DGS DHINAKARAN OF INDIA 5

HEAVENLY VISITATIONS 5

Brother Dhinakaran, how does exactly Jesus Christ look like? You have seen Him face to face, how exactly does He look like?

Well, the most important thing that you and I should remember is that He was in this world as a Jewish young man and all the time wearing the dresses which the youth in those days would be wearing with a mustache and a beard with long hair. Yes, that was the custom of those years

Well, He retained the same physical body in which He was sojourning in this world. So when He was raised up from the dead as the Bible says in Romans 8:11, it is that human body which was glorified.

Rom 8:11 But if the Spirit of Him that raised up Jesus from the dead dwell in you, He that raised up Christ from the dead shall also quicken your mortal bodies by His Spirit that dwelleth in you.

Rom 6:4 Therefore we are buried with him by baptism into death: that like as Christ was raised up from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so, we also should walk in newness of life.

1 Peter 1:21 Who by Him do believe in God, that raised Him up from the dead, and gave Him glory; that your faith and hope might be in God.

So He retains the same face, the same appearance, humanly speaking. But the greatest difference is the unique feature of His body which is a glorified body.

For example, if you read John 20, after His resurrection when His disciples were hiding in a room locked from within, He could easily enter in. John 20:19 says He entered and He said, "Peace be to you," and they were flabbergasted. Probably they should have been screaming and saying, "Is it Jesus?" or some may become pale and speechless.

John 20:19 Then the same day at evening, being the first day of the week, when the doors were shut where the disciples were assembled for fear of the Jews, came Jesus and stood in the midst, and saith unto them, Peace be unto you.

And another very important thing that the Lord made me understand is, He retains the face of His dear mother Mary. The Bible says when Virgin Mary asked the angel of God, "How can this be? I am a virgin. I have not known a man. I am not a married woman. How do you say that I am going to give birth to the Son of God? Luke 1:35 says, And the angel answered and said unto her, The Holy Ghost shall come upon thee, and the power of the Highest shall overshadow thee: therefore also that holy thing which shall be born of thee shall be called the Son of God.

So in a human way, when a child is born it carries the resemblance of the father and the mother, both mixed. I have yet to see a cloned person, he may just look only like the father or only like the mother. But in the case of our Lord Jesus, the body, the womb was provided by a woman but the seed came from the Almighty God and God has no form as you read in Hebrews 11:27 and First Timothy 6:15 and 16. He is invisible. God has no form.

Heb 11:27 By faith he forsook Egypt, not fearing the wrath of the king: for he endured, as seeing Him who is invisible.

1 Tim 6:15-16 Which in His times He shall shew, who is the blessed and only Potentate, the King of kings, and Lord of lords, Who only hath immortality, dwelling in the light which no man can approach unto; whom no man hath seen, nor can see: to whom be honor and power everlasting. Amen.

Therefore the most striking thing that really touched my heart was that the face of Jesus Christ resembles exactly the face of His dear mother Mary and I have seen the face of Mary in heaven. Oh, she is full of joy. Normally we see the picture of mother Mary full of sadness because she was a broken hearted person. She had to see her own Son being crucified, tortured, slandered, scandalized, spat upon and with a crown of thorns, crying right before her eyes, "My God, My God why hast Thou forsaken Me?

How much it should have pierced her heart. When I was in Rome, they showed me a sculpture where you see the mother Mary carrying the body of Christ, the lifeless body of Christ and numb body of Christ on her lap. Oh, how she would have felt.

Therefore all the time you and I imagined that she should have been the most unhappy woman in the world and her face would be reflecting sorrow all the time. It is true. When she saw Him on the cross, her heart should have been broken to millions of pieces but then when He rose up, her joy would have been uncontrollable. She would be overjoyed and that's why the Bible says in Acts 1:14, These all continued with one accord in prayer and supplication, with the women, and Mary the mother of Jesus, and with His brethren. She consoled and comforted the disciples, gathered them and made them pray.

So this amazing, what shall I say, joyous. Her whole garment and arrangement, everything else about her was joyous. You see the face of mother Mary, full of joy, the happiness which I have never seen on anybody else's face, so full of joy unspeakable. And her physical face is the face that our Lord Jesus Christ carries.

