Shekinah Magic #4 — Seeing The Father John 14
Uranda June 21, 1953 Class
It is a joy to welcome you to this hour of meditation this beautiful Sunday morning, as we move from the season of spring to the season of summer. At the beginning of this new week we are reminded that we have the privilege of moving from the beginning of things into the realm of bringing forth. It is not enough to start along the Way of Life; we need to share in the harvest. We need to remember the words of God spoken to those who first dwelt in the Garden of Eden: “Tend it and keep it.” And so we would not be merely beginning something. There are many who start along the Way of Life, the Way which our Master revealed; but let us carry forward in tending and keeping the Garden of God, that the fruits of the spirit may truly appear and that there may be a rich harvest in our lives, to the glory of God and to the blessing of the children of men; for as we gather here this morning to share this hour of devotion and meditation, we are keenly aware of the fact that God's true children are to be found all over the face of the earth, in every color, numbered among those of every creed and belief, that everywhere there are those who are willing to yield to the resurrection and the life, that they may not be dead to the things of the Spirit of God, and that if they be asleep they may be awakened, and on awakening they may begin to know the Way, the Truth and the Life. Let us then have a moment of devotion.
Our gracious LORD and holy KING, it is with humble joy, deep relief and soul-stirring satisfaction that we yield the kingdom of our bodies, our minds and hearts to Thee, that Thy spirit may enter into the Temple of the human form and that Thy presence may be made evident through every thought and word and deed until it shall be that Thy Will is done on earth in us even as Thy Will is done in heaven, for Thine is the Kingdom in heaven and on earth forevermore, and we would so live that it shall be evident in our lives that it is so, in the Christ. Aum-en.
In beginning our period of meditation this morning I would like to read to you a much loved passage that has received your attention many, many times; but in the current of the Spirit as God gives it to us in this hour, surely we can see more deeply than ever before, surely we can lift up our eyes to a higher goal, surely we can open our hearts to a deeper feeling recognition of the wonder of God's love, the beauty of His truth and the reality of life, now and always. Our Master spoke words that have burned themselves in letters of fire into many a heart:
“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?”
One of the things that impresses us as we begin to meditate upon these words is that the millions that have echoed the words of Thomas far outnumber the number of those who have echoed the words of the Master. Merely imagining that we know the way and we know the place is not enough. It is by the pattern of life that we can determine as to whether we truly know. The Master said, “Whither I go ye know, and the way ye know.” We must acknowledge that He spoke the truth; we must acknowledge that He knew what He was talking about. Therefore we must acknowledge that even though Thomas may have thought he was being honest, he was speaking that which was not true. In the pattern of his conscious mind, by reason of his doubting and unbelief, hesitancy in yielding, it may have seemed to Thomas that he spoke truly. But we must choose between the two. Our Master spoke and then Thomas spoke. Which spoke the truth and which uttered a lie? It is incomprehensible to imagine for even a moment that our Master failed in this moment to know what He was talking about; therefore there is only one other conclusion possible. Thomas was perhaps unconsciously but nevertheless actually lying. He spoke something contrary to the truth when he said, “Lord, we know not whither thou goest; and how can we know the way?” The reality of the Master's truth and Thomas's failure to comprehend the truth is made evident in the next words the Master spoke: “I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me.”
Here is a most significant picture. Before we can fully comprehend it, with a deeper realization than we have known heretofore, let us examine the words the Master spoke immediately following: “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?”
Here we have the picture of another of the disciples failing to speak the truth, failing to comprehend the simple significance of the Master's words. And let us consider how many there are since that day who have followed the lead of Thomas and Philip. They have followed Thomas and Philip, and though they have conceived themselves to be Christians, they have in fact failed to follow our LORD and KING. Following Philip, following Thomas, is not fulfilling the Master's invitation, “Follow me.” Until we can set aside the leadership of the Philips and the Thomases and follow Him, we are not what we should be in the pattern of Being. Now notice the Master's words: “Believest thou not that I am in the Father, and the Father in me? the words that I speak unto you I speak not of myself: but the Father that dwelleth in me, he doeth the works.”
