Month: August 2013

101. Filthy Garments and Festal Robes

Mike Parsons
and Jeremy Westcott –

The kingdom of God is all around us. Not separate, not a long way away. So close that we can turn and look into it.

So, too, is the kingdom that is in darkness.

Which will we draw from?

Depending on where we look, that is where we will draw our resources from. Our spirit has access to the kingdom which is in light. God wants us to access all that He has for us in that kingdom and to draw all our power and authority from it every day, so that we can live abundantly.

If we do not, we will inevitably draw our resources from the other kingdom. The soul and the flesh will look to meet their own needs in their own way, and will look to obtain their resources from the kingdom that is in darkness.

Every time we try to do something in our own strength, according to our soul power, it will ultimately prove unsuccessful. We have to get over the fact that we can do nothing in our own strength. So we can turn and engage the kingdom of light or we can turn into the kingdom in darkness. It is a choice we all have, but co-operating with God is much more productive than resisting Him.

God’s desire was for Adam and Eve to be successful in carrying out His plan for them and for the earth. So He made available to them everything they needed to fill the earth and subdue it. They chose to look for resources elsewhere, and failed to fulfil their destiny.

“The Lord rebuke you, Satan”

We have looked briefly before at Zechariah 3, and it is a really important chapter in understanding this:

Then he showed me Joshua the high priest standing before the angel of the Lord, and Satan standing at his right hand to accuse him. The Lord said to Satan, “The Lord rebuke you, Satan! Indeed, the Lord who has chosen Jerusalem rebuke you! Is this not a brand plucked from the fire?” Now Joshua was clothed with filthy garments and standing before the angel. He spoke and said to those who were standing before him, saying, “Remove the filthy garments from him.” Again he said to him, “See, I have taken your iniquity away from you and will clothe you with festal robes.” Then I said, “Let them put a clean turban on his head.” So they put a clean turban on his head and clothed him with garments, while the angel of the Lord was standing by (Zech 3:1-7).

This scene is set, not on the earth, but in the heavenly realms. Joshua was a man, a priest just as we are, and he had access to the presence of God. But Satan was there to accuse him. So we understand that we are looking at a courtroom in heaven, because courtrooms are where accusations are made and verdicts delivered.

It is God, not Joshua, who deals with Satan here.The Lord said to Satan, “The Lord rebuke you, Satan!”. So if there are accusations against us it is God who will deal with them.

Filthy garments

Notice that Joshua was ‘clothed with filthy garments’. Surely you cannot come into the presence of God wearing filthy garments? Actually that is exactly what you must do: He spoke and said to those who were standing before him, saying, “Remove the filthy garments from him.” Again he said to him, “See, I have taken your iniquity away from you and will clothe you with festal robes.”

God does the cleansing and cleaning up. We do not have to try to make ourselves clean in our own strength, by our own effort and initiative. That is just what Adam did when he messed up. He hid from God in the bushes and tried to cover himself with leaves. It does not work, and it is not our place to clean ourselves up. There is no need to feel guilty or condemned, or try to make amends for our sin in our own strength.

We just have to come into the presence of God, and He takes all the filthy garments off us and gives us a new robe.

Run to Him, not from Him

Now this all sounds very familiar, I know. But what we have maybe not realised before now is where this takes place. It takes place in the realms of heaven. That is why it is so important for us to access the heavenly realms: we can get clean every time we go in there, and when we are clean, we are confident to exercise the authority that God has given us and see the enemy defeated. If we feel guilty and condemned because of the accusations brought against us, then we lose our confidence, and are unlikely to overcome. So when we mess up – and we all do – we can step into the place of God’s presence. We can run to Him, not from Him.

He will deal with the accusations against us. He rebukes Satan. He does so because the blood of Jesus is constantly before Him as a testimony of what Jesus did on the cross:

God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself, not counting their trespasses against them (2 Corinthians 5:19).

From God’s perspective, there is no sin outstanding against any of us. Jesus completely undid the consequence of Adam’s sin which produced spiritual death in us.

For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord (Romans 6:23).

For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ all will be made alive (1 Cor 15:22).

