Tag: Mike Parsons

The Restoration of All Things book

The Restoration of All Things, the new book from Mike Parsons, is out now.
Purchase your copy online from The Book Depository (free delivery worldwide), Barnes & Noble (USA) or Waterstones (UK) or order from your local bookstore.

In my previous book, My Journey Beyond Beyond, I shared my life story on the quest for true reality in my relationship with God as my Father. This book continues the journey to where beyond was taking me. The previous four threads were woven together to create a rich tapestry expressing the pure joy and delight of a child discovering true reality for the first time. This journey, full of surprising revelations and experiences, unveiled further dimensions and depths beyond beyond once again. My encounters took me deeper into the Father’s loving heart, unveiling and revealing His Oracles for creation’s restoration. There will probably need to be three volumes to cover the vastness and extent of my journey but let’s begin.

My beyond beyond experiences were an ongoing process of encounters that created such cognitive dissonance that the God that I thought I knew evaporated into nothingness. The true reality of who They (Father, Son and Spirit) truly are emerged from the rubble that was my deconstructed mind into the glorious light of revelation. My experiences and encounters with their true reality exploded my limited and restricted understanding that had been framed by my mind’s religious constructs. I am now an atheist to the god I previously worshipped as he never existed other than as a figment of my religious imagination. The glorious true loving God who is Love, Light, Spirit and Fire emerged from the destruction of my orthodox belief systems. The encounters, like explosions of truth, destroyed my religiously framed construct to reveal a God who is I AM that I AM: pure, unadulterated, unconditional love.

As my great friend and fellow traveller, Lindy Strong has said, “My past self of ten years ago would probably call my present self a heretic” and that was my own experience on this journey. If that is not all our experience then we have ceased the journey, content with our systematic theological understanding of a God who is infinite, creating a box for that God that is only a prison for our minds. I am a happy heretic, enjoying skiing down the slope of orthodoxy to discover and explore a whole new vista beyond the limits of my understanding.

The further and deeper this rabbit hole journey has gone, the more convinced I am of God’s desire and passion for the restoration of all things of creation. Creation itself will inevitably be set free from its bondage and slavery to the corruption of our sonship by the revealing of the true mystic sons of God who have arisen and are shining with love’s light.

For He rescued us from the domain of darkness, and transferred us to the kingdom of His beloved Son, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins. He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation. 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. He is before all things, and in Him, all things hold together. He is also head of the body, the church; and He is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead so that He will come to have first place in everything. For it was the Father’s good pleasure for all the fullness to dwell in Him, and through Him to reconcile all things to Himself, having made peace through the blood of His cross; through Him, I say, whether things on earth or things in heaven (Colossians 1:13-20).

Are all things actually all things? I discovered the answer to this is yes and no. Yes, all things that Jesus created out of the desire of the Father’s heart in the power of the Spirit; but no to everything we have created from the DIY independent path of the knowledge of good and evil that has been cursed.

All things came into being through Him, and apart from Him nothing came into being that has come into being (John 1:3).

“The Father loves the Son and has given all things into His hand.” (John 3:35).

“For the Father loves the Son, and shows Him all things that He Himself is doing; and the Father will show Him greater works than these, so that you will marvel.” (John 5:20).

“My sheep hear My voice, and I know them, and they follow Me; and I give eternal life to them, and they will never perish; and no one will snatch them out of My hand. My Father, who has given them to Me, is greater than all; and no one is able to snatch them out of the Father’s hand. I and the Father are one.” (John 10:27-30).

Jesus, knowing that the Father had given all things into His hands, and that He had come forth from God and as going back to God… (John 13:3).

“But the Helper, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in My name, He will teach you all things, and bring to your remembrance all that I said to you.” (John 14:26).

“All things that the Father has are Mine; therefore I said that He takes of Mine and will disclose it to you.” (John 16:15).

“…and all things that are Mine are Yours, and Yours are Mine; and I have been glorified in them.” (John 17:10).

