14. The Cauldron of the Resurrection I
God demands proof of Himself in the earth. We are His proof.
[The answer I would give this brother today would be much more clear. Here I was searching for an understanding of this topic as God speaks it. And yes, I do believe that Paul was telling us the truth when he said that those inside of Christ in the heavens are, in fact, dead. They don't have their physical bodies; they are not whole.]
© Daniel Yordy 2010
Mr. Yordy. Is it possible you are already resurrected and don’t realize it or understand it? Your writings and audio contain some excellent material and understanding. You demonstrate Christ in you as a reality and yet as I read your teaching you are still waiting to be resurrected. Are you interested in pursuing this discussion? Have I misunderstood your resurrection ideas?~~~
We call those things that be not as though they are. Yes, our completed state exists fully before God right now. We are becoming what we already are.
Jesus was the Lamb slain from before the foundation of the world. Yet God did not count that reality directly for human experience until red corpuscles mixed with the dirt of this earth.
God created this earth, placed man under vanity, and gave you and me flesh for a purpose. God is after something, something that He cannot get just by speaking a word in the way that He creates everything else. That something is illustrated through a number of pictures – a butterfly pressing against its chrysalis until it is cast off, a bride coming out of the wilderness leaning on her Beloved, the life of Jesus revealed in my mortal flesh, the pain and agony of a woman crying out to be delivered of her child, His strength made perfect in my weakness.
There is certainly a large element of the resurrection that is spirit, that is, of a heavenly substance. In that part of the resurrection we do walk right now, but that is a walking by faith. Faith means we do not necessarily see it with our eyes.
But, ultimately, just as God required red corpuscles in the dirt of the earth, so the resurrection is utterly physical. It is the bringing of all that God is into the physicality of this earth. It is the redemption of the body. It is the mortal body, that is my dying flesh, that the Holy Spirit is working the resurrection life of Jesus into right now.
Now, that is an incredible statement, because I don’t, and have never seen (apart from an occasional miraculous healing) any outward sign of that working in my physical body or anyone else’s. My body is just like yours, it is getting older, more tired, and tending toward the grave.
A kingdom that is “spiritual” only has no appeal to me. “Thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.” This earth is my inheritance. I want to see the curse removed from it and all demons; I want to walk upon this earth in a physical body that is completely physical, yet as fully resurrected as Jesus’ body. I want to see plants and animals released to be what they really are. I want to hear the mountains sing and the plains rejoice in His glory. I want to see the power and place of wicked men to hurt and manipulate others totally removed. I want to see centuries upon this planet with no such thing anywhere. This is an essential part of my inheritance.
I want to open the door for all to follow after into a reality that is real in all the physicality of this world and not “mystical” or “spiritual” only.
Right now we are in the womb of the church. That is the best picture of where we are. We are, already, everything that we shall be. We declare all things as they really are, though we see nothing as yet. When our spirit was made alive, we were conceived in the womb. When our body is made alive we come forth in the full light of day. Then we shall see all things as they really are. (And she brought forth a male child, and her child was caught up to God and to His throne.)
But right now, here in the womb is found the entire purpose and intention of God. We do not see anything as it really is, except that we have heard what God speaks. It is dancing in victory before we see it with our eyes, convinced that what God says is true, though we see it not, standing in faith, casting down every voice that speaks otherwise, speaking what God speaks, light in the midst of darkness, love in the midst of hate, this is the great cauldron that God has carefully prepared in order to form that most very precious thing that He can have no other way.
More than just the child in the womb, however, everything concerning God and us is found inside the point of the labor of bringing that child to birth. Pressing through the birth canal, at the place of utmost pain, is where we are.
There are two points of contention upon which God has placed everything concerning the Word that He speaks and concerning us. Both of those points of issue are regarding the inheritance. But one point of conflict is spirit and in the heavens, and the other point of conflict is flesh and in the earth. Both points of contention will by won by us by the Spirit and by faith, in very similar ways.
God demands proof of Himself in the earth. We are His proof.
But the victory in the heavens comes first. That moment of winning is found in Revelation 12; it is the casting down of the accuser both out of our heavens and out of all the heavens of God. I suspect that means Satan and his demons becoming physical and earthy. The second moment of winning is found in Revelation 11, and that is the battle over the inheritance on this earth.
Come, let us kill Him, that the inheritance may be ours. — Cast out the bondwoman and her son, for the son of the bondwoman shall not be heir with the son of the free woman. — What shall their return be but life from the dead.