Now if we are to accept the words of the Master as being true we must cease attributing the words of the Father to the man Jesus. It is all right that it is put in the record that “Jesus said” or “Jesus saith unto him”; it simplifies the pattern of expression. But if we read that statement as if we imagined the words of Jesus to be separate from the words of the Father, then we who read are wrong. In our hearts and in our minds we should never attribute the Word spoken to the man Jesus, as if He spoke something separate from the Father. If we do this we are not following Him; we show that we do not believe on Him truly; we show that we think in some things He said that which was true and in other things He did not know what He was talking about. If we set ourselves up to be judges and say, “The Master spoke truly in this but He did not quite know what He was talking about in that,” we are going to be judged by the judgment with which we judge, and it will be shown that in such things we do not know what we are talking about. Once you begin to remember—always, without any single exception—to never attribute the words of Jesus to the man Jesus, you will begin to understand the significance of the things the Master taught. “The words that I speak unto you I speak not of myself: but the Father that dwelleth in me, he doeth the works.”
Remembering this, let us go back and consider, “If ye had known me, ye should have known my Father also.” Now that word the Master spoke was just as true at any point in the interval of time since the words were uttered as at that time; they are just as true today. “If ye had known me, ye should have known my Father also.” There are untold millions who imagine that they know Jesus and believe on Him, who by word and deed, by pattern of living, show that they do not know the Father. Can you know Jesus without knowing the Father? No! It is utterly and absolutely impossible to know Jesus without knowing the Father, and anyone who imagines that he or she does know Jesus without knowing the Father imagines that which is not true.
If we begin to see the pattern of the so-called Christian world in the light of the Master's own statement here, “If ye had known me, ye should have known my Father also,” we can begin to understand why the so-called Christian world is such a weak and helpless thing in the face of the world's present difficulties; the challenge of the communistic regime of Soviet Russia for instance, the terror, the enslavement of people, the danger of atomic warfare, all the evils and the ills which beset human beings. For if we knew the Father in actual fact we would not be powerless to meet these issues of life. Why, in a nation that calls itself Christian, must we proceed with feverish haste to build more hospitals, more institutions for the mentally unbalanced, more prisons? What is the word across the land? Our prisons are crowded and filled to overflowing; our insane asylums are filled to overflowing; our hospitals are crowded. There are long waiting lists of those who are handicapped, waiting to get into institutions of some sort for special care or training—all of these things which signify the fact that we do not have the manifestation of the power. Whether we are willing to face the indictment or not it is there, and the quicker we face the facts the better.
Now the Master made two or three positive statements here. “If ye had known me, ye should have known my Father also.” That applies to every one of you here. It applies to every self-styled Christian on the face of the earth. “If ye had known me, ye should have known my Father also.” And when we face the facts, from the standpoint of the great significance of those wonderful words, we must indeed bow our heads in sorrow that we should have so far failed our LORD that such things as these could be. And again He said, “And whither I go ye know, and the way ye know.” Generally speaking, human beings, having heard those words or read them, allow their minds to jump to the process of ascension, of disappearing in the Cloud of Glory from the eyes of men; of going to some supposedly unknown heaven in some faraway and unknown realm. But any such imagination of the heart is an evil thing, as the Master's own words reveal. Instead of assuming that the interval from the time He spoke these words to the time He ascended is to be conceived as meaningless in relationship to His words, why not stop and look at them from the standpoint of the Way in which He was going?
What was that Way? “The way ye know; whither I go ye know.” And Thomas, the liar, said, “Lord, we know not whither thou goest; and how can we know the way?” Let us consider those words as applying to His life and living, not merely as if they applied only to His disappearing from the realm of physical vision. Let us acknowledge that the interval between the moment when He spoke these words and the moment when He did disappear in the Cloud of Glory must have some meaning. What was the Way in which He was going? “And whither I go ye know.” What was the place to which He was going? Does the mind immediately answer, “Why, to heaven of course”? Anyone who would stop to think for thirty seconds, with the intelligence of a three-year-old child, would know that that answer would be a lie. Why? Because while He was here on earth He was already in heaven, and He did not need to go to heaven to be in heaven, according to His own testimony. So if you say that the way in which He was going was the way to heaven, you have not even stopped to think about it. “Whither I go ye know.” Where was He going? He was moving along the path of victory. Over what? The world and the evil in it; over the prince of darkness. “Whither I go ye know. I go to the goal of victory.” He said it over and over again. How could they who had walked with Him in the Way have assumed that He was going to a goal of defeat and of failure, as the millions since that time have assumed? For they glorify what seems to the world to be defeat. No! “Whither I go ye know.”
