Category: New For Old

Expanding Our Reality

“We use the creative power of our consciousness to create reality. We do it all the time, most of us unintentionally! If you want things to be different, you have to make intentional choices…”
Mike Parsons, Expanding Our Reality Intensive

Free to watch on this blog: this YouTube video of the first session of Expanding our Reality, our final Sons Arise! event of 2018.

You can purchase all 12 sessions, including downloadable HD mp4 video, mp3 audio and PDF slides, by clicking here. The cost of the full intensive is £72 (inc VAT).

The instrumental music featured in this series is by Samuel Lane (SML Music) and can be streamed from SoundCloud.
His 3-track album Renewing The Mind is available to purchase on iTunes and other digital music platforms.

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Thank you!
*Note Sadly, because of abuse by scammers we can no longer offer a ‘click to donate’ option. However, if you contact us, we will get back to you with a simple means of giving. 

Related articles from Freedom ARC
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EOR twinstapin sq

253. Framing Your Reality

Mike Parsons
with Jeremy Westcott – 

Living an illusion

True reality is not what we have come to know through our earthly experiences. The ‘world has been pulled over our eyes‘: we have been living in an illusion veiled as reality. We see what we see, and confirmation bias kicks in to make sure it is all we will ever see… unless something extraordinary breaks in to challenge that.

Outside the church, many people are exploring the possibilities of changing their reality: one popular author promises the ‘definitive guide to bending reality for beginners’. He is pushing the boundaries of what can be done in this created dimension. The trouble is, we will never be truly limitless until we expand our minds and our thinking to include revelation of the Truth from the dimensions of eternity.

That is what we are being called to engage in. Let’s allow God to unveil this for us. When we come to know the Truth we can experience true reality.

What is your reality? Is your reality shaped by what you have experienced and what you have seen? Can you trust what you see? Some scientists investigating the apparent paradoxes associated with black holes believe that our universe demonstrates characteristics we would expect of a holographic projection. In that case, what are you really looking at?

Is your truth relative or absolute? If you see only from your own perspective then it is relative; it only becomes absolute when you see from God’s perspective.

Creation responds

Our consciousness functions as a series of electrical impulses in our synapses passing along neural pathways. We have learnt to interpret those signals: our brain interprets them as thoughts and sensations. But we can also use those signals: science confirms that the world of matter and energy responds when we learn to focus them by meditation (or worry).

Your consciousness has the ability to affect energy and matter from a
quantum perspective. The double-slit experiment demonstrates that light is an energy wave that carries the potential to become a matter particle depending on whether it is observed or not.

The Truth may be beyond what I can presently imagine or think (Eph 3:19-21). ‘Renewing our mind’ (Rom 12:2) is the expansion of our consciousness to know our true potential. God chose the foolish things to confound the wise (1 Cor 1:27) – we do not need a degree in quantum physics, only Jesus the Truth, in order to operate in these things. In fact if we do have worldly wisdom, we are likely to continue getting the same old DIY results.

Our minds must be enlightened or illuminated by the light of Truth. The vast sum of God’s thoughts about each of us (Ps 139:17-18) reveal that we are sons of God, created in His image, with a destiny to rule the universe with Him. That truth will unlock the true potential of our sonship, the creative image we are made in.

Waking up to knowing the Truth as a person (Eph 5:14) will set us free to be who God intended us to be. It will challenge our present perception of ourselves: we can know the truth from God’s perspective and align ourselves with His thoughts about us. We can see ourselves free from addiction; we can see ourselves healed; we can see ourselves loved, accepted, affirmed, significant…

Quantum power

Our conscious thought has quantum power and the universe responds to the focus of our consciousness. The mind of Christ confers on us the capacity for the ‘greater works’ which Jesus spoke of (John 14:12). It is time to embrace the potential possibilities of who we are because of who He is.

One of the core principles of quantum physics is the idea that reality (the photons that produce the light-illusion we all occupy) exists in infinite possible states… until we observe it and thus collapse all potential versions of reality into the one single option we have chosen to live inside.

Here is a practical example of how it works:

Imagine you are sitting on your sofa at home and you are struck with the desire to do something different. You could do an infinite number of different things. As you weigh things up, what you start to focus on becomes more likely to occur: you could get up and go to the bathroom; you could switch on the light; you could walk outside; you could go to the kitchen; you could turn on the TV or your computer or check your phone; you could go to the off licence (liquor store) or you could go to a drug dealer.

Past rewards, memories and compulsions can drive you towards your choice of reality. The possibility exists for you to immerse your consciousness into any reality you want but you must decide which action you will take. You must make a choice of which reality you want to ‘observe’ coming into existence at the cost of becoming ‘blind’ to all other options.

As soon as you select a reality, the options you did not select begin to fade out of conscious thought, out of observation, and become less likely to occur as you continually move away from them in pursuit of your selected reality.

But that option which you did select – well, its photons are now becoming more vivid, turning from abstract imaginary choice into tangible forms you can interact with (whether it’s the light switch, the TV, bathroom, drink, drugs or whatever). In this way your internal consciousness, those chemicals produced and synapses manipulated by your thoughts, can alter the physical photons that surround you.

God or DIY?

So what reality do you want to create? From which source will you draw your choices? God or DIY?

If you are choosing from your past you may be:

  • hiding your passion and creativity because you’re afraid you may not be good enough.
  • agreeing to plans you don’t really want to be a part of so that you can ‘fit in’.
  • staying in a job that doesn’t fulfil you because you need the money.
  • pursuing relationships that you know aren’t healthy because you don’t want to be alone.

Our present reality is controlled by the programming of our past experiences and knowledge. Our future reality will continue to be a self-perpetuating fulfilment unless we choose to see from a new heavenly reality perspective.

If you do decide to escape your own DIY source and get God’s perspective, then you will have the power to envision a future reality that does not currently exist. So rather than simply choosing from an existing menu you wish to engage with, you can instead create new photon-forms that never existed before and inject them into reality.

We have this incredible ability called imagination: to envisage something in our mind and then summon it into being. Everything you see today: buildings, cars, planes, the device you are reading this on, even the clothes on your body, they originally existed only as thoughts formed inside someone’s mind. They were all once inert pieces of quantum possibility until someone came along and chose to pursue their creation.

Creating reality

This quantum wave collapse is called ‘popping a qwiff‘. You can see or observe a God qwiff (something God shows you that is not yet real in this dimension) and, by popping that qwiff, cause that potential to become your reality. Information flowing from your future possibilities is waiting for you to observe and ‘call those things that are not as though they were’ (see Rom 4:17).

“The quantum leap of knowing your purpose and assignment is waiting as a God qwiff for you to pop!” – David Van Koevering.

God has dignified man by giving him the power to choose, and to create his own reality aligned to those choices. The choices mankind has made independently of God, and without the reference point of love, have created the chaotic DIY state the world now exists in.

When we are reconciled and restored in relationship with God himself our mind can be renewed. This opens up the potential for us to access the eternal mind of God, and then our future reality can be realigned from an eternal, godly perspective.

DIY methods of framing reality (drugs, alcohol, food, pornography, relationships, religion – or whatever) will keep you in bondage. Choose another future, focus on another reality; see your freedom and your God-given destiny, and you cause them to materialise around you.

Sons arise!

Let’s not be limited by our DIY past: instead let’s be creative sons of God, creating a better future. All of creation has its eyes fixed on us, looking for true sons to be revealed.

Will you be one of those sons?
Will you accept the call?
Will you embrace your destiny?
Will you accept His yoke and learn from Him, the Truth?

Let the sons of God arise!

Let the sons of God arise! Declaration by Mike Parsons via YouTube.

Science articles
Recent articles from Freedom ARC
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Sons Arise intensive 3 Expanding Our Reality image with link

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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 use the blue button to contact us about making a one-time gift.
Thank you!
*Note Sadly, because of abuse by scammers we can no longer offer a ‘click to donate’ option. However, if you contact us, we will get back to you with a simple means of giving. 

252. Unrestricted Sons

Mike Parsons
with Jeremy Westcott – 

No limits

Jesus, the Truth, the second Adam, desires to remove the limits placed on us by the first Adam, to restore us and conform us to our original eternal blueprint, and to release us into the glorious freedom of our sonship. Every one of us, without exception. No-one is left out, because Jesus reconciled the whole world to Himself on the cross. The Father has made it possible for every person who has ever lived and who ever will live to come into relationship with Him if they will embrace Jesus and enter in through that door.

He desires to restore all things. That includes our capacity to engage bandwidths of electromagnetic energy and abilities which were lost at the fall, the flood and Babel. Those were times in Man’s history where He had to intervene to limit the damage we were about to do to creation by operating outside of relationship with Him. When we come back into relationship, it opens the way for Him to restore those abilities for us to use as sons and co-heirs in the kingdom.

