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Talks on Truth
Lesson 11
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[Talks on Truth]
[Charles Fillmore's Works] [Unity on the Web Home Page]
Lesson XI
The Restoration of God's Kingdom
Once to every man and nation comes the moment to decide,
In the strife of truth with falsehood, for the good or evil
side;
Some great cause, God's new Messiah, offering each the
bloom or blight,
Parts the goats upon the left hand, and the sheep upon the
right,
And the choice goes by forever 'twixt that darkness and
that light.
--Lowell
THE PROMISE that the Garden of Eden will be restored on
earth is older than the Bible. Other bibles of other
peoples far antedating the Hebrews prophesy a time when man
shall possess the earth in peace and plenty; a time when
the elements shall be subdued, disease and death
eliminated, and immortal life in the body again set up. It
should be observed that all prophecies to this end that
come through mystical channels say that this
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is a state to be regained. They do not hint at evolution,
as understood in modern thought. But the students of
physical science arrive through their deductions at
virtually the same conclusions concerning the ultimate
condition of humanity.
2. They also agree that this condition of peace and
happiness will be brought about through causes originating
largely with man and his acts. In other words, its
consummation will depend upon the wisdom and the energy
with which men act at certain crises in history. These
prophets, both ancient and modern, say that we are now at
one of the most vital turning points in our experience.
They get at it in a variety of ways, and they differ widely
in minor points, but they are unanimous in their
conclusions that now is the time foretold by prophets of
old, and reiterated by prophets now.
3. But it does not require a prophet's perception to
discern the signs of these times. The dissolution of the
old and the birth of the new are manifest in every walk of
life. For instance, the thought that has been held
inviolate for thousands of years about the opaqueness of
matter has been shattered. The materialist and his world
are no more. This, however, is only a minor example of the
astounding swiftness with which the material sense of
things has been dissolved in recent years. The past half
century has witnessed more of this than the history of all
the world records before. The past few years have
accelerated this dissolution at a tremendous pace, and a
prominent scientist says that the changes have been so many
that the textbooks of nearly
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every science will have to be rewritten. Yet those who are
watching the mental realm know that still greater changes
are going on there. The religious world of a few years ago
does not exist today. There is but one sect in all
Christendom that stands by its creed and carries forward
its work on the old lines. All the others are shaken to
their foundations. Their creeds and dogmas are skeletons in
their closets, which they do not care to talk about.
4. In politics and in government the same upheavals are at
work. The rights of men are no longer theories; they are
about to become real conditions in the world of affairs. So
from any plane of observation that may be chosen, we can
assert with conviction that a crisis is here. Something is
happening. All along the line are evidences of the birth of
the Prince of Peace. A higher state of consciousness is
bursting full-blown upon the whole race. It is everywhere,
and those who are most open to its influx are being
rewarded. The power is abroad in the earth, and it calls to
men and to nations, "Come up higher."
5. All this presages a new state of consciousness for the
whole race. It is the beginning of the visible reign of the
Christ, whose seed man was Jesus of Nazareth. Every state
of consciousness is first planted as a seed idea by some
individual. So Jesus of Nazareth planted the seed thoughts
that are now springing up in so many forms and shapes. He
it was who went into all the domains of thought and
formulated ideas that have waited for a people who could
comprehend and utilize them. We are that
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people. The dawn of the millennium is in our keeping. We
possess the keys that open the gates of the New Jerusalem.
6. It should not be assumed that this refers to any sect or
class; it refers to all the people of this great time who
are open to spiritual understanding. The keys are presented
to those who come into a perception that all is mind and
that all things and conditions represent states of
consciousness, produced through the free action of the I AM
in every man and woman. This is the key that is being
intrusted to many in this great day of the Lord.
7. But the possession of this key is not all. A key is for
use. We may know all about the way in which mind formulates
states of consciousness and all about our relation to God,
but unless we have made a change in our consciousness and
realized, in a measure at least, the presence of God in our
mind, we are not using the key. Theory is one thing;
practice is another.