Did He have to ascend into some high realm, perhaps a million miles from here or more, to be with the Father? Did He, now? If we say He did then we make Him a liar; for He said, “He that hath seen me hath seen the Father. The Father and I are one.” He did not have to go anywhere to ascend to the Father; He did not have to go anywhere to be in heaven, according to His own words. And we believe Him or we do not. Where was He going? Was he going to disappear and go to some other realm? That is not what He was talking about. If we stop and meditate and look and see, it is obvious. “And whither I go ye know.” Could one walk with the LORD along the Wfor even a few moments without being assured that He was moving forward to the goal of victory over all the limitations and evils of the world? that there was power enough, wisdom enough, understanding enough, everything enough to establish that victory? And then He said, “And the way ye know.” The way to what? The way to ascend up into some cloud in the sky and disappear from human view?
Apparently human beings decided that He meant that they knew the way to die, and so they proceeded to die by the millions, just to prove it. That is not “the way” He was talking about—the way to death. “And the way ye know.” The way to what? The Way to victory. “Whither I go ye know. If you know me, you know,” He said. And if you in any time have walked in the Way with the Master for as much as ten minutes, you know the Way too. You know the goal. You cannot, by reason of His Spirit or by any means whatsoever, be in His Presence for ten minutes and not know the goal—the Goal of Victory and the Way to Victory. If you say you do not, you are either declaring that you have never been in His Presence in any moment of time, by reason of His Spirit or otherwise, or you are a liar—one of the two. If we have by any means whatsoever been in His Presence insofar as our consciousness is concerned—oh our bodies have been in His Presence, there isn't any doubt about it. “Where two or three of you are gathered in my name, there am I in the midst of you.” Physically we have been in His Presence, whether our minds knew it or not. It is not a question of whether we have been in His Presence; it is a question of whether we are aware that we have been in His Presence. And if we are aware of it then there is no excuse for us; we know whither He was going and we know the Way, and we should not be a follower of Thomas or of Philip. We should follow Him.
“And whither I go ye know.” Who spoke this word? just the physical form of Jesus? Oh yes, the physical form spoke the word, yes, but did it start with the physical form? No, it was the word of the Father. “Whither I go ye know.” Did you ever stop to see that? “Whither I—the Father—go ye know, and the way I—the Father—go ye know.” Let us stop acting as if we thought our LORD and KING was a liar when He was on earth. “The words that I speak unto you I speak not of myself.” It was the word of the Father through the lips of Jesus. “Whither I go ye know.” Jesus went with the Father. That was all right. When the word came forth, “Follow me,” whose word was it? The word of the Father. When He said, “Whither I go ye know, and the way ye know,” whose word was it? The word of the Father. “If ye had known me, ye should have known my Father also.” Have we known Him? If we answer “Yes” we must acknowledge that we have known the Father also; if we say that we have not known the Father we declare that we have not known Jesus. How many are there in the world that believe on Him? Not many, not very many in this world who really believe on Him.
The Master continued on and said, “He that believeth on me, the works that I do shall he do also.” And human beings have read that as if it were Jesus talking. Of course Jesus was talking, because He was revealing the word of the Father; but it was the Father's word. “He that believeth on me—the Father—the works that I—the Father—do shall he do also.” “He that believeth on me.” And human beings have been trying to believe on Jesus, while they have been rejecting the Father, saying, “We do not know the Father. We will know the Father when we get to heaven. All we need to do now is know Jesus. And we will say we believe on Jesus and we will be saved, and then when we get to heaven we will know the Father.” That is the whispering of the devil. It is not the truth; it is not of the Spirit of God; it is not of the Bible, the Word of God. And until we begin to acknowledge that the Master spoke the truth we cannot possibly begin to know the reality of the Kingdom and the Power and the Glory.
Behold, He said, “And whither I go ye know, and the way ye know,” and He was not talking about going to the Father, ascending to the Father. He was not talking about going to some invisible realm. He was not talking about leaving this sphere of things. He was talking about movement into the realm of victory. And did He do it? Of course He did, and He said, “Follow me.” And if we accept His word as true we must acknowledge in this moment, this moment of this hour, that we know the Way to Victory. If we deny it we make liars of ourselves. And if we refuse to move in the Way we know, it is indeed a shame unto us. If we know the Way we are without excuse; we had better live in it. And if we say that we do not know the Way, so that we can be excused from living it, then we make of ourselves liars. There is no other choice. If we deny that we know, we are denying what we do know. Inside we do know it. We have heard it often enough, we have read it often enough, we have presumably meditated upon it often enough. And then to say we do not know? Why insult oneself by calling oneself a liar? Then you do know, just like that. You do know. And if you do not live according to what you know you are wrong; and if you do live by what you know there will be power, there will be victory.
