The question comes up constantly—you run into it, and it may be a question in some of your minds here: What is original sin? It is a term that is used very widely and is centered in the consciousness of many, many people. I think, generally speaking, if a person enquired as to what original sin is, it is more or less an idea that since Adam and Eve sinned, then everybody has sin; it is just original sin that comes down to you. Well, as far as I am concerned, that is no explanation at all.
The original sin, which you have no doubt considered somewhat in the other classwork, I believe, by now, I am not quite sure—in any case it is the eating of the forbidden fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. And the serpent whispered, “For God doth know that in the day ye eat thereof … ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil.” Man's effort to be as God, instead of being the means by which God can manifest on earth, has caused all the misery and suffering and sorrow and death that the world has known. Man was created in the image and likeness of God, to be the Body of God on earth, to be the means by which God's dominion could be extended into the earth with respect to all forms of manifestation here, including the elements. But man lost that dominion when he tried to be as God. When we recognize that the knowledge of good and evil is the fruit of the forbidden tree the whole thing is simplified—because man, judging with respect to the scope of his own immediate life as he sees it, as he thinks he wants it to be, is incapable of seeing clearly with respect to the whole, of recognizing the way in which the vibratory patterns of all human lives come together, or blend and influence each other.
There may be someone in Canada, we will say, someone in the eastern United States, in this very moment, who is responding as readily as the individual knows how, to the Divine Pattern, and that person's life may have, according to the Divine View, a very significant part to play in relationship to what we are doing here today, or our whole program in general. You are not in position to know this person; you are not even aware consciously that such a person exists; and yet that person's life and what that person is doing has a potential in relationship to us, perhaps to one of you individually, or all of us together. And if you function on an arbitrary basis, according to your own vision of what should be done and what should not be done, so that you do not yield to the spirit of God, you set up that vibratory pattern here which tends to make that person feel the same attitude. He or she tends to say, “Well now, I don't understand this urge that is within me. I don't see where I'm going, therefore I must use my intelligence. It looks to me like this would be good and that would be evil, and the impulse in me wants me to do something about which my mind says, ‘That would not work out right,’ so I'll do this.” But what happens? Following the impulse you initiated here, that person does what seems to him to be good. [greatcosmicstory.blogspot.com/that-which-ye-do-uranda-1938-that-which.html] But it turns out to be wrong. If he had followed this other course, which looked to the human mind, on the basis of limited vision, to be wrong, it would have been right and he would have carried through in the vibratory pattern and the path would have been open for the true patterns of correlation.
Man's vision, then, man's understanding, is inadequate to the necessities of a recognition of all the factors that are involved with respect to all the people of the world. And what you do day-by-day has meaning to everyone, in one way or another. Therefore when you make your course according to the human determination of what you think you want, what you think you want to do, without regard to the direction of the spirit of God, you are going to do something wrong; you are eating of the forbidden fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. For the mind of man says, “I can determine with my knowledge. I have the knowledge here already, and I can determine what is good and what is evil. I will not pick the evil fruit; I will only pick the good fruit.” But everyone who attempts that finds that what he thought was going to be good turns out to be evil; that is, not a pattern of Divine Fulfilment.
That in essence is what brought about the fall in the first place: man's self-determination without regard to the Plan of God. He was going to be as God; he was going to use the blessings he had, the powers he had, the abilities he had, for his own selfish purpose. This has been pictured as eating an apple, or something of that sort, which in limited allegorical presentation may be said to have some significance. But it was not just eating something. It was not that God put a tree in a physical garden and said to man, “Well now, of all the trees in the garden thou mayest freely eat, but of this tree, ye shall not eat of it, neither shall ye touch it, lest ye die.” It was the tree that is with us here today as much as it was with our forefathers. And that original sin is the sin which human beings are committing today, just as much as any Adam or Eve that ever lived—that original sin of eating of the forbidden fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, the self-determination according to the supposed wisdom of the human mind. Because what man thinks to be good turns out to be bad, and what man thinks would have been bad turns out to be good.
