36. The New Jerusalem
John, because he saw a vision, wrote down careionifully all the descriptive terms he could find to describe what he saw. On the other hand, Paul said exactly the same thing as this entire passage much more directly, in fact, with six little words: Put on the Lord Jesus Christ. There is no difference whatsoever between John's entire vision of the heavenly Jersualem and Paul's words: Put on the Lord Jesus Christ.
© Daniel Yordy - 2013
As I drive down the street, everything is totally different to me. Outwardly, things look the same, but I don't see the same. My definition of God began to change about two years ago from an idea to a description. Since writing “Appearance Versus Substance,” that description of God has taken hold of my eyeballs.
Everywhere I look, God upwells and is upwelling. The road, trees, houses, buildings, people, bushes, cows, trucks, the sky, and more people – all are sustained every moment, not just by the good-speaking of God, but by God all in all. I am not speaking of God in general, but God specifically. And God specifically, God in Person, is a heart of overwhelmingly tender compassion.
Now, let me strike a blow through an horrifically bad definition of God (I hope to obliterate many). Pentecostalism created a definition of God as a feeling. They call this feeling “Presence.” Thus, they imagine that when they “feel” this thing called “Presence,” God is here; but when they don't feel “Presence,” something is wrong, God is far away and somehow displeased.
Thus I can imagine someone reading my first two paragraphs and thinking, “Oh, Daniel must be at all times in the Holy Presence of God; he must “feel” super-anointed in order to see God upwelling everywhere.”
Not at all. We do not know God by feeling, we know God by knowing.
Knowing God is a quality of the spirit of the MIND! Here is a critical verse that must guide our understanding.
And we know that the Son of God has come and has given us an understanding, that we may know Him who is true; and we are in Him who is true, in His Son Jesus Christ. This is the true God and eternal life. 1 John 5:20
The word, “understanding,” is the Greek, dianoia, and is one of the two Greek words for mind. The other is nous, as in, we have the nous of Christ.
My dianoia has grown as I speak Christ, thus I know Him. Certainly feelings attend knowing from time to time, but knowing exists regardless of feelings. I know God even when I feel my worst. I refuse to make any judgment based on any feeling.
Feelings are on the side of the body, between the body and the mind; faith is a decision of the will, that God is telling us the truth. The will is between the spirit and the mind. We speak what we believe, not what we feel. Speaking generates the connection between faith and dianoia.
Prophecy Christ – The Word of Their Witness.
However, seeing God as the arising One sustaining all by a continual Word of goodness, absolving all sin, carrying all through death and into life, God all in all, raises a huge question. If this seeing of God is true, why do things remain the same? How can it be, if God sustains all things by goodness, that evil continually hides from God?
The answer is simple. God is unknowable and unseeable, and this unknowable and unseeable God never pushes anyone around. You see, there is a barrier between this God and all of His creation, fallen or unfallen. More than that, there is a barrier between God and all sin, all evil deeds. This barrier is not crossed by one thing, but by two.
On God's side, the element that pierces that barrier is Word coated with Blood. On man's side, the element that pierces that barrier is faith coated with Blood. Both must operate fully and together for God to be seen and known. Jesus, coming to our side of that barrier first and living as us now, is our faith. The Blood began first in the earth.
Thus this unseen and unknown God, who fills, sustains, and carries all things, cannot be seen or known by any part of creation except through His firstfruits, many sons, just like Jesus, the manifestation of the sons of God.
Now, in recent letters, I have stated that someone who says, “Lovey, lovey, there is no evil,” lacks the fear of God. Then, in turn, I have said that there is no evil substance, but that God sustains all things good. Am I contradicting myself?
I find myself taking a graduate level literature course that wants to judge everything in a piece of literature by gender issues and the war of the sexes. It is amazing to me to see that the same narrow-minded religious bent that would have been an ardent Puritan in the 1600's finds it's same release in ardent Marxist-feminism today. People are no different now than they were then. A bully is a bully because he is a bully. It makes no difference whether he is a Methodist in the 1830's or a progressive behavioral psychologist today.
