Modern Day Mystics

After Todd had a startling angelic visitation recently [which released revelation about the Spirit of the fear of the Lord and the Spirit of holiness], he was translated in the spirit. High above his city Todd saw a glory cloud like the one that led Moses, a cloud which symbolizes the greater glory that God wants to release today. Then in the weeks to follow, as many of you may have heard, in pursuit of the greater glory Todd began having a series of prophetic encounters and visitations. Consequently, we feel it is important to provide a foundational grid for these supernatural events by providing this riveting three-part teaching-article entitled Encounter with Heaven.

This week, in Part One, Todd establishes a solid framework for these heavenly encounters by examining God’s unchangeable character, the reality of heaven, and more. Next week your faith level will reach new heights as Todd discusses an amazing encounter in which Jesus literally walked into his world – leaving a trail of heaven following behind Him. Then in our final segment Todd shares about what happened next—his visit with the apostle Paul. So don’t miss Encounter with Heaven, and get ready to be transformed as heaven touches your world!
 

ENCOUNTER WITH HEAVEN
by Revivalist Todd Bentley (as edited by Kathy Thorne)
Part 1

“Therefore we also, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses,
let us lay aside every weight, and the sin which so easily ensnares us,
and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us”
—Hebrews 12:1. [emphasis mine]

I was just a kid when, over twenty-five years ago, the compelling movie Chariots of Fire came on the scene featuring Eric Liddell, the “Flying Scotsman.” The movie depicted how Liddell overcame intense pressure from both the political arena (the Prince of Wales) and the general public to run an Olympic race on a Sunday, the day which he always dedicated solely to the Lord. To keep his covenant he had to withdraw from the men’s 100 meters, his best race!

Yet that wasn’t the only battle Liddell faced. More pressure came from an unexpected source, his beloved sister. She worried that he was so dedicated to running that he was forgetting their spiritual mission. Inspired, he explained to her: “I believe that God made me for a purpose . . . (missionary work), but He also made me fast, and when I run, I feel His pleasure.”

Imagine! “When I run, I feel His pleasure!” He had divine knowledge or revelation that when he ran he brought pleasure to God . . . and he felt that pleasure. Talk about an encounter with heaven! He experienced God’s presence in the race! What’s more, not only did Eric Liddell press in to win the prize in his spiritual high calling by being an overcomer, he also won two Olympic medals—one gold and one bronze. A double, no a triple – blessing!

Friends! Just like Eric Liddell, God created each one of you to be champions in the race that He has set before you. He wants you to receive the “gold”—His presence and His pleasure, that says, “Well done, good and faithful servant; you were faithful over a few things, I will make you ruler over many things. Enter into the joy of your lord” (Matt. 25:21). Think about that. Eric Liddell had the right heart before God and he entered into the joy of the Lord because of it.

UNCHANGEABLE GOD

Yes . . . having the right heart brings God’s pleasure and His presence. Jesus Christ spoke about this to His disciples when He said:

“The person who has My commands and keeps them is the one who [really] loves Me; and whoever [really] loves Me will be loved by My Father, and I [too] will love him and will show (reveal, manifest) Myself to him. [I will let Myself be clearly seen by him and make Myself real to him]” (Jn. 14:21 Amplified).

That is a promise that God gives! He says that if you love Him and keep His commandments, He will manifest Himself to you! How will He manifest Himself? It might be through a dream, in a vision, in a prophetic experience, in the Word of God, divine knowledge or revelation (like Eric Liddell, for example), or through the gifts of the Spirit—“God, who at various times and in various ways spoke in time past to the fathers by the prophets” (Heb. 1:1).

But let’s not limit God only to those examples. Listen. He will also come bodily. Remember, after Jesus died and rose again, He spent forty days in His resurrected body on the earth teaching His disciples. According to God’s Word, Jesus is the same today, yesterday, and forever (Heb. 13:8). Do you believe that promise? Do you believe that Jesus actually is the same today as He was yesterday? The fact is, God doesn’t change His mind—“The Lord has sworn and will not change his mind” (Heb. 7:21 RSV).

Since God manifests Himself in diverse ways and He does not change, the full impact of that truth can potentially rock your entire world! Ponder this . . . because the Lord is the same today, yesterday, and forever, just imagine the possibilities of what God can do in your life TODAY. He is the same today as He was yesterday! Friends, it is possible that Jesus will come to us the same way that He did before—bodily. So let’s stir up our faith!

