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Jesus Christ Heals
Chapter 10
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[Jesus Christ Heals]
[Charles Fillmore's Works] [Unity on the Web Home Page]
Chapter X
"I Am the Way, and the Truth, and the Life"
JEHOVAH GOD restores me to health and wholeness. Words are
quickened by those who speak them and they pick up and
carry the ideas of the speaker, weak or strong, ignorant or
wise, good or ill. Thus words descriptive of deity have
been personalized in the thought stuff of the race and
those who invoke them in prayer and meditation are given a
spiritual impetus far beyond what they would receive from
common words. It is a fact that the name Jehovah came to be
held in such reverence by the rabbis that they never spoke
the word aloud. Jesus said that His words were so charged
with spirit and life that they would endure longer even
than heaven and earth.
Next to Spirit the word of Spirit is the most powerful
thing in existence. The author of the Book of Hebrews says
"that the worlds have been framed by the word of God." We
read in Genesis that "God said" and it came to pass. And
God said, "Let us make man in our own image, after our
likeness." Thus we see that man is the incarnate word of
God, and it logically follows that our words bring forth
whatever we put into them. Study the 1st chapter of John.
Jesus said that a man will be held accountable for his
lightest word.
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Spiritually classified, the Jehovah of the Old Testament is
identical with the Christ in the New. One who heals by the
power of the word should become familiar with the inner
meaning of all words and use those that appeal to him as
possessing the greatest healing potency. Jesus promised
that He would unite with the Holy Spirit in helping those
who called upon Him. Unity healers have found that this
promise is fulfilled when they concentrate in prayer and
positive affirmation on the presence of the Holy Spirit and
Jesus Christ. A new and strong contact is felt with
spiritual life, as if it were a mighty battery, when the
name Jehovah God or Jehovah-rapha ("the Lord that healeth
thee") is spoken silently and audibly; then the ethers
quicken with the name and shower spiritual life on both
patient and healer. The word Jehovah or Yahweh is charged
with spiritual power far above and beyond any other word in
human language.
I am raised to perfection in mind and body by the healing
power of Jesus Christ.
Quite a few Truth students ask why we emphasize Jesus
Christ so strongly in our writings and statements of Truth.
Spiritual psychology proves that the name of a great
character carries his mind potency and that wherever his
name is repeated silently or audibly his attributes become
manifest. Jesus knew this and commanded His disciples to go
forth in His name. The marvelous works they did prove that
they exercised power far beyond anything warranted by their
education or previous ability, power
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springing directly from Spirit.
Every thinker who studies the life and teachings of Jesus
readily admits that He attained an understanding of
spiritual things far beyond that of any other man that ever
lived. His mind touched heights far beyond those of other
advanced searchers for Truth. As we unfold spiritually we
see more and more that Jesus understood the finer shades of
metaphysical reasoning and related His mind and body to
both ideas and their manifestation.
Jesus demonstrated that He understood the healing power
stored up in the body, which He said is released through
faith. "Thy faith hath made thee whole." Jesus identified
Himself and His name with the sacred name of the Hebrew
dispensation, Jehovah, and added another link to that long
chain of names and events that brought forth the perfect
man ideated by God-Mind, Jesus Christ.
As a directive head is essential in any army, militant or
spiritual, so in every forward movement of the human family
there must be a leader. The leader is chosen because of his
ability as a demonstrator of the principles adopted by the
group he represents. The religious principles taught and
demonstrated by Jesus were not originated by Him, nor did
He claim them as a "discovery." He said that Moses wrote of
Him, and He often quoted Moses, but with an interpretation
quite different from that of the popular religious leaders.
He told them that they studied the Scriptures expecting
through them to attain eternal life when the only way to
attain that life was through
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Him, and they would not come to Him. Right here Jesus
emphasized the spiritual man, the I AM in man, as the only
way by which man can enter the kingdom of God.
Jesus was undoubtedly the greatest of all exponents of the
impersonal I AM, which is revealed to man when he opens up
the supermind within his own soul. Jesus Christ's real name
is Jehovah, I AM. The personal man Jesus is merely the veil
or mask worn by the spiritual man Christ or Jehovah. We are
all, in our personality, wearing the mask that conceals the
real, the spiritual, I AM. Jesus shattered that mask and
revealed the spiritual man. He also taught the way by which
we may all do what He did and thus fulfill the destiny
implanted in us by the parent Mind.
