Should We Resurrect Animals?

I was recently having a discussion with someone about raising the dead, and the conversation turned to whether we should raise animals from the dead or not. He posited that the resurrections we see in the Bible are all of humans being raised from the dead, and so in order to keep with Divine Order we would need to stick within that boundary. Furthermore, since we have been given animals to eat for food (Genesis 9:3), God has expressly permitted us to kill and eat them which means they shouldn’t be raised from the dead. If one person has either of these thoughts then likely many more do, so I want to share with you what I replied with to explain that yes, we should indeed resurrect animals and how we can know that is God’s will for us.

We first have to remember that what we see modeled in most of the Bible isn’t actually God’s end-goal for creation. This means that while yes, Jesus only is recorded as having raised people from the dead and all 12 resurrection accounts in scripture are of humans, that isn’t meant to be a limitation. So what is the end-goal of all of this, and how is what the Bible shows us not a limitation placed upon us? First, God’s plan for us never changed from the beginning, which was for mankind to fix all of creation. This means that creation as we observe it throughout the Bible is not in its ideal state. And this is extremely important to keep in mind as we identify what God’s standards for things are, because His standards don’t always match with what we can currently observe in the world around us. Think about it. We’ve only ever seen creation subjected to frustration and decay. We have never seen creation in its natural state, a state we normally term as “transfigured”. Yes, like Jesus on the Mount of Transfiguration, that is the end-goal for all of creation, and Romans 8 tells us that having our bodies transfigured is the firstfruits of that. Which means our transfiguration is the beginning of all creation experiencing the same thing! Second, in light of that end-goal, we need to adjust our expectations and remove the lid of limitations we tend to place upon ourselves and how we read the Bible. With those two things firmly in mind, I’ll address the two initial items—whether we should resurrect anything non-human, and whether animals are meant for us to kill for food.

1. Resurrecting anything non-human

It doesn’t really matter whether we are talking about animals, plants, or anything else—all creation is in bondage to decay per Romans 8, and it is our job to liberate it. As I mentioned above, this means that nothing in creation should be subject to death or decay, and to the extent that they are, it is our job to fix it. Romans 8 does tell us the pattern, which is that the transfiguration of creation begins with us, but it does not at any point limit it to us. In fact, if it were to limit it to us, then all creation that isn’t a human would still remain in bondage and we wouldn’t be liberating anything besides other humans. But that isn’t what the Bible teaches.

Yes, we only see Jesus and others raising humans from the dead, but it clearly states that not everything Jesus did was recorded and it states that we would do greater because Jesus was going to the Father. He also said in John 16:12 (my paraphrase) “I have more to tell you than you can handle right now, but the Holy Spirit will reveal it all to you later.” This means that Jesus would not have used the Bible as a limiting standard to tell us to only do what is explicitly written about in the Bible because He was expecting the Holy Spirit to tell us more later on. And what about all of the things Jesus did that weren’t written about in the Bible? The argument that we should or should not do something because it is not mentioned in the Bible is a weak argument at best. Electronics aren’t written about in the Bible and yet you are reading this using an electronic device right now. Quite often, especially when we come across things not explicitly written about in Scripture, using the Bible to identify underlying principles is far more useful than identifying specific actions or tasks which are knowably incomplete for the reasons mentioned above.

So how do we see principles in the Bible matching with raising animals? First, ALL death is an enemy of God. If we see death, we have authority to reverse it—not just death if it occurs in a human body. Second, Jesus commanded the disciples to raise the dead—He did not specify “dead humans”. Third, what is the end-point we see in Revelation 21? This gives us a glimpse of what it should look like—when the old order has passed away (it already did and was completed in 70 AD), there should be no more death (Rev 21:4). No more death isn’t “no more death for humans” but no more death at all anywhere for anyone or anything in all creation.

In the conversation he also mentioned that by paying attention to things like resurrecting animals that it could shift our focus away from our actual mission, which is bringing eternal life to people. The idea is well-meaning, but the problem is that the idea is incomplete. While it is true that part of our mission is to release life and immortality to other people, that isn’t the whole mission, and limiting our job to bringing eternal life to people is not the whole story. Our mission on earth from Heaven is probably better understood as “ending the reign of death in all creation and extending the reign of life in Christ Jesus to all of it.” We see this articulated in Romans 5, dealing with the end of one governmental system (death) and the establishment of a better governmental system (Life in Christ Jesus), but this isn’t just about humans. It begins with humans, but doesn’t end there.

2. Killing animals for food

This is a subject that is related to something I discuss in-depth in my book “The Gospel of Life and Immortality”. Chapter 11 talks about living from Heaven’s supply and not requiring food as an energy source, and it is probably one of my favorite chapters in that book. I don’t think I specifically address killing animals, but the concepts I explain in that chapter have obvious applications to this subject. Killing animals for food was basically a concession God made for humans, but it is not the end-point. We will eventually cease killing animals for food entirely because all death will be done away with. It is permitted, but even Paul said that not everything that is permitted is beneficial. It is a for-now thing, not a forever thing. This goes back to what I mentioned initially about needing to look at things from a perspective of the end-goal and God’s standards. When death and decay no longer manifest in any form in all of creation, there is a chance it will even become impossible to kill animals because the state of death simply will not exist any longer. Even if it is still possible to do, there will be zero need or reason to do so, nor will we have any interest in killing them. Killing and eating them in the future only makes sense if we are required to consume animals as a source of food, which we aren’t. And I’m not just limiting that to animals and saying everyone should be vegetarian. We will not require food of any kind, and as such all food will be consumed for enjoyment, not sustenance, and creation will have transfigured in such a manner that it can give up its bounty to us for our enjoyment without it diminishing itself as well. In other words, a tree can give us a fruit and yet simultaneously not lose the fruit even while we are holding and eating it because the power of life makes that possible. We can take a leaf off a tree and yet the tree does not lack its leaf because the power of life makes it so. As Apostle Tommy Miller puts it, the goal of God was for “people that look like Him in a creation that looks like Heaven”. And there is no death or lack or limitation in heaven. As such, any time we look at creation through a lens of limitation or lack then we are putting carnal limits on things that God never intended, and He is calling us higher in our perspectives.

The bottom line is that we will get the opportunity to partner with God to reverse all decay in the animal kingdom because we will be reversing it in the entirety of creation. This naturally includes animals, but extends vastly beyond just animals. Our job as stewards over creation is, in part, to fix everything that is broken, which means all death and decay must (and will) go. Raising dead animals is one tiny example of that. So if anyone has ever wondered if we can or have permission to raise animals from the dead, if it is part of what salvation and the gospel covers, or even if we should be eating animals for food, just know that we have been given a mission from God along with the power and authority to carry it out, to put all death under His feet and to bring restoration and life to all creation through enforcing and extending what Jesus did on the cross to all creation!