Most people live in utter ignorance of the reality of how things operate upon this earth. But all that God speaks, He speaks into that which is, not into that which is carefully fabricated nonsense. Because people don’t understand things as they really are, they have no idea what God is talking about. It is a waste of time to try to explain it to most. But this is all of God. We do what God has called us to do and leave the worrying about others in the hands of our most capable Savior.
I know that there is a large segment of thinking among Christians that the kingdom is all “spiritual” and has no immediate outworking in the physical, that the wicked machinations of this world and all the hurt and cruelty just go on and on, that all that God is can be found only in a spiritualized ideal, that dying and going into the grave is the only release into the “next realm.”
Then, there are many who turn around and imagine that bringing forth “the kingdom” in the earth involves moving as present Christians into the political realms and making the world “Christian.”
By God’s grace, I receive all who belong to Jesus in the same way that He receives me. But I have no interest in or connection with either of those ways of thinking. And it is my right and responsibility before God to speak that which God has placed in my heart without coming under the shadow of other voices.
I am convinced that the strongest voice whispering in the church today is the words, “Go to sleep. Sleep. Sleep.” John says that part of the spirit of anti-Christ is to remove “Christ” from the physical reality of flesh upon this earth.
Everything wants to get our eyes off the battle, off of standing firmly upon the insistence that we are not satisfied, we will not rest, we will not lay down our weapons, until we see all hurt and every part of the curse removed from off this planet in all physical actuality. Even entering into His rest is presented to us by the Holy Spirit as a battle.
I am no more resurrected than you are. The proof is in the pudding. A resurrected body is one that does not die physically, one that never grows old nor is ever weary or sick. A resurrected body is one that can enjoy all the fruit of the earth, but is not limited or bound by the earth and can go with us throughout all the heavens as well.
~~~
Mr. Yordy, I would like a better understanding of a scripture. Perhaps you can help?
For the Lord himself shall descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trump of God: and the dead in Christ shall rise first. 1Thessalonians 4:16
I cannot accept the idea that this has any reference to the physically dead, the corpses buried in the ground. The difficulty is the idea of simultaneously being IN Christ and yet DEAD. To be IN Christ is to be alive. What is your understanding?
~~~
In searching for understanding on a different, though similar, question, I came across the comparison Paul gives between love and knowledge. Knowledge gets rid of love as it puffs itself up, but love does not get rid of knowledge, rather, it brings knowledge into the spirit that says, “Whatever I may know now, I can’t possibly see or understand clearly; there is so much more that I ‘ought to know’ that makes my present knowledge quite limited indeed.” 1 Corinthians 8:1-2 (My paraphrase)
It is in that vein that I write. I share as if God has given me some understanding, both because He has and because Peter commands us that if we speak, we should speak as the mouthpiece of God. But God is meek and of a humble spirit; He never “puffs” Himself up. And so in sharing whatever it is that fills my heart, I do so with the full conviction that I know so very little, I see things dimly, God is far beyond my present knowledge and will be throughout eternity.
I enjoy reading historical stories, usually set in England. Death and burial often appear in those stories. To the Catholic medieval mind, where and how one was buried was a big deal. In one such story, a beloved pastor was buried with his back to the east facing his congregation so that when his congregation jerked up out of the ground, they would see him first and not be frightened out of their wits. Because the physical churches of England are surrounded by gravestones and all the motifs are about demons torturing people or corpses jerking up out of the dirt, the modern mind concludes that Christianity was a cult of death.
So I understand and share the revulsion to that whole way of thinking, knowing that it cannot be in line with the gospel of Jesus Christ.
In reaction against that way of thinking, that exalts the natural, that comes out of the limited thinking of fallen man upon this earth in his utter ignorance, many in recent years have adopted a method of interpreting passages in the Bible that seeks a “spiritualized” interpretation only. I have sat for years under many teachers of the word who give a “spiritual” and “deeper truth” interpretation only of many such passages.
But for some reason, although I believe fully in the Spirit of the Word, that is, that the Holy Spirit inside of us takes the Word God speaks as a seed of life and makes that Word our life in power, I have never really bought into “spiritualizing” the word God speaks. In other words, I see that “spiritualizing” a passage such as you refer to here is inside the same game as the historical “naturalizing,” just on the opposite end of the same spectrum. Much “spiritualizing” is little more than one more way to play intellectual games with the word God speaks, and in the end just another way to echo the serpent, “Did God really say that?”
