Tag: Jesus

98. Seven Mountains, Seven Thrones

Mike Parsons 
and Jeremy Westcott – 

Heavenly Realms.eng

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

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

Seven realms

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

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

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

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

Seven mountains, seven thrones

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

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

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

A different kind of authority

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

Heaven to earth

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

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

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

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

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

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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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87. The Heavens and the Earth

Mike Parsons
with Jeremy Westcott –

Joshua the High Priest

And the angel of the LORD admonished Joshua, saying, “Thus says the LORD of hosts, ‘If you will walk in My ways and if you will perform My 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” (Zechariah 3:6-7).

We saw last time how there is a progression here in the things that Joshua is required to do if he is to enjoy free access to the heavenly realms. It begins with walking in God’s ways and continues with performing His laws. We will go on to look at those heavenly realms to which he would have access, but first let’s touch on those laws.

12 Laws out of Jerusalem

The laws are not the Ten Commandments. They are ‘laws’ in the sense of ‘principles’, and they describe how God works within His kingdom.

• Law of the Spirit of Life
• Law of Sin and Death
• Law of Love
• Law of Faith
• Law of Sowing and Reaping
• Law of First Mention*
• Law of First Born
• Law of Abundance
• Law of Justice
• Law of Judgment
• Law of Grace
• Law of Righteousness

These are principles of how God operates and how we should operate in the kingdom. Like Joshua, when we start to do so, we gain free access to the realms of heaven.

Heavenly realms

I want to share with you a representation of those realms of heaven, so that you have some idea of how these realms relate to each other. It is only a representation though, and our understanding of this is developing all the time.

You will see that there are realms under the earth. In fact, there are three realms into the earth, three realms into the kingdom of heaven (into God’s kingdom, a kingdom that was given to Adam), and there is the atmosphere in between them, making seven. You will always find sevens in the things of God, because seven speaks of completion and is the perfect number.

Each heavenly realm has seven dimensions or levels of authority within it. I don’t know what they all are yet, but I do know that they are linked to the court structure (covered in the last session of the Transformation series, available on our website).

Within the atmosphere of the earth there are three realms (Greek thinking would see them as layers, but they are not), realms of God’s kingdom rule, and you will see the kingdom of earth where we experience the presence of God. Within this atmosphere is the area where we are supposed to rule: it is in darkness.

Under the earth, there are various places: Sheol, and Satan’s trophy room, and Tartarus, where certain angels are wrapped up. There are other places there too, but I am not going to deal with them here.

It is important to grasp that you do not have to go ‘through’ one realm to get to another. That again is Greek thinking. God has shown me places in many of these realms, and it is only over time that I have come to understand where they are located.

Let’s look at some scriptures, because we need to look at beginnings to see how some of this took place.

Satan fell

In the beginning (Gen 1:1) God created the heavens and the earth. He created the heavens first. The heavens were not just physical, they were all those realms we have just been looking at: realms of His kingdom, realms of His authority. The kingdom is all about authority, government and rule. Adam was supposed to bring what was in those realms onto earth. Earth was supposed to reflect heaven. Earth was not in the same place as we know it now. This was before time: in fact time didn’t exist at this point. And he created sons of God, which were the angels, particularly the ben elohim, who were preparing Earth for Man.

Now we have verse 2: The earth was formless and void, and darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was moving over the surface of the waters. But God did not create it that way. Something happened between God creating the heavens and the earth and the earth becoming formless and void.

What happened was this: Satan fell.

This was before Adam was created. The Spirit was hovering, resonating, over the surface of the waters. The fact that the whole planet was covered with waters indicates that there had been judgment. God did not create it like that.

For by Him all things were created that are in heaven and that are on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or principalities or powers. All things were created through Him and for Him (Col 1:16).

Everything was created for Jesus. Thrones, dominions, principalities and powers are not the names of demons. They are not the names of fallen angels (although fallen angels do presently operate in those realms of authority and power). So all these things – thrones, dominions, principalities, powers – were created for Jesus. ‘All things visible and invisible’ were created for Him: but things which are invisible to us now, to the natural eye, were not invisible to the spiritual eye for Adam.

The kingdom government is the heavens come on earth. It is all about bringing about on earth a reflection of what is in heaven. Whatever you see in heaven, those are the things God wants to see worked out in us. The principles of heaven need to be reflected in our own lives, and then in the world around us (starting with our spheres of influence). Everything that is in heaven, God wants to bring on earth.

What was the earth like when God created it? How can we know it was not created ‘formless and void’ (as a different reading of Gen 1:2 would have it)? Look at this verse in Isaiah:

For thus says the LORD, who created the heavens (He is the God who formed the earth and made it, He established it and did not create it a waste place, but formed it to be inhabited), “I am the LORD, and there is none else” (Isa 45:18). He did not create it a waste place.

Connected to the realm of heaven

This is the account of the heavens and the earth when they were created, in the day that the LORD God made earth and heaven (Gen 2:4). Do you see how the two halves of this verse are referring to different things? There is ‘created the heavens and the earth’ and then there is ‘made earth and heaven’. He originally created it, then something happened to spoil it (and we have seen what that was); and out of the formlessness and void, He made earth and heaven. In the original creation, there were no stars, planets and galaxies as we know them now. They didn’t exist in that creation because earth was in the centre of that circle, with a direct, seamless connection to heaven. Earth always was (and still is) intended to be connected to heaven.