After this, Jesus, knowing that all things had already been accomplished… (John 19:28)

(From the Introduction to The Restoration of All Things, by Mike Parsons).

Available wherever books are sold.
(except Kindle version, only available from the Amazon Kindle store).

Order your copy today!

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Expanding Our Reality

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

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

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

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

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

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My Journey Beyond Beyond

by Mike Parsons –

My Journey Beyond Beyond is Mike Parsons’ autobiographical record of deep calling to deep, the pursuit of intimacy with God.

This is a book for the Joshua Generation, not only to read but also to pass on to others to introduce them to the concept of operating in the realms of heaven as sons and heirs together with Jesus.

From the Introduction:

As I ponder where my journey began, I remember as a child dreaming of adventures, quests and exploits of derring-do, and being drawn to films and TV programmes like Robinson Crusoe, Thunderbirds, Stingray, Lawrence of Arabia, Forbidden Planet and Lost in Space. My first book was H.G. Wells’ The Time Machine, which resonated with the destiny God had agreed with my spirit in the before. That destiny was buried deep within my soul, hidden, but creating that splinter within my mind which sought to break free of the limitations of my mundane existence. I longed to go beyond the small Cornish town that framed my life but films and dreams were my only avenue.

God had wired me to be inquisitive, always curious about how things were made and how they worked. I often took things apart and, to my mother’s dismay, was unable to reassemble them. I loved to try to fix things that were broken, using my inbuilt ingenuity to solve problems with whatever was at my disposal.

I often went on adventures, sometimes with my friends but mostly on my own, and would come back with some treasure – usually a creature that I had captured to be added to my personal zoo.

Throughout my life, I have resonated with the mind-expanding possibilities of science fiction, Star Wars, Star Trek, the Marvel superhero universe comics and, more recently, films. I was stirred by the adventures of Bilbo Baggins in The Hobbit as it was read to us in junior school and later as I explored the world of Middle-earth in the Lord of the Rings trilogy.

God had placed within my soul the desire for adventure that longed to be outworked but only began to find expression when I discovered that I was included in God’s cosmic plan for the restoration of all things.

That deep-seated inspirational drive was at the heart of my quest for knowledge and a reality that always seemed just beyond my grasp. There was always something at the core of my being that knew there had to be more than this. “I still haven’t found what I’m looking for” are the lyrics of a U2 song that I resonated with for most of my life. When I first saw the movie The Matrix I discovered that the false and fabricated reality of religion had been pulled over my eyes. I was inspired to find the truth that had been obscured by the religious veil and willing to pay whatever the cost to discover what I had always known but had never been able to see. Thus began the quest for true reality, to discover what my destiny had always been looking for.

If I were God (fortunately I am not), the religious backwater of a small town in the far southwest of the United Kingdom would not have been my choice of place to begin the journey. My destiny and calling were to be a forerunner, therefore hindrances and obstacles often characterised the path I was destined to follow. All this was of God’s design, in order hopefully to inspire others that nothing is impossible with a God who often chooses the foolish things of this world…

In My Journey Beyond Beyond Mike shares about the restoration of a Father and son relationship, hearing the voice of God, seeing and travelling in the spirit; he explains how he began exploring supernatural dimensions to access the heavenlies, engaging with the angelic realms and legislating in the courts and assemblies of heaven. He tells his experience of integrating soul and spirit, deconstructing and renewing the mind, expanding consciousness and searching for quantum reality.

My Journey Beyond Beyond is available from online booksellers and high street bookstores worldwide.

Click here to find it on your local Amazon site.
If that link does not work for you, please search ‘My Journey Beyond Beyond’ on your chosen retailer’s website.
Here is the amazon.com link: https://www.amazon.com/dp/1789630088/

Support Freedom ARC

'Donate to Freedom ARC' button

Our Patreon patrons give a small amount each month and can join us for our monthly group Zooms, get exclusive or early access to Mike’s teaching and enjoy further patron-only benefits. Or you can use the blue button to contact us about making a one-time gift.
Thank you!
*Note Sadly, because of abuse by scammers we can no longer offer a ‘click to donate’ option. However, if you contact us, we will get back to you with a simple means of giving. 

