Teacher-Brother Dave's initial comments: I am presenting some of my Topical Studies from the fully public domain, 2097 page, Fifth Epochal Revelation of Truth and with my added comments. The Revealed text is free of copyright, so you may freely share individually these supernal quotes with your friends and relatives. But my order of selections, font types for emphasis and my added comments are Copyright 2014 by Dave@PureChristians.org All Rights Reserved. Contact me first about using the whole Study or group of Studies.
[My added comments of explanation below are in these square brackets]
Topical Study 87 "Embracing Spiritual Growth
by Sincerely Seeking to be Spirit-of-God-Led"
[Highlights of my Topical Studies 59, 65, 68, 74 and 82 done here earlier]
Compiled 7/06/2015 by Dave@PureChristians.org
[Part 34 of 34]
PAPER 196 THE FAITH OF JESUS
1. JESUS -- THE MAN
[Very important paragraphs:]
[Paper:Section.Paragraph]
196:1.1 Jesus' devotion to the Father's will and the service of man was even more than mortal decision and human determination; it was a wholehearted consecration of himself to such an unreserved bestowal of love. No matter how great the fact of the sovereignty of [Jesus Christ] Michael, you must not take the human Jesus away from men. The Master has ascended on high as a [all-perfected Spirit] Man, as well as God; he belongs to men; men belong to him. How unfortunate that religion itself should be so misinterpreted as to take the human Jesus away from struggling mortals! Let not the discussions of the humanity or the divinity of the Christ obscure the saving truth that Jesus of Nazareth was a religious Man who, by faith, achieved the knowing and the doing of the will of God; he was the most truly religious Man who has ever lived on earth.
196:1.2 The time is ripe to witness the figurative resurrection of the human Jesus from his burial tomb amidst the theological traditions and the religious dogmas of nineteen centuries. Jesus of Nazareth must not be longer sacrificed to even the splendid concept of the glorified Christ. What a transcendent service if, through this revelation, the Son of Man should be recovered from the tomb of traditional theology and be presented as the Living Jesus to the church that bears his name, and to all other religions! Surely the Christian fellowship of believers will not hesitate to make such adjustments of faith and of practices of living as will enable it to "follow after" the Master in the demonstration of his real life of religious devotion to the doing of his Father's will and of consecration to the unselfish service of man. Do professed Christians fear the exposure of a self-sufficient and unconsecrated fellowship of social respectability and selfish economic maladjustment? Does institutional Christianity fear the possible jeopardy, or even the overthrow, of traditional ecclesiastical authority if the Jesus of Galilee is reinstated in the minds and souls of mortal men as the ideal of personal religious living? Indeed, the social readjustments, the economic transformations, the moral rejuvenations, and the religious revisions of Christian civilization would be drastic and revolutionary if the living religion of Jesus should suddenly supplant the theologic religion about Jesus. [This spiritual Renaissance-Transformation worldwide is coming ! Amen !]
196:1.3 To "follow Jesus" means to personally share his religious faith and to enter into the spirit of the Master's life of unselfish service for man. One of the most important things in human living is to find out what Jesus believed, to discover his ideals, and to strive for the achievement of his exalted life purpose. Of all human knowledge, that which is of greatest value is to know the religious life of Jesus and how he lived it. [So True !!]
196:1.4 The common people heard Jesus gladly, and they will again respond to the presentation of his sincere human life of consecrated religious motivation if such truths shall again be proclaimed to the world. The people heard him gladly because he was one of them, an unpretentious layman; the world's greatest religious teacher was indeed a layman. [!!]
196:1.5 It should not be the aim of kingdom believers literally to imitate the outward life of Jesus in the flesh but rather to share his faith; to trust God as he trusted God and to believe in men as he believed in men. Jesus never argued about either the fatherhood of God or the brotherhood of men; he was a living illustration of the one and a profound demonstration of the other. [!!! Yes !]
196:1.6 Just as men must progress from the consciousness of the human to the realization of the divine, so did Jesus ascend from the nature of man to the consciousness of the nature of God. And the Master made this great ascent from the human to the divine by the conjoint [united together] achievement of the faith of his mortal intellect and the acts of his indwelling Adjuster. The fact-realization of the attainment of totality of divinity (all the while fully conscious of the reality of humanity) was attended by seven stages of faith consciousness of progressive divinization. These stages of progressive self-realization were marked off by the following extraordinary events in the Master's bestowal experience:
196:1.7 1. The arrival of the Thought Adjuster. [at about age 4.5 years]
196:1.8 2. The messenger of Immanuel who appeared to him at Jerusalem when he was about twelve years old.
196:1.9 3. The manifestations attendant upon his baptism. [Jan 14, A.D. 26]
196:1.10 4. The experiences on the Mount of Transfiguration. [Aug 15, A.D. 29]
196:1.11 5. The morontia [soil-form] resurrection. [April 09, A.D. 30]
196:1.12 6. The Spirit ascension. [to the Universal Father on Paradise on May 18, A.D. 30]
196:1.13 7. The final embrace of the Paradise Father, conferring unlimited Sovereignty of his universe. [May 18, A.D. 30 - on]
2. THE RELIGION OF JESUS
[Very important paragraphs:]
196:2.1 Some day a reformation in the Christian church may strike deep enough to get back to the unadulterated religious teachings of Jesus, the Author and Finisher of our faith. You may preach a religion about Jesus, but, perforce, you must live the religion of Jesus. In the enthusiasm of Pentecost, Peter unintentionally inaugurated a new religion, the religion of the risen and glorified Christ. The Apostle Paul later on transformed this new gospel into Christianity, a religion embodying his own theologic views and portraying his own personal experience with the Jesus of the Damascus road. The gospel of the kingdom is founded on the personal religious experience of the Jesus of Galilee; Christianity is founded almost exclusively on the personal religious experience of the Apostle Paul. Almost the whole of the New Testament is devoted, not to the portrayal of the significant and inspiring religious life of Jesus, but to a discussion of Paul's religious experience and to a portrayal of his personal religious convictions. The only notable exceptions to this statement, aside from certain parts of Matthew, Mark, and Luke, are the Book of Hebrews and the Epistle of James. Even Peter, in his writing, only once reverted to the personal religious life of his Master. The New Testament is a superb Christian document, but it is only meagerly Jesusonian.
196:2.2 Jesus' life in the flesh portrays a transcendent religious growth from the early ideas of primitive awe and human reverence up through years of personal spiritual communion until he finally arrived at that advanced and exalted status of the consciousness of his oneness with the Father. And thus, in one short life, did Jesus traverse that experience of religious spiritual progression which man begins on earth and ordinarily achieves only at the conclusion of his long sojourn in the spirit training schools of the successive levels of the pre-Paradise career. Jesus progressed from a purely human consciousness of the faith certainties of personal religious experience to the sublime spiritual heights of the positive realization of his divine nature and to the consciousness of his close association with the Universal Father in the management of a universe. He progressed from the humble status of mortal dependence which prompted him spontaneously to say to the one who called him Good Teacher, "Why do you call me good? None is good but God," to that sublime consciousness of achieved divinity which led him to exclaim, "Which one of you convicts me of sin?" And this progressing ascent from the human to the divine was an exclusively mortal achievement. And when he had thus attained divinity, he was still the same human Jesus, the Son of Man as well as the Son of God.
196:2.3 Mark, Matthew, and Luke retain something of the picture of the human Jesus as he engaged in the superb struggle to ascertain the divine will and to do that will. John presents a picture of the triumphant Jesus as he walked on earth in the full consciousness of divinity. The great mistake that has been made by those who have studied the Master's life is that some have conceived of him as entirely human, while others have thought of him as only divine. Throughout his entire experience he was truly both human and divine, even as he yet is. [He is fully One Unified, Fused God-Man, Deity, Light, Spirit Person !!! See Jesus: See God !!! and See our Very Elder Brother !!!]
196:2.4 But the greatest mistake was made in that, while the human Jesus was recognized as having a religion, the divine Jesus (Christ) almost overnight became a religion. Paul's Christianity made sure of the adoration of the divine Christ, [which is true and proper !] but it almost wholly lost sight of the struggling and valiant human Jesus of Galilee, who, by the valor of his personal religious faith and the heroism of his indwelling Adjuster, ascended from the lowly levels of humanity to become [very important:] one with divinity, thus becoming the New and Living Way whereby all mortals may so ascend from humanity to divinity. Mortals in all stages of spirituality and on all worlds may find in the personal life of Jesus that which will strengthen and inspire them as they progress from the lowest spirit levels up to the highest divine [Spirit] Values, from the beginning to the end of all personal religious experience. [Yes !! Perfect peace and eternal joy ! In Spirit and in Jesus' Father-Son Spirit of Truth Presence !]