Every time there is a contest there will be victory; every time there is anything to be faced it will be by the power and wisdom of God. There will be no excuse for failure, not a little failure or a big one, no excuse, regardless of circumstances—no excuse for failure in you, no matter what someone else does or does not do, no matter what you have or do not have, no matter how your neighbors feel or think, no matter what your husband or wife does, no matter what your parents or your children do, absolutely no excuse for you, none whatsoever, if you know. And you do know. If you say you do not, you make of yourself a liar. “Whither I go ye know, and the way ye know.”
What is this Way to Victory? The word of the Father through the lips of Jesus said, “I am the way, the truth, and the life.” Now human beings have gone to great lengths to develop a substitution for the teaching of Jesus Christ, and they have imagined that Jesus was the Way and that if you say you believe on Him and you accept this creed and that belief and so on, then that is all there is to it. But the assumptions of the human mind, motivated by the currents of the devil, have produced that thought and that belief. It is not what Jesus taught; it is not what the Bible teaches. The Bible teaches that the Father is the Way, the Truth and the Life. “I AM”—the Father speaking; coming through the lips of Jesus, yes, vitally important, but to say that it was Jesus talking and to act as if that is all it meant is to make a mockery of the words of our LORD on earth. “The words that I speak unto you I speak not of myself.” All right, either He spoke the truth or He did not. If He did and said, “I am the way, the truth, and the life,” then it was the word of the Father, not the word of the man Jesus; and if it is the word of the Father, then the Father is the Way. And is the Father far away? As long as you can make yourself imagine, by reason of false assumption, that Jesus was the Way, and He was on earth for a little while, but He is long gone, He is high up in the sky somewhere, in fact we do not quite know where He is, but He is in heaven, wherever that is, then you could feel that you had an excuse for being nothing more than just a drifting, weak and helpless human being: “After all, He is far away.” No. The Father is the Way, the Truth and the Life. And what is the revelation of the Father? Why does Jesus have meaning to us? For one reason only: He revealed the Father—the Father.
Is it the first time the Father had been revealed? Certainly not! Is it the first time the Spirit of God had been revealed and made known to man? Certainly not! The Father had said before, “Come unto me. Come near unto me. I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life.” And the Father is with you. “If ye had known me, ye should have known my Father also.” If we do not know the Father, we declare that we do not know Jesus. If we do know the Father, we are not going to be weak and helpless human beings. We are going to let the Power of the Father have meaning; we are going to let the Kingdom of the Father have meaning. To whom does the Kingdom and the Power and the Glory belong? To the Father. The Kingdom and the Power and the Glory are the revelation of the reality of the Father. How did the Master reveal the Father? By living in the Father here on earth, and He said, “Follow me.”
If you think you must wait until you die and go to some far heaven to live with the Father, then you are wrong, then you are not following our KING. Those who claim to be following Him and yet are not living with the Father here on earth declare themselves to be liars, children of the prince of liars, followers of the devil. If you are not living with the Father on earth you are not following Jesus. Whether we like to face the truth or not, that is it or we make Him a liar. It is better that we acknowledge ourselves to be a liar and repent and respond, and let our lives be redirected, and enter into the Kingdom of Heaven that is at hand on earth, that we may be with the Father on earth and follow Him. And if we are with the Father, what did the Master teach men to pray? “Our Father who art in heaven on earth, at hand, hallowed is Thy name to us.” The name of the Father—is His name hallowed to us if we ignore Him, if we refuse to let Him manifest in and through us? No. If you say, “The power of God is not manifesting in my life to meet the issues of life and to prove the goal of victory,” then your claims of knowing the Father or of knowing Jesus or believing on Him are so much prattle.
Blessed ones, it is time that we should begin to know the Father. In our meditation this evening I anticipate considering that aspect of the matter with you, but this morning let us yield to the basic truth, which the honest mind cannot deny: If we know Jesus we know the Father, and we know the Way and we know the Goal; and if we know the Goal and the Way and do not move toward that Goal in that Way, then are we indeed revealed as unbelievers; for if we believed there would be nothing on the face of the earth, around us or in us or above us, in circumstance or affairs, in national situations or world conditions, nothing could stop us from moving in that Way toward that Goal, that it might be true of us, “He that hath seen me hath seen the Father.” And what did the Master say? “If ye had known me, ye should have known my Father also: and from henceforth ye know him, and have seen him.”
