THE ACTS of GOD

In a recent daily paper appeared an article which told of a little chapel in the Orient erected to God by native converts; and how, on the very day of  dedication, the building was struck by lightning and burned to the ground. The natives were quite naturally taken aback by this happening, since The Little Chapel represented a distinct sacrifice on the part of each one of them. They immediately began to grope about in their minds to find some cause for it. Their natural conclusion was that the "Devil-God" had burned it down.

The leader of this little band was apparently not at all disturbed. When interviewed, he said, "We will rebuild it. Each native will again be called upon to contribute his labours and substance as best he can. "I have already explained to them the reason it happened------their wickedness. It was God's way of showing His displeasure at their sins." It appears that the natives refused at first to rebuild the church. They argued that it was useless to build churches to a God who would destroy them by lightning. Their leader settled this once and for always. "Ah," he said, "but this time we are going to put lightning rods on the church, and then it cannot burn down."

So a brace of metal rods were held up to these trusting souls as being able to offset the anger of God. What a terrible undermining of the Power! And of what avail, then, to rise and say, "God is all-powerful"? Acts of God and Providence are supposed by many to include cataclysms, earthquakes, fearful things too ugly to mention. What a God! If God is of "too pure eyes to behold iniquity," how is it possible to charge all these horrible things to Him? Either God is a "God of Love" or He is the God of Conscious-thinking, filled with all sorts of horrible designs, tyrannical and spiteful; watching like a suspicious person for someone to fall into a trap that He has set. Even a sadist finally tires of cruelty.

Are you still subscribing to the old tribal Jehovah who was filled with these terrible things, or have you left this state of bondage and come out into the place prepared for you by Jesus Christ? "God is Love." Is He? Or do you qualify that statement, and sandwich in some misunderstanding of the Presence? Because you cannot account for the evil manifestations you have brought forth, do you charge it off to God?

Many a person, unable to "lose" his life (to lose the limited sense of the personal life and find the Universal God, here, there, and everywhere), has suddenly gone into the business of "race-saving." If he cannot save himself, how does he expect to save the race? In order to get rid of the evil in his life, he is quite willing to precipitate the world into war, famine, pestilence, and all manner of evil. Blandly he tells you that this is the plan of the God of Love. But it is the plan of' the same god who burned down the little chapel, because he was angry with the children who built it!

"Awake, thou that sleepest, and Christ shall give the light!" What are you attributing to God, and to which God do you subscribe?-the "god of the lightning"? (He lived under another name in Egypt and Greece, and still lives and functions in the darkest jungles.) Oh, what a glory will fill your soul when you find the God of Love ! It makes no difference then where this finds you-----in the mire, in hell, in a swamp of human limitations. You will arise!----and there will be no need of plunging the whole world into war to satisfy and justify your own overcoming. "My sheep hear My voice"! It is wonderful!

"Yes, yes, but Jesus recognized evil"-and that seems to be the chief plank in the argument for a God of Wrath. Little by little the light is dawning upon the situation, revealing God as Love. Perhaps one of the most startling discoveries which has been made in years is reported in a recent copy of the London Daily Express. Dr. Lamsa, the author of this article, has completed a new translation of the first four Gospels from the ancient Aramaic text. "The gospels," he declares, "contain no fewer than 1,400 errors, many of which have created controversy and discussion for centuries."

Perhaps the most light giving of his discoveries is the revelation concerning the last words of Jesus. Most people believe the last words to have been an outburst of weakness and suffering-words which indicated that the crucifixion was almost too much for Him.
"My God, my God, why hast Thou forsaken me?" is rendered in the new translation by Dr. Lamsa: "My God, my God. for this was I kept"; or "My God, my God, my destiny is accomplished."

This beautiful revelation takes away all possible suggestion of bitterness or futility that was implied by the wail, "My God, my God, why hast Thou forsaken me?" Quoting further: "Dr. Lamsa's rendering, `My God, my God, my destiny is fulfilled,' is a sublime cry of victory." And so you go from glory to glory as the light breaks over you. One impasse after another will be cleared for you. The God of Love is truly of "too pure eyes to behold iniquity."

As you "ask" for wisdom-not from a person, book, or organization-you find everything being uncovered and the veiled mysteries being revealed, because you have placed a coal of fire on your lips, and have conceived the naturalness of God. As long as the Truth taught by Jesus remains an odd-issue, or something that is "used" instead of something "lived," it will only be an uncertain power resulting in an occasional "miracle." The long lapses between miracles will be fraught with doubt and disappointment.

"Awake, thou that sleepest, and Christ shall give thee Light!" Again and again the command is made to one apparently already awake. But we are never awake until we come to the point of naturalness with God, and bring Him down out of the skies of imagination into the everyday world; in other words, until we see the "Word made flesh" in the entire manifestation about us we will never know God.

What do you expect to gain by quoting to God, in prayer, words or explanations of another person? When you do this, you doubt the omniscience of God. If He knows all, what are you trying to do-call His attention to the perfection of Being? Moving with the Power will cease presently to be a mysterious thing. The more you recognize the Presence, the more natural it will be, and the more you will cease from the chatter of what Mrs. Blank or Mr. Blank has to say about it. You will know what Christ said about it, and that is enough, realizing that everything Mr. and Mrs. Blank can ever say will only be something based upon simple, direct words of the Master.
 