Practical Thoughts on Raising the Dead

Charlie Kirk’s execution/assassination yesterday has many people unsettled for a range of reasons, but I don’t plan to go into any of that. What the situation has done in one of my specific areas of focus is something that consistently happens almost any time some major news event that deals with death and dying occurs. And that is a focus on what I refer to as “Celebrity resurrection.” I define “Celebrity resurrection” as a focus on attempting to raise the dead specifically in the case of a high profile individual, regardless of whether that person is high-profile due to their profession, news coverage of an event, or any other cause that makes it become high-profile. What tends to happen any time a high-profile individual passes away is that for some believers it reminds them that through Christ Jesus we can raise the dead, and they have a desire to extend that offer of life to that individual. I both love that and am frustrated by that simultaneously. This is a difficult subject to navigate well because there are multiple factors in play that all stand in tension with another, and all of them have their own measure of validity. So in light of yesterday’s atrocity, keeping in mind that we, the Body of Christ, are meant to provide solutions to every problem, I want to discuss some practical thoughts on raising the dead and specifically look at the barriers that one will deal with when it comes to celebrity resurrection.

Any time we are raising the dead we will ideally look to get access to their body. Is it possible to raise someone from the dead without that? Yes. Can God re-create a body from ashes such as in cremation or a house fire? Yes. Can He teleport someone’s body that is washed away in a flood back to you so you can raise them? Yes, He both can and has done so. But that doesn’t change the fact that the predominant means of raising the dead is quite simply to command life over someone’s body. I don’t say this to create some sort of mental or theological limitation, but to recognize that the vast majority of the time that is how it will occur, and as such, gaining access to the body to pray should be a goal of ours.

In most first-world countries, we like to hide our dead. There are legitimate sanitary and legal reasons for some of this, but it does create barriers and restrictions to gaining access to a body for resurrection prayer. I had someone ask me yesterday if traveling in the spirit to pray over someone’s body is an option. Yes, that is always an option. And for those who want to understand more about what that means or what that is, I teach on the subject at length in my book The Beginners Guide to Traveling in the Spirit, so I’m not going to cover that further here. But while it is an option, as I said above, it’s not the primary option and gaining access to the body should still be a main goal/method that we use.

Where the issues of body-access comes into conflict with raising the dead as a whole, and especially with celebrity resurrection, is that we generally need family permission to gain access to the body. Obtaining family permission can be difficult all on its own without even considering someone’s potential high profile status. Most people, and even most Christians, still consider the concept of raising the dead to be extremely fringe even though it is a pivotal aspect of the Christian faith—to the point that if raising the dead doesn’t happen, Christianity has zero value as a belief system because if the dead are not raised then it would be a lie. Fortunately, God does raise the dead, Christianity is not a lie, and raising the dead is gradually becoming more mainstream as people get a greater revelation of God’s desire for abundant life for us.

Obtaining family permission is generally as straightforward as asking the family for permission. But straightforward does not mean easy. I don’t know that there is almost ever a time when asking someone for permission to pray over their deceased loved one is not daunting. Our own fears and doubts start to rear their heads and we have to militantly govern over our thoughts in those moments. Broaching this subject with someone has very real risks from being the target of ridicule and anger up to and including a complete loss of relationship with both the person we ask and others around them. Nevertheless, if we want to obtain access to someone’s body, we have to have that uncomfortable and risky conversation. And we have to have it with the right people.

Outside of situations where someone dies right in front of us, we first have to have access to the family. Then we have to have a favor with the family in order for them to say yes. Even once they say yes, there has to be follow-through on their part to actually give us the access that they told us we may have. The logistics of that follow-through may have a number of hoops to jump through as well as potential monetary costs associated with it. For example, a funeral home may charge the family each time we want access to the body to have time to pray over it, and they may have limitations on certain hours when we are permitted to do that. And at least in the United States, there is nothing illegal about the funeral home doing that. All of that can create more barriers to the resurrection effort, and at any step of this process we can lose the person’s interest or buy-in for any reason

Where this gets more tricky with celebrity resurrection is that due to the high profile nature of the circumstances, family is usually being bombarded by people. Whether it is a famous actor or singer who has potentially hundreds of thousands if not millions of fans, or something that is big in the local news and it’s getting a lot of local attention, the family is dealing both with the death of their loved one, as well as having to handle media and social media pressure and attention. Without immense favor from God in these circumstances or a pre-existing relationship, it is usually very difficult for someone to get access to the family to even bring up the request.

So does that mean that because it’s hard that we simply abandoned the attempt in those situations and only try for ones that feel less-difficult? Not necessarily. However, the guidance I would give on the subject is that we need to be conscious about staying within what the Bible calls our metron, also known as our “area of influence.” I firmly believe the Body of Christ has this solution available to offer Charlie Kirk’s family on his behalf. However, on a personal level, I do not know anyone in that family and I don’t think I know anyone with even two degrees of separation to that family. So while the will of God is for him and every other person on the planet to be raised from the dead, unless something happens and God opens that door for me (which I am very open to), I will not be making personal attempts at that in this specific circumstance. And again, this is where it’s a sensitive subject with nuance. Because neither the will of God or the situation have changed. His desire is for life. But there is a very real matter of divine order in how God chooses to do things in most circumstances, and unless/until God opens things up to bring that into my personal Metron, it simply isn’t, and is therefore someone else’s job. Again, that doesn’t mean that someone shouldn’t attempt to raise him from the dead. It just means that unless things change, that person isn’t me and likely it isn’t anyone I know either. Which means if you’re reading this, unless you have either a specific leading from the Holy Spirit, a relationship with the family or the ability to get it, and divine favor for access, then it isn’t you either. And in a situation that is as tragic and evil as this one is, that’s not nice news to hear, which is part of what makes this a sensitive issue, but that’s not all.

There is a separate matter of motives and motivation. I think this is never a bad question to ask, but I think it is all the more appropriate in the case of celebrity resurrections. We each have to ask this question in our own hearts, which is “of all of the people who have died in the last week or month, why am I focusing on this one?” There are a range of potential answers, and most of them aren’t necessarily bad answers. For me, in some situations, I have directly and personally known the deceased. At times, it has been a friend of a friend or a friend’s family member. In other circumstances people have reached out to me because they have read one of my books or articles on the subject, heard me talk on a podcast, or been informed about me some other way. On occasion I will get a request from another minister who knows that I believe in raising the dead because I live comparatively local to the person who reached out to them for help. It varies from circumstance to circumstance. For me, the motivation is always that death is an enemy, grief and pain and death are evil, and God desires that person and their family to experience life. What is generally never a motivating factor for me is the level of famousness of the person involved. But that is often a primary motivator for many people who want a celebrity resurrection. And it is another part of what makes this a sensitive subject to discuss.

I don’t want to discourage people from praying to raise the dead because I firmly believe it is always God’s will to resurrect them, every single time. And yet there is also this issue of operating in our God-assigned sphere of influence, and those two can at times be in conflict with one another. How I resolve what can sound cognitively dissonant in my own mind is to recognize that while God may want someone to do that thing, God isn’t always assigning that thing to me. Nor should I necessarily assign it to myself.

