Save for going to church this morning, I’ve
been in sort of a lockdown since Friday at 10:30 a.m., caring for a friend’s
89-year-old father, as well as her two big Golden Doodles, house and yard.
Today’s sermon was about life in the third
heaven and it made me think about how one day Believers are going to have a glorified
body that can instantly zip from one place to another.
“Think about how the Lord Jesus Christ is in
the tomb and walks right through the wall to get out; He doesn’t need anybody
to open the door,” says Jordan. “His disciples were all in the Upper Room,
locked in with the doors nailed shut and the windows pried down, and they’re
trying to figure out what to do next because everybody’s mad at them and their
Lord’s been killed and their hearts are full of fear. They’re having a meeting
and look up and see a guy at the end of the table who wasn’t there a minute
ago!
“They checked the door and counted the
numbers and said, ‘How’d He get in?!’ He just walked through the wall, that’s
how He got in!
“Did you ever want to just be here on the earth
and say, ‘I think I’m going to fly; beam me up, Scotty,’ and be in heaven? You
know, seven hundred and fifty billion light years across the universe. And then
say, ‘I think I’ll go back down now,' and beam yourself back down and do all of
that in less than two hours’ time? That is, do some business up there and come
back? You think, ‘That wouldn’t be too bad. I’d love to try that kind of body
out a little bit.’
“You look at all the exciting things God’s
got in store for your glorified body, and the things you’re going to be able to
do with it, and you say, ‘Man, that’s wonderful!’
“But there’s something more than that.
There’s even going to be something better than knowing you’re going to be able
to eat anything you want to and never have to worry about getting fat . . .”
*****
In Isaiah 63:15 (“Look down from heaven, and behold from the
habitation of thy holiness and of thy glory”), God is actually being invited to
look down on Israel from His habitation. The Bible makes clear there are
three literal heavens and God lives and dwells in a city on a planet called the
third heaven.
The atmosphere around the earth where the birds fly is
called ‘the open firmament of heaven’ and represents the first heaven (Gen.
1:20). The heaven where the stars are—outer space—makes up the second heaven.
II Corinthians 5 assures that the moment a Believer dies,
his/her soul leaves the body and goes immediately into the presence of the Lord
in God’s third heaven, which is where Jesus Christ is.
“When we say so-and-so died and went to heaven, we don’t
mean he’s on Jupiter or Pluto or Saturn or out in the Milky Way somewhere,”
says Jordan. “We mean he’s in the city where God lives. He’s on that city New
Jerusalem where God dwells and has His habitation. It’s
where the verse in Isaiah 63, or Moses in Deuteronomy 26, or Solomon in I Kings
8, talks about ‘thy habitation.’
*****
"When Paul says, 'For we know that if our earthly house of
this tabernacle were dissolved, we have a building of God, an house not made
with hands, eternal in the heavens,' he’s saying that in our new glorified body
we will function in the second and third heavens.
“Between death and the resurrection, we’re not just going to
be stuck out in outer space in the second heaven. Our function as the Body of Christ is to take over and rule
the government of the second heaven for Him, but we’re also going to have
access to the third heaven—the city where God is. In fact, that’s really going
to be home.
“Imagine the idea of God’s home being your home! A bunch of
heathen, idol-worshipping pagan Gentiles like you and me being invited to go
home and sit down at the table with God the Father, God the Son and God the
Holy Spirit and have Him say, ‘Here’s the key—the door’s always open to you.’
*****
"In John 1, Jesus tells Nathanael the day’s going to come in
the kingdom where he’ll be able to see the angels ascending and descending on
the Son of man, and that the angelic host leaves out of New Jerusalem and goes
into the heavens with diplomatic instructions for the government of the
heavens.
“There’s going to be a diplomatic force
going back and forth with constant communication between the second and third
heaven. You and I are going to be part of that and I plan to get some R & R
and go see the city.
“It’s exciting to me to see how God has fixed it so
Believers who are just willing to believe little simple things in the Bible can
have a hope that’s enhanced. It’s not just some mystical, intangible, inscrutable
thing I can’t know about in some spiritual state. That’s what all the pagans
believe.
