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July 22nd, 1917
Received by James Padgett.
Washington D.C.
I am here, St. Luke, writer of the Third Gospel that was. Well,
I desire to write a few lines on the subject contained in the book
which you were reading tonight. I mean the book dealing with the
"Creation and fall of man."
Well, the man who wrote the book is endeavoring to reconcile the
Bible doctrine of the creation and fall of man with the scientists'
doctrine of evolution, and to show that these two views of the subject
are not antagonistic, and if properly understood, may be used, one
to support the other. But in this he has not succeeded, nor can
he, for this reason, if there were no others, that man did not evolve
from the beast or lower animal, but was always man, the creature
of God, perfect in his creation and wholly natural.1
There was nothing of the supernatural about him and he never possessed
any nature of the superman from which he fell at the time of his
disobedience. He has never been anything more or less than the perfect
creation of his Maker, although he has degenerated in his qualities
and in the exercise of his will.
Evolution or the doctrine of evolution has its limitations, and
its founder, or those who follow him either wholly or in a modified
way, are not able to retrace this doctrine to the fall of man, and
hence, when they attempt to pass beyond that stage when man seemed
to have been very degenerate and a product of the animal progenitors,
they get into the field of speculation, and knowledge ceases to
exist.
Man was not created with any of the Divine qualities, as the writer
seems to think but was made the merely natural man that you see
now, without the defilement of his soul qualities which involves
only the elimination of those things from his soul that cause the
departure from the condition of his creation. That is, when he was
created he was in perfect harmony with the will of God and His laws
and when he shall be restored to that harmony of unity with these
laws, he will then be in what was his before the fall.
So the idea put forward by the author that man was created with
something of the divine in him, which took him out from a kind of
physical condition of imperfection, and that when he lost these
Divine qualities he fell into that imperfect condition, is all wrong.
The great truth connected with man's creation, is that man was created
perfect, that as regards his order of creation or the qualities
of his moral and physical nature there could be no progress, for
the next step in progression would be the divine.
Thus you will see that he was so wonderfully and perfectly made,
that he was only a little lower than the angels, and by angels I
mean the souls of men which have ceased to be incarnate and have
partaken of the Divine Love and become a part of the Father in His
Divinity of Love - not the mere souls in the spirit world which
have only the development of their moral qualities, because these,
whenever they have become purified and in harmony with the laws
and will of God, are only men perfected in their natures and organisms
as they were at the time of man's creation.
I say, the perfect man possesses those qualities and attributes
that were his at the time of his creation, and he cannot progress
or become greater or other than he was at the time of such creation.
He was made perfect as a creation, and beyond the perfect there
can be nothing greater evolved from the qualities and faculties,
one and all, that made him perfect. And to progress, there must
come into his nature, from without, the Divine Love, that which
will add to these qualities and faculties, which you may understand
is no part or method of evolution.
When the first parents fell, they lost that which destroyed the
harmony of their existence with the laws of God, and also were deprived
of the great potentiality of becoming Divine in their natures of
Love and Immortality, like unto the Father - but as mere created
men they fell from perfection and not from divinity. Nor were they
by that fall deprived of the possibility of living forever in the
physical bodies, because those bodies were made only for the purpose
of enabling the souls to individualize themselves, and thereafter
die and become dissolved into their derivative elements.
The physical body was never created to live forever, and men were
never created to live on earth forever, for a greater and larger
world was provided for their eternal habitation, where things are
real and only the spiritual exist. The earth is a mere image of
the realities of the spirit world, and exists only as the nursery
for the individualizing of the soul. That you may not misconceive
my meaning, remember the soul is the man - the ego - and that when
man fell, it was not the physical part of man that fell, except
as it was influenced by the soul, but, it was the soul that fell;
and the sentence of death was not pronounced upon the physical,
but upon the soul potentialities, and, hence, you may see, that
when man shall again become the perfect man, it will not be necessary
that the physical body be restored.
Even if it were not contrary to the physical laws of the universe,
or, to speak more correctly, to the laws controlling the material
part of the universe, that the material body of man be resurrected
and again be housed, the soul, it would not be necessary, for the
soul has its spirit body which manifests its individuality. There
is no necessity for the resurrection of the physical body, and there
will be no such resurrection, for God never does a useless thing.
As I say, man has never ceased to be the man of God's creation,
although he has become degenerate and defiled, and at one time in
the history of his existence devolved to that degree, where, save
for the essential qualities of his creation, he appeared to be lower
than the brutes; but he was always the man of God's creation, and
never an animal of the lower order. The scientists in their geological
search and research and in their finds of fossils and traces of
ancient man, and in their biological theories, conclude that man
was of a lower degree of intelligence and manner of living, and
they may be justified in so concluding, and also that he has gradually
evolved from that condition and state, and draw apparent correct
theories there from, yet when they attempt to go further, they enter
only into the realm of speculation and become lost in the darkness
of mystery. They can rightly acclaim the evolution of man from where
they lose him in their retracing of that evolution, but can know
nothing of his devolution anterior to that time; and, hence their
speculations are without foundation of substance.
No, man has not evolved from the lower animal, but only from himself
when he reached the bottom of his fall. In this particular, the
history and experience of man is this - he was created perfect,
- he sinned, he fell from the condition of his created state - his
condition at the bottom of his fall was inferior in some phases
to the brute animal - after long centuries he commenced to rise
from his base condition, and had made progress when the scientists
by their discoveries found evidence of his then condition, - and
since then he has been the subject of their "evolution." But the
scientists and all mankind must know that all during these centuries
of descent and ascent, man was always man, the greatest creation
of God, and the most fallen.
Well, I have written enough for tonight but as I was with you to-day
as you were reading and saw the misconceptions of the writer of
the book, as well as those of the scientists to whom he referred,
I thought it advisable to write the few incompleted truths about
the subject. I will soon come and write. So with my love and blessings,
I will say good night.
Your brother in Christ,
Luke
1 See this
message for a very recent message about the error chanelled
here. As also this one.
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