Tag: Old Testament

286. Unconditional Love in Action

Mike Parsons
with Jeremy Westcott –

Two Covenants

We live in a new age, in a New Covenant that Jesus made with the Father. We and all mankind are included in it. Jesus warned his disciples of the religious and political spirit that would be like leaven, yet my experience, through the churches and movements in which I have been involved, is that our understanding of the New Covenant has invariably been tainted with Old Covenant concepts.

Unconditional love requires absolutely no sacrifices or offerings but an Old Covenant mindset always requires something: it requires our obedience, our obligation, our duty – which are all dead works and none of them have any value whatsoever before God. The Father does not require them (and actually He never did, which may be a shock to a lot of people. I will come back to that!).

Operating under an Old Covenant works-based performance-orientated mindset towards God will wear us out; we will never be at rest if we think we have to earn His love and favour. There is no guilt, shame or condemnation within unconditional love: they are just religious concepts which will keep us coming back for more religion.

Foundations

The book of Hebrews is almost entirely about the differences between the two covenants. It was written to people who were so accustomed to the Old Covenant ways of thinking that they were in danger of missing out on the benefits of the New. And Hebrews 6:1-2 are very misunderstood verses. I totally misunderstood them for most of my life and taught the concepts they contain as foundations of the New Covenant.

What that passage actually says is this:

Therefore leaving the elementary teaching about the Christ, let us press on to maturity, not laying again a foundation of repentance from dead works and of faith toward God, of instruction about washings and laying on of hands, and about the resurrection of the dead and eternal judgment. (Hebrews 6:1-2).

So the Old Covenant was immature, and the New Covenant will bring us to maturity, but only if we don’t lay another Old Covenant foundation. What is that Old Covenant foundation? Repentance from dead works, faith towards God, instructions about washings (baptisms), laying on of hands, the resurrection of the dead and eternal judgment. All those things are Old Covenant understandings and mindsets which have nothing to do with the New Covenant. And yet most of those things are what we habitually teach: repentance, faith, baptisms, laying on of hands, resurrection and judgment. Those subjects are part of most churches’ foundation courses (they were certainly the basis of ours).

So when I used to read Hebrews 6:1-2, I just thought the writer was enumerating the elementary principles of Jesus that we needed to lay – but in reality they were exactly the opposite of that. Now I realise that these were the very foundations that the writer advises us not to lay again in the New Covenant! It is so important that we do not mix covenants by embracing Old Covenant understandings. Let’s not lay that Old Covenant foundation in the New Covenant: the only foundation of the new covenant is love.

The completeness of the fulfilled promise

Look at the passage again in the Mirror Bible:

Consequently, as difficult as it may seem, you ought to divorce yourselves from sentimental attachment to the pre-figuring doctrine of the Messiah, which was designed to carry us like a vessel over the ocean of prophetic dispensation into the completeness of the fulfilled promise. A mind shift from attempts to impress God by your behaviour to faith righteousness in Christ is fundamental. There is no life left in the old system: it is dead and gone – you have to move on. All the Jewish teachings about ceremonial washings (baptisms), laying on of hands (in order to identify with the slain animal as a sacrifice) and all teachings pertaining to a sin consciousness, including the final resurrection of the dead in order to face judgment, are no longer relevant. [All of these types and shadows were concluded and fulfilled in Christ, their living substance. His resurrection bears testimony to the judgment that he faced on humanity’s behalf and the freedom from an obstructive consciousness of sin that he now proclaims.] (Hebrews 6:1-2 Mirror).

‘The completeness of the fulfilled promise’ – that is Jesus. He is the fulfilment of every promise and covenant: everything is fulfilled in him. He is the conclusion, the completeness of everything that God said, to bring us into the reality of that today. And yet for most of my life I unknowingly tried to live in that same Old Covenant system by doing the very things that I should have left behind. If only the children of God, right throughout the world, would come into a revelation of this reality: that we would not have a sin consciousness but a righteousness consciousness instead!

The Law of Moses

Every church I have ever been in has always focused on sin. But we know that the more we try not to do something, the harder it is not to do it. That is why the Law was ineffective. It is impossible to keep the Law: Jesus made that very clear. And if you failed in one thing, you failed in it all. From the very beginning of the birth of the church, the religious spirit, operating in the Judaizers, tried to get believers back under the Law of Moses (and is still pursuing the same agenda today). But as I mentioned earlier, the whole Old Covenant system of sacrifices and offerings associated with the Law, which was instituted by Moses, was never God’s idea.

For the Law was given through Moses; grace and truth were realized through Jesus Christ. (John 1:17).

“What are your many sacrifices to Me?” says the Lord.
“I have had enough of burnt offerings of rams and the fat of fattened cattle; and I take no pleasure in the blood of bulls, lambs, or goats.” (Isaiah 1:11).

For I did not speak to your fathers, or command them on the day that I brought them out of the land of Egypt, concerning burnt offerings and sacrifices. (Jeremiah 7:22).

If God accepted their sacrifices and offerings, and if He accepts ours, it is only because He accepts us!

And the Holy Spirit also testifies to us; for after saying, “This is the covenant which I will make with them after those days, declares the Lord: I will put My laws upon their hearts, and write them on their mind,” He then says, “And their sins and their lawless deeds I will no longer remember.” Now where there is forgiveness of these things, an offering for sin is no longer required. (Hebrews 10:15-18).

The Mirror Bible again:

So when Jesus, the Messiah, arrives as the fulfilment of all the types and shadows, he quotes Psalm 40:6-8, and says, “In sacrifices and offerings God takes no pleasure; but you have ordained my incarnation! None of the prescribed offerings and sacrifices, including burnt offerings and sin offerings were your request…”
Having said what he did in the above quote, that the prescribed offerings and sacrifices were neither his desire nor delight, he condemned the entire sacrificial system upheld by the law. (These only served to sustain a sin-consciousness and was of no redemptive benefit to anyone.)
Also by saying, “I am commissioned to fulfil your will,” he announces the final closure of the first in order to introduce the second. (Grace replaces the law; innocence supersedes sin-consciousness.) (Hebrews 10:5-6, 8-9).