All sin originates in the heavens out of the lusts of an unclean spirit. That uncleanness finds resonance in human hearts and minds and shows itself as disrespect and cruelty. Being male or female, living in a patriarchal Christian society or being subject to a matriarchal college English department makes no difference at all. People are people; demons are demons. Demons always project evil; people always stumble in foolishness and make the wrong decisions based on selfishness. Yet people retain elements of the image of God, including compassion.
All these things are a given. What is not a given is the shaping of the human heart. Our response, either to give thanks and to extend compassion or to get bitter and treat with cruelty, shapes our hearts and the person we will be.
Evil is appearance only, yet that appearance is pure evil. Yet it is appearance only; the substance of all things is the good-speaking of God. Evil is the turning of the face away from God.
I loathe the condemnation this course is requiring of me. I am well able to skirt that judgment in my essays, the pickle I'm in is my interest in obtaining an A for the course. So, I find myself caught in one of those wonderful dilemmas we humans seem so able to leap into without thought.
The appearance of evil is what I see and feel. The knowledge of the good-speaking of God seems distant. You see, one of the men in the book we are reading against whom we are to speak condemnation is autistic – Asperger's (my own diagnosis of him), a man who, through childhood and into adulthood received not one ounce of help ever. As the poor man sees the world out of his autistic and lonely fear, we are supposed to pronounce – “bad patriarch and ignorant Christian” – against him. When his young wife, who did make a mistake in marrying him, finds compassion in her heart for him, we are supposed to determine that she is oppressed by a patriarchal society and would never show compassion on such a man if she were a “free” woman by today's mentality.
Now, I really am aiming at “the New Jerusalem.” God's reality proves itself in the world as we find it.
BECAUSE I KNOW that union with God comes first, that Salvation has already swallowed me up utterly, that all of my own human fears and foolishness, Jesus carries utterly inside Himself and shares all those silly things with me, because I KNOW that there is no “me” involved, but that all I am is He, yet that He calls me by my own name – I can look at this situation entirely out from God's heart, without worrying about myself.
Always in the past, when I thought I had to “measure up,” I could only ever withdraw quietly from such a thing and go on my way in sorrow. Yet so often I could not withdraw as I cannot this time, and thus I would find myself buried under conflicting and horrendous emotions with no way out.
The only possible way I can walk through this circumstance is to KNOW the difference between appearance and substance. The appearance is evil; the substance is the good-speaking of God, carrying each individual person in tender regard in spite of their ignorance of Him.
There is no judgment of angels in the present hour; we only cast them down. And in casting down the evil, by the Spirit of faith, we see each individual human, regardless of outward form, as utterly loved by God and by us.
I am speaking to myself; I am shaping my own necessary outlook as I go forward in this difficulty.Because I know God first, that Christ is all in me, I CAN for the first time in my life stop the little scenarios of fear that always flit through my mind. I can sit at His table in the midst of the valley of death. It is He who has made my enemies my friends by His own life laid down. I fear no evil.
I am the New Jerusalem, being revealed now upon this earth, coming out of the heavens.
In an earlier letter I laid out three arenas of judgment. The first was judgment in the heavens, which in the present time is casting down the accuser. The second was judgment in the earth, breaking the falseness of the world-beast by seeing only people and not regarding that beast as anything. The third is God's judgment on individual people. I said then that the third arena of judgment was the New Jerusalem.
I really had no idea what I was talking about when I said that. I think that I do, now, at least a little bit.
Here is the judgment of God.