Just as we all inherited that spiritual death and blindness from Adam, so we all share in the victory of the cross and resurrection life. When we take the bread and the wine in communion we are partaking of the life of God, His very essence, His DNA, and we are transformed. The blood of Jesus cleanses us from all our sin and all our iniquity is done away with.

One of the enemy’s favourite tactics is to make us believe that we cannot come to God because we have sinned, whereas in fact it is the very thing that we need to do, and as quickly as we possibly can, to benefit from God’s forgiveness and receive His cleansing.

If you confess your sin, He is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness (1 John 1:9).  ‘Faithful’ means that He will always do it. He will ‘clothe [us] with festal robes’ (Zech 3:4).

 Free access to stand 

We will never enjoy our free access to the realms of heaven if we think we have to be worthy. The enemy will always tell us we are unworthy. That is how he operates. We need to know the truth, because then we find the promise:

And the angel of the Lord admonished Joshua, saying, “Thus says the Lord of hosts, ‘If you will walk in My ways and if you will perform My service, then you will also govern My house and also have charge of My courts, and I will grant you free access among these who are standing here” (Zech 3:6).

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100. The Door of Heaven Stands Open

Mike Parsons
and Jeremy Westcott

We looked in the last post at Jacob’s dream of a ladder set on earth and reaching into heaven. Now, let’s see how this worked out in the life of Jesus.

And He said to him, “Truly, truly, I say to you, you will see the heavens opened and the angels of God ascending and descending on the Son of Man” (John 1:51).

This is what happened in Jesus’ ministry, and it is why He was able to do what He did. We are also to do what He did, and greater things (John 14:12). If Jesus needed the heavens open and angels ascending and descending, then God does not expect us to make do with less.

Jesus lived in dual realms

“No one has ascended to heaven but He who came down from heaven, that is, the Son of Man who is in heaven” (John 3:13).

Jesus says that He is in heaven, although He is also at that moment speaking to Nicodemus on the earth. He was there then; He is there now. We too can be living in that realm of heaven and also living on the earth. We too can live in dual realms of authority, outworking heaven on the earth, here and now.

“If anyone serves Me, he must follow Me; and where I am, there My servant will be also; if anyone serves Me, the Father will honour him” (John 12:26).

If Jesus is in the heavens, we can be in the heavens; and that is where we occupy thrones and mountains. It is where our authority comes from to rule in this earthly realm.

“In that day you will know that I am in my Father. You are in Me, and I am in You” (John 14:20). That is the relationship that makes us the house of God: “We will come and make our home (our dwelling-place) with him” (v23 Amp).

A habitation of God

The kingdom of God is within us (Luke 17:21). We are a habitation of God – a place where He lives, Father, Son and Holy Spirit. We are connected to God, and a gate of God’s glory.

The key to understanding this is for each of us to know that we are a dwelling place of God here on earth and that the door of heaven stands open for us to access the heavenly realms. We can experience that place and bring the authority of those heavenly realms back from there to here. Then it can be ‘on earth, as it is in heaven’. We have to manifest the kingdom of God, just as Jesus did.

Continual revival

For some time now here at Freedom we have been experiencing an everlasting door which is open. One door which is open over us here as a church, and it is manifesting as the glory of God. Sometimes in our worship and in what we do with the flags and streamers and rhythm and dance there are flashes, glimpses of the glory of God coming down through those realms. We have become a landing strip for angels. And that is with one door, not even fully open, over one local church. Imagine how it would be if all seven were fully open! It would be like heaven on earth.

God’s church around the world needs to have all those doors open; to have continual revival, which will not stop. We need to see unrestricted manifestations of the glory of God for healing and health, for deliverance and freedom, for mandating us to come into the fullness of our destiny. To get to that point, everyone is needed. None of us can do it on our own; and we cannot do it with just a handful of people: the whole church needs to be involved in these things. God is calling all of us to do the works that Jesus did. Every single one of us has been called and mandated with an authority to bring heaven to earth.

God is calling you

Let us put it plainly: God is calling you to take your realm of authority in your life on the inside and in the heavenly realms, and to start occupying God’s kingdom and bringing it here on earth as it is in heaven. Are you up for that?