Now, as we know, Adam had access to walk with God. The earth, in the centre of everything, was connected to the realm of heaven. There was an overlap between Eden (the garden of God), and the garden God planted for Adam. That meant that Adam had access to every realm in our diagram from under the earth upwards, up to and including the realm of Heaven. After the fall everything was moved out into time and space, and the earth was no longer connected to heaven in the same way. The earth’s axis moved and everything became elliptical rather than circular, right down to the orbit of electrons around the nucleus of the atom.

If Adam had not fallen, and if he had taken the Tree of Life (which was the pathway to life), he would have had access to the higher realms: Heaven of heavens, Perfection, and Eternity.

But as we know, he chose a different pathway.

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* The Law of First Mention sets the precedent for how we should interpret a particular word or phrase throughout the scriptures. Since everything is always a circle with God, in many cases we have to go back to Genesis if we are to properly understand what comes about in Revelation.


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82. Characteristics of the Joshua Generation (#21-25)

Mike Parsons
with Jeremy Westcott – 

The veil is open: in the spirit we can walk through that veil which is Jesus’ flesh, into the heavenly realms. So we can live there. There is a whole dimension here that we need to enter into. The Promised Land is not just about here on earth, it is about bringing heaven to earth. As we saw last time, if we are to be truly effective we have to learn to rule in the heavens and then bring that authority to bear in this realm. Today we will return to looking into the characteristics of the Joshua Generation again, but as we do, I want to encourage you to look at them from that perspective.

Another Joshua

First, though, let me mention another Joshua for a moment, to help us grasp all this. This is a much later Joshua, who was the High Priest, being called to enter the heavenly realms.

‘And the angel of the LORD admonished Joshua, saying, “Thus says the LORD of hosts, ‘If you will walk in My ways and if you will perform My 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 3:6).

‘If you will walk in My ways and if you will perform My laws’: those are the things we do here, in this realm. We can read Psalm 119:1-40 to understand more about His ways: His ordinances, His character, His nature. It establishes precedent when we fulfil the ways of God. Then it talks about performing His laws: if we follow the principles of the kingdom, here in the earthly realms, we will see manifestation of the kingdom on earth as it is in heaven.

‘Then you will also govern my house’: ruling the house is something to be done in the heavenly realms. The house of God is a dimension of the realms of heaven. And we are also a house, a dwelling place, for God.

‘You will also have charge of my courts’: the courts of heaven are where God administers justice, and the jurisdiction of God’s kingdom, manifested in the heavens, can be outworked here on earth.

‘And I will grant you free access among these who are standing here’: standing before the throne, in heaven. The High Priest had access to come into the very presence of God. If we are able to govern the house, and take charge of the courts, we will have access to stand in the presence of God. In His personal presence, not just His Presence. It is the difference between smoke and fire. Smoke tells you there is a fire. The Presence of God that we experience here in worship is like the smoke. But beyond that there is his Person, which is the fire. This passage in Zechariah is describing protocols which we must go through in order to be able to stand in the fire.

Let’s get back now to our original Joshua:

21 The Joshua generation will encourage people to hear the word of God directly.

Joshua 3:9 Then Joshua said to the sons of Israel, “Come here, and hear the words of the LORD your God.”

It is important for us as individuals to come and hear the words of God for ourselves, and to train up others to do so for themselves too. We need to come before the throne, to come into the courts, to rule the house. My intention in doing so myself, and teaching it to you, is that I bring you into it.

Entering into the realms of heaven is for all of us. Separate to that, I have a role which is to bring signs and wonders and miracles and healing. I am going to pursue that for myself. But you, too, need to find out what is written on your scroll, and pursue that for yourselves. We each need to fulfil the scroll of our destiny (which we can find in the heavenly realms), read it, eat it, get it inside us, into our heart, and start outworking it.

22 The Joshua generation will be honoured and respected by the next generation.

There is going to be a culture of honour. Jesus said, “if you receive a prophet in the name of a prophet, you will receive a prophet’s reward” (Matt 10:41). We have to receive people in their gift and calling in order to receive the reward in our own lives. We want to honour one another and receive one another, because every single one of us have gifts and calls, and we must look to help one another fulfil those and work them out.

On that day the LORD exalted Joshua in the sight of all Israel; so that they revered him, just as they had revered Moses all the days of his life (Joshua 4:14).

23 The Joshua generation will free the next generation from the reproach and effects of the past generations, into new revelation of past activities.

‘Now when they had finished circumcising all the nation, they remained in their places in the camp until they were healed. Then the LORD said to Joshua, “Today I have rolled away the reproach of Egypt from you.” So the name of that place is called Gilgal to this day. While the sons of Israel camped at Gilgal they observed the Passover on the evening of the fourteenth day of the month on the desert plains of Jericho’ (Joshua 5:8-10).

There are things we have done, and things that we have within God’s kingdom and within the church, in which we have operated up to the level of revelation we previously had. But now everything is moving up to a higher level.

Here they celebrated the Passover and re-instituted circumcision, which they did not do in the wilderness. They came to consecrate themselves to God; the reproach of the past was wiped away, the stumbling-blocks were removed, the purifying and refining was taking place. When we come into new revelation, even in the things that we have done already we will begin to appreciate new levels of meaning as God opens them up to us in their fullness.

