Not Above. Not Returning. Already Here.
The Transition From Localized to Universal Presence. The Home Made Within.
The Absence That Never Was.
Part 12 of 14
The Assumption That Broke Everything
At the heart of Christianity’s most consequential theological error is a spatial assumption. YHWH is above. Humanity is below. The distance between them is the problem the gospel solves. Yeshua came down from above to bridge the gap, accomplished the bridge at the cross, ascended back to the above, and will one day come down again to complete what was begun.
This spatial framework, above and below, departure and return, heaven as a location separate from earth, shaped every subsequent doctrine. Prayer became the attempt to reach the above from the below. Faith became the mechanism for crossing the distance. The church became the institution that managed the crossing. And the return of Yeshua became the event that would finally and permanently resolve the spatial problem by bringing the above permanently into contact with the below.
But the Hebrew scriptures, the Torah, the Psalms, and the Prophets that Yeshua identified as the interpretive authority, do not describe YHWH as primarily above. They describe YHWH as present. In the bush. In the cloud. In the still small voice. In the valley of dry bones. In the named vessels. The spatial framework is not native to the text. It was imported into the text by a tradition that had already lost the hermeneutic.
When the spatial framework is removed and the text is read on its own terms, what emerges is not a God who is above and will one day return. It is a presence that was always moving toward a single destination, permanent, universal, indwelling presence within the human race it created. Not above it. Not ruling it from a distance. Within it. As it.
The spatial framework, above, below, departure, return, is not native to the Hebrew text. Remove it, and what remains is a presence that was always moving toward permanent indwelling within the human race. Not above. Within.
Psalm 110
The Session That Was Never an Absence
The most quoted Hebrew scripture in the entire New Testament is Psalm 110:1. YHWH said to my Lord: Sit at my right hand until I make your enemies your footstool.
Christianity read the sitting at the right hand as a spatial description, Yeshua ascending to a throne located in a heavenly realm above the earth, waiting there until the moment of his return. The session became a waiting room. The right hand became a chair. The until became a countdown to a future event.
The Hebrew understanding of sitting at the right hand of power is not spatial. It is relational and functional. The right hand of a king is the position of completed authority, of accomplished victory, of the one whose work is finished and whose status is established. To sit at the right hand is not to occupy a location. It is to hold a position, the position of the one in whom all authority has been vested and all work has been completed.
The until is the key. The session at the right hand continues until the enemies are placed under the footstool. The last enemy, death, was placed under the footstool at the resurrection. First Corinthians 15 confirms this explicitly. The until was fulfilled at the empty tomb. The session was not a waiting room between a departure and a return. It was the declaration that the reign was active and moving toward its completion, and the completion occurred at the resurrection.
The sitting did not produce an absence. It produced the completion of the presence. When the last enemy was defeated, the session gave way to the God all in all of 1 Corinthians 15:28, not a sitting above but a dwelling within. The throne resolved into the indwelling. The session became the permanent presence. The right hand position became the everywhere position. YHWH not seated above humanity but dwelling within it, as Paul declared: Christ in you, the hope of glory.
John 14
The Coming That Already Came
On the night of his arrest, Yeshua told his disciples: I will not leave you as orphans. I will come to you. In a little while the world will see me no more but you will see me. Because I live, you also will live. On that day you will know that I am in my Father and you in me and I in you.
Christianity assigned this coming to a future return, the second coming, the parousia, the arrival at the end of the age. Two thousand years of believers have lived in the expectation of the coming Yeshua described in John 14.
But the text sets its own timeline. In a little while. On that day. The disciples did not wait two thousand years. The coming Yeshua described occurred at the resurrection, when he appeared to his disciples, breathed on them, and said receive the Holy Spirit. The coming was the transition from the localized earthly expression of the divine presence to the universal indwelling presence the resurrection established.
And then verse 23 removes all ambiguity. Yeshua said: If anyone loves me, he will keep my word, and my Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our home with him.
We will come. Make our home. The Greek word for home is mone, permanent dwelling, abode, the place where one resides. Not a visit. Not a periodic presence. A permanent dwelling established within the person. The two expressions of the one divine presence, which had been in conversation with each other across the incarnation, making their permanent home within the human being. Not above looking down. Not returning from a distance. Dwelling within. Already. Now. As the accomplished reality of the resurrection.
The coming Yeshua promised in John 14 was not delayed. It was not future. It happened at the resurrection and it has not been revoked since. The home was made. The presence moved in. And it has not left.
We will come to him and make our home with him. The coming was the resurrection. The home was made within. The presence that moved in has not left and will not leave, because a return requires a departure and the presence that makes its home within does not depart.
