The perceived Architecture of Christianity
The general perception of the world and sadly many Christians is that the Pillars or supporting structures of Christianity are the belief in a Heaven and a Hell…places we go to when we die.
But that is not true. Instead a Person is the foundation and the capstone of Christianity – JESUS CHRIST.
Jesus Christ is the Pillar of our faith. Jesus Himself is the Way, The Truth and The Life, no one comes to the Father except through Jesus.
“Yes” you say…”There it is right there! Jesus is the way to heaven!”
No!! Jesus is the Way to the Father.
But you say…”Yes, and Father is in Heaven isn’t He?”
Where is the Father?
The very assumption that God is in a place called heaven makes Him NOT GOD. To imagine God being in Heaven is to make Father a finite being. But God is Spirit and is equally, fully present, everywhere. To imagine God to be in a place called Heaven is to limit God.
Psa 139:7 Whither do I go from Thy Spirit? And whither from Thy face do I flee?
Psa 139:8 If I ascend the heavens—there Thou art , And spread out a couch in Sheol, lo, Thee!1Ki 8:27 “But will God indeed dwell on the earth? Behold, heaven and the heaven of heavens cannot contain You. How much less this temple which I have built!
We have been told since childhood that “God is in His Heaven” so many times and for so many years that it is generally accepted Christian doctrine. But it is not Scriptural or true. It is misleading and a Tare sown in the mind.
God is Spirit. In order for God to be known He must have a body. Enter Jesus, and all mankind. We are the image and likeness of God.
Jesus is the knowledge of God. To know the Father…that is, to know God, we must receive Jesus Christ into our heart by faith. We do that through believing in Him. The Father is in Jesus…and when Jesus comes into your heart, He brings Father with Him so that you can now begin to know Father by heart.
The idea that when you die you will go up to a place called Heaven and there you will see God sitting upon a throne, with Jesus on a throne next to God is pure imagination. God has revealed Himself that way to the Old Covenant prophets and the elders of Israel….a God outside of themselves. But that was the Old Covenant– all external.
The New Covenant is God’s desire for all people. That all may know God living inside their heart through Jesus Christ the Mediator. God has no desire to dwell in man made temples again. He departed from Shiloh and He departed eastwards from the Temple in Jerusalem.
He came to His own in the Person of Jesus the Messiah and His own rejected Him. But to those who believed in Jesus He gave the authority to become children of God. That’s you and me! Now God dwells inside you, you are His temple!!
Your heart contains all the fullness of God. Your heart is the Throne of God. Your heart is God’s dwelling place. Your heart is where God is known…by your spirit….not the intellect.
Jesus Christ in you is Heaven. Jesus in you is Life…your only Life. Jesus in your heart is the Way into the Father….and the way into you for the Father. Without Jesus you cannot know God. Without Jesus you are outside, dead, lost and without hope of knowing God.
Without knowing God, you cannot know who you are. To know who you are starts with receiving Jesus Christ into your heart by faith. And then to see that Jesus is one with you inside of Father God. You have no other life separate from the Life that Jesus is in you.
Christians are waiting to die so that they can go to a place called heaven where they think God is living. They imagine that when they die and go to that place in the sky, they will suddenly know everything and be like God. This is more imagined delusion.
If you do not know God here through the indwelling Jesus, you wont know Him there.
Christians imagine that they will each be given a mansion to live in which Jesus has been building for them. Even though when they die they are ONLY a spirit awaiting their resurrected body, they still imagine that they will able to enjoy physical things such as a mansion with golden floors and staircases and chandeliers. They think they will live in that mansion on their own, each one having a mansion made by Jesus the Carpenter. The carnal mind is amazing in it’s delusional ideas!!
Can a spirit feel a staircase? Can a spirit open and close a big wooden door in a mansion? Can a spirit eat and drink as you see Me doing?
Luk 24:39 Behold My hands and My feet, that it is I Myself. Handle Me and see, for a spirit does not have flesh and bones as you see I have.”
Dear believer in Jesus, sorry to spoil your dreams, but when you die you are a spirit being ONLY. There is no physical enjoyment for a spirit. That is why God needed a Body. That is why demons want to live in bodies. A spirit ONLY cannot enjoy the pleasures of the physical realm. Your ideas of Heaven are from the carnal understanding not the spiritual understanding.
If you are a believer in Jesus when you die, you die safely inside of Jesus Christ Who Himself is inside the Father. There will be a resurrection of your dead body, and it will be changed to be like unto His glorious body. Until then you wait in SPIRIT FORM ONLY. What you do until the resurrection I do not know, Scripture does not say.
You are a part of those called –“Those who sleep in Jesus”. Or “the dead in Christ.”