There are many distractions to keep us from finding the one
door into the inner kingdom and many voices calling to us
that they will show us the easy way, but Jesus Christ is
the only one that appeals to those who are grounded in
principle.
Any declaration man may make in which the name Jesus Christ
is used reverently will contact the spiritual ether in
which the Christ I AM lives and will open the mind and body
to the inflow of spiritual healing rays. These healing rays
are very much superior to the ultraviolet rays that come
from the sun or our best medical appliances, because they
minister to the mind as well as the body.
Thy vitalizing energy floods my whole being, and I am
healed.
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The most inclusive name for Being is Jehovah God. Jehovah
represents the individual I AM and God (Elohim) the
universal Principle. When man thinks or says "I am" he is
potentially giving freedom to the seed ideas that contains
in its spiritual capacity all of Being. The natural man in
his narrowed mental comprehension barely touches the seed
ideas that expand in the Christ man to infinite power. The
more we dwell upon and expand our I AM the greater looms
its originating capacity before us. When Jesus proclaimed,
"Before Abraham was born, I am," He realized that the I AM
preceded all manifestation, however great, and was capable
of infinite expression.
The proposition that the seemingly insignificant individual
I AM contains infinite creative capacity appears absurd to
the thoughtless, but we have numerous examples of
extraordinary capacity for expansion in the little seeds
that bring forth gigantic trees. The Scriptures plainly
teach that men may become gods. Adam was expelled from the
Garden of Eden because Jehovah realized that he might
appropriate eternal life and live forever in his ignorance.
When man realizes that "death and life are in the power of
the tongue" and begins to use his "I am" statements wisely,
he has the key that unlocks the secret chambers of
existence in heaven and earth.
The Christ substance (body) and the Christ life (blood) are
accessible at all times and in all places to the one who
awakens his soul to spiritual omnipresence. The table of
the Lord is spread everywhere
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for those who believe on Him as Spirit and in their Spirit
affirmation eat of His body and blood. The appropriation by
His followers of His life and substance is the very
foundation of salvation through Jesus Christ. The mere
acceptance intellectually of the teaching that we are saved
by the blood of the Lord Jesus and the partaking of the
bread and wine in a perfunctory manner will save neither
mind nor body. The only thing that will do it is the
understanding that Jesus raised His body life and substance
out of the race consciousness into Spirit consciousness and
that with our minds poised in that consciousness we can lay
hold of the Spirit elements that will save us to the
uttermost.
Nearly everyone needs both mind and body healing, and those
who give faithful attention to the law as it operates in
man are rewarded by demonstrations of healing. Jesus healed
"all manner of disease," the same Jesus has broadcast that
healing Spirit to the uttermost ends of the earth, and
today all who will may be made whole.
The Christ life quickens and heals me.
Although millions have testified that they have felt the
quickening life of Christ, other millions doubt if such a
thing as the Christ life exists.
The unseen forces have always been an enigma to the masses,
and even those who are expecting the unseen to spring forth
suddenly into some marvelous manifestation do not recognize
it when it comes to pass. It is said that when Marconi
demonstrated to a group of scientists in Paris the power of
radio waves,
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they doubted his claims and sought in various ways to
discover the concealed wires, which they were sure were
being used. So every unseen force man uses has had to prove
its existence by some visible manifestation that can be
mechanically demonstrated. But are there unseen forces that
cannot be mechanically demonstrated? The answer is that all
unseen forces can be mechanically demonstrated and that
they are being demonstrated every day the world over, but
scientists have not yet recognized as mechanical all the
devices through which man brings unseen forces into
manifestation; for example, his own brain and the radio.
These with many other unseen forces come under the head of
mechanism.
Brain cells are the only material things that will transmit
mind, and man has never yet been able to invent so fine a
piece of mechanism outside his own organism. But brains are
mechanical, and man does build and use them in expressing
his intelligence.
The fact is that each of us builds a brain especially
designed and fitted for our individual use and for no one
else's. All attempts to turn our brains over to others in
hypnosis or mediumship will prove abortive in the end.
In radio terms your brain cells correspond to the tubes in
a combined broadcasting and receiving set, and you have
tuned them to certain wave lengths and turned on the power.
