Genesis 1: 26 – 28: And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth. So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them. And God blessed them, and God said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth.
Genesis 2: 7: And the LORD God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul.
Our angel or theophany in Heaven is a most fascinating subject that can be plainly understood by looking at what the scriptures tell us about it. To most, if not all of us, it is a subject that may seem quite new and very fresh; this is because we bypassed our angel and came from attribute to flesh, having never had the experience of living in our angelic body, which is why we may be so surprised to learn that we have a heavenly body already in existence and waiting for us to enter it.
Every son and daughter of God has an angel or theophany in Heaven, but because we came into this world by the sex birth which produced a fallen body, our minds are therefore darkened to the reality that there is a perfect positive of ourselves in the next world. What we shall see however is that the scriptures contain many wonderful truths on this sublime thought of how the flesh body we currently live in is only the negative of our perfection that exists over yonder.
Before the Bride could be taken up into Glory at the translation, and before the seven seals were opened, God took the prophet beyond the Curtain of Time on May 8, 1960, and let him walk amongst the saints in the Region of the Blessed (the sixth dimension). This experience of our prophet was allowed of God because there were things written of under the fifth seal where he needed to actually visit the next world in order to interpret the scripture correctly. What he learned was that not only are there Jewish souls under the Brazen Altar of the Outer Court in the heavenly sanctuary, but that the theophanies of the elect are under the Golden Altar of the Holy Place.
Before we go any further into this subject, we must firstly establish what a theophany actually is so as to fully grasp the scope of what we are looking at. A theophany is a manifestation of God in whatever form He would choose to make Himself known. All throughout the Bible we read of God’s theophonic manifestations. He appeared to Abraham as a King called “Melchizedek” in Genesis 14, and appeared to Abraham again in the form of three men in Genesis 18. When Abraham saw these three men, he did not address them in the plural as “my lords,” but addressed them in the singular as “my lord.” Abraham by revelation knew that these three men were a triune expression of the one God.
As we progress further through the Bible, we see how God appeared to Moses as the burning bush in Exodus 3; then Moses saw God’s feet in Exodus 24, and saw the back parts of God in Exodus 33. God led Israel through the wilderness as the Pillar of Cloud by day, and as the Pillar of Fire by night. Then He appeared as the Captain of the Host to Joshua, He appeared as the Angel Gabriel to Daniel, He appeared in the form of a hand to write on the wall of Belshazzar’s palace in Daniel 5, and appeared in the form of a dove in Matthew 17. All of these examples (and others) were theophonic appearances of God and were not limited to His appearing only in the form of a man.
The prophet speaks most clearly about the theophany in the message “Who is this Melchisedec?” preached on February 21, 1965. In this message he makes a striking statement, saying that we came to the earth like Adam did, from attribute to the flesh. At first glance this would imply that Adam bypassed his theophany, but that is not so, because the term theophany encompasses much more than just a Word body that resembles the flesh. We tend to think so narrowly about the theophany and limit it to being just a Spoken Word celestial body (much like the sex-born terrestrial body) because of the prophet’s experience beyond the Curtain of Time when he saw the saints in their heavenly bodies. Consequentially, whenever we hear the term “theophany,” the image of a person in their perfection is what springs to mind first.
But in Genesis 1: 1 – 2, we learn that God created the physical universe, and when He did so, it was the Spirit of God that moved. Now in what form was God when He created all things? To answer this question we will look at what Paul says in Colossians 1: 15 – 17, speaking about Jesus: Who is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of every creature: For by him were all things created, that are in heaven, and that are in earth, visible and invisible, whether they be thrones, or dominions, or principalities, or powers: all things were created by him, and for him: And he is before all things, and by him all things consist. From this we learn that it was Jesus who created the universe, and the form He was in when He created all things is called “the Word” in John 1: 1 – 3. The prophet in the message taught us that Jesus as the Word was in the form of the Pillar of Fire when He created all things, so Jesus was Theophany-Spirit before He appeared as a theophany body. As the Pillar of Fire who created all things, Jesus could remember His existence in Theophany-Spirit form, and spoke of it in John 17: 5 when He prayed: And now, O Father, glorify thou me with thine own self with the glory which I had with thee before the world was.
