Bible Synapse
Has anyone but Jesus gone up to heaven?
Hard question · The life of Jesus · raised by 5 of the lists sceptics circulate
See the passages joined in the interactive mapThe passages
Jesus speaks of what he has seen: no one has gone up to heaven but the Son of Man, who came down from heaven.
Verily, verily, I say unto thee, We speak that we do know, and testify that we have seen; and ye receive not our witness. If I have told you earthly things, and ye believe not, how shall ye believe, if I tell you of heavenly things? And no man hath ascended up to heaven, but he that came down from heaven, even the Son of man which is in heaven.
A chariot of fire parts Elijah from Elisha, and Elijah goes up by a whirlwind into heaven.
And it came to pass, as they still went on, and talked, that, behold, there appeared a chariot of fire, and horses of fire, and parted them both asunder; and Elijah went up by a whirlwind into heaven.
Enoch walked with God, and then he was not there, for God took him.
And Enoch walked with God: and he was not; for God took him.
By faith Enoch was taken up so that he did not see death.
By faith Enoch was translated that he should not see death; and was not found, because God had translated him: for before his translation he had this testimony, that he pleased God.
The objection
Jesus told Nicodemus that “no man hath ascended up to heaven, but he that came down from heaven”. Yet the Old Testament says Elijah “went up by a whirlwind into heaven”, and Genesis and Hebrews say Enoch was taken up without dying. So others had gone to heaven before Jesus.
The answer
Jesus is not saying who has ever been taken to God, but who can speak about heaven from first-hand knowledge. The verses before set the subject: “We speak that we do know, and testify that we have seen” (John 3:11), and “how shall ye believe, if I tell you of heavenly things?” (3:12). No one has gone up into heaven and come back to tell what is there; only the Son of Man, who came down from heaven, can do that. Jesus is echoing an old way of speaking about God’s hidden wisdom: “Who hath ascended up into heaven, or descended?” (Proverbs 30:4; compare Deuteronomy 30:12).
Enoch and Elijah do not fit that description. Neither went up by his own power, for God took Enoch (Genesis 5:24) and the Lord took Elijah up by a whirlwind (2 Kings 2:1, 11), and neither came back to teach what he had seen. John Gill and Adam Clarke both explain the verse this way.
Other answers Christians give
‘Heaven’ as the sky
The Hebrew shamayim means both the sky and the dwelling of God. Some, such as Tektonics, take 2 Kings 2:11 to say that Elijah was carried up into the sky, without saying where he was then taken, so that John 3:13 is not touched at all.
From the classic commentators
Though Enoch and Elias had, yet not by their own power, nor in the sense our Lord designs; whose meaning is, that no man had, or could go up to heaven, to bring from thence the knowledge of divine and heavenly thingsJohn Gill, Exposition on John 3:13 (1746–1763)
This seems a figurative expression for, No man hath known the mysteries of the kingdom of God; as in Deuteronomy 30:12; Psalm 73:17; Proverbs 30:4; Romans 11:34.Adam Clarke, Commentary on John 3:13 (1810–1826)
Sources
- John Gill, Exposition of the Bible: John 3, at Bible Hub
- Adam Clarke, Commentary on John 3, at Bible Hub
- Jamieson, Fausset and Brown, Commentary on John 3, at Bible Hub