Colossians 1:27
The Location of the Throne
Paul writes to the community in Colossae: To them God chose to make known how great among the nations are the riches of the glory of this mystery, which is Christ in you, the hope of glory.
Christ in you. Not Christ above you. Not Christ coming to you from outside. Not Christ accessible to you through the correct religious practice. Christ in you, the indwelling reality of the divine presence already established within every human being as the accomplished result of the cross and resurrection.
The hope of glory is not a future event the believer is waiting for. It is the present reality the believer is already carrying. The glory that Yeshayahu (Isaiah) saw in the throne room, the glory that Yochanan (John) said was the glory of Yeshua, is now the hope within every person in whom the divine presence dwells. Not above them. Within them. The throne has relocated. Not from above to below. From localized to universal. From the one body walking in Galilee to the totality of humanity the cross constituted as the righteousness of God.
This is what the Yechezkel (Ezekiel) vision was always pointing toward. The glory departing from the cedar house.
The glory returning, not to a rebuilt temple, not to a heavenly location, but to the human dwelling that the new covenant declared when Yirmeyahu (Jeremiah) recorded: I will put my law within them and write it on their hearts. The throne within the heart. The glory within the human being. Christ in you. The hope, not the future aspiration but the present certainty, of glory.
The Return That Cannot Be
A return requires three things. A prior presence. A departure. And a coming back. Remove any one of the three and the return is impossible.
The cross and resurrection established that the presence of YHWH now dwells permanently within the human race. John 14 declared that the home was made and the presence moved in. Romans 8 declared that the Spirit of the risen one dwells in you, present tense, already accomplished. Colossians 1:27 declared Christ in you as the current reality. First Corinthians 15:28 declared God all in all as the completed state.
None of these declarations allow for a subsequent departure followed by a future return. The home that was made in John 14 is not a temporary residence. The indwelling of Romans 8 is not a visitation. The Christ in you of Colossians is not a periodic presence. The God all in all of 1 Corinthians 15 is not a future aspiration. They are declarations of the present accomplished reality of the resurrection.
If the presence is already universally indwelling, then the construct of a future return requires the presence to first depart, to leave the home it made in John 14, to remove itself from the all in all of 1 Corinthians 15, to withdraw from the Christ in you of Colossians, in order to return. That departure is not in the text. It is not declared anywhere by the voices that declare the indwelling. Paul never wrote that the indwelling presence would one day leave and return. He wrote that nothing, not death, not life, not angels, not powers, not things present, not things to come, can separate us from the love of God in Christ Yeshua.
Nothing to come can separate. The future contains no separation. Which means the future contains no departure. Which means the future contains no return. Because there is no absence for the return to address.
Nothing to come can separate us from the love of God in Christ Yeshua. The future contains no separation. Which means no departure. Which means the return that requires a departure cannot be what the text declares.
What the Construct of Return Produced
The construct of a future physical return of Yeshua did not arise from a neutral reading of the text. It arose from the same theological trajectory that produced the great commission as a human responsibility, Pentecost as a subsequent necessary experience, and Yakov’s (James’s) framework of faith demonstrated by works as the mechanism of salvation. It oriented Christianity toward the future and away from the present. Toward an arrival that was coming and away from the presence that had already arrived.
The consequences were not minor. A faith built on waiting for something not yet possessed cannot rest in what has already been accomplished. It generates perpetual anxiety, am I ready, is the church ready, is the world ready, what must happen before he comes. It generates escapism — the world is getting worse as it must before the return, so the task is not to inhabit the world but to survive it until the rescue arrives. It generates political manipulation, entire movements built on identifying current events as signs of the imminent return, nations and conflicts evaluated not on their human merits but on their role in a prophetic timeline that was never in the text to begin with.
Most devastatingly, it generated the sense of divine absence that is the opposite of everything the cross accomplished. A humanity waiting for a presence that has not yet fully arrived cannot experience the peace that the presence within produces. It cannot declare with confidence that the work is complete, the presence is here, the throne is within, and there is nothing left to wait for.
But the text declares exactly that. The work is complete. The presence is here. The throne is within. And there is nothing left to wait for — only the recognition, which is itself not a human achievement but the ruach within humanity crying Abba, the divine presence acknowledging itself from within the human race it permanently indwells.
The throne is not above the human race. It is not returning to the human race. It is within the human race, established there by the cross, confirmed there by the resurrection, declared there by every text that says Christ in you, we will make our home with you, God all in all.
Not above. Not returning. Already here. The presence that was always moving toward this, through every YHWH-bearing name, across the entire thousand year reign, through the full appearing, through the conversation of the cross, arrived. Made its home. And has not left.
The Gospel Revolution • Mike Williams Ministries
William Ethan Massengill • Michael Lilborn Williams • Daniel Thomas Rouse
Published by Audrey Williams