What is God’s purpose in instituting this great Plan of the Ages? What was His intent in forming man from the dust of the earth and making him a living soul? Why did He make man a little lower than the angels, yet visits him with an intimate relationship not given to angels and heavenly creatures? Why did He subject this creature to vanity, not willingly, but by reason of Him that has subjected the same in hope? Why was man made in such duality, having been given two seeds, one of corruption and the other of incorruption, made of both light and darkness, earthly elements and heavenly elements, bearing the image of the earthly and also the image of the heavenly? Why was man lowered out from God Substance into the dark and musty world of his humanity, shaped in iniquity and given the capacity to sin against God and mankind? What was in God’s mind before the disruption of the ages concerning this lowly creature called man? What was it about this creature that caused such an act of love and sacrifice to be acted out in the Creator, giving His own Son for the supreme gift of salvation to this dusty amalgamation?

Such questions may not be very uplifting to consider and some of us may rather not even address such thoughts, preferring to keep ourselves safe and secure in our ignorance concerning such disturbing realities, but for us that are truly seekers of truth, we must come to terms with such questions in order for us to come to true and relevant answers. Of course, someone will always fall back on old clichés when addressing such questions, such as the standard quote, "Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man, the things which God hath prepared for them that love him.", all the while failing to read the next verse that follows this often misused verse, "But God hath revealed them unto us by his Spirit: for the Spirit searcheth all things, yea, the deep things of God." I Corinthians 2:8-9. Ah yes, the deep things of God, those things that mere mortal man does not even bother to consider when contemplating his place in God’s Plan of the Ages. After all, who are we to come to such spiritual conclusions about our origins and our endings? Well, my dear friend, we are the chosen generation of the Lord, the heirs of His salvation, the election of grace, the priesthood that is called after the order of Melchizedek, and if we do not ask these questions, then no one will.

Certainly, the present religious systems of men will not ask these questions. For the religious world, questions are dangerous to the health and security of the system that they have instituted. They demand unquestioned loyalty to their doctrines and concepts about God, shrouding themselves in schools of higher learning and theological positioning that demand years of brain washing at the hands of the indoctrinated teachers and leaders. The present church system of religion has lost it’s way and has left the original, designed plan of God for man and has replaced that plan with their own carnal plan of man-made design. The main-line, fundamental church system has left the path of God’s truth and instituted their own version of the so-called end time and impending doom for mankind. Today, the standard doctrinal statement found in almost every statement of belief in this system of religion includes a belief that has come to be termed, "the rapture of the church", or "the second coming of Christ". Sadly, the only hope left to the modern day "church" to come into the presence of the fullness of God is to be whisked off to heaven via a bodily flight through the air into the sky, in a desperate, last minute escape from the clutches of evil. Sad as it may sound, the "church" of today has rested all of it’s hope on a rapture theory that no one can agree on exactly when it is supposed to happen, since the church system of higher learning has also drawn up a millennial chart of events that are supposed to take place on the earth, based upon a carnal viewpoint of scriptures that deal with so-called "end time" events, most notably the book of Revelation. So, the problem is to figure out just where exactly in these sequences of events the supposed rapture of the church is to take place. One thing that almost all of the theologians of the church system agree upon is the occurrence of the so-called "Great Tribulation", which is generally taught by these systems as a time of God pouring out His wrath upon all the earth in a fit of rage and anger. This Great Tribulation is a central part of the chart of the end time sequences of events, so the theory for the rapture of the church has to either take place pre-tribulation, or mid-tribulation, or post-tribulation and the funny part is that no one agrees on the correct timing for this event to take place, although they all use the same scriptures and references for each rapture position that is taken, pre-trib, mid-trib or post-trib. This is what the "church" has come to, a confused, uncertain, body of believers without consensus on what they would term as the single most important event to transpire in the history of God’s plan, the "rapture of the church" into the presence of Jesus. As you might have surmised by now, I do not believe in a "physical rapture" of the church into the blue yonder, but I believe that there is something much more grand and momentous that is to take place in the heart of the believer, an event that will indeed cause a people to rise into the presence of the Lord, but not in bodily flight through the air, but an ascension that will translate us out from the kingdom of darkness and despair into the light of the Kingdom of God. In my viewpoint, this is not an external event, but an internal experience in the hearts of believers.

