97. Image-Bearers of the Heavenly

Mike Parsons
and Jeremy Westcott –

Purifying, refining fire

For some time now, the church has been at that point in God’s Prophetic Timetable which is characterised by the coming of fire, refining and purifying; the gathering and removing of stumbling blocks from the church and from our lives. It is not an easy time. Those stumbling blocks can be idols, they can be other things – and even people – that are hindering the flow of God’s kingdom. The gathering angels are here, to see if we are willing to open up our hearts and allow them to be removed from our lives. We can co-operate, or not: but it will be less painful if we do.

Raising up of a Joshua Generation

This time is also characterised by the raising up of a Joshua Generation, a people of a different spirit, a generation of people who will inherit the land and bring another generation in with them. Joshua and Caleb brought a whole new generation into a physical, geographical land, and also into a new spiritual land. We have spent some time looking at 40 Characteristics of the Joshua Generation on this blog, and it is important for us to know if we are called to be part of that generation.

That is where we are now. But we know that what God is calling us to do is to move forward. Refining, purifying, coming into the furnace of God’s Presence: that is all preparation for moving on with God.

Refiner’s fire

“And the Lord, whom you seek, will suddenly come to His temple; and the messenger of the covenant .. behold, He is coming,” says the LORD of hosts. But who can endure the day of His coming? And who can stand when He appears? For He is like a refiner’s fire and like fullers’ soap. He will sit as a smelter and purifier of silver, and He will purify the sons of Levi and refine them like gold and silver, so that they may present to the LORD offerings in righteousness (Mal 3:1-3).

God wants to prepare us, that we may be the offering of the Lord. A refiner’s fire gets pretty hot: the melting point of gold is around 1064°C (1945°F). As the heat is maintained, the impurities come to the surface and can be scooped off. If you are experiencing this, you will know exactly what we are talking about – when something comes to the surface in your life, you have a choice: you can allow God to remove it, or you can just push it all back under again. The trouble is, until you allow God to remove it, it will just keep on coming back to the surface. And the very worst thing you can do, if you want to fulfil your destiny in God, is get out of the fire.

When gold is really pure, the surface is like a mirror. It gives an absolutely perfect reflection. And God wants us to reflect Him, so that others see Him in us. But during that process we need to know that God is with us in it.

We open our door to Him, He opens His door to us

“Behold, I stand at the door and knock; if anyone hears My voice and opens the door, I will come in to him and will dine with him, and he with Me” (Rev 3:20).

In other words, He is offering us an intimate relationship with Him in which He will reveal Himself to us and we will be close to Him. And a few verses later:

After these things I looked, and behold, a door standing open in heaven, He said, “Come up here, and I will show you what must take place after these things.”  Immediately I was in the Spirit; and behold, a throne was standing in heaven, and One sitting on the throne (Rev 4:1).

As we surrender our lives to God; as we open up our lives to the lordship of Jesus (and submit to the process of refining), He opens up the door into the heavenly realms for us to engage and ‘Come up here’. Some people have been translated physically, I know, but for most of us it will be a spiritual experience, and that is what we have been looking at on this blog in recent posts.

With practice we can learn to turn into that realm of heaven, because it is ‘at hand’ – or as close to us as if we put our hand in front of our face. We step in, and we step out of the heavenly realms. When we step back out, we bring with us what is there and manifest it here. That is what we understand by Your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven (Matt 6:10). Jesus Himself brought the kingdom, and the will of God, as it is in heaven, to the earth – and He intends his disciples to do the same. If we are to bring heaven to earth, we have to access heaven – and the door is open.

Bear the image of the heavenly

As is the earthy, so also are those who are earthy; and as is the heavenly, so also are those who are heavenly. Just as we have borne the image of the earthy, we will also bear the image of the heavenly (1 Cor 15:48-49).

Just as we were born in an earthly body, now we have been born again and our spirit is now active and alive to God. So we will now bear the image of the heavenly. We need to be bearing the image of the things that are going on in the heavenlies, and outworking them here on the earth. God is opening up the door for us to engage with the heavenly realms, so that we can both see and reflect what is going on.

Through the church… in the heavenly places

…and to bring to light what is the administration of the mystery which for ages has been hidden in God who created all things; so that the manifold wisdom of God might now be made known through the church to the rulers and the authorities in the heavenly places. This was in accordance with the eternal purpose which He carried out in Christ Jesus our Lord (Eph 3:9-11).

There is so much more to God than we can even imagine. He is infinite and eternal. And there is so much that He is revealing today which has not been revealed before. He is opening the realms of heaven so that His people can see. That manifold, multi-faceted, wisdom of God is to be made known through the church – through us – to the rulers and the authorities in the heavenly places.

That kingdom which is in darkness – it, too, is that close to us. We are not to draw from it, but we are to manifest the manifold wisdom and authority of God to its rulers and authorities in heavenly places. This was always His intention:

This was in accordance with the eternal purpose which He carried out in Christ Jesus our Lord (v11).

Adam was to have enjoyed free access to the heavenly realms, but he chose a different path. In Christ, that access is now restored to us.

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96. Surrender and Rule

 

Mike Parsons 
and Jeremy Westcott –

Surrender

When we open the door of our heart, when we open that First Love gate and let Jesus come in, He comes in and He rules. We can rule here in this realm on our own mountain, in our own house, but we rule through surrender. We give Him rulership of our life. Now as we are renewed in our mind, and as He begins to transform us, as our emotions and our soul get restored, He gives back more and more rulership to us, so that our spirit starts to rule in us as a joint heir with Him.

Initially he comes and rules: we hand our lives over to Him. But as He starts to equip us, He gives us more and more authority to rule with Him as a son of our Father. In the early days He can’t trust us with it all because we wouldn’t know how to handle it. It would be like giving a child a machine gun. But as time goes on, the more we allow God to transform us into His image, the more authority we start to come into. The more we allow God to deal with what is in our hearts and see that worked out in our lives, the more He begins to bring us into the delegated authority associated with our destiny, so that we rule with Him in that place.

What is our destiny?

We really need to find out what is on our scroll of destiny. We can get a sense of what is on it by looking at what we are consistently drawn towards. But as we get to know God intimately, we can talk to Him about it and ask Him to show it to us. I have mentioned this before, and I will go into it some more on another occasion.

For those whom He foreknew, He also predestined to become conformed to the image of His Son, so that He would be the firstborn among many brethren (Rom 8:29).

