"Conversations"
IDENTITY
IN THE RESURRECTION
July 12, 2012
Today’s conversation is a
follow-up to the recent conversation on The
Imperative of Identity Replacement in the Believer.
Ray wants to know what “identity replacement” will
actually look like in the manifest kingdom. Will we be
recognizable? Or not? If so, how? This conversation takes
a mild stab into the unknown for an answer, opening our
minds to considerations “outside the box” beyond what we
might tend to assume about life in the age at hand. (For
context, you can read the original conversation at the
bottom).
Be blessed, all.
Chris Anderson
www.firstloveministry.org
________________________________________
From: Ray Ashmore
Sent: Wednesday, June 27, 2012 1:45 PM
To: littleflock
Subject: Re: First Love Readers Circle: Conversations -
The Imperative of Identity Replacement in the Believer
Hello Chris,
Having read this and your response, my thinking is still
not completely clear--especially as to resurrection
identities. Would you please email me your insights about
our bodily resurrection from a spiritual identity
perspective? And also what the resurrection kingdom will
look like?
I'm not sure my question is even clear. But. . .
Blessings,
Ray
________________________________________
From: littleflock
Sent: Saturday, June 30, 2012 12:33 PM
To: 'Ray Ashmore'
Subject: RE: First Love Readers Circle: Conversations -
The Imperative of Identity Replacement in the Believer
Thanks for writing, Ray. These are great questions, and
not easily answered at this point in the eternal journey.
Following is what I can say.
On Resurrection Identity
The best phrase I can use to describe my understanding of
resurrected identity is “unrecognizable yet recognizable.”
The best examples of this from scripture are of the
relationship between Jesus and his disciples after the
resurrection but before the ascension, and John’s
encounter in Revelation. In the gospel stories of the road
to Emmaus, and also the early morning “fish fry” by the
sea, we are told that the Lord was not immediately
naturally recognizable to the disciples.
This unrecognizability speaks to the transcendent aspect
of resurrected identity. Yet at the same time, the
Lord then somehow became recognizable as Who He had been
among them before the crucifixion. The Emmaus road story
especially tells us it required special revelation for
this recognition to occur.
Perhaps the title of the Book of “Revelation” speaks to
this more than anything. The book is about the “revelation
of Jesus Christ.” This revelation is of the resurrected
Jesus. The fact that God transmits to us a
“revelation” about this resurrected identity is I think
significant and offers us clues that help answer your
question. (Sometimes the answers to our questions are
hidden in plain sight.) Let’s look at some of these clues
then.
When the Lord first appears in chapter one, John does not
say, “13 and in the middle of the lampstands I
saw Jesus…. “
Instead, he says,
13 and in the middle of the lampstands I saw one
like a son of man, clothed in a robe reaching to
the feet, and girded across His chest with a golden
sash. 14 His head and His hair were white like
white wool, like snow; and His eyes were like a flame of
fire. 15 His feet were like burnished bronze,
when it has been made to glow in a furnace, and His
voice was like the sound of many
waters.
In this we see that unfamiliar unrecognizability factor,
which we’ll come back to.
Now prior to this encounter, John is inspired to write by
faith in his first letter,
3:2 Beloved, now we are children of God, and it
has not appeared as yet what we will be. We know that
when He appears, we will be like Him, because we
will see Him just as He is.
First, John is answering your question to me. He says, “I
really can’t answer what our new identity is going to
look like, how we will be known, etc.” But then he
exceeds that observation to say, “But when He does
appear, we will be like Him, because we shall see Him
for who He really is.”
John is telling us key things here. First, he is admitting
that how Jesus really is now different than who
He was in this life. That’s what the phrase “just as He
is” means. John is saying in reverse, “He is not the
Jewish Jesus we all knew here below.” And of course, he
had already had some experience with this, being one of
those who saw the Lord after the resurrection, but had to
first process that cognition through the unrecognizability
veil.
But then we come to the actual “revelation of Jesus
Christ.” Revelation 1 is the personal fulfillment of
John’s expectation in I John 3:2. For the first time, John
sees Jesus “just as he is.” But what does he say? How does
he identify Him? Again, he does not say, “I saw Jesus.”
He says, “I saw one like a son of man.”
He is taken aback by Who he is beholding. He doesn’t even
have a name for Him.
[As an interesting aside, after this first encounter,
Jesus does not identify Himself by His original name until
the very last chapter: 22:16 “I, Jesus, have
sent My angel to testify to you these things for the
churches. I am the root and the descendant of David, the
bright morning star." And so John wraps up in the
recognizability of: 22:20 “Amen. Come, Lord
Jesus.” As patterned right after the resurrection,
we see a passage from unrecognizability to recognizability
in the book of Revelation itself. And I would say that it
is the concluding declaration of Jesus’ name in ch. 22
that gives John the basis for his “preamble” in ch. 1 to
declare that this is the “revelation of Jesus.”]
But the point here is that at the beginning of the
encounter, John is beholding Jesus “as He is” in unveiled
resurrected glory for the first time—and he is so undone
by the appearance that he has to reach for language to
identify the “one” he is seeing. It is not the name he
is used to from the incarnation.
He ends up using the same language Daniel uses (7:13) who
did not at the time even know the name “Jesus:” "I
kept looking in the night visions, And behold, with the
clouds of heaven One like a Son of Man was
coming, And He came up to the Ancient of Days And was
presented before Him.” (And how much this
sounds like Revelation 5:7 where the “Lamb” approaches the
throne to take the scroll)
Again, to keep to the point—the appearance of the
resurrected Lord is so otherworldly that his identity is
clearly beyond anything by which He was recognized in His
original incarnation.