There is a popular saying, “Hindsight is better than foresight.” After it is all over, a person says, “Well I wish I had done that. If I had only known, I could have done this.” Yes, if you had only known. God did know. And if you were aware of the working of the spirit, that current of the spirit sought to direct you in the right direction so that you would do the right thing. But when the human mind attempts to determine what is good and what is evil the human being always fails and brings discord and disturbance into his life. The individual may say, “Well what good is my intelligence then? I thought God gave me a mind so that I could determine what is good, what is good in my life, so that I can govern my life and live a good life.” So many people tend to jump to the conclusion, when you suggest that they are not supposed to judge good and evil with their mind, that it simply means, then, that you can do anything you please, that you are not supposed to say, “Well, this is good or bad; so I'll just do whatever I want to,” and it is supposed to be all right. That is not suggested at all. That is a fanciful human interpretation of the Divine Truth. It does not apply. It simply means that once we are attuned to God and letting the spirit of God direct, we do not have to depend upon the puny wisdom of the human mind.
And that original sin is still with us. Not because of heredity, not because of the mere fact that someone back along the line undertook to be as God and set himself up in opposition to God, but because that is the thing which human beings are doing today. The Lord said, “In the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die.” Now here is another passage which clearly indicates that the days God was talking about were not twenty-four-hour days. We have been recognizing something about the creative cycles, the length of time involved in a Creative Day, 25,850 years approximately. But Adam, according to the story, ate of the forbidden fruit and he lived to be nearly one thousand years old before he died—according to the story. God said, “In the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die.” Well, then, if God had meant a twenty-four-hour day, that would have made God a liar, and God is not a liar. So to say that it is a twenty-four-hour day, as so many attempt to do, is just simply wrong. “In the day that ye eat thereof”—in the life cycle, in the life span, in the period of time you are on earth—"if you eat thereof, you die.” But just as surely as that is true under the Law, just so surely is the opposite true. “In the day that ye shall cease eating of the fruit of the forbidden tree of the knowledge of good and evil”—and the tree is exactly what its name implies, the knowledge of good and evil— “in the day that ye shall cease to eat of this forbidden fruit, ye shall surely live.” Just as surely.
For how many centuries, how many millennia, has man been trying to prove that God was wrong? For around twenty thousand years. And man has not proven God wrong. So it behooves us to recognize that basic key: that we cease eating of the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. “Ye shall not eat of it, neither shall ye touch it.” You reach a point where you leave it alone. It is not your business. God said, “All of these other trees are yours. This one is mine. I reserve this tree to myself.” Why was it there? Just to tempt human beings? Oh no. Just to be a mockery? No. That was God's tree, and it is. He reserved that tree for Himself. And it is in the pattern of life today, and you can stop eating of that forbidden fruit and let God take care of that tree.
Learn to follow the direction of the spirit. And once you stop eating of the forbidden tree, once you stop even touching it—not even going up to take a good look at it, not worrying about smelling it even; leave it alone; it belongs to God—and learn to live in the current of the spirit of God, what happens? You begin to live. What did the Master say? “I am the resurrection, and the life,” the reality of life. And what does His whole life exemplify? It exemplifies what it means to leave the forbidden tree alone. He said, “Judge not, that ye be not judged.” He lived in accordance with that principle. And blessed ones, we can too. And unless we do we are not going to be true servers. Anything less than that is not satisfactory. If we are going to be so serving that we can help other people to begin to live in the true sense, we must be letting the light so shine that we can inspire others to leave that forbidden tree alone. You cannot extend the gift of life to another until that other is willing to leave the forbidden tree alone. I don't care how many attunements you give, how many lectures you give, how many acts of goodness you express on earth, in actual fact you accomplish nothing until or unless you inspire others to leave that tree alone; because you can talk to them, you can serve them in every conceivable way, and if they continue to eat of the forbidden fruit, they are going to die just the same. They are going to get sick, they are going to be unhappy, and there is nothing you can do about it.
This emphasizes one of the basic factors with respect to true service: “According to your response, so be it unto you.” We cannot impose life upon anyone, and life, in the true sense, is that which brings healing with respect to body or mind or heart, spirit, affairs—it makes no difference. It must be the natural expression of life through the individual. If there is to be healing their life must be on an increase. As long as life is on the decrease, the life current on the decline, you are not going to have healing in any true sense. You may get better for a little while, in one way or another, but there will not be any true healing. So the life current must be on the increase, and the only way it can be on the increase is for the human being to begin to leave the forbidden tree alone. You may not be able to speak of it specifically the first time you give a person an attunement, or perhaps not even the second time, but you begin to set the pattern, you begin to open the door. Maybe a little at a time; perhaps it will take six months. It is not for you to judge. But as long as there is response, remember that everything you are doing in giving an attunement, or serving in any way whatsoever, is leading to this one point: to get the individual to stop eating the forbidden fruit. Because as long as he does he will keep on dying.