Untethered

Jesus came to bring abundant, overflowing life. Those whom the Son sets free will be free indeed. While we remain tethered to the physical realm and under its rule and bondage, we contribute to creation’s groan rather than being able to respond to it, because we, too, are longing to be set free. In Jesus we can get to know the Truth by experience, and He makes us free to engage with creation as the sons and heirs we truly are.

So, freedom from sickness, disease and pain: can you see that reality? Freedom from rejection, fear, insecurity, addiction, poverty and every bondage and limitation: can you see those realities? If we can focus on those realities as we see them in Jesus, it will change our thinking and free us from the restrictions our minds have imposed upon us. If we can see them as truth then they can manifest in our lives. We can be set free from the chains of time and space and the dimensional restrictions of our flawed belief systems and mindsets; free to fly, untethered and unrestricted.

Earthbound

There can be many realities – and we are all living the reality we can see – but there is only One Truth. A word of warning: the truth, once perceived, may not always be to our taste. We may find the truth unpalatable and hard to swallow because of our DIY mindsets.

The truth may not always be convenient or pleasant because it will not allow us to stay the same. It may require sacrifice and discipline but it will always bring us into freedom. Because it can be hard, sometimes we encounter truth but do not follow through. We turn from the truth and return to less challenging pseudo-realities, fearing the hardships and responsibilities that freedom brings, losing sight of the higher purpose we have in God’s kingdom.

I remember once, I was ministering with another person and we saw someone’s leg grow – not just a millimetre or two, but about 8 centimetres (3 inches). The next day, the person who had been with me came to me and asked “did that really happen?” They had allowed unbelief to come in and rob them of what they had actually seen with their own eyes because it did not fit in with their mindset.

We must live beyond the veil. If we cannot perceive (or if we choose to ignore) the eternal realm of which we are citizens, then we will remain confined and tethered to this earthly, DIY version of reality; remain earthbound, restricted, living in a carefully constructed illusion that reduces us to the status of mere mortals, unable to change our circumstances and situations or fulfil our eternal destiny:

…in whose case the god of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelieving so that they might not see the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God (2 Cor 2:4).

Let’s be willing to ask, are we blinded by the world’s DIY system? Whose reality are we living in?

Jesus did things by the power of His consciousness which we do not think we can do. He controlled reality through His choices. Much supernatural truth has been put ‘off limits’ to us by religious spirits operating within the old order religious systems, labelling it ‘New Age’. All truth is from God because Jesus is The Truth but some things have been veiled in deception. Just because some folk within the New Age movement may have glimpsed a reality which Christians have rejected, and just because they may have their own worldviews, mindsets and filters in place which cause them to see and present a distorted version of the truth, that does not mean that the truth is not there to be revealed when viewed through the lens of Jesus. We must recover that truth.

Take the red pill

‘The Matrix’ is one of my favourite movies, a modern parable which reveals that the truth can free our minds. If you have not seen it, I recommend it! Keanu Reeves is Neo (whose name means ‘New’ and is also an anagram of ‘One’). With the help of Laurence Fishburne’s character, Morpheus, he becomes aware that the reality he is living in is a lie and seeks to expose and overthrow it.

Here are a few quotes from Morpheus:

  • “Let me tell you why you’re here. You’re here because you know something. What you know, you can’t explain. But you feel it. You felt it your entire life. That there’s something wrong with the world. You don’t know what it is, but it’s there. Like a splinter in your mind – driving you mad.”
  • “I’m trying to free your mind, Neo. But I can only show you the door. You’re the one that has to walk through it.”
  • “Unfortunately, no one can be told what the Matrix is. You have to see it for yourself. The question is, are you willing to look?”
  • This is your last chance. After this, there is no turning back. You take the blue pill – the story ends, you wake up in your bed and believe whatever you want to believe. You take the red pill – you stay in Wonderland and I show you how deep the rabbit-hole goes.
  • “What is real? How do you define ‘real’? If you’re talking about what you can feel, what you can smell, what you can taste and see, then ‘real’ is simply electrical signals interpreted by your brain.”
  • “Don’t think you are, know you are.”
    Neo: “What are you trying to tell me? That I can dodge bullets?”
    Morpheus: “No, Neo. I’m trying to tell you that when you’re ready, you won’t have to.”
  • “The Matrix is everywhere. It is all around us. Even now, in this very room. You can see it when you look out your window or when you turn on your television. You can feel it when you go to work… when you go to church… when you pay your taxes. It is the world that has been pulled over your eyes to blind you from the truth.”
    Neo: “What truth?”
    Morpheus: “That you are a slave, Neo. Like everyone else you were born into bondage. Into a prison that you cannot taste or see or touch. A prison for your mind.”
  • “The Matrix is a system, Neo. That system is our enemy. But when you’re inside, you look around, what do you see? Businessmen, teachers, lawyers, carpenters. The very minds of the people we are trying to save… You have to understand, most of these people are not ready to be unplugged. And many of them are so inured, so hopelessly dependent on the system that they will fight to protect it.”
  • “I didn’t say it would be easy, Neo. I just said it would be the truth.”

Meeting Morpheus scene from The Matrix.

See for yourself

This rabbit-hole goes deep. “Deep calls to deep at the sound of Your waterfalls.” I can give you testimony of my experience, but you really have to see this for yourself. Choosing relationship with the Father through Jesus is like taking the red pill: once you have seen and experienced Him for real, there is no going back. Around the world, I see many people encountering the real God and beginning to grasp that He really is Love. Many of us are only now beginning to realise just how good He actually is.

When Neo goes to visit the Oracle (hoping to find out if he is ‘the One’),  there is a sign on the wall, ‘Nosce te ipsum’ (‘Know yourself’). It is only when we see God as He really is that we can know who we really are.

Some recent articles from Freedom ARC
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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 use the blue button to contact us about making a one-time gift.
Thank you!
*Note Sadly, because of abuse by scammers we can no longer offer a ‘click to donate’ option. However, if you contact us, we will get back to you with a simple means of giving. 

Image attribution: the black and green ‘matrix’-inspired image used as a background for the title meme is by Pixabay contributor Tobias_ET. Used under Creative Commons CC0.

251. God’s Original Design and Purpose

Mike Parsons
with Jeremy Westcott – 

Our minds are constructed from pillars of beliefs and value systems acquired through the experiences of our lives. Those pillars form our worldviews and frame how we interpret the world around us – they are our conscious reality. We see the world through a lens that filters life’s experiences in line with our existing worldview and so perpetuates the status quo. But when we compare them with the Truth, with Jesus, we may well find that those pillars in our minds are lies or false representations of reality.

It is only knowing the Truth by personal experience, and in relationship with God, that will bring us into a new reality in which we can recognise who we are and fulfil our role and position in His kingdom as sons and co-heirs with Jesus.

Pillars removed

I shared with you how God revealed what the pillars were which held up the construct of my mind. Many of them were religious theology or doctrine. Others were from the education system and some from the DIY tree path of self. As you will recall, I asked Him to remove them one at a time; still, when the first one (evangelicalism) was removed, my whole theological belief system began to crumble. Doctrines and theological positions which did not properly reflect God’s love began to be exposed by the light of truth.

I began to see things I never saw before. I am loosely connected to thousands of people on social media, and suddenly I became aware that some of their posts seemed to line up with where God was taking me. It was not that they had only just begun to share those things, but that I had always tuned them out before. I had literally not been able to see them with my previous filters in place. Now I have connected more closely with some of those individuals and we are able to dialogue and share our journey together.

Long held beliefs have been challenged by the experiences of God’s love that encounters with Him brought. My whole relationship with God began to change as more and more of my filters were removed and I started to see everything through the lens of love. God is love. He isn’t anything else. Love always wants the best. So when we see Him do something which does not seem to be love, then our thinking about it must be wrong. Either it is love or it is not God. That will surely begin to defy some of our existing perspectives.

An empty head?

So God was carrying out the deconstruction that I had asked for. I began to wonder, what if I did not have anything there, what would it be like to have an empty head? So I asked “What is going to replace the construct?” This is what He told me:

“Son, let Me form the pathways of the tree of life within the construct of your mind. Let Me reform and connect the ancient paths within your brain so that your consciousness will become unrestricted and your creative potential will not be limited. I must plant new roots within your mind that will be able to flow from the eternal source; let them be entwined as the pathways to truth. As the living word, My relationship with you can now be the first pathway that will become a trunk that supports life.”

So He was promising to develop something in me which was not a construct but something more organic and relational as I engaged with the Source of life Himself. I felt this root system of truth began to form deep in my mind. Something was changing in the way my mind worked so that I would be able to see with a different perspective.

I had already engaged with the tree of life, and some of you may have too.

