Greatest Lie — Greatest Atrocity
Greatest Victory
from The Cross
Uranda March 16, 1953 Class
You are a cross—either the means by which the things of God cross over into the world or the means by which the things of God are crucified on earth. If you become self-centered in any moment, even for a few moments, you start crucifying the things of God and start preventing the things of God from crossing over into the world. And every moment that you spend in crucifying the manifestation of the things of God which should cross over into the world through you, you are sharing in the crucifixion of our Lord and King when He was on earth nearly two thousand years ago.
You share that act just as surely as if you had stood there and participated in driving the nails or placing the crown of thorns or using the spear to pierce His side; as surely as if you had helped lift the cross into the hole that had been dug after His body was on that cross; just as surely as if you had shared in letting it thud into that hole; just as surely as if you had helped tamp the soil around the foot of the cross. So, whether you think of it or not, realize it or not, you are in every moment of time, without any exception so long as life remains in you on earth, you are a cross—the cross of your own body—and that cross has for its purpose the crossing over of the invisible things of God into the realm of visible form.
But man has used that cross for the purposes of crucifying the things of God on earth. Once we begin to have a basic realization of that, and to realize that in any moment of self-activity, no matter how justified it may seem to your self-active mind, you are sharing in that focalization of crucifixion which was meted out to our Master when He was on earth. The judgments of your own mind by which you justify self-active function, are of no more meaning than the mockery of that trial, so-called, by which human beings then, undertook to justify themselves for the action which was taken. And so, you are either serving God by letting the things of God cross over into the world, or you are serving the adversary by refusing to let the things of God come into the world.
Life is in you—life force. How is it that evil is produced? By creating it as such? No. Evil is produced by refusing to let the things of God cross over into the world, for wherever you prevent the manifestation of something that should appear from the invisible realm, you have a space where the things of God did not appear, and consequently you have either a void or a distorted form which is not filled with the Spirit of God, and consequently is not functioning according to the Divine Design. This cross also represents your own God Being, by whatever name called. The inner cross of your Being always functions correctly—a connecting link between what we speak of as Heaven and earth, the invisible and the visible, according to this particular level of creation. And your body, which is the means by which that God Being has manifestation and is able to function on earth, is likewise a cross through which the Inner Reality is made manifest, or a cross upon which you crucify your own God Being.
Now, in crucifying, you cannot slay God, you cannot kill a God Being. Our Lord did not die on the cross in the sense that human beings think of it. We hear everywhere, in the so-called Christian world, the idea expressed that Jesus Christ died on the cross. His body reached a point of unconsciousness, yes, but if Jesus Christ had died on the cross there would be no hope for you, or me, or any other man or woman on the face of the earth, and as long as the devil can keep so-called Christians believing that Jesus Christ died on the cross, those same Christians cannot receive the power of God by which the works of God are supposed to be accomplished on earth. That is the central key lie of the devil, by which millions of earnest, sincere Christians have been kept from having any power on earth, any more meaning than all the other people, the so-called non-Christians.
When we look out into the world and see what actually is the fact, regardless of human beliefs or ideas or what human beings want to believe, we have to recognize that the power, the spiritual power actually made manifest through Christians, so-called, is precious little more than that which is made manifest through non-Christians. In other words, they are not letting the power of God manifest. I do not care what church they belong to, what beliefs they hold, what creeds they adhere to, the power is not made manifest, and where God is in action, power is made manifest—power to change things. And so, the central, key lie by which the Christian world has been duped, hoodwinked, and kept in a state of slavery to the unreal world, is this lie that Jesus Christ died on the cross—and as long as human beings believe that, they cannot conform to the laws and principles of Being which make possible the Victory of our Lord, Jesus Christ.
They have been so sure that it was necessary for Him to die on the cross. It was not necessary, and in fact, He did not. The crucifixion was the greatest atrocity of all time. Never in the history of the world has there been such an atrocity. Many of the atrocious things that human beings have done have had a direct relationship to this one thing, but that was the greatest atrocity committed by man in all history—and it was man's effort to destroy God and God's power and influence on earth once and for all.
Once we begin to see that God the Father did not intend that man should try to kill God, there was no necessity within the range of the Plan of Salvation by which, as it is supposed, it was necessary for man to try to kill God in order to be saved. Once we begin to see the truth of the matter, once we begin to let go of all these concepts that human beings have maintained for so long, we see how utterly ridiculous it is for human beings to suppose that God would ordain that man must try to kill God in order for man to be saved—that God could not save man until man had done his level best to kill God. Now that is what it amounts to, when we take a good honest look at it without regard to all the foolish concepts that have been promulgated down through the centuries. God did not ordain that man should try to kill God. God ordained that man should begin to respond to God, to love God, to yield to God and let the spirit of God have some meaning. So the mockery of the trial and the horror of the crucifixion itself was not something that God ordained.
Let us take another look at it. Those who suppose that it was necessary that Jesus Christ should die on the cross if human beings were to be saved, are saying, in fact, that the human being who has rendered the greatest service of all human beings aside from the Master Himself, the one who most fully did God’s will—the one who took a position that would not be understood, but the man who most served God in all of history was Judas. Because if man says that Jesus Christ had to die on the cross in order for man to be saved, man is saying that when Judas started that chain of events that led to the crucifixion, Judas was serving God, he was doing God's will; it was something that had to be done and that our salvation depended upon what Judas did. Now any time, any human being tries to tell you that our salvation depends on what Judas did, do not believe it, that someone had to go and betray. But even so, he did betray, his whole pattern of action was self-active, it was without regard to the Plan and Purpose of God, and yet there are millions who call themselves Christians who say that Jesus Christ had to die on the cross—and if you are going to believe that contemptible lie you must believe that of all the men who ever lived, the one who served us most was Judas, and that his action in betraying our Lord was the will of God made manifest.
Let us take an honest look at it on the basis of the truth, without regard to all the ideas and concepts and beliefs that have been promulgated without understanding the laws and principles of Being. So, when we begin to see this one thing it makes all the difference between life and death, it makes all the difference between serving God and serving the devil, because regardless of the claims of belief, anyone who says he believes that Jesus Christ died on the cross is serving the devil whether he knows it or not. I do not care how sincere, how earnest that individual may be, he is, in actual fact, serving the devil and not serving God.