Want to go deeper, higher?

This event is over, but the recordings are available.

Do you want to go deeper? Deeper into intimacy with God, deeper into God Himself, deeper into the Truth (Jesus), deeper into revelation?

Do you want to go higher? Higher into the creative light realms, into the heart and mind of God outside of time and space, to engage with who He created you to be?

Then join us from March 8th to 10th, either in person or via the livestream, for Engaging The Father, the first of our Sons Arise! conferences for 2018.

This event is now finished. For recordings, please go to https://freedomarc.org/engagingfather 

New material

Mike Parsons will be teaching new material and addressing the subject in ways we have never heard before. In addition to the teaching sessions, there will also be time set aside for us to encounter the Father for ourselves.

Topics likely to include: Restoration of fatherhood and sonship – Call to the Joshua Generation – Accessing the fire stones of destiny – Engaging the Ya Sod, the Father’s heart in the what was (eternity) – Standing in the 4 faces of God – Operating in the Order of Melchizedek.

Tickets

This event is now finished. For recordings, please go to https://freedomarc.org/engagingfather 

Livestream (includes recordings)

This event will also be livestreamed.

The cost of the livestream for the ‘Engaging The Father’ conference is £30 GBP. This includes continued access to the  video recordings afterwards, so if the timings don’t suit you, you can play any sessions you miss at your own convenience. Downloadable video, audio and PDF files will be added later – all included in the livestream price.
Click here to order the livestream/recordings.

141. The Flesh Profits Nothing

Mike Parsons
with Jeremy Westcott – 

God intends us to be spirit, soul and body, in that order. Our soul and body should be subject to our spirit, now that our spirit has come alive to God. If we want to build a strong spirit, we saw last time how praying in tongues on the inside and on the outside is something we need to practise.

Meanwhile we also need to deal with the soul.

Nothing good

But I say, walk by the Spirit, and you will not carry out the desire of the flesh.
(Gal 5:16).

Our spirit needs to be strong to lead, direct and guide us in our everyday life so that we will not carry out the desires of the flesh. The desires of the flesh are not good, and we have to accept that. We want to believe there is a bit of good in there somewhere, but there is not. There is nothing good about our flesh whatsoever. It always gets us in a mess.

For the flesh sets its desire against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh; for these are in opposition to one another, so that you may not do the things that you please (Gal 5:17).

So whilst my spirit is flowing from the Holy Spirit, and the purposes of God for my life and my destiny, my flesh has tried to get in the way and has to be brought into line. Our flesh wants to please itself; our spirit desires to please God.

Two completely different agendas, because if you please yourself you cannot please God (and our flesh does not even want us to understand that).

“I am the vine, you are the branches; he who abides in Me and I in him, he bears much fruit, for apart from Me you can do nothing”
(John 15:5).

Nothing of any eternal value or significance can be done apart from Jesus; apart from Him who dwells in our spirit, and flows through our life.

“It is the Spirit who gives life; the flesh profits nothing…” (John 6:63).

Trust

That is really hard for the flesh to take. We really like to think we can at least do something. I went through a time in my personal times with God in which I was engaging Him in the garden of my heart, but I was in complete pitch-black darkness. It was not a place of fear, just of not being able to see anything and resting in complete stillness before Him. I found it so hard. I really wanted to know what was happening.

But God said, “Will you just trust Me? Just stay still, and let Me do what I need to do to prepare you for what is to come.” I thought, “Of course I can do that.” But when it came to it, my flesh was desperate to know what was going on. I remember one day I cried out to Him, “O God, what is going on?” And He answered me, “I don’t need your assistance, just your surrender.” It was really difficult. But what it came down to was this:

Trust in the Lord with all your heart
And do not lean on your own understanding
(Proverbs 3:5).