This picture represents various interconnecting spheres within the tree of life (of course it is not really flat, but multi-dimensional). We will have unique experiences of engaging with it, because the fruit is different for each of us depending on what we need. But I do believe that as you do so it will change the way you perceive and think about everything, right down to the very way your mind functions, just as it has for me.

God’s original design

So why is this deconstruction and renewal so important?

God has given us the power to affect our reality, but that will only be beneficial for us and for others if we are able to affect it from a perspective of truth rather than that of the lies we previously believed. Otherwise we will keep getting more of what we have always got. And that is the problem with thinking – you do not know you are thinking in a particular way, you just do!

“…and that He may send Jesus, the Christ appointed for you, whom heaven must receive until the period of restoration of all things about which God spoke by the mouth of His holy prophets from ancient time” (Acts 3:20-21).

God is looking to restore everything back to its original blueprint design. As His sons, co-heirs in the kingdom, we have a part to play in that. But if we were to continue to see things the way we have always seen them, there would be no scope for them to change; restoration to God’s original plan and purpose would be impossible with the restrictions and limitations within which we have been operating.

We are not going to fix the problem with the same DIY methods that created it. There has to be a different way. We are not going to build embassies of heaven on earth in the way they built at Babel, using human construction materials and techniques, to make a name for themselves. It will not be for ourselves at all, but for the whole of creation, and we will have the ability to construct organically using quantum reality. Most technology that you see today is a development of something God has made in creation; God wants us to go beyond, and even beyond beyond, to creatively call things into existence which are not there at the moment.

Creation’s groan

For the anxious longing of the creation waits eagerly for the revealing of the sons of God (Rom 8:19 NASB). Or, as Francois Du Toit puts it in the Mirror Bible: Our lives now represent the one event every creature anticipates with held breath, standing on tip-toe as it were to witness the unveiling of the sons of God. Can you hear the drum-roll?

Creation is still groaning. So we can be sure that what it is witnessing at the present time is not the fullness of our sonship:

All creation knows that the glorious liberty of the sons of God sets the stage for their own release from decay. We sense the universal agony and pain recorded in history until this very moment. We ourselves feel the grief echo of their groaning within us while we are ready to embrace the original blueprint also of our physical stature to the full consequence of sonship. What we already now participate in as first fruits of the spirit will bloom into a full gathering of the harvest. (Rom 8:21-23 MIR).

God loves the whole cosmos but it is waiting for us to mature as sons. He has chosen us, and given us the responsibility. He is not going to do this for us. He is looking for sons who know the truth, the full reality of who our Father is; sons who see Him as He truly is and see ourselves as we truly are, created in His image.

The first stage of the restoration of all things is that we, the sons of God, return to our original design and blueprint. That is why it is so important that the illusions and delusions under which we have been operating are exposed, so that we can be unplugged from this false reality and plugged into the truth. Only the Truth that I know by experience will free me from being tethered to the earth, the physical realm, and from its rule and bondage.

The Truth desires to release us into the glorious freedom of our sonship as co-heirs of His kingdom.

Recent articles from Freedom ARC
Older related posts

Support Freedom ARC

'Donate to Freedom ARC' button

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 use the blue button to contact us about making a one-time gift.
Thank you!
*Note Sadly, because of abuse by scammers we can no longer offer a ‘click to donate’ option. However, if you contact us, we will get back to you with a simple means of giving. 

250. Pillars In My Mind

Mike Parsons
with Jeremy Westcott – 

The truth that love reveals

When we behold God face to face it can lead us to experience metanoia (a radical shift of thinking), removing the veils and renewing our minds. In the last post I described how my introduction to the mind of God was like a conversation: communion, fellowship and oneness between God the One as Three and the Three as One.

He told me “Son, you can be one as We are One: your body, soul and spirit at oneness, unified and restored to godlikeness to be the light of love to the world. Let the conversation of love surround you and immerse you and fill you. Let the truth that love reveals define you; let it unveil your true image in Me. Know who you are by reconnecting with who you have always been. In Me, see your true image framed in love’s conversation, revealed in love’s true expression.”

One time the Father said “Come, walk with Me”, and we were walking in His garden. We were in a place of total rest, the most beautiful, living, vibrant place I had ever seen, felt, smelled or engaged with. Then it changed before my eyes into something completely different in colour, form and fragrance. And then it totally changed again. He said “Look through My eyes” and for just a moment I glimpsed all the infinite possibilities which exist all at once and I felt His pleasure and enjoyment in it all.

It was like a mind-expanding trip to prepare me for what was to come.

Free from limitations

Again, the Father said “Come, walk with Me.”

This time everything was dimly lit and it took time for my eyes to adjust. There were light pathways crossing and connecting but it was as if the power was down. He explained that we were walking in my own mind! We came to a gulf, and beyond it I could see doors that I somehow knew were closed but not locked. The Father said He would bridge the gulf for me, just this once. I saw a path extend across to one of the doors and knew the possibility of new pathways developing in my mind. I felt and sensed the potential possibilities of the eternal reality of who I was always intended to be as a son. Capacities that have been locked and hidden can now begin to reconnect. God wants us to be free from the limitations imposed by following Adam’s DIY tree.path.

We walked across the light bridge He had made for me. I knew it was up to me to open the door, so I reached out with my mind. I embraced the possibility of opening that door to discover new dimensions of reality. The door opened and I just gazed with amazement at ‘now’; seeing beyond time and space, I could envision all the possible creative choices I could make at that moment.

“Which one do I choose?”

That was my first thought. It was a fear-based response, the fear of getting it wrong. Because I was walking with the Father as a son, heart to heart, I immediately felt that fear just melt away. I saw a golden thread intersecting my time streams, fixed at both ends but flexible and movable by my choices, and I realised that as a son and heir all my possible creative choices were good and acceptable and would all lead to positive outcomes.

Pop the qwiff

I saw beyond the boundaries and limitations of my consciousness disconnected from true reality. I saw that I could choose a possibility, that I could (in quantum language) “pop the qwiff” and collapse the possibility into a reality.

I came out of this encounter and immediately I was faced with an opportunity to apply what I had just learned. I looked at my watch: it was 7.45am and I was due to meet Jeremy in my office at 8am. I saw the reality of being there on time and I chose to realise it and felt at peace. So I went upstairs and got ready to go out. When I came down and looked at the kitchen clock it was 7.55 but my watch (a Citizen Eco-Drive which never stops) still showed 7.45am.

I decided to test this reality. So I went out into the garden to water the plants in my greenhouse and feed the fish. After all that, my watch was still at 7.45am. Just as I was about to leave, my wife Deb reminded me that she needed the car that morning. I was going to have to walk. It is not that far, it takes about 10-15 minutes, so I set off. It was still 7.45 by my watch. Halfway there I noticed it had started to move again and I got to the office at 7.55am.

Pillars in my mind

“Son, walk with Me”.

We walked again within the recesses of my mind. “Son, look at the dysfunction of the broken paths. Look at the mindsets that are like obstructions blocking the pathways. Look at the rigid networks conforming and framing the pathways within your mind. Now see fluidity and beauty of the pathways that can be formed by your renewed mind linked to Mine.”

I saw the comparison. I saw the simplicity of the truth of the ‘now’ possibilities and compared it to the complex construct built from the interpretations of truth and reality that come from religion and culture.

“Son, let Me renew your mind to a new level, open up your mind to Me. Let the truth remove the cages constructed by following the pathways of the knowledge of good and evil.”

I saw a framework, a construction with pillars holding it up and a grid or series of connecting cross members as if bolted onto the pillars. He started to shine a spotlight onto these pillars:

“Son, these are the pillars upon which your paradigms are built.” He focused the light of truth on each of the pillars in turn:

  • Evangelicalism
  • Sola Scriptura
  • Greek thought
  • Hebrew thought
  • Augustinianism
  • Protestantism
  • Scientific rationalism
  • Cultural relativism
  • Humanism

It was not lost on me that there were 9 of them. There are 9 fire stones, stones of revelation which Lucifer the light-bearer was intended to reflect. Those 9 stones became counterfeited and perverted as 9 veils that frame our minds. Each veil filters the light of God and distorts the image of God and His image in us. Each veil controls how our mind interprets the data we receive.

The covering cherub’s role was to absorb and reflect the light released from the throne of God. He was responsible to release frequencies that would carry the image of God, revealing our sonship; but instead he chose the DIY path and led mankind down it too.

The veils are mindsets established from beliefs that someone has taught us; revelation from old theological truth meant for a previous day, the resting place of words that frame our belief systems. There is a new revelation of truth for our day to discover.

Deconstruction

“Do you want Me to deconstruct your mind?”

