These Things Transcend All Time
Uranda October
12, 1947 100 Mile House, B.C.
My
thoughts turn to some of the words of the Master tonight:
“Yet I am not alone, because the Father is with me. These things I have spoken
unto you, that in me ye might have peace. In the world ye shall have tribulation:
but be of good cheer; I have overcome the world.” And we are, also, to overcome
the world.
I was thinking that, in the conclusion of the
activities of a Blessed day such as this, we might well again give thought to
the Master's Prayer at the time of the conclusion of His Ministry. The
conclusion of His Ministry was peculiarly the point where our Ministry begins.
The time that has elapsed since has no meaning in that. He had been outlining
the Principles of the One Vine and of the means by which we might let the Works
of the Father manifest. “Verily, verily, I say unto you, Whatsoever ye shall
ask the Father in my name, he will give it you. Hitherto have ye asked nothing
in my name: ask, and ye shall receive, that
your joy may be full... For the Father himself loveth you, because ye have
loved me, and have believed that I came out from God. I came forth from the
Father, and am come into the world: again, I leave the world, and go to the
Father.” He had also outlined the Principles with respect to the Work of the
Comforter or Spirit of Truth. He had pointed the Way to Life. It remained for
those who should follow after to prove that Life, to experience it according to
His Word. And then, in the conclusion of that Ministry, He gave a prayer—a
prayer that is our beginning point.
“Father, the hour is come; glorify thy Son, that
thy Son also may glorify thee”. He was, of course, the manifestation of the Son
of God, but He was returning to the Father and He had outlined the Plan by
means of which the Son, the only begotten Son of God, should continue on earth.
The interval of time that has elapsed before that Plan began to be of effect
should be, in our consideration, forgotten, as it were, that it may be
meaningless. The trials and the tribulations, the concepts, the efforts and the
failures of that interval must not be allowed to have meaning in relationship
to our function. From the standpoint of Reality, those things do not have
meaning. The connecting thread, the unifying Current, is not less strong
because of the passage of that time. Our attitude and our feeling and our
function should be as if we had heard these words for the first time a few days
ago, as if only a month ago He had stood with us upon the face of the earth, as
if it were but yesterday that the vibrant sound of His Voice fell on our ears,
as if we, in this flesh, had seen Him come forth Victoriously from the tomb, as
if we had, in person, shared His final words of admonition and instruction, as
if we had known that hour when He ascended to return no more until what He had
begun should have been finished in the hearts and lives of men.
The human mind is so inclined to feel the distance
of the intervening years, so that there is a loss in a consciousness of
personal contact. The Son is the One
Christ Body on earth, then and now. The meaning of the Word as He spoke it with
respect to His own manifestation is not to be construed as the only meaning,
for He spoke also of that Body that is—“Father,
the hour is come”. His was the hour of departing; ours is the hour of
beginning, of moving forward in fulfilment. The Father glorified the Son then.
He is just as capable of glorifying the Son now. “The hour is come. Glorify thy
Son”. Why? “That thy Son also may glorify thee”. The beginning and the end, or
the end and the beginning, are the same.
The point of His ending in Ministry is the point of
our beginning. He was here on earth. It seems but yesterday we heard Him speak.
It seems but the passage of a moment since His prayer first ascended as sweet
incense unto God. Time—these things transcend all time. It was but yesterday He
gave the Promise. Today we let that Promise be fulfilled. We remember how our
hearts were stirred at the sound of His Voice, and the passage of an hour or a
day cannot quiet that stirring or end that surge of consciousness of the Power
of God. It is now, in this hour, that the Spirit of His Word finds fulfilment in
our hearts. It is now, in this hour, that we let His Promise be fulfilled. The excitements
and the questionings, the fears and the doubts, have been stilled. We have ceased
trying to make it be so, for in the vibrant Power of His Love we are not
separate or apart and we know that the Father Himself loveth us because we have
loved Him, because we do love Him Who has walked the earth before us, Who has
revealed the Way, the Truth and the Life.
“The hour is come” for us to let the Father glorify
His Son, that the Son may glorify the Father. We trembled, and were sad, that
the hour had come when He should leave us, but we did not let such things
prevent fulfilment of His Word lest what He did should be in vain. The hour of
His going was the hour of our beginning, and it is so still, for though He went
He has not departed, for His Spirit lingers in our hearts and His Word is as
powerful as when it first fell from His lips, Words burned in letters of Fire
upon our hearts, memorable occasions that could never pass from mind. Yesterday
His hour came—today is our hour of fulfilment in beginning.