Our God is a God of Love—our God is Love—and Father God so loved the world that He sent His only begotten Son into the world that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish but have everlasting life—and in those words there is not one single thing about the necessity of Judas betraying Him, of Peter denying Him, of all the others following afar off, those who did it, so that He had to be crucified. There is not one authentic word of Divine Inspiration anywhere, not anywhere, in the Bible or anywhere else, that suggests that Jesus Christ had to be crucified, let alone that He had to die. Once we begin to see the crucifixion of our Lord and King for what it was, the greatest atrocity of all time, something that God did not ordain, something that was not required in any way, shape or form for the salvation of man, we will begin to be in position to see the truth for what it is. We will begin to be in position to understand God’s Word. We will begin to be in position to let the truth make us free.
The Master said, “And ye shall know the truth and the truth shall make you free,” He did not say, “I will die on the cross and my dying will make you free.” Not once. That is the greatest lie that the devil has ever managed to foist on human beings—the lie that Jesus Christ had to die on the cross, and that if you believe that He died on the cross you are going to be saved. Every human being that believes that is deluded—I do not care who it is. You may say, “Those are strong words.” They are, but they are the truth, the truth that stands, and until there are those on the face of the earth who dare to face the truth, to see it and to accept it, there is no starting point for the working of God’s power into the world, that the will of God may be done on earth as it is in heaven, to the end that His Kingdom may actually come.
Once we begin to reach a point where we can start to relinquish this lie, where we can set it aside without feeling that we are betraying God somehow—Oh, that is one of the first things that a person runs into—conscience, the old idea has been instilled into the human mind since babyhood, perhaps, and conscience says, “Oh, if I believe this, I will be betraying Jesus.” The same old lie by which the devil has hoodwinked human beings down through the centuries, and until we begin to reach a point where we are controlled by the truth which we can see and understand with the intelligence that God gave us, regardless of conscience, regardless of anything else, we cannot begin to know the reality of that truth that makes you free.
Therefore, once we begin to set this lie aside and see it for what it is, we can begin to truly appreciate what our Master did on earth, we can begin to see His wonderful life for what it was, we can begin to see what He truly did to make it possible for you and me, and every other human being on the face of the earth, to rise out of this morass of nothingness and begin to be men and women in Christ, to share the Divine Pattern of Being, to be men and women, to have enough nobility to refuse to believe that contemptible lie—for as long as human beings believe that, they keep right on crucifying the manifestation of God on earth, they keep right on believing that they can be subject to the devil and the powers of evil on earth all the days of their lives, and then simply because they said they believe on Jesus Christ and that He died on the cross to save them from their sins, that they are going to go to heaven and everything is going to be all right from there on out. Once we begin to see this thing for what it actually is, the greatest fraud that the devil ever managed to foist on humanity, we will begin to be in position to be men and women and to truly follow our Lord and King.
You speak to the average Christian about following Jesus and what does that person think about? He thinks about following Him to the crucifixion, about being nullified, to be made of no effect, of being hurt and abused, of being crucified, and they are all like whipped dogs with their tails between their legs. The very word Protestant is a word which destroys any real meaning to the position of men and women. In the sense that it is ordinarily used, what does Protestant mean? Simply that it is protesting against some of the ideas promulgated by the Roman Catholic Church and that is that. Protest-ant. We are protesting against something—not a positive expression of Divine Life. No, the Protestants are just as much in the same applecart as the Roman Catholics, or anyone else. I hold no brief for any of them. I do not condemn them. They are all doing the best they know, and most of them sincerely believe what they say they believe. That is not their fault, and I have no quarrel with them. I simply point to the truth that as long as we believe those things we cannot know the truth—we are believing a lie, and there is no real release for fulfilment in believing a lie. So, until we do begin to let the truth come through into our consciousness so we can begin to know it, it cannot make us free.
What does it mean to be free? Most people, when they think of being free, they want to be free from all of the evil things round about of which they are aware. If they have a hurt or a pain or an ache, they want to be free of that. If they have some difficult situation to work out, they want to be free of that. They want to be free of all the things which they do not like. Now that is a fine attitude, is it not? An attitude that suggests strength of character, moral courage, divine ability to meet situations. You want to be free of everything you do not like. To be free of the things you do not like! Blessed Ones, as long as your primary motivation in finding the things of God is so you will be free of the things you do not like, you are not showing forth the moral stamina and nobility of Being which should characterize a man or a woman. In other words, you are being plain childish. That is all right for little children. And the Master said you had better come as a little child so that you can begin to understand the truths of Being, learn the truth and enter the Kingdom of heaven. When I say that it is being childish, actually I am not condemning you. I am simply pointing out the facts of the case so that you can face the truth, and until you know the truth you will not let the truth make you free.
So man did not succeed in killing God—and the focalization of Deity to which we respond was on earth, and if man had succeeded in killing Him there would have been no hope, because we could not have hoped to do something that He was not able to do. If He had not, in His position, been able to carry through and defeat man in life—not after He was dead—then indeed would the Christian idea that there is no hope of defeating the devil on earth, so you have to die and get out of the earth and go up into heaven—and where is the defeat, and where is the Victory, pray tell me? The devil is not in heaven to start with, and you are going to go sneaking out of life and through the gateway of death; you are going to get into a state where the devil is not, and that is victory! What victory? Where do these evil things need to be met? You are going to get away from them, are you? Perhaps!
But until someone has the moral stamina, the fortitude to dare to meet these things on earth where they are, where is the victory? And if the Master’s Victory was merely that the devil could not control Him after He was dead, where is that victory? There was a Victory, praise God—there was a Victory, a real one; not the false thing that human beings have imagined it to be; for if man had been able to kill our Lord, and it was only after He was dead that he could get out of the clutches of the devil, there was no victory. Do you see that? Do you see how it could not be any other way? That it was in life, on earth, in a physical body, that the Victory had to be established—not after He was dead, but before He was dead. Actually, He was not dead at all. His body did not die, praise God, for if it had there would be no hope that we could gain the victory here on earth. But there is a Victory, there is a starting point for you and for me and for every man, woman and child on the face of the earth and we can share in it.
