I want to teach about entering the realm of the kingdom of heaven. There are some amazing things that you will be confronted with and will need to contend with as a believer, when you first start to explore the reality of the realm of heaven.
The kingdom of heaven creates a greater awareness of the nature of sin, because of the greater light. You may feel unworthy, and the reality is that you are unworthy, but it is the blood of Jesus makes you worthy. That is why the blood of Jesus Christ being applied to your life is so vital.
This unworthiness and a greater awareness of God make us aware of our own sin and the sin of those who are around us.
Isaiah 6:5 – then said I, woe is me! For I am undone and ruined, because I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips; for my eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts!
When you go into the kingdom of God it becomes light and the light exposes every point of darkness. That is why when we turn up in the courtroom of heaven we look filthy, and that is why God says, new garments! – Zachariah 3:3 – five) because he knows we cannot stand there without them.
We need to build intimacy with the presence of God before we can experience his presence. We need to build towards and hunger after him and build a relationship before we will ever see or experience him. When I first saw my wife, she was roller-skating around the ring. I saw her and imagined in my mind what it would be like to get to know her. God gave me the object of my desire, which is my wife, although I did not know God at that stage.
To get to know someone, you naturally roll things around your brain like, I wonder what she will be like to talk to? This lovely apparation that is rollerskating around, but I cannot compete with rollerskating speed. Then she just happened to fall over right in front of me! I will not tell you what happened next, but in my heart and mind I got to know her and I wanted to know her more.
The yearning and desire to get to know opens the door way to make an initial contact. This is what this is all about: to build a desire in you to make the initial contact. Did you know that it is a frightening thing for a guy to ask a girl out, in case she laughs and says, not interested, sorry! It is the same in the realm of the spirit: we are afraid that God is going to say, not interested. This is because of the condition of the sin we live in. Whereas the reality is that God is already waiting at the door. He is already waiting there.
Genesis 28:12 – then he dreamed, and behold, the latter was set up on the earth, and its top reached to heaven; and there the angels of God were ascending and descending on it.
This is the doorway of heaven. God was already standing there saying, get up here if you can hear me!
One of the big questions is, will it hurt? So far, the only physical experience I’ve had from this realm of the kingdom has been the tremendous sense of burning and heat. However, it is still only a sensation; my skin is not blistered from it yet. The fire of God changes what draws near to it. Often when I am preaching I will be sweating like crazy and everybody else will be cold. It is because of the glory that I have drawn near to in the realm of the spirit. The kingdom realm will change you and you can draw on it and become one with it when you are in the middle of a group of people. It is really exciting!
Another question is, will I die? Who knows! It does not really matter anyway because if you die, you die in the best place you can. Your soul and your body want to hold onto life and not let go of control, feeling that if the control is lost so is the power. You have to face the potential death, the same as the high priest. Every year he went into the holy of holies where he had to face the potential being burned to a crisp. If the blood sacrificed was not good enough; or if the incense was contaminated with something was not mixed correctly, he would go in there and become a crisp! The reality is that you face a potential that you may die, but also that you may live. You need to come to terms with that inside of you.
At times the power of revelation that is inside there will make us feel weak, but we must trust God that he knows better than we do. I call these the realms of thunder. That is why I have called my ministry son of thunder. It is come out of the experience around the throne of God. The realms we go into with God are often fearful things when they initially happen. But if you can stay, it changes from fear to awe and wonder. The fear comes from your soul and your body and the record of what happened inside the nature of your sin, in the garden when God brought judgment. We are all afraid of that flaming sword that is going to kill – Genesis 3:24. That flaming sword of judgment is a fire and it burns everything what it touches. However, if I have drawn near to the source of the fire and I have taken on the image and the nature of the fire, you think a fiery sword is going to be able to touch me when I am exactly like it?
That is why it is important for you to engage God on the earth, because it means when you go into the kingdom realms you already resemble its nature and the sword is going to say, welcome home. It will not be able to touch you because you are already carrying the nature of the flame and the fire. So, it is very important for us to come to grips with some of these things. You will find that they will clamor in your soul, because your soul will clamor for position and authority.
Genesis 3 talks about the Angel that was put in front of the tree of life to guard the tree.
Genesis 3:24 – so God drove out the man; and he placed at the east of the garden of Eden the cherubim and a flaming sword which turned every way, to keep and guard the way to the tree of life.
Revelation 2:7 – to him who overcomes I will give to eat from the tree of life, which is in the midst of the paradise of God.
You need to face the potential death to eat true life. You need to face death and, on the way, you die and you get resurrection power. The Angel that stands before that tree is an amazing creature. What it is actually doing is guarding against the nature of sin touching the tree.