We have many pictures or paintings of the face of Christ but the one which is very close to the face of Christ is the one painting made by Sallman Head.

The Head of Christ, also called the Sallman Head, is a 1940 portrait painting of Jesus of Nazareth by American artist Warner Sallman (1892–1968). As an extraordinarily successful work of Christian popular devotional art, it had been reproduced over half a billion times worldwide by the end of the 20th century.

It's a very popular picture. Many times we publish it in the Jesus Calls magazine also and we have it framed in our office also. He looks like that and His mother Mary also looks like that. That's how He looks. I mean physically, His physical appearance is like that.

What about His mind? As He sits on the throne, millions of angels are around Him, the Stars, the Sun, the Moon, the Comets, the planets, they all go around, bow before Him and every second, every moment some soul or others who loved Him comes to heaven. He's so happy to see them.

But at the same time, one day, the Holy Spirit made me look into His heart. There He was in all His glory surrounded by a marvelous light. At the same time, the Holy Spirit made me look into His heart, deep into His heart. That heart was full of passion for souls.

If you read Matthew 18:14, Jesus said, Even so, it is not the will of your Father which is in heaven, that one of these little ones should perish.

The Lord Jesus says not even one man should perish and go to hell. That is the wish of His Father.

And in 2nd Peter 3:9 the Bible says, The Lord is not slack concerning His promise, as some men count slackness; but is longsuffering to us-ward, not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance.

That is the love of Christ. So all the time sitting there on the throne as the King of kings if you read Romans 9:5 the Bible says, Whose are the fathers, and of whom as concerning the flesh Christ came, who is over all, God blessed forever. Amen.

In 1st John 5:20 you read the same thing, And we know that the Son of God is come, and hath given us an understanding, that we may know Him that is true, and we are in Him that is true, even in His Son Jesus Christ. This is the true God and eternal life.

Yes, He is the replica, the expressed image for the Almighty God.

So He's all the time thinking about the souls which had chosen not to come to Him, to walk in the path of God. So if you read 2nd Peter 3:10 says, But the day of the Lord will come as a thief in the night.

He has said He is going to come back again. Now so many thousands of years have passed by, why has He not come back yet? The reason is simple. He says, "If I wait for one more day, so-and-so will turn from sin, so-and-so will turn from the pathway to hell, so-and-so will come out of the addiction, so-and-so also will turn from the hands of the devil and choose to come to heaven."

So He goes on waiting, waiting. He has waited for more than two thousand years. So as you look into His heart, you can see continent after continent. There are five continents. You can see them right in His heart, what He thinks of the people in Africa, what He thinks about the people in the UK, what He thinks about the people in India, how He's worried about them, how He is concerned about their future, about their souls. Oh, it's amazing. 

One day the Holy Spirit came upon me in a mighty way and He said, "Come and I'll show you what's the cry of each country."

What do you mean by the cry of each nation? If you read Genesis 18:20, And the LORD said, Because the cry of Sodom and Gomorrah is great, and because their sin is very grievous.

God says the cry of Sodom and Gomorrah has come before Him. So every country has its own particular problem. Every country has its people worries, about a particular problem. It differs from country to country.

I was taken above and then from country to country. One country I heard the screaming, the agonizing cries of single mothers. Womenfolk have been given sweet promises by men and then their modesty was outraged. They were made to carry children and then the young men would abscond. They would give birth to these children. They were forced to raise the children as single mothers. So in one particular country, the cries of the single mothers were terrible.

Then He took me to another country. On one side the cry of pleasure, screaming in joy, fully drunk, dancing and enjoying the pleasures, evil pressures of nightclubs and so on. In the same country, on another side, people who have indulged in such pleasures, then getting into problems, loneliness, broken heartedness, losing every wealth in the pursuit of such pleasures and sometimes getting deadly diseases.

Then He took me to another country and standing over that country, I heard the voices of women folk. According to the rule of that country, a person can marry any number of girls. So as the days passed by, the love of that husband gets concentrated on one woman, all the other women folks were in tears.