I did not answer right away but pondered for a while. Several days, in fact – I even had to google what some of those pillars were! Eventually I said “Yes, Lord, deconstruct the frameworks of my mind. Strip away the presumptions and the assumptions of my thinking. I want to think like a son.”

“Son, I can continue dismantling this from the outside or I can remove the foundations of the dogma, the pillars and supports of the constructs so that they collapse. This may be traumatic and disorientating for a short while but will be the most effective and quickest way to free your mind and consciousness from its constraints and restrictions.”

“Father, please remove the dogmatic foundations of my beliefs and restore the true foundations formed from eternal truth. Pull the pillars out!”

“But please do it one at a time!” I added quickly.

Mindquake

As the pillars were ripped from my mind the constructs began to become unstable. It felt as if my mind was wobbling – like I was having a mindquake. The truth began to challenge my established and entrenched beliefs and my mind was being set free. I started to see things I was not able to see before and realised how many assumptions and presumptions I had been living according to.

“The limitations are being removed and the realities are being expanded. Son, you are created and crafted with the creative nature of I AM as a son of God. Your true potential is limitless but is controlled by the boundaries that exist within your consciousness. Rest in the deconstruction at the end of the 7th day to embrace the new beginnings of the 8th day reality.

“Son, I am the master of all reality. Everything is contained within Me. I AM, therefore everything is contained within the infinite potential possibilities of My mind. You have access to My mind so your mind can be conformed and freed from its limitations.”

Beyond

These things are beyond what we can imagine with our present knowledge and ways of thinking. By faith you too can open up your mind for Jesus to walk in it, to reveal the veils and constructs operating in you, and invite Him to remove the pillars. You may share some of the pillars my thinking was built on; you may not. Like me, you may want to say ‘Please do it one at a time’.

But if you are to move on into the fullness of sonship, they are going to have to go.

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249. The Veil is Taken Away

Mike Parsons
with Jeremy Westcott – 

Acquainted with perfection

Live consistent with who you really are, inspired by the loving kindness of God. Do not allow current religious tradition to mould you into its pattern of reasoning. Like an inspired artist, give attention to the detail of God’s desire to find expression in you. Become acquainted with perfection. To accommodate yourself to the delight and good pleasure of him will transform your thoughts afresh from within (Rom 12:1-2 Mirror Bible).

“Become acquainted with perfection”. We know that God is perfection. But have you ever considered this? His image of us is also perfection! Perfection is what He sees in us when He calls us and gives us a destiny in sonship. Our own view may have been distorted by our experiences of life and the things we believe, but His original intent and purpose remain unchanged. He still sees us as we really are, therefore only He can bring about the transformation in our thinking that will enable us to ‘live consistent’ with that.

We have to get to know Him. There is no methodology that will achieve this consistency outside of relationship with Him. If we do not see God as He really is, there is no possibility of seeing ourselves as we really are. Our unrenewed minds are veiled by the constructs of our own consciousness. And even though we may ditch our old understanding of who God is, if we merely replace it with a new understanding which is also a construct of our own minds, then that will not be accurate either. What we need is a renewed mind and a continual, living relationship.

Taught to conform

But their minds were hardened; for until this very day at the reading of the old covenant the same veil remains unlifted, because it is removed in Christ. But to this day whenever Moses is read, a veil lies over their heart; but whenever a person turns to the Lord, the veil is taken away (2 Cor 3:14-16).

This veil is our old religious or DIY belief system that causes a hardened mind. Justin Paul Abraham points out that in the church we have been very good at teaching people what to think, but not how to think. Most of us have been taught to conform, either explicitly or implicitly. But conformity to ideology, theology, doctrine and cultural norms actually limits our creative thinking and our sonship. We must turn to the Lord for the veil to be taken away.

To turn is to engage metanoia, the word which is normally translated ‘repentance’ but which really means a radical shift of thinking. We know that the more we try to turn away from something, the more we will focus on the thing we are trying to turn away from. The solution is to turn towards something else instead, and to focus on that. To remove the veils and renew our minds we need to behold God face to face, to engage Him heart to heart and mind to mind, so that we can become like Him. We can do this through meditative encounters. As we open the eyes of our heart, as our imagination is activated, we can begin to see, hear and perceive true reality. Our encounters with God will begin to challenge what we thought we knew about Him.

Expand my reality

I had a number of encounters with God which created cognitive dissonance within me. Cognitive dissonance is the mental discomfort (or psychological stress) experienced by a person who simultaneously holds two or more contradictory beliefs, ideas or values, especially when something happens to highlight the contradiction. This was very distressing, but it served to expand my reality of God and myself. I had a choice, to fight to hold onto what I had always thought to be true or allow the Truth, Jesus, to renew my mind.

I had engaged God’s heart many times with my spirit, outside the limitations of time and space, where my unrenewed mind could not function rationally. Then one day God said “Let me show you My mind.” I am not going to describe it visually, but it felt like being in the middle of a continuous, harmonious conversation between Father, Son and Spirit, in which I could hear faint echoes of my own name.

Again I heard the Father say ”Let Me show you something” and I briefly glimpsed reality from His perspective. I saw that He was connected to everyone that had ever lived, is living or will live, all at once; that is around 108 billion people and counting. He was connected to everyone in the ‘now’, knowing every choice and every decision made every microsecond, and His loving desire was to bring good out of every choice, to redeem even the most stupid decisions of every single person. What amazing love!

Meanwhile we know that the love of God causes everything to mutually contribute to our advantage (Rom 8:28 Mirror Bible).

Same old

Unless our minds are renewed we will find ourselves stuck in the ‘same old, same old’ life. We want to know who God really is and who we really are in Him, yet our past belief and experience limit our capacity to grasp what is really true. Our mind has the capacity to go way beyond its present conscious awareness. We need our minds expanded, though not with psychedelic drugs or anything of that kind: engaging the mind of God will do it. He is omniscient, He knows all there is to know, so engaging His mind will likely be an image-busting experience for us. Are you willing?

Communion

One simple way we can encounter the mind of God is through communion. Renewal of the mind through communion breaks the neural pathways linked to old mindsets and establishes new neural networks, new perspectives, that can be continually renewed. I have shared my original communion prayer with you on this blog before, but I will close this post with a version I wrote to help me renew my mind through engaging with the body and blood of Jesus.

When we take communion we fellowship, sharing life, partaking of His life by focusing and fixing our eyes on Him. As we eat His flesh and drink His blood we are engaging with His life, His essence, His mind and His thoughts.  We engage by faith: not just reciting the words parrot-fashion but meditating on what we are asking and experiencing the reality.

Applying the Body and Blood of Jesus to the renewal of the mind:

I eat your flesh and drink your blood so that I will have the Mind of Christ.

I engage in the body and blood of Jesus and I embrace the transforming power of the Mind of Christ contained within it.

I engage the record containing the light, sound and frequency of God’s consciousness for the renewal of my mind, back to its eternal condition.

I embrace the record of the dimensions of the kingdom released in my mind by the thoughts of God to renew, rewire and restore my brain and thinking.

I engage God’s thoughts and apply them to my mind for health and wholeness, to break and remove all negative neural pathways linked to my conscience.

I speak to my marrow and command it to be a new source of blood that will renew and rewire the cells of my brain so that I can think like a son of God.

I apply the frequency of God’s thoughts resonating with truth to transform my mind into the Mind of Christ by removing all lies and breaking all strongholds.

I command every neural pathway attached to negative memories and ungodly behaviours to be broken and new neural pathways aligned to truth to be formed.

I apply the blood of Jesus to all negative and impure memories and break all connections to sin and trauma – Mind and thinking, be renewed!

I apply the blood of Jesus to all negative images within my imagination and all negative belief systems within my reason centre – Mind, be cleansed!

I call my mind to resonate with the thoughts of God contained within the Mind of Christ and come into alignment and agreement with an eternal perspective.

I choose that my brain and mind be conformed to the likeness of my Father and Brother in heaven to release the creative capacity of sonship

Let the word of God be breathed into my mind, unlocking its true capacity and releasing the supernatural abilities of God.

I trigger the ability for telepathic communication, telekinetic power and transmutation abilities.

I trigger the ability of creative thought, translation, bilocation, pre- and post-cognition and time travel.

[Click here to download a copy of this prayer to print for your own use or to share with others. Opens in a new tab or window.]

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248. Multicoloured, Multifaceted Reality

Mike Parsons
with Jeremy Westcott – 

We have looked at the mind in various ways within previous teaching. The Transformation series dealt with ‘trauma to transformation’. In Gateways, we considered the subconscious mind, the heart and the negative effects of our memories. The gateway of imagination was about activating the eyes of our heart to see the spiritual realms and in the gateway of reason we began detoxing our minds from the poisonous lies of destructive thinking.