And this forbidden fruit, taken by the human being, produces a narcotic effect; it dulls the senses, distorts the vision, makes many things seem to be something that they are not, and so clouds the perception that the human being imagines many things to be so with respect to himself or others when it is merely a figment of fancy. He may as well have taken some kind of dope. It would not have dulled the senses any more, in fact not as much. So in whatever sphere of service we function, without any exception, only to the degree that we can inspire, lead and encourage others to move to a point where they stop eating of the forbidden fruit, can we begin to get them in position where they can eat the fruit of the tree of life. And that tree of life is available to us now, just as much as it was to Adam or Eve. It is available to us today just as surely as it was to them. So we begin to see that there is a basic pattern, a point to which we must move.
Now in this process of movement out of the old pattern into the new, which is the process of resurrection, something specific must take place with respect to what has been called repentance and forgiveness, etc. True repentance is simply a willingness to let one's life be redirected. True repentance is the willingness to let one's life be redirected. So many people imagine that seeking forgiveness or repentance means groveling in the dust and merely making it appear that one is extremely sorry. Well, there is possibly some regret and there is possibly some sorrow, but repentance and the process of forgiving is not a process of groveling, not in God's way. In God's way it is a process of ennobling. For if something is wrong and needs to be changed, it is not a process of groveling that is necessary; it is an ennobling process, making more noble, making more real, making more honest. So if we are going to assist others in movement away from the forbidden tree, so that we can lead them along the golden path that leads to the tree of life, we must first inspire repentance; that is, the willingness to let one's life be redirected in actual fact. Not just to say, “I'm sorry,” and go and do the same thing all over again. That is not repentance. But an actual redirection of life, a willingness, an eager willingness, that it should be so. As long as the individual resists, resents and refuses he has not repented, no matter what he may say with his lips about being sorry.
So first, the willingness to be redirected. And then, if you are going to serve as an instrument of God's power on earth, you must be able to forgive sin. If you cannot forgive sin in actual fact—I am not just talking about saying words—if you cannot, as a member of the Body of God on earth, actually forgive sin, you cannot be a server. Forgiveness? You can offer forgiveness, but it must be more than that. If you are going to be a server you must be able to help the individual through the process of letting his future be changed, of letting the ill things be nullified, and of letting the new patterns of life be initiated so that he or she can begin to be a man or a woman according to the divine pattern.
Now do not let it—what shall I say?—discourage you in some fashion because I say that you must be able to forgive sin in actual fact if you are going to truly serve. You—you, the human being? You, just the physical body? What did the Master say? “The words that I speak unto you I speak not of myself: but the Father that dwelleth in me, he doeth the works.” If the words you are speaking in your ministry, in your service, are the words of God—not originated according to some human fancy or concept—then God is in action in you and through you. Here you are, going through a process of training, instruction, which enables you to learn to let that be a fact, not just a fanciful dream for some day in the future. If it is not a fact with respect to my ministry with you, then you are wasting your time listening to me. If I am not exemplifying the things I am talking about, then you may as well go somewhere else. So you begin to see that as you let the spirit of God work through you in actual fact, you can inspire the willingness to let one's life be redirected, and then you can forgive sin, you can begin to work out the pattern with the individual or individuals by which the wrong cycles are nullified and brought to naught and the future is changed.