I went to another country. There the grip of the evil spirits was terrible. The evil powers, all kinds of witchcraft and so on the people groaning under the evil powers, what shall I say, squeezing their throats, throttling their throats and making them cry.

So different countries have their own peculiar problems. So there, sitting on the throne is the Lord Jesus Christ who thinks of these people. That is why in Isaiah 6:8 the cry comes from the throne of God, "Who will go on our behalf? Who will go and tell them about My love? I long to help them, who will go and tell them that I came into this world and I gave My life for such people? Who will go and tell them?

Isa 6:8 Also I heard the voice of the Lord, saying, Whom shall I send, and who will go for Us? Then said I, Here am I; send me.

Recently some people came from the United Kingdom and they visited the Prime Minister of Israel. Then while talking, he jokingly said, "We all believe in Messiah. We all are expecting Him to come back, no matter whether you are a Christian or a Jew, we all are expecting the Messiah to come." The Christians answered, "But there is only one question we are asking, were He here before?" So we got the Christians who believe Jesus has come and He will be coming back again whereas the Jews don't believe. So the Prime Minister said, "No, no, He's going to come. He hasn't come yet." So both of them are waiting for the Messiah.

So the heart of Christ melts for the unrepentant sinner. So this is the Lord Jesus whom you see both physically and spiritually.

Bro Dhinakaran, the Bible says God created man in His own image. When Jesus made you see the Almighty Father, how do you synchronize the image of man and the image of God that you saw?

If you read Colossians 3: 9 and 10 and Ephesians 4:24, He made man in His own image in true holiness, true wisdom and true knowledge.

Col 3:9-10 Lie not one to another, seeing that ye have put off the old man with his deeds. And have put on the new man, which is renewed in knowledge after the image of Him that created him.

Eph 4:24 And that ye put on the new man, which after God is created in righteousness and true holiness.

These are three things in which He made man in His own image. He gave these things to the man. Well, physically also you see He has hands and in several prophetic books (Isaiah to Malachi) that He walked, so He has legs. So to some extent, I believe that He meant both, in the image of God, both spiritually as well as physically.

Brother Dhinakaran, on the spiritual side, when you said you looked into the heart of Jesus Christ, do you mean to say that God has a heart and a mind like how we have?

It's not like that. What you see as His bosom in that the whole thing is reflected. That's what the Bible says in Proverbs 3:3, Proverbs 7:3 the tablet of your heart.

Pro 3:3 Let not mercy and truth forsake thee: bind them about thy neck; write them upon the table of thine heart.

Pro 7:3 Bind them upon thy fingers, write them upon the table of thine heart.

It is just like a screen, you look into that and see what He thinks.

Well, the most important aspects that you and I should remember when we speak about heaven is the hope it gives. Death is terrible. Any death is terrible. Whatever may be the age when your loved one passes away, you feel so miserable. You can't forget him even if a person dies at 89. Still, you miss him. You wish that he is still with you and that place cannot be taken up by anybody else.

That's why if you read John 11 when Martha came and cried to Jesus, "If only You had come earlier, my brother would not have died." He said, "I am the resurrection. I am the life. If a man believes in Me, he shall not die and even if he dies he will live forever."

So He was trying to console her and comfort her by saying, "I am the life, I am the resurrection but look at Him when in verse 33 when the whole village came and Mary also came and Martha came. They all cried. The Bible says He was troubled in His heart. He was troubled. He couldn't control His sorrow and finally, He broke down and wept. So He knew in His heart the pain of death.

John 11:32-36 Then when Mary has come where Jesus was and saw Him, she fell down at His feet, saying unto Him, Lord, if thou hadst been here, my brother had not died. When Jesus, therefore, saw her weeping, and the Jews also weeping which came with her, He groaned in the spirit, and was troubled, And said, Where have ye laid him? They said unto Him, Lord, come and see. Jesus wept. Then said the Jews, Behold how He loved him!

If you read Hebrews 2:14 and 15, one of the purposes for which He came was to take away the pain, the agony, the fear that death brings into your heart and the message of heaven is to give you hope.

