|
|
|
|
Part
9 OUR
FATHER WHICH ART IN HEAVEN
“After this manner therefore pray ye: Our Father which art in
heaven...” (Mat. 6:9).
Now, as we are trying in these messages to realize the full
significance of this model prayer, we must give our attention specially to
this expression, “which art in heaven.” There is perhaps no subject in
the Bible about which there is such shallow thinking, such dullness of
understanding, and so many distorted notions, as the subject of heaven.
Where is heaven? What is heaven? Is it a place? Is it in another galaxy?
Is it beyond the stars? Is it a condition of life? Is it a different
dimension of living? If our very Father is in heaven, then we ought to
know something about heaven, for it is the source of our life, the realm
of our origin. We know this because the Father who begat us dwells in
heaven; therefore we are out of heaven and from heaven. If He is our
Father and heaven is His natural environment, His habitat, we should
understand what that realm is really like.
The English word “heaven” is derived from the old Anglo-Saxon
term “heave-on,” meaning to be lifted up, up-lifted. It means to be
“heaved-up” or “heav-en.” As someone has written, “In the
scriptures, heaven is used to describe three rather distinct and different
realms. First, we find it used over and over with reference to the
earth’s atmosphere. It is used to describe the envelope of air that
surrounds the planet, conditions our climate, and sustains life. ‘And
God said, Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it
divide the waters from the waters. And God made the firmament...and God
called the firmament Heaven. And the evening and the morning were the
second day’ (Gen. 1:6-8). The formation of clouds, the precipitation of
rain or hail or snow, are regarded as coming from heaven. Also the birds
fly in heaven. In other words, all that we normally associate with the
atmosphere about the planet is said to be heaven. ‘For as the rain
cometh down, and the snow from heaven, and returneth not thither, but
watereth the earth, and maketh it bring forth and bud, that it may give
seed to the sower, and bread to the eater’ (Isa. 55:10).
“Second, there is a very much broader sense in which the word
heaven or heavens is used to describe outer space. It specifically refers
to the sun, moon, and stars, and the sky. It denotes the unmeasured
immensity of numberless galaxies flung across infinite expanses. It is
used for the unending realm of stellar constellations that circle through
the night in majestic movements. ‘The heavens declare the glory of God,
and the firmament showeth His handiwork’ (Ps. 19:1). Again and again the
scriptures speak of the stars of heaven and the heavenly
constellations.”
But the heaven where God dwells is beyond all this. Not only is God
our Father, but He is our Father in heaven. By saying God is in heaven,
Jesus does not mean to localize or locate God. He is not telling us of a
place where God is and where God lives apart from any other place in the
universe. Those who think of heaven as a place, usually think of Him as
being very distant. Somehow we have gotten the idea that heaven is a long
way off. This error has crept into many songs sung by the church world. In
the
Let us turn to the Word of God for the understanding of heaven, and
forget all the perversions we have heard and all the nonsense of religion.
We want no theories or guesses. We want truth and reality. We want nothing
but the highest authority. And what better authority can we find than the
One who made the heavens and who Himself dwells in the heavens. If anyone
understands the facts of heaven, it is He. Let us see what He said. He had
left His heavenly glory. He had humbled Himself, had taken upon Himself
the form of sinful man; and becoming a man, was despised and rejected. He
was of no reputation. And yet, while in humility and reproach, a man among
men, He made this statement: “No man hath ascended up to heaven, but He
that came down from heaven, even the Son of man WHICH IS IN HEAVEN.” And
still the unlearned and the ignorant and the unbelieving say that heaven
is a place to which the redeemed go after death. Any fool can understand
foolishness. But those blessed ones called to sonship to God have a higher
heritage than these. We who are of the Day have been given the unfailing
Word and understanding of the deep things of God.
The eternal Word of God left His glory, and descended to the depths
of shame and reproach. He came and took our place of disgrace. He became a
man among men in order that we might be raised and exalted and honored
and, under Him, be given a name above every name. He, the Christ, who was
made in all things like unto His brethren (Heb.