Now I want you to think about how God turned the apostles’ lives upside down two thousand years ago. Consider what happened to Peter. He fell into a trance and had a vision in which God revealed something so immense it revolutionized the advancement of the whole Gospel (Acts 10:9–33). Yet don’t miss this—Peter fell into a trance! Do you know what a trance is? A trance is a dream-like state but you are awake. Look! If Peter can fall into a trance, you and I can fall into a trance. We need to have faith today that God is the ever-living, unchangeable God! If it’s in the Bible, it can happen! The Holy Spirit is here and He is just as real for you and me today as He was for Peter and the other early disciples.

Look at Ezekiel. He was taken up by his hair (Ez. 8:3) and at times he was carried in the spirit to various places (11:1; 37:1; 40:1, 2). If God wills it, you and I can be carried in the spirit too. What about Elijah! Scripture says that he was a man just like you and me, but he prayed hard that it would not rain and it didn’t, for over three years (James 5:17). If God can come and work mighty miracles through Elijah like that, He can work mighty miracles through you too! Then there’s the apostle Paul!

HEAVEN IS REAL

I could go on and on; but just know this. Every great man and woman [in God’s eyes] that He has ever used throughout history is as great as you are. They received the grace of God because their heart was right with Him and in His grace God chose to visit them. For us, today, we are blessed because God in His grace has chosen to give us His precious word. What’s more, God in His grace has given us His Holy Spirit.

One main reason that God gave us the Holy Spirit is so that He would live in us and that we could then connect with Him as He exists in heaven now. When I received a revelation from the Holy Spirit about this connection—heaven invading earth—I ascended new levels in my walk with the Lord. What hit me, and to this day remains one of the most significant aspects of the whole ministry of the Gospel, was the instruction from Jesus to His disciples—“In this manner, therefore, pray . . . Your kingdom come. Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven” (Matt. 6:9, 10). Jesus said that when you pray, “pray Your kingdom come.” In other words, He was saying that it’s not yet on earth as it is in heaven, so when you pray, pray that it will be on earth as it is in heaven!

When Jesus taught His disciples to pray like that, He was actually revealing the secret to having the power come. It wasn’t necessarily just by fasting and it isn’t necessarily by all the great things we learn in training seminars and five-step models. He said when you pray, pray: “Our Father in heaven, hallowed be Your name. Your kingdom come. Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.” It’s a “now” word—Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven NOW.

What would it be like if you were in heaven right now? What would you expect to see if you were in heaven right now? Would you have any problem with seeing the apostle Paul? How about Abraham? How about family members and loved ones that have gone on to heaven? Is there a cloud of witnesses as the Bible describes (Heb. 12:1) or is there not a cloud of witnesses? I mean, is heaven real? Are there mansions with streets that are golden in heaven? Are there angels? Are there gems? What is the glory of God like?

Remember, Jesus said when you pray, pray Your kingdom come, because it’s not on earth as it is in heaven yet. But Jesus wants it to be! Impossible? No! I believe there is an open door. I believe we can come boldly by the blood of Jesus before God’s throne of grace. I’m saying that heavenly encounters are possible; experiencing Jesus is possible; revelation of the Lord is possible. Dreams are real, visions are real, heavenly encounters are real. God is a living God. He said, “My sheep hear My voice” (Jn. 10:27). He speaks to His people!

Heaven is my inheritance and if I wasn’t in my physical body, where would I be? I’d be in heaven: absent from the body, present with the Lord (2 Cor. 5:8). Yet, I believe heaven is something that we can experience now. Jesus came preaching the kingdom of heaven is at hand (Matt. 4:17). The kingdom of God is within in you (Luke 17:21). It’s “Christ in you, the hope of glory” (Col. 1:27). Surely these scriptures tell us that heaven is close enough for us to discern it!

Let’s keep pressing in. There is another realm called the invisible realm. God created an invisible spiritual realm. One part of that realm includes principalities, powers, the rulers of the darkness of this age, and spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places (Eph. 6:12). It’s a realm in which we don’t wrestle against flesh and blood but against demonic powers. So why would God create a realm that is invisible? One answer is because God wants to enlighten the eyes of your understanding and give you eyes to see into that invisible realm (Eph. 1:18).

Friends, I want you to understand today that even though we can’t see heaven with our natural eyes, heaven is real! In fact, it’s more real to me today than it’s ever been. I’m saying this because I have been there! I have been taken into heaven.

