It's Supernatural

SID: There are two kinds of heavenly encounters. Everyone knows about one kind. That’s the sovereign one, where someone’s caught up into heaven, but very few understand about the second kind. Tell me about that sovereign one that happened to you.

PATRICIA: Well, in 1994, it’s January 1994, I was in Florida at a revival meeting and I did not know, Sid, at that particular time that you could actually access heaven when you were living in the Earth. I didn’t know it. But the Holy Spirit took me up into heaven in that meeting and it was definitely sovereign. Sovereign, we mean, it’s under God’s control. It’s not like, we didn’t believe for it to happen or anything like that. And I was actually shocked and all of heaven was laughing. There was such joy in heaven. And I struggled with that a little bit at the time because I thought, well down on planet Earth, we’ve got a lot of issues that need to be looked after. We could use your help, but it looks like you’re having a party up here or something. Right?

And so I was a little bit struggling with that. And the Lord spoke to me, He said, “We don’t have any anxiety here. There’s nothing that we are concerned about because the victory is already secured and we live from that position. And we want you to live from that position in the earth.” And so it was a real testimony to me and I gleaned a lot out of it. I had some other visions within that encounter and that … but when I came out, I wanted more of those sovereign encounters. So I kept crying, “Oh God, take me back, take me back.” And I was waiting for God to sovereignly pick me up again and take me into heaven. And it didn’t happen.

Then you bumped into a mutual friend of ours, a prophet that is now in heaven. His name was Bob Jones. And it changed her whole paradigm about ascending or descending with heaven. Explain it.

PATRICIA: So that was six years later and I’ve been praying for another encounter this whole time and I was picking up Bob Jones from the airport, first time I met him, but I’d heard a lot about him and about his spiritual encounters. And so, when I picked him up, we were in the car going back to his hotel and I told him about my 1994 encounter. And he says, “Yep, I have those every day. They’re my raptures.” He called them his raptures, right?

I said, “You have these every day? I would love to have these every day.” He says, “Well, you can have them every day.” And I said, “Well, would you pray for me?” He said, “Yep, but not now.” So I thought, “Oh Lord, this is going to be amazing.” So the next day we’re in the lunchroom at the conference, and he says, “Well, do you want to go?”

And I said, “Yeah, you mean like right now?” He says, “Yep.” He said, “It says in the Bible, in Ephesians 2, that we’re seated in heavenly places in Christ and Christ is seated at the right hand of the Father in heaven.” So he said, “You’re already there. Why are you asking for something that you already have?” And it was like, “What? I don’t feel like I’m already there.” And he said, “It’s got nothing about feeling, it’s about following the Spirit. Right? And also in Hebrews it says that we’re to come boldly before the throne of grace to obtain mercy and to receive grace in time of need.” Well–