Do not think, ‘Oh, that kind of thing is not for me; I never get anything like that’. Start operating with God, in the garden that you have on the inside. A door will begin to open up for you into the heavenly realms: step in and you will start to experience more and more.

It is God’s intention to do this with you. It is for every single person reading this: that is why we began writing this blog back in 2011, trusting that God would help you find it. And part of the reason God is raising us up as a resource centre is that we are called to support you and encourage you and help you as you find your way in these things. Time is speeding up, there is an acceleration happening. When God suddenly comes and starts doing something different, what used to take years can take months, weeks, or even days.

Will you run with Him?

Let’s pray.

Father we pray for all the frazzled minds that are out there.
By Your Spirit, from their spirit, bring revelation knowledge of the truth
Of each person’s identity,
As a lord, as a king and as a son of God.
The full realm of authority that each person has,
To manifest the kingdom on earth as it is in heaven
Through their lives
To do the works of Jesus here on earth.

We thank You and praise You, Lord God,
For all that You are doing in these days
For the exciting times we are living in
Times when Your kingdom is going to come and manifest
On earth as it is in heaven.

We pray that You would call and choose and invest
Each of the people reading this
With the authority they have in that realm to occupy those thrones.
That they will be enthroned and begin to rule
And to manifest Your kingdom through their lives.

Let the spirit of wisdom and revelation and the knowledge of God
Open the eyes of our hearts that we can start to see
And experience the fullness of our inheritance
On earth, and in the heavens.

Dreams, visions, revelations: we pray that they will be released
Where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty:
Freedom to come into the revelation of God
That we can step into Your kingdom
And step out of your kingdom by faith every second of every day.

Stir us and draw us to that place
Where we can fully be the manifest sons of God on the earth.
Holy Spirit, we pray You would do that in our lives.
Draw us into intimacy, remove the stumbling blocks
And let us be lifted up as the gates of heaven.

Amen.

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Our Patreon patrons give a small amount each month and can join us for our monthly group Zooms, get exclusive or early access to Mike’s teaching and enjoy further patron-only benefits. Or you can make a one-time gift of any amount you choose (in US Dollars) by credit or debit card (processed by Stripe), or using your Apple Pay account if you have one.
Thank you!

Image attribution: Detail from Jacob’s Dream by William Blake (c. 1805, British Museum) – William Blake Archive, Public Domain,
https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=1869973

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Your first two weeks free!
Click here to get started today*

To find out more about the Engaging God programme, click here…

*Technology permitting: automated process on setup of payment arrangement and completion of online registration form. Terms and conditions apply.

99. Everlasting Doors

Mike Parsons
and Jeremy Westcott – 

Between the heavens and the earth are the everlasting doors. These are the portals that were open when Adam was first created, so that he could manifest God’s glory. The earth still retains the residual memory of when they were open – the grid pattern of ley lines whose power is recognised by New Age people and those who practise the occult. But it is only a memory – they have now been guarded and mostly blocked by territorial spirits in the atmosphere of the earth. We find them in Psalm 24, (and we often sing a song based on this passage):

Lift up your heads, O you gates!
And be lifted up, you everlasting doors!
And the King of glory shall come in.

Who is this King of glory?
The LORD strong and mighty, The LORD mighty in battle.

Lift up your heads, O you gates!
Even lift them up, you everlasting doors!
And the King of glory shall come in.

Who is this King of glory?
The LORD of hosts, He is the King of glory.
(Ps24:7-10).

The glory of God

‘The King of Glory shall come in’. The King of Glory will come through those doors from the heavenly realms into this realm, bringing with Him the glory of God. This still happens from time to time, and we call it revival, transformation, awakenings. These are all manifestations of the power of God and the presence of God through the angelic which come through those doors.

We are the gates

Who is the King of glory? The Lord strong and mighty, the Lord mighty in battle. Things begin to happen as soon as we start lifting up our heads, as gates. We understand that each of us is a gate for the presence of God to come through, a gateway between heaven and earth.

By now we know to think Hebrew not Greek, function not form. Your head is the place of government, authority and rule. The function of the head is to rule, and to lift it up is to rule at a higher level. Once we start to lift up our government to a higher level, then the lifting up of the everlasting doors starts to take place and the glory of God begins to manifest.

