The Species that Came from Two Realms (Chicago – 1989)

Now then, if you will watch the water pour out from the tree, it forms a great river. And should you reach down with your hand into the bed of the water, the living water, you would bring up gold. Living gold. And pearl. Living pearl. And stones more magnificent than all the imagination could possibly dream, glistening in the water, along with the gold and the pearl. All manner of glistening, glowing, living stone of the most precious worth. All of this is in that place where two realms overlap, the habitat of man. Praise the Lord.

Well, the Lord told this man he could eat anything in that garden. And he encouraged him particularly to eat of this massive great tree, which was called the source of life, the tree of life, and man chose rather to eat the only food forbidden to him. And it’s a tragic story that we will not waste a great deal of time over, except to tell you this. When man ate of this intoxicating fruit, it went to his head and made him a highly intelligent being. He knew the difference between good and evil, something that none should ever know. And he would always be driven by good from this moment on. Good would be his obsession, evil would be that which he despised, but he would always fluctuate from one to the other, and he always felt that if he could just be good, he would please his God, never knowing that the pleasure of God rested not in the good nor in evil, but in the tree of life.

Deep within his being, there was a convulsion of light and dark, the great brightness, the glowing brightness that had been his clothing burst out of him, brighter than ever, struggling as if to escape, and then going in and flashing out and blinking out and then once more struggling to break loose and then disappearing, and each time it would disappear a struggle to break loose would get weaker and weaker, until the light within the man went out, and he screamed, ‘I can no longer see the unseen, I have been cut off from a large part of my natural habitat’, and he looked down and cried out, with the most pitiful wail, ‘I am naked, no longer clothed in light; I am naked.’

He had always communed with his Lord from within here, and he had seen him here with his own eyes; now he had to speak with an audible voice to a God he could not see, and the Lord God said, ‘Man, you must leave this place that is part of heaven and part of earth, and you must go to that which alone you can communicate with the physical realm. And so God drove him out of the garden. He did not go willingly; he was driven out, and God said it must never be that fallen man ever come into this garden. I must shut any access to the spiritual realm off from this sin-diseased creature. And so, the Lord took the two realms in his hands, and where they overlapped, He pushed them back until they almost parted and just barely touched. And it was at that place where they barely touched; it was there that the door was located.

And so, the Lord God stepped into the heavenly realms and reached over and pulled the door closed, but not before He put cherubim outside that door with a circling sword that moved in every direction for any that might have dared approach that door. A blazing, burning, circling sword held by cherubim. And the Lord God said, Let no man, no creature, enter from this direction. Now the Lord himself could open that door, and the angels, the cherubim, would turn around and see their Lord there, and they would, of course, let him pass, but they allowed nothing to come this way. The door was closed, and mankind was cut off from the spiritual realm, and he was now a species of but one realm, for he had once been of two.

But this is not the end of our story. In fact, in some ways, it’s the beginning of the story of that door. For instance, once there was a young man in a land, I’ll not tell you exactly where it was, but I’d like for you to come with me and see him, a young man who is herding pigs. He’s a herdsman, and he herds pigs. He’s been sitting down at lunch, very thoughtful, eating pork, thinking about things heavy on his heart, and mysteriously, he lays down his pork chops and he walks away. He looks down upon the city of his home. He sees the great temples. He sees the Zulag there at the very center of his city. But he decides to walk up the side of a sloping hill. He can see nothing unusual at all. What he does not know is that the door has moved and stands now right before him, and the door is open, and out of the spiritual realm comes a voice. Abram, leave Ur of Chaldea and go westward until you find a city, and if you never find it, keep looking. Go, for I have commanded you to go. And the doors closed.