These are all important processes in maturing as sons. But now we will be asking God to actually rewire our brain and the construction of our minds and our consciousness. Adam had abilities we have now lost. As sons of God, we should expect our mental abilities to be far superior to those we currently enjoy. It is our framework of beliefs which creates that limitation.

Savant syndrome is a condition in which a person with a developmental difference demonstrates abilities far in excess of what would be considered normal, often at the cost of healthy emotional development. The savant’s mind is wired differently. God wants to restore a whole range of abilities to his sons but in the wholeness and oneness of spirit, soul and body.

Religious tradition

And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind (Rom 12:2).

These two processes, not conforming and being transformed, must run in parallel if our minds are to be renewed. We need to let go of the old DIY ways to embrace the new reality of our sonship with a new mind.

Live consistent with who you really are, inspired by the loving kindness of God. Do not allow current religious tradition to mould you into its pattern of reasoning. Like an inspired artist, give attention to the detail of God’s desire to find expression in you. Become acquainted with perfection. To accommodate yourself to the delight and good pleasure of him will transform your thoughts afresh from within (Rom 12:1-2 Mirror Bible)

Renewing our minds will enable us to know God and therefore know our true selves so that we can live in a new level of reality. So far we know only a tiny fraction of what there is to know. Patterns of belief have formed in us because of what we have been taught: religious tradition can be a big problem for Christians, even for those of us who thought we had escaped the bounds of religion decades ago!

When we align ourselves in relationship and engage personally with God’s good pleasure in us, He will transform our thoughts from within and give us a whole new way of thinking – about Him, about ourselves, about everything.

The mind of Christ

For who has known the mind of the Lord, that he will instruct Him? But we have the mind of Christ (1 Cor 2:16).

This is not ‘might have’ or ‘will one day have’. We have the mind of Christ. Christ is the anointed one and the anointing is the divine enabling power of God. It is not a brain transplant: we do not have the actual mind of Jesus but we can have the restored, equipped mind of a son of God.

Jesus demonstrated an amazing range of unexpected abilities including telepathy, transmutation, pre- and post- cognition, telekinesis, becoming invisible, quantum tunnelling and creating reality.

Since we have the same empowerment that He had, we can do the same kind things He did. In fact, He told us we could do greater!

Truly, truly, I say to you, he who believes in Me, the works that I do, he will do also; and greater works than these he will do; because I go to the Father (John 14:12).

We have the mind of Christ to enable us to do things like that. Do we believe it?

When we really believe something, we will act on it. What we believe, whether truth or lies, will actually influence our behaviour. God does not want our intellectual assent but rather a belief that transforms the way we live. Lies will never enable us to be who God created us to be; only the Truth we know by personal experience (Jesus) will enable us to be free to be the real us.

So does what we claim to believe match up with what our actions indicate we really believe? If we find ourselves living in opposition with our supposed beliefs, let’s be willing to ask what the real truth is. Let’s be proactive and engage the Truth and let the Truth expand our reality to transform our lives. Let’s be willing to ask the questions that will bring a truth that we can live by.

Wired up

Even if we do believe that we can do greater things than Jesus, do we know how? Is our mind wired up correctly and connected to those abilities?

There is a popular myth that we only use 10% of our brains. That is not true, we actually use most of our brains but we only understand how 10% of the brain functions. We do not know how neurons from different areas of the brain collaborate to form consciousness or why some areas of the brain appear disconnected and some abilities are not yet (re)activated. I am sure that God does not want them to remain dormant in us, but He desires that we come into the fullness of our sonship.

Neural pathways are like superhighways of nerve cells that transmit messages. As messages travel over the superhighway many times, the pathway becomes more and more defined so that habits and beliefs form. Most of our pathways are formed by repetition, but trauma can cause a pathway to form instantly, as we saw before.

Deconstruction and Renewing

God spoke to me: “Allow your mind and your consciousness to be expanded beyond all that you presently know and have experienced. Experience the reality of all that is, all that will be and most importantly all that can be within My heart. Son, let your monochrome existence become filled with my multicoloured, multifaceted reality.”

It is always exciting when God says something like that, but I know by now that usually these things do not come without cost (and probably some unforeseen consequences as well). Expansion means being stretched, it causes tension. It is much more comfortable only to look at things the way we have always looked at them, only to see what we have always seen, and therefore only experience what we have always experienced. When God asks us to look at what can be, at things we have never seen, that creates the possibility that we will experience things we have never experienced before.

The way my mind was constructed made it impossible for me to experience that reality. It was not something that could change gradually and imperceptibly; something dramatic was called for. And so for me the whole of 2017 was a year of deconstruction and renewing. I experienced what I can only describe as a head explosion. I will share more about that in future posts.

God shows no favouritism, and everything He offered me He will offer you. Are you prepared to submit to whatever God needs to do in you? If not exactly prepared, are you at least willing? If so, tell Him and cooperate with what He says and does to make it a reality for you.

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247. Limitless Grace and Mercy

Mike Parsons
with Jeremy Westcott –  

And even if our gospel is veiled, it is veiled to those who are perishing, in whose case the god of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelieving so that they might not see the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God (2 Cor 4:3-4).

…for their minds have been blinded by the god of this age, leaving them in unbelief. Their blindness keeps them from seeing the dayspring light of the wonderful news of the glory of Jesus Christ, who is the divine image of God (2 Cor 4:4 TPT).

The ‘god of this age’ refers to the religious systems, governing structures and self-help solutions of this world. A religious veil has blinded many to God who is love, light, spirit and fire. The true image of God has been veiled, with the result that some people, perhaps ourselves included, have not been able to see the reality of who He truly is. Does our ‘God’ look exactly like Jesus? Does our ‘God’ look exactly like love?

The DIY tree path

This veil began to be drawn over the truth when Adam and Eve chose to follow the wrong path, the path of the tree of knowledge of good and evil, what I have called the DIY tree path. In losing sight of God they also lost sight of themselves and the true image of their sonship. They became slaves to their own do-it-yourself efforts to restore what they already had: love, acceptance, approval, affirmation, significance and purpose in relationship.

Mankind has been doing the same ever since.

We have tried many solutions, including power, position, money, materialism, religion and other relationships. All that DIY has done is cause us more pain, leading to more unsuccessful self-medication. All our religious systems are DIY attempts to please or appease God, hoping to get back what was lost. Sadly, if we do not know the relational truth about God and ourselves, we are actually helping to keep the veils in place:

“You are the light of the world. A city set on a hill cannot be hidden” (Matt 5:14).

We are supposed to be the light that enables people to see God but that light will be dimmed or distorted if we are hidden behind a mask or a veil of religious deception ourselves.

False reality

Our own minds are inevitably veiled by the things we already believe. Our mindsets, world-views and strongholds can all be veils or filters over our minds that obstruct and filter how we process reality. These constructs within our minds and consciousness frame our world, what we believe and how we interact. We see the world – and God –  through the lens of our own understanding. It is a distorted view, a false reality, but while it persists it is real to us.

Confirmation bias

To make matters worse, we often have confirmation bias operating. Defined as ‘the tendency to interpret new evidence as a confirmation of one’s existing beliefs or theories’, confirmation bias is particularly prevalent in the area of religious beliefs. Our theology and doctrines tend to cause us to interpret everything through their filters. It takes a significant experience, often almost a trauma, to shake us loose from the limitations of what we already believe.

Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and do not rely on your own understanding (Prov 3:5).

God is wooing us into a deeper level of intimacy with Him in relationship. When we encounter God we want to make sure that we are not relying on our existing understanding but only on continual living relationship (so we must beware of replacing our existing understanding with a new, equally flawed one). There is a new level of experiential relationship with God (Father, Son and Spirit) that is being unveiled to us, a new level of communication with God (the ability to hear and see what God is revealing); a new mind, the mind of Christ, continually flowing from our relationship with Him rather than just new theology or doctrines (a new DIY construct).

When we are able to behold God (Father, Son and Spirit) as He really is, then we can become conformed to the image of sonship that we see within Him.

And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, so that you may prove what the will of God is, that which is good and acceptable and perfect (Rom 12:2).

In the past, I believed I could renew my mind by memorising Bible verses and confessing them trying to believe them. I have come to understand that we are renewed from within, not from the outside, as we relate to God who is Father, Son and Spirit in us (and we are in Him).

Beyond all expectations

This is my testimony of how this came about for me. Early in 2016 I heard God say:

The mists around the closed and clouded minds must be dissipated. The hindrances and entanglements must be removed so that the limitations of minds that are stuck in what has been can become free to embrace what can be so that it can become what will be. The veils must be removed and restrictions lifted to embrace the limitless potential of My reality. The Way, Truth and Life are to be experienced not conceptualised and contained.

