The Species from Two Realms: Heaven, Earth, and the New Creation (Chicago – 1989)

There were many things that he did, but on the third day, he did something truly remarkable. After having made water and many other things, he announced that he was going to do something unbelievable: he was going to put upon the land that had come out of the water. He was going to put on it something alive that you could see. Now the angels really were mystified. How could anything be alive that was visible? Why, every angel worth his salt knew that everything that was alive was invisible. And so God took a little seed which he had created and he said I will drop this into the earth and if I keep it in my hand it will just be there forever and there will never be anything physical living but I will drop it into the earth and it will come up not one seed but many seed it will die and then rise he dropped it into the ground and pretty soon not one seed came up but thousands and millions and trillions until there was a great, great field of beautiful, ripened grain growing.

The angels got down and looked at it, felt it, and said, ‘It’s alive.’ And it’s visible. And another one said, and it’s green. And then he filled the oceans with living things that could think just a little bit, just barely. They had something an angel had never contemplated, the beginnings of a soul. Then he made the birds, who even had more of something of a soul. And then on the sixth day, he made the cows, the cattle, the sheep, and the bulls. He made the lion, the lioness. And here truly were creatures of great strength and beauty. And they had a living soul; they could think. They were very conscious of themselves. The grain had not been conscious of itself. He was something fully aware of its environment and itself.

The angels were standing in awe of all of this. They had never seen or dreamed of something living that was visible and certainly not something that would have something that was not a spirit, a soul, and then God said I am going to create my greatest masterpiece, greater than you, greater than these. I am going to create that for which I have done all creating. And he reached down into the red dirt, and he picked up clay, and he began molding it. The angels were fascinated, and one said to another, ‘That is what God would look like if He were visible.’ God continued to work on this masterpiece.

But it wasn’t alive. And then he reached down over it. And they said, he’s going to awaken it. It will be like the cattle, it will belong to the earth and have a soul because it is made out of the earth, it belongs to the earth, it is a species for the physical visible material realm of space and time. It will have a soul, and it will stand, and it will be the center of the physical, visible, material, universe, temporal, captured in space and time.

But then, the creating God did a most incredible, unexpected thing. Just as they knew He was about to awaken this masterpiece from clay and cause it to stand, the living God stepped back, and while the angels stood there and dumbfounded all, the Lord lifted up off the planet, rose up through the clouds, rose up through the visible heavens, above all the angels, and went back through the door, into the other realm. And there he stood for a moment in the invisibles, the non-material, the non-physical, the spirituals, the invisibles, the non-dimensionals. And he took a deep breath of the wind of the Spirit. (Wind, spirit, and breath are all the same word in both Greek and Hebrew.) And he did like this, and he locked the winds of the heavenly realm into his being, and He went back through the door, down through the visible heaven, down to the clouds, back to the place where the clay awaited Him and the angels wandered. And the living God, the Creator, leaned over, reached down, and took the winds of heaven, the spirit of heaven, the breath of heaven, something out of the other realm, the spiritual invisible realm. And he went (sound of wind noise)

And this sparkling, glowing, glistening breath and wind of the heavens came rolling out of the nostrils of God, pulsating, beautifully illumined, and went into the nostrils of the clay, and the angels watched as it rolled down through His being and began to find itself in the inmost recesses of that clay, and there it whirled and glistened and glowed and sparkled. And then its glow began to reach out to all the clay, covering all of the inmost parts of his being until the clay itself was filled internally with all sorts of light pulsating from the winds of heaven. And even then, it grew and grew until the light began to break out of the clay and show forth there in the midst of God and the heavenly host. And the clay came alive, and it was clothed in light, broke loose from the dirt and stood erect, took a step, and every angel knew they were looking at a creature who could see them. They were astounded. Here was a physical being who could see the unseen. He could see the creatures of the invisible realm, and one of the angels poked the other and said, ‘Well, he’s made out of clay.’ Does he belong to the physical realm? The other angel poked the first one and said, But he’s also made out of the wind of heaven, does he belong to our realm? And another angel said he doesn’t belong to either one of them. And another angel said, Dummy. This was obviously an archangel.

He said he is not like us. He is not like the cattle. He is not even like God. He belongs to both realms. Praise the Lord. He belongs to both realms. He has the physical being of clay. He has the soul that belongs to the visible realm, but he has a living, pulsating, breathing spirit that belongs to the invisible realms. Two parts this realm, one part that realm. He could put his feet in one realm, one foot in one and one foot in the other realm. He belonged to two realms, the only creature that ever has or ever will belong to two realms, and he turned around and he saw the living God, and instead of being frightened or terrified or falling down in worship, he said, ‘You are my creator.’ I am your handiwork. I am your son. And they couldn’t believe it. For as the two stood there close to one another, they realized, these two looked very much alike. And this creature, who was the child of both realms, looked very, very much like the living God.

Well, you know, every creature has to have a habitat. There is no creature that God has ever created but what he had to have a habitat. Even God has a habitat, the spiritual realm. It matches him. And this creature had to have a habitat. The angels had the heavens. The horses and cows had the fields. The birds had the sky. The fish had the water. And the herbs had the earth with which to cling to. What would be the habitat of a creature that belonged to both realms? Well, the answer is obvious. He would belong in a habitat that was made up of both realms.

And so, the living God reached out and took the earth and reached over and took the heavenlies at the place of the door. And He drew them together. And they came closer and closer and closer. The angels watched and wondered. And finally, the two realms where the door was to the spirituals and a portion of Earth’s domain touched. They did not yet do anything but touch until the living God pulled them a little closer together, and there in a small place, they overlapped, and nothing like that had ever before been seen. Something that was part of the spiritual, invisible, timeless, eternal realms, and something of the physical, visible, material realm made of mass, overlapped one another.

It was a place where the animals could come and where angels could play, but it was mostly a place where man would live, for he belonged to both realms. He could see the unseen, and he belonged to the physical realm. And so his home was a place that overlapped two realms. Now, what is that place called? The Garden of Eden, and what an incredible place it was, what an incredible place it was. Let me tell you about it. It was not only a place where angels could come and the animals were free to be there, it was the place of Adam and Eve, but within it were incredible things.

There was a river there. Oh, but we shouldn’t start with a river. There was a tree there. But we shouldn’t even start with a tree. God was there. He dwelt there with man, and in the very center of that place where man and God lived together was a tree, but this is not a tree like you and I could imagine. I would like for you to see a tree that, if you were to stand at its base and look up, you would be like an ant looking at the Himalaya mountains.

Oh, this tree is so large, and its roots just go on for hundreds of miles, filling up all sorts of portions of the Garden of Eden. And that’s not all. Pouring down all over this massive tree that you can hardly see the top of or the sides. It blots out the sun if you get close. Cascading down from it are cataracts. Not waterfall or waterfalls, but all sorts of waterfalls plunging in together. Cataracts of water, and not just water. This is the strangest, most peculiar of all water. If you pick it up, it’s alive. Living water pouring down from the tree, you can’t quite see where its original source is. You can’t quite tell, but also reaching out from the tree is pulsating, brilliant, glistening fruit that is also alive and glowing with its life.