10. Heaven-Earth
© Daniel Yordy – 2020
In this letter I want to define again the relationship between heaven and earth. I want to keep this explanation as close to an “extended definition” as is reasonable, that is, partly in the direction of what you would expect to find in an encyclopedia.
Heaven and earth are one place, intrinsically part of one another. This one place has two dimensions, the spiritual and the physical. In this definition, we are using the word “spiritual,” not as “ethereal” or “illusory,” but as a term referring to substance of equal weight to physical substance. Matter is the substance of earth; spirit is the substance of the heavens. These two types of substances are always entwined together.
The best illustration for us of how the two dimensions of heaven and earth are related together is our human form. James stated that without the spirit the body is dead. Jesus said that it is the spirit that gives life. We understand that the human form is made up of two parts, a physical part and a spiritual part. We can speak of the human body and the human spirit as distinct entities only in the classroom. In real life, the two cannot be separated except as death.
Death, in its largest definition, is the ripping apart of heaven and earth.
The human body is made out of earth and is a part of earth. The human spirit is made out of heaven and is a part of heaven. You and I relate with the physical realms of earth through our physical body and we relate with the spiritual realms of heaven through our spiritual body.
Humans are disconnected from the heavenly realms in only one way. We are blind to spiritual substance. This blindness is an act of the mercy of God towards Adam and Eve. Yet we understand spiritual blindness in the same way that we understand physical blindness, and that is that a normal function of our human form is dysfunctional. Those who are blind cannot see anything of material form. Nonetheless, their other senses do connect directly with physical things and they live and function in their relationship with physical things without hindrance or ignorance, even though they can’t see any of it.
The blindness of our spirit eyes is the same. Just because we cannot see the heavens all around us does not mean that we are not completely familiar with heaven since we are part of it and since we function in heaven all the time. Every human knows the spiritual realms with all familiarity. Since we cannot see, however, we assume that the heavenly aspects of our form and existence are just part of the physical. Nonetheless, there is an inherent understanding inside that our mind and our brain are two different things, though they are intrinsically connected together.
We can reference the story of Elisha and his servant in 2 Kings. Elisha possessed the rare quality of being normal, that is, he could see the heavens all around him. His servant was blind, like most all other humans. Elisha asked God to open the eyes of his servant so that he could see. When that happened, the servant could see the heavens as a normal human, just like Elisha, at least momentarily.
We then assume, from this account and others, that Adam and Eve, prior to sin and death, saw the spiritual substance of heavenly things as easily as they saw the physical substance of earthly things. There is no need whatsoever to regard the early Chaldean term translated “serpent” as referencing a physical animal. All angels were visible to Adam and Eve’s spiritual eyes, in the same way that animals were visible to their physical eyes.
Again, the word “spiritual” means “spirit eyes,” that is, eyes of our spirit form and substance. I am determined, then, to see the meaning of the word “spiritual” altered to be the precise counterpart of “physical,” and not as a mental and meaningless abstraction.
Our physical bodies are absolutely earth and our spiritual bodies are absolutely heaven, yet the two are so entwined together all through our human form that to pry them apart is to die. For this reason we are able to consider the relationship between the human spirit and the human body in order to extrapolate from there out into the larger relationship of all things heaven with all things earth.
Compare the following two verses.
And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living being (Genesis 2:7). – In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. The earth was without form, and void; and darkness was on the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters (Genesis 1:1).
The implication and parallel is clear, that God formed the physical earth and then He breathed a heaven upon it. It is clear to anyone looking at earth from outer space that the planet Earth is distinctly different from all the other planets. Mars and Venus are dead planets; they have no heaven breathed upon them. Earth is a living planet because it is imbued with all the life and substance of the heavenly realms.
It is an absolute fact that what we call “life,” whatever that might mean, that life is a quality of spirit.
