(Reprinted from 2009)
This is not more about that house.
I went to the new GI Joe movie yesterday and discovered something a little interesting, a little exciting, a little scary, a little revolutionary… and a lot thoughtful.
I won’t tell you the story line in case you want to see the movie yourself. But the incredibly beautiful “not-too-distant future” locales, sets, scenes, and especially the super high-tech technology were – there’s no other way to say it – familiar.
One of the early images I received of heaven (after the house, the city, the worship!) was in response to a question I had asked about the landscape. The beautiful residential areas, of which there were multitudes in a multitude of cultures and eras, all seemed to be one or two-story at most. The city had skyscrapers, but even before I began to really examine the city and its functions, I think I asked the question about below-ground.
Is there anything underneath the houses, grounds, and city?
Oh, yes. Is there ever. There is a tremendous depth of technologically advanced construction through and through. Arts. Research. Galleries. Laboratories. Offices. Every imaginable type and scope and purpose and reason and goal and function and appearance, and some I would never have imagined.
It would take hours to try to describe what I saw, the people I saw and the activities they were involved in. Again and again, I was reminded – everything that exists on earth was conceived, designed, constructed and used in heaven first. And heaven is a physical material place, not imaginary. A different dimension but just as real.
The answer to that simple question was anything but simple.
Like a tourist I was escorted through miles and miles and miles of hallways, level after level after level. This has happened several times now, sometimes just to show me, to demonstrate or explain what is happening in a particular area.
Like the holographic history laboratory, a combination arts and science development project where students can participate in accurate-to-the-last-detail holographic reenactments of historical events. It’s up and running but still being developed and improved, with people participating as both scientists, artists, guinea pigs and students.
Would you like to be present at the wedding where Jesus turned the water into wine? Or perhaps present for Lincoln’s Gettysburg address? Or at his elbow when he wrote it?
Requests were taken from people for specific historical holographic scenarios and if deemed appropriate or practical or not redundant, then they were eventually created. All the historical records are available to go by – there are massive archives and libraries and museums, every medium and format. Recreating the holographic accounts creates another level of history for study, both by historians and students.
Observers of these scenarios can actually enter and walk around in the locale, see the people and places up close and “personal,” although of course they don’t interact with these actors and can’t actually take part in the event themselves. Still, it’s a very compelling way to learn.
Then there’s the research laboratories into the nuclear physic properties of sound and color. Color has sound and different textures of colors have different sounds. Yellow paint on a flat metal surface has different sound qualities when stroked than yellow dye on a sweatshirt or the grown-in red of a tomato skin. And the force and type of touch or stroke creates different sounds, of course – but why is that important, or useful to study? I didn’t ask and may not have been able to understand the answer, if I had asked.
Sound also has texture. Sound produced on a single violin string or a layer of tissue paper will have different texture, different dimensions. Texture is the wrong word but I don’t know what would be the right word, although I can see the difference in my mind’s eye.
It doesn’t mean pitch or tone or wave-length, it’s something else entirely, but I have no idea how to describe it really. These are concepts I can’t quite grasp. But large underground laboratory facilities are full of people studying, experimenting, developing practical applications of their research. (There are many such facilites above ground, also, some of which need the air, sky and space for their work.)
I asked about the people who live and work underground – don’t they miss the air and sky? Do they rotate, working sometimes underneath and sometimes above ground?
Some people never really experienced the air and sky above ground. They died too young. For them, it really doesn’t matter where they live and work. What matters to them is serving Father God, doing whatever assignment he needs them to do, learning, exploring, developing, growing, being part of his plan.
On one visit “downstairs,” I wondered just how far down we could go, and how exactly were people traveling up and down, side to side? We got there in an instant, without any sense of traveling, so I was curious. Holy Spirit seemed amused at some of my questions, but he’s very patient.
I have no idea of the distance down. A long way, is all the answer I got to that. But people travel by stepping into a tube, whether in a city building or underground. No elevator. They could get to wherever they want to go by spiritual means, simply thinking. But that seems to be the exception, not the rule. It’s a question of courtesy more than ability, considering they still have to know exactly where their destination is and exit the tube nearest that. It’s rude to simply appear somewhere without notice, unless you have no need to give notice, for instance if there’s no-one there to greet or interrupt.
One place that truly interested me was a music lab. Many instruments from many ages were stored in one section, sort of like a museum or library. Others were in constant use, being played and changed and modified. One particular instrument that I saw was similar to a piano, but the strings were all external, contained in a tall, broad frame in front of the keyboard. There were many more octaves and strings than on any grand piano I’ve ever seen, and the sound had a richness I’ve never heard. I don’t know how striking the keys made the strings sound, whether it was wireless technology or something else.
Another keyboard instrument was a crystal pipe organ. All the pipes were of crystal, not metal or wood. The keyboard was not much different from any earthly pipe organ I’ve played before, but I didn’t play it. I just listened to it being played by someone else. Gorgeous, and quite different from anything I’ve heard before.
There were others that I have no name for, horns of metals and woods, stringed instruments, bells, some brand new, some very old. And lots of people everywhere. Some were composers, discussing ideas for compositions with the musicians who would be performing them. I felt so completely out of my depth!
The odd thing as I look back – no one seemed surprised at my presence, and all of them seemed very welcoming. I believe any one of them would have stopped what he or she was doing and answered all my questions, had I not had such a competent guide along with me (the Holy Spirit or Jesus, one of them was always escorting me).
My questions about the underground portion of heaven haven’t all been asked and answered yet, but many have.
In the GI Joe movie, there was a huge super high-tech military complex under the ice cap at the north pole. Under the ocean. As I watched the movie, I compared it to what the Lord had showed me on the bottom of the ocean in heaven. Yes, oceans in heaven. While the undersea movie set was beautiful and the movie-makers had done a wonderful job designing it, in the story it was being used for a deadly purpose.
The undersea complex I saw in heaven is just as high-tech and more. But its purposes are very different. Maybe I’ll try to describe that another day.
It was a fascinating experience, watching that movie and seeing just how familiar all those locations looked. I had to wonder about the writers and the builders. How much of heaven have they themselves seen? Maybe without even knowing what they were looking at…
What is Tim doing? I asked the Lord one recent bedtime. It was just a random question before going to sleep; I don’t ask that every night any more, like I did a year ago. I got an instant answer and then a little explanation to go with it.
Joshua was a warrior. He spent many years with Moses, serving first as his aide de camp and eventually named as his successor.
Joshua was a warrior. He spent many years with Moses, serving first as his aide de camp and eventually named as his successor.
Speaking of heaven 