By faith Abel offered to God a more excellent sacrifice than Cain, through which he obtained witness that he was righteous, God testifying of his gifts; and through it he being dead still speaks. By faith Enoch was taken away so that he did not see death, “and was not found, because God had taken him”; for before he was taken he had this testimony, that he pleased God. But without faith it is impossible to please Him, for he who comes to God must believe that He is, and that He is a rewarder of those who diligently seek Him. By faith Noah, being divinely warned of things not yet seen, moved with godly fear, prepared an ark for the saving of his household, by which he condemned the world and became heir of the righteousness which is according to faith. Hebrews 11:4-7
Again, the word “condemned” is not katakrisis, condemnation, but katakrina, judgment.
Here is the judgment in the simplest terms. We live in a world of nearly 7 billion souls. All 7 billion individual persons, each individual one, are 1. Loved by God and carried utterly by Him, 2. Ignorant of the God in whom they live, and 3. Bound by chains of darkness according to each his or her own willful rejection of God. Inside of this vanity we, you and me, are just the same as every one of them.
Abel was not one bit different from Cain; Enoch was not one bit different from the thousands around him who gave themselves to demons; Noah was not one bit different from all those who perished in the flood. Neither were these men “special,” nor any kind of an elite.
Each of these three simply saw God inside of themselves and carrying all things. They simply wanted to know Him; they simply made a decision to believe that when He spoke to them, speaking quietly in their hearts, He was telling them the truth.
Little things in the earth, in the quiet communing inside a man or a woman's heart; – big things in the heavens, shaking the foundations of all things to the core.
The Pharisees accused Jesus of being a man just like themselves. That is exactly what they feared. If God showed up on the earth as a man just like themselves, nothing special, then all were judged, all were found wanting.
Here is the final passage I hope to address in these last two letters in this series.
Then I, John, saw the holy city, New Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. And I heard a loud voice from heaven saying, “Behold, the tabernacle of God is with men, and He will dwell with them, and they shall be His people. God Himself will be with them and be their God. And God will wipe away every tear from their eyes; there shall be no more death, nor sorrow, nor crying. There shall be no more pain, for the former things have passed away.”
Then He who sat on the throne said, “Behold, I make all things new.” And He said to me, “Write, for these words are true and faithful.” And He said to me, “It is done! I am the Alpha and the Omega, the Beginning and the End. I will give of the fountain of the water of life freely to him who thirsts. He who overcomes shall inherit all things, and I will be his God and he shall be My son. But the cowardly, unbelieving, abominable, murderers, sexually immoral, sorcerers, idolaters, and all liars shall have their part in the lake which burns with fire and brimstone, which is the second death.”
Then one of the seven angels… came to me… saying, “Come, I will show you the bride, the Lamb’s wife.” And he carried me away in the Spirit to a great and high mountain, and showed me the great city, the holy Jerusalem, descending out of heaven from God, having the glory of God. Her light was like a most precious stone, like a jasper stone, clear as crystal. Revelation 21:2-11
Before continuing, let's ground ourselves in an absolute concerning what God is doing now in us. This absolute comes through Peter, not Paul or John. I am convinced God spoke it through Peter solely to ground us firmly in the Rock. Here is what Peter said in 1 Peter 1:
You, who are kept by the power of God through faith for salvation ready to be revealed in the last time.
Rest your hope fully upon the grace that is to be brought to you at the revelation of Jesus Christ.
Two things are coming now upon us that the Apostles and writers of the New Testament simply did not know.
A Grace never before released and a Salvation not yet revealed.
Thus, we must expect to see beyond what they saw. Not different, not something else, but beyond. We seize hold of a Grace never before given to any in the church; we reveal a Salvation never before experienced by any in the history of man upon this earth.
But also, as we see God as He is, revealed now through us, we see that historical Christianity has simply taken a few things in the Bible in a direction God never intended. Thus, although we use the same verses, it seems we are speaking of totally different Gods and a totally different salvation.
And we (sort of) are – yet we see and speak what God has said all along.
Now, this passage is clearly NOT talking about a place called “heaven.” God says, “the bride, the Lamb's wife.” People just pay no attention to what God actually says. More than that, this bride, this city, is coming “out of” the heavens, that is, showing up in the physicality of the earth. All of the symbols found in this vision, then, are speaking of the qualities of God found in us, the revelation of His kingdom, now upon the earth.
