The fire in my spirit is momentarily subsiding. I've been reading my Bible (as I stated in previous posts) from Genesis to Revelation and Revelation to Genesis. I am reading from the beginning to the end and the end to the beginning. I want to see from God's perspective. I want to see the world through His eyes, not my own.
It's hard to see from the perspective of Almighty God who can see the hearts and lives of all men at once. He sits high above it all and looks down, like we are glorious pieces in the chess game of life. But we are not just carved images on the board, we are living and breathing, made in the very image of God. We are precious to God. Everyone is precious to God, regardless of name, race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, socioeconomic status, or even religious beliefs. He formed us with His very own hands while in the womb, delicately shaping our being. We are precious to God.
God is LOVE...the purest form of love that ever existed. Love originated from God because it's the very essence of His being. However, the love we know on earth is not the love of God. Love can get quite twisted here on earth, barely even resembling the true (agape) love of God.
However, although God is love, He has other character attributes as well. Keep in mind that everything God is...He is 100% purely that character trait. There is no mixture or impurity in Him. He is 100% love, 100% truth, 100% just, 100% wrathful (righteous indignation), 100% peaceful, 100% joyful, 100% merciful, 100% faithful. He cannot be less than 100% of any pure and good character trait. He is 0% evil--in any way! There is no darkness or evil in Him--at all. He is pure Light, and this Light cannot dwell in coexistence with darkness. There is no shadow of turning in Him. He is Light on every side, glorious and beautiful Light.
If I may, I would like to share a very special testimony with you about the Lord.
Many of you may know this (or not), but I was a victim of sexual abuse when I was five years old. I met the spirit of perversion at a very early age and it defiled me. It's the same spirit running rampant in the world today. This is probably why I hate it so much. It's nasty and foul, likened to a deep, dark dungeon place full of rats and smelling of mold. It's dirty, but it's lust is uncontrollable. It's desires cannot be satisfied and it seeks to fulfill it's own desires at any cost. It takes no thought of harm to others and you become a piece of meat, set before a ravenous wolf. I hate this spirit--as does God. It's a fallen angel that was once glorious and beautiful in every way. God created these angels to be full of His righteousness, but they chose the sin of pride and acted in rebellion--not unlike many people today. The once beautiful creature became defiled and nasty.
The same thing happens with humans when we sin before God. We are created in His own image, the most shining example of His character and glory. We sin, we fall, and shame covers us.
After suffering for 6 years following the abuse, I became very withdrawn and depressed. I was lonely, but did not want to tell anyone about what had happened to me. I felt that it would make my parents stop loving me forever. It was dirty and shameful--a dark, desperate place. Shortly after the abuse, a "presence" started to come visit me in my room. The essence of love, peace and joy would fill my room and then I would hear it speaking to me...not from outside my own body, but from somewhere within. When it spoke, it brought me great peace and comfort. After some time, the voice seemed to transcend out into my room and it would speak to me all the time. In counseling, a person can be diagnosed as schizophrenic following a traumatic event. It was rational when I spoke to my parents for them to believe I might have a psychosis. According to the world's view of spirituality...that was the only answer to what happened to me. However, hearing voices and seeing visions does not automatically meet the criteria for schizophrenia because all diagnoses must be considered in the perspective of the person's own religious and cultural contexts. Hearing voices, as a Christian, does not mean that a person is schizophrenic, according to the DSM-5. If that were the case, I know a lot of schizophrenic Christians who claim to hear the voice of God speaking to them (and see visions of things that are not visible to the eye).
No...something else was happening to me. This presence would come, almost daily, to visit with me. He began to show me things (visions and dreams) of places that were full of his attributes, peace, love and joy...and the presence would also show me bad things that were still coming. I had visions and dreams of horrible catastrophes. At the age of five, I started knowing things were going to happen before they happened. People suggested that I had a gift--or maybe I was a psychic. I had dreams that I would tell my closest family and friends, and I always had "feelings" that things would happen a certain way--and they did. I knew when people were going to die, and with my own grandmother (later in life), I spoke about it with details about the exact timing of her death.
