Enoch

A 2005 television broadcast hosted by Barbara Walters posed this question: “Heaven—where is it? How do we get there?” The same questions that people have about their origin, their changed reality, and God’s purposes for them are the same questions they have about their eternal destiny. Is heaven for real? And if so, what might heaven be like, and what do we need to do to make sure we get there? We read in the Psalms how God promised fullness of joy and pleasures forevermore: “Thou wilt shew me the path of life: in thy presence is fullness of joy; at thy right hand there are pleasures for evermore” (Ps.16:11).

Is heaven just a place we go where pain and suffering have ended, or is it a place of inheritance and eternal rewards of faith? In this chapter, we want to gain a perspective of heaven and our eternal inheritance from the eyes of Jesus for He said, “I am the resurrection, and the life: he that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live” ( Jn.11:25). In saying, “I am the resurrection and life,” Jesus was saying that our redemption and eternal rewards are hidden in Him.

Jesus spoke about His Father which is in heaven; He spoke of the kingdom of heaven and promised eternal life to those who love Him. He comforted us with these words: “Let not your heart be troubled: ye believe in God, believe also in me. 2In my Father’s house are many mansions: if it were not so, I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you. 3And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again, and receive you unto myself; that where I am, there ye may be also” ( Jn.14:1-3).

It has been difficult for the church to get an accurate idea of what eternal life might be like beyond the fact that we will be with God forever and experience boundless joy and pleasure. We will never again suffer the contradiction of this life that comes with the curse of death, never again suffer the restrictions upon our signatures, and never again be vulnerable to the Antichrist spirit.

Through Jesus Christ, we experience our eternal hope in part now as the apostle Paul wrote: “For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known” (1Cor.13:12). We know God now through the work of the Spirit. God daily issues grace and peace to shield and comfort the soul, and we experience how the knowledge of Christ cleanses and nourishes the soul and how God resets our appetites according to His kingdom.

We experience the liberty of the Spirit to follow the pattern of faith rather than the pattern of the flesh, and we experience how the Spirit of God gives substance to our hope of knowing God and overcoming ourselves, the world, and the devil. Our confidence in Him is daily renewed through His abundant and tangible care. We know God, in part, by the issuance of His grace, by the work of the Spirit, and by the fruit of Christ formed in the inner man. Thus, our joy is made full daily. Great is our redemption and great is our Redeemer.

We “know God in part ” now because God limited our present experience of Him by keeping our contact with Him bound to His covenant agreements. If God provides so richly now for our daily care, increase of
soul, and sustenance in Him as we walk by faith, how much more will He provide eternally for our care, increase, and sustenance in Him?

What will our experience of Him be like when He lifts the restrictions He has imposed? In the above scripture, we read that we shall know God even as God knows us. The apostle John wrote about our eternal inheritance saying, “Beloved, now are we the sons of God, and it doth not yet appear what we shall be: but we know that, when he shall appear, we shall be like
him; for we shall see him as he is” (1Jn.3:2).

Our eternal inheritance and reward of faith is that we shall know God even as God knows us, and we shall be like God. What does that mean to “be like God”? We already know that God had created Adam in His own image and likeness. What was God’s plan in sharing His likeness? God’s plan was to create an offspring with whom He would share His throne. This is why Jesus said, “To him that overcometh will I grant to sit with me in my throne, even as I also overcame, and am set down with my Father in his throne” (Rev.3:21). Jesus was not promising to share His “chair” with us—He was promising to share the power and authority of His throne with us. His throne is the throne of God.

Adam did not function as a god in the Garden of Eden. God set a restriction upon the design of divinity in Adam, and only God would release that restriction and fulfill that design Himself when the human race was duly tested and tried. Adam had to await the process. Satan offered an option to Adam and Eve to use their imagination to ascend to the Godhead without God’s due process. This was a temptation to Adam who knew that God had designed him for greater things. If God had not set a restriction upon the design of divinity in Adam, Satan could not have tempted Adam to exceed that restriction.

God was not caught off guard when Adam sinned by attempting to exceed that restriction. God was purposefully creating a proving ground for His sons and daughters. Jesus was the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world (Rev.13:8). God had carefully planned for the fall of the human race and had carefully planned to raise those of faith up as heirs of God, joint heirs with Jesus Christ—that is, the Godhead. The Godhead (sharing God’s throne as sons and daughters of God) is given as a reward to those who are tested, tried, and found faithful.

God did not set the pattern of the Godhead in the first Adam, but in the second Adam—Jesus Christ. As we see in Romans 5:15, “But not as the offence, so also is the free gift. For if through the offence of one many be dead, much more the grace of God, and the gift by grace, which is by one man, Jesus Christ, hath abounded unto many.” And also 1Corinthians 15:45-47 reads, “And so it is written, The first man Adam was made a living soul; the last Adam was made a quickening spirit. 46Howbeit that was not first which is spiritual, but that which is natural; and afterward that which is spiritual. 47The first man is of the earth, earthy; the second man is the Lord from heaven.”

