‘I am the Bright and Morning Star’

~ Jesus Christ, The Holy Bible ~

 

‘He shall teach you all things, and bring all things to your remembrance, whatsoever I have said unto you. He shall glorify me: for he shall receive of mine, and shall shew it unto you. He shall take of mine, and show it unto you.’
~ Jesus Christ ~

 

This humble offering is dedicated to all my
Christian brethren, as we travel the never
ending path to become, little by little,
closer unto our Lord.

 

 

 

Preface

The object of the ‘Bright and Morning Star; A Christian’s Guide To The Second Coming’ is to present the unassailable ascendancy of Jesus Christ and to present logical, self evident, historical proofs of Christ’s Authority, to resolve many of the issues surrounding the reappearance of His Light as promised in the Bible and our present day approach to His return.

A presentation will be made concerning the conditions; social, psychological and spiritual, surrounding Christ’s first appearance in the Holy Land, and the dawn of a new Spiritual Age of mankind, the dawning of the Day of God Himself, the Day known to Christians around the world as the Second Coming of Christ, the Promised Day.
The Divine, infinite power and authority of Christ, will be forcefully demonstrated. The meaning of His persecutions and the motives of His persecutors will be explained in a way not prevalent in Christian thought or theology today. The Bible itself will be demonstrated and proven to be a Divinely ordained source of the Word of God, the Holy Spirit, and His guidance for humanity.

The key to interpreting important metaphors, proverbs, traditions, similes, parables and symbolism will be discussed, in some depth, especially those concerning His return, in a clear, logical and thoughtful manner. The significance of literal vs. symbolic interpretation is fully considered, in the Light of Christ Himself, and (as far as I am able) the Holy Spirit and there absolute oneness.

The rejection of Christ upon His first appearance and the possibility of a historical repetition of that rejection, upon His return, by the established churches, their clerics and followers, of all religions is examined. The responsibilities of, and the roll played, by our present day clergy is made clear.

The possibility that the expansion of knowledge of the Lord, which He promised us upon His return, has already begun, is presented. The truth that the presence of Christ is, for us humans, identical to the presence of God, will be explained. The principle that God would not test us by asking us to accept anything that belies or contradicts spiritual truth, science, or the realities that effect and govern all created things, that science and God’s testimony in no wise disagree, while, at the same time, confirming the validity of miracles, will be covered. The misuse of signs as a means of recognizing Christ on His Return is laid out in practicable terms. The relationship of God’s chosen Prophets, Teachers, and Messengers, as “Manifestations of God”, and Their Oneness are illuminated. Entrance into the Kingdom of God is confirmed and defined. The defects in the current definition of religion are corrected. Superstitions, rampant in what is currently and erroneously defined as religion, will be exposed. The non-existence of evil and Satan is explained clearly and conclusively.

This is an investigation and an expose, entered into with a sense of awe and reverence, dispassionately, fairly, and prayerfully, in order to separate truth from falsehood, using clear language, in a world where truth has either been severely suppressed or lost completely. In reading this, detached from all things save God, I believe any Christian may feel confident of having taken a significant and meaningful step towards fulfilling the duty of obeying Christ’s command to us; ‘to watch’ for His coming, and by such watchfulness prepare ourselves, for that time when, as He forewarned, He will ‘come as the coming of a thief in the night.’

This fresh perspective is, though it may be considered a radical departure from the norm, I hope is presented in such a way that the reader can make up His own mind, freely, fairly and confidently, with enthusiasm and joy, and most importantly with a certitude only He can grant.

The roll integrity plays in the decision making process, and its relation to prejudice free thought, is disclosed and reclaimed, as its influence seeming has receded, to a faint whisper.
At times, the use of a certain ambiguity, is intentional as to whether I am speaking of Christ’s first coming, or Christ’s Second Coming, or both. The “interchangeability” of events, assists in making their many points in common, apparent.

And lastly the principal that the nature of the human being is spiritual, not animal, and not material, is bolstered. The possibilities for eternal growth are unending, the pathway is broad, and welcoming, forgiving and inclusive, and, please God, always beneath our feet.

Glory, Sovereignty and Dominion

The Glory, Sovereignty and Dominion of Jesus Christ is all encompassing, eternal, and heavenly, not of this world, Divinely Ordained, has ever been and shall ever be complete, has never been added to or subtracted from, is unchanging, is spiritual in nature and has neither beginning nor end. The Alpha and the Omega, His Power is the Power of God, regardless of the earthly conditions He permitted during His earthly sojourn when, to outward seeming, He meekly passed through this world, allowing Himself to be subjected to the will and blind cruelty of the least of men. This meekness and His human qualities was as an obscuring veil, a cloud, causing the faith of many to falter, while the faith of others rose from their graves of oblivion and forgetfulness, to see the Lord of heaven, seated on His invisible, heavenly throne of glory.

His Glory, Sovereignty, and Dominion are as manifest as the sun to His true, His reawakened lovers and honored servants. These, mostly unlearned, in the time of Christ, knew little of the Old Testament. When they beheld Him and heard His Word, they beheld God and heard His Word and that was enough for them. In accordance with their spiritual capacity, they saw and felt in His Presence the Paradise of the Kingdom. For the pure in heart, possessing a seeing eye and a hearing ear, His Manifestation alone was sufficient to enable them to perceive His Nature, to accept His claims and bow down before Him in a certitude that nothing could alter. For them Christ was the Sovereign of the Kingdom of eternity come down from Heaven and the Lord of their hearts and souls.

According to worldly standards and appearances, when viewed with material eyes only, Christ was meek and helpless, defeated and humiliated by His enemies, a mischief maker, a rebel, a disruptor of social and religious order, suffered from megalomania, was under satanic influence, and through His misinterpretations, He corrupted The Book of God, and finally suffered a disgraceful and useless martyrdom. In reality, He was the embodiment of all of God’s attributes, His Power and Authority, His Vicegerency on earth, the perfect Mirror reflecting flawlessly the Image and all the Qualities of God. He counted the earth of little value, taught that it contained no lasting glory, happiness, or fulfillment, and He demonstrated this by His life, His Word, His Revelation, His suffering, and finally by His crucifixion.

He was Salvation, in His own Words; ‘I am the resurrection’, the Savior of every true seeker, every repentant soul, a salve to every grieving heart, the real Guide and Educator of men, the Vessel for, and Conferrer of, the Holy Spirit, the Redeemer of our souls and the Forgiver of our sins. He was All Powerful and possessed innate knowledge. He was Christ, the Anointed One, the Son of God. A Sonship that, being purely spiritual, was exalted far above this contingent world and devoid of the limitations of material existence. He was a perfect Lamp, whose crystal was flawless and completely free of the dust and dross of the world, aglow with the Light of God, a Lamp ablaze with the fire of the Love of God, to a degree and intensity that no man can attain and is bestowed directly by God. He is pure Spirit in the noble form of the human Temple and in Spirit we worship Him. Through Him, if our hearts be pure and our eyes open, we learn of the Father. In all His Words, His voice, His features, even in His every gesture, those with the spiritual capacity, the “eyes to see with”, see the almighty signs of God. For he that has “eyes to see with”, not just material eyes, but spiritual sight and insight, the reality of Christ is plain to see.

Christ was the Sun of Truth breaking over the horizons of the world on the Day of a new Revelation, a new Dispensation of God, and a new Religion. He had “cloven asunder’, in its entirety, the whole of the Jewish Dispensation. A new era was born. All created things, every people, stirred with a new potential, though they knew not its Source. Christ was the Word of God made flesh and in His Book, the New Testament, the Holy Spirit breathed. No words can adequately depict Him.

The Presence of God and Resurrection

The Presence of Christ is synonymous with the “Presence of God” and is the highest attainment in this world or the next. It is entry into the Kingdom. Christ is the only source of that presence in the world and in that presence is salvation. He is ‘the way, the truth and the light’. Christ Himself, brings to life the spiritually dead. He is the rise of God Himself, through His all-embracing Revelation. The presence of Christ, is resurrection, rebirth, and rising from the grave of self. Even as Christ said; ‘I am the resurrection’. No resurrection is greater than this Resurrection, nor can one ever be conceived. How paltry, by comparison, is that physical raising of the dead from a dusty grave! Many are the verses whose literal significance cannot compare to the beauty, depth and veracity, the traces of the Holy Spirit itself, exhibited by their inner spiritual meanings.

Christ is like the sun. He ignites the love of God within, making of us lighted candles shinning with His very own light. But this is a mere allegory and symbolic. The realty is beyond speech to articulate, or mind to conceive! Yet that Light, the Light of God, is one. It cannot be divided, nor can its depth or breadth be plumbed; beyond all things material, it is pure spirit. In this sense God created us in His image and our potential, though seemingly well hidden, is immense. Resurrection is the entrance of our souls into the Kingdom of God, the spiritual state of our soul’s illumination and has nothing do to with our material bodies. Attainment to this understanding is fundamental. Would that this was the meaning of fundamentalism. When this world reflects His Light, and our hearts contain that love, this nether world will be a reflection of that Kingdom.

These heavenly reflections gradually become apparent in this world as we fulfill our first obligation; recognition of Him and obedience to His pleasure. It makes no sense that our bodies would be reconstituted for the purpose of resurrection. For He is Spirit and we worship Him in spirit and we ourselves are spiritual beings, not material beings. Even though we are born and grow and live for a few years on this earth, in the final analysis, this earth, this dust heap, is just the repository for our own dust, our tomb.

While waiting for worldly, outwardly physical displays, as signs of His Return, that may never happen exactly as expected or according to our own desires, and by making of such signs a Divine standard by which to judge the truth, to judge Christ Himself on His Return, we may be blinding ourselves, even as the Jews have blinded themselves, by seeking the physical fulfillment of signs, to the extent that we too may fail to ever recognized Him. This is motivation enough, for us to meticulously scrutinize, our own heart and its motivations, and to so purify our minds and our hearts, that never, ever, could such a fate befall us; that is to judge Him on His return by signs which in many cases cannot be understood until He does return. The wayward, unknowingly swayed by superstitions and a sense of their own infallibility, pursue their own vain designs, their own vision, and consider no other options as viable. This is a bunker like isolation of ignorance in which many have entrenched themselves and in tragic irony, may deprive themselves of that salvation which, for so long, they have prided themselves in having attained. Yet I do not believe, these ignorant ones, who have lead an upright and dedicated life in accordance the spiritual values revealed by our Lord, would not experience the mercy and bounty of a loving God and that only those directly responsible for the maltreatment of Christ would suffer God’s wrath. We are allowed opinion and free expression, only so long as it does not contradict that which has been revealed. Amiable presentation of differing opinions can cause the discovery of the spark of truth. Contention and strife however, are forbidden. At all times we must recall the oneness of the Light and its single Origin, God, and that He, being the Origin of our own true selves, wishes for our complete harmony of conduct and thought.

The prophesies of His return are given to us in order to test us, while at the same time helping us to recognize Him. It follows, then to try our utmost to understand the diverse meanings of these prophesies and not pass our days in idleness and waiting for this or that particular sign. The command is to watch... not to wait. Let us then, prayerfully and in all humility explore deeply and contemplate dispassionately this greatest of all themes. If we fail to apprehend the meaning of "Resurrection" and "attainment unto the divine Presence," are we not then utterly depriving ourselves of their blessings?

Truth is one and indivisible, and is therefore supremely unifying and healing. The miracle of Resurrection is the reality of Christ and is ‘the only way’ to God. Resurrection as described in the Bible is not intended to show us as material beings, that our material bodies will not permanently disintegrate at death, or that God’s Kingdom is made up of material things, just as this world is, and not to indicate a physical, material plane of existence awaits us “some where up there” upon our death. It is clear that after life on this earth, the material body serves no other material purpose outside of disintegration and re-entry into the elemental chain of mineral, vegetable, and animal. Universal laws of science are God’s laws too.

The Law of Separation and Distinction

Interpretation of verses in a literal vs. a symbolic manner, causes an outstanding distinction to become apparent between the simplistic and the subtle, the superficial and the profound, the materialistic and spiritual, the sophomoric and the mature, the reflexive and the thoughtful, a belief based on blind faith and a belief based on assessable reason. These distinctions, becoming apparent upon meditation, with intellect, justice, and wisdom often indicates to the impartial and sincere observer where the truth lays. Justice and wisdom can never be resisted or defeated and must sooner or later be discovered and cleave asunder the veils of darkness and superstition.

“You will know them by their fruits,” would He suggest we are to make judgments relative to their fruits and that we have this ability and the responsibility to do so. We will know with absolute accuracy when He returns by His embodiment of the Holy Spirit, the sweetest fruit of all. Then we will know for sure it is Him, for we have the ability to recognize that Spirit. It is certain we have these abilities and this responsibility. Otherwise how could we have recognized Christ? Otherwise how could we be held responsible if we were to deny Him? ‘Know verily that the purpose underlying all these symbols, terms and abstruse allusions, which emanate from the Revealers of God’s holy Cause hath been to test and prove the peoples of the world that thereby the earth of the pure and illuminated hearts may be known from the barren soil and stone. From time immemorial, such has been the way of God amidst His creatures and to this testify the records of all the sacred books. Such things take place only that the souls of men may develop and be delivered from the prison-cage of self and desire’.

‘Yea such things throw consternation into the hearts of all men only that each soul may be tested by the touchstone of God, that the truth may be known and distinguished from the false.’ The reason Christ appeared among men, destitute of all the trappings of earthly dominion, and without the means of worldly ascendancy apparent, is attributed to ‘the principle of separation and distinction which animates the Divine Purpose’. It is the Lord’s wish that we distinguish ourselves by our love; that which we demonstrate by deed, and prove. This act, this deed, this proof, this love, this obedience is recognition of Him, obedience in its truest, most basic form. Love demonstrated by the test of fealty, fidelity, faithfulness. Our ability to recognize and then obey Him, is in turn determined by our detachment from the world and all it contains; its things, its notions, its man-made standards and fallacies, and its superstitions. Our obedience to Him is identical to our recognition of Him and is His measure of our love for Him. The distinction and separation between the true and the fake, the lover and the disobedient, the tyrant and the just, the mythical and the actual, the superstitious and the factual, the good and the evil, the faithful and the fickle, the worldly and the heavenly, the material and the spiritual, that which cuts through the clouds of all division and separateness, of time, place, name, attire and appearance, reveals the merits of the true believer, as opposed to those who ‘turn on their heels like a frightened donkey fleeing from a lion’.

Jewish ecclesiastics make an issue of Christ’s lack of worldliness and earthly power and authority, His noncompliance to accepted scriptural standards, interpretations, and the traditions born by generations. But all these pretexts are based on the literal interpretation of the Book of Moses, instead on the inner spiritual realities they represent. Christ possesses sovereignty, but it is of an eternal, heavenly quality, not the earthly sovereignty they expected, according to the literal reading of the Book. His is not an earthy empire. His is divine, heavenly, and everlasting. He conquers not by the sword. His conquests are by Love and His sword is His Word, which divides truth from falsehood, separates His sheep from the goats. But they preferred their own understanding and rejected these as “mere interpretations” and persisted in rejecting Him. 'These are mere interpretations,' they said. 'We will not give up the letter for these.' They chose their superstitions; literal, blindly accepted interpretations, over Christ. How very sad.

Unable to understand that there is no merit in acknowledgement of the Christ Spirit based on earthly qualities or miracles, they failed the test of fealty. God tests and proves the hearts of His servants by offering each the freedom of cognitive choice, that they may achieve the merit and blessings of distinguishing themselves from those who merely follow by rote or imitation. By disguising His true nature in a human impersonation, devoid of any visible earthly power, He insures that spiritual prerequisites of belief be met, not earthly ones.

