and
@Willie T
I haven't been a fan of Paula White since the scandal she was part of, but there are many Christians who are being transported to heaven since the 80's, including one of my own pastors. So is it she you don't believe, or that
anyone could claim they've been translated. Don't know the right term to use - translated/transported. How do you feel about Jesus showing up physically in your own living room and having a conversation with you? Or maybe just hearing God speak to you in your head.
What do I think of all that? Now that you asked, I'll give you an answer. I have been transported to Heaven myself. I would not dare to say however that I saw the face of God. I instinctively averted my gaze, not wanting to peer and stare. I didn't even think about it. I knew the respectful thing for me to do was avert my gaze. The conversation of that experience is something I do not think I should relate since I'd call it a private revelation and would not help anyone else.
I could believe Jesus might appear anywhere he wants with a body I could touch so it felt solid. However I would not call it "physical." That has never happened; but I have seen him a few times.
As for God speaking to me in my head? Not with a voice that might be confused with a voice of the material world. I did hear a voice say my name audibly one day and did not think it was God. I paid no attention to it since it sounded so much like a human voice from the material world. Someone with spiritual ears knows when he's hearing a spiritual voice and does not confuse it with what he hears with his physical ears.
Emphatically I do believe people who are born of the Spirit as well as being born of the water can travel to spiritual places. The person fully born of the Spirit can move like the wind -- as Jesus told Nicodemus. Paul also indicated the saints are meant to seated in heavenly places and said God made it so -- and that was before those people's physical bodies died.
Ephesians 2:6 And hath raised us up together, and made us sit together in heavenly places in Christ Jesus:
Certainly too, there are ungodly "powers" still around in high places; and the saint may deal with them at times.
Ephesians 6:12 For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places.
2 Corinthians 10:5 Casting down imaginations, and every high thing that exalteth itself against the knowledge of God, and bringing into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ;
It is not for everyone however if has evil of his own left unresolved. The person with the temptation to sin himself would be placing himself in peril by trying to take on "spiritual wickedness in high places." How could someone who has not had God cast out the evil in him be able to deal with such greater evil? I cannot say I know for sure what happened to Paula White. She has said some things however that struck me as arrogant. People who say they are rebuking Satan and so on make me wonder a little if their comments verge on the disrespectful (yes, I have also met Satan and I did not speak to him disrespectfully). My guess is that the book of Jude may apply to Paula White. I think she's gone delusional. What a pity.
Jude 1:7 Even as Sodom and Gomorrha, and the cities about them in like manner, giving themselves over to fornication, and going after strange flesh, are set forth for an example, suffering the vengeance of eternal fire.
8 Likewise also these filthy dreamers defile the flesh, despise dominion, and speak evil of dignities.
9 Yet Michael the archangel, when contending with the devil he disputed about the body of Moses, durst not bring against him a railing accusation, but said, The Lord rebuke thee.
10 But these speak evil of those things which they know not: but what they know naturally, as brute beasts, in those things they corrupt themselves.
