Tag: Unconditional Love

533. A Well-Being Economy

Mike Parsons

A Well-Being Economy

I would like to see politicians who do want to be supporting the people of the country they live in rather than the big businesses or the corporations or everything else. People’s health and well-being should be the key factor. So I think a well-being economy rather than a productivity economy would more reflect God’s heart.

There are some governments around the world who have adopted a well-being economy agenda, but not the US, ot Britain, although I think Scotland does as part of Britain, and New Zealand. I think some of the Scandinavian countries are looking and thinking, “What are we doing? You know, we are ruining the planet, ruining people’s lives. What for? To make people rich.”

So I do believe that actually a well-being economy would change things to benefit more people for more of the time and therefore health and immortality would certainly be part of that.

Profit Over Health

Now, I do not know how much of this is true, but I read about when they first introduced corn syrup into the US food system and how it was marketed as the solution to everyone’s problems. Corn syrup has basically produced obesity throughout the world. But someone made a lot of money out of corn syrup and it was promoted by advertising to be a healthy option.

And I think there are things like advertising companies who make money promoting products which are unhealthy. I mean, look at the epidemic of opioid addiction and those that made all the money out of promoting addiction on the basis of, “This is safe and non-addictive.” When you look at oxycodone and other things, I mean, you know, I have looked at the movies or TV series about it and obviously people were prosecuted or whatever else, but it is still going on.

People are making money out of making other people sick. Well, that is the sort of thing that should be addressed in government, but who is taking the backhanders? Potentially, those who make decisions on what drugs and how much they are charging and all of that stuff. You know, there is this massive scandal in the pharmaceutical world, which is not trying to make people well, it is just trying to make people more money at the expense of other people while they keep them sick.

So I definitely believe there needs to be a change. That change will not come about until the governments are not influenced by those who have the most money and the most lobbying power.

Truth, Discernment, Integrity

So, I would love to see a well-being economy looking out for the health of the nation and changing things to help people live more healthily and live longer and eventually, if they live longer, finding God and finding healthy immortality.

436. How to Live Forever | Communion (Part 1)

It is not an easy world we live in and it is becoming harder and harder for people to know the truth. I mean, if you saw something on the TV 50 years ago, 40 years ago, even 30 years ago, you would think what you were looking at was absolutely the truth because you were seeing it on your screen and someone was reporting on it.

Now the people who are reporting the news are making the news and they are deciding what is news, and what you see you cannot believe with your own eyes anymore, unless you were there in person. And I think that is a very dangerous situation in that there are a lot of people who are not discerning enough to actually see what the truth is. Therefore, they believe what they are being told, and what they are being fed as true, when it is not true.

And sadly, I do not think most people will go and find out what is true or do their own fact-checking on what is true. They just listen to what is being said. And I do not think that is what we should be doing as believers. We should be looking at the truth, which is Jesus, spending enough time with the truth to be discerning of what is true.

So I never take what I am hearing and accept it as being true or not true. If it is important to me, I will fact-check it – with God, primarily. I might do some of my own research, but even that is harder and harder to do, to find out what is actually true because who knows whether what you are reading is true?

500. Jesus, The Ultimate Fact-Checker!

So God is the best source of information when it comes to what is true. And the more time you spend with the frequency of truth, then when you hear something, you discern the frequency of love and truth on it. That will help you.

Character Rather Than Charisma

And it is not one side or the other. It is both sides who do the same thing. And, you know, we need to rise above it all. We need to go into a realm where the truth is in a relationship which enables us to be discerning because we have practised training our senses to discern what is good and evil. And I do not think enough people have practised training their senses and therefore they are gullible to believe a lot of what is being said which is targeting them at their agendas.

384. Spiritual Senses | Learning to see beyond the physical

I mean marketplace stuff, social media, it is targeting people to buy things because it is listening to conversations and all of that stuff. And you get targeted marketing. You get targeted political statements. There is no integrity in doing that at all. They just want to win at all costs.

And I do not think that is the way we should operate as believers. We should be looking at the truth and focused on what is the truth. And there is truth in both sides of every argument. And there are truth and good things in both parties. But you are not going to get it because they will not come together on a higher agenda of, “We will support these good positive things that you are doing if you support these good positive things that we are doing.” It just does not happen, does it?

But I would hope that change would eventually be driven from grassroots people who say, “Enough is enough. We are just not playing this game anymore. We are not agreeing to this system anymore.”

Now, how you would do that, I do not know. But change has happened politically in history from people rising up and saying, “We are not having this any longer.” You know, who would have thought the Iron Curtain would come down and the Berlin Wall would come down? No one thought that was possible. But individuals began to promote change supported by the grassroots who were behind change and eventually change happened.

I would never have imagined the Berlin Wall would come down in my lifetime. Well, now I am going to live forever, so in that sense it would anyway. But back then it was a huge shock that essentially communism fell. But now, what have we got? Something worse probably that says it is democratic but actually is not and operates the way it does.

