IN THE WORDS OF JESUS–Part 508

Love is the Fulfilling of the Law

ON LOVE; PART XCIX

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GoodWill IS Love in Action

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The last several posts have set the stage for this one today and likely for several more to come and this stage is the combination of the ideas of illusion and glamour, vanity as the Apostle Paul tells us, and the subject of the Great Commandment from our Lord and Master, Love. In this respect, the understanding of the word vanity as the common understanding plays large as this vanity is a major component of the illusion and the glamour in which men live their lives. We spent much time in the last few posts outlining the ideas of the Master regarding one’s being accounted worthy of His Kingdom and in repeating His words we at best get the idea that there is a rite of entry, a series of accomplishments in Life on Earth, that must be performed before one is allowed to enter. We should stop here and remind ourselves of the Master’s words and then reinterpret His words regarding the Kingdom accordingly.

The Master tells us clearly “The kingdom of God cometh not with observation: Neither shall they say, Lo here! or, lo there! for, behold, the kingdom of God is within you” (Luke 17:21-22). Although this saying is clear in its literal interpretation, men have tried to reason it away in the doctrines of the Churches and maintain the ages old theory regarding heaven and hell as the eternal reward and punishment of the man when he leaves this Earth. We have often railed against this theory which is based upon the superstitions of old and the teachings of the Church Fathers who were dealing with a mentally inferior population compared to what we have today and this is meant more to say that they were grounded in emotion and not mind than that they could not understand. Today, most of the civilized world is grounded in the mind as the primary focus with emotional response falling away as the race evolves although there are many around the world to whom emotional response is their primary motivation and who still require the devotional approach to the Lord. Regardless, we believe that the time has come for the doctrines of the churches to shed the superstitions and the unbelievable teachings on heaven and hell which the modern man cannot accept and which in many ways drive him away from the ‘religious’ approach to God. It is here that the ideas of illusion and glamour have caught up with man; as we said in the last post it is in these very ideas of doctrine, which should be based solely on His words and whose intent is to dispel the illusion and the glamour that many are themselves steeped in.

There is a way out of this malaise and that is to understand and to accept the Master’s teaching that the “the kingdom of God is within you” and it is here that the ties that bind a man to the ancient and restrictive teachings can be broken. Two posts back we listed some of the Master’s words on our own entry into the Kingdom and from His words we can see this as a place to go and these ideas would stand if it were not for the straightforward saying that He gives us, the one that tells us that while there is no physical place to go, there is that change of focus that is required. When we understand this His words can then come to Life as is His intent; they can find their right place in the heart, in the conscious Life of the man. Briefly these ideas are:

• That a man repent which we identified as simply changing the focus of his Life from attending to the things of the world to attending to the things of God. As we said in the last essay, this is no easy task but one that is accomplished by heeding the Master’s other admonition which is that we strive. In this striving our focus will naturally change and we will begin to see the reality of Life as it unfolds before us and it is here that we see that it is ALL within.
  • “From that time Jesus began to preach, and to say, Repent: for the kingdom of heaven is at hand” (Matthew 4:17). Looking then at this saying against the revelation that “the kingdom of God is within you” paints this in a new Light.
  • “Strive to enter in at the strait gate: for many, I say unto you, will seek to enter in , and shall not be able” (Luke 13:24). This is His instruction to us ALL, that our motivation in Life is to enter the Kingdom and this too is broadened by our right understanding of “the kingdom of God is within you“, to the underlying reality that as we focus and as we keep His words in Life, we will undergo that change that brings the fruits of the Kingdom, the fruits of the Spirit, into expression in this Life in the Earth. Is this not the objective and the goal of such striving?
• That our righteousness exceeds that of those that we believe to be righteous. We should understand this in the way that it is offered and to whom. The Jews in the Master’s audience have no qualms at this time regarding the Pharisee and the scribe; these men are generally accepted as the most righteous and the closest to God. Yes the Master does break down this vision for many of the people, those that believe and focus on Him, but in these early days of Jesus ministry these religious leaders were likely much respected as the most righteous. So then what is the admonition here? simply that if one wants to attain to the Kingdom that he must become more righteous than those that he may believe are righteous; in other words that the man become the most righteous. We should not be deluded into believing that the Master is referring to the hypocrisy of the Pharisees nor the error of their ways as we learn later in His ministry; these things that we may define as their unrighteousness. This is further elucidated by the Master in our next point.
• Of all our list this point is likely the most important in our quest and our journey for His Kingdom; we must seek it and, we must seek it first. We should understand here that seeking the Kingdom first is not intended to be so in numeric order; this would make little sense in one’s journey as in a scenario like that the Master paints for us in the Parable of the Prodigal Son. In this story, seeking the kingdom was the last idea that the son had. The idea here is that this seeking is to be the primary thing that one does no matter when that seeking should occur. Vincent tells us this about the Greek word proton as he discusses it from another verse in the Epistle of the Apostle James; he says: First. Emphasizing its inner quality, pure, as distinguished from its outward expressions. The idea is not first numerically, but first essentially ⁴. Again, when we look at this idea we should see our thought of focus as if this seeking is of primary importance to a man he will focus upon that and ALL else will fall away and become meaningless. Like the idea of strive this idea of seek is a consistent move by the man into that state of an aspirant and continuing on into the state of discipleship and here too we must see that this is, like the Kingdom of God, the result of the focus on that part of Life. There is no one that will appoint a man as an aspirant or a disciple; these are the character of a man that develops in his heart as he consciously takes on the role. The common understanding of becoming a priest or a minister, pastor or even a bishop in some church group has no play here; these are the appointments of men who have made themselves authorities in their own rite and while they may correspond somewhat with the thoughts of Paul on the organization of a church, they convey little of what the Master teaches and, in some cases, much of what He may decry. In this same saying that tells us to seek the Kingdom, we are told to seek His righteousness as well and in this we should be able to understand that these ideas are intimately connected. We could say that if one attains the Kingdom, it is necessary that he attain this God-like righteousness as well and in this we can see the expansion of the idea of being more righteous from the previous point. When we can see the teachings of the Master and the word of God as the ONLY right things to do as a man in form and when we can understand that these teachings and this word are the inherent qualities of our True self as Souls, then we will be better able to understand this concept of “the kingdom of God is within you” and that our responsibility as aspirants and disciples is to express this quality in the world of men. It is as men in the world, lost in the illusion and the glamour, that we must seek and must strive to bring forth the qualities of the Kingdom and in doing so we accomplish the Master’s saying “Herein is my Father glorified, that ye bear much fruit; so shall ye be my disciples” (John 15:8).
• Our next point here is that to be accounted worthy of the Kingdom of God a man must “doeth the will of my Father which is in heaven” (Matthew 7:21) and if we look at this from the perspective of what we have read above, we will see that there is nothing else that we need to do; that in Truly repenting, seeking and striving a man will take on the qualities of the Soul through his Life in form and be expressive of these qualities to the world. The will of the Father is the will of the Soul and is inclusive of ALL that is right and naught that is contrary or separative and this is because His will is founded in Love which we KNOW because we KNOW that “God is love” (1 John 4:8, 16). Here, as in the previous points above, we must understand that these ideals flow out into a man’s Life in the world from within, from the Christ Within which IS the Soul, and the realization of the man in form of this Love and Power in his conscious Life is his realization of the Kingdom of God as it flows forth from within.

There are other references to man’s attainment of the Kingdom but these will suffice for us here and these are the same as we covered in that previous post. Nowhere in any of these sayings nor in any of the others that we did not discuss here today is there any reference to the Kingdom being that place to which we go when we die in this physical world. There are two Greek words translated as hell in the King James Version (KJV) and they mean two distinctive things and neither is a place of punishment after death. In the Parable of the Rich Man and Lazarus we find that both men die and are figuratively then found in the same place but at opposite ends and this could be a picture for us of the afterlife that we have discussed but it IS NOT heaven and hell as many are taught and believe. Our point here is that there is no teaching by the Master regarding attaining to heaven or hell after death and no mention at all of the more Catholic idea of purgatory; these are the inventions of men based on the superstitions of the time and carry no real weight except in the fear that can be evoked.