8. The balanced mind no longer seeks to do evil, and the
factor of evil no longer enters into its problem; but a
proper discrimination between the enduring, permanent
things of existence and the transient and evanescent is not
so common. To choose wisely in this respect requires wisdom
and spiritual perception. Those who are unconsciously
building on the shifting sands of the material world are
many. They try to perpetuate the existing state of things
by calling it spiritual, and their ideals are but little
removed from the materialistic. The new heavens and the new
earth are not to lie darkened
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or cumbered by any conditions that exist today. All things
are to be made new. This is the promise of all the prophets
of all the ages. There is to be no more war, nor sorrow,
nor crying, nor pain, nor poverty; hence, all conditions
that cause these must be destroyed.
9. Our ideal world must first be formed in mind on a very
high plane. We may choose to build it from the standpoint
of the most transcendent dreams of humanity's perfection.
Nothing less will answer, and all attempts to bring forth
the new civilization in conformity to any lower ideal will
mean failure to the true metaphysician of the Jesus Christ
school. Jesus Christ has a distinct school. He has His
ideals; they have been sown in the minds of men, and will
surely come to fruitage. He saw a people here on earth with
all the powers of the gods, but He did not look to
governments, or churches, or industrial movements to bring
about the civilization that He planned.
10. His kingdom is now ready to be set up. The conditions
are ripe for it. It is open to all, but only those may come
in who are willing to give up for it all their ideas of
earthly possessions. "Seek ye first his kingdom, and his
righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto
you." This admonition still holds good, and its fulfillment
is capable of visible realization by those who are willing
to accept the conditions. But it is not to be attained in
the Ananias and Sapphira way. There can be no reservation.
Every earthly link must be broken, every mortal love
crucified. This was the way by which
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Jesus of Nazareth got into this kingdom, and His way is the
way that we must employ.
11. It is not for us to quarrel with the conditions of the
world, nor to take upon ourselves the burden of righting
them. That is a long, circuitous route into the kingdom,
and those who are choosing it face many weary years of
waiting. We are to accept that which is now prepared for
us. The feast is ready and the invitations are out. This is
no longer a parable, but an exact statement of that which
really exists in the very atmosphere of this planet. There
is a state of consciousness that can be attained and is
being attained by men, where all things are provided to
fulfill the desires of the regenerated souls. It is not
removed to some problematical heaven, nor is it on some
distant planet; but right here in our midst are the form
and the substance of the condition promised by Jesus Christ.
12. The day is not distant when this kingdom will have its
place in the geography of this people, and those who have
chosen it will be known to exist under laws and through
means beyond the ken of the Adam man. The way into this
kingdom is through the mind, and its doors all open in
response to words.
13. If the "kingdom of heaven," to which Jesus so often
referred, is a city with golden streets, in the skies, He
could easily have located it; but He did nothing of the
kind. On the contrary, He again and again gave
illustrations to show His listeners that it is a desirable
condition which can be brought about among them by the
power of Spirit. He did
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not speak of it as situated anywhere in particular, or say
that it could be attained quickly. For instance, in Luke
13: "Unto what is the kingdom of God like? and whereunto
shall I liken it? It is like unto a grain of mustard seed,
which a man took, and cast into his own garden; and it
grew, and became a tree; and the birds of the heaven lodged
in the branches thereof." And again: "It is like unto
leaven, which a woman took and hid in three measures of
meal, till it was all leavened."
14. It is a great mystery how these comparisons of heaven
ever came to be construed to refer in any way to a locality
in the skies. What relation to a city with streets of gold
has a mustard seed planted in the earth and springing forth
into a tree? or a little cake of yeast fermenting a baking
of bread? A remarkably strange lot of comparisons this wise
one used, if He had in mind a place where the good were to
go after death!
