About Heaven, how much insights have you accrued?
Tell me, how much do you already, or want to know,
About the place saints AND sinners are going to go?
Here are some insights to boost your ‘Heaven IQ’.
Many of us might imagine Heaven as a place …‘up there’,
Where Father God’s ‘Son’ is always shining, and it’s never dark,
Saints and angels spirits praise The Lord under His rainbow arc, 1
While the saints wait for their new bodies in the rapture affair.
Even before Father God, through and for Jesus, The Lord God,
Created the universe and all things therein,
Including our planet, Earth, and all things herein,
Heaven must have been a place where somethings physical could trod.
Remember, Jesus created Adam in His own image:
Spirit and soul in a body resembling His.
When Adam sinned, where did He go? That’s no pop quiz.
He did not stay on the Earth after, by sin, it was damaged. 2
So where in the world did we get the idea,
That Heaven is some place that’s ethereal,
Somewhere far above the universe, physical??
Let’s ponder for a while clues to this enigma.
The Bible gives us a few clues that this may not be the case.
Yet our failure to imagine well b-e-y-o-n-d its words,
Restricts our understanding to what’ve read and heard.
Let’s see what it indicates, and let that be what we embrace. 3
The first clue is about Enoch, who ‘walked with God and was not’ .
He could not be found among the people, for ‘God took him.’
Into Heaven he was raptured, full-body paradigm,
The first of several raptures in The Lord’s …strategic plot! 4
The second clue is about Elijah,
Who, in a chariot of fire, into Heaven was raptured,
By onlookers, his full-bodied experience …was captured!
Hey, his rapture was quite an enigma!!! 5
The third clue correlates with The Lord’s death and resurrection,
When the graves of dead saints were opened,
and to many they appeared.
Just like Christ…
They died mortals, but when raised, in them immortality inhered.
To die once is to us appointed, with a few exceptions. 6
These raptures were in the first two ages of history,
Notably, the pre-flood and the post-flood/pre-cross ages.
To the final five ages, Pentecost turned the pages,
On which are pre-written many more raptures, bodily.
First lesson:
Heaven is a place for
spirits, souls and physical bodies!
Stay tuned for Part 2
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1 The rainbow John saw in his Revelation vision was ‘around or encircling The Lord’s Throne’. We know rainbows as arks, not circles. Try to imagine how this rainbow could completely encircle His Throne, whether vertically or horizontally. Interesting imaginations…
2 Jesus was a glorified Man in Eden, who could be heard and physically relate to Adam and Eve in their (pre-sin) glorified, glory-flooded, immortal bodies.
3 Keep in mind, The Bible is a quintessentially a spiritual book that generously spreads across its pages and ages, ‘strategic dots’ that we need to connect.
4 See: Genesis 5:24 and Hebrews 11:5
5 See: 2 Kings 2
6 See: Matthew 27:51-53 and Hebrews 9:24-28. Historically recorded exceptions include Lazarus, whom Jesus raised from the dead as a mortal (not immortal) man who later died again as we understand the story. Similar experiences are recorded in 1 Kings 17:17-24, 2 Kings 4:1-37, and Acts 20:7-12. Matthew 27:52-53 signals/hints ALL pre-cross saints from the first and second ages of history have already been resurrected, transformed and raptured. This is how and when 'Jesus led captivity captive!' (the second point of Psalm 68:18, confirmed in Ephesians 4:8) These verses only account for those saints who were buried in/around Jerusalem. But remember, we don’t know how far across the world pre- and post-flood folks back then scattered, plus some Jewish saints had migrated across the region and beyond. Moreover, the global flood at the end of the 1st age very likely disturbed every grave on Earth! Ergo, I intuit these verses indicate the resurrection and rapture of the entire body of saints in the so-called 'bosom of Abraham', that Jesus spoke about in a REAL story (not a parable) in Luke 16. Jesus preached and confirmed His gospel to ALL who were in that place, not just to those who had been buried in/around Jerusalem. Ergo, don't imagine that He was picky about whom He would resurrect, and whom He would let remain in that place!!! Nope. He fully fulfilled Psalm 68:18. Nowhere else in known history is it recorded that graves were opened, and previously dead people were seen walking around. So it seems safe to conclude saints who were raised outside of Jerusalem may have also been resurrected and possibly directly raptured into Heaven. See: The Rapture (Series)
whose twins spirits/souls, in death, were confined to the upper, protected region of hell, as their physical bodies decayed in their graves.