I had to realise that maybe I did not trust Him as much as I thought I did. I had to die to that need to know what was going on. I had to choose to trust God even if I could not see anything. I had to trust that whatever He would do would be the best thing for me. So I know it is hard when we have to deal with the flesh.

Humanism is independence from God. It is doing things without God. That is what Adam and Eve bought into when they sinned. Satan offered them the opportunity to gain knowledge without God. Everything in dealing with the flesh is dealing with humanism and dealing with independence. There is nothing good that comes from independence.

Self

We need to die to self.

Self-centredness: it is very difficult because of course we are at the centre of all that goes on in our life, but that has to flow from the spirit, not the flesh. Selfishness is wanting to put myself first above everybody else, whereas when Jesus came He said, “I have not come to be served, but to serve.” That is a completely different attitude, and I should also seek to serve rather than be served. There is no place for selfishness or self-centredness in that. We are so accustomed to being self-centred, and life revolving around us.

Anyone who is married knows that when you get married, life does not revolve around you as a single person any more. You have to think about somebody else. When we become Christians, we enter into a relationship with God in which we are no longer in first place: He is. When we become Christians, we say that we make Him Lord of our life: we must make sure that He really is.

We need to die to self-importance, self-promotion, self-reliance, self-sufficiency, even self-belief. There is nothing of the spirit in these. We can have no self-righteousness. Self-help, self-expression.

You might think, ‘Surely they are not all negative?’ Anything that comes from the flesh is negative, and however hard we find that, we have to surrender.

Self-respect, self-esteem, self-worth. If my self-respect comes from what I have done in the flesh, if my self-esteem comes from what I can do, they are not good. I want my esteem to come from how God sees me; from knowing who I am as a child of God, knowing the love of God, knowing the value He places upon me. My worth comes from knowing that I am God’s child, that He loves me and has a purpose for me. My self-image is not how I view myself, but it is seeing myself as God sees me. If we could really see ourselves as God sees us, it would transform everything about our lives.

Some things are more obviously negative: self-gratification, self-indulgence. Making ourselves feel good, using food, shopping, sex, drugs, alcohol. Whatever it is, if the self is involved, it needs to die. It needs to go on the cross.

The cross

The cross is not a pleasant place. When Jesus went to face the cross, when He was in the Garden of Gethsemane, His soul was in anguish. Literally, He sweat drops of blood, He was in so much anguish. He saw what He was going to have to carry on the cross; He looked into the cup, and in that cup was every sin we have ever committed, every negative thought, every sickness that has been on our body, every sin committed against us: He took it all physically upon Himself, because He loved us so much.

He chose to say, ‘Not My will, but Yours be done’ even when His flesh, His soul, looked into what it was going to have to carry. Being sinless, because He loved us so much, He was willing to go to the cross and take our sin, our flesh, our self, and be crucified. He also represented us there so that we could identify with Him through the bread and the wine.

I am crucified with Christ; nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ lives in me, and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me
(Gal 2:20 JUB)

He died so that we could be free from the flesh, because our flesh died with Him.

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If our free or paid resources are a blessing to you, please consider sowing into and supporting this ministry with a financial gift. Thank you!

Our Patreon patrons give a small amount each month and can join us for our monthly group Zooms, get exclusive or early access to Mike’s teaching and enjoy further patron-only benefits.

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128. Building A Strong Spirit

Mike Parsons
with Jeremy Westcott –

God wants us to come into that place of relationship and responsibility into which Adam would have matured if he had not chosen to follow the DIY pathway of the tree of knowledge of good and evil.

For that to happen, we have to build our spirit. If we are not strong in spirit, we will not be able to overcome and dethrone the soul.

