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being born again, church, discerning the spirits, dreams, dying to self, experience, flesh, following Jesus, light, Possessors, Professors, sovereignty, T.A. Sparks, the cross, the devil, the enemy, visions, walking by the spirit
I need to admit that I usually feel a bit embarrassed before I share my visions publicly as they are often both personal and intimate revelations by Jesus Christ and sometimes by God, our Father. Therefore, I almost always need to drop several details that ought to remain private. It is much easier for me to publish another teaching I just learned from the Holy Spirit than to open up as for my whole life with God in the Spirit. Nonetheless, dear reader, I do want to take you a bit deeper into what life in the Spirit with God means for me. Maybe, it is different for you. But as for me, I can only share what I have experienced myself. Well, such ‘visions’ do not happen randomly without me being able to weigh in with my own impressions, whether right or wrong. Rather, it is like walking with Christ 24/7 and on this walk in the light, I tend to see and understand more and more of what He wants to reveal (note: that also happens in dreams). If I am too tired or too busy during the day, I can ask Him to please stop showing me another new thing in the heavenlies until I have recovered again. And it is not so, either, that once I have seen a vision, it would be over. No, this is not the case.
Instead, I can go back to the scenery shown before where God points me to more and more details that I had either not noticed or not comprehended yet. Somehow it is like watching a movie repeatedly with variations in perspective. That, of course, is not possible while watching a normal movie. There you always see the same people, doing the same things, saying what they had already said before and so on. However, it is not so with walking in the spirit, whether you see a vision, or you have a dream, or if you simply live together with God in Christ continually. Furthermore, since God’s timing is not ours, it also occurs that God shares another detail, a Scripture, or further explanation of a vision with me when I am just checking the supermarket chest freezer with my husband while shopping. 😉 Well, life in the spirit is real life that knows no interruptions as it seems and it is sooo very adventurous at that. 🙂
So, here comes the vision that led me to choose the title of the blog. I was standing beside Jesus on a high and grand plateau. You had a great view in every direction from this high elevation. A very bright light illuminated the far distance as well as everything in close proximity. While enjoying a restful state and the liberty of seeing no boundaries anywhere, my attention was drawn to a remarkable mountain which was located on our right side. You could have easily walked over there, but I rather stared at the bottom of this mountain which somehow disappeared in the ocean. In fact, this whole mountain looked like the trunk of a tree while its stony roots reached down under water. Very odd, indeed! 🙄
The calm waters of the sea came from the right side of this mountain and were gathered in a huge bay which surrounded an area that looked almost like a circle. On the left side of the bay there was a long sandy beach with colorful, small houses right behind. At first sight I was reminded of a place in Italy or in Spain. But as soon as I could look at them closer while walking with Jesus on this beach shortly afterwards, I remembered a Dutch line of houses I once admired in the Netherlands. Standing in front of the first pretty house, I started to wonder, though. The whole beach was empty. Nobody left or entered a house. A disconcerting silence spread over this whole place. It got even worse when Jesus led me to the back of the houses. Oh no!! 😳 There were no walls, no rooftops, nothing but a few chairs and tables here and there. Bewilderedly I turned to Jesus because I felt that something went wrong here. Jesus had a serious look on his face, too. He told me to look at the treelike mountain on the opposite side again. What I had not seen before as I focused on the bottom of the mountain only, there was a purple palace on top of the mountain that looked like a fairy tale castle. And what was so strange… This castle appeared to be growing quickly, higher and higher into the sky until there was a sudden stop of its increase. 🙄
Before giving an explanation of the things seen, I want to add that afterwards I was able to check the underground both beneath this Potemkin village and beneath the underwater “roots” of the mountain while diving with Jesus there. To cut this long vision short, I was perplexed to see that there was no supporting fundament in any case. Those pretty houses, or rather façades, were built on sand alone. One giant wave would have been enough to destroy this artificial stage setting. Diving in these murky waters was not fun, either. There was no fish, no plant, only a cloudy dim light which aroused a spooky atmosphere. As we were diving under these huge “roots” of the mountain, they rather looked as if they were made out of iron. Nevertheless, as big as they were, they did not reach the ocean bed at all. Instead, they were hovering in the dark, making the darkness even darker due to the shadows they cast. Between these artificial roots you could reach a cave which led you all up the mountain from the inside. Or in other words, the inside of the mountain was rather a void or an underground chamber than a supporting rock for the castle on top.
