16. The Fullness of Times

There is not one thing that exists on the natural, lower level of expression or frequency that is not an extension of reality in the spiritual or heavenly realms. Everything in the natural is simply a visible form of spiritual reality. At the same time, everything in the heavens, everything in the spiritual realms, has a visible outworking in the material, physical world. Nothing exists separate and disconnected. Nothing.

 

The word God speaks, including the prophetic word, has a fulfillment on several different levels, both in the realms of physical nature, in the realms of the spiritual heavens, and as a symbol – as the Spirit wishes to use it in the present moment. Some believe, however, that there is no fulfillment of the prophetic word in the natural world. They have never seen clearly how all things exist.

When we were first born again, we had little understanding of the realms of spirit. As we grew up in the Lord, we began to hear His voice. Great emphasis was placed on hearing His voice and obeying what He speaks. Yet this level of walking with God was still a separation from Him and impossibly in-part.

Now we realize that the next level of relationship is that of seeing. “We shall be like Him for we shall see Him as He is.” This is not some future event when He appears in natural form. Rather, it is the transformation of our minds from hearing to seeing.

And thus the Scripture says, “I heard of you by the hearing of the ears, but now my eyes have seen. . .”

Our eyes are opening and we are seeing that which has always been true.

All things are of God; all things exist inside the realm of Spirit. All things live and move and have their being in God. Even evil spirits gain their existence and power operating inside the realm of Spirit as extended to them by God. They serve only His ultimate purpose.

However, when I wrote that some of the symbolism in the revelation of Jesus Christ given to John on Patmos has a fulfillment both in nature as well as a fulfillment in the spirit realms, I was still seeing these things as separate occurrences.

They are not.

My eyes and yours are opening like never before. I see with an inner knowing the realms of spirit. Granted, I see as a baby sees, yet I see. Not long ago I did not see, except by occasional glimpses. Now I find that I see much of the time. In saying that, I do not set myself above anyone in any way. Rather, I am sharing with you that the door into the heavens has opened for all of us.

The times have changed. Open your eyes and see as God sees. See by the perception of your spirit. You are able to do so.

The Spirit of God is like the air or the ocean – which are two pictures we have of the medium that contains all forms of life. All physical life exists in one or the other. Birds and fish typify this reality best since they move entirely in air/water. In exactly the same way, all things that exist move about in the Spirit of God. Just as all creatures draw breath from air/water, so all created beings, both in heaven and on earth, draw their continual breath of existence from the Spirit of God.

All birds/fish move about by pushing against the air/water. Even the tiniest movement of either sends ripples and currents flowing outward far beyond the immediate reach of the creature. In exactly the same way, every created being in heaven and earth moves about in the context of Spirit and every movement sends ripples throughout the realm of Spirit.

But we never think of Spirit as a “force.” It seems at times to exist in that way, but Spirit is always a Person – the Holy Spirit.

All sin is committed in the Holy Spirit – NOT by the Holy Spirit – NO! But you can’t go somewhere else to commit sin or cruelty. There is no where else to be. If any created being were to find itself where the Holy Spirit did not exist, they also would not exist.

David said, “If I make my bed in “hell” (Sheol), behold You are there.” Nothing and no one is ever separate from God. God is always close, up front and personal. We cannot sin except we draw the functions of life to sin from the Spirit in which we live and move and have our being.

In fact, all waste of fish and bird is carried away by the air/water in which they move. All evil entities or negative personal frequencies exist only in the larger context of God. This is a puzzle, but reading through some of Annie Schissler’s visions of reality in the heavens gives us some understanding of how this works. If you have not obtained her book of visions, I urge you to do so. It is the last booklet, I Looked and I Saw Visions of God, that speaks the most clearly to me. You can find a link to her books on my website.

Now, here is another of the first things I see. There is not one thing that exists on the natural, lower level of expression or frequency that is not an extension of reality in the spiritual or heavenly realms.

Everything in the natural is simply a visible form of spiritual reality.

At the same time, everything in the heavens, everything in the spiritual realms, has a visible outworking in the material, physical world.

Nothing exists separate and disconnected. Nothing.

And the earth with the work God is doing upon it is the central focus of all things; it is the place where God is forming His sons, the ones through whom all creation is set free.

The “mark of the beast” exists fully in four ways all at the same time. First, it exists in the realm of spirit unrelated to the passing seasons. This is a spirit, or a spiritual quality that sits upon all men through the history of this earth. However, humans are physical as well, and thus the spirit beastliness that sits upon them shows itself in many outward physical markings and ways of doing things. Those outward marks are directly connected to and are the visible expressions of the spiritual reality called the “mark of the Beast.”

“And Cain rose up against his brother Abel and killed him.”