We were created to be spirit, soul and body, with the spirit taking the lead. But because our spirit was dead to God, our soul has become accustomed to having its own way. When we are born again and our spirit comes alive, that has to change. The soul must submit to the spirit, but it will not do so willingly.

How to build our spirit

There are a number of things we can do to build our spirit. We will look at them in more detail later on in this series, but I will just list some of them for now:

1. Make sure we give God first place, first love, first priority.
2. Pray and sing in tongues.
3. Wait on the Lord and be still.
4. Meditate on Bible verses and passages.
5. Praise and adoration, soaking in the presence of God.
6. Come to God and ask Him to build our spirit. Often we do not have because we do not ask (James 4:2).
7. Confess and call things into being. Call forth our spirit. Speak it out.
8. Persevere. You don’t build your spirit in a day.

If you want to get fit and have rippling muscles in the natural, you have to go to the gym and train, session by session, week after week, until you build muscles. It is the same with your spirit. Your spirit grows stronger through exercise; spiritual exercises train and equip your spirit to connect with God, to flow in revelation, and to rule in your life. You have to persevere.

Desire, discipline, delight

If we give up on exercise, it is usually because we don’t enjoy the discipline. Discipline itself is not very pleasant. I would love to have a real six-pack, and the body of Mr Universe, but I have not got the discipline to go in and train myself to do it. It would take a lot of training, and I do not want it enough to submit to the discipline.

But what I do want enough is a strong spirit, and therefore I am willing to do whatever it takes to train it. I spend a lot of time training my spirit. Hours, every day, training my spirit to discern the words of God, to flow, and to build up my spiritual senses. You can do the same. We will look at each of them in more detail in coming posts, but there is nothing in the list of 8 things above that you cannot do. It just takes practice and perseverance.

It starts with a desire, it takes discipline, and then it becomes a delight.

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127. Relationship and Responsibility

Mike Parsons
with Jeremy Westcott – 

On this blog we are just at the beginning of a new series of posts about preparing for our destiny.

We prepare according to God’s Prophetic Timetable of events for the future, so that we will be ready for what he is doing and ready to play our part in it. From a place of intimacy with God, we will allow Him to change and transform our lives, removing from us everything that is a hindrance or a stumbling-block.

prophetic-timetable-overview20

He is raising up a Joshua generation who will press into their own inheritance, and lead the following generation into receiving theirs too. We need to receive that inheritance so that in the situations we will face in the coming days and years, when the world’s systems have broken down, we will be ready with the supernatural power of the Holy Spirit operating in our lives. We must be like Jesus: He brought the kingdom, and He calls us to do the same.

From eternity, God has a destiny appointed for us to fulfil, and we have been invested with authority to fulfil it. We need to wake up and take hold of who we are as the sons of God.

Man’s destiny has always been to rule, to bring heaven to earth (Gen 1:28). We bring the rule of heaven to earth so that we transform not just this planet but the whole of creation – our universe and even beyond that – which is groaning and longing for the sons of God to be fully revealed.

Psalm 24:7 says ‘Lift up your heads, O you gates’. It is talking about us being lifted up to that place of rulership and authority, so that we become a gateway for the King of Glory to come in and fill this world through our lives. That is what God wants to do through us: everything He is, grace, power, mercy, would be channelled through us, and that we would manifest them here on earth.

The Angel of the Lord admonished Joshua, the High Priest, who was standing in the presence of God in the heavens and said,

“If you will walk in My ways
and if you will perform My service,
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).

This involves a progression of relationship and of levels of authority and responsibility that would bring us to our sonship.

We live here on the earth, with the atmosphere of the earth around us. In that atmosphere at present are the principalities, powers and rulers of wickedness. It is a kingdom in darkness. We ‘walk in His ways’ here, and we recognise that the kingdom of God is within us, but that we are also connected to the kingdom of God realm in the heavens.

