There is a song by U2 that I really used to love: “Still haven’t found what I’m looking for”. I would sing that and really mean it from my heart, because I knew in my spirit that there was more, and I had not found it. I can’t sing it and mean it like that anymore, because actually I have begun to find and walk in my destiny. My destiny was out in the realms of the heavens. It is not ‘written in the stars’, but it is to be in the stars.
Three Scrolls
Here are three scrolls (or books) that we find referred to in scripture:
1. Scroll of destiny
First of all, there is the record of your eternal destiny.
Your eyes have seen my unformed substance;
And in Your book (scroll) were all written
The days that were ordained for me,
When as yet there was not one of them
(Psa 139:16).
2. Book of Life
Then there is the Book of Life.
Then I saw a great white throne and Him who sat upon it… and another book was opened, which is the book of life; and the dead were judged from the things which were written in the books, according to their deeds… And if anyone’s name was not found written in the book of life, he was thrown into the lake of fire (Rev 20:11-15).
Richard Murray explains:
All our false names/natures are NOT written in the book of life, while all our authentic God-crafted names/natures ARE written in the book of life… What gets excluded from the book of life gets cast into the lake of fire. These elements are not our whole beings, but rather are toxic aspects of our non-being – false identities, sin masks which have deformed, debilitated, and impoverished us from manifesting our original created purpose. These forged identity masks have grafted themselves, with our consent, onto our souls and must be carefully irradiated and excised by the curative and corrective knife of divine love.
…to say that the personification of all the dark dynamics within us will be destroyed (i.e. NOT written in the book of life) is ultimately a wonderful thing, all our false sin-identities cast into the lake of fire nevermore to trouble us again1.
3. Scroll of your life
But there is also a scroll of your life, the record of the life you have lived. We know that Jesus took away the power of sin and death and there is no further judgment for sin, but we will be judged according to whether we have come into our destiny or not, whether we fulfilled God’s purpose for our lives. What is written on the scroll of your life? Does it match up exactly with what is written on your scroll of destiny?
My personal experience is that it does not. But we can change that too. We can come into agreement with our destiny, and God can change what is written on the scroll of our life.
For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, so that each one may be recompensed for his deeds in the body, according to what he has done, whether good or bad (2 Cor 5:10).
Where it mentions ‘good or bad’. it is not speaking about sin, but about the motives of our hearts.
You do not have to wait until you die, or until Jesus comes, to go to the judgment seat of Christ. I have been there, the scariest place I have ever been in the heavenly realms. It is a place of living, consuming fire, with eyes coming out of that fire. I was shaking – in fact, everything was shaking. The scroll, which was written on front and back, was opened, and I saw my life. God showed me all the good things, where I had lined my life up according to my destiny. But I also saw all the rest too, the missed opportunities to be obedient. The fire of God came and purged it, and I was given a fresh opportunity.
Every one of us can go to that place and see, does our life match up with our scroll of destiny? That is God’s intention, and He wants us all to make sure it does. Whether we are to be in the outer courts, the inner courts, the Holy Place, or the Holy of Holies: that will be decided by what is on those scrolls and how they match up. I know where I want to be.
The Age to Come
We will also have responsibilities in the age to come, which are determined by whether we are faithful here.
Our destiny is not just something which is to be accomplished in the here and now, in this physical realm. When Jesus returns, He will put the earth back into its central place in the Kingdom of God. It was removed from that place and put into time, in order to restrict the effect of sin. As we move into the age to come, the whole world will be cleansed with fire and brought back into the place where the physical and spiritual realms overlap and interact. And we will have new physical bodies, which are immortal, in order to operate in that realm.
When Satan fell, the light-bearer, light was removed from galaxies. In the age to come, those black holes which are at the centre of many galaxies will once again be filled with light. Who will get the opportunity of doing that? We will: the sons of light.
At present there is a river of dark matter flowing through the universe which needs to be transformed. Who gets to transform it? We do.
If Jesus created galaxies, who else gets to create galaxies? We do.
We need to take the blinkers off our understanding, and grasp what God actually says about these things. Our destiny goes way beyond this physical realm. It is awesome. When we first begin to go into the heavenly realms, our mind often gets in the way until we learn to see and operate there. He wants us to be free of the restraints which hold us back because of our mind and the way we think.
Choices
There is a preparation we need to go through so that we will be ready for Jesus’ return and for our destiny in the age to come. We need a transformation in order to be manifested as the sons of God – on earth as it is in heaven, and then beyond.
We all have a choice about whether we will be transformed; a choice about how we will spend eternity; a choice about whether we will fulfil our destiny. God gives us that choice, and the opportunity to outwork it day by day. There is always, has always been, a choice. There have always been two pathways: the Tree of Life, or the Tree of the Knowledge of good and evil; the kingdom of God or the kingdom that is in darkness (which is just as close).
Kingdom in darkness, by the way, not kingdom of darkness. Satan has no kingdom. He only occupies the kingdom we were meant to be ruling over. He has brought darkness to that kingdom, and it is up to us to bring light into it. God wants us to transform the atmosphere of the earth and to bring light to that place of darkness, and to the places under the earth too. It is our right to rule there.
We need to rule and manifest the kingdom around us. We also need to preside over the heavenly courts for our own lives to bring the mandates that are ours into physical manifestation. This is something we can all learn. It is not magic, it is not mysticism, it is just our birthright to have access to the heavenly realms because we are spirit. We were all made a spirit, but now we need to be transformed into a son from glory to glory (that is the process we are in right now), and to be manifested as sons on the earth
God’s Prophetic Timetable all leads up to the time of Jesus’ return. After Jesus returns, we will go into our eternal destiny in the age to come. And that age to come is beyond most people’s capacity to imagine. Every one of us has been appointed to a purpose in the whole eternal destiny of God. Will we fulfil it? The choice is ours.