So it is here on earth that changes need to come. It is here that all the evil forces need to be defeated. It is here that we need to live, and as long as human beings believe that Jesus Christ Himself could not live on earth and gain the victory in this life before He was dead, no wonder they fold their hands and say, “Yes, I believe on Jesus Christ, but you cannot get away from evil on earth; there is nothing much you can do about it. We will just try to be good, we will do the best we can, and after Jesus comes, why then it will be changed on earth. He will do it, but we cannot. And then also, if I die in the meantime, I know I will go to heaven.” O my! Of all the putrid things! It makes my soul revolt! Once we begin to see the truth for what it is so that we do truly follow our Lord and Master, we are not waiting until after we are dead to slip out of the devil's clutches. We are going to face up to the issue right here on earth, and let the power of God mean something in our dally lives—to be men and women in Christ.
So the things of God are coming into you from every direction all the time—the things of God coming from the Divine Source through the God Being and through your bodies out into the pattern of environment— the things of God are available to you from every direction all the time, without regard to so-called up or down or anything else, and you are living inside of your body of pneumaplasm. What is it that makes evil? What is it that causes evil to appear? Not the actual creation of evil, but simply the crucifixion of that which is of God so that it does not appear, and where that which is of God does not appear there is something that we call evil—a void, a distorted form, something out of control, something that is not beautiful and lovely. In this sense you begin to see that you cannot actually create evil. You can help produce evil by keeping the things of God from getting through into the world, into your life. And that which is evil, whether it is sickness in the body, or disturbance in the circumstance, or whatever it may be, is simply that which results when something of God does not get through the way it should.
There is the pattern of the individual responsibility and we cannot shift responsibility and blame someone else, but we do have to recognize that we have a relationship one to another. No human being, by and of himself, created all of the evil that may manifest in his life, but if he accepts that as an excuse and starts blaming someone else, he will never, while he does that, be free. Once you begin to see that evil is something that appears when the things of God do not get through, you will no longer have any fear of evil. “Yea, though you walk through the valley of the shadow of death, you will fear no evil.” Why should you fear evil? It is simply the mess that is left when human beings crucify that which is of God and do not let the things of God get through. A certain amount of power, force, influence in it, yes—and if you respond to it you can go on crucifying the expression of the Divine in yourself and share in the evil condition. But if you refuse to respond to that, if you fear no evil in actual fact, you are not going to have faith in it. Why should you have faith in this distorted mess that is left because human beings have crucified the expression of God on earth and kept it from coming through? Why not have faith in God? Why not have faith in our Lord and King? Why not have faith in the power of His Love, the reality of His Truth, the vibrant reality of Life?
One of the first things is to be so centered in God's love that you cease having fear, you cease being afraid of evil. You let perfect love cast out all fear and then you begin to be serene and tranquil, then you let the inside edge of your pneumaplasmic layer begin to be clear and the things of God start coming through, and if you do not reject them, you do not react to them, they begin to fill up all the voids. What happens to the evil? It disappears as soon as what God made gets through. Where does it go? It is nothing, so it does not have to go anywhere. We just simply have the manifestation of what ought to be in the Divine Design; we have the manifestation of control and there is beauty where ugliness once was; there is peace and serenity and harmony where there was discord and all the other forms of evil. Evil must pass away; it cannot do anything else. Only as human beings maintain it for a little while by the power of their own life force, sacrifice their own lifestream to it, can it be maintained. And so, after you are dead—you, the human being—it is too late, too late you, the human being, to share in establishing the Victory of our Lord Jesus Christ on earth before the children of men.
The so-called resurrection after death has its origin in this lie, in this lie that Jesus died. His body was resurrected, yes, but not from death, from the tomb. Your body is in the tomb now, is it not? What is this world but a great grave-yard? Your body is in the tomb now and what is the stone that stands at the mouth of the tomb if not the hardness of human hearts that refuses to let God's Love come through, God's Truth control, and God's Life have meaning. It is out of the tomb of this world that the resurrection must take place. But it is while your body is still alive that it can experience the resurrection, while physically alive, for once the God Being is separated it has no more meaning.
InterBeing by Alex Gray
If there is to be a heaven in your life, within your being, you must let God create it—and heaven is at hand, your God Being is there, so heaven is there, but until it takes form and manifests in your body, the fact that it is there means nothing to you. So many people have tried to comfort another by saying, “Well, heaven is within you, if you—well, I don’t know—if you just—I do not know—somehow if you just—heaven is really within you, after all you know; if you will just be peaceful and calm, heaven—somehow you can have this peace.” I have heard spiels from the pulpit that were not much more encouraging than that.
Day-by-day you leave behind certain refuse. Do you go into mourning every time you leave a little refuse behind? No. You may say, “Well, one feels it when one’s loved one passes on.” Yes, and I do not want to make light of that. There is a separation and there is a loneliness. But we still have to face the basic fact that what was left behind is not that person. The one loved did not go into the grave—the one you loved. Blessed Ones, why did you love some certain person? Because there was something noble, something sweet, something lovely that did get through, in spite of everything else. Where did that that was noble and lovely and real come from? From the God Being, it came from the God Being, and man cannot kill God. The circumstances of evil on earth cannot kill God. Guns and bombs and what-have-you, cannot kill God. Disease cannot kill God. Accidents cannot kill God. If man had succeeded in killing Jesus Christ on the cross then it would have been bad. Man would have succeeded in killing God and then there would have been no hope. In fact, we would not even be here now. Everything would have gone to pieces long ago. But man cannot kill God, disease cannot kill God, accidents cannot kill God, guns and bombs cannot kill God, and everything you loved in that person came from the God Being into manifestation through the body so that it would have meaning on earth—but that which went into the grave was not that person, simply the means by which that nobility, that loveliness, whatever it was, was made manifest for a little time.
Now as soon as you begin to know the truth and let the truth make you free, in actual fact, you begin to realize that regardless of what man does, regardless of what happens to the physical body, man cannot kill God and that God Being did not die. The means of manifestation was spoiled, yes, but we begin to recognize that all that you loved, all that was Divine, all that inspired, all that was appealing, did not pass away in any sense of dying—and that still remains and cannot die, will not die. Day-by-day a certain amount of refuse is left behind. When the body is separated from the God Being for any cause whatever, that which remains has become refuse. That is not what you loved, that and is not the person—that God Being cannot die. Remember this! Life does not ever die; life cannot die; it is impossible for life to die. Man has never managed to kill life. He may have disrupted the form through which life was made manifest, but that life did not die, ever, with respect to any person or thing, for life cannot die.
