Everlasting Kingdom: Unraveling the Bible’s Secrets

John 3:13 Gabriel Commentary

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John 3:13 NO ONE HAS GONE UP TO HEAVEN EXCEPT THE ONE WHO CAME DOWN FROM HEAVEN, the Human Son who is in Heaven. [Commentary]The Gabriel Bible

John 3:13 is one of the best places in the Bible to expose the side stepping song and dance routine of “Bible apologists” (as if the Bible needed anyone to apologize for it). John 3:13 has stirred a great deal of controversy for three reasons:

John 3:13 Concern #1 “No one has gone up to heaven”: Almost the entirety of Christianity believes that when people die, if they were “saved” they go immediately to heaven. The KJV mentions “heaven” 551 times and “heavens” 127 times, but none of those references say anything about people going there! In fact the only “person” in the Bible who claimed to want to go there was Satan (Isaiah 14:13)! Actually, if you read “the end of the story”, heaven comes to us (Revelation 21).

What really happens is that we must wait in death until the resurrection. Daniel explains is pretty well:

Daniel 12:1-4 AT THAT TIME, Michael will take a stand, the great commander who stands for your people, and there will be a time of trouble [the Great Tribulation, worse than 536 A.D, The Worst Year In History], such as there has never been since the first nation up until that time, AND AT THAT TIME [during the “time of the end!”] your people will escape, everyone whose names are still found {niphal} recorded in the Book [of Life]. 2 Multitudes of people sleeping in the dust of the earth will wake up, some of them to everlasting life, and the others to shame and everlasting contempt. 3 Those who are wise will shine like the brightness of the expanse of heaven, and those who turn many to righteousness like the stars forever and ever. 4 But Daniel, keep this message a secret, and put a seal on the book until the time of the end. Many will travel around quickly, and knowledge will greatly increase”.

John 3:13 Concern #2 is when He “came down from heaven”. Yeshua (Jesus) actually resided in the heavenly realm with the One who was to be His Father (when He was born as a human). He temporarily gave up His status for us!

Index

Philipptians 2:6-8 Altho He was in the form of Yehovah, He didn’t consider His equality with Yehovah to be a prize to grasp tightly onto [1]. 7 So He divested Himself, and took on the form of a servant by coming into existence in human form. 8 And when He found Himself in human form, He lowered Himself by becoming obedient until the time of death, even death on a cross.

[1] The Modern Greek to English versions understand that “robbery” is not what is literally being spoken of in this passage, since it doesn’t make sense. “Clinging onto” is not necessarily “snatching.”

Some try to conclude that Yeshua was saying that he was the only person to both go up to heaven AND to return, but that is simply not what He said. He said that He was the only person who would be going up there. The fact that He also came down is a second but separate truth that many reject as well. In addition to being the I AM of ancient times, He also came down ‘as an embryo’.

John 3:13 Concern #3: “the Human Son (or Son of Man) who is in heaven”. People take this to mean that Yeshua was saying that He was in two places at once. Another way to understand this is that John was recounting what Yeshua had explained to him prior to His death, and he simply commented that He was in heaven now.

Are Yehovah (God) or Yeshua ever in two place at once? We know that Their spirit is present everywhere, but what about Their bodily presence. If omnipresence is Biblical then this is the example. But is there a clear example of omnipresence in the Bible? In the account of the destruction of Sodom, the sins were so unbelievably horrific that a personal visit was required to verify just how bad it was:

Genesis 18:20-21 Yehovah said, “Because the outcries against Sodom and Gomorrah are so numerous, and because their sin is so very serious, 21 I’m going down now to see if their actions are as bad as the outcries that have come up to Me. If not, I will know.

This doesn’t sound like omnipresence to me.

There is another possible consideration for John 3:16. The oldest 2 or 3 Greek translations (the ones modern versions almost always use), are poorly made translations of the original Aramaic, but they don’t include the phrase “who is in heaven”. And while I generally don’t trust the Wescott and Hort copies, they don’t include a few additions that were made in the first and second century.

Didn’t Elijah go to heaven (contradicting John 3:13)? Not exactly, see this article. Most commentators have great difficulty reconciling the fiery chariot event with the letter Elijah sent about 7 years later, as recorded in 2 Chronicles 21:12. The problem is that people assume that Elijah 1) died and 2) went to the highest heaven rather than having experienced a dramatic ending of his mission there and then. Verse 16 is more like what happened in 1 Kings 18:12. See more on Elijah here under the heading: The Fifth Coming of Elijah! Elijah never left the atmosphere, as John mentioned above.

I checked the commentaries referenced on the Forerunner site, and Forerunner was the only commentary that accepted at face value the simple truth that Yeshua stated.

The next Gabriel Bible commentary is John 3:16

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