Open Heaven

In Genesis 28 beginning in verse 10, Jacob had an encounter with God in a night vision. He dreamed of an ladder ascending between heaven and earth and He saw angels ascending and descending from heaven to earth and back again on this laddar. God stood at the top of the ladder and spoke to him. After Jacob saw this and heard God speak to him, then the covenant that was given to his grandfather and his father was also recommitted to him. In the latter part of verse 14 it says, "All peoples of the earth will be blessed through you and your offspring (seed)."

The Apostle Paul picked up on that 'and your seed.' Paul said, "It didn't say seeds (plural) -- it said 'Seed,' meaning Jesus. All nations are going to be blessed through you and your Seed." God is concerned about the nations, even at this point.

This is one of the greatest dreams in the whole Bible. This is a prophetic dream that encompasses the purpose of God and we are blessed to be a blessing. Israel is chosen to make God known to the nations. The plan of God is to make Himself known to the nations, and from every tongue, nation, tribe, people, He will have them in heaven around Him. This means that before Jesus comes back, every tribe, every ethnic linguistic group, are going to hear the gospel of the Kingdom, which is the gospel of power. God was talking to Jacob and told him that he would also be blessed.

Look at verse 15. "I am with you and will watch over you. Wherever you go, I will go, and bring you back to this land. I will not leave you until I've done what I promised." Then verse 16 says, "When Jacob awoke from his sleep, he thought, 'Surely the Lord was in this place and I was not aware of it.'"

Now I want to tell you something. There are times when God is with us and we are not aware of it. I really believe that I'm alive today because of angelic oversight. There was more than once that I should have been killed. I think the enemy's been after me from the time I was a little boy. I had more insurance claims on me, my mom said, than the rest of the family put together. That's true!

One time when I was seven years old, I was kicked in the head by a horse. A quarter of an inch closer and that steel horseshoe would have crushed my skull instead of just lifting the skin up to see into the skull. Another time when I was in the sixth grade, if I'd been just a little bit farther down the field when cut myself as I was shucking corn, I would have died. I cut the artery in two and I had to hold my wrist and run about a mile to get the house while my artery was pumping blood. Then my parents had to get me to the hospital before I died. If I had been further down the field when this happened, I would not have made it back to the house.

One time as a youth, I was almost killed in a car wreck. My best friend who had been sitting beside me was killed. This was the fulfillment of a dream I'd seen as a little boy. In my dream I was walking through the woods and all of a sudden a tree fell on me and I was pinned down. I cried, "Help me! Help me! I'm pinned down! I'm pinned down!" At the time of the car accident, my cousin who was not a believer, regained consciousness first. He said I was pinned in. He said I was yelling, "Help me! Help me! I'm pinned down! I'm pinned down!"

Another time when I was 16 years old, I was almost in what would have surely been a fatal car accident. I was passing a car and there was no way to get over. There was a truck coming and I misgauged it. (I was 16 years old.) This truck, a big old semi, was coming off a hill and he was running way too fast, and I could not get over to my lane. The neighbors who saw it said, "I don't know how you got your car between those two cars!" It was all of a sudden, right before he hits me I got over -- 'shoomp' I'm there! I believe there really is an activity of angels in our lives, even when we don't know it.

Jacob said, "I wasn't even aware of it." And then he says, "How awesome is this place. This is none other than the house of God. This is the gate of heaven." The gate of heaven! The house of God!

I remember growing up in the fifties when there was all this prejudice between the denominations about which one was the real, right denomination. We lived in a little community -- the county seat had 2600 people, there were 11,000 in the whole county. On the Christian radio, you'd hear the Church of Christ, "We are the right ones! We got the right name! There's not a Baptist church mentioned in the Bible in the New Testament, there's not a Methodist church mentioned in the New Testament, there's not a Presbyterian church mentioned in the New Testament! If you want to be a New Testament church, then you look in the New Testament and you'll find all that's there is the Christian church and the Churches of Christ!"

Of course, each denomination felt like, through J.R. Graves that we could trace our heritage back through every heretical group that there ever was all the way to John the Baptist and we were the right group. 'Trail of blood,' that's right! After I looked at some of those trails that we went through, I thought, "I bet they didn't know that they believed that!"

The point is that everybody was trying to prove they were the right denomination because of something they had that was right doctrinally or in their practice. I think that that was the wrong approach. I think the right approach is, if you want to be the House of God, which is one of the titles that Paul uses for the Church, be a gate to heaven. Why did he call it the house of God? Because there was a gate. This is none other than the House of God because God is here, and there's an open heaven, there's a gate to heaven in this place! I believe God has purposed, because of the Cross, that in every church (if we would come to understand it), He's purchased for us an open heaven. He's purchased for us to have activity.

Jesus enters into this picture way back in the time of Jacob. God, in this vision or divine visitation, had spoken to Jacob. He made promises to him and told him of things to come. He talked about the vast number of future generations that would come from Jacob to be the Jewish race, God's chosen people. Then He changed tense from plural to singular to talk about the "Seed" (singular) that "all the families of the earth shall be blessed" by. This is a reference to Christ -- He is the one who descended from Abraham, who laid down His life as a sacrifice for man's sin and then rose from the dead, forever conquering sin and death. He is the one who made it possible for all people, not just the Jews, to enter into a personal relationship with God. That was the blessing that Gen 28:14 was talking about -- Salvation and right relationship with God.