The Altar And The Shekinah #2
Martin Cecil January 10, 1971 p.m. 100 Mile House, B.C.
It's 21 degrees below zero this evening and probably it will be quite a bit lower by morning. I was wondering, at what temperature should one stop serving the Lord? This is not just a facetious remark but I have noticed all too often, when services are being held in various places, that a poor attendance was reported because of the weather. I suppose there may be justifiable occasions when drifts of snow are impassable, but generally it's just a matter of a little discomfort, and I think it's rather revealing of people as to what it is that stops them from doing the thing they know should be done.
Wonderful words are recorded as having taken form through our Master's lips a long time ago, but as with all words of truth they are ageless. This is from the 14th chapter of the Gospel according to John, beginning with the 1st verse.
“Let not your heart be troubled: ye believe in God, believe also in me. In my Father's house are many mansions: if it were not so, I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again, and receive you unto myself; that where I am, there ye may be also. And whither I go ye know, and the way ye know. “Thomas saith unto him, Lord, we know not whither thou goest; and how can we know the way?
Jesus saith unto him, I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me. “If ye had known me, ye should have known my Father also: and from henceforth ye know him, and have seen him. “Philip saith unto him, Lord, shew us the Father, and it sufficeth us. “Jesus saith unto him, Have I been so long time with you, and yet hast thou not known me, Philip? he that hath seen me hath seen the Father; and how sayest thou then, Shew us the Father?”
There were a large number of people who knew Jesus by sight and who had listened to His words, who were impressed by Him in various ways. The disciples themselves were included amongst this number of course. They had been close to Him, and yet it is clear that they had never really seen Him, or at least Thomas and Philip hadn't. Maybe one or two of the others had. There was a questioning as to the way, and Jesus said, “I am the way, the truth, and the life”—I am Shekinah. This had not been adequately seen. The mere fact that an outer form of a man had been noted by many people did not mean that He had really been seen. He said of Himself: “I am Shekinah, the Shekinah of the Father; therefore he that hath seen me hath seen the Father.” He that hath seen Shekinah hath seen the Father; not he that hath seen the physical body, although that might be included for those who had really seen Him. Here was the Word made flesh, the individual body of the Son of God on earth. Many people claim to believe in that but evidently very few have really seen Him, for if they had they would have recognized the truth which was being exemplified as it related to themselves. There is no intent to detract from the beautiful revelation of Shekinah on earth if we realize that as it was with Him so should it be with us. Here was the altar of the Lord at which there might be worship of God. All that He said, all that He did, proclaimed the truth of this altar and the form of its manifestation on earth, the body of the Son of God to take form, to be the intercessor, to be in fact the savior of mankind.
The altar of the Lord is being rebuilt on earth in this day, the body of the Son of God coming again into form in the world. Who has really seen this? So many claim to have seen it with respect to Jesus, or at least the story about Jesus; but how little meaning that has if the real body is taking form on earth and is not seen! How many of you have seen the way, the truth and the life, by reason of this body which is taking form? have seen Shekinah, so that you could say, “I have seen the Father”? The Father is here through Shekinah—through the Fire that Burns, the Light that Glows, and the Cloud of Glory. Shekinah can only be known when the form, the body, of the Son of God, the altar of the Lord, is present, to whatever extent it is present. According to the ancient story, even when it was present as a little baby there were those who rejoiced and saw. At what point shall a person recognize that the body of the Son of God is present on earth? Does it require that anyone should wait: not yet, not yet? If not yet, when? From the standpoint of Jesus, there came a time when He initiated His ministry in the public sense, but wasn't He present before that? Hadn't He been present on earth for about thirty years?
Those who know Shekinah through the body of the Son of God on earth are Shekinah. If you know the truth, you are the truth. If you are merely looking for it, expecting to find it one day, you do not know the truth. The only way to know the truth is to be the truth, and the only way to know Shekinah is to be Shekinah. How vividly are you aware that this body—composed of how many members? what difference does it make?—is the body of the Son of God, the body of Shekinah? This is the way it's built. This is what it is. Do you know it? Do you really know that, that the Father is revealed on earth through the Shekinah of His body? That Shekinah is not separate from His body. The Shekinah builds the body and shines through the body. What do you see?
Some people see what they call a ministry. They talk about “the ministry.” There are those who say, “I am part of the ministry.” Others have said, “I am leaving the ministry.” Some others on occasion, when they have had a fit of self-activity, say, “I am not leaving the ministry.” But what is the ministry? Ministry is a function, isn't it? There must be someone present who ministers if there is a ministry. Are you the one who is present, that ministers? You are not then the ministry, are you? You are the minister. Of course, when speaking to those who do not understand, who are still caught in the limitations of the subhuman consciousness, it may be right to say something about a ministry; but those who are associated with whatever it is should know better than to speak of the ministry in this way, as though it were something you could join or leave. It's like a department of government: if one has the qualifications one can be hired and be a member of that particular ministry. If one can be hired, one can be fired too, or one may resign. One can come and go in such things. I think the word is useful to people because they feel they are not stuck: if the going gets a bit rough they can quit, if it's just a ministry. But what we are really talking about, and seeking to experience, is the body of the Son of God.
