Of Heaven and Things Above: A Discourse About The Afterlife

I really just came here to see if the writing would flow today. I've been thinking of writing, I just haven't had the chance in my life to do it. How are you? How have the years been? How has life been treating you? I truly hope that, whatever cards you may have been dealt, you've been able to weather it with unwavering faith in the victory we already have in Christ Jesus.

I want to talk about the Afterlife. I have been fascinated with the Afterlife lately. I lost my father in February 2024 and he was buried in March. But even before this time, I think the thought of the Afterlife came into view proper for me about 2021 when a friend of mine suddenly died in childbirth. We weren't too close but we had started getting close and we would chat and one day I had called her and whilst we were talking, we broke out into prayers and their was a real move of the Holy Spirit. That had only happened once with someone else and I noted that perhaps we needed to be closer- so I planned to sort of pursue the connection, to see what God had there for us. But life was also happening with me and was so busy and I was just so immersed in the busyness of life, mummyhood, parenting, chores.... and then she died. Her death was a rude shock. I was like "How?". After "How", I then began to think,

"So Booky is in heaven now? I wonder what it would be like- what she would be doing....".

It was bizarre in an almost eerie way to think that she was no longer "here", she was now somewhere else. So bizarre. And then when Mohbad, a Nigerian secular singer, died, for some reason that happened again. Maybe it was the way he died. The fact that he seemed to know it was coming and would allude to it, and also because it seemed like he really did not want to die, he was so gifted when it came to music, I almost felt like he was cut off right before his light could really shine and he seemed like he was just really looking for a chance to "become" but there had been factors that seemed determined to stop him from expressing that light that was within. The scripture that comes to mind is the one that says "he was cut off from the land of the living" about the Lord Jesus (Isaiah 53:8). But this time it was about a young talent who fell in with the wrong crowd but who, innately, seemed to still retain the light of God and fear of God in him- he was just battling with the burdens of the flesh: addiction, fame, sin etc etc.

So when I lost my dad this year, again, I went through that process. I'd find myself wondering where my dad was now, what he was doing, was he now fine in his health? Like, he was no longer "here" again, what was happening "there"? What was it like? Would he still retain his gra-gra self or would he become calm and angel-like? If you were "gra-gra" (active, lively, full of energy), would you retain that earthly self or would you become the ethereal version of you? Was your "real self", the part that stayed alive and went on to eternity, would it retain all the sides of you like your personality, mannerisms,  etc? I didn't want to ask these questions out as I didn't want to spook anyone out but I had them. Then I recently lost an Aunt last month quite suddenly. I was stunned because it was unexpected. But my comfort was that I knew she went to be with the Lord. Yet, how odd. That she was here and just like that, she had gone there. Just like that.  

Anyway, I found a book on amazon that was supposed to speak to it. I had read the reviews and the reviews were raving about how that reading the book helped them process the death of their loved ones and to give a perspective about the afterlife. So I got the book and began reading and immediately realised it was a trap- for me. The book was written by a medium who, from the beginning of the book, began speaking to the "spirit-guides"(demons) that came to her from early childhood and how she would see and commune with dead people and how her ma and grandma guided her in the walk as they were also seers. I realised it wasn't a Christian book and stopped reading it. But I still retained this curiosity and then, one day as I was listening to Andrew Wommack teaching at a seminar, I heard him talk about a book he had read back in the day. The woman had died and gone to heaven and eventually came back and she had written about her experience of and in heaven. Andrew had said that it took him about a month to finally decide he was going to be here on earth after reading the way this woman had portrayed heaven. The name of the book is Intra Muros: My Dream of heaven by Rebecca Ruter Springer. I immediately found and got this book. As I read, I didn't want it to end. I read it in 2 days (could have done in a day but, hey, I've got responsibilities :D) and, Oh my God, what a book!

I cannot describe how this book made me feel. Ah. I came away from reading that book just basking in our victory as Children of God! I came away from it just appreciating the truth that we win anyway. We just absolutely win in life. Regardless of what life on earth throws at us and how difficult this earthly life presents itself to be, we win. We have our victory through Christ Jesus to live out our eternal life right here on earth and choose to live by faith- focusing on what we have in Christ Jesus, things that may seemingly be unseen in the natural but which are really real and present in the spiritual/unseen realm and which, as we focus on and walk in, by faith, we begin to live out and draw into our earthly experience until they become real and tangible: 

By faith we understand that the worlds were framed by the word of God, so that the things which are seen were not made of things which are visible- Heb 11:3

