Open Heavens

A lot of prophetic people are teaching about the open heavens right now.  They tell of angelic encounters, seeing Jesus, encounters with the glory of God, and more.  Some of their testimonies stretch us as they tell of supernatural travel or of conversations with Christians who have already died.

In this short article I can’t hope to share every scripture that puts these experiences in a biblical context.  But I want to list three simple principles from the life and the words of Jesus and one from the book of Acts, to help us put open heaven experiences in perspective.

1. Jesus is the open heaven. He said so when He called Nathaniel as a disciple in John 1:51 — “hereafter you shall see heaven open, and the angels of God ascending and descending upon the Son of Man.”  In other words, Jesus Himself is Jacob’s ladder.

If this same Jesus lives in us, we can expect His presence in us to be Jacob’s ladder.  This not only gives us an open heaven, but makes us into an open heaven – a people who carry the connection between heaven and earth wherever we go.

2. Jesus lived in a constant flow of hearing the Father’s voice and seeing what He was doing. The fruit of the open heaven in Jesus’ life was the continual fellowship He had with the Father.  As He saw what the Father was doing, Jesus could do the works of God.  As He heard what the Father spoke, Jesus could speak with authority, not like the scribes.

The open heavens in Jesus’ life began when He was baptized in the Jordan.  When we follow Him in baptism, we enter into the power of His death, burial, resurrection, and ascension.  Many scriptures testify to the power of these classic gospel realities to transform our lives.  But for two thousand years, most of the church has overlooked the promises of an open heaven available to us while we live in this world.

3. Jesus took three men with Him when He talked with Moses and Elijah in the cloud of God’s glory, but the voice from heaven called the disciples’ attention to Jesus. There is a whole cast of characters in heaven, from God to angels to saints from other generations who have already left this world.  For a more complete list, read Hebrews 12:22-24.

As we experience the open heavens, we will have encounters with other heavenly characters besides God Himself.  This is normal.  This is what happened to Jesus when He took Peter, James, and John up to the mount of transfiguration.  A cloud of glory descended and Moses and Elijah talked with Jesus for a few moments.  Peter wanted to build three booths, but the voice of God from heaven established something once and for all:

“This is My Beloved Son; hear Him.”  Moses and Elijah have their place; angels have their place; saints from other generations have their place.  But Jesus is and must always be preeminent.

As we hear about open heaven experiences or have them ourselves, we need to be careful and faithful to stay focused on Jesus.

4. In the book of Acts, more open heaven encounters are listed than times of using the gift of prophecy. Frankly, I was surprised when I discovered this.  I was used to assuming the gift of prophecy was scriptural but open visions, encounters with angels, and appearances of Jesus were the exception.

One day I read the book of Acts and counted how many times it says someone prophesied, and how many times someone had an open heaven experience.  I challenge you to do the same.  I think you’ll see what I saw:  that open heaven experiences are part of the church’s inheritance, and we’ve been overlooking it.

We need the rock and we need the oil, but don’t forget Jacob’s ladder.  God wants to make it real in your life.

 

Stan Smith  ::  © 2009, GospelSmith  ::  http://www.GospelSmith.com

 

 

Buy Oil

There are many good things to say about the anointing, but I’m going to boil them down to a single thought:  the oil Jacob poured on the rock represented God’s manifest presence.  The house where God lives must be a house that makes room for His manifest presence.

As a teenager, a troubling question made its way around the churches:  if God withdrew His presence from the church, how many of us would know the difference?  And how many of us would continue doing what we’d always been doing, totally unaware that God Himself had left?

I didn’t know if I could answer the questions well, but I resolved early in my Christian life that I would build my own ministry on God’s manifest presence, in such a way that if He withdrew, I would be unable to continue.

In John 14:21-23, Jesus gave a simple recipe for His manifest presence:

“He who has My commandments and keeps them, it is he who loves Me.  And he who loves Me will be loved by My Father, and I will love him and manifest Myself to him…If anyone loves Me, he will keep My word; and My Father will love him, and We will come to him and make Our home with him.

