Word of God – Sons of Issachar

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

Mike Parsons

The Bible, the Word of God?

I couldn’t move beyond, as long as I was restricted by my mindset and belief system, which was deeply rooted in evangelicalism. For years, I held the absurd notion that certain Bible verses referred to the Bible itself as the “Word of God.” But none of those verses mean the Bible, even though my deceptive sola scriptura programming led me to believe they did. I read the text and interpreted it in the way I had always been taught.

The Bible is a collection of writings, compiled over centuries, that wasn’t formally assembled until around AD 385. It couldn’t possibly refer to itself as the “Word of God” because it didn’t exist in its current form. Those who wrote its books had no idea they would one day be gathered into a single volume called The Holy Bible. That title was given by man—not by the Bible itself, and certainly not by God.

Misunderstood verses

Here are some examples of verses I misunderstood because of my conditioning:

Psalm 119:105: “Your word is a lamp to my feet and a light to my path.” I immediately assumed ‘word’ referred to the Bible.

Ephesians 5:26: “That He might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word.” Again, I thought ‘word’ meant the Bible—it doesn’t.

Ephesians 6:17: “Take the helmet of salvation and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God.” I thought of the Bible as the ‘sword of the Spirit.’ But in reality, Jesus is the Word of God, and the words He speaks are the Word of God. This verse doesn’t refer to the Bible. My children even played a computer game where you would ‘draw your sword,’ which was portrayed as the Bible. You’d take it out from under your arm and use it as the ‘Sword of the Spirit.’ That just reinforced the idea that the Bible itself was the weapon, which was completely inaccurate.

1 Timothy 4:5: “For it is sanctified by means of the word of God and prayer.” To an evangelical, as soon as ‘word of God’ and ‘prayer’ are mentioned in the same sentence, it automatically means the Bible and prayer—because that’s what we were taught.

2 Timothy 2:15: “Be diligent to present yourself approved to God as a worker who does not need to be ashamed, accurately handling the word of truth.” Again, I was conditioned to interpret ‘word of truth’ as the Bible. In the King James Version, it even says ‘study to show thyself approved,’ which led to the belief that studying the Bible was what made you acceptable to God. But that’s not what it means at all.

We need to embrace a deeper understanding. Jesus said, “My sheep hear My voice, and they follow Me.” He didn’t say, “By reading the words in the Bible.” It’s about hearing His voice and following Him. Of course, some of the words Jesus spoke might speak to us today, but not all of them were meant for us. Many were directed to the people He was speaking to at the time.

Hebrews 4:12: “For the word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, penetrating as far as the division of soul and spirit.” I thought this meant I had to use the Bible to separate my soul and spirit. When I heard teachings about soul and spirit separation, I believed this was something I had to do. Thankfully, God had a completely different way. Jesus, as the living and active Word of God, was able to separate my soul and spirit and reintegrate me into wholeness.

2 Corinthians 3:18: “But we all, with unveiled faces, look as in a mirror at the glory of the Lord, and are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory, just as from the Lord, the Spirit.” When I read this, I had no idea it meant I could look into God’s face and see Him directly—face to face—and be transformed by the image reflected back to me. I thought it meant looking into the Bible and trying to identify the image of God in it so I could imitate it. I was so caught up in this evangelical belief system.

Hebrews 6:5: “And have tasted the good word of God and the powers of the age to come.” Again, I interpreted ‘word of God’ as the Bible. But I don’t see it that way now.

1 Peter 1:23: “You have been born again, not of seed which is perishable but imperishable, that is, through the living and enduring word of God.” Once more, I could only see this as referring to the Bible, rather than to Jesus—the living and enduring Word of God in me, bringing life.

1 John 2:14 says, “I have written to you, fathers, because you know Him who has been from the beginning. I have written to you, young men, because you are strong, and the word of God remains in you, and you have overcome the evil one.”