So things can get hijacked. We have got to have the right people who bring about the right change for the right reasons. And that is why we need to look to people with character and integrity rather than look at charisma or money. Do they have the right character and are they operating with integrity?

Thank you to our Patreon patrons – you help make these blogs and videos possible! Join at patreon.com/freedomarc and partner with us in taking the good news of unconditional love to all creation.

532. Grace Over Law | The Revolution of the New Covenant

Mike Parsons

No video? Click here.

The Old Covenant System

We’re looking at a perspective where the old covenant operated in a way that they had a system in which they needed a temple which reflected a heavenly picture of a holy of holies, an inner court and outer court and that sort of thing. And I do not understand personally why David would have desired to do that, when he had the presence of God in the Tabernacle of David, which represented our day in which the gospel would be open to all people, not just a limited people. But they had a religious system and, according to their religious system, they needed somewhere where God’s presence would be, where they could offer their sacrifices and offerings and their day of atonement and all that.

So according to that system, I can understand why that was important to them; and God worked within their system. But did he intend there to be these things made out of stone, when we are the temple that he always desired to dwell within and with? So we have got to look at it from their perspective. Under their religious system, a temple made sense.

Jesus came to completely destroy that temple. That is what he said. “Not one stone will be left standing on this temple,” which was the representation of the old covenant system of law, when the new covenant would be a system of grace, not law. So Jesus said that this system was coming to an end. It would happen within a generation. It happened within a generation.

320. The Signs of Jesus’ Coming

So we have got to be careful not to read into what happened in the old covenant as anything that we should be looking for to happen in the new covenant. So God certainly allowed them to have their belief system and he operated within it for them, but he did not condone it because he said, “Sacrifices and offerings I desired not.” You know, “You wanted to do this, I went along with it, but I never wanted it.” And even in Hebrews it says sacrifices and offerings God did not want.

So why did they do it? Because they operated in their own system of belief that they created to enable them, in their view, to have a relationship with God. But they never had a relationship with God that was personal and intimate. They had a relationship with religion and a system that they thought was keeping their nation safe from God’s wrath and judgment and punishment.

419. Jesus Saves Us From The Father’s Wrath? NO!

Grace Rather Than Law

The day of atonement is where an offering was made for the sin of the nation, whereas Jesus is the sin offering for the world. So we do not need any physical temples anymore. We are the temple of the Holy Spirit. God dwells in us. We are the tabernacle, and corporately God dwells in our midst as well as dwelling within us individually. There is a corporate dynamic to that.

But definitely I do not believe that we should be looking to rebuild or have temples which are physical things. Now, I do not mind going into wonderful cathedrals and things like that where they have been built often out of respect and honour for God, and you can tell that people put their heart and soul into it. And they can be places where you can find peace and I have often been in them. But I do not believe in the religious system of denominations occupying them.

They did not have any church buildings for the first few hundred years, until Constantine decided that Christianity would be the Roman religion. Therefore they had a lot of temples which were now redundant, so they might as well use them for Christian things. The same with priests, a lot of redundant priests. So, let’s have a priesthood (rather than the priesthood of all believers, which is what it is).

All of us have access into the holy places of God in the realms of heaven.

445. Walking In The Spirit: A Journey Into Heavenly Realms

Reading the Bible With Perspective

Part of the problem with a lot of these things is we read what the Old Testament says and we think that must be true, the total truth. A lot of it is their interpretation of the truth from their understanding. It does not make it true. It makes it true from their perspective, under their religious system.

We have got to be so careful we do not just accept the Bible must be totally true because it says so. The Bible, you have got to understand, is a collection of books written by loads and loads of people. Some poetry, some wisdom, proverbs and things like that. Some are history, some prophetic books. They are all books written from someone’s perspective who wrote them. It does not make them right.

403. So you think the ‘Word of God’ is the Bible? Think again!

Just because they said that God said, “You need to wipe out this group of people,” does not make it right that he said it. They just used that because that was their view of God. God was going to wipe out their enemies, because that is how they saw it. That does not make it true. God was never going to wipe out his enemies in the way that they thought. God can turn enemies into friends. That is what it says, turn his enemies into his footstool, the place of worship, not destroy them and wipe them out.

531. When the Bible Becomes a Barrier

Mike Parsons

If you do not see the video above, please click here.

Get more from Mike when you join any tier at patreon.com/freedomarc.

Moving Beyond the Need for Proof

When I started this journey, everything for me had to be focused in the Bible because that was what I was brought up with in the evangelical system of thinking. And that was limiting what God was able to show me, which were things beyond the Bible. But because I needed it grounded there, that grounding then was outworked in what I knew. And so I would try to do it myself because I knew and I was confident, well, the Bible says this.

481. Beyond The Pages | Finding Truth Outside the Bible

Now, at that point, I had not gone through deconstruction, and that was still what was framing my relationship with God. But God wanted to take me beyond that, so he had to start weaning me off needing proof, biblical proof, which was where my proof came from, you know, because there were things then he started to show me. Well, if you want biblical proof about this, your understanding of the Bible needs to change because the way you see the Bible now is not going to give you the proof, which is actually the truth. Because you are framing it with a wrong expectation of me.