Mankind is declared innocent. You are innocent. Let that sink in.

The verdict of the judge, in light of the victory of Jesus through the cross, is that all mankind is innocent, not guilty, justified and righteous. That is unconditional love in action; and that is God in action. The cross was an amazing love transaction that dealt with the legal consequences of mankind’s lost identity. Jesus conquered sin and death with love. Love released full and total, unconditional forgiveness.

Forgiveness is as unconditional as love; no works are required.

Each of this series of blog posts is adapted from Mike’s latest FREE video series on ‘Unconditional Love’.
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9900

241. You Have Not Desired

Mike Parsons
and Jeremy Westcott  – 

God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and He has committed to us the word of reconciliation (2 Corinthians 5:19).

Modern evangelical religion sees the Father punishing and forsaking his own Son on the cross. Yet the early Church Fathers (who were discipled by those that Jesus discipled in love) did not believe that God punished Jesus. The cross is not about abandonment but quite the opposite: healing and reconciliation.

Relationship sees the death of Jesus as the communion, oneness and togetherness of Father, Son and Holy Spirit breaking into our separation.  It sees the love of God breaking into our alienation and darkness with light. The purpose of Jesus’ death is to find us, to establish relationship with us, in our sin, in our death, in our bondage; and to recreate us or to make us alive, to bring us from death into life. That has been His desire all along.

If God is ‘not counting their trespasses against them’ then there is no reason for Him to punish anyone. And fear of punishment is absolutely not the way Perfect Love operates in any case: instead, His kindness leads us to repentance:

Or do you show contempt for the riches of his kindness, forbearance and patience, not realising that God’s kindness is intended to lead you to repentance? (Rom 2:4 NIV).

What is wrong with this picture?

So if we look at the Old Testament law and the sacrificial system and see an angry God needing appeasement, something is very wrong with this picture.

Cain and Abel were the first people we know of who brought God an offering:

So it came about in the course of time that Cain brought an offering to the Lord of the fruit of the ground. Abel, on his part also brought of the firstlings of his flock and of their fat portions (Gen 4:3-4).

God had not asked them for anything. So I wonder who told them that God required offerings or sacrifices. I would suggest that it was the same satanic DIY religion whose lies inspired Adam and Eve to make coverings and hide in the bushes.

Since then, and throughout mankind’s history, making sacrifices (including child sacrifices) to appease angry do-it-yourself gods has been integral to religion. Sacrifices are made to ensure fertility, bountiful harvests, security and victory. Abraham was told to leave his idol-making family behind but he didn’t (Gen 12:1). Jacob’s wife Rachel stole her family idols when she was leaving home (Gen 31:19). Israel sacrificed to idols while they were in Egypt, and even took them with them into the wilderness (Acts 7:43), where they got Aaron to make a golden calf (Ex 32:1-4).

Delight in sacrifice?

It was anger at the sight of the golden calf that caused Moses to break the original tablets God had given him (Ex 32:28), God’s own handiwork which according to the original Hebrew were actually sapphire cubes of heavenly revelation.

For the Law was given through Moses; grace and truth were realized through Jesus Christ (John 1:17).

Moses wrote the law from His own interpretation on the replacement tablets he cut out of stone. He gave the sacrificial law to stop Israel sacrificing (including child sacrifice) to idols such as the golden calf, Baal, Molech and countless others. God allowed Moses to introduce the law to limit sacrifices that could be made, not to endorse them. He neither wanted nor needed the sacrifice of animals to appease His wrath.

At that time they made a calf and brought a sacrifice to the idol, and were rejoicing in the works of their hands… as it is written in the book of the prophets, “It was not to Me that you offered victims and sacrifices forty years in the wilderness, was it, O house of Israel? You also took along the tabernacle of Moloch and the star of the god Rompha, the images which you made to worship” (Acts 7:41-43).

God really did not want their sacrifices.

For I did not speak to your fathers, or command them in the day that I brought them out of the land of Egypt, concerning burnt offerings and sacrifices (Jer 7:22).

Therefore, when He comes into the world, He says “Sacrifice and offering You have not desired, but a body You have prepared for Me; In whole burnt offerings and sacrifices for sin You have taken no pleasure” (Heb 10:5-6).

King David, even after committing murder and adultery, knew that appeasement was not what God required:

For You do not delight in sacrifice,
otherwise I would give it;
You are not pleased with burnt offering.
The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit;
A broken and a contrite heart, O God,
You will not despise
(Psa 51:16-17).

Justice, not sacrifices

“What are your multiplied sacrifices to Me?” says the Lord. “I have had enough of burnt offerings of rams and the fat of fed cattle; and I take no pleasure in the blood of bulls, lambs or goats… Wash yourselves, make yourselves clean; remove the evil of your deeds from My sight. Cease to do evil, Learn to do good; seek justice, Reprove the ruthless, Defend the orphan, Plead for the widow” (Isa 1:11, 16-17).

“I hate, I reject your festivals, nor do I delight in your solemn assemblies. Even though you offer up to Me burnt offerings and your grain offerings, I will not accept them; And I will not even look at the peace offerings of your fatlings… But let justice roll down like waters And righteousness like an ever-flowing stream” (Amos 5:21-22, 24).

“…and to love one’s neighbour as himself, is much more than all burnt offerings and sacrifices.” When Jesus saw that he had answered intelligently, He said to him, “You are not far from the kingdom of God” (Mark 12:33-34).

A change of heart, righteousness or justice could only come from relationship with God, not out of the self-righteousness associated with our own DIY religion, or with the Law. In fact the Law only served to demonstrate to those who were under it that they could not have a relationship with God through their own DIY efforts.

