter to the Colossians, he had used a powerful image.
Christ had stripped principalities and powers.
He had displayed them publicly.
He had triumphed over them.
For a Roman, the image was immediately understandable.
After a victory, a general could enter the city in a triumph.
The vanquished were shown.
Everyone could see who had won.
This is how Paul read the cross.
The men had looked at Jesus crucified and had seen a condemned man.
The invisible world had witnessed something else.
An act of cosmic warfare.
Sin was judged.
Death was losing its ultimate authority.
The enemy powers were stripped of their claim to rule.
“They can still fight,” said Paul. “But they don’t decide the end.”
He knew, however, that the battle could be painful.
In another letter, he would recount that Satan had thwarted some of his plans.
He would also speak of a “thorn in the flesh,” which he called a messenger of Satan.
He had asked God to take it away.
Three times.
The answer was not what he had hoped for.
“My grace is sufficient for you.”
Thus Paul was not teaching a naive faith in which knowing Jesus immediately eliminated all opposition.
He knew about prisons.
The blows.
Betrayals.
Fatigue.
Fear.
Resistances.
He knew that Christ’s victory did not prevent the enemy from acting in the present.
But she was changing the meaning of her action.
The enemy could resist.
He couldn’t rewrite the ending.
Paul had even written a strange sentence to the Corinthians:
“Do you not know that we will judge the angels?”
The tone was almost surprising.
Don’t you know?
As if this were part of a lesson that his readers should already have known.
What kind of angels would be judged?
The text does not elaborate on all the implications.
But for Paul, the fate of the rebellious powers was not uncertain.
They would be tried.
And humanity redeemed in Christ would participate, in a way that Paul does not fully detail, in this future order.
What a contrast.
In Genesis, man seemed to be the victim of a rebellion beyond his comprehension.
In stories about demons, human beings sometimes seemed to be completely dominated.
But in Christ, Paul foretold a reversal.
Those who appeared weak would one day participate in the judgment of powers that were once terrifying.
However, the most surprising point in his theology was not the fate of angels.
That was the fate of men.
Paul knew the story of the heavenly rebellion.
He was familiar with the texts about sinful angels.
He knew the seriousness of the sentence.
And the more he understood this, the more immense a question became:
Why had the man been given a chance at salvation?
The author of the Letter to the Hebrews would express this difference as follows:
God’s help is directed towards the descendants of Abraham, not towards the rebellious angels.
Christian tradition would see this as a striking contrast.
Christ had not become an angel.
He had become a man.
He had taken on flesh.
He had been hungry.
He had cried.
He had suffered.
He had shed human blood.
He died a natural death.
Then He was resurrected in a glorified body.
For what ?
To save the man.
Paul called this:
grace.
Not the superiority of man.
Not his intelligence.
Not his innocence.
Grace.
The human being had not earned this help.
He had received it.
This idea prevented Paul from turning his teaching about the invisible world into a simple terrifying story.
He was familiar with the principalities.
But he spoke more about Christ.
He knew Satan.
But he spoke more about grace.
He knew the powers that be.
But he refused to give them the last word.
In his letter to the Romans, he drew up a list almost as if he wanted to challenge the entire universe:
death.
The life.
The angels.
The principalities.
The things that are present.
Future things.
The heights.
The depths.
Then he concluded:
None of these things could separate those who were in Christ from the love of God.
Principalities existed.
That was precisely why Paul named them.
But they had a limit.
They could not take from God what belonged to Him.
Years later, in prison, Paul may have thought back to that young man from Ephesus who had asked him:
“Should we be afraid?”
Around him, Rome seemed all-powerful.
The emperor had soldiers.
Prisons.
Courts.
Paul could be executed.
In human terms, he was the prisoner.
But he knew that appearances never told the whole story.
An empire could imprison his body.
Not the Gospel.
An invisible power could resist his mission.
Not to cancel the resurrection of Christ.
Satan could act.
Not changing one’s own conviction.
The rebel angels could be powerful.
But some were already described as being held for trial.
The others also had a limited time.
The illness could give the impression of spreading.
For Paul, this did not mean that he won.
But the story wasn’t over.
So how did Paul know so much about the invisible world?
The most accurate answer is probably not a single explanation.
He had the Scriptures.
He knew Daniel, Genesis, Job, Isaiah and the Psalms.
He had been trained in first-century Judaism and was probably familiar with interpretive traditions circulating in his time, including ideas also found in the Book of Enoch.
But this book was not, for the majority of Christian traditions, a canonical authority equivalent to Scripture.
It could shed light on a context.
Not establishing a doctrine alone.
Paul had above all encountered the resurrected Christ.
And he had lived through this extraordinary experience which he called the third heaven.
Exactly what he experienced there remains unknown.
To claim that he learned the entire hierarchy of angels there would be to go beyond what he wrote.
But after all that, one conviction runs through his letters:
The visible world is not the whole of reality.
There is a spiritual conflict.
This conflict is organized.
It is dangerous.
But its outcome has already been determined by Christ.
In Ephesus, Paul finally finished his sentence.
He put down his reed pen.
“Take up the full armor of God.”
Not to chase after darkness.
To stand firm.
That was the verb that kept coming up.
Hold.
To hold firm when the lie comes.
To stand firm when the accusation strikes.
Hold firm when fear tries to convince you that the enemy is more powerful than he is.
To hold on when an entire culture seems to be going in the opposite direction.
To persevere when visible circumstances seem to contradict invisible promises.
Because, for Paul, the believer did not fight to create a victory.
He was fighting from a victory already won by Christ.
He raised his eyes towards the night.
Ephesus was asleep.
The temples were still standing.
Political powers still existed.
Occult practices had not disappeared from the city.
The world seemed unchanged.
But Paul knew something that the stones of Artemis’s temple could not tell.
Kingdoms pass away.
The powers fall.
The rebellious angels will be judged.
Death itself has an end.
And the one whom Paul had once persecuted was alive.
That is why he could speak of the invisible world without morbid fascination.
That is why he could name the principalities without trembling.
That is why he could look upon prison, persecution, and even death without believing that the enemy had won.
He knew the last chapter.
And for Paul, the most important question was therefore not:
“How many powers exist in the darkness?”
Neither :
“What is the name of each fallen angel?”
Nor even:
“What exactly does he experience in third heaven?”
The real question was much more personal:
“Whose side are you on in this war?”
Because Paul knew men who possessed a great deal of religious knowledge, but no relationship with Christ.
Sceva’s sons knew His name.
The evil spirit knew the difference.
Paul himself had known the Scriptures before he knew Jesus.
He had defended God while persecuting those who belonged to the Son of God.
The information was therefore insufficient.
Tradition alone was not enough.
Even an impressive knowledge of the invisible world was not enough.
What changed everything was Christ.
Christ crucified.
The resurrected Christ.
Christ is above all principality, all power, all dominion, and every name that can be named.
And when Paul reflected on everything he had learned, everything he had seen, and everything he had endured, one conviction remained stronger than all the others:
nor the angels,
nor the principalities,
nor the powers,
nor death,
nor the depth,
nor any creature,
could not separate those who were in Christ from the love of God.
The invisible world was real.
But he was not sovereign.
Christ was.