Our Lord was in heaven; He came down from heaven, and still was in
heaven; and this heaven is, in the Greek, OURANOS. It is something a
person can be in, can descend from, and still possess. And the meaning of
the word is “elevation, height, exaltation.” Our Lord was the King of
the universe. But He descended from that state. He humbled Himself, and
took upon Himself the form of sinful flesh. He became despised and
rejected. But nevertheless, in His humiliation He was still the Lord of
the universe. All things were subject to Him. He still could command the
winds and waves and they obeyed Him to the astonishment of those men who
saw it. He still could control the atoms, multiply the loaves and fishes,
raise the dead, and was Master of all laws of nature. He still saw into
the unseen realm of spirit, was consciously aware in both the earthly and
spiritual dimensions, unlimited by the physical world. He was still
elevated, exalted; He was still in heaven!
God gives us definitions in His Word. He tells us exactly what
certain things are — if we have ears to hear. And He tells us exactly
what heaven is. “Heaven is my throne, and earth is my footstool” (Acts
How many still hope that God is in heaven? The first Sputnik the
Russians put up scared a lot of people — they were afraid it might knock
God off His throne. Thank God, so far it’s missed the throne! But let me
ask — How far is heaven away from earth? We know how far it is to the
moon — 240,000 miles. We know how far it is to the sun — 93,000,000
miles. So how far is heaven from the earth? Let me assure you — it’s
not very far. Maybe twenty feet? Perhaps ten feet? Five feet? Do those
figures seem a little too close? We have all read the story of Jacob, when
he was fleeing from his brother, Esau, he laid his head upon a stone and
saw a ladder from the earth, passing by the moon, reaching past the sun,
extending past Jupiter, right on through the Milky Way until it finally
reached heaven! He saw a ladder reaching from earth to heaven and God was
standing at the top of the ladder and spoke to Jacob from the top of the
ladder. Jacob could both see and hear God from the top of the ladder and
he could see the angels of God ascending and descending upon the ladder.
Jesus said HE was the ladder. “Verily, verily, I say unto you, Hereafter
ye shall see heaven open, and the angels of God ascending and descending
upon the Son of man” (Jn. 1:51). The ladder is the Christ of God —
with its Head in the heavens and its body upon earth. The Christ body is
the connecting link between the earthlies and the heavenlies. In and upon
this body heaven comes down to earth, and earth is raised up into the
heights of the Spirit realm of God. Jesus Himself is the proto-type of
this reality as He walked on earth in the conscious awareness and active
participation of both dimensions. He was both in heaven and earth at the
same time. At the very moment when Jesus spoke these words, heaven could
have been no more than six feet away, for Jesus was Himself the ladder
that connected heaven with earth! In Him men could see God at the top of
the ladder, and by Him God spoke to men upon earth. So heaven isn’t that
far away! When Christ comes into your life — where Jesus is, ‘tis
heaven there.
The heaven of God’s presence, wherever it is in the universe, is
constantly available to all who walk in the Spirit. And it doesn’t take
a hundred years or even eight minutes for your prayers to reach heaven. We
know that light travels at the speed of 180,000 miles a second, which is
an incredible, almost incomprehensible, speed. At that rate it takes light
eight minutes to reach the earth from the sun. But if you can determine
how long it takes for your prayer to reach heaven, and the answer to
return, you will know how far away heaven is. Someone says, “Brother,
heaven must be very far away, because it takes a year for my prayer to get
answered!” But have we not also discovered that the moment we pray, God
hears? “And it shall come to pass, that before they call, I will answer;
and while they are yet speaking, I will hear” (Isa. 65:24).
God says that men enter His heavenly Kingdom by being born into it
(Jn. 3:5). Men do not die to go to heaven, they are born there, for our
Father is in heaven. And then after they are born into that state —
after they become heavenly beings — they can lay up, by obedience to the
heavenly Father, heavenly riches which will not only be a place, but royal
pomp, splendor, majesty and dominion beyond compare. Sonship not only
entitles one to residence in God’s limitless and eternal domain, but to
the ownership and rule of that domain, in proportion to qualifying in
spiritual growth and development. Oh, that it were possible to lift men up
above the shadows, and give them just a glimpse of something higher!
Mortal minds are so entirely inadequate; human eyes so dim; human ears so
dull!
Heaven is not a mansion over the hilltop, not the gratifying of the
needs and desires of this vessel of clay. It is not that which will bring
creature comfort. It is not a state of eternal creature enjoyment or rest.
The celestial realm is something infinitely higher. It is eminence, power,
majesty, life, glory. It is becoming the same kind of a Being as the One
who made the worlds (Jn. 10:34-36; I Jn. 3:2), and will bring, not
inactive rest with fluttering wings and strumming harps, which in a few
short hours even becomes exceedingly tiresome, but activity and
accomplishments far surpassing that of earth’s limitation. And it
includes kingship and priesthood over God’s eternal and infinite domain.