I believe this vision is partly self-explaining, isn’t it? 🤔 This luxurious palace on top of the mountain represents the church, sitting as a queen there (cf. Rev 18:7). This lower located Potemkin village stood for those who left the grand institutional church in order to re-establish the true church after a New Testament pattern. That might sound good at first sight. However, if these believers are not led by the Holy Spirit but by their own ideas of what God’s will might be, they cannot share the life of Christ with anyone outside the IC, either.
In closing, I offer you another extract from one of T. Austin-Sparks’ articles in which he gets straight to the point.
“What is the curse of the church today? The link and relationship of mere professors with true believers – a mixed multitude. Those who have come into the things of God, but not by new birth. They have come in along the flesh line and because they have some kind of link which is profession, they profess to believe the same things, the same God, to have the same interests. And because there is that kind of natural link, the Lord’s people have said “Oh, they are very good people, they mean well…” and they have not gone to the root of the matter as to whether they have been born from above.
“The question of new birth is a far bigger one than we recognise. The question has within its power the whole testimony of the church of God. What the devil has done has been to destroy the testimony of the sovereignty of Jesus Christ by getting in people who are not really born from above. The Lord’s people are robbed of power, and it has been the enemy’s way of destroying the testimony of the absolute pre-eminence of the Lord Jesus Christ. It is a threefold natural relationship and the Lord said that this should be destroyed.
“Though it seems a hard thing to say, there is a sense in which every mere professor ought to be slain, not literally of course, but in this sense: they ought to go to the Cross and be slain and be raised together with Christ in newness of life. You have got to be hit very hard by the Cross or else the testimony is going to be ruined. The letter to the Romans was written to believers, not to the unsaved. The whole significance of the Roman letter is this. If we are going to know the life of sovereignty in the Spirit which comes in with chapter 8, we can only know it as we know the life of death in chapter 6. Dying with Christ, that is the way in.
“The message of the Cross is essential to sift out professors from possessors, pretence from reality, and it raises a very solemn and serious issue for many today. The flesh resents being crucified, resents dying. You can go a long way with a crowd of good professing Christians until you come to the question of identification with Christ as a practical thing; then there is conflict. The forces of evil are just as much lodged in mere profession as they are in utter infidels. This is one of the subtle activities of the enemy. He could not do it by downright infidelity, but gets in people who profess to be one with you, but they have never died, nor known what it is to be crucified with Christ, or had any experience of His Cross in their lives in a real way.”
[…]
We have got to come into the thing of God from above. We cannot join Christianity like we join a society or a movement. You cannot get into the things of God like that. You wonder what I mean by coming in from above? I mean that you have died, you have been buried, and now you have come in from the heavenly side, through an open heaven, by way of revelation, the revelation of Jesus Christ in your own heart. This is no earthly thing at all for you; it had its origin in heaven.
Another thing is that we should be out to get Christian men and women by way of the Cross. All this flesh business paralyses the testimony of the sovereignty because it produces something that is not heavenly. That is what is here. Have you got a profession or have you got a confession?
https://www.austin-sparks.net/english/books/004626.html
All images © Susanne Schuberth 2021
Entering the Promised Land 
Susanne,
When it comes to interpretations of dreams and visions (especially the Book of Revelations) I was reminded of this verse in Genesis,
“And they said unto him, We have dreamed a dream, and there is no interpreter of it. And Joseph said unto them, Do not interpretations belong to God? tell me them, I pray you.” (Gen 40:8, KJ2000)
It is interesting to me that Jesus was showing you these things in your vision and also giving you interpretations afterwards. We do well to wait on Him alone in such things. I think that many false teachers and false prophets who are into eschatology make the mistake that they can interpret prophetic books in the Bible with their own intellects and do so in a sensational, ear tickling way to draw people to themselves and make lots of money in the process, selling books and charging those who attend their conferences. The book, “The Late Great Planet Earth” comes to mind along with all the other books about the pre-trib rapture theory. Contrast all this with what REAL apostles did 2000 years ago when the church was in its infancy,
“And when they [Paul and Barnabas] had preached the gospel to that city, and had taught many, they returned again to Lystra, and to Iconium, and Antioch,Confirming the souls of the disciples, and exhorting them to continue in the faith, and that WE MUST THROUGH MUCH TRIBULATION ENTER INTO THE KINGDOM OF GOD.” (Acts 14:21-22, KJ2000)
You wrote that Jesus went on to speak to you about the vision, revealing more to you as you were shopping with your husband and how our walk with Him is 24/7 when we yield to Him with our whole hearts. So true!!! I am afraid that we Christians these days live compartmental lives. We live as if there are “spiritual” things and times and then there is the mundane, the ordinary things of our daily lives when we don’t give much thought to Jesus or His leading. I know that I have a long way to go in this area. 😦
In the third paragraph you wrote, “While enjoying a restful state and the liberty of seeing no boundaries anywhere…” This jumped out to me as I read it. Wow, I think that IN Christ as we are with Him in Spirit, there are no boundaries and we can experience some of the most soul freeing moments as He draws us up into heavenly places in our spirits. But on this earth we have to be as Jesus was of whom John wrote,
“Now when he was in Jerusalem at the Passover Feast, many believed in his name when they saw the signs that he was doing. But Jesus on his part did not entrust himself to them, because he knew all people and needed no one to bear witness about man, for he himself knew what was in man.” (John 2:23-25, ESV2011)
Here we can see that not only among worldly people, but among “believers” we can’t always let down our guard and entrust ourselves to them, thus the need for boundaries in our lives while among them.