“It’s not some nirvana that just sort of comes over you like
a yoga trance and you’re just there. No, it’s a real place. It’s tangible. It’s
made out of material that’s different from the earth but the earth is made in a
pattern after the heaven and it’s wonderful to see these things.”
*****
"Jesus Christ, in talking to the Samaritan woman in John
4:24, informs, 'God is a Spirit: and they that worship him must worship him in
spirit and in truth.'
“That’s a great statement about who God is.
He’s a spirit; He’s not material. He’s not made out of Carbon-14 like we are.
He’s eternal and He’s always existed.
“When God made creation, He made it in a way to manifest
Himself to creation, and in order to do that, He made a location. He made a
place in the creation that He created in order to demonstrate to His creation
who He is. In fact, He actually created creation for the purpose of doing that.
He created you and me—His creatures—for Him to have fellowship with. He
created man so He could have a creature in the earth He could commune with and
who could go out and be His representative.
*****
As Jordan points out, man’s the only creature on the face of
the earth God made who doesn’t have his own naturally grown clothes.
“Psalm 104 says, ‘Bless the Lord, thou art clothed with
honor and majesty.’ Notice that He’s got on clothes. Isn’t that interesting?
God has a doctrine of clothing and it’s not the fashion of the world; it’s the
fashion of heaven.
“God wears a coat of many colors. It’s an original design.
God fixed it so we would be like Him because He wears a garment, and we’re
going to see that everybody in His heaven has on garments.
*****
"In the Bible, the universe is described as a tent for God to
dwell in. Hebrews 8:1-5 indicates that the tabernacle that Moses built in the
wilderness was made as an exact replica of this tent. God gave Moses the exact
measurements, dimensions and features to scale of the tabernacle He pitched in
the heavens.
“When I draw you a picture of what the universe looks like,
I use the tent that God dwells in and you draw it in the shape of the
tabernacle in the wilderness. In fact, you guys that are
good with math, if the scale is right and the verses mean what they say, and
the tabernacle in the wilderness is a scale model of the universe, you can
figure out literally the shape and size of the present universe with its ends
and bounds and borders by the measurements back there.”
"In regards to what Job 22:14 reveals ('Thick clouds are a
covering to him, that he seeth not; and he walketh in the circuit of heaven'), do you know the shape of the city that God lives in? It’s not
a mistake that the earth is round. This planet is made like the planet where
His city is. Think about that! Psalm 19:6-7 talks about the same thing; about
Him out walking in His circuit.
*****
"Speaking of the upcoming millennial kingdom when God will
bring His city down to earth, Hebrews 12:22 states, 'But ye are come unto mount
Sion, and unto the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to an
innumerable company of angels.'
“One day God’s going to bring down that
third heaven and put it on this planet and the reason the earth is such a
special planet in all the universe--there’s not another planet just like it—is
because it’s the place that God originally made when He made His heaven and
then He created the universe; He made a place in that universe where He was
going to put His city.
*****
"In Ezekiel 40, when Ezekiel looks into the millennial
kingdom and begins to see where Jesus Christ has come back and set up His city
in that territory in Israel, he says he sees the 'frame of the city.'
“That’s stuff’s hidden now, it’s not there,
there’s going to have to be a lot of topographical changes to manifest it. When
the Flood came, all that stuff over there got broken up, but in the millennium
that stuff’s gonna reappear. It’s already there.
“When God’s building the earth, He’s planning a place where
He’s going to bring that house down and sit in. The third heaven’s gonna come
to visit! His city’s coming down!
“Moses, when he describes that kingdom and the blessings in
that kingdom, says in Deuteronomy 11:21, ‘That your days may be multiplied, and
the days of your children, in the land which the LORD sware unto your fathers
to give them, as the days of heaven upon the earth.’
“When the goal is reached in the kingdom, it’s going to be
as the days of heaven on earth. That tells me that when the days of heaven are
done down here, they’re not going to be invisible, intangible, spirit-state
unreal; they’re going to real, material, literal days on a literal planet
that’s just like the earth.”
(new article tomorrow)
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