Now, in saying that, I fully recognize and use the Bible’s own definitions of metaphors and symbols. God uses metaphors and symbols from beginning to end, and He gives us the interpretation of every metaphor and symbol He uses inside the Bible itself. Yet, for myself, I find a distinct difference between using metaphors as God uses them and “spiritualizing” the word.
And so I have to ask the question. Could there be a completely different way of understanding God and His ways than either of these two intellectual approaches? We see that whenever Jesus was asked a question, He gave an answer that seemed to have nothing to do with the question. Yet as we come to know God and His ways, we come to see that Jesus’ answer was the only possible answer to the question, that it answered the question perfectly.
Here is one from John 12. Question: We would see Jesus. Answer: Unless a grain of wheat falls into the ground and dies, it remains alone, but if it dies, it will bear many more grains.
We know that understanding Jesus’ reply does not take us into “spiritualized” realms that dilute the meaning of His words. We know that Jesus meant that seeing Him as an individual man would do no one any good, but that if He “died,” that is, if He entered into us in our earthy condition, becoming Christ as us, the Holy Spirit would form Him in many and we would see Christ growing to full fruit both in ourselves and in one another. We understand this reality to be substantial and practical; there is nothing ethereal about it.
God’s creation has two parts, that is, everything God created is made up of one or the other of two forms of substance. One form of substance is the physical – matter, atoms, molecules, moving through space. The other form of substance is the spiritual – spirit, frequency. Spirit is a substance as real as matter. Angels are created out of a spirit substance, though we know from the Bible that they can take on themselves a physical form that is in that moment as substantial as any rock or human body. Yet, when they leave it, it vanishes as if it never was. Animals, on the other hand, are created out of physical matter, though they have a measure of spirit that ceases when they cease.
An angel, consisting of spirit substance, at the frequency of spirit, can cause that frequency to lower and thus the angel’s “body” appears at the frequency of physical matter. Then, when the angel disappears, it simply releases the substance of its body back into its normal spirit frequency. Nothing is spooky or “miraculous”; everything works in the harmony of laws created by God to govern all things. Laws of true science are laws created by God.
The Bible uses two metaphors to speak of these two sides of creation. Heaven and Earth. And so Mars, because it is physical, is on the earth side of creation. Angelic spirits of all kinds, even though they may find themselves in earth’s atmosphere, are on the heavenly side of creation. All that is spirit is heavenly. All that is matter moving through space is earthy.
Everything God created, however, is found in one realm or the other. Animals are completely physical; their spirit is tied completely to the earth. Angels are completely spiritual, that is, their substance is completely spirit, and they are tied always to the heavenly side of God’s creation. If angels materialize, they do so only temporarily; it is not their normal state.
Man is unique.
Man is the only creature God made that is fully earth and fully heaven, fully physical matter and fully spiritual substance both at the same time. 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
This is man’s substance in perfection before the fall or any sin. In other words, you and I are a living soul. And we express ourselves and communicate with others through two different bodies both at the same time. We have a physical body through which we interact with the physical side of God’s creation and we have a spirit, a spiritual body through which we interact with the heavenly side of God’s creation. Both bodies are completely real and both are completely integral to who and what we are as humans.
The human is the union between spirit and dirt. Christ is the union between God and the human. I more and more believe that the “image of God” aspect of things is centered in the heart, and that heart is a unique element found only at the juncture of God and dirt.
Then comes the fall. The fall shatters both realms, heaven and earth. It affects man by cutting him off from knowledge of his spirit and normal interaction with the heavenly elements, the heavenly side of God’s creation. Man sees only a blighted earth with no knowledge of the heavens he was created to walk in as well. If he could see those heavens, he would see that they are just as blighted as the earth, if not more so, and he would know only despair. He would see the nastiness of the evil spirits that drive him, and he would succumb to horror.
But then there comes into the thinking of man upon this earth, especially after the resurrection of Jesus, in the church age, when spirit is re-introduced into the human experience by God, a philosophy, a view of God’s creation that says something along these lines.
Heaven good - Earth bad.
The most extreme is known as Manichaeism, that is the belief that a greater God created heaven and the realm of spirit, that a lesser god created the earth and the realm of matter moving through space, and that these two “gods” are at war with each other. Gnosticism is similar. Gnosticism argues that since the physical realms are tainted and evil, then Jesus could not possibly have appeared in a body of physical substance. Therefore Jesus made Himself “look like” He had a physical body, though He had nothing of the kind.