When we consider the makeup of our physical bodies, we see that our bodies are very complex, as David said, we are fearfully and wonderfully made. Our bodies are made up of individual cells of varying types that come together as larger organs or tissues. And the life of our physical bodies relies on a complex interweaving of many different functions – oxygen and blood, nerves and glands, many different things all working harmoniously together. There is no reason for us, then, to assume that our spirits are just one bland “vapor.” It is reasonable, knowing God as the Creator that He is, to assume that the human spirit is complex as well, designed in its differing parts to function closely together with the differing parts of the body. This fact is assumed often in the Bible as the differing qualities of the human spirit are assigned to the differing organs of the human body – heart, kidneys, guts, etc.
More than that, when a human dies, that is, experiences the ripping apart of heaven and earth, spirit and body, the complex functions of the soul continue even after death. A dead human in heaven-only still thinks and speaks and interacts with other heavenly beings. This confirms to us the idea that the human spirit is complex.
Here is the conclusion. Every part of the physical body corresponds with and relates together with a part of the spiritual body that matches it. And every part of the spiritual body corresponds with and relates together with the part of the physical body that matches it.
We then extrapolate out from this picture, this perfectly intertwined relationship of heaven and earth that we are, and see that all that is heaven and all that is earth relate fully together in the same substantial way.
Every particle that is earthly and material is combined with its counterpart in heaven. And every particle that is heavenly and spiritual is combined with its counterpart in earth. All things of heaven and all things of earth are fully intertwined and completely dependent on one another.
It is one place.
But let’s hold this fact, then, as a continual rule of all that exists. – Every element of earth has a heavenly part, and every element of heaven has an earthly part.
More than that, even though we cannot “see” heavenly things, they are not really “invisible,” for we are familiar with heaven all the time. Heaven is an essential part of our makeup and being.
Inside of our experience as humans, then, we will consider that the heavens that were breathed by God upon the earth, that is, the inhabited heavens, relate to the magnetosphere of the earth. In fact, the physical aspect of the magnetosphere is created by the flow of electricity blowing across it from the sun. That flow of charged particles (electricity) is typically called the “solar wind” because humans cannot imagine that charged particles that are not confined to a copper wire could be called “electricity.” We could even thing of this flow of electricity as the physical manifestation of the “breath of life.”
Here is our assumption. – All beings who inhabit the heavens are found within the perimeters of earth’s magnetosphere. Some species of angels can undoubtedly function outside of that boundary, but such is not common or usual.
Let’s consider next the many types of beings that inhabit this one place. There is a Greek word that should be translated “the inhabited realm” which must include all the denizens of the heavens equally with all the denizens of earth.
Consider the following layout of heaven and earth together.
| Rocks/Dirt | Plants | Animals | Humans | Angels | ?Elementals? | Spirit-substance |
| The building blocks of all things on the physical – earth side. | Rooted in the earth, with simple, but vital spirit qualities. | Bodies of the earth, possessing spirits that do not endure. | Fully of earth; fully of heaven. Possessing earth bodies and heaven bodies equally enduring. | Bodies of heaven substance, that is spirit; can take on temporal earth form. | Rooted in the heavens, with simple, but vital interaction with the physical earth. | The building blocks of all things on the spiritual – heaven side. |
We want to assume that animals are not sentient beings, that is, they do not share the same level of consciousness belonging to humans and angels, that is, animals do not endure. Solomon said that when an animal dies, its spirit returns to the earth. We assume that means it is no more.
Nonetheless, this assumption is challenged by a close study of dolphins, animals that speak to one another in a language and that act together in what one must call enduring friendships. Other animals, including elephants, show similar remarkable traits. Our only conclusion is that we can assume that most animals are not sentient, nonetheless, we do not know the boundaries of that term.
Nonetheless we assume that humans, once conceived, exist forever, but that dolphins do not. Yet we don’t actually have any grounds for that assumption, one way or the other.
Humans have bodies, just like the animals, but humans are not animals. Humans have spirits, just like the angels, but humans are not angels. It is in humans that heaven and earth find their fullest togetherness. And thus humans, like animals on one side and like angels on the other side, nonetheless we are uniquely different, beings made for an entirely different purpose and therefore constructed in a different way.
Humans are different from angels and animals in another respect, and that is that we are all one family. All humans are the children of Adam and Eve first, and all humans from (ca)3200 BC until now are the children of Noah and his wife. Contrary to the claims of modern anthropology, there are no other “species” of humans. And I do not take that position contrary to any actual scientific evidence. Consider the difference between a Poodle and a Great Dane. Both are children of the two wolves that came off the ark with Noah; they are the same family though their appearance is quite different.