All life is eternal life. The life which you share in this moment is eternal life just as surely as any life that ever was or ever will be. People talk about getting eternal life or going through some process where they will have eternal life. You will never be any nearer to eternal life than you are in this moment, for all life, without any exception, is eternal life and until we begin to realize that—that we do not have to get into eternal life, we are in it now—we cannot possibly know the truth and let the truth make us free.
While the world is as it is there will continue to be some things we do not like, and if we are controlled by the things we do not like we are not being controlled by God—and God's process of making us free is not simply a matter of removing all the things we do not like. To be free, to be a noble man or woman in Christ, to be free to let the power of God manifest, to be free to share in the Victory—which means to be free to move into the pattern of action right here on earth by which ill things are overcome and made to be of no effect. And how do we start? By fighting all of the evil things? What are you going to do when you fight evil things? What is evil? That which results when someone crucifies the expression of God on earth. And you are going to fight it? You are going to go out and stir it up and make the muddy, filthy pool a little muddier. Fighting against evil does not at any time accomplish anything, personally or collectively. It is not by fighting evil that we share the Victory. It is by letting that which is of God come through so that it manifests in form because we live, and then the evil is gone—not to get away from something we deem to be evil, not to get away from things we do not like, not to compel everyone around us to do just what we think they ought to do to please us. No. But to live in the Spirit of Victory. The truth will make you free. How shall the truth make you free? By coming forth into form.
As long as you think of truth merely as some knowledge or concept or belief that you get hold of over there, and then you try to function according to that knowledge and belief, what is going to happen? Nothing! You can get all the knowledge you are capable of gathering within the scope of your poor, puny brain or mind and you will have nothing. How is it that the truth begins to make you free? You let the truth itself come forth in your life and take form. You let God’s Love fill your body, your mind and your heart so that the evil spirits cannot come in—there is no room for them. If you try to drive them out and fight with them, what is going to happen? It will not be very pleasant and you will get nowhere. But if you turn your attention and your love to God and let His Love come in, the manifestation of His Love will fill your heart and mind and fear will be cast out, and all the evil spirits will be gone, and you live that way.
Next comes Truth, and you let it have form on earth through you because you live. The reality of the Divine Design, and we have beauty, the reality of control and we no longer have chaos. There is order, there is harmony, there is coordinated function and your life functions effectively within you, and you function effectively in relationship to others who are likewise under the control of the Spirit of God. In the expression of that life you begin to be free of all of these things round about because you are under the control of God. You are going to be under the control of something all the time. You are either going to be controlled by circumstances, evil spirits, ill conditions, things you do not like, or you are going to be controlled by the power of God, and once you are controlled by the power of God, you do not fight it any more.
You cannot be free without the power of God, so why not yield to it, accept it, eagerly, open your heart and mind and let the power of God make you free; for the evil disappears as you let the things of God begin to have form within yourself and through yourself in the living of life, and then you begin to share the Master's Victory, you begin to share the victory over death and that is the resurrection. What did the Master say? “I am the resurrection and the life.” To resurrect you out of the old state in which you were and lift you up to a new state, the state of a Divine Man or a Divine Woman in Christ.
© Emissaries of Divine Light
Priest Of The Most High God
from Abram, Lot and Melchizedek — Bread and Wine
Uranda April 2, 1953 Class
Melchizedek, Priest of the Most High God, King of Salem. Salem, as you know, means peace: King of Peace—Priest of the Most High God. The Levites became the Priesthood in the pattern of the children of Israel and were supposed to maintain a Priesthood after the Order of Melchizedek. From the Divine standpoint we can classify any true Priesthood as belonging to the Priesthood of the Order of Melchizedek. We recognize here the individual pattern of symbolism as it manifests in relationship to three beings. Perhaps if we look at this individual pattern first, it will help us to a deeper realization of the larger application in the Divine Plan.
We see Melchizedek as the symbol of the Father within, the focalization of God Being in relationship to yourself as an individual. We see Abram as representing your level of consciousness—your mind, where there is a pattern of awareness with respect to the things of God. It was Abram who had the awareness of God's direction. It was Abram who was concerned about building an altar unto the Lord. It was Abram who was particularly blessed by Melchizedek, King of Salem, who brought forth bread and wine and was the Priest of the Most High God.
I would like to particularly emphasize this text and remind you of what is called the Lord's Last Supper, because at that time there was bread and wine. In other words, the elements utilized specifically, at the point of the Last Supper, or what we now speak of as the Holy Communion Service, have a background in the written record extending to Melchizedek and Abram. So we must give consideration to the symbolism involved: bread and wine used in relationship to the specific expression of blessing. Why does anyone, as it is put in these days, take communion? It is on the basis of receiving a specific blessing. And the Lord's Supper, as it worked out just prior to the Master's experience in Gethsemane and all that followed, was also specifically a pattern of blessing to the disciples who participated. The bread and the wine. The bread represents physical substance of your own body or being. In the New Testament pattern it is mentioned specifically as unleavened bread. The specific emphasis on unleavened bread in relationship to the expression of God, as it was through Jesus for instance, or as it was through Melchizedek here, has to do with the recognition that when there is true response self-activity ceases, and the molding, the changing in the individual, comes through divine action instead of through self-active determination.
The wine, the juice of the grape, is used all through the Bible as the symbol of life. Its symbolism here is that it signifies life. With respect to the physical body, you recognize that the bloodstream is the lifestream. The use of the word “blood” in the New Testament pattern became crystallized and a bit distorted; but when the Master said, “This is my blood,” He was talking about His lifestream, not about the idea that His blood as such had to pour out of His body. Actually, from the standpoint of the outworking of circumstance in an ordinary sense, there was not nearly as much actual loss of blood in connection with the Master's crucifixion as some might suppose. The blood was not drained out of His body. There was some loss of blood. But when He said, “This is my blood,” what did He mean? “This is my lifestream.” He was undertaking not to develop the picture as human beings have devised it; He was undertaking to bring them into a consciousness of the fact that they were members of His body, that He was including them, to whatever degree they responded, in the working of the lifestream which had its base in Himself. Until the Communion Service is seen on that basis there cannot be any true understanding of it or any true sharing of it.