24 The Joshua generation will operate with the angelic realm.

This is something which causes Christians a lot of needless problems and argument. ‘Why do we need angels when we have the Holy Spirit?’ – you know the kind of thing. Angels and the Holy Spirit are completely different. Angels have a completely different purpose and function. And in fact all angels have their own particular functions.

For example, one night when Ian Clayton was here, he dropped frankincense on the floor and the aroma of it filled the room. It took me into the realms of heaven and I saw a canopy, and big angels being released from the throne. They had huge wings, and razor-sharp feathers which I could tell they were going to use as weapons. I knew instinctively who they were: they were the hunter angels. They go out to bring in a harvest. Their weapons are about cutting blindness off people’s eyes, which would prevent them from seeing and responding to the truth. And God is releasing them right now. They are different from the gathering angels, and the watcher angels, and other angels that we see. You notice, we even describe them by their function.

Now it came about when Joshua was by Jericho, that he lifted up his eyes and looked, and behold, a man was standing opposite him with his sword drawn in his hand, and Joshua went to him and said to him, “Are you for us or for our adversaries?” He said, “No; rather I indeed come now as captain of the host of the LORD.” And Joshua fell on his face to the earth, and bowed down, and said to him, “What has my lord to say to his servant?” The captain of the LORD’S host said to Joshua, “Remove your sandals from your feet, for the place where you are standing is holy.” And Joshua did so (Joshua 5:13-15).

When you read that he ‘lifted up his eyes’, it means he was looking into the heavens, and seeing into another realm, another dimension. As you read the scriptures again, you will see examples of this in other places too, such as when Abraham ‘lifted up his eyes and looked’ and saw the three men standing opposite his tent (Gen 18:2). And in this passage, the captain of the host goes on to give Joshua strategy that will help him be victorious and successful. When we praise God, that high praise releases some of these angels. Read Psalm 149 and you will see more about that, how we execute judgments that are written, how we execute vengeance upon the enemy.

We are not fighting against flesh and blood. Earthly strategy just won’t cut it.

25 The Joshua generation will hear God’s strategy for warfare.

The LORD said to Joshua, “See, I have given Jericho into your hand, with its king and the valiant warriors. You shall march around the city, all the men of war circling the city once. You shall do so for six days. Also seven priests shall carry seven trumpets of rams’ horns before the ark; then on the seventh day you shall march around the city seven times, and the priests shall blow the trumpets. It shall be that when they make a long blast with the ram’s horn, and when you hear the sound of the trumpet, all the people shall shout with a great shout; and the wall of the city will fall down flat, and the people will go up every man straight ahead” (Joshua 6:2-5).

When God said, “See”, how could Joshua see that? It hadn’t happened yet. The answer is that God was showing him in the realms of heaven what would happen. It is just like when Jesus said He did the things He saw the Father doing (John 5:19). In what realm did He see the Father doing them? The Holy Spirit will disclose things which are to come, before they actually happen, because we see – and can step into – a different realm.

Again, when this passage talks about a city with its king and its warriors, we can understand that solely in the natural realm. But above and beyond that, in the realms of the heavens, there are also mountains, and rulers and kings. We need to deal with them in that realm in order to deal with their counterparts in this realm. As I wrote last time, that is why we may historically have struggled to overcome in this realm – it is because we cannot do so effectively without dealing with the heavenly realm first.

Like Jesus, we also need to see what the Father is doing, in order to bring it to earth. If that is how Jesus operated (and He told us it was), then surely that is how we must operate too. Jesus lived constantly in two realms, in relationship with the Father.

The strategy God gave for taking Jericho was very clear, and very detailed. And the strategy that Joshua received in the heavenly realms, he had to carry out in this earthly realm. We need to be able to do that, every day, all the time.

That is what it means to be living in dual realms, to see what the Father is doing, to be constantly connected.

And that is what it takes to bring heaven to earth.

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61. The Sun Will Be Darkened

Mike Parsons
with Jeremy Westcott –

Salvation and judgment

Look at what the Jewish crowd said when Pilate was trying to get them to release Jesus instead of Barabbas: “His blood shall be on us and on our children!” (Matt 27:25). Now that is a very serious thing to say; and it is what happened. As we have seen, the counterpart of salvation is judgment. The blood of Jesus brings salvation for us but judgment upon those who did not accept Him.

The destruction of Jerusalem in AD 70 was the culmination of God’s judgment upon that generation. “The LORD will bring a nation against you from afar, from the end of the earth, as the eagle swoops down, a nation whose language you shall not understand” (Deut 28:49). We have been looking at that over the past couple of weeks, and seeing what scripture really has to say about it.

Darkened Sun

eclipse-32823_640Here is another much misunderstood verse: “But immediately after the tribulation of those days THE SUN WILL BE DARKENED, AND THE MOON WILL NOT GIVE ITS LIGHT, AND THE STARS WILL FALL from the sky, and the powers of the heavens will be shaken” (Matt 24:29). You can already guess what I am about to say about that: it is covenant language and needs to be understood in terms of covenant judgment. People look to see this literally fulfilled. It was not, will not be, and was never intended to be. Let the Bible interpret itself.

