Wednesday, November 23, 2022

The Twenty-fourth Saying (Part 1)

“On the fortieth day following his return from the Emerald Isles, The Man sat in company with a gathering of Mariners and Companions of The Way in his study at the Rectory of the Abbey in the Sierra Nevada. On this day, he considered revealing the Twenty-Fourth Saying of Jamil, which he had kept to himself for a number of years since he had been inspired to write down the tenets given by The Child during his brief earthly sojourn.

“And The Man looked upon the disciples of The Way knowing that the changes taking place in the world were testimony to the heavenly influence of the manifesting Image and Word of God. The earth was being drawn into the future. The pangs of birth of the new were already evident: the old was dying. It was apparent to the Teacher and Disciple of the Holy Infant that humankind was witnessing the coming into being of a new and final religion, and that its doctrines had to be revealed and put into practice so it would not die aborning.

“When the devout followers had settled themselves before the speaker, The Man took in hand the document containing the words of The Child and, drawing the red ribbon girding it, began to read.

“And these are the words of the Twenty-Fourth Saying:

Not all world religions teach of the True God, as I have said. There are religions born of the human mind and the human urge to worship the powers that shape and nurture the earth. Fearing the forces of nature, humankind has given names to these powers and forces, worshiping them as gods, sacrificing to them, and attempting to calm them through appeasement.

Created in the image of nature and in the image of the world, the gods, by whatever name, are cruel and demanding, as are the religions that profess to worship them. Fear, judgement, law, injustice, punishment, terror, war, and calamity follow.

There is no enduring peace for either the faithful or the disbeliever. The innocent suffer, as do the workers of bad deeds. Vanity, passion and hatred, envy, lust, greed, pleasure-seeking, selfishness, desire, anger, jealousy, violence, and delusion dominate those who believe the world created Man and that nature controls him.

Man imitates nature, holding to life, wealth, and power for the strong and enslavement and sorrow for the weak. The human drama simulates the drama of nature. All things are transitory – life perishes, as does matter.

Man, ever seeking the knowledge of his pre-existent form, being, and self, penetrates into the deep roots of his psyche and there finds a forerunner to which he attributes creative powers. Not knowing that he has entered a world of terrible Darkness wherein is found his early origins, Man is confronted with incorporeal entities who become ephemeral gods of newborn religions. Malevolent spirits gain control over Man’s actions, and he surrenders to powers beyond his control. Because there can be no reward or lasting success by serving Evil, the adherents succumb to grief, pain, misery, and disillusion.

There is but One True God, just as there is but One Way to God taught by the One True Religion revealed by His Word. There cannot be different ways to God, nor different truths, nor different religions. The One Image of God is the Divine Presence. All other images are those of lesser things or lesser gods.

The world is ignorant of this Teaching. The world is unstable and confused. Instruction is the sole means of its salvation.

“And when he had completed his reading, The Man looked again at the devotees, awaiting their response.”

We will continue our review of the Twenty-fourth Saying of Jamil next week. In the meantime, for those of you in the United States, I wish you a very happy Thanksgiving with family and friends.

Again, if I may be of any personal service to you, please do not hesitate to contact me.

Very truly yours in Light+,

Gene

Wednesday, November 16, 2022

The Twenty-third Saying (Part 13)

“Following this discourse, a female Companion of The Way addressed The Man thusly, ‘May I ask for a further explanation of the statement that affirms that this world is not the True Creation and the Evil One could not exist without God.’ The Man replied to the disciple, ‘God created the world as Good, where there was no death and His creatures lived on His Presence. In speaking, we need to express these concepts in words and speak in terms of God and Him and His Presence to explain a point. But in the beginning, God was a Presence, and Man and Woman lived off that Presence. Over a period of time, Man and Woman became tempted, as you know from the allegorical story of the Garden of Eden, and they fell away from God and began to live, not off God’s Presence as nourishment, but by the taking of the lives of other things. The allegory does not answer all the questions concerning their evolution to the stage when they, or at least their descendants, began to eat meat, to the act of killing, and living off the Creation and not God, which led to our suffering, disease and death.

“‘Therefore, when God’s True Creation is restored – when He reveals Himself through the Image and the Word – all the existing creation will be burned up by the Presence of His Light. God must reach out to the souls of men and women by revealing His Image and speaking to them in His Word so that they will be restored. Thus, the new Creation is already in the process of becoming.

“‘As ministers, as the pre-ordained, as a Church, we are caught in the phenomena of space and time. God’s World has already been restored, and we are already immortal. As humans existing in space, we naturally think in terms of time – a beginning, a middle and an end – and as a consequence, we live out our lifetimes on the physical level, in the physical world, and we will die as this world will die, but we will be restored eventually. The concept of time is such that it does not explain to us when this will be; because space and time are an illusion, as it were, an unreal state of the present, not of the future; nor was this illusion of the past, except recently.

“‘As we evolve, we will see that, as ministers, we are being trained for a great undertaking. This Church is gearing itself to introduce religion as a revolutionary force in the world beyond politics, beyond economics, and beyond the civil state, to create a religious State in the world. And the world must give us the place to do that. We cannot predict when that will be, but that is our goal.

