Being Transported in the Spirit

“He reached out what seemed to be a hand and took me by the hair. Then the Spirit lifted me up into the sky and transported me to Jerusalem in a vision from God. I was taken to the north gate of the inner courtyard of the Temple, where there is a large idol that has made the Lord very jealous.” —Ezekiel 8:3 NLT

God will speak to His people through translation and being transported in the Spirit of God. We have to embrace and understand biblically these high-level prophetic ways God speaks to His people. There are demonic and counterfeit encounters such as astral projection. I am not going to address or cover that, but I will focus briefly on divine translations, transporting, and being caught up, which are biblical terms and experiences by the Spirit of God. Below I will share three different ways God communicates to us prophetically through the supernatural:

1. Translation is God moving your spirit.

2. Transportation is God moving your physical body

3. Being caught up is God moving of your spirit or natural body to the heavenly realm.

This is another type of experience that a believer cannot activate or initiate at will. These are God’s special invitations to a person He chooses. God does the inviting, but we must be open and positioned by being ready when God does this sovereignly. Jesus was transported several times in Scripture after His resurrection (Matt. 28:8-10; Luke 24:13-43).

God will bring you into divine translations and transportation. Being transported physically or translated in the spirit is when you are taken away to another place to deliver a message or prophetic word of God. Probably the most quoted transportation is Phillip’s, found in the book of Acts. It appears that Phillip was transported to another location in the flesh in an instant. His whole body, soul, and spirit were transported:

So he commanded the chariot to stand still. And both Philip and the eunuch went down into the water, and he baptized him. Now when they came up out of the water, the Spirit of the Lord caught Philip away, so that the eunuch saw him no more; and he went on his way rejoicing. But Philip was found at Azotus. And passing through, he preached in all the cities till he came to Caesarea (Acts 8:38-40 NKJV).

When he was done witnessing to the Ethiopian eunuch, Philip was taken to preach in another city. I love what the text says—that the Spirit of the Lord “snatched” Philip away (NLT) and the eunuch no longer saw him. Later, Philip found himself at Azotus—that basically means that he was in one place physically and ended up in another place miraculously. He was seen no more, which leads me to believe that he was there physically in sight and later wasn’t. Philip was in one place and translated to another place by the same source—the Spirit of God. Since I was a young Christian I have heard people talking about Phillip’s transportation in the Spirit, and I wanted to have that same kind of encounter. I wondered how it would be. I have been translated and transported places in the spirit but not physically like Philip.

After Philip baptized the Ethiopian treasurer we can read that Philip appeared at Azotus and travelled about. Luke, the author of Acts, would have heard about this event directly from Philip as he stayed with him in Caesarea (Acts 21:8-9).

As we look deep into this type of supernatural way God speaks to His people, we can see that what happened to Philip is described by the Greek word harpazo (Strong’s #G726), which is translated as “suddenly took” in the NIV. The other occasion Luke uses this Greek word is when the apostle Paul was in Jerusalem and the Jews falsely accused him of speaking against their religion:

The dispute became so violent that the commander was afraid Paul would be torn to pieces by them. He ordered the troops to go down and take him away from them by force and bring him into the barracks (Acts 23:10).

Here the word harpazo is translated “take by force.” Both usages of the word harpazo are powerful and are similar in expression. We cans see in both cases the person in the text was suddenly moved away or taken away by force from where they were presently in eyesight and then seen in another location. It is as though someone seized them as police would when they come to make an arrest. In the second case it was by means of the troops and in the first case it was by means of the Holy Spirit.

Likewise, the apostle Paul wasn’t sure if he had been carried away in body or just in Spirit:

I know a man in Christ who fourteen years ago was caught up to the third heaven. Whether it was in the body or out of the body I do not know—God knows. And I know that this man—whether in the body or apart from the body I do not know, but God knows— was caught up to paradise and heard inexpressible things, things that no one is permitted to tell (2 Corinthians 12:2-4).

