from
The Coming Of Heavenly Government #2
Martin Exeter November 11, 1984 p.m.
It was said of somebody or other that he went to and fro in the earth, and up and down in it. The name was Mr. Satan, as I recall, not only rushing hither and yon trying to achieve something but even endeavoring to get higher, and more often than not finding himself lower: the futile human state. Unless there is a foundation established whatever is done will prove to be futile. It’s a very sad thing to see human beings who had such promise in their earlier years turning into old grouchy people, convinced of futility, when it need never have happened. Generation after generation human beings go the same old ridiculous way.
There is a foundation to be built and if we have allowed the experience of this building to occur within our own experience then we discover that there is something to be done. What is to be done is not within the scope of human ambition—it’s never even been thought of!—but it may come into experience if the foundation is built, and we allow it to do so. We are not trying to achieve some great thing; we are not following out the old human designs as to what is desirable and what is commendable and what is to be expected. There have been countless generations who have followed that way; it was all futile. Why would anyone go the same path? It’s like cows walking down the trail, only this time it ends in the slaughterhouse.
The foundation is laid because we handle what arises in ourselves intelligently. We can’t handle it intelligently without having some association with the intelligent spirit of God. There is no other source for intelligence. Where there is intelligence, then those things which arise in one’s own experience to distract and endeavor to cause one to return to the old human ruts will be dealt with. This was described most accurately in what were called the temptations in the wilderness. Here was something personal insofar as Jesus was concerned. It was a culmination of something because He had lived thirty years by then; it was just a proving out of what had been dealt with along the way. He was a teenager, by the way, for a while, as we all have been. The question I suppose is whether we still are or not.
But here was something to be dealt with personally; it related to His own personal experience. Obviously He dealt with it in a very forthright way: no shilly-shallying, no argument about it—and so it was disposed of in the personal sense. This did not mean that in the following years He had nothing to deal with, but He had nothing to deal with personally. It all related to the reason for His presence on earth. We can relate that to our own experience. Certainly there is something that each individual must deal with personally, so that it is absolutely clear where one stands—there is no possibility of removing oneself from that foundation. Then everything that arises thereafter is no longer a personal matter.
In the case of Jesus He had many things to handle, didn’t He? Many people came with all sorts of difficulties, problems, but also endeavors to shoot Him down, so to speak, and there was no difficulty in handling those things. Anyone who has read the story will be impressed with the ease with which He dealt with what came to Him. Many of the things that came to Him could have been translated personally, in the same way that most of us have done it in times past because we had not come to the point of taking that stand, having dealt with everything personally: “That’s it! Now I know where I stand and there is nothing anywhere that can cause me to remove myself from that position.” When one has a foundation such as that, where’s the problem with handling what arises?
There are many things that should arise, many things to be brought so that we may successfully establish the government of heaven on earth. During the period up until the public ministry of Jesus began, He had dealt with all these personal matters. He had, in letting that happen in His own experience, opened the door for others, so that there was preparation for what was then His ministry, when He would be functioning directly with the government of God. Something of what that might mean did take form; there was certainly authority present. The door had been opened by what He had experienced previously in dealing with the personal matters that came to Him in His own makeup; and all that was summarized in the story of the temptations. We’ve all had the same opportunity.
Then comes the initiation of true government. He had opened the door for others to share in that. His disciples put in an appearance and others gathered around, to some extent at least but it became apparent very shortly that virtually no one accepted the same foundation which He had established, accepted it for themselves. There is indication that there may have been one of His disciples who did, in the person of John, but no one else. Even the one who protested most about his love proved to be the one who denied Jesus. It isn’t a matter of protesting. It’s a matter of being. It’s a matter of experiencing what that foundation is, because if that is experienced you never leave it.
Could anyone say that what is needful to permit this foundation to be established in one’s own experience individually has not been freely available? If there is honesty one would have to admit that it has been amply available. [greatcosmicstory.blogspot.com/2019/02/extending-from-motherland-sacred-thread.html] If there has been any uncertainty, any doubt, any feeling of a lack of foundation in one’s living, it could only be because advantage was not taken of the provision that had been made. If in one’s own experience that foundation has not been adequately known, that has been one’s own choice in the matter. It is always that way. There is a creative process in effect; there is change to come. How is it going to come? By opposing it? By saying, “You’re not doing what you ought to do”? How do you know what that person ought to do? You don’t even know what you should do!