I have had plenty of times in my life where I have prayed to God and asked Him to do something in a situation and His reply has been “you do something”. That might sound like a strange response to hear from God until we understand that we are collectively assigned as His change-agents in the earth. In other words, long ago, God delegated everything in the earth to us to fix, and he has never undelegated that to us. Which means it’s still our job, not His. Whether it comes to raising Charlie Kirk from the dead or anyone else, that is our job as followers of Jesus Christ. The individual details of which person does which things are largely at the direction of the Holy Spirit, but it is conclusively our collective job to do the things that remove death and decay from the cosmos and fix all creation to make it become on earth the same way it already is in heaven.

So while God has assigned dead-raising to us, God has not assigned every single one of those to me personally. This means that in every situation, whether it is raising the dead, healing the sick, speaking a word of encouragement to a neighbor, or anything else, we have to be aware of those things that are within our sphere of influence and therefore are our God-ordained responsibility, and those things that are outside our metron making them someone else’s. I believe looking at heart motivation is important in this type of situation because if we don’t look at it, we can assign things to ourselves that are outside of our metron, which is unwise at best and is otherwise fairly nonfunctional.

Why do I care more about raising someone from the dead who is on the news than I do the grandmother down the street? When the news and social media give something significant public attention, it signals to our subconscious minds that this thing is more important than all of the things that are not receiving that same public attention. And that is where the trap is. Increased public attention has nothing to do with whether something is in or outside of my metron. The two are unrelated, which is why I ask the question I did before about internal motivation. Am I motivated to do this because my subconscious has been signaled by a bunch of outside influences? Or is this because this is what God is actually saying and doing right now with me personally? I challenge myself with these kinds of questions, and suggest that anyone reading this do the same. We must be people to discern what God is saying and doing with us on an ongoing basis.

So again, any time the matter of celebrity resurrection comes up, I encourage us to look at our heart motivation and identify whether this is in or outside of our personal metron. If it is within our metron then we need to take practical steps to walk that out, which usually is going to look like contacting the family, receiving access to the body, and commanding life. If you are not sure how to go about doing any of that, or want to up-level your beliefs on the subject, I encourage you to pick up a copy of my book Faith to Raise the Dead. If you are currently in the middle of a resurrection attempt and don’t have time to read a longer book on the subject, pick up a copy of my book Practical Keys to Raise the Dead, which is short excerpts from the other book and is designed to cover just the immediate practical things you need to know in the moment. For additional resources, I recommend the books How to Raise the Dead and The Dead are Raised by Tyler Johnson, and the book Saints Who Raised the Dead by Father Albert J Hebert, a Catholic priest who chronicles over 400 resurrection stories throughout church history.

None Of This Is Life Or Death

Do you ever have those moments where you say something and when you hear it come out of your mouth you realize it carries a lot more wisdom than you intended? I was in line at the grocery store the other day. The cashier was getting extremely flustered because she had messed something up on the register and the line was backing up. And backing up some more. And backing up some more. And she was visibly stressed out by it all. Eventually, it was my turn to check out, and without me saying anything she apologized for everything taking so long. I replied, wanting to be encouraging and not meaning to be dismissive, by saying “Yeah, I wouldn’t worry about it too much. None of this is life or death.”

And right when I said that, it really hit me. I think sometimes because of my job as a nurse I forget that most other people’s jobs really aren’t life or death issues. I think there are very few professions in the world where you can be driving home after work and truly wondering if you might’ve accidentally killed someone today. And I am fairly certain that every nurse, doctor, paramedic, EMT, and others in the medical field know exactly what I’m talking about. But most jobs aren’t like that. In reality, most things in life as a whole aren’t like that.

And that’s not to say that other large life decisions don’t matter, because they do. But if I look at the number of times I get stressed by something in a day, it can be easy to lose sight of the fact that in the grand scheme of things it’s really just not a big deal. Has traffic backed up and it’s taking longer than I thought to get somewhere so I will be late? Possibly. But is it life altering? Generally not. We all have stressors in life. And some of them are bigger than others. Having bigger stressors doesn’t automatically make the smaller ones disappear, but I think sometimes a shift in perspective can help, and in some cases help a lot. As that saying not-always-accurately goes, “Don’t sweat the small stuff. And it’s all small stuff.” I don’t think it is all small stuff, but knowing when to not sweat the small stuff can be a valuable skill to develop.

But the more I thought I about this idea, I then thought about how sometimes things we don’t think about much actually can have far more significance than we realize. How many times do we make a light of something when in reality it is participating long-term to producing life or death for us? If I am stressing over something insignificant, is that now producing death in my body when otherwise it never needed to? What about complaining about unimportant or minimally frustrating things? Or even just complaining as a whole? I won’t pretend that I have mastered that one by any stretch of the imagination, but are there areas in life where we consistently align ourselves with death without realizing it because we have become so accustomed to doing it?

The Bible tells us quite plainly in Proverbs 18:21 that, “the power of life and death are in the tongue, and those who love it will eat its fruit.” It mentions in Matthew 12:36 that we will be judged for every idle, careless, or useless word we have spoken. Now I’m not saying we need to be hyper legalistic or critical of every word that we or others say, as that is just creating its own special path toward religion and bondage. But I do think it becomes an opportunity to encourage us to check back in with the words that we say and the ideas that we communicate on a regular basis.

There is a rather obscure verse in the Old Testament, Isaiah 28:15, that talks about how the Israelites made agreements with death and covenants with the realm of the dead, and it really begs the question, how often do we through our word choices make agreements with death as well? I lay this concept out in significantly more depth in my book The Gospel of Life and Immortality. In that book I also go over some very common everyday examples of where we use our words to produce death. But I think this can actually be a very important subject for us to understand better. Often we produce death in our lives without even realizing it, and it is largely because we have gotten so used to it as a culture that few of us even think about the long-term effects of some of the simple statements and beliefs we hold. If this subject speaks to your heart at all, I highly encourage you to get a copy of that book. It is available in print, Kindle, and recently just became available on audiobook. Because so often the things that we think, say, and do in life really aren’t life or death issues. . . Until we look a little deeper and realize that maybe in fact they are.

All Death is an Enemy—Live Accordingly

After moving to a very small town in Ohio earlier this year, the nearest countryside is about a two minute drive away. And that’s not an exaggeration. That should just tell you how small of a town I’m living in. One of the things I see on a near-daily basis as a result, is roadkill. Squirrels, rabbits, raccoons, a lot of deer, and the occasional stray cat or unrecognizable bird. And as often as I can remember to do it, I command life into those bodies each time I pass one. Why? Because all death is an enemy, and we should live accordingly.