“In as much as the divine Purpose hath decreed that the true should be known from the fake and the sun from the shadow, He hath, therefore, in every season sent down upon mankind the showers of tests from His realm of glory.” As He saith; “But for the tribulations which are sustained in Thy path, how could Thy true lovers be recognized and were it not for the trials which are borne for love of Thee, how could the station of such as yearn for Thee be revealed?” In this Day the tests of change will, necessarily be the most severe and varied ever encountered.
“For everything there is a sign. The sign of love is fortitude under My decree and patience under My trials.”

Denial

There will come a time when the meaning of the symbols and proverbs will be clearly revealed and the books “unsealed” as promised in John 16:25, where Christ promises to address us with clear proofs and evidences; ‘These things have I spoken unto you in proverbs: but the time cometh, when I shall no more speak unto you in proverbs, but I shall shew you plainly of the Father’. This will actually occur, and when it does, it will be very difficult for many to let go of their present ideas, to get past their own preconceptions to the point of being able to even consider, the fulfillment of this promise, much less believe in Him who fulfills it.

The “end time” will come and we are to “watch”. The world as we know it will come to an end. So what if the earth changes, we can roll with that, but our beliefs changing(?) that would be a new heaven and a new earth! Yet this too is another fulfillment of prophesy, in its inner spiritual truth, spoken in proverb 2,000 years ago. Christ Himself, again speaks to us, in symbolic terms appropriate to the time; ‘Other sheep I have, which are not of this fold: them also I must bring, and they shall hear my voice; and there shall be one fold, and one shepherd.” “And thou shalt be called by a new name, which the mouth of the LORD shall name.”

In Christ’s time people could not conceive of such a Divine, world encompassing, unity. Such a reality was beyond their capabilities. Most thought the world was flat and had no concept of other cultures or civilizations across vast mountains and oceans. Therefore Christ had to speak of such advanced subjects as His return and the Kingdom of God on earth, as to children, in proverbs, which many Christians still cling to as literal, and ignore the spirit of the Word and consider the literal as the fundamental, unmitigated truth, aligned and perpetuated by the perceptions of an obsolete and backward clergy. To make any sense at all, Christ had to, in particular instances, speak in proverb. We are not “at the ready” in watchfulness for this ‘plain speaking’ that was clearly foretold. ‘Behold, ye despisers, and wonder, and perish: for I work a work in your days, a work which ye shall in no wise believe, though a man declare it unto you.’ Meanwhile the peoples of the world are gravely ill, consumed by the plague of seemingly irreparable differences and intransigent beliefs and the loss of moral and spiritual cohesion. They are well and truly trapped in the prison cage of self. This illness in the world spreads, its fever rises, while unskilled practitioners, the ecclesiastics and politicians, are given a free hand and the Divine Physician is barred at the door.

‘Judge nothing before the time, until the Lord come, who...will bring light to the hidden things of darkness.’ So, when the time comes, we will have to make judgments. Will we will be able to recognize His ‘plain speaking’ and its Source, He who ‘shall teach you all things’ ‘and bring all things to your remembrance, whatsoever I have said unto you.’ We will have to make judgments when Christ returns, as is clearly indicated by Him, as in ‘Judge nothing before its time...’ when, by His Words He will establish new laws and annul others, especially those established and maintained by an archaic and backward looking priesthood. This is exactly what happened upon Christ’s first coming.

It follows then, that our own personal power of perception will be more important than our physical eyes or ears. As Billy Graham said, ‘When we received Christ, we didn’t touch Him with our fingers, or see Him with our natural eyes, or hear Him with our ears.’ How many millions of Christians today, ever saw Him? Without question, God has given man the capacity to see Him, and to hear His voice, to be touched by Him, to judge Him from afar, so to speak, to “see” what has been sent down from God, to see the Revelation of God, to see Jesus Christ, that He is the rise of God Himself, and His Word is the Revelation of God Himself, without the use of our earthly eyes or ears! In the light of such profound truths, who can sit idly by and in expectation and wonder; “Why hasn’t this sign or that sign appeared?”

What other sign does the sun require but its own light? Yet the essence of the sun is unknown; it is understood by its qualities of heat and light. Those who are awake, those in who’s hearts the fire of the love of God still burns, what need have they for further signs or miracles to see, hear, or recognize Christ, other than Christ Himself? No disguise can Hide Him, no ”new name” will deceive or deter us, no place of origin or birth, no appointment in time, no questionable lineage, no physical distance, no new or unexpected evaluation of scripture, will keep us from fulfilling our assigned task ‘to watch’, to fulfill our responsibility to recognize and to see with those heavenly spiritual eyes of inner perception, that can “see” the Holy Spirit, that Divine standard of understanding, the nature of that “fruit”. The Jews failed because, though possessed of earthly eyes and sight, they still could not see that light, or recognize that Lamp or see its shinning in this new Mirror. When the Spirit of Truth presents itself, accept it, don’t fear it. This is how the Jews doomed themselves. Can I love you and not tell you the truth?

Because the old perspectives have had such a long and wide spread support is no proof of truth. This preclusion of truth has caused most to become over confident, to develop an almost cocky sense of infallibility, in their judgment of this most challenging and surprising issue. Many have set aside humility and forgotten, that fear of God is a healthy respect and awareness for His Authority, His precedence and preference for change, when a new Dispensation is inaugurated and have become complacent, even sanctimonious. “Watching” does not mean to go outside and look around. A serious, humble and prayerful approach, is essential, ardor is needed, dedication is needed, if we would dispel the clouds surrounding this issue. With the gift of the rational faculty comes the duty to weigh fairly what is presented to you.

Remember Noah. The Bible clearly states that God actually broke His promises to Noah, openly, and repeatedly. I am not asking you to look for broken promises, but neither was Noah. He said look for the Spirit. God then, could blatantly break His promise as a specific method of testing the faithful. Certainly then, He could well veil His meaning in proverb and similitude, in order to protect us from that which we were not ready, and test our faithfulness, the quality of our belief in Him, when the time for “plain spoken” words, explanations, has arrived.

If He did lie for Noah, as stated in the Bible, and warned us that He would ‘come as the coming of a thief in the night’, then we must be watchful indeed for tumultuous changes are bound to be coming our way. It is not that God is tricky. It is that He is subtle, a Master at dividing the genuine believer from the “fair weather friend” among His servants, the strong from the weak, the pure from the corrupted, and to separate the robust from the weakling, as in Matthew; ‘He judges the people of earth and separates them one from another, as a shepherd divides his sheep from the goats.’

Watch and pray and trust the Holy Spirit within you, do not become attached to any “minds eye view” of future events, or the hearts own over attachment to its loves. Like any Judge deciding a verdict, hold high and fast the standard of Justice above all. Like an investigator, be relentlessly thorough, follow every lead, no matter how unlikely, to its ultimate and final conclusion, less the innocent be found guilty or the guilty be exonerated or a single impurity, remaining hidden in our own hearts, deflects us from our life’s purpose.

When news of the light of New Revelation reached the ears of the Jewish religious leaders, being utterly blinded by tradition and in pure imitation of their forefathers, they said; “What light?”, by the Book, “He is clearly an imposture”! These false and venal men held only to outward symbols and disregarded the inner spiritual reality of those terms referring to Christ and refused to seriously consider them for a moment. ‘Their hearts seem not to be inclined to knowledge and in the manifestation of the Revealer of Knowledge they find naught but the call to self-sacrifice’.
So let us be duly warned and extremely cautious, for we, ourselves are holding fast to the same standards as the Jewish leaders did, the standards of literal interpretation concerning the signs of His coming. This ominous neglect and shallowness on our part is more frightening than the specter of any earthly catastrophe, because this effects the fate of our souls, a fate we choose ourselves, being as however much we wish to offer up to Christ our lives and its affairs, in our most ardent prayers, free will has not ceased to operate within the choices we make, we all fall short of the Glory of God, and however devoted, have not yet attained, in ourselves, or our judgments, the state of blessed perfection. Rely upon God, thy God only, but apply with justice the intellect He blessed us with.

When Jesus Christ returns and fulfills the promise to ‘speak plainly of the Father’ what then will be the clerics complaint of Him? No doubt they will say, “He has usurped the Authority of God! He has desecrated and has sought to alter the sacred texts, to assume leadership of the true Faith and even claims all the world must turn to and obey Him! He bewitches all who meet Him, is possessed of a demon, and by the beguiling sweetness of His voice, or satanic powers, while artfully quoting our own Holy Book, He silenced and discredited us completely, He is worthy of punishment, banishment, death!” We have heard all this before. When we hear it again, watch closely, least we miss Him as the Jews did, when He came and was crucified as a criminal, then was gone, and they never knew Him. Though to the spiritually awake He never left us and will never die.

A man that receives such condemnation from a spiritually bankrupt priesthood deserves, indeed, our closest attention, for such has been the treatment of Jesus at His first coming. The fundamentalists of the Jewish dispensation have made spiritual truth subordinate to the letter and then put forth the letter as a criterion for belief. Does this, my Christian brethren, sound familiar? For this is the position of Christian priests and ministers today and of our own selves, How can we, if we use these same methods and standards of literal understanding as did Sanhedrin 2000 years ago, maintain any credibility within ourselves, or project it to the world? How then could we allow our own clergy, to determine the Messiah-ship of Christ on His return, using the same measures as did the Jews to determine the Messiah-ship of Christ, to trust them to interpret Biblical prophesies that have both inward and outward meanings? If we don’t think for ourselves, how can we avoid their fate? Sadly, in these days of horror, our “leaders” are following in the way of the Jews, are steeped in self and fear the sacrifice of earthly their vanities. They render themselves susceptible to “the evil whisperer that whispers in men’s breasts”, as they cower in the light of inquiry. They are hopelessly prejudiced, and for them justice is an empty letter. They have brought ruin on their people, suppressed the truth, and oppressed their followers. The drama and tragedy of aforetime has reemerged and is being reenacted before our faces, with the same gross misinterpretation of God’s Word, this time applied to Christ’s second coming, the prayed for Advent, dear to every true Christian’s heart. They have trampled beneath their feet, the foundations of fairness and knowledge. The heaven of understanding has been cleft asunder, the stars of guidance have fallen to the earth. The priesthood, once beacons of guidance, have lead the people in manifesting the ‘oppression of those days’; that suppression of the truth said to accompany His return. If the sincere would read, in open and deep contemplation, the Words of Him whom they have prejudged, mayhap they would see the Source therein, plainly and unequivocally. But lust for power and greed, unbalance and subdue the rational faculty of men, who seek leadership and accolades of other men, until they cannot distinguish what is in their our best interest, and in the processes lead many astray. Would that people would but dispassionately, and prayerfully peruse that which as been revealed, to assume this responsibility as a matter of life and death, instead of taking so much for granted.
If Christ, at any time, was to state that heaven is not up in the sky, that bodies once dead begin a molecular disintegration and revert to their constituent elements, to reenter the life cycle in myriad forms, a process that is not reversible, by God’s natural law, and declare certain verses symbolic, would we have the courage, perseverance and constancy to inquire justly and dispassionately and not reject Him outright? Would we still hold to the earthly, though time honored way of viewing these verses? Are we prepared for a change of such dimension, contrary to our expectations, yet entirely possible? If not, if we are caught off guard, bewildered in surprise, of what use then the theological colleges and universities or the man made titles of reverence or holiness, the years spend in acquiring knowledge and study the Holy Words of the Bible? Independent investigation of truth is best, independent that is, from all save God.

The spiritually sick would respond to such a question and all such questions in this manner; If Christ were to declare these things we would believe them, but, being as Christ would never, could never say them, we therefore reject them and the one who says them as confused at best, and Satanic at worst, and prefer instead to cling to that which those before us have clung. These believe God’s hands are tied.

“In as much as the people of the world have failed to seek the inner meaning of God’s holy words, they languish in their notions, reaching conclusions without adequate basis. “Having weighed the testimony of Christ by the standards of their own knowledge, and finding them at variance with their limited understanding, they all arose to perpetrate such unseemly acts against Him.”

The Clouds Of Heaven

“Consider how men for generations have been blithely following their forebears, and have been trained according to such ways and manners as have been laid down by the dictates of their Faith. Were these men, therefore, to discover suddenly that a Man, Who hath been living in their midst, Who, with respect to every human limitation, hath been their equal, had risen to abolish every established principle imposed by their Faith – principles by which for centuries they have been disciplined, and every opposer and denier of which they have come to regard as infidel, profligate and wicked, – they would of a certainty be veiled and hindered from acknowledging His truth. Such things are as "clouds" that veil the eyes of those whose inner being hath not tasted the life giving waters of detachment, nor drunk from the pure springs of the knowledge of God. Such men, when acquainted with these circumstances, become so veiled that without the least question, they pronounce the Manifestation of God an infidel, and sentence Him to death. You must have heard of such things taking place all down the ages, and are now observing them in these days.” Do not expect such observations from the “leaders” of religion. Investigate solely on your own. God has vested in you all that is necessary to recognize Him and His Holy Spirit.

Had the clergy and their followers understood the symbolic references, such as “clouds”, in the Bible, and considered the spiritual reality which they held within them, portrayed, they would assess their inner meaning as far superior, by any measure, than any other conception that could ever be discovered, imagined, or put into words. This is a mighty indication of their veracity. Some spiritual truths can be expressed in language, some can be alluded to only symbolically. Still more are there that can never be alluded to, however faintly, in word, letter, or symbol on this contingent and material plane.

‘No two minds are alike, no two can comprehend alike, no two can speak alike. That is to say, from the mere human standpoint of interpretation there could be neither truth nor agreement. The only true Explainer of the Book of God is the Holy Spirit.’ The challenge is not in figuring out the meanings of every prophecy in the Bible. The challenge is recognition of the Holy Spirit. Therefore however inadequate we may feel, however poor we feel our qualifications, we have the capacity, the ability, even the responsibility, to understand the verses of God, free of prejudice, independent of all that has been. The goal, however allusive, is to have no other attachment then to God...to the truth. It is my belief that when this Holy Spirit is discovered within any verse, it becomes like a magnet that attracts the hearts, causing a unity of agreement where no further proof is needed. This is the mystic power of that Spirit and its wisdom and cannot be denied, over ridden, explained away, rejected or killed, except in contrarian and reasonless minds, in hearts hardened to indifference by prejudice, and personal, learned preferences, usually accepted blindly, bereft of any awareness of the necessity for the application of equity.

Would it not be reasonable to consider the possibility that “Clouds of Heaven” not only has another meaning, but a multitude of other meanings? Could one meaning of the ‘Clouds of Heaven’ be that which is hidden within in God’s Word through parable and symbol? Is it possible that the signs of His return were purposely written in symbolic form, with inner spiritual meaning, because their actual meaning would reveal too much, too soon, and would reveal it to those who do not deserve to know them? These symbolic verses are like sifters of men, separating the sincere from the false.

Also, could it not be possible that belief in the literal interpretation, taking a verse at face value, may amount to blind acceptance, creating a veil, a decoy, a cloud, meant to separate the pure hearted soul from those hearts still attached to the world of clay, especially if it will be at odds with the newly declared, “plain spoken” enunciated by Christ when He returns, thereby causing people to reject Christ on His return because they prefer the old and wrong view to their true meaning? These would be clouds in deed.