This is ordained for us, our destiny has been put in place: we are called to be conformed to the image of Jesus. To be like Him. There are not supposed to be just one or two people ruling in the heavenly places: Jesus is to be the firstborn among many brethren. We are all supposed to rule as joint heirs with Christ. We need to take up our authority.

Rule as a lord…

So we become a lord when we dispossess the giants and rule on the mountain thrones in the ‘kingdom of God’ heavenly realm. That is where we are ruling the house. That is our house, our level of authority; our mountain, our throne. That is all to do with our destiny and our mandate. We can even become a lord of lords as we disciple and raise up other lords. We give away what we have received. We raise up others and bring them into their destinies as well.

…a king…

Then we become a king, when we dispossess the dragon and we rule on that mountain throne in the ‘kingdom of heaven’ heavenly realm. We start to administer righteousness and justice from the heavenly courts.

When we start operating in the courts, we will find them to be awesome places of authority. There is a whole court system, with higher and lower courts, and I have been to many of them myself. There are divorce courts where we are able to legally separate ourselves from things in our past. There are courts of accusation where Satan accuses the brethren, and we have to go and deal with those accusations over ourselves (how we deal with accusations against us, by the way, is to agree with them, accept the judgment of God, and go free because Jesus has already paid for us). Some of those reading this are called to be intercessors: they are called to go to the courts and deal with accusations on behalf of other places, people or regions.

We can become a king of kings as we disciple and raise up other kings. Everything is about reproducing in others what God produces in us. Everything God is and has in heaven, He wants to be reproduced on earth. That is why Jesus had disciples around Him.

…a son

As we are diligent to rule as lords and kings, God will bring us into our place as sons. Then we rule on a mountain on a throne in the heavenly realm of ‘Heaven’. And God manifests us as sons of light on the earth (as it is in heaven). As in heaven, so on earth: the application of that here is that only as we rule in the heavens first can we then outwork that rule on the earth. We cannot expect to do it the other way round.

We will live as manifest sons of God, restoring the earth to its original purpose – the original purpose even in the first creation – to bring us into fullness of sonship.

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95. Manifestation of the Sons of God

Mike Parsons
and Jeremy Westcott

Heavenly places

In this series of posts we are considering the heavenly places. We have seen that there are indeed different places or realms in the heavens, and that we can access them even while we are living on the earth, just as Jesus did.

And angels who did not keep their own domain, but abandoned their proper abode, He has kept in eternal bonds under darkness for the judgment of the great day (Jude v6).

This is talking about the fallen watcher angels who left their proper place, and came to the earth to produce the Nephilim. Those 200 watcher angels are now bound, in a place called Tartarus. I have seen them there, and they are bound because of what they did.

In quoting Bible verses, what I am trying to show you is that all these different places in the heavenlies have a scriptural background. Sometimes you have to look closely at familiar scriptures to see that maybe they have more to say than we have seen before. So we saw last time that there is a trophy room of Satan which we can plunder, and here there is a domain where angels are bound.

Seven

Now, seven is an important number in scripture. There were seven days of creation, there are seven systems of government. Seven is always the perfect number, the number of completion, the number of God. We have seen that there are seven realms, three into the heavens, three into the earth, and the seventh is the atmosphere of the earth in which there are principalities, powers and rulers.

But the very first realm of government for us has to be in our own life. To rule there we must bring spirit, soul and body back into proper order. We are a house of the Lord, and we rule with Him from a place of our spirit, not our soul, not our body, bringing it back into wholeness and completeness. That is why we need to access our own garden, soaking room, bridal chamber and the dance floor – the four chambers of our heart – to actually deal with things in our own life. There are areas of government: in us, and through us, and in the heavenly realms.

King of kings and Lord of lords

He who is the blessed and only Sovereign, the King of kings and Lord of lords (1 Tim 6:15).

These will wage war against the Lamb, and the Lamb will overcome them, because He is Lord of lords and King of kings, and those who are with Him are the called and chosen and faithful (Rev 17:14).

Jesus is described as the King of kings and Lord of lords in these two passages. So there are kings of whom He is King, and lords of whom He is Lord. The second passage tells us that those who are with Him are called, chosen and faithful. We are the called, we are the chosen, we are the faithful: we are the kings, and we are the lords.

We need to take our place as lords and kings who rule in the heavenly realm. The warfare is still going on, but we are followers of Jesus, and we will triumph over the works of the enemy and come into victory and dominion.

God’s people have never accessed the heavenly realms properly, or consistently, and so the enemy has had free rein to do what he likes. We are now starting to do so, and the enemy is losing ground as God causes us to overcome and take back dominion.

Rule as Lords

So the heavenly realm called ‘the kingdom of God’ is where lords rule. But in order to rule, we have to dispossess the giants because they occupy the place of our authority. So we have to do just as Caleb did when he went into the Promised Land, into the hill country that was to be his possession, and drove out the sons of Anak. We have to do as David did to Goliath – after he hit him in the head with a stone from his sling, he cut his head off (and that is what caused the enemy army to turn and flee – there was no doubt that their champion had been defeated).

This all sounds a bit gory, I know, but we have to cut their heads off, and we have to split them open so that all the stuff inside them spills out, everything they have robbed from us and that they have consumed. Then we can take it and eat it and place it within us. It was always intended for us, and we are going to need it if we are going to start occupying a place of authority and power.

It is not difficult for us to kill a giant once we know who we are, when we know what authority we have, what belongs to us, and what mandates we hold. We need to know what we are called to, and then we can fulfil that calling. Confident in our identity as sons of God, and knowing what is on the scroll that is written about us, we can enter into our destiny. We cannot take someone else’s scroll, or operate on someone else’s mandate, or take someone else’s throne – it doesn’t belong to us. We need to lay hold of what is our own destiny in God, and then we can go for it.

Rule as Kings

The ‘kingdom of heaven’ heavenly realm is where kings rule, and that is also where the dragons are. They operate in a higher level of authority, and they have more stuff in them. Again, in the realm of the spirit we can go and kill dragons, split open their belly and recover everything that should be ours. I have done that, and so have others here at Freedom. The first time, even though it didn’t seem to take long, afterwards I was really tired! So I knew that I had to get stronger, to build up some more spiritual muscle, and more stamina.

Stand as Sons

And then there is the heavenly realm called simply ‘heaven’, where sons rule. We have thrones there, and it is where we are seated with Christ. When we begin to occupy that place, God starts to cause us to be manifest as sons on the earth – and I’m really looking forward to that. That’s when we start getting transfigured, when we start demonstrating the manifest presence of God in our lives. That’s when things get really exciting.

