Come up here

"Come up here," is what Jesus told John in Revelation 4:1 when he John was undergoing tremendous suffering in exile on the Isle of Patmos. We need to see things from God's perspective. That is among God's primary responses in answer to the sufferings we are presently experiencing.

Richard Wurbrand, the founder of the ministry Voice of the Martyrs, and who spent much time in prison and solitary confinement for his faith, wrote some similar statements in his book, If Prison Walls Could Speak. "Christ said to His first disciples, "Come and see"' (John 1:39). We have passed from hearing to seeing. To Martha, the Lord said, "Did I not say to you that if you would believe you would see the glory of God?" (John 11:40).

The Book of Revelation too, is a book about things that John actually saw. In the conditions of solitary confinement, which are similar to those of a hermit in the desert deprived of material things, the seeing becomes so real that you have difficulty convincing yourself that what you see is an event in the spirit and not in the material world."

Then Wurbrand speaks about a Chinese legend. "It is said that a great painter once painted on a wall a beautiful landscape with a cave. When he had finished, he walked into the cave and disappeared, and was never heard of again." He went on, "Whatever you create or evoke in the spirit can become a reality into which you can enter, and live, and disappear." Wurbrand concludes, "Therefore we have been given the power to ascend in the spirit. Poverty, sickness, inner and outer tragedies, prisons, or chains cannot hinder this ascent. On the contrary, they assist it. Oh my brothers and sisters, why remain in ugly places? Evoke heaven and enter forever into what you have evoked. What will death matter then?"

One of the first steps in God's plan for our afflictions is for us to "Come up here." He wants us to experience spiritual reality, His presence to such a degree that the things of this world grow strangely dim.

Larry Chkoreff February, 2002

Wurbrand, Richard. If Prison Walls Could Speak. Bartlesville, OK: Living Sacrifice Book Company, 1972- quotes from pages 28-33.