But frogs and dogs are not related in any way. Frogs do not become dogs. And there is not one particle of actual scientific evidence that suggests that they do.
Consider God’s design of animals. It is clear that God is always hyper in whatever He does and when He creates, He is simply beyond extravagant. The number of species found inside the very broad category called “animals,” are many, ranging from a one-celled amoeba all the way to a blue whale, which is, in fact, a mammal that looks like a fish, but is not.
Then we see that the Bible clearly delineates between differing species of angels.
It is not wrong, then, for us to combine these two facts together and make an extraordinary assumption regarding angels. We can assume that, just as the word “animal” is a very large category containing many different kinds of things, each containing hundreds and even thousands of differing unrelated species, so also is the large and general term “angel.” We can assume that there are many differing species of angels, possibly even matching the extravagant variety of the animal realm.
Let’s consider next the relationships among these three different types of creatures living together inside this one inhabited place, heaven-earth.
I have observed a number of times in my life what could only be the result of the hand of a guardian angel blocking an object moments before it should have crushed me. By the laws of physics, the object (one time, a pile of lumber on a fork lift) should have crushed my body. The fact that it stopped abruptly one-half inch from my body was contrary to the laws of physics.
I thus conclude that there is an angel, a living, thinking, observant person, right next to me right now even as I am sitting here typing, and most likely more than one.
At the same time, I have observed, recently, the hapless and crazed efforts of demons to strike against this present flow of word coming through me this January of 2020. Their increase in expressed fury seems to be equal to their inability to have any effect on me. And I make that statement entirely inside the grace of God and not of myself.
I then conclude that there are several demons around me right now even as I am sitting here typing, probably some pretty big ones.
So what did I just say? I just said that demons and angels occupy the same space around me and are thus fully aware of one another.
Consider the street on which I live. I know for a fact that some individuals on this street are born again Christians. I also know that some individuals on this street are unregenerate. Nonetheless, we all live on the same street and are fully aware of one another and are fully able to relate together. My neighbor on the other side of the fence is likely unregenerate. Even though I cannot have any spiritual fellowship with her, nonetheless, I can chat merrily and kindly with her.
The heavens are the same. Angels do not live in a “faraway place.” They inhabit the same one place, heaven-earth. Demons do not live in a “faraway place.” They inhabit the same one place, heaven-earth. Humans who have lost their physical bodies do not live in a “faraway place,” whether born-again or unregenerate. They inhabit the same one place, heaven-earth.
Hades/Sheol, then, is not a quality of heaven-earth. Hades is a condition of soul.
There is, then, a social law that rules inside the relationships of all three types of creatures, animals, humans, dead or alive, and angels. That law is that like gathers together with like. In other words, we tend to associate with those we are most like, that is, those with whom we are most comfortable.
Now, my understanding of how this law of society, that like gathers together with like, operates on the heaven side of things comes to some measure from the book Return from Tomorrow by George Ritchie. I would urge you to obtain that book and read it carefully. I have always trusted that the account George Ritchie gives of the heavens is accurate.
George Ritchie saw dead humans who had been heavy smokers when they had physical bodies gathering together with living humans who were heavy smokers, desperately trying to share the sensation of smoking, even though the living humans were oblivious to their presence. If that is true, then, the condition of being dead does not break this law of gathering.
And so George Ritchie saw dead humans who had loved war gathered together in an unending attempt to hack each other to pieces. By the same measure he understood, though the Lord did not take him there at that time, that dead humans who loved Jesus were gathered together into Him.
Let me define the phrase “dead in Christ.” People who lust after the super-Christ get bent all out of shape over this phrase written by Paul. Let’s look at the whole passage.
