Come, Follow Me with FAIR: Faithful Answers to New Testament Questions – 2 Corinthians 8–13

Evangelical Questions: Why do you believe in Levels of Heaven? by Jennifer Roach, MDiv, LMHC Welcome back to Come Follow Me with FAIR: Faithful Answers to New Testament Questions. My name is Jennifer Roach and today we’re going to talk about the 3 kingdoms of Heaven. As you know we’re going through the Come Follow Me readings and addressing common questions that Evangelicals ask about our faith as we go along. Our purpose here is not to fuel debate but to help you understand where your Evangelical friends and family are coming from so that you can have better conversations with them, and perhaps even be able to offer them a bit of our faith in a way they can understand. Quick announcement for you first: This coming weekend, Friday Sept 22 – Saturday Sept 23 is an online only conference put on by FAIR and the focus is evidence for the Book of Mormon. I am not presenting at this conference but I do get to help out a bit with introductions and questions which I am thrilled to death over because it means I get to hang out with some very smart people all day long. The Friday evening presentation is none other than Richard Bushman. On Saturday there are a number of speakers including Stephen Smoot – he’s the most up-to-date scholar on issues surrounding the Book of Abraham; a presentation by my 2 favorite Spencers – Spencer Marsh and Spencer Kraus – which I think has been jokingly titled, “Revealing the One True Spencer” but in reality is about 2 Nephi 19:1, which is rather a puzzling verse. Several good talks on archeology challenges and ancient artifacts. I’ll be there live with the speakers, but the conference is online only and you can stream it on the FAIR YouTube channel. Okay, we’re going to talk about the levels of Heaven. Our jumping-off verse is 2 Corinthians 12:2: I know a man in Christ who fourteen years ago was caught up to the third heaven. Whether it was in the body or out of the body I do not know—God knows. And I’ve noticed that Latter-day Saints sometimes are confused about why Evangelicals don’t accept this idea, it’s in the Bible after all. I want to talk through how and why Evangelicals see this verse in 2 Corinthians the way they do, and then we’ll talk about some intersections with our faith and where you might go in conversation about this topic. I don’t have research to point to that backs this up, but my sense is that if you asked most Evangelicals what Paul means by “the 3rd Heaven” they wouldn’t even understand the question. It’s considered an obscure verse that they generally don’t spend a lot of time on so the average Evangelical person might not even know it’s in scripture. But, for those who do, they have a very concrete (meaning physical) explanation for it – rather than a spiritual one. Which brings up a bigger question: Why do we – why does anyone – take some verses literally and some spiritually? Evangelicals and Latter-day Saints use both techniques, but at different times and for different reasons. The cynical explanation is that the other group, the group that is opposite of you, does this at their own convenience only to fit their doctrine in. But I think it’s more complex than that. Both Latter-day Saints and Evangelicals (as well as every other denominational group or religion out there) are heavily influenced by a set of interpretative rules called hermeneutics. The hermeneutic you use – here the choices are physical or spiritual, but there are lots of others – d