Those in spirit only –those who have already left their bodies in the grave, are waiting for the last trumpet when the dead shall be raised and they shall be joined gain with their bodies which shall be made immortal at some time. So the goal is not Heaven…but the resurrection from the dead! The goal of the believer is to be part of the Resurrection when the dead are raised and they receive their new immortal body like Jesus body.
That new body will allow us to move between the spirit realm and the physical realms. Hallelujah!!..Like the angels of God can do when God allows.
Luk 20:33 Therefore, in the resurrection, whose wife does she become? For all seven had her as wife.”
Luk 20:34 Jesus answered and said to them, “The sons of this age marry and are given in marriage.
Luk 20:35 But those who are counted worthy to attain that age, and the resurrection from the dead,neither marry nor are given in marriage;
Luk 20:36 nor can they die anymore, for they are equal to the angels and are sons of God, being sons of the resurrection.
Luk 20:37 But even Moses showed in the burning bush passage that the dead are raised, when he called the Lord ‘THE GOD OF ABRAHAM, THE GOD OF ISAAC, AND THE GOD OF JACOB.’
Luk 20:38 For He is not the God of the dead but of the living, for all live to Him.”
That Age and the Resurrection from the dead!! You see that Jesus was not preaching about dying and going to heaven. Jesus preached and believed in an AGE to come where men and women will not die anymore having become similar to angels.
This is what Paul spoke of as well….Brackets are mine..
1Th 4:13 But I do not want you to be ignorant, brethren, concerning those who have fallen asleep,[in spirit only] lest you sorrow as others who have no hope.
1Th 4:14 For if we believe that Jesus died and rose again,[receiving an immortal body] even so God will bring[forth] [in union]with Him those [spirits] who sleep in Jesus.
1Th 4:15 For this we say to you by the word of the Lord, that we who are alive and remain[survive] until the coming[presence] of the Lord [we who accounted worthy to attain that Age and the Resurrection from the dead] will by no means precede those who are asleep[in spirit only].
1Th 4:16 For the Lord Himself will descend from[out from] heaven with a shout, with the voice of an archangel, and with the trumpet of God. And the dead in Christ will rise[stand up] first.
1Th 4:17 Then we who are alive and remain[survive to that time] shall be caught up[seized or snatched, plucked out] together[at the same time] with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. And thus we shall always be with the Lord.
Since you are reading this, then you are a part of that group that is “alive and remains”…for the moment anyway. That group that shall be caught up, seized and snatched up to meet the Lord in the air. Now that is not saying you shall then go away to a planet called heaven is it? Just snatched up to meet the Lord in the air. What happens when you are snatched up, if you “are alive and remain at that time”?
1Co 15:50 Now this I say, brethren, that flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God; nor does corruption inherit incorruption.
1Co 15:51 Behold, I tell you a mystery: We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed—
1Co 15:52 in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed. 1Co 15:53 For this corruptible must put on incorruption, and this mortal must put on immortality.
At that moment when the dead are raised or stand up out from the earth and sea in immortal physical bodies, those who are alive and remain shall also, at the same time, be snatched up and be changed from being flesh and blood to being “fashioned like unto Jesus glorious body.”
Php 3:20 For our citizenship is in heaven, from which we also eagerly wait for the Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ,
Php 3:21 who will transform[change in the twinkling of an eye]our lowly body that it may be conformed [summorphos] to His glorious body, according to the working[energy] by which He is able even to subdue all things to Himself.
Thus Heaven is not the goal presented by the Gospel or the Apostles. Heaven is a waiting place or experience where the dead are in spirit form only inside of Jesus. The resurrection is the goal…more to the point…being conformed(symmorphosed) to the image of Jesus Christ in all ways is God’s determination and purpose for all people. [Rom 8:29]
Please note that God is the one who conforms us to Jesus image. But as Paul says, we put on Jesus…we put on immortality, which is Jesus…we put on incorruptibility…Jesus…we do this now by faith! We call those things that be not as if they are.
We shall reign as co-regent with Jesus our Head in the Kingdom of God which comes down out of the heavens into the visible realms of earth. The earth and the Heavens shall be one just as God made them to be.
This is only one way of seeing all these things….there is a deeper way of seeing these things which I have written about elsewhere and other brethren have more understanding than me also write about.
The one thing I know is that God our Father wants all to come into His Kingdom. But not all are ready to. God will not force anyone to desire Him. He sent His Son….and He continues to send His Son Jesus out of hearts of flesh as rivers of living water.
Jesus living as you and me, sown like seed among the millions, is always laying down His life..as you…for those others He wants to bring to Father.
