The Gates of Eden

The Gates of Eden

Vance Royal Olson

THE GATES OF EDEN copyright © 2015 Vance Royal Olson

All rights reserved.

Published by: The Blacksmith Arms Publishing House, London, England

Print design and cover layout: Simona Meloni

email:blacksmithpublishing@gmail.com

Contents

I. Preface

II. Prologue: Excerpts from The Road to Eden

A Twilight Encounter

The Hydraulics of an Open Heaven

III. The Father’s Love: Gate of Heaven

IV. Beginnings: Wisdom Calls from the Gates

First Answers

Overcoming Fear

Pressure

Training and Commissioning

V. The London Scene: Gates of the City

Ichthus House

The Dietrich Bonhoeffer Memorial Church

The New Life Centre

Number 7 Combedale Road

The Haunted House on Beaconsfield Road

VI. God’s Hydraulics and the Right of Access: Gates of the Earth

Discernment and the Key of Knowledge

Access: Using the Key of Knowledge

Unbelief

Spiritualism

Slavery

Fashion

Architecture

Music

Philosophy and Academia: John Wycliffe

A Note of Caution

VII. WWII and the Cross: Gate of Hope and Glory

An Old Desire

Ron

Brian and the Gates of Hades

The Quest for the Unified Field

The Cross and the War

VIII. Transtemporal Intercession: Gates of the Ages

Moses, Paul and Israel’s Destiny

Indicators and Tokens

IX. Heart of Light: Breaking the Iron Gate of Religion

Healer of Broken Hearts

The Catholic Church

Mary Grace

The Father at the Cross

Epilogue

X. The Church of England: Battle at the Gate

The Martyrdom of David Watson

St Paul’s Cathedral

King Henry’s Legacy

Queen Elizabeth’s Oak

First Fruits

XI. Lord of the Whole Earth: Gate of the Peoples

Dialectic

Jerusalem: Gate of the Peoples

Lord of all the Earth

The Church: Light of the World, Salt of the Earth

A Surprising Observation

XII. Travailing Desire: Entering the Gates

XIII. Appendix 1: The Reality of Universals

Reality vs. Nominalism

Understanding Universals

The Human Body

Levels of Reality

The Interface of Spirit and Body

Universals and Creation

On Quantum Theory

XIV. Appendix 2: The Armour of Ghostly Battle

The Armour of Heaven, or of Ghostly Battle

I. Preface

In the first book in this series I told some of the stories of my youth and childhood, especially experiences of my father’s love and how that became a doorway into the heavenly Father’s love. The Road to Eden is the journey into knowing God our Father, as we were created to know him. This book takes up the story of what happened in the seven years that followed. I will begin with a short excerpt from the earlier book so that this one can stand alone if necessary.

‘Gates’ in the Bible is often a metaphor for the place of ruling and authority because the elders and governors of ancient cities assembled at the gates—‘city hall’ by modern parlance. Additionally, gates had a literal physical role in the military security of the city, and in being the place where trade and the movement of people could be controlled.

When Adam and Eve were expelled from the Garden of Eden, God placed at its gate behind them, ‘...the Cherubim, and a flaming sword which turned every way, to guard the way to the tree of life.’ (Genesis 3:24) The Hebrew root concept relating to the word ‘Cherubim’ (which is not formally defined) suggests the idea of guarding and intercession—and with the flaming sword, we can add spiritual warfare. Before Jesus came, died, and rose again, however, we were on the wrong side of the gates, and the wrong end of the sword.

‘But to all who received him, who believed in his name, he gave power to become children of God.’ (John 1:12) We have been offered access in Christ, through the cross, to the authority of God our Father once again. And we are invited in the Lord’s Prayer to exert that will and authority of God—his kingdom—on earth, by prayer and intercession; a work which takes us back to Adam and Eve’s proper occupation, before they fell to sin. In sum: The Gates of Eden is about the place of intimacy, love, intercession and warfare through which the sons and daughters release their Father’s will and kingdom on earth.