A living sacrifice

Therefore I urge you, brethren, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies a living and holy sacrifice, acceptable to God, which is your spiritual service of worship (Romans 12:1).

Paul is not writing here about trying to appease God by serving Him. It is very easy to slip back into the mindset that we need to do something to make us more acceptable to Him. Political and religious spirits constantly seek to subvert the gospel. Jesus warned his disciples about this:

“Watch out! Beware of the leaven of the Pharisees and the leaven of Herod” (Mark 8:15).

So let us consider, are we in any way still living a DIY religious lifestyle?

  • Are we praying and reading our Bibles more out of fear than faith?
  • Are we doing good works to earn forgiveness, or brownie points?
  • Are we paying our tithes and giving our offerings out of obligation?
  • Are we sacrificing our children on the idol of ministry?

There’s nothing I could do
That would ever make You
Love me more
There’s nothing I could do
That would ever make You
Love me less
(Outrageous Love by Jonathan David Helser and Ed Cash).

Nothing we can do could possibly make Him love us any more than He already does. Nothing we can do can make Him love us any less. He loves us consistently, perfectly, passionately. Once we recognise this fact, the idol of ‘GOD’ as the distant, angry, punishing deity begins to be demolished in our lives.

What if?

  • What if God was ACTUALLY good?
  • What if God was ONLY good?
  • What if God was ALWAYS good?
  • What if there was NO dark side to God – at all?
  • What if God was FOR us, not against us?
  • What if God doesn’t allow evil, but rather seeks to DISALLOW it by applying His curative energies to both victim and offender?
  • What if God cares deeply, tenderly and intensely for the wellbeing of everyone at all times and in all places?

A.W. Tozer famously said that “by a secret law of the soul, we grow to resemble our image of God.” We become like who we behold; so we need to know the true God if we are to be like Him and represent Him on the earth.

Once again, let me say, I am not trying to invent or convert anyone to a new theology or belief system but I am encouraging us all to meet God face to face and find out what He is really like. Instead of agreeing or disagreeing with me about these things, why not ask God for personal revelation an d let Him reveal Himself as the Truth?

This blog post is adapted from Mike’s teaching in the ‘Engaging God‘ subscription programme. Find out more…

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Nothing I could do 2

240. Loving Instruction and Correction

Mike Parsons
with Jeremy Westcott

Love, the very essence of His Being

If we continually engage with God in a relational way we will continually find new things. We certainly cannot contain Him in a box – or even in a book. We need a relationship with Him and then, just as in any relationship, we will gradually (or sometimes in a flash of revelation) get to know what He is really like.

As the Joshua Generation, we are called to engage our inheritance, to cross over into the realms of heaven. In that, whether we are engaging God in the realms of heaven or engaging Him in our own heart, or in the spirit, or outside of time and space in the heart of God Himself, God is revealing His precepts, His character and His nature. When we meet God face to face, it begins to change our view of Him, and for the better. You can take it from me: we honestly have no idea just how good He is!

When I have engaged face to face with Him, what I have found is that God is Love. That is not only His predominant characteristic, but the very essence of His being. That Love poses a challenge to many of the ways we have thought about God because of our religious upbringing or traditions. If we are to live as the sons of God we truly are, if we are to love one another and to love the world as He does, then we need to have an authentic experience and testimony of God as a loving Father. After all, we are His representatives, His ambassadors, and we are to play our part in bringing the whole of creation back into a relationship with Him, to be reconciled to Him. Notice that it is not that He needs to be reconciled to us, the world or creation: He has chosen to maintain relationship with us from eternity past and unambiguously demonstrated that once and for all through the cross.

Father, Son and Spirit

The word ‘God’ has all kinds of different meanings to different people. When I write or speak about ‘God’, what I mean is Father, Son and Spirit; there is a relationship there, eternally expressed between the members of the Trinity, and this is the relationship into which we are now invited. As we experience the true reality of who God is, false doctrines and theologies will be exposed as lies, distortions and misrepresentations when compared with the Truth (the person, Jesus, rather than an impersonal set of beliefs, tenets or ideas).

Jesus is the exact representation of the Father. He said, “If you have seen Me, you have seen the Father”. We may think we ‘know’ this, but right there is a potential bombshell of cognitive dissonance waiting to explode. What do I mean by that? When we read the Old Testament and the New Testament, there is a danger that we see two different ‘Gods’. The New Testament ‘God’ looks like Jesus, whilst the Old Testament ‘God’ is vengeful, vindictive, unpredictable, and downright scary. It should be no surprise if we struggle to hold these two incompatible views of God in our minds at the same time, yet that is exactly what many of us have done ever since we became Christians. We have looked at this through our own filters and through our own preconceived ideas. If we will look through the lens of Jesus we will realise that any dichotomy is not real, it is just a perception.

Not God at all

Every good thing given and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shifting shadow (James 1:17).

“For I, the Lord, do not change; therefore you, O sons of Jacob, are not consumed” (Malachi 3:6).

Everything that is good in our lives has come from God. Conversely, we can know that everything that is bad has not come from Him. He is, has been, and will always be the same. And His unchangeableness is the reason we are not consumed, and do not have to fear being consumed. It is because He is Love, that perfect Love who drives out all fear. He is good, all the time.

God (who is Father, Son and Spirit) is always smiling at us and is always in a good mood with us; always, even when we mess up. His countenance does not change. He does not get angry with us. Everything He does towards us is for our good, not to harm or punish us. And every time I have used the words ‘we’ and ‘us’ in this paragraph, that does not only include Christians: God so loved ‘the world’ [Greek: kosmos] that He gave… but we will pick up that particular hot potato another time.