Many Christians try to claim a spiritual right to return to the Garden of Eden and receive the empowerment and blessing of the first Adam. However, God had never intended that the first Adam would carry the design of the Godhead to fulfillment, rather that the second Adam would bring God’s plan to fulfillment in Himself. This is why Jesus, the second Adam, is called the firstborn among many brethren (Rom.8:29) and why we are called “joint heirs” with Him as we read in Romans 8:17, “And if children, then heirs; heirs of God, and joint-heirs with Christ; if so be that we suffer with him, that we may be also glorified together.” We are not destined to the Garden of Eden, nor to recover and fulfill the commission to Adam there.

We are destined for the bosom of the Father. We’ll explain more about what it means to be “destined for the bosom of the Father” in a moment. Let’s first talk about what it means to be a “child” of God. God calls us His children because we are begotten of Him by faith in Jesus Christ, by the seed of truth, by the Spirit; we are also called children because He is parenting and nurturing our souls as a father. We are called children because we will follow in the footsteps of our Father to do what
He does.

Children share the dwelling place of their parents and then in time share the responsibilities of the household and then take on the duties of the family business. When God made man in His image and likeness, it was to carry God’s likeness and, in time, position him on His throne as an heir. This is why Jesus is the firstborn among many sons. The pattern of our sonship is in Him, and He is God. That means that God put the pattern for our inheritance in Himself for us to be like Him (the spirit of adoption).

God determined to put a seal in the soul of Adam like unto His own, which would excite the passions of the soul to project with the imagination, and Adam would create life; and he would rule over a kingdom with justice and judgment—just like his Father. However, as we have said, God did not plan to fulfill this through the first Adam, but through the second Adam, Jesus Christ. This is the will of God. This is the plan of God. This is the purpose of God and the intended destiny of the human race.

The understanding of the promise of the Godhead has been lost to Christianity, distorted by New Age indoctrination, and demonized by those who thought the inheritance was merely to walk on streets of gold. Jesus spoke of the promise of the Godhead in John 10:34-36 where He said, “Is it not written in your law, I said, Ye are gods? If he called them gods, unto whom the word of God came, and the scripture cannot be broken; Say ye of him, whom the Father hath sanctified, and sent into the world, Thou
blasphemest; because I said, I am the Son of God?” Jesus was quoting from Psalms 82:6, which reads, “I have said, Ye are gods; and all of you are children of the most High.” God was speaking of the promise of the Godhead reserved for His children who overcome.

Earlier, we quoted from the apostle John who wrote: “Beloved, now are we the sons of God, and it doth not yet appear what we shall be: but we know that, when he shall appear, we shall be like him; for we shall see him as he is” (1Jn.3:2). As we have said, the promise to be “like God” as His child extends far beyond the concept of merely sharing a dwelling place in heaven. God is providing us with the promise of His likeness, to be as He is—a God. It is at that time that we will know Him as He knows us. The Promise of the Third Covenant and the Baptism of Light Christians wonder how it is possible for God to offer a “third covenant.”

What is the meaning of the third covenant? Does Jesus sacrifice Himself again? No. There is no more sacrifice for sins. When Jesus died on the cross, sin had been put away once and for all. God’s love for humanity found its perfect expression. Unfortunately, people are only familiar with the idea of covenant in regard to the concept of removing sin. God is not removing sin in establishing a third covenant. He is initiating the next stage of His plan and again setting it in Himself. The everlasting God carries within Himself the agreement for our redemption through each covenant.

The third covenant is initiated after the great white throne judgment and demonstrates the plan of God coming to a new point of fulfillment in Jesus Christ. As with all things, there is a due process for the third covenant. As the first covenant had a baptism through the Red Sea to prepare the Israelites for the Promised Land, and the second covenant had a baptism of the Holy Spirit to prepare believers for our eternal inheritance, so also the third covenant has a baptism that prepares us to function in the capacity
of God’s likeness. The second covenant baptism of the Holy Spirit put us into the robes of Jesus’ righteousness and forms the fruit (virtues) of Christ within the soul. The third covenant baptism will put us in the robes of His light (His glory), and therefore, we call it the baptism of light. The inner likeness of Jesus’ nature (glory) to which the soul conformed will then be an outward expression of glory.

As the second covenant baptism engrafted God within our souls, the third covenant baptism engrafts us into God’s soul. When God baptizes a believer with the Holy Spirit, it is like pouring the ocean (God) into a cup of water (human soul). When we are baptized in His light and take on the robes of His glory, it is like pouring a cup of water into the ocean.

The video “The Baptism of Light” will help you understand the hope that God has placed before you.