After this I looked,
and behold,
a door was opened in heaven.
The first voice which I heard was as it were of a trumpet talking with me,
which said,
Come up hither.
And I will shew thee things which must be hereafter.
Immediately I was in the spirit,
and behold,
a throne was set in heaven.
John has finished the letters to the seven churches. He looks, and a door is opened in heaven. The voice is the first voice, as of a trumpet, the same voice that told him to write. It says, Come up hither, and I will shew thee things which must be hereafter. He is in the Spirit at once, and a throne is set.
The door is not a parable he invents. It is opened for him. What he sees from there is the throne, the One who sits, the elders, the living creatures, and the Lamb. The churches were the lampstands on earth. The door is the way the same Lord shows him what is above, and what must be hereafter.
Come up hither is for John. It is not a command written to the churches to leave the earth in that verse. The showing is the book that follows.
A door was opened in heaven.
Come up hither.
A throne was set.
Scripture uses heaven for more than one thing. The first is the sky, the air and the clouds. The second is the starry host. The third is the dwelling of God, where Paul says he was caught up, whether in the body or out of it he did not know. John is shown a door in that last sense. A throne is set. One sits on it. No telescope is aimed at that.
Observation can map the air, the planets, and the observable universe. It can say the sky was not torn by a physical door in the first century that left a crater, a radiation spike, or a hole in the star field. It cannot weigh a throne, time a voice like a trumpet, or prove a vision false because no instrument recorded it. John says he was in the Spirit. The text puts the sight there, not in the weather.
Ezekiel saw the heavens opened and visions of God. Stephen saw the heavens opened and the Son of Man standing. Those are the same kind of report. A physical door in the atmosphere would be a different claim, and this verse does not make it.
The sky can be measured.
The throne cannot.
John was in the Spirit.
After this I looked, and, behold, a door was opened in heaven.
Come up hither, and I will shew thee things which must be hereafter.
Immediately I was in the spirit: and, behold, a throne was set in heaven.
The door is opened for John. The sky can be measured. This throne cannot. He was in the Spirit.
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