Most of what is in these realms is to do with manifesting the authority of the kingdom. There isn’t much on our scrolls that is to do with casting out demons, healing the sick, or even doing all kinds of miracles. That is just basic stuff really, that any Christian ought to be able to do. Our scrolls are mandating each of us to do particular things in the realms of heaven, they confer on us particular responsibility for the administration of the realms of heaven.

In the future, we are going to rule galaxies: that is our destiny. If you read in the book of Daniel, you can see how it refers to different levels of heavenly authority. In the same way, when Jesus talked about good and faithful servants who will rule over ten cities, He was talking about much wider dimensions than what we might previously have understood by ‘cities’. Every galaxy has a black hole in it that is just waiting for the manifestation of the light of the sons of God to go and occupy it.

Joshua generation, this is what we are called to: to walk in the way of the Lord, to perform His service, to govern His house, to take charge of the courts, and to start acting as – and standing in the place of – sons (Zech 3:6-7).

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94. The Enemy is Disarmed and Vulnerable

Mike Parsons
and Jeremy Westcott – 

Give me the hill country

When the Israelites finally crossed the Jordan under Joshua and began to occupy the land God had given them, Caleb said to him,

“Now then, give me this hill country about which the Lord spoke on that day, for you heard on that day that Anakim were there, with great fortified cities; perhaps the Lord will be with me, and I will drive them out as the Lord has spoken” (Joshua 14:12).

Last time we were considering mountains, and what they represent in scripture. Here again, the hill country speaks of a higher realm. Caleb is talking about moving into that higher authority that God had promised him, that Moses had promised him. He was coming into the Promised Land, and symbolically this represents places of spiritual authority.  There were giants living there in those places of authority, in fortified cities, which speak of rulership. For Caleb and Joshua, the Promised Land was not only a physical, geographical area, but also a matter of spiritual authority to be outworked in the natural.

The Anakim (or sons of Anak) who we see here are part of the Nephilim. They stand in opposition to the purposes of God, and need to be driven out of the place of authority they occupy.

There also we saw the Nephilim (the sons of Anak are part of the Nephilim); and we became like grasshoppers in our own sight, and so we were in their sight (Numbers 13:33).

Giants in heavenly places

The Nephilim were giants (Gen 6:4), the result of fallen angels overshadowing human women and causing genetic mutation of DNA. So Greek and Roman mythical figures such as Hercules are most likely based on stories of Nephilim before the flood. Those Nephilim did not have human spirits, so when they died (as they did in the flood) their spirits became the giants that rule in the heavenly realms. In the same way, the dinosaurs were a previous product of Satan’s attempts to rule on the earth through creatures bearing his own reptilian DNA. And when they died, they became the dragons that rule in the heavenly realms.

In that day the Lord will punish Leviathan the fleeing serpent, With His fierce and great and mighty sword, Even Leviathan the twisted serpent; And He will kill the dragon who lives in the sea (Isa 27:1).

That is a picture of Satan’s seed, who lives in the sea (which here represents the earth). Leviathan, dragons, these are demonic beings who were formed by Satan after his own image.

And the great dragon was thrown down, the serpent of old who is called the devil and Satan, who deceives the whole world; he was thrown down to the earth, and his angels were thrown down with him (Rev 12:9).

So there are fallen angels too, a third of the company of heaven, who are part of this pattern of rebellion and rule.

We have the authority now

… in which you formerly walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, of the spirit that is now working in the sons of disobedience (Eph 2:2).

That scripture speaks of the three levels of the atmosphere of the earth. It speaks of Satan as the prince of the power of the air, having authority in that realm.

The key word though is ‘formerly’. It means that he used to, but he does not any more. Satan has no authority now, except over those who are ‘sons of disobedience’. In contrast, we can identify ourselves as ‘sons of obedience’, so we are not subject to Satan as the prince of the power of the air; in fact it is we who now have the authority in that realm.

Put on the full armour of God, so that you will be able to stand firm against the schemes of the devil. For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the powers, against the world forces of this darkness, against the spiritual forces of wickedness in the heavenly places (Eph 6:11-12).

There are heavenly places from which these spiritual forces exert authority over this realm, and we need to deal with them. Our struggle is not with people on earth: we should be ministering to people on earth and setting them free from the influence of the things that are going on in the heavens. To do that effectively, we need to have authority in the heavens to overcome the spiritual forces of wickedness which are messing up people’s lives. We can go there and obtain that authority, delegated to us by God.

God’s eternal purpose

For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor any other created thing, will be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord (Rom 8:38-9).

All those things are real, but none of them can separate us from the purposes of God.

… so that the manifold wisdom of God might now be made known through the church to the rulers and the authorities in the heavenly places. This was in accordance with the eternal purpose which He carried out in Christ Jesus our Lord, in whom we have boldness and confident access through faith in Him. (Eph 3:10-12).

We have to bring God’s wisdom, the authority of His kingdom, to those realms. That is our mandate as God’s people. And we can have confident access to those heavenly places through faith in Him.

Created by Him, and for Him

For by Him all things were created, both in the heavens and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities—all things have been created through Him and for Him (Col 1:16).

So all these realms were created by Jesus, but they were created for Him, not for the forces that currently occupy them. As we take them back, we can surrender them to Him, and bring them under His lordship and rule.

C.S. Lewis saw these things, and there are many analogies to them in the Narnia books, once you begin to see them.

The enemy is disarmed and vulnerable

And having disarmed the powers and authorities, he made a public spectacle of them, triumphing over them by the cross (Col 2:15 NIV).

This is a great thing for us. At the cross, Jesus has disarmed those principalities and powers. Our role is to go and take back the places of authority from which they have been operating. They are vulnerable now, so we can go and deal with them.

When a strong man, fully armed, guards his own house, his possessions are undisturbed. But when someone stronger than he attacks him and overpowers him, he takes away from him all his armour on which he had relied and distributes his plunder (Luke 11 21-22). Or how can anyone enter the strong man’s house and carry off his property, unless he first binds the strong man? And then he will plunder his house (Matt 12:29).

Satan was the strong man in these stories told by Jesus, and he had possessions. Because they were guarded, they were undisturbed. Jesus is stronger than Satan, and overpowered him. He took away all his armour, all his weapons, all that he relied on to defend what he had. So now Jesus can distribute his plunder.

Plunder Satan’s trophy room

The trophy room of Satan is found under the earth, and is the place where all that he has robbed from the church is stored up. Blessings, authority, power, scrolls, mandates, weapons, provision – and more besides! It’s all there. It is guarded, but it is within our power to overcome. We can take back what has been robbed from us in generations past.