At the time of the writing of the New Testament, the authors not only most profoundly [and properly] believed in the divinity of the risen Christ, but they also devotedly and sincerely believed in his immediate return to earth to consummate the heavenly kingdom. This strong faith in the Lord's immediate return had much to do with the tendency to omit from the record those references which portrayed the purely human experiences and attributes of the Master. The whole Christian movement tended away from the human picture of Jesus of Nazareth toward the exaltation of the risen Christ, the glorified and soon-returning Lord Jesus Christ. [Since May 18, A.D. 30 - on, Jesus Christ is fully here Guiding us in His Spirit and thus in God's Spirit and in the Holy spirit ! Three in Two as One ...]
196:2.6 [Very important:] Jesus founded the religion of personal experience in doing the will of God and serving the human brotherhood; Paul founded a religion in which the glorified Jesus became the object of worship and the brotherhood consisted of fellow believers in the divine Christ. In the bestowal of Jesus these two concepts were potential in his divine-human life, [Yes !!] and it is indeed a pity that his followers failed to create a unified religion which might have given proper recognition to BOTH the human and the divine natures of the Master as they were inseparably bound up in his earth life and so gloriously set forth in the original gospel of the kingdom. [The True Religion OF JESUS and the Spiritual Truth ABOUT JESUS that He is our loving and Sovereign Creator Father and Eternal Son of God and our very Elder Brother must be UNIFIED and all of this realized IN JESUS our One Holy Father-Son-Spirit here with us -- All Three Paradise Deities in/as Two running our local universe: our Father-Son Creator Jesus Christ Michael and his Divine Creative Spirit Partner, and all as One here in Spirit !]
196:2.7 You would be neither shocked nor disturbed by some of Jesus' strong pronouncements if you would only remember that he was the world's most wholehearted and devoted religionist. He was a wholly consecrated mortal, unreservedly dedicated to doing his Father's will. Many of his apparently hard sayings were more of a personal confession of faith and a pledge of devotion than commands to his followers. And it was this very singleness of purpose and unselfish devotion that enabled him to effect such extraordinary progress in the conquest of the human mind in one short life. Many of his declarations should be considered as a confession of what he demanded of himself rather than what he required of all his followers. In his devotion to the cause of the kingdom, Jesus burned all bridges behind him; he sacrificed all hindrances to the doing of his Father's will.
196:2.8 Jesus blessed the poor because they were usually sincere and pious; he condemned the rich because they were usually wanton and irreligious. He would equally condemn the irreligious pauper and commend the consecrated and worshipful man of wealth.
196:2.9 Jesus led men to feel at home in the world; he delivered them from the slavery of taboo and taught them that the world was not fundamentally evil. He did not long to escape from his earthly life; he mastered a technique of acceptably doing the Father's will while in the flesh. He attained an idealistic religious life in the very midst of a realistic world. Jesus did not share Paul's pessimistic view of humankind. The Master looked upon men as the sons of God and foresaw a magnificent and eternal future for those who chose survival. He was not a moral skeptic; he viewed man positively, not negatively. He saw most men as weak rather than wicked, more distraught than depraved. But no matter what their status, they were all [ALL !] God's children and his brethren. [Amen ! What a beautiful Savior we have in Jesus Who really understands each and all of us !]
196:2.10 [Very important:] He taught men to place a high value upon themselves in time and in eternity. Because of this high estimate which Jesus placed upon men, he was willing to spend himself in the unremitting service of humankind. And it was this infinite worth of the finite [!!!] that made the golden rule a vital factor in his religion. What mortal can fail to be uplifted by the extraordinary faith Jesus has in him? [Tremendous !!! The higher "golden rule" upstepped by Jesus is to try to love and serve all humans as you believe that Jesus would do ! Fatherly love is much more high and real than just human brotherly love !]
196:2.11 Jesus offered no rules for social advancement; his was a religious mission, and religion is an exclusively individual experience. [of personal God-consciousness everywhere and at all times !] [Very important:] The ultimate goal of society's most advanced achievement can never hope to transcend Jesus' brotherhood of men based on the recognition of the fatherhood of God. The ideal of all social attainment can be realized only in the coming of this divine kingdom. [realized and lived in the souls and minds of all humans on earth ! Let us each teach and live in Spirit the loving Fatherhood of God and in the perfecting worldwide brotherhood of all mankind in the Eternal Family of God !!]
3. THE SUPREMACY OF RELIGION
196:3.1 Personal, spiritual religious experience is an efficient solvent for most mortal difficulties; it is an effective sorter, evaluator, and adjuster of all human problems. Religion does not remove or destroy human troubles, but it does dissolve, absorb, illuminate, and transcend them. True religion unifies the personality for effective adjustment to all mortal requirements. Religious faith -- the positive leading of the indwelling divine presence -- unfailingly enables the God-knowing man to bridge that gulf existing between the intellectual logic which recognizes the Universal First Cause as It and those positive affirmations of the soul which aver this First Cause is He, the heavenly Father of Jesus' gospel, the personal God of human salvation.
196:3.2 There are just three elements in universal reality: fact, idea, and relation. The religious consciousness identifies these realities as science, philosophy, and truth. Philosophy would be inclined to view these activities as reason, wisdom, and faith -- physical reality, intellectual reality, and spiritual reality. We [some super-human revelators] are in the habit of designating these realities as thing, meaning, and value. [some interesting, illuminating triads of reality !]
196:3.3 [deep and important:] The progressive comprehension of reality is the equivalent of approaching God. The finding of God, the consciousness of identity with reality, is the equivalent of the experiencing of self-completion -- self-entirety, self-totality. The experiencing of total reality is the full realization of God, the finality of the God- knowing experience.
196:3.4 The full summation of human life is the knowledge that man is educated by fact, ennobled by wisdom, and saved -- justified -- by religious faith. [and all three are gifts from God !]
196:3.5 Physical certainty consists in the logic of science; moral certainty, in the wisdom of philosophy; spiritual certainty, in the truth of genuine religious experience. [just as and just where you are at all times and all places !]
196:3.6 The mind of man can attain high levels of spiritual insight and corresponding spheres of divinity of values because it is not wholly material. There is a spirit nucleus in the mind of man -- the Adjuster of the divine presence. There are three separate evidences of this spirit indwelling of the human mind:
196:3.7 1. Humanitarian fellowship -- love. The purely animal mind may be gregarious for self-protection, but only the Spirit-indwelt intellect is unselfishly altruistic and unconditionally loving.
196:3.8 2. Interpretation of the universe -- wisdom. Only the Spirit-indwelt mind can comprehend that the universe is friendly to the individual. [Definitely Spiritually and mentally friendly, even if not always physically friendly.]
196:3.9 3. Spiritual evaluation of life -- worship. Only the Spirit-indwelt man can realize the Divine Presence and seek to attain a fuller experience in and with this foretaste of divinity. [Yes, most worthwhile and satisfying ...]
196:3.10 The human mind does not create real [Spirit] values; human experience does not yield universe insight. Concerning insight, the recognition of moral values and the discernment of spiritual meanings, all that the human mind can do is to discover, recognize, interpret, and choose.
196:3.11 The moral values of the universe become intellectual possessions by the exercise of the three basic judgments, or choices, of the mortal mind:
196:3.12 1. Self-judgment -- moral choice.
196:3.13 2. Social-judgment -- ethical choice.
196:3.14 3. God-judgment -- religious choice.
196:3.15 Thus it appears that all human progress is effected by a technique of conjoint revelational evolution.
196:3.16 Unless a divine lover lived in man, he could not unselfishly and spiritually love. Unless an interpreter lived in the mind, man could not truly realize the unity of the universe. Unless an evaluator dwelt with man, he could not possibly appraise moral values and recognize spiritual meanings. And this lover hails from the very source of infinite love; this interpreter is a part of Universal Unity; this evaluator is the child of the Center and Source of all absolute values of divine and eternal reality. [We have the Thought Adjuster, Jesus the Father-Son Spirit of Truth and the Holy Spirit of the Infinite Spirit ! Three in Two as One to ever love, guide and serve us in Combined Divine Ministry !]
196:3.17 Moral evaluation with a religious meaning -- spiritual insight -- connotes the individual's choice between good and evil, truth and error, material and spiritual, human and divine, time and eternity. Human survival is in great measure dependent on consecrating the human will to the choosing of those values selected by this spirit-value sorter -- the indwelling interpreter and unifier. Personal religious experience consists in two phases: discovery in the human mind and revelation by the indwelling divine Spirit. Through oversophistication or as a result of the irreligious conduct of professed religionists, a man, or even a generation of men, may elect to suspend their efforts to discover the God who indwells them; they may fail to progress in and attain the divine Revelation. But such attitudes of spiritual nonprogression cannot long persist because of the presence and influence of the indwelling Thought Adjusters.[our Father's perfect love and supernal ministry for each of us !]
196:3.18 This profound experience of the reality of the divine indwelling forever transcends the crude materialistic technique of the physical sciences. You cannot put spiritual joy under a microscope; you cannot weigh love in a balance; you cannot measure moral values; neither can you estimate the quality of spiritual worship.