It is dominion and power and influence far above that which earth can
contemplate or even imagine. And it begins here and now as the power and
glory of God begin to move and manifest in and through our lives on this
earth. Truly, “Heaven came down, and glory filled my soul.”
The King James version of the Bible gives us this prayer in these
words, “Our Father which art in heaven,” but in fact the verb
“art” in not in the original Greek text. The Greek expresses it more
this way: “Father of ours, the One in the heavens.” Why is there no
verb in the Greek text? Because there has never been any particular time
when God was not “in the heavens.” One of the laws of Greek grammar is
that whenever a verb is missing, it indicates limitless time. If our
common version were correct and this verse said, “Our Father which art
in heaven,” it would indicate that the Father was in heaven at the
particular time that the prayer was made. Our Lord, however, is revealing
the great truth that our heavenly Father has always dwelt in the heavens.
He was, is, and ever will be in heaven. It is the permanent dwelling of
God. WHERE IS HE
Jewish thought was fond of dividing the heavens into seven
different strata, the “seventh heaven” being God’s dwelling place.
But God does not dwell in one certain heaven — the third, the seventh,
or any other. He is in the heavens, and above and beyond all heavens. A
philosopher of yesteryear once referred to God as “God, whose center is
everywhere, whose circumference is nowhere.” Ah, that is it! If God’s
center is everywhere, then wherever I may be the center of that center
would be in my deepest being. From where I stand the center of God is
right in the innermost part of my life, and His circumference is infinite.
The Greek word for heaven, in the New Testament, is most often in the
plural. When you read Jesus’ great parables of the
In other words, that heaven that is so vast, so expansive, so
extensive, so all-inclusive that it embodies within itself all the other
heavens — even that heaven cannot contain our God! And yet I hear some
say that God is not omnipresent! God is the God, not of heaven, but of THE
HEAVENS. And in our journey into God we pass through all these heavens.
Jesus passed through all the heavens on His way into the glory of the
Father. “He that descended is the same also that ascended up far above
all heavens, that He might fill all things” (Eph.
Let all who read these lines clearly understand that God’s heaven
is not the inexhaustible universe of stars and suns and planets —
swirling nebulae. Heaven has nothing whatever to do with the time-space
continuum or matter in any form. The true heaven is beyond it all, above
it all, before it all. Heaven is that high and holy and invisible realm of
SPIRIT, the pure and divine and eternal and incorruptible realm of GOD
HIMSELF, which existed before ever a star or a planet appeared. Heaven,
therefore, can only be entered BY THAT WHICH IS SPIRIT. Let every man know
for a certainty that natural eyes cannot pierce the invisible realm of
spirit. The Russian astronauts returned from space and said, “We have
been up there, we looked around, and we didn’t find or see God.” Of
course not! Natural minds know nothing of that realm, for we perceive only
those physical things recognizable by the physical senses. Natural ears
are unable to hear that which is spoken in the realm of the spirit, for
spirit vibrates on a frequency higher than and superior to the low
vibrations of matter. Heaven is all around us, in us, and through us, just
as radio waves and various other rays are all around us, within us, and
through us without our knowledge. We must be raised out of our natural
consciousness in order to touch it. But the dimension of heaven is ten
thousand times MORE REAL than this gross material realm to which our
mortal form has been subjected.
The highest realm revealed to man is called HEAVEN, and all who
have been born again from above by the Spirit of God have had opened to
them a realm higher far than the heavens perceived by astronomers and
astrologers. These know nothing of heaven at all! Paul tells us that we
are to “seek those things which are ABOVE, where Christ sitteth on the
right hand of God. Set your affection on things ABOVE, not on things on
the earth” (Col. 3:1-2). The man or woman who is born again from that
bright glory world above becomes an entirely new creation in Christ Jesus.
And from that time forward he lives for God. His chief delight is in
spiritual things. His affections are set above and not on things below.
His citizenship is in heaven. Before his eyes there is opened up a kingdom
which is beyond his full articulation or expression. He has only glimpsed
some of the ineffable glories that God has revealed, is revealing, and
will reveal to him. He is now part of a kingdom so vast in scope and so
enduring in quality that the things of this world seem crude, mean,
narrow, and insignificant by comparison.