We used to sing a song: ‘I went to the enemy’s camp, and I took back what he stole from me’. There are things that ought to be ours which can be restored to us, wells that have been blocked up that can be unblocked. But only if we recognise that we are stronger: only if we are ruling in the heavenly realms, in authority and power.

When we are, then we can go and take it all back.

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93. What Is A Mountain?

Mike Parsons
with Jeremy Westcott

On this blog, we have been talking about mountains and thrones in the heavenly realms. I want to give you some scriptures now about mountains, what they represent, and how they outwork here in this earthly realm.

We have seen this passage before about the fall of Lucifer, or Satan as we now call him:
“You were the anointed cherub who covers, And I placed you there. You were on the holy mountain of God; You walked in the midst of the stones of fire. You were blameless in your ways From the day you were created Until unrighteousness was found in you. By the abundance of your trade You were internally filled with violence, And you sinned; Therefore I have cast you as profane From the mountain of God. And I have destroyed you, O covering cherub, From the midst of the stones of fire” (Ezek 28:14-16).

From this scripture we can understand that ‘the holy mountain of God’ is what it looks like in heaven. It is a mountain of authority, and God rules from a throne in that mountain. Satan would have had access to all that until he fell. He walked in the midst of the stones of fire. We can all walk on those stones of fire now: they are a place of revelation.

God appears on the mountain

When God suddenly started coming and appearing to man, it was on a mountain top.

And to the eyes of the sons of Israel the appearance of the glory of the LORD was like a consuming fire on the mountain top (Ex 24:17).

Great is the Lord, and greatly to be praised,
In the city of our God, His holy mountain (Ps 48:1).

The city of God and the mountain of God are synonymous terms. They refer to the same place. And the bible uses lots of different terms to describe how God rules and where His throne is. Sometimes it will be like a temple, like a city, like a mountain, but they are all talking about the same place. So when we talk about ruling over cities, we are using the same kind of language.

Mount Zion

But as for Me, I have installed My King
Upon Zion, My holy mountain. (Psalm 2:6).

The heavenly Zion is God’s holy mountain, the place where He rules. Here God is saying that David and his offspring, his descendant Jesus, would be king on His holy mountain. That mountain is obviously in heaven, but also here on earth: the mountain of the house of the Lord is to be raised up (see below), which refers to the church.

So in Hebrews 12:22, where it says ‘But you have come to Mount Zion and to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to myriads of angels’, the New Jerusalem is a mountain. We will look at the structure of the New Jerusalem in a future post, but I can tell you now, it isn’t what most people think it is.

The mountain of the house of the Lord

Now it will come about that
In the last days
The mountain of the house of the Lord
Will be established as the chief of the mountains,
And will be raised above the hills;
And all the nations will stream to it (Isa 2:2).

This is an earthly outworking of what is in heaven. The hills are lesser authority figures compared to the mountain, but they are not insignificant. The highest authorities, whether natural authorities or ungodly supernatural authorities, will have less authority than the church. This is the way it will be when God raises us up and we take up His delegated authority in the way He intends. God will raise us up once we have occupied authority in the heavenly realms – because that is the only place the authority to rule comes from. It is not earthly, natural leadership or rulership.

Jesus talks about the authority figures on earth how they lord it over people (Mark 10:42). And He says His kingdom is totally different. He didn’t come to be served, but to serve. So everything about rulership in God’s kingdom is about serving, not dictatorship. The first will be last and the last first. That turns on its head the whole system of the world, in which people want to be more highly placed than others so that they can stamp on them and keep them down. And what do most church leadership models look like – the world, or a reflection of heaven?

In the kingdom of God, authority is intended to be all about raising people up. So yes, there is a place where you rule, and it is called a mountain and a throne, but the whole nature of the rulership we are called to is to raise people up into their own places of authority and power, not to keep them down and subservient.

My Father’s house has many rooms

Jesus said,

“My Father’s house has many rooms; if that were not so, would I have told you that I am going there to prepare a place for you?” (John 14:2).

Now that refers to us, as God’s people here on earth, but it also says that there are many rooms within the mountain of God, the house of God in heaven. I have been in some of them, and there are many, many more that I don’t even know about yet. There’s the war room, the mantle room, the treasury room, the book room, and so on – and in those places we can obtain specific revelation that we are going to need to fulfil our call and purpose on earth. And we are able to access those rooms.

A very high mountain

When he was tempting Jesus, the devil took Him to a very high mountain and showed Him all the kingdoms of the world and their glory (Matt 4:8). Where do we think Satan took Him? Everest? No, to heaven. It is not talking about a physical mountain, but a heavenly one. He was showing Him all the glory of the kingdoms of the world. And not only natural kingdoms on the earth, but all the levels of authority in the heavenly realms, because those were the areas that Satan had rulership over.

He was offering Jesus a shortcut to rulership of everything He would later obtain through the victory of the cross – but without the suffering and dying. Jesus did not succumb to the temptation, as Adam and Eve did. Satan offered them the same deal – ‘do it your own way, instead of God’s way: in fact, you can do it without God’.

Satan took Jesus into the realms of the heavens and showed Him everything. As God, he knew all this already, but Satan took Him there as a man. And that is the key. We also can go there, as men and women, into those realms. We can go in the realm of the spirit, see the reality of heavenly authority, and begin to occupy thrones and mountains there.

Jesus withdrew to the mountain

In His earthly ministry, Jesus often went to mountains.

So Jesus, perceiving that they were intending to come and take Him by force to make Him king, withdrew again to the mountain by Himself alone (John 6:15).

This time it probably was a physical mountain, but I don’t think He stayed in the physical realm. You find that He went to mountains before He made big decisions. He was going into heaven to obtain the revelation He needed, and to bring it into this realm.

After He had sent the crowds away, He went up on the mountain by Himself to pray; and when it was evening, He was there alone (Matt 14:23).

It is the same again here. He is praying, not to a God far away, but into His very presence. Jesus lived in dual realms, heaven and earth: that is how in every situation He could see what the Father was doing (John 5:19).

Jesus left there and went along the Sea of Galilee. Then He went up on a mountainside and sat down (Matt 15:29). You might think that by sitting He was just resting. I believe He was taking a seat of authority in that realm. This is where we have  to start thinking Hebrew and not Greek. We need to think function, not form – and that is alien to the western mindset. The function of a mountain is authority. The function of a seat is a throne of rulership. All the scriptures we have looked at here show us what mountains are for, what they are about, what they represent. When we come across them in scripture, can we now stop thinking about them as big lumps of rock, things to climb and plant a flag on?