That realm God took away from Adam, is returned in Christ, but we must be prepared to face the sword anyway. For seven days I had an encounter with the flaming pillar of fire in my room and I faced that judgment sword that came out of it. I am glad I did it then. One day I was asking God, Lord, I want to know what it is to come into your presence, but I am so petrified because I do not know what is going to happen. The fear of the unknown is a thing that will stop you from going into the realm of the kingdom. It is that fear the unknown that we have demonized and has stopped us from going where we should be going. It is the unknown that holds the anchor that keeps us on the earth. If you are held back by the unknown then you need to be known and you need to get your knower knowing. you do that by meditation and worship so that the kingdom realm is familiar to you and not unknown. So when you are told – this is what it is going to be like – you can enjoy it because you already know what it is going to be like.
There is nothing unknown in heaven. All the anchors are in the word. The Bible describes what it is going to be like. That is the unknown. I do not have to go there thinking – what is it going to be like? I go there knowing what the Bible says, that is my picture, that is what it is going to be like. So I go there with the known. The reason you have a fear of the unknown is because you do not know the known; what the Bible teaches. That is the reality. These things are the things we have to contend with in the spirit.
First Kings 18 records Elijah calling out to God.
1Kings 18:37 Hear me, O LORD, hear me, that this people may know that You are the LORD God, and that You have turned their hearts back to You again.”
38 Then the fire of the LORD fell and consumed the burnt sacrifice, and the wood and the stones and the dust, and it licked up the water that was in the trench. 39 Now when all the people saw it, they fell on their faces; and they said, “The LORD, He is God! The LORD, He is God!”
40 And Elijah said to them, “Seize the prophets of Baal! Do not let one of them escape!” So they seized them; and Elijah brought them down to the Brook Kishon and executed them there.
Judgment requires a response. You need to face the wrath and the judgment of God to find the grace and mercy of God. The wrath and judgment of God releases his power, dominion and might. The grace and mercy of God releases his love, his wonder, his all and his compassion. For me, I would rather have the wrath in the judgment hit me up front in the grace, mercy, wonder and awe that comes out the other side, then to stand here wanting to receive the awe, wonder, grace and mercy and have the judgment go somewhere else. I would rather be judged now than judged in that day.
All of us have to face these kinds of things that go on in the spirit around us. God is still crying, Adam, where are you? God is still crying out for a relationship, for more people who can come into intimacy with him and share his life with him. This is not just sharing your life with him, you need to share his life. Then you get to know about him, what his heart is and what he wants, what he says and what he does. It is exciting up there!
Fear
Another thing that can stop you is the fear of the spirit world. Through the generations we have been taught by the media, by movies and demonic spiritual experiences, to fear the spirit world and any contact with it. This fear is a fortress mentally that greatly hinders our spiritual experience with God. The reason it is like that is because those things have presented a picture that that the demonic world is stronger than the believer; and we believe it! I watched the movie the exorcist. It shows the believers as weak and vulnerable to the demonic world, when it should be that demons are weak and vulnerable to the kingdom world. But this is the conditioning of the realm of the demonic so that they can maintain their position, because everything is about position in the spirit. So that they can keep us afraid of this realm, then they have the position and then they have the power and the authority. That is why they are still in the heavens. It is because we have not been there and confronted them.
For some of you this is really stretching your brain! It is good because it is frying some of the transistors of your religious processes and structures. God made the heavenly places and that is where Adam lived before he fell. He gave Adam authority over all of it. How do you think the devil got that power? How do you think he got the world? It is because Adam was booted out of it. If there is not somebody to guard it then somebody else will fill it, and the devil has just filled it. He has filled the seat of government.
Heavenly places are what it is called. The only reason he is there is because we have not taken our place as sons of God in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus and the anointing of the son – Ephesians 2:6. It is the anointing that gives you access to have dominion. The anointing is the power that gives us the tools from God and the mandate to do the work. People say you cannot do these things, but I’ve been doing them for over 25 years.
The fear that stops us from entering the realm of heaven is the same fear that ties us to the earth. That same fear goes all the way back to the Garden of Eden when Adam and Eve sinned, and they hid themselves from the presence of God. It is this same fear that we have to face today. Exactly the same thing: I am a man of sin. Well, hallelujah! There is provision for that by the blood. Do something about it.
The difference between a demonic encounter and a godly encounter is that one is based on death and fear, but the other is based on life and abundance. The realm of Revelation is the steppingstone to the realm of visitation. Once we have been attuned, with our transistors in our mind tuned to the area of Revelation, we receive from the word by our process of learned extraction. We put it into our lives and receive Revelation. Visitation is on its heels.
Visitation
Revelation is all about you watching something happen. Visitation is all about you going there and doing something. I do not want to just watch something happen. I do not want to just watch other people do things. I want to go over there and do them first.