We do not want you to be ignorant, brothers and sisters, concerning those who have died, so that you should not be grieved, as the rest of those having no hope. For if we believe that Jesus died and rose again, so also God will carry those who have died, in joint-togetherness with Him, through Jesus. For this we declare to you inside of the word of the Lord, that we who live and remain into the presence of the Lord, shall not arrive ahead of those who have died, because the Lord Himself, in a great shout, in the voice of an archangel, and in the trumpet of God, will descend from heaven, and the dead inside of Christ will rise first. Then, we who live and remain, right along with them, will be seized inside the clouds into the meeting, connecting with the Lord into the air; and so, we will always be jointly-together with the Lord [sharing the same form] (1 Thessalonians 4:13-17).
“The dead inside of Christ.” How can a human be inside of Christ and be dead?
The problem here is the inability of some to consider the definition of words, that one word can have more than one definition, even though they KNOW that this is true.
A dead human is a human who has no physical body. Believers in Jesus dwelling inside of Him who have lost their physical bodies and who live in heaven-only, do they have physical bodies? No, they don’t. By that one definition of “dead,” they are dead.
Are we now, having physical bodies, not then alive inside of Christ? Of course we are, just exactly as they are. Yet, in spite of the fact that we are utterly ALIVE inside of Christ, we can still experience the ripping apart of heaven and earth and the loss of our physical bodies.
Humans, without a physical body, are only half there. They are not and cannot be complete. Living inside of Christ without a physical body CANNOT be Salvation, for humans in that state are woefully incomplete. That is why they long for the resurrection of their physical bodies.
Consider this passage, then. – But you have approached {same word as in Hebrews 10:19-22} Mount Zion, and the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem and myriads of angels {all things found when living inside the Holy of Holies.}. [You have approached] the festival assembly {the gathering of the Feast of Tabernacles} and the church of the firstborn enrolled in the heavens. [You have approached] God, the Judge of all, and the already perfected spirits of the righteous (Hebrews 12:22-23 – rough JSV).
Yes, those who are in Christ, you and me just as much as those who have died, are already perfect in our spirits, for we are already incorruptible in spirit, one spirit with the Lord, just as those Christians who have lost their physical bodies. The difference between us and the “already perfected spirits of the righteous” is one thing only. We have physical bodies, and they don’t. We are able to be the revelation of God through human flesh, and they cannot.
Christians who are “dead inside of Christ” CANNOT be the revelation of God; that’s why they are “coming back.”
And no Christian in heaven-only can know God beyond the level that Christians on this earth presently know God. A Christian dead in the heavens CANNOT impart to you a superior knowledge of God or of the revelation of Jesus Christ.
And all these, bearing witness through their faith, did not receive the promise; God, having perceived inside the core of His being [pro-seeing] something better for us, that apart from us they will not come to completion (Hebrews 11:39-40 – rough JSV).
Our hearts of flesh ARE the entrance of God into His creation to be seen and known by all. No flesh means no revelation of the knowledge of God flowing forth.
This is why God commanded us not to talk with the dead, even those who are dead inside of Christ. The lust in some Christians for the super-Christ opens those Christians up to demon spirits masquerading as “super-Christ Christians” of superior expressions of “God,” and these lust-filled Christians will hear demons and call it “Christ.”
Those of us who give thanks inside of and for all our human weakness, knowing that it is here that Jesus reveals Himself, are not subject to such blatant deception in the way that those who lust after superiority are. Nonetheless, we walk with great care; this is no game.
Now, my purpose in this layout is to arrive at an understanding of heaven-earth that allows us to place the actions of a Caller, a prophet of God, and what is happening in this realm of heaven-earth, when such a call is made. Some of that will be in upcoming letters, but we want to set the groundwork of understanding here.
In order to move towards such an understanding, we must next address the issue of symmorphy. There is no indication anywhere in Scripture that an angel can have other persons living inside of its bubble of self. There is clear indication in Jesus’ encounter with the Gadarene in the tombstones that angels can live inside the bubble of self that is an animal – that is, Jesus sent demons, who were hiding from God inside of a human, into pigs, in order to maintain a similar level of hiding, at their request.
Then, there is no indication that any godly angel ever lives inside the souls of either humans or animals. It is easy to assume that an angel’s entrance into either a human or an animal is a wicked action, akin to, but far worse than rape.