God stands in the gateway

As often in the psalms, the phrases are repeated, but with subtle changes. Next time around, in verse 9, we notice that it says, ‘even lift them up, you everlasting doors’. Once you have been lifted up to a realm in the heavenlies, once the gateway is open, God comes and stands in the gateway. I’ll show you that from scripture in a moment. When God comes and stands in the everlasting door, that whole realm lifts up the gate to a higher level.  It is the fact that God is standing there in the doorway that enables things to go to an even higher level of authority in the Kingdom of God.

Lord of the Angel Armies

Who is the King of Glory? The Lord of hosts. Now we have a name. Before, we had what He did, but now we have His Name. Do we understand the Name of the Lord of Hosts? It means ‘Lord of the Angel Armies’. Once we start accessing the courts in the heavenly realms, the Lord of the Angel Armies is actually releasing the angelic to operate amongst us. Some of us know this by experience. In fact, more and more of us are starting to see angels, and experience the reality of angelic activity, and recognise what is going on in these realms. He is the King of Glory, and the King of Glory is going to manifest Himself through the angelic in these days.

Jacob’s dream

Where in scripture do I see God standing in the gateway? Genesis 28:12-15 talks about Jacob.

He had a dream, and behold, a ladder was set on the earth with its top reaching to heaven; and behold, the angels of God were ascending and descending on it. And behold, the LORD stood above it and said, “I am the LORD, the God of your father Abraham and the God of Isaac… Behold, I am with you and will keep you wherever you go”.

I met Jacob in the heavenly realms – he was the first of the ‘cloud of witnesses’ that I met, one of the men in white linen who are there to help us from past generations. He spoke to me about this passage and told me to study it and to understand how this works. So I have been looking at his experience and his life (and talking to him about it).

That ladder was set here, on the earth, not in heaven. Its top reached into heaven, which means we have access here to reach into heaven. The angels are mentioned first as ‘ascending’, so they were already here. They were going up, and they were coming back down bringing the kingdom and the revelation of the glory of God back down with them. And here is where we see God in the gateway: “the LORD stood above it” (v13) – He was standing at the top of the ladder. He promised to be with Jacob and keep him – the King of Glory starting to manifest His presence.

Bethel, the house of God

He was afraid and said, “How awesome is this place! This is none other than the house of God, and this is the gate of heaven” (Gen 28:17).

Each of us as an individual is now the house of God, because God dwells in us. We are also a gate of heaven, and we need to be lifted up as a gate into the heavenly realms to manifest the glory of God

Then God said to Jacob, “Arise, go up to Bethel and live there, and make an altar there to God”. So Jacob said “Put away the idols which are among you, and purify yourselves and change your garments” (Gen 35:1-2),

Jacob had called this place Bethel, meaning ‘house of God’, and God told him to go and live there. We have to go and live in the place where we are the house of God and where we are a manifestation of the gate of heaven. “Make an altar there”, a place of sacrifice. “Put away the idols which are among you, and purify yourselves and change your garments” – that is a description of what is going on with us right now in God’s Prophetic Timetable.

There is sacrifice, a purifying, a removing of idols, and a change of garments taking place. And no, it is not necessarily a painless process.

SoundTrack

Jeremy Riddle (Bethel Music) – We Will Dance (For Your Glory) via YouTube

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Our Patreon patrons give a small amount each month and can join us for our monthly group Zooms, get exclusive or early access to Mike’s teaching and enjoy further patron-only benefits. Or you can make a one-time gift of any amount you choose (in US Dollars) by credit or debit card (processed by Stripe), or using your Apple Pay account if you have one.
Thank you!

Image attribution: Detail from Jacob’s Dream by William Blake (c. 1805, British Museum) – William Blake Archive, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=1869973


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Blake_jacobsladder

98. Seven Mountains, Seven Thrones

Mike Parsons 
and Jeremy Westcott – 

Heavenly Realms.eng

The diagram above is a representation of the realms of heaven we have been exploring.

