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 Sermon > Theme Words of Life |
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Title |
Heaven(4) - Spiritual Shape and Resurrected Body |
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Speaker |
Rev. Jaerock Lee |
Bible |
1 Corinthians15:51-53 |
Date |
2006-12-03 |
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1 Corinthians 15:51-53
"Behold, I tell you a mystery; we will not all sleep, but we will all be changed, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet; for the trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised imperishable, and we will be changed. For this perishable must put on the imperishable, and this mortal must put on immortality."
Dear brothers and sisters in Christ,
Now I will speak about "Heaven" for the fourth time. Last time I spoke about the kind of life that is led by the souls of the believers who have already entered into the Waiting Place of Heaven on outskirts of Paradise.
I also told you that there are some other souls that cannot enter the Waiting Place of Heaven but remain in the Upper Grave forever. This applies to the spirit-soul of those who died in the womb of their mothers and received salvation.
Today I will be further explaining to you why the spirit-souls of those who die in the womb are not able to enter heaven but stay at the Upper Grave forever and how it is because they had not yet put on a whole physical body in the womb while on earth. So, what kind of spiritual form do you suppose they wear?
Also, I will speak about the 'spiritual forms' that are taken on by the souls who stay in the Waiting Place of Heaven and about the "resurrected bodies" that we, as saved souls, will put on when we experience resurrection, and about the "perfected heavenly body" that we will wear in heaven after the Great White Throne Judgment. Many people endeavor to have a healthy and robust body and women want to have skin as clean and pure as a precious white gem stone.
If they are too short or too tall, there are some who worry about their height, and some others who are full-figured may worry about their weight. When you discard your physical body, you will finally realize how much you don't have to worry about them at all!
When you put on the resurrected body and then the heavenly body by the power of God, you will feel how great the love of God is when He changes your structure and even the skin color into a more perfected and beautiful one.
Therefore, Colossians 3:2 tells us to "Set your mind on the things above, (namely things in heaven) not on the things that are on earth." I ask all of you in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ not to set your mind and seek earthly things that are temporal and perishable but to seek the heavenly things that are true and everlasting.
Dear brothers and sisters in Christ, When a baby is conceived, the spirit for that baby is not given until the term of the full fifth month of pregnancy. So that it is given in the 6th month of pregnancy. If the baby is aborted in the womb before the 6-month of pregnancy, since it has not yet attained the age to be given the spirit, it has nothing to do with the life that is to come.
Animals have no spirits and when they die, everything just ends. In the same way, when a fetus that has not received the spirit dies, it means that everything just comes to an end. It is only God who is entitled to control the life of mankind, so if any person puts the life of a fetus to death, it is obviously murder.
It is an obvious act of standing against the authority of God. How can you say it is only a minor sin?Life and death belong to God, so if we kill at our will, it i a murder. Retribution will surely follow and you will have to pay a great penalty for it.
So, we believers in God must never murder the fetuses through the fifth month of pregnancy despite the fact that they have not received the spirit yet as well as those who have already received their spirit.
When fetuses die, God gives salvation to most of them except very few. The few cases are when the parents and ancestors stood against God and piled up so much evil, so that even from the moment of pregnancy, the fetuses inherited so much evil.
You can sometimes see that kind of people. They don't have any relation with God, but they curse God for no reason saying He is evil God. They don't have any relation with church, but they just curse church and pastors. They are so evil. They don't have anything to do with God, but they just curse.
For example, some believers are so wicked that they speak against the works of the Holy Spirit, judge and condemn and oppose the Holy Spirit and envy and try to kill those who glorify God. When those wicked people conceive a baby, the baby inherits all the evil natures from them, and when the baby dies in the womb after six months of pregnancy, the baby cannot be saved.
Those spirits will not be extinguished, and they will fall into the Hades. This is applied so exceptionally that it only pertains to just a few cases. The vast majority of the souls of fetuses who die in the womb are saved. The fetuses that die in the womb have brains that are virtually blank because they have not been cultivated at all, and when the fetuses die, the spirits that come out of the bodies do not have the proper human shape because the fetuses do not fill the full pregnancy of 9 months.
They do have eyes, noses, and mouths, but they are not perfect. Their souls' shape looks like the spirits of the fetuses that are first given, and the souls are lifted up into the Upper Grave and stay there until the last resurrection. When the time of the last resurrection comes, the souls' bodies will grow very fast and stop at the shape of the age of 33.