Please understand that my intent is not to try to prove to you that there will be no rapture, although I myself have come to that conclusion. Real Truth does not rely on our scholastic abilities to prove it’s true validity, but absolute Truth will simply make all other part-truths irrelevant in the light of it’s glorious reality. I did not come to the reality of the present, abiding kingdom of God and the present, indwelling of the Son of God in my life by reading a newsletter or hearing a taped teaching discoursing on such a possibility. The fact is, I arrived at this conclusion the same way a person would arrive at a location in the far distance, finding myself arriving at such a conclusion in a natural and fluent progression and in looking back at that journey, I realized that during that whole journey I was given no other recourse or direction, since all other roads were cut off for me. The wonderful thing about Truth is that when it is revealed in it’s entirety, all other shadows and symbols of that Truth disappear and are made of no effect. For this reason, I truly do not try to change someone’s doctrinal belief, but I do speak of the Truth that has been revealed to my heart, and in so doing, if it truly is absolute Truth, it will automatically do away with all lesser viewpoints that we may have conjured up on our journey to that Truth. One day, as I continued to walk into the Truth of God, I looked for the rapture theory, and it was no where to be found! It was swallowed up into the greater Truth of the abiding presence of Jesus Christ in my life, so there was no longer a need in my mind to look further down the road for something intangible and out of reach, for the Lord had come to my house and made His presence known. Why should I look for Him in the sky or in a city or out in the desert when He was standing up in His temple declaring Himself as present and available? I came to this Truth just as sure as if I were to get in my car and drive to the local market, that which I sought after in past days, I have come to and arrived at by the grace of God. So, for me, the focus of this present time in God is not in trying to get ready for the supposed event of the rapture of the church, but I do believe we are getting prepared for something to take place! After all, God is going to get that which He has been after from the genesis of His plan. It just isn’t going to be accomplished by a mass exit of the overcoming Church from planet earth!

If Christ IS come in the flesh, if He HAS come to His temple and seated Himself in that temple in heavenly places, if He HAS filled us with the fullness of His Self, if we are indeed the house of God, the dwelling place of the Most High, the city of God, if we are indeed the house not made with hands, the New Jerusalem, if we are His gates of praise, walls of salvation, the everlasting doors through which the King of glory shall appear, then why would we be looking for some kind of external, physical kingdom or city to be set up on earth? The answer is that we are still carnal and our understanding is still dark. All of the doctrines of the modern "church" that have put God afar off into the wild, blue yonder, and that have portrayed the devil as equal to Him in power and strength, all of this comes out of the darkened understanding of the natural, religious mind. When Jesus reveals Himself to any person, that person will never again look for Him in some far off place, but will walk with Him and talk with Him and live in Him. The King is here! He has not been exiled to some far off planet, lurking out in outer space waiting to come to break through the stratosphere of earth’s atmosphere and call His chosen to the sky. The King is here! He has always been here, and He has never been away from His Body, but has filled it with Himself and is revealing Himself from glory to glory to those that are looking for Him. Every day I see and hear Jesus and we have beautiful communion together. Right now, even as I type these words, He is with me and speaking to me words of life. When I lay down in bed tonight, He will be with me and when I wake up in the morning, He will be with me, for He is my eternal, abiding friend that I will always have at my disposal. I know some may think this is the words of a fool, but since He revealed Himself to me, I have never been out of His presence! The Truth is, He has always been with me, I just didn’t know it. I wasn’t looking for Him, because the church system had taught me that He was way up there and I was way down here and someday I would get to go to Him either when I died or when I was "raptured", but one day I found the courage to believe God’s word instead of the words and thoughts of men, and I saw Him! Right here, with me, in me, through me, and everywhere I looked, I saw Him, O glory to His name! This One that I loved with all of my heart, longed after to look upon Him, to see His visage, to bask in His presence, one glad and glorious Day the scales of my eyes fell off and I saw Him, not with the eyes of flesh, but with greater eyes, that tell no lies, I saw Him, nay, I knew Him, I smelled Him, I felt Him, in all truth, I was made AWARE of Him. It is truly difficult to find the words to express this excruciatingly personal relationship with Him, but any one that reads these words and have come to KNOW Him in this way, will have a Yea and an Amen in them at my words. This is how far off the path of life the "church" has come, to where Jesus has become a disembodied spirit floating around somewhere, waiting to take us to a floating city in the sky. God help us! We must get back to the true plan of God for mankind! That plan is not for an escape out of this world, but the true Plan of the Ages deals with the transformation of mankind from a creature of the dust into a creature of spirit life.