The reason we might find it hard to trust God is because the god we have been taught to trust is not God at all. That “GOD” is an imaginary construct of DIY religion, a distant, angry disciplinarian, a two-faced deity with a dark side which is to be feared. That anger, or perhaps you may have heard it called ‘wrath’, could be poured out in extreme punishment on anyone at any time.

That was who Adam and Eve wanted to avoid by hiding in the bushes. But God did not come lashing out at them in anger, roaring “What have you done?” He came seeking them out in love, asking, “Where are you?”. He was saddened by the loss of relationship (and was ready to restore it, if only they were willing).

Discipline, not punishment

Last time we saw that the cross had nothing to do with ‘penal substitution’, nothing to do with God punishing Jesus. But that whole doctrine of penal substitutionary atonement has so perverted our view of God that we often try to avoid His discipline because of fear of punishment (because if He would punish Jesus, for sure He would punish us). Can we really trust a god who would punish his own son so cruelly? It is very difficult to see how anyone could trust in a god like that. The world does not, and votes with its feet.

However, God’s discipline has nothing to do with punishment:

Embrace correction. His instruction confirms your true sonship, just as a father would take natural responsibility for the education of his children. Discipline is not punishment but loving instruction and correction to bring out the best in us (Heb 12:7 Mirror Bible).

God disciplines us to bring us back to the image He created us in. The Greek word translated ‘discipline’ is paideia, which means ‘the training and education of children’ or ‘instruction that trains someone to reach full development (maturity)’. That is what God does with us. But we have a tendency to read into the word all kinds of experiences we may have had in our own childhood and customs and practices we may have adopted in bringing up our own children or observed in others. But God’s discipline is not flawed like ours. If His discipline seems harsh at the time, it is often because we do not like being caught out, or do not like the learning process necessary to get us back on track.

The perception of an angry, punishing, retributive “GOD” is reflected in our society. Western civilisation may be built on a Judeo-Christian ethical foundation, but if the Judeo-Christian understanding of the nature and character of God is flawed, then so too will be the society built on that foundation. The evidence is clear: angry, punishing parenting styles, support for corporal and even capital punishment, wars, jihads and crusades. This kind of institutionalised violence and retaliation has not solved the problems the world faces and it never will. Only love will solve the problem. Only relationship with God will deal with these issues. Our DIY methods only make things worse.

Spare the rod and spoil the child?

Many of us were told (and have believed ourselves) that corporal punishment is clearly taught in scripture. Christians in some countries have fought for the right to smack their children when their governments have sought to bring in laws to forbid the practice. Here is the scripture which is often quoted:

He who withholds his rod hates his son,
But he who loves him disciplines him diligently
(Prov 13:24).

Does this mean that we should beat our children to discipline them? It does not. When you understand what the rod is, you realise it is not a cane to beat someone with.

Your rod and Your staff, they comfort me (Ps 23:4)

The shepherd uses his rod to guide, to keep the sheep from stepping off the correct path, not to punish them.

God does not beat us. He corrects us, He puts us back on the right path in a loving way. His discipline is not an angry parent taking out their frustration on their child, as sometimes happens in human society. His discipline is parental love in action and nothing else. Nothing that harms and nothing that maims, shames or blames: only a love that empowers us to fulfil our destiny, a love that strengthens us to know our true identity and to express who we really are.

That is why we can embrace His correction, understanding that it demonstrates how much He loves us and that He cares deeply about us.

This blog post is adapted from Mike’s teaching in the ‘Engaging God‘ subscription programme. Find out more…

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creation relationship

#6626

178. No Spot or Wrinkle

Mike Parsons
with Jeremy Westcott –

For the word of God is living and active and sharper than any two-edged sword, and piercing as far as the division of soul and spirit, of both bones and marrow, and able to judge the thoughts and intentions of the heart (Heb 4:12).

God is looking to see us transformed (Rom 12:2), and bone and marrow are the deepest level of transformation, at the DNA level. The bone speaks of the structure of our lives and the marrow speaks of the source – red and white blood cells and stem cells.

Only 2% of the human DNA genetic code determines our physical appearance and characteristics. The other 98% used to be called junk DNA, but there are sequences, triggers and switches, in that 98% which turn on and off certain hidden attributes. For example, some diseases can be inherited but they only appear at certain times because of these triggers.

After their kind

Then God said, “Let the earth bring forth living creatures after their kind: cattle and creeping things and beasts of the earth after their kind”; and it was so (Gen 1:24).

‘After their kind’ means according to the genetic material within their species. God’s will is not for things to get mixed up between species. Impurity gives the enemy legal rights to occupy areas of our lives and to occupy places of authority that should be ours in heaven. Jesus is returning for a spotless bride, a bride without impurity:

…that He might present to Himself the church in all her glory, having no spot or wrinkle or any such thing; but that she would be holy and blameless (Eph 5:27).

As in the days of Noah

For the coming of the Son of Man will be just like in the days of Noah (Matt 24:37).

Therefore we need to understand what it was like in the days of Noah, and we have posted about this before. There was genetic manipulation taking place in the time of Noah, and even after the flood, giants appeared in Ham’s genetic line.

Today there is a lot of genetic modification not only within species but between them. Scientific researchers are mixing DNA from animals and plants, which has been forbidden by God. GRIN technologies (Genetic, Robotic, Information Technology and Nanotechnology) are designed to transform human abilities. If they have cloned Dolly, the sheep, then certainly someone, somewhere is looking to clone a person, even if this is banned.

All these things are taking place now, in the times leading up to Jesus return.

He shall bruise your head

The Lord God said to the serpent…
“And I will put enmity
Between you and the woman,
And between your seed and her Seed;
He shall bruise your head,
And you shall bruise His heel.”
(Gen 3:14-15).

