Resurrection and Ascension – Because He lives, we shall live also; because He was raised, so shall we be. Already Christ, the first of a new race has entered fully into the New Creation. We catch only glimpses of it, by faith, but already we too can live into it and appropriate from its realities some of what is needed in our days still lived in this time between, this ‘mean-while.’

The end goal (teleological) can give perspective to the now and the immediate. The future has already broken into the present. God’s final purposes in Christ have begun to appear. We can see the Christ; we can know Christ’s Presence by the Spirit.

Behind the Scenes, we see only by faith. By sight we can see the Visible Stage. As in The Matrix, we can know the invisible: what’s going on to facilitate, make it happen, get ready for the next act. The invisible is ‘the heavenlies’ – the visible is ‘on earth.’Resurrection and Ascension means Jesus is Lord of the whole ‘play’ as the drama of this world – and all our parts on it, unfold. We pray: ‘Your will be done on earth as it is in Heaven. Your will be done in this here space time visible creation in accordance with the new Creation plan.’

There is a focusing of the binoculars so there is complete harmony. With full adjustment; there is nothing out of joint or out of sorts. There is shalom (peace) – wholeness and the whole thing being put right.

We live between this world and the new world, not between this world and heaven (for heaven is already all around us). Heaven is the throne room, the control room, the unseen created real where God is and from which He controls all places and all things.

The unseen world intersects and is very close to this visible world. There are thin spots and holy, almost translucent moments where there is already complete resonance and accord. We can be caught up into the greater Real – or Heaven is brought down into a oneness with us.

Already we reign with Christ. Already we are seated with Him in the heavenlies. Christian communities are ‘colonies of heaven.’ just as much as Philippi was a colony of Rome. It was to be like all that Rome was in the freedom it offered so that it’s citizens – even while living in the wilds and roughs of Macedonia, were entitled to live as if, and have all the privileges of the city of Rome. Where the Roman way was, there was the Empire; there was Rome. Even if it didn’t look like it, they were to act like it and make it ever more so.

In fact, ‘parousia’ is not about rapture as being some kind of snatching away from this world – to some disembodied, ethereal space called ‘heaven. Rather it was about two things:1. When God clearly showed up and revealed Himself, His power, His work.2. When the Lord, the Emperor came to the colony – and the city and all its citizens got ready and went out to receive Him upon His arrival.