Surely, if in the symbolic or metaphoric form of interpretation, we can actually find the Holy Spirit, the validity of such an interpretation becomes self evident and proven. Belief in the Bible as the Word of God and our fundamental faithfulness to God, certainly cannot reasonably be conditioned upon taking everything in it as literally true. We must seek out in His teachings, the Holy Spirit, the Revelation of God Himself. The only limitation to do exactly this is our own purity of heart and our greater attachment to that Light of God, then the Lamp of God, which was created to bear that Light, by Whose aid, we distinguish truth from error. On the other hand should that Lamp proclaim “I am God and all must bow down to me”, this would also would be true, for in that Lamp are manifested all the qualities and attributes of God. The distinction is important because there is more than one Lamp that God has sent. The elevation of one Lamp above another would be incongruous to the truth, for of those Lamps shown with the identical Light. Any variation in that light was due to the capacity of God’s servants, and needs at the time of its Revelation and have no bearing to that power or those potentialities of the Light itself. Also there is only one God and therefore no spiritual distinction should be made between those Lamps, those bearers of His Light. The oneness of God, the oneness of mankind, and the oneness of His Revelation has ever been Their nature and Their essential, fundamental and indispensable theme. The theme of the Oneness of God and His Revelation is inexhaustible cannot be fittingly discussed without tiring the reader and using more ink than the world can supply. This Presence, the Christ, the Anointed One of God, is that Harbinger of God’s Revelation, the Holy Spirit and a new Dispensation. Could the actual interpretation ‘Clouds of Heaven’ simply mean His Heavenly Glory, Sovereignty and Dominion – His Divine Power and Authority, His absolute Heavenly perfection, that is the substance of that anointment with which God anointed a lowly carpenter, and raised Him up as the King of Heaven? In this interpretation, can you detect the Holy Spirit and perceive the Divine Motive? If Christ returned with the literal, material accouterments of ‘Clouds of Heaven’ surrounded by angles, to the sound of a mighty trumpet blast, how exactly would that improve on or further demonstrate or elucidate the Glory of His Presence alone? It would not. It could not. No earthly object could. In literal acceptance only, which is fiercely superficial, there is no need for a deeper understanding, no opportunity to extend the time horizon of understanding. Blind faith acceptance and fanaticism would replace comprehension, growth would instead be stifled, and the spirit stagnate under literal domination. In the spiritual metaphor, simile and proverb we rise up to a new, more inspiring, more accurate, higher level of understanding and appreciation of God and Christ. Further more, an enlightened treatment of these verses would require that we, of our own choice, see in the context of the Holy Spirit, the only context that is real, a choice that alone would bring a merit of its own. If we cannot do this, and accept prophetic verses of Christ’s return literally, when they have an intended, inner, spiritual meaning, how will we recognize Christ on His return? And if we deny Christ on His return of what merit would be our belief in Him, our work in His vineyard, up to that point? We have allot to lose and much is at stake. In parable form, if we spent our life working in a vineyard and then one day the owner returned to His vineyard to reward his faithful laborers and those laborers refused to acknowledge His ownership of that vineyard, denied him, and threw him out, of what account would be given to our labors, what payment, what gratitude, what relationship, would ever be ours?

The trumpet blast, may also mean many different things. The Trumpet Blast is His Word, His Proclamation; Here am I, Here am I !!! What trumpet blast could rival this trumpet blast? All created things would vibrate with its influence. Its Holiness and Almighty Power, would revolutionize spiritual life, regenerate all things, awaken every pure heart and spiritually aware believer in God, and would in an instant, revolutionize the ways, the thinking, the creativity, and the destiny of mankind for uncounted centuries––so potent is His Word, that “Here am I. Here am I.” trumpet blast, that expression of the Divine Will, the creator and destroyer of the universe!

The angels that will surround Him upon His Return, in those same ‘Clouds of Heaven’, are those souls who, rise up from the tombs vain imaginings, above all earthly limitations, rising like unto birds, released from their cages, as though freed from the bodies of a material existence, to be reunited with Christ: a reunion that is everlasting and is synonymous with their recognition of Him. He came from heaven the first time He came, though He was born of the Virgin Mary. And so He may well come again from heaven, in this humility, this humanness, surrounded by God’s Glory, those “the clouds of heaven”. So why then, the absolute belief in His return from a material “heaven”, the vacuum of space or another material location, in a material universe, riding physical clouds of water vapor? All limitations are earthly, while the Holy Spirit is of God, and is universal.

“What! Say these, scribes and Pharisees, these are but interpretations. For them we will not give up the letter.”
As Billy Graham said it, in His ‘On the Beach’ sermon in Melbourne Australia, ‘When we received Christ we did not see Him with our natural eyes, we did not touch Him with our fingers, we did not hear Him with our ears’. He is Spirit and we worship Him in Spirit. What need then for earthly pomp and circumstance? If we wish to see overt material displays of His material, earthly power, the grandeur of the universe is sufficient, the least atom of which, is beyond our comprehension, all of which would not have been created but for Him.

It is spiritually vacuous to consider such insights as mere interpretations, and then to prefer the literal letter to the heavenly reality. It is also short sighted to think that because something needs to be interpreted or that spiritual perception is required to be understood, that the literal is then some sort of scriptural error or by using such insight, we add to, subtract from, or change the Bible. God’s will is never lax, His work pure perfection, and includes His Holy Book. Prophetic, historic, or advisory, His verses are written by design for our own edification, growth, His prophesies testing us, challenging us, to accept Him for who He is, in His new attire.

The main stream of “Christians” generally refuse to define watchfulness in terms of investigation. On the contrary they consider the need for investigation an automatic proof of fraud. They say, “Why investigate? We will know instantly,” therefore anything requiring investigation is automatically fraudulent, for “the Return is something that could not be missed!?” The Old Testament has 333 prophesies concerning Christ’s first coming. Yet all the leaders got it wrong. They misunderstood the conditions of His arrival and what He was coming to do. Could we also fail to see His second coming? ‘Be on guard! Be alert!... watch... do not let him find you sleeping. What I say to you, I say to everyone: “Watch!”’ – Christ (Mark 13:33-37 NIV).

How vain are we. How different are the ways of God from that which men imagine. Christians today seem of have forgotten the admonition to ‘Watch’. They see in His coming ‘as the coming of a thief in the night’, only the warning that we know not the hour He will come. Might not there be numerous and deeper meanings to that grave warning? It also implies spiritual diligence far beyond a simple passive watching, that He may come in a manner that is unexpected. It implies and inner watchfulness, a great spiritual readiness, preparation and wariness, in all its implications. But because this does not fit in with our other preconceptions, we are lax in our duties. Our attitude is like that of the Pharisees, who thought the Messiah would come in a way that could not possibly be missed. Will we also wait, as the Jews are still waiting? The Jews, Christian and Muslims all await Christ’s return. All Religions expect the literal, fanciful mode of fulfillment of prophesies concerning the coming of the “Promised One” of all mankind. All share the belief He will descend from heaven, all expect confirmation, not nullification, of all they believe, all expect their faith to be “the last Religion to be revealed before “their own” Lord returns. Christ came in palpable clouds of heavenly glory when He came the first time. This has been God’s method from the beginning and will continue the same to the end that has no end. God does not Manifest Himself in accordance with our own fantasies. More than a passive watchfulness is required. To be waiting and wishing is not watching.

If watchfulness is required, the implication is that we may miss His return. “Test the Spirits to see whether they are from God” (I John 4:1 NIV). “To them who look for him shall He appear the second time” (Heb. 9:28). Is it possible the world has already missed His return? Could He have come and gone without our being aware of it? For many centuries most people were unaware of Christ’s first coming. Such is “the coming, as the coming of a thief in the night”. He comes and is gone before we know it.

Yet at the same time He is prophesied to come with great heavenly displays and trumpet blasts declaring the event. Is this how a thief comes, with trumpets blowing? Further more, if He wished to manifest a grand heavenly display, all He needs to do is be here and if we met Him, that alone would be enough to resurrect our souls. Christ said as much! He said; “I am the Resurrection”! Why intimidate the world with a superfluous show of earthly power, so uncharacteristic of Him, so unworthy of Him? Does a thief come in this way? What sign could be greater than His appearance itself? Christ vanquished His enemies and conquered the world, while they were torturing His body! Many people were blind and missed it all. They were blind to His Glory and to them He did come as a thief in the night. He kept His greatest heavenly qualities veiled from the worldly. Only those “who had eyes to see with” recognized Him and saw His Glory. How mysterious, how far are God’s ways, from that which we imagine!
All the discoveries of science, art, and literature, inspiration, and love for God proceed from one Source; Jesus Christ Himself, whenever, wherever, however He appears, under what ever Name He chooses. “He shall save the humble person,” Job 22:29. He guides the humble and teaches them His way. (Psalms 25:4-5,9 NIV). But this too requires eyes of the spirit where with we can see, and ears where with we can hear, those same eyes and ears with which we saw Christ as He received us and as we received of Him our own eternal salvation, the Holy Spirit, within our hearts! ‘Our heart is His home; sanctify it for His descent. Our spirit is the place of His revelation; cleanse it for His manifestation.’

Other “Clouds” are there besides these, and though they are said to block the acceptance of Christ, in really they are beautiful signs of purity and light, full of the waters of life, just like real clouds, and are signs of the Most Great Jubilee of the Promised Day, both on His first coming and His second. Among the clergy these many clouds mean something very different; the loss of leadership positions, material income, personal prestige, and power. Where once they were leading authorities, having studied years for their ordination, now they find themselves humble students once again. Of what need or purpose would the clergy possibly fill if Christ returns now, except to alert their congregations? History shows us clergy would be the last place to look for such guidance in recognizing Christ’s return. Further more we can all read and investigate for ourselves now. Education is now nearly world wide. The time for clergy may well have passed altogether. Now we are all “learned”. The clergy, the guardians and leaders of their respective sects, spoiled by name, fame, and man made titles of reverence, pomp and wealth, bolstered by years of indoctrination and so called learning, were the first to resist Him, and call Christ a fraud, often the leading figures in the denial and or persecution of God’s Chosen Ones. Having the most to loose, they had the most to overcome, and very few did. Ego is another “cloud”, hiding Him from the egocentric, those attached to the world, who are immersed in self, totally exposed, and never know it. This too is one meaning for “the stars falling from heaven”.

Effort and diligence is required, to over come, to see through our own egos, to even consider the possibility that His coming could be so natural, so subtle. We expect the instant gratification of being physically raptured. We expect the gratification of seeing all our hopes fulfilled and our enemies vanquished, instantly, before our eyes. Yet so timid are we, that we fear understanding, seeing in it to much personal sacrifice. Now we are told He could come and be gone, without our knowledge, “like a thief in the night!” and by this knowledge, our chief response is to be offended! “Then came his disciples, and said unto him, Knowest thou that the Pharisees were offended, after they heard this saying? Let them alone: they be blind leaders of the blind. And if the blind lead the blind, both shall fall into the ditch.” Matthew 15:12-15

He is the Kingdom of God, just as He is the Resurrection, just as He is the presence of God itself. If we turn away from Him, what then have our hands wrought and to whom in heaven or earth shall we turn? Watch therefore. Look carefully. Test everything for the Spirit.

He said He will come with a new name, He won’t be called Jesus anymore. Though He still will be, in the most real sense, The Anointed One, the Christ, He will have a new name, and be that same Sun filling a new Lamp, with the same Light. We do so love the name Jesus Christ! We were told His Word shall never pass away, but His name will and He obviously does change and nullify His own Words and Laws with every Dispensation, every new Revelation. The new name, His Word spoken anew, that same Spirit in another human temple, these are many wondrous and Glorious clouds as well as the “clouds” that will block our view of Him, if we are not carefully “testing the spirit” and “watching”. We believe God can’t do that, yet, at the same time, all these changes are the very Heavenly Clouds of Glory upon which He will return.

Catastrophe and Victory

What greater catastrophe can be imagined that on His second coming He be persecuted and suffer again, to an even greater extent than before? The spread and establishment of the Dispensation of the Kingdom of God on earth, may take some years, even centuries, to be established and would require the gathering of all God’s sheep into one flock, with Christ as the One Sheppard. This may take time and develop gradually, by the subtle, invisible hand of God, and by the work of those very visible angels of His, that can hear His Trumpet Blast and most certainly means the eventual unity of all peoples of the world in one universal Faith. To those who actually see this Revelation, however, it won’t seem so subtle, but instead, as evident as the sun, at noon, on a clear day, and the cause of the greatest joy. Long before His Kingdom is fully established in this world, its principals accepted and a perfect level of peace and unity among the hearts is achieved, humanity will suffer because of their negligence and denial of Him. In fact, every affliction that harasses humanity and its tranquility can be directly traced to the rejection of God’s Holy Manifestation. Had we all obeyed Christ when He first came, their would, in fact, be no need for His return. But this is not the way of men. We do not earn from wisdom alone, we must learn from the pain of experience. Just as to the Fundamentalists, such a world embracing unity of all nations and races means one thing; the Anti-Christ! To them any system, of world government, that includes man’s participation, democratic or otherwise, is the work of Satan. However when Christ returns it will be He who establishes His kingdom on earth and not man. It will be a Heavenly, Divinely revealed system, the nature of which we can barely image a glimmer, except to say, their will be a unity amongst the hearts that surpasses anything man can produce. Certainly the Kingdom of God will possess qualities, characteristics, and attributes such as world unity, and the recognition of, and participation in, one universal Cause. Gracious God, can those qualities that are intrinsic to the Kingdom of God be considered Satanic or anti-Christ?
When we, today, first heard of Christ, did we say, “wait a minute, let me check with the Old Testament to verify this”? No we went straight to the source; Christ and the Gospels. If Christ was to return in the same manner as He came the first time, would it not be simple justice and prudence to verify His claims, hear what He has to say, or has written, to investigate His life, to know His fruits, to verify His perfection, just as we did the first time He came? No, actually most of mankind will reject, severely persecute Him, immediately and continually, because He did not come according to their expectations, their understanding of their scriptures, reasons very similar for the way the Jews first treated Christ. He will come to utterly destroy, not fulfill our expectations. Far from inquiring as to His true state, we will shun any knowledge of Him and abhor Him, the less we know of Him the better. Is this “watching” or are these the actions of the Satanic? Do we love the blossom, Jesus, so, that we would rather it not bloom into the full glory of the flower? Would we consider change, any change in our beliefs to be denial of Christ? Does the blossom die in order to become the flower? How can Christ return and not bring major changes to our understanding, our beliefs, in major and wonderful ways we cannot even imagine? Can His Kingdom be realized without employing His teachings? No, never!

We have always proclaimed openly His Word, His Life, and Teachings and heard of all the wonders of His works, of all kinds, His innate knowledge, His Loving Kindness, His Sacrifice, and we believed in Him and found salvation. If such qualities have returned to earth, would it not be prudent, on our part, to investigate, prayerfully and dispassionately, the validity of His claim to a definite conclusion? Or would we become, ourselves, latter day Scribes and Pharisees? May it, again, be wise, to go straight to the Source, as we once did, to “prove all things” and to “hold fast that which is good”? (I Tes.5:21) To independently investigate truth is the hallmark of the wise, an attribute of the faithful, whose qualities are confirmed in the scriptures as those who “know them by their fruits” and those who confirm whether or not “He will testify of me” “take of mine and shew it unto you” – confirmations for the watchful, yet, at the same time, sheer terror to the lovers of blind faith, and the unreasonable, unflinching, literal interpretation of every word in the Bible, those with an affinity for superstition; A belief or notion, not based on reason or knowledge; a blindly accepted belief or notion’. Blind faith is not a prerequisite of belief or of faith or salvation.