The theophanies of God’s sons and daughters rotated out of Melchizedek (Jesus as the Pillar of Fire) before the foundation of the world and are collectively called the sons of God that shouted for joy in Job 38: 7, and are the angels before the Throne worshipping the Lamb in Revelation 5: 11. Although our theophanies rotated out of Melchizedek, yet our attribute or soul remained locked-up inside of Elohim, and would not be released from Him until we came into this world via the sex birth. That is why the prophet said that we bypassed our theophany, because the soul never lived in its angel before coming into flesh.
Adam and Jesus were the only two who did not bypass their theophany, but came from thought, to Word, to flesh. The question would then arise as to why we bypassed our theophany and Adam did not. This is in fact very simple to answer. Adam did not bypass his theophany because he was to foreshadow Jesus Christ (the second Adam). In Adam was a mystery of what Jesus would do for us much later on when He came to flesh. To be able to truly understand and appreciate what Jesus accomplished for us, we would have to see the mystery of Christ in Adam, so then Adam had to come the same way that Jesus did, from thought, to Word, to flesh. God wanted to express His manifold attributes to His children, and He knew that there would be a Fall and that all of His children would enter a flesh body by the sex birth, so that in their fallen state they could experience the redeeming love of God, and what it was like to be lost, found, and restored.
Because we bypassed our celestial existence and came directly into fallen flesh, we have no conscious memory of being with the Father in Heaven (our minds are darkened to that), whereas Adam in his flesh body was able to remember his glorious celestial existence before he came to flesh. Unlike us whose consciousness began in Time when we came into flesh as human babies, Adam’s consciousness began way back in Eternity. Perhaps as a little side note here, it would be fitting to mention that after the prophet visited the saints beyond the Curtain of Time, he was able to remember what it was like to have entered into his theophonic body. But for us, because our soul came into a fallen body, and because we have not had the same “crossing over” experience as did the prophet (and Paul [2 Corinthians 12: 1 – 4]), the spirit of our flesh cannot remember past the natural life.
It is most important to be very clear about how Adam was first created. Adam’s celestial existence was as a theophany spirit-man, it was not as a theophany body. Thus when the prophet implied that Adam bypassed his theophany, what he is really getting at is that Adam was created as a conscious spirit-man, but he did not live in a theophonic body. Adam and Jesus were exactly the same in how they came into existence. Both were in spirit form first before they entered a body of flesh in this world. As Jesus was a conscious Spirit-Man or Theophany-Spirit in the form of “the” Pillar of Fire, so Adam too was a conscious spirit-man or theophany-spirit existing in very much the same way as “a” pillar of fire. For it must be remembered that we stated earlier how that all the theophanies of God’s sons and daughters rotated out of Melchizedek or Jesus when He was the Pillar of Fire. Thus those little licks of fire that spun out of Him then formed into the angelic bodies of the saints, but Adam lived as a conscious spirit lick of fire first, and would not enter into his theophany body or angel until he died at the age of 930.
When God called Abraham, He promised that Abraham’s faith seed would go from the dust to the stars (Genesis 13: 16; Genesis 15: 5), in other words, from a terrestrial state to a celestial state. Then when Abraham met Melchizedek in Genesis 14, he got to see a celestial or theophanic body standing before him; he got to see a body like what he should have come into if there had not been a Fall in the beginning. Melchizedek was Jesus having en-morphed (changed form) from Theophany-Spirit as the Pillar of Fire when He created the universe to being a theophany body that looked like a man when He stood before Abraham.
Because our theophany already exists in Heaven and is waiting for us to enter into it, then it shows that theophanies are not being created or coming into existence when a believer dies. That kind of thinking is flawed because it does not match what the scriptures actually say. Paul makes this abundantly clear for us in 2 Corinthians 5: 1 – 2: For we know that if our earthly house of this tabernacle were dissolved, we have a building of God, an house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens. For in this we groan, earnestly desiring to be clothed upon with our house which is from heaven: When the natural body is born, there is a soul waiting to enter it, and when the natural body dies, there is a theophany already prepared to receive the soul, thus the soul of a believer is never in a disembodied state.