The limits of what is possible must be removed for My purpose to be achieved. You must begin to entertain limitless grace and mercy to be able to grasp what is true reality, beyond all expectations. New dimensions of everything can be yours if you are willing to let go of the old and embrace the challenge of the new.

A radical shift

In order to know God who is Father, Son and Spirit, and to know our identity in sonship in Him, we need our minds deconstructed from the wrong frameworks, from all our limited, restricting belief systems.

Or do you think lightly of the riches of His kindness and tolerance and patience, not knowing that the kindness of God leads you to metanoia? (Rom 2:4).

We need a metanoia, a radical shift of thinking, to enable a relationship with the Truth to reveal true reality. Most Bible versions translate the word as ‘repentance’, but metanoia has nothing to do with saying sorry or doing penance for our past: Jesus dealt with that on the cross and made us righteous once and for all.

Conversations with God

He called me to make some laws and legislative decrees on the basis of what He had told me. As I did, I expected Him to use them to free others from their worldly and religious mindsets. I had no idea that He was instead going to use my own words to iconoclastically deconstruct my conscious, subconscious and unconscious mind!

It began with Brexit, the vote about whether the UK should remain within the European Union or leave it. I was pondering how to vote when He asked me “Why do you normally vote the way you do?”

In the conversation that followed, I realised that I had made huge assumptions about which party He would want me to support, not only over this issue but more generally. I had always voted on principle, but God showed me that the principles I was voting on were my own, not His.

So I asked Him which way the Brexit vote would go. He told me, and asked me which way I was going to vote. “Leave,” I replied, “because You have told me that is the way the vote is going to go.” Another assumption! It turned out that God wanted me to vote the opposite way so that He could teach me how to respond when my choice was defeated.

This series of conversations with God (and I will write about them in more detail elsewhere) opened the door to the possibility that I had many more assumptions and presumptions about God, the Bible, theology and doctrine than I thought, and they were acting as veils and filters in my mind.

So the process of my deconstruction and renewal began in earnest.

Cognitive dissonance

It is impossible to see Him as He is when our minds are confused with our own distorted ideas about Him. Every time a stronghold in the mind is broken down, it makes way for a resurrection of fresh revelation. This is not an easy process; there is a lot of eating humble pie to do. And some of those strongholds are beliefs deeply cherished by ourselves and by others; one reason I initially held back was that I knew this was going to cause trouble.

Cognitive dissonance is the mental stress or discomfort we experience when we realise that we hold two or more contradictory beliefs, ideas, or values simultaneously. This often happens when new information manages to get through the filter of confirmation bias and threatens to disrupt the balancing act in our minds.

The encounters I had with God challenged what I believed about Him. This put a stress on my brain that felt like a restrictive band around my head. The pressure was only released when I gave in and stopped trying to hold on to my old way of thinking.

‘The Great Iconoclast’

Andre Rabe writes, “Jesus comes to make you an atheist to the god of your own making. He comes to bring an end to your way of subjecting God to your own understanding”. John Crowder says, “It is only at this place where our ideas and our faith are completely devastated that we have an opportunity to meet the God who transcends all our ideas about God.”

Jesus Himself constantly challenged the accepted thinking of His day: “You have heard it said (rabbinical tradition) but I say to you…” He turned their religion on its head; love replaced religious duty and obligation.

C.S. Lewis called God ‘the Great Iconoclast’ and wrote, “There are three images in my mind which I must continually forsake and replace by better ones: the false image of God, the false image of my neighbours, and the false image of myself.” (The Great Divorce).

Are we ready to let God renew and transform our thinking? He will not be confined to our limited, static perceptions of Him. We cannot keep an infinite God in a box made by the finite capacities of our understanding. God does not dwell in manmade temples, theological constructs or ideologies. God dwells in our spirits and in our hearts.

We need a transformation, a revolutionary change of mind. We need the veils of our understanding exploded and stripped away. We have a relationship with the Living Word, the ultimate source of revelation who searches the deep things of God and makes them known to us. We must not let our current understanding keep us in bondage to the limitations of our past experience.

Everything we receive must come through personal encounters with God. Our encounters will never contradict scripture but may not be directly found in it. They will definitely challenge the religious belief systems which reduce everything to a set of rules or doctrines.

Our old mindsets, thinking patterns and religious world views will keep us in old trusted ways of behaviour and will limit our abilities to engage in the heavenly spiritual realities that are being unveiled in our day. Are we prepared to embrace and spread the revolution? Some of the doctrines and beliefs we once deemed foundational may turn out to be just the skewed projections of our own fearful, fallen assumptions about God. He is about to explode the DIY myths we have invented; myths which actually obscure who He really is from our view.

Love bombs

I saw angels with light wands marking us out, and others, for laser-guided love bombs. God wants to explode those love bombs over you, penetrating your mind, your heart, your whole being with His love for you, revealing your true identity as a beloved son.

Live loved, love living and live loving.

Invite Him to release those love bombs over you. Let your heart and mind be cocooned in love. Let Jesus reveal His love for you. Let the Father reveal His love for you. Let the Spirit explode His love in you. Let the love of God touch your mind. Let Him encounter you with love that will explode and destroy any wrong image of Him. Let Him remove the veils that obscure and distort Him.

Let Him explode your limited reality.

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246. Gnashing Teeth and Goats

Mike Parsons
with Jeremy Westcott – 

Recent posts on ‘hell’ have prompted questioning among our readers. That was their purpose – not to stir up controversy for the sake of it but to encourage us all to examine our beliefs about this subject and where those beliefs have come from.

We have looked at the occasions on which the actual word appears in English translations of the Bible, and then in the last post I shared with you the series of encounters with God which led me down this route in the first place. But we promised that before we move on we would also examine the passages where the word itself does not appear, but ‘the Bible clearly says’ that some people go to a place of eternal torture when they die.

Weeping, Gnashing of Teeth and Outer Darkness

“Weeping and gnashing of teeth in the outer darkness! That is obviously a reference to suffering eternal physical torture in hell.”

Is that so?

Look at what happened leading up to Stephen being martyred in Acts 7:54: his accusers (members of the Sanhedrin) became furious and gnashed their teeth at him. Weeping and gnashing of teeth was an expression not of tormented pain and anguish, but of rage.

When the chief priests and the Pharisees heard His parables, they understood that He was speaking about them (Matt 21:45). The only reason they did not seize Jesus then and there was because they were afraid of the public outcry.

It was not the general mass of humanity that Jesus was speaking of when He talked about gnashing of teeth and the outer darkness in Matt 8:12, 13:42, 13:50, 22:13, 24:51, 25:30 and Luke 13:28. It was this group of self-righteous individuals who would find themselves outside the covenant they were so sure was their birthright. In that ‘outer darkness’, having failed to heed Jesus’ warnings, they would respond with defiant anger.

Sheep and goats

Then they will go away to eternal punishment, but the righteous to eternal life (Matt 25:46).

To be fair, you can understand why people tell us ‘the Bible clearly says…’. Our English Bibles certainly seem to. But we need to look at the Greek words used by the original writers of the New Testament books.

Firstly, what do we understand by ‘punishment’? Kolasis is the word used here, and it means ‘correction’, not ‘retribution’. Greek had a word for retributive punishment, timoria, which is never used of God in the New Testament. God’s discipline is always restorative.

Secondly, the Greek language had no word for ‘eternal’. They could have invented one if they had wished to: the language was exceptionally well-suited to building new words from component parts. They did not need the word because they did not have the concept. The root of the word used here, aionios, is ‘age’. For Greek speakers, an aion could mean a lifetime, a generation, or a longer period of time – but always of finite length. So not never-ending, not forever and ever, not eternal.

“Ah, but the same word appears in both halves of this sentence, and since ‘eternal life’ is everlasting, then the punishment must be, too.”

That depends on what aspect of the life we focus on when we read ‘eternal’. Surely it is not primarily the length, but the quality. The life being promised is the-God-kind-of-life: and the punishment therefore is the-God-kind-of-punishment: restorative and corrective, not retributive.

There are other reasons to treat this passage with caution, too. The sheep and goats in the parable are nations, not individuals. The criterion for escaping ‘eternal punishment’ is good works, not faith in Jesus. So if you are prepared to assert that whole nations will be sent to heaven or hell – based on their works, not on faith – then you can reasonably use this passage to argue your case for an ‘eternal hell’. So far I have not come across anyone in any theological stream who is prepared to do so.

“The eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels? That’s clear enough.”

The more I consider this phrase, the more I am inclined to Chuck Crisco’s view that it refers to ‘the accuser and his messengers’, which is a perfectly valid translation of the Greek words used. The Law, the religious system and those who fought to preserve it were heading for the fires of the Temple Mount and Gehenna at the end of the Old Covenant age (aion) in the destruction of Jerusalem by the armies of Rome (AD70).

