Ephesians 4:10

10. For the purpose of identifying the Jehovah of the psalmist with Christ, Paul in Ephesians 4:9 notes that the psalmist’s ascender must have previously been a descender; now, for the purpose of showing Christ’s exaltation, he argues that the descender is the ascender. He In the Greek emphatic, the identical he.

Above all the heavens With the article in the Greek, the threefold heavens of the Old Testament. Note on 2 Corinthians 12:2-4. As the psalmist’s Jehovah ascends Zion, so the apostle’s Christ ascends from the depth of hades to even above the heavens. For God is truly above all heavens.

Fill all things The Highest is omnipotent, and he takes the highest position that he may pour himself down, over and into all things, natural and supernatural. But while he fills all other things with presence and power, he fills his Church with special plenitudes and endowments.

To the questions of modern astronomy, Where are heaven, paradise, hades? we may, (in addition to our notes on 2 Corinthians 12:2-4,) give this further answer: Dr. Dawson, in his Bible and Nature, suggests that heaven, the third heaven, may be supposably located beyond the astral heaven. Assuming our starry universe to be finite, then there is a circumambient pure space, encompassing our whole starry system with its ethereal belt. There God may for us specially dwell, in the third or highest heaven, and in supremacy enthroned above all the heavens, binding the system with his power and sending his volitions as perpetual laws through and to the centre. Paradise we might then identify with the second, lower, or “astral heavens;” but the texts suggest a more limited region. Hence Byron’s conception, though sublime, is too cold and indefinite for the biblical view of the blessed abode of sainted spirits:

“When coldness wraps this suffering clay,

Ah! whither strays the immortal mind?

It cannot die, it cannot stray.

But leaves its darkened dust behind.

Then, unembodied, doth it trace

By steps each planet’s wand’ring way?

Or fill at once the realms of space,

A thing of eyes, that all survey?”

But from the use of the word air in Ephesians 2:2, and Ephesians 6:12, (where see notes,) we should infer that the lowest, or “aerial heaven,” is the border region where the forces of paradise and lower hades blend and struggle. And thence descending, we are led to find the darker and darkest hades in the lower parts of the earth, that is, towards and in the subterranean regions. We should be inclined, therefore, to find the normal paradise in the upper margin of the aerial stratum, undivided yet distinct from the lower hades, and unexcluded from the “astral heavens.” Paradise we should view as a broad, overlying margin of pure ethereal glory, underlaid with shade, deepening to denser and still denser darkness, even, perhaps, to the subterranean centre. That centre is the lowest hades. As to the ouranos, heaven, and the gehenna, hell, beyond the resurrection, see note on 1 Thessalonians 4:17.

That the ancient and biblical idea, which located hades in the interior of the earth, finds nothing in the earth’s solidity nor in any fact of science to contradict it, is well shown in the following passage from the Unseen Universe, p. 160:

“The deservedly famous Dr. Thomas Young has the following passage in his Lectures on Natural Philosophy: “Nor is there any thing in the unprejudiced study of physical philosophy that can induce us to doubt the existence of immaterial substances; on the contrary, we see analogies that lead us almost directly to such an opinion. The electrical fluid is supposed to be essentially different from common matter; the general medium of light and heat, according to some, or the principle of caloric, according to others, is equally distinct from it. We see forms of matter, differing in subtilty and mobility, bearing the names of solids, liquids, and gases; above these are the semi-material existences, which produce the phenomena of electricity and magnetism, and either caloric or a universal ether. Higher still, perhaps, are the causes of gravitation, and the immediate agents in attractions of all kinds, which exhibit some phenomena apparently still more remote from all that is compatible with material bodies. And of these different orders of beings the more refined and immaterial appear to pervade the grosser. It seems, therefore, natural to believe that the analogy may be continued still further until it rises into existences absolutely immaterial and spiritual. We know not but that thousands of spiritual worlds may exist unseen forever by human eyes; nor have we any reason to suppose that even the presence of matter, in a given spot, necessarily excludes these existences from it. Those who maintain that nature always teems with life, wherever living beings can be placed, may therefore speculate with freedom on the possibility of independent worlds; some existing in different parts of space, others pervading each other unseen and unknown, in the same space, and others again to which space may not be a necessary mode of existence.”