Have you ever thought of the meaning of the name ascribed to God,
the MOST HIGH? Why the Most High? Does this not indicate that there are
other high authorities in existence, and that He is the Most High: the
highest of them all? We often talk about Jesus, His death on the cross,
His resurrection, and His ascension. We say that after He was raised from
the dead He ascended up to heaven. What do we think of when we make such a
statement? Do we visualize Him going somewhere away beyond the stars,
millions of miles out into space, to a place called Heaven? The scriptures
say that when He ascended up on High, He led captivity captive, and gave
gifts unto men. He ascended up ON HIGH. What does this mean? High above
what?
I want to draw your attention to a few scriptures that will make
the truth crystal clear. In Hebrews 7:26 we read these words concerning
Jesus: “For such an High Priest became us, who is holy, harmless,
undefiled, separate from sinners, and made HIGHER THAN THE HEAVENS.”
This doesn’t say that He merely ascended up to some far off heaven
somewhere, but that He was made
Paul tells us something about this high and exalted realm.
“I...cease not to give thanks for you, making mention of you in my
prayers; that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may
give unto you the spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of Him:
the eyes of your understanding being enlightened; that ye may know what is
the hope of His calling, and what the riches of the glory of His
inheritance in the saints, and what is the exceeding greatness of His
power to usward who believe, according to the working of His mighty power,
which He wrought in Christ, when He raised Him from the dead, and set Him
at His own right hand in the HEAVENLY PLACES, FAR ABOVE ALL PRINCIPALITY,
AND POWER, AND MIGHT, AND DOMINION, and every name that is named, not only
in this world, but also in that which is to come” (Eph. 1:16-21). In
verse twenty of this beautiful passage we have the Greek phrase “en tois
epouraniois,” translated into
Our Lord and Saviour when on earth, even though He had humbled
Himself and had descended to the depths of the realm of death and had
borne our sins, was still the exalted One. He was still in heaven (Jn.
So the heavens He has been raised up far above are the
Principalities and Powers, the Might and Dominion, that inhabit and dwell
in all the heavens. God has given Jesus an exalted position, far above all
other Principality and Power, good and bad, and given Him a name (nature)
that is above every name that is named throughout the vastnesses of
infinity. He has put all other Power and Authority everywhere under His
feet, and made them all His footstool, that before His glorious name, that
wonderful name of Jesus, every knee should bow, yes, every knee, of the
inhabitants of the heavens as well as those on the earth and things under
the earth; and every tongue shall confess, the tongues of those in the
heavens, of those on the earth, and those in the underworld, every one of
them shall proclaim Him Lord, to the glory of God the Father.
And let demons rage. Let fools and unbelievers hang their heads in
shame. We quote once more from the incomparable Word of God. “But God...
And yet Christians in ignorance sing, “In the sweet bye and bye,
we shall meet on that beautiful shore!” Heaven for those who have been
born from above is not a future hope. It is a present reality. It is the
realm far above all other forms of natural and spiritual life that inhabit
God’s vast universe and far above all power and might and dominion of
any order; not above them geographically, but above them in RANK, in
QUALITY OF LIFE, in EMINENCE, in POWER and AUTHORITY and NATURE and GLORY!
All the elect sons of God must find their existence and experience
enthroned with Christ in the higher than all heavens. They must find all
their source and reality of being IN
If my Father is “in heaven,” then I can expect from Him only
such things as come from heaven, are heavenly in character, and such as
will make me heavenly. All that comes to me from heaven will make my life
and my world more heavenly. In prayer I am making a link between earth and
heaven; I am opening up a channel for heaven’s bounty to come into this
world. We do not, then, pray to gain divine power for doing worldly tasks,
or for realizing worldly ends. We come in prayer to open up the way for
heaven’s life, heaven’s reality, heaven’s power, heaven’s glory,
conditions, qualities and purposes to flow down into the earth realm,
thereby establishing the Kingdom of Heaven — the Kingdom of God in
earth. We come not to lay hold upon heaven’s power to fulfill earthly
plans, hopes, and dreams, but to open the door of heaven for godliness to
come down and transform all it touches. As a son of God I cannot ask for
anything contrary to the character or will of my heavenly Father, for
anything out of keeping with the heavenly order. To the Father in heaven I
come seeking heaven’s glory. When we understand this, and by conscious
awareness live in the reality of “our Father,” we live and move and
have our being in God. It is a great mistake to think of heaven as
something that happens after we die. It separates us in the “here and
now” from the reality of our Father. It is said that the
In the Garden of Eden the footsteps of Yahweh were heard. He walked
in the Garden and talked with man face to face. As far as Adam saw, the
wonderful Creator was ever present. The thought that God was far away,
removed from the habitation of man, never entered the pure minds of our
first parents. It was later that worldly philosophy placed God at a
terrible distance, while idolatry lowered Him to the earthly and sensual. HEAVEN WITHIN
Heaven is our Father’s native realm. It is His natural
environment. It is His home and habitat. Heaven is heaven by virtue of the
fact that His presence, nature, power, wisdom and glory make it such. If
God dwells in me, then heaven is within me, for He is my Father “in
heaven.” When teaching His disciples this magnificent prayer, Jesus was
not thinking of a distant Being in some remote area of the universe. He
was referring to One whose existence was the very essence of His life.
