IN THE WORDS OF JESUS–Part 190

Love is the Fulfilling of the Law

The Miracles of Jesus (continued; part ii)

We spent much of the last post looking at the Greek word pisteuo which is generally rendered believe and which, with the common idea of Faith, has become the cornerstone of much of what is taught and understood in today’s Christianity. Our attempt was, and will continue to be, to gain a deeper understanding of the concepts involved in the use of this word by the Master and by His apostles, especially John. Believing and Faith cannot properly exist in a vacuum and unless there is a fundamental change in one’s life resulting in some form of action it is really of no moment, it is empty. We see also from yesterday ‘s post that the idea of believing on the Master is for us the same as saying that we follow Him and, as Vincent tells us, that we accept and adopt His precept and example as binding upon the life⁴. In this is the Truth of believing and also the Truth of Faith when it is used in this same context.

We start here in relation to The Miracles of Jesus because we want to see the relationship between His acts and those things that we can do according to His word. To this end we have also briefly discussed the world situation where there are healers of varying degrees of ‘power’ who are at work in the world today. As we said, much of this is unpredictable in nature and we should always be aware of the charlatan and the fake as there are many. The slow and methodical healing that we find in the churches and which is alleged at times to be based on the Faith of the healer and well as that of the person being healed is not what we want to deal with here. There are many causes and effects involved in this type of healing which should attest to the power of the mind and of the emotional nature, both of which can have a profound effect upon the physical body and can either cause or to correct problems. From a spiritual perspective the very nature of disease and illness is a vast and complex subject and the diseases of man can spring from a large variety of world effects.

We will discuss in this series the instant healing as done by the Master and His Apostles and for which there is evidence that it can still happen today. Additionally we will focus on the other miracles of the Master that are not healing related and some of which are among the greatest that He did in His time on the Earth. Our keynote throughout these essays on the Miracles of Jesus will be those sayings that tell us that ALL that He did is within our ability:

1. “For verily I say unto you, That whosoever shall say unto this mountain, Be thou removed, and be thou cast into the sea; and shall not doubt in his heart, but shall believe that those things which he saith shall come to pass; he shall have whatsoever he saith” (Mark 11:23).
2. “Verily, verily, I say unto you, He that believeth on me, the works that I do shall he do also; and greater works than these shall he do ; because I go unto my Father” (John 14:12).
3. “All things are delivered unto me of my Father: and no man knoweth the Son, but the Father; neither knoweth any man the Father, save the Son, and he to whomsoever the Son will reveal him” (Matthew 11:27).
4. “…for verily I say unto you, If ye have faith as a grain of mustard seed, ye shall say unto this mountain, Remove hence to yonder place; and it shall remove ; and nothing shall be impossible unto you” (Matthew 17:20).

In these four sayings we find the potential of every man to be as the Master and this should not be seen in the realm of doing miraculous things alone. In the first statement we find the idea of “he shall have whatsoever he saith” and, although this is taken out of context, along with the next verse in the text, and deemed to mean things of the Earth by much of the church, it is a basic and fundamental Truth. The context here is clearly in the spiritual realm and the power of KNOWING which the Master here speaks of comes only from above and within and forms the coherent expression of spiritual power through the personality and the body of the man in form. It is in this capacity to KNOW that we find the high degree believing which furnishes the ability of a man to “not doubt in his heart, but shall believe that those things which he saith shall come to pass“. As we have said before (In the Words of Jesus parts 136-138) this ability to KNOW without doubt is extremely rare and limited to those who have been able to be accounted worthy of the Kingdom and His Presence. In the power that such one would have there will be no degree of selfishness whatsoever and therefore no risk to the world at large; this is the person of whom the Master speaks when He tells us that we should “Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect” (Matthew 5:48). Who else is there that could be trusted with such power?

We should remember here that the Master’s words on believing and not doubting are in the context of the ‘withering’ of the fig tree which in and by itself is a miraculous event and one which took the Power of God to accomplish. In this awesome feat is the opportunity for the Master to teach Peter and the rest about the True power of Faith and of believing. Jesus message is specific in saying to them “Have faith in God” before going into the teaching on the mountain being cast to the sea. This is a teaching about the awesome power found in having a True Faith in God which the Master defines as having no doubt and believing, a combination that we define as KNOWING and, as a KNOWING that only comes to one in the fuller potency of the Light of the Soul, the Christ Within. Here we should see that all of us who believe that we are in this Light still cannot find that Power that results in doubting nothing. At the same time we can all likely see our own shortcomings in our spiritual lives and our spiritual walk as the main obstacle to our realization. This is the nature of this KNOWING and its requirement of perfection which we must naturally have before we are able to wield such awesome power. In the fourth statement above is the same idea as in the first except here the Master’s word is Faith and the ‘kind’ is  “as a grain of mustard seed“. We have discussed this before. in the same series as referenced above. and our thoughts on this became a source for our defining word KNOWING. The mustard seed has no doubt that if it is planted and nourished that it will become a tree; this is the teaching of the Master, if we KNOW that what we say or believe will happen, it will happen and it is in this KNOWING that one can accomplish the same miracles as the Master and, if we can use this phrase, ‘when we are able to do this the miracle is not so much a miracle at all’. In this is also seen the nature of our idea on predictable; it is the effect of KNOWING. Properly nourished the mustard seed has no choice but to become a mustard tree, this is its predictable end. Believing and doubting nothing, having Faith and doubting not are for us resolved into our understanding of KNOWING and the effect of this KNOWING is that a thing will be predictable.