Heb 2:14-15 Forasmuch then as the children are partakers of flesh and blood, He also Himself likewise took part of the same; that through death He might destroy him that had the power of death, that is, the devil. And deliver them who through fear of death were all their lifetime subject to bondage.

Recently, a young man just 19 years old was sent by his family from Sri Lanka to the United States of America to study engineering because he was a very brilliant student. One day he was walking in the street a car came and hit him, threw him in the air and he died. It was totally unexpected. The parents had only one daughter and one son and the son died like this. And the cruelest thing is the whole family is a God-fearing family. The boy himself was a God-fearing boy. So the question in the minds of everybody was "Why?", "Why?" and the body was brought to Colombo and he was buried there.

The pastor who buried that boy told me, "Brother, 52 years I have been a pastor. 52 years I have been officiating in funeral services but this was totally different. I thought within myself, "My God, with what comforting words am I going to console and comfort this family?" But when I went there and I saw the peace in their faces when I saw the comfort in their faces, it really was intriguing to me and finally just before the coffin was lowered, the father gave a wonderful testimony.

He said, "All these years I've been worrying about my son. Where will he be now? In America, where will he be now? But now I know he is saved in the bosom of God. Someday I'll go and see him."

So that is why I say they had the hope. Heaven gives hope. That is why if you read Mark 12:27 the Bible says, God is not the God of the dead but God of the living.

So when you think of heaven, "Oh, after death I'm going to live with God. Oh, my dad has gone but I know he is with my Heavenly Father. Someday I'll go and see him. Someday I will go and see him."

If you read the Second Samuel 12:23 there you find David, "My son is gone but I will go and see him. I will go to my child." So it gives you hope. That is why the Lord Jesus said, "God is a God of the living and not the God of the dead."

2 Sam 12:23 But now he is dead, wherefore should I fast? can I bring him back again? I shall go to him, but he shall not return to me.

And the other thing is for the saints of God. If you read Matthew 11:28 the Lord Jesus Christ has said, "Come unto Me, all you who labor and I'll give you rest."

What kind of rest? It's not a physical rest. It is rest for your souls as Jesus says in verse 29, rest for the souls.

Mat 11:28-29 Come unto Me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take My yoke upon you, and learn of Me; for I am meek and lowly in heart: and ye shall find rest unto your souls.

That's why Isaiah 57:2 says, He shall enter into peace: they shall rest in their beds, each one walking in his uprightness.

They who walked uprightly before Him, righteously before Him, they are resting in their beds, not only physically but their souls are also resting in heaven now. In this world, their souls have been suffering, they have been all the time subject to so many worries, so much of agony and sorrow and if they have been persecuted for their righteousness, it would have broken their hearts but now while their bodies are resting on the beds, their souls are resting in heaven.

If you read Daniel 12:13 But go thou thy way till the end be: for thou shalt rest, and stand in thy lot at the end of the days.

Daniel has worked very hard and now he is told to go and rest until Jesus wakes him up to receive his reward. Oh, what great hope.

So when you think of heaven, you must think of three things. Number one, the hope.

Number two, in the sight of God everybody is living; either he lives in heaven or in hell. If you read Proverbs 15:11 the Bible says, Hell and destruction are before the LORD: how much more then the hearts of the children of men?

Hell is open before God. Hell is open. From heaven, He can see the people being tormented in hell. So for Him, everybody's living either in this world or in heaven or in hell. So He knows the future. In our future He knows that we are going to be with Him and for the saints of God, the righteous people, the God-fearing people there's a great hope.

Yes, if you read Revelation 21:4 it says there is a place where there are no more tears, no more sorrow, no more agony, no more waiting, no more lamenting, no more crying, no more screaming. Amen. Hallelujah! Oh, what joy is going to be.

Rev 21:4 And God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes; and there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain: for the former things are passed away.