John, because he saw a vision, wrote down carefully all the descriptive terms he could find to describe what he saw. On the other hand, Paul said exactly the same thing as this entire passage much more directly, in fact, with six little words:
Put on the Lord Jesus Christ.
There is no difference whatsoever between John's entire vision of the heavenly Jerusalem and Paul's simple statement, put on the Lord Jesus Christ.
This is something we do, yet we put on the Lord Jesus Christ entirely by faith. That is, union comes first, communion comes second, completely inside of union, and everything else comes after, flowing out of Christ.
Put on the Lord Jesus Christ is 100% literal. We are spirit of His Spirit, soul of His Soul, flesh of His flesh, body of His Body.
When we know what we already are, when we truly know that we ARE the body of Christ, mortality cannot stay mortal, and the present appearance of our physical bodies must be swallowed up by life.
Yet we are not one ounce different in any way from our fellow human beings. You see, the church cast off the judgment of God by turning Jesus into “God the Son.” Since Jesus was “God” in some outward definition of “God” when He walked the earth, His witness does not count and we ourselves “escape” God's judgment.
No one can accuse us of being “God” in some outward form as we put on the Lord Jesus Christ, thus all will become silent before Him. A short time ago, I posted some statements of Christ my only life on Facebook. A man who considers himself “God's prophet for today,” using a sister's Facebook name, mocked me. God does just about everything apart from you, Yordy. He doesn't need any human consent. Nice that you are freeing creation. I've read about some in prison for Christ that could use your help. Go at it! They are being tortured, could use prayer.
Doesn't this sound just like the accusations hurled against Jesus from before the cross?
This is the judgment; I am not God. Yet in believing all that God speaks concerning Christ my only life, that God speaks true, I, not one bit different than the man who wrote those words or anyone else on this planet, put on the Lord Jesus Christ. I do so entirely by faith, by the word of my testimony.
God manifest in the flesh is always meek and lowly of heart, always a “nobody” by outward appearance. Those who hate God showing up in human flesh, mock Him, saying, “Hey, if you are “God” (by my definition), then do something extraordinary. 'Prove' that you can do the stuff!! Then, I'll 'believe' you.” They demand thunderbolts coming out of His arse. They have no idea they ARE looking at God, laying down His life for His friends, for them.
There is no salvation apart from judgment. Only the lost can know Him; only the forgiven wash His feet with tears. Here is the judgment of God, the only doorway into Salvation.
That every mouth may be stopped, and all the world may become guilty before God.Romans 3
The knowledge of God AND accusation against Him cannot exist together. It is either one or the other. The incredible goodness of the gospel is that NO ONE can ever “get rid of” the accusation before they can know God. In complete contrast, we know God now personal in us in all fulness. That present knowledge of God causes all the accusation that might remain in us to vanish away in the brightness of His glory.
It's called the Blood.
Thus, when God has His full judgment in the earth, the New Jerusalem, you and me having put on the Lord Jesus Christ in all fulness, yet entirely by faith – all human beings, each individual one, MUST go silent. They can no longer accuse God.
Then, for the first time, they can hear the tender love of His heart.
Nothing unclean can enter into put on the Lord Jesus Christ, into the New Jerusalem. All uncleanness must be absolved upon the Mercy Seat; all persons become silent before Him.
You see, some who write to me share the dilemma “they have gotten themselves into,” and how they know God wants them to climb out of it, they just don't have the “faith” to do it. They don't understand that the Lord Jesus Christ possessed them from the moment they asked Him into their heart. He has led them into the dilemma of the present moment for one reason only, to get them to shut up, to stop all this whining about how they need “faith” to “climb out,” to “become holy,” or whatever definition we have placed on what a good Christian ought to look like.
A person who is judging him or herself is not silent before God. A person not silent before God can never speak Christ their only life; they are chattering about the wrong things.