In looking at the life of Jesus in the flesh, we learn that He was aligned with His theophany because He came into this world by a sinless birth; in other words, he was not born by sex, so he did not have a sinful nature. If Jesus’ sinless birth allowed Him to be aligned with His theophany, then it must take another birth for us who are born by sin to be aligned with our theophany. The second birth that we all need is the rebirth, via the process of justification, sanctification, and the Spirit baptism in order to be connected with our heavenly representation. Jesus taught the importance of the new birth in John 3: 1 – 8: There was a man of the Pharisees, named Nicodemus, a ruler of the Jews: The same came to Jesus by night, and said unto him, Rabbi, we know that thou art a teacher come from God: for no man can do these miracles that thou doest, except God be with him. Jesus answered and said unto him, Verily, verily, I say unto thee, Except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God. Nicodemus saith unto him, How can a man be born when he is old? can he enter the second time into his mother’s womb, and be born? Jesus answered, Verily, verily, I say unto thee, Except a man be born of water and of the Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God. That which is born of the flesh is flesh; and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit. Marvel not that I said unto thee, Ye must be born again. The wind bloweth where it listeth, and thou hearest the sound thereof, but canst not tell whence it cometh, and whither it goeth: so is every one that is born of the Spirit.
In God instructing Adam to multiply and replenish the earth, it reveals to us the manner in which we were supposed to come to flesh. We were meant to come from thought, to Word, and then enter into glorified flesh by the Spoken Word. Adam was supposed to have called us into flesh by the creative power of the Spoken Word proceeding forth from his lips, and that fruitful reproduction of the human race would have been a spiritual multiplication by Spoken Word creation, not by the sex act, which is the animal law of reproduction, and can only produce a fallen flesh man disconnected from his theophany and born outside the Kingdom of God.
This world in which our bodies live is a Curtain of Time (a veil) made up of three dimensions (Light, Matter, and Time), but furthermore, this sex-born body which our soul lives in, it is a curtain of time (a veil) too. The theophany cannot come into a sex-born body, because when it comes into flesh, it is not going to be bound or restricted by the limitations of a fallen body. Because Jesus was not born by sex, He was connected to His theophany and was not limited as we are in our bodies of fallen sinful flesh. Jesus did not have to deal with a veil or barrier that kept Him from knowing the will of the Father and from seeing and knowing what was happening in the unseen world.
Because the gene of God in our soul came into a body born by sex, it now by default lives behind this curtain or veil of fallen flesh, so that the supernatural cannot be seen nor experienced. But the new birth was established by God and made available to us in order that we might come into a higher realm of living in this world. The new birth is how the fleshly curtain of time is gotten out of the way by dying to self so that we can start walking by faith and be ministered to by the Spirit of God.
Matthew 18: 10 – 14: Take heed that ye despise not one of these little ones; for I say unto you, That in heaven their angels do always behold the face of my Father which is in heaven. For the Son of man is come to save that which was lost. How think ye? if a man have an hundred sheep, and one of them be gone astray, doth he not leave the ninety and nine, and goeth into the mountains, and seeketh that which is gone astray? And if so be that he find it, verily I say unto you, he rejoiceth more of that sheep, than of the ninety and nine which went not astray. Even so it is not the will of your Father which is in heaven, that one of these little ones should perish.
God condescended to the earth as Jesus and became one of us by entering into flesh via the virgin birth. Jesus was the Son of Man and the Chief Shepherd whose earthly existence was to save the lost sheep that had gone astray, because each of these little ones had an angel in Heaven. It was not the angels of the little ones that were lost, but that the little ones themselves had gone astray in a world of sin because of their first birth. These little ones did not know that they have an angel in Heaven, and if Jesus had not come down to save and restore them, then their angel would be without a body, because the theophany is not complete until it comes back to the earth and unites with the flesh to form a glorified body.
Eve was the first sheep to go astray when she fell by listening to the Serpent who beguiled and seduced her. Adam as a shepherd-husband then went looking for his lost wife, calling out her name as he searched for her. This was a shadow of Jesus as the Chief Shepherd who came down looking for us, calling out our names from the Lamb’s section of the Book of Life. The Book contains only so many names because the Father has only so many sheep, but because they were lost by their fallen sexual birth, then the Chief Shepherd had to descend with the open Book containing the names in order to find them. This scene is so beautifully depicted in Revelation 10 where the Mighty Angel is seen descending from Heaven with an open Book in His hand to call the names of the elected ones, those little ones or lost sheep that had gone astray.
Next, we will look at the nation of Israel and how its early history perfectly illustrates our thought of bypassing the theophany and being born outside of the Kingdom.
Canaan was the land of Israel’s fathers Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and was given to them by God as their inheritance. The children of Israel were supposed to have been born in Canaan, but Israel went astray when Jacob and his family went down into Egypt in the time of the great famine. After Joseph died, a new Pharaoh arose who did not know Joseph nor had respect toward the children of Israel, thus they became captives in Egypt and were put to work as slaves to build up Pharaoh’s kingdom.
