May 08, 2019
That Clarion Voice
You know from your own experience that if there is a refusal to accept responsibility you lose your authority. When you accept the responsibility, even though you may feel inadequate in the situation, the authority is still there. The authority goes with the responsibility—reject the responsibility, you reject the authority; accept the responsibility and move in it, and you have the authority. Not because you thought you had it before, perhaps; you may have thought you lacked it because of the sense of inadequacy—but accept the responsibility and you have the authority.
We are able to encompass the creation. Let us not downgrade ourselves by assuming a false humility. If there is the inclination to say in any circumstance, "Well I'm only one person, what can I do about it?"—you are at least one forty-foot person! And if a forty-foot person looms on the scene I am sure everybody would take note and there would be a little hesitancy about contending. So let us be assured in this regard, partly because the facilities of incarnation are a lot bigger than we had previously thought, but also because we who incarnate are any size that is needful, and we are capable of encompassing whatever is required of us—namely our worlds. We encompass our worlds. Let us therefor see our worlds from the standpoint of One who encompasses them, and not from the standpoint of some little human form crouching there, who doesn’t see much beyond the end of his nose. The human form is handy; we need it; but we need all the other levels of our incarnation as well, in order that there may be an adequate capacity of incarnation to accommodate us as Angels.
We do not accommodate our worlds merely on the basis of our physical forms. Of course not! How could we? But we are able to encompass our worlds because of all the levels of this machinery of incarnation; and because we ourselves as Angels are capable of using these facilities of incarnation—and they are sufficient to do what needs to be done. Let us not accuse the Lord of making us inadequately. That is what happens when a person says, “Well, I am inadequate.” He is saying, “Lord, you should have made me much more than I am.” The Lord made each of us of sufficient magnitude! Insofar as our facilities of incarnation are concerned we can encompass whatever is needful. That’s the fact of the matter—we should acknowledge it, and not try to shrink down into our little physical forms, oh so humbly!
We have size, magnitude, in the sense of the machinery of incarnation, sufficient to handle the incarnation—and we begin to know these things; we begin to function from the standpoint of this awareness. Most people, when they look at the time when Jesus was arrested and subjected to all the indignities to which He was, most people look at that physical form; that’s all they see. Well, certainly something was happening to the physical form, but was that all that there was to Him? There was something so tremendous standing there, that completely dwarfed the physical form, and what was happening to the physical form in that sense was quite insignificant to the machinery of incarnation, because of this great form that was present there, and known to be there, by the One who was incarnate. Do you suppose it was so very difficult to permit that physical form to experience what was called resurrection? One could almost say it could be done with one hand tied behind one’s back.
We need to have a consciousness of our real capacity, not merely of that little thimble which is seen by human nature consciousness. We don’t need to boost our egos to make it seem as though we are something which we are not, because the truth is right there—and we become aware of it as our expression begins to sound the Tone of Life continuously. Then we find that Tone reverberating in far more than our physical form. It reverberates through this vaster form which is actually present, and which is being fleshed out as there is the generation of substance. There was considerable substance present during the time when you were each speaking here in turn, because each one who came up here brought far more than his physical form. There had been far more substance generated which fills out something much bigger, and we all have a sense of substance, we say—of largeness, really. It isn’t just something hollow. We are not looking at a bigger form. We say, “Oh yes, there are seven levels. That form must be considerable.”—but if it has no substance, if it’s just hollow, it doesn’t mean much. But because there is the generation of substance, then this larger form begins to have increasing meaning, and we sense it with each other.
But the One who incarnates is greater than the facility of incarnation. In fact, the facility of incarnation seems to become less—even though it is so great, just simply looking at it from the outer viewpoint. It becomes less as the Angel comes forth through it, because the Angel is so much greater. And we find that individually speaking we all blend together in the larger form, which is vast in the external sense. We think of the numbers of people in the world as being great, and the body of mankind as being vast—compared to what it was 500 years ago—but it’s a drop in the bucket compared to the true stature of Man. But that true stature of Man is absent. There is just a space there where it should be. But as we allow, in this Body, the generation of the substance that fills out the true stature of this Body, then the stature of this Body is far greater than the stature of mankind the way it is now—and because of this we are quite capable of handling whatever needs to be done in this rather small sphere of responsibility.
