Shabbat shalom chaverim. I hope those of you observing this month's divine moedim (appointments) had a good Passover Season and that you enjoyed hearing or reading Resurrection Narratives as much as I took pleasure in sharing them with you.

This morning the MLT congregation enjoyed listening to a wonderful presentation by N.T.Wright on the Resurrection both so that I could have a break from preaching as well as to let my family in particular hear someone else apart from their Dad and husband. They say that pastors' kids have a really rough time growing up and I am accutely conscious of that potential problem. I consider that listening to different points-of-view is essential to healthy mental and spiritual development, not just for a pastor's own children but really for everyone. Members of NCAY tend to be quite an independently-minded lot, and I am all for free-thinking provided it doesn't become a fad and isn't used as an excuse for the flesh to go on a lawless spree.

Today's talk by N.T.Wright, simply called Resurrection [1] and aired on British Channel 4 TV in 2004 when Wright was the Anglican Bishop of Durham, reminded me of one very, very important truth that I especially want to bring out today, and it's this: reality is both spiritual and physical, the opposite of what most non-monotheistic religions teach. As I listened to this presentation a couple of days' ago (today's was my second or third hearing), I wes reminded of something I often forget when I share my testimony of how I became a Christian. And this is something I strongly feel I need to drop into this conversation before I go on and talk about, and to (if they're listening), a group of people who weigh heavily on my heart, namely, those who have been seduced, in particular, by the occult and all subjective systems of religion.

The event was a concert of Bach's St.Matthew Passion that I heard in St.Mary's Church, Oxford about 40 years ago, the place I began life as a Covenant Believer. I say 'believer' because I did not really know Christ at all then, because it was there I knelt at the altar when the church was empty (the place where the Protestant martyrs Latimer, Cranmer, Ridley were condemned to be burned at the stake during the time of the Marian persecution), and there I covenanted to God that I would search for the truth and not rest until I had found it. So there I was, back in the church which for me was a landmark in my spiritual journey, listening to a deeply profound and moving devotional piece about the life of Christ.

As I listened to this magnificent classical devotional work, it took me back to a movie I had seen as a young undergraduate a year or two before called The Gospel According to St.Matthew, a black-and-white movie produced in 1964 using amateur actors (mostly Italian peasants and farmers) made by the communist director Pier Paolo Pasolini and produced by Alfredo Bini. I belonged to a student cinema club at the time that screened rare movies at an affordable price for such as myself on a small student budget.

That movie had left a lasting impression on me. This was before I was a regenerated (born-again) Christian. All I knew back then was that Jesus (Yah'shua) was God (Elohim) because of an unsolicited revelation I had received at a Nichiren Shoshu [2] Buddhist meeting in an acquaintance's house in north Oxford, the account of which I recently related to you. The dialogue of the movie is 100 per cent from the Gospel of Matthew, a biographical drama that traces the life of Messiah from the Nativity to the Resurrection. It was voted the best film on Christ ever made in the Vatican newspaper L'Observatore Romano in 2015. I heartily agree.

Pasolini chose the Gospel of Matthew over the other three because (as he, as a communist, viewed things) he wanted to avoid the mysticism of John, the vulgarity of Mark, and the sentimentality of Luke, as he saw them. Though I don't think that is necessarily a remotely accurate way of classifying those three gospels, I know what Pasolini was getting at, even if he had a marxist bias. He wanted something down-to-earth and he did it absolutely brilliantly. He takes uneducated, unsophisticated ordinary people to act the parts without the slightest trace of pretentiousness, frivolity or exaggeration; and though the film obviously has a heavy southern Italian flavouring as you'd expect, I understand what he was getting at that made this a rendition of universal appeal. It contained not a single trace of embelishment to the biblical account nor any literary of dramatic inventions. The extraordinary thing is that this atheist Marxist treated his subject material with such reverence because Marxists almost never examine the mystery of life, death and suffering, let alone religion, because they don't want to. If you ever want to witness to a Marxist, show him this film and tell him about Pasolini's background and how he was reacting to the blind conformity usually demanded of his Marxist peers.

This movie still elicits deep feelings within me because it's very gutsy, as, I believe, a side of Yah'shua (Jesus) was as a human being. I like to view it as a wonderful example of realism, and reality, as you all know, is something I am passionate about, especially in the spiritual realm where it is so easy to get taken away by fancy and imagination. This was a movie intensely personal and human all rolled into one. Let's not forget that there is a strong Christian humanism element in the Gospel that can easily get trampled down by excessive religiosity. And though Pasolini was an unbeliever himself, he presented the Gospel honestly and directly with a strong compassionate, humanistic element which got him into trouble with fellow communists later. He captured, perhaps unwittingly, something of the phronema of those sacred, historical events by transporting the viewer back in time and planting him in as near realistic-a-setting that could probably have been conjured up in post-war southern Italy (1964). And I think he inadvertantly tapped into something of the deep spiritual need within himself. And if there's one thing Marxists desperately need, it is to be reconnected with their hearts which have been suppressed by so much anger and revolutionary fervour.

