The First Reality (DCLC – July ’86, Part 1)

You don’t have to have your spiritual experience with the Lord. You don’t have to have your spiritual experience with the Lord. You know what you could have? You could have His spiritual experience with the Father. That is much better than you, you hobo, you beggar, you poor soul who’ve got so many inferiority complexes, always trying to come to the Lord with an empty bucket to get something and never really feeling satisfied. Alright, why don’t you just give that whole concept up? Just give it up for Lent, and then instead of trying to have your experience with the Lord, why don’t you enter into His experience with the Father, and then you get completely left out, but brothers and sisters, there’s growth in spirit, whether it’s your spirit or His Spirit.

Now, if you will just chew on that for a little while, you will understand what this conference is about this week. Now, I think I can say with a great deal of confidence that I don’t care how many conferences you’ve been to in your life; I doubt that you’ve heard a whole lot that’s recognizable up to this point. Is that reasonable to assume? It is. You have never heard anything like this before. I kind of thought maybe that was true. I hope that we’re telling you things that are not only new but better. I also want you to make an observation that you’re not getting any doctrine today. This will fit a Baptist, a Presbyterian, and a Catholic. This will fit a hot and tot. It’ll fit all of us, any of us, because it is about your Lord.

Now, I want you to turn with me to Colossians. This is still an introductory message; I haven’t gotten to the Lord’s life yet. I wish to read to you one very incredible passage of scripture. This is Colossians 2, and it is verses 16 and 17. Therefore, let no one act as your judge, or let no one judge you. You could stop right there. Don’t let anybody judge you. And that includes you. Don’t let anybody judge you in regard to food or drink or in respect to festivals or a new moon or Sunday, that is a Sabbath day, things which are a mere shadow of what is to come, but the substance…substance is over against what? Shadow…but the substance is Christ. Not the substance belongs to Christ. The substance is Christ.

I’m going to read it again. Therefore, let no one judge you in regard to food or drink in respect to festivals or a new moon or a Sabbath day. Things which are a mere shadow of what is to come, but the reality, the substance, is Christ. Now, I’d like to introduce you to someone you may not know very well. I would like to introduce you to the eternal Christ. Not only, and not just, the Christ of the 33-year pilgrimage on this planet, and not so much even the Christ who rose from the dead. I want to talk to you about Him, who is, who was, who is, who ever shall be. But we don’t have the word in the English language that says it. We don’t have that word “is”, the one who is.

I want to acquaint you with the Lord that is not easy to grasp, but if you can, then do. I want you to get a hold of this fact that the one who came to earth had an awful lot of history behind Him, and He was aware and was very cognizant of that history. Think about it for a moment. When you read the Gospels, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, do you not kind of assume that, well, here is Jesus who is my Savior, and someone asked Him a question, and boy, that was a neat answer, wasn’t it? And then He got into this situation, and they were trying to twist Him up, and they said something to Him, and boy, He came out with this really powerful answer. Well, it was really neat; He was really on his P’s and Q’s. That’s not true, brothers and sisters, the Man who was standing there talking to those people was ancient, but He had a thought pattern all His own, and sometimes, when they were talking about one thing, He was talking about another. And when they would use a word in its shadow, He would use it in its substance. He was living in two worlds at the same time. He was living in time and space on this earth, and in His spirit, He was living outside of time and space and remembering things past and things future. And He was talking and communicating on those levels.

I really want to introduce you to this Lord because it will free you so much to come to the scripture, to holy writ, to the Bible, and begin to see Him in His eternalness and begin to catch Him out there even when He’s here, and go with Him to those places and see from His vantage point, not yours. I said this to you when I first stood up last night: I don’t want to take you higher up the mountain. I want to take you down off of whatever mountain you’re on, go get a whole new mountain, climb it, and get to the top of it and give you a whole new vantage point from which to view the gospel.  Therefore, I’m inviting you today to start up that mountain. It is a mountain in which you see through His eyes, see through His thoughts, see through His mind, and understand what’s going on inside of Him internally at that moment. What He is hearing of His Father and causing Him to respond the way He does, what He’s remembering, and why He says what He does. I’m not inviting you on an intellectual trip; I’m inviting you on a trip into time and space, but not this time and space. And then I’m inviting you into another place outside of time, outside of space, before time, before space, and after time, and after space. That you have a right to enter into this other dimension as you read and look at and behold the Lord’s life, because part of you belongs outside of time and outside of space.

Part of you belongs to the eternals. And right now, looking in this room from the eyes of angels and from the eyes of God, one third of you, one third and not one third of the people in this room, but one third of you, brother, one third of you, sister, is not in this room and is not confined to this room. Your spirit did not originate on this planet. You are the only creature…even God cannot make this statement…His Son can…even the Father cannot say that He’s native to two realms. Only you. And the only reason you can is because your brother can. Your elder brother – He came out of that realm and came into this one. Lived in both of them. He belongs to both of them. And while He was in this one, He was also in that one. And the same is true of you. One third of you came out of the other realm. It was born from above. Born out of God, born in God, put in you.

You can’t cut a Christian open and find his spirit because it belongs to the invisible. It belongs to the nondimensional. How big is your spirit? Really tiny or really big? That realm doesn’t have dimension. And you’re sitting here with something in you free of dimension. It is your spirit and His Spirit in your spirit. Praise the Lord. Here are things we have not considered. So, let’s consider them. What was it like before creation? And I’m talking about even before angels. And the answer is really simple. This was a time even before God had created the eternals. Now, if you believe that that’s not possible, if you’ll find a marginal reading in the book of Titus, you’ll see a reference that says before times eternal. There is that which is before eternity. It is a time when there is absolutely nothing that can be other than God. Not even eternity; there’s no room for eternity. There’s only God. You can’t say that there’s God out here in the midst of a great abyss of nothingness; nothingness has not been created. There is God, and that’s all there is. The Father, the Son, the Spirit, the Godhead, and that’s all there is.

Now then, you have to realize that we came along a lot later than that. But as you realize that, would you also realize that everything that you and I are is fairly new? And as much as we take them for granted, they’re not real. They’re not real. You can read in 8 and 9 of Hebrews about the shadows; that the tabernacle is a shadow of something seen in the heavens. The offerings are a shadow of things seen in the other realm. Symbols and pictures for us to try to grasp what was and what is out yonder in the other realm.

Everything that is real is in God. Everything outside of God is in some way either a shadow, a figure, or a picture. That’s right. Reality rests in Him alone. Now then, you understand that, but what I want you to know is that He’s used to that. You and I have to strain to see that; he’s used to that. What He has to strain to do is to see things from our viewpoint. He has difficulty picking up on our vocabulary, just as we have difficulty picking up on His vocabulary. Perhaps I’m imagining this after He came to this earth, but let me go ahead and do this anyway. He has difficulty comprehending what we’re speaking of, as we have difficulty comprehending what He’s speaking of. And sometimes He speaks on this level, and we speak on this level. The best illustration that comes to mind is a conversation between He and His mother. They were just missing one another completely. They’re out of wine, she said. He stepped back and looked at her and said, “Woman, my time has not yet come.” She must have said, “This boy of mine, Son, I’m just telling You that they’re out, they’re out, nothing to drink over here. They’re out of punch. They’re out of wine.” And He said, “My time has not yet come.”

Now, do you know why that happened? Because she was speaking of a symbol. He was speaking of reality. Now, you tell me, what is wine? What is wine? I want somebody in this section right here; tell me what wine is. Audience: It’s grape juice.