And I suddenly started to realise that what God was saying to me is, “You do not have to do this yourself. You just let me do it.” So presenting myself as a living sacrifice, as a priest, meant for me I was doing what I needed to do to be a good sacrifice. Whereas actually Jesus my high priest prepares me in my life. But I was doing the preparation.

Trust Jesus Rather Than Knowledge

So every day I would want to go into the tabernacle in heaven and I would want to look into the bronze laver and see a reflection. But what I was looking at was a reflection of my understanding of the Bible. I did not know at that point that Jesus was the Word of God. Of course, I knew it intellectually, but actually the Bible was the word of God. So for me, that is how it was.

403. So you think the ‘Word of God’ is the Bible? Think again!

Therefore being washed by the water of the word was not Jesus doing that. It was me, reading the Bible, who was doing it. So I was actually trying to wash myself. You know, when I was trying to renew my mind, I was using the Bible to try and renew my mind. And all of the things like “the word of God is like a sharp two-edged sword just dividing soul and spirit,” – I was trying to divide my soul and spirit using the Bible to do it.

And actually what Jesus was trying to say is “No, I am the living Word. So trust me, not in your knowledge, because your knowledge will not be enough to do it because you do not know enough, and also some of the things you think you know are not true.”

So it was quite a challenge, you know, to go through that process of him removing the evangelical framework of my thinking to trust him rather than to trust my knowledge. Ultimately that took me through a whole process where I had to accept that I was in control and I was doing it myself. And I was not trying to do a bad thing, but I was still doing it in works, and I was still doing it in the power of my soul, and I was still doing it actually because I trusted myself more than God.

489. Nine Pillars That Shaped (And Shook) My Beliefs

You know, because of the [understanding of the] nature I still had of God who was to be feared, because that was before my understanding of God was deconstructed into unconditional love. So I was still functioning in penal substitutionary atonement and all of those doctrines which were my understanding of framing the Bible. So I was framing the Bible wrongly all of that time.

Surrender, Deconstruction and Trust

So he decided to wean me off the need for biblical truth and biblical proof and show me that a lot of my understanding of what I thought was true based on the Bible was not true because it was based in a false system of belief based around a god who is not actually who God is.

So you go through seasons, and it is not always easy if we do not surrender. So what I have learned to do is just surrender and trust. If it seems to be a season of inactivity, it is okay: I trust you, and I trust you enough that if there is anything you want me to do, then you will show me. And when this season changes, then I will actually sense and feel something has shifted and now something else is happening.

But it is not an easy process when you are conditioned. And I was certainly conditioned. And I had to go through a lot of deconstruction. And I had to surrender to trust God before that deconstruction could really take place. You know, there was a degree where I had experiences that challenged some of the things I believed about God, but that was not sufficient at that point without a surrendering of my soul’s need to understand and to know and effectively to be in control.

501. Deconstructing Beliefs: A Journey to Authentic Faith

So God took me through a whole process of softening me up, preparing me, a lot of refining experiences of going into fire and going into being soaked and getting ready for the most difficult thing that ever happened when I got to the point where I had to surrender my right and need to know to just trust him. And that was such a hard thing back in 2012. But since then, my relationship with God, my understanding of who God is, my understanding of who I am has been totally transformed because I now know God at a completely different level.

So go for it, you know, go for resting. And it does not mean that you cannot say to God, okay, if you want to tell me what is going on or show me what you are doing, I am open. But that is not the driving force behind what you do when you engage God. Because there is no problem, God is quite happy for us to talk to him and ask him questions, but he is quite at liberty not to give us the answer if he does not want to. And we have to accept that there is a reason for that, whatever it might be. That is what we have to trust God in, the process.

 If you enjoy these videos, would you please take a moment to like, comment, and subscribe? It really does help. Thank you very much.

527: The Ripple Effect

Mike Parsons

No video? Please click here.

Join our Patreon patrons, who give a small amount each month and can tune in for our monthly group Zooms, get exclusive or early access to Mike’s teaching and enjoy many other patron-only benefits.

 

Transition Rather Than Revolution

I always hope for transition rather than revolution, because a lot of people get hurt in revolution. Transition is a more peaceful way of doing things, but I am not always totally convinced that transition brings about change if people do not want the change. What will cause people to want the change? They are not happy with the present situation, other than a more philanthropic view of wanting to see the world a better place, but most people are not really looking that way.

So ultimately, do I believe things will just change? I think there will be some shakings that promote people to look for a different solution, rather than perpetuating the same. It is people who will eventually bring the change. If 250 million people in the US suddenly found an intimate relationship with God as Father, things would change, because those people would demand change and they would be agents of change. They would change how they treat people, and then other people being treated differently would treat others differently.

