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Keep A True Lent
Chapter 4
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[Keep A True Lent]
[Charles Fillmore's Works] [Unity on the Web Home Page]
Christ in You
Chapter 4
VOLTAIRE IS CREDITED with saying that if there were no God,
men would invent one. The human characteristics of the gods
of all religions betray their man-made origin. Not
discerning the real character of God, man has thought of
Him as acting as man would if he were God. The result is a
God who is angry every day, regrets that He made man,
drowns the whole human family, and condemns the wicked to
the eternal fire of hell if they fail to ask His
forgiveness. This God of many of the religions of the day
is of such frightful mien that we find it difficult to
accept Him as the loving Father that Jesus taught Him to be.
Robert Ingersoll paraphrased "An honest man is the noblest
work of God" to "An honest God is the noblest work of man."
He was not so far wrong. All inventions are first pictured
in the mind of the inventor. So we form a mental picture of
everything we conceive, and our conception of God is no
exception. We do not see persons and things as we think we
see them. What we see is our own conception of them.
We are forced by intuition, logic, and manifest evidence to
the conclusion that the Creator of the universe in which we
live was and is wise and good. This being true, we cannot
accept descriptions of
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Him or His acts that contradict that primal conclusion.
When we read that "God is angry with the wicked every day"
we question the understanding of the writer, although the
evidence would tend to prove the assumption.
Those who transgress divine law suffer in various ways, and
it might well seem that an angry Being is the executioner.
However, we know that even those who frame our civil laws
are not angry with the persons who break them. Those who
conceive of God as a person will invest Him with personal
traits, some of which are ridiculous.
We can all understand that a creation which involves
complex relations must be governed by laws and orderly
acts. Those who get the right conception of the creative
source and adjust their minds to its wisdom, purity, power,
love, and completeness as the ideal source of perfect man
are rewarded by a serene peace and confidence in the final
supremacy of justice and righteousness. God is good, and He
is the only real power in the universe; consequently,
perfection must eventually establish itself in the minds of
the law-abiding people and through them in the whole world.
God-Mind presents its perfect ideals to all minds,
especially to those that are open to the light of the
Christ, by whom the bonds of error thought are broken.
Those who have been trained to think of God as a person, as
the parent of a family of billions can continue to think of
Him as such by adding
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the attributes of unlimited principle. But they should not
make their God a man with the limitations of the human. The
natural man thinks that the world in which he lives is the
real world and that the thoughts he thinks are the real
thoughts. Those who expect the second coming of Jesus look
forward to His appearance in a body of flesh similar to the
body that was crucified, if not the same.
But Jesus at the Ascension broke His physical organism into
its primal electrons or ions of substance and life, which
He sowed as a body seed for all those who follow Him in the
regeneration. Thousands have appropriated these seeds of
the new Christ body in the past nineteen hundred years and
are now in the process of unfolding a redeemed organism. No
one has fully developed the Christ body as it will appear
when mortal life has been replaced by immortality. Many are
experiencing strange sensations that they or their medical
advisers do not understand. These are the transforming
elements of the new life that they have incorporated into
their consciousness in this or some other incarnation.
The redemptive work that Jesus began will require a long
period of time to be fulfilled. He told His apostles that
many things would happen before the consummation of what He
called the "end of the age." This phrase appears in the
American Standard Version of the New Testament as the "end
of the world," but is corrected in the margin. This
erroneous translation, "the end of the world," has caused
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wave after wave of fear to sweep over the earth for
hundreds of years, and many ministers are still using it as
a club to scare people into conversion.
Jesus never taught that God would destroy the earth, but He
did teach that race evolution was being carried forward in
great periods or ages, one of which was ending in His time.
Jesus said that no one knew the duration of this age except
the Father. Paul doubtless had this in mind when he wrote
to the Colossians concerning "the mystery which hath been
hid for ages and generations . . . which is Christ in you,
the hope of glory." Through Christ we are unified with God
and become joint heirs with Jesus to all the treasures of
the kingdom of heaven.
Every follower of Jesus should strive for a better and
fuller understanding of the unity He made with the Father,
whereby He opened the way for us to make the same unity and
help others to do likewise. People are no longer herded
into heaven by persons preaching the fear of hell, but many
persons are sinking deeper and deeper into the delusions of
sense. The old serpent is deceiving them with the promise
that they get pleasure out of sensations of the flesh. We
must preach and teach and demonstrate that there is health
and happiness in the spiritual life of Christ. The blood of
Jesus does save. We have a striking illustration of the
efficacy of human blood in the restoration of life to our
wounded soldiers. The blood of the human family has become
corrupt, and the race body is no longer vitalized
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sufficiently. It has reached a point where an infusion of
purified blood is imperative.
Jesus raised the blood of His body to spiritual potency.
This purified blood was sown as seed in our race thought
and can be appropriated by anyone who raises his thoughts
to those of Jesus. This is accomplished through faith in
Jesus to save one from sin, to inspire one with His Spirit,
or through asking Jesus to come to the aid of the sin-sick
mind or suffering body. A single atom of the purified blood
of Jesus can begin a vitalizing and purifying work in mind
and body that will continue until the Christ man appears.
How long it will take to transform the mortal into the
immortal no man can tell. We do know, however, that once
the mind receives the Christ quickening it will continue to
grow in grace, incarnation after incarnation, until the
rejuvenating life has overcome death and reincarnation is
no longer necessary.
The multitudes who still labor under the logic of the
personal-God consciousness continue to ask why God does not
plainly reveal Himself and destroy the Adversary, who is
leading so many astray.
Those who have for even a short time given their thoughts
to the Christ Spirit can testify that it has developed in
them a new outlook on life. Where before they were doubtful
and uncertain, they now have the assurance of the presence
of a power that is helping them to better living in every
way. Christ has become a real Comforter, working with them,
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rather than a historical God-man in heaven. Health and
prosperity have replaced the former fear of sickness and
financial worry.
How great is the need for a metaphysical understanding of
God and His relation to man! Jesus taught plainly that "God
is Spirit." God is not a sleight-of-hand performer who
makes full-grown animals instantly. God gives Himself to
man, and man has the power to make himself what he will.
Freedom of will is man's inheritance, and he can use that
freedom to build or destroy as he determines. Jesus claimed
that all authority was given to Him "in heaven and on
earth." What Jesus had, we all have potentially. He
developed His powers and was the great example for all of
us. We can attain the same unity with the Father-Mind that
He attained; and He promised us that He will help us to
reach this unity with the Father. If suffering humanity
could appreciate the importance of this stupendous
invitation and accept it, the world and its people would
soon be transformed.
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[Keep A True Lent]
[Charles Fillmore's Works] [Unity on the Web Home Page]
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