IF IT'S IN THE BIBLE, IT'S FOR US!

Why is it in the church today that we struggle when somebody says that he or she has been to heaven or they’ve had an encounter with Jesus face to face? Listen! God doesn’t have anybody else to visit but you and me! The great saints of old like Abraham, Elijah, Moses, and Paul aren’t here. Neither are more recent saints like John G. Lake and Smith Wigglesworth alive anymore. So if God can’t visit them supernaturally here, whom do you think He is going to visit? He is the same yesterday, today and forever . . . remember? Why should it be any different for us if God wills to come in His grace and reveal Himself just as He revealed Himself to any other saint that we read about in the Bible? It’s you and I who are alive today, and it’s you and I who will bring in the second coming of Jesus Christ.

In fact, we actually build upon what those previous godly generations gave us. If something was possible for them, then it’s possible for us, too. Look at this. The apostle Paul spoke about someone he knew who was caught up into the third heaven (2 Cor. 12:2). Is there anything stopping us from daring to believe that God will bring us into the third heaven, too? Think about that.

HEAVENLY ENCOUNTERS

Before I speak more about the third heaven, I want to say that as I pursue the Lord it’s the cry of my heart to know Him intimately; to know Jesus Christ more and the power of His resurrection more. Essentially, the whole ministry of Jesus (for me) was a model of what it was like to be a son of the Father and to have a relationship with the Father. Today it’s as if He is saying to us: “Here is what it looks like and this is what I want you to have, because you’re My sons and daughters.” That love relationship is the model of Jesus!

Friends, it’s because of my Father-son relationship with God that He has taken me into real, tangible, encounters with Him; encounters that I liken to the disciples’ Road to Emmaus experience (Luke 24:13–34). In those encounters, the Lord was as real to me as He was to those early disciples when He was alive for forty days after His resurrection. The encounters I have experienced were, and are, totally rooted and grounded on the Word of God. Look. If something is outside of the scriptures, we can’t say it’s from the Lord. But if it’s in the Bible, I’m hungry for it. We can only limit God with the boundaries of Scripture.

So, let’s dig into the scriptures right now! Since I mentioned earlier that the apostle Paul said he knew a man who was taken into the third heaven, let’s examine what Paul said about that encounter in Second Corinthians 12, verses 1–4. [Although Paul was speaking about “a man I know,” most Bible scholars agree—and I agree with them—that he was really speaking about himself.]

“It is doubtless not profitable for me to boast. I will come to visions and revelations of the Lord: I know a man in Christ who fourteen years ago--whether in the body I do not know, or whether out of the body I do not know, God knows--such a one was caught up to the third heaven. And I know such a man--whether in the body or out of the body I do not know, God knows--how he was caught up into Paradise and heard inexpressible words, which it is not lawful for a man to utter.”

Paul had “visions and revelations of the Lord.” We must place the emphasis on “of the Lord” because it’s not about the experience, but it’s about bringing us into the place where we love Jesus more and want Jesus more. It’s about Jesus! It must be about Him! Is that what you want? More of Jesus! In addition, Paul was in such a deep place of respect and intimacy with the Lord that he wasn’t going to “utter” the “inexpressible words” that he heard in Paradise. I believe that what he heard was so astounding that to try and put it all into words would have done it an injustice, and also the hearers were probably not in the right position to receive such revelation even if it could be uttered!

Naturally, there are times when deep revelation should not be discussed but there are times when it is right to share. Today I am permitted by God to share with you about some of the recent amazing heavenly encounters that I have experienced. As revelation is released (in this three-part teaching-article) I want you to taste and see how good God is and to anticipate all the goodness that God has planned for you. But most of all, it is my hope that you will love Jesus Christ more than ever before – that you’ll experience His pleasure and presence in the race that you are running. Exciting days are before you!

Now it’s time to come to a close for this week. In the next two segments I’m going to share about some of my recent heavenly encounters. As you prepare your heart for this, my prayer is that you will sense a greater and greater measure of God’s presence surrounding you and that He will confirm, establish, and strengthen you in the awesome destiny that He has purposed for your life.

Before closing, for those of you who want to study this teaching further I want to recommend four valuable resources which are available here at Fresh Fire Ministries that will help to reinforce or boost your spiritual sensitivity---The Reality of the Supernatural World [book]; Audio resources -- How to Develop Your Seer Gift; Open Heavens Worship and Prayer CD [Vol. II]; and School of the Supernatural Realms of Heaven (with optional workbook).