I lost my daughter on the 21st of May 1986. 16 years have passed by and I still think of her and something happens within my heart. She died when she was traveling with me in the car on the way to the airport. Every time I passed that way, my heart sinks within me. Sixteen years but now and then when the Lord Jesus Christ takes me to heaven, He has shown my daughter a few times. Of course, He never allowed me to talk to her but I saw her and once the Lord Jesus asked me, "Would you like to talk to her?" I said, "Lord, no, because she loved me so dearly and she's written in her diary, "Of all the things that I cherish in this world, I cherish my father's kisses," so if I appear before her she might think of all that and she may cry. I don't want to speak to her but I could see her and what great hope it is that someday I'll go and be with her.

So it is in this light we must see heaven. This is a message of heaven. That's a great life. We need to live the most part of our life in heaven. Only for a short while, we are going to live on this earth and there's hope for every true believer who believes in Christ.

When souls are told to rest until they are wakened up for judgment, is there any other places of rest different from heaven?

No, it's either heaven or hell. When I said, rest in the soul, it means the soul has received the peace of Jesus as the Lord Jesus said, "I give unto you My peace." So while in this world, you see every time you are in a prayer meeting, you are in the church, you forget all about yourself. Yes, you just do not know how the hour has passed and especially in a revival meeting when the songs are sung, different people come and sing different kinds of songs, different kinds of musical instruments, you really forget yourself and then you say, "Oh, those three hours just passed up like three minutes."

It is like that in heaven. Your soul gets locked up with the presence of the Lord Jesus Christ and He gives His rest to your soul. Sleeping means you are inactive. Daniel was all the time worried about the kingdom of Babylon and now he is in retirement. I saw the big palace in which he lived in Babylon and I mean it's in Iraq. I went and saw their rebuilding that very big palace in which Daniel lived. He is such a mighty man and for anything and everything the kings were depending only on him but now his rest has come. "Come on, Daniel, go take a rest. Every day you have been praying three times, bringing to Me all the problems of the Empire and the problems of the Jewish people and so on. Now have a rest."

Did you see the mansions that Jesus said in John 14:2-3 that He would go and prepare for us?

John 14:2-3 In My Father's house are many mansions: if it were not so, I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again, and receive you unto Myself; that where I am, there ye may be also.

There are two sides to this. Number one, if you read Psalm 84:11, For the LORD God is a sun and shield: the LORD will give grace and glory: no good thing will He withhold from them that walk uprightly.

In Psalm 37:4, Delight thyself also in the LORD; and He shall give thee the desires of thine heart.

There are times that before your dream, your desire could be fulfilled, they were snatched away from this world and God is so wonderful, so marvelous He loved to fulfill every desire in heaven, not the fleshly desire but what is the absolute necessity which you didn't have, He makes you feel as if you are getting that.

So once when the Lord was taking me to heaven, what looked like mountains in the first phase of the heavens, I saw some beautiful houses made of gold. Then I asked the Lord Jesus, "What is this?" He said, "Come, we'll see one house." So He and I went to one house and I saw the soul of a person. He was so happy all the time looking at the building and so on. The Lord Jesus told me, "This man died in poverty, very righteous man, very God-fearing person but he died in poverty but he had a great desire that he must have a house of his own, not these thatched sheds but real concrete building."

So just to make him happy, I planned something. So when he came here, I took him personally to his house and I made him feel I am also living in that home. So all the time he will see Me and he will, of course, forget about everything. But when he came and he saw the house, he was so happy, "Oh, I have my home." So God is so gracious.

So this is one side. On the other side, I talked about the third heaven and there in the midst of that marvelous indescribable light, I saw mansions which looked like big palaces and they were illuminated in glittering gold. That's how I will put it, glittering gold and then I asked Him, "Father, what is this?" Then He said, "Have I not said that I am going to prepare a place. This is meant for those who walk so closely with Me in this world but have gone through so much of tribulation and I have prepared this place exclusively for them."

And with all humility, trembling and shivering let me add, He showed me the mansion that He has prepared for me. Oh, it was unbelievable and whatever I liked on this earth which I thought my house should have, there it was. It was carpeted exactly as I would love to have it in this world. You cannot put it in words.

He is so careful; He counts every one of your tears as you serve Him, as King David cried out in Psalm 56:8, "Lord, count my wanderings, put my tears in your bottle, are they not in your book? It is true as a servant of God, the Bible says you are a living sacrifice (Rom 12:1). So as you are laid before Him as a living sacrifice and go through so much agony in this world, He is careful to write down every bit of your agony, whatever you have gone through. He writes there and He wants to make you hilarious happy in the real sense of the word. Put my tears in your bottle, are they not in your account? Your account records your wanderings in this world.