Satan put in place two strategies to try to prevent the seed of woman ever being born. Firstly he traded with Adam and Eve to acquire human DNA. In killing Abel, Cain demonstrated the nature of his true father (just what Jesus saw in the Pharisees (John 8:44; Matt 23:31-32)). The sons of the evil one in the parable of the tares (Matt 13:38) are his sons genetically, not just spiritually.

Satan has always tried to wipe out the pure seed. He knew the pure seed would be his undoing. On the cross Jesus fulfilled that Genesis 3 prophecy by destroying satan’s work.

Angels who did not keep their own domain

But the enemy had another plan as well:

Now it came about, when men began to multiply on the face of the land, and daughters were born to them, that the sons of God saw that the daughters of men were beautiful; and they took wives for themselves, whomever they chose (Gen 6:1-2).

These sons of God were the watcher angels spoken of in Jude:

And angels who did not keep their own domain, but abandoned their proper abode, He has kept in eternal bonds under darkness for the judgment of the great day, just as Sodom and Gomorrah and the cities around them, since they in the same way as these indulged in gross immorality and went after strange flesh, are exhibited as an example in undergoing the punishment of eternal fire (Jude 6-7).

Only evil continually

The Nephilim [the word comes from the Hebrew for ‘fallen ones’] were on the earth in those days, and also afterward [after the flood] when the sons of God came in to the daughters of men, and they bore children to them. Those were the mighty men [Gibborim] who were of old, men of renown… Then the Lord saw that the wickedness of man was great on the earth, and that every intent of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually (Gen 6:4-5).

Adam and Eve had been made in the image of God, but within 1200-1500 years men were ‘only evil continually’, so that God had to wipe them all out.

The Lord was sorry that He had made man on the earth, and He was grieved in His heart. The Lord said, “I will blot out man whom I have created from the face of the land”. But Noah found favour in the eyes of the Lord. These are the records of the generations of Noah. Noah was a righteous man, blameless in his generations; Noah walked with God. Noah became the father of three sons: Shem, Ham, and Japheth (Gen 6:6-10).

Noah walked in the realms of the spirit with God, just like Enoch. And the phrase ‘blameless in his generations’ is very important: God found one man who was genetically pure. We do not know about his wife, or his sons, though if you look at how Ham behaved later (Gen 9:22-25), it is not surprising that we find Nephilim on the earth again even after the flood (Gen 6:4).

We all come from those 3 families, so our DNA may well be polluted. Maybe it already affects us today, or maybe it is ready to be ‘switched on’ to affect us in the future. We need to deal with it so that we become genetically pure. Then God can ‘switch on’ the supernatural abilities that were lost by Adam.

Transformation 2012 15 (1)

Satan fell in eternity. God formed time to contain satan’s sin, and in eternity to come there will be no record of what he did. But through out Old Testament times, satan tried to pollute the seed.

The ‘Nephilim agenda’

Randy DeMain has written extensively about the resurgence of Nephilim today. If the days of Noah were days of genetic impurity, he suggests that so too will be the days leading up to Jesus’ return. The Nephilim will not turn up this time as giants: they have refined their methods and will use such techniques as transhumanism, hybridization, genetic DNA modification; perhaps even hybrids developed by trans-dimensional beings from DNA harvested through what is popularly known as ‘alien abduction’. This may all be starting to sound like the X-Files, but perhaps ‘the truth is out there’.

The agenda is to destabilise financial and government systems, causing chaos and destruction; to use science to establish genetically engineered retroviruses, contagion, and plague agents; to use the media to popularise and desensitise us to such concepts as vampires (there are no good vampires, whatever the creators of the Twilight saga would have us believe), werewolves, zombies and aliens.

We need to be aware of such an agenda, but not fearful of it. The purpose of all this is to rob man of his inheritance. The devil comes to rob, kill and destroy (John 10:10) but Jesus came to destroy the devil’s works.

Demonstrate the power of Jesus

God’s desire is to have the earth full of the sons of God. We are looking to an end time harvest of souls in which people will be rescued, saved, delivered, transformed, healed and brought into wholeness before Jesus’ return. We have a lot of work to do, and we must demonstrate the power that Jesus worked in. When the world is falling apart, we need to have the answers (both natural and spiritual) that people will be looking for.

God wants ‘the church in all her glory’ (Eph 5:27) to represent and manifest His glory, His manifest presence flowing through us. For that to happen, transformation needs to take place in us on each level: separation of soul and spirit; dividing the thoughts and intentions of the heart; bone and marrow (Heb 4:12). We need to be genetically pure: spirit, soul and body.

In coming posts we will look at how we can apply the power of communion, the blood of Jesus and the DNA of God, so that nothing remains in our genetic make-up for the enemy to use to rob us of our inheritance.

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89. Seed Wars

Mike Parsons
with Jeremy Westcott – 

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

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

Time and Eternity

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

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

The Fall of Man

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

Trading for Seed

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

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

Seed Wars

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

Polluting the Seed

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

Jesus the Seed

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

Abraham and his Seed

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

The Prophecy Fulfilled

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

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73. A literal 1000 years?

Mike Parsons
with Jeremy Westcott –

Scripture teaches us that Satan is bound for a thousand years. In this short post I just want to look more closely at that figure and consider whether it is literal or symbolic.

cattle-20527_1280To do that, let’s look at some examples of how the Bible uses it in other places.

For every beast of the forest is Mine, the cattle on a thousand hills (Ps 50:10).

So are the cattle on the 1001st hill not His? Clearly this is not a literal 1000 hills, it is just a big number – in fact it means all of them.

For a thousand years in Your sight are like yesterday when it passes by, or as a watch in the night (Ps 90:4).

Are a literal thousand years exactly like a day to God in heaven, or is it really saying that heavenly things are eternal whilst earthly things are temporal (and temporary)?

And it is the same with this scripture: He has remembered His covenant forever, the word which He commanded to a thousand generations (Ps 105:8). If that is literal, you are in trouble if you are part of the 1001st generation! Will the 1001st generation miss out on His covenant blessings? Will His word no longer be operating? That is not what it means at all.