And Abram, whose heart had been filled with seeking for the true and living God, raised his hands in ecstasy and said, Hallelujah, I have found them! And he takes his family, and he starts out across the deserts looking for a city not made with human hands. Praise the Lord. And one day, later in his life, oh wow, we could be here all night. He is herding sheep. He gave up his pigs, and once more the door opens, and a most incredible thing happens. One from the spiritual realm steps through the door and takes upon himself the form of a human being. And Abraham sees him and is astonished. And Abraham knows who it is. And he goes and gets his money, takes 10% off it, and brings it over. This is a really good Hebrew; he brings it over and offers it to him. And together there, a man confined and captured to this earth sits down with a man who is a priest who has no father nor mother and has no other priest and no lineage before him or after him. And he sits down with him, and together they eat, and they dream, and they fellowship together. Praise the Lord.

Something within the heart and depth of Abraham, something he cannot understand, but it’s an echo that comes back from his parentage, even Adam; he longs to know that other realm, he longs to touch that other realm. He has a grandson, a grandson; real spiritual disappointment, folks, always in trouble, always doing something he shouldn’t. One night, and one of those times when he’s in deep trouble, he’s all alone, a sojourner very much like his grandfather, he lies down on a stone, puts his head on a stone, and goes to sleep, and when he does, the door opens. An angel walks over, and the door misses the earth by about twenty feet. So he puts a ladder out there. Oh, it’s the only way that angel can get there by means of that ladder. That ladder now joins the two realms just as the Garden of Eden had once joined the two realms. There’s a ladder that can join two realms. Praise the Lord. And they go down this incredible ladder, and they step up on the earth, and then they go back into the heavens, and this Jacob, this twisted one, opens his eyes, commerce between the two realms. He can’t believe it.

And then he thinks he wakes up from his dream, but he doesn’t know what’s going on. He makes the most remarkable of statements. He says, I have seen two realms, touch and join, by means of some incredible ladder that has made it possible. Truly, where the two realms join, that is where God lives. I am standing at the house of God, Beth El, and he took the stone of earth and the oil of heaven and poured them together, and he built an altar, and he said, ‘Truly this is the house of God.’

Many men had experiences with this door, but none more remarkable than the one that you are about to hear. This was the first time that a number of men ever came to that door and were allowed to come from that direction to this direction, and the story goes like this: Moses came down from a mountain out in a desert place, and it was covered at the top with smoke and thunder and the blasting of bugles and lightning, and it was terrifying. And he came down to the base of it, and everyone was just standing there, terrified. And there was a group of men standing at the very base of it, white with fear. They were the seventy elders of Israel. And Moses said to them, Are you ready? And they each reached over and kissed their wives goodbye, picked up their children and held them to their breast, and asked others of their kin to take care of them if they never returned, because they were going to that mountain and up to the top of it, and they might see the face of God and may never come down alive. Moses said, Joshua, and 70 men started up that hill. And as they went, the slopes got more rugged and steeper, and they were soon just almost hand over hand and foot over foot.

And one of the elders, the oldest of all, had fallen way behind. And he was, it was looking hopeless. They had all disappeared up there into that smoke and the bugles blasting and the thunder clashing. He could not imagine what terrible fate awaited him. And he’d have to stop and rest, and his hands were cut and bleeding, and he was far behind them, and he was afraid to go on, afraid to go back, afraid he was lost. He climbed up into the cloud, but he could see nothing. And he was absolutely terrified until suddenly he… He had come to pavement on the top of a mountain. Now that didn’t make any sense at all. And he knew that when he pulled himself up, he was going to see God, and he was going to die for sure. And he raised himself gradually, slowly, and he looked, and he could see through a door, and he could see Moses, Joshua, and 69 elders climbed up on that pavement, and he looked, and there weren’t any of them dead. In fact, you know what they were doing? They were sitting around in a circle, eating and drinking with the living God. Praise the Lord. And praise the Lord. Hallelujah. They were fellowshipping. fellowshipping, fellowshipping with the living God. Praise the Lord. Isn’t that wonderful?

Well, years roll by. Ages pass. God’s people, Abraham’s descendants, settled in the land, built a beautiful and remarkable temple. and every year on one high, festive, celebrative occasion, all the priests gathered to draw lots that one of them might go into the holiest part of the temple, the very holiest of all. In fact, do you know what it represented? It represented that place where two realms touched. It represented the throne of God, the place where God dwelt. It was but a picture, a miniature, and a replica.