With Christ Today in Paradise

Thrasher

• Publisher: Resource Publications
• Year: 2010
• eBook ISBN: 9781498271875
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Religion

Focusing on the ontological indwelling of God as the basis and ground of the soul, the author expounds its capacity for spiritual experience, which he describes metaphorically as being with Christ in paradise. Aspects of mystical experience are briefly discussed, an extended description of the author's own experience is presented, and practical suggestions are offered to the reader for his or her own spiritual enrichment.

1

The Promise of Paradise

Jesus said to the convicted criminal dying with Him on an adjacent cross, “. . . Verily I say unto thee, Today shalt thou be with me in paradise.”1 Although this promise was made privately and exclusively to the man indicated, it is implicit in the act of salvation and is therefore a promise to every Christian believer (except for the temporal qualification “To day”). The crucified thief must die in order to receive the promise but since both his death and the death of Christ were imminent, this posed no problem for him. Indeed, deliverance from the dire circumstances in which he found himself was a culmination much to be desired. So he died with Christ on Calvary. In fact, he alone among the sons of men died twice with Christ. He died with Him when he put his trust in Christ, reaching out to Him for salvation. The Apostle Paul interpreted the exercise of saving faith as dying spiritually with Christ, participating in His death and subsequent resurrection.2 In addition to entering into the death of Christ spiritually in advance, he also actually and literally died with Christ. Both he and Christ died that day. And the promise to him was fulfilled then and there.

We who have spiritually died with Christ through faith, entering into His death, also are heirs of the promise: “You shall be with me in paradise.” It is contained in our salvation. The exception is that “today” is not an essential dimension of the promise to us. Someday, we shall be with Him in paradise in the absolute sense, but probably not today. God grants us time and space in which to continue our lives, to realize our calling and destiny, to continue to live and move and have our being both in Christ and in the earthly sphere as we continue our historical existence.

Yet it is possible or even probable that some who are reading this now will in fact be with Christ in paradise today in the final sense, that is, through the experience of death. We must all pass through death to receive the promise literally and enter into that permanent state of bliss with Christ in the heavenly realm, the exception being those who are still alive at the second coming of Christ (the parousia).3 Meanwhile, we rejoice because God has given us time and space in which to realize our destiny and calling.

But there is a real sense in which we can enter into paradise with Christ and at the same time continue our earthly, historical existence. In this sense the today of Christ’s promise to the thief on the cross may apply to us also. However, we must broaden our understanding of the term “being in paradise with Christ.” Paul the Apostle explicitly claims to have been “caught up into paradise” and “caught up into the third heaven.”4 Paul is describing a state of his soul in which he was elevated to unearthly heights, taken into glory, stood before the Lord, and heard words that could not be uttered by human tongue.

On that day Paul was in paradise with Christ, yet he continued to live and, although uncertain as to whether he was “in the body or out of the body,” to exist in the earthly, historical realm while the experience was occurring. So for Paul, “being with Christ in paradise” in the here and now is a spiritual event in which the soul by its marvelous capacities granted to it in creation, apprehends and is apprehended by the Divine.

Others have reported this experience of being taken up into glory also. While differing in the form and imagery, the essence of the occasion is consistently uniform. Apparently the perceptual mechanism is transposed, by-passed or over-ridden and the one having the experience is ushered into the presence of the Divine as the soul makes its way to its center and there finds its true essence with the triune God residing there, with whom it enters into an intense embrace beyond human conception. Since the normal faculties are suspended, we do not see God with our physical eyes. Our image-making function which is directly related to our earthly life is not activated so we do not behold any form. Our spiritual eyes are blinded by the overwhelming splendor of the divine presence but our total being is flooded with a holy light accompanied by indescribable joy and heavenly happiness.

The resulting ecstasy is so intense that one is not sure whether he is “in the body or out of the body.” With all the psychic faculties, emotions, and human capacities negated, the conviction that one is in the presence of God is absolute, requiring no reasoning, analysis, or consideration as to the nature of the experience. All normal operations of the mind and soul being negated and bypassed, one is consumed by the sheer immediacy of standing in the presence of God. To ask “What is happening to me?” or “Why can’t I see God?” would be pathetic appeals to our human faculties to apprehend that which is beyond the human and which contains its own unique, eternal grounds for self authentication. We know that we are standing on the holy ground before the throne of God. This is a different kind of knowing, a “spiritual discernment” characteristic of the new epistemology of the Spirit.