The actual expression which the Master used at the time when He gave them the symbol of the bread was not that “This is my body” should be taken to mean that the bread as such was a part of His physical body, as people are inclined to believe, but that as He gave the bread, “this,” the human being or the disciple who received that bread as the symbol, was thereby included as a part of His body. He was saying “This is my body, this group of individuals”—including them as members of His body. You begin to see that He did not, in His original expression in that upper room, suggest that the wine as such was His blood or that the bread as such was His body, or that it should be conceived to be so, as in the popular concepts that have come down to us, but rather that He was using symbols to show those who participated that they were a part of His body: “This is my body.” So the secrets of the Communion Service have not been known or understood by the Christian churches, and the pattern of belief in connection with the Communion Service has not allowed the true expression, the true manifestation, of what the Master intended it to.
But wine is the symbol of the lifestream. What was the first step the Master took in relationship to His public ministry? At the marriage feast of Cana, He changed water to wine. Now you can believe whatever you wish to as to the actual fact that there was some water there and suddenly it became wine. It is not at all impossible. But that is not the point I am emphasizing. The point is that changing water to wine was His lifework, as it is mine: changing water, truth, to wine, the practical expression of life on earth. And the marriage feast? Why the marriage feast? Because His whole ministry was designed to bring heaven and earth together into oneness. In other words marriage was, and still is, used as a symbol of the union of heaven and earth. So the Master's first step in ministry was to reveal the purpose of His lifework. And unless you see that first step in relationship to the Lord's Supper—the final step before Gethsemane and the trial, etc—you cannot understand the final step. But changing water to wine, changing truth in the abstract sense, the elusive sense, into a practical expression of the lifestream on earth in and through you, individually and collectively, bringing you, the outer, into oneness with you, the inner, because heaven and earth must begin to be one in you before they can begin to be one around you. So this marriage feast, this pattern of union, has to do with the manifestation of oneness in you. That is the key, the secret of the meaning of that first miracle, as it is called. And the wine: the practical expression of life, the living lifestream made manifest on earth.
So the beginning of the Master's ministry on earth was with respect to changing water to wine, abstract truth into a living lifestream in relationship to humanity, on the basis of the oneness of the inner and the outer, heaven and earth. And He concluded His pattern of ministry with the Lord's Supper, using wine to symbolize the lifestream and extending the offer of that lifestream to all who would receive. Likewise here in the Old Testament we have the word, in the 18th verse of the 14th chapter of Genesis: “And Melchizedek king of Salem brought forth bread and wine: and he was the priest of the most high God.”
Your function here in this School has for its purpose the basic initiation into the Priesthood after the Order of Melchizedek. There can be no true manifestation of spiritual power except on the basis of the Priesthood after the Order of Melchizedek. This is the key point in relationship to the outworking of the whole Divine Plan and Pattern. Those who would share in the fulfilment of that Divine purpose on earth must, to some degree at least, begin to share the reality of the Priesthood after the Order of Melchizedek. We cannot at this time undertake to unveil all of the mysteries involved in this Priesthood after the Order of Melchizedek, but I would particularly draw your attention to the fact that here in the beginning of the pattern as it was with respect to the children of Israel we have the specific mention of the Priest of the Most High God.
Now, you begin to feel, the moment we touch this point with respect to Melchizedek, the moment there is any recognition of the reality of this Priesthood, that to Melchizedek God was no mystery—the focalization of manifestation on earth where God was no mystery. And in the Blueprint as outlined in the Book of Revelation, the 10th Chapter and the 7th Verse, we read: “But in the days of the voice of the seventh angel, when he shall begin to sound, the mystery of God should be finished, as he hath declared to his servants the prophets.” The mystery of God should be finished. God has never sought to be a mystery to man, but man's refusal to know God has caused God to be a mystery to man.
Until we begin to realize that the finishing of the mystery of God is a process that takes place within you as an individual, the process of achieving that which was signified by the Master's first step in public ministry, changing the abstract truth into the living wine of life at the marriage feast—the union of the inner and the outer, to let the inner, the power of God, have positive meaning on earth—until you begin to go through that process of letting water be changed to wine in you, you cannot have the joy of seeing the finishing of the mystery of God. And while God is a mystery to you, you cannot know the fulness of that which you should reveal on earth; for you came into the world to reveal God, and you cannot reveal that which is a mystery, unknown to yourself. So here, in the very beginning of the pattern as we share it at this time, Melchizedek, King of Salem, brought forth bread and wine, and he was the Priest of the Most High God. And the pattern of our purpose and goal is that the mystery of God should be finished. Only to the degree that we today let that process work out in ourselves as a unit, or as a body, or as members of that body, can we be Priests and Priestesses after the Order of Melchizedek.
What does it mean to be a priest? What does it mean to be a prophet? Generally speaking, human consciousness limits the idea of a prophet more or less to the idea that a prophet was one who could foretell future events, he could prophesy, he could tell what was coming someday. While the revelation of the spirit of God through the individual may reveal something of that which is coming out of the east, a prophet is one who lets the Word of the Lord be spoken on earth. The true meaning of a prophet is one who speaks the Word of the Lord on earth. And to whatever degree you let the spirit of God determine the words you speak you are a prophet. But there is something higher and greater than being a prophet.
We might note that one can be a disciple without being a prophet; one can be a prophet without being a Priest. And we begin to recognize that it is not enough merely to be a disciple, one who follows after; it is not enough merely to be a prophet, one who speaks the Word of the Lord on earth—it is necessary that we enter the Priesthood after the Order of Melchizedek—not only to speak the Word of the Lord but to do the works of the Lord, to work out the Divine Pattern on earth, to live the reality of that which is, to the world, the mystery of God. And it is only as this reality of Priesthood is made manifest that we can have the manifestation of power necessary to the accomplishment of the Divine Purpose on earth.