There is a restoration of lost things going on in the realm of the kingdom right now that is preparing the church, for those who would receive it. One of the things that has been lost in the church is the arena of government. I mean world government, not just church government; but we have lost that too in many ways. God is dismantling the processes of some of the human structures that have been put in place, and there are other things that are already trying to fill it. Some of these human structures are just not right, they are okay but they are earthly. For those who experienced the realm of heaven, who chase after it to go into that place where God is, God is going to put you together because he wants a family. I do not just share my meal with just my son, or just one of my daughters or only my wife. I love the whole family. It is great being around the table when there is a group of you. Why? Because you can talk, you can share things, and you can laugh together. Now if that is in the natural, how much more so in the realm of the spirit. God wants to take someone from Russia and China and America and New Zealand and put us together around the table. Why? So, we can talk!
Within the next 5 to 10 years you are going to find that there are things that suddenly crop up in the church all over the world. You will be saying, well, we did not know anything about this doctrine, but suddenly it is everywhere. It is going to be like that because there will be people who are going into heaven and sharing Revelation. There is going to be a standard set where true government is exercised in the spirit over the earth, and suddenly the earth is going to respond to it.
I have been in that room; it is an amphitheater. When I was first there, there were three people sitting in an approximately 20,000- seater amphitheatre. I walked inside and wailed in shock and awe. They shouted back, we have waited so long!
There are things that God is unlocking to the church and it’s all about the kingdom. It is all about being in the kingdom and experiencing the kingdom. If some of this is going over your head, that is okay, just work on the little bit that triggers your soul and your spirit. Work on that little bit that is important to you and generates a sense of going somewhere with God. You work on that bit and allow God to develop the rest. All he is looking for is one channel and when one is open and tuned then the rest come easily.
So how do you become attuned? Easy; by being discipled by another person who goes there. You need to be taught, in the same way as I have been taught by the spirit of knowledge; by going to its classroom. There are now 15 or 20 people who sit there from the world of believers, when I go there. You see, the classroom is omnipresent, but the spirit of knowledge is not, it is one spirit.
Now, you cannot take someone to a realm or a world you have never been to yourself. Unfortunately, there are many diehards who are trying to do that. It is okay for a season, but there will come a time when God will say, no and they will die, because God does not mess around with this kind of activity. He tolerates it for a season and then he says, no, you come home now, it is your time.
Another way to become attuned is familiarity with what the word says; you need to read the word and meditate in the word. You need to purify and cleanse your imagination so there is no garbage in it, keep short accounts when you find something that disturbs you. As a guy, I see certain types of magazines all over the place, you can walk into a shop and they are right in front of your face. But if you look at them, O God, blood of Jesus, cleanse it out, and that is finished. Where is its power? It is not the actual seeing but the response that is the key. What goes on in your heart is the key. If you desire holiness and purity then you keep short accounts.
Also, dreaming about that reality, allowing your heart and mind to be captivated is a problem. What do we do? Record, review and revisit are the cycle of Revelation training. How do you revisit the things you have experienced? First you must open your spirit to that reality again. Many people have had encounters with the realm of glory but then 25 years pass, and they have not had another one. For some people it was five years ago, for some people it was three weeks ago. You must go back and review and revisit that encounter. You do it by praying in tongues first, opening your spirit, activating and drawing on the memory of that last experience and all that was connected with it.
One day a woman from America saw an amazing prophetic person of God giving her a goblet and she drank wine from this goblet. It was the most amazing experience. When I asked her how long ago it was, she said it was about two years ago. I asked her what she did with it and she replied, what do you mean? I told her she had to go back and review, revisit and write it down because that is the doorway to the rest of it. I asked her, you know what the hand was like that fed it to you? What do you know about the room that it was sitting in? In fact, do you know what was in the bottom of the goblet or what the color of the wine was? Tell me what the goblet was like, tell me about the rings that were on the hand that fed you the goblet. What was the person like who fed it to you? What was the room like?
Encounters with the realm of glory are doorways that open up the possibility, but you can only go back when you revisit them. So I spend time praying in tongues, focusing on the recall of the last experience. That is fantastic. Then it develops and becomes exciting; then it becomes awe inspiring; then it becomes hard work because you need to write down how you did it. It has taken me 12 years to get some of this down on paper.
It is hard work going through the process of what to do; pray in the spirit, recall what happened in your imagination and make a choice to step back into that window of the experience. I can remember the first time I ever had an angelic experience. I was busy praying, father I thank you for your word that is like a sword. Father please show me what your word does when I am decreeing, you are defeated by the blood of Jesus. Show me what that does in the spirit, please father.