When preaching on this, I would have said something like, “You need the Word of God! You need to feed on the Bible! You need to read it daily so that it’s in you, and then you’ll overcome the evil one and grow strong.” But the reality is that the ‘Word of God’ in this verse refers to Jesus, who is in us. He has already overcome the evil one, and we overcome through Him. At the time, I would have thought John’s letters—now included in the Bible—were the key to their strength. However, their strength came not from intellectual knowledge, but from their personal, experiential knowledge of Him.

Titus 2:5, which instructs women “to be sensible, pure, workers at home, kind, and subject to their own husbands, so that the word of God will not be dishonoured,” was another verse I misunderstood. I was taught this meant wives needed to submit to their husbands to avoid bringing dishonour to the Bible. But let’s set the record straight. This isn’t about women submitting to their husbands in some rigid hierarchy. Instead, it’s about being in a mutually respectful and loving relationship. It’s about mutual submission in the context of Christ’s example. The focus is on living in a way that honours God, not enforcing roles for the sake of protecting a book. Jesus is the Living Word of God, and He calls us into relationship with Him.

When we talk about the ‘Word of God,’ it’s essential to recognise that this primarily refers to Jesus, not the Bible. God’s words, whether spoken directly to us today or recorded in Scripture, can be meaningful. But the emphasis must remain on Jesus, the Living Word, who is still speaking and guiding us. He wants us to hear His voice and follow Him.

All God-breathed writings

Now, let’s address 2 Timothy 3:16, a verse often quoted in evangelical circles: “All Scripture is inspired by God and beneficial for teaching, for rebuke, for correction, for training in righteousness.” This verse is frequently used to argue that the entire Bible is inspired, infallible, and inerrant. However, there are several issues with how this verse is traditionally interpreted.

First, the word ‘all’ doesn’t mean everything indiscriminately. Second, the term ‘scripture’ is often mistranslated with a capital ‘S,’ implying it refers to the entire Bible. The original text doesn’t imply this. In fact, when this was written, the Bible as we know it didn’t even exist—it wouldn’t be compiled for another 300 years.

Let me read this verse from Young’s Literal Translation, which translates it as: “Every writing God-breathed is profitable for teaching, for conviction, for setting aright, for instruction that is in righteousness.” Notice the difference? It says every God-breathed writing is useful—not that every part of the Bible is God-breathed, nor that it refers specifically to the Bible at all.

This means that writings inspired by God—whether ancient or modern—are profitable and beneficial. God is still breathing inspiration into people today, and those writings can be just as useful for teaching, guidance and correction as any ancient text. This isn’t about elevating the Bible to an infallible status but recognising the broader scope of God’s inspiration.

God is still breathing inspiration into people today, and those writings can be just as useful for teaching, guidance and correction as any ancient text.

Unfortunately, I was conditioned to believe that this verse proved the Bible was infallible, inerrant and the ultimate authority. The evangelical mantra reinforced this: “The Bible is inerrant, infallible, and inspired.” But when you take a closer look, 2 Timothy 3:16 doesn’t say anything about the Bible being inerrant or infallible. It simply states that inspired writings—those breathed by God—are beneficial.

We must break free from the deception of assuming these verses mean something they don’t. God is still speaking today, and the Living Word—Jesus—continues to guide and transform us through His voice and presence.

This video blog is an excerpt from Mike's current teaching series, Restoring First Love. Get the full length videos every month, only at eg.freedomarc.org/first-love

Activation

So let’s take a few minutes to engage with God, with unconditional love.

Close your eyes,
begin to still your heart,
and still your mind.

Start to slow down your breathing.

Focus your thinking on God.
Focus your thinking on engaging unconditional love.

Breathe in deeply.
And as you breathe in,
you are breathing in
the unconditional love of the Father for you
as his child.

Wait in that place.
Be still.
Let the love of God,
that unconditional love,
rest on you.

Let Him reveal Himself
as pure, unconditional love.

Perhaps now,
you want to ask Jesus, as the Truth,
to speak something specific to you?

“You have heard it said,
But I say unto you.”
Maybe some belief system,
maybe the way you’ve looked at God,
maybe the way you have been programmed
with religious thinking,
some mindset or belief system.