Just as bean sprouts in a jar look very alike, the souls in the Upper Grave will grow and look alike. Of course each individual of them will be different according to his/her temperament. The brains of the souls are like a blank paper. The souls grow very quickly up to the age of 33 and fill themselves with knowledge of truth.
It is very similar to the body and learning of Adam in the Garden of Eden. God created Adam as a 33-year old male. But because he had no knowledge whatsoever, God taught him with the knowledge of life one by one.
So, God Himself taught him various knowledge of spirit for a long period. Unlike Adam who had no evil at all when he was created and lived in that state in the Garden of Eden, the souls that have been saved from the womb that remain in the Upper Grave once had a fleshly body that also included sinful attributes.
That's why according to the spiritual order and ranking, the souls are inferior to Adam who lived in the Garden of Eden. And the souls cannot enter heaven but have to stay the Upper Grave because they are saved without experiencing God's human cultivation.
Dear brothers and sisters in Christ, What are like the shapes of the souls who have experienced human cultivation on earth and received salvation and then stay at the outskirts of Paradise, the Waiting Place for Heaven? "Spiritual shape" refers to the unique shape of the spirit. Every creature on earth including human beings, animals, and plants has its own 'shape'. In the same way, each spirit has its own body that makes them look different from each other.
When a person dies, his spirit, whose shape looks like his body, comes out of the body. Those whose spiritual eyes are open can see it. When one dies, the spirit of a child looks like that child, the spirit of a young man looks young, the spirit of an adult looks grownup, and the spirit of an old man looks old. So, we can see when each individual has died through the shape of the spiritual bodies.
But the spiritual shapes have no disabled part, scar, wrinkle or beard like our physical bodies have.Some people die of illnesses, but their spiritual shapes are healthy and beautiful. When old people die, their spiritual shapes look like their physical bodies but are not old or weak at all.
So, even if one of your arms is amputated after a traffic accident or something, your spiritual body will have perfect two arms. Even if you one of your eyes was hurt by a mistake, your spiritual body will have perfect two eyes.
No matter when he lived, and no matter what kind of race he was, the spiritual shape of every soul who has been saved will have white skin and wear white clothes. The spiritual shape of each soul will shine with lights differently according to how much they have accomplished the word of God and sanctification on earth.
And the length of women's hair will be different according to the measure of their spirit they have cultivated on earth. The hair will fall down to the waist for the women who have accomplished whole spirit and reached the highest level of faith, and the hair will reach the middle of the back for the women who reached the 4th level of faith by throwing away every kind of evil and becoming sanctified, but have not accomplished whole spirit.
It's about a span of a hand above from the waist. But people have different heights. Anyway, so the hair comes down to about the middle of the spine for women in third kingdom of heaven. And for those who go to New Jerusalem, their hair comes down to the end of the spine. For most of women who have received salvation, the hair falls down to their shoulders.
And other women, in paradise, the 1st kingdom, and 2nd kingdom of heaven, their hair comes down to touch the shoulder line. It's about the length of the ladies who don't have very long hair now. So, just to see the length of their hair we can guess what kind of heavenly dwelling place the souls can enter.Namely, we can see whether that person is from New Jerusalem, the 3rd kingdom, or the 2nd kingdom of heaven.
All men's hair falls down as far as the neck. But now, we don't see any man here whose hair comes down to the neck. But in case of some artists or poets, we may see some of them grow their hair down to their neck, or longer.
For most of us, our hair does go down as far as the neck line, but in heavenly kingdom, it will be longer to come down to the neck line. I believe that you have surveyed and understood the spiritual shapes of the souls who stay at the Waiting Place of Heaven.Dear brothers and sisters in Christ, The people who stay in the Waiting Place of Heaven have not put on the imperishable body but exist as the combination of soul and spirit.
So, the souls who stay at the Waiting Place of Heaven are waiting for the final resurrection. When our Lord Jesus Christ appears in the air, they will be able to wear the "resurrected body" that is imperishable and everlasting. You may think, "It's complicated. God could have given us resurrected body from the beginning, and why are the spiritual shape, the resurrected body, and the perfected heavenly body?" But I will explain about it soon.
1 Corinthians 15:51-53 say, "Behold, I tell you a mystery; we will not all sleep, but we will all be changed, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet." Our Lord will come in the air, along with the archangels and sound of trumpets, and in glory, to take us. And, "we will all be changed, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet."
"for the trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised imperishable," This is about those believers who died early and are buried in tombs. "and we will be changed." Why do those in the tombs go up first? I will tell you about that soon, too. "For this perishable must put on the imperishable, and this mortal must put on immortality."