What would happen if there really was agreement? Let’s just let it work the way it’s happening and, believe you me, if there is an openness in this regard the spirit of God is quite capable of carrying it through the way it should be carried through. We keep saying that what needs to be done must be done by the spirit. All right, let the spirit do it then! Don’t oppose whatever it is that begins to put in an appearance. What puts in an appearance now is not what will put in an appearance tomorrow or the next day or the next Let it change! Let it move! Free it up, that all may participate agreeably in the overall process and in every detail thereof. Is that too much to expect? We do not know what it is that needs to occur except that it must occur on the basis of the action of spirit. And spirit is acting; it never stopped acting. We’re not waiting for it to act. It is doing so now in the circumstances the way they are. Free it up! Don’t say to spirit “Well if you act, you’ve got to act the way I want you to act.” We don’t know what should happen. Let’s find out by giving spirit free rein because we agree with what is happening; we’ll let it happen.
What is happening within the range of our own experience, you may have noted, has a certain aura of control. It isn’t anything wild; it doesn’t produce a riot. There may be riots out there. Is there a willingness to let things move within the range of the operation of the government of heaven? We have some experience of this. Let it work here, in this. Do you think that would destroy everything? We see the world busy destroying itself. The heavenly government is the only chance—and that isn’t a chance; it’s a sure thing. Let it move freely. We are discovering how it moves freely, much more so than has been in the past. There is a greater willingness on the part of all to find the way it works—less opposition, less arbitrary assumption that “This is not the way it works.” Spirit is on the move because it has a little space. Perhaps we have been instrumental in providing a little space and so it moves, something begins to happen. There are those who look around fearfully; they’re not sure whether what’s happening is what they think should happen, or it’s not as quickly as it should happen, or it’s happening too quickly, or whatever it may be. Let it be whatever it is. We find that there is the essential control present because the truth is present; and a new thing is in the process of taking place. It’s not the same as what has happened before.
How many successful people do you think there are in the world? One can look in the record where they list some very wealthy people; millionaires galore!—successful people. Did you ever meet any of those successful people? Oh my! They may have been successful in amassing what they think of as wealth, but they’re not people. How many people are there on earth? Oh, we say, getting on for five billion now. I don’t think so. Maybe a few hundred. There are some humanoid creatures around, but what about real people, genuine people? Well there are those who aspire to that, and I am not attempting to put people down but merely indicating that the true state of man has been absent.
Now something begins to move. Is there anything greater, or could there be any experience more successful, than allowing this to occur all the way through to its fulfilment? For those with true vision there is a recognition that there is nothing greater possible. It is majestic and it is grand. And we have the opportunity of letting it happen because we have some awareness of it and some experience of it already, which is not true of most of the population of the earth. I have a sense of responsibility because of all this. The responsibility is that I won’t let the LORD down, for one thing, and for another thing, we’ll not withdraw the Way, the Truth and the Life from the population of the world, either by quitting or by falling down on the job. We share the wonder and the glory and the beauty of something absolutely transcendent. We begin to sense the coming. It is coming. We either know it’s coming or we don’t. We’re either with it or we’re against it. We stand together in one spirit, differentiating that spirit individually because individually we take responsibility for our own differentiation of it, something that nobody else could do. I have mine to differentiate, you have yours, but we’re all on a par in that regard.
When there is the government of heaven on earth absolutely, when that facility is there, the way it has been is no longer in effect and human beings are quite incapable thereafter of producing the sort of world which they have produced heretofore. The power is gone. With a little perceptiveness one can recognize that it is in the process of going, and it goes just to the extent that there is a focus of absoluteness present on earth of sufficient dimensions to provide what is necessary for the whole body of mankind. This would seem to emphasize the fact of largeness of vision, largeness of understanding, largeness of capability. If this largeness is not experienced in the circumstance as it now is it could never be experienced in the larger circumstance, because that circumstance would never come. This is a fallacy that has been present with many people, where they thought that their ministry was some large thing over there somewhere, when they couldn’t even handle what was right next to them! That largeness comes in the only way it can come, by reason of the truth in expression in the immediate circumstance. Such a simple little thing, so steadfastly avoided. But now there are those who are awakening to this. They do not have grandiose visions of something great somewhere else but they have largeness of vision as to the meaning and effectiveness and value of what they are now doing as related to the whole. They do not become myopic, but what they are doing is a window into the whole. Is what you do a window into the universal whole? To what extent?
Those who are absolute on earth are the angels of God. They know what they are about. They understand what is happening. They are quite capable of handling it. But it requires a pure heart and obedient mind to do it. And so we share the process by which this happens, in the core of things. It is in fact a delightful happening when we participate in it: Heaven on earth known again because the ordinances of heaven are being set in the earth. When that is factually the case nobody can stop it, nobody can resist it, nobody can make it some other way, because all the power and ability that human beings thought they had heretofore simply evaporates. It’s not there anymore. How grand and glorious it is to share this responsibility, incomprehensible to the impure heart and the disobedient mind but becoming increasingly comprehensible to our own purifying hearts, and minds accepting obedience to the ordinances of heaven. This is the way it is. This is the way it works. This is what we’re here to do. So let’s do it!
© emissaries of divine light