Open up your heart.
Ask Jesus, as the Truth,
the Living, Active Word of God,
to show you something
where is He saying,
“You’ve heard it said, you believe this
but I am saying unto you… this.”

Listen to His voice,
revealing something at this moment
that will bring truth to you.
Just let that frequency of his voice engage you.

395. Soul Ties | Recognising and Releasing Toxic Relationships

Mike Parsons

When it comes to relationships and the connections that form between individuals, these are often referred to as soul ties or emotional connections. Some of these ties can be negative, especially if they involve people who drain energy from you or have impure or unholy motives. Such connections can cause problems in your life.

Cutting Negative Ties

The key to dealing with these ties is intention, desire and choice. Since these connections are spiritual, it’s important to ask the Father to help disconnect them. Hebrews describes the Word of God as being sharper than a two-edged sword, capable of dividing soul and spirit. This isn’t referring to the Bible, but to Jesus as the Living Word. He can sever the spiritual connections between souls, setting you free from any negative ties that feed off your energy or bring negativity into your life.

Steps to Freedom

Forgive and Release
Begin by ensuring your heart is free of bitterness, resentment, anger or frustration toward the other person. Forgive them—not because they’ve asked for it, but because it’s your choice to let go. Release them from any perceived debt or obligation to make things right. Forgiveness is about freeing yourself as much as it is about freeing them.
Ask God for Help
Once your heart is in the right place, ask God, or Jesus as the Living Word, to sever any unhealthy spiritual connections. Choose to cut the ties and ask Him to free you from them. This includes releasing any energy or influence they have over you.
Maintain a Positive Attitude
After severing these ties, maintain an attitude of love and blessing toward the person. Wish them well, but do not allow them to reconnect with you in a negative way. Sometimes, people may try to re-establish harmful connections. By standing firm in your freedom and relying on God’s help, you can prevent this from happening.

Protecting Yourself

If the individual has been involved in harmful spiritual practices such as witchcraft or cursing, breaking the tie ensures they no longer have a spiritual connection to you. This also protects you from further harm. Stand firm in the knowledge that a curse without cause cannot affect you. You can even ask God to assign angels to safeguard you from any residual negativity.

Living in Freedom

It’s essential to stay in peace and rest, trusting in God’s protection. When negative people or situations arise, they don’t have to affect you if you remain shielded in your relationship with the Father, Son and Spirit. Being clothed in light ensures that darkness cannot penetrate. Once the internal connections are severed, external ones cannot form.

Relationships change over time, and it’s okay to move on from certain connections. However, always ensure that you act out of love, keeping your heart pure and free from resentment. This allows you to maintain your freedom and live unaffected by negativity.

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263. The Word of God

Mike Parsons
with Jeremy Westcott –

God spoke

“…the period of restoration of all things about which God spoke by the mouth of His holy prophets from ancient time” (Acts 3:21).

In his sermon on the day of Pentecost, Peter tells his audience that God has already spoken about the restoration of all things in the past. So who were those prophets He spoke through, what did He say and when did He say it? And if these things were spoken, were they also written down, and if so, where?

In the 39 books which we call the Old Testament? Or the 24 books of the Hebrew Tanakh? Or the Talmud or Rabbinical writings?
Is it only the Bible that records what God spoke by His holy prophets? Are there other written records of what the prophets said?
What about the Apocryphal books which were once included in our Bible? What about other Jewish mystical writings such as the Talmud, Targum, Midrash and Zohar?

Those are the kinds of questions which go through my mind when I read something like that.

In His Son

God, after He spoke long ago to the fathers in the prophets in many portions and in many ways, in these last days has spoken to us in His Son… (Heb 1:1-2).

That is where we are. We actually do not need a prophet to speak to us anymore, because we have Jesus to speak to us. The Father can speak to us. The Holy Spirit can speak to us. And they can speak to us directly, they do not need a prophet to be a mediator.

When He spoke to prophets who lived 3000 years or so ago, He spoke to them in the context of their own society and way of life. If we simply read what they wrote, it might not mean the same to us (especially if we don’t speak their language). We need God the Holy Spirit to speak to us so that, whether we have it in writing or not, He can say it in a way appropriate for us and apply it to our situation today.