Moses was a prophet-shepherd who was sent by God to bring Israel back to their inheritance because they had gone astray. As all of Israel was supposed to have been born in Canaan, the land of their inheritance, so we as God’s sons and daughters were supposed to have been born in Eden by Spoken Word creation. But like Israel, we were born outside of Eden because of the Fall when Adam and Eve went astray, thus we were born as slaves to sin in a world dead in sins and trespasses.
When Moses came to find the lost sheep of Israel and deliver them, he killed the Passover lamb; and when the blood of that lamb was shed, a way was made for Israel to go back to the land of their inheritance. So when Jesus came to the earth, He who was the Word in the beginning then had to become flesh, because God could not die as a Spirit. It was blood that caused the Fall, so God had to become flesh and blood by a new creation to redeem fallen man and bring him from flesh back to the Word.
Jesus was the Great Prophet-Shepherd, but also was the Lamb of God who died for our redemption, that we by the new birth could go back to the inheritance or celestial body that we originally bypassed. The Angel of God who led Moses and Israel from Egypt to Canaan, is the same Holy Spirit that is leading us who the Lamb died for through the process of justification (the Red Sea), sanctification (the wilderness), all the way back into Canaan, to the Holy Ghost which is Christ, that we might enter into the Word body that we originally bypassed.
When God made Adam, he was placed inside the Kingdom of God, but when Eve fell, she brought forth her children outside of the Kingdom, outside of a world of perfect faith, and put us into the realm of animal where we reproduce by sex, which is the animal law of reproduction. Because we were born by sex, we bypassed our theophany and came into a fallen terrestrial body, whereas if we had come by Spoken Word creation, then we would have been put into the celestial body.
Because Adam came by the Spoken Word, he had a celestial existence first as a conscious spirit-man or theophany-spirit in the form of “a” pillar of fire before he came into a terrestrial body. And because Jesus came by the Spoken Word, He too had a celestial existence first as a conscious Spirit-Man or Theophany-Spirit in the form of “the” Pillar of Fire before He came into a terrestrial body. But we came into this world separated from God and with a nature that is at enmity with God; that is why we need a new birth, and is why there is the plan of redemption, to bring those who bypassed the Word back to the Word.
1 Peter 1: 3 – 4: Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, which according to his abundant mercy hath begotten us again unto a lively hope by the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, To an inheritance incorruptible, and undefiled, and that fadeth not away, reserved in heaven for you,
Thus far we have looked at various portions of the scriptures to cement our thought of how we bypassed the Word in the beginning. Lastly, we will briefly look at the words of Peter concerning the inheritance we have in Heaven, and of which the access to it was opened by the resurrection of Jesus Christ. Paul tells us the following in Ephesians 1: 13 – 14: In whom ye also trusted, after that ye heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation: in whom also after that ye believed, ye were sealed with that holy Spirit of promise, Which is the earnest of our inheritance until the redemption of the purchased possession, unto the praise of his glory. Here Paul teaches us that the Holy Spirit we receive by the new birth is the earnest of our inheritance that already exists in Heaven, so we receive a portion or measure of the Holy Spirit here on the earth, but in Heaven, we have an inheritance or celestial body that is incorruptible and undefiled, and which pulsates by the fulness of the Holy Spirit.
Because we as those little ones or lost sheep went astray by our sex birth, Jesus had to come and die for us. His blood needed to be shed so that a way could be made for us to come into our full redemption by the new birth, and the end of our redemption is when we go back into our inheritance that exists already in Heaven and is waiting for us to enter it. Our inheritance which is our theophany will pick us up one of these days (as the prophet taught us), and we will be glorified, for when we see Jesus, we will be like Him, for we will have the same glorified body that He has (1 John 3: 2: Beloved, now are we the sons of God, and it doth not yet appear what we shall be: but we know that, when he shall appear, we shall be like him; for we shall see him as he is.).
The importance of the new birth cannot be emphasized enough, for it is the new birth that links us with our angel in Heaven. Jesus called our angel or theophany a mansion in John 14: 2: In my Father’s house are many mansions: if it were not so, I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you. It is the new birth that connects us to our mansion; but of course, we have not as yet entered our mansion, but we will enter into it at the time of the translation. God’s great power to transform is truly changing us from glory unto glory, bringing us from the Word seed to the Word image, that we might go back to the Word body, to our angel that we bypassed in the beginning.