And I will grant wonders in the sky above and signs on the earth below, blood, and fire, and vapor of smoke. The sun will be turned into darkness and the moon into blood, before the great and glorious day of the Lord shall come’ (Acts 2:19).

Even here, in the promise of the coming of the Holy Spirit being fulfilled, an amazing time of blessing, associated with it was judgment.

Government

To get insight into what sun, moon and stars mean, let us look at Genesis. The sun and moon were created by God for a specific purpose, stated in this scripture: to govern.

Then God said, “Let there be lights in the expanse of the heavens to separate the day from the night, and let them be for signs and for seasons and for days and years;  God made the two great lights, the greater light to govern the day, and the lesser light to govern the night’ (Gen 1:14, 16). They were signs representing government.

“I have had still another dream; and behold, the sun and the moon and eleven stars were bowing down to me…” (Gen 37:9).

Joseph’s family understood that the sun, moon and stars spoke of government:  He related it to his father and to his brothers; and his father rebuked him and said to him, “What is this dream that you have had? Shall I and your mother and your brothers actually come to bow ourselves down before you to the ground?” (Gen 37:10).

Egypt, Babylon, Jerusalem

Nor is this prophecy about darkened sun, moon and stars unique in the Bible, as you might suppose:

And when I extinguish you, I will cover the heavens and darken their stars; I will cover the sun with a cloud and the moon will not give its light. All the shining lights in the heavens I will darken over you and will set darkness on your land,” declares the Lord GOD.  “I will also trouble the hearts of many peoples when I bring your destruction among the nations, into lands which you have not known (Ezekiel 32:7-9).  

That is a prophecy about the fall of the Egyptian civilisation, about the end of a system of government.  Although it might sound like the end of the world, it is not. It is just the end for them.

The same language is used of the fall of Babylon:

Behold, the day of the LORD is coming, Cruel, with fury and burning anger, to make the land a desolation; and He will exterminate its sinners from it. For the stars of heaven and their constellations will not flash forth their light; the sun will be dark when it rises and the moon will not shed its light (Isaiah 13:9-10).

And here in Matthew 24:29, it is the fall of Jerusalem and of the old covenant system. This was prophesied in Zechariah 14:2-9:

For I will gather all the nations against Jerusalem to battle, and the city will be captured, the houses plundered… In that day His feet will stand on the Mount of Olives, which is in front of Jerusalem on the east; and the Mount of Olives will be split in its middle… In that day there will be no light; the luminaries will dwindle. For it will be a unique day which is known to the LORD… And the LORD will be king over all the earth.

Not also a literal splitting of the Mount of Olives: this is all about the destruction of Jerusalem and Jesus coming in judgment. The mountain speaks of authority. Remember, in all this we have to let the Bible interpret itself, and not project onto it what we think could happen in our own time.

The light of Israel was to be extinguished, the old covenant nation would cease to exist, and the old covenant system would come to an end. The partition wall between Jews and Gentiles would be removed: the mountains of Jerusalem and its walls which symbolise this division between the old and the new were to come down. This is what Paul had to say about it:

For He Himself is our peace, who made both groups into one and broke down the barrier of the dividing wall, so that in Himself He might make the two into one new man, thus establishing peace, and might reconcile them both in one body to God through the cross (Eph 2:14-16).

This was the end of the ‘one nation, one city, one temple’ wineskin. Today, there is one people of God: those who have faith in Christ Jesus.

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53. Breaking off the Greek Mindset

Mike Parsons –

Last time I shared with you a couple of tables relating to the Greek (Western) and Hebrew (Eastern) mindsets. In this post I want to look just a little more closely at the contrast between them, and then I would like to pray for God to reveal where we are being robbed by our Western way of looking at things, and break it off us.

Separation vs unity

Here is the first of those tables again:

Greek Mentality

Hebrew Mentality
The goal of salvation is to escape this world and go to God’s dwelling place in heaven The goal of salvation is to prepare a place fit for God’s dwelling here, among His people
The kingdom of God exists in heaven, not upon the earth The kingdom of God is God’s reign among people here on earth
Jesus is coming to take us away from this world Jesus is coming to reign over us and through us in this world
Message: “Get your ticket now, or you might miss the train!” Message: “The kingdom of God is coming! Get ready to serve the King and manifest the kingdom.”

Let’s take these one line at a time.

In our Greek understanding, the goal of salvation is to escape this world and go to God’s dwelling place in heaven. So everything is focussed on what will be: very little about what is now. In Hebrew thought, the goal of salvation is to prepare a place fit for God’s dwelling here, among His people. He wants His kingdom to come on earth.

Linked with that, where does the kingdom of God exist? The Greek view says it is in heaven, not on the earth, whereas the Hebrew view is that the kingdom of God is God’s reign among people here upon the earth.

So is Jesus coming in order to take us away from this world? No, Jesus is coming to reign over and through us in this world. We need to focus on God’s kingdom being ‘now’, not separating it out. “Get your ticket now or you might miss the train”: that may have been what we were told, but do we really want to carry on presenting the gospel that way?

And then: “Now you have your ticket, just hold on tight. In the end Jesus will come and rescue you”, rather than what Jesus preached: “The Kingdom of God is coming! It’s right here, right now! Get ready to serve the King and manifest the kingdom”.