If you don’t like the subjects of prayer, spiritual warfare and intercession—with all the strange mystical and spiritual talk that surrounds them—this is probably not the book for you. I make little effort to convince sceptics of anything; rather, I assume my readers are born again in the death and resurrection of Jesus, baptised in the Holy Spirit, and have at least rudimentary knowledge of those things of the Spirit which the Apostle Paul says are foolishness to worldly thinkers. (Ref: I Corinthians 2:14)

And finally, please remember what James said: ‘...for we all make many mistakes.’ (James 3:2) This is my own story about a season of prayer as I understood it at the time, from memory, and with hindsight, but of course many details are left out. Then, too, many things that were only embryonic in 1984 are developed more fully here—I can’t always remember exactly what I was thinking at that time. My prayer is that the Holy Spirit will guide you into his truth and cause any wrong or unhelpful words to fall by the wayside.

II. Prologue: Excerpts from The Road to Eden

‘See that you do not despise one of these little ones; for I tell you that in heaven their angels always behold the face of my Father who is in heaven.’

(Jesus Christ, Matthew 18:10)

A Twilight Encounter

September, 1983

I pressed my knees as best I could up against my CX500’s V-twin engine for whatever scraps of warmth I could draw from it as it propelled me through the twilight toward the deepening gloom of night. The cheerful little engine seemed as oblivious to the darkness and the chill blowing in off the North Sea as to the last remnants of my slowly resolving frustration. Nor did the bleak, muddy flats of western Belgium, which were disappearing into the darkness, dampen its spirited diligence as we pushed mile after mile, first northward from Dunkirk, then westward toward Brussels.

I had always loved twilight, and my mind drifted back to an evening years earlier—a soft, warm evening when I was a child playing in the farmyard back home. Through an open window, I could hear my mum playing her piano and singing. The beauty of her worship flowing through the evening air caressed both soul and body and, merging with the interminable distances of the twilight, drew me into one deep undefined longing: joy-sorrow, as unexpected as ever.

A sudden extra chill in the air jolted me out of the remembrance, and I tried to tighten the bottom of my jacket around my waist. There was no question of stopping for the night—I only had enough money for fuel and food. I looked again across the shadowy landscape in the last light of that September evening and wondered at the barren, cold dampness of it. This was a different twilight and I thought of the battles that had been fought here in two world wars.

The grisly image of a young German soldier trying to gather up his intestines and put them back in his abdomen flashed across my mind. It was from stories told by my father’s old friend, Bill Perrot, who had fought in the First World War when ammunition was in short supply and the fighting frequently reverted to knives and bayonets. Most of the soldiers never talked about what they had seen, but Bill was different (for reasons unknown) and this particular story had traversed a generation and was fixed in my imagination. I could even see the ghastly terror on the young German’s face as the final blow was struck—ostensibly in kindness at that point, as the story went. My father hated war.

My thoughts drifted back to the present day and my current situation. I would have been well into the warmer regions of central Germany by now if not for an annoying delay in getting out of London. Someone had asked me to wait outside a meeting he was in, then—forgetting me—exited the meeting by a different door, leaving me to wait ‘patiently’ for several hours. The plan for a leisurely late-morning departure had become an irritated rush mid afternoon. And because of that, I had left my gloves on the hall shelf—a fact which was now painfully presenting itself to me. How pleasant would those generous motorcycle gauntlets have been, I thought, as the cold, damp air found its way up my sleeves. Still, it was my own fault for being so grumpy when I left.

Then my mind began to wander down a path that it had never previously travelled. My hands were really very cold by now and I began to wonder if a person could ask God for something when it was his own fault that he didn’t have it already, and when he could see no possible way for God to answer. After all, there didn’t seem much chance of bumping into a generous Christian with an extra pair of gloves on this forsaken road—and I had no family on this continent, and not a penny to spare for extras. As I was reflecting on this theological point about prayer, but before I had a chance to pray—and I hadn’t even decided if it would be appropriate to pray—two ancient-looking figures in black hooded capes, resembling the grim reaper, appeared about a metre in front of my hands, each holding a large block of ice. They hovered above the road and moved backwards, facing me, at the same speed as I was travelling. There would have been times that such apparitions would have terrified me, but on this occasion I simply thought, ‘Humph, they’ve been there awhile and I just didn’t see them.’