508. God’s Desire For You | Discovering True Intimacy

Beyond Political Solutions

Ultimately, I am not optimistic of a political solution, but I am optimistic of God’s kingdom eventually, through transforming people’s lives, changing the world, hopefully transitionally. But there may well be some bumps in the road that cause people to start looking at different solutions to their life.

If you think the government is going to solve all your problems, you are looking in the wrong place, because has it ever solved everyone’s problems? Not really. So let us give them a role that they have, to make sure there is an infrastructure in the nation that can support well-being, but they are not there to control people’s lives and they are not there to make money for other people either.

433. Transform Your Life | Focus Your Energy

Discernment and Unity

We should be looking for peaceful transition, without what happened last time to divide the nation even further. You want things to come together, not be driven more and more apart. I would want people to be discerning and to be able to find out what is the truth, and not be swayed by lies and propaganda and all that goes on. The political arena is like a pigsty, everyone is dirty in it. Not corrupt, but it is just not a good environment, it just feels like it stinks. It did not used to as much as it does today.

Love as the Highest Agenda

As followers of Jesus, “love one another as I have loved you” should be the highest agenda that we have. To love one another, even if we disagree, whether we disagree politically or in so many different areas. Love should be the higher agenda and call; and if it was, things would be different.

It seems that in the last election, Christians were no better than anybody else in vilifying others, and it was not good. We need to rise above that and demonstrate love for those we disagree with, because that will change things, because Jesus said it would. How would the world know that we are his disciples? By our love for one another. And that does not exclude the world, because Jesus came to save the world, not just a part of it.

Love That Transforms

We need to love everybody, whether they are a different colour, speak a different language, or whatever differences there are. Nothing should be higher than love. Love can bring about unity and union, but only love can do it. Therefore, we need to be loved. More and more believers need to know that they are loved unconditionally so that they can choose to love each other, the world, and their neighbour.

Our neighbour may be a different colour, come from a different country, be an immigrant, or anything else. Most people in America are immigrants when you go back a few generations. So let us love each other, whatever our background or wherever we have come from. Let us choose to love one another, because that is the higher law. That is what will change things ultimately, if we choose to love one another.

510. Discovering Your Worth: The Truth of Being a Child of God

Love forgives

Jesus said to love your enemies. From our perspective we should not have enemies, but if people feel that they are our enemies, we should still love them, forgive them, and want to bless them. That is what love really is. Can you want the best for someone who does not love you? It is a challenge, but that is what Jesus did for those who put him on a cross, both political and religious. “Father, forgive them.”

I think that is what love does. Love forgives no matter what. And that would change things if more and more people who say they are followers of Jesus actually followed him by doing what he said, loving one another and loving their neighbour as themselves.

If you enjoy these videos, would you please take a moment to like, comment, and subscribe? It really does help. Thank you very much.

521. God Is Love: Rethinking Judgment, Identity and the Reach of Grace

Mike Parsons

No video? Please click here.

Join our Patreon patrons, who give a small amount each month and can tune in for our monthly group Zooms, get exclusive or early access to Mike’s teaching and enjoy many other patron-only benefits.

God’s Desire Is Always Good

God is good, and God wants to bring good into people’s lives, even out of the things they do which are wrong. He does not condone what they do, because what they do will often be negative towards themselves and towards others, and that is not something God desires. But God still wants to bring good.

It is the love of Christ that compels us. It is not fear of God’s judgment or anger. It is God’s love, and that is what we are meant to carry.

I know some people say that is all wishy-washy, and that you need to see God as this or that. But honestly, I do not think those people really know who God is if they believe He is angry, looking to punish people, or wanting to take people out. That is not who He is.

Identity, Not Condemnation

God wants people to find their identity as sons in relationship with Him, and to discover their place in bringing the kingdom of God on earth as it is in heaven. That is His desire for everybody. That is true for every single person on earth right now. No matter what they have done, Jesus has already died to forgive them. God does not hold it against them at all, because they are already reconciled to Him. They just do not know that, so they are operating out of a lost identity. They are doing things out of a lack of knowledge and experience of who they are.

We have all been there.

God did not judge me in a negative way. He graciously, with mercy and love, led me into discovering the truth. He did not come down and condemn me because I was believing lies, even though He knew I was believing lies about Him and many other things. He led me into an experience of truth which renewed my mind. I came to realise, I do not believe that anymore. There was no condemnation involved.

So we should not condemn people for where they are in their journey. They may still be operating out of a wrong identity, a wrong way of thinking, or a religious mindset, but so were we. Let us have grace and mercy for people, and help them find where the truth is. Not by condemning them, but by encouraging them to pursue God so they can find the truth in Him.

God Is Love, Fully and Consistently

God is love. I do not just think that, I know it. Therefore, God operates in love all the time. He is never anything other than love. People say, “Well, He is just and He is holy.” Of course He is. But that means justice and holiness are love expressed and outworked. They are not different.