I haven’t done it in a good number of years, but from time to time I used to stop, put the roadkill in the bed of my truck, and continue to pray over it for 2 to 3 days. When I was still married, my wife and I had a house rule at the time that three days was the maximum that I would keep them. Not because Jesus was in the tomb for three days or any other pseudo-spiritual reason someone can think up for a three day time limit. No, this was purely practical. After about three days, the level of decay that the body underwent became enough of a problem that we agreed that if it hadn’t risen in three days, I would let it go.

Now, I understand that to most people this seems like extreme behavior. But what if it isn’t? What if we as the Body of Christ have gotten so complacent with death that we stopped giving it the level of attention that we should have been giving it all along? I’m not saying everybody has to go pick up roadkill and pray for it and if they don’t they are somehow neglecting the gospel. That would be a ridiculous assertion to make. What I am saying is that I think we have become so accustomed to death that we generally don’t give roadkill a second thought.

Sure, if we can see that it was somebody’s dog or cat we might say a quick prayer for the family, but what if praying for peace for the family wasn’t the solution that God wanted us to offer? What is God was actually just wanting us to reverse death? It’s not that crazy of a proposition. The Bible tells us in Romans 8:11 that “the same spirit that raised Jesus from the dead quickens and gives life to our mortal bodies.” It is this same Holy Spirit that empowers the gifts of the spirit. The same Holy Spirit, by which we work miracles. By which we prophesy. It is the same Holy Spirit who transfigures our bodies. Why would it be strange that the same Holy Spirit is still in the business of raising the dead?

Now, maybe roadkill is a bit too extreme for some reading this. While I disagree, I can accept that some people feel that praying for animals to be raised from the dead is too much. But how many of those who think roadkill is too extreme have even prayed for a person who died? And how many other limitations are we going to place on when we decide to stand against death? Let me tell you the ones I most commonly see: If somebody is too old, they deserve to die. If we arbitrarily think the person might not want to return to life, we let them stay dead. If we think they have too many injuries or disabilities, we decide it’s OK for them to be dead. I would argue that we are far more comfortable with death than God ever intended. Far more cavalier about it. Far too accepting.

So what am I suggesting the standard should be? It’s actually extremely simple, doesn’t require special memorization, and is really straightforward to apply. The way we can know when we should reverse death is if it is present. It’s that simple. If death is there, we reverse it. Every time. Every situation. It doesn’t matter the age, the physical circumstances, what we think we arbitrarily believe the will of the deceased to be (none of which can be concretely tested by any reasonable prophetic standard and pass). There are no special provisos or side clauses that give us a way out. If death, loss, or destruction is present, it’s the job of a son of the Most High God to fix it.

But Michael, that’s a really high standard.

Yes, it is. What’s your point?

I’m going to let you in on a little secret: I didn’t make that standard up. Jesus did.

If somebody can show me, and I mean truly and unequivocally show and prove to me that there is a circumstance of death, loss or destruction that the shed blood of Jesus on the cross was not meant to solve, that the power of God was never intended to reverse, then I will back down on that standard. But they cannot and it’s impossible to prove that, because Jesus’s standard about life and death and His work on the cross is absolute and doesn’t leave room for compromise.

There is no “yes, but what if. . . “. Our job is to fix it. And yes, that’s going to get inconvenient at times. But that just means we need to get used to being inconvenienced.

As an RN, I currently work in an ICU. I am surrounded by more death now than I have been at any prior time in my nursing career. And I still pray for life in every situation even when it seems hopeless or pointless because Jesus didn’t give us any other standard. Jesus didn’t say “only pray for life if you think it will matter” or “when situations look really hopeless, it’s OK to just give up.” Jesus stood in front of the tomb of his friend who had been dead for multiple days and even then it still wasn’t too late. There is no time, situation, or circumstance in all creation where it is too late for Jesus to do something. That doesn’t mean outcomes always goes the way I want or expect them to that doesn’t mean I always receive the answer I am praying for. My failure to fully steward what Jesus accomplished says nothing about what Jesus accomplished and says a lot about my ability to steward it. But one thing I do know for certain is this: according to Jesus all death is an enemy, and we must live accordingly.

If you want to learn more about how to walk in resurrection power, pick up a copy of my book Faith to Raise the Dead and its sequel The Gospel of Life and Immortality.

Live Life Longer

As a nurse, I both have and overhear a large number of extremely random conversations on a weekly basis. I recently was in a room where a woman was talking about how she and others her age had lived long lives and how they need to make room for others. In other words, she was talking about how they all needed to die in order for their posterity to have space on the planet to live. Fortunately or unfortunately, she is absolutely wrong. I say it’s fortunate that she’s wrong because it means people don’t need to die to make room for other people to live. It’s unfortunate because she clearly doesn’t believe that. And we largely tend to receive the results of what we believe. As that saying goes, “if you think you can or think you can’t, you’re probably right.”

As I have continued to talk about life and immortality over the years, one of the major questions I get asked is that if everything I am saying about what Jesus accomplished on the cross is true, and that we were never meant to die, and that He took care of defeating death on the cross, then why do people still die? And it’s a fair question. But I think it largely goes back to what this woman was saying in believing that she needs to die as the means to exit the Earth in order to make room for other people to live. If we believe we have to die, then guess what: we probably will.

Science is only more recently becoming able to quantify things that the Bible has stated plainly for thousands of years— things such as “as a man thinks in his heart, so is he” (Proverbs 23:7). The Bible says it in a variety of ways, that ultimately what we behold and believe, we become. If we believe we have to die, then we will die. If we believe we get to live, then we will live. If we believe we are sinful then we will receive sin’s payment, which is death. If we believe we are righteous, then we receive the gift of righteousness, which is life. This principle doesn’t just touch on life and death, influences many other areas of life.

Overpopulation is not our problem on the Earth. Waste is. Poverty isn’t our problem. Waste is. Hunger really isn’t a problem. Waste and mismanagement are. Now, for any single one of those we could easily point to specific examples where they are, in fact, a problem right now, somewhere on the Earth. But my point is they don’t need to be. If we were to get rid of all of the corruption from every government in the world, we could probably solve world hunger in under six months. We have sufficient technology to desalinate the ocean to provide water for everyone all over the world. It would definitely take a lot of construction and planning, but the point is that it’s possible to do. The idea that we can’t do certain things or that we are incapable of certain things as far as providing food, water, or shelter for people is usually just a lie. On a local scale, it is definitely possible for there to be a temporary local hunger problem. When the storms hit North Carolina this past year, there was definitely a local problem. But a temporary local problem is not the same thing as saying that we are incapable of providing food worldwide. Not that the US is perfect by any means, but there are many times that the US has delivered food aid to other countries with starving populations and the leaders of that nation simply stockpiled the food as a means of control instead of distributing it to the people. At that point in time, corruption was the problem because the hunger issue could have been solved with the resources provided.

Lack and limitation mindsets will only ever yield us the same results that they’ve gotten us before: inability and incapacity. Quite often our problem isn’t that we lack something, it is that we have very firm beliefs in our lack and limitation. Sure, there may be lack in an immediate moment, but those who overcome are those who believe that they can overcome. Those who believe they can’t overcome tend to remain stuck in their problems.