As said in these verses, when our Lord comes again in the air, the souls who are asleep in Christ and stay in the Waiting Place of Heaven will first come down from there and unite with the imperishable and everlasting bodies that are resurrected from the grave
And those who are alive will put on the imperishable and everlasting body in a moment and be lifted up into the air. This is called the "Rapture." Why are there these processes? It's because of the so-called 'docking'. The bodies in the grave will first put on the resurrected body and be caught up into the air.
In the air, those bodies will meet their owners, which are the spirits who will have been waiting in the outskirts of paradise. These spirits will come down to the air following the Lord's coming in the air. You see in the Bible talking about this second coming of the Lord.
They will come along with all the others and in the air, namely in the second heaven, about which I will explain as to where you will have 7-year wedding banquet and how we will do it, but anyway, the bodies and spirit combine together in the air. The resurrected body and the spirit will be combined together.
This is just like 'docking'. They will be combined and will have spirit, soul, and body. Now you understand, don't you? There is a procedure. So, those who are in the grave will first resurrect and go up, and those who are living on this earth and have accepted the Lord will follow them. Their bodies will change into imperishable bodies and will be caught up into the air.
This is called the Rapture. The imperishable and everlasting body that the saved souls will receive at the second coming of our Lord is called "the Resurrected Body."With this resurrected body, we will attend the 7-year Wedding Banquet and come down to the earth and spend the millennium there.
In what aspects is the resurrected body different from the spiritual shape that we will wear at the Waiting Place of Heaven?This will be explained later, but anyway, when you come down to this earth, this earth will be completely different.
During the 7-year Tribulation, there will be the 3rd World War, and there will be many corpses decaying, and so many dirty things. The Lord will clean all these things and make this earth very clean, and then we will come down to this earth.
Even the air will be cleaned and it will have no pollution. We will live on earth for 1,000 years. I will elaborate on this in the Revelation lecture series. In what aspects is the resurrected body different from spiritual shape that will be in the Waiting Place of heaven?
First the resurrected body has the shape of a 33-year-old in age as that during which Jesus lived on earth, and this is applied to everybody whether old or young, men or women. The sun is the brightest at the time of noonday. In the same way, the peak of human life is at the age of a 33-year-old.
A person who is under the age of 30 is inexperienced in many ways and a person who is above 40 looks aged and is enervated, but a person who is around the age of 33 is matured and beautiful. So, it is also mature. If you are over 40, you begin to get old and lose the energy of life. Comparing it with flower, it's when it fully blooms. Then there is time for the flower to fall.
We men, too, begin to fall from about 33 years. Then, we will get old, and our strength will not be as strong as before. There will be wrinkles on faces, and the skin will get old, too. The flower is falling. It is the period for the fully bloomed flower to fall. Until the age of 33, the flower is going to bloom.
That's why God chooses and lets His saved children wear the imperishable and everlasting body of the shape of 33-year-old. Men's height is 190cm. Women's height will be about a span of a hand shorter. So, it will be about 170 cm.
The structure is neither skinny nor fat. Everyone is in the best shape. You will have the slim bodies that people usually want. Some people ask me to pray for them because their belly is too big. But if you go to heaven, you don't have to worry about these things at all.
This embodies the love of God who lets us live in the everlasting kingdom of heaven in a form that is beautiful and young. This resurrected body has imperishable and eternal flesh and bones, so this resurrected body is tangible. The resurrected body also breathes, eats, and drinks. When you go to heaven, you will eat the fruit of life, and twelve different kinds of fruits. There will be parties every time to eat and drink.
Our Lord also said He would drink the wine only after all the people come into the kingdom of heaven. The food eaten comes out of the body through breathing and is divided into nothing. So, the processes of digestion and excretion are not needed anymore.
So, in heavenly kingdom, you don't have to go to the bathroom. And if you just put the fruit in the mouth, it will dissolve and come out through the breath, so you can see how soft they are. It's so soft and tasty that it will just melt in the mouth.
Because it's so delicious and it melts in the mouth, it will dissolve and come out through the breath. How delicious the fruit is! But even the same fruit of life and the water of the river of life will taste differently in the paradise, in 1st kingdom, 2nd kingdom, 3rd kingdom, and New Jerusalem.
This resurrected body is spiritual and imperishable, so it transcends the limitations of the physical world and can go anywhere as it wants.The feeling and sensations that the resurrected body has in the spiritual space is totally different from that of spiritual shape. The feeling in the spiritual space is not easy to explain. We can compare it with the difference between dream and reality.