What was true of Jesus Christ as He lived in
Every child when thinking of his father associates with that
personality an abode or dwelling place of some kind. It may be a
tumble-down shack on the other side of the tracks or the king’s palace,
yet it is home, sweet home. Home is where father is. Home is the
storehouse where father keeps his resources to meet the need of his son.
Home is the place from whence emanates peace, love, wisdom, joy, harmony,
security and provision. It is the place where the child goes to find
comfort, understanding, counsel and strength. It is the one place to which
the child can go to express his joys and share his happiness. That is the
picture of the abode of our heavenly Father which we call heaven. Heaven
is our home — not in the sweet bye and bye, but in the here and now!
Heaven is where the Father is, the realm from which He radiates and sends
all His love, wisdom, power and purpose. Jesus went to prepare a place for
us in the Father’s house, and He has come again in mighty Spirit power
to receive us unto Himself, to bring us to the Father, seated together
with Him in the heavenly places. In the true and inspired words of the old
hymn: Once
heaven seemed a far off place, Till
Jesus showed His smiling face; Now
it is here within my soul, ‘Twill
be while endless ages roll. O
Hallelujah! yes ‘tis heaven, ‘Tis
heaven to know the Son that’s given; O’re
land or sea, what matter where, Where
Jesus is, ‘tis heaven there!
We must realize Him as our living, ever-present God within. He is
closer to us than the air that we breathe. Yea, closer is He to us than
the blood that courses through our veins. He is in our spirit, and He is
our very life. He is in heaven and we are in Him and He is in us. There is
such a commingling that we cannot tell where heaven ends and earth begins,
where God begins and we end, or where we begin and God ends. He that is
joined to the Lord is one spirit.
Some time ago a brother shared a word and I now communicate it to
you as faithfully as I can. He pointed out that heaven does not have a
present significance in the mind and spirit and understanding of vast
numbers of God’s people. Somehow the churches relegate heaven as an
aftermath, something beyond this life, the category that awaits us after
death. And that is to the great detriment of the Church. The Church is, by
definition, a heavenly institution on earth and in time —
Everything in this world works against this kind of consciousness.
Everything in modern civilization, everything in the scientific,
educational, medical, industrial and social institutions of the world is
calculated against heaven, against eternity, against SPIRIT. They want to
delude the masses of mankind to believe that this is it — this temporal,
spatial, physical and visible world is the sum and substance of REALITY.