Job says in Job 31:4, Does He not see my ways and count my every step?

How I have wandered and cried in agony to come out of my bereavements and sorrows. I do not know that I have said it before but once when I was very sick, I was taken to heaven. I didn't enter heaven but at the door, very near the door of the gateway to heaven as we call it, a gateway to heaven rather the gates of heaven, I saw an angel of God sitting and writing something in a register. Behind him, I saw millions of scrolls. I was looking at whatever he was writing. There it mentions the name of a person, where he will be born, where he will live, what will be his age when he would die but then every record of whatever he has done in this world, everything was very carefully recorded. Suddenly the angel looked up. He stood up. He asked me, "What do you want?" I told him, "Sir, I'm in great agony. I'm unable to bear this disease. Please look into this register and tell me when I will die, when I will come here. I'm unable to bear this disease." And mysteriously I could see him moved to tears. He embraced me and he said, "Your time has not yet come. Your time has not yet come. Go. You have to bring healing to millions of brokenhearted people. You have to bring physical healing to millions of people who are crying in agony. Only then you will come. Your time has not come but God will heal you." Oh, that was so wonderful. I came back and God healed me.

There was another time I went through sickness and I was vomiting blood. I had no hope, feeling that there is one week more for me to see death. So one day I told my wife, "I have lived a righteous life. Therefore the Lord will take care of you and my two children. Sorry I am closing my eyes." She cried and went away. Then came Jesus. Then He told me why He allowed the sickness and one of the reasons is, He said, "My son unless you go through this part of sickness, this part of languishing in sick bed, you will never understand the agony of My people who go through sickness. There's only one reason for which I allowed it but now I will heal you."

So all this agony that a real servant of God goes through are carefully recorded in heaven and the right time when you go, He tries to make you very happy in every way possible. That's why He has built mansions, golden mansions that glitter, I can never forget.

Recently in November 2001, in one of the cities in Nigeria, Pastor Daniel Ekechukwu was going to visit his father to give him a Christmas present and on the way, he met with an accident and he died. Three days his body was kept in the mortuary, totally dead and gone but later on God in His mercy heard the cry of his wife and sent him back. His wife had the audacious faith. She read in Hebrews 11:35, Women received their dead raised to life again.

That one word touched her heart so when a great man of God, Reinhard Bonnke, was conducting a big crusade in a church, she went and begged the doctor to release the dead body of her husband. They obliged and the police obliged, the security obliged. She brought and laid the dead body of this Nigerian pastor in the basement of this church where this man of God was preaching. When he was praying for the sick and the suffering, she prayed earnestly for her husband to be resurrected. Lo and behold, he came back alive and he lives today.

I have not met him but I saw him in a videotape. This man has also said, when he died in the accident, he was giving instructions to his wife to do this and that. Then his heart stopped and two angels of God came and took him to heaven and surely he saw so many things there.

And then he says when the angel said, "We will now go back. Before that, come let us have a look at the mansions prepared for God's people." It was so encouraging to me that what God showed me, He showed him also.

So one side there are mansions which are prepared by the Lord Jesus Christ for the people who laid their lives for Him. On another side to make the people happy, one of the things that He has prepared is little homes wherever they want. Many doesn't need it for the moment they come to heaven, they say, "That's enough, that's enough." When they see Jesus they forget but in His mercy, in His great love, in His compassion, He thinks of the things which these people never had in the world and He makes them feel that they got it.

I went to Libya. They have a place where they had a conference of the oil-producing countries and all monarchs and princes and kings stayed in a particular place. This place was built exclusively for them to stay and lo and behold when I went there, our ambassador put me in that wonderful place. Oh, it was marvelous. I said, "It's beyond my worthiness. I don't deserve this." He said, "You don't deserve it but we would love to make you happy."

So like that the mansions in heaven, they are all the pleasure of our Lord Jesus Christ. 

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