Leaving the author behind, in the passage above we read that Levi has been invited for a trip to heaven, with stops along the way. An angel lets him have a look at the heavens. Most importantly, not only is he allowed to see the heavens, he can actually enter them. A little bit later in his testament he describes his trip, heaven by heaven. He starts at the beginning:
Hear, then, about the seven heavens. The lowest is the gloomiest because it witnesses all the unrighteous deeds of men. (Testament of Levi 3:1b)
Intriguing! The heaven closest to us is gloomy, because it is closest to humanity’s injustice. In other words, it’s closest to the darkness of sin (see John 1:4–5). That’s quite logical, when you think about it. Another reason it is gloomy is because this heaven is furthest away from God, who we all know is light. The first heaven is gloomy, the second one is full of weather:
The second [heaven] holds fire, snow, ice, ready for the day which the Lord has decreed in the righteous judgement of God: in it are all the spirits of retribution for vengeance on the wicked. (Testament of Levi 3:2)
The second heaven contains fire, snow, and ice. That snow and ice exist in the heavens is quite normal to people living in the colder parts of this world. Some places have months of snow every year, but for someone in Israel snow was by no means normal. Snow or ice from the sky was a disaster: exactly the same as fire from the sky. God often uses fire to destroy sinners, he could also use snow or ice (Genesis 19:24).
Here, in this second heaven, are the extreme weather conditions that can only be acts of God. So, when God wants to destroy a city, what does he do? Simple. He lets some of these heavenly stores fall upon the earth. We might think this is too simplistic, but at the same time it makes a certain type of sense. The reasoning has a certain elegance.
What else is in this second heaven? Spirits (i.e., angels) who punish the wicked. This is harder to understand. Not many people nowadays would say that angels punish people, demons do that in hell. It might help to notice that the angels only punish the evil people, the wicked. When God stops time, when God finally destroys all evil, these angels are the ones responsible for the wicked, for the people who do not want to know God. The angels of punishment stand at the ready in the second heaven.
That is the second heaven, and Levi continues upward:
In the third are the warrior hosts appointed to wreak vengeance on the spirits of error and of Beliar at the day of judgement. (Testament of Levi 3:3a)
The third heaven is similar to the second. Once again there are armies of angels, but these angels will attack Beliar (another name for Satan, 2 Corinthians 6:15) and his spirits. In the great, final battle between good and evil, these angels will fight on the side of good (see Revelation 19:11–21). They will destroy the evil angels, and they will avenge all the ages of misery that these evil spirits caused.
In order to achieve their mission, the warrior hosts need to be ready to attack. So here they are in the third heaven, just above the snow, ice, and fire. As close to humanity as possible, so that there needn’t be any waiting.
Higher Heavens
Levi’s trip continues with the fourth, fifth, sixth, and seventh heavens:
But the heavens down to the fourth above these are holy [. . . .] And in the [fourth] heaven next to it are thrones and powers, in which praises are offered to God continually. (Testament of Levi 3:3b, 8)
Levi doesn’t give us much information about the fourth heaven. What we do see is that there are heavenly thrones and powers. All of these thrones aren’t for God; he doesn’t even live in the fourth heaven. It is not entirely clear what or who these heavenly kings are who have these heavenly thrones. They are not the archangels, because they are higher up. Soon we will run into the archangels.
While the heavenly kings might be a bit of a mystery, we do see heavenly rulers every now and then in the New Testament. Paul talks about powers, authorities, rulers, and dominions that are not earthly (Colossians 2:10, Ephesians 1:21, Romans 8:28). These heavenly powers, whatever they are, live in the fourth heaven—at least according to Levi. They do more than just ruling; they spend most of their time praising God without ceasing.
By this time, halfway through the heavens, we see that the heavens have become holy. There is no more talk of sin or punishment. These things are no longer discussed. We have started to move on to praising and holiness. And the fifth heaven is even more holy, it is filled with angels:
And in the heaven below it [i.e., the fifth heaven] are the angels who bear the answers to the angels of the Lord’s presence. (Testament of Levi 3:7)
The word “angel” in Greek just means “messenger.” We have taken the Greek word for messenger “angellos” and bastardized it to “angel.” We then stopped translating the Greek into English. We do this quite often: Christ (christos means anointed), synagogue (synagoge means gathering), Satan (satanas means adversary). Despite that the word “bastardize” sounds quite harsh, there is nothing wrong with this practice. Christ is not just any anointed person and an angel is much more than an earthly messenger. But, as we read the Bible we should always remind ourselves of these original meanings.
An angel was originally a messenger between God and humanity. The angels that went among humankind were exposed to the sins of humanity. This means that these angels would have been seen as unclean—just like the first heaven was unclean. These messenger angels were too unclean to enter the presence of God. That’s why they could only reach the fifth heaven. There they could, as it were, shout up to the sixth heaven. The angels of the presence of God, who are in the sixth heaven, can hear them:
And in the heaven next to it [i.e., the sixth] are the angels of the Lord’s presence, who minister and make expiation to the Lord for all the sins committed unwittingly by the righteous: and they offer to the Lord a soothing odour, a spiritual and bloodless offering. (Testament of Levi 3:5–6)
In the sixth heaven, we see a special type of angel: the angels of the presence of the Lord. Literally the testament speaks of “the angels of the face of the Lord.” Often these angels are called archangels (Revelation 8:1). The Bible only ever calls one archangel by name—Michael (Jude 9)—and tells us that he is one of the chief princes (Daniel 10:13). Gabriel, another famous angel, is called an angel of the presence in the Bible, never an archangel (Luke 1:19). Outside of the Bible, Gabriel, Rafael, Uriel, and Jeremiel are often called archangels.
These angels do three things that are all related: they minister, they make expiation for humanity’s sins, and they offer sacrifices. In this respect, they look very much like the Old Testament priests, who—just like these angels—ministered in the temple, made atonement for the sins of the people, and brought sacrifices to the Lord. It seems that the Jews and Christians back then imagined that there was a temple in heaven, just like on earth, where angels organized similar services to those in the earthly temple. This is not totally unexpected, whoever reads Hebrews 8 and 9 would come to a similar conclusion.
What is unexpected, however, is the sacrifice the archangels bring. This is a sacrifice with two characteristics: it is a spiritual or rational offering, and it is a bloodless offering. The first characteristic, “spiritual,” is something that Paul also talks about (Romans 12:1). It is “spiritual” or “true” worship that we ourselves give to God. The other characteristic, “bloodless,” is stranger. If you think about it carefully, a bloodless sacrifice is hard to imagine. On the other hand, you can imagine that a bloody offering is equally hard to imagine in heaven. Nowhere do we read “and this is where the bulls and lambs are kept for the sacrifices.” There are no sacrificial animals in heaven, patiently awaiting their fate. In fact, there isn’t any death