The second statement above is a bit different as it does not talk of any specific act or miracle and it is not said by Jesus in relation to one. It is for us a statement of fact that if we believe on Him, as it was defined for us by Vincent and to which we have given the notion of following Him and doing His word, we will be able to do the things that He did here on this Earth. Here, as we said, there is no limitation to just His miraculous acts but to all His works; His Love, His Wisdom, His ability to teach and to live as a Son of the Father plus all the His abilities to work ‘wonders’ in the Earth. The flavor of Vincent’s words give much insight to this idea of believing on the Master:

To believe in, or on, is more than mere acceptance of a statement. It is so to accept a statement or a person as to rest upon them, to trust them practically; to draw upon and avail one’s self of all that is offered to him in them. Hence to believe on the Lord Jesus Christ is not merely to believe the facts of His historic life or of His saving energy as facts, but to accept Him as Saviour, Teacher, Sympathizer, Judge; to rest the soul upon Him for present and future salvation, and to accept and adopt His precepts and example as binding upon the life⁴.

Of course for us the last part of this statement is the crux of it as it is our practical approach to the Kingdom of God away from the doctrines of the churches.

• We accept Him because He is the Master, the Christ and we are One with Him through our own Christ Within which pours its Light upon our conscious personalities prompting us to the Good, the Beautiful and the True in our Earthly lives.
• We adopt His precepts as our own because in the understanding that comes to us by our focus on the Christ Within we see them and know them as the way to Life and to His Kingdom and His Presence. We see His precepts, His commandments, as the necessary step that every man must take in order to free himself from this world which can draw him down into it so quickly; we see His precepts as our tools par excellence for dealing with the carnal life.
• We take His example as a man in form much like we are as our promise that we too can do as He has done and, of course, that is what this verse is all about. By His example we can see that with the unimpeded flow of the Light of the Soul bringing into this carnal life the Love and the Wisdom of God, we too can attain to that High and Holy place where He is, the Kingdom of God. And, by His example and His words we can see also that this Kingdom is within us all as it was within Him waiting for our following of His instructions so as to release its Power into our lives.

Our last statement above, number three, is different from the rest in that it is not about believing, it is not about Faith nor does it have to do with doubt. It is a message that tells us that when we have the basis for believing and Faith and an understanding of doubt and how these are all resolved into KNOWING, that we can come to approach the Father and His Kingdom. We said in a previous post which introduced this idea that in the context of this saying we should remember that the Father is akin to the Spirit of man, his True self that is at One with God. The Son is akin to the Soul of man that shines his Light onto the conscious personality when that personality is ready and willing to accept it.

As aspiring disciples of the Master we should have come to a point where we do have the nature of Faith and believing as evidenced by our desire to follow Him and keep His words, His precepts. As aspiring disciples we have an understanding of doubt; we see it in our discussion about the Baptist (In the Words of Jesus parts 170-172), we see it in the actions of the Apostle Peter and we see it in all the Apostles at the resurrection and, of course we can see it in ourselves. We need to develop that KNOWING which comes to us by reason the these words by the Master. As the Soul, the manifested reality of man, the Christ Within, we can say with the Master that “All things are delivered unto me of my Father” which is simply to say that from that God of whom we are part and parcel all things spiritual are within our reach, are accessible, as the Soul of man. As the Spirits that we are we can say that we know the Son, the Soul, and this is true because the Soul is the manifestation of the Spirit in what we can call the Kingdom of God. While we have previously said that the Soul is pure and unblemished, we should see the Spirit as One with God and untouched by anything in manifestation. It is ultimate purity in its Oneness with the Father. Conversely it is True that there is none that KNOWS Spirit save the Soul which is the pure and unblemished manifestation of the Spirit just as the Christ is the Pure and unblemished manifestation of God. Finally we have the idea of revelation, of the revealing of the Soul to the conscious personality which is what we attempt to do as aspiring disciples; to bring the Light of the Soul into expression through our form.

It is in this interplay of Spirit, Soul and personality that we have the flow of that awesome power that can predictably heal and that can ultimately move the mountain. The relation of the Spirit and the Soul is firm and sound as is the relationship between the Father and the Son, between God and His Christ. It is by the example and the precepts of the Master that we are able to bring these down yet again into expression on Earth as Jesus did 2000 years ago.

Having built an adequate foundation for understanding, we will continue, or begin, to explore what it is that the Master did and how we can partake in these same things.

Note on the Quote of the Day