This is how I explain the Kingdom of God and Christ, also being heaven. This place cannot be defined as a single place and this place is not related to time. It is a timeless truth, hence, eternal. Meaning eternity past and eternity future. We usually think that eternity means from now forward but that is not true. To be eternal is to be timeless. Either God is or He isn’t. We know Him as alpha and omega, beginning and end and this doesn’t do justice to what eternal means either because it points to a start and an end. The truth is time has a start and an end but eternity does not.
Same way with the attributes and characteristics of God broke down for our understanding as seen in the law and the prophets, then seen more clearly in Christ in a human body, which is the mystery of God, the infinite, becoming a digit, a singularity, a man.
But this break down of the nature of God was for us to grow in an understanding of God. God never changed in who He was for that is impossible, but through the word we understand different attributes of God. So we can see Christ as the lamb of God and we can see Him as Son of God and many other aspects, but He is all these things simultaneously.God did not become anything or He was not God. Christ was made man for a little while so that He by the grace of God ,would taste death for every man. He laid aside His deity for this purpose, but He never un-became anything, and He never becomes anything. Hebrews 13.8 Christ the same yesterday today and forever.
Knowing God this way we can say of His eternal gift to us, that it is of His same nature and character that He is, or it isn’t really eternal. His reward is with Him. He is the reward or His gift would have a start and an end. Now this is hard for our brain to apply this principle when reading His word. We like to bring it down here and put perimeters on it, a beginning a timeline and an end.
There are two aspects of creation that define it. The beginning and the end. All of the ubiquitous aspects of God are not of the 6 day creation. They are pre-existent. The 6 day creation can only dimly describe it. But this is what we do. We lay the feast’s out and wait for them to happen. We do this with end time views too. We see on a timeline and think God is subject to that, and He is but not as it relates to time. Some people are under Gods judgment and others confess and are saved, while yet another receives His spirit and another receives the kingdom, but because these are eternal aspects of God, each person understands in his, or her own order. (1 Cor 15).
So Christ came in the flesh to redeem mankind, but there are those who were redeemed before Christ came, showing the timelessness of His gift being the lamb slain from the foundation of the world. As Abraham saw “The Lords Day†and was glad, before it happened in time. And John on the Island of Patmos was in the spirit on the Lords day before the end of the world. Christ died and was resurrected but He was the “resurrection and the life†before He died or Lazarus could not have been resurrected. Or what about the angel John went to worship, who was of those who “keep the testimony of Christ� How does that fit our human timeline? That person had a glorified body.
Paul referring to Isaac and Ishmael said that the flesh has always persecuted those born of the spirit, meaning them way before Christ came, but in our timely, carnal thinking no one was born of the spirit until after Christ was on earth, putting God on a time frame. And teaching that no one received the Holy Spirit until the time of Pentecost, but Joshua and David and Daniel as others already had the indwelling of the Holy Spirit, for in their mind Christ was the already Glorified King. John 7.39 for the spirit was not given for Christ was not yet glorified, pointing to a revelation. You can’t prove this anyway, except with scripture.
Here is the truth of the matter. Yes Christ has to be Glorified in ones mind to receive His spirit but that relates to a sequence of revelations, if you are able to accept it, not a day a month and a year. Like when the disciples asked why the prophets say Elijah must come. He has come if you are able to receive it. Are you? We all have the same stages in our walk with Christ, but because one person knows Him only as having died on the cross does not mean that another cannot know him as being seated with Him.
Here then is the error of time dispensational thinking. It makes it easy for the carnal mind to think that God became, or is becoming and must still do in this age. Leaving people looking for another move by Christ or to come later and be King another day, he has always been a king. But the Holy Spirit has repeated throughout time that “Today is the day†“in an acceptable time I have heard, I have helped†and “now is the acceptable timeâ€. He was born King and never denied He was a king. This thinking puts people in a holding pattern in their relationship with Christ, making the eternal God a subject of His own creation, bound by time. Yes He is revealed through a sequence but of revelations not time. From Hebrews 4 “And in this 7th day they shall not enter His rest, although the works were finished from the foundations of the worldâ€. It is the revelation that takes us closer to God, it is not as the event seen happen, for if it is seen it is not of faith. As with Isaiah, in the year that king Uzziah died he saw the Lord high and lifted up, and the train of His robe filled the temple. Many are still looking for this to happen in time as a 2nd coming.
We can take the same principle of “Ubiquitous†and apply it to the gift of eternal life, and us being joint heirs with Christ. God is, or He isn’t. The gift is or it isn’t. It is Him or it is not eternal. If it is locked into space and time it is not of Him.
When a species is born it is identified by it’s features, A fish by it’s fins, a bird by it’s wings. A human has specific features, a head, arms, legs, and a torso, having fingers and toes. After it is born it doesn’t grow new arms or add toes. As with us, we “are complete in Him who is the head of all principality and powerâ€. And “now we are the children of Godâ€. We each, individually as born again believers have His Fullness.
The point I would like to make is that as His offspring we are now becoming only in understanding not in nature. Meaning, we are or we are not. Now that we bear His image in the spirit, being born again, we put on this new man. That we grow in understanding and applying our new nature, the transformation of our understanding in the inward man being renewed day by day as or outward man perishes, but we have already been birthed or we are not born again.
So we ask, Whats the difference between growing and becoming. Well becoming indicates that He is not yet or we are not yet, that we are partial and limits our ability to understand and receive. But we are complete in Him who is the head of all principality and power. Of his fullness we have all received And He has given us everything that pertains to life and Godliness through the knowledge of Him who calls us to glory. The work He is doing now is awakening us to this in the spirit, to these realities. As Paul says, I press on to lay a hold of that for which Christ laid hold of me
If we believe we are not yet and that Christ also must become, both being progressive in nature, we take the power out of our conversion and are enticed to lay things out in a time dispensational manner thereby distancing ourselves from some of the promises of God and God himself which is the very nature of our inheritance. . To wait for the work of God to happen like in a 2nd coming for our carnal senses of site hearing, taste and touch, to believe it? This is the very enmity of God by the carnal mind to subject God and His timeless eternal gift to the “time sensitive†created realm by which carnal man is uncapsulated in, not God, and not the new man. Hence “the kingdom of God does not come with observation.
As scripture says “as He is so are we in the world†and “we have this treasure in earthen vessels that the glory and the excellency may be of Godâ€.
An invitation went out from the beginning of creation to enter the rest of God. This can not happen in a dispensational brain for it tell us it is later, being subject to the laws and nature of this creation we need to see it physically. This is the snare of eschatology. But we are a new creation, a timeless one,, a Ubiquitous one.
I challenge you at this point to think about what the Holy Spirit has shown you by revelation the things that are yours now by faith. If we are “seated with him in heavenly placesâ€, what does that mean? To accept the cross and resurrection is really just the basics from baptism. Can we see past the cross? Let us go on to maturity not laying again the foundation of repentance from dead works of faith of baptisms, laying on of hands and resurrection from the dead. Resurrection is a foundation doctrine, it is the milk of the word.
John 3.8 The wind blows where it wishes, and you hear the sound of it, but cannot tell where it comes from and where it goes. So is everyone who is born of the Spirit.â€
So if we are waiting for another work of Christ, be it a “latter rainâ€, the “manifest sonsâ€, a “rapture†a tribulation a resurrection or whatever, we make null some promises of God and put ourselves in “unfaithâ€, “unbeliefâ€.
The old testament picture was to go up to Jerusalem. This should be our current focus in the faith. Colosians 3.1, if you are then raised with Christ seeks the things that are above. And I will add, seek not the things on earth regarding the faith.
Blessings.
