What verse shows that the atmosphere is the first heaven?
Genesis 7:23 shows the atmosphere is the first heaven. It speaks of "the fowl of the heaven" during the Flood, and the first heaven is identified as the air or atmosphere, the area where birds fly. Thus Scripture uses that verse to place the atmosphere in the first heaven.
Les teaches that Scripture lists three heavens: the first heaven, the second heaven, and the third heaven. The first heaven is what we would call the air or the atmosphere, the area where the birds fly. To show this from Scripture, he turns back to Genesis chapter 7 and comes down to verse 23, in the context of the Flood. There it says, "and creeping things, the fowl of the heaven." So it was already referred to that the atmosphere is part of what the Bible calls the first heaven. The second area is what we now call space, or the area of the stars, and the third one is heaven as we know it, the third heaven.
And every living substance was destroyed which was upon the face of the ground, both man, and cattle, and the creeping things, and the fowl of the heaven; and they were destroyed from the earth: and Noah only remained alive, and they that were with him in the ark.