Winona Conference Part 5 – Outside of Time and Space Fellowship with Christ

Alright, here is the space-time continuum of which you and I are so familiar. That is where the living God spoke for the first time; He expressed Himself, and anytime He expresses Himself, that is Christ. This is beginning; this is alpha. What is beginning? Can anyone give me a definition of ‘beginning’? Can you give me a definition of beginning? Boy, you have got so much to learn. You’re going to enjoy discovering some glorious things. Can’t you tell me what beginning is?

Audience: A gap? Not bad. Sister?

Audience: The starting point.

You’re too Aristotelian; too Western. Do you not understand that Jesus Christ is beginning? He is beginning, the first thing that ever was that is part of our MC—mass, space, time. The first thing that ever appeared in this realm was Christ. Now I don’t have to ask you what the omega is. The last thing that this temporal, very temporal…see how temporal it is…the last thing that will ever be seen in the temporal physical mass realm, the end of it all; He stands at both places, is also the end. And you know something, everything that was before the beginning is Him, and everything after the beginning is Him. And He’s allowed a little in here that is not Him, a little pocket inside of the living God that will be over soon. Very soon, it hasn’t been here very long; It’s going to be over. He is the Alpha; He is the Omega. Now that means He stood there, and He will stand here? No, He stands here and He stands here. Let me explain this in other terms.

Where is creation? There’s only one place creation could possibly be. If God is all, where are you going to put creation? You’ve got to put creation in Him. So, creation is in Him. Where does that put you? Alright, where is He? No. Alright, much better. He is in me. Now, where are you? I am in Him. Now, if Christ is in you and you are in Christ, please explain to me why you are a worrywart. That’s true. Christ is in you, and you are in Him. So, you know what we need to do, brother? We need every once in a while to take a vacation from this realm and go to the other realm. We have a right to be there. And there we will go, and when we return and look around, we will see the material, and you will notice your values will change. You’ll begin to see this realm the way the Lord sees it in you. This is very temporal here, isn’t it? This is here for a short time. Praise the Lord.

I can’t prevent them (time and space) from being a little important, you know, because I am stuck here, but I am surrounded by a sovereign God, a totally sovereign God. My circumstances are in His hands. And those of you who are Pentecostals, forgive me for picking on you Pentecostals, but you know, you’re almost Manicheans. You’re almost Manicheans. Manichean? Those are people who believe that the powers of evil and the powers of good are equal. You’re almost Manichean. Oh, God bless me with a car. We’re having a problem in our home; the devil is after us. That’s almost Manichean. If it’s bad, it’s the devil. If it’s good, it’s the Lord. And there is no cross. And the cross isn’t bad. it just works on places you don’t want to be touched. And He uses His cross for you or the circumstances He puts you in, and I’ll say again, if we can touch the eternals, we can begin to sense His value, His set of values, and we begin to take upon us the mind of Christ.

And now that opens up a whole new world for us, because we won’t have the church until we begin to have the mind of Christ. So, I belong here. Two-thirds of me belongs right here. Two-thirds of me, my soul and my body, belong here, but one-third of me is out here. Now, this fascinates me by way of parentheses. When I was a young kid, walking down the streets of Dallas, Texas, one day, I had a Revised Standard Version New Testament. It had just come out just about the time I was saved. I’ve never been a King James student. I started with the RSV and grew from that to the New American Standard. And I was reading Ephesians and I kept looking at that and I kept thinking, why do I never hear people talk that way – in Christ, God in Christ, Christ in God, me in spirit, me in Christ, Christ in me, all the blessings of the heavenly realms in Christ, you know, and I hear Romans 3:23, Romans 6:23, all have sinned and come short of the glory God, why don’t I hear Ephesians 1? Why is that not part of my vocabulary and yours? Why is it that when we sit down to share that our words are not filled experientially with ‘in Christ’, ‘in God’, ‘in Spirit’, ‘walking in Spirit’, ‘living in Spirit’?

I am certain that the first-century Christians, more than any scientist living today, and probably only our generation, and probably only the astrophysical scientists, would be able to sit down with a first-century Christian. They understood space-time and that which is outside of space-time better than any other human beings who have ever lived before or after them. Not because they had been taught like I’m speaking to you, but because they had touched the other realm. Now, brothers and sisters, touch that realm, and you will say, “Now I know why Peter wasn’t afraid. It wasn’t power. It wasn’t, you know, the Holy Spirit, and it wasn’t boldness. It was disdain; it was contempt. It was a different set of values. It was the values in Him that had come to him from another realm.

I am telling you that the Christian vocabulary came from another realm to us. It is not some sort of mystical invention to explain things we don’t know about. The experience produced the vocabulary. The vocabulary does not simply describe. Did you ever read Philip’s introduction to the book of Revelation when he translated it? Have you ever read the Philips translation of the New Testament? He said, “As I translated the book of Revelation, I knew that I was reading the words of a man who was almost insane, trying to find words to describe an experience; he was torturing the Greek language, trying to get out of it some way to describe what he had seen.”

Our Christian vocabulary, which we never use, was based on men’s experience with the living God outside of – free of space; outside of – free of time. And I always point here, but I should point here and here and here because this whole realm of God the Father, God the Son, and God the Spirit, this whole realm of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, is filled with their experience with one another: Their interplay, their interchange, the commerce between them, the fellowship of the Godhead, and then the fellowship of the Godhead became bodily. And then that realm was placed in you and me. And there’s a door there. There’s a door in you to this other realm, and it’s timeless and it’s spaceless and dimensionless. It can be future, past, or present, and you have a right to it because you are a hybrid. You are part of this world, and you’re part of the other world, and the church of the Lord Jesus Christ is made up of a woman who came out of God. And you and I are in a foretaste of the time when all of our living will be out here, but the church of the Lord Jesus Christ touches that realm now.

That was a summary of everything I’ve said this weekend.

Okay, Gene, put it on the table. I’ll put it on the table right now. Do you have any questions you want to ask about any of this? Yes, brother.