Do you see how each misunderstanding arises from the previous one? Once you begin to go down the route prescribed by Western thought, you find there is more and more separation becoming entrenched in your thinking, and less and less of an understanding of the unity of God’s purpose.

Form vs purpose

If we look at the second table, we can see how this works out in practice:

Greek mindset

Hebrew mindset
Form Function
What I do How I do it
Secular/Religious Unified
Heavenly/Earthly Dual
Knowledge Experience
What I know Who I know
Works Grace
Creed Deed
Analyse Live – Be and Do

The Greek mindset looks at the form of something. For example, let’s take a tree. It has roots, a trunk, branches, leaves – that is what I mean by looking at its form. In the Hebrew way of thinking, it is more about what it is for. What is the purpose of a tree? To bear fruit. They are really not interested in the fact that it might have roots, a trunk, branches and leaves. Does it bear fruit? If not, it is of no value at all. Remember how Jesus cursed the fig tree that was not producing any fruit? It is the difference between an actual, practical outworking and just a mental, theoretical understanding.

So: Greek: what I do; Hebrew: how I do it. We can do lots of things from the wrong motive – but we know that God looks on the heart.

Greek thinking separates out our religious life from our secular life. Family, work, school, friendships on the one hand; and church on the other. But God wants His kingdom to be flowing through all of our lives, with no separation. There is no secular for us. Our lives are a whole, they are unified, and we bring the kingdom of God into everything.

In Greek thinking, the heavenly was separated from the earthly. There was no overlap. Bill Johnson wrote a book called ‘When Heaven Invades Earth’. Bottom line is, that is impossible in Greek thinking. But for us, we can live in both places: we live in the realms of heaven, and we bring that spiritual realm into our lives on earth, at the same time: not in the future but now.

‘Knowledge’ to the Greek mind is information. But to the Hebrew, you cannot know anything without experiencing it. It is all about knowledge through spiritual encounter. If all I am doing in this blog is imparting information to you, we are missing the mark. That is why from time to time I also include praying for you, which gives you the opportunity to encounter Him through the Holy Spirit and experience the reality of His truth for yourself (of course you can always pray these things through even when I don’t specifically include a prayer).

It’s not what you know, but who you know! We know God, but it is perfectly possible to read the Bible from cover to cover and have all the information, but never actually know Him. We need to encounter everything in the Word of God for ourselves.

Works, or grace. A creed or the deed. Stating what you believe, or actually living that way? Faith without works is absolutely dead. Jesus said, “If I do not do the works that my Father does, don’t believe me” (John 10:37). You don’t hear too many sermons on that verse.

We don’t analyse: we live. It is about who we are and what we do. God Himself says He is the I AM.

I want to pray now. If you think you may have any mindsets, any of the Greek way of thinking, we want to break that off right now.

[If you would like to hear an audio version of this prayer, click here.]

Father, I pray that the power of Your Holy Spirit will come.
Break any deception off our mindsets
Any way in which we have come under false doctrines,
False teachings, mindsets of the enemy,
Greek thinking that would cause us to separate our lives out.

I come, Lord, with the sword of Your Spirit,
To break that off our mindsets right now
In Jesus’ Name.
To be loosed from any control that the enemy has had over us
Through traditions of men and demonic doctrines
That put things into the future instead of the present;
That put things into heaven instead of on earth;
That have separated us out;
That have caused us to believe and not do.

I break those mindsets right now.

I break any doctrines over us that would hinder Your church
From pursuing and seeing the kingdom of God fill the earth
As it is in heaven.
Holy Spirit, come and reveal to anyone reading this
Anything which is a hindrance, an obstacle, a stumbling block
To our being able to fulfil our destiny as God’s people.
I pray that You would send gathering angels into our lives
To gather any stumbling blocks from us.
Gather them from our mind, gather them from our heart,
So that we believe and stand on the truth of Your Word
That through kingdom and covenant,
You are going to fill the earth with Your kingdom.
You are going to come back for a victorious, overcoming church
That has risen above every other thing.
Because ‘of the increase of Your kingdom there is no end’.

Empower us with the power of Your Holy Spirit
To take Your kingdom
And manifest Your kingdom through our lives,
Every day of our lives:
In work, in home, in our neighbourhood.
That we would manifest Your kingdom in power and authority
Doing the works that Jesus did.

I loose us from everything that would hinder us
From that fulfilment of Your purposes for our lives
In Jesus’ Name.

Amen.

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52. Wheat and Tares

Mike Parsons
with Jeremy Westcott –

We have been considering the disciples’ question about Jesus’ return and the end of the age. It is essential to view all this through covenant eyes. God has always worked through covenants with men, and every time it was men who broke them. But they were all fulfilled in Jesus: every promise God ever made finds its ‘Yes’ and ‘Amen’ in Him. There are not two covenants in operation in our day, just one. And it is one which we cannot break, because it was not made with us, but with Jesus.

AD 70

We have seen that Jesus’ answer in Matthew 24 (at least up to verse 34, but probably the whole chapter) refers to the end of the Old Covenant age and the destruction of Jerusalem, especially its temple. “Truly I say to you, this generation will not pass away until all these things take place”. AD 70 would have been the end of that generation of disciples Jesus was talking to. The main fulfilment of all those prophetic words happened in that period. That is not to say that we cannot see further examples of them in our day – and throughout church history – but we are not waiting for them to happen as signs of the end. The end that Jesus was talking about already came.