Then a memory began flooding across my mind of a day when I was about three or four years old and riding with my father on the tractor—a McCormick WD9, with no enclosure to shield the driver or his tagalongs from the elements. It was twilight, the temperature was dropping rapidly and we had probably another hour to go to finish the field. I remembered my boyish thoughts exactly: ‘If I tell Dad I’m cold, he’ll say, I’d better take you into the house to Mum while I finish.’ (The field was right next to the farmyard.) ‘But... I want to stay with him... but my hands are freezing.’

I looked up into my dad’s face, sort of trying to pretend I wasn’t cold, but hoping for some help as well. I saw in his face the perfect understanding of my dilemma—he knew I didn’t want to say I was cold and he knew why. And besides that, I could see that he was pleased that I wanted to be with him, and he was pleased to have me with him. This whole complex thought was held in one glimpse of his face in an instant: Love.

Then the memory merged with my present situation: as I saw that look on my father’s face in my memory, I was seeing the same look on my heavenly Father’s face now, in Belgium. Instantly my two hooded tormenters dropped to the road and disappeared beneath my feet behind me.

Back on the farm, my father had said, ‘Put your hands on these hydraulic pipes.’ As he said this, he gestured toward the hydraulic control valve that was bolted on to the fender of the tractor near where I was standing. Delicious heat from the high-pressure oil lines flowed into my cold hands as I did this, and our faces met again with smiles.

My heavenly Father, on the road in Belgium, then said, ‘Put your hands on my hydraulic system—where my Spirit is moving under pressure.’

I understood this as the call to intercession, and the whole incident, though it took only a moment reveals the inner heart of all kingdom work. But Jesus answered them, ‘My Father is working still, and I am working.’ (John 5:17) Our Father is out in the cold working, and he makes it possible for us to join him and be with him.

This is the first, the deepest and the greatest desire of the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit brings to our tangible experience, from the depths of the Father’s heart, the desire to be with us. This desire to be with us goes right back to before the foundation of the world; it is the reason for the foundation of the world; it is the foundation of all foundations; it is absolute bedrock. The Father imagined us, just as a man or woman might imagine having a son or daughter; and having seen us in his heart’s eye, he cannot rest until he has us tangibly with him. This desire is also called love.

The Hydraulics of an Open Heaven

I was only a little warmer after that experience but I had a different heart about it and I spent the rest of the night praying for people who were cold. I won’t say it was fun or easy but it was joyful work, in good company, and much came of it in future days and years.

Mid morning the next day I arrived at Bodenseehof, spent a good week with friends, and had plenty of time to rest before packing for the return journey—via Freiburg because I wanted to see an old friend whose family had a vineyard in a village nearby. After a morning ride from Lake Constance, through the Black Forest to Freiburg, and lunch with my friend, I got back on the road for the long drive to Dunkirk.

The forecast was for rain and already the sky was almost fully overcast as my CX500 crunched slowly through the loose stones of the vineyard’s driveway to the village street. The sky ahead looked dark and foreboding, but there was still a slight break in the clouds where I was. Before long, the road was wet, and I expected to drive into rain at any moment. However, the rain was staying just ahead... and I began to think it was a bit odd. After about an hour, there was rain behind as well, then rain to one side, and then to the other side—but still none on me; always a little opening in the clouds.

This opening continued throughout the afternoon as I headed northward, up the Rhine Valley to Karlsruhe, and then Mannheim. At one point it was raining right up to the sides of the road on both sides, and almost as close front and back; at other times, the clear area was larger. There was always a little patch of open sky and sometimes even sunshine just over me, and I began to know it was in answer to my prayers for all cold people, on the outbound journey a week earlier. At Mannheim,