Jesus told a thief on the cross beside Him, “Today shalt thou be with me in paradise” (Luke 22:43). The apostle Paul, writing in 2 Corinthians 12:2-4, spoke of going to “paradise” and “heaven,” but being forbidden to reveal what he saw in Heaven. Jesus did not go to Heaven the day He died but to Paradise. He arose and returned to earth on the third day. After returning and being seen by several people, He ascended through the atmosphere in a cloud to the third Heaven about which Paul later penned. Daniel had foretold of this in Daniel 7:13-14. We, thus, conclude that both Jesus and Paul went to both Paradise and Heaven, and Paul, in writing to the Corinthians defending his apostleship, wrote of two different places, Paradise — the temporary place for the righteous dead — and Heaven — the final resting place for those same people after the Judgement Day. Paul, though, had to return to earth and was forbidden to describe what he had seen.
A main lesson for us is that people claiming to have died, gone to the spirit world and have come back to tell us what it was like are under a delusion! Or, they lie! If the apostle Paul could not tell what he viewed and experienced, people claiming to have gone to the spirit world and returned would not be allowed to tell about it either.
All righteous who die before Christ returns in the clouds will spend some time in Paradise, but none will go straight from earth to Heaven. There was a special reason for God letting Paul view Heaven, to help identify him as Christ’s appointed apostle. To speak of people going directly from earth to Heaven at death has no Bible basis, and certainly, nobody contemporary with us has gone to Heaven and returned to earth.