But if that is a step too far for some, let’s consider the purpose of fire. The Greek word is pur, from which we get words like ‘pure’ and ‘purify’. Jesus came baptising with the Holy Spirit and with fire and Paul said that everyone’s work will be tested with fire. I believe we will all go through the fires of purification to restore us to our original design and identity as sons by removing anything that distorts that image. We can engage with that fire now, or wait until we die (I advise option 1). There is a fire which awaits everyone who has not gone through it already but it is for purifying and correcting, not for destroying. It is the consuming fire of God’s passionate love. And my testimony is that even those who did not accept Jesus while alive will still get to choose when they experience that fire after death.

So what was Jesus’ point in this story of sheep and goats? ‘Brothers’ was a term used by Jews to refer exclusively to other Jews. Again (as throughout these chapters of Matthew’s gospel) I would suggest that in His love He was setting out a warning to the religious-yet-unbelieving Jews, especially the leaders, who instead of serving ‘the least of these my brothers’ (the believing Jews) would imprison and kill them instead.

Lazarus and the rich man

We touched on this before, and for an in-depth look into this parable we recommend Brad Jersak’s analysis in Putting Hell Back in the Handbasket.

The context of Luke 16 is all about wealth and true riches. In the verses immediately preceding this parable Luke tells us that the Pharisees were lovers of money. Jesus is not offering a treatise on the afterlife, but a warning about putting your trust in riches and failing to help the poor. Jesus quite literally means that the rich and poor of that age will see a reversal of fortunes in the next.  Losing your soul for temporal gain is the cost of materialism and the results of living a DIY self-righteous life (Matt 16:26).

Abraham’s bosom is not a biblical phrase but a mythological or cultural one found in the Babylonian Talmud. Jesus is using a culturally accepted idea as the background for his story.

Aspects of the story make a crass literalism awkward: how does the rich man communicate with Abraham across the chasm? Does everyone there have a direct line to the patriarch? Does someone being incinerated in a furnace care about thirst? Are these literal flames? And since hades precedes the resurrection of the body, do we have literal tongues with which to feel thirst? Is this also the literal Abraham? Do the millions in his care take turns snuggling with him? Or is his bosom big enough to contain us all at once? How big he must be! And so on into implausibility. Taking the parable seriously means we mustn’t take it so literally. (Brad Jerzak – Putting Hell Back in the Handbasket).

Do we think that when we are in heaven we will be able to see our loved ones in ‘hell’, talk to them but offer them no hope, yet be happy with that?

Eternal destruction, away from the presence

… when the Lord Jesus will be revealed from heaven with His mighty angels in flaming fire, dealing out retribution to those who do not know God and to those who do not obey the gospel of our Lord Jesus. These will pay the penalty of eternal destruction, away from the presence of the Lord and from the glory of His power (2 Thess 1:7b-9).

If you believe in hell as eternal conscious torment, the word ‘destruction’ does not work for you. If you believe in the annihilation of the wicked, the combination of ‘eternal’ and ‘destruction’ makes no sense. However you look at it, we need to delve deeper.

The words in bold are all poor translations: diké (translated penalty) means justice, judicial hearing, legal decision; the related word ekdikesis (translated retribution) means that which arises out of justice; aionion (eternal) we know means pertaining to the age; olethros (destruction) means the state of being lost, lostness; apo (translated away from and from) does indeed mean from, but in the sense of coming out of or coming from and not separated from. Matthew Distefano points out that the phrase Eternal destruction from the presence of the Lord (olethron aionion apo prosopou tou Kyriou) in 2 Thessalonians 1:9 echoes exactly that in Acts 3:19: Times of refreshing from the presence of the Lord (kairoi anapsyxeos apo prosopou tou Kyriou). No one translates that ‘times of refreshing away from the presence of the Lord’.

So Paul was encouraging the Thessalonians that there was a judicial decision about to come from the Presence of the Lord which would have a consequence for those who were persecuting them: it would involve a state of lostness pertaining to the age. Or you can read it as God’s consuming-fire-presence delivering a justice that totally ruins their lostness.

This is not about some future end of the world event or afterlife experience but what Jesus prophesied would occur in that generation (and did occur in AD70) – but even then, God’s justice is always restorative for everyone.

The Lake of Fire

Four verses mention the lake of fire in the Bible, all in Revelation 19 and 20. Revelation is an apocalyptic book, symbolic and cryptic in nature, the only one of its kind in the New Testament but very common in Jewish and Greek literature. Only those ‘in the know’ and immersed in the culture in which it is written will fully understand the symbolism. Symbols can represent multiple concepts. One thing is certain: apocalyptic literature is never intended to be read literally.

We can get clues about some of the symbols because they also appear in the book of Daniel, including the beast being cast into the blazing fire (Dan 7:11). Just as Daniel’s beasts were figurative, representing various nations, so too is the lake of burning sulphur figurative. The book of Revelation is not a prophecy for the far distant future but was an immediate warning to first-century Israel that just as Sodom and Gomorrah fell in fiery destruction, so too the Jewish religious system was in danger of ending in the same manner.

The ‘book of life‘ mentioned is a commonly understood concept in the Jewish tradition and refers back to the law where according to the Talmud this book is opened every Jewish new year on Rosh Hashanah.

In Revelation 20:14, we see Death and Hades thrown into the lake of fire. Here the lake of fire may well represent God’s (completed) triumph over evil, sin, the grave and death through the power of the cross. Many of the early church Fathers saw the lake of fire as a spiritual place where everyone in humanity was purged of their unbelief and sins so that they could eventually believe in God. I believe it is fed by the river of fire which flows from God’s throne.

And the devil who deceived them was thrown into the lake of fire and brimstone, where the beast and the false prophet are also; and they will be tormented day and night forever and ever (Rev 20:10).

Forever and ever is a poor translation of to the ages of ages. Brimstone (Greek: theios, closely related to the word for ‘God’) was regarded as having power to heal and purify. Basanizo (translated torment) is ‘testing with a touchstone’ (in other scriptures it is translated as tossed or battered by waves, straining at the oars of a boat, and being in labour while giving birth).

Conclusion

Enough! No matter how many objections we address, how many scriptures we dig into, we know that some will not be persuaded. These posts are really not intended for them but for those who discover that God is already on their case – and even they will probably come up with other verses or passages not included in this brief survey. There are far more comprehensive treatments of the subject elsewhere; we have referenced some of them in the text and below. But ultimately all of us are going to need to go to God, in whatever way we know how, and hear what He has to say to us about the questions we have.

Fire and passion

We can all experience the fire and passion of God’s love today for ourselves. Let’s not hide from it or try to avoid it.

Son, it is time for everyone to embrace the fire
to experience deeper love
and the purification that My consuming fiery love brings.

Son, call on Me to stoke the fires
and increase the intensity of the heat
to reveal hearts, minds and motives. 

So I call for the purification of fire.
I call for the fire of love to penetrate the hardest, darkest areas of our hearts.
I call for the refiner’s fire to burn away the dross of self.
I call for the light to shine, to expose the things hidden because of shame.
I call for love’s overcoming power to reveal and break every chain tethering God’s people to the DIY path.
I call for the passion of God’s heart to be revealed in His wrath directed towards all brokenness and lost identity.

Let the consuming fire of God’s love burn in our hearts and minds to restore us to true sonship.

Recent articles from Freedom ARC
Older related posts
Resources on the topic of ‘hell’

These publications and websites raise issues we believe God is drawing to our attention today. We do not necessarily agree with all the doctrinal positions, conclusions or opinions of the authors.

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245. What Jesus Did

Mike Parsons
with Jeremy Westcott

In the last two posts I have quickly outlined what the Bible really says about ‘hell’. That has caused a certain amount of controversy (to put it mildly). But I am not trying to invent a new theology or doctrine, or even ask you to believe what I believe, and this time I am simply going to share my testimony with you.

Renewing my mind

In recent years, God has given me experiences that demonstrate the strength of His love, profoundly challenging my beliefs and what I used to think the Bible was saying. This all happened as part of the removal of the manmade constructs of my mind, and it was not an easy process for me as those mindsets, doctrines and theological frameworks of my thinking were very strong.

For 3 weeks I felt severe pressure around my mind, almost like a physical pain. God was challenging me to reconsider the issue of ‘hell’ but my long-held belief systems discouraged me from doing so. You see, I had even been to the fire. I had had visions of people in anguish in what I called ‘hell’. So I purposely held back, even though frequent love-encounters were making it increasingly difficult to deny what I now believe. That is, until Jesus actually took me back to the fire to see.

Satan’s trophy room

Wisdom’s heights was my entrance.

Does not wisdom call, and understanding lift up her voice? On top of the heights beside the way, where the paths meet, she takes her stand; beside the gates, at the opening to the city, at the entrance of the doors, she cries out (Prov 8:1-3).

