Heaven Is Beyond Your Wildest Expectations (3 page)

I want to attempt to describe Father God as I saw Him there in Heaven. God the Father is as the Bible says, a Spirit. He is pure Spirit. He is pure Love and He is pure Life and He is pure Light! That is who He is. I connect everything that God does back to who He is—Love, Life, and Light. He cannot come at us any other way than what He is. All that He does comes out of who He is. He is very vast, as in never-ending. The word “big” does not come close to describing what I saw or experienced. The angels that fly around Him saying, “Holy, holy, holy” are very small compared to God. He has the form of a human. Or better yet, we have the form of God. We look like Him. We were made after His likeness.

I really cannot wrap my thinking around Him. He is large, huge, vast, infinite, enormous, immeasurable, unrestricted, unrestrained, never-ending, endless, without end, free and at liberty to be God. I really have not found words in English to describe God. I have no thought to even grasp what I saw. All I can say is there is no end to God the Father. He is bright like Jesus with many colors coming off of Him. Jesus and the Father God light up everything. They do not let any darkness in Heaven. None at all! Every being there has God the Father and Jesus inside of them. They live outside of every being and inside every being. Every being shines because of the Father and Jesus. They are the light within every living being and creature. Darkness has nowhere to hide.

When I saw Father God sitting on the Throne, another of my ideas of God was blown up. He was sitting on the throne yet He
is
the Throne, as I said earlier. God is vast and the throne was God, and God was the throne. He had colors coming from Him, more colors than I can tell you. The colors were alive just as everything that comes from God the Father is alive. Before the Throne there was an immeasurable number of heavenly creatures giving God praise. He was in the midst of the Throne and connected to the Throne. Where He was, the Throne was there. I had always believed God was sitting on a chair, but that was not so. The Throne was bright and looked like a cloud. What I experienced about the Throne was that God the Father was and has never been separated from the Throne. It was hard for me to take in all that I experienced before the Throne of God. God says in Isaiah that,
“Heaven is My throne and the earth is My footstool”
(Isa. 66:1). This Throne was God Himself. Who could make a Throne for God, but God?

As I looked at the Throne, I saw how much the Father loves us. I knew Jesus loved us very much, but to see the Father’s love for us—
wow!
I looked into His eyes. When I did, all I could think was,
I don’t know how many universes you can place in His eyes.
But out of all that I saw, what really stood out to me was the love that He has for each and every one of us on earth.

I came to understand that every time we take a breath of air, the Father God is saying, “I love you.” The only reason air is here, is for you. There is no other reason that the air is here. How many times in a day do you take a breath of air? Whatever the number is how many times God is telling you that He loves you. Hear Him as you breathe say, “I love you.”

I understood that there is no number two in God’s eyes. Everyone is number one. There is no one taking the place of number two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, or the tenth person. There is only number one, everyone is number one to Him. Everyone is first in line with Him. There is no difference even here on earth. If you know Jesus as Lord and Savior, you are number one to Him. As the Bible says, we are the apple of His eye.

I was on my hands and knees when I saw the Throne. I was far and yet I was near the Throne of God. The innumerable beings that surrounded the Throne were giving Him praise. Some had been human beings from earth and others were heavenly beings. Between them and the Throne was something like water. It looked like a crystal sea, but it was not. It was something like water, but not really. Now after this crystal-like sea, there was another liquid under the Throne of God. The Throne hovers over this liquid, which was also alive. It had a different density to it compared to the crystal-like sea. These two liquids flowed through each other, but did not overlap or blend or bleed into each other. They stayed very much separate. I have not found the words to really describe the beauty of these water-like liquids. All I can say is that they were alive and had a personality to them. Throughout Heaven there are more water-like liquids that are alive and have delightful personalities.

W
ORSHIP

As I saw and listened to worship before my Father’s Throne, I heard a sound so beautiful that it has changed my worship of God forever. This part that I am about to tell you changed my life the most here on earth. I experienced something about God the Father that changed the way I look at life altogether. When you, as a pure spirit being, get to look at the Father, you see Him completely different from how you have previously perceived Him to be. Let me attempt to tell you what I am talking about. I pray that the heart of your understanding is open to receive what I have come to know about our Father God.

Before the Throne, after I saw all that I just told you, I heard another sound that I had a hard time accepting when I got back to earth. It was a sound that I knew brought me life, and life more abundantly. This sound was God the Father singing back to each and every being giving Him praise before the Throne. He was singing an individual love song to each of His creations. The song was alive and seemed to go inside of the beings it was meant for. What I saw was just like in the Song of Songs in the Bible. There is an exchange of love words between God and each person expressing his or her love for one another. That is what was going on in Heaven. Father God was expressing His love for each being and they were expressing their love for Him.

What really touched me so deeply
was that when He sang, the song
came out of His Spirit, Himself.