I know that sometimes talking about life and immortality, living forever and never dying and never having an old and decrepit body can sound extremely impractical to people who are dealing with what most think of as real-world problems. But explain to me how death isn’t a real world problem and maybe I’ll believe you (hint: you can’t). The truth is, though, if we can believe the truth of the Bible, that we don’t have to die, maybe everything else that feels less-daunting than that will be believable too. Maybe when the Bible says that God has supplied all of our needs out of his immense wealth that we will actually begin to believe that and watch our needs and even our wants get met. Maybe when God says he has made us whole, he actually means for us to experience fullness in spirit, soul, and body. Maybe if we begin to believe that, we will see our bodies healed, our souls healed, and yes, even our spirits restored (while you may not be able to kill a spirit, you absolutely can damage one).

I want to encourage us today to believe for the limitless. To push the boundaries of our expectations beyond what we have been willing to expect before. The Bible says that God is “able to do exceedingly abundantly more than we can ask or think, according to the power at work with us . ..” (Ephesians 3:20). It is a conditional statement, which means that while God has limitless capacity, we have the ability to limit that capacity based on our beliefs and expectations. If we want to receive more, we need to believe more. I’m not talking about just working really hard in toil to believe. I am talking about transforming our mindsets to believe the truth that God has already been telling us because as we do that, we will experience the promises He has made to us.

Maybe believing in life and immortality is a bit much for you right now. Well then, maybe start by believing in a long life. And by long life, I don’t mean adding an extra five years, I mean adding an extra fifty. If the average age at death is in the 70s or 80s, and we know that some people live into their early hundreds, than realistically long life needs to extend beyond that, or it isn’t really long. It’s just the longer end of normal. If you don’t think you can believe for living forever, maybe start believing in experiencing constant divine health: that you never get sick and never get injured. Because in reality, if you never get sick or injured, and your body doesn’t experience decay, then you will never die. In fact, signs of aging will begin to reverse themselves as your body regenerates. I’m not saying you need to arrive there all at once, nor am I pretending I have either. What I can tell you, though, is that I very consistently have people tell me they think I am at least 10 years younger than I am. I personally believe that my long-held belief in life and immortality and the end of decay in the cosmos because of what Jesus did on the cross is responsible for my experience. I have been talking about this subject for the last decade and a half— and as I continue to renew my own mind to believe the truth, it seems only reasonable that my body would be starting to match that belief in an observable manner.

If you want to learn more about how to walk in this revelation of life, I encourage you to pick up a copy of my book The Gospel of Life and Immortality. In my book The Power of Impartation I also discuss some of the principles God has created in the cosmos that you can use to help apprehend the life God has already prepared for you in Christ Jesus. I also write regularly about the topics of inner healing and deliverance because the transformed soul is a major key for us to experience everything God has planned for us. If you want to learn more about how to do that, I encourage you to pick up a copy of my book Broken To Whole. And as always, I write on all of these subjects extensively so you can take a look at other articles I’ve written on this website as well.

Conditioned For Decay, Conditioning for Life

I was at church a few weeks ago when a friend of mine and I were discussing me selling an enclosed trailer I own. I mentioned that once I sell that trailer I won’t need to keep the Dodge Ram 2500 that I currently drive, and I can look at getting a newer/different vehicle. You see, the reason I initially bought this particular truck was *so* it could tow that trailer a number of years back before I moved to Austin. I then mentioned to my friend that it’s just as well that I sell the trailer and won’t need that specific truck soon because my truck is 30 years old and I don’t know how long it will last. On the drive home from church I was thinking about that conversation because I realized this was a perfect example of limitation thinking in my life, how I have been conditioned for decay, and need mental re-conditioning for life.

That’s kind of a vague series of statements, so what do I mean by all of that? A few weeks ago on social media I reposted an old article I wrote called “There Is No Such Thing As Normal Wear And Tear” which talks about how the children of Israel went through 40 years in the desert where their belongings didn’t decay or break down, and how under a better covenant we should be experiencing at least that if not significantly better. We have been conditioned by the patterns of this world and constantly socialized to believe in the power of death that we often don’t notice where we have given ourselves over to death-based thinking and the ways we have come into agreement with decay.

Re-conditioning for life begins with noticing our thought patterns—because many of our thoughts and beliefs are habitual, and if we don’t notice when we engage those habitual thoughts we won’t notice how and when to shift them in a different direction. I write about this in my book The Gospel of Life and Immortality, but we have been so indoctrinated by what I call the Worldwide Death Cult that we often have death-based thinking and language that we use regularly without realizing it. Some examples include “until death do us part” in our wedding vows, thinks like a “bucket list” which only makes sense if someone is planning to die, statements like “I’m dead” in common vernacular when we are saying that something is extremely funny. And these are just a few of the many. Food that is “to die for” is another one. Is the food really that good?

When we are able to recognize these phrases and habitual statements and the beliefs that underlie them, we can then shift our language. I don’t have a single “hill I will die on” when I believe something emphatically because I won’t be dying. Likewise, when I recognize that I have entered into agreement with death-based thinking and with the lie of limitation, it is important that I come out of agreement with that lie. For me, often I will verbalize that shift as a way of helping change my thought pattern.

To demonstrate this, let’s use my truck as an example. I might say “I break agreement with the lie that says my truck will break down and decay because it is old, and I come out of agreement with all decay-based thinking and with the lies of limitation and lack. I choose instead to believe the truth that as a son of the Most High God I have authority to release creation from decay. I command all rust, breakdown, and decay to reverse itself now in Jesus’ name. I release the power of regeneration over this truck right now in the name of Jesus and I command repair to all of its processes and parts right now!”

It’s not necessary to say certain specific words. This is just an example of how I pray in hopes that it is helpful to the reader to give you ideas of how you might choose to pray in a similar situation. One person might pray a much shorter prayer and command “Get fixed now in Jesus’ name!” and leave it at that. Someone else might pray even longer and specify which parts of the vehicle need what form of repair, etc. There isn’t a single right way to pray. There are a few wrong ones, however, and asking God “if it be your will” is definitely top of that list when praying for things He has already given us power and authority to fix. If you truly aren’t sure what God wants in a particular circumstance than praying for His kingdom to come and His will to be done in that circumstance as it is in heaven is never wrong. But in any situation where we are dealing with life and regeneration over death and decay, the only answer is life and that is, has been, and will always be His will. In any situation where we aren’t sure that’s God’s will, there is only a single remedy—to become convinced. The Father has already firmly expressed His will in this area in the person of Jesus, and that will never change. The great news about that is that it lets us know that we can always decree life in any situation, whether dealing with my truck body, with a human body, or with anything else.