You might think I am deliberately picking references to the number 1000 and 1000 years which are not literal. But I cannot find even one Old Testament reference to a literal 1000 years, nor did Jesus ever teach about it or even mention it. There is nothing in the epistles to indicate that there would be a significant period of a literal 1000 years. We have one short passage in Revelation 20, and people have built up a massive theology around it being a literal 1000 years when there is nothing else in scripture to back it up.

The conclusion has to be that the number 1000 is symbolic. It is made up of 10x10x10, and 10 is the number of fullness. The ‘thousand years’ is the whole of this period we are living in. And when everything is fulfilled, Jesus will return.

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Related article from Jonathan Welton: A literal new heaven and new earth

28. Present a Living Sacrifice (1)

Mike Parsons –

Paul writes to the Romans,

I urge you, brethren, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies a living and holy sacrifice, acceptable to God, which is your spiritual service of worship (Rom 12:1).

A living sacrifice is a prepared sacrifice. It will help us if we understand what was involved in offering a sacrifice in the Old Testament. When they sacrificed a lamb they prepared it in a certain way so that it was able to be received as an offering. It was the High Priest who prepared and arranged the sacrifice on the altar, and we know that Jesus is our Great High Priest (Heb 4:14). So now we come into the holy place within the heavenly tabernacle and present ourselves on the altar of incense to be a sweet-smelling aroma to God; we invite Jesus to prepare us as a sacrifice: we know what He is going to do, and we deliberately allow Him to do it.

This is how the High Priest prepared the sacrifice:

  1. He slit its throat and drained its blood. If we are going to be prepared as a living sacrifice, we have to be willing to have our throat slit and our blood drained so that our life in the flesh is exchanged for His life in the spirit. Not literally, not physically having our throat slit, I hasten to add. But Jesus said, “You need to deny yourself, take up the cross daily, and follow me”. Lose our life, to gain His life. We are going to need to totally die to doing it our way, as a choice where we say, “I die to myself,  I deny myself”, daily.
  2. The head was chopped off. We cannot be in charge, with our head. We have to be saying, like Jesus, “Not my will, but Yours be done”. He is the perfect sacrifice. He did this every day. He presented Himself morning by morning as a disciple (Is 50:4). I renounce the right to my free will. Every time, my flesh would get in the way and I would choose to do what suits me rather than what suits God. Therefore, not my will, but Yours be done: I am not going to let my head decide what I am going to do.
  3. The skin was removed. We cannot have defence mechanisms, protection mechanisms and our own self-righteousness as a barrier: we have to be vulnerable and transparent before God, and before others. We cannot protect ourselves: we must live in His protection. We have the armour of light, the armour of righteousness, and the armour of God to protect us. We do not have any of them if we try to protect ourselves with inferior armour of our own making. It is time to let it go.
  4. He split the body completely open, and washed all the inner parts. God wants our heart purified, refined and washed in the living water of His Word and His Presence. We have to be willing to open up our heart, open up our life. That’s what a living sacrifice is, it is saying “Everything belongs to You. I am not hiding anything from You. You have it all”.
  5. Finally, He chopped the legs off. We cannot walk our own way, we have to surrender daily and walk according to how the Spirit leads. “I am going to do nothing other than what I see the Father doing” (John 5:19). That is how Jesus did His miracles: He saw the Father doing it. He is calling us to do the same: miracles, signs and wonders, being led by the Spirit daily, following Him, not doing our own thing and going off in our own direction, but every day surrendering that day to God and saying, “God, this day belongs to You. This is Your day, I am just here as a servant. You lead me, You use me, empower me, envision me, show me what You are doing”.

When we go to heaven and He gives us revelation there, when we spend time in our spirit, in communion and fellowship with Him; if we present ourselves as a living sacrifice, He will reveal Himself.  He will use us if we give Him the opportunity. But we have to surrender and allow Jesus to prepare us to be the sacrifice, and we cannot offer it half-heartedly; because if we do, He knows.

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27. Surrender, Crucifixion and Sacrifice

Mike Parsons –

I surrender

We are continuing to look at the Prophetic Timetable that God showed me, the plan of what He intends  to do in our days, until Jesus returns. As I have said, there are no specific dates here, but periods of time in which God will be working in particular ways.

In the coming days, God is going to equip people in supernatural ministry. There will be cities of refuge (we read about cities of refuge in the Old Testament: they were places where people could go and be safe). God is speaking to us here at Freedom about being one of those cities of refuge. And there will be others because in the times that are going to come, people will need places of safety that only the kingdom of God can provide.

Surrender

All the creative gifts are going to be released, whether in music or the arts or media – all sorts of areas. God is going to release that, but He has first to remove the stumbling blocks: and the gathering angels are waiting. We do not have to wait for that time, do not have to wait till He comes and pins us to the ground. We can be proactive: we can surrender and allow God to do it right now; we can get on our face before Him and allow Him to do anything He chooses in our lives: get rid of the flesh, pride, rebellion, impurity, unbelief – anything. And if we surrender, He will do it.

He wants us to surrender, He wants us to say ‘Yes’ to Him, so that we can shine like the sun, shine with His glory: the light has come, and that light needs to be released, manifested through us as true sons of God, manifested in power. The whole of creation is groaning, waiting for the manifestation of God’s sons (Rom 8), those who are actually reflecting the glory of Jesus, who are truly living as Christians – ‘little Christs’. You know, ‘Christ’ is not Jesus’ surname: it means ‘Anointed One’ and it puts the focus on His anointing. So when we are Christians, we are anointed ones; and we carry His anointing and His power. All those ancient anointings, together with new ones, are going to be released in these days. So please, let’s not miss out, any of us.

Crucifixion

I have been crucified with Christ; and it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me; and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by faith of the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself up for me (Galatians 2:20).