As for the “Potemkin village” built on sand, that was new to me so I looked it up and found the following:
1) [Potemkin was] a Russian officer and politician who was a favorite of Catherine II and in 1762 helped her to seize power; when she visited the Crimea in 1787 he gave the order for sham villages to be built [to impress her] (1739-1791).
2) a pretentiously showy or imposing facade intended to mask or divert attention from an embarrassing or shabby fact or condition.
This is very descriptive of the nature of the church and many Christians today. This purple castle (speaks of royalty) that had no real foundation and the roots were iron columns (reminds me of Nebuchadnezzar’s dream of the giant that had feet made of iron and clay that were struct by a great stone that came down from heaven) that never reached the seabed, the village built on sand and the castle were subject to destruction because their foundation was NOT Christ, the Rock! I think that this describes Christianity today, for sure. The churches, palaces built to falsely “exemplify” the greatness of their leadership, are ever growing upwards and becoming more and more pretentious. All looks well and even grandiose from the outside to those who have no spiritual discernment. But to the rest of us, “the king has no clothes!” The facade, empty houses with no roof “no covering” or walls “wide open to what comes along,” speak of how Christians are who do not have Jesus as not only our ONLY Foundation, but as our covering and strong defense against the ways of the world and the assaults of the devil. I believe that there is a large wave coming upon this empty church system that will reveal what manner of foundation it is built upon. “And the rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat against that house, and it fell, and great was the fall of it.” (see Matt. 7:21-27).
Sparks wrote, “The question of new birth is a far bigger one than we recognize. The question has within its power the whole testimony of the church of God. What the devil has done has been to destroy the testimony of the sovereignty of Jesus Christ by getting in people who are not really born from above. The Lord’s people are robbed of power, and it has been the enemy’s way of destroying the testimony of the absolute per-eminence of the Lord Jesus Christ. It is a threefold natural relationship and the Lord said that this should be destroyed.” Yes, this says it all, dear sister.
Thanks so much for this, Susanne, “Let he/she who has an ear, hear what the Spirit is saying to the churches.”
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Thank you very much for your insightful comment, Michael. I agree with everything you said. ⭐
It is good you mentioned this example with Joseph who had to learn when and how to speak up regarding the dreams God had shown him (or others). It was a long and painful wait for him, wasn’t it? 🙄 I remember that God gave me one vision of Jesus in 1988 (i.e., seven years before I came to know Jesus for real!) and a few visions in 1995. Then the “seeing” stopped until the year 2000. There after a few weeks, once again, no visions anymore. In 2005 for a short time God helped me interpret a complicated dream of another person and then it was over again. In 2008 as walking in the Spirit continually had begun, the vision-and-dreams-time lasted until 2010. It was only in June 2021 as I have begun to “see” on a permanent basis with often little explanation/interpretation from God at first. That caused me quite a headache, not always literally, but it was very exhausting to see clearly, not blurry, in the beginning. Although I could remember everything, I could not understand what was meant. However, in order to confirm the truth of what I had seen, God gave me one or two signs after every vision and then I had to wait for His interpretation.
This last vision was different in so far that I had asked Jesus before to, at least, tell me a bit more about what I was seeing. I would not have asked if I had not felt His approval to do so. So, this vision was the first one on a completely new level, compared with all the others before. It was as if He was lifting me up to meet me at eye level. Michael, I felt deeply humbled as He gave me many more explanations than I had expected because I felt He opened up to really trust me! I could hardly believe it!! 🙄 That fact almost makes me shudder as I do not want to disappoint Jesus in any way. I was also reminded of the following Scripture regarding this.