As we keep the laws, the principles of the kingdom, as we administer righteousness and justice, so we learn to be lords, kings, and sons at that level in the heavenly realms (and also within us). Once we understand who we are and what our identity is, we can start ruling the house (our own house, but also the house of the Lord).

Then we can start judging the courts. The kingdom has foundations of righteousness, and justice, and it is God’s people who are eventually going to judge angels, and fallen angels. We have a right to bring judgment to change things in this realm, and eventually to have access to stand among those who are operating in the heaven of heavens.

When we start doing that, we remove those hierarchical authorities from the atmosphere of the earth, and we can rule. We rule in light, rule in love, rule in righteous power. The influence we have in the heavens will be manifested here on earth. God wants us to understand and to access those realms. The more we do so, the more we will bring the kingdom of God on the earth, both in us and through us, so that we shine with the glory of God.

That will deal with sickness, disease, poverty – all the things which rob God’s people (and the world) of their inheritance – and all that stolen inheritance will be restored.

We will manifest the rule of heaven on earth, just as Jesus did.

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'Donate to Freedom ARC' button
Or you can use this blue button to support our work with a one-time gift*.
Thank you!
*Note: This donation is securely handled through PayPal but you do not need to have a PayPal account yourself to make a one-time donation.
For repeating donations, if you do not have (or want) a PayPal account please support us through Patreon instead. 

Subscribe to Engaging God

Get 2 weeks free – then pay just £12 GBP per month (around $14 USD – but dollar amount varies slightly each month as the exchange rate changes).

Engage God through Jesus (the Way, Truth and Life) in the realms of heaven and within your own spirit and heart; and take up your responsibility as a mature son [daughter] in God’s kingdom.
Terms and conditions apply.

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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42. A Dwelling Of God

Mike Parsons –

In Daniel chapter 2, Nebuchadnezzar saw in a dream that Jesus would come in the time of the Roman Empire to set up a kingdom which would continue to grow, and would overcome all other kingdoms. Daniel 7:18 tells us that … the saints of the Highest One will receive the kingdom and possess the kingdom forever, for all ages to come. We are those saints, and the kingdom is ours to possess.

… the Ancient of Days came and judgment was passed in favor of the saints of the Highest One, and the time arrived when the saints took possession of the kingdom (Dan 7:22).

No end

We will possess it for ever, and for all ages to come. It is not going to be another group of people, it is going to be God’s people, His saints, the church, who will possess that kingdom and be involved in continuing to expand it. Even after Jesus returns, and we go into the age to come, the kingdom will go on increasing. There will be no end of the increase of His government. It will not end when Jesus returns and there are a new heavens and a new earth. There is a whole universe, multiverses maybe, into which that kingdom will expand, and ‘the saints of the Highest One’ are going to be instrumental in that.

For a child will be born to us, a son will be given to us; And the government will rest on His shoulders; And His name will be called Wonderful Counsellor, Mighty God, Eternal Father, Prince of Peace. There will be no end to the increase of His government or of peace, On the throne of David and over his kingdom, To establish it and to uphold it with justice and righteousness From then on and forevermore. The zeal of the LORD of hosts will accomplish this’(Isa 9:6-7).

If the government rests on Jesus’ shoulders, who are the shoulders? We are His body, and His shoulders are part of His body.

Above

… 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, which is His body, the fullness of Him who fills all in all (Eph 1:20-23).

So Jesus is above everything. This is a New Testament scripture now, saying the same things about Jesus’ rule, His kingdom. Look at the last few words there again, ‘the church … His body … fills all’. The expansion of the kingdom is going to come through Jesus’ body, the church.

The early church was made up originally of Jewish people. Then Peter had a vision which led him to preach to Cornelius and his family, who were not Jewish but got saved and became part of the church, and in Acts 15 at the Council of Jerusalem James talks about the Tabernacle of David being restored, meaning that the gospel is going out to the whole earth.

