Man was created in the image and likeness of God, to be the body of God on earth, to be the means by which God's dominion could be extended into the earth with respect to all forms of manifestation here, including the elements. ...
Melchizedek king of Salem brought forth bread and wine: and he was the priest of the most high God."And he blessed him, and said, Blessed be Abram of the most high God, possessor of heaven and earth:"And blessed be the most high God, which hath delivered thine enemies into thy hand. And he gave him tithes of all.
In this movement forward, in the process of becoming in actual fact members of the one body, letting the power of God work in us and through us to carry on the divine pattern, we must become priests and priestesses after the order of Melchizedek. We can be hangers-on, or we can be disciples, or followers—a disciple is a follower—or we can reach the point of being prophets (that is, letting the Word of the Lord express through our lips), or we can keep on and become priests or priestesses.
Now I would not want you to feel that I arbitrarily take the stand that every man, woman and child on the face of the earth should be a priest or priestess in the ultimate outworking. There are all kinds of spheres of service and responsibility which relate to that central focalization, and for a person who is content just to be a disciple, well, no one is going to find fault with him if he is a good disciple, or a good prophet or prophetess, as the case may be. There are many spheres of service. But from the standpoint of actually establishing the patterns and accomplishing the will of God on earth, it must be through the priesthood after the order of Melchizedek. There is no other way. That is the way which Jesus Christ revealed on earth, and He said, "I am the way, the truth, and the life." He was reestablishing on earth a consciousness, an understanding, a recognition, of the priesthood after the order of Melchizedek.
And we might point out that it is only as human beings have responded to the influence released in the pattern of the priesthood after the order of Melchizedek that they have accomplished anything worthwhile in a real beneficial sense to humanity or to the glory of God, at any time on the face of the earth. This is without respect to church or denomination or creed or color or anything else. You begin to realize that this in which we are sharing comes over to us from the Motherland, from the days before the fall of man, and it is the divine pattern which has not been changed. It is still the same. It is still the same Law and principles of being. What we are speaking of here as the priesthood after the order of Melchizedek was the governing force on earth before the fall of man, and had been for around one hundred and thirty thousand years. And it has been the governing force behind every constructive move, every really blessed life, on the face of the earth since that day, without respect to any of the man-made divisions. In other words, when we begin to recognize the basic truth of the matter, we find that it is the catholic church. Catholic means universal.
Catholic is universal. To say Roman Catholic is to establish a division, a limit, to build a fence. In other words you begin to see that whatever is constructive or right or real, or response to the spirit of God, in any person on the face of the earth, regardless of nationality or creed or religion or anything else, is a response to that pattern in which we are engaged. We do not use the word "catholic," because of its, well, misuses; that is, we do not use it publicly. But it means universal. And we do not speak of it as a church particularly, in the ordinary sense, because it is much more than the human concept of what a church means. But it is the priesthood after the order of Melchizedek. And in order to see the full significance of this, we go back and recognize that the divine pattern was in operation before the fall. This pattern was in operation in relationship to the conditions that worked out after the fall. We remember man's sudden plunge downward into the caveman age, etc., and his gradual emergence into the dim dawn of history. And it was by this means that the focalization of the pattern was carried over from the period that was beyond the range of history, or man's knowledge, and reestablished with respect to the dawn of history.
So, from my standpoint, any man or woman, regardless of who it is, or where, or in what condition, what they call themselves or anything else—any man or woman on the face of the earth who lets God's will be done, even to the slightest degree, so that there is a real service from it, that person is a part of this which you share here. And it is only to the degree that any person is a part of this, that he or she can amount to anything, I don't care what the standards according to the world concept. But this is, and has been for many thousands of years, the universal pattern with respect to the things of God on earth, the progress of man, everything. Every step of progress that man has made has been worked out under this pattern, without a single exception.
We have people talk about their churches or their denominations going back two or three hundred years or four hundred years, or back to the time of Jesus, or something of that nature. This program which you are sharing here goes back to the fall of man, on the basis of its present purpose—that is, the restoration of man—and it goes back to the beginning of creation, the beginning of the creation of the world in actual fact. So as far as this world is concerned it cannot be any older than that. It is the divine pattern in operation, and has been since the beginning of the creation of the world. Once we begin to see that, we realize that we have a tremendous responsibility, a glorious privilege, to consciously share in this process of restoration.
But man has been in the fallen state for so long that he imagines that God's whole purpose is just to get him back into heaven, and once that is done, everything is done. This twenty-thousand-year interval in which man has fallen has simply meant that some of the other things that God intended to do have had to wait a bit. Getting man back into the divine pattern is a temporary goal. After man is back in the divine pattern, then we can go on with our cosmic work, our divine pattern of work. Simply saving human beings is not the end and aim of all things; it is merely incidental; because when man fell, man interfered with the processes of God's creative work as it was being carried on in the solar system in relationship to the universe and the cosmos.
The body of humanity became ill. It is not well yet. So as soon as the body of humanity is well and the process of restoration has been worked out, we can go back to work and do the thing that we really were ordained to do, we were intended to do and should be doing. But for the time being we are on a temporary job.
© Emissaries of Divine Light
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