“Until now you have asked nothing in my name. Ask, and you will receive, that your joy may be full. “I have said these things to you in figures of speech. The hour is coming when I will no longer speak to you in figures of speech but will tell you plainly about the Father.” (Jn 16:24-25 ESV)
Every dream or vision must be interpreted by the Holy Spirit. I cannot publish everything I know about the visions, in particular, when specific people are concerned. So what I try to write on here is a more general impression of what I saw. As for this giant wave approaching Christendom, well, I have seen this in a later part of the vision and it was truly strange. There was a wave building in this bay that was about 10 times higher than these empty house shells. This wave was approaching the beach and then it stopped, standing there like a skyscraper that cannot be moved. As I was wondering about this phenomenon, I observed the gap between the wave and the houses, the air in between them, so to speak, and then I heard the Holy Spirit say, “Repentance.” This gap appears to be the room or time given for repentance.
Thanks again for your great and inspiring contribution, my brother! 😊
Your sister in Him,
Susanne
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Yes, this is a time of repentance for the church that has become a mixture of true crucified faith IN Jesus Christ and having faith in that system we call as Churchianity while professing rather than confessing Christ. The virgin church had no need of constructing buildings to meet in and all the incorporated business that goes with them, much less today’s top down hierarchic structure that goes with it. They above all else were family, the family of God with Jesus as their head. We need to repent of all that plus our worship of men. What Sparks wrote above was so correct. What we are seeing today is a cross-less Christianity of people who confess Christ, but do not LIVE Christ. Isaiah saw this same sin in Israel saying,
“And the Lord said: ‘Because this people draw near with their mouth and honor me with their lips, while their hearts are far from me, and their fear of me is a commandment taught by men, therefore, behold, I will again do wonderful things with this people, with wonder upon wonder; and the wisdom of their wise men shall perish, and the discernment of their discerning men shall be hidden.’” (Isa 29:13-14, ESV2011)
Just as the Lord gave the Jews a time to repent and they chose to persecute those who followed Jesus and ended up being destroyed and scattered bringing an end to their temple worship system, so is it today. That giant wave of destruction is being held back, but not forever.
“The Lord is not slow to fulfill his promise as some count slowness, but is patient toward you, not wishing that any should perish, but that all should reach repentance. But the day of the Lord will come like a thief, and then the heavens will pass away with a roar, and the heavenly bodies will be burned up and dissolved, and the earth and the works that are done on it will be exposed. Since all these things are thus to be dissolved, what sort of people ought you to be in lives of holiness and godliness, waiting for and hastening the coming of the day of God, because of which the heavens will be set on fire and dissolved, and the heavenly bodies will melt as they burn! But according to his promise we are waiting for new heavens and a new earth in which righteousness dwells.” (2Pet 3:9-13, ESV2011)
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Michael, you wrote,
“Just as the Lord gave the Jews a time to repent and they chose to persecute those who followed Jesus and ended up being destroyed and scattered bringing an end to their temple worship system, so is it today. That giant wave of destruction is being held back, but not forever.”
Yes, this giant wave of destruction won’t be held back forever. On the one hand, that makes me sad as to all those people who won’t have repented then. On the other hand, I think the more we share in Christ’s Spirit, the more we will be able to understand His judgments, too. Like Peter said in his first letter,
“For it is time for judgment to begin at the household of God; and if it begins with us, what will be the outcome for those who do not obey the gospel of God? And “If the righteous is scarcely saved, what will become of the ungodly and the sinner?”” (1 Pt 4:17-18 ESV)
Every gospel preached that seems to be an easy-going thing has not come from God in Christ. Neither can a legalistic approach of the gospel save us, ever. We all truly need the anointing of the Holy Spirit to carry us through these perilous times.
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Yes, Susanne, you are right. That gospel is what I call “the easy believism gospel” as opposed to the “hell fire and damnation gospel.” One tells people that Jesus did it all and all they have to do is make a “commitment,” sign a pledge card, go to church and be a regular tither and they are in! The other preaches the law and how its members that Jesus saved them, but they have to walk the straight and narrow line to keep themselves saved. Neither speaks of the way of the cross and living in an intimate relationship with Jesus as His bride and loving Him more than all the world has to offer until we can honestly say, “For me to live IS Christ” and “It has pleased God to reveal Himself in me.”
Michael
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Could not be said better, Michael! ⭐
Your sister,
Susanne
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