Jesus will answer every single accusation raised against God, each one individually by the word of His power, by the power with which He subdues all things to Himself. It is a lake of fire. It is the love of God.
He answers them through you and me, who, having nothing, failing in all things, yet believe with all our hearts that He speaks the truth, because we love Him.
The gates into the city of God are pearls. Pearls ARE giving thanks for all things, starting with our human form, the likeness of God. The one who speaks on and on about his or her own mistakes and how they need “faith” to “make it” somehow, IS NOT entering into the city. Entering the city begins with giving thanks FOR our flesh, the likeness of God, giving thanks that Jesus has lived us into the mess we are so that we will shut up about “climbing out” of it. So that we will KNOW that we are supposed to be a total failure at “pleasing” God. Speaking Christ begins at the bottom when we cannot see. Those who wait until they see before they will speak Christ their only life, those who wait until they are “pleased with themselves” before they will believe God speaks the truth, will wait forever.
Now I want to address another aspect of this New Jerusalem coming out of the invisible realms of spirit and showing up in the physicality of this earth. It is the same thing as the opening of the seventh seal and the sounding of the seventh trumpet.
When the seventh seal is removed, the Scroll is opened wide for all to read. When the seventh trumpet sounds, the mystery of God is finished. It is the fulfillment of the final day of the Feast of Tabernacles. It is the culmination of the entire purpose and intention of God.
Here is another view of this same thing.
Then the temple of God was opened in heaven, and the ark of His covenant was seen in His temple. Revelation 11:19
I have been puzzling over something the last while. I have been saying, “We are filled with all the fullness of God here and now.” In speaking that, I have been seeing, more and more, that it is true. But that poses a problem with my understanding of the Feast of Tabernacles and of the one moment, the one event that changes everything.
More than that, the full release of the rivers of living water across the earth, as seen in Revelation 22, happens after this one thing. Yet we say that rivers of living water flow out of us now before we see it with our eyes.
Yes – we call those things that be not as though they are.
Then I received an email from a dear sister who has been led by the Lord to quit both her church and her job in that church. She finds herself now alone, condemned by those with whom she once worshiped. God fills her heart with love, but her mind is uneasy, and her concern for her children and their involvement with good Christian fellowship is important. Her need is exactly what I have desired to meet in the vision of community God has formed in my heart. As I wept before the Lord over my present inability to meet her and her children's needs (she lives in South Africa), I saw the answer to my “theological” puzzle.
The greatest event in the history of the human experience, an event just before us, is the moment when God the Father fills His fully completed temple with all of His glory and is from then on seen and known by all.
We are the stones, the pillars, the members in particular of that temple.
Here is the puzzle. The fullness of Tabernacles, God filling His fully completed and fully purified temple with all of His manifest glory, cannot happen until that temple is complete, pure, and fully assembled. Here are the accounts.
And the temple, when it was being built, was built with stone finished at the quarry, so that no hammer or chisel or any iron tool was heard in the temple while it was being built. 1 Kings 6:7
And it came to pass when the priests came out of the Most Holy Place… when the trumpeters and singers were as one, to make one sound to be heard in praising and thanking the Lord… and praised the Lord, saying: “For He is good, for His mercy endures forever,” that the house, the house of the Lord, was filled with a cloud, so that the priests could not continue ministering because of the cloud; for the glory of the Lord filled the house of God. 2 Chronicles 5:11-14
“Behold, I send My messenger, and he will prepare the way before Me. And the Lord, whom you seek, will suddenly come to His temple, even the Messenger of the covenant, in whom you delight. Behold, He is coming,” says the Lord of hosts. “But who can endure the day of His coming? And who can stand when He appears? For He is like a refiner’s fire and like launderers’ soap. He will sit as a refiner and a purifier of silver; He will purify the sons of Levi, and purge them as gold and silver, that they may offer to the Lord an offering in righteousness. Malachi 3:1-3
Do you see how the rebellion of Adam turns God's words backwards? “Oh, I have to be purified first, then Jesus will come and fill my temple.” No. Christ is always ALL first, BEFORE anything “not Christ” could ever vanish away.
