Heavenly places
In this series of posts we are considering the heavenly places. We have seen that there are indeed different places or realms in the heavens, and that we can access them even while we are living on the earth, just as Jesus did.
And angels who did not keep their own domain, but abandoned their proper abode, He has kept in eternal bonds under darkness for the judgment of the great day (Jude v6).
This is talking about the fallen watcher angels who left their proper place, and came to the earth to produce the Nephilim. Those 200 watcher angels are now bound, in a place called Tartarus. I have seen them there, and they are bound because of what they did.
In quoting Bible verses, what I am trying to show you is that all these different places in the heavenlies have a scriptural background. Sometimes you have to look closely at familiar scriptures to see that maybe they have more to say than we have seen before. So we saw last time that there is a trophy room of Satan which we can plunder, and here there is a domain where angels are bound.
Seven
Now, seven is an important number in scripture. There were seven days of creation, there are seven systems of government. Seven is always the perfect number, the number of completion, the number of God. We have seen that there are seven realms, three into the heavens, three into the earth, and the seventh is the atmosphere of the earth in which there are principalities, powers and rulers.
But the very first realm of government for us has to be in our own life. To rule there we must bring spirit, soul and body back into proper order. We are a house of the Lord, and we rule with Him from a place of our spirit, not our soul, not our body, bringing it back into wholeness and completeness. That is why we need to access our own garden, soaking room, bridal chamber and the dance floor – the four chambers of our heart – to actually deal with things in our own life. There are areas of government: in us, and through us, and in the heavenly realms.
King of kings and Lord of lords
He who is the blessed and only Sovereign, the King of kings and Lord of lords (1 Tim 6:15).
These will wage war against the Lamb, and the Lamb will overcome them, because He is Lord of lords and King of kings, and those who are with Him are the called and chosen and faithful (Rev 17:14).
Jesus is described as the King of kings and Lord of lords in these two passages. So there are kings of whom He is King, and lords of whom He is Lord. The second passage tells us that those who are with Him are called, chosen and faithful. We are the called, we are the chosen, we are the faithful: we are the kings, and we are the lords.
We need to take our place as lords and kings who rule in the heavenly realm. The warfare is still going on, but we are followers of Jesus, and we will triumph over the works of the enemy and come into victory and dominion.
God’s people have never accessed the heavenly realms properly, or consistently, and so the enemy has had free rein to do what he likes. We are now starting to do so, and the enemy is losing ground as God causes us to overcome and take back dominion.
Rule as Lords
So the heavenly realm called ‘the kingdom of God’ is where lords rule. But in order to rule, we have to dispossess the giants because they occupy the place of our authority. So we have to do just as Caleb did when he went into the Promised Land, into the hill country that was to be his possession, and drove out the sons of Anak. We have to do as David did to Goliath – after he hit him in the head with a stone from his sling, he cut his head off (and that is what caused the enemy army to turn and flee – there was no doubt that their champion had been defeated).
This all sounds a bit gory, I know, but we have to cut their heads off, and we have to split them open so that all the stuff inside them spills out, everything they have robbed from us and that they have consumed. Then we can take it and eat it and place it within us. It was always intended for us, and we are going to need it if we are going to start occupying a place of authority and power.
It is not difficult for us to kill a giant once we know who we are, when we know what authority we have, what belongs to us, and what mandates we hold. We need to know what we are called to, and then we can fulfil that calling. Confident in our identity as sons of God, and knowing what is on the scroll that is written about us, we can enter into our destiny. We cannot take someone else’s scroll, or operate on someone else’s mandate, or take someone else’s throne – it doesn’t belong to us. We need to lay hold of what is our own destiny in God, and then we can go for it.
Rule as Kings
The ‘kingdom of heaven’ heavenly realm is where kings rule, and that is also where the dragons are. They operate in a higher level of authority, and they have more stuff in them. Again, in the realm of the spirit we can go and kill dragons, split open their belly and recover everything that should be ours. I have done that, and so have others here at Freedom. The first time, even though it didn’t seem to take long, afterwards I was really tired! So I knew that I had to get stronger, to build up some more spiritual muscle, and more stamina.
Stand as Sons
And then there is the heavenly realm called simply ‘heaven’, where sons rule. We have thrones there, and it is where we are seated with Christ. When we begin to occupy that place, God starts to cause us to be manifest as sons on the earth – and I’m really looking forward to that. That’s when we start getting transfigured, when we start demonstrating the manifest presence of God in our lives. That’s when things get really exciting.
Most of what is in these realms is to do with manifesting the authority of the kingdom. There isn’t much on our scrolls that is to do with casting out demons, healing the sick, or even doing all kinds of miracles. That is just basic stuff really, that any Christian ought to be able to do. Our scrolls are mandating each of us to do particular things in the realms of heaven, they confer on us particular responsibility for the administration of the realms of heaven.
In the future, we are going to rule galaxies: that is our destiny. If you read in the book of Daniel, you can see how it refers to different levels of heavenly authority. In the same way, when Jesus talked about good and faithful servants who will rule over ten cities, He was talking about much wider dimensions than what we might previously have understood by ‘cities’. Every galaxy has a black hole in it that is just waiting for the manifestation of the light of the sons of God to go and occupy it.
Joshua generation, this is what we are called to: to walk in the way of the Lord, to perform His service, to govern His house, to take charge of the courts, and to start acting as – and standing in the place of – sons (Zech 3:6-7).