The word used for “caught up” is, again, harpazo. Paul uses this word again in 1 Thessalonians 4:17 to speak of the Christian believers who are alive and remain at the coming of Christ and who will be “caught up” to meet Him in the air.

Ordinary men encountered the power of God through being caught up, transported, or translated in the Spirit. Ezekiel was lifted up in one text of the Scripture and another stated that a hand took him by the hair. Ezekiel was translated into the future:

Then the Spirit lifted me up, and I heard behind me the voice of a great earthquake: “Blessed be the glory of the Lord from its place!” It was the sound of the wings of the living creatures as they touched one another, and the sound of the wheels beside them, and the sound of a great earthquake (Ezekiel 3:12-13 ESV).

In the Old Testament we can presume that being transported was a fairly common occurrence for the prophet Elijah from the instant reaction the sons of the prophets had to Elisha when he stated that his master (Elijah) had been taken (2 Kings 2:16-18). The sons of the prophets sent out 50 men to look for Elijah to verify the disappearance, saying, “Perhaps the Spirit of the Lord has picked him up and set him down on some mountain or in some valley.” Also, when the servant of Ahab came to Elijah he was afraid that Elijah would be transported somewhere, and in the following scripture he openly expressed his concerns and fear:

And now you say, “Go, tell your master, ‘Elijah is here’”! And it shall come to pass, as soon as I am gone from you, that the Spirit of the Lord will carry you to a place I do not know; so when I go and tell Ahab, and he cannot find you, he will kill me. But I your servant have feared the Lord from my youth (1 Kings 18:11-12 NKJV).

As we know, translation is when the Lord moves you in the spirit, such as when Elisha’s spirit was divinely translated in 2 Kings 5:26. With regard to transportation the Lord moved Enoch in the physical body to another place (Gen. 5:24; Heb. 11:5). Elijah was taken up or caught physically in his body by God through the means of a whirlwind. He was caught up into heaven physically, while the apostle Paul spoke of being carried away into the third heaven in 2 Corinthians 12:2:

I know a man in Christ who fourteen years ago was caught up to the third heaven. Whether it was in the body or out of the body I do not know—God knows.

What is the “third heaven” referred to by Paul? The very first verse of the Bible tells us, “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.” So what is the third heaven? The only reference to the “third heaven” in Scripture is found in 2 Corinthians 12, speaking of the apostle Paul. Paul was basically saying of his dramatic experience that he never knew how this prophetic encounter happened, so we can be quite sure that we can’t know. Nevertheless, the Bible sheds light on individuals caught up in the body, translated, or transported with out-of-the-body experiences.

Both Enoch and Elijah didn’t see death but were caught up the same way. This wasn’t something made up; it’s biblical fact found in the Old Testament. We can see that happening in a different way with Philip being translated or transported in the Spirit.

In Awakening the Prophet in You, author Abraham Peters states that “Out-of-body encounters are biblical! God still uses these types of supernatural encounters to speak to us today. While we cannot make these types of experiences happen, we can position ourselves and make ourselves available by removing doubt and unbelief. If we would only believe, then all things are possible.” The prophet was carried away, transported or caught up by the Spirit. This is a prophetic encounter that God uses to reveal specific life-altering things to you. There are times in the Bible that prophets were carried away or translated by the Spirit of God into visions and supernatural encounters.

It is very important to understand that we can hear the voice of God when we have these high-level encounters. God doesn’t allow us to have these experiences in vain. God does them on purpose to shift and change the way you think about God and yourself. I don’t have a lot of these types of encounters, but when I do I am changed forever! One may ask, “Is it safe to ask the Lord for them?” I never asked to have them; they happened sovereignly. For me, when they first happened to me the first thing I did was go to the Word of God to make sure this wasn’t something demonic.

I found that it was in fact biblical and something that people of God such as Paul, Ezekiel, Philip, and Elijah experienced. We can make ourselves available for these experiences by simply telling God that we submit to His will and are ready to be used by Him however He would wish.

Hakeem Collins