We often create two versions of God when we compare what people think they see in the Old Testament with what Jesus revealed in the New. People end up operating in a mixture of those two ideas. But God is not two-faced. He has always been love. He has never been anything different. He was not operating differently in the Old Testament than in the New. People simply viewed Him differently.

They did not know Him. So they described Him out of their lack of knowledge, through their own religious mindsets, creating an image of God shaped by distance rather than relationship. That does not define Him. We have never defined God through our theology, beliefs or doctrines. God is not definable by us. He is God.

Therefore just because someone says God is like this, or writes something down and it is recorded in the Bible, does not mean it is true. If it contradicts the reality that God is love, then we know it is not true, because Jesus came to reveal who God really is. You do not see Jesus condemning people. He challenged people, but He did not condemn them. He did not judge them. He did not kill them. Even when people were killing Him on the cross, His response was, “Father, forgive them.”

That is God. He forgives. He is a loving God.

Awakening to Love

God has been misrepresented by all sorts of religions, including Christianity, as someone He is not. That is why people need to awaken to love. Many are doing that by leaving the conditional picture of God they encountered in church and finding Him outside of it. There are also people who have never been in church who are discovering that God is love, not through religion, but they are still coming through Jesus, even if they do not name Him.

He is the door to the Father. You cannot find the Father any other way, but that door is open. It has always been open. Jesus is the door; He has opened the way, and He has kept it open. He is not as precious about how people come through that door as we often are. When people find the Father, they will have come through Jesus the Son. They may not describe it that way, but that is the reality.

So we need to help people come through that door, to find Him, to experience the love of God, and to discover their identity in Him. Not to try to conform them to a religious system. In reality, more people are finding God and His love outside of Christianity than within it.

Already Reconciled, Already Included

I am not against people coming to Jesus and accepting what He did on the cross. That is how I would present the gospel, helping people discover who God is in love and experience that love; that Jesus loves them and has made a way for them. But I would not be prescriptive and say there is no other way people can come and experience the love of God. It will be through Jesus, but it may not be through the religious Christian way that we have described how Jesus saved people.

People are already saved, already included. Already reconciled, already accepted. They are already forgiven. They do not know it, and sometimes the way we present the good news does not help them know it. So let us help people find God, and let God bring them into the relationship and reveal Himself to them. That is not our responsibility. That is His.

Let us remove the hindrances and obstacles that may have been placed in people’s way, especially the harsh, judgmental message that says they will be condemned to hell if they do not accept Jesus. That is not true. Love is powerful: love never fails, love never gives up.

And death is not the end of choice.

Love Beyond Death: A Personal Testimony

Even if someone chooses to reject God in this life, God does not reject them. There is still opportunity beyond this life to embrace Him.

I have a testimony of that recently, though I have never done this before.

Last week, I went to a celebration of someone’s life. It was a man I had met through a school reunion. He was the husband of one of Debbie’s school friends, and we had met several times over the past months. At those gatherings, the husbands are often spare parts, left figuring out what to talk about. But over time I got to know them. One of the men was a Christian, and we had some great conversations about grace, love and the mystic side of things. This other man was not interested at all. He was a nice man, funny, but not open to any of it.

We met in April, and in June we heard that he had been diagnosed with a disease, and then he died in July, suddenly, very quickly. It was sad for his wife, for his family, and for his children. We were invited to go to the celebration of his life, which was totally non-religious, because he was totally against organised religion, as I found out when people were telling stories about him.

I sat there listening to the stories and people’s recollections, and I started to feel sad. I felt sad for the people who did not seem to have any hope. In their view, he was dead and gone. Life after death did not exist as far as he was concerned, and probably that is what his family felt too. There was no expectation of seeing him again.

While they were playing some music he liked, some Beatles music and other songs, I thought, “Okay God, is there anything I can do about this? Is there anything that you want me to do?”

Then I felt God say, “Well, you know what to do about it.”

So I thought, “Can I?” And then I decided, okay, I am going to be bold. While everything was quiet and the music was playing, I went to the fire of God’s love and I called him out. I did not know whether he was going to be there, because sometimes people accept Jesus on their deathbed. But he was there.

He came, and I felt the emotion. I felt that he was feeling condemned, not by God, but by self-condemnation and self-anguish, because he realised that his belief systems were not right. He was still alive, not dead. His consciousness was still living. For people who do not believe there is life after death, when they die and discover they are still alive, it is a shock.

So I preached the gospel to him. I shared that God’s love never fails. That even though he had rejected God while he lived, and did not accept that there was a God, God still loved him. God had never rejected him. God still wanted a relationship with him.

I shared that good news, and I offered him that opportunity, to which he responded and accepted. He followed me, and I introduced him to the Father. The Father brought his spirit and soul back together, unified him, clothed him with glory, and placed a ring on his finger of sonship. It was wonderful to see.

I did not stand up and tell people what I had done. That would not have fitted the framework of the meeting. They would probably have thought I was very strange. But now he has a relationship with God.

And death is not the end. It is another opportunity, in a different way, to experience God’s love.