Eg, a person may be facing financial difficulties or health challenges and they may choose to keep their mind filled with the truth that, in Christ Jesus, they are rich, (For ye know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that, though he was rich, yet for your sakes he became poor, that ye through his poverty might be rich- 2Corinthians 8:9) they are wealthy, by the stripes of Jesus, they were already healed. And they choose to live out life through the lenses of scripture, despite what the situation in the present presents to them. They wake up in the morning and exercise their dominion over situations. They don't stay down crying and complaining about lacking or about the health challenges, they wake up and say "Father I thank you for you have already supplied all my needs according to your riches in Glory in Christ Jesus. Thank you for I have all I need today. Thank you for providing for me, thank you for giving me the hidden riches of secret places and for giving me the power to create wealth. Thank you for I and my family lack nothing and all things are ours. As I sit up today, the favour of the Lord is upon me. I am helped". They get up and put their hands to work, any work at all they can find and stay speaking those scriptures over the works of their hands (Deut 28:12) and blessing and thanking God for the wealth He has already given to them. Or they speak to their bodies and command it to align to the truth of God's word, they don't let the sickness consume them, they super-impose the life of God in their spirit upon their flesh and over how they "feel", ignoring the symptoms and rejoicing in the divine, incorruptible, life they have in Christ Jesus (For assuredly, I say to you, whoever says to this mountain, ‘Be removed and be cast into the sea,’ and does not doubt in his heart, but believes that those things he says will be done, he will have whatever he says- Mark 11:23). They don't allow their feelings consume them, they let the word of God interrupt and disrupt those feelings. A pain hits them and makes them want to lay in bed all day? They resist that devil and speak to the pain directly,

"in the name of Jesus Christ, I cut you away now and command you to cease. I go about my business today and I command you to die from the root of whatever is causing you- the Law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus is at work in my mortal body and my body is the temple of the Holy Ghost, you have no place here, now, Go!"

. They don't lay in bed, they get up and go, doing everything they ought to as normal, and if the pain has not gone, they continue to believe that immediately they said it, it happened, because the bible said so. So if it still feels like it's still there, its because it's on its way out. They believe the Bible. They believe the Word of God as a child, trusting and not doubting.

I have always known that we always win as Christians all ways. Whether here on earth or when we move to heaven, we win. Because of the Lord Jesus, we have the advantage of living above situations in this earth-life and superimposing the victory of Christ over the trials and tribulations the enemy throws at us, and winning. And in the instance that a person is unable to withstand the trials and are overcome in this earthly life, they go on ahead to heaven. It's just, reading the book made me truly appreciate just how much of a win this is, oh my God, the beauty of heaven as this women attempts to describe is...... whoooshh! WHAT A WIN!! No wonder the devil is mad mad! Look what we are going to experience! (and what we can begin to experience right here on earth because we have it already, we just need to learn to walk in it and to throw off the effects of the old man on our human nature, our flesh) So the devil stays trying to make the life of a saint hard on earth, and if he finds a saint who is unaware of his true rights in God and how to work that, he deviously colours their lives with his misery and torment- he hates us, he hates us because he can never have what we have, what was lavishly given to us, an undeserving us.... Oh, how much God loves us! 

So, I'm not going to do a re-cap of the book per se but, basically, this woman was on her deathbed and it seems she died and then went through that entire experience which she has now written about. She felt she had spent about 5 years in "Earth-language" in heaven, just basking, living such a beautiful heavenly life that she goes on to describe (OMG). And then, all of a sudden, one day, out of the blues, she feels something unpleasantly familiar that she had learned was never in heaven. She suddenly feels the constraints of earth-life come upon her- she had negative thoughts flash through her mind and as she was wondering where the thought came from in heaven, she recognised a fear and in that moment of confusion, wondering what was happening, wondering how these "earthy" feelings were happening to her in heaven, she hears someone saying "she's looking way better now, look, she's coming around!". She was back to earth. Phew! I can't even imagine the disappointment she must have felt. I wonder if she had asked God to take her back. I have heard that Smith Wigglesworth's wife died and he raised her from the dead and when she woke up, she asked "what are you doing? Leave me be please, I don't want to be here" (paraphrased) and he let her go and didn't try to wake her up again. 

Rebecca went on to offer some explanations- seems letters poured out to her from Christians all over the world asking about her experience- was it a dream? A vision? A trance? All she could offer was that the experience was as real as can be. How did they move? Were there wings? What happened if people remarried- which spouse was their "spouse" in heaven? She did her best to explain these as she saw it and I could understand everything she was saying. I'm refraining from doing a full blown summary here but what she described is better read first-hand than for me to attempt to recap something so heavenly and so blissful. Indeed, there were times when she said over and over in the book that she lacked the earthly words to accurately describe the beauty and glory of the life in heaven. I can understand that, I don't even have the words to describe what she had written.

I will say though, the thing that really fascinated me was knowing that there were books in heaven. Immediately I saw that, I wondered, "who wrote the books?" And that was her next question to the person she had been speaking with. So, basically, upon getting to heaven, the first person she met was her husband's brother who had been a devout believer. He was the one that led and guided her to her own house. And he was to be her guide for a period just getting her attuned to the heavenly life as new entrants often retained some of their earthly beliefs and needed to be gradually inducted into the new life which they often found quite jarring (too glorious that it was overwhelming in a beautiful way for them) at first. So back to the book bit, when she asked him who wrote the books and if people read in heaven, there ensued a discussion I found super intriguing. Her brother in law talked about how oddly we thought about heaven from earth, how we often felt like we would go to heaven and all our desires would be of the throne (This is soooo true!! I have often wondered what heaven would be like and wondered if we would be like the elders, bowing down and worshipping and I have wondered if we would find that exciting because thinking of that from earth here feels like a chore no one would want to do- except our desires were supernaturally transformed and it becomes all we utterly desire to do when we get to heaven). He was like, you retain all of the good desires your soul pursued on earth. And that if your soul was filled with unworthy desires, then most likely you wouldn't have made it into heaven in the first place. There were scholars in heaven, pursuing the areas for which their souls were schooled. Writers continued writing and those who were leaders on earth also continued leading the same sort of areas in heaven only, with a much more elevated insight into the area of interest as they were imparted with the knowledge of all things. Something like that sha.