We looked briefly at the decline and revival of the church over the centuries, how the Holy Spirit began to break back in once the scriptures were available in the common language again. I would encourage you to read the ‘God’s Generals’ series of books by Roberts Liardon, and see how God began to restore truth to the church through some amazing godly men and women. But as God sowed wheat, the enemy also sowed tares. Tares look just like wheat, and you can only tell the difference because tares don’t produce a harvest. So in the very period when God was working in revival and power, we also see the birth of Darwinism, Marxism, humanistic philosophy – false systems of belief sown into the world. And not only into the world – into the church too. Mormons, Jehovah’s Witnesses, and Christian Science all started around this time. Some of them looked like the truth, and people are still deceived by them today.

False doctrines

In 1826 the Brethren movement rejected the gifts of the Holy Spirit, and put back the purposes of God for another 80 years. In rejecting the truth, they also embraced deception, as often happens. And the enemy was able to use this to sow in false teaching and false doctrines which have plagued the church ever since. This is what God is starting to challenge and remove so that we can regain a true perspective of His kingdom.

What were some of those things?

  • Dispensationalism. Separating up scripture into particular periods of time in which God works in different ways. That breaks up the continuity of scripture and prevents people seeing the whole picture of God’s plan and purposes through the ages.
  • Cessationism: The belief that gifts of the Holy Spirit are not for now, that they stopped in the New Testament when the last apostle died.
  • Pre-Millennialism: Jesus was going to come back before the Millennium. Up to that time the only people who taught that were the Jesuits. No-one else believed it. Now it is prevalent among large sections of the church.
  • The Rapture: God would come for His people in a ‘secret rapture’, take them and leave everyone else behind. That doctrine only arose in this same period. And now it is the subject of a whole series of best-selling Christian books and accepted without question by much of the church as being what the Bible teaches.
  • Seven Years of Tribulation on the earth: this belief only started to appear at this time.
  • The separation of Israel and the church.

This was all so insidious that it spread like wildfire. The Schofield Bible came out of all this, robbing the church of authority by promoting an eschatology of defeat and rescue rather than of victory and of the increase of God’s kingdom to fill the earth. All of a sudden it was maintenance, put the walls up, protect your beliefs, have nothing to do with the world. The Brethren church was so exclusive you were not even allowed into their meetings unless you could prove that you came from another Brethren Assembly. I was brought up in this, and when I got baptised in the Spirit, God just challenged my whole theology. I have had to re-examine everything I believed: even now I have to be continually open for God to show me the truth.

Greek and Hebrew mindsets

The background to this is that there is a difference between the Greek and the Hebrew mindset. We have briefly touched on that before. Let’s be clear, I am not talking about reading scripture in the Greek and Hebrew languages, but about our way of looking at things when we approach scripture. Here are a couple of tables I often use to illustrate some of that:

Greek Mentality

Hebrew Mentality
The goal of salvation is to escape this world and go to God’s dwelling place in heaven The goal of salvation is to prepare a place fit for God’s dwelling here, among His people
The kingdom of God exists in heaven, not upon the earth The kingdom of God is God’s reign among people here on earth
Jesus is coming to take us away from this world Jesus is coming to reign over us and through us in this world
Message: “Get your ticket now, or you might miss the train!” Message: “The kingdom of God is coming! Get ready to serve the King and manifest the kingdom.”

Greek mindset

Hebrew mindset
Form Function
What I do How I do it
Secular/Religious Unified
Heavenly/Earthly Dual
Knowledge Experience
What I know Who I know
Works Grace
Creed Deed
Analyse Live – Be and Do

You will recognise many of the approaches in the left hand columns. They sum up how most of us have been taught, and have affected how we view everything. God is removing stumbling blocks, and we are going to find that the Greek mindset is increasingly going to be challenged.

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49. Jesus, the Centre of all History

Mike Parsons
with Jeremy Westcott –  –

Jesus is the centre of all history

Take eschatology, the study of the last things: it is all about Jesus. It is not about us, it is not about the church, it is not about the world – it is about Jesus. He comes to sum everything up. He holds everything together. All the Old Covenant looks forward to Jesus. All the New Covenant looks back to Him. So every time we look at a scripture, we must interpret it through Jesus’ message and His Person. You cannot take it in isolation.

Some people say, ‘Paul said this in the epistles, and it contradicted Jesus’. No. it did not. It can never contradict Jesus. What Jesus said, what Jesus did, that is it. And we need to understand that, and interpret everything in that light.

All history was consummated in Jesus and it will be consummated in Him. Therefore, for as many as are the promises of God, they all find their ‘yes’ in Him  (2 Cor 1:20). Every single promise you can find in the Bible finds its answer in Christ. Every single one is fulfilled in Jesus. That is a really important principle to get hold of.

I want to give you some scriptures now which are foundational, and which will help us as we go on to look at some more complicated and difficult questions – in particular when we look at Matthew 24, which is Jesus’ teaching about what was to come.

That He may send Jesus

… 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).

So everything that has been prophesied through the mouth of a prophet, including everything we have written down as prophecy in the Bible, it will all come about before Jesus leaves heaven. Until everything is restored into the order God intended, until all the prophecies are fulfilled, Jesus will remain in heaven. And only when it is will He come back.

