In discussing with my friend from Escondido (a southern California native now in her early 60s) how she still has never seen any of the Eastern seaboard, much less visited the Midwest, she reasoned, “I live in paradise—what’s ever been a real motivation to travel anywhere else?”

Definitely, California offers a near-unparalleled display of God’s handiwork. Just yesterday, jogging on the beach in Corona Del Mar and watching the waves hitting the beautiful dark jagged rocks along the shore line, I thought, “How could you get any better than having one of these houses here on the cliff overlooking all this!”

*****

While I’ve given serious consideration on-and-off over the years to moving to the Los Angeles area (I have a cousin in Pasadena and, of course, there’s Verstegen’s church in nearby San Juan Capistrano), what stops me is knowing just how incredibly seductive it all is.

For sure, the beach bum in me would be planning my whole day-to-day life around sunrises and sunsets on the beach, going swimming, surfing, kayaking, fishing, diving, on and on.

I’d also find myself up in the mountains all the time, cross-country cycling, hiking, bird-watching, etc.

*****

Off the book table at the Bible conference the other weekend, I picked up a series of audio studies by Jordan on what heaven’s going to be like.

He talks about how earth is modeled after God’s home in the third heaven and that some of what God created down replicates exactly the environment of His heaven.

“We have the right to believe that in heaven are the same kinds of things we see on earth,” says Jordan, “and that we can understand the things that are up there by looking at the things down here because God has revealed these things to us; He’s told us, ‘That’s how things are there!’

“What you got to get is that the things up there were the originals. We hang onto something down here and say, ‘That’s the original,’ but, no, it’s a copy. The original book was up there. When He made the things down here, He made them in the image of what He made up there.”

*****

Colossians 1:16 plainly states, “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.”

Jordan explains, “In other words, if you can understand the created world here that gives you the capacity to understand the invisible world out there. We can understand things that we cannot see by looking at things we can see because God created the things we can see according to the pattern of the things we can’t see. You gotta get that!

“God patterned what He created in His creation after some things in the spirit world, and the things you see around you didn’t just come willy-nilly out of nowhere. They were created according to something in the invisible realm.

“Do you know what a throne is? Thrones, dominions, principalities and powers are realms of governmental authority. Notice He uses exactly the same terms to describe the things in the heavens and He does for the things in the earth. He says, ‘I created these things in both realms.’

“The idea in Romans 1 is if you want to understand the things you can’t see, look at the things you can see. Because God created what you can’t see in the same identical pattern to the things He created in the realm you can see.

*****

In Isaiah 63:15 (“Look down from heaven, and behold from the habitation of thy holiness and of thy glory”), God is actually being invited to look down on Israel from His habitation. The Bible makes clear there are three literal heavens and God lives and dwells in a city on a planet called the third heaven.

The atmosphere around the earth where the birds fly is called ‘the open firmament of heaven’ and represents the first heaven (Gen. 1:20). The heaven where the stars are—outer space—makes up the second heaven.

II Corinthians 5 assures that the moment a Believer dies, his/her soul leaves the body and goes immediately into the presence of the Lord in God’s third heaven, which is where Jesus Christ is.

“When we say so-and-so died and went to heaven, we don’t mean he’s on Jupiter or Pluto or Saturn or out in the Milky Way somewhere,” says Jordan. “We mean he’s in the city where God lives. He’s on that city New Jerusalem where God dwells and has His habitation. It’s where the verse in Isaiah 63, or Moses in Deuteronomy 26, or Solomon in I Kings 8, talks about ‘thy habitation.’

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When Paul says, “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,” he’s saying that in our new glorified body we will function in the second and third heavens.

“Between death and the resurrection, we’re not just going to be stuck out in outer space in the second heaven,” explains Jordan. “Our function as the Body of Christ is to take over and rule the government of the second heaven for Him, but we’re also going to have access to the third heaven—the city where God is. In fact, that’s really going to be home.

“Imagine the idea of God’s home being your home! A bunch of heathen, idol-worshipping pagan Gentiles like you and me being invited to go home and sit down at the table with God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit and have Him say, ‘Here’s the key—the door’s always open to you.’

*****

In John 1, Jesus tells Nathanael the day’s going to come in the kingdom where he’ll be able to see the angels ascending and descending on the Son of man, and that the angelic host leaves out of New Jerusalem and goes into the heavens with diplomatic instructions for the government of the heavens.