There have been quite a number of people who have sensed something of the significance of Melchizedek, or the Priesthood after the Order of Melchizedek. There are some so-called modern schools of thought which claim to stem from that point but which, by their very attitudes and actions, show that it is a forgery and nothing more. We would recognize that wherever truth is in expression, there the influence of this Priesthood is to be seen and felt to some degree. But the control pattern with respect to humanity, and the design pattern with respect to the Plan and purpose individually and collectively, is carried over in focus to this present period of time, which begins here with Abram and extends to ourselves, from the Motherland. The Focalization of the Divine Pattern as it was working in the Motherland, the pattern of government, the manifestation of the educational system and what we might call the religious or spiritual life of the people, all came to focus in the Priest of the Most High God. The pattern of connecting that which was known in the Garden of Eden, or in the Motherland, with that which is known within the period of recorded history is carried over to us, and made available to us, on this basis: Melchizedek, King of Salem, Priest of the Most High God. And that particular focalization, in manifestation, of Priesthood gave man the opportunity of returning to the Divine Estate.
The true purpose of the development of the pattern of the children of Israel was to make possible the manifestation of this Priesthood, not for purposes of selfish nationalism but to the end that through such a manifestation of Priesthood the spirit and power of God could be extended out to all humanity. The real purpose with respect to all of the tribes of the children of Israel was to the end that the different tribes could be different parts of the body, finding true expression and meaning in and through the Focalization of Priesthood, by which the power and spirit of God should extend to the whole earth. Only to the degree that the children of Israel allowed that fulfilment was their outworking in history according to Plan or truly meaningful. We see a development in the outworking in that historical pattern which produced a selfish nationalism, an exclusiveness, a degeneracy in those who were given the privilege of Priesthood, so that it became something that was a far cry from that which God intended.
Melchizedek established this Pattern with respect to Abram, outlined the Plan and the purpose and the method—not all at once but over a period of time—and carried the pattern through with respect to Isaac and Jacob, who became Israel, and gave those who were at that time responding to divine direction an opportunity to allow the full manifestation of the Divine Plan in action in relationship to the physical world. This first step in the dawn of history, in the unfolding of the Divine Plan, had to be on the basis of reestablishing the First Sacred School, giving human beings an opportunity to approach the process of development into the Divine Pattern on what we might call the physical plane; that is, an outer, physical approach. The full significance of that may not be immediately evident, but all of this that is recorded here with respect to the development of the children of Israel from Abram's time had that one theme for its purpose, and when we look back we see that the children of Israel failed miserably in fulfilling that purpose.
We begin to see that the Master refocalized, when He came into the world, exactly the same thing. He did not undertake to change the Pattern around in some fashion. He did use the Second Plane approach instead of the First Plane approach. It was impossible to undertake to use the First Plane approach anymore; the conditions necessary for its use had passed, and humanity had failed to carry through in it, so there was nothing more that could be done about it except to use the next cycle in order to make the next plane approach. And the Master Himself came into the world to do that. But again, just as with the children of Israel, the purpose was not recognized, the Plan was not accepted, and those who call themselves Christians have, in following out their own ideas and concepts with respect to these things, produced the same type of failure which was made manifest with respect to the children of Israel.
The children of Israel were finally taken into captivity and scattered. Have the so-called Christians been taken into captivity? The answer is obviously Yes—taken into captivity on a basis which has not allowed the manifestation of power, the reality of the Divine Priesthood. The disciples were supposed to become prophets, and as the cycle worked out and the day of Pentecost came, they began to function on the basis of speaking the Word of the Lord. If they had been content to wait for the Lord's direction, instead of impulsively using the current of power on the basis of their own choices, they would have become prophets, so that they could have actually expressed the Word of the Lord, and begun to see the Plan of God, the Plan that the Master brought into focalized manifestation on earth. And then they would have become, had they held steady, Priests after the Order of Melchizedek, and there would have been the manifestation of power, under the Divine Pattern, sufficient to influence every phase and department of life, extending into the spiritual influence or control in the world of government.
A little of this has of course gotten through now and again, shaping the Divine ordering of human events in order to make it possible for us to have this present opportunity. You are sharing the work of the Third Sacred School again being made manifest on earth. Humanity had failed to utilize the opportunity when the First Sacred School was being reestablished. The same is true with respect to the Second. Those opportunities are gone. Let us look back for a moment.
What was one of the great stumbling blocks to those who thought to follow Jesus at the time He was on earth? Human beings were then still trying to work things out on the basis of their concepts of the old order. The pattern as it appeared with respect to the First Sacred School had degenerated into a human pattern, as symbolized by the scribes and Pharisees. And they could not see on what basis there should be a New Pattern. Their subjection to the old pattern tended to make them reject the New Pattern. They did not realize that since the cycle had broken in relationship to that first pattern it was utterly useless. Jesus Christ Himself could not make that first pattern work under those vibrational conditions. That opportunity was lost, it was gone. It could not be reinstituted by any means whatsoever in heaven or on earth. It was gone. And they did not see that. They did not realize they simply had the empty shell of something far different from that which God had given to them.
Now we have something of the same pattern. Human beings today tend to have difficulty in letting go of the old pattern, and they try to make the pattern as they think it was with respect to Jesus work in this present time. It cannot be done. If Jesus Christ Himself came on earth He could not make it work on that basis. That opportunity was lost; the cycle was broken and there simply is no way by which that can be caused to work out to a point of fulfilment on that basis. It cannot be done. That cycle was broken, as surely as the cycle with respect to the First Sacred School. Now that does not mean that the truths that were contained in the teachings and presentations of the First or the Second were lost. No.
I have shown you that the focalization aspects were carried over and they were just the same in principle in the Second as they were in the First. And the same is true today. But the approach, the basis of attempting to work it out, which could have worked under the Master's leadership and with respect to the vibrational factors as they were at that time—that pattern could have worked but it didn't. Instead of actually working, there was a break in the pattern almost immediately, and there was the thousand years of the Dark Ages, the millennium. The Second Plane approach is what? Mental—with respect to consciousness, the working of the mind as such. And human beings are still today trying to use that same approach. They think they are getting somewhere with it. They are getting into trouble; that is all we will get into with it. But if they had carried through there would not have been any thousand years of the Dark Ages, when man's mind was bound in darkness.