Nobody can have a separate will in the body of the Son of God. There is the one will, the Will of the Father, which is the expression of Shekinah. One cannot know this truth as long as a personal will is maintained. People are able to find fancy reasons for doing what they do without regard to the Will of the Father. Of course the vast majority of people never even consider that there could possibly be the Will of the Father; just my will, the personal will. We have a growing consciousness of the reality of Shekinah. We know Shekinah just to the degree that we are that, so that there is no separation, no separate will certainly.
The body of the Son of God built by Shekinah for the expression of Shekinah—no other reason for being! He that has seen this, not just as a fanciful theory but as a present fact, has seen the Father. This body, the body of the Son of God on earth, reveals the Father, just as the body of Jesus did; but obviously, to see this truth there must be a seeing which looks beyond the physical form. Many knew Jesus as a physical form but never saw Him, never saw Shekinah. We know that only as the altar of the Lord is built on earth, is there a true place of worship on earth, does it become possible for the Temple of God to be built on earth, for mankind to be restored as the Temple of God—filled with Shekinah, built by Shekinah, Shekinah manifesting through the altar of the Lord, through the body of the Son of God. Those who actually participate in this are themselves Shekinah, the evidence of the Presence of the One Who Dwells in His body.
When you consider the body of the Son of God in all the emerging ramifications of its form, of which you all know something, you know what is closest to you best. Many people think they know what is further away better, but it's not true. What you see closest to you is your vision, rather than your imagination. So many people think they see something beautiful if they look out a little further, but unless we see something beautiful here in our immediate experience of this body we only imagine it out there. It is like people who are imagining how beautiful Jesus was away out there long, long ago. But the truth is here now; the body of the Son of God is here now. Do you respect it? Do you behold Shekinah because of it? Or do you just see it as nothing particularly out of the ordinary, just as many people saw Jesus as nothing particularly out of the ordinary. What do you see? There has been a little tendency, when reading this passage that I read at the beginning of the service, to feel self-righteous: What was the matter with Thomas and Philip that they were so dumb? What's the matter with us that we're so dumb?—because we are in exactly the same position now!
The body of the Son of God is taking form on earth because there are a few who know it, because they know Shekinah, because they are Shekinah—there is no other way of knowing it—are the evidence of the Presence of the One Who Dwells in form on earth. To those the body of the Son of God is beautiful, precious, because through it Shekinah is seen. Shekinah is the Minister, and there is a ministry because of the minister. The invitation is extended not to become a part of the ministry, whatever that is, but to become aware of being a part of the body of the Son of God—this! The fact of being proclaims that each one is a part of that body, but scarcely anyone has known it. “How shall we join the ministry?” This is a very conceited attitude of course, because “important I” is going to join the ministry, and the ministry of course is going to benefit by my presence. Join what? What is there to join? The very fact that a person can say, “I'm leaving the ministry,” or “I'm not leaving the ministry,” is an indication of the fact that there is a concept of joining something. You can only leave what you join, or not leave what you have joined. So the very way of expression reveals that the individual doesn't know what it is that is being offered, just as scarcely anyone had the faintest idea as to what it was that our Master was offering. They were all willing to join a ministry; but a ministry in this sense is some sort of an organization, isn't it? a soulless machine of some kind. Our concern is with the One who ministers.
The One who ministers is Shekinah. Our Master said, “I am Shekinah. I am the way, the truth, and the life. He that hath seen Shekinah hath seen the Father.” He was not saying, “He that hath seen my physical form has necessarily seen the Father.” No! When you look at the body of the Son of God taking form, what do you see? Just the form? Do you think that there is something wrong with the form? The form is composed, you know, of the people sitting next to you, and others as well. So you don't think much of this one or that one? You don't think much of the form of the body of the Son of God. You're hung up. You don't see Shekinah. If the body of the Son of God is here, if it is emerging, it is because Shekinah is here. There couldn't be any body without Shekinah. “Without him was not any thing made that was made.” How could one possibly come and go in the body of the Son of God? One either knows Shekinah because one is Shekinah or one knows nothing. One can mouth platitudes and follow out personal desires, and die!
Here are some other words of Shekinah: “He that findeth his life shall lose it: and he that loseth his life for my sake shall find it.” How much do we cling to our personal lives? How much can the things that happen supposedly in our personal lives throw us? How much can we be caused to deny Shekinah by the things that occur in our personal lives? We are associated with something, whether we have consciously realized it or not, that is absolute—it is what it is. Because this is so, the comings and goings of human beings don't change anything of what is. Such things change the experience of those concerned: finding one's life in the human sense is losing it in the divine sense. Now there isn't really any such thing as life in the human sense; there is only life in the divine sense. We talk about a distinction here because we are a little confused.