We are no longer so impressed with numbers. This is what impresses people, isn’t it—numbers—numbers of people, very often numbers of dollars. We are impressed by something different. It isn’t numbers, because as far as we are concerned there is just One—and that is sufficient. That’s all that is needed. We see all these numbers of isolated people in the world, composing what is supposed to be the body of mankind, but that is very small potatoes from the angelic standpoint, because there is One who is much greater. We are not overly impressed with respect to the numbers participating in this ministry. One of the questions that we are often asked is, “Well, how many are there in your program?” I suppose we have difficulty in answering because the fact of the matter is there is only One—there is only One, and to most people one would not be very impressive. But when that One is seen for who He is, and when His Body of incarnation is seen for what it is, that is greater and more vast than all the rest of the population of the world put together. Of course, they’re not put together! They are all scattered abroad, and there is very little substance, obviously. The evidence of the substance being present—the True substance—is Oneness. If there isn’t Oneness there is not much substance.
We have a responsibility for the sounding of this Tone collectively speaking, and this is done in many ways—but one of them is in the extension of the sounding of that Tone in a peripheral sense. Not that we moved anywhere—we stand where we are and sound the Tone, but that Tone will sound right out to the periphery of whatever substance we have, and there are those who will be more responsible on the periphery just as there are those who are more responsible at the core. But it’s all One Body anyway. You can’t separate the core from the periphery. If the core could be separated from the periphery then there would be a corpse, wouldn’t there? That’s what happens in the individual experience. We are interested in the true experience, not in the human nature experience.
It could be said, in one sense, that we believe in the resurrection of the Body. The resurrection of the Body—we believe in it because we are it. We are not looking at some body over there. It is right here where we are. This is the Body! This is the blood. This is the living form—not only physical form, with just a few people, but a form composed of substance, far more than flesh substance, and yet it is not separate from the flesh substance. It simply extends through it and beyond it. And in this sense there is a heavenly giant present on earth. We need to have a strong awareness of this so that we never shrink into a state of uselessness. We do not lay claims to anything as individuals, but we honor and respect the Body.
The Body of the Archangel, we have called this Body. We would never, in anything that we do, or say, or think, or feel as individuals detract from that Body. Our concern is that there should be the generation of more and more substance, that it may be filled out at all levels; not merely trying to grab more and more people, as though that was going to make it great. It isn’t that, that makes it great. It is the quality and quantity of substance that makes it great. The stature is vertical more than horizontal. (Even human beings are a little concerned when their stature begins to be more horizontal than vertical.) Let us have a vision of magnitude—the magnitude of what we are in this One Body. It is vast, entirely capable of handling everything that needs to be handled.
The population of the world is incapable of functioning together. Well, we can take advantage of the principle then—divide and conquer—because that which is to be conquered is already divided; we don’t have to divide it. There may be configurations in that body where a certain amount of substance has been developed in various ways to allow that particular configuration to function in a manner that seems to be quite powerful in the human nature world. But how do you think that stacks up against the Body of the Archangel? Obviously, such substance as may be generated beyond the physical substance—it’s mostly physical substance, numbers of people—but such substance as may be generated beyond that only goes to a very limited level, perhaps what we might call the psychological level.
It is never one individual doing anything. Anything that is done is done by the whole Body, and in fact it is done by the Archangel, who is incarnate, and that isn’t a little thing. That is tremendous, and we need to be assured—because we ourselves accept responsibility in the matter—of the magnitude of that expression. We stay put in the Body of the Archangel and all that is needful to be dealt with will come to us. We handle it intelligently, with dispatch. Behold I come quickly.
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