196:3.19 The Hebrews had a religion of moral sublimity; the Greeks evolved a religion of beauty; Paul and his conferees founded a religion of faith, hope, and charity. Jesus revealed and exemplified a religion of love: security in the Father's love, with joy and satisfaction consequent upon sharing this love in the service of the human brotherhood.
196:3.20 Every time man makes a reflective moral choice, he immediately experiences a new divine invasion of his soul. Moral choosing constitutes religion as the motive of inner response to outer conditions. But such a real religion is not a purely subjective experience. It signifies the whole of the subjectivity of the individual engaged in a meaningful and intelligent response to total objectivity -- the universe and its Maker.
196:3.21 The exquisite and transcendent experience of loving and being loved is not just a psychic illusion because it is so purely subjective. The one truly divine and objective reality that is associated with mortal beings, the Thought Adjuster, functions to human observation apparently as an exclusively subjective phenomenon. Man's contact with the highest objective reality, God, is only through the purely subjective experience of knowing him, of worshiping him, of realizing sonship with him.
196:3.22 True religious worship is not a futile monologue of self-deception. Worship is a personal communion with that which is divinely real, with that which is the very source of reality. Man aspires by worship to be better and thereby eventually attains the best.
196:3.23 The idealization and attempted service of truth, beauty, and goodness is not a substitute for genuine religious experience -- spiritual Reality. Psychology and idealism are not the equivalent of religious Reality. The projections of the human intellect may indeed originate false gods -- gods in man's image -- but the true God-consciousness does not have such an origin. The God-consciousness is resident in the indwelling Spirit. Many of the religious systems of man come from the formulations of the human intellect, but the God-consciousness is not necessarily a part of these grotesque systems of religious slavery. [!!]
196:3.24 God is not the mere invention of man's idealism; he is the very source of all such superanimal insights and values. God is not a hypothesis formulated to unify the human concepts of truth, beauty, and goodness; he is the personality of love from whom all of these universe manifestations are derived. The truth, beauty, and goodness of man's world are unified by the increasing spirituality of the experience of mortals ascending toward Paradise Realities. The unity of truth, beauty, and goodness can only be realized in the spiritual experience of the God-knowing personality.
196:3.25 Morality is the essential pre-existent soil of personal God-consciousness, the personal realization of the Adjuster's inner presence, but such morality is not the source of religious experience and the resultant spiritual insight. The moral nature is superanimal but subspiritual. Morality is equivalent to the recognition of duty, the realization of the existence of right and wrong. The moral zone intervenes between the animal and the human types of mind as morontia [soul-level reality] functions between the material and the spiritual spheres of personality attainment.
196:3.26 The evolutionary mind is able to discover law, morals, and ethics; but the bestowed Spirit, the indwelling Adjuster, reveals to the evolving human mind the Lawgiver, the Father-Source of all that is true, beautiful, and good; and such an illuminated man has a religion and is spiritually equipped to begin the long and adventurous search for God.
196:3.27 Morality is not necessarily spiritual; it may be wholly and purely human, albeit real religion enhances all moral values, makes them more meaningful. Morality without religion fails to reveal ultimate goodness, and it also fails to provide for the survival of even its own moral values. Religion provides for the enhancement, glorification, and assured survival of everything morality recognizes and approves.
196:3.28 Religion stands above science, art, philosophy, ethics, and morals, but not independent of them. They are all indissolubly interrelated in human experience, personal and social. Religion is man's supreme experience in the mortal nature, but finite language makes it forever impossible for theology ever adequately to depict real religious experience. [!!]
196:3.29 Religious insight possesses the power of turning defeat into higher desires and new determinations. Love is the highest motivation which man may utilize in his universe ascent. But love, divested of truth, beauty, and goodness, is only a sentiment, a philosophic distortion, a psychic illusion, a spiritual deception. Love must always be redefined on successive levels of morontia and Spirit progression.
196:3.30 Art results from man's attempt to escape from the lack of beauty in his material environment; it is a gesture toward the morontia level. Science is man's effort to solve the apparent riddles of the material universe. Philosophy is man's attempt at the unification of human experience. Religion is man's supreme gesture, his magnificent reach for final reality, his determination to find God and to be like him. [!!]
196:3.31 In the realm of religious experience, spiritual possibility is potential reality. Man's forward spiritual urge is not a psychic illusion. All of man's universe romancing may not be fact, but much, very much, is truth. [!!]
196:3.32 Some men's lives are too great and noble to descend to the low level of being merely successful. The animal must adapt itself to the environment, but the religious man transcends his environment and in this way escapes the limitations of the present material world through this insight of divine love. This concept of love generates in the soul of man that superanimal effort to find truth, beauty, and goodness; and when he does find them, he is glorified in their embrace; he is consumed with the desire to live them, to do righteousness.
[The following sentence is so very important; I will put it in big size and centered:]
196:3.33 Be not discouraged; human evolution is still in progress,
and the revelation of GOD to the world,
in and through JESUS,
shall not fail.
[Amen ! My Brothers and Sisters in Jesus; do you now realize that you may help in serving our loving Father and Son in Spirit in helping to realize the perfecting Family of God on earth ! Pray about this. Thank you.]
196:3.34 The great challenge to modern man is to achieve better communication with the divine Monitor that dwells within the human mind. Man's greatest adventure in the flesh consists in the well-balanced and sane effort to advance the borders of self-consciousness out through the dim realms of embryonic soul-consciousness in a wholehearted effort to reach the borderland of Spirit-consciousness -- contact with the Divine Presence. Such an experience constitutes God-consciousness, an experience mightily confirmative of the pre-existent truth of the religious experience of knowing God. Such Spirit-consciousness is the equivalent of the knowledge of the actuality of sonship with God. Otherwise, the assurance of sonship is the experience of faith.
196:3.35 And God-consciousness is equivalent to the integration of the self with the universe, and on its highest levels of spiritual reality. Only the Spirit content of any value is imperishable. Even that which is true, beautiful, and good may not perish in human experience. If man does not choose to survive, then does the surviving Adjuster conserve those realities born of love and nurtured in service. And all these things are a part of the Universal Father. The Father is living love, and this Life of the Father is in his [Paradise Coordinate Creator] Sons. [Our Creator Father-Son Jesus Christ Michael] And the Spirit of the Father is in his Sons' sons -- mortal men. [Yes, we are Jesusonians: sons of God in Jesus !] When all is said and done, the Father idea is still the highest human concept of God.
[This completes this Topical Study #87 "Embracing Spiritual Growth by Sincerely Seeking to be Spirit-of-God-Led" with my added comments and highlights from my selections of the very unique Fifth Epochal Revelation of Truth, which is in the public domain. Next here, I will start a new Topical Study, #88.]
[Love, peace and progress in Spirit and in Father-Son Eternal Truth ! Brother Dave My E-mail: truthist@Comcast.net]
Topical Study 88 "Self-Control-Mastery-Regulation-Respect"
Compiled 7/08/2015 by Dave@PureChristians.org
[Part 1 of 2]
PART I THE CENTRAL AND SUPERUNIVERSES
PAPER 14 THE CENTRAL AND DIVINE UNIVERSE
6. THE PURPOSE OF THE CENTRAL UNIVERSE
[Paper:Section.Paragraph]
14:6.26 Havona [One billion ultimate-absolute Spirit-level immense spheres circling around the nuclear Isle of Paradise; we will progress through all of those Heavens to qualify for eternal Paradise Residence in a Corps of the Finality] exhibits finality of spirit values existing as living will creatures of supreme and perfect self-control; mind existing as ultimately equivalent to spirit; reality and unity of intelligence with an unlimited potential.
PAPER 28 MINISTERING SPIRITS OF THE SUPERUNIVERSES
6. THE TERTIARY SECONAPHIM
28:6.13 4. The Solemnity of Trust. Trust is the crucial test of will creatures. Trustworthiness is the true measure of self-mastery, character. These seconaphim accomplish a double purpose in the economy of the superuniverses: They portray to all will creatures the sense of the obligation, sacredness, and solemnity of trust. At the same time they unerringly reflect to the governing authorities the exact trustworthiness of any candidate for confidence or trust.
28:6.20 6 and 7. The Secret of Greatness and the Soul of Goodness. The ascending pilgrims having awakened to the import of time, the way is prepared for the realization of the solemnity of trust and for the appreciation of the sanctity of service. While these are the moral elements of greatness, there are also secrets of greatness. When the spiritual tests of greatness are applied, the moral elements are not disregarded, but the quality of unselfishness revealed in disinterested labor for the welfare of one’s earthly fellows, particularly worthy beings in need and in distress, that is the real measure of planetary greatness. And the manifestation of greatness on a world like Earth is the exhibition of self-control. The great man is not he who “takes a city” or “overthrows a nation,” but rather “he who subdues his own tongue.”