With respect to any illness of body or mind or heart, what healing can there be without forgiveness? None. In every pattern of healing—I don't care what it is or what method you think you used—there was no healing, not even of a cut on your finger, without the reality of the process of forgiveness offered and received. Because, in the ordinary course of events, forgiveness not received would turn into serious infection and one thing and another. It is all a pattern leading to what? Destruction, decay, disintegration, death. You may say, “Well I didn't die the same hour I did it, so I guess it's all right.” I have had people get all up in the air because they could not force me into some self-active pattern, or force this ministry into some self-active pattern; and they would leave and they would say, “Well now, nothing has happened to me, so it's all right. I'm perfectly safe,” etc., etc., etc. All kinds of ridiculous things. I am not interested in hurting anybody. Sometimes people who consider themselves my enemies decide that if they do not drop dead instantly, well, then I don't amount to anything. We actually had a man here during the earlier Class who got defiant and went around here for several days deliberately undertaking to prove that what I said was not to be considered, because he took the attitude, and tried to convince people, that if I was right, then he would just drop dead, and if he didn't drop dead, then I was wrong. Well he is far, far from here now. Finland, I believe. In any case, I was not concerned about his dropping dead. It would not have done me any good, or anyone else.
Adam, after he ate the forbidden fruit, lived for nearly one thousand years, but he still died. Human beings are so inclined to say, “If it doesn't happen within such and such a time it is not going to happen and I can go on and do as I please. What difference does it make?” They are not going to push God into a corner like that. So the point is that whatever healing takes place, at any time, under any circumstance, there is a process of forgiving sin. If your finger heals, then God has forgiven you for cutting your finger or it would not get well. It does not make any difference, that which is established in the wrong pattern must be nullified and the right pattern established or reestablished. That is forgiveness and the receiving of forgiveness. And it is only to the degree that you can actually produce that in fact, inspire it, and by the working of the power of God through you accomplish it, that you can serve. And that is what? The beginning of the eating of the fruit of the tree of life.
Do you imagine that the tree of life is just some physical tree like—well, the wrong tree was an apple tree, so I suppose the right tree was a peach tree or something of the sort? And it was going to somehow be big enough? It would have to be as big as a banyan tree, wouldn't it, even to take care of a little section of humanity. People must have to line up out here for miles and miles, and stay in line, and wait days and days to get by, to get a little nibble off the tree of life. Just consider, over two billion people on the face of the earth, and the tree of life is just going to be one tree, a physical tree somewhere. Everybody has to get a bite of it once in a while in order to have eternal life. You see how fanciful the human concept is? It is not a physical tree. It was not supposed to be. It is a pattern of portrayal. And that tree of life—whether you can see it or know it or not is beside the point—is available to us today on exactly the same basis that it was available to Adam and Eve. As long as you eat of the forbidden tree, you cannot find it. You can search, you can look, you can feel, you can do anything you want to, and you cannot find it. I can tell you something about it, but if you still insist on eating the forbidden tree you will never find it. I can lead you blindfolded and set your feet on the golden path and then take the blindfold off and say, “Now you follow this path and you will come to the tree of life”; but if you have not stopped using the narcotic of the forbidden fruit, you will not find it. You cannot be pushed into it, you cannot be forced into it. You have to make your choice between the two, and they are both available now, in this day and age, to us as much as to anyone. One is to be left alone. And we do not need to imagine a big banyan tree somewhere, as a symbol of the tree of life.
Do you know what a banyan tree is, all of you? Anyone here who doesn't? Well a banyan tree is the biggest tree, in the sense of acreage covered, on the face of the earth. Now of course the highest and biggest, in the sense of the ordinary pattern of a tree, is the redwood, the California redwood. If any of you have seen those you certainly have had the privilege of seeing something very beautiful. They are the oldest living things on earth. I have seen them. A banyan tree does not grow so tall, although it may get two or three hundred feet high, I believe, in some cases—they get pretty big anyway—but they cover a large territory; they spread out, and as their limbs get out too far, so that they would sag, they send a root down and it builds another trunk right down into the ground, so that the branches go on and on and on. And one banyan tree can cover acres of ground, because the branches are held up by little trunks running down to the ground, developing a root system and so on—all one tree. So the banyan tree covers more ground per tree than any other tree on earth. That is the reason I suggested it as a possible illustration with respect to man's foolish fancies.
How ridiculous it would be, with even the largest banyan tree on earth, everyone trying to get to it to pick a little fruit, to get a bite of the tree of life. You do not find it that way, and as long as man imagines that he will, it proves only one thing: He has been eating the dope; he has been getting the narcotic effect of eating the forbidden fruit. And he can have all kinds of flights of fancy on that basis. So our purpose is to inspire human beings to get away from the dope habit, get away from the narcotic effect of the forbidden fruit, to learn to leave it alone, not even to stop and look at it. “Ye shall not touch it.” Leave it alone. And then, as the consciousness clears, perception becomes more keen, response more vivid, step-by-step you can persuade such a responding one to move toward the tree of life, and one bright day, to begin to eat of it. And only as we accomplish that are we true servers.