“Father, the hour is come; glorify thy Son, that
thy Son also may glorify thee: As thou hast given him power over all flesh, that
he should give eternal life to as many as thou hast given him. And this is life
eternal, that they might know thee the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom
thou hast sent.” “And this is life eternal, that they might know thee the only
true God”, and the Christ, the only begotten Son—then Jesus—now the One Christ
Body Whom Thou hast sent. “I have glorified thee on the earth: I have finished
the work which thou gavest me to do”. How truly is that our point of beginning.
How seldom on this earth has the word reverberated in truth—“I have finished
the work”. We have seen in the world the feeble attempts at doing some bit of work—human
beings, like children, building castles in the sand to admire in one moment and
to destroy in the next, and then to delude themselves into feeling that they had
accomplished something. And how they brag about the mansions they builded in
the sand; but we consider other mansions, Mansions in the Father’s House.
“I have finished the work which thou gavest me to
do”—and in season the Son shall again speak these words, but before those words
may be truly spoken once more, there must truly be the beginning, the opening
up, that comes through the surging Power of His Spirit as we hear again, in
memory, His Word, “And now, O Fatter, glorify thou me with thine own self with
the glory which I had with thee before the world was. I have manifested thy name
unto the men which thou gavest me out of the world: thine they were, and thou gavest
them me; and they have kept thy word.” That was but yesterday, surely. It is but
a dream that some did not keep His Word. There must now be fulfilment which
gives meaning to His faith when He spoke that Word, that when these words sound
in memory, and stir within our hearts, they shall not be as a mockery, a symbol
of the faith of the Son of God that found no answering heart on earth, but a
symbol of the faith of the Son of God that finds fulfilment here and now in His
Son on earth.
“And they have kept thy word. Now they have known
that all things whatsoever thou hast given me are of thee. For I have given
unto them the words which thou gavest me; and they have received them, and have
known surely that I came out from thee, and they have believed that thou didst
send me. I pray for them: I pray not for the world, but for them which thou
hast given me; for they are thine. And all mine are thine, and thine are mine;
and I am glorified in them.” Yes, the intervening time when these words remained
unfulfilled is surely but a dream. Twas only yesterday He spoke, and today His
Word finds fulfilment. Today we prove His faith was not in vain.
“And all mine are thine, and thine are mine; and I
am glorified in them. And now I am no more in the world, but these are in the
world, and I come to thee. Holy Father, keep through thine own name those whom
thou hast given me, that they may be one, as we are. While I was with them in
the world, I kept them in thy name: those that thou gavest me I have kept, and
none of them is lost, but the son of perdition; that the scripture might be
fulfilled. And now come I to thee; and these things I speak in the world, that
they might have my joy fulfilled in themselves.” What was His joy? It was the
joy of Oneness with the Father. It was the joy of Being the Son on earth. That
is the joy that must be fulfilled in us, the joy of Oneness with the Father,
the joy of Being the Son.
“And these things I speak in the world, that they
might have my joy fulfilled in themselves. I have given them thy word; and the world
hath hated them, because they are not of the world, even as I am not of the
world. I pray not that thou shouldest take them out of the world, but that thou
shouldest keep them from the evil. They are not of the world, even as I am not
of the world. Sanctify them through thy truth: thy word is truth. As thou hast
sent me into the world, even so have I also sent them into the world.” That is
His Word. His Word is true, and we let it be so in us in this hour, and
forevermore, for as the Father sent Him into the world, even so has He sent us
into the world.
“And for their sakes I sanctify myself, that they
also might be sanctified through the truth. Neither pray I for these alone, but
for them also which shall believe on me through their word; That they all may
be one; as thou, Father, art in me, and I in thee, that they also may be one in
us: that the world may believe that thou hast sent me. And the glory which thou
gavest me I have given them”—“And the glory which thou gavest me I
have given them”. It is glory to be the Son on earth. “And the glory which thou
gavest me I have given them; that they may be one, even as we are one: I in them,
and thou in me, that they may be made perfect in one; and that the world may
know that thou hast sent me, and hast loved them, as thou hast loved me.
Father, I will that they also, whom thou hast given me, be with me where I am”—not
where I shall be, where I am.
He, the Son of God, stood on earth in the hour of
fulfilment. He had finished the work. That was where He was in the hour of
fulfilment. And He said, “Father, I will that they also, whom thou hast given me,
be with me where I am”—and so it is His Will that we should stand in that
Oneness of the Son in the hour of fulfilment. “That they may behold my glory.
Which thou hast given me: for thou lovedst me before the foundation of the world.
O righteous Father, the world hath not known thee: but I have known thee, and
these have known that thou hast sent me. And I have declared unto them thy
name, and will declare it: that the love wherewith thou hast loved me may be in
them, and I in them.”
Beloved LORD, we thank Thee that it is so, and we
thank Thee for the Holy Privilege of sharing Thy Fulfilment on earth, IN the
Christ. Aum-en.
© Emissaries of Divine Light
