Heaven Is Beyond Your Wildest Expectations (18 page)

There’s no time between being here and there, no floating around, you’re instantly in Heaven. It’s so far beyond any human words. There is total love, total confidence, total peace; everything is perfect. This will be hard for people on earth to understand, but I was instantly in Messiah,
in Him.
It’s spiritual because bone and flesh cannot inherit the Kingdom. Therefore, we can’t be there in earthly material. I knew I was me, and yet I was in Messiah.

There is no fear in Heaven. Fear was reduced to zero after Jesus died, when He arranged a place of total joy and peace. As long as we are in the flesh, we have built-in fear. God put it in there so people would have a form of fear so they wouldn’t voluntarily hurt themselves. In Heaven, there is no such thing as flesh as we know it. It’s entirely spiritual. What God can do is limitless because it’s a spiritual material. We have so many senses in the spirit body, unlike the five senses we have here on earth. And all those senses are in total ecstasy. The same mind you have there is the same mind that Messiah has.

S
PIRITUAL
R
EALITY

Instantly upon landing, I looked to see what I landed on. My feet were the same size and shape. I recognized myself by the conformity to my earthly self. My spirit eyes saw it all. I could see right through my spiritual body. No weight. No pain, fright, or discomfort. Just joy. And no bones, ligaments, or organs in our spiritual bodies. There is no material I can describe in words for our spirits. It is the form that God created to provide life for the flesh. Once that is removed, it has to go somewhere, either Heaven or hell.

The first thing I realized is that I did not have the mind I had on earth. Here on earth, life is the product of brain tissues. When the body is gone, it seems that we suddenly have an electronic chip of the mind of the Lord Jesus implanted in our minds. We know more information than all of our brains here on earth. Suddenly, I had a mind that thought with a speed incomputable on earth.

The first time I heard the Lord’s voice, He said, “Dick, you’re dead.” Though I heard the voice within me, it was the voice of the King of kings and Lord of lords. His voice was absolutely indescribable. His saying it was judicial, authoritative, loving, humble, kind, and accurate all at once. That He called me by my name showed me the intimacy He has with my existence. I asked, “Why do you call me Dick?” He said, “When I died for you on the cross, it was a most intimate thing. When you accepted Me, you became a new person and part of My body for whom I will be coming soon.” We had quite a conversation while I was with Jesus.

It is mind-to-mind talk there. The need of air to transmit sound and for the ear to hear is absent in Heaven. There is nothing in the physics of Heaven that is similar to the physics on earth. He was speaking inside my mind and I was answering with a rapidity that can only be imagined. The language is so perfect that instantly I realized each word in a split second. Timing was perfection. It meant only one thing. He knew exactly what He wanted me to know. If I asked a question, He had the answer ready before I even asked it.

Jesus and I walked in Heaven
together, but it was more like
flying than walking.

Jesus and I walked in Heaven together, but it was more like flying than walking. We were talking while suspended in midair. There is no weight or gravity in Heaven, so there is no need to touch the ground. As we were conversing, He added little bits of data to increase my knowledge, and when I would ask questions, he always had the answers. Communication is so far superior than anything we can imagine down here. Space is also limitless. I asked Him a question about how large an area designated for different persons would be and He answered, “I only give them the desires of their heart. I put it in my book. Didn’t you read My book? Everything in it is explanatory of what a child of Mine needs to know.” Several times I asked a question and He answered, “Didn’t you read My book?”

L
OVE IN A
D
IFFERENT
D
IMENSION

His love is in a different dimension than our idea of love. There is no question of His love. Human intelligence is inadequate to understand the love of our Creator, which was known the moment I was with Him. But I was also “in” Him. In the spirit, we are what the Scriptures say—we are in Him and He is in us (see Gal. 2:20). Yet we don’t lose our identity. The love He infused me with instantly upon my arrival was so much more complete than we can experience on earth. Our flesh is always standing in the way. Even if He tried to give us a full dose here on earth, we would diminish its intensity by our unbelief because we couldn’t believe it’s that good. When we are in Heaven, though, it seems normal that He wants to bring us a full dose of His love and peace. Everything seems normal, yet magnificently limitless. The only definition is Heaven is all about God!

There are no languages on the face of the earth that can adequately describe a place that is indescribable. I landed in a vast valley with thousands of flowers, all different kinds. The trees of Heaven are huge, nothing exactly as on earth, because it’s all made of a material that is indestructible, the same as our spirit bodies. Nothing like sin or fire can ever touch Heaven. God made it for His own throne room.