PART II THE LOCAL UNIVERSE
PAPER 52 PLANETARY MORTAL EPOCHS
6. EARTH’S POST-BESTOWAL AGE
52:6.6 4. Political wisdom. Emotional maturity is essential to self-control. Only emotional maturity will insure the substitution of international techniques of civilized adjudication for the barbarous arbitrament of war. Wise statesmen will sometime work for the welfare of humanity even while they strive to promote the interest of their national or racial groups. Selfish political sagacity is ultimately suicidal — destructive of all those enduring qualities which insure planetary group survival.
7. POST-TEACHER SON MAN
52:7.5 [In the distant future destiny of our planet:] Life during this era is pleasant and profitable. Degeneracy and the antisocial end products of the long evolutionary struggle have been virtually obliterated. The length of life approaches five hundred Earth years, and the reproductive rate of racial increase is intelligently controlled. An entirely new order of society has arrived. There are still great differences among mortals, but the state of society more nearly approaches the ideals of social brotherhood and spiritual equality. Representative government is vanishing, and the world is passing under the rule of individual self-control. The function of government is chiefly directed to collective tasks of social administration and economic co-ordination. The golden age is coming on apace; the temporal goal of the long and intense planetary evolutionary struggle is in sight. The reward of the ages is soon to be realized; the wisdom of the Gods [God the Universal Father, God the Eternal Son, and God the Infinite Spirit as manifested in our universe Father-Son Creator Jesus Christ Michael and our universe Creative Spirit Partner of Jesus. Three in Two and all as One Sovereignty Omnipresence] is about to be manifested.
PAPER 54 PROBLEMS OF THE LUCIFER REBELLION
1. TRUE AND FALSE LIBERTY
54:1.6 True liberty is the associate of genuine self-respect; false liberty is the consort of self-admiration. True liberty is the fruit of self-control; false liberty, the assumption of self-assertion. Self-control leads to altruistic service; self-admiration tends towards the exploitation of others for the selfish aggrandizement of such a mistaken individual as is willing to sacrifice righteous attainment for the sake of possessing unjust power over his fellow beings.
54:1.9 [A warning:] How dare the self-willed creature encroach upon the rights of his fellows in the name of personal liberty when the Supreme Rulers of the universe stand back in merciful respect for these prerogatives of will and potentials of personality! No being, in the exercise of his supposed personal liberty, has a right to deprive any other being of those privileges of existence conferred by the Creators and duly respected by all their loyal associates, subordinates, and subjects.
PAPER 55 THE SPHERES OF LIGHT AND LIFE
5. THE ACME OF MATERIAL DEVELOPMENT
55:5.4 [In the even more distant future destiny of our planet:] War has become a matter of history, and there are no more armies or police forces. Government is gradually disappearing. Self-control is slowly rendering laws of human enactment obsolete. The extent of civil government and statutory regulation, in an intermediate state of advancing civilization, is in inverse proportion to the morality and spirituality of the citizenship.
PART III THE HISTORY OF EARTH
PAPER 69 PRIMITIVE HUMAN INSTITUTIONS
5. THE BEGINNINGS OF CAPITAL
69:5.1 Capital is labor applied as a renunciation of the present in favor of the future. Savings represent a form of maintenance and survival insurance. Food hoarding developed self-control and created the first problems of capital and labor. The man who had food, provided he could protect it from robbers, had a distinct advantage over the man who had no food.
PAPER 71 DEVELOPMENT OF THE STATE
3. THE IDEALS OF STATEHOOD
71:3.7 The laws of the ideal state are few in number, and they have passed out of the negativistic taboo age into the era of the positive progress of individual liberty consequent upon enhanced self-control. The exalted state not only compels its citizens to work but also entices them into profitable and uplifting utilization of the increasing leisure which results from toil liberation by the advancing machine age. Leisure must produce as well as consume.
71:3.9 A moral society should aim to preserve the self-respect of its citizenry and afford every normal individual adequate opportunity for self-realization. Such a plan of social achievement would yield a cultural society of the highest order. Social evolution should be encouraged by governmental supervision which exercises a minimum of regulative control. That state is best which co-ordinates most while governing least. [Less oppressive government regulations, smaller government, less taxes is the way of progress now.]
8. THE CHARACTER OF STATEHOOD
71:8.1 The only sacred feature of any human government is the division of statehood into the three domains of executive, legislative, and judicial functions. The universe is administered in accordance with such a plan of segregation of functions and authority. Aside from this divine concept of effective social regulation or civil government, it matters little what form of state a people may elect to have provided the citizenry is ever progressing toward the goal of augmented self-control and increased social service. The intellectual keenness, economic wisdom, social cleverness, and moral stamina of a people are all faithfully reflected in statehood.
PAPER 82 THE EVOLUTION OF MARRIAGE
1. THE MATING INSTINCT
82:1.2 Sex interest and desire were not dominating passions in primitive peoples; they simply took them for granted. The entire reproductive experience was free from imaginative embellishment. The all-absorbing sex passion of the more highly civilized peoples is chiefly due to race mixtures, especially where the evolutionary nature has been stimulated by the associative imagination and beauty appreciation of the Nodites and Adamites. [About 38,000 years ago, our universe Creator Jesus Christ had Adam and Eve -- super-human materialized Sons of God -- come down to Earth to biologically uplift all the human races. They partially defaulted; so humans today are still sub-standard, but slowly improving long-term.] But this Andite inheritance was absorbed by the evolutionary races in such limited amounts as to fail to provide sufficient self-control for the animal passions thus quickened and aroused by the endowment of keener sex consciousness and stronger mating urges. Of the evolutionary races, the red man had the highest sex code.
82:1.9 With the savage, the food supply was the impelling motivation, but when civilization insures plentiful food, the sex urge many times becomes a dominant impulse and therefore ever stands in need of social regulation. In animals, instinctive periodicity checks the mating propensity, but since man is so largely a self-controlled being, sex desire is not altogether periodic; therefore does it become necessary for society to impose self-control upon the individual.
82:1.10 [A serious problem now:] No human emotion or impulse, when unbridled and overindulged, can produce so much harm and sorrow as this powerful sex urge. Intelligent submission of this impulse to the regulations of society is the supreme test of the actuality of any civilization. Self-control, more and more self-control, is the ever-increasing demand of advancing mankind. Secrecy, insincerity, and hypocrisy may obscure sex problems, but they do not provide solutions, nor do they advance ethics.
PAPER 83 THE MARRIAGE INSTITUTION
6. TRUE MONOGAMY — PAIR MARRIAGE
83:6.6 Monogamy [of one adult man and one adult woman, cocreating more sons of God for our Creator Father] always has been, now is, and forever will be the idealistic goal of human sex evolution. This ideal of true pair marriage entails self-denial, and therefore does it so often fail just because one or both of the contracting parties are deficient in that acme of all human virtues, rugged self-control. [AIDS, and other deadly STDs are eliminating humans with defective self-control. They will be rehabilitated up on the next series of corrective, soul-level Heavens if they desire survival as ascending sons of God.]
83:6.8 Pair marriage [male-female only] favors and fosters that intimate understanding and effective co-operation which is best for parental happiness, child welfare, and social efficiency. Marriage, which began in crude coercion, is gradually evolving into a magnificent institution of self-culture, self-control, self-expression, and self-perpetuation.
7. THE DISSOLUTION OF WEDLOCK
83:7.7 The high degree of imagination and fantastic romance entering into courtship is largely responsible for the increasing divorce tendencies among modern Occidental peoples, all of which is further complicated by woman’s greater personal freedom and increased economic liberty. Easy divorce, when the result of lack of self-control or failure of normal personality adjustment, only leads directly back to those crude societal stages from which man has emerged so recently and as the result of so much personal anguish and racial suffering. [If Christians fail to enforce Godly morality, then society will revert back to the harsh, crude "Sharia law". That is expected to rule Europe in about ten more years !]
PAPER 84 MARRIAGE AND FAMILY LIFE
4. WOMAN’S STATUS IN EARLY SOCIETY
84:4.9 However foolish these olden notions were, they did some good since they gave overworked females, at least when young, one week each month for welcome rest and profitable meditation. [during their menstrual period.] Thus could they sharpen their wits for dealing with their male associates the rest of the time. This quarantine of women also protected men from over-sex indulgence, thereby indirectly contributing to the restriction of population and to the enhancement of self-control.
PAPER 89 SIN, SACRIFICE, AND ATONEMENT
1. THE TABOO [Early history of man]
89:1.1 Observance of a taboo was man’s effort to dodge ill luck, to keep from offending the spirit ghosts by the avoidance of something. The taboos were at first nonreligious, but they early acquired ghost or spirit sanction, and when thus reinforced, they became lawmakers and institution builders. The taboo is the source of ceremonial standards and the ancestor of primitive self-control. It was the earliest form of societal regulation and for a long time the only one; it is still a basic unit of the social regulative structure.
89:1.7 There would, however, be no civilized society to sit in criticism upon primitive man except for these far-flung and multifarious taboos, and the taboo would never have endured but for the upholding sanctions of primitive religion. Many of the essential factors in man’s evolution have been highly expensive, have cost vast treasure in effort, sacrifice, and self-denial, but these achievements of self-control were the real rungs on which man climbed civilization’s ascending ladder.