15. But He never pretended to represent any such thing. His
command to His disciples fully carries out His idea of the
kingdom of heaven. It was a condition to be brought about
in the affairs of men. It was to grow from small
beginnings, like the mustard seed or the yeast cake. His
disciples were sent forth to sow this seed in a definite
way, by carrying into the midst of men the signs that
evidence the power of Spirit through which the kingdom of
heaven is to be established right here on this planet.
There is no basis for any other view. All the visionary
theories about a place called heaven are founded on John's
symbolical description of the New Jerusalem,
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which was a picture, an imagination, of the fulfillment on
earth of the very movement inaugurated by Jesus and by Him
described as having such small beginnings. The city that
John saw was among men. "Behold, the tabernacle of God is
with men, and he shall dwell with them, and they shall be
his peoples, and God himself shall be with them, and be
their God: and he shall wipe away every tear from their
eyes; and death shall be no more; neither shall there be
mourning, nor crying, nor pain, any more: the first things
are passed away." This all describes what is to take place
here among us. No reference is made to its being among
angels, nor is it stated that it was established at the
time that John saw the vision. It means that heaven is to
be consummated in new conditions on earth.
16. If the kingdom taught by Jesus is in the skies, why did
He direct His disciples to pray, "Thy kingdom come. Thy
will be done, as in heaven, so on earth"?
17. The fact that the kingdom of heaven is at hand and
"within you," the sense man totally ignores. He does not
see beyond the range of the three limitations of space,
hence cannot cognize that which lies within and is
interlaced with phenomena on another plane. The kingdom of
heaven is not only an ideal realm in which all possibility
is freely transformed into externality, but it also has its
externality, as tangible to the higher faculties as are the
aspects of nature to the sense man. It has its working
plans, and it executes them with a fidelity and an accuracy
not comprehended by the
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lax methods of the lower plane. So you who have looked upon
the kingdom of heaven as a potentiality to be realized by
the power of your word should change your base and see it
as it is--a real place already formed, and waiting for you,
as a bride adorned for her husband.
18. It is here all about you; the knowledge of its presence
only awaits the opening of your interior eye, the single
eye, as Jesus taught. When you look with this eye your
whole body is made full of the light that is neither of the
sun nor of the moon, but of the Father.
19. As a disciple, it is not necessary that anyone should
know all the intricacies of the metaphysical law; he has
simply to act on his inspiration. He need only preach the
kingdom of heaven as being at hand, and it will manifest
itself. Electricians do not know what electricity is; they
have merely utilized some of its laws. They have found that
an unknown principle in nature is made manifest when they
observe certain conditions. They simply make the mechanical
apparatus, set it in motion, and the invisible unknown
becomes visible as light, heat, power.
20. In the world of ideas the metaphysician has discovered
that there is a realm having potentialities whose depths he
has not sounded. This realm is to him the greatest
storehouse of wisdom and of life, and he finds that his own
center of consciousness is like it. He is essentially one
with it. His thinking faculty represents the mechanical
device through which this all-Principle is made manifest.
His word sets
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the machinery in motion, and results follow in the realm of
ideas that parallel those in the realm of dynamics. When
you know this, you have the working plan upon which is
based discipleship. Then go forth and preach, "The kingdom
of heaven is at hand." As to defining what that kingdom is
like, you must be guided by the Spirit of truth alone.
21. The Master could not describe it to men on the sense
plane except in symbols. He said that it was like a pearl
of great price, to possess which the discoverer sold all
that he had. He compared its growth in the mind to a small
seed or a little leaven. He summed it all up in the words
"The kingdom of God is within you."
22. You cannot understand mathematics until you have
studied mathematics; neither can you understand what the
kingdom of heaven is like until you have studied that
kingdom on its own spiritual plane.
23. "Awake! thou that sleepest" in the sense mind! Rouse
yourself, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand. You are a
king! Bestir yourself; the Christ of God is born in you,
and the hour of your reign is at hand!
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