We have been conditioned by the patterns of this world for decay, breakdown, and destruction, but it is time for us to undergo conditioning for abundant life! As we change our patterns of thinking, some things will come to us effortlessly. We will experience greater levels of health, energy, creativity, and more simply as a result of believing God’s truth about us and about all creation. We will experience greater prosperity, greater health in our relationships, and much more. Creation literally responds to our belief patterns, and as we shift ours to align with heaven, earth and all creation will shift itself to match. In music this is called entrainment, where with two slightly discordant musical notes, one note begins to match the other one until they are resonating in synchrony with one another. We are meant to become Life to creation so that it entrains to the divine pattern we release to it. There is a divine synchrony that is waiting to appear in our physiology that is unlocked by our belief patterns, and as we shift our beliefs into patterns of abundance and life we will not only unlock our own health and life but we will unlock the world around us into the freedom it has been longing for.

If you want to learn more about God’s plans for abundant life for you and your loved ones and help shift your beliefs accordingly, I encourage you to pick up a copy of my books The Gospel of Life and Immortality and Faith to Raise the Dead, as well as my friend Tommy Miller’s books Deathless and Transfigured. You may also want to check out Fiorella Giordano’s courses. All of them are good, but specifically the one called Becoming Goshen is very relevant to this topic.

You Will Regret Missing The Rapture

A few weeks before I moved from Austin, Tx to the New Philadelphia area of Ohio earlier this year, I somehow got into what was a confusing conversation for me with one of the nursing assistants in my hospital system. It was confusing for me largely because these days I am very far removed from the mainstream heaven-when-you-die rapture belief. I simply forget sometimes that some people are so entrenched in that belief system they either can’t or won’t consider anything else. I don’t even remember how the subject came up, but it ended up with her telling me that I was on “dangerous ground” by teaching people what the Bible explicitly states about life and immortality. And to top that off, I was informed that if I don’t believe in the rapture that not only will I miss it when it happens, but that I will regret it because I will be forced to be here for the Great Tribulation.

Unfortunately, the conversation devolved quite rapidly. I was surprised to discover she had never even heard of Preterism, much less Partial Preterism (views that deal with End-times beliefs from a different perspective than the typical Futurist belief), but ignorance is fine if you’re willing to listen to me explain what it is. Nobody knows everything, and we all have opportunities to learn new things. However, not only was everything I said falling on deaf ears, but that she was trying to paint me in this heretical-teacher-bound-for-judgment role, and I wasn’t having it. Am I a Fivefold Teacher? Yes. Do I need to be responsible with the things I teach and say? Yes. Do I attempt to do that precisely because I understand why and how it is important? Also yes. It is precisely because I understand the value of solid Christian teaching and how it has an impact on our lives that I write books and weekly articles and will launch The Kings of Eden Podcast this year. Hosea 4:6 tells us that “my people die/are destroyed for lack of knowledge.” Even in my job as a nurse, I see people who grow sick and on occasion die because of things they didn’t know or things they thought they knew but understood incorrectly. What we don’t know can and often does hurt us, and my heart is for everyone to live in the fullness and abundant life that Jesus provided for us, so I want to provide information and resources so people can access those things.

The funny thing to me is that in this conversation, while I was being told that I would miss out on the rapture and that she believed I was a false teacher, I was unphased by these things she was trying to firmly warn me about. In fact I told her I was “comfortable with that” when she told me that what I am teaching is fringe theology. Why? Because I am. It might be fringe now, but it will one day be mainstream, and as a forerunner, it’s my job to spread the word early.

The other thing this woman didn’t realize (nor do I think she would have understood if she did) is that decades ago when I still believed in the Rapture, I literally would pray and ask God to let me remain for the Tribulation so I could help people through it. You see, I’m pretty serious about this whole Life thing. Death is an enemy, it needs to be fully put down once and for all, the pain of the world must be healed, and the decay removed from the cosmos. And while that all might sound like big ideals, its literally what Jesus came to accomplish, and I think that nothing less than His full reward is appropriate.

So if Rapture-ready heaven-if-you-die theology isn’t it, what should we believe and why? We need to remember that death never has been our means of access to heaven—Jesus is. My book “The Gospel of Life and Immortality” lays out Jesus’s plan for us. The book title is taken from 2 Timothy 1:10-11 where Paul declares that the gospel he preached is one of life and immortality—life of ever-increasing quantity and quality. In addition to extensive scripture references to lay out where this message is all throughout the Bible, I include an entire chapter on the subject of death not being our means of access to heaven, as well as a chapter discussing end-times theology and what to do with it. I also highly recommend my friend Tommy Miller’s books “Deathless” and “Transfigured”. All three of these resources will help you have a deeper understanding of God’s plan for us that does not include death or a rapture. You might also check out the book Victorious Eschatology by Harold Eberle if you want a theological deep-dive into end-times/rapture stuff.

A Resurrection Mindset: Waking the Sleeper

My very good friend Kyle died on June 19, 2021 in a motorcycle accident. The entire situation was (and is) heartbreaking, and I did pray for resurrection. At the time of writing this he hasn’t returned back to life yet, but my job is to pray, not to decide the timing of things, so pray is what I do and I let God work out the rest of the details. I have said before that in almost every situation where I step out in faith to raise the dead God teaches me something whether someone returns to life or not, and this time was no different, albeit it was harder on my emotions than most other situations. The morning of Kyle’s funeral I had a dream that I want to share with you because it spoke to me a little differently about raising the dead than I had ever experienced before. In fact, the dream was so real that I recognize I wasn’t simply dreaming, but had a spiritual encounter with Kyle as he is now part of the Cloud of Witnesses (For those who are unfamiliar, I cover encounters with the Cloud of Witnesses in my book The Beginner’s Guide to Traveling in the Spirit). This encounter challenged me with the idea that having a resurrection mindset is really about learning to wake the sleeper, not raise the dead. I want to share with you what happened and what I have learned from it.

In the physical I was staying in Portland at a friend’s house in one of their guest rooms. I had lived with them for multiple months while we made our family move to Texas and this had been “my room” during that time, so the room itself was very familiar room to me. This matters only because in the dream encounter I began in this same room.

In the dream, I woke up laying on my bed at my friends’ house where I was physically staying the night. It was morning, and Kyle’s body was on the bed on my right, and his wife was standing at the end of the bed. I reached over and lightly nudged him to wake him up—the same way I might if I was waking someone who was sleeping. And he woke up. It was so incredibly easy—like I imagine dead raising is supposed to be, and like the Bible seems to suggest it was for Jesus.

I was overjoyed when he woke/returned, and somehow Kyle and I were now in this large building, almost like the middle of a rotunda of a massive building, complete with huge pillars. The building seemed like it was old but didn’t feel old. Standing there with Kyle next to me, I called Tyler Johnson (founder of the Dead Raising Team) on my cell to tell him that the DRT had another successful resurrection, and then Kyle and I hung out for a while. It was really nice.

And then I woke up.

It took me a minute to realize that what I had experienced before was a dream encounter. You have to understand that because in the dream I was laying in the same place on the same bed in the same room that my body actually was physically, and the dream had felt so real, it was very disorienting. And, as one can imagine, when I realized that Kyle was not in fact next to me and alive because it had been a dream encounter, I began to cry.

