from
This Generation
Martin Cecil December 26, 1962
I have emphasized the fact before that the change must come in one generation. It could be, presumably, any generation, as long as human beings exist on earth. If they leave it too long, of course, there will not be any generations left. But it must come in one generation, though human beings have a comfortable idea that somehow or other the next generation may be more successful. That which has to be experienced is what has been defined as a change of polarity. Fallen human beings are polarized with respect to the mass consciousness of humanity; Divine Man is polarized in Divine consciousness. If we take just one person and consider this changeover, we recognize that there must be a transition. Everyone starts off with the wrong polarity. There must be movement through a period of experience to right polarity. It is not something that is done instantly; but unless it is done in that person while he lives, it is not done. Isn't that right? After he is dead there is no more chance for that person.
As we multiply one person by whatever number is required—say 144,000—then it must happen to those 144,000 individuals during the course of their life; otherwise it does not happen. If the attitude is taken, “Well we'll do it just so far; we couldn't possibly go all the way; but our children will then carry on from there,” we delude ourselves, because the children only receive a blessing if the generation who are the parents carry through. Otherwise they are left betwixt and between; they are neither one thing nor the other. They do not have the evidence made manifest of the Divine State and they do not have the experience, to the same degree, of the fallen state. There is perhaps a tendency to consequently take things for granted and to lack appreciation for that which is, to the extent that it is. They have not been through the harsh—I was going to say reality; it should be unreality—of the fallen state, and they have not been offered the experience of the Divine State, if those of the previous generation have not carried through.
It must be done in one generation, because if the generation who were in the process of carrying through do not, then the children, or succeeding generation, have to start all over again. The idea that the hope is in the children is nonsense. The idea that the succeeding generation offers the hope is foolishness. It is the generation that is here now that offers the hope. It is now that is the appointed time. It is the only time we have. If in one generation there are those who do carry through, and there are children associated with that generation, then that is a different matter, because they have the manifest experience of the Divine State at that point, and they know what it is then. But if it has not been made manifest they do not know what it is, and they will find that they have to go down into Egypt again and come clear all over again—if they are going to do it, that is. There has always been a block with respect to the fulfilment of the Divine Plan, and that block has been just one generation—never any more, just one generation. We can take the attitude, “Well we'll do our best. We'll go as far as we can,” but it will not get the job done, and another generation—if one is on hand—will have to start all over again.
You have been through some experience to bring you to this point, to enable you to emerge from the fallen state to the extent that you have. It has been quite a journey, hasn't it, to bring you to this point. You have had many experiences, passed through many things. You have known clearings of various sorts. All that has been put into you, so to speak—this is the Lord's investment in you. We cannot bequeath it to someone else, can we? It is something that happened to us, not to anyone else. We cannot just take it out of ourselves and put it in our children. If they are going to share it they must experience it too. There isn't anything vicarious in this process; we have to know it for ourselves, and therefore we must come all the way through if our lives are to have the meaning which is the Divine Purpose. If we do not come all the way through we fall short. That is what is called sin, by the way—falling short of the mark. If there is a falling short it is so much waste, isn't it? There has been development, and development working out through us—we just didn't make it. Well if we didn't make it we didn't make it, and what might have been on the basis of our restoration was not experienced—gone—and all that went into our lives to make it possible for us to experience the restoration is wasted because we are gone.
This is something that must work out in one generation; otherwise it doesn't. It will not evolve there, because it is not a matter of evolving through human self-activity. Human beings have been doing that, but that never achieves the goal, never gets anywhere except to ultimate annihilation. It is something new. Our Master Himself revealed this when He came. He let it be done in thirty years—one generation insofar as He was concerned. So He revealed that it could be done in one generation. He also, incidentally, revealed that it must be done in one generation, although that has not been so clearly seen. Look at all the generations we have had since, and still it is not done insofar as human beings generally are concerned, because there has not been a recognition of this one fundamental principle.
It is not a matter of evolving in human self-activity so that we become better self-active human beings. That is not the goal at all. The goal is to become Divine Beings, and we cannot become Divine Beings as long as we remain self-active. It is a matter of moving through the transition from the control of the devil to the control of God, and when God controls, when the Divine consciousness is accepted, then the Divine State can begin to appear as a result. As long as the devil controls, then the fallen state must appear as a result. No matter how much progress may be made in self-activity, the fallen state must remain; conflicts will continue until the final conflict, somewhere along the way.
The statement was made by our Master to the effect that except the days should be shortened no flesh should be saved. Now that has generally been translated to mean that there was going to be such an appalling state of destructiveness on earth that unless that were curtailed everybody would destroy everybody else; so this period of awful destructiveness, when human beings were in such tribulation, would have to be shortened so that somebody survived. Well there might be some application in that sense, but we may also see that the days must be shortened in the sense of one generation. Unless the days are shortened in that sense, no flesh shall be saved; unless the change, the transition, the restoration, comes with respect to an adequate body of human beings in one generation—wherever that generation may be—no flesh shall be saved, because there isn't any other way by which flesh may be saved.
It is the acceptance of the Divine control, in actual fact, of a sufficient number of responding ones which allows the Divine control to begin to manifest as a reality on earth—something which human beings have not experienced. They do not know what it would be. They have no idea that such a thing is even possible, for the most part. They certainly have no comprehension of what would happen if Divine action began to appear on earth because there was a form through which it could appear. There simply has not been such a form, except here and there on an individual basis, since man fell; so human beings have no awareness of what it would be, and the results which would be the natural result, the natural consequence of the Divine control working, are therefore considered as being fantastic. From the standpoint of human self-activity such results could never appear in a million years, but from the standpoint of Divine activity they could appear in one generation. But there could be no Divine activity in this sense, no transfer of the Divine control, until there are those who are willing to accept it. Because there have been no adequate instruments of such acceptance, there has been no experience of what the consequences would be.