3. RENUNCIATION AND HUMILIATION
89:3.3 Poverty was just a part of the ritual of the mortification of the flesh which, unfortunately, became incorporated into the writings and teachings of many religions, notably Christianity. Penance is the negative form of this ofttimes foolish ritual of renunciation. But all this taught the savage self-control, and that was a worth-while advancement in social evolution. Self-denial and self-control were two of the greatest social gains from early evolutionary religion. Self-control gave man a new philosophy of life; it taught him the art of augmenting life’s fraction by lowering the denominator of personal demands instead of always attempting to increase the numerator of selfish gratification.
89:3.7 Someday man should learn how to enjoy liberty without license, nourishment without gluttony, and pleasure without debauchery. Self-control is a better human policy of behavior regulation than is extreme self-denial. Nor did Jesus ever teach these unreasonable views to his followers.
PAPER 91 THE EVOLUTION OF PRAYER
4. ETHICAL PRAYING
91:4.3 In all your praying be fair; do not expect God to show partiality, to love you more than his other children, your friends, neighbors, even enemies. But the prayer of the natural or evolved religions is not at first ethical, as it is in the later revealed religions. All praying, whether individual or communal, may be either egoistic or altruistic. That is, the prayer may be centered upon the self or upon others. When the prayer seeks nothing for the one who prays nor anything for his fellows, then such attitudes of the soul tend to the levels of true worship. Egoistic prayers involve confessions and petitions and often consist in requests for material favors. Prayer is somewhat more ethical when it deals with forgiveness and seeks wisdom for enhanced self-control.
91:4.4 While the nonselfish type of prayer is strengthening and comforting, materialistic praying is destined to bring disappointment and disillusionment as advancing scientific discoveries demonstrate that man lives in a physical universe of law and order. The childhood of an individual or a race is characterized by primitive, selfish, and materialistic praying. And, to a certain extent, all such petitions are efficacious in that they unvaryingly lead to those efforts and exertions which are contributory to achieving the answers to such prayers. The real prayer of faith always contributes to the augmentation of the technique of living, even if such petitions are not worthy of spiritual recognition. But the spiritually advanced person should exercise great caution in attempting to discourage the primitive or immature mind regarding such prayers.
91:4.5 Remember, even if prayer does not change God, it very often effects great and lasting changes in the one who prays in faith and confident expectation. Prayer has been the ancestor of much peace of mind, cheerfulness, calmness, courage, self-mastery, and fair-mindedness in the men and women of the evolving races.
6. THE PROVINCE OF PRAYER
91:6.3 No matter how difficult it may be to reconcile the scientific doubtings regarding the efficacy of prayer with the ever-present urge to seek help and guidance from divine sources, never forget that the sincere prayer of faith is a mighty force for the promotion of personal happiness, individual self-control, social harmony, moral progress, and spiritual attainment. [Beautiful !]
PAPER 92 THE LATER EVOLUTION OF RELIGION
3. THE NATURE OF EVOLUTIONARY RELIGION
92:3.9 Religion facilitated the accumulation of capital; it fostered work of certain kinds; the leisure of the priests promoted art and knowledge; the race, in the end, gained much as a result of all these early errors in ethical technique. The shamans, honest and dishonest, were terribly expensive, but they were worth all they cost. The learned professions and science itself emerged from the parasitical priesthoods. Religion fostered civilization and provided societal continuity; it has been the moral police force of all time. [It should do so now !] Religion provided that human discipline and self-control which made wisdom possible. Religion is the efficient scourge of evolution which ruthlessly drives indolent and suffering humanity from its natural state of intellectual inertia forward and upward to the higher levels of reason and wisdom.
PAPER 118 SUPREME AND ULTIMATE — TIME AND SPACE
8. CONTROL AND OVERCONTROL
118:8.6 The slowness of evolution, of human cultural progress, testifies to the effectiveness of that brake — material inertia — which so efficiently operates to retard dangerous velocities of progress. Thus does time itself cushion and distribute the otherwise lethal results of premature escape from the next-encompassing barriers to human action. For when culture advances overfast, when material achievement outruns the evolution of worship-wisdom, then does civilization contain within itself the seeds of retrogression; and unless buttressed by the swift augmentation of experiential wisdom, such human societies will recede from high but premature levels of attainment, and the “dark ages” of the interregnum of wisdom will bear witness to the inexorable restoration of the imbalance between self-liberty and self-control.
Topical Study 88 "Self-Control-Mastery-Regulation-Respect"
Compiled 7/10/2015 by Dave@PureChristians.org
[Part 2 of 2]
PART IV THE LIFE AND TEACHINGS OF JESUS
PAPER 124 THE LATER CHILDHOOD OF JESUS
1. JESUS’ NINTH YEAR (A.D. 3)
[Paper:Section.Paragraph]
124:1.4 But trouble was again stirred up at school when one of the more backward pupils discovered Jesus drawing a charcoal picture of the teacher on the floor of the schoolroom. There it was, plain as day, and many of the elders had viewed it before the committee went to call on Joseph to demand that something be done to suppress the lawlessness of his eldest son. And though this was not the first time complaints had come to Joseph and Mary about the doings of their versatile and aggressive child, this was the most serious of all the accusations which had thus far been lodged against him. Jesus listened to the indictment of his artistic efforts for some time, being seated on a large stone just outside the back door. He resented their blaming his father for his alleged misdeeds; so in he marched, fearlessly confronting his accusers. The elders were thrown into confusion. Some were inclined to view the episode humorously, while one or two seemed to think the boy was sacrilegious if not blasphemous. Joseph was nonplused, Mary indignant, but Jesus insisted on being heard. He had his say, courageously defended his viewpoint, and with consummate self-control announced that he would abide by the decision of his father in this as in all other matters controversial. And the committee of elders departed in silence.
PAPER 133 THE RETURN FROM ROME
2. EMBARKING AT TARENTUM
133:2.1 While tarrying at the ship landing, waiting for the boat to unload cargo, the travelers observed a man mistreating his wife. As was his custom, Jesus intervened in behalf of the person subjected to attack. He stepped up behind the irate husband and, tapping him gently on the shoulder, said: “My friend, may I speak with you in private for a moment?” The angry man was nonplused by such an approach and, after a moment of embarrassing hesitation, stammered out — “er — why — yes, what do you want with me?” When Jesus had led him to one side, he said: “My friend, I perceive that something terrible must have happened to you; I very much desire that you tell me what could happen to such a strong man to lead him to attack his wife, the mother of his children, and that right out here before all eyes. I am sure you must feel that you have some good reason for this assault. What did the woman do to deserve such treatment from her husband? As I look upon you, I think I discern in your face the love of justice if not the desire to show mercy. I venture to say that, if you found me out by the wayside, attacked by robbers, you would unhesitatingly rush to my rescue. I dare say you have done many such brave things in the course of your life. Now, my friend, tell me what is the matter? Did the woman do something wrong, or did you foolishly lose your head and thoughtlessly assault her?” It was not so much what he said that touched this man’s heart as the kindly look and the sympathetic smile which Jesus bestowed upon him at the conclusion of his remarks. Said the man: “I perceive you are a priest of the Cynics, and I am thankful you restrained me. My wife has done no great wrong; she is a good woman, but she irritates me by the manner in which she picks on me in public, and I lose my temper. I am sorry for my lack of self-control, and I promise to try to live up to my former pledge to one of your brothers who taught me the better way many years ago. I promise you.”
PAPER 143 GOING THROUGH SAMARIA
2. LESSON ON SELF-MASTERY
143:2.1 The Master was a perfected specimen of human self-control. When he was reviled, he reviled not; when he suffered, he uttered no threats against his tormentors; when he was denounced by his enemies, he simply committed himself to the righteous judgment of the Father in heaven.
143:2.2 At one of the evening conferences, Andrew asked Jesus: "Master, are we to practice self-denial as John taught us, or are we to strive for the self-control of your teaching? Wherein does your teaching differ from that of John?" Jesus answered: "John indeed taught you the way of righteousness in accordance with the light and laws of his fathers, and that was the religion of self-examination and self-denial. But I come with a new message of self-forgetfulness and self-control. I show to you the way of life as revealed to me by my Father in heaven.
143:2.3 "Verily, verily, I say to you, he who rules his own self is greater than he who captures a city. Self-mastery is the measure of man's moral nature and the indicator of his spiritual development. In the old order you fasted and prayed as the new creature of the rebirth of the Spirit, you are taught to believe and rejoice. In the Father's kingdom you are to become new creatures; old things are to pass away; behold I show you how all things are to become new. And by your love for one another you are to convince the world that you have passed from bondage to liberty, from death into life everlasting.