This view forgets the fact that heaven is also shattered and blighted, that it is unclean in God’s sight, and that He intends to destroy it and create a completely new heaven. Heaven is in as much need of redemption as earth.
The New Testament teaches us that we fight evil and wickedness in heaven not in the earth. In other words, we have greater enemies in heaven and in the spirit than we have in the flesh or upon the earth. Heaven is more likely to pull us down and away from Christ than earth or the flesh is.
It is a reaction against the carnality with which the gospel has been interpreted and applied in Christendom to seek a spiritualized understanding of the things God says. But I would submit that to “spiritualize” what God says comes out of the same intellectual thinking as to “carnalize” what He says. Rather, let’s look through God’s eyes and see the creation as He sees it.
You see, there is an enormous pressure all through human history to demonize the earth and to mock and ridicule the human. Not one ounce of this pressure comes from God, every bit of it comes from the evil one. Satan hates man because man is the image of God and he is not. God intends to reveal Himself through man and not through any angelic being. All angelic beings, even the greatest and most powerful, were created for an ultimate purpose – to serve the image of God, which is man. Just as God created animals to serve man, to be our beasts of burden and to work for us upon the earth, so God created angels to serve man and to work for us in the heavens.
Why? Certainly not for our self-exaltation or self-pleasure. No. Man is created to be the image of God. That is, God intends to reveal Himself as He really is through man. God is invisible, no one can see or know Him, neither in heaven nor on earth. God is not satisfied with that arrangement. He wants to be seen, to be known, to be handled, to be touched. Therefore God created man weak. We have the capacity to be filled with all that God is and to release God as He is through us to creation. But we have no ability in ourselves whatsoever. That is the nature of man. Infinite capacity, zero ability.
Faith is the mechanism, the door, the passage, by which infinite capacity – God – moves through zero ability – man – to touch and bring life and healing and joy to all created beings, whether in heaven or on earth, that is whether beings created out of the substance we call “spirit,” or beings created out of the substance we call “matter.” Faith is Christ living in our hearts.
Now, we know that God created all things that are spirit substance, and God created all things that are physical matter. And in the day that He created all things, He pronounced all things “good.”
Let me bring in some verses that are definitive for me, substantial underlying verses that rule our understanding of God and His ways.
Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.
The glory of the Lord shall cover the earth as the waters cover the sea.
The meek shall inherit the earth.
He who overcomes shall be My son and shall inherit all things.
There is a strong belief in “deeper truth” circles that the physical side of the universe, physical matter moving through space, is a problem with God, that it is the source of our trouble, and that God intends to dispense with it as soon as He can. There is the belief that when God finishes with the earth, there will be heaven only, there will be no physical matter anywhere in the universe. The universe will revert to spirit substance and we, as overcoming saints, will exist before God as spirit beings only and never again know anything of the physical matter side of God’s creation.
I would contend that this belief is as much nonsense as corpses jerking up out of the dirt on “judgment day.” It is the statement “heaven is our home,” something God never says anywhere in the Bible. Because, you see, I am as much the seed of Abraham as I am the seed of God.
Heaven is the same as earth as regarding good and evil. A good man who brings good out of his heart can live on the same street on earth as an evil man who brings evil out of his heart. The problem is not the street. In the same way, evil spirits and good spirits fill heaven and often live and work side by side. Again, the problem is not “the street.” To say that heaven is good and earth is evil is to miss the whole point of what causes something to be of God or not of God. Spirit substance is not “more holy” than physical matter. In fact, it is man only who is created like God. Angels, though they are of spirit substance and are heavenly creatures are NOT like God. God fashioned the physical human body with Himself in mind – an essential part of man, His image. He did not think that way when He formed angels. In fact, Hebrews indicates that, while God was thinking of Himself when He formed man, He was thinking of man when He formed the angels as the servants of those who are the heirs of salvation.
God says that He intends to create a new Earth. That means to me that He intends to create once again a physical side to the universe, that is, physical matter, atoms and molecules, moving through space. This is not a “spiritual” earth, that is, it is not an “earth” made out of the substance of spirit. The substance of spirit is heaven, not earth. Earth is the substance of physical matter moving through space. All the universe that is seen by the naked eye and by present human instruments is physical matter. None of what is seen out there is spirit or “heaven.” In fact, the part of heaven with which we have to do is right close around the earth, not out there somewhere. The belief that the stars and planets are literally “heaven” and not a symbol of the heavens has led to most pagan religion on earth.