If we will learn to hear God’s voice and discern what He is saying, we may find He has much more to say than we ever thought. He speaks to me in all kinds of ways, not just through scripture. If He speaks to me through a sci-fi film, is that less valid than Him speaking to me through the Bible?

Truth and opinion

I often find I have more questions than answers! That is because I now recognise that many things I thought I knew were only assumptions, or other people’s opinions. My understanding was framed by what I was taught about how God spoke and what the Bible meant. But in the process of God renewing my mind, He began to challenge me on some of these things.

Jesus is the Truth. So wherever there is truth, it must be from Jesus. Whether it is in a movie, or a book, or music, or some other creative work, it must be Jesus. The conclusions people draw, or the way they interpret that truth, that is not necessarily Jesus. We cannot assume that just because one part within it rings true, that everything in it is true. The Holy Spirit will give us that discernment. We can find truth in many things, truth that we might miss if we believe the only way we can receive truth is through the Bible.

The Bible

So where does the Bible (and other ‘scripture’) fit into the picture of what will be restored? Where does the Bible fit into our lives? Is it a manual for living or an introduction to a living, loving relationship with Jesus, the Living Word? Is everything that is recorded in the Bible inspired by God? What do we mean by ‘inspired’? Is all of the Bible inerrant and infallible as we may have been told?

I understand that posing such questions risks causing offence. I am not setting out to deliberately offend but I do want to challenge our view of the Bible as the ‘word of God’. Everything God has ever said, through anyone or anything, is the word of God. But it is not a book. Nowhere in the Bible does it call itself ‘the word of God’ but it does call Jesus Himself the Word:

In the beginning was the Word [Gk: logos], and the Word was with God, and the Word was God (John 1:1).

Perhaps we have been taught that the Greek word logos means the written word, the Bible, and the Greek word rhema means the spoken words of Jesus, recorded in the Bible, or the words the Holy Spirit speaks to you when you read the Bible. Logos and rhema do not mean that. They were the normal, everyday terms for written word and spoken word and that is all.

The early believers did not even have a Bible when those words were used. The books contained in our Bible were not originally part of a collection of writings at all. They were letters, or books of history, prophecy, or poetry and so on. And some of the books that were included in the first ‘canon of scripture’ have since been discarded.

Evangelicalism

No one lives without influence. Everyone’s mind is framed by their belief systems. In the process of the deconstruction and renewal of my mind, God showed me that one of the pillars of so-called ‘truth’ that framed my beliefs was evangelicalism.

This is a belief system which teaches that the Bible does not merely contain the word of God, but that every word of it is the word of God. Scripture therefore carries the full authority of God: every single statement of the Bible calls for instant, unqualified and unrestricted acceptance. In fact many evangelical churches hold to the doctrine of Sola scriptura (Latin: by scripture alone): the Christian scriptures are the sole infallible rule of faith and practice.

Ironically, you will not find any of that in the Bible. It is not there because it is a man-made doctrine. Not only does the Bible never call itself ‘the word of God’, it does not claim to be inerrant, infallible or the only authoritative guide for us either. The emphasis on following the Bible only arose because no one taught us that we really could have an intimate face-to-face relationship with Jesus in which He could speak to us personally. Jesus is the One we are supposed to listen to and follow, not a book.

In reality, not everything in the Bible applies to us.

Much of the Old Testament and law only applied to Jewish people and converts, or to the specific people being addressed, not to us in the new covenant. Much of the New Testament was written to address the events of the destruction of Jerusalem in AD 70, the end of the old covenant system. Paul wrote letters to certain churches in circumstances we do not face today. Some passages only make sense in their own cultural context – though I was brought up in a church which had a stock of head coverings at the door for women thoughtless enough to come without one (1 Cor: 11:5-8).

The Living Word

Jesus never promised a book, but a relationship with Himself, with His Father and with the Holy Spirit of Truth. Everything we read in the Bible needs to be interpreted by the Holy Spirit dwelling within us. There is some universal truth within it which is awesome, revealing the loving nature and character of the Father. The Holy Spirit will show us that universal truth and how it is to be applied to our lives.