I had a very excellent letter of response recently from one of your number, who spoke of the original state as the experience of being unconsciously divine. Divine in that state wouldn't be a word, would it? It wouldn't be necessary, because there was nothing else. There was a consciousness of everything the way it was. There was no necessity to be consciously divine, because all concerned were divine and there wasn't anything else to be. There wasn't anything else to compare it to anywhere in the whole cosmos. In such a state, then, there is no need to utilize what have come to be known as religious terms: religious terms are just the contrast to the worldly state. If there isn't a subhuman state, then there is only the one true state. This is the fact of the matter now actually, but human beings don't know it. They think there is another state; they think there is another life which they can live here. But the fact of the matter is that the only life that is available to human beings is the life of Shekinah. “In him was life.” There isn't any other. We can squeeze it out of our own experience, but as long as any little bit of Shekinah's life is getting through we claim to be alive. That is Shekinah getting through. But when we have obliterated it all there is nothing; it's gone. We have lost our experience of life, our experience of Shekinah. So the little bit of life that gets through, that we try to juggle with to have our own way, is still the life of Shekinah, but because we are juggling with it we lose it.
So in the beginning all present on earth were unconsciously divine. After the fall, when a different experience had come into the consciousness of man, he was divinely unconscious; and human beings everywhere are quite unconscious of being divine. There is a state of being divinely unconscious, subhumanly conscious. Now the necessity is to become consciously divine; but when we become consciously divine we find that we are unconsciously divine, because there isn't anything else. So why use the word “divine”? It doesn't really describe anything, because it's all there is. Approaching the state of being once more unconsciously divine it takes some conscious doing, because we now have a contrast. We have experience of something else than what is divine, even though it only exists to us because of our experience of it. From the standpoint of reality it doesn't exist—just to us. But as long as we have to try to be divine we are not unconsciously divine, are we? When it is the natural thing, when we have the experience that this is what we are, we don't have to think about it and try to be divine; that's what we are.
This is knowing Shekinah, returning to a consciousness of the truth that there isn't anything else but the being of God. There never was. There never will be. We have been in a state of delusion, and in our initial faltering steps toward becoming consciously divine we have some very peculiar ideas, some very strange notions, which because they have become so familiar seem to be quite natural, when they are not at all. Our awareness must change. The nature of our very thinking processes must change. Perhaps some of the things I have said this evening seem difficult to grasp. Well don't try to grasp them; but essentially they are completely simple. The difficulty is that the mind has been following out certain ruts for millennia past and it doesn't like to get out of them.
The body of the Son of God is on earth. The very fact that it is on earth reveals the fact that Shekinah is here, because Shekinah creates the body of manifestation. And so the body emerges because of Shekinah. When we begin to know this, this body is seen with new eyes. It is the most precious thing conceivable to us. It would be beyond the bounds of imagination even to consider trying to separate ourselves from it. We do try to separate ourselves from it every time that we inject a personal will. We are saying in effect, “I want to keep my life, my human life”—my subhuman life actually. And on this basis I can keep it for a while. But I lose it, because it is not mine, in the subhuman sense. It is part of Shekinah, and it will never be disassociated from Shekinah. You can't get life away from Shekinah, which is really what people have been trying to do. “I want it for myself so that I can do the things that I think should be done.” Human beings spend their lives trying to extract life from Shekinah, and all they do is extract their own consciousness, their subhuman consciousness, from life, until it vanishes away out of experience. Being Shekinah, it is inconceivable that one could be anything else; and that's the truth of the matter, because one can't be anything else, at least not for very long.
Are you still inclined to ask that same question? First of all, “I don't know what the way is.” Shekinah is the way! “Shew us the Father, and it sufficeth us.” Have you been so long time with the body of the Son of God and have not seen Him? As I say, it is utterly inconceivable to a person who has actually seen the Father through Shekinah in the body of the Son of God to separate himself from that; it can't be done. I watch people coming and going, this way and that, swirling around, never having seen Shekinah. The altar of the Lord is being rebuilt on earth. I have a part to play in that, and that's my total concern. I am not really concerned with people as such, with their sufferings or anything else; just with this one thing: rebuilding the altar of the Lord that is broken down. It is the only thing that has any meaning whatsoever. If there are those who will associate themselves with this rebuilding of that altar, I receive them with rejoicing. I have patience, as most of you know, but fundamentally, if a person fools around and doesn't accept this priceless invitation, I don't care what happens to that person! Those of you who offer yourselves to Shekinah agree with me in this. Yes, there is patience, there is understanding, people are given time; but self-indulgence in personal nonsense is of no value, and those who undertake to follow out such courses are of no value to themselves or to anyone else. The body of the Son of God is taking form on earth because Shekinah is here. Because this is so, the whole world has the opportunity of making a choice. The time is at hand for everyone. It's here now for many.
I am deeply thankful to God that there are those who do know Shekinah and, because of this, permit the body of the Son of God to take form. There are many more who shall come to know. But let all of you remember that this, and this alone, has meaning, certainly insofar as I am concerned, and it must be so insofar as you are concerned. This does not encourage judgment of anyone but merely the acceptance of responsibility for oneself, so that the word may be truly spoken: I am Shekinah—the Fire that Burns, the Light that Glows, and the Cloud of Glory, present on earth, rebuilding the altar of the Lord that is broken down, and shining round about.
© emissaries of divine light