Death Is Not the End of Choice

I know people will say you cannot talk to dead people. But they are not dead. A person’s spirit and soul do not die. Their body may be dead, but they have moved into another realm. We still have an opportunity to share the good news with them, even if they have chosen to reject Jesus and God in this life.

Then I started to feel really happy. There was a sense of joy in what he was now experiencing. Of course, I would want his children and his friends to feel that same joy, and to be awakened to God’s love. But at least for him, he is now out of the consuming fire, out of that refining process, and he is now receiving and accepting God’s love.

Now he knows who he is. And now he is going to go on to fulfil his destiny in that realm. That is good news. These are tremendous opportunities of sharing God’s love. Death is not the end of choice, as I experienced in that testimony. I am not saying I will ever do that again:  I do not know. I felt moved by compassion, and God gave me permission.

It shows what is possible.

Responsibility and Opportunity

All of us have the opportunity to preach the good news and help people embrace God’s love, even after they die. There may be family members. There may be situations where we can do this.

In this situation, I was surprised that I even thought about it. But I was feeling so moved, aware that something was missing, something that could have been there, so I chose to do something about it.

He still had the choice. He could have rejected what I shared. But his belief system had already been challenged, because he did not believe there was anything after death. Now he found himself in a place where he thought he was condemned to remain there forever, because he did not know anything different. Even though he had not believed in God, and had not believed in hell, he now assumed that must be where he was. He was full of self-anguish, believing that his decisions in life had placed him there.

But God still loves him. And the love of God can reach people even in that place. It is our responsibility to empty that place of people, to make sure no one is left there, and that they all find the love of God.

If you enjoy these video blogs, please take a moment to like, comment, and subscribe. It really does help. Thank you very much.

517. Experiencing Heart to Heart Intimacy with God

285. God is Love… BUT

487. My First Hand Experiences Of Hell

Join our Patreon patrons, who give a small amount each month and can tune in for our monthly group Zooms, get exclusive or early access to Mike’s teaching and enjoy many other patron-only benefits.

513. Who Are You Really? Unpacking Identity

Mike Parsons –

I believe the world is beginning to experience a series of awakenings. A love awakening, a grace awakening, a joy awakening, a peace awakening. A true God awakening to the reality of who God really is. We are part of that awakening, helping people discover the truth as we discover the truth ourselves, and then share it and live it. It is important that we embrace these awakenings. As we do, we begin to carry and express them naturally.

For a long time, God kept asking me a simple but profound question: who are you? He asked it in various ways over a period of time. At first, my answers were always works-based, tied to what I was doing. Like many people, I identified myself by what I did rather than by who I was. My soul defined my identity, but God was seeking to reveal the true me. For that to happen, my soul had to accept it, and that was not an easy process.

All of us go through a process, and God reveals who we really are in different ways. At the same time, he exposes what hinders us from accepting that reality. Each of us carries things that God has to deal with. Our souls have constructed identities using the data collected throughout our lives: things that happened to us, information we received, and the programming we absorbed through culture, religion and family. Information flowed through our senses, shaping survival strategies that helped the soul cope and protect itself from harsh realities.

Those defence mechanisms, however, often become prisons. They falsely promise safety while preventing us from knowing who we really are. Until the soul surrenders control, we cannot fully trust God for protection, provision and direction. Letting go of control is difficult, especially when we have learned to do everything ourselves. Trusting God sounds simple, but it is not. I believed I trusted God implicitly until he began to challenge what trust really meant in my relationship with him.

So, who am I? That question sits at the core of most people’s inner life.

Imagine a scene. You are in a boat, adrift on a vast ocean. You do not know where you are, and you do not realise that this ocean is unconditional love. You have no sails and no oars. This is the position humanity often finds itself in, unaware of where it truly is and protecting itself from the very reality that surrounds it. This state of despair is an illusion, a deception that causes people to try to navigate the surface of an ocean of love through self-effort.

The answer is to get out of the boat and sink into the depths of unconditional love. There we discover who we really are and who God really is. We are never separated from God, because we exist within him. Acts 17:28 tells us that in him we live and move and have our being. Everything exists within God, who has created space within himself for relationship. Separation, therefore, is an illusion we have created through guilt and shame. That illusion keeps us from intimacy with God and traps us in a lost identity.

Getting out of the boat feels counterintuitive to the natural mind, which has been conditioned to follow an independent, self-directed path. Yet the question remains: who are you, and how will you find out? I would suggest that you will never truly know if you stay in the boat. Even when it feels safer to stay there, paddling with your hands requires constant effort and never brings you to truth.

Who do you think you are? Ten years ago, I would have answered differently than I would today. Five years ago, my answer would have changed again. Thirty years ago, it would have been completely different. Who do others think you are? That question matters, because if we allow it, the opinions of others can define us. Are you shaped by your past experiences, your circumstances, your parents, your friends, your boss or even your genetics?

The deeper question is this: who does love say you are?