This is the first “mark” or outward form of the Beast – manipulating and controlling, ruling over others by violence and by the threat of violence.

What is America’s answer to every problem in modern society? Throw them in jail. Locking people up behind bars is almost the only solution any more to any difficulty in human life. This is a mark of the Beast, one of many.

From Cain striking Abel all the way to America’s infatuation with keeping millions of people behind bars, most for “made-up” crimes, you see the thread of the mystery of iniquity, of the spirit of the Beast manifesting outwardly in various outward forms, imposing control on others through various violent means. You see the direct connection.

The lust to dominate (the Beast as a spiritual force) through various violent or subversive means (the Beast outwardly) to the voluntary submission of people to the dictates of power, (the outward marks) shows the direct connection between the reality in the heavens with the outward forms in the earth.

You cannot have a spiritual quality that does not have its expression on the physical plane. You cannot have something on the physical plane that does not come out of a spiritual quality in the heavens. Both the spiritual quality in the heavens and the outward physical marks in the earth are the same thing manifesting on two different levels. Nothing is separate or disconnected.

But there is a further reality that exists for all things spoken by God in the prophetic word. And Jesus is the prophetic word, “For the testimony (the witness) of Jesus is the Spirit of prophecy.” The revelation of Jesus Christ is a prophetic word, a word that calls those things that “be not” as though they are.

That reality is called “the fullness of times.” God requires everything to come to its full reality, its full expression and form, its full position or potential. That is His nature, the nature of Spirit. All things hidden shall be made known; everything secret becomes visible; things whispered in the dark must be shouted upon the housetops.

Everything is revealed as it really and truly is.

The best example of “the fullness of times” is the blood of Christ. When God says, “The Lamb slain from before the foundation of the ages,” He meant that the Blood of Christ exists in God in eternal form in all of its redemptive qualities and powers and is an integral part of who and what God is, separate from time or creation.

Then, as sin unfolded in the earth, so did the blood. Blood is implied in the acquisition of animal skins by which God clothed Adam and Eve, and it is shed in redemptive offering by Abel in verse 4 of human life after the garden.

That shedding of blood by Abel was the very blood of Christ in the heavens manifesting in physical outward form in this world. Every offering of blood from the lamb offered by Abel to the lamb offered up in the temple of Herod as Jesus hung upon the cross was simply the outward physical form of the heavenly spiritual reality of Blood.

But here is what so few people seem to comprehend.

The Eternal Blood of Christ in the heavens AND every one of its physical manifestations upon the earth DID NOT satisfy God.

God required the Fullness of Times.

Before the fullness of times, the Blood began in the heavens and then revealed itself in the earth. But in the fullness of times, God sent forth His Son – and the most incredibly bizarre change occurred. The Blood began in the earth and then revealed itself in the Heavens.

Neither the Blood filled with all redemptive power in the heavens, nor its ongoing manifestation in the earth, the shed blood of lambs, of bulls, and of goats, COUNTED for God. God required physical human corpuscles, the life of the human body, falling into the physical dust of this earth out of which our physical bodies, our flesh, was formed.

Then, beyond all comprehension, that which began in the NATURAL was taken by the Lord Jesus as He ascended to the Father, which He then sprinkled before the throne upon the Mercy Seat in the heavens as the SPIRITUAL power of redemption.

And suddenly, at that moment, the BLOOD counted for God, and eternal redemption was extended to all creation.

In the fullness of times.

But the fullness of times is a spiritual reality that exists for everything. Everything that is in God, in the realm of Spirit, with all of its manifestation in the earth, the realm of physical matter, also has its own FULLNESS of Times.

I cannot know for certain, we can only wait and see, but I have the sense in my spirit that this day, this October of 2010, the dispensation, the age, the time period of the fullness of times is begun. It is the shortest of all God’s created ages.

Let me repeat the pattern of the first “fullness of times,” the 3 ½ year ministry of the Lord Jesus Christ, culminating in His ascension into the heavens ten days before Pentecost, and beginning at the moment that John the Baptist lifted Him out of the waters of the Jordan into the fullness of the Spirit coming upon Him.

The Lamb was already slain in the eternal Being of God, that Blood of the Lamb was able to manifest itself all through human history in the form of the shed blood of sheep and bulls and goats. By that physical side of the heavenly blood, God could walk with man. He could dwell among them, in spite of the presence of sin.

But from the shed blood of the lamb offered by Abel to the shed blood of the lamb offered in the temple while Jesus hung upon the cross – all of it – was —

In Part and Not Enough!

Now, in Jesus, God manifested Himself in FLESH and walked among us. Before Jesus, the reality of the heavens manifested all through the earth, but in part and not enough. Now, every single act of Jesus after the baptism of John was earth establishing eternal reality in the heavens.