 Can you imagine this? I thought, ah! So I'd still enjoy reading, writing, cooking, and the way she described family life? I seriously wondered about that, I thought the bible says there is no marriage in heaven, but the way she described family life seemed to be almost akin to an earthly family life, only, filled with joy, peace, laughter, bliss..... 

I had a lot of questions. What about love? Did we experience love? There seemed to be an overriding, beautifully blissful experience of love between everyone in heaven and between everyone and the Lord Jesus. There was such a pure love theme that I cannot really explain now, but I wondered, was that how love would be experienced purely? In the pure Agape form? Were the other forms of love (Eros, Philia) only limited to the earth? I wondered if people who never had the opportunity to experience true romantic love would be able to experience it in heaven or if those types of feelings got eradicated and was experienced in that purely agape form? Just another thought sha. 

I was also fascinated by how much joy people felt to see their loved ones or friends and family when they came. There was such an anticipation. They were often told when a person was coming and so you'd have loved ones and friends going round to welcome the person. Right down to children that you most probably forgot after losing on earth, you went on to see lovely people all just so happy to be reunited with you. In some instances, they decorated the person's room/house with the exact tastes the person liked on earth, eg, if they liked flowers or gardening and their rooms overlooked a garden, they made it the same, only, it was so much more glorious, overwhelmingly so. Infact, there was a way she described the beauty of the flowers, she said they were so beautiful and they peeked out at you as though to invite you to admire their beauty. It was the words she used to capture these glorious revelations! Ensure to read it! You can find it here if you are interested in discourse like this.  

What a blessing it must be to have had this experience, for Rebecca, and to be able to share it with the Body of Christ! (Even though I imagine she may not have been happy about coming back). I feel so grateful to have read this book. Sure, I know it probably doesn't do heaven any justice at all but still, it more than satisfied the curiosity I had about the afterlife. I would often wonder, why were we so scared of dying or why did we fight it, especially if we are believers? Would we go on to heaven and wonder why on earth we were worried about going there? Would it feel like a "graduation", like someone feeling so scared of leaving primary school because they didn't know what to expect in secondary school? Why did we fight to stay here? 

My understanding then was that it was the fear of the unknown. But now, I think, for me, I would fight to stay here simply because I want to fulfil God's purpose for my life and to fulfil the assignment and the reason for which I am here on earth. Also, because I CHOOSE to live out the promise of God to me for my earthly life- He said with long life has he satisfied me, He said He has satisfied my mouth with good things, so that my youth is renewed like an eagle, He said that He has caused me to prosper and to be in health even as my soul prospers, He says that by the stripes of Jesus, I was already healed, He said He has given me all that pertains to life and Godliness. Therefore, because He has said these to me, I have received them and agreed to live it and no devil will take it away from me. Simply because I will not let a devil bully me. I will fulfil the purpose and the mandate of the Lord for my life and I shall not die but live (long) to declare the great works of the Lord in the land of the living. To do the works of our Father here on earth before we join Him in heaven to live that absolutely glorious life. However, it truly helps to have an insight into what is beyond- somewhat. It no longer feels "scary", we can rest in what we have in Christ and not "hang on to dear earthly life" like it's all we've got, we've got eternal life, we never die, we've defeated death with Christ. We live forever, we just change forms and we are not afraid to change forms when the time comes and in every form we are in, we do the works of our Father in heaven- Love, preach the gospel, give unbelievers the opportunity to receive this eternal life which can only come from receiving Jesus as your Lord and personal Saviour, we lay hands on the sick and they recover, we set people free from the oppression of the enemy and show them all that we have in Christ Jesus. 

And He said to them, “Go into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature. He who believes and is baptized will be saved; but he who does not believe will be condemned. And these signs will follow those who [d]believe: In My name they will cast out demons; they will speak with new tongues; they[e] will take up serpents; and if they drink anything deadly, it will by no means hurt them; they will lay hands on the sick, and they will recover.” 

And if you would like to receive Jesus as your Lord and personal saviour, please say this simple prayer out with your mouth

"Dear Lord Jesus, I know that I am a sinner, and I ask for Your forgiveness. I believe You died for my sins and rose from the dead. I turn from my sins and invite You to come into my heart and life. I want to trust and follow You as my Lord and Saviour. Please teach me all that is required on this journey with you from today. Amen".  

Do you have thoughts like this? Have you lost someone before? Have you ever wondered along these lines? Would you read the book or na, you're not that curious?

Until my next entry,

Have a lovely rest of the year,

Love and Light,

Judy.