That is the wisdom of the world, the wisdom of this age that undergirds
and permeates the entire kingdom of corruption and death. The world
operates on the supposition and premise that everything of value is now,
in time, material, the things that are seen, tangible, felt and held, and
that when this life passes it is over. Therefore, eat, drink and be merry;
therefore fornicate; therefore overindulge; therefore grasp; therefore get
all you can get and enjoy all you can enjoy, for this is all there is. And
that is a LIE! The world is living in a lie. And the church world is
living in another (and just as serious) LIE. The churches tell us that
heaven is a future hope — beyond the grave. They understand not that
heaven and spirit are synonymous — you cannot have SPIRIT without having
HEAVEN. And the
What is wanting is a people that are in consciousness so in the
heavenly dimension now; are so alive to the things that are eternal, the
things that are spirit, that even without them speaking this explicitly,
their very presence exudes the atmosphere of life and the fragrance of
eternity. God is after a people, a heavenly and celestial race, set in
time. “...and hath raised us up together, and made us sit together in
heavenly places in Christ Jesus: that in the ages to come He might show
the exceeding riches of His grace in His kindness toward us in Christ
Jesus.” (Eph. 2:6-7). This is
meaningless prattle unless the Spirit opens our understanding. We have
been warned by the carnal minded of this age about the danger of being so
“heavenly minded” until we are “no earthly good.” That is what the
world says, and what should you expect from the world but to controvert
and take the wisdom of God and so distort and pervert it until it appears
ridiculous and absurd to have mankind believe exactly the reverse! But
these words are being written to show that we have no choice, no option as
to whether we will be heavenly minded or not; for the truth is, IF WE ARE
NOT HEAVENLY MINDED IT IS IMPOS
It is when we are quickened to the realm of SPIRIT, to the heavenly
and celestial, to that bright glory world where alone can be perceived
eternal truth and reality, that we hear our heavenly Father speaking from
the throne of eternity, long before the ages were framed and before the
cosmos appeared out of the wastes of chaos, there in the glory and wonder
of His presence, from out of the depths of His omniscient mind, His
purpose for the ages, the dispensations, the worlds, was laid down upon
the infinite blue-print, plan by plan, purpose by purpose, age by age, so
that each eonian purpose and every divine decree shall be guided and
controlled by His omnipotent hand to grow and mature from glory to glory
until His vast family of beloved sons shall deliver up to Him all things
in perfection that God Himself might be All-in-all. The very idea that one
could in some way become so “heavenly minded” that he would be “no
earthly good” reveals the incredible darkness and deluded stupidity of
the carnal mind and its pitiful inability to comprehend things that belong
to heavenly realms. Oh, that the wisdom of man which is foolishness with
God might be torn from our hearts that we might see beyond the mists and
theories of time and tradition right into the very heart of the eternal
where is found the infinite wisdom that teaches us how it is that until
one becomes truly HEAVENLY MINDED, he CANNOT be of any EARTHLY GOOD! The
fact is, the only reality in the universe is SPIRIT. The things which are
seen are TEMPORAL, says the Lord, and the things which are not seen, are
ETERNAL. This is the wisdom of God in a mystery. Until one learns how to
live and have his being OUT OF SPIRIT, out of the invisible realm, out of
his very innermost being, he will continue to be held captive by the
corruption of the flesh and dwell in the shadow of death.
“Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who hath
blessed us with all SPIRITUAL BLESSINGS IN HEAVE
He who writes these lines testifies to those who read them that all
who live after the flesh, out of the flesh, and for the flesh are earth
dwellers, and woe! unto them that dwell upon the earth, for the world
passeth away, and the lust thereof: but he that doeth the will of God
abideth for ever. All who by faith live after the spirit, out of the
spirit, and for the spirit have now become PART OF THE ETERNAL. Neither
can they die anymore. Death’s cruel sting, filled with its venom of sin,
has passed away, and victory has been snatched from the yawning jaws of
the tomb. We have passed from the realm where all is death to the realm
where all is life. Our citizenship in this present age has been revoked
and we have a new citizenship conferred upon us from the eternal and
undying realm. And just as the stars in some mystical way influence and
control the destinies of earth, so does the power of the SPIRIT quicken
and metamorphose all natural things and even our mortal bodies as we live
out of the high and eternal realm of the Spirit.
We are not citizens of earth, we are the true SPACE PEOPLE.
Neither are we to be governed by the laws of earth. We are to be governed
by the laws of heaven, the principles of the
When the day of Pentecost was fully come, and the Spirit was shed
forth, Peter stood up with the eleven. Consider the scene that day! There
was Peter, a fisherman, a little man, an uncouth and apparently
inconsequential man. But on that day of the outpouring of the Spirit, when
he rose to testify and proclaim that Jesus was resurrected and ascended to
the heavens, this little man was in a position higher far than the most
exalted rank of earth. The greatest and highest on this earth could not
compare with Peter and those standing there with him. Why were they so
high? How could such as they be so exalted? It was because at the very
moment their spirits were quickened by HIS
Living, experiencing and expressing out of the heavenlies is not a
matter of geographics, not a question of physical location at all. It is a
matter of consciousness and experience. Our citizenship IS in heaven. We
do not move in and out of the heavenly realms at our whim. But according
to the positive declaration of the scripture, we exist
constantly in the heavenlies. This is a state of constant spiritual
existence, but because our outer man is still in this flesh realm, we are
not always aware or conscious of the greater privileges of our heavenly
existence. We must continually heed the admonition of scripture: “Be not
conformed to this world: but be ye transformed by the RENEWING OF YOUR
MIND” (Rom. 12:2). Transformed by the renewing of the mind! Almighty
Father! what words are these which instruct us to be transformed by the
way we THINK and PERCEIVE! I am sure that as the Holy Spirit illumines
these significant words to your understanding you will find them among the
most revealing and deeply meaningful and most powerful and life changing
of all inspirations.