I am not psychic. The presence would tell me about things that I did not understand. When I grew older and started to study the Bible, I realized that many of these things were biblical places, events and even future events that were prophesied about in the book of Revelation. I began to see that everything the Spirit told me was true. I realized the presence was the Holy Spirit and He had been visiting me, speaking with me, teaching me--since I was 5 years old. My family didn't attend church and I didn't study the Bible at home. HE taught me the Bible, and that is why I believe it has such a special place in my heart. He was the only friend I had that I could really talk to during those days of my childhood. I was really afraid to talk with anyone else, but He was always there, always comforting me--telling me to keep pushing forward and to never give up.
At 11 years old, I don't remember falling asleep, but it seemed I had a dream. In the "dream", I was in a foreign place, standing at the edge of a body of water. There was a little inlet and a small, single island in front of me. It was only large enough to hold one house. The house stood in the center of the island. Everything around me was black and white, there was no color. I was afraid to wade through the water, but I decided to go into the house. I waded through the waist-deep water and went into the house. I looked around and there was no furniture. Everything was empty. I walked down a hallway at the end of the house and there was a single folding chair at the end of a long hallway. I walked toward it. There was no furniture anywhere except that one folding chair. I suddenly felt very tired and stumbled toward the chair and fell onto it. As I collapsed onto the chair, my spirit rose from my body and I was immediately surrounded by these twinkling, sparkling little lights. They formed a whirlwind around my body and within seconds, they whooshed me up through the ceiling (that just opened above me) and within a few more seconds, I was in the most beautiful glorious Light that anyone could ever imagine. I was suspended in the Light, and I had a body, but it was not like the body I had on earth. It was light and airy and felt completely free of any imperfection, sickness or hindrance of any kind. It seemed the Light could pass right through my body and it filled every place inside of me. The love that I felt was unlike anything I could describe. I had never imagined that someone could be loved so much. The peace I felt was perfect, and in perfect harmony with perfect love, and perfect unending and unrestrained JOY. In a matter of moments (although I sensed there was no time in this place), I knew I NEVER wanted to go back or be in any place except THIS place. It only took milliseconds to realize this.
As I was suspended in the Light and enjoyed it flowing through me and filling me completely, I suddenly heard a thunderous voice (but it wasn't scary). It was the LIGHT speaking to me. The Light was buttery and golden and glowing, and it was soft to the touch. Describing it in human terms is difficult because there are simply not adequate words to describe what I have experienced. The LIGHT spoke to me and said, "Do you want to stay?"
I thought for just a moment. While I was thinking (for a few milliseconds), another figure appeared out of the Light. At once, I knew this was Jesus. I had never seen Him before, and I knew little about Him from the Bible, but my spirit recognized Him immediately. He just stood and looked at me without saying a word. The Light seemed to be waiting patiently for my answer, even though it had just been a moment. I spoke to the Light and said, "I have to go back. I will miss my family." At once, the sparkling light beings (angels) surrounded me and whirled me back down through the roof of the house and back onto the chair. This only took a millisecond to get me back.
As I had left the presence of the Light, I began to cry in the second while I was traveling back to my body. I was sobbing and weeping when I re-entered my body on the chair. I could feel the cold, darkness of the world around me. I had left the most glorious place to return to shame, guilt, filth, anger, hatred, sickness and everything dark and evil. I wondered if I could ever go back. I was crying on the chair in the house on the tiny island. I got up and immediately knew I had work to do. I needed to tell my family about this place, so that they could one day go there too. I looked down the hallway where there had previously been no furniture, and there stood one small table with a red rotary phone on it. I went to the table and picked up the phone and called my aunt. I began to tell her where I had been and what I had seen...
Then I woke up. My pillow was soaked and sopping wet from my tears.
When I woke up, I felt very different than when I went to sleep. I had a peace that I had never had before and I felt that any fear of death I had was GONE. I have never been afraid to die since that night. The presence (the Holy Spirit) began to visit me less and less. I became angry that I was "stuck" in this world with all these evil people and darkness all around me. Instead of putting my full faith in Jesus, I began to walk away from God. Even though I made the choice to leave the Light, I was angry that I could not go back.
I know that I will be in that Light again. I have turned to the Lord with all my heart and have surrendered my life to Jesus, putting my full faith in Him for salvation. By His grace, I will make the journey back HOME. That is my home. This is NOT my home. This dark world is NOT my home. I have tried to stop being angry at the world. I love the world. I came back so that my FAMILY (and I've come to realize it wasn't just my biological family, but my spiritual family) can come to that glorious place that I visited. Heaven is real. God is real. Jesus is real. Everything that is described about how the new heaven and earth will be in Revelation 21 & 22 is real!