You feel something you experience in your dream is real, but that feeling is completely different when you touch something and you move somewhere in reality. If we compare the feeling that the spiritual shape consisting of spirit and soul alone has in the spiritual space with that in dreams, even if it is not complete, the resurrected body can feel the spiritual space as a reality.
So, the spiritual shape is not complete but only when we wear the resurrected body can we lay the foundation by which we can live in spiritual space. It was our Lord Jesus who showed the reality of the resurrected body. He resurrected on the third day of His burial and showed Himself to His disciples.
John 20:19 tells us that when the doors were shut where the disciples were, for fear of the Jews, Jesus came and stood in their midst." They were in fear and they locked themselves in. If they were found, they would have been arrested. But the Lord just appeared. He didn't knock on the door to tell them to open it. He just appeared.
and Luke 24:42-43 say, "They gave Him a piece of a broiled fish; and He took it and ate it before them." Then, we see the Bible says Jesus breathed out. Why does the Bible have to say even such a thing? When He ate, the food was dissolved, and it went out through the breath.
And Jesus said to His disciples in Luke 24:39, "See My hands and My feet, (namely, look at the hands and feet with the nail scars.) that it is I Myself; touch Me and see, for a spirit does not have flesh and bones as you see that I have." Thus, the Lord revealed his resurrected form of his Self to his disciples, and thereby planted the assurance of the faith in resurrection into their hearts and let them know about the resurrected body through His resurrected body.
But our Lord didn't really have the scars after He resurrected. In a hymnal song it says we will see His hands and feet with the scars, but it's actually wrong. Then, why did the Lord show the scars to the disciples? Otherwise, they wouldn't have recognized Him, so it was to let them recognize Him.
Thomas had doubt, and even if He said He was Jesus, they couldn't believe it. Why? Because His body was very different now. He didn't have the beard, and He was shining, and He was much taller. Everything is changed. So they couldn't recognize Him.
Even when He was with the two disciples who were going to Emmaus, they didn't recognize Him. Only when Jesus revealed Himself clearly, they recognized Him. In the same way, it was for the disciples to believe Him without any doubt, that He showed them His hands and feet with the scars.
Why? In the fourth heaven, you can change the form as you like. You can change them from solid substance to liquid, from liquid to gas. But I didn't say the resurrected Lord changes Himself as He wants in the kingdom of heaven. I didn't say that.
I said it was in the fourth heaven. Please listen carefully. It is about the fourth heaven. So, God can do as He wants. Not in the third heaven. At first Mary Magdalene and the disciples did not recognize the Lord who wore the resurrected body.
That was because of the spiritual lights that came out of His resurrected body. Our Lord showed prints of the nails in His hands to the 'doubting' Thomas. It did not mean that those prints of the nails remained on His resurrected body. He revealed His physical body to Thomas temporarily in order to plant the faith in his heart.
But at that time His whole body was not the very body that Jesus had put on during His ministry, for example the body with beard. He just showed the prints of nails on His hands as a sign confirming Himself as their Teacher. Those whose spiritual eyes are open see the spiritual shapes and the physical body of prophets.
By the present spiritual shapes of the prophets, they are wearing white clothes and shine differently according to the measure of their lights. With His power, God can overlap their spiritual shapes with their physical body that they had on earth.
Dear brothers and sisters in Christ, We will enjoy the 7-year Wedding Banquet with our resurrected bodies and then come down to the earth again to live for a thousand years. After that each of us will enter our own dwelling place decided for us according to the Great White Throne Judgment. For this we will wear the heavenly body that is the complete spiritual body. There is resurrected body, and there is also heavenly body. Heavenly body is above and different from the resurrected body.
The spiritual shape, resurrected body, and the heavenly body are all different. Let me tell you the biggest difference between the two bodies. The saved souls will receive different glory, authority, and reward at the Great White Throne Judgment as they have done and sowed on earth. So, the heavenly bodies that they will wear after the Great Judgment will reveal not only their level of sanctification but glory and rewards and glory God will give them.
We will have the reward judgment, and so according to the rewards, the brightness and things will be different. So we can know many things just to see the heavenly body of each individual apart from his clothes and decorations. For example, we can understand how much he has loved God and lived by His word, how faithful and devoted he had been to the kingdom of God.
And we can realize which kingdom of heaven his dwelling residence belongs to and what kind of glory and rewards he has received from God.For your better understanding of this, let's think of different official dress that graduates wear according to their different degrees and the dress of judges that they wear on the court.