If you have not been informed of your innate ability to
turn on or off the mind waves, you are functioning in the
established race programs of personality: what your
ancestors
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have thought, what other people think, and what little
thought you can conjure up yourself. Unless your mind has
been quickened by the light of spiritual understanding, you
are living in a little three-dimensional world whose
beginning and end is sin or a falling short of the divine
ideal.
"If a man keep my word, he shall never see death."
"I am the resurrection, and the life."
Jesus stressed the power of words, especially His words. In
the parable of the sower He said, "When anyone heareth the
word of the kingdom." Here He referred to the Logos, the
creative Word, which framed the worlds, according to John.
The creative Word or Logos is also identified as Holy
Spirit, which is carrying forward the ideas of God as they
unfold in the manifest universe.
As the Word of God, the Logos, is creating in the universe
(body of God) so man's word is creating in his universe
(man's body). That is why Jesus said that we should be
judged by our words. We are creating a little universe in
which the cells of the body correspond to the planets of
the solar system. "And I say unto you, that every idle word
that men shall speak, they shall give account thereof in
the day of judgment."
The "day of judgment" to us is any day that we get the
fruit in body and affairs of some thought or word that we
have expressed.
The creative power of man's word is in proportion to his
understanding of God-Mind and his unity
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with its law. The creative power of most men does not get
beyond their own body consciousnesss, because they know
very little about Spirit and their relation to its laws.
The better we realize our spiritual relationship to
creative Mind and conform our thoughts and words to its
laws the greater is the power of our words. Jesus "tuned
in" to Divine Mind until that Mind reinforced His mind and
raised it to superhuman capacity. It was in one of His
moments of mental exaltation that He declared, "The words
that I have spoken unto you are spirit, and are life."
We have thought that we were to be saved by Jesus' making
personal petitions and sacrifices for us, but now we see
that we are to be saved by using the creative principles
that He developed in Himself, and that He is ever ready to
co-operate with us in developing in ourselves by observing
the law as He observed it. "I in them, and thou in me, that
they may be perfected into one."
Thus we see that when Jesus said, "If a man keep my word,
he shall never see death," He meant that we should realize
the life-giving properties of the creative words of God as
He had realized them, that we should have no consciousness
of death.
I have new life in Christ and I am healed.
To attain this realization of the word of life we must
create currents of life in our bodies as Jesus did in His.
Of all man's possessions the most valuable is life. "For
what shall a man be profited, if he shall gain the whole
world, and forfeit his life? or what shall a man give in
exchange for his life?"
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When Jesus uttered these words He was explaining to His
disciples that He was about to pass through a
transformation in which He would give up His physical life,
though He would continue His manifestation in a spiritual
life. They did not understand Him, and Peter "began to
rebuke him." Jesus told them they did not understand the
things of God "but the things of men." Up to this day the
passing over of the natural life into the spiritual life is
not fully understood by Christians. It is almost
universally interpreted as something that takes place after
the death of the body, while in fact it is a transformation
of the issues of life while the body is intact. Paul said,
"I die daily." So Jesus could not have appeared after His
crucifixion in the same body if He had not daily given up
the physical life and daily put on the Christ life. It is a
step-by-step or cell-by-cell transformation.
What did Jesus mean when He said, "If a man keep my word,
he shall never see death"? Did He mean death of the soul?
There is nothing in His teaching to warrant such a
conclusion. He meant that we shall escape physical death if
we identify ourselves with the creative Word in Him, the
Logos.
Then to understand the new life in Christ we must give
attention to that mystical Word or Logos, because in it are
wrapped the principles that, planted in our minds, will
spring into new life in mind and body.
Eternal life and strength are here, and I am made whole
through Jesus Christ.
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Among the seven sacred names given to Jehovah by the Hebrew
priesthood is "Jehovah-shammah," meaning "Jehovah is
there." Jehovah is the name of the ever-living I AM. When
the mystic desired to commune with the omnipresent life he
did not speak the name aloud but silently intoned,
"Jehovah-shammah!" This pervasion of his I AM with the
ever-living I AM harmonized the spiritual man with his
source, and the individual was merged with the universal.