While there are a number of potential takeaways from this encounter, I want to focus on a key lesson I believe the Lord wanted to teach me. The dream showed me something I suspect is meant to be a reality for us, and gives me a new target for my faith—that raising the dead should be as simple as waking someone up from sleep. There is scriptural precedent for this concept (not that precedent is required, but it’s still there nonetheless) found in something Jesus said, as well as some things the apostle Paul mentioned:

— When Jesus raised Jairus’s daughter from the dead, he mentioned that she was not dead, but rather she was sleeping. (Matthew 9:18-26; Mark 5:21-43 Luke 8:40-56)
— When Jesus spoke of Lazarus to his disciples, He initially stated that Lazarus was sleeping, but later had to clarify for them that Lazarus’s body was dead because the disciples didn’t understand (John 11:11-14)
— In Ephesians 5:14 Paul writes, “This is why it is said: ‘Wake up, sleeper, rise from the dead, and Christ will shine on you.’”
— Paul states in 1 Thessalonians 4:15-17 that those who have died are asleep, and they will wake when Christ comes again.
— In 1 Corinthians 15:6 Paul wrote about Jesus appearing to the disciples and again referred to those disciples who at the time of him writing the letter had died as being “asleep”. He goes on to reference this idea of death being sleep again in the same chapter in v18, 20, and 51 as well.

Even in the Old Testament we find this concept:
— Job speaks of death being a place where he would finally get sleep (Job 3:11-17)
— Daniel 12:2 says, “Multitudes who sleep in the dust of the earth will awake: some to everlasting life, others to shame and everlasting contempt.”

When we understand the our spirits are eternal and immortal, it brings clarity to some of this. When we incarnate into the earth and our spirit inhabits a body, I believe it is at that moment that something of the interaction between spirit and body births the soul and the soul realm. When someone dies, the body is clinically dead, the eternal spirit is still alive, and the soul is in an unclear state that I suggest is probably the part that is asleep—unable to function properly until it is rejoined with the body. That specific part about the soul being what sleeps is supposition, but the Bible is incredibly clear that those who die do enter some degree of sleep-like-state, and it does not expound in-depth on what that looks like or what portion of the human being enters that sleep-state, so educated guesses are what we are left with.

Now, where this matters for us is that if we are praying to raise someone from the dead then on some level we need to change our view of death from being this massive mountain we have to overcome, and instead simply acknowledge that the person has entered a transitional state of “sleep”—and it is our job to go wake them. I don’t pretend to have it all worked out as far as what that looks like, but I do believe that God was showing me something of importance during this dream encounter. What difference in results would we see if we learn to shift our mindset from seeing death as a mountain to climb and instead we view it as a defeated foe who can at very best put someone to sleep for a bit. And if all death can do is put someone to sleep, then all we have to do is wake them back up and we’ve solved the problem. 1 Corinthians 15:25-27a says of Jesus, “For he must reign until he has put all his enemies under his feet. The last enemy to be destroyed is death. For he ‘has put everything under his feet.’” Jesus is the head, we are the Body (1 Cor 12:27, Eph 5:23, 29), and as such if we put everything under His feet then we, the Body of Christ, are all collectively taking dominion over it and placing it under our feet as well.

According to Hebrews 6:2, raising the dead is a foundational teaching of the faith, so I believe it is important we not only have a clear theology on what this looks like, but also practical application—a way to actually “do the stuff” and not just talk about it. To that end, I have written a book series called the Abundant Life series, of which the first book is Faith to Raise the Dead. This book is a shortcut—and that is precisely the point. This doesn’t have to be hard for everyone, and my goal in writing it is to make this a far easier journey for you than it has been for me. Faith to Raise the Dead will give the reader a great deal of wisdom and insight on raising the dead. It lays out what the Bible says on the subject, and answers many common questions and concerns. In some places I share a few perspectives and/or thought processes for the reader to consider on matters that don’t have one clear and specific biblical answer, but even things that don’t have clear-cut answers are discussed. At the end of the book there is also a list of scriptures that one can reference to encourage their faith and, if someone prefers to pray the scriptures when praying, that appendix can be used for that as well. The goal was to write a comprehensive book that prepares the reader to go out and raise the dead—and I believe I accomplished that. I encourage you to pick up a copy of the book today. While my friend Kyle has not yet returned, I believe that with the resources this book holds, the future can be different for another family—and maybe you will be the next one to give someone back to their family, brought back to life by the power of Jesus Christ.

Additional Resources:

Faith to Raise the Dead by Michael King

Practical Keys to Raise the Dead by Michael King (excerpts from FTRTD, can be read in about 30 minutes)

How to Raise the Dead by Tyler Johnson

The Dead Are Raised: Unearthing Lost Resurrection Stories by Tyler Johnson

Saints Who Raised The Dead: True Stories of 400 Resurrection Miracles by Father Albert Hebert

The Dead Raising Team

A New Energy System

A number of years ago I listened to a conference recording from an event at Seattle Revival Center in which one of the speakers essentially prayed for everyone to become disconnected from the energy matrix of our universe. At first, this prayer was confusing as I didn’t understand its purpose. However, as I pondered it further, things became clearer. It seems strange to think that we would want to disconnect from the energy within the cosmos—that of the sun, moon, and stars, as their various energies all influence our lives on both obvious and subtle levels. The goal behind this prayer? To govern over the cosmos instead of being ruled by it.

The concept that the cosmos is governing over us isn’t that difficult to find even in the Bible. If we look in Genesis 1:14-19 we see God creating what the Bible refers to as “lights”, which in this passage reference what we understand to be the sun, moon, and stars, and Genesis 1 says that they were given authority to govern over the day, night, and to separate light and darkness. And yet, while God gave those cosmic forces authority to govern certain aspects of creation, we as sons and daughters of God are not meant to be ruled over by celestial bodies. Certainly we experience a certain measure of their rhythms through times and seasons, but we are meant to be able to transcend those rhythms, not to be governed over by them.

This is one of the reasons why astrology is an unhealth practice for the follower of Jesus. If we are not ruled over by the various celestial bodies, then it would be impossible for astrology to work. After all, astrology is generally based on the premise that our position in the universe and the energies from the various stars relative to our position influence the day to day events of our lives, and particularly this is governed on a personal basis on our individual position in the cosmos when we were born. After all, what we think of as a static location as a planet in the cosmos is roughly the equivalent of a tiny small spinning ball bearing on a rotating top that is whirling around a whirlpool in the bed of a truck that is making concentric ovals as it navigates the parking lot of a circular stadium. In other words, nothing about our movement through the cosmos is static or “in one place” and even on a scientific level it is possible that the gravitational forces of these various stellar bodies influence us each in some small way. And while an individual star might not make that much of a difference, tens of thousands of stars added together could reasonably have more considerable effects. And yet, we aren’t meant to be governed by those forces, but rather as sons and daughters of God we are meant to rule and reign with Jesus Christ over all spiritual and cosmic forces.