You may have heard people talk about the first, second and third heavens. In the past, that may have helped us to get some understanding of where we were, and how we could interact with heaven, but it was very basic, and in fact it was very flawed. With our Greek (rather than Hebrew) understanding, we assumed that we had to go through the second heaven to get to the third, and that is not the case at all. Instead of layers, we now think realms, or dimensions. We have spoken before about seven realms, three into the earth, the atmosphere of the earth, and three into the heavens.

Seven realms

Looking at the diagram above, we live our physical lives here in the Kingdom of Earth, where we can experience God’s Presence. We are also aware of the atmosphere of the earth – remember that Satan was called ‘the prince of the power of the air’. There are actually three spheres within the atmosphere of the earth: rulers, powers and principalities. These were created by God, but are currently occupied by the forces of evil. Up to now they have been reasonably successful in blocking the flow of God’s glory from coming to us through the Everlasting Doors (we will consider these Everlasting Doors in the next post).

Moving into the heavenly realms, we see the Kingdom of God, the place of God’s government. Fallen angels and the demonic still have access there, but they do not have access to the Kingdom of Heaven. The Kingdom of God is where the court is in which Satan accuses the brethren. But the devil and his angels have no access beyond this, to the Kingdom of Heaven, or to Heaven God’s abode – though we do; it is where we are seated with Christ in authority. And beyond that, there are other realms as you see.

Under the earth there are also three realms. These were all created by God, but are now occupied by fallen angels:  Sheol is the place of the dead; Tartarus is where the ‘angels who did not keep their proper place’ are chained up; and Satan’s Lair. There are other places down here as well, including Satan’s trophy room that we have written about before.

God’s intention is that we take back all the realms currently occupied by the enemy. But it is not for us to engage fallen angels – there are twice as many angels on God’s side who will do that for us if we learn how to interact with them. Our role is to take up our mantles and operate in the authority that God has called us to exercise.

Seven mountains, seven thrones

In the heavenly places there are mountains, and thrones on those mountains. That is to say, there are places of authority, and seats of rulership. Associated with those mountains and thrones are scrolls: decrees, mandates, and resources we can draw upon. Freedom Church has seven mountains and seven thrones. They were not unoccupied – giants were sitting on them, and they have had to be unseated. In fact every church has mountains and thrones of its own which relate to God’s purpose and calling for that particular body of believers, so every church needs its giant-killers.

And we all as individuals have seven thrones, which we need to go and occupy. Family, marketplace, gifts, ministry, calling, and so on – there are many different thrones we might have, and we only find out through revelation, from God showing us. Remember, if we are not sitting on them, something else is, and it will need to be battled with and dethroned. Killing a giant is not difficult, but it takes spiritual effort:  we are going to need to build up our spiritual muscles. If the throne is rightfully yours, you can dethrone the giant and occupy it. But you have to have the authority to rule there – you can’t just go and take someone else’s mountain and throne for them.

I know this may all seem a bit ‘out there’, a bit Lord of the Rings, but actually Tolkein understood some of these things. Giants, dragons – you have to chop off their heads, rip open their bellies, and recover their spoil.

A different kind of authority

With all this talk about rule and authority, please understand we are not being arrogant. In the kingdom, the last will be first and the first last. The ruler will be the servant of all. We are not rulers to lord it over people. It is a different kind of authority. We are there to support people, serve them, help them discover their gifting and their own God-given mandates, to bring others where we are and beyond. That is how it is with the Joshua Generation.

Heaven to earth

The plain truth is that if we are to bring heaven to earth, as we have said before, we need to access heaven. That is how Jesus did it. He brought heaven to earth in the form of miracles, deliverance, healing, salvation, transformation, signs and wonders – and He did so by operating in dual realms (look at the present tense of the verb ‘is’, in John 3:13).

There are higher levels of mountains within the Kingdom of God, and dragons occupy those thrones. I have been there, fought dragons, but I can’t do it all myself. No-one can. As yet I have only seen a handful of others there, but it is time for us all to step up and begin to occupy the places of authority God has given us.

There are yet higher mountains and higher thrones in the realm of the Kingdom of Heaven (a yet greater degree of authority and  rule).

The mountains actually represent our governmental positions of authority, we are mountains. When we occupy the top mountain, our governmental position,  we can rule all the other mountains from there.

It is time for us all to act as the lords, and kings, and sons we are called to be.

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