that he was caught away into paradise and heard unutterable words which it is not lawful for a man to speak.

Whether what he heard was in Hebrew or Greek, languages known to him, or in some foreign language that cannot be translated in known human languages, the apostle Paul does not specify.

7, 8. (a) Why is the “paradise” to which Paul refers not the same as the one mentioned in Revelation 2:7? (b) Why was that “paradise” to which Paul was caught away not the “garden of Eden”?

⁷ As for his being caught away to “paradise,” this is here associated with the “third heaven.” This would suggest something spiritual. But this would not indicate that the paradise to which Paul was caught away was the one referred to in the message sent by the glorified Jesus Christ to the congregation in Ephesus, Asia Minor: “Let the one who has an ear hear what the spirit says to the congregations: To him that conquers I will grant to eat of the tree of life, which is in the paradise of God.” (Revelation 2:7) This “paradise of God” is a figurative one in the invisible spirit heavens, into which flesh and blood cannot enter and into which fleshly eye cannot see. (1 Corinthians 15:50) Nor is there any intimation that the apostle Paul saw symbols of things that are in the invisible spirit heavens in the way that the apostle John saw such, of which John gives us a description in Revelation, chapter four. So it is very unlikely that the apostle Paul was caught away to the “paradise of God” to see its “tree of life.”

⁸ As far as the original earthly paradise, the “garden of Eden,” is concerned, there is nothing mysterious to human creatures about such a paradise. It is nothing beyond human experience, and the restoration of it to earth under God’s Messianic kingdom has long been understood according to the Bible prophecies. (Genesis 3:8-24) Hence, the apostle Paul would not have to receive “supernatural visions and revelations of the Lord” in order to learn and know that.​—2 Corinthians 12:1.

9, 10. (a) The vision given to the apostle Paul was concerning what paradise, existing at what time? (b) The “unutterable words” that Paul heard involved what, and speaking those words would have meant what?

⁹ There is, however, another paradise that the Holy Scriptures picture prophetically, even giving us a historic prototype of this, in the land of Judah after the Babylonian exile of the Jews. This paradise is the spiritual one in our day, nineteen centuries after the apostle Paul was caught away to the “third heaven” and to “paradise” in a supernatural vision. What Paul heard during that realistic experience, the “unutterable words which it is not lawful for a man to speak,” were about this then future spiritual paradise. This blessed estate of Christ’s true disciples would come into existence during his “presence” or parousia at the “conclusion of the system of things.”​—Matthew 24:3.

¹⁰ Paul was inspired to foretell the religious “apostasy” that would befall the Christian congregation before the “presence of our Lord Jesus Christ,” but it was not lawful for him as a man to speak about this spiritual paradise, about which he heard in “unutterable words.” To do so would have meant for him to interpret the Bible prophecies that have to do with this spiritual paradise.​—2 Thessalonians 2:1-3; 2 Corinthians 12:1-4.