I know that I'm going home. I will return. I want YOU to go with me. Please don't be so prideful, stubborn, or think yourself wiser than God....just be humble, ask forgiveness, believe in the Lord Jesus as the full payment for your sins, accept His wonderful grace....and COME WITH ME! I want you to be in the family of God. God wants you in His family.
I have a mission to fulfill on earth...to gather as many people as will come, and to bring them home to Jesus. That is why I do what I do. That is why I speak what I speak. I am compelled by the Holy Spirit to compel you to come into the kingdom of God. I cannot ever forget that place--my home. In years since then, God has given me other visions and shown me other things about heaven. I used to think that we just had to endure this horrible place on earth and then eventually we would be in heaven, free from it all. Although that is true, this place is horrible, there is abundant life to be found NOW through a relationship with Jesus. We can bring the things of heaven to earth to enjoy while we're here and show people what eternal life with Jesus is like. The Lord's prayer says, "God's will be done, on earth AS IT IS IN HEAVEN." Believers, children of God, we can bring the goodness of heaven to earth so people have a glimpse of what heaven is like. They can realize that this place is not their home, and they can come home to Jesus.
People are right. I can't cry loud enough to change the laws of earth to match the perfect law of heaven, but I cry loudly in the streets the message of salvation because those who don't hear and respond will experience the opposite of what I just described--a place that is utterly devoid of that Light and presence of God. God has shown me this place as well, and it's worse than you could ever imagine. It's not the hellfire, the worms, or the 8-9 foot demons with foot-long razor sharp claws, and the smell of death all around you, with no light and constant torment....because that's all real too...it's the knowledge you have that you could have been with God in heaven forevermore, and YOU (YOU ALONE) made that choice to reject the goodness of God through Jesus Christ and sent yourself there for eternity with NO HOPE of ever being released or having salvation. You clearly know what you lost in rejecting Christ and you feel that you want to kill yourself every second of the day, but you know that you can't. You can't escape. That is the torment of hell. The Lord allowed me to see it and feel it. It's why I shout loudly the message of salvation. NOBODY has to go there. It's your choice...and it's truly a choice of life or death (forever without end).
Choose wisely and choose quickly. Time is running short. I'm warning you now. Don't say I didn't warn you.
Revelation 21 New King James Version (NKJV)
All Things Made New
21 Now I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away. Also there was no more sea. 2 Then I, John, saw the holy city, New Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. 3 And I heard a loud voice from heaven saying, “Behold, the tabernacle of God iswith men, and He will dwell with them, and they shall be His people. God Himself will be with them and be their God. 4 And God will wipe away every tear from their eyes; there shall be no more death, nor sorrow, nor crying. There shall be no more pain, for the former things have passed away.”
5 Then He who sat on the throne said, “Behold, I make all things new.” And He said to me, “Write, for these words are true and faithful.”
6 And He said to me, “It is done! I am the Alpha and the Omega, the Beginning and the End. I will give of the fountain of the water of life freely to him who thirsts. 7 He who overcomes shall inherit all things, and I will be his God and he shall be My son. 8 But the cowardly, unbelieving, abominable, murderers, sexually immoral, sorcerers, idolaters, and all liars shall have their part in the lake which burns with fire and brimstone, which is the second death.”
MATTHEW 25
The Parable of the Ten Virgins
1“At that time the kingdom of heaven will be like ten virgins who took their lamps and went out to meet the bridegroom. 2Five of them were foolish and five were wise. 3The foolish ones took their lamps but did not take any oil with them. 4The wise ones, however, took oil in jars along with their lamps. 5The bridegroom was a long time in coming, and they all became drowsy and fell asleep.
6“At midnight the cry rang out: ‘Here’s the bridegroom! Come out to meet him!’
7“Then all the virgins woke up and trimmed their lamps. 8The foolish ones said to the wise, ‘Give us some of your oil; our lamps are going out.’
9“ ‘No,’ they replied, ‘there may not be enough for both us and you. Instead, go to those who sell oil and buy some for yourselves.’
10“But while they were on their way to buy the oil, the bridegroom arrived. The virgins who were ready went in with him to the wedding banquet. And the door was shut.
11“Later the others also came. ‘Lord, Lord,’ they said, ‘open the door for us!’
12“But he replied, ‘Truly I tell you, I don’t know you.’
13“Therefore keep watch, because you do not know the day or the hour.