Kind of blows your mind, doesn’t it?

Now, in that fullness of times, every step of faith walked by the Word made flesh became our reality forever. And the physical blood shed upon the cross became the Fullness of Heavenly Reality that was now Fully in all ways and at all times —

COMPLETE AND ENOUGH.

But God requires two witnesses of Christ, not one. And He requires a second fullness of times that comes out of the pattern of the first.

Look at the life of the Christian from the Day of Pentecost until right now today, and it is 100%, in all possible ways —

IN PART AND NOT ENOUGH!

Yet we know that it is all 100% real in the heavens, in God. But the 100% reality in the Spirit does not satisfy itself in life on this earth.

Search the annals of church history, pick any one or any group you like, the Apostle John or St. Patrick, Brother Lawrence or John Wesley, the latter-rain outpouring or the early church in the spiritually-charged weeks after Pentecost, pick any of it.

THEN, lay the life experience of any and all Christians in the age of the church against the simple truth God speaks about LIFE in the pages of the New Testament and all we have ever known in the age of the church is — In Part and Not Enough.

There are those who try to spiritualize the vision of the kingdom, there are those who try to naturalize the vision of the kingdom, both in order to argue and to assert that life as we know it now IS what God meant by all those incredible things He says about us in the New Covenant.

Most of Christianity has given up on what God says in the New Testament and put it all into a “place” they call “heaven” to which they hope to go after they die. This is the grossest form of unbelief in what is called “Christianity.” They then believe that we presently experience all that the kingdom is for us here, and that we presently know all that we are meant to know in this life. 

It is NOT!

Once again, we are in the fullness of times. Once again the Word is made flesh in us. AND once again, the actions of physical human beings upon this planet set the reality of all future ages that God has created.

Adam worked with God to name the animals. You and I are working together with God to form the very nature and being of the ages that are yet to come, right now, out of the fullness of times. We are about our Father’s business.

Here is the pattern of the Blood. First, true in the heavens, but in-part in the earth. Then, in the fullness of times, true in the earth becomes the full reality of all heaven. So it is with the mark of the Beast.

The contest in the revelation of Jesus Christ is between the Lamb and the Beast. The Lamb has the Blood, the Beast has its mark – they are counterparts. By the Blood we gain the victory over the Beast and over its mark and its symbols.

The Beast, the nature of self, separated to itself, manipulating and abusing others for self gain, exists as a spiritual quality in the heavens. Its mark reveals itself in the earth all through human history, both as the means of violence and further, as the outward show of submission to cruelty and control and to the service of cruelty and control. Any man picking up a weapon to “fight for his country,” has fought for the Beast and never for the Lamb.

The American flag is one of the most prominent “marks” of the Beast. The mark of the Beast is any symbol by which individuals connect themselves to the spirit of this world.

Yet in the fullness of times the order is reversed. The outward form of the fullness of the mark of the Beast, the most in-your-face, screw-You-God symbol of control and submission to control – the radio identification chip inserted into the physical body – that which was created to be the temple and the dwelling place of Almighty God – and tied directly to a world-wide web of electronic control, turns and creates the reality of the mark of the beast in the heavenly realms and in the age to come in fullness.

We live in the most exciting and the most dangerous of times.

Now, let me work my way to the main point of this chapter.

In the natural, everything is made of atoms gathered together in molecules. Atoms are electrical charges that give everything substance and shape. Even our minds work to a large extent through the electrical properties of atoms.

In the heavens, in the Spirit, everything is made up of a substance called Life. Thus we have the word of Life, the water of Life, the Spirit of Life, and so on. The Blood in the heavens is the very LIFE of God.

In the reality of Spirit, everything obtains its substance and form and shape from the quality called Life – in exact parallel to the electrical positive/negative balance called atoms in the earth.

Everything in the heavens is made of Life; there is nothing inert, everything is living. As Peter says, we are “living stones.” He was not speaking symbolically only, nor giving us a method of intellectual Bible interpretation, he was speaking of literal reality in the spiritual realms. In the same way, nothing in the natural exists separately from living Spirit in the heavens. Everything is much more ALIVE than we have the ability to perceive.

That brings us to the most powerful form of life in the universe — The Word.

The words we speak are far more than vibrations in the air or letters on a page. ALL words are spirit and they reverberate through the realms of spirit either as death unto death or as Life unto Life. All words spoken by the heart of men create spiritual reality that must reveal itself in some outward form.

Life and death are in the power of the tongue. It is not just that words “make things happen,” it is that they themselves are Alive.

I am astonished beyond measure that mature saints of God are willing to speak what God does not speak. There are two words spoken into the universe. You and I are capable of speaking both at the same time.