To answer the questions posed above, what God is after is simply a NEW CREATURE! That is the whole point of making God’s plan for mankind. Change is an intrinsic element in Gods nature, and everything that comes into contact with the spirit of God cannot remain unchanged. Everything must give way to God’s vivifying Life, and whatever is lowered out of Him must be raised up again in a greater life. All that we see in this existence came from God and was lowered out of Him. Everything had its beginning in God and it all consists by Him and for Him. So, everything and everyone is in a state of progressive transformation. The earth, the heavens, the sun, the planets, everything has been lowered out from God and in its present state and condition has a limited existence. The sun, in time, will burn out and darkness will cover the earth and the surrounding solar system. All that keeps the sun burning is fuel, and that fuel is the same as the fuel that runs your car or the fuel that runs your physical body, it has a limited supply and if not replenished will run out. Scientists tell us that the universe is like a wind up clock running down, and energy will one day run out. The earth will eventually die, and all life on it. I am not trying to be morbid, nor am I being a messenger of doom, this is the reality of how God made the natural world. It is fashioned with a limited time span of existence. Everything we see around us in the natural world will come to an end.

The only hope for all creation, natural and spiritual, is the transforming power of the life of God. The Good News is that God is not far off from His creation! He fills all things and gives life to all things. He is the true Source for all things to exist by and He has infused all things with Himself! The PLAN isn’t to pray to be taken off this dying and sinful planet and escape into outer space, the PLAN is for a people to come into the fullness of Christ, to have that infused life within them rise up and fill the house with its glory and consequently for that people to become the agents of a Greater Life, the Life of God, and to begin to sound forth in earth and heaven the glorious sound of the New Man, not angel, not man, but a New Species of God Substance, filled with the full counsel of the Father. We are not here to live out a miserable life and then pray we can get to heaven someday, but we are here to be CHANGED, from corruption into incorruption, from mortal into immortal, from earthiness into heavenliness, we are here to BE changed and then to have the power TO CHANGE everything else. That is the True Plan as Paul wrote in his epistles to the elect of God. Now, to those that are held captive to the five senses of the natural man, these words will seem like a story of fiction, but to those that have had the scales removed from their eyes, to those that have had a visitation from the invisible spirit of Christ, this will ring true and will enlarge our vision of our purpose in this life.

God did not put you in your body and place you on this earth for you to live your life out as mortal man, but if this writing is witnessing to you at all, if you are feeling an inkling in your heart of hearts that I am talking about you, if you feel a stirring in your inner man and sense an awakening coming forth in areas of your being that have been asleep, then you, my friend, are on a collision course for your true destiny in God and from this day on you will start to see a greater purpose in your existence. You are more than a chunk of physical clay, but you are a spiritual being, placed by God in a physical, corruptible body for a predetermined intent. The majority of Christians only know about God by reading letters on a page or by attending and engaging in a structured religious ceremony that depicts man’s doctrine about God, but He is more than just what we believe Him to be. HE IS WHAT HE IS. Our developed belief about what He is does not dictate what He in actuality is, but that developed belief or faith is a physical mechanism that feebly enables us to mentally handle this kind of quantum thinking. However, there is in each one of us another Mind, that metes out to us information as we can handle it, revealing to us His glorious Self from glory to glory and each phase of revealing changes us, in ways that we cannot begin to fathom. So far, throughout the ages past, most of the change has been on the inside of man, beyond the five sense realm. We could perhaps look at the world and see the outward condition of man and his surroundings and come to the logical conclusion that nothing has changed from 2,000 years ago. But, that would only be the logical, soulical vision of our lowered mind, that cannot know the things of God because they are spiritually discerned. For those that have had their inner eye opened, the world is not the brink of a historic disaster of self destruction, but we see the world on the brink of a great Day of the Lord, that has been progressively dawning toward this present hour since the Beginning and it is now upon us. I am sure this sounds as far fetched and mysterious as Jesus sounded when speaking of spiritual realities to men and women that were living in a lowered reality. Tear down this temple and I will build it back up in 3 days, and immediately everyone thinks Jesus is talking about the physical temple in the city. If any man eat of this bread, he will never die, and immediately everyone thinks Jesus is talking about the natural bread in their hands, or, horror of horrors, His own physical body. That is how foreign this realm of spirit and life is to those that are only aware of the limited, soulical life of the natural world. However, we must not lower our vision and our reality to appease the flesh of men, but as we speak of these mysteries surely they will quicken and make alive those that are purposed to hear them. We might speak to a hundred and only 10 will hear, but we must speak, for whether they hear or don’t hear, the word of the Lord will continue to visit creation until all have been changed.