That is a key scripture in surrendering to God. This is what Jesus has already done for us on the cross: are we going to embrace it? Are we going to count ourselves crucified with Him? We are going to have to surrender ourselves to that crucifixion of the flesh. Everything that could hinder, and cause us to be a stumbling block, or cause us to miss out; everything that has happened to us; all the pain and the hurt, the disappointment, the people who have let us down, and the abuse that we have suffered – are we going to allow any of that to stop us? Or are we going to use it as a springboard to surrender to God, to be healed, restored, and made whole?

Let me make it personal: will you ask yourself, “Am I going to allow God to change my life, so that I can get on and do the things that He has called me to do?”

He wants to live through us. The New Age movement has robbed us of so much, because they have counterfeited what is real. When you talk about being a channel of the Holy Spirit or being a channel of God’s power, there is a sharp intake of breath as people say, ‘Oooh, you can’t do that”. And that is because the New Age people talk about channelling spirits. But we are actually supposed to be a channel of the Holy Spirit; rivers of living water are supposed to flow through us; we are supposed to be those who God breathes through, who God lives in, so that people see Him in our lives.

Sacrifice

This is how we do it:

I urge you, brethren (and ‘urge’ is a very strong word), by the mercies of God, to present your bodies a living and holy sacrifice, acceptable to God, which is your spiritual service of worship.  And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, so that you may prove what the will of God is, that which is good and acceptable and perfect (Rom 12:1-2).

That is what worship is. Worship is not singing songs, though singing songs may be a way we express our worship. Worship is bowing down in obedience and saying, “You are God, and I submit and surrender to You. I present my life as a living sacrifice: You use it how You want to use it. I am not going to get in the way, I am not going to determine what I am going to do in my life, I am going to surrender it to You. I will allow You to lead me”.

Those who are children of God are led by the Spirit. We are not conformed to this world, we don’t have to come under the rules and regulations of the world. I am not talking about the laws of the land, we need to respect and honour those in authority over us; but I am talking about the things of the world that seek to keep us down, things that say to us, “You’re not good enough, you’ll never be anything”.

God uses the foolish things of the world to confound the wise. He is not looking for people of great intellect, He is looking for people who are available, people who are willing. It is not about how much head-knowledge we have of the Bible: what counts is knowing Jesus. It is actually having a personal relationship with Him. No-one reading this is excluded from that, no-one at all. You might have university degrees, that is great. I had an education like that, but did it help me in knowing God? Not a bit. Most of the time it got in the way, because I rationalised, analysed and thought about Him rather than feeling Him, experiencing Him and knowing Him.

And now that I am feeling, experiencing and knowing Him, it is a total revelation! To meet with God and know Him, to meet with the Holy Spirit and know what God is saying; to receive visions and direction and dreams from God: that is what He wants for us, and that is how He wants to speak to us. We cannot know God except by experience. It is not about gaining knowledge, it is about being transformed by the renewing of our mind. Then we will know what God’s will is for our lives, and we will be able to outwork it.

That is why God wants us to sacrifice ourselves to Him, to surrender and to submit to Him as Lord of our lives: to allow Him to determine what our lives are like – who we are, where we go, what we do, what we say.

How do we surrender and submit to Him? We come as a living sacrifice, a prepared sacrifice; and in the next post we will see exactly what that involves.

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19. Stepping Up

Mike Parsons – 

Step up

In our days, the prophetic books are being opened. Fresh revelation is being released: revelation of the Spirit, revelation of heaven, revelation of the days ahead. And God wants His people to get plugged into the Holy Spirit and to be aware of what is going on in our own lives, in the world around us, and in heavenly places, so that we can cooperate with what He is doing.

Where more is given

As each period comes along, it is going to require more of us. God is going to require more of us.  Each period brings more revelation, both of what is going on on earth and of what is going on in heaven. And God says that where more is given, more is required.

He wants us to step up to a new level of holiness, a new level of being set apart for Him, a new level of righteousness. He is coming to refine and purify us so that we are able to live on that new level, and we have to submit to Him in that, because He is looking to prepare us for what is coming. On each level there will be more demonstration of kingdom power and authority. God wants to take today’s church back, not just to the early church (or New Testament) levels of kingdom authority, but back to the Garden, where He conferred the mandate on Adam and Eve to bring the kingdom of heaven to earth. That task and that mandate are now ours.

This diagram is a representation of what God showed me:

Periods of God's Prophetic Timetable

On each level there will be stronger and more powerful demons and fallen angels for us to defeat and dethrone. But we will be able to defeat and dethrone them. We will be able to take new ground on earth, in areas we haven’t yet ventured into. There is territory to occupy and a strategy to outwork. We have the power to overcome: we can do all things through Christ who strengthens us.

Step up

God is looking for us to be a habitation of His Presence, and we need to be prepared to step up. He is calling us to be a people who will bring the kingdom of God from heaven to earth. That call starts with a call to intimacy because only in knowing Him intimately can we be prepared to move up to the next level. Intimacy is absolutely key to moving forward in this.

In the Kingdom Explosion meetings in 2011 when Mike Bryant was here, God showed him that there were three phases of what He was intending to do, and that the first of those phases was fire. The purpose of the fire was first of all to thaw us out! God wants us softened up. He wants to draw us, His sons, His children, to draw us to Him in a close, intimate relationship, and to stir up our passion and our desire for Him. Jesus is to be our first priority, our first love. His kingdom is what we seek, and what we seek first. And we will need constantly to surrender to Him, in order to encounter Him at ever deeper levels.

