(an abbreviated version of the Slovenian text)
It was one of the darkest moments of my life, when God one day opened my spiritual eyes and senses, took me to heaven, and showed me heavenly worship.
I was going through a period of severe illness and material deprivation. Anything that could go wrong, was wrong. I hardly spoke to anyone about my situation, because in the church community I attended at that time, we were quite subject to only one aspect of teachings about prosperity and faith, and the triumphant life in Jesus (otherwise it didn't take long, later we swung into too much emphasis on God’s sovereignty - to the extent that I almost forgot to use my faith), but at the time these visions were happening, we were pretty bold about faith, and believing God will solve all your problems ASAP, so people prayed for me to be healed, they broke the curse of want, and I should have been fine, but I wasn’t. It was as if the ground beneath my feet was collapsing every day.
And heaven was silent on my behalf.
Yet I thanked God every day and glorified Him no matter what. And God graciously came to me, the awareness of trouble and pain faded, I was overwhelmed by the glory of God, and the Lord took me to Heaven in an open vision and laid my life on a whole new foundation. Heavenly. Unchangeable. Inexhaustible. Eternal.
That Wednesday at five in the afternoon, I found myself in the Spirit in front of a large sea of glass, and a great crowd of people was praising the Lord. There were so many that they could not be counted. I saw different tribes, different churches, and nations. All this crowd was part of the earthly Church, the real people who had worshiped on earth in their earthly bodies at that time - yet present in their spirits before the throne of God, and people who had already left their bodies died on earth and joined God from past generations. The living church was composed of all saints, those present on earth and those absent. Both groups of people were seen worshiping in heaven, together, as the time frame of our earthly existence was completely irrelevant.
I even recognized some churches from earth because I knew their teachings and worship. Each of these groups had a unique song from the Lord that they sang before Him, each of these songs had infinite songs in them but altogether was only ONE song.
No one could learn these songs, but they were given by God. How the songs were given to different church communities was very unique and manifested differently within the groups as songs of light, color, and shapes. The sound was heard and at the same time manifested in pictures and colors.
I saw very large communities and very small ones, each community had a different character and was connected differently, they were so different that you couldn’t determine some pattern of how God works over people. I saw e.g. a community from Seoul founded by Yonggi Cho and considered the largest church in the world and several Asian communities. The people in these communities were very closely connected in hearts and close together, in the middle they had the song of the Lord as the soft presence of the Holy Spirit, hovering like a fragrant mist ball in the center of the community and fading at the edges and merging with the surroundings. I had a hard time distinguishing where it starts and where it ends. People were completely submissive to the Holy Spirit.
I’ve seen a lot of American communities, including the Morningstar community that Rick Joyner founded, who stood out quite a bit from the rest because of their specific tribal worship and dance. I thought it was a tribe of artists. I joined their tribe in celebration and danced with them as if we had known each other forever. And today as I was translating this in English, 17 or more years after the vision, I’m a part of their community that grew internationally. God has a sense of humor.
Every once in a while, people left their groups that were worshipping and entered the depths of God’s throne, and later came back to their tribe. But not everyone was recognized. Some groups didn’t notice that particular individual, even if they came back with greater glory. I have seen that what makes churches special and unique is, at the same time, their limitation to corporately reaching deeper into God’s presence and the rule of God’s throne. Because the deeper you approached the throne, the more God ruled and the more lost individuals were as if there were gone. Some were not seen by their communities any longer, because of the glory.
I have celebrated together with some of the church tribes present before, which is extremely difficult to explain. I knew the sea of glass before the throne of God from a relationship with God from previous visions and spiritual perceptions. I am from Slovenia, make no mistake. But when you become a worshiper of God in spirit and truth, distances no longer exist. There is no more distance between heaven and earth. There is no more distance between Russia and America. You are somewhere in the body and somewhere else in the spirit. The Holy Spirit once bestowed upon me the grace to join in the celebration in the spirit of other churches I had not physically visited. It used to be a lot of fun.
But this time it was very different. All of a sudden, I found myself back at the entrance to the realm of God’s throne, on the verge of transitioning into eternal celebration, and as if I wasn't me. Something was very wrong, but not so wrong that it would be wrong in my heart, but it was wrong in my body. But there can be nothing wrong with heaven, I thought.
It was as if I suddenly realized that I was not alone this time, but there was a whole community that came with me. I felt as if every part of my body was connected to someone else and I felt them, not myself. To live as if we are one part of another. Limbs of one body. With the whole community, I found myself on the outer edge of the crystal sea, and the glory of God’s throne was in the distance. But that made me nervous, because I was feeling every carnal thought of others, and things that I know can’t enter God’s presence. So I was perplexed, how could that be? We are in heaven, but the carnal thoughts are here, also.