We can expect the choices we will be asked to make on the Promised Day to be commensurate with, and on the same order of magnitude of, and wholly appropriate to, the Promised Day itself, the Day the foundations of the world will shake! The Day when the old order crumbles, and there will be ‘a new heaven and a new earth’. Let us make sure we don’t crumble along with it. Very big changes are coming and in fact are well underway. Can all this happen without changes within yourselves? On the contrary, it is within ourselves, and our understanding and knowledge of ourselves, and God, that a great many changes will occur. We will become the living sacrifice, called upon to burn to ashes every visage of self, until only He remains. Many are called, few are chosen. Our beliefs and faith will change, but not into something else, they will deepen and expand, they will not only blossom but come to fruition and be fulfilled, as our appreciation will grow apace with their realization, as love for, and knowledge of, Christ grows though a longing desire to fulfill His will and not our own! Take pity on your selves and act nobly and with virtue. The choices we make on that Day will define our fate, and determine our place at the wedding banquet, our spiritual state in this world and the next!

Virtually every human being that has heard of Christ, starting 2000 years ago up to today, has done so by word of mouth or print. May not we likewise hear of His return and that He has come and gone? Is this impossible? May it not fall to us, by the grace of Providence, to be called upon to assay the pure gold of the Holy Spirit from the dross of human error, a task wherein ‘none except the righteous shall partake, none but the godly can share therein’, just like the Apostles?

It is interesting to consider that we have seen Him at His first coming, as we broke through the clouds of our doubts, by the power of the Holy Spirit, and that we then became His surrounding angels, His resurrected ones, by His Word of salvation, and heard the sound of the great trumpet blast of “Here am I, Here am I”, glorious and resplendent to the vigilant and silent and subtle as a thief in the night to the negligent.
The heart breaking calamity and betrayal, committed by those claiming loyalty to Moses and God, and perpetrated against Christ at His first appearance, are elementary but essential lessons for us today, in how to avoid a historical repetition of those same, self destructive events, upon His Return. Those who perceive and meditate deeply on the manner in which God both cloaks and reveals His Prophets and Messengers will see the truth in such a repetition of events with the clarity vouchsafed to the sincere.

May we see with a new capacity, recognize and see Him as He, winning for ourselves the merit of the faithful servant, in this world and in the world to come.

We have that ability to recognize the Holy Spirit. We are spiritual beings by nature. Otherwise we could never believe in Christ or God or even care. The responsibility of knowing and loving God and recognizing Him, when His qualities are Manifest in His Chosen One, falls to everyone, not by miraculous signs, but by Him alone, by His Words, by His Revelation, whether in this world or the next, whether or not He still walks the earth or has already ascended to the realms above. Will we make of the signs that alert us to His coming, walls separating us from Him?
He does ‘whatsoever He willeth’, with no one, no thing, no prophesy, no verse, no promise, to restrict Him, or to which He must conform, obey, or answer to. Yet we hold Him to account to our will!

Previously He released His knowledge according to what we could “bear”. The result was a limited release of information, intended for a specific, limited, length of time. By refusing to acknowledge future Manifestations of God, those previously limiting factors would then be maintained, frozen in perpetuity, with the result that what was once spoken for the child will be repeated to all future generations of men, and represented as the latest truth, the most recent Revelation of God. The more spiritually mature person may well have a sense of being left behind, to loose faith in Religion, because of the sophomoric level of so many of its teachings, and the misconstruing of so many concepts, meant for elucidation in a distant future, that has already arrived, but has not yet been acknowledged. To people such as these Religion has lost its credibility, its potency as a force of good in the world, causing many to abandon it completely. Such is the burden of responsibility that rests on the shoulders of the fundamentalist and their clerical leaders. Such is the cause of the condition the world finds itself in today and lends credence to the concept that there may well have been other Revelations since Christ’s. Christ never said God would not send other Teachers to us prior to the arrival of the Promised Day.

Christ crushed to dust the mountains of the ancient and immovable institutions of Judaism. He abrogated the authority and brought to a close the Dispensation of Moses. For the Jews, their stars had fallen, though they knew it not. The Jewish priest’s unrelenting literal interpretation of prophesy enshrouded their souls in a thick cloud, hindering them from recognizing Christ, severely retarding their spiritual development.

Christ’s sermons of love and salvation, His life and His death, initiated a new Dispensation from God, a new heaven and a new earth, with new laws and additional spiritual teachings, including a new commandment. He changed and added to the Word of God. That He will do the same on His return and to a superlative degree is a practical certainty. If we fail to expect the same, or at least examine the possibility, then we are not “watching” and are on course to follow the example of the Jews.

The flood gates of all categories of knowledge have been opened, flooding the earth with new, world shrinking technologies, a practical necessity for it’s unification, and supplying as well, the spiritual teachings commensurate to the needs of planetary unity, especially the perpetuates for personal spiritual growth. We, by His grace, will become laborers in the building of His Kingdom, by simply living in accordance to His Word, becoming teachers in word and deed, ourselves, apostles of the Christ returned. The Kingdom of God will not just descend from Heaven whole and prefabricated. That Heavenly Kingdom is primarily an inner, spiritual state of being, not merely a system of governing with buildings and edifices of mortar and clay. Its foundation, the blood, the unprecedented sorrows and tribulations He and His companions have suffered and continue to suffer to this very day. Twenty thousand martyrs, men, woman and little children, and counting, affirm its unshakable foundation, verifying its veracity, and proving its permanency and ultimate victory over its foes. This is the time of the in gathering, from the four corners, of God’s sheep, into one fold, with Christ, its only Sheppard. The process has begun and the Day is upon us. The clouds obscuring the Sun of Truth are gradually being dispersed. These ruinous wars will cease and the unity of hearts, the Most Great Peace, shall come.

Religion and Revelation

No one can be saved, or can see, or can know anything, of God except through the Christ. He is the Way, the Truth and the Light, the source of God Himself, to all His creatures. God has ordained that Christ Spirit to manifest itself in the noble form of the human temple, when and in Whomsoever He willeth. ‘He it is Who hath unveiled to your eyes the treasures of His knowledge, and caused you to ascend unto the heaven of certitude, the certitude of His resistless, His irrefutable, and most exalted Faith’. We learn of the qualities of God and through His Manifestations learn to commune with His Spirit. Still we are not equipped to know God in is His Essence and never can be. How can the painting know the painter or the table know the carpenter? ‘How can mine eye which has no faculty to perceive itself, claim to have discerned Thine Essence?’

If God’s Power was completely and at once, revealed to the world, the universe and all that is in it would be annihilated. Therefore, God created His Intermediary, in the noble form of the perfect human Temple, as the means of revealing Himself and all His attributes to mankind. Instead of making everyone perfect and creating instantly, paradise on earth, He has by His Grace sent His Messengers, Teachers and Manifestations, throughout history, to teach us how to achieve the paradise of His Presence, through following His guidance, and through the choices we make. That Intermediary is our salvation, the only Source of knowledge, the true Beloved of every soul and the single Object of our adoration. He is sight to the blind, the Pure Water to every thirsty one, the Educator of every soul, the Representative of the Essence of God. He is salvation itself. His Book remains complete, now as always. It must be so, for to maintain that the Testimony of Providence is incomplete, that He has not availed us of the means for recognizing Him or has not adequately prepared us for His return, is nonsensical. ‘How far it is from the grace of God and His loving kindness, and tender Mercy it would be, to single out a soul from among all men for the guidance of His creatures, and, on one hand, to withhold from Him the full measure of His divine testimony, and, on the other, inflict severe retribution on His people for having turned away from His chosen One!’

The followers of the Gospel hold as impossible that the Bearer of a new Revelation should again shine forth from the dayspring of the Will of God after Jesus, Son of Mary. In support of this contention, they quote such verses from the Gospel: ‘Heaven and earth shall pass away, but the words of the Son of Man shall never pass away.’ They maintain that the teachings of Jesus may never be altered. However when He comes again He promised that there will be new teachings in the verse; ‘I have many things yet to tell you but you cannot bear them now, how be it when He who is the Spirit of Truth is come He will guide you to all truth’...in another verse referring to His coming He says ‘the Comforter will guide us to all truth.’ It is interesting to note that He refers to Himself, upon His return as “He” and “the Spirit of Truth” and the “Comforter”. He foretells of a “new” Name upon His return. His return in another body is reincarnation, and is not taught in the Bible. These things being true, His “return” must needs represent the return of His Spirit, which is the Holy Spirit of God, in another human temple, replicating that same Divine Authority, down through the Ages, in diverse climes and attire.

His Words will not pass away, but that does not mean He will have nothing new to teach us and that He will not clarify and elucidate conflicting interpretations concerning His previous sayings. Clearly His ‘Words will not pass away’, but equally as clear is the fact that they will be added to, others altered, some annulled. He did this when He came to the Jews and He certainly will do so again, in the still greater Revelation, and to an even greater degree.
Many Christians believe that upon Christ’s return they will rise up to heaven and meet their Lord in the rapture. The dictionary has six meanings for “rapture”, one of which is the fundamentalist belief that they will meet Him in the air. This too is only symbolic. The rapture will be real and has nothing to do with antigravity. This is one of the promises of the Promised Day and God keeps His promises. Most Christians also believe tribulations will be happening around that time, to put it mildly. But few consider these tribulations may also include Christ’s suffering and persecution again and to a much greater degree, that it will be a time of severe testing, that we will have to actually decide to accept Him or reject Him, and most will reject Him. What tribulation greater than this can be imagined? To the pure and seeing soul, no tribulations is greater than this tribulation.

Most feel saved and in essence, “home free” because they have already accepted Him as their Savior, and are therefore exempt from any further testing or challenges related to their salvation, sincerity, or understanding, that they will not bear any responsibility to demonstrate again their faithfulness, through recognition of Him upon His return, or their willingness to live and even die for Him at that time, and that mortal persecutions, on a scale undreamt of, may again run rampant, that the blood of His true believers may flow even more copiously. Nor do they imagine they would be called on to play an active part in the labor of spreading the news of His return, to be once again, His Apostles, amongst their own brethren, many of whom will appear either spiritually comatose or wildly defensive.
The chief reaction amongst fundamentalists, to any approach to the Second Coming that does not conform to their expectations, is to oppose, ignore, and wait. They will wait, as the Jews wait, while Christ, even as on His first coming, came like the coming of a thief in the night; He came and left two thousand years ago, and still the Jews don’t know Who it was that did come. They are waiting until the prophesies are all filled literally “to the letter” and according to standards they have obviously only imagined. They wait for an idol their imagination has devised. Are the Jews not a warning lesson to us all? What if He comes as He did the first time, as a seemly normal man, while fulfilling all the prophesies, in a spiritual, non-material, way, like Christ did the first time, coming in the clouds of heaven, surrounded by His Angels, to the sound of a great trumpet, with great sovereignty and dominion. But most were blind and deaf. Let those who refuse this Promised One follow the Promised One of their own imagination.
The over powering literal means, by which many are expecting Christ to return, i.e. from the sky, riding clouds of glory, surrounded by His angels, to the sound of a mighty trumpet blast, and everyone will see Him at once, will make recognition of Him impossible to miss... but this is not how a thief comes, though surprisingly, both prophesies are in truth accurate, if taken symbolically. Taken literally however, there are contradictions and gross flaws. A thief comes and is gone, without anyone being aware of it. He doesn’t sound a trumpet announcing his presence. There are often multiple, valid ways of interpreting the same verse, in some cases both literally and symbolically. But that is another book. (Read ‘Thief in the Night’ by William Sears.)

The rational faculty is unique to the soul. So it’s ok to use it! Consider for a moment why the Jews rejected Christ, that ‘Bright and Morning Star’. Centuries of training in an ancient, preconceived mode of thinking, seems to have shut down independent and rational thought. So let us be very careful and thoughtful when considering the possibility of a particular method of Christ’s Return. Be suspicious if there are dogmatic conditions for belief in Him, based on how He will return, or if the clergy actively oppose and denounce Him. Remember the clergy were Christ’s chief opponents.

It must be openly acknowledged, by every faithful believer, that the Almighty has the choice and the ability, to cause the Manifestation of Himself to return in a way similar to His first appearance, or in any other way, and still fulfill all His prophesies regarding His return or to fulfill none of them. To deny that He has this Power is to reject the Almighty, Omnipotent God. His return, neither depends on, nor requires, any prophesy, or any particular Biblical terminology, or anything else whatsoever – except His Will. To deny His ability to return, at any time, in any manner, is to deny the Omnipotence of God, and displays arrogance and a disbelief in the fundamental nature of God. To believe that God is under any constraints or limitations, whether or not they are written or described in the Bible, shows a lack of fundamental understanding of the essential nature of Lordship itself.

The challenges that arose with Christ’s changing, annulling and amending many long standing laws and traditions, clarifying misinterpretations, that tested Jewish steadfastness and loyalty, and aroused the clergy in opposition, may once again, necessarily, be implemented as integral to the divine Purpose, in a manner similar to His first coming. Those who understand that: “He doeth whatsoever He willeth” are secure from those errors the Jews made all those years ago.

At the “time of the end”, meanings of things hidden, will be unsealed and explained to us, as suggested in the Book of Daniel by the verse; ‘Seal them up, Daniel, until the time of the end.’ Things that may, very much surprise us and actually contradict our current beliefs! So, if this is the ‘time of the end’, let us look and watch for the breaking of the seals spoken of by Daniel, and the availability of such truths as we once “could not bear”, as well as the opening of the flood gates of ‘all truth’. Further, Christ said; “He shall teach you all things, and bring all things to your remembrance, whatsoever I have said unto you. He shall glorify me: for he shall receive of mine, and shall shew it unto you. He shall take of mine, and show it unto you.” Note that Christ keeps saying “he” as if referring another person, and yet He is clearly at the same time referring to His own return. This is not a contradiction. Could it be that another “person” will come but they will in truth be One because They both perfectly mirror God’s Will? Also it is evident that He is speaking of verses of His own that will be referenced, and “shown unto you” as though teaching us more of Him. To “watch” means more than “to look.” It also means to actively investigate. After all, one reason He give us all those prophesies was so that we should watch for and investigate, their fulfillment!

It is interesting, amazing if fact, nay utterly astounding, that if Christ returned today, exactly as He came the first time, manifesting all the Holy Spirit, and Glory, Heavenly Sovereignty, and Dominion of God, just as He did the first time He appeared, nearly all of His present day “believers” and devoted worshippers would turn away from Him, disappointed, and refusing to even consider Him seriously, would renounce Him to scorn, unless... unless... He literally fulfilled all the prophesies concerning the Second Coming, to the letter, as they understand them! On the other hand their will be those who never see Him at all yet will know Him instantly. Like me for instance. When they first told me of Him they said “Gods Teachers or Manifestations are like lamps and they each shine with the Light of God. It is the light we follow, not the lamp.” The first thing out of my mouth was “I believe that”. Like when I first found Christ. But I had an advantage. I was actively investigating Hinduism, and Buddhism at the time and had grown up believing in God and Jesus. So I already knew of their many similarities.

The sun has darkened, the stars have fallen, the moon has ceased to give her light and similar verses, are symbols for the down fall of long held religious beliefs and institutions, the extinguishing the priesthood, laws of marriage and divorce, punishment of crime, holy observances of what has always been considered lights of guidance. These interpretation prophesies has been fulfilled the first time Christ came and are therefore, is strong evidence of their veracity.

Now we can now read, investigate, understand, and make judgments for ourselves, (being illiterate children no more), no longer needing the aid of a priesthood or those who have attained honors and titles conferred by other men, for their so called learning and scholarship, where in they take the simple facts, such as Christ dying for us, to the mythical, fictional, depths, of atonement, making them essential, prerequisites to our acceptance by God, excluding other lovers of Christ from ever being acceptable to God, bringing shame on themselves, their followers and on religion itself.