One more example: Jesus took Peter, James and John up to a high mountain and was transfigured before them (Matt 17:1-9). What high mountain was that? Moses and Elijah came too: it wasn’t here on earth. He told the disciples not to tell anyone else what they had seen until He had gone back into the heavenly realms.

They had accessed something of heaven that day. And in time they would be able to teach others to do the same.

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92. Step into the Realm of Heaven

Mike Parsons
with Jeremy Westcott – 

We have been seeing over several posts now how God intends us to enter into the realms of heaven, here and now while living on the earth.

If you are ready, it is time today to actually do that.

Step in, step out

If you are able, please stand up and pray in tongues for a minute – out loud if possible, just to activate your spirit. Please don’t skip over this. If right now you are not in a position to pray aloud, you are welcome to continue reading, but do come back to this post later and actually work through it, because it is very practical.

When you have been praying for a minute or so (don’t stop, carry on praying in tongues),

See that there is a door open.
God is standing in the door,
And He’s welcoming you to step into the realm of heaven

There is a ladder, with angels going up and down.
But you don’t have to climb the ladder to get up to the door,
Because God is asking you in, welcoming you, inviting you to come.

So as you continue to pray in tongues,
Take a step forward, a physical step,
And go into that realm, where your throne is, in the heavens.

You are now standing in the presence of God.
The glory of God is surrounding you,
The presence of God’s kingdom is surrounding you.

You step in and receive your lordship.
You step in as a lord,
And you are going to receive the authority to rule
On the mountain that is operating within your spirit.

You are in the heavenly realms.
You have stepped in to the presence of God
And He is investing in you
The right and the power to rule in your life

So step out of the heavenly realms
(Take a step backwards).

And now you have authority,
And you can exercise that rule and authority on your mountain
To see things change in this realm, on the earth.

I want to encourage you, you can step in and out of the realms of heaven as many times in the day as you choose to. Step into the realm of heaven; step back out of the realm of heaven: bring heavenly authority back with you and apply it to your life.

If there is something negative or difficult going on during the day, just step into the realms of heaven. Receive the robes of righteousness and then step out of the realm of heaven and exercise authority in the righteousness of God, here on earth.

Practise stepping in and stepping out.
Pray in tongues vigorously.
That will build your spirit so that you are able to step in and step out.

Engaging with God in our garden

We have a garden in our soul. Our garden is part of our heart (there are four chambers of the heart). Let’s begin to learn to fellowship with God there, as we open the door, that ‘everlasting door’ that is in each of us, to let God in.

So we pray in tongues for a minute or two, continue to pray …

[2 minutes]

And now we are going to open that door.

We open the door in our heart.
We welcome the King of Glory to come in
and be enthroned on the throne of our life.

We receive His lordship, His authority in our spirit,
For our spirit to rule our body, rule our soul, and have authority.

We operate in the authority of the kingdom: in heaven, in our lives, in our spirit.
So we develop that spiritual connection with God where the River of Life is flowing,
Where the garden of God becomes the garden in our heart.
As it is in heaven, so it is outworked on earth, in and through us.

You can learn to step in every day, open up your door, let the King of glory come in. And He will rule on the throne of your life as you surrender the rule of your life to Him.

When we first start exercising in this way, He rules. We surrender our life to Him. Then as we go on, He starts to give us back more authority. He trusts us to do the things on earth as in heaven. Once we have learnt to surrender our spirit, soul and body, He will give us the throne in our own life to rule with Him.

Step in every day. Open up the doors. Let the King of glory come in. Enthrone Him over your life. Then start to exercise that lordship on your spirit-gates, your body-gates, your soul-gates. Work on getting your gates open and flowing freely (you can use the diagram below to help you with this). The Spirit of God will start manifesting through you in everyday life.

You can continually step into and out of the realms of the heavens, as God intends.

Gates

gates-with-no-hole
Diagram of the gates of our spirit, soul and body. The origins of the diagram go back to at least the year 1919. Ian Clayton saw something similar to this on a scroll he received from heaven and offers extensive teaching on it.

In this diagram of the gates of our spirit, soul and body, you will see that the Glory of God is in the centre of our being, and the gates are the means of seeing Him manifest in our lives. They are not for ‘letting Him in’, but for ‘letting Him out’. Starting with the gate of First Love, we can work through them, asking God to show us if anything is blocking them, and then exercising heavenly authority to see them opened and freely flowing. The more of our gates are wide open, the more of God can be manifested in our daily lives.

Garden (song)

Here is a Misty Edwards song we often use to help us engage with God in our garden.

Or click here to play: Garden (Misty Edwards – via YouTube – opens in new tab/window)
[If the above version does not appear, please search for ‘Misty Edwards Garden’ on YouTube]

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91. The Way, The Truth, and The Life

Mike Parsons
with Jeremy Westcott –

In this ‘Kingdom Realms’ series we have begun to understand that God intends us to have access to heaven, right now. But to do so there are certain steps we must follow. He said to Joshua, the High Priest:

If you will walk in My ways and if you will perform My laws, then you will also govern My house and also have charge of My courts, and I will grant you free access among these who are standing here’ (Zech 3:7).

The earth is filled with his glory

Isaiah saw the Lord on His throne.

In the year of King Uzziah’s death I saw the Lord sitting on a throne, lofty and exalted, with the train of His robe filling the temple. Seraphim stood above Him, each having six wings: with two he covered his face, and with two he covered his feet, and with two he flew. And one called out to another and said,
“Holy, Holy, Holy, is the LORD of hosts,
The whole earth is full of His glory.” (Isa 6:1-3).

So the Lord sits on His throne, on top of His mountain. And the structure of it is like the temple. There are seraphim who stand above Him (we will look at the angelic realms in more detail in a later post). They are prophesying the revelation they are receiving: that the earth is to be full of God’s glory. And God has chosen the church, He has chosen us, to display the fullness of His glory on the earth.

The Temple

The temple consists of the Outer and Inner Courts, the Holy Place and the Holy of Holies. The veils (or matrices) between the different heavenly dimensions are the way, the truth, and the life.

In the Outer Courts there is darkness. If we don’t want to spend eternity there, we must seek to fulfil our purpose and our call. This is where we will find those who are not faithful to fulfil what is written on their scroll and the destiny they have been given in God.

We have looked at that before: those such as the five foolish virgins, and those who say ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in Your name, and in Your name cast out demons, and in Your name perform many miracles?’ to whom Jesus says ‘Depart from Me, I never knew you’; they will be thrown out into the outer darkness. It is not the place some think of as ‘hell‘ – how could a place of fire be dark?