The light in Heaven would blind our natural eyes immediately. He is the Sun of Heaven. With spiritual eyes I could see any distance and through anything. Blades of grass are not broken when I walked on them. There are no insect bites. Leaves on trees do not turn brown because there is no death. There is only the absolute spiritual divinity that God used to create His own home.

The odor of Heaven was a sweet-smelling savor. The aroma came from the prayers of the saints who are in Heaven, not on earth. The prayers of those who were saved and are worshiping and praising God in Heaven are so sweet smelling to the Lord that He allows them to smell their own prayers. The sacrifices of animals in the Old Testament produced a barbecue kind of smell that to His nostrils was sweet smelling because they were doing what He told them to do as forerunners of the sacrifice of His Son.

Then He didn’t talk to me anymore. The trip was over.

I thought I was there permanently, but suddenly I whizzed through a long valley and up a great canyon where I heard my wife’s voice. I heard her calling “Dick.” God permitted me to hear her as she was praying, and then everything went dead as I was returned into my body. I found myself completely unconscious from then on. The body had never left, and my spirit was back in it. My wife asked the Lord to send me back—and He did. The exit from Heaven was instantaneous, faster than the speed of light.

At first there was no blood in my body. As a corpse, I was aware that the room was filled with a brilliant light. I said, “Lord, I’m aware of a terrific light. Yet I know I’m not alive.” He said, “Yes, I’m putting life back in your body, and you will be able to resume your medical practice.”

With my doctor’s mind I asked Him how He decided which organs to restore first. He said, “My son, no one has ever asked Me that before. I’ll tell you.” Then He went from up my legs to my arms, then into my chest activating this and that. Then He said, “My son, I’ll be leaving now.”

Then He was gone, and I was alive again.

Five years later, I was in Israel visiting Lazarus’ tomb, which is like a small cave. The cave holds three people; two ladies were there with me. All of a sudden, the lights went out. We were two stories underground. It was a terrible darkness. Both women screamed. I said, “Don’t scream, just pray.”

Then I was alone in absolute blackness, and suddenly I was bathed in a limitless and powerful light. I knew instantly that I had to be in my spirit body. Standing beside me was a fantastically beautiful human figure—it was Jesus. He was slightly taller than I, about six foot. He must have stood slightly above most of His colleagues in Israel. I looked into a face so magnificent that it cannot be described. Absolute divinity, merciful yet judicial. A slight smile was on His face as if He was enjoying this moment. He put His arm around me so that it permeated me in a hug of love. I knew it was about something important happening.

Jesus spoke to me as He had five years earlier. He said, “My son, I’m going to show you hell.”

I replied, “I believe in You. That’s off limits.”

He said, “I want to show you a holding tank for those who refuse to believe in Me.”

“I don’t want to go.”

“I’ll take you there for two minutes. I’ll send My Spirit with you.”

“But my name is in the Book of Life,” I said.

He responded, “I’ve expunged it for two minutes. For that time, you will feel what it is like in hell.” I knew I would experience the worst that anyone had, even an atheist. An atheist doesn’t believe in God but he has to. Hell is separation from the very Person in charge of the universe. Jesus said He would explain what was happening.

I said, “Get it over with as long as You will put my name back.”

F
ALLING INTO
H
ELL

I felt myself falling. I fell straight down and stopped at the center of the earth in an enclosed pit or chamber that was about ten feet high by four feet square. It had no exit or entrance. I was in total silence, total darkness. He gave me just enough of the five senses to realize these things. I cried out to Jesus, “You said You’d explain.” He answered, “Yes, My son. You are in a place of total isolation prepared for the demons. Absence of God results in no light, no sound, and no heat.”

I would have gone stark raving mad if the love of God hadn’t been with me. Then He removed the five senses normal to the fleshly body and gave me what is normal to the spirit body—it feels like a million senses to the spirit body. They are limitless. Place, time, speed. The spirit of man that came out of God originally has no limitations. The absence of God means no light because God is light.

Just like He said, I was in a holding tank for sinners until the great white throne of judgment takes place. It was so terrible that I find it hard to describe. I had gone right through the center of the earth, just buzzed right into a stone tomb in the holding tank. I was terrified. Voices tell the sinners why they are there, how they got there. There’s no escape; and it’s an instant thing—when a sinner dies, that person is there instantly.