This isn’t a call to live under the law; it is a call to grace, which we enter into by repentance and faith.  And it is a call to intimacy, a life of hearing and responding to His voice.

In the beginning of my ministry, I didn’t know how to access the voice of God.  If He spoke, I was likely to mistake it for my own thoughts.  I missed a lot in my early days.

But I always looked for scriptures I could act on, and there are plenty.  I learned that a deep walk with God doesn’t consist in prowling around in the obscure passages of scripture; it consists in finding the simples commandments and acting on them.

They’re simple, but they aren’t necessarily easy.  Humble yourself.  Submit to God.  Serve one another.  Love one another.  In everything give thanks.  Pray without ceasing.  Whatever you do, do it as unto the Lord.

And I John 1:9 is one I’ve needed when I’ve sinned: “If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.”  It’s easy to say, “Yeah, yeah; I already know that.”  It’s better to take a few minutes to do it, and to do it as often as necessary.

Jesus talked about oil in the parable of the ten virgins – it’s in the first few lines of Matthew 25.  He told of ten virgins who needed oil in their lamps so they could participate in the part of the wedding that happened in the middle of the night.

I won’t try to explain the wedding customs in Jesus‘ day, but suffice it to say that His hearers found the story very believable.  The point was this:  five of the virgins were wise because they had bought oil during the day, and five were foolish because they had not.

It wasn’t a big purchase.  I’m guessing they needed to spend about as much as someone might spend for a flashlight battery today.

In more than forty years of following Jesus, I’ve seen that this parable holds a key for all of us.  It is impossible to pay a great price today to buy all the oil we’ll ever need.  But we can make a small transaction today, exchanging a few minutes here and a small effort there to invest in God’s manifest presence.

Small investments add up.

Don’t be fooled by get-rich-quick schemes.  See if you can find a small opportunity to buy oil before you go to bed tonight.  Look for another before lunch tomorrow.

Buy oil.  Small investments add up.

Stan Smith  ::  © 2009, GospelSmith  ::  http://www.GospelSmith.com

The Rock Is A Person

The language of the rock, the oil, and the open heaven can be misleading.  Each is something we would be tempted to call “it”, but in each case we need to say “He”.  Seeing God as a person makes all the difference.

A few years ago I had an open heaven experience because I shifted from the language of “it” to the language of “He”.  Here’s what happened.

I was in a worship service and we had all gone sky high in spontaneous worship.  It became so intense that the worship leader took his hands off the keyboard and shrugged at another person on the worship team.  It wasn’t time for man to lead; God was leading for now.

The worship was intense and I was hungry, so I prayed the classic prayer, “More, Lord.”  It’s a good prayer, but on that day, my heart immediately corrected me: was I simply expecting God to double the voltage of His presence, as though He were a mere force field?

As soon as this thought flashed through my mind, I changed my prayer.  “Lord, make it more personal,” I prayed.

Instantly I saw Jesus standing in front of a stone wall and grinning at me.  As soon as our eyes met, He began to walk and I followed.  He took me up onto the porch of an apartment in a three-story brick building, opened the front door, and walked in…

I won’t write about the furnishings in the apartment or the three people who were sitting at the dining table.  Instead, this was a new beginning for me as God has led me into a season of open visions.

What is an open vision?  Contrast it with another kind of visions, the picture that flashes in your mind when you seek God’s wisdom.  Many visions are pictures like the still photos you would see in a photo album or on someone’s FaceBook page.

Some visions are like videos, complete with sound and motion.  But an open vision goes one step further, putting you in an interactive video in which you participate.  What you say or don’t say will affect the way the vision unfolds; so will what you do or don’t do.

It has been very humbling since then to have had more than my share of open visions.  Some have been scenes from the earth and some have been in heaven.  It’s humbling because it isn’t my gift or my anointing or my will that makes it happen; I get there by invitation only.  And a tone of the fear of God goes with these experiences, as they happen with the tacit understanding that I am there only by permission and not because I have somehow earned the right to be there.

