Will  A  Man  Rob  God?

from  Attunements and Returning to God

Uranda  February 22, 1953

Tonight let us meditate for a few moments upon the principles involved in our individual and collective return to God. We may be part way in our journey. I have not questioned the fact of your start along that path. There is blessing and commendation in the fact that one begins the journey, but the beginning is of small avail unless one completes the journey according to the Divine Plan. The Master pictured the necessity by the story of the prodigal son, who found that that upon which he had been feeding was merely the husks, the empty shell of that which he had thought to get, and so he decided to return home to the Father. Here we are in the process of returning to God, that being centered in God, that being in the Father’s house, we may truly serve others and truly inspire them to arise and leave the husks behind and return to God. In this connection I wish to read to you from the 3rd chapter of the Book of Malachi: “Even from the days of your fathers …”

“Even from the days of your fathers.” That would carry back to the time of your first birthday it would seem, from the time of your birth. “Even from the days of your fathers ye are gone away from mine ordinances, and have not kept them.” To a certain degree, within a certain range, you may have from your earliest years sought to serve God, to keep the commandments, etc., and this is not in condemnation but in recognition of a basic fact. The Lord here is speaking of the ordinances, “mine ordinances,” the ordinances of Life. Or as it is put in another place, “Knowest thou the ordinances of heaven? canst thou set the dominion thereof in the earth?” When the Lord says “mine ordinances,” is He not speaking of the ordinances of heaven? What other ordinances would He be talking about? So the question in the great examination is, “Knowest thou the ordinances of heaven? canst thou set the dominion thereof in the earth?” For the ordinances of heaven are supposed to have dominion on earth, but they can’t unless we return to God.

“Even from the days of your fathers ye are gone away from mine ordinances, and have not kept them. Return unto me, and I will return unto you, saith the Lord of hosts. But ye said, Wherein shall we return? Will a man rob God? Yet ye have robbed me. But ye say, Wherein have we robbed thee? In tithes and offerings. Ye are cursed with a curse: for ye have robbed me, even this whole nation. Bring ye all the tithes into the storehouse, that there may be meat in mine house, and prove me now herewith, saith the Lord of hosts, if I will not open you the windows of heaven, and pour you out a blessing, that there shall not be room enough to receive it.”

There are many very interesting things revealed in this text. First, each human being who begins the return journey to God must acknowledge that he has robbed God, that he has taken from God, for his own use, that which belonged to God. In any moment that you use your mind, your hands, your lips, your ears, any part of your being, for your own purposes, without regard to the purposes of God, you are robbing God, for you are taking something that belongs to God and using it for your own purposes. “Yet ye have robbed me in tithes and in offerings.” What are the tithes and offerings? What are your offerings? The expressions of thought and word and deed. Are all of the offerings which you offer into Life designed to be placed before the throne of God? Or are some of them designed for the altar of Baal? What are your offerings into Life? “Bring ye all the tithes into the storehouse, that there may be meat in mine house, and prove me now.” Is that not an interesting expression? “And prove me now”—not a thousand years from now, not after you are dead and gone, but “prove me now, saith the Lord of hosts.”

“And prove me now herewith, saith the Lord of hosts, if I will not open you the windows of heaven.” You are the windows of heaven, but you must be opened before the things of heaven can be poured out into the earth. As long as you are closed tight, as long as you are given to your own purpose without regard to God, you cannot be used as a window of heaven. “And prove me now herewith, saith the Lord of hosts, if I will not open you the windows of heaven, and pour you out a blessing, that there shall not be room enough to receive it.” The abundance of God’s giving, so that in our receiving, though it be to full capacity, there must be the overflowing. And God is offering you some very special blessings; they are coming out of the east, from the Garden God planted eastward in Eden, coming out of the future, that you may receive them and be the means of their manifestation. “And prove me now herewith, saith the Lord of hosts, if I will not open you the windows of heaven, and pour you out a blessing, that there shall not be room enough to receive it.”

Blessed ones, until you recognize yourselves as windows of heaven, and until you yield to God’s opening power, you cannot know the fulfilment of this wonderful promise. So, are you ready to let yourselves be opened by the hand of God? Or will you keep yourselves tightly closed, resisting the opening power? For you cannot return to God unless you let yourselves be truly opened, and until you return to God He cannot return to you, in any sense that has meaning to you. You must first return to Him, and that return comes only as you let the power of God open you, that you may be an open window of heaven, not a closed and darkened window, covered with dirt and cobwebs so thick the sunlight of God’s love cannot penetrate. No, let yourself be opened. Here is the word: “Even from the days of your fathers ye are gone away from mine ordinances.” So it is time to return to the ordinances, the ordinances of Life, the laws and the principles of Life, and function under those ordinances, that we may know them and share in setting the dominion thereof in the earth. When that dominion is set in the earth of our own bodies and minds and hearts it shall express through us. Knowest thou the ordinances of heaven?

Canst thou set the dominion thereof in the earth?

“Even from the days of your fathers ye are gone away from my ordinances, and have not kept them. Return unto me, and I will return unto you, saith the Lord of hosts. But ye said, Wherein shall we return?” I wonder if any of you have ever heard that question asked, or have you ever asked it? “But wherein shall we return?”

“Will a man rob God [or will a woman]? Yet ye have robbed me. But ye say, Wherein have we robbed thee? In tithes and offerings.” When the expression of your life is an offering to God all of the time, it will make a difference. “Ye are cursed with a curse: for ye have robbed me …”

“Bring ye all the tithes into the storehouse, that there may be meat in mine house, and prove me now herewith, saith the Lord of hosts, if I will not open you the windows of heaven, and pour you out a blessing, that there shall not be room enough to receive it. And I will rebuke the devourer for your sakes, and he shall not destroy the fruits of your ground; neither shall your vine cast her fruit before the time in the field, saith the Lord of hosts. And all nations shall call you blessed: for ye shall be a delightsome land, saith the Lord of hosts.”  So let it be.

© Emissaries of Divine Light