Having been built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Jesus Christ Himself being the chief cornerstone, in whom the whole building, being fitted together, grows into a holy temple in the Lord, in whom you also are being built together for a dwelling place of God in the Spirit. Ephesians 2:20-22
You also, as living stones, are being built up a spiritual house, a holy priesthood, to offer up spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ.1 Peter 2:5
(Do you see how Peter applies Malachi's prophecy to the church of Christ?)
We are “being built” into a holy temple in the Lord, but God does not fill His temple until it is complete. So how can we say now, “I am filled with all the fullness of God,” and walk in the full consciousness of it's truth?
Each member of that temple must know personally, “I am filled with all the fullness of God,” calling those things that do not appear as the full substance of reality. The only thing that purifies and prepares us is the knowledge of His fullness now and first.
Yet here is where we find ourselves. God has given us years of immersion in the Christian experience, walking together with other believers, submitting to authority. Inside that arena, He taught and shaped us, yet He also showed us those things that were called “Christian,” but were not of Him.
Then, each in our own experience, the Lord set us aside from all that involvement with other believers. Here, in this set-aside place, outside the camp, He has shown us Himself as we never knew Him before. Yet we are not ignorant of His body and the glory of the church. And we yearn to be gathered together once again with others of like precious faith.
Yet we remain alone. And here, alone, but fully a member of that soon-to-be-assembled temple, we say, “I am filled with all the fullness of God; rivers of Spirit flow out of me setting all creation free.”
No work can be done on any stone at the temple site. All work must be completed first. We are not the judge of whether the work of God upon ourselves is or is not completed. We never judge ourselves; we will ALWAYS get such judgment wrong.
So if work is being done on many blocks all around you (church), then you know you are not yet on the temple site. For many, the final polishing happens in solitude – HOWEVER, we never make that any kind of a law, and I have no doubt God has many in whom He completes the final polishing even while they are immersed in service.
Consider the fully completed blocks of stone being taken to the temple site. This picture is identical in every way to the New Jerusalem coming out of the heavens into the physicality of the earth.
Each stone has been shaped for a particular place in the temple. A stone block has six sides. One side is shaped to rest upon a particular stone beneath. One side is shaped to carry a particular stone above. Two sides are shaped to walk alongside two other particular stones, one on each side. One side is shaped to face outward and bear the brunt of the world, revealing God to all. And one side is shaped to face inward to the glory and beauty of the Lord in sweet communion.
Yet in the quarry, as each stone is being shaped, the stones simply do not know for whom and for what they are being shaped. Yet the moment each one of us finds ourselves fitting into the wall of the temple, fitting into the Body of God, our hearts will sing with such overflowing joy, for we will find ourselves fitting perfectly into the place prepared just for us. Everything we have ever known inside of us will show itself of extraordinary value and wonder as we find exactly how it was intended for our “fit” into our place in the revelation of God.
“The Father's house” is NOT heaven; it is a Body prepared for Him. The Father's house is also our house, just as we share heart with God, so we share house with God, that is, our/Jesus' physical body.
You see, right now, we, each one of us as members in particular, are filled with all the fulness of God. We speak that by faith, though we “see” it not. No one else sees it either.
But Christ IS a many-membered body. He never intended for us to function by ourselves. We are made for one another; we are designed for a particular place in that body. All we can know of church-life now is the quarry. Even church life as found in the first six days of the Feast of Tabernacles, though no longer the quarry, maybe, is still just the staging on the site. What we long for, church as it was meant to be, is what happens on the final Day of the Feast.
When we find ourselves in our place in that CHURCH, a place designed for us as we are made from the tips of our toes to the outer perimeters of our spirits, a place for which we are shaped perfectly to fit, oh, how we will sing. Our overwhelming joy will be unstoppable.