How does that apply to us? Well, remember that John also
said above, “we shall be like Him.” Jesus
is the “pattern Son” (as the Latter Rain teachers are fond
of saying.) What is true about Jesus as the firstfruits of
resurrection (firstborn from the dead) is true of
those who follow. In glory therefore, we will have a
quite otherly appearance and identity. We will be carnally
unrecognizable, though we will yet mysteriously become
recognizable for who we had been here below.
Based on the evidence in both the gospels and Revelation,
this will apply whether we are on earth or in the
heavens. John’s description of the glorious
unrecognizable “one like the son of man” in Rev. 1 agrees
with the description of “us to be” that both Jesus and
Daniel give here:
"Then THE RIGHTEOUS WILL SHINE FORTH AS THE SUN in the
kingdom of their Father. He who has ears, let him hear.”
Mt. 13:43
"Those who have insight will shine brightly like the
brightness of the expanse of heaven, and those who lead
the many to righteousness, like the stars forever and
ever.” Dan. 12:3
That “shining” of the saints will carry the same
unrecognizability to the natural perception as it did for
John at the opening of Revelation. Our true spiritual
identity as children and sons of the heavenly Father
beyond and apart from Adam will be manifest in that
shining and glory and brilliance.
We also want to note that in accord with this, we are
promised “new names” (Rev. 2:17). New identity follows new
nature. That identity becomes manifest when the nature
becomes fully manifest. So it is that at the manifestation
of our resurrected identity we will receive new names
(with an appendage that goes something like “formerly
known as Ray Ashmore!”). Even Jesus gets a new name!
(3:12).
So that is my best insight at this point on resurrection
identity.
Let me offer two last asides of interest in this regard:
It is to be surmised that John’s statement, “when He
appears, we will be like Him,” had special
meaning for John personally which may help explain
something of the mystery of the Book of Revelation’s
dissemination and John’s destiny. …. For the
following insight I have to credit my friend Bruce Hehl,
but I am persuaded of the following:
The Book of Revelation is not merely a supernatural
revelation, but the circumstances surrounding its writing
and transmission are equally supernatural. As I said
above, John’s encounter with the Lord of Glory on Patmos
was the fulfillment of his expectation that “when He
appears, we shall be like Him.”
The most consistent conjecture then is that at this
encounter, and when John was “called up above” in Chapter
4, John did not merely have a “vision,” but it was here
that he was finally translated himself to permanently
leave this life…. John wrote the revelation in glory as he
encountered it and thence transmitted it as instructed to
the unknown angel messengers of the seven churches, which
he would have been able to do from a glorified position,
something which is not really explainable any other way.
Also of note is John’s use of the past tense to describe
where he “was” at the time of the encounter. ….
1:9 “I, John, your brother and fellow partaker
in the tribulation and kingdom and perseverance which
are in Jesus, was on the island called Patmos because of
the word of God and the testimony of Jesus.”
….. Meanwhile, in the opening verses of chapter one, he
gives present tense greeting from a heavenly-oriented
location:
4…Grace to you and peace, from Him who is and
who was and who is to come, and from the seven Spirits who
are before His throne, 5 and from Jesus
Christ, the faithful witness, the firstborn of the dead,
and the ruler of the kings of the earth.”
This sounds like where he “is,” as opposed to Patmos where
he “was.” It is a present tense position in the heavenlies
“before His throne.” He writes as one standing next to the
spirits themselves. In any case, a most fascinating
conjecture…..
[Ed. Note to the reader: There is no actual record of
John’s death. Eusebius, a Roman writer of the fourth
century, is reported to have said that John’s body could
not be found. All other traditional accounts as to what
happened to John—such as he was released from Patmos, went
back to Ephesus, did some sheep herding and that a church
is built on the site of his tomb—are not based on any
immediate witnessed reports, but are held by
tradition.]
The second aside is more to the point of identity and your
question. I just want to refer you to the testimony
of Howard
Pittman, one of several people who have recorded
testimonies to heavenly encounters resulting from clinical
death experience. Pittman’s testimony at one point
describes what he saw regarding the passage of spirits of
the Lord’s people from this life to the next life, as
through a tunnel. What he was given distinctly to notice
about each spirit is that each was ageless, without gender
and without race—yet each possessed the intrinsic
uniqueness by which he was known. For Pittman’s detailed
description of this, please listen to minutes 34-41 of the
message linked here.
On Resurrection Kingdom
As to what the resurrection kingdom will look like (and by
the way, I like your term for it), I have offered some
thoughts in my treatises on Israel about this.
Specifically, I have postulated a dimensional concept of
“spiritual physicality” which you can read about in more
detail here.
To sum it up though, what I say there is that in the age
of glorification, certain supra-creational properties
which now only manifest within the heavenly plane itself
will be made visible to and interface with natural
creational properties as we know them now. Those higher
properties when written about in the prophecy of scripture
have a “fantastic” sound to the mind here below, a sound
that leads men of the present dimension to dismiss them as
hyperbole or allegory. But they are not. They are simply
of a dimensional plane that has not been introduced yet to
the earth.
In the Israel treatises, I also postulate what certain
governmental structures will look like, as the extensions
of what we now call spiritual law will become the realized
standard by which earth’s peoples function. You can read
more about that in the three sections of the treatise that
begins here.
(I’ll keep this short so as not to reinvent my own wheel.
But if after reading these sections other questions arise,
maybe we can take a look at them.)
This is my very short summary of insight on Resurrection
Kingdom
&&&&&&&&&&
Thanks, Ray. Again, great questions.
Chris A.
_______________________________
First Love Ministry
- a ministry of Anglemar Fellowship
http://www.firstloveministry.org
07/12
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