Without exception, whenever I get into an open vision, it happens by relating to God as a person, not as an inanimate force field or a theological concept.  He is much more personal than you and I are.  Next to Him, we are the ones who are inanimate objects.

Why do I share about the open visions I have had?  Because God is giving these experiences to more and more of His people.  We are in a season when we are going to need profound God-encounters to equip us to shine brightly in a world that appears to be getting darker every day.

So whenever you consider the rock, think in terms of “He” and “Him” rather than “it.”  The same holds true for the oil; the Holy Spirit is a person.

In what everyone is calling the Information Age, this personal dimension is one of the great differences between God-given prophecy and the endless chatter of man.  That which is born of the Spirit is spirit; that which is born of the flesh is flesh.

Stan Smith  ::  © 2009, GospelSmith  ::  www.GospelSmith.com

More Of The Rock

The rock is Jesus.  The rock is the foundation on which He builds His church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.  Paul said no other foundation could be laid than that which was already set in place, Jesus Christ.

Many of us have allowed Jesus to be the foundation of our doctrine and have stopped there, but life is more than doctrine. Look at the words of Jesus in John 5:39-40 –

You search the Scriptures, for in them you think you have eternal life; and these are they which testify of Me.  But you are not willing to come to Me that you may have life.

Some of us know Jesus mentally because we have received Him as the foundation of our doctrine, but we hunger for something more intimate.  We need to let the scriptures bring us into the presence of Jesus so we can find life.

Some of us are hungry for His presence and try to bypass the scriptures.  We look to the signs and personal encounters with Him that come in visions and dreams.  Like the wise men who followed the star, we will find that these experiences can get us only so far before we need to consult the scripture to zero in on His presence.  The star got them to the right country, but only the scripture could get them to the right city.

As we seek more of Jesus, we will find that it takes the word and the Spirit working together to lead us into Him.

Jesus says, “Come to Me, all you who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.”  Have you ever come to Him when you were overwhelmed with work and cares and found a tangible sense of rest in His presence?

Psalm 16 says that in the presence of the Lord is life forevermore, and pleasures at His right hand.  Have you ever sensed the inrush of life that happens when you get into His presence?  Have you found the pleasures at His right hand?  We can acknowledge these truths as part of our sound doctrine, but we can also experience them.

Psalm 23 says the Lord our Shepherd prepares a table for us in the presence of our enemies.  Have you ever been surrounded with enemies and impossibilities, only to find that before the Lord took care of your battle for you he sat down with you and shared a picnic lunch with you in perfect peace, as though no battle were raging?

These are just three samples of what might happen if we search the scriptures and let them bring us to Jesus.

As a young man, I learned to find Jesus on every page of the Bible.  He’s there; the Spirit of prophecy who inspired the scripture is the testimony of Jesus.  I find Him in the symbolism, the allegories, the prayers and prophecies, and of course in the passages that directly describe Him.

I’ve learned to look past the deeds the Bible records and to look into His heart.  What kind of God cares enough about the crowd who listened to His words that He goes on to multiply loaves and fishes so He can feed them?  What kind of God then carefully gathers the leftovers so they won’t go to waste?  His thoughts and motives must be very different from ours.

Lately I’ve been noticing that as I read the Bible I’m walking down memory lane with Him.  This passage reminds me of an impossible prayer He answered; that passage reminds me of a visitation in which He taught me something about prophecy; yet another reminds me of a miraculous healing I got to participate in.

How many experiences with God are anchored in your Bible?  The text is there in black and white, but His works in us are the illustrations, and the pictures are in vivid color.

As you get more of the Rock in your life, God will fill your Bible with  illustrations.  Get the illustrated version.  This is the abundant life Jesus promised.

Stan Smith  ::  © 2009, GospelSmith  ::  http://www.GospelSmith.com

Prophetic Mission: What Should Prophecy Add To The Church?

It’s one of the beloved scenes from the book of Genesis: Jacob’s wilderness dream of a ladder between heaven and earth.  He woke up and poured oil on the stone he had used as a pillow, and then named the place Bethel, the house of God.