The true basis and greatest proof for accepting the appearance of the same presence of God, in an Intermediary form, are not prophesies and signs, or acceptance of the doctrine of atonement, or the existence of a real Satan, but are His Self, His Revelation and His Word; the very same qualities which, at His first coming, drew our attention to Him and lead us to belief in Him, without our ever meeting or seeing Him physically. He promised us changes in His Revelation and in His Word. How can there be a new Revelation and not have change? We are certainly able to recognize these changes when they happen. Otherwise we would not be held responsible for having failed to recognize them. It is purely reasonable to surmise, that the changes to come, will be of a greater intensity and farther reaching than anything previously revealed, and address the needs not only of personal salvation but the needs of the world as a whole, which primarily is unity. The Holy Spirit, Christ and God do not change. But we do, so Their teachings to us change right along with us, with each new Revelation, just as we change teachers every time we graduate a grade. Still, because we know Him now, we will know Him when He returns, if we are watchful and our vision is keen, unless we are attached to our own imaginings of how “its” “supposed” to be.

Men project their own perspectives onto the pristine nature of a Religion, that was once accepted, in the springtime of its Revelation, but the essence of the Faith of God and our faith in Christ, remains, unscathed, beneath all the rubble piled onto it. Verily, all these years, we have been sustained by Christ and through His Word, through Himself, we have “seen”, and we believed. Will we turn away, disappointed if He comes again on “the clouds of Heaven”, while walking again among us in humility, as He once did?

If these assertions be weak and poorly founded, then surely they can be soundly refuted. But they cannot be. They are irrefutable. If these are not viable truths than produce a work refuting these assertions, disproving its claims, if you be a man or women of God.

The people of negation

The denial of spiritual reality in lieu of literal interpretation, which occurs with the inauguration of each new Dispensation, is being repeated today. Every present day clerical leader and the sects they espouse, disagree on a multitude of scriptural references and have devised a multitude of divisions of the One Faith in order to satisfy their particular view. Can such an important matter as understanding the verses directly related to “the Day of Reckoning” be entrusted into the hands of these clerics as well? The time for the independent investigation of truth has come, as has the time for the recognition of one God, one human race, and the essential unity of Religion; Religion being defined as ‘the Testimony of God’, a definition not found in any dictionary.

‘Were a myriad voices to be raised, no ear would listen if we said that upon a fatherless Child hath been conferred the mission of Prophethood, or that a murderer hath brought from the flame of the burning Bush the message of "Verily, verily, I am God!” How contrary are the ways of the Manifestations of God, as ordained by the King of creation, to the ways and desires of men!’

When Jesus Christ does return, members of every faith will eventually, recognize Him as the Promised One, and His ‘new name’, as He repeatedly promised in the Bible and foretold in the sacred writings of every religion. Whatever His human form or Name, He will be the Christ, the Anointed One of God. The slow recognition of the new Manifestation of God has been a repeated historical lesson. Though in this age, due to the shrinkage of the world through technology, the new Manifestation’s acceptance could spread world wide with unprecedented speed, one might say “like lightening” and if He were to come from the east, one may say, “like lightening from the east shinning unto the west”.

All through history the people have been expecting, the Promised One. The realization of the oneness of religion is becoming more wide spread. Universal peace will eventually be realized. This is the ancient promise of the Promised One. That Promised One is known throughout Christendom and Islam as Jesus Christ. Other tribes, from American Indians to Tibetan monks, have different names for Him.

He is the One Sheppard that will gather all His sheep and make of them one fold, freed from the superstitions and divisive beliefs of the past. After thoroughly verifying, in our minds, through an individual investigation of reality, or by an instant of intuitive recognition, the enraptured lovers of God, will be busily engaged in spreading the news of this “In Gathering”; the Advent of the Promised Day of God. As soon as the world learns the three oneness’s, the oneness of religion, the oneness of God and the oneness of mankind we will have world unity.

It is Christian belief that God has not revealed any new testimony or changed any law for over 2000 years and to believe He has is simply a fiction. However, to believe God could not have done so, demonstrates a spiritual disease, degrading those who profess love for God and His unlimited almighty power. The foundation of belief in God and His signs has always been the recognition that, “He doeth whatsoever He willeth”. To say that God “cannot do” is identical to disavowing His Almighty, Omnipotent Being, and is essentially renouncing God Himself. This is the plight of humanity today and of those who say Christ cannot return is a way similar to His first coming.

This is repeated by the followers of every religion as they confidently assert their prophesies will be fulfilled according to His will, oblivious that His Will and theirs differ. But those whose truly watch, need not worry, for however He chooses, whenever He chooses, and wherever He chooses, it is good and we believe now as always, faithful and secure, and blessed are we. When He actually does return we will know, in accordance to the Divine Will. We will discern the Advent for we are of the watchful and the just.

However, if He has returned and then left this earth, many decades before we were even born, and the world is still largely oblivious of His coming, we will certainly know Him as an imposture and refuse to acknowledge Him. If He is not instantly recognized by all, even if He were to leave us, His “Holy Testament”, a new “Book”, comprising a hundred volumes of His Words alone, written in His own hand, on every subject, in a language unparalleled in it’s beauty and depth, we must still reject His claim. These are the people of negation.

Even if there where millions of believers, thousands of martyrs, and unnumbered eyewitnesses, all with their own written accounts of Him, His deeds, His innate knowledge, the exalted character of His companions and the many miracles He performed, we must reject Him still. Regardless of the rivers of human blood shed in tragic martyrdom of 20,000 innocents of both sexes and all ages. Still, He is but a colossal duper of men. These are the people of negation.

Even if He appointed an interpreter of His Word for future generations, even if He delineates a perfect system for administering His Faith, without a priesthood, and designed the Divinely ordained structure of a New World Order and resolved human problems of every nature, whether personal or general, material or spiritual, such as economics, disease, race relations, religious differences and governmental organization and international relations, no matter the nature of the evidence left behind, we will refuse to acknowledge or even investigate, His claim––because He came and left and so very many didn’t even know it! These are the people of negation.

His ‘coming as the coming of a thief in the night’ we are certain never meant this! Every eye will see Him, we are convinced. Even the spiritually blind! God could not and would not test our love and faith in Him in this way. This type of test we declare to be too harsh and unfair and in this we cannot be wrong! To suggest that we have been so wrong for so long is simply too much. These are the people of negation.

The reasons for our rejections are firm, stated in the Holy Bible and are as chains of obligations by which God has chained us and Himself, by which He is obligated and by which faith is truly tested. These are the fundamentals of our faith. He would never (we understand all) break the laws He Himself has laid down. These are the people of negation.

Very few Christians would survive such a test. Such as storm would shake the faith of all, sweep away all, except the wise, the seeing and the hearing.

The people of negation have forgotten the theme of Noah’s call to salvation. The Promises God made and broke, to test the faithful. Gracious God! Do they put limitations on God? Do they deny the very Omnipotence that is an essential characteristic of God alone? They believe His Hands are chained up, chains which they strangely imagine. The people of negation believe they are saved entirely by grace and forget the results of deeds and the roll of free will in the choices they make.

Well, not even Jesus could convince everyone. We must not be discouraged. Some ground is fertile and some stony, some trees fruitful, others barren. He could make everyone in the world a believer by the slightest indication of His Will. No miracle is beyond Him. But that is not His way.

Our job is to live and speak the truth, to love mankind and try to serve it. We sew the seeds, which may not even sprout in our life time. We try to ignite the heart wherein an ember of God’s love and remembrance still glows. This Christian, for one, does not wish to be held back or “left behind”, stuck on some lower spiritual level, separated from Jesus the Christ, the Object of my hearts desire, for any reason, be it Name, race, dogma, time or place, or the simple minded, blind faith interpretations of man. We willingly give up our selves, our life, our all, including our opinions, beliefs and expectations, for the Love of God. We dread only His justice. This is a choice only the pure in heart, kneaded by the Hand of tribulation, fearful of none but God, can make.

Could it be, that Christ will, once again, suffer at the hands of the malignant, even more severely and for the same reasons? Might He and His ladder day apostles suffer again with Him on a scale to dwarf that first Calgary and the gruesome martyrdoms that followed? Do we wait for great earthly tribulations, when the greatest tribulation is the denial of God’s Light? What tribulation, what catastrophe, could be greater than for the peoples of the world to reject Christ on His return and again persecute Him and His followers? What cloud more dark, what glory more brilliant, what plague more deadly, what tragedy more poignant, what darker a moon, what quake more earth shattering, what deeper a mourning, what sacrifice more telling? This is the stuff of the foundation of the Kingdom, the mortar and clay of the Kingdom of God. Those that give their life, these are His angels and the Dawnbreakers of the Day of God. The Promised Day will be a day of unprecedented tribulation. Unprecedented hate, unprecedented persecutions, unprecedented displays of heroism and suffering.

When Christ has come again, regardless of scriptural lessons and the lessons of historical repetition spread out before us, will we still fail the tests on examination Day? A level of sacrifice, of inward scrutiny and contemplation, outside our normal comfort zone, difficult to be embarked upon, may be required of us, causing many to falter. God wants us to know the truth, the same pure truth that exists at the unblemished core of every Religion.

Knowledge and Belief

Fact-finding does not imply disloyalty or even a temporary suspension of belief. It does however require a provisional, suspension of a blinding denial. What greater loss can be contemplated, than through carelessness or the lack of diligence and scruples, or for the lack of love of truth, we forgot humility, denied God’s omnipotence, and contradicted that which has been prescribed by God and rejected that which He has ordained?

Will ‘the lion lie down with the lamb’ or is this an allegory foretelling of the peace to come? Some say yes, some say no, some say both. We must be careful not to draw lines of limitation and denial prematurely simply because so many, including ourselves, have held contrary views for so long. But where do we then draw the line? Who draws the line and by what authority?

Christ certainly will “draws those new line and parameters” upon His return, but if we cannot accept Him because of the manner of His return, or because of where He has drawn the lines of reality, or because of the lines we ourselves have drawn, then we are imprisoned within a sort of vicious cycle of self and denial, thus isolating ourselves from Him. But by applying the requisite qualities of justice, alertness, spirituality and humility – qualities of the watchful soul – we protect ourselves from our preconceptions, which could block any possibility of our being unbiased and fair in our consideration of events, which would make any objective conclusions and perception impossible for us to achieve.

There comes a moment when we must release ourselves, to be blown by the Divine winds of God’s Will, wherever it shall take us, and release all the world and its contents, least the blessings of recognition pass us by.
1 Corinthians 9-13 says: ‘For we know in part, and we prophesy in part. But when that which is perfect is come, then that which is in part shall be done away. When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things. For now we see through a glass, darkly...’. ‘When that which is perfect is come’, if we are watchful, we will seek out and “test it, know it by its fruit, by its “perfection” and recognize it when we see it. Our passage into adulthood and understanding will depend on the clarity of our own perception, the degree of justice employed in our decision making process and our willingness to sacrifice our preconceptions.

It is natural to fear giving up that which we love, but as we grow, our love grows and deepens, bringing changes of increased abilities and the responsibilities of adulthood, that are good for us. That which we love cannot be relinquished, but that love can grow and blossom beyond all imagining as our understanding grows. Does the blossom die in order to become the flower or the child die in order to become the man? No, as we grew up we shed what was once vital, in order to become what is now vital.

But when He comes it will be like the coming of the flower when we expected the blossom only, and many will loose faith. If we are watchful, we will seek out and test it, know it by its fruit, by its “perfection” and recognize it when we see it.

Testing for the presence of the Holy Spirit is a much more effective test for truth than testing by the appearance of, or the lack of, signs such as, coming down on clouds, or lions and lambs lying down together, or the dead rising from their graves. This understanding requires perception and fairness, prayer and humility, using the spiritual eyes of a man as opposed to the simple, childish acceptance of outward appearances.

Some timid souls are afraid that the truth being represented in allegorical or symbolic form is somehow and indication of fallacy and would some how threaten the foundation of their faith. Meditation or thinking deeply on the words in the Bible with a spiritual mind is one of the greatest joys of life. The foundation of the Christian faith is not vulnerable, nor can it be threatened or corrupted. Interpretations can be corrupt, but they also can yield truth, when derived from reverent consideration, using the rational faculty of the soul and the insights of the Holy Spirit. Such insights come naturally and often. But interpretation is only infallible when it comes from the mouth Christ. The mouth of Christ is, unfiltered through any evanescent soul, Itself, the Holy Spirit, and the Revelation of God. ‘He shall teach you all things, and bring all things to your remembrance, whatsoever I have said unto you. He shall glorify me: for he shall receive of mine, and shall shew it unto you.’ “He shall take of mine, and show it unto you... And lead us to all truth.” Let us look for the fulfillment of these verses as a practical confirmation of His return instead of fearing the annulment of certain interpretations and institutions to which we have become attached.

Many feel obligated, unreasonably so, by the desire to preserve a particular school of theological thought, to maintain a psychological and in some cases professional niche, in which they are firmly ensconced, regardless of spiritual rationale or science. The issuance of a New Dispensation of God and the annulment of the old is at once and by far the most challenging and the most traumatic shift that could be faced or imagined by any one of the faithful, so disorienting is the prospect of relinquishing long held beliefs. Many believers in God, confronted with an intransigent lack of rationality on the part of religious leaders, simply refuse to partake in religion at all, seriously doubt it’s ability to unite, and question it as a force for good in the world, reason seemingly having fled from it entirely.

Yet if we consider ourselves followers of His Blessed Light how could we hold back our proclamation of it, when it appears? Is not the intentional absence of the light of reason, the withholding of truth and logical answers, a form of oppression? Could this have any connection to the prophesies which forebode; ‘in those days the sun will be darkened and the moon will not give its light’ and ‘the oppression of those days’? History repeatedly, and amply demonstrates, when a new Revelation occurs people are very reluctant, even psychotically so, to accept it and have gone to great lengths to quash the Message and persecute the Messenger, even unto death, to wipe out His followers, in the attempt, however vainly, to eradicate it’s very existence and remove any sign thereof. It falls then, to us, to squarely shoulder the responsibility of probing the Word of these heavenly Messengers for spiritual realities, to identify the truth of those Claims, which have, so startlingly, gathered followers from all walks of life and all strata of intellectual, religious and economic society, often at great personal cost, and then acknowledge their perfections, independent of any undo influence from the “theologically trained”, all of whom are intrinsically no more qualified to interpret or investigate these truths than we ourselves are. In fact the more sophisticated, honored and lauded the ‘learned’ become the more intractable they seem to be and are often of the most prejudice and fanatical. We must remain rationally and spiritually open by keeping our eyes open and watchful... then decide, by Him, His Word, and His Revelation when it occurs. Christ on His Return, will confirm the eternal unchanging spiritual truths, and will add, and or remove, certain social teachings and institutions. He will explain verses in the Bible in such a way as may be contrary to the accepted standards of the time. The Bible will then be ‘unsealed’, its many controversial and cloudy statements made clear. ‘He shall bring all things to your remembrance, whatsoever I have said unto you. He shall glorify me: for he shall receive of mine, and shall shew it unto you. He shall take of mine, and show it unto you.’
When Christ first appeared, He abrogated the Laws of the Sabbath and Divorce and added the entire New Testament, renewed and deepened the laws of salvation, and revitalized what it means to “live the life”, gave prophesies of many more changes yet to come and He even formally added an eleventh Commandment! He amended the Word of God, as only He has the authority to do. ‘The Word of God shall never pass away’, but Christ did alter the Word, according to a Divine Plan, and certainly will make other changes upon His return. The uninformed abhorred and feared any changes, considering them heretical, a threat to the “religion” of God. Does the seed die in order to become a tree? Only Christ can issue new laws and abrogate old ones. A marked surge in spiritual growth occurs when He does, personally and as a civilization, a giant step forward is realized. Consider the difference between the Old and New Testaments. Now consider the difference between the New Testament and the Testament of the coming and establishment of the Kingdom of God on earth! A giant leap forward, a paradigm shift, is upon us. But we are to close to see it. Future generations will look back at this period of time, as a time of such phenomenal change that only our children’s great grandchildren can more properly assess. It is like a very tall billing. When we are standing right next to it we have know idea of its grand dimensions.