Get out of the boat. Sink into the vast ocean of love. Surrender, be immersed and saturated in unconditional love. Return to first love, because it is there that we discover who we really are. God, who is love, defines us. He defines who you are.

So, who are you? I would suggest that we can only truly know through a restored, face-to-face love relationship with God as Father, Son and Spirit. It is that relationship which enables us to discover the truth and to live in it.

If you enjoy these videos, please take a moment to like, comment and subscribe. It really does help. Thank you very much.

272. One Conclusion: God Is Love

510. Discovering Your Worth: The Truth of Being a Child of God

336. Get out of the boat… and SINK!

502. Breaking Free From Indoctrination | Embracing Love

Mike Parsons –

Over hundreds of years, false doctrine has infiltrated the church and shaped what many people simply accept today.

If you do not see the video above, please click here.

Simplicity of the gospel

Over many years, even hundreds of years, false doctrine has infiltrated the church and shaped things into what we see today, and people have simply accepted it. However, there are explanations for this and different alternatives to all of it. To be honest, why spend your time trying to understand something that was never written for you in the first place?

With all of this, whether it is true or not, let us go back to the simplicity of the gospel that Jesus talked about. Let us love one another. We do not have to agree: let us love one another. Let us love the world rather than trying to convince someone of something. Let the Holy Spirit, who is the only one who can renew someone’s mind, do that work. If people are genuine, then you can have a conversation, but if they are just trying to prove you wrong, then it is a waste of time.

A different view of God

If someone is genuinely searching and thinking, “I am struggling because this does not align with God, how could this be God?”, then they are on a journey towards restoration and renewal of their mind, and you can help them along that path. If all they want to do is convince you that you are wrong, and that there is going to be tribulation and judgment and a millennium and all of that, then that is a very deceptive doctrine, and you will not argue someone out of it. I think God will renew many people’s minds and deconstruct a lot of people, but many will remain stuck in religion and in the system, sadly. But many are leaving it, and many are coming to a different view of God.

We can help them discover that God is love by loving them. It is better to love them than to argue with them. It is better to keep a friend than to win an argument and lose a friend. I think saying, “Look, I do not really want to get into a lot of this stuff, because I think it will just cause problems in our relationship, and I value our relationship more than being right,” and leaving it at that, is often the best way.

It is better to keep a friend than to win an argument.

It is a difficult deception that keeps people in darkness and in bondage, and ultimately only God can bring the light into that. If people had tried to convince me that my eschatology was wrong back in the 1980s, I would not have believed them. But God spoke to me. God did it. I could not argue with God. I just went on a journey where he unfolded a whole different view that I had never even imagined.

God deconstructed me himself

I did not read books about it at first. God showed me through the Spirit by taking me through the whole thing. Once I realised that my whole understanding had been twisted, then I found some books that supported that view, and I realised I was not on my own. Loads of other people believed this as well. But I did not find it through other people. God totally deconstructed me over a two or three year period himself. Then that was confirmed by me reading other things, and there were people who were helpful to me, especially David Chilton: Paradise Restored, The Great Tribulation, and The Days of Vengeance, which is his book on Revelation, a massive book. You can find free PDFs online here:

Paradise Restored: A Biblical Theology of Dominion (1985)
The Days of Vengeance: An Exposition of the Book of Revelation (1987)
The Great Tribulation (1987)

David Chilton started off as a partial preterist in that he believed chapter 20 of Revelation was still future, but he ended up a full preterist because he came to realise that it was all in the past. He got himself excommunicated from the group he was in because he believed that and was persecuted.

Inevitably, I think, if you are open, you will move through partial preterism into preterism. I do not want to be labelled a preterist or not, because there are other things within that system that I do not necessarily think are true, but let us say I am a realised eschatologist. All eschatology is realised. It is already the end. The study of the last things is the study of what happened in the past, not the study of what will happen in the future. For me, that is where I have moved towards.

Not the end of the world

Ultimately, my understanding of that, and the same Bible verses that talk about what would happen at the end of the old covenant, also talk about and have been interpreted as what is hell. Then I realised, I do not believe this is talking about the end of the world. So this is also not the end of the world. Gehenna is not hell. Gehenna is literally talking about the end of the age when the old covenant was put into the fire and destroyed. Jerusalem and the people were put into the fire in Gehenna if they continued in Jerusalem, as Jesus warned them would happen.

They did. The Romans crucified hundreds of thousands and burned them in Gehenna. That was not the end of their life. That was the end of their physical body. Their actual soul would go into the fire of God’s love and hopefully bring about their restoration. I imagine a lot of people would have remembered what Jesus said when the armies turned up, but it was too late if they were besieged, and they would probably have remembered what Jesus said, “You are going to end up in Gehenna.” Hopefully, they would also then have remembered Jesus’s offer of life.

If you enjoy these videos, would you please take a moment to like, comment and subscribe? It really does help. Thank you very much.