143:2.4 "By the old way you seek to suppress, obey, and conform to the rules of living; by the new way you are first transformed by the Spirit of Truth and thereby strengthened in your inner soul by the constant spiritual renewing of your mind, and so are you endowed with the power of the certain and joyous performance of the gracious, acceptable, and perfect will of God. Forget not -- it is your personal faith in the exceedingly great and precious promises of God that ensures your becoming partakers of the divine nature. Thus by your faith and the Spirit's transformation, you become in reality the temples of God, and his Spirit actually dwells within you. If, then, the Spirit dwells within you, you are no longer bondslaves of the flesh but free and liberated sons of the Spirit. The new law of the Spirit endows you with the liberty of self-mastery in place of the old law of the fear of self-bondage and the slavery of self-denial.
143:2.5 "Many times, when you have done evil, you have thought to charge up your acts to the influence of the evil one when in reality you have but been led astray by your own natural tendencies. Did not the Prophet Jeremiah long ago tell you that the human heart is deceitful above all things and sometimes even desperately wicked? How easy for you to become self-deceived and thereby fall into foolish fears, divers lusts, enslaving pleasures, malice, envy, and even vengeful hatred!
143:2.6 "Salvation is by the regeneration of the Spirit and not by the self-righteous deeds of the flesh. You are justified by faith and fellowshipped by grace, not by fear and the self-denial of the flesh, albeit the Father's children who have been born of the Spirit are ever and always masters of the self and all that pertains to the desires of the flesh. When you know that you are saved by faith, you have real peace with God. And all who follow in the way of this heavenly peace are destined to be sanctified to the eternal service of the ever-advancing sons of the eternal God. Henceforth, it is not a duty but rather your exalted privilege to cleanse yourselves from all evils of mind and body while you seek for perfection in the love of God.
143:2.7 "Your sonship is grounded in faith, and you are to remain unmoved by fear. Your joy is born of trust in the divine word, and you shall not therefore be led to doubt the reality of the Father's love and mercy. It is the very goodness of God that leads men into true and genuine repentance. Your secret of the mastery of self is bound up with your faith in the indwelling Spirit, which ever works by love. Even this saving faith you have not of yourselves; it also is the gift of God. [!!] And if you are the children of this living faith, you are no longer the bondslaves of self but rather the triumphant masters of yourselves, the liberated sons of God.
143:2.8 "If, then, my children, you are born of the Spirit, you are forever delivered from the self-conscious bondage of a life of self-denial and watchcare over the desires of the flesh, and you are translated into the joyous kingdom of the Spirit, whence you spontaneously show forth the fruits of the Spirit in your daily lives; and the fruits of the Spirit are the essence of the highest type of enjoyable and ennobling self-control, even the heights of terrestrial mortal attainment -- true self-mastery."[What tremendous and spiritually and morally inspiring words of Light and Life from our Master Jesus ! Worth reading again and again and taking these gracious words of God to heart -- to soul and mind.]
PAPER 147 THE INTERLUDE VISIT TO JERUSALEM
4. THE RULE OF LIVING
147:4.6 [Jesus teaches on "The Rule of Living -- to do to others that which you desire others to do to you", in part:] "3. The level of mind. Now come into action the reason of mind and the intelligence of experience. Good judgment dictates that such a rule of living should be interpreted in consonance with the highest idealism embodied in the nobility of profound self-respect."
PAPER 149 THE SECOND PREACHING TOUR
4. PROGRESS OF THE PREACHING TOUR
149:4.2 [Jesus:] “Anger is a material manifestation which represents, in a general way, the measure of the failure of the spiritual nature to gain control of the combined intellectual and physical natures. Anger indicates your lack of tolerant brotherly love plus your lack of self-respect and self-control. Anger depletes the health, debases the mind, and handicaps the spirit teacher of man’s soul. Have you not read in the Scriptures that ‘wrath kills the foolish man,’ and that man ‘tears himself in his anger’? That ‘he who is slow of wrath is of great understanding,’ while ‘he who is hasty of temper exalts folly’? You all know that ‘a soft answer turns away wrath,’ and how ‘grievous words stir up anger.’ ‘Discretion defers anger,’ while ‘he who has no control over his own self is like a defenseless city without walls.’ ‘Wrath is cruel and anger is outrageous.’ ‘Angry men stir up strife, while the furious multiply their transgressions.’ ‘Be not hasty in spirit, for anger rests in the bosom of fools.’” Before Jesus ceased speaking, he said further: “Let your hearts be so dominated by love that your spirit guide [Thought Adjuster - God within you !] will have little trouble in delivering you from the tendency to give vent to those outbursts of animal anger which are inconsistent with the status of divine sonship.”
6. THE “FEAR OF THE LORD”
149:6.11 [Jesus:] “You do well to be meek before God and self-controlled before men, but let your meekness be of spiritual origin and not the self-deceptive display of a self-conscious sense of self-righteous superiority. The prophet spoke advisedly when he said, ‘Walk humbly with God,’ for, while the Father in heaven is the Infinite and the Eternal, he also dwells ‘with him who is of a contrite mind and a humble spirit.’ My Father disdains pride, loathes hypocrisy, and abhors iniquity. And it was to emphasize the value of sincerity and perfect trust in the loving support and faithful guidance of the heavenly Father that I have so often referred to the little child as illustrative of the attitude of mind and the response of spirit which are so essential to the entrance of mortal man into the spirit realities of the kingdom of heaven."
PAPER 155 FLEEING THROUGH NORTHERN GALILEE
5. THE DISCOURSE ON TRUE RELIGION [in part]
155:5.8 Until the races become highly intelligent and more fully civilized, there will persist many of those childlike and superstitious ceremonies which are so characteristic of the evolutionary religious practices of primitive and backward peoples. Until the human race progresses to the level of a higher and more general recognition of the realities of spiritual experience, large numbers of men and women will continue to show a personal preference for those religions of authority which require only intellectual assent, in contrast to the religion of the spirit, which entails active participation of mind and soul in the faith adventure of grappling with the rigorous realities of progressive human experience.
155:5.9 The acceptance of the traditional religions of authority presents the easy way out for man’s urge to seek satisfaction for the longings of his spiritual nature. The settled, crystallized, and established religions of authority afford a ready refuge to which the distracted and distraught soul of man may flee when harassed by fear and tormented by uncertainty. Such a religion requires of its devotees, as the price to be paid for its satisfactions and assurances, only a passive and purely intellectual assent.
155:5.10 And for a long time there will live on earth those timid, fearful, and hesitant individuals who will prefer thus to secure their religious consolations, even though, in so casting their lot with the religions of authority, they compromise the sovereignty of personality, debase the dignity of self-respect, and utterly surrender the right to participate in that most thrilling and inspiring of all possible human experiences: the personal quest for truth, the exhilaration of facing the perils of intellectual discovery, the determination to explore the realities of personal religious experience, the supreme satisfaction of experiencing the personal triumph of the actual realization of the victory of spiritual faith over intellectual doubt as it is honestly won in the supreme adventure of all human existence — man seeking God, for himself and as himself, and finding him. [Beautiful ! Direct, personal God-consciousness is the absolute proof experience in soul and mind !]
155:5.11 The religion of the spirit means effort, struggle, conflict, faith, determination, love, loyalty, and progress. The religion of the mind — the theology of authority — requires little or none of these exertions from its formal believers. Tradition is a safe refuge and an easy path for those fearful and halfhearted souls who instinctively shun the spirit struggles and mental uncertainties associated with those faith voyages of daring adventure out upon the high seas of unexplored truth in search for the farther shores of spiritual realities as they may be discovered by the progressive human mind and experienced by the evolving human soul.
PAPER 156 THE SOJOURN AT TYRE AND SIDON
5. JESUS’ TEACHING AT TYRE
156:5.14 [Jesus] Spiritual living mightily increases true self-respect. But self-respect is not self-admiration. Self-respect is always co-ordinate with the love and service of one's fellows. It is not possible to respect yourself more than you love your neighbor; the one is the measure of the capacity for the other.
PAPER 159 THE DECAPOLIS TOUR
3. INSTRUCTION FOR TEACHERS AND BELIEVERS
159:3.1 At Edrei, where Thomas and his associates labored, Jesus spent a day and a night and, in the course of the evening's discussion, gave expression to the principles which should guide those who preach truth, and which should activate all who teach the gospel of the kingdom. Summarized and restated in modern phraseology, Jesus taught: [in part:]
159:3.2 Always respect the personality of man. Never should a righteous cause be promoted by force; spiritual victories can be won only by spiritual power. This injunction against the employment of material influences refers to psychic force as well as to physical force. Overpowering arguments and mental superiority are not to be employed to coerce men and women into the kingdom. Man’s mind is not to be crushed by the mere weight of logic or overawed by shrewd eloquence. While emotion as a factor in human decisions cannot be wholly eliminated, it should not be directly appealed to in the teachings of those who would advance the cause of the kingdom. Make your appeals directly to the divine spirit that dwells within the minds of men. Do not appeal to fear, pity, or mere sentiment. In appealing to men, be fair; exercise self-control and exhibit due restraint; show proper respect for the personalities of your pupils. Remember that I have said: “Behold, I stand at the door and knock, and if any man will open, I will come in.”