Many believed Christ had no authority to make these drastic changes and, having misunderstood Him, accused Him of leading the ignorant astray, and desecrating the true faith of Moses. In their utter ignorance they used this as a pretext for crucifying Him. As for changes He might decree upon His return...’He doeth whatsoever He willeth’ and to no belief, to none of the faithful, is given the right to doubt this truth. No precept or doctrine is unalterable by God. It is for Him to Decree and for us to obey, to do or die.

When the spring time of the Holy Dispensation of Christ has passed, when men have once again forgotten their Lord, and annihilated its unity, and the dark clouds of ignorance once more intervene between the Sun of Truth and the community of man, He will come again ‘in the Glory of the Father’, with a ‘new Name’, reminding us of that which we have forgotten, and much, much more. He will tell us that which we could ‘not then bear’ and He will ‘guide us to all truth’. ‘He will take of mine and shew it unto you’. After The Bible is preached to all nations and peoples as a witness, The Promised Day will Dawn, a Day not followed by night, the Day of God Himself, a Dispensation unique in the history of creation, the Day wherein His Love will unite the hearts of men and ‘Thy kingdom Come, Thy will be done, on earth as it is in Heaven’, will become an eternal reality on earth as in heaven. He will abrogate all past Dispensations; they are all His, and inaugurate a new Dispensation, the Dispensation of the Kingdom of God, The Dispensation of the Father, which will bear His ‘new name’ as He prophesied. Which do you think is the more accurate statement of these two; ‘The Bible will prove Him’ or ‘He will prove the Bible’? They are both true, with the latter being the more powerful for His existence is independent of all created things.

Many tribulations will assail the world. Disagreements and separations of friends and family will occur and the evil will put many innocents to the sword. Their sacrifice is the foundation of the new Jerusalem, which will descend from heaven, and the rebuilding of the Temple of Judaism and the establishment of His Kingdom on earth, as it is in heaven. But this New Temple, this Kingdom, this City, this foundation, is not laid by mortal hands with mortar and clay, but of the Word of God it is fashioned, by the blood of its innocents, is it set and constituted and firmly established in the world.

Christ’s “arrogant” nullifications of long standing Mosaic Law, Words believed to be eternal and unchangeable, blinded many people with the heavenly clouds of His glory; the power of Who that lowly carpenter really is. He nullified Jewish law and inaugurated new ones. And we don’t think He can do it again?

Christian clerics teach, and their congregations believe, the meaning of prophesies relating to the Return, are obvious, that their fulfillment is literal, as written, with no deviation, no interpretation permitted. But this is exactly what the Sanhedrin believed as they examined Christ, with prejudice, and then crucified Him. They and their people, at Christ’s first coming, looked at Him and His Word, with, at best, a cursory glance, then they compared them to the prophesies of the Old Testament. Finding them not literally fulfilled in Christ they condemned Him. He did not come from heaven as literally foretold – He was born of poor earthly parents. He was not seated on the Throne of David as literally foretold – He was however, seated on the throne of a heavenly Sovereignty and Dominion. He did not rule with an iron rod, as literally foretold – He ruled by the rod of His Word, the Word of God. Instead of confirming, He nullified many of their laws and made new ones. Failing to see literal, earthly fulfillment of these verses and others like them, by Him, they denied Him, and put Him to death. They rejected Him because He lacked the signs literally foretold, even though He was the personification of God’s Word, His Glory, His Sovereignty and Dominion! And they did all this for the lack of signs!!! They condemned Him, were blind to His Glory, Sovereignty and Dominion. Can such things occur again? Will Christians treat Him, when He returns in the same way, and for the very same reasons?

Christians of today believe they could never reject Him for lack of signs, not then and not when He returns. That is ludicrous and sacrilegious, they say. We will always know our Lord, they say, and they most certainly should. Yet, we too, as Christians, do exactly that, we expect signs and prophesies to be literally fulfilled! No....we demand them, as an article of faith, and a condition of salvation!!! We believe we will know Him instantly. In fact so ridged have many become they would reject Him, without investigation or fair hearing, if those signs were not literally fulfilled. We are told to watch, and that we will know instantly. We will know because we are of the saved and therefore could not “miss” His Second Coming, regardless of His ‘coming like unto the coming of a thief in the night’. Regardless of the apparent need for the oft repeated warning “to watch”. We know we will see and instantly recognize Him when He returns. This is in fact one of the many signs we expect and insist on and in fact demand, for it is written in the Bible and must therefore literally come to pass, just as written. To believe other wise is to corrupt the Bible. Therefore God cannot, will not, would not, do otherwise. He did say He had “many things to tell us, but we could not bear them now”. Maybe one of “those thing” He will tell us is that we are looking at His second coming in totally the wrong way. Yes, that would make Him hard to accept by many, for we have learned to expect certain signs to judge Him by and by these signs we will test Him. Whatever He says, if we don’t like it, we will reject Him, unless he has some very fantastic earthly signs to go along with His words. Yes, we will judge Him by signs that have been prophesied and which must be literally fulfilled. Yes, we will judge Him by signs. We will judge Him by signs!!! Gracious God! Can none recall; “it is and evil generation that seeketh a sign?” And unless we investigate, watchfully, dispassionately, fairly, unlike the Jews, we will, just like the Jews, reject Him! As already stated; the Jews also expected miraculous displays of confirmation of their faith, but were instead tested by changes that altered universally accepted beliefs, practices, and institutions. These God changed and altered and fulfilled into something even more beautiful and beneficial to all people, the world over. He renewed the pure and essential and annulled or altered the rest. The Jews were disappointed with the glory, sovereignty and dominion of Christ! The loving kindness the Christ displayed where meaningless, signs of weakness. How, oh how, could man be so blind??? Are we too not men, imperfect, that must be wary of our own selves? Absolutely!

It certainly is not appropriate for God’s servants to test Him, but for God to test His servants. And we will be tested on that Day! A thief comes and is gone, without the awareness of the home owner, asleep inside. What if today the stars of heaven have fallen and the sun and moon have failed to give forth their light, all over again and despite His past lessons we are blind to it all? This is the warning wherewith we have been warned. He cannot come again, walking among us, like the first time He came. He must come from Heaven riding clouds of glory. He will not nullify our beliefs. He will confirm them. We act like babes being weaned! We are acting like the Jews before us! We have forgotten humility. We stumble around drunk with pride, heedless, and blind while the world is on the precipice of tasting the results of rejecting the its only Savior.

Watch therefore, but watch for Him. Not for signs, which can be misconstrued. Are not the signs of His Heavenly Glory, Sovereignty and Dominion which He displayed on His first appearance sufficient for us? Must we have an extravaganza of miraculous displays in order to believe? Must we? Is the wonder any less, if His prophesies are fulfilled symbolically, in the Spirit, rather than materially, or are they all the greater for their invisible, infinite nature? Is the application of our God given powers of insight, intellect and rationality to be treated as satanic?
His claim on our hearts and souls is total and cannot be denied. Our duty is faithfulness to His Spirit and what is Revealed therein.

When God reveals Himself again in a new Revelation, it will not be in a religion in any sense we are used to. It will not be “an organization”. It will simply be the Spirit of the Age, its structure unobtrusive, its nature moral and democratic, the three oneness’ its hallmark; there is only one God, the oneness of religion and the oneness of mankind.

God leaves earthly affairs of men to those who desire them. He doesn’t go around making Himself known in obvious, sensational ways. Even though His command over all things is unquestionably complete, His control is sublimely subtle, omnipotent, all knowing, and all wise. He is the Master Planner and Architect. He will Manifest Himself in the noble form of the Human Temple as He will, and He will not use physical miracles to convince us that yes, it really is Him.

Christ has achieved, both outwardly and inwardly, the establishment of the eternal Faith of God throughout the world without His even being physically present! His Word was spread by His faithful servants, through acts of love, heroism and devotion, through eloquent pen and speech, long after He left this earthly plane. Christ had helpers in the form of His Apostles, and many others in the years that followed, spreading the Word. Christ made of this, our labor of love, one of His greatest gifts to us. He chose us, His lowliest sinners, to believe in Him and spread His Cause. We cannot appreciate enough, His Love for us, while we are still on this earthly plane. But in the next world, the world of the spirit, we will be able to appreciate this Love.

Whether or not it seems inappropriate and faithless to expect physical signs or worse demand them as proof, whether or not His prophesies are literally or symbolically fulfilled, know this: we do not know the mind of God or His plans. Believing we are saved will not preserve us from the shame of ignoring His return. Humans have proven their blindness to Him in the past, by rejecting Him, even when He was standing right in front of them. They were blind to His Glory, Sovereignty and Dominion and Love. The first believers believed in Him without the literal fulfillment of prophecies and signs. Should not we be able to do the same on His return? He will come ‘in the Glory of the Father’ just as He said He would. He first came in “the Station of the Son” and now He will return in “the Station of the Father”. The intensity of God’s Revelation on the Promised Day is going to be increased, to a degree we cannot foresee. God is sublimely subtle in His plans and actions and not given to gaudy displays of earthly power and glory. His concern is the heart, not outward appearances. The Jews expected Him to come from heaven seated on the Throne of David. The Christians expect Him to come from Heaven riding Clouds of Glory. What is the difference? Their symbolic meaning is the same; Christ came from heaven, period. He was born on earth, outwardly appearing in the human form, in order that none may know Him except the pure in heart. God does not intend that we will easily recognize Christ on His return, few will “pick up that cross”. His return will cause separation and will fracture the foundations of all things. There will be tests of the character of our faith. We are going to have to watch for the Advent. He is going to come like a thief in the night! Only the pure in heart will have the eyes to see Him.

The Non-Existence of Evil

A word about Satan and evil. Firstly if you were to look upon this subject in fairness, justice, faithfulness and a complete lack of superstition you would know that God, the creator of all that is, has never, created an evil spirit. Neither has God created evil. All God has made is good.

‘When a baby cries for milk it expresses selfish desire, becomes angry, and shows a temper, it may be said that good and evil are innate in man. It may then be said, that the evidence contradicts the proposition, that there is no evil, and only good exists and that nature and creation are all good. The response to this is that to desire is good, if the desire is for self improvement or the betterment of our fellow man. Desire then, to ask for more that what we have, is good when properly directed. Anger too has good use, if directed against the tyrannical murderer for example. Desire and anger when not properly used becomes condemnable, dishonorable, and worthy of blame. This is the same with all of man’s natural qualities, the essential components of man’s life. If they are used in such a way that is contrary to God’s laws they become dishonorable. Therefore it is clear that creation is purely good.

Just as darkness is but the absence of light, so evil is the absence of good – the developed state. A bad man is a man with the higher side of his nature that is undeveloped. If he is selfish, the evil is not in his love of self – all love, even self-love, is good, is divine. The evil is that he has such a poor, inadequate, misguided love of self and such a lack of love for others and for God. He looks upon himself as only a superior sort of animal, and foolishly pampers his lower nature as he might pamper a pet dog – with worse results in his own case than in that of the dog. The greatest evil is man's going astray and being veiled from truth. Error is lack of guidance; darkness is absence of light; ignorance is lack of knowledge; falsehood is lack of truthfulness.’

‘That which is referred to as Satan or evil is a reference to the lower nature of man. God has never created an evil spirit. All such ideas and terms are symbols describing the non-spiritual nature of man or his earthly nature. It is an essential condition of the soil of earth that thorns, weeds and fruitless trees may grow from it. Relatively speaking, this is evil; it is simply the lower state and baser product of nature.

That which is evil cannot be taken with a person when he dies. An evil person arrives in that spiritual world with fewer good qualities than those who lead more virtuous, spiritual lives. Both however, by the grace of God, still progress, but on different levels.’

‘It is clear then, that man needs divine education and inspiration and that the spirit of God and His bounties are essential to man’s development. These teachings, which are necessary for man education and guidance come from Christ and the prophets. They are the divine gardeners who till the earth of human hearts and minds. They educate man, uproot the weeds, burn the thorns and remodel the wasted places into gardens and orchards where fruitful trees grow. The wisdom and purpose of their training is that man must pass from degree to degree of progressive unfoldment until perfection is attained.’

‘Man needs a wide range of experiences in order to grow and develop. He needs to experience life as an infant, a child, a youth, and maturity and old age. If all men could stay young their whole life they would not know what it means to grow old or even believe it existed. If he did not grow old he would not know what being young means. He would be completely ignorant of infants and infancy. If there was no wrong, how would he recognize right? If there were no sin how could he recognize virtue? If evil deeds did not exist how could you recognize good works? If their was no sickness how would we know health?

Evil is non-existent. It is the absence of good. Sickness is the absence of health. Poverty the lack of wealth. Without knowledge there is ignorance; therefore ignorance is simply the lack of knowledge. Death is the absence of life, darkness is the absence of light. On the one hand we have existence; on the other, nonexistence, negation or absence of existence.’

‘Briefly this journey of the soul is necessary. It is the pathway of life, the road which leads to divine knowledge and attainment. Without this real life experience, the training and guidance of the soul could never progress beyond the conditions of its lower nature which is ignorant and defective.’

If all was light we would be practically blinded. The material world is the fetal state of mans spirit. If it were not for the fetus we would not know this comparative reality. This limited world helps us comprehend the existence of the limitless.

Science and Integrity

All things react with other things. If a thing did not react with other things its existence could not be known. If we do not acknowledge the existence of a thing, while it duly demonstrates its existence, we degrade the integrity of our own existence.

If integrity is essential to acknowledge the existence of a thing, then without integrity we can not acknowledge that existence. An absence of knowledge of a thing does not indicate the absence of its existence.
Integrity is ‘adherence to moral and ethical principals; soundness of moral character; honesty’. When we acknowledge an existence of a thing that requires the all the constituent parts of integrity, then we verify our own integrity.

If the attributes of one thing are essentially equal and identical to the attributes of another thing, then both things must be acknowledged as essentially identical, regardless of time, place, name or rarity, whether it is visible or invisible, spiritual or material, emotional or intellectual. If we acknowledge the Manifestation of God in the first instance, we must then acknowledge the Manifestation of God in every instance. To deny one is to deny all. To consider one above another is to deny that one and to deny all.

When we see our sun reflected in a mirror, we know that the sun itself has not come down out of space and squeezed itself into the mirror. No, the sun remains, as always suspended in distant space, unchanging and unmoved and in the mirror we see only a reflection of the sun’s many qualities. As we see these qualities, still we know, it is only a mirror that we see and its ability to reflect, it is not the sun itself come down. It is the same when God Manifests Himself in the noble form of the human temple. It is not God Himself that has come down and entered into a man. Only His unique qualities of love, knowledge, Divinity, wisdom, and Lordship that we see, each according to our individual capacity. Only once in every age, in God’s chosen One, do they appear. Christ was just such a Manifestation of God. In Him, those same, identical, perfect, superlative qualities of God, qualities that can only be manifested by God Himself, have appeared again in a Human Temple. We know, by Christ‘s example, that a Chosen Human Temple can be a vessel for the Manifestation of God. Regardless of time or place or name or locality.