So, for us that are walking in the Light of the Lord, our focus must be on those invisible, spiritual elements of our purpose for coming into this earthly life. We are here to be changed. In fact, we are here to set a precedent in the earth and follow after Jesus Christ into the glory of our heavenly Father. WHEN this change takes place in its full manifestation is not our concern. This Change did not start with us, and it may not end with us, but we will run our course and finish our leg of the race. There is a very good reason why God keeps us in the dark about the Who and the When concerning the imminent change and transformation of mankind. Surely we can admit that if we were to be given those facts that we are still subject to moving out of time and order in the set phases of the plan of God. By this I mean that we are still selfish enough to try to bring it into evidence before its set time, as we do everything else that God gives to us. I can’t count the times in my own life when God has spoken to me by His spirit and revealed something to me that was about to take place in my life. Each time I would try to figure out a way to make it happen in my own timing, to fit the rest of what was going on in my life at that time. God is a very patient God! Despite all of my innocent maneuverings, invariably nothing would take place until God instituted it. That meant, however, that during that time of internment, I was in a living hell, wondering why God would say such a thing to me and then not let me come into it when I thought it should be evident. As the decades have gone by in my life, I have learned to hear the Lord and to receive instructions from Him and then to not put my hand to it, but let it sit on the stove for as long as the Lord saw fit, without my hands getting in the way and making a mess of it. Such peace I have enjoyed when I take my hands off the things of God and let Him perform that which He allowed me to see before they arrived. Even now, I have several items on the stove, letting them simmer and cook until the appropriated time for them to be integrated into my life. I admit, that sometimes the waiting for them to become available is hard on my natural self. One of the great memories of my childhood is having to go a whole day around the house waiting for dinner time to arrive while my mother cooked her delicious spaghetti dinner in the kitchen. We didn’t have air conditioning, so I could find no relief from the mouth watering aroma, even when going outside to play, as the wind carried the aroma right out through the open windows into my nostrils. As a result, I had to risk life and limb by sneaking into the kitchen to sample the simmering sauce by sopping it with a piece of bread and then running for my life. But, finally, after a full day of suffering the aroma that promised such a tasty meal, the call would come that the food was ready and the set time arrived. No one had to call me twice to such an event, as the waiting made me a willing participant to come running to the feast.

Can we not see the same thing in the present time and atmosphere in God? Can you not smell the aroma of the Bread of Life in our midst? Something has been cooking in our being and it is causing us to become extremely hungry for the things of God. The problem for us is that there has been a bunch of promise of things to come, but no food yet! Did you know that the very beginnings of proper digestion of natural food is begun before the food ever enters our stomach? How many of us have waited all day to attend a dinner engagement at a wonderful restaurant and in anticipation of that meal heard a growling and rumbling coming from our stomach? That, my friend, is the beginnings of digestion, brought on by our ability to anticipate that meal, drawing a mental picture of how it will taste and how it will take that hunger away. Then, we finally arrive at the establishment and we either look at a menu, or walk by the food bar, and the sights start to initiate a further stage of digestion, even lifting our spirits a little, making us a little more jovial and personable to our dinner partners. Surely you have noticed this, haven’t you? Then, the meal is served, and we immediately enter into the next phase of digestion, the sense of smell. Oh, come on now, you know we all do it, even if we don’t want others at the table to be aware of it, but it is an ancient genetic habit from our earliest beginnings, before we eat the food, no matter how delicious it looks, we put it to the final, time honored test, we smell it. I had a fast rule when I was a child, if it doesn’t smell good, it isn’t getting in my mouth! When the aroma of food reaches our nostrils, our body starts to anticipate and prepare itself for the ingestion of that food. This is the final test before the external food source is actually introduced to our body, for everything up to this point has just been anticipation, but now, through the sense of smell, we are going to determine whether it is worthy of our ingestion. Our mouth starts to gather fluid, which is full of digestive agents that will aid in the digestive action of the food when it is first introduced into our mouth. Whether you know it or not, the pupils of your eyes widen to inspect the food even closer, looking for anything suspicious or unappetizing. Sorry, but the clinical examination of the digestive process is kind of gross, but this is how important it is for our body to assure itself of the proper ingestion and digestion of fuel. Anyway, if the food looks good, if the food smells good, then comes into play the old adage, "Through the teeth, over the gums, look out stomach, here it comes!" But, not so fast! One of the most important phases of digestion happens in the mouth, before the big gulp. Proper chewing of the food prepares the stomach for the arrival of the food. While the food is pre-digested in the mouth, the stomach is resembling a rumbling volcano, churning with acids and enzymes, all needed to break down the prepared food from large pieces into much smaller molecules which the body will take full advantage of in meeting the needs for fuel and nutrition. If one step or more of the lengthy digestive process is missing, the result is improper digestion, which leads to malnourishment and physical weaknesses.

