Flesh Cannot Be the Temple of God
“Christ said. Unless ye turn and become as children, ye shall not see the Kingdom of God. Again, he said to Nicodemus; except a man be born again, of Water and of Spirit, he cannot enter into the Kingdom of God; for that which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is Spirit.
“Scripture positively declares that the fleshly natural man receives not the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness unto him, neither can he know or achieve them.
“Now seeing that all of us have Flesh and Blood bodies, and are mortal, as we find by experience, and yet scripture says that we are Temples of the Holy Ghost, who dwelleth in us, and the Kingdom of God is within us. … Therefore we should seriously consider what kind of person it is that is capable of being thus like the Deity.
“For it cannot be said of the mortal flesh … that it is the Temple of the Holy Ghost; much less can it be said that the New Birth comes to pass in this earthly flesh, which dies and putrifies.”
Become as Children
This is one of the most misunderstood things that Jesus said. He didn’t mean that we should physically shrink down to the size of children. Nor did he mean that we should be uneducated in a general sense. What he meant is that by the time we become adults, we are full of beliefs, ideas, and concepts that are sometimes false, or only partially true. These beliefs and concepts prevent us from seeing things that do not fit in with our beliefs. The best example of this is the Story of Christopher Columbus landing in the New World. The Native Americans saw the small boats that brought Columbus and some of his crew to shore, but they could not see the large ships those boats came from. Their beliefs blocked them from seeing something that contradicted those beliefs. Only the Medicine Man, the most open-minded of them, saw the big ships and slowly described them to the others. Once they were told about them, they were suddenly able to see them. This is true for many beliefs that we hold about God, spirits, and just about everything. It is most important for the spiritual student to learn to push aside those beliefs and concepts in order to see what is truly there.
Water and Spirit
This is an allegorical saying as well. It does not literally mean water, as in baptism, but the Spiritual Water, the Grace of God. The point is, to reborn does not mean to study scripture or to be ordained a minister. It means to take in the Spiritual Light that awakens and develops the Spirit. That is being Reborn.
Flesh is not The Temple
The material body of flesh cannot be the Temple of the Holy Spirit, yet Scripture tells us we are such a Temple. It is the spirit of man that is the Temple. The spirit is our link to heaven, to the Angels in Heaven, and to God. But that link doesn’t function if we allow the spirit to stay in the dormant state it was in when we were born. We must awaken and develop the Spirit until it becomes a conscious Soul. That is what the ancient mystery schools taught. It is what the Gnostic groups taught in secret to their members. It is what was truly taught by Jesus, Buddha, and the other founders of great religions. It is the developed Soul that will go to Heaven, not the physical body. The physical, being created by the Demiurge, cannot go to Heaven. In the not-very-distant future, though, matter will change back to its original form as spirit and all will be as God wants it to be.