Then I found myself in another space, I was not in the room anymore, and there was a tall Angel who smiled at me. He had a long sword on the side. He took the sword out. I had been decreeing in the realm of the spirit, father, it is finished! When he took that sort out it had written on the sword, father it is finished! The Angel said, you were the only person in the church who took that sword. The Angels swung the sword and when it got to a certain point it went into eternity. Then it came back as a small sword again, he put it back in its scabbard and I was back in my room with my mouth open, catching flies, saying, wow!
I could’ve just had that as a wonderful experience. I am very familiar with that Angel now, it is great hanging around him, you do not feel scared of anything. But I had to make the choice to go back to that experience. I had to face the fear and the terror and the questions in my mind about what do I say and what do I do?!
Well, high! Is a good start! You say hi! And he says hi! What do I say then? Well, you start talking, who are you? That is another good thing; every Angel has a name and the name represents who they are and their nature and character. If you find out their name, you become familiar with their nature and their character. Then when they are around, you can feel them in the atmosphere and they work on your behalf, because we are the heirs of salvation – Hebrews 1:14. They bring the liberty of heaven when they come into a room. They only come in because you are familiar with them, and they want to be a part of what you are doing. They just want to look into the things we are looking into because they do not know about them, all they know is about him. They are with him, but they do not know about these things that have been destined for us that we investigate and find out about. They want to be a part of it, not only do they want to be a part of it, but they also
want to help you into it. They are only too happy to help you into it, with cries of let’s go! And you are out of there.
There is nothing like riding a fiery chariot. I said to the Lord one day, Lord, I want to know what it is like when there are no demons around. Great question! What would it be like to not have the oppressive atmosphere anywhere? Then I started hearing a sound that told me that was a big mistake. It is called a fiery chariot and sounds like a steam train. It came into my room and I was going at the speed of thought away from the earth. I saw my city, my nation and the earth rush away from me to nothing. I was screaming! I love riding roller coasters; they are the closest thing you can get to a fiery chariot ride in your life. I love them. In America I ride them over and over again! The most amazing thing is to end up in a place where the human eye has not been able to see, where there is no corruption. That amazing tranquility and absolute peace is the realm that God wants us to walk in on the earth; having the peace of God just like that inside of us. The scariest thing is that they put me at the head, right on the front of the chariot.
When I was a kid I used to love riding yachts, plowing through the water getting wet, then coming back, right on the front, with the coastline rushing into view. I saw our solar system, then the earth, and I was screaming and laughing, shouting, slow down! I ended up in my room trying to catch my breath, you see, they enjoy relating with us. They think we are funny!
I can remember being in a church preaching the word of God. The inside of the building had a great big beam that went across it. I was still learning about things in the spirit and about angels in those days. As I was busy preaching my eyes began to open and there was an Angel, like one of those girls who swings around on gymnastic bars. Every time she reached the top she shouted, go ian! Go Ian! Wow I was trying to preach this serious message! The realm of that angelic is real. They are here because we are the sons of God and they want to be a part of an inheritance. It is awesome.
Some of us might find feathers appear because they will leave these little deposits. There is a door that the living creatures go through and when they go through it they move at lightning speed. When they go through the door they hit the side and there are feathers on the side. These feathers have eyes in them and because nothing dies they are still alive and you walk through it and all these eyes follow you! It is glorious – is just great fun.
I talked before about trans relocation so you can see that it is real. My first experience in this was probably around 1998 or 1999. What God is looking at doing is giving us supernatural capabilities that can override every single natural law. In one of the trans relocation experiences I had with the Holy Ghost, he put me into a prison cell in an eastern country somewhere, and there was a guy who was a believer, beaten up on this bed, absolutely smashed – eyes, nose, teeth – just messed up. I did not know what was going on, nobody talked about trans- relocation in those days. I just turned up. I said to him in English, I am here, God has put me here. He replied, I know, through his broken teeth. I laid hands on him, and like a paint brush going over him, everything in his body came into divine order. I am standing there saying, oh yes, bring it on Jesus! And he is also saying, bring it on Jesus! When you are in a prison cell you do not make a noise because you will get beaten more. But he had got his hands up over his head shouting in Victorious joy, hallelujah I’m free, I’m healed! I heard these heavy footsteps coming down the passageway. The door has a little spike on it that was turned sideways and an eye looked through. Then I heard this shout and a gun came out and I heard a shot. Now, my in the spirit or am I in the natural? I saw the bullet come out of the end of the gun and then everything slowed down. It started coming towards me and I was thinking, God, get me out of here, now! Then the whole spirit world flashed and I was not there anymore.
God wants us to experience some of these things. I have also been trans- relocated into a place where I have not been taken out of the situation, and I have ended up with physical marks on my body. My kids have seen them. That is okay, it is part of the price of doing those kinds of things. Let me tell you, it is glorious!