“I was made for this! This was made for me!”
Let's look back at the central question that fills our minds and hearts. “God, I see you filling, sustaining, carrying all things. God, I see you filling me with ALL of Your fulness, in Person. God, I see You flowing out from me as rivers of Spirit. Why God? How can it be that this reality is absolutely true right now, and yet all creation continues to stagger under darkness as if it is not true? God, how can this be?”
Let me suggest to you that this is the central question of the travail.
Here is a little secret about God. God created Adam as His own likeness, male and female in one body. Then, God separated those two functions of His likeness into two separate bodies. Originally, they were one body.
God says that the whole creation is in travail. God says that the heavenly woman, the New Jerusalem, is right now in travail to give birth. I have posited that God, just like us men, stands there feeling useless.
Only a woman can bring forth life.
Here is the secret. God is as much female as He is male. It is God who is in travail. It is God who is giving birth, making Himself visible through us to all creation. When we scream to give birth, we are simply manifesting the reality of God.
How is it that God screams in travail?
The pain of creation is the pain of God's heart. It is He who wants to be seen, to be known, to be handled. It is He who longs to be visible. It is He who desires to be known in gentle tenderness in the heart of each created being in heaven and in earth. God's desire is the power of the universe.
When we drive down the street, seeing God in everything, sustaining all, carrying all, when we look at ourselves and see God in all fullness filling us full and flowing out from us, it's not us asking the question – Why God, does creation still not know You? – It's God asking that question with all the pathos of His heart.
Let's look again at what I consider the most important vision Annie Schissler saw. I will reduce it.
That Holy Thing
As I entered His presence, He showed me something so impressive… in almost unbearable pain and in great love, He tore open, as it were, His own spiritual form or body. …after this great tearing open of Himself I could see within. There I beheld something so terribly perfect in its holiness, that even the word perfection seems to sully it in my memory. This living something was very much a part of Himself, yet it seemed as though He were bringing forth, in a tremendous beginning, a new being from His own person… For long eons He has waited to manifest this most Holy Thing which He is about to bring forth.
The tremendous, radiant perfection – the holy glory of this beginning that He showed me – was so far beyond expression and so filled with holiness and God-life… It was something too high, holy and perfect to look upon.
When He said, “The hour has now come,” it seemed that He was about to explode, not in an explosion of terrible destructive violence, but rather a pacific explosion. The He came forth, as it were, in this explosion, and it was tremendously sweet. From this sweet, explosive breaking forth, He extended Himself over all; that is to say, He desired to manifest Himself, pouring this forth upon those of His own ones who were waiting upon Him…
~~~
Annie was seeing the birthing of the manchild; she was seeing God filling His temple full. She was seeing the New Jerusalem showing up in the earth. All of it is God Himself making all the desire of His heart seen and known by all.
A part of that experience will be the transformation of our souls into incorruption and the transformation of our bodies into immortality. No created being is incorruptible. We are the full revelation of God.
This vision includes all who have gone before, all who are in heaven only without their physical half, without the temple of God, waiting in the same place of faith upon God. They become physical again first seconds before our own bodies are swallowed up in life. The human body is God's temple first, not the human spirit. God always begins in the earth, in His image, before He can ever be known in the heavens.
We are talking about church life. People think that they can be witnesses of Christ by themselves. Yes, God has seasons for our lives, but Christ is a many-membered body. Apart from the fulness of church life we cannot know Christ, not as He really is. And creation cannot know God except through His revelation through the church, through community, through family, through brothers and sisters, mothers and fathers, children and grandparents, walking together in love, sharing all the expressions of life together. In the end, that is the only witness of Christ, regardless of the present transitions and in-part seasons that take us there.
Our longing for the full experience of church life as God intends it to be and our longing to know God in all fullness are the same thing. The two can never be separated. Male and female in one body.
Church Life. The Temple. A Body Prepared for Him.
God revealed.