The Living Word, Jesus, can interpret whatever has been written, speak directly to us daily and bring truth to us even if it is completely out of the context it was originally written in. He did that when He came – and we can read about it in the Bible! How many times in the Sermon on the Mount did He say “You have heard it said… but I say…”? He still does it today.

Articles by others

God Didn’t Write The Bible. We Did. – Keith Giles.

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26. The Spirit and the Word in Unity

cross Mike Parsons –

Now is the time

God is looking for hearts that are truly His. Every one of us has a destiny prepared by God, and we must make sure we don’t miss it for the sake of our own stubbornness, our strongholds, or our own way of thinking. It is time to give it all to God: He wants it all. This is a time of preparation, a time when He is inviting us to abandon ourselves fully to Him. So let’s give Him everything, let’s hold nothing back. Let’s not allow our pride or our past to get in the way of what God wants to do in our lives. Let’s not miss this opportunity: because for some, if you miss it now, you will have missed it completely – that is how serious it could be. Now is the time.

God is pouring out fresh revelation in these days because He is preparing for Jesus to return, preparing for the harvest that is coming. It is time for the church to rise up: He is calling us to ever deeper levels of commitment, and He is releasing ever deeper levels of power and authority. We have entitled this blog ‘Sons of Issachar’ (see 1 Chron 12:32), because God is calling us to be like them in recognising the signs of the times and knowing what to do. God wants us to know what to do, that is why He always reveals to His prophets what He is about to do.

The coming revival

There have been revivals in the past, but they are nothing in comparison to what is going to happen as we approach the return of Jesus. It is good to read about what God has done (and I would encourage everyone to read Roberts Liardon’s books, ‘God’s Generals’) so that we do not lose sight of our heritage and so that we don’t repeat the mistakes people have made before. As you read, you can’t help but get excited about what God is going to do, because all those things He has done in the past are going to come together in the end times. Every mantle of authority that has ever been given is going to be released again over us. It will be an outpouring of the Spirit such as has never been seen before. Smith Wigglesworth prophesied that the Spirit and the Word would come together, that churches of the Spirit and churches of the Word would come together in unity, and that the result would be to release a revival that would impact the whole world. We are in the beginning of those days, and we need to grasp hold of that right now.

We are starting to see the manifold wisdom of God being released. The light that is in us is starting to come through: the fruit of the Spirit, the gifts of the Spirit, releasing ministries, increasing revelation of the Spirit of God, offices being raised up. The kingdom is coming in more and more fullness.

Anointing

It is we who are the gifts, all of us: we are the ministries, we are the ones who are going to get revelation. This is not just for one or two people. Some are going to have ministries that are going to go around the world. Some will stay right where they are and build the foundations of the Kingdom of God. But everyone can have a part in this and it needs to be manifested through us. God wants to reveal Himself in the fruit and the gifts of the Spirit and in ministries being raised up because they are expressions of what He is like. The fruit of the Spirit: that is His character. The gifts of the Spirit: that is the anointing of the Sovereign Lord which was upon Him, and it is also upon us (Isaiah 61). Those ministries are the ministries that He raises up to administer the church.

Freedom Apostolic Resource Centre

God is wanting to move. He is establishing us here at Freedom as a revival centre, an apostolic resource centre for this region and beyond. He is calling us to be a habitation of God to equip others, to bless others, to give away everything that God has given us. I know people can take this the wrong way, thinking we are saying that we have it all. That is not what is in our hearts: yes, we want to give to others what we have, but also we would like to receive from them what they have.

I had a picture, a vision, of waterfalls being poured out over churches across Barnstaple and across the south-west of England. As I watched, all the rivers and all the colours came together as one river, releasing an explosion of life. That will happen (and not only here) if we are willing to give to each other, to receive from each other, and to live in unity with one another; honouring and respecting one another’s churches and traditions and so on, but all bringing what we have received and pressing in together into what God is doing.

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