Various ministers and writers through the centuries, with keen
spiritual insight, have seen and expressed these glorious realities. The
Scottish preacher, Dr. Alexander Whyte, adds this testimony from one of
his sermons delivered back in the 1800’s. “The spiritual world is
essentially and fundamentally different from the material world. The
geographical and astronomical dimensions and distances of the material
world bear no manner of relation at all to the dimensions and distances
— so to call them — of the spiritual world. We speak of English miles,
we speak of nautical miles, when we take our measurements of the material
world. But the distances and the directions of the spiritual world cannot
be laid down and limited in such miles as these. When Holy Scripture
speaks of the ‘highest heaven,’ it does not speak mathematically and
astronomically, but spiritually. The highest heaven is not so called
because it is away up above and beyond all the stars that we see. It is
called the highest heaven, because it is immeasurably and inconceivably
above and beyond us in its blessedness and in its glory; in its truth, in
its love, in its peace, and in its joy in God.
“When it is told us in the Word of God that the Son of God came
down from heaven to earth in order to redeem us to God with His own blood,
we are not to think of Him as having left some glorious place far
‘beyond the bright blue sky,’ as the children’s hymn has it. Wherein
then did His humiliation consist? His humiliation consisted in His being
born, and that in a low condition, born in a stable and laid in a manger,
made under the law, undergoing the miseries of this life, and the cursed
death of the cross. That was His descent from heaven to earth; and it was
a descent of a kind, and of a degree, that no measuring-line of man can
tell the depth of it, or the distress of it, or the dreadful humiliation
of it. ‘Our Father which art in heaven.’ Now heaven, here, is not the
sky. It is not the heaven of sun and moon and stars. Heaven here is the
experience and enjoyed reality of God — wherever that is. Heaven here is
our Father’s house — wherever that is. Heaven is high up above the
earth — yes; but let it be always remembered and realized that it is
high up, as Almighty God is high up, in His Divine Nature, above mortal
man in his human nature. It is high up as goodness is high up above evil
and as perfect blessedness is high up above the uttermost misery.
“As often as we kneel down again, and begin to pray, we are to
think of ourselves as at a far greater distance from God than we ought to
be, and now desire to be. All true prayer is a rising up and a drawing
near to God: not in space indeed; not in measurable miles; but in mind,
and in heart, and in spirit. ‘Oh for a mountain to pray on!’ thou
criest. ‘A mountain and a temple on the top of it; high and exalted, so
that I might be nearer God, and that God might hear me better; for He
dwelleth on high!’ Yes, He dwelleth on high; but all the time, He hath
respect to the humble. ‘Wouldst thou pray in His temple?’ says
Augustine; ‘then pray within thyself; for thou thyself art the true
temple of the living God.’”
The English preacher, G. A. Studdert Kennedy, back in the 1920’s
wrote the following penetrating words in his book THE WICKET GATE. “What
is heaven, and where it? Is it a place, or a state of mind? Is it here or
hereafter? What is hell? Is it a place, or a state of mind? Is it here or
hereafter? Heaven is where God is. God is here, and now, and so is heaven.