Now, going back to the story with respect to Abram and Melchizedek, where were we? Anyone recall? [Albert Ackerley: “We were to become Priests and Priestesses after the Order of Melchizedek.”] That's right. “And Melchizedek king of Salem brought forth bread and wine.” You remember, on Friday we recognized that bread and wine, brought forth by Melchizedek, was also offered by our LORD at what is called the Last Supper, or the Lord's Supper. Bread and wine—exactly the same symbols for the same purpose. As the Master in the upper room blessed His disciples when He gave them bread and wine, so we read that, “… Melchizedek king of Salem brought forth bread and wine: and he was the priest of the most high God. And he blessed him, and said, Blessed be Abram of the most high God, possessor of heaven and earth: And blessed be the most high God, which hath delivered thine enemies into thy hand. And he gave him tithes of all.” [greatcosmicstory.blogspot.com/service-in-temple-of-light.html]
And we recognized that in this movement forward, in the process of becoming in actual fact members of the One Body, letting the power of God work in us and through us to carry on the Divine Pattern, we must become Priests and Priestesses after the Order of Melchizedek. [greatcosmicstory.blogspot.com/priesthood-after-order-of-melchizedek.html] We can be hangers-on, or we can be disciples, or followers—a disciple is a follower—or we can reach the point of being prophets (that is, letting the Word of the Lord express through our lips), or we can keep on and become Priests or Priestesses.
Now I would not want you to feel that I arbitrarily take the stand that every man, woman and child on the face of the earth should be a Priest or Priestess in the ultimate outworking. There are all kinds of spheres of service and responsibility which relate to that central focalization, and for a person who is content just to be a disciple, well, no one is going to find fault with him if he is a good disciple, or a good prophet or prophetess, as the case may be. There are many spheres of service. But from the standpoint of actually establishing the patterns and accomplishing the Will of God on earth, it must be through the Priesthood after the Order of Melchizedek. There is no other way. That is the way which Jesus Christ revealed on earth, and He said, “I am the way, the truth, and the life.” He was reestablishing on earth a consciousness, an understanding, a recognition, of the Priesthood after the Order of Melchizedek.
And we might point out that it is only as human beings have responded to the influence released in the pattern of the Priesthood after the Order of Melchizedek that they have accomplished anything worthwhile in a real beneficial sense to humanity or to the glory of God, at any time on the face of the earth. This is without respect to church or denomination or creed or color or anything else. You begin to realize that this in which we are sharing comes over to us from the Motherland, from the days before the fall of man, and it is the Divine Pattern which has not been changed. It is still the same. It is still the same Law and principles of being. What we are speaking of here as the Priesthood after the Order of Melchizedek was the governing force on earth before the fall of man, and had been for around one hundred and thirty thousand years. And it has been the governing force behind every constructive move, every really blessed life, on the face of the earth since that day, without respect to any of the man-made divisions.
In other words, when we begin to recognize the basic truth of the matter, we find that it is the catholic church. Catholic means Universal. Consider the idea of Greek Catholic, Roman Catholic. Both, by the very fact that they say Greek or Roman, say it is not catholic. Catholic is universal. To say Roman Catholic is to establish a division, a limit, to build a fence. In other words you begin to see that whatever is constructive or right or real, or response to the spirit of God, in any person on the face of the earth, regardless of nationality or creed or religion or anything else, is a response to that pattern in which we are engaged. We do not use the word “catholic,” because of its, well, misuses; that is, we do not use it publicly. But it means universal. And we do not speak of it as a church particularly, in the ordinary sense, because it is much more than the human concept of what a church means. But it is the Priesthood after the Order of Melchizedek. And in order to see the full significance of this, we go back and recognize that the Divine Pattern was in operation before the fall. This pattern was in operation in relationship to the conditions that worked out after the fall. We remember man's sudden plunge downward into the caveman age, etc., and his gradual emergence into the dim dawn of history. And it was by this means that the focalization of the pattern was carried over from the period that was beyond the range of history, or man's knowledge, and reestablished with respect to the dawn of history.