The central doctrine of the Messianic faith is the physical resurrection. We're coming back as physical beings for eternity at some point in hopefully the not too distant future. Heaven and earth will be fused together into one reality. The problem in this pre-resurrection, mortal world, is that the link between heaven and earth is tenuous. When we die, we sever contact with this world and dwell exclusively in the spiritual realm for a while until we are called back to a cleansed planet. In the language of Scripture, this earth with its sky or atmosphere is known as the 'First Heaven'; and the spirit world, where we are going briefly after we die, is known as the 'Third Heaven'. Paul speaks of a brother who had some sort of out-of-body experience and was taken to the Third Heaven:

"I know a man in Christ who fourteen years ago -- whether in the body I do not know, or whether out of the body I do not know, Elohim (God) knows -- such a one was caught up to the Third Heaven. And I know such a man -- whether in the body or out of the body I do not know, Elohim (God) knows -- how he was caught up into Paradise and heard inexpressible words, which it is not lawful for a man to utter" (2 Cor.12:2-4, NKJV).

The Third Heaven is here identified with the paradise of the qodeshim (saints, set-apart ones) to which the saved go and wait for the resurrection. The wicked go to another area, known only as "Prison" (e.g. 1 Pet.3:19), colloquially known as 'hell', in English at any rate.

Many religions such as Islam speak of 'seven heavens', including the highly inaccurate and contradictory Pharisee 'Book of Enoch', but this idea is not Biblical. Since the Third Heaven is plainly the highest, according to Paul, we need only answer the question: what is the 'Second Heaven'?

I don't think there is very much room for doubt as to its identity. Suffice to say occultists call it the 'astral plane'. a place they value highly in their search for the imaginary 'Akashic Record', information about equally imaginary previous lives requiring another fiction called 'reincarnation', and spiritual knowledge in general.

Before I became a Christian I dabbled in the occult. I practiced astral projection, studied Roscrucianism and took Qabbalism particularly seriously. Most of it was an intellectial pursuit - I studied the works of Alice Bailey, Helena Blavatsky, Krishnamurti, Ouspensky, and many, many others. I won't rehearse all of that to you here.

I mention this, though, because I had a 'lot' of 'spiritual' experiences, as I supposed they were, only to subsequently discover that this 'Astral Plane', so called, or 'Second Heaven', is in fact the playground of demons, where grand theatrical productions have been staged for thousands of years for those foolish enough to be lured into that non-physical world apart from the resurrected Christ. All the occultic works were spawned here, all the lies about evolution and devolution, human root races, and all the false world religions.

I realise that to intellectuals of both the atheistic and occult varieties, Christianity seems very primitive. Satan appeals to the pride of life and offers false science, esoteric and exoteric, that seem very sophisticated but which are bald lies. Man is encouraged to exalt himself as god but this, in the end, leads to satanism. There is a 'higher heaven' to the one staffed by dark forces who, as I said, put on spectacular productions day and night both for when we're awake and asleep, and especially when we're in drug-induced altered states of consciousness.

I've seen some of them. I've had messengers appear to me who turned out to be devils in disguise. Some of those manifestations have been pretty spectacular too. Don't be fooled by them. Watch out for your pride because that is what they play on, wanting to convince you that you are part of some special, superior super-élite...ecause you supposedly have a better brain and 'see' things that others don't. In new Age circles they refer to such 'special ones' as 'Indigos'. Remember, that there are two spiritual 'seeings', one of Elohim (God) and one of Satan. Just because something is supernatural doesn't make it true.

The resurrection is the antidote to all the deception of the Second Heaven, the Astral Plane, the Buddha Plane, or any of the thousands of names by which it is called. The resurrection anchors the soul in reality because it links the First Heaven to the Third. It gives you a handle which the Second Heaven, as a single point of reference, can never do. It is without concrete reference points making you dependent only on what the enemy shows you and your own unreliable, subjective experience which is easily manipulated. Remember, the occult teaches that the physical world is maya or illusion, because the devil is scared what it reveals in conjunction with the First Heaven, the abode of Yahweh. He aims to deprive you of the contrasts which the First and Third Heavens alone provide, namely, objective science and truth from the Creator Himself, which confirm one another.

Why do you think Yahweh incarnated His Son Yah'shua (Jesus) into a physical body? To make atonement, yes, to pay, and bring us forgiveness, for our sins, yes, but it was also to bring Heaven and Earth together - matter and spirit into one. When the Third and First Heavens come together as one, the Second Heaven will be completely gone. I don't care if you've had supernatural experiences in a dimension not ruled by Yah'shua (Jesus). I have too, before I was born again. I know lots of people who have, and who have since had all of that exposed. Don't go into these teachings and practices. Don't get involved in any way because they will destroy you. In fact, read your Bible and ask Yah'shua (Jesus) to reveal Himself as He really is. Believe in the physical resurrection because that is where Gospel faith begins. If you do that, you will have your feet firmly planted in reality, and you will have your mind and your heart and your spirit in union with the Third Heaven.

That is my message today. I hope this has been a blessing to those of you who have been involved in the occult and are still trying to extricate yourself from the consequences of that involvement, or are involved in the occult - and there are increasing numbers of people who are - whether it's so-called 'mild occult' (like Wiccanism) or whether it is devil-worship and satanism. Remember, these will ruin and destroy you if you remain involved. It's not real - yes there are supernatural experiences you can have but they are not a part of any eternal realm and are therefore not permanent. They come to an end one day in the lake of fire. Remember, the promises the demons who steer occultism are lies. Yahweh bless. I hope you had a good sabbath today. Amen.

Endnotes

[1] Produced by Blakeway, InterVarsity Press (IVP) (ISBN 10;0-8308-3435-4)
[2] A branch of Mahanaya Buddhism based on the 13th century teachings of a Japanese Buddhist priest Nichiren (1222-1282) that I briefly investigated but never was converted to

Comments from Readers

[1] "Thank you for this...listening now. I'm behind your messages. Please know your teachings are very important to many of us abroad. Thank you" (EOE, USA, 19 April 2020)