The reality is that “the kingdom of God is within you” and these are the Master’s words. He is specific in His telling us that it is not here nor there as many may say and we should remember here that He is speaking to men who believe that this is a place and others that believe that it is like other kingdoms on the Earth but established by God. These ideas are our reference to how we see the man in those days; steeped in superstition and in legend. We KNOW that the Master does not say things regarding the Kingdom plainly to those who cannot accept such teachings and this He tells us saying “Unto you it is given to know the mysteries of the kingdom of God: but to others in parables; that seeing they might not see, and hearing they might not understand” (Luke 8:10). Can we see this at work in the Master’s telling us that “Neither shall they say, Lo here! or, lo there! for, behold, the kingdom of God is within you” (Luke 17:21) which is a testimony to His genius; here we find the Truth hidden in plain sight, and not only from the men of that day but from the many succeeding generations.

True, accepting this would be a dynamic change in the beliefs of many millions of Christians but it is also True that many of the world religions already accept some form of  this philosophy a part of their beliefs. The contrary view as held by the majority of the Christian community has no actual foundation in scripture but is carried over from the perceived beliefs of the Jews. We can take heart in the fact that this is a teaching of the New Dispensation that the Christ brought to us 2000 years ago and which has been incubating and growing in the heart of the evolving race of men; it is this teaching as well as ALL of which the Master tells us that is being born with this New Age, the Age of Aquarius, and this too is a hard pill for the doctrine oriented Christian world to follow and a Truth that they fight against. Closing this segment we add that this is the same process that we see in the New Testament regarding the Master’s teaching on Love and brotherhood; the teaching originated with Moses many centuries before and simmered in the consciousness of the Jewish world who rather ignored it in their emphasis upon the things and the ways of the world. It is the Master that came among us and reiterated and reinterpreted and reinforced the age old teaching on Love and this sparked the wave of Christianity which left the Jews in their place. Although the Christian world did not take hold of Love as their way of Life, they did form their New religious beliefs around this central teaching and so we see that the seed of Love that is planted in the Age of Aries (Moses time) is reinforced and takes on a reality in the Age of Pisces (Christ’s time) and will come to fruition in the Age of Aquarius (current time). From our vantage point this is thousands of years but in the reality of the Eternal God and us as Eternal Souls, this is evolution; another word that we do not quite understand nor appreciate. In symbolism we have the ram, the fish and the man carrying a pitcher of water and the origin of these signs can be traced back to at least 1000 BC.

We did not get to where we intended to go today but the ideas above will give us a surer foundation for the next post where we will try again to tie this all together.

We will continue with our thoughts in the next post.

Note on the Quote of the Day

This daily blog also has a Quote of the Day which may not be in any way related to the essay. Many of these will be from the Bible and some just prayers or meditations that may have an influence on you and are in line with the subject matter of this blog. As the quote will change daily and will not store with the post, it is repeated in this section with the book reference and comment.:

Today we post a World Prayer that is also included in the Prayers and Meditation section with some explanation of its source and its use. We are entering a time of the year which we can consider more sacred by way of the newness of Spring which should reflect in our newness of Life. This is the Festival of Easter and a time of rejoicing; not only for the Resurrection of the Lord from the Christian perspective but also for the teaching that is incorporated in the Master’s sacrifice 2000 years ago and in His continued sacrifice. We should remember His parting words: “I am with you alway, even unto the end of the world” (Matthew 28:20)

From the point of Light within the Mind of God
Let light stream forth into the minds of men.
Let Light descend on Earth.

From the point of Love within the Heart of God
Let love stream forth into the hearts of men.
May Christ return to Earth.

From the centre where the Will of God is known
Let purpose guide the little wills of men
The purpose which the Masters know and serve.

From the centre which we call the race of men
Let the Plan of Love and Light work out
And may it seal the door where evil dwells.

Let Light and Love and Power restore the Plan on Earth.

• ⁴ Word Studies in the New Testament; Marvin R Vincent D.D. 2nd edition, 1888