So, from my standpoint, any man or woman, regardless of who it is, or where, or in what condition, what they call themselves or anything else—any man or woman on the face of the earth who lets God's Will be done, even to the slightest degree, so that there is a real service from it, that person is a part of this which you share here. And it is only to the degree that any person is a part of this, that he or she can amount to anything, I don't care what the standards according to the world concept. But this is, and has been for many thousands of years, the Universal Pattern with respect to the things of God on earth, the progress of man, everything. Every step of progress that man has made has been worked out under this pattern, without a single exception.
We have people talk about their churches or their denominations going back two or three hundred years or four hundred years, or back to the time of Jesus, or something of that nature. This program which you are sharing here goes back to the fall of man, on the basis of its present purpose—that is, the restoration of man—and it goes back to the beginning of creation, the beginning of the creation of the world in actual fact. So as far as this world is concerned it cannot be any older than that. It is the Divine Pattern in operation, and has been since the beginning of the creation of the world. Once we begin to see that, we realize that we have a tremendous responsibility, a glorious privilege, to consciously share in this process of restoration. But man has been in the fallen state for so long that he imagines that God's whole purpose is just to get him back into heaven, and once that is done, everything is done.
This twenty-thousand-year interval in which man has fallen has simply meant that some of the other things that God intended to do have had to wait a bit. Getting man back into the Divine Pattern is a temporary goal. After man is back in the Divine Pattern, then we can go on with our cosmic work, our Divine Pattern of work. Simply saving human beings is not the end and aim of all things; it is merely incidental; because when man fell, man interfered with the processes of God's creative work as it was being carried on in the solar system in relationship to the universe and the cosmos. Just as you might, conceivably, in some time in the past have been working on some certain job and you became ill and you were home for ten days, or in the hospital, we will say; well, after you were out of the hospital, and the convalescent period was over and you were strong enough, you went back on the job. And that interval is like this interval. It is a correction of something that is wrong. It is a process of restoration; it is not the real goal. It is important, but once we have achieved this process of restoration, then we can go on with our work, the work that was interfered with when man, the body of mankind, became ill through eating the forbidden fruit.
As a child, did you ever eat a green apple and get a bellyache? That is what has happened to man. And once we get him over this illness and the process of restoration worked out, then we can go back to the work that we were ordained to do. And it seems to me that once the human being begins to see that, he has a pattern of inspiration that is beyond, what shall we say, anything that is ordinary, because human beings seem to think that this little interval here, the little life span on earth, is so important—it is—and being saved is so important that once that is done it is all done, God is satisfied, that is all it is going to be for all eternity. The body of humanity became ill. It is not well yet. So as soon as the body of humanity is well and the process of restoration has been worked out, we can go back to work and do the thing that we really were ordained to do, we were intended to do and should be doing. But for the time being we are on a temporary job.
Now to carry this out a little further, so that you see the connection clearly and have a pattern of understanding with respect to what we have been meditating upon and the classwork that is coming up. You will recall in the Master's Prayer, as we considered it last evening, He made the statement that “none of them is lost, but the son of perdition; that the scripture might be fulfilled.” Now there is a very interesting opportunity to see the peculiar workings of the human mind in relationship to that which is actually expressed, the peculiar processes through which the mind of man goes. The 12th verse of the 17th chapter of John, specifically: “While I was with them in the world, I kept them in thy name: those that thou gavest me I have kept, and none of them is lost, but the son of perdition; that the scripture might be fulfilled.” The human mind jumps to the conclusion that the scripture had to be fulfilled. There was a prophecy; the scripture had to be fulfilled, therefore someone had to do this. “This must mean Judas. Therefore it means that Judas, in order to fulfil the scripture, had to betray Jesus.” That is supposed to be reasoning, logic. Only someone whose mind was filled with the dope, the narcotic of the forbidden fruit, could call that logic or reason—"that the scripture might be fulfilled.” The son of perdition did not have to be lost in an arbitrary sense merely to fulfil the scripture.
