Seventh Cycle
Uranda August 1, 1953
From the 2nd chapter of Genesis, the 1st verse: “Thus the heavens and the earth were finished, and all the host of them. And on the seventh day God ended his work which he had made; and he rested on the seventh day from all his work which he had made. And God blessed the seventh day, and sanctified it: because that in it he had rested from all his work which God created and made.” Outside of this reference, which is most significant, we hear nothing about keeping the Seventh Day, or the Sabbath, or having a particular day of rest, until the time when the children of Israel were wandering in the wilderness and the Ten Commandments were given at Mt. Sinai. In all this interval the subject is ignored, and yet during that interval there were many who were very closely related to God, as was Enoch, for instance: “He walked with God: and he was not; for God took him.” Yet here the point is emphasized: God rested from the work which He had made, on the Seventh Day.
The Seventh Day is the Seventh Cycle, or period, or step, in the outworking of the life of man. Now in the Divine State, reaching the Seventh Day would mean something quite different from our present circumstance. In the Divine State, when the seven cycles were completed, that meant that the individual had completed his purpose in life on earth for that particular incarnation. Whether it took seven hundred years or seven thousand years was beside the point; the cycles of outworking leading to ascension were seven in number, depending upon the individual and the pattern of being, the purpose on earth. We have recognized that in relationship to fallen man the seven cycles of the seven days, or seven periods, lead to the restoration of man to the Divine Estate of Oneness, that we may come to that place of consciousness where we may experience what the Master spoke of as Oneness. He pointed out that He and His Father were One, and in His closing expression of ministry He gave that great prayer—in the 17th chapter of John it is recorded—and He prayed “that they all might be one as we are”; that those who should follow Him and let His Body take form and have meaning on earth might truly be One, even as He and the Father were One. The attainment of that state of Oneness is that which we experience on the Seventh Day, when we cease all self-activity and come to rest in the Lord, so that from that time onward we are functioning on a basis of Oneness. God rested from the work which He had made, in the sense of His work without regard to the work of God being made manifest through man. The period of Oneness, of correlation between Creator and creation through Oneness with the Crowning Creation, was supposed to be the Sabbath rest.
Man has allowed his awareness of these basic principles of Being to degenerate into the idea of keeping a day; but the Sabbath in the true sense is not something that can be kept merely by setting aside one day a week to cease physical labors in the ordinary human sense and then go back to physical labors in a self-active pattern on Monday morning. No man or woman keeps the Sabbath—I care not what the religion, I care not what day the human being seeks to keep—no man or woman keeps the Sabbath until he or she has attained to the day of rest; which is to say Oneness with God on earth, so that from that time on self-activity ceases and the Divine Pattern of function is made manifest from there on, twenty-four hours a day, day in and day out without limit, keeping the Sabbath. For the true day of rest is the cessation of self-activity; rest in the Lord, Oneness that is attained when we truly follow our LORD and KING and let His prayer be answered so that His Kingdom comes in us, His control or dominion is established in us and through us, and we attain to that Oneness of which He spoke so many times. This then is the Sabbath rest for man in this present state of things. But once that Sabbath rest has been attained, a new week begins, a new cycle of outworking in the achievement of the purpose for which that human being came into the world—and in that new week he does not function self-actively; he lets the works of God be done so that man is doing God's work.
When God first created mankind, God ended His works in the direct sense of creative action so that man could begin the works of God. But this human beings have failed to recognize and realize. God's work was done in the sense of direct action on earth, but God's work was not done in the sense of the work of God which was supposed to appear through mankind. So we see how it is that since the fall of man there has been a failure to let that Seventh Day have any meaning, that day of rest. Man has failed for twenty thousand years to enter into the Sabbath rest. The Seventh Day has had no meaning—a symbol has no meaning the moment it is disassociated in consciousness from that which is symbolized. We have many symbols which we must use in the interval of transition and resurrection, but a symbol ceases to have meaning the very moment it is disassociated in consciousness from that which is symbolized. And that which is symbolized is the day of rest, when man ceases his self-activity and begins to let Divine Activity be made manifest on earth because man lives on earth. We have recognized something of the pattern of these cycles and their relationship to the Four Forces. When we reach a point of being with one accord in one place, in agreement on earth as touching all of these things, then something wonderful and beautiful is going to happen. How soon shall it be?
© emissaries of divine light