When I say that I myself have been in paradise with Christ, this is what I mean. I refer to the spiritual experience granted to many in which we are so “elevated” in spirit, that we are taken up into the eternal dimension, privileged to stand in the very presence of the eternal God. Many have been invited to “. . . sit together in heavenly places in Christ Jesus”5 or stand before the throne of the Almighty as Isaiah did when he reported that “. . . I saw also the Lord sitting on a throne, high and lifted up, and his train filled the temple.”6 Or as Paul did when he states that he was found himself in the “third heaven.” John the Apostle was invited by the heavenly being to enter the transcendent dimension with the summon to “. . . Come up hither.”7 In response to this command, he entered the heavenly glory and beheld God seated on His throne in majesty surrounded by heavenly beings and received revelations of “things which must be hereafter.” Isaiah and John reported that they “saw” God, but perhaps it was not with the physical eyes. In addition to Paul and John, Isaiah, Plato, Plotinus, St. Teresa of Avila, St. John of the Cross, and multitudes of others, celebrated as well as unrecognized, have entered the transcendental dimension and beheld in some spiritual sense the divine glory.

Since this experience is wholly a matter of God’s grace, being a private and personal transaction between God in Christ and ourselves, there is no technique, discipline or formulae which will guarantee its occurrence. Nor does it always require agonizing discipline with painful longing or rigid self-flagellation. It is a gift of God which may be given without the recipient meeting any specific standards or it may be withheld from those whose life has been permeated with the sincerest devotion. God’s ways are higher than our ways and His thoughts higher than our thoughts;8 therefore, our expectations and desires do not necessarily coincide with His. He never places Himself under obligation to us or allows Himself to be brought under our control.

Therefore, entering paradise with Christ is never an automatic process; the initiative is always God’s. He may admit us into the presence of the heavenly glory or He may not do so, just as He pleases; our own desire and longing notwithstanding.

Nevertheless, we should conduct our devotional life so that if, at any moment either unexpected or sought with urgent longing and tears, the Door should open and we find ourselves drawn in to the heavenly glory, we would be prepared to enter, clothed in the righteousness of Christ as Paul said, “And be found in him, not having mine own righteousness, which is of the law, but that which is through the faith of Christ, the righteousness which is of God by faith:”9

The best preparation would seem to be absolute trust in Christ (or as near to that as we are capable) which approximates the naïve simplicity of the pristine moment when we first believed, marked by the convictional certitude that “all things are possible to him that believeth.”10 Augustus M. Toplady’ phrase, “In my hand no price I bring; simply to the cross I cling”11 from his hymn “Rock of Ages, Cleft for Me” provides a good summary of the stance that promises the most fruitful results. But in the final analysis, it all depends on God’s will as to whether we receive the promise of Christ that “To day shalt thou` be with me in paradise.”

A vast number of people, from various walks of life, with varying understandings and interpretations of the Christian faith, have also been exalted into the realms of eternal glory and have lived to tell the story. And of course, most of the non-Christian world religions have mystical elements and many of their practitioners have sought the divine encounter and reported similar episodes in their own inner life. Apparently this opening of the door between the temporal and the eternal is a universal mystical gift to the human creature as such which God will activate when and how and to whom He will. This only causes us to proclaim His glory all the more fervently.

In the following pages, I have tried to ground this experience in the original creative act of God by which He m...

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Preface
• Chapter 1: The Promise of Paradise
• Chapter 2: The Divine Image and the Breath of Life
• Chapter 3: Our Knowledge of Eternal Space
• Chapter 4: The Soul as a Sparkling Prism
• Chapter 5: The Thirst for the Eternal
• Chapter 6: The Vital Center
• Chapter 7: Brief Bright Moments: Messages from Beyond
• Chapter 8: A Journey Not Made with Feet or Ships
• Chapter 9: There You Will See Him
• Chapter 10: Come Totally Alone and Jesus Will Meet You There
• Chapter 11: To Those Who Suppose He Has Left Them
• Chapter 12: Divine Embracement
• Chapter 13: Practicing the Presence
• Chapter 14: Referring Everything to God
• Chapter 15: Consecrating Our Cares
• Chapter 16: The Holy Spirit in the Depths
• Chapter 17: Pray Without Ceasing
• Chapter 18: The Unsleeping Heart
• Chapter 19: Short But Ardent Prayers
• Chapter 20: The Jesus Prayer
• Chapter 21: The Single Eye and the Power of Intention
• Chapter 22: Agape Love for God
• Chapter 23: Activating Spiritual Agencies and Powers
• Chapter 24: Abandonment to God
• Chapter 25: The Bible, Preaching, and Holy Waiting
• Chapter 26: Slapped by an Angel
• Chapter 27: Light from the Deeps Below Being
• Chapter 28: The Ontological Light Enters the Heart
• Chapter 29: To the Heights Above the Heart
• Chapter 30: The Light Divine
• Chapter 31: Amazed in the Presence
• Chapter 32: Answering the Call
• Chapter 33: Coals from the Heavenly Altar
• Chapter 34: Night in Gethsemane
• Chapter 35: Evenness of Spirit
• Chapter 36: The Still Small Voice
• Chapter 37: Seeing Everything Sub Specie Aeternitatis
• Chapter 38: The Opensed Understanding
• Chapter 39: Gathering Experience for God
• Bibliography