The Way, the Truth and the Life

When Jesus described Himself as ‘the Way, the Truth and the Life’, He was referring to the pattern of the heavenly and earthly tabernacle, and specifically to the doors or veils between the various areas or dimensions. To those who were listening to Him it was perfectly clear what He was talking about, because they were familiar with those areas of the temple. He was saying that if we follow Him, we can enter in to the holiest place, and find abundance of life. Of course, if we approach this saying with a Greek mindset rather than a Hebrew one, the meaning will be completely lost on us.

There is a process to this, a progression, a series of protocols that God has prepared for us to enable us to enter in.

Everlasting Doors

Let’s look at this diagram again.

Most of the enemy activity that we are experiencing and trying to deal with right now is going on in the atmosphere of the earth. That is where the spiritual hosts of wickedness, the rulers in darkness, and powers are functioning in principalities (or spheres of geographical areas).

The pattern that is in heaven is expressed in us. We are made in the image of God. We are body, soul and spirit. And in us we also have a door into the realms of the heavens, which we can open and experience the kingdom of God in us.

In the same way, there are also Everlasting Doors on the boundary between the atmosphere of the earth and the heavens. We read about them in verses 7 and 9 of Psalm 24. Those doors are ruled by things we need to dispossess. I have seen God open some of these doors, often as a result of prayer and of intercession. When they are opened, revival starts to take place. God’s Presence and His glory become accessible in this earthly realm.

Mountains and thrones

Click the image for a larger, easier to read version (opens in new tab or window).

In the realm of the Kingdom of Earth is where we ‘walk in His ways’ (Zech 3:6-7). In the Kingdom of  God is where we ‘keep His laws’, and where we are to rule as lords. In the realm of the Kingdom of Heaven is where we ‘rule His house’.

There are mountains and thrones in each of those realms, on which God intends us to rule. For example, in the Kingdom of God, we at Freedom have seven mountains as a church, and seven scrolls attached to those mountains. Other churches will have their mountains and scrolls too.

Each of us as individuals also have our own mountains, our own places of rule. These are according to our destiny, our call and our gift, and we are to occupy them as lords. Jesus is King of kings and Lord of lords: we are the lords and kings that He is Lord and King of. As lords and kings, we raise people up in discipleship to themselves become lords and kings.

The seven spirits of God stand before the throne in the realm of Heaven. They are not God, they are creatures, and they are there as tutors to bring us to revelation of who God is and of His ways. We need to engage them and learn from them if we are to be revealed as the sons of God.

This is another view of the realms of heaven, based on Ian Clayton‘s ‘menorah’ diagrams.

You can see how these realms of authority in the heavens are arranged in the same way as the structure of the temple: Outer Courts, Inner Courts, Holy Place, Holy of Holies. There are protocols we can follow which will help us to access each of these, as we will need to in order to fulfil our destiny. We each need to be able to rule as a lord, and a king, and to stand as a son.

For the anxious longing of the creation waits eagerly for the revealing of the sons of God (Rom 8:19).

And we will be manifested as sons on the earth, just as God always intended.

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SoundTrack: The Way (New Horizon) – Housefires (feat. Pat Barrett) via YouTube

90. A Doorway to Experience

Mike Parsons
with Jeremy Westcott – 

We are looking at how God invites us to ‘come up here‘, how He invites us to experience for ourselves the realms of heaven. Now I am only telling you about the places I have actually been myself, so that I can give you testimony from first-hand experience, and tell you that it is possible to go there. There are plenty of other places where I haven’t been. And I find that when God gives me experiences, sometimes it is only later on that He brings revelation of where those places are. So there are also places which, although I have been there, I couldn’t tell you where they are as yet.

The scriptures as a doorway

But you don’t just have to take my word for all this.

I’m going to give you a lot of scriptures in this post. I know that some of you will have been asking, ‘where in the Bible does it say we can do this?’ I don’t subscribe to sola scriptura myself, but if you do need to see it in the Bible, then I can show you from the Bible. Then, once you know that this is all based in scripture, you can have the confidence to enter in. So use these scriptures as a doorway. Go through, and find for yourself the reality of what you read. Your experiences can then become an anchor for more.

The kings of the earth

And from Jesus Christ, the faithful witness, the firstborn of the dead, and the ruler of the kings of the earth. To Him who loves us and released us from our sins by His blood (Rev 1:5).

Who are the ‘kings of the earth’? We are. At least, we are supposed to be. We are supposed to be manifesting the kingdom of heaven on the earth.

And when they heard this, they lifted their voices to God with one accord and said,
“O Lord, it is You who made the heaven and the earth and the sea, and all that is in them,
who by the Holy Spirit, through the mouth of our father David Your servant, said
‘Why did the Gentiles rage,
And the peoples devise futile things?
The kings of the earth took their stand,
And the rulers were gathered together
Against the Lord and against His Christ'”
(Acts 4:24-26).

Here we have the kings of the earth again, this time opposing Christ. So here the kings and the rulers are not us. In this passage the disciples are quoting from the Old Testament, and it refers to a time before the cross. These are the rulers in the heavenly realms, principalities and powers, who gathered to oppose Jesus. They were trying to destroy the seed, and they did all they could to achieve that, but He overcame them.

In heaven, on the earth, under the earth

And no-one in heaven or on the earth or under the earth was able to open the book or to look into it (Rev 5:3).

Right there you see at least three realms: in heaven, on the earth, under the earth. Stated quite clearly, for those of you who are asking, ‘How do you know that some things are under the earth? This is how we can know. Again,

And every created thing which is in heaven and on the earth and under the earth and on the sea, and all things in them, I heard saying, “To Him who sits on the throne, and to the Lamb, be blessing and honour and glory and dominion forever and ever.” (Rev 5:13).

God’s throne is above all these other realms.

Heavenly places

Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ, just as He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world, that we would be holy and blameless before Him. In love (Eph 1:3-4).

It is ‘in the heavenly places’ that God has blessed us with every spiritual blessing. Plural, ‘places’, speaking about more than one place in the heavens. And, ‘just as He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world’: it was always God’s intention that we should rule the realms of heaven, and bring that rule onto earth – that we would access both realms. So when Jesus came, He accessed both realms.

If you read Genesis 28, where Jacob had a dream of a ladder, and a door open in heaven, you’ll see that God was standing in the doorway welcoming people in. That ladder did not go through those other realms, by the way. It is not linear, as though you have to go through one to get to two to three to four to five and so on. It goes straight in. We can have access straight in to the realm of Heaven, because that is where our thrones are.

