|
|
April 7th, 1919.
Received by James Padgett.
Washington D.C.
I am here, Jesus.Let me write a few lines.
I see that you were much interested in what the preacher (Dr. Swain) said tonight
about God and His personality, and that you gave him several questions
which he could not answer. This must be expected, for to men is
not given ordinarily a true conception of God, or who or what He
is, and only by the development of their souls by the Divine Love
can they obtain any conception of His being. As their souls thus
develop they become a part of His Divinity, and their soul perceptions
become opened up to a realization of who God is, to a small degree
at least, and then they know that He is something more than an all
enveloping energy, supplemented by a purposeful will.
The preacher has not these soul perceptions and cannot conceive
of God, the Soul, but can only express to you the truthfulness of
the evidences of God's existence, such as the energy that he spoke
of.
As you know, this energy is His Spirit, although the preacher has
not the exact conception of what this Spirit is or how it operates.
He confuses the soul and spirit, and makes the mere instrument by
or with which God expresses His energy, to be the real true substance
of God, the Soul. He is right when he says that he cannot go back
of this energy to find God, for his soul perceptions have not yet
been awakened to a cognition of that from which the energy proceeds,
or which is the very source from which flows all the manifestations,
that to his mind constitute God. He is like the theologians and
philosophers, who believe that these manifestations and energies
and forces are the only God, the only personal God; and he may be
shocked to hear that his teachings amount to only this. But it is
true, and to him there is no more personal God than to the others,
with this exception; that he attempts to believe that in some manner
and in some way connected with this energy, there is a Will which
has in it a purpose of love or kindness or fatherly care; but the
real personal God, with his Great Soul of Love which is being always
bestowed upon the individual man, he does not conceive of or make
his own.
God is Soul, and only Soul, which has in it all the attributes
of Love and wisdom and thought for the welfare of His creatures.
He is a thinking and seeing God, and all the energies of His Soul
are used to make men better and happier. As is the natural father
of the man a personal father, so is the Great Soul of God, a Personal
Father to all his children; and men when they have the development
of their souls in the Divine Love will know that God is personal
- something more than an all enveloping energy or force or mere
manifestation of His existence.
The preacher says, in substance, that God is everywhere, and His
presence may be realized by all who are willing to receive that
manifestation, and that whether they are or not willing, that presence
exists just the same. This is pantheism, toned down a little by
his beliefs in a more personal God, but still pantheism, and wholly
wrong and violative (desecrate or defile) of God's being.
The source of things can never be the things themselves, although
the things as they flow from the source have some of the qualities
of the source itself, and so these manifestations of God's existence,
while they are of His qualities, yet they are not equivalent of
His presence or the source from which they flow. God is not everywhere,
but in His Heavens, and all these expressions of His powers and
will and energies are merely evidences that there is a source from
which they all come, and they are not that source itself.
And again, the preacher said that God created the body of man and
not the spirit, as he calls it, meaning the soul, so that the body
is a creation by itself and cannot contain in it the spirit or the
spirit body, but that this spirit is outside of the human body,
and is in a general way a part of one Great Spirit that is universal
and everywhere and that, therefore, all men, no matter what their
conditions may be in the earth life or in the eternity part of life,
are brothers, and God is the Father of them all. Well in this the
preacher is mistaken, for every man has his own individual spirit
(and) soul, and on the state or condition of that soul depends the
happiness or misery of the man; and he is merely the brother of
other men because he is a creature of God and made in his image,
and not because he is a part of the universal spirit, which the
preacher believes permeates everything and exists everywhere. And
God is the Father, because these children are His creatures, the
objects of His creation, and individualized, each working out his
own destiny. As we have told you, some of these children will always
remain the merely created children, while others will partake of
His Divine Love, and become a part of His divinity, and inhabitants
of the Celestial Spheres.
The preacher has many things to learn, and as he believes in the
search for the truth, if he will let the Divine Love flow into his
heart and transform his soul into the very essence and substance
of the Father's divinity, he will be able to learn many things spiritual
as well as of things material are governed by law, and unless the
soul gets into a condition that enables it to see and realize the
higher truths of the spirit world, it can never obtain knowledge
of things spiritual, and one of the objects of such knowledge is
God.
Well, I have written enough and will stop. With my love, I will
say good night.
Your brother and friend,
Jesus
|
|