They are really judges and doctors even if they do not wear official dress, but if they appear in official attire, anybody can understand they are doctors or judges. You have different clothes for Doctorates and the judge. In old days, the costume for the kings and queens were different and it was different between the queen and the concubines.
Also, the prime minister and other ministers have different clothes and different belts. In the same way, the measure of sanctification and rewards for each man is already decided after the history of human cultivation, so each person is recognized and discerned according to the spiritual light his spiritual shape shines.
In Europe, maybe in England, just by looking at the clothes, they could understand somebody is Duke or count. Through the Great White Throne Judgment, however, God will officially recognize and declare the unique glory, authority and reward to each person. So the heavenly body of each person will reveal everything of its glory, authority and reward.
When a person meets another who is higher in glory, authority and reward, the former will show truthful honor to and bow before the latter. So, even in the same place, say in the 2nd kingdom of heaven, they have different lights. Of course, even the brightest light will be less than those in the 3rd kingdom of heaven, but they all have different lights and rewards in the same 2nd kingdom of heaven, too.
Thus, there will be the order naturally. So, if one is higher than you in the rank, you will express your respect coming from the depth of your heart. Dear brothers and sisters in Christ, why then does God not let us wear the heavenly body at the second coming of our Lord but instead allows us to put on the resurrected body?
It will be much easier to make the perfect heavenly body from the beginning! But then why does God distinguish between the spiritual shape, resurrected body, and heavenly body? The kingdom of air where we celebrate the 7-year Wedding Banquet is very different from the kingdom of heaven where we will live for ever and ever in the passing of time and density of space, and accordingly God will let us wear different and proper bodies in each different space. .
Let's say your spirit leaves your body, so now you have spiritual shape. This spiritual shape is in this space. It can adapt to this space and also, it can adapt itself in heaven, in paradise.
But this resurrected body will not go to paradise, but it will receive the Lord in the air, to have the 7-year wedding banquet. So, it has to adapt to the 2nd heaven. God made it to fit the second heaven at the best.
Then, later, it has to come down to this earth, the 1st heaven. So, God made it fit this, too, so that it can adapt itself to different environments. You see the density in the second heavenis greater than this first heaven where we are living right now. The density is all different, between the 3rd and the 4th heaven, too.
That's why God gives us the most appropriate body in to fit different spaces. Let's compare the people who live in the highest mountain regions with those living in low lands. They differ in the breathing capacity.There is less oxygen in the highlands than in any other place, so the body of the residents needs to increase the breathing capacity to compensate for as much oxygen as needed.
It is not easy for the people coming from other places to adapt themselves to these conditions but, they can do it as time passes. Some marathoners go to and practice in the high lands to increase the breathing capacity. If we have some soccer match in Latin America, they first go to high mountains for their training to get used to that environment. Otherwise, they will have trouble breathing when they play.
Just as people apply their bodies according to the situation in which they live, the souls have to wear the proper and different spiritual bodies according to the spiritual spaces where they live. So, God lets us wear the proper spiritual bodies in accordance with the timing. Why does God give us the heavenly body after the Great judgment?
After we receive the judgment of reward, we will directly go to the heavenly kingdom. We will go to the third kingdom of heaven, so God gives us the heavenly body, which is the best for that environment. How are spiritual shape and heavenly body different?
Spiritual shape does not live on this earth. It will wait in the upper grave and then go to the outskirts of paradise. It will not have the body with it. So, because there are different steps like this, God gives the perfect body for each time. So, God gives us the resurrected body until we go to heaven and receive the Great Judgment.
Because we have to come down to this earth after the 7-year tribulation, the body with spirit, soul, and body, and live here, God gave us such a body. For what kind of spiritual spaces does God allow us to wear different spiritual bodies?This will be explained to you along with the whole structure of the spiritual realm next time.
Dear brothers and sisters in Christ,Today I have explained to you about the spiritual shapes of the saved souls, the resurrected body that they will wear on the last resurrection and heavenly bodies that they will put on after the Great White Throne Judgment. No matter what kind of spiritual body he has, each person shines different spiritual lights from the inside him to the extent that he has made bread of the word of God who is light and walked in it.
So, I urge you to check what kind of spiritual lights you are shining from the inside. Are you shining the lights the brightness of a small star in the dark sky, the moon or the noonday sun?What is important is that you will shine different lights according to the measure of spirit you have accomplished on earth, and live with the heavenly body with that measure of light.
May each of you cultivate your heart into spirit, shine your light to the world and glorify God, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ I pray! |
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