Some years ago, I was a given a seal and staff and went through a door on Wisdom’s heights. It was a tunnel of fire which opened into a place of extreme restriction and sadness: satan’s trophy room. There I saw 3 things:

  • The sparkling diamond trophies of the destinies of those living and dead who had not believed the good news
  • Stolen mantles and crowns
  • An area of the heritage of my generational family lines

Now Jesus took me back there. He showed me the heritage area and I looked at the family line of my father’s father.

Jesus said to me, “Do you want to see this restored?”

I asked “How?”

Into the fire

Then He showed me a door I had not seen when I came before. He explained that the door had been there all along, but my framework of beliefs would not allow me to see it. Then He gave me a silver heralding trumpet and we went through the door into the fire. There were thousands of people there from that part of my family line, not talking to one another; isolated individuals who appeared to be in anguish of soul. They were not being tormented; there was no devil there with a pitchfork or anything like that. They were there, on their own, in a place of consuming fire.

So I looked to Jesus, hoping He was going to do something. He just stood there looking right back at me. So eventually I preached the good news to them, though not very well! I felt rather tongue-tied and overwhelmed. Overwhelmed with love, actually, and of course completely unprepared. But at least I told them that they could accept Jesus and come out.

I figured Jesus must have given me the trumpet for a reason, so I blew it. He turned to walk out, and there was no way I was going to stay in there on my own, so I followed Him back through the tunnel of fire. I went through the door back to Wisdom’s heights and this time I saw that the door was like a fiery sword (I knew that a fiery sword guards the way to the Tree of Life).

I looked back and a few hundred people had followed us to the door. As they approached I saw them kneel, I heard them confess Jesus as Lord and they walked out and through the gates into Zion.

Authority

I turned to Jesus. “What have you done to me? I’m in trouble now! How do I explain this?”

Jesus said “Just tell people that you are doing what I did – and I told you to do what I did, and greater things. This is just the beginning”.

I asked Jesus why so few of them had followed us out of the fire. If it was me and someone offered me a way out, I would have been out of there as fast as I could. This is what He told me:

“You can only preach with authority to the degree that the fire has consumed generational things in you. That is why not everyone responded. Keep presenting yourself to the fire of the altar and you will be able to reach more of your generational lines. Embrace the coals to touch areas of your life that have come from your generations; that will give you authority.”

So I present myself as a living sacrifice on the altar in the temple every day.

Back again… and again

Since that first time, I have been back to engage each of my 4 generational family lines and preached the good news to them. When I was in China in 2017 someone gave me a silver heralding trumpet just like the one Jesus had given me. One morning while I was there I woke at 3am and felt a strong desire to engage the altar and ask for the fiery coals to touch a specific area of behaviour, the area of divorce.

As I did, I began to feel intensely loving towards everyone in my generations who had been divorced, not angry or resentful, and I began forgiving them and blessing them. Once I finished I went to the fiery place again. I preached to all my generational lines with boldness, blew the silver trumpet and this time many more responded. They followed me out, came to the door, confessed Jesus as Lord and went through.

Later, on a Sunday morning here at Freedom as I was embracing the fire another area surfaced. I again went back and preached with renewed boldness and once again many more responded. Another time, I wondered what it might be like if I took communion down into the fire. So I went back there and offered communion, the body and blood of Jesus, to those who were in the fire. Yet again, many responded!

More recently I became aware that there were many in that place with fractured souls, what we sometimes call ‘stuck parts’, mostly caused by trauma in their lives. They were double-minded, triple-minded or worse and were unable to make a decision to follow Jesus. So I asked Jesus to come with me and I told them they could come to the Prince of Peace (shalom means ‘wholeness’) and be made whole. Vast numbers of them did so.

My strong desire is to empty that place, but for that to happen I need to embrace the fire myself. I need to be good news and demonstrate that good news in my own life.

I have now had many experiences of going into the place of fire both for personal refining and on rescue missions. The fire of God is for purifying and refining and removing all the dross in people’s lives. They are waiting for someone to come and share the good news with them.

Testimony

One day, before I even mentioned this publicly, a friend I meet with online said he had something to share with me. He had been engaging in heaven when some of his family members came up to him. He was surprised and said “I didn’t know you were believers in Jesus!” And they said, “We weren’t. But we remembered that you said your whole household would be saved, and Jesus came and preached the good news to us, and that’s why we are here.” This really did not fit my friend’s theological box, as he put it. He was encouraged when I then shared my experiences too.

Since then (and especially after this topic cropped up in several of my regular online mentoring groups) I have had conversations with others and I have heard many testimonies of people who have gone into the fire and preached the good news as Jesus did. After I shared this in the Vision Destiny 2017 series I had a number of emails from people thanking me for opening up the discussion as they had been afraid of sharing their experiences because of the reaction they knew it would cause (a reaction I have experienced for myself).

Labels

This view of the fire as purification and a place from which people could be rescued is not some strange new doctrine. This was the position of many of the early Church Fathers and others across the church spectrum through the last 2000 years: Clement of Alexandria, St. Macrina, St Gregory Nyssen, St Isaac of Nineveh (and many other Fathers), and moderns including Fr. Sergei Bulgakov, St. Silouan the Athonite, Fr. Alexandre Turincev, Metropolitans Kallistos Ware and Hilarion Alfeyev.

There are many accusations people throw at you if you start talking like this. You will be called a heretic, and a Universalist (I am neither). I do not believe that all roads lead to God. I am not even a Christian Universalist because I do not believe that it is guaranteed. I believe that Jesus gives people the choice. I like what Brad Jerzak’s article Permit me to hope says about hopeful inclusivism: “We cannot presume that all will be saved or that even one will be damned. Rather, we put our hope in the final victory and verdict of Jesus Christ…” But I do not accept any of these labels – as soon as you accept a label,

  1. you immediately narrow your options to the views espoused by those who carry that label.
  2. you are assumed by others to believe everything they think that an [insert label here] believes.

Objections and accusations

Some will say “If people are going to be saved anyway, then what is the point of preaching the gospel?” Is that not a rather selfish view? Do we not want people to know and enjoy relationship with God now? Or to find and fulfil their destiny in this life? And I certainly do not want anyone to go into the consuming fire of God’s presence without knowing Him. It is not a pleasant place to be if you don’t know Him. If anything, I find I want to preach the good news more than ever.

They will also say, “Well, if there are no consequences to my behaviour then I might as well just keep on sinning.” If that is true, then they are only behaving as they do out of fear. They are living under the law, not grace (whilst they sadly shake their heads and accuse us of promoting ‘another gospel’). Why on earth would we want to keep on sinning, when sin messes up our relationship with God and everything else in our lives and its wages are death?

Embrace the fire

It is best not to argue with people. We can share our testimony, and just love them whether they agree with us or not. We are not looking to provoke controversy, enter into fruitless disputes or draw people into making accusations. These posts are not intended for those who only want to fight their corner and prove that they are right. They are for those who are open to lay down their own presumptions and assumptions, to engage with God for themselves and allow Him to reveal the truth about His love for them and for all His creation; for those who will embrace that truth and be part of the ‘restoration of all things’ (Acts 3:21).

Jesus told me to release this message and encourage the Joshua Generation to arise and be bold, to come to Him and He will open the gates to reveal the consuming fire and show them the way just as He has shown me. I believe we all have the ability to engage the fiery place and do what Jesus did, to preach the good news to those spheres that we are mandated to engage.

The refining fire of the altar is where the authority to preach will be given. As we embrace the fire with urgent desire, great authority will be released to us. I believe we get to choose when we go to the place of fire. We can go now, or later, but God is a consuming fire and we cannot escape His love. That love is an unquenchable fire, intended to refine and purify us.

Let’s choose to embrace the fire now.

Related articles from Freedom ARC

“Three views of hell: burn forever, annihilation, restoration… How did you come to yours?” – Mike answers George’s question here on YouTube: Supernatural Mentoring Monday 12th March 2018 Washington or scroll down to view the video in full on this page.

Resources on the topic of ‘hell’

These publications and websites raise issues we believe God is drawing to our attention today. The fact that they are listed here should not be taken to imply that we agree with all the doctrinal positions, conclusions or opinions of the authors.

Image attribution: the image used at the head of this post is by 7trumpetsmusicband [CC BY-SA 4.0
(https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0)%5D, from Wikimedia Commons

Hell? Journey Testimony Part 1 – Supernatural Mentoring Monday 12th March 2018 Washington

Support Freedom ARC

'Donate to Freedom ARC' button

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 use the blue button to contact us about making a one-time gift.
Thank you!
*Note Sadly, because of abuse by scammers we can no longer offer a ‘click to donate’ option. However, if you contact us, we will get back to you with a simple means of giving.

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