Jacob’s story shows three things God wants in His dwelling place:  Jesus is the rock; the Holy Spirit is the oil; and the open heaven is our access to Him and His to us.  Wherever we might want to make God feel at home – in our personal lives, our ministries, our churches – we need to make sure these three ingredients are in place.

And while these ingredients are relevant to every Christian and every ministry, they are central to the call and the anointing of prophets.  Any of us who relate to prophetic ministry in any way, whether by giving or receiving prophecy, can use Jacob’s story to help us stay on track.

Are we getting it right?  The rock, the oil, and the open heaven all show us what prophetic ministry is meant to accomplish.

The Rock:  Jesus Himself

I don’t have to go through the many scriptures that liken Jesus to a rock. Any chain reference Bible or concordance can lead you to them.  But one key principle about prophetic ministry is so simple and basic we tend to think we have outgrown it:  “The spirit of prophecy is the testimony of Jesus.”  (Revelation 19:10)

Don’t get me wrong.  Not every prophecy will focus on Jesus.  God is free to speak about anything that affects us.  The prophets in scripture gave battle plans, told how to access divine prosperity, and gave direction in times of national crisis.  The list could go on and on, but anything that mattered to His people was something God might speak about through His prophets.

Some therefore have said that the testimony of Jesus is the testimony given by Jesus, the words He is speaking about current events.

If we read nothing but the Old Testament, we will find plenty of evidence that this is what prophecy is all about. We see prophecies that came to pass sometimes in their own generation and sometimes a century or two later.

But when we read the New Testament, we see prophecies that had one meaning when the prophets had given them and another higher meaning when Jesus came to fulfill them.   This means Old Testament prophecy often had two or more fulfillments:  a historical fulfillment in their own day, another fulfillment in the ministry of Jesus, and sometimes yet one more fulfillment in our own lives as Christ lives in us.

We see these levels of prophecy in the life of David.  He often consulted the prophets to find out whether God wanted him to fight a battle or not, but few of these prophets’ words were recorded in scripture.  David’s Psalms were recorded instead, and astonishingly many of them give a clear portrait of Jesus.

The testimony of Jesus is more than just what He tells us about the next election or the next earthquake.  It is a revelation of Him, an opportunity to know Him better.  This is what prophecy is meant to give us.

Do you know Jesus better because of your connection with prophetic ministry?  If so, you’re getting it right; if not, somebody is missing the point – either the voice that speaks prophecy or the ear that hears it.

The Oil:  The Supernatural Presence Of The Holy Spirit

Many scriptures use oil as a symbol of the Holy Spirit.  The Bible uses other symbols as well:  wind, fire, rain, rivers. If God wants to live in a house built on the rock, He also wants to live somewhere anointed with the oil of His Spirit.  His house must be a place where His Spirit can move.

Perhaps more than any other ministry, prophets are people of the Spirit.  Pastors can chatter amiably with people to make them feel at home; prophets don’t want to talk until they have a word from God to deliver.  Teachers can teach anything they find in scripture, but prophets have to hear it from God before they’re ready to stand in front of people and speak it.  Prophets can’t bear to function without the fresh touch of the Holy Spirit.

Unfortunately, prophets sometimes get busy and take shortcuts.  Sometimes we become so zealous to help the whole church take its first steps in the prophetic that we dumb things down to an intellectual level.  Or rather than taking time to hear something fresh from God, we present something that was fresh long ago when God gave it, but like yesterday’s uncollected manna it has now bred worms and begun to stink.

I’m not pointing the finger at others here.  This is a temptation I face myself.  I continually have to remind myself to slow down and take time to receive something fresh from God.  And I have to treat my intellectual resources with the utmost suspicion; it’s too easy to fall back on knowledge rather than trusting God for something the flesh can’t produce.

Human intelligence can never substitute for the Spirit of God.  Human study and education can never approximate the touch of the Holy Spirit.  Scripture makes it clear:  the natural mind of man fights against the things of the Spirit.

