- 2 Cor. 4:16

 

      When the Holy Spirit came into my dream and said, "I am going to show you something you have never seen before," it was such a startling revelation to me.  All my life I have always looked at John 3:16 with this thought in mind: "For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him, should not perish (go to hell), but have everlasting life (go to heaven)."  It was just something that was so imprinted in me that I never really considered any other interpretation.  But in my dream, the Holy Spirit said to me, "You have always looked at this verse from eternity's point of view.  Now I want to show it to you from the view that I intended it to be understood."

      First of all, let me say this; I think it goes without question that if a person does not believe in Jesus Christ as their Lord and Savior then in perishing they will perish.  That means without a personal encounter with the Lord no one is going to escape the fate of eternal damnation.  That decision is one we must make now in this life if we are going to change the course of our eternal destiny.  However, when the Holy Spirit started talking to me, he said, "There is another side to this that is very dear to my heart and the heart of the Father.  And that is what I want you to see."  And then he proceeded to point out the word "perish."  He said, "This does not just mean eternal damnation as you have always supposed."  Listen very carefully.  He said, "To perish means to lose out on all that the Father planned for you, which includes the work of redemption available in this life."

      When I began to look this verse up in the Greek I was surprised when I found that the words "should" and "perish" were the same.  If you read them as they read in the Greek, it would say, "...that whosoever believeth in him perish not perish, but have everlasting life."  "Perish not perish" means that though outwardly we are perishing, we must realize that there is a life within us that can empower us to live above the cause behind our perishing.

      God told Adam, "...in the day that you eat it (the forbidden fruit) you shall surely die" (Gen. 2:17). The literally Hebrew should read, "In dying thou shalt die." In other words, spiritual death seized the sovereignty, and by doing so, it has rendered us useless and inoperative toward living a life of dominion.  We lost out entirely on partaking of God's original plan. 

      We were fated to perish. Yet, according to the Holy Spirit, John 3:16 was meant to read as: God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son that whosoever believeth in him might regain the sovereignty of life and rise above the ills of the destroyer.  See, we may not be able to escape perishing physically, but we can certainly escape the fate of perishing while we perish! And that is exactly what Paul meant when he told Timothy: "Who hath saved us, and called us with a holy calling...which was given us in Christ Jesus before the world began; but is now made manifest by the appearing of our Savior Jesus Christ, who hath abolished death, and hath brought life and immortality to light through the gospel" (2 Tim. 1:9, 10).  Now that eternal life is available to all true believers in Christ there abides within this life a sovereignty that can elevate us above the works of the destroyer.  Peter writes something very similar: "Whereby are given unto us exceeding great and precious promises: that by these ye might be partakers of the divine nature, having escaped the corruption that is in the world through lust" (2 Pet. 1:4).  The divine nature is the life of God and through it we can rise above the enemy's plots and schemes where he is set on destroying all that he can.

      This is exactly what Jesus meant when he said, "The thief cometh not but for to kill, and to steal, and to destroy, but I have come that ye might have life and have it more abundantly" (John 10:10).  This doesn't just have to do with life when we get to heaven.  It has to do with living his life while we are still subject to these mortal bodies! 

      God wants each of us to realize the sovereignty of life means we have the right to escape moral corruption, human frailty, even the boundaries and limitations of a life blinded by sin consciousness, or anything that seeks to rob us of our rights and privileges in Christ. God does not want any to perish. He does not want any to suffer loss, become deprived of life as heaven has it, or be rendered useless by the destroyer.  We must remember the words of the apostle Paul: "But with many of them God was not well-pleased: for they were overthrown in the wilderness" (1 Cor. 10:5).  

That shall not become our fate.