If we fail to recognize and acknowledge those superlative qualities, which only God possesses, we have failed to recognize God Himself, failed in our loyalty and faithfulness to the Light of God, and disintegrated our Divine integrity, whenever, wherever, however, why ever, it appears, previously or in the future. In this way if we reject one of God’s Chosen Ones we have, in truth, rejected Them all. This is because the qualities of one are identical to the other.

The latest of these Manifestations of God, the One sent to address us, is the One prophesied and Promised in the texts of every religion of the world. This Promised One is expected by the peoples of all nations of the world. And it is incumbent on all, to be obedient to Him, to be subservient to His Will.

It is because of the needs of man, and conditions of place, and time of Their appearance, there appears differences in the sayings of the Holy Manifestations, but when scrutinized closely, they are found to be animated by God alone and reflect His light alone.

God has made this recognition our first responsibility and made acceptance of every goodly deed dependant upon it.

Entrance Into the Kingdom

‘The mind, which is in man, the existence of which is recognized – where is it in him? If you examine the body with the eye, the ear or the other senses, you will not find it; nevertheless, it exists. Therefore, the mind has no place, but it is connected with the brain. The Kingdom is also like this. In the same way love has no place, but it is connected with the heart; so the Kingdom has no place, but is connected with man.’

There is a great controversy in the world as to what salvation is and how to obtain it. Each religion claims to have the one and only key to salvation. And they each do. It is the Love for God. Christ is the only way because His Way is the love of God. Acquiring this Love is entrance into the Kingdom of God, being born again, dying to the world, a rebirth in the spirit, the acquisition of a new life in the spirit, and the resurrection of the soul. Over time man has de-emphasized these teachings and misconstrued them and caused division and devised other requisite conditions for salvation and made love for God one of many ancillary beliefs. Whereas love for God is not simply the way to salvation, it is salvation itself.

However, we must first be in a condition to receive this Love. The Great Being saith; ‘Thy heart is My home; sanctify it for My descent. Thy spirit is My place of revelation; cleanse it for my Manifestation.’ And, ‘Love Me, that I may love thee. If thou lovest Me not, My love can in no wise reach thee. Know this, O servant.’

The Kingdom is a spiritual, divine world and is impossible to describe, except in the most simplistic terms derived from this world. Therefore, symbol, similitude, analogy, metaphor and proverb are useful in describing things of God. Poets, Prophets, saints and those so inspired, make the best use of these words and are able to inspire us with glimpses, however faint, into the realities of the world to come. His Manifestations have the most power, and unequaled perfection in Manifesting God’s Word. Therefore Christ was called the only Son of God, others where know as the Friend or the Messenger of God to illustrate that nearness. The quantity and quality of their anointment with God’s Spirit where equal, for God Spirit does not vary in quality and in quantity is infinite. Any limitations perceived are our own. In the reality God has no relatives, no actual brothers, sisters, cousins, sons, or daughters, etc. He is remote, in the Hallowed, Unknowable, Essence of His Being, in His retreats on high, beyond our ability to penetrate or conceive. Christ’s Sonship, a title conferred by God, proving His likeness and nearness to God. Names also are as clouds to the peoples of all Faiths. Have you not heard; God is the King of all Names and He has told us the truth of the matter, for those who have chosen the path to their Lord. Names breed division by the ignorant. Would that there were no names! Terms indicating the superiority of any Manifestation of God, in the end, only intensifies the veils for those endeavoring to recognize God and His Oneness.

When man is in the world of the womb, God showers upon him all blessings he will need to progress in this material world. But man cannot, while in the womb, appreciate these gifts. When the child is born from the world of the womb into this world, all those blessings and gifts which God showered upon him in the womb become apparent. Similarly God showers upon man many spiritual blessings in this world, which we fail to, which we cannot, appreciate fully. When man enters the world of the spirit, the Kingdom of God, then the blessings he acquired in this world will become fully apparent in that world. But, in this world, they cannot be fully utilized or appreciated. However, they can and must be developed, for development is our only purpose here, otherwise when we leave these mortal bodies behind, forever, we will find ourselves handicapped by our lack of development. Therefore we must be thankful for all manner of trial and adversity here, for if we allow them, they will cause our spiritual growth, will teach us to turn to God, to seek refuge in Him, too empathize and feel compassion for the suffering of others, and in general learn to love all mankind as children of one heavenly Father. All of God’s Chosen ones and all of the greatest men, have suffer the most. If we allow the horrors of this world to turn us from God then to where shall we then turn? Weak ships are battered by the waves, strong ships ride the wave. It is for us to learn to be strong ships not battered ones. If we permit trials to batter us into a pulp and cause us to turn away from God, the opportunity of our purpose here will be lessened by our own choice. Under all conditions we must really upon God and thank Him and trust Him. Do not all religions teach this?

Although material life has existence, by comparison, ‘it is accepted as pure nonexistence and absolute death by the holy and sanctified beings’. Without the blessings of salvation; the love for God, the knowledge of God, and obedience to Him because of that love, the life of material existence alone is as death.

Prayer for the love of God is the highest form of prayer. To pray for the love of God is to pray for entrance into the Kingdom of God. ‘Nothing will benefit thee in this life except supplication and invocation unto God, service in His vineyard, and, with a heart full of love, be in constant servitude unto Him.’ Love for God is the motive force for obedience, and causes the edification and transformation of our characters. It is also is the origin of all philanthropy. By love for God, love for all humanity becomes possible. This love cannot be created in the hearts of men unless they purify their hearts of all other loves and of hatreds. That is, that love which may lead him away from the truth, and that hate which may repel him from truth. Only then can the mirrors of our hearts reflect the image of His resplendent Beauty. The cleansing of the mirrors of our hearts comes about through the Love of God and association with His loved ones.

“Good actions alone without the knowledge of God cannot be the cause of eternal salvation; entrance into the Kingdom of God. Entrance into the Kingdom is through the love of God, through detachment, holiness and chastity, truthfulness, purity, steadfastness, faithfulness and the sacrifice of life. We know these things only because the Manifestations sent by God told us. These truths have been circulating for thousands of years, to the point where we have forgotten their origins. We imagine humanity thought of them all by ourselves and God needn’t ever send His Prophets and Messengers to remind us. By the grace of God, man’s knowledge and salvation comes from the Manifestation of God, as does this great Love of God, which is reflected into this world by the Manifestation of God.

Graduation Day

All the Religions of the past point to one time, one all encompassing Event; the appearance of the Promised One, all finding in that Promised Day their final consummation and ultimate fulfillment. Some confusion arose, therefore, when quite unexpectedly, God sent other “Prophets”, or “Messengers” or “Teachers” or more specifically, “Manifestations of God” to the four corners of the earth, prior to the Promised Day’s arrival. These Manifestations of God, at the behest of God, appeared at a time when great geographic boundaries isolated ancient societies for thousands of years. As time moved on, these boundaries began to disappear and these other religions began to make contact with each other. Christ said, “I am the Good Sheppard; I know my sheep and they know Me. I have other sheep that are not of this sheep pen. I must bring them also. They too will listen to my voice, and there shall be one flock and One Shepherd.” Although He never told us so, we know that this is a parable for a great unification in Christ on the Promised Day, not a reference to sheep and the herding thereof. If we are to be faithful to the “sacred” principal of literal interpretation of God’s Book, than we must, on the Promised Day, look for the many sheep from all over the world gathering together.

Moses and Christ performed many genuine miracles. The witnesses to these had unique, confirming experiences, and we too, who have read the Word and believed, stand in awe and wonder. Christ did not use miracles as a form of spiritual bullying in order to obtain converts. All miracles of healing, spiritual or material, were performed to mercifully relieve suffering and to aid in our progressing in nearness to Him. This is the purpose of our life and why the universe was created.

If Christ only healed eyesight, one day the patient would die and be blind once again. By healing their spiritual vision, their perception of His spiritual nature was realized and eternal life and sight obtained. The raising of the physical body from death means little when the physical body will one day die and return to dust, while His raising of the dead in spirit to eternal life in the Holy Spirit is everlasting. However, if the priests and ministers maintain their hold on their followers, and they still use the literal, physical, rising up into heaven to explain resurrection, and Christ’s coming down on clouds to describe the means of His return, and lift these up as a test of faith, so cherished by an ignorant and backward looking clerical order, and maintain these literal interpretations as a standard and proof by which to judge Christ Himself on His return rather than using Himself alone as proof, then that clergy has over stepped the limits of propriety and has corrupted, by alteration and addition, the meaning of Scripture and deny themselves and their followers these inestimable, invisible, blessings. Until those believers stop accepting the words and sayings of men as truth, and begin an independent investigation of truth, independent from the past, independent from previous conceptions, they will not be able to accept Christ upon His return. Those who miss the Return do so solely as a result of their our own actions.

Growth means change and usually a good bit of pain. These are not olden times, our capacity has grown. Furthermore, God would not test us by asking us to accept something that belies or contradicts spiritual truth, science, and the realities that effect and govern all created things. The definition of superstition and blind faith are practically identical – ‘superstition; any blindly accepted belief or notion’. This is not the definition of faith. The degree of our love and faith is measured by the yard stick of obedience, not our ability to tolerate superstition and blind faith.

We cannot love what our minds cannot accept. ‘If a religion does not agree with the postulates of science nor accord with the regulations of reason it is a bundle of superstitions; a phantasm of the brain. Science and religion are realities, and if that religion to which we adhere be a reality it must needs conform to the fundamental reality of all things.’ On the other hand, ‘to reject miracles on the ground that they imply a breach of the laws of nature is a very shallow, well-nigh a stupid argument, inasmuch as God Who is the Author of the universe can, in His Wisdom and Omnipotence, bring any change, to the laws which He Himself has created.’

Testing the truth or the status of our faithfulness is not to be determined by our acceptance of miracles. Yet, any miracle is possible for Christ and God, is an article of faith and complies with reason and science. Just because a verse, when taken literally, is an astounding miracle, does not mean it literally happened or not, but when the spiritual, inner meaning is even more wonderful than the literal miracle then we must ask ourselves, “what was the purpose of the literal?” To ignore the more miraculous inner spiritual truth and meaning out of dogmatic reflex, without due consideration of justice and reason with no dispassionate review, is not a worthy basis for the evaluation of faith or truth, obedience to God or understanding. So, the ability to perceive the truth in the non-literal interpretation of His verses is also a worthy basis for the evaluation of faith or truth. All of this will be clarified on Christ’s return but not to those who place preeminent importance upon literality instead of reality. By literal signs they will judge Him! What could be more Satanic, more spiritually suicidal, then reliance on signs as proof, instead of Him, His Word and His Revelation?

Even as He Himself has said; ‘Strive, O people, to gain admittance into this vast Immensity for which God ordained neither beginning nor end, in which His voice hath been raised, and over which have been wafted the sweet savors of holiness and glory.... Suffer not your hearts to be deprived of remembering your Lord, nor your ears of hearkening unto the sweet melodies of His wondrous, His clear and most eloquent voice.” “We have caused you to draw nigh unto the right side of Paradise. Take heed lest ye allow yourselves to be shut out as by a veil from this Day Star that shineth above the Will of your Lord, the All-Merciful. Purge your sight, that ye may perceive its glory with your own eyes, and depend not on the sight of any one except your self, for God hath never burdened any soul beyond its power. He hath endowed every soul with the capacity to recognize the signs of God. Thus hath it been sent down unto the Prophets and Messengers of old, and been recorded in all the Scriptures.’

The Oneness of the Prophets

The Primal Point of the Revelation of God is God’s Holy Manifestation, Jesus Christ. Christ accepted death on the cross, torture and imprisonment that we may be freed from the prison of self and attain life eternal. Christ is the Portal of the Revelation from God, the Lamp of the Light of God, the Perfect Mirror in which we behold the Sun of Truth and all the attributes of God. The body of Christ was the Human Temple, the perfect Mirror, through which God Manifested Himself and all His attributes. How dearly we love that Lamp, that Mirror, that Human Temple. However, attachment to the Lamp is not the same as loving the Light.

The Manifestation of God, the Religion of God, The Revelation of God is none other that the all sufficing Word of God. When this principal is understood, the golden thread that binds all Religions becomes more apparent, their veracity further illuminated, and their reconciliation facilitated. Without Religion, (defined as the Testimony of God) as a source of instruction and enlightenment, the veracity of Prophethood, and His Manifestation in human form, an infinitely potent and illuminating means of instruction and discovery, would not exist. The Manifestation of God demonstrates the perfect living example towards which we must all earnestly strive, and is the perfect medium for communicating how to find our way to the Kingdom of God. The Manifestation of God in human form, is blessing unalloyed. Divine verities are, through a human Mediator, and Perfect Exemplar, made more accessible, more easily absorbed and integrated into our lives on this earthly plane. All the Religions of the world teach the great everlasting spiritual truths, such as the love of God and the acquisition of heavenly qualities. The social teachings of the Manifestation changes as society matures. The truth and endurance of these is proven again and again, in the crucible of severe persecution and suffering for those who accept it and those Divine Manifestations who announce it.
The inter-faith commonality of Their eternal spiritual truths, alert us to the phenomenon of Religious accord. The wonder of beholding Prophetic fulfillment, assists in establishing the universal foresight and the timeliness of Religion and it’s One Mystic Source, each proclaiming the Love of God and Love for God as Their central theme. Through Religions the grace of God and His mercy can be apprehended, and the release from blind repetition of tradition and superstition, when they are properly understood, is realized.

Judaism accepts Abraham and Moses but rejects all the Dispensations of God that came after their own? Christians accept Abraham, Moses and Christ but reject all Religions that came after their own. Muslims accept Abraham, Moses, Christ and Muhammad and reject the Religions that came after “theirs”. It is no coincidence that all clerical leaders, of all religions, believe in “the Promised One of all Ages and Religions, staunchly interpret prophesies relating to the coming of the Promised One literally, and many of the prophesies are held in common and are often identical.
All the religious leaders of all religions reject every succeeding Dispensation and its Prophet, because They each nullify their own Dispensation, made it an out-dated, expired Dispensation, and replaced it with a newly inaugurated Dispensation in its stead. All Theologians believe that their “own” religion will be the last one before the appearance of the Promised One, that “their” religion will be the only one remaining, “the last one standing”. The prejudice of clerics and the blind acceptance of their followers has been repeated with every new Revelation. Yet all speak at great length of the Promised One that will bring universal brotherhood and peace and longed for the Day of His appearance!

All scholars of history, regardless of their own beliefs, acknowledge that every world religion has clearly pronounced the coming advent of a ‘Promised One”. The Buddhists are waiting for the 5th Buddha, the Hindus await Lord Krishna, the Jews await the Messiah, the Muslims expect the 12th Imam and Christ, and of coarse Christians await Christ, and the Bábís await ‘Him Whom God Shall Make Manifest’. Baha’is await no one, for Baha’u’llah told us the next Manifestation will not come until after the passing of 1,000 years, and when He does come His mission will be to unite the planets. He says that the Prophetic Cycle that began with Adam has ended in Baha’u’llah’s coming, for He and the Bab are the fulfillment of all the prophesies of that cycle. Bahá’u’lláh says with His coming a new era, the Baha’i Era, has begun, that will last for 5000 centuries. The Bab, (meaning Gate), Baha’u’llah’s Forerunner and a Manifestation in His own right, was the ‘Gate’ from the old Cycle to the New Era and the Bab was that return of John the Baptist, the preparer and herald for Baha’u’llah.