Our inheritance

He made known to us the mystery of His will, according to His kind intention which He purposed in Him with a view to an administration suitable to the fullness of the times, that is, the summing up of all things in Christ, things in the heavens and things on the earth. In Him also we have obtained an inheritance, having been predestined according to His purpose who works all things after the counsel of His will (Eph 1:9-11).

We now live in a time when that administration is being outworked through us, the kings. That administration is our inheritance. God has already purposed this: we have to work it out. And we can’t do it from our position here on earth. We have to go into the realms of the heavens to outwork it, because that is where the authority structure is which will enable us to bring it here on earth.

Up to now, the church has been trying to change things in the atmosphere of the earth from our position here in this earthly realm. We have talked about ‘praying into those realms’, whereas in fact we need to go into higher realms, realms above the atmosphere of the earth, and exercise authority from those higher realms to bring about the changes we desire.

Look back at the first diagram I shared at the beginning of this series.

We have authority from those three realms going into heaven, and the realm of Heaven. That authority is what enables us to go into the atmosphere of the earth, to break the enemy’s power, and to reclaim it and purify it. It is our inheritance. He has stolen it, or rather, Adam handed it over to him; but because of the cross, we can get it back.

Seated with Him

And we know that we can go into those heavenly places: we are seated there with Him:

And raised us up with Him, and seated us with Him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus (Eph 2:6).

Again, if we read carefully we can see that this tells us there are lots of heavenly places, and lots of thrones where we are seated. We have to get hold of where they are, and be sure we are seated on them.

He descended, He ascended

Now this expression, “He ascended,” what does it mean except that He also had descended into the lower parts of the earth? He who descended is Himself also He who ascended far above all the heavens, so that He might fill all things (Eph 4:9-10).

If He descended to the lower parts of the earth, and we are supposed to do the works that He does, and did, then what are we supposed to do? The lower parts of the earth are also realms where we should be ruling. I am not talking about Jules Verne, Journey To The Centre Of The Earth. I am not talking about physically going down into the earth, although it is described in those terms. These are really spiritual realms of government and authority. The centre of the earth contains a throne on which Adam would have ruled in glory.

It also says that Jesus ascended. So everything in all of those realms is supposed to be filled with the glory of God.

God’s eternal purpose

That will only happen through us, through the church, because that is the way God has planned it:

And to bring to light what is the administration of the mystery which for ages has been hidden in God who created all things; so that the manifold wisdom of God might now be made known through the church to the rulers and the authorities in the heavenly places. This was in accordance with the eternal purpose which He carried out in Christ Jesus our Lord (Eph 3:9-11).

God’s manifold, multi-faceted wisdom is to be made known through the church, through us, to the rulers and authorities in the heavenly places. That is His eternal purpose. He has always intended that it should be this way.

God is in all

One God and Father of all who is over all and through all and in all (Eph 4:6).

We need to get hold of this truth, because it will explain why we can go to any of these realms, to all these heavenly places. It is because God is in it all, and we are in Him.

I want to encourage you to take these scriptures, meditate on them, ask God to take you to these places and show you the reality of all this.

This is your inheritance. You can have access to it all.

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89. Seed Wars

Mike Parsons
with Jeremy Westcott – 

When Satan fell, he was seeking to overturn God’s eternal plan that Man should inherit the heavens. He wanted that place of rulership for himself.

Here is a diagram I used when I taught about spiritual warfare in Freedom Church:
I realise that some of the writing is quite small to read, so you can click on the image above to view or download it as a PDF file, if that helps.

Time and Eternity

On the left you see eternity, the setting for Genesis 1:1. Before time, if you like. God created the earth to be inhabited, but then Lucifer rebelled, as we saw last time, and was cast down to the earth, where he brought down God’s judgment upon it in the first flood.

Moving to the right, you find Genesis 1:2. Inside the bracket of time, now. The earth is without form, and void (that’s really just another word for ’empty’). God begins again, He recreates the earth. How long is the time between verse 1 and verse 2? We have no idea. Nor do we know how long a time elapsed between verses 2 and 3. It could have been microseconds; it could have been 14 billion years. We don’t know.

The Fall of Man

Then comes the week of (re-)creation followed by the story of Adam’s fall, as Satan now engages with Adam and Eve. And what he is offering them is the only thing he has to trade with: information. He offers them the opportunity to become like God, but without God. The opportunity to know, without God. To rule, without God (he would later try the same thing on Jesus in the wilderness). This is the root of humanism.

Trading for Seed

He offers to give them information in return for something. They did not trade by eating a piece of fruit from a tree – that is very symbolic language when you go back into the original language. Satan overshadowed them, and took their DNA. He knew that DNA was the only thing that could inherit the heavens.

Now that he has DNA, he produces a seed. That may be an unfamiliar idea, but it is right there in scripture. In Genesis 3:14-15 we find the first prophecy of the coming of a Messiah, a Redeemer, and in verse 15 we read about Satan’s seed: “And I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your seed and her seed; He shall bruise you on the head, and you shall bruise him on the heel”. God is talking to Satan, and says, “Your seed and her seed”. It is made really clear that Satan has seed.

Seed Wars

This is how he came to get that seed. Cain and Abel, who were twins, had different fathers. Abel’s father was Adam, and his DNA was to produce what is called ‘the seed of woman’. Except that Cain killed him, and God had to reinstitute that line through Seth. Cain’s father was Satan. Cain was the seed of Satan. So you can view this whole period as one of seed wars, during which Cain’s seed seek to rule.

Polluting the Seed

Then, in Noah’s time, we have fallen watcher angels – Ben Elohim (sons of God) – falling to earth, leaving their proper place (Jude 1:6). They do a similar thing with human women, overshadowing them (this is not sex as we know it, but overshadowing of their DNA) to produce the race of giants called the Nephilim. Spiritual warfare becomes intense, fighting for the purity of the seed. Judgment comes again in the flood, but God preserves the seed of woman.

Jesus the Seed

We know that Jesus was the prophesied seed who was coming, who was to crush Satan’s head (though he would bruise His heel). Satan did not know that, but every scheme and intention of his was to prevent the fulfilment of that prophecy by eliminating or corrupting the seed line before it could happen.

Abraham and his Seed

Remember the covenant God made with Abraham. It was a covenant with Abraham ‘and his seed’ (Gal 3:16). And throughout the Old Testament period, Satan threw everything he had at frustrating God’s plan. From genocide under Pharoah to the massacre of the innocents under Herod, he tried everything to prevent the fulfilment of God’s words in Genesis 3:15. Even when Jesus was ready to enter His ministry, as I mentioned earlier, he attempted to derail His destiny in the wilderness.