Stone

That is why Paul writes to the mostly non-Jewish believers in Ephesus, So then you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are fellow citizens with the saints, and are of God’s household, having been built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus Himself being the corner stone, in whom the whole building, being fitted together, is growing into a holy temple in the Lord, in whom you also are being built together into a dwelling of God in the Spirit (Eph 2:19-22).

Here again we see that Stone which was ‘cut out without hands’ in Daniel 2. You can say He is the foundation stone too, because the foundation which the apostles and prophets laid was none other than Jesus (this passage is not saying that the apostles and prophets are the foundation, but that the church is built on the foundation which they laid). We are the temple now, a ‘holy temple in the Lord’, and – this is the most wonderful part – ‘a dwelling of God in the Spirit’.

We know He dwells in us individually, but this passage is saying that He dwells in us corporately. We are beginning to experience this, that when we come together we are a dwelling of God in the Spirit, and His Presence manifests among us – that is what the glory of God is all about.

Soundtrack: Dave Fitzgerald (feat Jenn Johnson) We Are An Ark live at Bethel Church via YouTube

Heart/universe image courtesy of finemayer via Pixabay.

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34. Enlarge The Place Of Your Tent

Mike Parsons  –

In all that we are sharing about the Prophetic Timetable, it is important to remember that God has not revealed this simply so that we can be fascinated as we look into it and see what He is doing: He has revealed it so that we can be prepared to play our part. There is a place of authority that God has always intended us to occupy, in which the authority of God is expressed through our lives as we bring heaven to earth. All the earthly systems are about to be shaken and all the world will turn to the church for the answers: we need to be ready.

I have mentioned before that I believe that the first harvest of labourers, the harvest of harvesters, will amount to 20% of the population. Worldwide, that would be over a billion people. If that scale is too hard to imagine, let’s look closer to home: the population of Barnstaple and the surrounding villages is around 48000 according to the latest figures I could find, probably closer to 50000 by now. 20% of that is 10000 individuals. What would it take for the local church in our relatively small market town to handle an influx of 10000 people right now (I don’t mean just Freedom Church, but all the churches across the area)?

There are 20 churches who are part of the Barnstaple Churches Together network, and only a handful of them have congregations over 100 at the moment. Could each church take 500 people, disciple them and equip them to go out and reach the rest of the population? What if there were only 10 churches who were prepared for that? That would be 1000 each. No wonder we are thinking we need a bigger building! The biggest auditorium in North Devon is probably the Queen’s Theatre, which holds 600. Possibly if you used our local Leisure Centre you could squeeze in a few more. Even in a town like Barnstaple you would have 10 churches needing 10 places that size or bigger.

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And if only 3 churches were ready… in that case, we are going to need the whole site we have been believing for. That is why some of us have been making those declarations and prayer-walking and staking out the boundary God has shown us. If you look on a map, or this aerial view, it is shaped like a footprint, with our present building at the ‘big toe’ (centre right, marked with our butterfly logo). That is very fitting, because God told Joshua that he would possess everywhere he set his foot. And just as God really intended Israel to take the blessing to the whole world, that footprint is not the limit of our inheritance or our influence – it is just the base from which we would look to reach out to transform our whole community (however wide that is).

So what if people came from further afield? In the revival here in 2012 we saw folk coming from the south of the county, from Torquay, from Cornwall and Somerset. If we are to be a regional apostolic centre, how big is the region? How big is our vision? As I update this post in mid-2015, we are connecting with thousands of people around the globe through our ‘Engaging God‘ programme, blog, websites, social media and YouTube channel. Wherever you are reading this, how does all this translate into your situation, your church, your community?

All this may well get you thinking: and it is just one aspect of what it would take to disciple and equip the harvest of labourers. I am really only quickly sketching it out now as an introduction to what I want to get into, which is this: if we are going to do all that God is showing us, we are going to need resources way beyond what we now have at our disposal. It is just one line on that Prophetic Timetable, but it is an important one: there is going to be a wealth transfer, to enable us to do all those things to which God is calling us.

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