Let me emphasize something to you. What was the date with respect to the manifestation of this Blueprint which we now use, the Blueprint that relates to us today? According to the Biblical pattern it is listed at 96 AD. That is close enough to emphasize my point. It was not until long after the day of Pentecost, long after all these tangent patterns had come into manifestation and the break was beyond repair, that God made arrangements for the refocalization of the Divine Pattern, or the Blueprint. He gave what we call the Book of Revelation, so it would be on hand, within manifestation, for the next cycle of outworking. That opportunity had been thrown away back there, and all of the intervening struggles to try to make that pattern work have proven futile. It had some semblance of effectiveness up to the beginning of what we might call our national history. It was losing that semblance of meaningfulness long before that, because there was an overlapping in the vibrational factors. But the New Pattern had emerged to its reasonably full force, so that the overlapping vibrations from the old pattern were virtually gone by the turn of this century, and see what happened.
We have something new, something altogether different. Now it is the same truths, the same laws, the same basic purpose, but the approach is different, and must be different. However, the Christian world tries to make the approach on the basis of what they think the Master used, when they do not understand the Second Sacred School at all. They could have understood it if they had allowed the cycle that opened with what is called Pentecost to really work out and carry through, but they never gave themselves a chance to understand it, and the churches that have developed out of that have never given themselves a chance to understand it. I am not condemning them, but they are just simply utterly ignorant of what is meant, what the Divine Plan was then, and the human concepts of pattern derived out of that simply do not work, not in the sense that God intended. And any effort to still use that pattern of approach must fail, because God Himself would not try it. It would be impossible to God, because it would be an attempt on God's part to violate His own laws, to ignore the vibrational factors in the Cosmos, to ignore the natural cycles of the unfolding pattern of the Four Forces.
So we come to the Third. And the Third is what? The Third Sacred School has the approach on the spiritual expression plane basis. It is not as popular, in the outer sense, as either of the other two, a little more difficult in one sense, but we can, under this vibrational pattern, make a Third Plane approach and revitalize the factors of the Second and First plane patterns in relationship to ourselves. But if we try to make a physical approach; a mental approach—it does not solve the problem, and can't. Those approaches at that time, under those vibrational factors, would have allowed the development of awareness so that the Three-Plane Pattern could have come into manifestation under either one. Suppose the disciples had followed through and allowed that Pentecostal pattern to really unfold and become what it was supposed to be—then the factors that were with respect to the physical plane approach would have been reactivated and revitalized and drawn into alignment, and that which was of the Third Plane vibrational factors would have come into manifestation in relationship to it and there would have been alignment. But they didn't do it.
Now we cannot just arbitrarily reach out there and use one of these other approaches and get anywhere. Millions have tried it. If you want to waste time with it, that is your business, but it will not work. We use the Third Plane approach today, and it is the only way that will work, because we have an altogether different vibrational pattern than was present in the past, either at the time of the children of Israel or at the time of the Master. Once we begin to function correctly on the basis of the Third Plane approach, the Second and First Plane patterns become reactivated and drawn into alignment with respect to ourselves, because the mind and the body, individually speaking, begin to come under subjection to that. The alignment is established and you begin to be what you should be; you begin to have the manifestation of healing power, for instance. But this is the third step in the period of recorded history, to give man an opportunity of restoration.
The outline in Revelation relates to this Third Plane approach. Why do those who have been functioning on the basis of the First or Second Plane approaches find Revelation meaningless, virtually? Oh, they have concocted some ideas with respect to it, but it just simply does not mean a thing. When they try to interpret it on that basis it becomes fantastic nonsense. They could not do anything else with it. Not until we make the Third Plane approach can the Book of Revelation have any meaning, and under that approach it does have meaning—it is the Divine Blueprint.
Now suppose this cycle were broken. The only cycle that could be opened to humanity would be with respect to the Fourth. But if man has thrown away the First and Second, and then should throw away the Third, which is really the highest level contact that he can hope to make—if he throws this one away and has to be limited to the Fourth Plane approach, would he have any chance? Obviously not. Man has thrown away two opportunities, the third one is established, and if he throws that one away there is no more—it is finished. Now he is not going to throw it away; I am not suggesting that. There are going to be a few, somehow or other, to carry the pattern through. But that is what we are here for, and until we begin to let the Priesthood after the Order of Melchizedek have meaning in relationship to this Third Sacred School approach to the fulfilment of the Divine Pattern, we cannot hope to accomplish that to which we are called.
When you begin to see that our Lord, when He came on earth, was a Priest of the Most High God, after the Order of Melchizedek, you can begin to see that you cannot truly follow Him unless you too let that sensing of the Divine Pattern have meaning in your life, and unless we utilize the vibratory factors that are available to us today we cannot receive it. You try to receive it on the basis of the vibratory factors of the past cycles and it will not work—you cannot receive it. You may go into fantastic flights of fancy, as many have, but you will not receive it. You must receive the gifts of God on the basis of the vibrational factors.
And we remember that our present vibrational pattern is what? Air—Water—Air. And if we try to use the vibrational patterns at work at the time of the Master we fail; it will not work, not today. It could have worked then, under His leadership, but it cannot work today, under these vibrational factors, and I would not attempt to work it out. He could do it; I can't. I make no pretense of it. But I can, with the help of those who are willing to share it, I can work it out on the basis of the present vibrational factors, which utilize the elements that were allowed to come somewhat into manifestation in that First and Second Cycle and allowed to become meaningless. You can utilize those same elements and carry through to victory. And it is your choice. What shall it be?
© emissaries of divine light
Watch The Cycles Working Out
from Abram
Uranda March 30, 1953 Class
As you begin to function on the basis of the principles of reality, you learn to discern the factors which should come to focus in a cycle that is of comparatively short duration and you do not try to bring to focus in the present those factors which are of a larger cycle. You let them work out. One of the causes for difficulty, futility, failure, is this: until the human being learns to so function in the current of the spirit that he can discern what factors are properly to be brought to focus today and what factors are to be left alone to work out in a larger cycle, he will be tending to ignore the things that should come to focus today and he will be trying to bring to focus today things that should be left alone.
Now the human mind, with human intelligence, cannot learn to do this in self-activity—it simply cannot be done. There are no rules and regulations you can point to. In the ordinary sense, you can't put it on what is commonly called the scientific basis, that is, subject to the logic and reason of the intellect. But once you begin to let the spirit control, you find it is on a scientific basis, and that logic and reason recognize the reality as it manifests. So one of the things that you can do very effectively in relationship to your own progress is to watch—not trying to make something be thus and so, but just to watch and observe; be alert. Watch the cycles working out in relationship to yourselves, to whatever degree you can see them in relationship to one another. But particularly watch the cycles as they work out in the material which I present to you, because there, if you are alert, you can perceive the variations.