Consider the beautiful and wholesome togetherness that is found in your continuous experience of the Person of Jesus living inside of your own bubble of self. At no point is there any discord or disconnect. Then consider the awfulness of an angel living inside of a human’s bubble of self. Everything about it is and feels contrary. They do not belong.
I’m not going to go any further down this line of thinking on the principle that a little knowledge is a dangerous thing. That is, we cannot know enough about these things to mess any further with them. Nonetheless, what I have said thus far about varying types of symmorphy is fully known and Biblical.
Someone made the statement that we also share symmorphy with other Christians, just as we do with Jesus. This is self-evident BUNK! I do not have other Christian’s minds, feelings, and decisions, their entire persons, bobbing around inside of my bubble of self and neither do you. Such a thing would be far more wicked than the entrance of a demon. The relationship we have together as believers is fellowship, NOT symmorphy.
Now, the “elephant in the room” is the question – Where does God Himself fit into all of this?
We must look at three different statements in the gospels.
Our Father in heaven, hallowed be Your name. Your kingdom come. Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven (Matthew 6:9-10). – These things I have spoken to you as allegories [metaphors – figurative language]; an hour is coming when I will speak no more in metaphors, but I will boldly and publicly make the Father known to you (John 16:25). – In that day you will know that I am inside of My Father, and you inside of Me and I inside of you (John 14:20).
Let’s think this through carefully. It is clear from Paul’s claims in Galatians 1, that the apostle John knew absolutely nothing about any “me in Jesus and Jesus in me” at the late date of AD 53 when Paul wrote Galatians.
Everything Jesus said during His ministry was constrained by the fact that He was speaking to unregenerate people who simply could not comprehend either He or God dwelling inside of them. No one who heard Jesus speak, including the disciples, were capable of comprehending God and Jesus as they ARE. This is why the last thing Jesus said was, “Everything I have said up till now is figurative.”
John’s knowing of “me in Jesus and Jesus in me” would not come until decades later, long after the Day of Pentecost when, for the first time, humans were capable of knowing God.
When Jesus said, “Our Father in heaven,” He was not geographizing God, making God into a creature of heaven. He was speaking at the level of those who heard Him, for they were incapable of knowing God.
God is omnipresent Spirit; that means that God IS all here now, that He fills all things with all that He is. Those who have read what I share for some time understand that reality of God.
Here is how I would say it now. The things of God do operate in the heavens by His Spirit, BUT God Himself in Person cannot be known by any part of heaven-earth except He come into their knowing THROUGH your heart and mine as we, with Father, love one another.
As always, we are never talking about God Himself, for God Himself fills every particle of that which is heavenly and every particle of that which is earthly, yet God is infinitely beyond both, yet that of God which is infinitely beyond both is ALL HERE NOW in all.
The issue is always the knowledge of God, and the knowledge of God is a BIG deal, for it is the only thing that is age-unfolding LIFE.
This, then, allows us to see again that there are TWO very DIFFERENT kinds of prophets in the church. There are those in-part prophets who call the things of the heavens, the things of God into the knowledge of humans. And there are those prophets or Callers of the fullness of Christ who call God Himself in Person into the knowledge of all, humans, angels, and everything else.
Consider the role of Annie Schissler as an in-part prophet of the things of the heavens in her seeing of many profound visions.
Annie Schissler had zero knowledge of Paul’s gospel, of a Jesus who dwells INSIDE of her, in all of her person, and inside of whom she dwells in all of His Person. She knew Jesus only in the way the disciples knew Jesus as Someone outside of themselves who does good things for them.
Thus we know that, when Annie saw Jesus in the heavens, she was seeing only figuratively, for she did not know that Jesus is, in fact, dwelling all through her own human person. The form Jesus took to fit Annie’s understanding was a form that could never be her Salvation. Salvation is the same Christ inside our hearts.
God always meets us where we are in our limited understanding, and walks with us, step by step into the knowing of things as they really are.
Nonetheless, God was able to pass through the limitation of Annie’s understanding and enter into me through her vision as a profound KNOWING of God-in-me far beyond what Annie could know at the time.
You know, I think that is enough of a background for us to be able to talk about the practical meaning of God through us into the knowledge of heaven-earth in the upcoming chapters.