As this is true in the natural, so how much more true is it for us in the spirit? We are at a time in the progressive Plan of God for creation where elements must be changed from one form into another form. That carrot that you ate for lunch no longer has any resemblance to a carrot now! However, all that it was changed into was in the carrot before it’s transformation, but in another order or form. As the many stages of the Day of the Lord have come and gone, they have gone through a series of assimilations into the new stages, which each age of God’s plan having a certain glory to it, which must give way to the new glory that follows it. The old glory must be dissimilated, broken down to it’s basic elements, and then re-assimilated into a new form of glory. Even in this realm of passing orders and glories, we can see the process of one glory fading, but the rising of a new anticipation of the next dimension of glory. We start to hunger for that new glory, yearn for it, pant after it as the hart pants for the water of the stream, we thirst and hunger for the greater life in God. It takes that groaning, and travailing to bring us to the proper posture of receiving the greater and letting go of the lesser. Our dear, esteemed brother in the Lord, J Preston Eby, once ministered to a gathering that I attended this wonderful promise that has given me much comfort when I faced an interim between one glory and the next. Quote: "The Father never lets us experience hunger without having the substance to satisfy that hunger ready for us to eat." In other words, if we smell the aroma of fresh baked bread, then it won’t be long before we are called to the table to partake of that wonderful meal. If we are all feeling the same anticipation concerning the break through of life in our midst, then we can rest assured that the change is at hand, even at the door, for us to enter into it. I have never had such an expectation in me concerning this tremendous truth of Transformation as I have right now. Regardless of the fact that it seems that so much is happening in our lives that would seem to make it impossible for such a thing to be happening, I declare to you all that are reading these words, IT IS HAPPENING! Even in the midst of such sickness and death throughout the ranks of the sons of God, I cannot hold back this declaration, although it may grind against our logical mind and what we see with our natural eyes and hear with our natural ears, I tell you of a truth, we are on the precipice of the greatest event the world has ever known!

How do I know this? Because the whole company of the First Fruits of Christ are hungering after it at the same time! I must tell you that I have been ministering about this Transformation for about 35 years now, and it has been ministered for much longer than that by the early trail blazers of Truth, but something is different in my being as I write about it in this article. I am not writing this in a desperate act of trying to ‘name it so I can claim it", or in a "mind over matter" display of trying to wrestle something out of the heavens, but my spirit knows something that is exciting it to a fever pitch! My inner man is jumping up and down inside of me, my heart is singing a song of victory and salvation, and it is not coming from a doctrinal aspect, but from an expectation that goes beyond what I know and what I can comprehend right now. I don’t care if it happens in my own life, as I am aware that many have gone before me that have been great men and women of faith and purpose and I do not hold any aspirations of grandeur for my own part in this great Journey for creation, but something is HAPPENING dear ones, and all that I know is that we must have our focus and attention upon this momentous occasion, the transformation and transfiguration of the sons of God in this earth. It is not out of fear of the grave that we are ministering this wonderful truth, but out of the pure joy of seeing Christ appear in His saints and to see every man awakened unto this great Gift of Life that Jesus has won for us. I long for the song of victory to be sung on every hill and mountain top, the sound of it going down into the valleys and filling the pastures with the sound of Redemptive Victory! I yearn for pain to be cast off the children of God and to see the nature of the Lamb manifest in every life. I thrill to the sound of the marching of the army of the Lord that I hear in my spirit, as the heavens declare the approaching hour of God establishing His kingdom in the hearts of men. Can you hear them, dear saints of the Lord? Do you hear the innumerable company of those that are singing the new song of the Redeemed of the Lord? Is it resonating in your being, filling you with the glorious harmony of such a host that are being gathered together in Christ, a heavenly choir of ascension and victory drowning out the doubt of our minds, filling us with a dangerous faith in the power of our Christ and our Lord? Oh yes, we are a very dangerous people! We have nothing to lose and everything to gain! Woe to the darkness, woe to the corruption of sin and death, woe to the walled cities of despair and sorrow, for we are gathered this Day against those principalities and powers to bring them down and to free the captives from their deadly chains. We are a people that are being made ONE, with God and with each other, and nothing will stand against this army of priests and kings, as their Supreme Lord and King leads them on. Hell and Death are on shaky ground, sickness and disease are on notice, agony and defeat are on our hit list, and we will bring to this earth the visitation of our King, having a great resolve within us to bring this final act to it’s long ago purposed end. Such a Day we have come to and such a Day have we been born unto. Now, rise up and take the land!

By Bob Torango