Mike Parsons
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The eternal now
God dwells within the eternal now, which would be outside of time and space, but not disconnected from it. I’ve found that there are ways God has drawn me into the eternal now to experience his presence in that pure essence, and I describe it as perichoresis: the circle of the dance, the conversation between Father, Son, and Spirit, where there is pure relationship, pure love, pure everything that God is that he has invited us into. We came from that place, out of his heart. He created us there within his heart, and we were not separated from his heart until he formed creation. And when he made creation, he then formed us to engage with creation, both in the spirit but also when we become living beings on earth, and therefore we can go back to the place which I call home.
You know, it’s sort of, for me, the place of pure intimacy, pure face-to-face engagement, but outside of time and space, and therefore disconnected from this realm in a way that means I’m not distracted or affected by this realm when I’m in that realm, and I can be in that realm in the purity of God. I find that it’s very difficult to engage it cognitively, in that I can’t figure it out or work it out, because it’s nonlinear and it’s not like this realm. But the relationship is there. Now, that realm relates to the created realm, and there also I can engage God in the realm of perfection in light, which is connected to this realm and that realm, and I find I engage God’s heart there for the outworking of his heart into this realm, the created realm where I can engage God face to face. In that realm, in the purity of light, but it’s connected with this realm in its governmental aspect.
I engage in the relational aspect within the purity of God in what I call the eternal now, and it is pure relational love. But I also engage God relationally in relation to his government in the realm of light and perfection. So I am face to face, heart to heart, mind to mind with him there. Jesus said he only did what he saw the Father doing. You know Jesus said, I am in the Father and the Father is in me. That is the place where I engage, where I only outwork what I feel the father’s heart is. I’m engaged relationally, but I’m also engaged governmentally.
Pure love relationship
When I engage outside of time and space within the eternal now, it is pure, intimate relationship. If God is infinite and eternal, then everything that he has created has been created within a space within him. So it isn’t separate from him, but it is in a space within him which is within him in a different way.
This is where, it’s like, God is everything in everything, and all that, we live and move and have our being in him, and he fills all in all, and there are lots of Bible verses that indicate his connection with creation. But for me, the pure essence of God, in what I call perichoresis, is what the early church fathers used for the description of the trinitarian relationship of Father, Son, and Spirit in pure love relationship, and we are invited to be in the midst of that. That’s where we were formed within the Father’s heart, and that’s where we can learn to dwell and engage. And because we are made in his image and likeness as sons, we have access there that the other angelic beings don’t.
There were various routes that I found, that God took me to that place, even though I didn’t understand it, and I couldn’t figure it out. So to start with I just had to park my intellect outside, if you like, and not try and figure it out. It was an experience, not knowledge; so it’s not knowledge as intellectual knowledge, it was experiential knowledge. I couldn’t describe it in a visual sense, because it was beyond a visual expression. I couldn’t describe it, as an image, but I can describe the intensity of the love relationship that I’m included in. And it’s the pure, absolute essence of who God is, relationally, that we all are invited to participate within, in the purity of it.
And that, I think, is why we can’t try and figure it out or understand it — you just have to experience it — and it is life-changing, because what you find within that is who you are. God reveals… I mean, that really is the sort of mirror that we look into, in its purest essence, to discover who we are, free from any connection to what’s happened to us in this realm.
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Sons of Issachar 