There is Light for you in the very words of Jesus Christ------Light that has never been revealed to any other being, for it is the Light which is to shine forth in you. The peculiar manifestation which comes to you (in order that you may become one of the "peculiar people" spoken of as the People of God) is not transmitted through another. There is nothing between you and God but the thin veils of conscious-thinking. See how thin are these veils. In a moment of excitement or emotion, a hopeless, bedridden invalid suddenly rises with full use of his body. Many an incurable cripple of years' standing has run from a burning building. Are you going to say that this does not count-that it is only human emotion? That is all right ---the main issue in the whole affair is that, just a moment before, you, with thousands of others in authority, would have said that this very thing could not be accomplished in any way. What happened to the invalid, then? He followed unconsciously the law---he took his attention away from appearances and instantly found himself free. The veil of conscious-thinking which is binding you is just as thin as that. If you can remove your attention from it for a moment the Power comes through. Yes! but the invalid may have collapsed or relapsed-and so the human mind offers a thousand futile reasons why it is all nothing. The invalid remembered something and returned to it just as the Prodigal "remembered" something (his Father) and rose to that.

It is wonderful when you delete the unnaturalness of Life and find that the Lord God is One God, and that Life is One Life. Presently you break down the parentheses of health sickness, poverty-riches, happiness-unhappiness which you have used to enclose a personal sense of life. The Lord is One Lord.

Life is One Life -"look up and be saved, all ye ends of the earth." It is glorious to contemplate the Allness of the Presence, and relaxation comes to you. At last you have cast your burdens on Me and are finding, strangely enough, that I Am sustaining you. So the secrecy envelops you.

The great, victorious cry, "My God, my God, my destiny is fulfilled,"  thrills one. It is an exultant cry of one who suddenly perceives that he has gone through the thin veils of belief-even death. And presently the secret joy of traveling the way alone, right in the midst of everything, will be revealed.

"In the world but not of it" does not mean the "holier-than-thou" attitude that many imagine is the badge of holiness-----"wholeness." If you are to live in the world and not be of it you will not pose as a saint. Saintly qualities will show forth in deeds and manifestations-automatically.

"In the world and not of it" renders to Caesar the things that belong to him, but it also "moves through the crowd" and "goes to the other side"-and finds the substance in the desert, and many other things which are not revealed to the noisy talker.

There is no measure large enough to hold the joy of your soul, when you (for yourself) find the Lord sufficient. Not because you read it in a book, or because you have heard someone in the "know" say it, but because you have found the Lord sufficient. You will go down unto your house blessed, and a blessing to all those with whom you come in contact.

The things that could not be told to you in Jerusalem, because of the noise, may be told to you when the coal of fire is placed upon your lips and you are "listening," instead of telling the Power what to do. Drop all human, emotional ideas and vain imaginations of becoming a saint. Let the naturalness of the Christ flow through you into manifestation. "I came that your joy might be full." Do you hear? I did not say nearly full, nor full of a sickly, puny sense of humour, as many imagine it to be, but a far-flung joy of life, ebullient, vital, all-encompassing.

Jesus, calling down the centuries that his "destiny" had been fulfilled, should so stir your heart that it would burst the narrow confines of conscious-thinking and feel the great, universal heart-beat of rhythm, and the surge of Life, passing into manifestation.
The subterfuges of the human mind will be cast aside. You will not seek to hide behind lightning rods. Neither will you excuse your failure in bringing the manifestation forth by something as flimsy as a human explanation.

A woman once said, in great glee, that she had thrown away all her medicines---"well, that is, everything but a few----a----a---a-tiny box of tablets-and I have those way behind all the jars in the pantry on the top shelf."
 
"Awake, thou that sleepest"! If "the pills" are there at all, they are the recognized point of power. They are the hidden things which are relied upon, just as the lightning rods on the little mission hall. What hope will there be for such an idea when you are caught far from home in the conscious-thinking and cannot make it to the pantry? Or if the storm break in a place where no lightning rods are available?

"Arise!" Do you hear? Let the dirty rags of deceit and hypocrisy fall from you. "Come out from among them"------come out from the hidden deceit of the conscious-thinking. "Stand and deliver." All these ringing commands are accompanied with the power to accomplish when you are ready and willing to "leave all and follow Me." What do you mean by all, and what do you mean by Me-and where are you going?

Yes, it is true, "I shall overturn and overturn till He comes whose place it is to rule." It is the coming of Me at which you leave all-pills, lightning rods, and the deceitful human explanations of them.

The victorious cry, "My destiny is fulfilled," which closed the conscious-thinking chapter in the life of Jesus Christ, is made a thousand times in the life of every man, once he is awakened to the Presence. He exclaims with joy, "It is done!"-"It is fulfilled"-"It is so, and so it is"-and rises into the Consciousness where this is an absolute reality.

When you begin to "travel alone" you may for the first time in your life be in a real crowd, so contrary appear the laws of God to the human, reasoning mind. You will also find that in the Secret place you are able to hear things that you cannot utter or explain. When you begin to come by the way of God it is the secret way, and, though you pass thousands of men on the highway, you salute none of them. The moment you do, that moment the conscious-thinking enters in and you are turned away.

Do not be alarmed; the time will definitely come when "I will walk in you and talk in you"-but at all other times it is best to leave arguments to those who are argument-wise. If My ways are not your ways, then there is little to be accomplished by arguing. Perhaps when you have come to the place of "yea, yea, and nay, nay," you will speak more than you have ever spoken before, because you will speak from the urge of Spirit and be unafraid to let the Power flow through
you into expression.

There is only one yardstick with which to measure everything-that is the Voice of Jesus Christ in the midst of you. It will keep you safe from the opinions of the "wise" ones.

Do not be fooled-God is not mocked-and God is in the midst of you. What hypnosis entered you when you put up your lightning rods and then turned about and violently declared, "There is no power apart from God"! "A house divided against itself must fall," and so it is.

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