‘It is because of the difference in Name and mission, that the words and utterances flowing from these Well Springs of Divine knowledge appear to diverge and differ. It has ever been evident that all these divergences of utterance are attributable to the contingent world, to difference of time and place. Otherwise, in the eyes of them that are initiated into the mysteries of Divine wisdom, all the varying utterances pronounced by Manifestations of God are essentially one and the same. This must be attentively considered, that the divergent utterances of the Manifestations of God may cease to agitate the soul and perplex the mind.’

‘These Birds of the celestial Throne are all sent down from the heaven of the Will of God, and as they all arise to proclaim His irresistible Faith, they, therefore, are regarded as one soul and the same person, the Day Springs of His Revelation, Luminaries of infinite and immeasurable splendor! Even as He hath revealed: For they, one and all, summon the people of the earth to acknowledge the single, the One and only God, and announce unto the people of earth God’s infinite grace and bounty. They are all invested with the robe of Prophethood, and are honored with the mantle of glory. If viewed from the standpoint of their oneness and sublime detachment, the attributes of Godhead, Divinity, Supreme Singleness, and Inmost Essence, those Essences of Being, all abide on the throne of Divine Revelation, and are established upon the seat of Divine Concealment. Through their appearance, the Revelation of God is made manifest, and by their countenance, the Beauty of God is revealed. Thus, it is that the enunciation of God Himself is uttered by these Manifestations of the Divine Being.’

The best known of these ‘Birds of the celestial Throne’, in the recorded history of this planet, are Krishna, Moses, Buddha, Jesus, Muhammad, the Bab and Baha’u’llah. The Promised One, the one awaited by all is Baha’u’llah. He proclaims that all religions come from God in their original, pure form, and they will continue to appear approximately every thousand years....forever! Baha’u’llah’s mission is to establish the unity of mankind and religion and to usher in the long awaited Kingdom of God on earth. Thus, He says, ‘Our Cause is but One. Inasmuch as the Cause of Christ, and God’s Chosen Proponents of His Cause, are one and the same, they all soar in the same heaven, are seated upon the same throne, utter the same speech, and proclaim the same Faith. ‘In this respect, if you call Him by the name Jesus Christ only, and dost ascribe to Him the same attributes as all of God’s Chosen Messengers and Prophets thou hast not erred from the truth.’

Bahá’u’lláh states in ‘The Summons of the Lord of Hosts; ‘Yea, these servants regard the one true God as He Who “doeth as He willeth” and “ordaineth as He pleaseth”. Thus, they view not as impossible the continued appearance in the contingent world of the Manifestations of His Unity. Should anyone hold otherwise, how would he be different from those who believe the hand of God to be “chained up”? And if the one true God – glorified be His mention! – be indeed regarded as unconstrained, then whatever Cause that Ancient King may please to manifest from the wellspring of His Command must be embraced by all. No refuge is there for anyone and no haven to hasten unto save God; no protection is there for any soul and no shelter to seek except in Him.’

‘They are all the manifestation of the "Beginning" and the "End," the "First" and the "Last," the "Seen" and "Hidden" – all of which pertain to Him Who is the Innermost Spirit of Spirits and Eternal Essence of Essences. In addition, were they to say, "We are the Servants of God," this is a manifest and indisputable fact. For they have been made manifest in the uttermost state of servitude, a servitude the like of which no man can possibly attain. Thus in moments in which these Essences of Being were deep immersed beneath the oceans of ancient and everlasting holiness, or when they soared to the loftiest summits of Divine mysteries, they claimed their utterances to be the Voice of Divinity, the Call of God Himself.’

‘To maintain that no independent Prophet could arise after Moses or that the law of the Gospel shall at no time be annulled, is a soul sickness that afflicts people around the world. These have clung to certain verses or traditional perspectives and not having beheld the literal fulfillment of certain verses, have found fault unnecessarily with, and raise trivial objections against, the Embodiments of Divine Revelation.’

’Wherefore, should one of these Manifestations of Holiness proclaim: "I am the return of all the Prophets," He is speaking the truth. In like manner, in every subsequent Revelation, the return of the former Revelation is a fact. It is clear and evident that all the Prophets are the Temples of the Cause of God, Who have appeared clothed in divers attire. If thou wilt observe with discriminating eyes.’

“Of all gifts that are inherent in man himself, that which is preeminent above all other gifts, is incorruptible in nature, and pertaineth to God Himself, is the gift of Divine Revelation. Every bounty conferred by the Creator upon man, be it material or spiritual, is subservient unto this. It is, in its essence, and will ever so remain, the Bread which cometh down from Heaven. It is God's supreme testimony, the clearest evidence of His truth, the sign of His consummate bounty, the token of His all-encompassing mercy, the proof of His most loving providence, the symbol of His most perfect grace. He hath, indeed, partaken of this highest gift of God who hath recognized His Manifestation in this Day.”

The Great Announcement

‘The Revelation which, from time immemorial, hath been acclaimed as the Purpose and Promise of all the Prophets of God, and the most cherished Desire of His Messengers, hath now, by virtue of the pervasive Will of the Almighty and at His irresistible bidding, been revealed unto men. The advent of such a Revelation hath been heralded in all the sacred Scriptures.

Behold how, notwithstanding such an announcement, mankind hath strayed from its path and shut out itself from its glory.’

‘O people of loyalty, O people of faithfulness, O people who are awakened by the Breath of God, O people who are inhaling the scent of life from the Spirit of God! The path hath become smooth, the way straightened, the carpet of the Kingdom is spread, the Tabernacle hath been elevated upon the Hill of Might, the powers of heaven have been shaken, the corners of the earth have quaked, the sun has been darkened, the moon ceased to give light, the stars have fallen, the nations of the earth have lamented, and the Son of Man hath come upon the clouds of heaven with power and great glory, and He hath sent His angels with the sound of the great trumpet, and no one knows the meaning of these emblems save the wise and informed.’

‘He, verily, hath again come down from heaven, even as He came down from it the first time. Beware lest ye dispute that which He proclaimeth, even as the people before you disputed His utterances. The Prophetic Cycle, beginning with Adam, has ended, the eternal truth is now come.’

‘In the open radiance of His glory He standeth before you. His voice summoneth all the holy and sanctified beings to come and be united with Him. Happy is he that turneth thereunto; well is it with him that hath attained, and gazed on the light of so wondrous a countenance.’

'Behold ye that dwell on earth, and ye denizens of heaven, bear witness, He in truth is your Well-Beloved. He it is Whose like the world of creation hath not seen, He Whose ravishing beauty hath delighted the eye of God, the Ordainer, the All-Powerful, the Incomparable!'

‘O Son of Man! Many a day hath passed over thee whilst thou hast busied thyself with thy fancies and idle imaginings. How long art thou to slumber on thy bed? Lift up thine head from slumber, for the Sun hath risen to the zenith; haply it may shine upon thee with the light of beauty.” ...In like manner, have such false imaginings caused other communities to stray from the Kawthar of the infinite mercy of Providence, and to be busied with their own idle thoughts.’

‘O SON OF BEING!

Thy heart is My home; sanctify it for My descent. Thy spirit is My place of revelation; cleanse it for My manifestation.’

Take note followers of the Gospel: no one is saying “He is over there, in the desert or He is in that place or this, or you can see Him here or there”. He spent all the years of His Mission under arrest, imprisoned, isolated, tortured, exiled from place to place, from prison to prison, from country to county, homeless, within the boundaries of the Ottoman Empire, at the behest and the collusion of the Islamic religious authorities and heads of state. From 1853 they conspired to keep Him isolated, a prisoner in a foreign lands, everyday of His life, until He left this world in 1892. His sufferings extended beyond any before Him, be He man or Manifestation of God. Such are the clouds of Glory on which He came!

‘It behooveth us, therefore, to make the utmost endeavor, that, by God's invisible assistance, these dark veils, these clouds of Heaven-sent trials, may not hinder us from beholding the beauty of His shining Countenance, and that we may recognize Him only by His own Self. He it is Who hath unveiled to your eyes the treasures of His knowledge, and caused you to ascend unto the heaven of certitude the certitude of His resistless, His irrefutable, and most exalted Faith. Beware that ye do not deprive yourselves of the grace of God, that ye do not bring to naught your works, and do not repudiate the truth of this most manifest, this lofty, this shining, and glorious Revelation. Judge ye fairly the Cause of God, your Creator, and behold that which hath been sent down from the Throne on high, and meditate thereon with innocent and sanctified hearts. Then will the truth of this Cause appear unto you as manifest as the sun in its noontide glory. Then will ye be of them that have believed in Him.’

‘Rely upon God, thy God and the Lord of thy fathers. For the people are wandering in the paths of delusion, bereft of discernment to see God with their own eyes, or hear His Melody with their own ears. Thus have We found them, as thou also dost witness. Thus have their superstitions become veils between them and their own hearts and kept them from the path of God, the Exalted, the Great.’

‘Verily I say, this is the Day in which mankind can behold the Face, and hear the Voice, of the Promised One. The Call of God hath been raised, and the light of His countenance hath been lifted up upon men. It behooveth every man to blot out the trace of every idle word from the tablet of his heart, and to gaze, with an open and unbiased mind, on the signs of His Revelation, the proofs of His Mission, and the tokens of His glory.’

‘Fear ye God, and be not of those who perish. Say: The Book of God hath been sent down in the form of this Youth. Hallowed, therefore, be God, the most excellent of makers! Take ye good heed, O peoples of the world, lest ye flee from His face. Nay, make haste to attain His presence, and be of them that have returned unto Him. Pray to be forgiven, O people, for having failed in your duty towards God, and for having trespassed against His Cause, and be not of the foolish. He it is Who hath created you; He it is Who hath nourished your souls through His Cause, and enabled you to recognize Him Who is the Almighty, the Most Exalted, the All-Knowing.’

Each and every people, and every religion, await a Promise One, and Baha’u’llah is the One Who is awaited by all; and therefore the Cause of Baha’u’llah will bring about the oneness of mankind, and the tabernacle of unity will be upraised on the heights of the world, and the banners of the universality of all humankind will be unfurled on the peaks of the earth.’

☆

"I am, I am, I am the Promised One! I am the
one Whose advent you have longed to witness,
and the hour of Whose Revelation you have
prayed God to hasten. Verily I say, it is
incumbent upon the people of both the
East and the West to obey My word and
to pledge allegiance to My person."

☆

‘He that partaketh of the waters of My Revelation will taste all the incorruptible delights ordained by God from the beginning that hath no beginning to the end that hath no end.’ ‘One righteous work performed in this Day, equalleth all the virtuous acts which for myriads of centuries men have practiced – nay, We ask forgiveness of God for such a comparison! For verily the reward which such a deed deserveth is immensely beyond and above the estimate of men.’

The All-Knowing Physician hath His finger on the pulse of mankind.  He perceiveth the disease, and prescribeth, in His unerring wisdom, the remedy. Every age hath its own problem, and every soul its particular aspiration.  The remedy the world needeth in its present-day afflictions can never be the same as that which a subsequent age may require.  Be anxiously concerned with the needs of the age ye live in, and center your deliberations on its exigencies and requirements.

People have often expressed and aversion to ‘organized religion.’ But how could they know? All are disorganized, in that there is not one that has not been divided into hundreds of conflicting sects. All the highest ideals of every peace organization, humanitarian association, “new thought” group of every kind, will find in the Bahá’í Faith the perfect expression of their highest ideals, and their Source. Such groups have come into existence today as a result of the spiritual potentialities released by this Revelation.

‘Could these fevers in the world of the mind, these fires of war and hate, of resentment and malice among the nations, this aggression of peoples against peoples, which have destroyed the tranquility of the whole world, ever be made to abate, except through the living waters of the teachings of God?  No, never!’

The New World Order

‘The World Order of Bahá’u’lláh is the divinely ordained system for which nations and peoples so desperately search. Bahá’u’lláh Himself prescribed this Order, for its standard of justice, its commitment to the practical realization of the oneness of mankind, as well as for its capacity to promote change and advance world civilization. It provides the means by which the Divine Will illumines the path of human progress and guides the eventual establishment of the Kingdom of God on earth.’ It is the Advent of Divine Justice. This is without precedent in the history of religion.

“The world’s equilibrium hath been upset through the vibrating influence of the most great, this new World Order. Mankind’s ordered life hath been revolutionized through the agency of this unique, this wondrous System––the like of which mortal eyes have never witnessed.”’

The barest outline of the Bahá’í Administrative Order which is the nucleus and pattern of the New World Order is outlined below.

In every community where nine or more adult Baha’is reside, every year, a Local Spiritual Assembly, consisting of nine members, is elected by secret ballot, without electioneering, nominations, campaigning of any kind, or even discussion of possible candidates, by that community. There are currently more than 10,000 Local Spiritual Assemblies in the world.

Each year, every community elects a delegate to a National Convention, in order to elect, by secret ballot, without electioneering, nominations, campaigning of any kind, or even discussion of possible candidates, the National Spiritual Assembly, consisting of nine members.

(In the future Local Spiritual Assemblies and National Spiritual Assemblies will be called Local and National Houses of Justice, respectively.)
Every 5 Years the members of the National Spiritual Assemblies of the world elect the nine members of the Universal House of Justice, the governing body of the Baha’i world, located in Zion, on mount Carmel, Haifa, Israel.
Mount Carmel was extolled by the prophet Isaiah almost three thousand years ago, when he announced; ‘And it shall come to pass in the last days, that the mountain of the Lord’s house shall be established in the top of the mountains, and shall be exalted above the hills; and all nations shall flow unto it.’ ‘And many people shall go and say, Come ye, and let us go up to the mountain of the LORD, to the house of the God of Jacob; and he will teach us of his ways, and we will walk in his paths: for out of Zion shall go forth the law, and the word of the LORD from Jerusalem.’ (King James Bible, Isaiah)

The succession of leadership in the Baha’i Faith, provided by Baha’u’llah for after His passing was as follows; Baha’u’llah, (the Glory of God), succeeded by His eldest Son, Abdul-Baha, (The Servant of Baha), the Perfect Exemplar of Baha’i Life and Center of the Covenant, followed by Shoghi Effendi, the Guardian of the Baha’i Faith and eldest grandson of Abdul-Baha, followed by the Universal House of Justice, to be re-elected every 5 years until the next Manifestation of God appears, ‘after 1,000 years’

A brief collection of statistics on the Baha'i Community Worldwide;
· Number of Baha’is in the world: estimated at 6,000,000
· Established in every nation.
· Nearly every nation has a National Spiritual Assembly elected by the Baha'is of that jurisdiction.
· Number of localities where Baha’is reside: more than 100,000
· Number of Local Spiritual Assemblies: more than 10,000
· Number of languages into which Baha’i literature has been translated: more than 800
· Tribes, races and ethnic groups represented in the Baha’i community: about 2,100
(See the statistics page from the Baha'i World News Service for more information)
Closing Note

All the things I have alluded to and described, whether completely or partially, accurately or inaccurately, however inadequately, are all explained in His own hand, by His own Pen. These can actually be viewed in the Archives building on Mount Carmel, Israel, or in thousands of books stores and libraries throughout the world and on the world wide web. Will you investigate?

Many Christians fear Satan and “believe” in him. They fear him. The only manifestation of Satan, the only thing to fear, is our own negligence of the things of God.

Everything in quotes without Endnote numbers, are quotes derived from either the Bible or the Baha’i writings. Their originals can be easily located by using the ‘Ocean’ word search software or http://reference.bahai.org/en/ Other useful references are; http://bahaitext.info/ and http://www.bahai.us/ .