Jordan says, “There’s going to be a diplomatic force going back and forth with constant communication between the second and third heaven. You and I are going to be part of that and I plan to get some R & R and go see the city.

“It’s exciting to me to see how God has fixed it so Believers who are just willing to believe little simple things in the Bible can have a hope that’s enhanced. It’s not just some mystical, intangible, inscrutable thing I can’t know about in some spiritual state. That’s what all the pagans believe.

“It’s not some nirvana that just sort of comes over you like a yoga trance and you’re just there. No, it’s a real place. It’s tangible. It’s made out of material that’s different from the earth but the earth is made in a pattern after the heaven and it’s wonderful to see these things.”

*****

Jesus Christ, in talking to the Samaritan woman in John 4:24, informs, “God is a Spirit: and they that worship him must worship him in spirit and in truth.”

Jordan explains, “That’s a great statement about who God is. He’s a spirit; He’s not material. He’s not made out of Carbon-14 like we are. He’s eternal and He’s always existed.

“When God made creation, He made it in a way to manifest Himself to creation, and in order to do that, He made a location. He made a place in the creation that He created in order to demonstrate to His creation who He is. In fact, He actually created creation for the purpose of doing that. He created you and me—His creatures—for Him to have fellowship with. He created man so He could have a creature in the earth He could commune with and who could go out and be His representative.

*****

As Jordan points out, man’s the only creature on the face of the earth God made who doesn’t have his own naturally grown clothes.

“Psalm 104 says, ‘Bless the Lord, thou art clothed with honor and majesty.’ Notice that He’s got on clothes. Isn’t that interesting? God has a doctrine of clothing and it’s not the fashion of the world; it’s the fashion of heaven.

“God wears a coat of many colors. It’s an original design. God fixed it so we would be like Him because He wears a garment, and we’re going to see that everybody in His heaven has on garments.”

*****

In the Bible, the universe is described as a tent for God to dwell in. Hebrews 8:1-5 indicates that the tabernacle that Moses built in the wilderness was made as an exact replica of this tent. God gave Moses the exact measurements, dimensions and features to scale of the tabernacle He pitched in the heavens.

“When I draw you a picture of what the universe looks like, I use the tent that God dwells in and you draw it in the shape of the tabernacle in the wilderness,” explains Jordan. “In fact, you guys that are good with math, if the scale is right and the verses mean what they say, and the tabernacle in the wilderness is a scale model of the universe, you can figure out literally the shape and size of the present universe with its ends and bounds and borders by the measurements back there.”

In regards to what Job 22:14 reveals (“Thick clouds are a covering to him, that he seeth not; and he walketh in the circuit of heaven”), Jordan asks, “Do you know the shape of the city that God lives in? It’s not a mistake that the earth is round. This planet is made like the planet where His city is. Think about that! Psalm 19:6-7 talks about the same thing; about Him out walking in His circuit.

*****

Speaking of the upcoming millennial kingdom when God will bring His city down to earth, Hebrews 12:22 states, “But ye are come unto mount Sion, and unto the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to an innumerable company of angels.”

Jordan explains, “One day God’s going to bring down that third heaven and put it on this planet and the reason the earth is such a special planet in all the universe--there’s not another planet just like it—is because it’s the place that God originally made when He made His heaven and then He created the universe; He made a place in that universe where He was going to put His city.

*****

In Ezekiel 40, when Ezekiel looks into the millennial kingdom and begins to see where Jesus Christ has come back and set up His city in that territory in Israel, he says he sees the “frame of the city.”

Jordan says, “That’s stuff’s hidden now, it’s not there, there’s going to have to be a lot of topographical changes to manifest it. When the Flood came, all that stuff over there got broken up, but in the millennium that stuff’s gonna reappear. It’s already there.

“When God’s building the earth, He’s planning a place where He’s going to bring that house down and sit in. The third heaven’s gonna come to visit! His city’s coming down!

“Moses, when he describes that kingdom and the blessings in that kingdom, says in Deuteronomy 11:21, ‘That your days may be multiplied, and the days of your children, in the land which the LORD sware unto your fathers to give them, as the days of heaven upon the earth.’

“When the goal is reached in the kingdom, it’s going to be as the days of heaven on earth. That tells me that when the days of heaven are done down here, they’re not going to be invisible, intangible, spirit-state unreal; they’re going to real, material, literal days on a literal planet that’s just like the earth.”