One word says, “Let there be light,” actually, that should be translated, “Light be,” a calling those things that “be not” as though they are. The other word says, “Did God really say that?”

“Did God really say that” comes in more forms and arrangements than we could possibly count. It is woven all through the fabric of Christian theology and reasoning. And when we speak what God does not speak, we create death.

Speaking what God speaks begins in the heart. It is birthed out of the greatest statement of Living Faith in human history. “I belong to You. Let it be to me according to Your Word.” Out of that Faith, Christ is birthed into the world.

Speaking what God speaks is a living reality of the heart, not a dead letter of the mind.

The problem is that no matter how much we hear, “Speak what God speaks; DO NOT speak what God does not speak,” yet it just does not sink into the reality of our own religious thoughts and words.

If I could erase from your mind every word, every cute saying, every trite phrase, every bit of religious nonsense Christians so easily speak, that God does NOT say, I would. But, alas, I cannot do that. The only thing that will erase from your own heart and mind the very many ways in which the serpent still says, “Did God really say that,” is for you yourself to speak yourself with your own voice box the words of Life that God Himself speaks. And to believe that what you speak is Living true reality through all the heavens of God.

Our words are alive and they live forever, whether we think them or speak them or write them. They are alive.

A million years from now, we will stand before the next place in God and in His purpose for us and we will see there, before us, our words, spoken by us here upon this earth. Those words will either open the door into that next experience of God, or they will keep that door closed so that we cannot enter. We will say, “Why can’t we enter here?” And our words, spoken by us upon this earth, will answer back, “Did God really say that?”

Jesus said, “By your words you will be justified and by your words you will be condemned.” It is this living eternal reality of which He was speaking.

We see this stark reality in today’s world. Every word that every person types or speaks and sends out into the Internet as email or voicemail, or pushes “send” on their cell phone either as text or as spoken conversation – EVERY SINGLE word exists forever as long as the world wide web exists. Anyone who knows how to look can seek out and find every single word you have texted or spoken in the digital world. They can bring that word back either to condemn you or to justify you. Every word.

The Beast knows how to find our every word and has already catalogued them. We will see it use the words that it keeps to condemn and to destroy.

It is the same in the heavens, except this – in the heavens all those words are alive.

Now, before we get conniptions about all this, remember two things. Normal human conversation comes out of the mind and heart of God. It is holy and pure. Conversing with our family, visiting with friends and neighbors, talking about the job at work, these things are entirely out of the heart of God.

More than that, there is something in the heavens that is able to erase forever every single negative word we have ever thought or spoken or written. To erase it as if it never was.

That something is the BLOOD.

But the Blood by itself does not erase our mistakes. Our faith must draw that Blood into itself. The Blood, working together with Faith (and it’s not even our faith, it’s His), makes all things brand new.

This is the confidence and the boldness in which we walk.

When we speak what God speaks about ourselves and His purposes through us, our eyes are opened and we can see all things as they really are.

But what happens to us now when we speak what God does not speak?

When we speak what God does NOT speak, we are literally cutting out our own spiritual eyes, we are preventing our own selves from being able to see the wondrous things God is doing right now upon the earth.

Here is the difference with us as sons of God sent into this world to fulfill our Father’s work and to accomplish His purposes in the earth.

God has placed all things into our hands. It is not us, it is Christ, yet it is us, for we are one with Him. We do not ourselves bear this great responsibility, it is Christ who bears it in us, yet He and we are in no way separate.

The judgment of the prince of this world, the turning of the ages, the proving of the will of God in the earth, all these things are in our hands. Not in the sense that we “get out and do something,” that is how we once thought when we lived separately from Christ.

I, me, the human me, I am completely swallowed up in the Lord Jesus Christ. Yet He, the King of Heaven, reveals Himself in every tiny part of my human frame. I live, yet it is not I, it is He. Yet it is also I.

Every weight He bears, every joy I share.

How can I say this that is so real?

What I speak is Christ speaking. My words are so very, very important. By my words I bring healing and joy into the hearts of others. By my words I cast down every voice that speaks against the Word God speaks. By my words I turn the ages. By my words the glorious liberty of the sons of God is revealed to all creation.

Yet we know that reality is not in Word only. (Don’t ever forget that word “only.” The word “only” means both all the time.) Reality is found in Word and in Deed. The Words of Christ which we speak move through our hands and our feet into the reality of all the ways of life in this world. But it does not begin with our hands or our feet, it all begins with our tongue, with the words that we speak.

And thus we prove all the will of God in our bodies upon this earth.

The words that we speak are alive and they live forever.

We are in the fullness of times. All that the Father has spoken from the beginning is fulfilled now in all fullness through us upon this earth.