I now believe that happens to us here on earth when we express our love to God. I have not tried to copy His song. What really touched me so deeply was that when He sang, the song came out of His Spirit, Himself. The song was not touched by any other creation of His. Nothing in Heaven stopped it or would think to stop His song from reaching the targeted being. With the songs from the beings to the Father who sits on the Throne, the crystal-like sea had its part and the colors had their part. But when it came to God’s song, no one had a part but Him and the being it was meant for. This song was pure love. I understood by seeing this love song come from the Father, in the power of His love.

I knew that not only was the Father sending a love song to each and every creation of His in Heaven, but also on earth. He is sending love to all people on the planet. All the time love from God is being sent out to each and every person, and nothing can stop this love from reaching us. We can deny His love, reject His love, or act like His love is not there, but He keeps sending it to us. Every time we take a breath of air, He is saying, “I love you.” When you now take a breath of air, listen to the Father telling you that He loves you.
“For God so loved the world”
(John 3:16) became more alive to me in seeing and hearing this love song from the Father to each being there.

Jesus wanted me to make sure when I tell my story that everyone I talk to knows that this is not our home; we who know Jesus as Lord and Savior are just passing through. It seemed to me that this earth was just a small part of a very big picture, a really small part. This earth is deteriorating. We are in a countdown to the end of the age. But we seem to think and act as if this is our home forever. Yet Jesus told us that He goes to prepare a place for us (see John 14:2). He was not talking about a house or a mansion as we say many times, but a much greater place in Heaven just for us. When I was there, I knew that I was in my place and no one else could take it. It was prepared for me. I also knew that I was not taking anyone else’s place. When I talk about the music there, I understood that each being’s song had its own place. I knew I was in my place and no one could take it away. Jesus has a place in Heaven just for you, where you will know Him completely as Lord and Savior. It was made just for you—no one else.

Commentary

The most life-changing aspect of Dean’s visit to Heaven is the depth of God’s love that Dean experienced over and over again. It wasn’t just God’s love as a fact, it was God’s love
for him—
as if Dean was the only object of God’s love, yet knowing God loves everyone in His creation the same way. When Dean was in the presence of the Lord Jesus, Dean felt His love coming from every part of Jesus’ anatomy. The Lord not only loves, He
is
love. It’s not just His heart or mind that loves us, it’s every part of Him. You can see how His love for us has nothing to do with what we do or refrain from doing. Once we receive His unconditional love, it dispels any kind of rule keeping, works, or behaviors to try to gain or keep God’s favor. When we know we have His love like this, sin loses any appeal it might have had. Who can be anything but entirely secure knowing God’s love like this? Further, it also washes away any fear of rejection by God we might have once we know there is nothing in Him that cannot or will not love us.

Once we know we are altogether, entirely loved, and fully accepted by Him, we lose all interest in the things of this world that might have drawn us away from Him or His holiness. We love Him because He first loves us. The response to His love, His greatness, and His glory evokes a spontaneous, continual loving worship of Him from every created being in Heaven. Even the flowers in Heaven worship God, and the very atmosphere bows in worship before Him. But even more wonderful is that as each worships God in song, He responds to each person’s worship and sings a personal love song back to each person—there is an exchange of love between the Father and each of His beloved. We might know what it is to be deeply in love with someone who loves us in return, but God has given that to us as but a mere shadow of the reality of His love.

What we often have difficulty saying, we can easily sing. God has created us, even our brains, to function this way. Sing your prayers to God and then be aware as you are singing to Him of what He is singing back to you. Allow God to wrap you in His love for you. It is a life changer!

For as high as the heavens are above the earth, So great is His lovingkindness toward those who fear
[revere]
Him
(Psalm 103:11).

About Dean Braxton

Dean and his wife, Marilyn, are licensed ministers and travel the United States sharing the Good News of Jesus the Messiah. They have also been invited to speak about Dean’s heavenly experience, supported with Scripture, on numerous television shows. Marilyn talks about her experience through the prayer that brought Dean back to life. Their mission is to share how much God loves us and to give hope in a unique and transparent way. Dean is the author of
In Heaven: Experiencing the Throne of God.

C
HAPTER
2

JOURNEY OF GLORY

by Rhoda “Jubilee” Mitchell

Things were not going well for twenty-year-old Jubilee. She was overwhelmed with defeat. She cried out to God in her despair and suddenly Jesus, who is a very present help in trouble, came to her and lifted her not just from depression but out of her body to reveal to her that what she was feeling isn’t all there is; there is so much more! That day, the spirit realm became very real to her.

The last thing I remember was lying face down on my bed. I was repeating to God over and over “I can’t take it any more, I just can’t take it any more.” I knew the Bible says, “Whoever will call upon the name of the Lord will be saved.” So I cried out to God and something amazing happened! Jesus immediately appeared next to me. He came to rescue me.

Suddenly I could see myself lying face down on the bed. My spirit had been separated from my body. Then all at once Jesus and I flew up into the sky. He flew me up through the roof of my home. When we got about twelve feet above the roof, I looked down toward my bedroom. I saw the tiles on the top of the roof, but the roof was transparent. I could see clear through it. My eyesight had been changed. It was heightened along with all of the rest of my senses.