The moment we begin to see the Master in relationship to our conscious comprehension—the eye of the mind and the heart, the processes of acceptance and belief—we begin to see the Father. How do you see Jesus? By looking at a picture out here? By doing what? By looking for a vision in the sky? By hoping to have a dream? By hoping that there will be some kind of a vision take form here in the meeting so we can say, “I have seen Jesus,” or “I have seen the Father”? These foolish fancies have no part or place for those who follow Him. Oh we might conceivably see a form, I am not saying we could not, but that is not what we call seeing. That would be incidental. The Master said, “Blessed are the pure in heart: for they shall see God.” How are we going to begin to see? How are we going to begin to actually see our LORD, our Master, Jesus, the Father, however you want to put it? How? If we see the reality of Jesus with the eye of our minds we are beginning to see Him. If we see the reality of His love with the eye of the heart we are beginning to see Him. And if the eye of the heart and the eye of the mind come together in a single eye, then thine eye shall be single and thy whole body shall be full of light, and in the light you see the Father.
Are you going to try to see Jesus? If you do you are wrong. Why should you try to see Jesus? You should not try to see anything, but you should let yourself see the Father. Why not take a look at the Father? Why always be looking to see Jesus? You say the Bible teaches that you should see Jesus? It does not teach any such thing. There is not one authentic word in this Book that teaches any such thing—this Book teaches that you should see the Father; and “If you have seen me,” said the Master, “you have seen the Father.” Well, then you have not seen Jesus, you have seen the Father. Stop making Jesus to be a veil between you and the Father. He is a revelation of the Father, not a veil between, once you begin to know the reality of the Father. Is the Father weak and helpless? Or did the Master fail to know what He was talking about when He taught men to pray, “Thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory”? If you see the Father and deny the reality of the Kingdom and the Power and the Glory, you have not seen the Father; and if you say you have seen Jesus and yet say you have not seen and known the Father, you are a liar and the truth is not in you. If we believe on Him then the truth is in us, and if we have looked we have seen the Father.
And what is the Father? How can we know the Father? How can we live in the presence of the Father? How can we let that Kingdom be a reality in body and mind and heart, in our affairs? How can we actually let the power manifest? Instead of dreading the supposed power of Soviet Russia, the enslaving power that has made a hell of China and of other countries, instead of dreading that supposed power—oh it is there, and if we remain weak and helpless human beings we had better look out for that power—but what about the Power of the Father, what about the Kingdom of the Father? Do we have to wait until some future time? Some people imagine that we do. We are going to have to wait until something happens up here. They say when Jesus comes. When Jesus comes? Of all the foolish fancies that ever became implanted by the devil in the minds of men! Jesus did come, and as long as you are saying, “When Jesus comes,” you are denying that Jesus ever did come. He did come, and yet to say, “Well now, when Jesus comes everything will be all right”! You cannot be a true Christian and say, “When Jesus comes,” because the very attitude denies that He ever did come. And He came and He did His job. Let us not deny it.
Jesus did come, and if He came then His coming has all the meaning for us that any possible concept of His coming in the future might have. Why project it into the future all the time? Why deny Him? That is not believing on Him. Whether they know it or not, every person on the face of the earth that is looking forward to the coming of Jesus—“When Jesus comes…”—is serving the devil, denying our LORD and KING and refusing to serve God. The Bible does not teach it. It is an assumption, pure and simple, by human minds inspired by the spirit of darkness. When Jesus comes? Jesus did come, and let us stop denying it. He came on earth. He revealed the Father. He revealed the Kingdom, He revealed the Power, He revealed the Way, He revealed the Truth, He revealed the Life, He revealed the Victory. What more do you want?
He said, “Follow me,” and do not wait until some future event. That has been one of the cleverest delusions of the devil foisted upon humanity—putting it off. He did come, and let us stop denying it. And He said, “Whither I go ye know, and the way ye know”—the Way to Victory. Unless we begin to live in it and reveal the reality of the Father in our own lives, we are proving that we do not know Him and that we do not believe on Him. Now, are we willing to face the truth and let the truth make us free? Or do we want to follow the delusions of the devil and continue to be weak and helpless, puny human beings? It is up to you to make your own choice. Shall we follow Him? Shall we serve our LORD and KING and do it truly? Let it be so.
Heavenly Father, we thank Thee. We thank Thee from the depths of our hearts for Thy revelation through the body and being of Jesus, that we might know the reality of Thy Presence and accept that reality for ourselves, and remember that Thy Name is hallowed; for our Master taught us to pray, Our Father who art in heaven—and heaven is at hand on earth—hallowed is Thy Name to us. Thy Kingdom come in our hearts and minds, our bodies, our lives. Thy Kingdom come. Thy Will be done on earth exactly as it is done in heaven. For Thine, O Father, is the Kingdom and the Power and the Glory, forever. Aum-en.
© emissaries of divine light