He cannot come until all that has been done. He is not going to come, and then do it after He has come. He is going to do it before he comes. He is going to fulfil and restore all things before He comes.

“He must be received into heaven”. Now, what does that mean? So then, when the Lord Jesus had spoken to them, He was received up into heaven and sat down at the right hand of God (Mark 16:19). When He was received into heaven, He was enthroned: He sat on the throne. When you sit on a throne, it means you are ruling, you are reigning from that place of ultimate authority and power. That is where Jesus is. And He will remain in that place until He has restored all things.

Reigning

For He must reign until He has put all His enemies under His feet. The last enemy that will be abolished is death. For He has put all things in subjection under His feet… (1 Cor 15:25-27). Jesus will return to abolish death. Death is the last enemy.

Here is another scripture which talks about all things being in subjection:

…which He brought about in Christ, when He raised Him from the dead and seated Him at His right hand in the heavenly places, far above all rule and authority and power and dominion, and every name that is named, not only in this age but also in the one to come. And He put all things in subjection under His feet, and gave Him as head over all things to the church” (Eph 1:20-22).

So that is where Jesus is, right now, in this age. He is reigning in authority and power. If Jesus is the Head, and we are His body on the earth, then His feet are our feet. And if all things are in subjection under His feet, then they are under our feet too. God gave Him as Head over all things to the church. I don’t have the space to go into every detail of this here, but you can follow it through in the psalms, look at what it means to be a footstool, begin to get familiar with this prophetic language and see what it is saying.

Through the church

We read in Ephesians 3:10 …that the manifold wisdom of God might now be made known through the church…’  I love that word ‘manifold’, because it means multi-coloured and multi-faceted, all expressing who God is; all expressing the wonderful wisdom of God. Being made known through… us, through the church. Being made known to whom? It continues: … to the rulers and authorities in the heavenly places. This was in accordance with the eternal purpose which God carried out in Christ Jesus. So His eternal purpose was to manifest, to demonstrate, His wisdom. And He accomplished that in Christ and through the church.

Are you starting to grasp how all this hangs together? Is it starting to challenge some of the underlying assumptions you have been making?

It gets harder! Next time, as I said, we will begin to look at Matthew 24. That is a scripture which has been completely misinterpreted and misunderstood by the church, probably more so than any other chapter in the whole Bible. That is because it has been interpreted by Greek (western) logic and by people trying to make it fit with events they see happening around us today. As we shall see, that is a mistake.

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47. Just One Answer?

Mike Parsons
with Jeremy Westcott – 

Interpreting the times

Maybe you are old enough to remember all those books about the supposed significance of the Common Market being 12 countries, or about Communism and the USSR? Well, we can see now that none of it was true. Today those books are just gathering dust on people’s bookshelves, and if they were to read them now they would laugh. Dates, times, everything seemed so very plausible. But it didn’t happen.

That came about because the authors of those books just looked at the world around them, and tried to fit their own understanding of scripture with those events. We need instead to get revelation of what scripture is really saying. As I mentioned before, that involves seeing things from a Hebrew rather than a Western viewpoint.

Covenant

Take Biblical symbolism and covenant language. The whole Bible is written in terms of covenant. We even speak about the Old Covenant and the New Covenant. If you have never considered covenants then I do not have space to go into the whole subject here, perhaps the best advice I can give is to get hold of some of Ian Clayton’s teaching on covenants.

In short, covenants are binding agreements, and they are something that God has always used in interacting with people. God initiates covenants, and He makes them in blood. He always upholds His part of the deal. The sad fact is that the human race never upheld their part: at least, not until Jesus came and made a new covenant of blood with God. That covenant is unchallengeable because Jesus cannot fail: His blood is eternal. So we now receive all the benefits, all the promises, because of what Jesus has done.

The Old Covenant was all about what we had to do to be acceptable to God. That is no longer the case. But covenant is still the basis on which God works, and to understand the Bible we need to understand covenant language and how that covenant language is used.

Personal revelation

Again, because Jesus is the Living Word, He can give you a personal revelation of any word, any passage, any part of Scripture that He chooses. It may be completely out of the context it was originally written for, but He can still speak it to your heart and speak to you in it. That may be for you and you alone, in your situation and circumstance, and it may apply to nobody else. But it is vital that you have a proper overall understanding of the purposes of God. That will safeguard you from error so that whilst God can give you things like that, you won’t completely go off at some tangent because of some fanciful thing that you have made up.

For example, if you get what you think is a revelation that tells you to go off and rob the person down the road, you will know it is not God. You need to have understanding of the nature and the character of God, of how God works, so that you don’t go off the rails completely. You have to realise that not every voice you hear is God. Sometimes our soul can speak to us, particularly if we have a deep desire, and it can convince us that it is God telling us to do something, or that what we want to do is all right, when in fact it isn’t. Jesus can take His Word and apply it to us as He sees fit – we just need to be careful that it really is Him.

Plan A

My point here is that we need to understand the context of the eternal purposes of God. He hasn’t changed His plan. He has no Plan B, C or D.

Now, there is a teaching which says He has. You have heard it, maybe been influenced by it. You may not have thought of it in quite that way though. It is the teaching that prevailed in the town I grew up in, as I have written about previously. It divides up scripture into blocks and periods in which God works differently. It says ‘that is not for now’, and it denies the continuity of God’s purposes from Genesis to Revelation. If you read those two books, so much of the symbolism is the same. What it is in the beginning, it is in the end, and that is why it is so important to get understanding of it.