A certain mystery has always accompanied the use of the
sacred name, and the priesthood gained their ascendancy
over the people by performing marvelous works through the
silent and audible intoning of words charged with thoughts
of spiritual power.
However a priest must undergo discipline to acquire mastery
of the elemental forces that function in mind and body. A
cursory reading of Exodus conveys the idea that for forty
years Moses was a shepherd, tending the flocks of his
father-in-law Jethro, priest of Midian. But his mastery of
nature, as evidenced by his works in Egypt, plainly shows
that he understood the control of matter by mind better
than did the magicians of Egypt, although he was versed in
their magic.
The followers of Jesus did marvelous works in His name, but
that name was also used by those who were not His immediate
disciples, and they succeeded in casting out demons so well
that John complained about it. Jesus said, "Forbid him not:
for he that is not against you is for you." So we find that
a person's
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name identifies him with his character. If that character
is mighty in spirituality and power, he who invokes it in
his prayers is automatically raised into a like sphere of
power and what he says comes to pass. "And whatsoever ye
shall ask in my name, that will I do, that the Father may
be glorified in the Son."
Salvation through Jesus Christ is not accomplished by
looking forward to freedom but by realizing that we are now
free through His freeing power, which we are using to cut
the bonds with which our thoughts have bound us. Then we
have only to establish ourselves in real life and strength
by understanding that these attributes of Being are
omnipresent and that our affirmations of that presence,
will cause us to become conscious that we do now and here
live, move, and have our being in eternal life and strength.
In the name and by the power and authority of Jesus Christ
I am made every whit whole.
Man gives a name--that is, "character"--to every idea that
comes into consciousness, and whatever he conceives a thing
to be, that it becomes to him. So it is written in Genesis:
"Whatsoever the man called every living creature, that was
the name thereof."
Jesus taught and demonstrated that man is master of a
kingdom far beyond the consciousness of the natural man,
but accessible to those who open their mind to its laws and
observe those laws in thought and act.
The official declarations of a representative of a country
are recognized by all as worthy of credence.
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Jesus represented the kingdom of the heavens, and we, His
agents, take possession of that kingdom in His name and
declare that we are vested with authority to bring
spiritual forces to bear that will restore man to his
primal perfection.
In the 3d chapter of Acts is recorded the healing by Peter
of a man lame from his birth; and Peter says, "In the name
of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, walk. . . . and immediately
his feet and ankle-bones received strength. And leaping up,
he stood, and began to walk; and he entered with them into
the temple, walking, and leaping, and praising God."
When the people were greatly astonished at this marvelous
healing and gathered around Peter and John, Peter
explained, "Ye men of Israel, why marvel ye at this man? or
why fasten ye your eyes on us, as though by our own power
or godliness we had made him to walk? . . . And by faith in
his name hath his name made this man strong."
Shakespeare says, "Good name in man and woman . . . is the
immediate jewel of their souls." But even Shakespeare, with
his psychological insight, never realized how good a name
would be or to what heights of power it could lift one who
applies the laws of Spirit in its use.
Those who have searched diligently to know God and His Son
Jesus and have prayed for the light of Spirit find that
they possess a certain confidence and faith in the very
name Jesus Christ and that to the one who speaks it the
name draws creative forces far beyond mental comprehension.
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Hence we should have confidence in the promises of Jesus
that those who in faith use His name shall do the marvelous
wonders that He did and even greater works of a spiritual
character.
Read in the 16th chapter of Mark what are the signs of a
real follower of Christ and see if you are measuring up to
them: "And these signs shall accompany them that believe:
in my name shall they cast out demons; they shall speak
with new tongues; they shall take up serpents, and if they
drink any deadly thing, it shall in no wise hurt them; they
shall lay hands on the sick, and they shall recover."
By the grace of God through Christ Jesus I am made whole.
Jesus knew what He had accomplished in breaking the mortal
mesmerism of the race, and He boldly proclaimed His ability
to help all those who join Him in seeking to effect a
direct union with creative Mind.
As Jesus healed in Galilee so He is healing in the same
spiritual realm of radiant health today. "To him that
overcometh, to him will I give to eat of the tree of life,
which is in the Paradise of God." "I am the way, and the
truth, and the life."
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[Go forward to Chapter 11 ->]
[Jesus Christ Heals]
[Charles Fillmore's Works] [Unity on the Web Home Page]
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