God, as I know Him
and per the Bible, is not limited. He can do the
seeming impossible. You don't have to die to leave
your body. And notice, Jesus didn't call it
'reincarnation.' Paul the Apostle didn't know what
to call his experience either. Who knows what God
would call it. ;) But it is obvious John the
Baptist didn't understand what God was doing with him
other than the ministry he was called to perform.
My visit to Heaven
in January 2007 began with me first viewing my ceiling
fan while lying flat on my back in my bed. Then
suddenly, the ceiling fan disappeared and I was then
seeing Jesus off in the distance sitting on His throne
in Heaven.
When Jesus got off
His throne and walked down some stairs to a lower level,
I felt a shuffle and the next thing I knew I was up
there with Him. Jesus took my spirit to
Heaven while my body remained in my bed. How
do I know? Because He took me to a room where He
showed me things about creation of the Earth. I
remember holding a crystal ball about the size of a
volley ball in my hands and examining it, as well as,
later walking through a hallway and across a platform,
then going down steps to a lower level like Jesus did at
the beginning of the vision and walking with Him a short
ways.
When I was in
Heaven, I wasn't at all conscious about my body lying in
my bed until there was another feeling of a shuffle
during which He returned my spirit to my body lying in
my bed.
Then, when Jesus
asked me a final question from Heaven, my response was
from my body lying in my bed, though I did not see my
bedroom around me while I was in my bed until after my
session with Jesus was done. But I knew I was
answering Him from my bed because at one point I turned
over in my bed and pulled the covers over my head when
He asked me the final question that took me by
surprise. He must have known the last question
would embarrass me and returned me to my bed in time so
I could pull the covers over me to hide.
Hah! How thoughtful of Him.
When He
finally got the last answer out of me and ended His
session, that's when my ceiling fan appeared again and I
no longer could see any more of the vision in
Heaven. It's confusing, I know, but my body was
here while my spirit was up there for awhile. It
was all done so quickly and seamlessly, in the
"twinkling of an eye."
I tell you this so
that you can understand, hopefully, that God can do
anything. It would be nothing for Him to keep
Elijah's body up there while using his spirit down here,
as weird as it sounds. He has the "essence of the
spirit" and does what He wants with it. That's why
I don't struggle with what Jesus said to His disciples
about John the Baptist because I've experienced God's
unlimited ability to do things that appear impossible to
us. John the Baptist, not having had such an
experience consciously, obviously had no idea what God
could do. Even the Apostle Paul had trouble
explaining his vision visit to Heaven.
There's a book by
Enoch that describes him telling the saints in Heaven
how he and Elijah are going to return to Earth during
the Great Tribulation where they will be killed in the
street of Jerusalem, resurrected and return once again
to Heaven. That corroborates what Jesus was
telling His disciples. That would be a second time
for Elijah to experience death, albeit in another body
since he first experienced it as John the Baptist who
got beheaded and a first time for Enoch, as far as we
know.
What you need to
know: God told someone once that "there's
really no such thing as death."
Instead, "your energy merely changes forms."
Jesus, the Creator, gave an example of this in
caterpillars who turn into a cocoon that looks like a
tomb, then flies out of it as a beautiful
butterfly. Its energy didn't die - it merely
changed forms. Our spirits are eternal because we
are from God who is an eternal spirit. We have a
spark of the Divine in us which is why one person
reported that angels bowed to him while visiting
Heaven. When he asked why, the reply was, "Because
you have a spark of the Divine in you." It's the
containers we call "bodies" that return to the dust, but
not our spirits.