But learn to watch the vibratory factors, learn to perceive them. If you do not practice looking for them, watching them, you will never learn to see them. It takes alertness, observation, and it takes the process of letting. For here we see letting comes into two specific classifications: one, letting the vibratory factors of the larger cycle alone, letting them work on out; but the factors which are supposed to come to focus in the present, letting them have the proper vibratory pattern, the control and design patterns, so that they can manifest. You go through a process of letting in both cases. One, you let it work out further, let the cycle continue, leave it alone. Do not try to make it be thus and so. The others, you let them come to point in the present, you cooperate, you give them an opportunity of having controlled focalization.
This gives you an opportunity to have a little insight into the way in which human beings fail to receive God's blessings. Because, for some reason or other, whether they are struggling or being concerned about the larger cycle, or whether they are self-centered or functioning wrongly in some fashion, they will fail to cooperate in receiving into focalized pattern, in relationship to themselves, the vibratory factors that should come to focus. Now they are not going to just, by some magic means, gather to a point and manifest for you. There has to be some way of receiving them. You have to give them a contact point. If you are trying to get hold of vibratory factors that are beyond your reach, that you have no business playing with, you are going to be in trouble, or at least fail. But there are those factors each day in your life, right here and now, which are supposed to begin to come into focus. And unless you are so functioning that you can gather them in and let them have point in relationship to yourself, they are not going to come into form; they will pass on by. The thing is so scattered that it never appears.
The point is that we have something to do and we have to learn how to function in relationship to it. Now, at the moment I can tell, by the looks on some of your faces anyway, that this sounds a little ambiguous, a little—well, these are the things we are here to learn. Don't imagine that you are supposed to be able to so function overnight. But I want you to take a little look at it to see the principles involved, so that you could stop rejecting God's blessings which are coming your way, and start doing your part toward letting the vibratory factors come to focus as they are supposed to appear in your life in relationship to the Unit here, or in relationship to the Lord's service wherever the pattern may be working out.
All of this has a very definite bearing on the basic principles that we have been studying in relationship to history, because one of the great values in history as it has been introduced is to let you see how it was that human beings failed to receive blessings when they could have, when they should have, when they were provided; how human reactions or self-activity dissipated the vibratory factors that were supposed to come to point, instead of letting them come into focalization in relationship to the individuals then living. Unless you begin to see history on this basis you will not be able to gain the greatest possible comprehension of the lessons that are contained there.
Of course, you can always say that history teaches various things more or less on the surface, or to be intellectually observed. One of the things that tends to come into consciousness for anyone who really studies history is the idea that there are great cycles that work out and have within the whole scope of recorded history, that can be seen in relationship to the rise and fall of empires. A certain pattern would begin to take form, people would cooperate in it up to a certain point, then they'd begin to be lethargic and self-righteous and self-satisfied and so on. And you can see where the graph of the cycle begins to level out, and in that pattern you look at the historical factors and you see how these people were so self-content, they thought they were on top of the world and they were just going to stay there. And then, perhaps almost imperceptibly at first, there was a decline, beginning to go down, and then suddenly, generally, a plunge, and another cycle begins: the rise and fall of empires, the great cycles in history.
We can look at those great cycles—you probably have enough knowledge of history to see clearly the point I'm talking about at the moment—we can look at those and see how human beings precipitated those things. They were the ones that brought it about. We see a dangerous tendency, that has been in manifestation for some time in our own country, of a leveling off. There is a little rally at the present time; how well it's going to hold we shall see. But being called the greatest nation on earth, etc., taking some of our blessing and privileges and opportunities for granted, tending to be self-righteous and self-satisfied, feeling secure with industrial patterns and business, commerce; we've got the best of everything, etc—I'm not sure that that is true; to a certain extent it is, but not on the basis that is generally thought of—and all of this self-righteousness, and what do we begin to see? Self-satisfied, instead of the forward movement upward, a tendency to level off, a tendency to lose the moral fiber, the strength, the stamina, the pioneering spirit necessary to keep moving upward. Now it's our business, in part, to help maintain that pioneering spirit in relationship to our national program. It works here and in Canada, or wherever there is response to it. There must be something moving upwards. If we pause to consider the matter, just very briefly, we could see that the reason why England, as the center of the British Empire, has managed to stay up as well as it has, has been because of the outlying dominions where something of that upward swing was present, and it siphoned back to England. If England had been left more or less on her own, and the pattern had worked out as it did in England, it too would have reached the point of taking the great plunge before this. But the upward trend in the dominions held it up.
Now all the way back through history we see how God has given man opportunities, over and over again, which man has failed to utilize. He didn't take advantage of them. He started to perhaps, in some ways, and then let self-activity enter in. In recorded history we do not have any specific pattern which makes for easier examination and analysis in this regard than the experience of the Children of Israel. And it is this specific pattern which we begin to analyze in order to see what relationship that outworking has to us. And you will be surprised, if you have not already begun to see it, how closely those same principles, those same factors, show up in relationship to ourselves in this present day. We won't be studying history as something way back yonder. We'll see it in relationship to the present cycle, because the same basic factors are present in any case, and it is brought out into the pattern that you see on the basis of symbolism. And we begin to appreciate the meanings of the various symbolic factors. We begin to see how those things are in operation here and now, so that we are not relegating it merely to a story of the past.
Once you see the prehistoric pattern, see how man went through a process of rapid devolution, and gradually began to move upward again, we began to have a written record, the early Egyptian period, etc—we begin to see the dawn of history. And back in that period of the dawn of history, our attention comes to focus on a man called Abraham and his particular pattern of response, the things that began to work out in his life. I do not suppose that any of you ever think of Abraham without thinking almost in the same split second of Melchizedek. In any case, the very mention of the name Abraham should remind you instantly of Melchizedek—Melchizedek, King of Salem, meaning the Prince of Peace. The beginning pattern, initiated by Melchizedek, who according to the record was not as a man born—he was without beginning of years as we think of it, without end of days; in other words, the picture we have is of a Being who was not subject to birth and death or ascension, as we think of it, in relationship to this particularized pattern. The King of Salem, Melchizedek, comes into the picture—we see the beginnings of this pattern.
© Emissaries of Divine Light