266. A Happy Eschatology

431. Breaking Free from Deceptive Teaching | Rediscovering God’s Love

426. The Nature of God: Rethinking Our Beliefs

345. The Rapture of the Saints

318. Not the End of the World

501. Deconstructing Beliefs: A Journey to Authentic Faith

Mike Parsons

The deconstruction of our way of thinking comes from experiencing God. If I present people with theory about God, they will soon spot the gaps in that theory reflected in my own life. If I share the testimony of my experience of God, based on knowing that God loves me unconditionally, that there are no conditions attached, that I have been reconciled and included in Christ and all those wonderful things, then I am able to share that good news with others because I have truly experienced it.

If you do not see the video below, please click here.

If I only offer theory, people will sense it is not real in me. The best form of deconstruction is to experience the truth, which will then challenge the areas in our lives that are not true. Rather than attempting to change lies, experience the truth. Focusing on changing the negative aspects of our lives only makes us focus on the problem, causing it to grow and become more difficult to overcome. If we focus on the solution, the solution addresses the problem.

No one can deconstruct their own mind. Only God can accomplish this. If we keep walking with him, he will do things in our lives that will completely challenge everything we have thought about ourselves, about him, and about everything else. People may try to teach you to deconstruct your mind, though they might use the term “renew your mind” instead. I see deconstruction as the removal of negative things. However, I do not believe it is something God attempts directly; rather, deconstruction happens as a result of God revealing his true nature to us. Instead of God saying, “I am not like this,” he focuses on showing us who he truly is.

Renewing our minds brings about deconstruction because it challenges what I previously believed was true and shows it is not. Those beliefs are then deconstructed. You cannot deconstruct yourself because you do not know what you do not know. You allow God to reveal to you his truth, his love, his light, his relationship, his grace, and his mercy. Those experiences will change the areas in our lives that do not align with such truths.

Deconstruction is a consequence. God is not actively trying to deconstruct you. He is trying to give you the truth, and the truth will change the lies. If people focus on trying to change the lies, they end up concentrating on them. You can modify your belief system, but that is only a set of facts you have chosen to believe are true. That is quite different from truly knowing the truth.

I have changed many things I used to believe because I became convinced that something else was better or that it was actually true. However, until I experienced the truth, it remained an intellectual understanding; the truth is a person – Jesus, who is the way, the truth, and the life.

I am never going to discover truth by simply trying to invent a new belief system. You need to allow God to show you his character, and that will naturally transform the areas of your life that do not yet reflect who he really is. I know people, and I was the same, who tried to change their thinking by memorising, quoting, or confessing Bible verses. I did that myself. The Holy Spirit was able to work with me to some extent through that process, but essentially, confessing scripture will not make me experience it. It may provide a new perspective, so that I know the verse and can quote it or use it, but until I experience the truth behind it, I do not have a testimony of it in my life. That is the key.

I think deconstruction is spoken about a great deal at the moment because many are undergoing this process. It is not, however, God attempting to deconstruct their minds; it is God giving them a new revelation and experience of the truth, which then causes what is false to fall away. God is not going around trying to destroy your beliefs; instead, he wants to give you something true, and those false beliefs will simply fall away, which is far better. Having a testimony is so much better than having a belief.

If you enjoy these videos, would you please take a moment to like, comment and subscribe? It really does help. Thank you very much.

190. By Personal Encounter and Experience

426. The Nature of God: Rethinking Our Beliefs

330. Find Truth Within: Trust Your Own Connection with God

 

491. When I Let Go Of Penal Substitutionary Atonement

Mike Parsons

No video showing? Please click here.

Penal substitutionary atonement (PSA) was the first to go. When I began to express my doubts about it to others, one woman involved in mystic and mentoring groups emailed me, saying I was trying to take away ‘the cornerstone of her faith’. She was serious and angry at me because she wanted to hold onto PSA as the cornerstone of her belief.

I told her that if that’s where she wanted to remain, that was her choice, but I was moving on. Naturally, that upset some people, but many others resonated with the idea that it didn’t make sense for God as Father to kill or punish His Son. And when you investigate further, you find that PSA is actually a doctrine that only emerged in the tenth century…

299. PSA Sounds Nothing Like Jesus! (Penal Substitutionary Atonement [1])

304. Wrath is not the solution | Penal Substitutionary Atonement [2]

 

487. My First Hand Experiences Of Hell

Mike Parsons

Not seeing the video above? Click here.

So between 2005 and 2010, I had a number of experiences which I described at the time as hell-like, simply because I had no other reference point in my life. I thought I had encountered hell, and so my framework for understanding was the usual concept of hell. That’s what I believed the experience meant, because I couldn’t see it any other way; I had no other frame of reference.

Once I actually encountered God and encountered love, I was able to revisit those experiences and see what he had really been showing me through them. I came to realise that I had completely misunderstood and misinterpreted what had happened, just as many others do when they claim to have been in hell for a few minutes. They are framing their experience through their theological understanding of hell.

404. Framing Hell in a New Light

244. The Hell Delusion