The Prophecy Fulfilled

The cross, he thought, was his moment of crowning triumph. Only to find that, despite his best efforts, all he had done was fall in with the eternal purpose of God, and co-operated in bringing down that promised crushing blow upon his own head.

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88. The Fall of Lucifer, the Light-Bearer

Mike Parsons
with Jeremy Westcott

We have seen that something catastrophic happened between the first two verses of Genesis. Satan fell.

When God made the earth, as it is now, He removed it from the sphere it was in and placed it into time and space. God said, ‘Let there be light’ before He made the sun, and the moon, and the stars. Because He is light, and that light is creative light. And there are two speeds of light: there is the speed of light that operates in the heavenly realms, and the speed of light which operates here, which is slowing down (as some scientists have now suggested), although at the beginning they were the same speed. Because of Adam’s fall, the speed of light started to slow down and so time used to be quicker (if you understand what I mean). That is why the earth appears to be 10,000 years old in the biblical account, and yet it is 14 billion years old as measured by science. Time was different, time was stretched out, the heavens were stretched out.

There is a passage in 2 Peter which speaks of this period: For when they maintain this, it escapes their notice that by the word of God the heavens existed long ago and the earth was formed out of water and by water, through which the world at that time was destroyed, being flooded with water (2 Peter 3:5-6).

This is not Noah’s flood. This is talking about the original destruction of the earth, and the fall of Satan. Earth was flooded with water at that time, the first flood. That is why we then find that the Spirit of God was brooding upon the waters in Genesis 1:2.

The anointed cherub who covers

We need to see what happened when Satan fell. He was originally a covering cherub, one of those angels who covered the throne, one who cried ‘Holy, holy, holy’. When he cried ‘holy’, he was exclaiming with wonder as he received from God the revelation of His purposes.

At some point, God revealed His plan to use Man, a person with DNA, to carry the DNA of God on the earth. And God revealed that it was to be His sons in DNA who were going to inherit the earth and the heavens (rather than the sons of glory, the angels).

Instead of crying ‘holy’ this time, all of a sudden, something else started to form in Satan’s heart.  He rebelled, and in his heart he was saying, ‘I want to ascend to the place where I will be like that!’

Now Satan had a reptilian form, and he was covered in stones. He was called Lucifer, the light bearer, and he was also the leader of the worship in heaven. So those stones were supposed to reflect the light of God’s glory, and he was supposed to be responsible for training Man to come into the fullness of God.

In Ezekiel 28 we can read about Satan’s fall.

Thus says the Lord GOD, “You had the seal of perfection, full of wisdom and perfect in beauty. You were in Eden, the garden of God; every precious stone was your covering: the ruby, the topaz and the diamond; the beryl, the onyx and the jasper; the lapis lazuli, the turquoise and the emerald; and the gold, the workmanship of your settings and sockets, was in you. On the day that you were created they were prepared (Ezek 28:12-13).

The garden of God (Eden) was connected to the earth. In Genesis it says God had a garden in Eden, and then He planted a garden east of Eden. So there were two gardens, and at that point heaven and earth overlapped. The garden of God was where God walked, Adam had access to that; it was where the Tree of Life was.

And then we read about all the stones that covered Satan’s body. You will notice that Satan had nine stones, but Man has 12 stones: the breastplate of the High Priest had 12 stones, there were 12 tribes, there are 12 foundations to the New Jerusalem, 12 fruits on the Tree of Life. The number 12 speaks of government, and Man was supposed to exercise godly government.

[Biblical numerology is really interesting: threes and sevens and tens and twelves and forties are everywhere once you start to see them, but we can’t go fully into that here.]

Then it goes on,

You were the anointed cherub who covers, and I placed you there. You were on the holy mountain of God; You walked in the midst of the stones of fire. You were blameless in your ways from the day you were created until unrighteousness was found in you. By the abundance of your trade you were internally filled with violence, and you sinned; therefore I have cast you as profane from the mountain of God. And I have destroyed you, O covering cherub, from the midst of the stones of fire (Ezek 28:14-16).

Heaven is on a mountain, ‘the holy mountain of God’ (v14). The whole structure of heaven is a mountain and there is a plateau on top. On the mountain there is a throne and from the throne runs a river of fire – imagine how lava flows from a volcano. There are stones that operate on that fire which are stones of revelation. I have been on that mountain and I have walked on those stones, and another time I will maybe explain what those stones are. They represent what Satan would have done to bring Man into the fullness of God.

But then unrighteousness was found in him. It was exposed because of his role as covering cherub and the revelation that God gave him. The scripture goes on to speak about Satan’s trading and about his being filled with violence.

Again, I am going to have to teach on trade and trading floors another time, because it is to do with covenant and to do with exchange. For now, let’s understand that it worked like this: Satan had information, revelation of what God was going to do, and he traded it with the other angels. Man was going to inherit the heavens, rather than the angels doing so, because the angels were all about being ministering spirits for those who would inherit salvation (Heb 1:14). All the angels were created for us, and that now became clear. When Satan discovered this revelation, he went to some of the other angels and a third of them decided they were going to receive and act on it, and they were going to seek to rule the heavens instead of Man.

Like lightning from heaven

So Satan fell, like lightning from heaven, Jesus said. As a result of his fall, Satan no longer has access to Heaven (but has not lost access to all of the heavenly realms). He has no access to the River of Life or the stones of fire, or anything else which is found in that heavenly realm.

And when he fell, ‘there was war in heaven, Michael and his angels waging war with the dragon. The dragon and his angels waged war, and they were not strong enough, and there was no longer a place found for them in heaven. And the great dragon was thrown down, the serpent of old who is called the devil and Satan, who deceives the whole world; he was thrown down to the earth, and his angels were thrown down with him (Rev 12:7-9).

Here Satan is referred to as the dragon (I was writing about dragons and giants a few weeks ago in a previous post). This is where the word ‘dragon’ comes from: it is a description of Satan. A third of the angels – and that is a great number – took the trade Satan offered them, and fell with him.

As I say, that was in the original creation. Satan’s activity on the earth brought down God’s judgment upon it in the first flood, which resulted in a planet that was ‘formless and void’, covered in waters over which the Spirit would hover, brood or vibrate (Gen 1:2). And in the second creation, Adam’s rebellion would give Satan access to heaven again and open some of those realms back up to him.

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