Passover to Pentecost – Other Ascension Stories         Week 6 Day 3

The Lord was about to take Elijah up to heaven in a whirlwind.  2 Kings 2:1 (NIV)

We will look at two cases where a man was taken into heaven while still alive:

Enoch – His story is found in Genesis 5: 21 -24.  It says he walked with God 300 years and God took him.  One creative preacher said that they spent so much time walking together that one day when they were close to heaven; God asked him to spend the night and he just never went home. J

Elijah – His story of being taken into heaven is in 2 Kings 2: 1 – 18.  This story has a backward connection to the Feast and Joshua’s Fifty Days.  Elijah and Elisha started in Gilgal then proceed down the list:

• Bethel – House of God
• Gilgal – (back to)Place of circumcision, first camp, held Joshua’s first Passover
• Jericho – First city taken, it happened during the Counting of the Omer
• Jordan River – “Baptism” for all those born in the wilderness
• “The Wilderness”- Place where Moses died.

This is a reverse of the locations that Joshua and the Israelites took when they came into the Promised Land.

There is a third case in Revelations 11: 12 where the Two Witnesses will rise into heaven in a cloud.  This is after they had been killed by the Beast.  The powers of these witnesses match Moses and Elijah while they were on earth.  But Enoch and Elijah are the only two people never to die, and it is written that man is appointed once to die (Hebrews 9:27).

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