Encounter

This is about love. It is about our identity as sons of God. It is about a new level of knowing Him. The Old Testament word for know is “yadah” which means “personal encounter.” There is a difference between the Hebrew and the Greek ways of thinking. The western world has been fashioned and formed by a Greek mindset. We cannot go deeply into that here, but we do need to understand that the Hebrew concept of ‘knowing’ has nothing to do with the intellect. You cannot say you know God unless you have actually experienced Him. People with a Hebrew mindset won’t even listen to you if you are not speaking from experience. Moses had that kind of an encounter with God at the burning bush. That was an experience in which what he saw and heard opened up his destiny for him. We need a personal encounter with God in the same kind of way to open up our destiny for us. As we come to truly know Jesus, His Presence in us will be obvious, and His light will be increasingly shining from within us and growing in intensity.

The New Testament word for know is “ginosko”, and this is the word used for a man knowing his wife and bearing a child. That is pretty intimate isn’t it? This is not sexual, of course, but it is the spiritual equivalent. It is a relationship in which nothing is held back, on either side. We hold nothing back from Him; He holds nothing back from us.

He wants us to know Him in two places: on earth (in our own spirit), and also in heaven. Psalm 23 is a powerful psalm which talks about the intimate relationship God desires to have with us, and that is where we will be going in the next post.

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17. Prophetic Timetable Overview (part 2)

Mike Parsons – 

Important note: at the time of writing this blog post, Mike had not yet received all the revelation he now has regarding the ‘hell‘ delusion, AD70 as the ‘end of the age’, happy eschatology and the restoration of all things, for example.

Last time we looked at the opening stages of what I have called the Prophetic Timetable – at what God is planning to do in our days. There is a call to intimacy, a gathering of stumbling blocks, a raising up of a Joshua generation, a judgment of God’s household, a harvest of labourers and a shaking of the world’s systems.

Final Harvest

And there is going to be a final harvest. I have told you before, at the very least there are going to be more people in heaven than not. If there are 6 billion people today on the planet, then I want most of those people to be swept into the kingdom of God – but we are going to need that earlier harvest of labourers to bring this harvest in.

The River of Life is flowing from the throne in heaven today. The crystal river is full of gems and other wonderful things, but it is flowing through the realms of the heavenlies, into the dimensions of the atmosphere of the earth, a kingdom in (not ‘of’) darkness, to a place called Nirvana. Some of you might know what that place is, it is a desolate place. The river is being dammed up in that dimensional realm. The River of Life continues to flow and build up pressure and so that dam is going to be broken when we take back possession, when we take back the authority that Adam lost. Satan became the prince of the power of the air in what was Adam’s sphere of influence. When we bring the dominion of the kingdom of God, opening the everlasting doors so that the light of the glory of God disperses the darkness, then that dam is going to break and the River of Life is going to be poured out on earth. That’s why this harvest is going to come, it is because the River of Life is going to be poured out. I have seen that place, it is desolate right now, waiting and waiting for us to get our act together, to take back authority, to release the things of God.

There is going to be increasing darkness, but increased light. Increasing darkness in the world; increasing light in the church. We are going to shine before people; we are going to demonstrate the light, to be children of light. There will be increased manifestations of the glory of God, signs and wonders, and full ministry and full miracles being released. As a result of all that, there is going to be persecution. When we start seeing the true church born out of the institutional church, there is going to be persecution. But we can rise above that. There is going to be an end-time transfer of wealth: we are going to need to be able to finance the end-time harvest.

The mountain of the house of the Lord (speaking of God’s Kingdom, administered through the church) is going to be raised up above every other mountain, every other hill, every one of those things that are being ruled right now by the enemy.

Return of Jesus

These paragraphs reflect Mike’s undersrtanding in 2011 (see note at the head of this blog post).

[Jesus is going to return. But in Acts 3:21 it says that Jesus will remain in heaven ‘until the restoration of all things about which God spoke by the mouth of His holy prophets from ancient time’. So everything prophetically spoken in the New and Old Testaments will be fulfilled before Jesus returns. That is going to blow some of your theologies out of the water. There is all sorts of nonsense talked about what is going to happen. Jesus said that He is coming back in the same way that He went. When He comes back on the last day, it will be the end of time and the ushering in of eternity. He is going to stay in heaven until He has restored everything on earth. So, everything promised to Adam and Eve: restored. Everything promised through the prophets: restored. Everything spoken of through Jesus: fulfilled, coming into its fullness before He returns. Not after He has returned, but before He returns. ‘He must remain in heaven until…’.

So who is going to do the restoration? We are, His people. He gave the original mandate to Adam and Eve, and now He has given it back to His people, calling us to fulfil it – as he calls the church to fulfil it – calling us to bring His kingdom on earth, as it is in heaven.

There will be a last day, when Jesus comes, a day of resurrection, a day of judgment, when we will be changed in the twinkling of an eye, it says, and we will be drawn to meet him. On that last day, He is indeed coming back in the same way He went: on clouds of glory, with the cloud of witnesses who will be with Him, to receive us to himself.]1

The ages to come

And then we have the ages to come. All this that we are experiencing right now is just preparation for the ages to come. This is not the final deal; this is to prepare us for what is to come. And how you live here will determine what you do there. Jesus said some people are going to rule over ten cities, or five, or some over one – that was just an illustration of how there are going to be different roles to play, different levels of authority to exercise, and that will be dependent on our faithfulness here in doing the things Jesus did and the reward that He is going to release to us in that heavenly realm. Now, I want to rule over a universe, don’t you? Jesus said we could do the things He did, and greater; well, He created this universe, why not create another one? Take the limits off your thinking here: with God in eternity we are not going to be sitting around on a cloud with a little harp, plucking it and saying ‘Oooh isn’t this lovely!’. The ages to come are what we are being prepared for here and now; in the ages to come He is going to show us the fullness of everything.

Fire will come and purify the church. So anyone who is storing up stuff here, no matter how good it is, it is going to go into the fire. We need to be ready, because God has already begun.

In future posts we will begin to look in more detail at these periods, and first of all the call to intimacy.

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