If we are letting our lives be dedicated to this Divine purpose of the restoration, we must experience it within ourselves first. It is not as though we could say, “Well we have a vision of this—the restoration, the goal. We see how wonderful it would be. God's power is adequate; we believe that; therefore somehow or other, because we have this vision and understanding, it is all going to work out successfully.” It is not. If it works out successfully it has to work out through someone, and if our dedication is genuine, we are saying, “It must work out through us.” And in that actual experience the reality begins to be known: Divine activity, the power of God manifesting on earth to make possible that which naturally appears in consequence. We do not have to concern ourselves with that which is to appear. That takes care of itself. All we have to concern ourselves with is letting the experience be known to us under the dominion of God.
Because man has been functioning in the fallen state there has been no available instrument for the Divine use; the power of God has been entirely excluded in the truly creative sense, but such as has been able to appear has had to appear through the fallen consciousness of human beings. The life force that is moving through people—that is, the power of God—is under the control of the fallen consciousness of human beings, and consequently it has kept everything in a turmoil. The very moment there begins to be something which is under God's control the power of God can begin to move through that in a creative sense—there begins to be a shift, and we are here to share in letting that shift take place actually. But unless we ourselves experience what it means to be under the dominion of God, unless we ourselves begin to discover, and consequently experience, what it means to function on the basis of Divine consciousness, we cannot share in that which needs to be done.
Shall that which has been experienced through us and through others over these past years,
bringing us all to this point, be allowed to go for nothing?
It is not just a matter of the number of years a person may have been associated with this Ministry in the conscious sense—it is the number of years a person has been on earth moving toward this point of conscious recognition of these things, for all experiences have been used. Each one of you has come through cycles which are distinct and individual to you, and all these things have brought you together here—not only you who are here present tonight but all who are here in our Ministry in actual fact—to this hour. How much investment the Lord has in us, then, investment which can either come to fruition or be written off. The Lord is pretty accustomed to writing it off. It might be a change for Him if it was allowed to come to fruition, if there was an actual willingness to carry through to the point of fulfilment; not personal fulfilment in the sense of something which the individual thinks would be pleasing to himself, but fulfilment in the sense of being absolutely under the dominion of the spirit of God, whatever might occur thereafter. To what extent is that true of you now? How free are we? How much dominion does the truth have in us actually? All of you know that it should be so, all of you feel that you are dedicated to this purpose; but does it go beyond the theory, really? Sometimes a human being will have something in mind that he would like to do, and if that is suggested, “Oh yes! I'll go right into it! Wonderful!” but if it is something else that he had not considered as being too desirable, and it meant that he was not moving into what he wanted to move into, what then? Is it what we ourselves personally want to do that is important? Or is the need in the Ministry of the Lord important? What needs to be done? That is the important thing. Whether we want to do it or not is beside the point, and if we have such wants anymore it is obvious that we are not yet sufficiently under the control of the Divine consciousness.
We are here to fill the needs of the moment. We are not in the Divine state in the external sense—of course not, because there has been no cause for it to be here yet. We have to establish the cause first, and thereafter the Divine Estate will appear and that no doubt will be wonderful. But in the meantime it is not here and we have to function on the basis of the things that are here, filling the needs that are here without question as to whether it is personally pleasing or not. “Is this the thing that is needed in the Lord's ministry, in the fulfilment of the Divine purposes?”—that is the question. And it is in the filling of the needs in the Lord's service, no matter what they are, that we find our joy. That is where the joy is. The joy is not in doing what we like to do, but in doing that which is needful in the fulfilment of the Divine purposes. And when we begin to do that consistently we begin to find the secret of joy.
Our Master said that He would give His joy, didn't He? And what was His joy? To do the will of Him that sent Him; to do what was necessary in the fulfilment of the Divine purposes, even if, as it worked out, it was necessary for Him to go through what He did. It is in that that we find true joy, because we begin to find ourselves under the dominion of God, we begin to find ourselves participating in the instrument for Divine activity, so that the power of God may work creatively on earth to bring forth fruit—Divine fruit. It will not restore the world to the Divine state in a moment. How many years do you think it might take? We will not question that; but the very moment that the power of God begins to work creatively on earth because there is a means for its manifestation, the issue begins to be forced, and consequently the days are shortened.
The answer comes quickly. Human beings are forced to make their choices. In one generation the restoration can become a reality; not in the sense of its final manifestation necessarily, but the restoration nevertheless, because the cause is established. How long it will take for that to work itself out so as to cover the earth is something which need not particularly concern us. Our concern is to let the cause be established, because we know that when it is there the results are sure, in the cycles and the seasons of the Lord. And the cause is established as we ourselves have the experience—in no other way. Only as we ourselves know what it means to be under the dominion of God in the expression of our lives do we share in allowing any creative expression of God's power. Thinking about it, theorizing about it, imagining things, accomplishes nothing; it is only when it is done that the fulfilment comes.
Our Master spoke some words when He was hanging on the cross. He said, “It is finished.” It was done insofar as He was concerned; and the fulfilment came, didn't it, for Him. We need to be able to say, “It is finished.” There is no adequate group of human beings in any generation since the fall of man that has been in position to say that—a lot of things left undone, half done. Well here we are in the world as it is. Can it be said of our generation—there is quite a scope to a generation—shall it be said of our generation that they finished the work which had been given them to do? When that can be said the restoration will be a reality, the cause will have been established, and the results will appear.
© Emissaries of Divine Light