Some have taught that the left-brain dominance of our culture has made us allergic to the things of the Spirit and a right-brain dominance would cure the problem.  But the Bible doesn’t say the left side of your brain fights the things of the Spirit and the right side doesn’t; it says the whole mind is at war with the Spirit.

Those of us who teach have tried to identify principles that will help us line up with the Holy Spirit.  I’ve done it myself.  Some teachings have been better than others, and some students have grasped the material better than others.

But increasingly, I am meeting people who are trying to get into the things of the Spirit by human understanding.  We have gone into the depths of symbolism, finding that a dream about this symbolizes that.  We have gone into deep research into history so we can identify how God wants us to pray and strategize.  We have worked out the numerical significance of the notes we play in prophetic song and created a mysticism of sound.

Don’t get me wrong.  There is a right way to use these bits of knowledge.  But let’s be careful not to begin in the Spirit and end in the intellect of the flesh.

Ask yourself:  has my connection with prophetic ministry made me more dependent on Him and less dependent on my own intellect, or has it been the other way around?  God’s house isn’t the stone with Jacob’s head on it, sound asleep.  It’s the rock anointed with the oil of the Holy Spirit.

The Open Heavens

The open heavens are too big a subject for this short article, but this ingredient is all-important if we want to make God feel at home.  On our end it means we have access to the things of heaven; on God’s end, it means He has access to the earth through us.

Jesus is Jacob’s ladder.  He came right out and said so in the last line of John 1.  Then in John 3, Jesus said He had come down from heaven and was still in heaven, while He stood in the dark and talked to Nicodemus in Jerusalem.  He was in both worlds at once, heaven and earth.

Does Jesus live in you?  If so, you are an open heaven too.  Hebrews 12:22 says you are now in the heavenly Jerusalem; Ephesians 2:2 says you are seated in heaven right now; Colossians 3:1-3 says your life is hid with Christ in God, and it is your responsibility to seek the things which are above.

We can’t afford to neglect God’s gracious gift of the open heavens.  His dwelling place is the intersection of heaven and earth, and that is what He has called you to be.

Again, more than any other ministry, prophets are preoccupied with the open heavens.  Some preach and prophesy about it.  Some report encounters with angels, with the visible glory of God, or of visions of Jesus.  Some bring us into prophetic worship and an opening of the heavens over the whole congregation, and the whole church gets to taste more of the glory of God than they thought they would ever get to access.

Ask yourself:  do the prophets bring a sense of heaven and earth joining together, or is everything locked in the earth?  If the prophets are saying it correctly and if their hearers are hearing correctly, the prophetic word will change our thinking, because the kingdom of heaven is at hand – not far away, but close enough to touch.

The Prophetic Church.

I’ve said these three ingredients characterize the house where God feels at home, and that in a special way prophets are called to help the church realign itself with these three key ingredients.  But this ministry isn’t reserved for the prophets alone, for Acts 2:17-21 Peter made it clear that the whole church is meant to be prophetic:

‘And it shall come to pass in the last days, says God, That I will pour out of My Spirit on all flesh; Your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, Your young men shall see visions, Your old men shall dream dreams.  And on My menservants and on My maidservants I will pour out My Spirit in those days; And they shall prophesy.  I will show wonders in heaven above And signs in the earth beneath: Blood and fire and vapor of smoke.  The sun shall be turned into darkness, And the moon into blood, Before the coming of the great and awesome day of the LORD.  And it shall come to pass that whoever calls on the name of the LORD Shall be saved.’

What is this outpouring of the prophetic Spirit for?  So all of us, by the Spirit of prophecy, can have firsthand revelation of our Rock, Jesus Himself.  So all of us can prophesy and see dreams and visions, experiencing the oil of the Spirit as a supernatural flow of His presence and power.  So all of us can experience the open heavens, seeing the wonders that are going on there.

This is what prophecy is for:  more of Jesus, more of the Holy Spirit, and more of heaven on earth.  Accept nothing less.

Stan Smith  ::  © 2009, GospelSmith  ::  http://www.GospelSmith.com