The discussion here isn’t really about astrology, but about how to disconnect ourselves from the energy matrix that astrology works under. After all, the reason astrology works is precisely because humanity has historically been governed by the stellar bodies in question and the spirits behind them. As sons and daughters of God whose job it is to release the cosmos from its bondage to decay (Romans 8:20), we cannot expect to significantly influence the current system if we are bound by its rules and regulations.

Hebrews 1:3a tells us much about the energy system we live under, and there is much we can learn from it. It states, “The Son is the radiance of God’s glory and the exact representation of his being, sustaining all things by his powerful word.” This verse is pregnant with meaning. First, the son is the radiance, or light energy that comes from God. Second, it says he sustains everything, which means to continually keep things alive on an ongoing basis. Third, He does so by his “powerful word.” A word is a frequency or vibration or energy. If we put this all together, it basically means that the powerful being of light energy who releases this power from God keeps everything in all creation alive continually by the ongoing emanations of energy that He emits. John 1:2 also tells us that Jesus is the Living Word who is the fabric of all creation, and from Him all life is derived. Acts 17:28a says it this way, “For in him we live and move and have our being.” If for some reason Jesus were to cease emanating His glory into all creation, then we would instantly stop existing. Science has proven that all matter vibrates, but scientists have posited that it is possible to reach a temperature so cold that matter ceases to vibrate. When water freezes, we consider it solid, but it forms a still-vibrating crystalline matrix. At absolute zero, a temperature equivalent to -273.15 C or –459.67°F, some believe it possible to cease all vibration, but I find this improbable. Why? The life-energy of Jesus sustains all things, so I find it highly improbable that someone would be able to negate that life energy via technology that exists and works because of that same life energy.

Ultimately, what all this talk about vibrations and the energy of the cosmos means for us is that we need to be conscious of the fact that our goal is to live outside of the constraints of the energy of this realm. In Genesis 1, God created light on the first day (Genesis 1:3), but it was only on the fourth day (Genesis 1:14) where God created the sun and moon and stars. We have been living under the power of the created light of Genesis 1:14 when we need to live from the creative light of Genesis 1:3.

If we look back at the garden of Eden in Genesis 2:8-9, we see that all the fruit bearing trees were given for food, but the tree of life was the one that was designed to give life. This means that the rest of the food God provided wasn’t meant to provide us with the ability to survive, but rather for our pleasure. In fact, according to Strongs Lexicon, the word “Eden” means “pleasure” or “delight.”

God is bringing this revelation of His abundant life forward at this time, and as He does so, I believe we will learn how to disconnect from the created energy/created light system and tap more deeply into the creative light and creative energy that proceeds directly forth from His mouth. After all, Jesus himself said “Man shall not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of God”. There is a promise given to us in a few places in scripture where we will not require food or drink to sustain ourselves. That doesn’t mean we can’t or won’t, but that as I mentioned above. it is for our pleasure and not for sustenance. In Matthew 4:4 Jesus quoted a verse out of Deuteronomy to Satan saying, “Man shall not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of God.” Jesus already knew that it is possible to live on substances other than food. In fact, He recognized in John 6:51 that it is the “bread that comes down from heaven” that we are to eat instead

If this subject of two systems of energy, one that puts us under subjection to itself and another we are meant to use to govern over the one one is of interest to you, or if you want to hear more about how we can live unbound from the energy of this world system that requires us to consume food in order to live, or if you simply want to go deeper in the mysteries of all of the promises of God, I encourage you to pick up a copy of my book The Gospel of Life and Immortality. I devote an entire chapter to discussing this topic of energy, light, and how man can live from the Word of God as a higher fuel source for our bodies. You can also dive into my friend Fiorella Giordano’s course on the New Creation Continuum which discusses related matters. Be blessed!

Eternal Life in the Age to Come

In Mark 10:29-30 Jesus said some pretty spectacular things. “Truly I tell you,” Jesus replied, “no one who has left home or brothers or sisters or mother or father or children or fields for me and the gospel will fail to receive a hundred times as much in this present age: homes, brothers, sisters, mothers, children and fields—along with persecutions—and in the age to come eternal life.”

One of the things I think we sometimes forget is to look at things in context. Sure, I suppose we could say that the “age to come” is in heaven after people die. God has lots of rewards stored up for us in heaven, so that statement would make a lot of sense at face value. The problem is with the last phrase Jesus uttered–“and in the age to come eternal life.” When Jesus made that statement he had yet to go to the cross, die, and rise again. At that time he and all of his disciples were technically still in the Old Testament Age. It was only after his death, resurrection, ascension, and I would even argue another ten days later on Pentecost when Holy Spirit came in power that the new age began. Thus, when Jesus was promising his disciples they would live forever, I don’t think He was just saying that they could live forever in heaven after they died. That would contradict all of the other things He had told them previously. No, Jesus was saying that after he rose and destroyed the power of death over their lives, they could have eternal immortal life free of death in every form.

Am I saying we are already living in the age to come? Not necessarily—otherwise how would they have had time to receive one hundred times more of what they have given up in the present age? However, I am also not saying it isn’t what Jesus meant. What I am quite clear on is that we have relegated many of the promises of God (and most especially those regarding eternal life) to a far off heaven-when-you-die reality instead of a Kingdom-here-and-now version that Jesus spoke of. In fact, Jesus prayed in the Lord’s Prayer for “your Kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it [already is] in heaven” for a reason. It wasn’t so we could jet out of here and go somewhere else, but so we would transform earth and make it like heaven, ushering in the age that has not yet come because earth hasn’t become like heaven yet.

This is a serious challenge for many because it flies in the face of so many things we have been taught. And yet, those things we have been taught often fly in the face of what Jesus directly said and demonstrated. Jesus taught that we are not supposed to die. He taught that if we die we are supposed to get raised from the dead and keep living. He explained publicly that while the forefathers of the Jewish people ate manna, literal bread from heaven, and still died, that those who ate of Him, the bread that came down from heaven, that they would not die.

In all honesty, a single article like this doesn’t have sufficient length to explain what Jesus was talking about, nor to answer all of the questions that arise when opening this subject up. That’s why I’ve written a book that discusses the subject quite extensively. The Gospel of Life and Immortality is a one-of-a-kind book that begins by explaining how God led me into this particular perspective of the gospel message. The second chapter is dedicated entirely to looking at what Jesus taught on the subject so we can be incredibly clear that this is in fact the true gospel message and not “something else,” and from there we look at the Old Testament, Paul’s teachings, and much, much more. Toward the end the book covers very practical considerations, answers common questions not otherwise answered in previous chapters, and gives some practical steps we can take to walk this out in our lives. If this subject has gotten you curious, questioning, or hungry to hear more, click the title to pick up a copy of The Gospel of Life and Immortality today!