159:3.3 In bringing men into the kingdom, do not lessen or destroy their self-respect. While overmuch self-respect may destroy proper humility and end in pride, conceit, and arrogance, the loss of self-respect often ends in paralysis of the will. It is the purpose of this gospel to restore self-respect to those who have lost it and to restrain it in those who have it. Make not the mistake of only condemning the wrongs in the lives of your pupils; remember also to accord generous recognition for the most praiseworthy things in their lives. Forget not that I will stop at nothing to restore self-respect to those who have lost it, and who really desire to regain it.
159:3.4 Take care that you do not wound the self-respect of timid and fearful souls. Do not indulge in sarcasm at the expense of my simple-minded brethren. Be not cynical with my fear-ridden children. Idleness is destructive of self-respect; therefore, admonish your brethren ever to keep busy at their chosen tasks, and put forth every effort to secure work for those who find themselves without employment.
PAPER 187 THE CRUCIFIXION
4. THE THIEF ON THE CROSS
187:4.5 This young man, the penitent brigand, had been led into a life of violence and wrongdoing by those who extolled such a career of robbery as an effective patriotic protest against political oppression and social injustice. And this sort of teaching, plus the urge for adventure, led many otherwise well-meaning youths to enlist in these daring expeditions of robbery. This young man had looked upon Barabbas as a hero. Now he saw that he had been mistaken. Here on the cross beside him he saw [Jesus,] a really great man, a true hero. Here was a hero who fired his zeal and inspired his highest ideas of moral self-respect and quickened all his ideals of courage, manhood, and bravery. In beholding Jesus, there sprang up in his heart an overwhelming sense of love, loyalty, and genuine greatness.
187:4.6 And if any other person among the jeering crowd had experienced the birth of faith within his soul and had appealed to the mercy of Jesus, he would have been received with the same loving consideration that was displayed toward the believing brigand. [God is no respecter of persons; He loves all equally, high to low; so should we !]
PAPER 195 AFTER PENTECOST
2. THE ROMAN INFLUENCE
195:2.4 And these Romans were a great people. They could govern the Occident because they did govern themselves. Such unparalleled honesty, devotion, and stalwart self-control was ideal soil for the reception and growth of Christianity.
Topical Study 89 "Home and Family"
Compiled 7/13/2015 by Dave@PureChristians.org
[Part 1 of many]
PART I The Central and Superuniverses
PAPER 2 THE NATURE OF GOD
6. THE GOODNESS OF GOD
[Paper:Section.Paragraph]
2:6.2 Religion implies that the superworld of spirit nature is cognizant of, and responsive to, the fundamental needs of the human world. Evolutionary religion may become ethical, but only revealed religion becomes truly and spiritually moral. The olden concept that God is a Deity dominated by kingly morality was upstepped by Jesus to that affectionately touching level of intimate family morality of the parent-child relationship, than which there is none more tender and beautiful in mortal experience. [Jesus called the Universal Father "Abba" - Daddy; and Jesus here in Spirit calls all humans beloved sons of God in the Family of God !!]
PAPER 3 THE ATTRIBUTES OF GOD
2. GOD'S INFINITE POWER
3:2.9 We are all a part of the Family of God, and we must therefore sometimes share in the family discipline. Many of the acts of God which so disturb and confuse us are the result of the decisions and final rulings of all-wisdom, empowering the Conjoint Actor [The Infinite Spirit acting for the united will of the Paradise Father and Eternal Son] to execute the choosing of the infallible will of the infinite mind, to enforce the decisions of the personality of perfection, whose survey, vision, and solicitude embrace the highest and eternal welfare of all his vast and far-flung creation.
PAPER 4 GOD'S RELATION TO THE UNIVERSE
4. THE REALIZATION OF GOD
4:4.5 God’s absoluteness pervades all seven levels of universe reality. And the whole of this absolute nature is subject to the relationship of the Creator to his universe creature family. Precision may characterize trinitarian justice in the universe of universes, but in all his vast family relationship with the creatures of time the God of universes is governed by divine sentiment. First and last — eternally — the infinite God is a Father. Of all the possible titles by which he might appropriately be known, I have been instructed to portray the God of all creation as the Universal Father.
PAPER 5 GOD'S RELATION TO THE INDIVIDUAL
4. GOD IN RELIGION
5:4.3 God is not only the determiner of destiny; he is man’s eternal destination. All nonreligious human activities seek to bend the universe to the distorting service of self; the truly religious individual seeks to identify the self with the universe and then to dedicate the activities of this unified self to the service of the universe family of fellow beings, human and superhuman.
6. THE GOD OF PERSONALITY
5:6.9 The bestowal of creature personality confers relative liberation from slavish response to antecedent causation, and the personalities of all such moral beings, evolutionary or otherwise, are centered in the personality of the Universal Father. They are ever drawn towards his Paradise presence by that kinship of being which constitutes the vast and universal family circle and fraternal circuit of the eternal God. There is a kinship of divine spontaneity in all personality.
PAPER 6 THE ETERNAL SON
8. REALIZATION OF THE ETERNAL SON
6:8.1 Concerning identity, nature, and other attributes of personality, the Eternal Son is the full equal, the perfect complement, and the eternal counterpart of the Universal Father. In the same sense that God is the Universal Father, the Son is the Universal Mother. And all of us, high and low, constitute their Universal Family.
PAPER 7 RELATION OF THE ETERNAL SON TO THE UNIVERSE
5. THE SPIRIT OF BESTOWAL
7:5.1 The Eternal Son without reservation joined with the Universal Father in broadcasting that tremendous injunction to all creation: “Be you perfect, even as your Father in Havona is perfect.” And ever since, that invitation-command has motivated all the survival plans and the bestowal projects of the Eternal Son and his vast Family of co-ordinate and associated Sons. And in these very bestowals the Sons of God have become to all evolutionary creatures “the Way, the Truth, and the Life.” [Our Sovereign Universe Creator Father-Son of God is Jesus Christ Michael.]
PAPER 8 THE INFINITE SPIRIT
1. THE GOD OF ACTION
8:1.11 It is enough of a reach of the material mind of the children of time to conceive of the Father in eternity. We [high Paradise Divine Counselors] know that any child can best relate himself to reality by first mastering the relationships of the child-parent situation and then by enlarging this concept to embrace the family as a whole. Subsequently the growing mind of the child will be able to adjust to the concept of family relations, to relationships of the community, the race, and the world, and then to those of the universe, the superuniverse, even the universe of universes.
4. THE SPIRIT OF DIVINE MINISTRY
8:4.8 As man learns more of the loving and tireless ministry of the lower orders [many types of angels] of the creature family of this Infinite Spirit, he will all the more admire and adore the transcendent nature and matchless character of this combined Action of the Universal Father and the Eternal Son. Indeed is this Spirit “the eyes of the Lord which are ever over the righteous” and “the divine ears which are ever open to their prayers.”
PAPER 9 RELATION OF THE INFINITE SPIRIT TO THE UNIVERSE
8. PERSONALITIES OF THE INFINITE SPIRIT
9:8.25 The spirit personalities of the vast family of the Divine and Infinite Spirit are forever dedicated to the service of the ministry of the love of God and the mercy of the Son to all the intelligent creatures of the evolutionary worlds of time and space. These spirit beings constitute the living ladder whereby mortal man climbs from chaos to glory. [Humorously, some humans have stated that as "from clod to God" and "from slime to sublime"; and I have stated, "from oozed to enthused !" Ha ha]
PAPER 11 THE ETERNAL ISLE OF PARADISE
9. THE UNIQUENESS OF PARADISE
11:9.6 God’s residence is central and eternal, glorious and ideal. His Home [Infinite, Eternal Paradise] is the beauteous pattern for all universe headquarters worlds; and the central universe [Paradise and the one billion surrounding Havona Ultimate-Absolute spheres] of his immediate indwelling is the pattern for all universes in their ideals, organization, and ultimate destiny.
PAPER 12 THE UNIVERSE OF UNIVERSES
7. THE PART AND THE WHOLE
12:7.8 The Fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of man present the paradox of the part and the whole on the level of personality. God loves each individual as an individual child in the heavenly Family. Yet God thus loves every individual; he is no respecter of persons, and the universality of his love brings into being a relationship of the whole, the Universal Brotherhood.
12:7.9 The love of the Father absolutely individualizes each personality as a unique child of the Universal Father, a child without duplicate in infinity, a will creature irreplaceable in all eternity. The Father’s love glorifies each child of God, illuminating each member of the celestial Family, sharply silhouetting the unique nature of each personal being against the impersonal levels that lie outside the fraternal circuit of the Father of all. The love of God strikingly portrays the transcendent value of each will creature, unmistakably reveals the high value which the Universal Father has placed upon each and every one of his children from the highest creator personality of Paradise status to the lowest personality of will dignity among the savage tribes of men in the dawn of the human species on some evolutionary world of time and space.