“‘Unlike other churches, the Church of the Second Advent is not interested in merely existing within the status quo and being governed by the State, responding to the State. We are not interested in allowing our children to enter the military when the time comes, paying taxes, and getting involved in the life of this senseless, aborted, perverted physical world. We are only concerned with the evolvement and evolution of man and woman and society. In essence, we represent that very religion promised by Jesus Christ to come when the world would be changed for Good. We have picked up the cross that was laid down two thousand years ago. We are the Second Church of Christ – the restored Church of the Second Advent in which God’s Image and Word motivate and animate us to do His Will.’”

Again, if I may be of any personal service to you, please do not hesitate to contact me.

Very truly yours in Light+,

Gene

Wednesday, November 2, 2022

The Twenty-third Saying (Part 11)

“‘Therefore, in Community we must decide who we are going to serve: God and the Sun of Righteousness or the earth and the Powers of Darkness and society? We are too small now to be noticed, but the time will come when this Church must affect the world. Humankind is not Evil. Humankind has a spirit and that spirit is played upon by the Powers of Light and Darkness, so there is a struggle between the Powers of Light and Darkness for control of the spirit. We may ask whether the Power of Darkness is equal to the Power of Light. The answer is, only in its ability to affect the spirit of Man. Light gives him Life, and Darkness gives him death. We can ask whether the Evil One is equal in power to God. Of course not. If it were not for God, Evil could not exist. Evil is a parasite, not a creator, even though it created this aborted world we see about us. Its nature is passive, not permanent and creative as God is creative.

“‘Though the world allows itself to be influenced by the Powers of Darkness, now it has an opportunity to be influenced by the Powers of Light through the Sun of Righteousness. This means that the End Times is upon the world, and the great battle between the Powers of Light and the Powers of Darkness is taking place now. As a consequence, the world is going to change and there is no power of Man that can stop it from changing. Man is either going to fall into the trap of the Powers of Darkness and be destroyed by the Power of Light, or he is going serve Light and serve God and restore this world to the state of original Creation. This is a kind of judgement – a judgement day.

“‘The Evil in the world – suffering, pain, death and loss – is not the work of God. If a person asks why God took a child, or wife, or husband, the reply is: God had nothing to do with it. The physical dimension is not a true creation of God. Therefore, God cannot be the Father of this world. According to interpretations of the Bible, God created the world. That means He created death, He created war, He created blood, we have to sacrifice to Him, He is jealous, He is vengeful, He works with the Jews as His chosen people; and, from the New Testament, because Christ is the Son of God, He works and helps Christians. However, after two thousand years, that religion has not brought peace to the world. It has actually helped destroy whole races of people, such as Hawaiians, Peruvians, and Mexicans, to mention a few examples.’”

Again, if I may be of any personal service to you, please do not hesitate to contact me.

Very truly yours in Light+,

Gene

Wednesday, October 26, 2022

The Twenty-third Saying (Part 10)

“‘It is God’s Will to bring about the redemption of humankind. It is part of His Divine Plan to redeem the world. So, if we work in the Church together, we are naturally bound to benefit more through the added benefit of metanoia. However, looking at the sun but not living The Way nullifies or negates the benefit. Looking at the sun, living The Way, working in Community, participating in God’s Will, which is the Divine Plan for the redemption of the whole race and the world – restoring it to Light – gives us greater power because we are able to assimilate more stimuli, if I can use that term. That is the reason for Community. Community also allows us to pass along to future generations our goodness and knowledge. If we fail to pass along what we have learned to future generations, they must begin all over again.

“‘The churches of the First Dispensation are kept in a state of ignorance because they do not have access to God’s Power or Christ’s Power. They do not have access to the Light and the Image of Christ. Consequently, members of those churches cannot be God-like or Christ-like. The imitation of Christ has been transformed into a dogma or a doctrine that, basically, consists of “thou shalt do this, thou shalt do that,” or “thou shalt not do this, thou shalt not do that.” Consequently people are expressing themselves on the level of a manmade religion as opposed to a Godly religion which must be controlled by God in Heaven through the sun, not here on earth.

“‘For example, when scholars retranslate, as they have been doing in recent years, parts of scripture that could give different meaning, the whole concept becomes different. Perhaps something that we have believed to be true for hundreds or thousands of years is not true after all. God cannot err. God’s Word must be accurate, authentic, reliable and unchanging. It cannot be so if it is confined to the world or if it comes within the hands of scholars to change. The Divine Word cannot change because it originates from outside of the world and manifests through the sun and is only available to those people living The Way within this Church. That is a simple and hard teaching, but that is what the words of the Twenty-Third Saying tells us.

“‘We are learning that the world is beginning to change. In other words, if the Sun of Righteousness is real, then it is changing the physical sun. That sun is changing the planet. God’s Image and Word, indirectly, is affecting the whole physical universe. By efforts of working together in Community, the world becomes knowledgeable in living The Way. And, as greater numbers of people begin to live The Way, society – politics, economics, the military – must change as a result. Thus, if an individual or the world wants to be Good, they only need to adhere to Good religion and the world will be Good. But, people do not really want the world to be Good; that is why it is not Good. They do not want the Church of Christ to be Good. They do not want the Goodness of God. They want to change things for their own convenience. The problem in the world today is that the world is an image of the mind of Man not an Image of God.’”

Again, if I may be of any personal service to you, please do not hesitate to contact me.

Very truly yours in Light+,

Gene