God will be hereafter, and so will heaven. Hell is, where God is not, and
that may be here and now for us. Hell is where God is not — and that may
be hereafter for us too. Ah, God is even there, but to us it is as though
He is not, for He is unperceived. Heaven is the truth about earth. It is
what earth really is. It is the true meaning of life, both now and
hereafter. Men have cried, ‘Our Father, which art in heaven!’ It may
be doubted whether the best of them ever bothered their heads about the
distinction between a place and a state of mind; and it is doubtful
whether we need bother our heads either, for a place is never very much
but a state of mind. A place is always what a man sees in it, and thinks
of it. It is to him what it means to him. I remember standing with a
friend of mine, who was not born again — or, at any rate, if he was born
again, his eyes were still shut like a kitten’s. We were watching the
sun go down behind the blue Welsh hills, and turn the still wet sands of
“Heaven can be, and often is, wherever two or three are gathered
together in His name, and He stands there in the midst of them. But,
although that heaven is so near, closer than breathing, nearer than hands
or feet, yet it is a long way off; because the road that leads to it is
the way of the Cross, the way of sacrifice, which all men fear to tread;
and because they fear to tread it, they are always postponing it, or,
having started, are always turning back. That is the real danger of
putting off heaven to the hereafter. It means that we do not set out in
earnest to find it here on earth; and if we do not begin to find it here,
we certainly shall not find it hereafter. I have no reason whatsoever for
supposing that I shall be any nearer heaven by the mere act of death than
I am now; neither mere living nor mere dying can in themselves bring me
nearer heaven. Everything depends upon how I live and how I die. Mere
lapse of time cannot lead us to eternity. Heaven is not another world from
this, as a matter of time. It is another world from this as a matter of
kind. It is this world and the next seen in another light, the light that
never was on land or sea, which shines in the eyes of those who have been
quickened by the Spirit of God. Postponing heaven means doubting its truth
— that is the only sense in which it can be postponed. The distance from
heaven to earth is measured not in moments, nor in miles, but in terms of
faith or of doubt. If we put it off to the hereafter, it tends to become
an ideal rather than a reality; and an ideal, which is not recognized as a
truth, is something which everyone is expected to honor, and no one is
expected to attain.
”Our fathers tried to drive men into heaven by threatening
them with the horrors of hell. The truth is, that a man cannot see the
horrors of hell until he has caught a glimpse of the joys of heaven. You
cannot learn the Love of God through the fear of hell. You can only learn
the fear of hell through the Love of God. Less and less do men fear God,
and less and less can be accomplished by preaching the fear of Him. I do
not fear God. I reverence Him, but I am not afraid of Him. He could not,
and would not, do me any harm, anywhere, or at any time. If I have any
fear of Him, it is a fear that is born of love, a fear of grieving Him,
which love begets. He is, and always has been, and always will be, pure,
infinite, unmitigated Love. His justice cannot be separated from His Love
— justice has no meaning apart from love. If He is the Judge of the
world, He is not in the least like a human judge, for a human judge does
not administer justice in any true sense of that word. Human justice is a
caricature and a travesty of the Divine. The human judge administers those
pains and penalties, which a chaotic and sinful community believe to be
necessary in order that some measure of order and decency may be
maintained; but, in the nature of things, the man condemned must often be
less of a sinner than the jury that condemns him. What mainly governs the
penalties imposed, is, not what is calculated to redeem the criminal, nor
what is the absolutely right retribution for his wrong — but what is
assumed to be necessary to deter others from committing like crimes.
”We have really nothing to fear from God, and I am not
afraid of Him; but I am terrified of life without Him, for that is hell.
Apart from God, when the sense of His presence grows dim and disappears,
when men lose their hold upon goodness and beauty and truth, there appears
to be no accursed cruelty, no damnable crime, no hideous villainy of which
they are not capable. Men without God are infinitely lower than the
beasts. A man who does not believe in hell, and who fought in Flanders and
in
“Hell is life without God; and that can be, and often is,
the most terrible of all realities. That is what I am afraid of — life
without God, life outside of heaven. I am afraid of it for myself, and I
am afraid of it for my people. When I used to walk about the slums in
which I worked, passing from house to house among broken and despairing
women, hundreds of whom had taken to drink — and when I get near to the
heart of the West End of London with its drugs and its prostitution — I
murmur to myself, ‘They lie in hell like sheep, and death gnaweth upon
them.’ And there seems to me to be for them no morning, no fresh dews of
early dawn, and no sweetness of the sunshine ever, unless the Eternal Love
can find a way to turn their darkness into light. “A
linnet that had lost its way Sang
on a blackened bough in hell, Till
all the ghosts remembered well The
wind, the trees, the golden day. At
last they knew that they had died, When
they heard music in that land, And
Someone there stretched forth a hand And
drew a brother to his side. ”Then hell was hell no longer. For hell cannot be where love and beauty and God are. God grant we may find it true, ‘Even if I go down into hell, Thou art there also’” — end quote. By J. Preston Eby. [ENTER TEXT OF WRITING / SCRIERE HERE] |
Other Writings in This Series:
|