12:7.10 This very love of God for the individual brings into being the divine Family of all individuals, the universal Brotherhood of the freewill children of the Paradise Father. And this Brotherhood, being universal, is a relationship of the whole. Brotherhood, when universal, discloses not the each relationship, but the all relationship. Brotherhood is a reality of the total and therefore discloses qualities of the whole in contradistinction to qualities of the part.
PAPER 14 THE CENTRAL AND DIVINE UNIVERSE
0. INTRODUCTION
14:0.1 The perfect and divine universe occupies the center of all creation; it is the eternal core around which the vast creations of time and space revolve. Paradise is the gigantic nuclear Isle of absolute stability which rests motionless at the very heart of the magnificent eternal universe. This central planetary family is called Havona and is far-distant from the local universe of Nebadon. [Our local universe, is created and still evolving by our universe Creator Father-Son Jesus. When completed, it will have ten million human-inhabited perfecting planets; now our young universe, over 400 billion years old, has just over 3.8 million human planets. Nebadon has 570 soul-level Heavens to allow us to graduate higher as 1st-stage Spirits. After the one billion Havona Heavens, we enter Paradise as 6th-stage Spirits; 7th-stage comes later in the transcendental Master Universe and after doing further adventures with and under our Sovereign Jesus Christ Michael !] It is of enormous dimensions and almost unbelievable mass and consists of one billion spheres of unimagined beauty and superb grandeur, but the true magnitude of this vast creation is really beyond the understanding grasp of the human mind.
6. THE PURPOSE OF THE CENTRAL UNIVERSE
14:6.11 The eternal Father views with never-ending satisfaction the Havona creation as the worthy and alluring goal for the ascension candidates of time, his mortal grandchildren of space achieving their Creator-Father’s [Jesus'] eternal Home. And God takes pleasure in the Paradise-Havona universe as the eternal Home of Deity and the divine Family.
14:6.39 Paradise is the home, and Havona the workshop and playground, of the finaliters. And every God-knowing mortal craves to be a finaliter. [An Eternalized Son of God on Paradise]
PAPER 15 THE SEVEN SUPERUNIVERSES
14. PURPOSES OF THE SEVEN SUPERUNIVERSES
15:14.9 Your planet is a member of an enormous cosmos; you belong to a well-nigh infinite family of worlds, but your sphere is just as precisely administered and just as lovingly fostered as if it were the only inhabited world in all existence. [!!]
PAPER 30 PERSONALITIES OF THE GRAND UNIVERSE
4. THE ASCENDING MORTALS
30:4.10 1. Planetary Mortals. Mortals are all animal-origin evolutionary beings of ascendant potential. In origin, nature, and destiny these various groups and types of human beings are not wholly unlike the Earth peoples. The human races of each world [seven trillion worlds in this first, Supreme-level, Grand Universe Age] receive the same ministry of the Sons of God and enjoy the presence of the ministering spirits of time. After natural death all types of ascenders fraternize as one morontia [soul-level] Family on the [570] mansion worlds.
PART II The Local Universe
PAPER 33 ADMINISTRATION OF THE LOCAL UNIVERSE
3. THE UNIVERSE SON AND SPIRIT
33:3.6 [Important:] After this pledge of subordination by the Creative Mother Spirit, [Jesus Christ] Michael of Nebadon nobly acknowledged his eternal dependence on his Spirit companion, constituting the Spirit coruler of his universe domains and requiring all their creatures to pledge themselves in loyalty to the Spirit as they had to the Son; and there issued and went forth the final “Proclamation of Equality.” Though he was the Sovereign [God] of this local universe, the Son published to the worlds the fact of the Spirit’s equality with him in all endowments of personality and attributes of divine character. And this becomes the transcendent pattern for the Family organization and government of even the lowly creatures of the worlds of space. This is, in deed and in truth, the high ideal of the Family and the human institution of voluntary marriage.
33:3.7 The Son and the Spirit now preside over the universe much as a father and mother watch over, and minister to, their family of sons and daughters. It is not altogether out of place to refer to the Universe Spirit as the creative companion of the Creator Son and to regard the creatures of the realms as their sons and daughters — a grand and glorious Family but one of untold responsibilities and endless watchcare.
PAPER 40 THE ASCENDING SONS OF GOD
6. THE FAITH SONS OF GOD
40:6.3 All evolutionary worlds of mortal habitation harbor these faith sons of God, sons of grace and mercy, mortal beings belonging to the divine Family and accordingly called the sons of God. Earth mortals are entitled to regard themselves as being the sons of God ...
10. ASCENDANT DESTINIES
40:10.14 As mortals you can now recognize your place in the Family of divine sonship and begin to sense the obligation to avail yourselves of the advantages so freely provided in and by the Paradise plan for mortal survival, which plan has been so enhanced and illuminated by the life experience of a bestowal Son. [Our God-Man Jesus !] Every facility and all power have been provided for insuring your ultimate attainment of the Paradise goal of divine perfection. [Infinite love and lavish mercy ministry to each and every human ! What tremendous Gifts we each have from our Father God !!]
PAPER 52 PLANETARY MORTAL EPOCHS
2. POST-PLANETARY PRINCE MAN
52:2.6 [On Earth, 500,000 years ago - on] On average worlds, during the latter part of the prince’s rule, national life begins to replace tribal organization or rather to be superimposed upon the existing tribal groupings. But the great social achievement of the prince’s epoch is the emergence of family life. Heretofore, human relationships have been chiefly tribal; now, the home begins to materialize.
52:2.7 This is the dispensation of the realization of sex equality. On some planets the male may rule the female; on others the reverse prevails. During this age normal worlds establish full equality of the sexes, this being preliminary to the fuller realization of the ideals of home life. This is the dawn of the golden age of the home. The idea of tribal rule gradually gives way to the dual concept of national life and family life.
52:2.8 During this age agriculture makes its appearance. The growth of the family idea is incompatible with the roving and unsettled life of the hunter. Gradually the practices of settled habitations and the cultivation of the soil become established. The domestication of animals and the development of home arts proceed apace. Upon reaching the apex of biologic evolution, a high level of civilization has been attained, but there is little development of a mechanical order; invention is the characteristic of the succeeding age.
PAPER 54 PROBLEMS OF THE LUCIFER REBELLION
[200,000 years ago up, to April, A.D. 30, when Jesus incarnate here overcame Lucifer, Satan, and all other lesser fallen sons and angels.]
5. THE WISDOM OF DELAY
54:5.4 3. No affectionate father is ever precipitate in visiting punishment upon an erring member of his family. Patience cannot function independently of time.
54:5.5 4. While wrongdoing is always deleterious to a family, wisdom and love admonish the upright children to bear with an erring brother during the time granted by the affectionate father in which the sinner may see the error of his way and embrace salvation.
6. THE TRIUMPH OF LOVE
54:6.3 If an affectionate father of a large family chooses to show mercy to one of his children guilty of grievous wrongdoing, it may well be that the extension of mercy to this misbehaving child will work a temporary hardship upon all the other and well-behaved children. Such eventualities are inevitable; such a risk is inseparable from the reality situation of having a loving parent and of being a member of a family group. Each member of a family profits by the righteous conduct of every other member; likewise must each member suffer the immediate time-consequences of the misconduct of every other member. Families, groups, nations, races, worlds, systems, constellations, and universes are relationships of association which possess individuality; and therefore does every member of any such group, large or small, reap the benefits and suffer the consequences of the rightdoing and the wrongdoing of all other members of the group concerned.
54:6.4 But one thing should be made clear: If you are made to suffer the evil consequences of the sin of some member of your family, some fellow citizen or fellow mortal, even rebellion in the system or elsewhere — no matter what you may have to endure because of the wrongdoing of your associates, fellows, or superiors — you may rest secure in the eternal assurance that such tribulations are transient afflictions. None of these fraternal consequences of misbehavior in the group can ever jeopardize your eternal prospects or in the least degree deprive you of your divine right of Paradise ascension and God attainment.
PAPER 55 THE SPHERES OF LIGHT AND LIFE
3. THE GOLDEN AGES
55:3.10 On these superb worlds the childbearing period is not greatly prolonged. It is not best for too many years to intervene between the ages of a family of children. When close together in age, children are able to contribute much more to their mutual training. And on these worlds they are magnificently trained by the competitive systems of keen striving in the advanced domains and divisions of diverse achievement in the mastery of truth, beauty, and goodness. Never fear but that even such glorified spheres present plenty of evil, real and potential, which is stimulative of the choosing between truth and error, good and evil, sin and righteousness.
6. THE INDIVIDUAL MORTAL
55:6.1 [Light and Life is the certain future destiny of our still backward, confused planet ! Thanks to God and Jesus, One in Spirit here Guiding us !!] As worlds advance in the settled status of Light and Life, society becomes increasingly peaceful. The individual, while no less independent and devoted to his family, has become more altruistic and fraternal. [Amen !]