There are only two bodies on earth, [greatcosmicstory.blogspot.com/two-pyramids.html] the Body of the Son of God and the body of the son of perdition. And those who are coming out of the body of the son of perdition are becoming members of the Body of the Son of God. The son of perdition is lost. It is the body of humanity that is lost, wandering away from God, away from the tree of life. It is lost, and if it keeps going in the direction in which it is going it will die. Now the son of perdition must die, one way or another. It is going to be in one of two ways as far as God's Plan is concerned.
This body—to make it a little easier to illustrate; it is not the case yet, anyway, but just to illustrate principle—suppose of the two billion people on earth, one billion is actually enjoying membership in the Body of the Son of God, and the other billion has membership in the body of the son of perdition—two bodies. They are at this point in the outworking more or less equal in number of people—that is sometime in the future; we have not gotten there yet. Now the body of the son of perdition must die, it must cease to exist. As long as it exists it will be interfering with God's Plan and purpose; there will be misery and suffering and sorrow and death. So there are two ways.
Every one of that billion of people in the body of the son of perdition could relinquish the old pattern, let his or her life be redirected and move over in life into membership in the Body of the Son of God. And suppose every man, woman and child on the face of the earth did that, so that each one had entered into membership in the Body of the Son of God; the body of the son of perdition would be gone without the death of a single human being. The death, the end of the son of perdition, could come about without the death of a single human being. Now it is hardly likely that that will be the case, but I want you to see what the possibility is, because as far as God is concerned that is the desirable goal. But human beings are reactionary creatures; they are still fighting, still resenting, still trying to get their own way, still insisting on eating the forbidden fruit. So in all likelihood there will be those who will simply refuse to come out of the body of the son of perdition to become members of the Body of the Son of God.
Now that particular outworking is anticipated according to the Blueprint not because it has to be that way, not because God ordained that it had to be that way, but because God is wise enough to know human beings and to know how they are going to act—not that they have to act that way but just that they do. So when we reach a certain point in the outworking—and this is specifically mentioned in the Blueprint in the Book of Revelation—the members of the body of the son of perdition will undertake to have war with the members of the Body of the Son of God. In other words the devil and his servants will go up and make war against the servants of God. And they encamp round about the camp of the saints, etc., and the picture is that fire comes down from God out of heaven and devours them. And that is true. Once we begin to have a real control pattern, so that the currents of God's love and truth and life have meaning on earth, something along that line will work out.
What is the fire that comes down from God out of heaven? It is the fire of God's love—something that is cooling, soothing, healing, utterly wonderful to those who respond to it; something that carries the very essence of ecstasy and joys unspeakable and full of glory to anyone anywhere who will yield to it. But to anyone who fights it, it is a consuming fire. So it will work out on the basis of individual and collective response. From the standpoint of those who are members of the Body of the Son of God there will be no effort to destroy the members of the body of the son of perdition anywhere along the line, no effort whatever. But sooner or later it is anticipated, according to the vision of God in the matter, that there will be those who are members of the body of the son of perdition who will decide they are going to fight against the members of the Body of the Son of God.
Remember what I told you? We can use response that is yielded or response that is opposition, either one. So the moment they begin to fight—we will have done everything we could in the meanwhile to get them not to fight; we do not want to fight; we would that every man, woman and child on the face of the earth should yield and respond and come into the Divine Pattern in the right way—but those who begin to fight do what? They separate themselves from the source of life, from God—the positive rejection of God—and any such group action as is pictured there would simply be fighting against God's love, vigorously fighting against God's love. And what happens? The individual dries up, he is burned up, he becomes nothing.
So there are the two bodies. Our business is first to get clearly out of the body of the son of perdition as far as this group is concerned and over into membership of the Body of the Son of God, and then there to serve, to lead people, inspire away from the tree that brings death to the tree that brings life. “In the day that thou shalt cease to eat thereof, thou shalt surely begin to live.” And then to begin to actually inspire people to repent, let their lives be redirected in actual fact, on a permanent basis, and forgive sin, and move forward to the end that the Body of the Son of God shall be made manifest in all the earth, that the body of the son of perdition may be no more. So shall it be, as it is written, “The kingdoms of this world are become the kingdoms of our Lord, and of his Christ.” The Kingdom of Heaven is at hand. These are the things you are invited to share, that through your ministry, through your service, others may find and know the way, the truth and the life, and so respond that the truth may make them free. I thank God that it is so. Peace be unto you.
