Mike Parsons –
Over hundreds of years, false doctrine has infiltrated the church and shaped what many people simply accept today.
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Simplicity of the gospel
Over many years, even hundreds of years, false doctrine has infiltrated the church and shaped things into what we see today, and people have simply accepted it. However, there are explanations for this and different alternatives to all of it. To be honest, why spend your time trying to understand something that was never written for you in the first place?
With all of this, whether it is true or not, let us go back to the simplicity of the gospel that Jesus talked about. Let us love one another. We do not have to agree: let us love one another. Let us love the world rather than trying to convince someone of something. Let the Holy Spirit, who is the only one who can renew someone’s mind, do that work. If people are genuine, then you can have a conversation, but if they are just trying to prove you wrong, then it is a waste of time.
A different view of God
If someone is genuinely searching and thinking, “I am struggling because this does not align with God, how could this be God?”, then they are on a journey towards restoration and renewal of their mind, and you can help them along that path. If all they want to do is convince you that you are wrong, and that there is going to be tribulation and judgment and a millennium and all of that, then that is a very deceptive doctrine, and you will not argue someone out of it. I think God will renew many people’s minds and deconstruct a lot of people, but many will remain stuck in religion and in the system, sadly. But many are leaving it, and many are coming to a different view of God.
We can help them discover that God is love by loving them. It is better to love them than to argue with them. It is better to keep a friend than to win an argument and lose a friend. I think saying, “Look, I do not really want to get into a lot of this stuff, because I think it will just cause problems in our relationship, and I value our relationship more than being right,” and leaving it at that, is often the best way.
It is better to keep a friend than to win an argument.
It is a difficult deception that keeps people in darkness and in bondage, and ultimately only God can bring the light into that. If people had tried to convince me that my eschatology was wrong back in the 1980s, I would not have believed them. But God spoke to me. God did it. I could not argue with God. I just went on a journey where he unfolded a whole different view that I had never even imagined.
God deconstructed me himself
I did not read books about it at first. God showed me through the Spirit by taking me through the whole thing. Once I realised that my whole understanding had been twisted, then I found some books that supported that view, and I realised I was not on my own. Loads of other people believed this as well. But I did not find it through other people. God totally deconstructed me over a two or three year period himself. Then that was confirmed by me reading other things, and there were people who were helpful to me, especially David Chilton: Paradise Restored, The Great Tribulation, and The Days of Vengeance, which is his book on Revelation, a massive book. You can find free PDFs online here:
Paradise Restored: A Biblical Theology of Dominion (1985)
The Days of Vengeance: An Exposition of the Book of Revelation (1987)
The Great Tribulation (1987)
David Chilton started off as a partial preterist in that he believed chapter 20 of Revelation was still future, but he ended up a full preterist because he came to realise that it was all in the past. He got himself excommunicated from the group he was in because he believed that and was persecuted.
Inevitably, I think, if you are open, you will move through partial preterism into preterism. I do not want to be labelled a preterist or not, because there are other things within that system that I do not necessarily think are true, but let us say I am a realised eschatologist. All eschatology is realised. It is already the end. The study of the last things is the study of what happened in the past, not the study of what will happen in the future. For me, that is where I have moved towards.
Not the end of the world
Ultimately, my understanding of that, and the same Bible verses that talk about what would happen at the end of the old covenant, also talk about and have been interpreted as what is hell. Then I realised, I do not believe this is talking about the end of the world. So this is also not the end of the world. Gehenna is not hell. Gehenna is literally talking about the end of the age when the old covenant was put into the fire and destroyed. Jerusalem and the people were put into the fire in Gehenna if they continued in Jerusalem, as Jesus warned them would happen.
They did. The Romans crucified hundreds of thousands and burned them in Gehenna. That was not the end of their life. That was the end of their physical body. Their actual soul would go into the fire of God’s love and hopefully bring about their restoration. I imagine a lot of people would have remembered what Jesus said when the armies turned up, but it was too late if they were besieged, and they would probably have remembered what Jesus said, “You are going to end up in Gehenna.” Hopefully, they would also then have remembered Jesus’s offer of life.
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431. Breaking Free from Deceptive Teaching | Rediscovering God’s Love
Sons of Issachar 