I suddenly remembered the songs we have sung in church, about how we stand before the throne of God, and we sang them as we were so close, and I always imagined in my mind how close we are to God like in a small room. But in heaven, the distances are infinite and sight and glory unimaginable.
I found myself in heaven with the church community from my town that I was part of at that time. I was especially surprised by the appearance of our tribe. Each individual was completely twisted to one side, as in his artistic pose, each one separately, far apart as some beautiful abstract image that Kandinsky could create, from a distance we were looking at a modern piece of art. I thought my whole life I'd wanted to understand why I like abstract art so much, but I didn't know. And I liked what I saw.
I perceived that as a tribe we didn’t know our name, or who we were, as if we were not aware of our identity given to us by God. I saw that we were given a song, the very light of God, in which there were many songs, many melodies, and messages, but it worked as one song, the extraordinary purity of God was in the atmosphere of this heavenly celebration. We were given the privilege of being a heavenly priesthood, like other tribes, and we were worshipping before the sea of glass.
God has shown me that the key to entering His immediate presence is the awareness that you are a new creation, that you are aware of Jesus and His sacrifice, the blood that cleansed your conscience, more than yourself and your imperfections.
However, this time I became unbearably ashamed before the Lord because I perceived fleshiness in relationships and antagonism. The feeling of appearing before the Lord like this was unbearable. I carried in my body all the carnal thoughts and intentions of the people I was associated with. I wanted to go away, I wanted back to earth, to my kitchen where I prayed. I was overwhelmed by pure horror, and this had never happened to me before in the direct presence of God. I thought I was going to die, it was going to tear me apart. Jesus suddenly stood by me, comforted me, and told me, why He wanted to reveal that tension between the flesh and the spirit to me and let me know that because of the flesh and unregenerate relationships with each other, sometimes people cannot see the dimension of glory given to them in which they stand, even though they are redeemed for heaven and they stand in the direct presence of God, even though the very light of God has been given to them … They perceive God, but flesh blinds their hearts to a fellow man who stands with them in the glory of God.
“And I gave them the majesty you gave me to be one, as we are one: I in them and you in me to be completely one. May the world know that you sent me and that you loved them as you loved me. Father, I want you who have given me to be with me where I am, so that they may see my majesty, which you gave me because you loved me before the beginning of the world (John 17: 22-24). ”
We need to understand that the vertical and horizontal dimensions of the cross, reconciliation with God, and reconciliation between people are equal in nature. Jesus, God, and man did not come to take me personally to heaven, but to bring us all together to the extent that we are one as the Father and the Son. To make heaven and earth one. How deceived are the people who think they are exclusive because of God’s revelation. If my revelation of God excludes others, I don’t want to have them. Seriously. I prefer the kitchen revelations of baking something new.
It was then that I realized that God’s glory is not enough, that heaven is not enough, intimacy with God in an exclusive relationship is not enough, and vertical connection with God is not enough. As the heavens are holy, relationships and communion must be holy if we are to become worshipers in spirit and truth, for it is written:
“If we say that we are in communion with him, yet we walk in darkness, we lie and do not act in accordance with the truth. But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we are in fellowship with one another, and the blood of his Son Jesus cleanses us from all sin. (1 John 1: 6-7). ”
The unbearable consciousness of relationship antagonism has waned. Conflicts that were probably happening in real-time between specific people at the time, but I didn’t know about them at the time, but I felt them as if they were in my body because of heavenly glory, were conflicts between flesh and spirit in different groups. People were not aware of the burdens and pains they caused each other because of their unregenerate human nature, they had no distinction, they were like children, innocent in their hearts, and God, who is like a good Father, did not condemn them but raised them. Educated for eternity.
I saw Jesus again. He stood a few steps in front of me. He told me to come forward, He told me that He choose me, to go on, to be able to glorify Him, to come deeper into God’s glory. The depths of God’s glory are revealed to those who are willing to surrender completely and submit to God and to the people He loves.
Some in their relationship with God will never go beyond the. corporate worship of the community they belong to, remain on the fringes of heavenly rooms and are unaware that much more is available, some submit only to God and are unwilling to submit to the people to whom they belong. Sometimes some leaders believe that because of their anointing, God's mantle, or biblical expertise, they are above the level of the shared life of their communities, they submit exclusively to God and expect the subordination of others. Jesus is not impressed when you bow down before Him just to have others bow down to you. Such leaders remain outside their communion and the consolation bestowed by the Holy Spirit on all equally.
Open communion with God and open communion with brothers and sisters are equal forces that together will bring the unimaginable.