1 + 1 = ?

Our Western mindset is based on Greek, linear logic. For example: ‘1 + 1 = 2’. That makes sense to us. How could it equal anything but 2? Hebrew logic doesn’t see things the same way. In Hebrew logic (also called ‘open block logic’) there are multiple understandings which can all be true even if they seem contradictory to the western mind. And that is how God works. So in Hebrew logic, 1+1 can equal 11. It is the same proposition, but a different way of looking at the answer. And in Hebrew context, 11 is actually a much more likely answer than 2.

If that makes no sense to you, look at it this way. There can be layered truth. There is the obvious thing that is on the surface, but there can be layers of truth underneath, which may not be so obvious. The first layer of truth may be literal: Joseph was given a word that God’s people would be 430 years in Egypt and then they would be set free, and history tells us that was how it was. That is very straightforward for us to understand. But that word may also have further meanings, and they can be equally true, and equally valid.

There may be different fulfilments of prophetic words in scripture. Often there is an immediate or initial fulfilment that we can see, for example in the life of Jesus, and there is also a progressive fulfilment that goes on happening. Now this is not true of every single prophecy, but it is true of some. Therefore you cannot just read something, see how it was worked out once, and think that because of that is it over and done with. It may happen again, in a different way.

So which meaning is correct? What did God intend us to get from a particular scripture? The fact is, you do not always have to choose just one answer.

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44. The Supernatural Kingdom of God

daniel

Mike Parsons–

We are continuing to look at the kingdom of God as prophesied in the book of Daniel.

How great are His signs
And how mighty are His wonders!
His kingdom is an everlasting kingdom
And His dominion is from generation to generation

(Daniel 4:3).

Supernatural

The kingdom of God is a kingdom of power and supernatural manifestations. Jesus said that His kingdom is not of this world. That is because it is heaven being manifested on the earth:

… For He is the living God and enduring forever, 
And His kingdom is one which will not be destroyed, 
And His dominion will be forever.
He delivers and rescues and performs signs and wonders
In heaven and on earth…
(Dan 6:26-27).

What He does in heaven, he also does on earth, including signs and wonders.

We encourage people to get hold of Bill Johnson’s books, because he talks about how heaven invades earth through God’s people. People are only going to be convinced of the truth of the gospel, as Paul tells us, not by wise and persuasive words but by demonstration of the Spirit and of power – in other words, with signs, wonders and miracles.

Greater works

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).

I spent a whole year teaching on this verse not so long ago. It is Jesus’ mandate to us, to His disciples, to His church. It is the same mandate of kingdom authority which was originally given to Adam and Eve in the Garden, but which they lost.

That is why I am not just looking for us to get back to the level of power and authority which the disciples displayed in the book of Acts. The level of the supernatural power of God that Adam and Eve possessed was vastly superior to that. They would have been capable of supernatural manifestations way beyond anything we see in the early church. And if Jesus will remain in heaven until the restoration of all things (Acts 3:21), then we are going to see that level of power and authority restored.

Freely give

Freely you have received: freely give (Matt 10:8).

As we go out with the message of this kingdom, we are to give away what we have received. This encourages us to seek God for more manifestations of the supernatural in our own lives, because the more signs and wonders and supernatural manifestations of God’s power we have received, the more we can give away. Signs and wonders should overflow from our lives as we engage with God in the heavenly realms and live out that reality in our daily lives. One of the phrases God spoke to me while I was on the fast was about ‘living in and living out the manifest presence of God’.

The glory of God is no good to people if it is locked up inside us. It is time for us to shine. And I do believe we will literally shine, that our faces will glow with the radiance of God’s glory. It happened to Moses – it can happen again. And that will cause people to sit up and take notice.

We will find that when the shaking comes, as it will, then words will not be enough. We will need to be able to live demonstrating the truth by the manifestation of God’s kingdom. So we must get ready for that time, we must throw off all the idols, all the hurt and disappointment with which the enemy seeks to weigh us down. He is just trying to intimidate us, just trying to cause us to back off. We cannot allow that to happen.

Hungry

We need to be increasingly hungry and thirsty to pursue God. We need to get everything going, everything God has for us. When prayer and impartation are being offered, I always encourage people to come forward for everything. In a sense it doesn’t matter what it is! For myself, I always try to find a way I can fit into the category of people who are being called forward. I want more; I want everything there is which will empower me, prepare me and equip me to be manifested as a son of God, as a joint heir with Christ.

We need to grasp the reality of this: sons of God, joint heirs with Christ:that is what  we are (Rom 8:14-17).

Superheroes

Let’s be willing to be superheroes. Some of you know how much I love science fiction. Some of the super-powers that those characters have on films and in TV series, I believe we will literally be like that. People will see the power coming from our fingers. We will be able to move instantly from one place to another. In the Spirit. And yes, we will shine. People will either run from us or fall on their faces asking, ‘what must we do to be saved?‘

Honestly, I believe that is what it will be like when we are truly ‘living in and living out’ the supernatural kingdom of God.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aAsu689yRrg

Soundtrack: Jesus Culture – We Are Hungry via YouTube
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