Message 11
Who And What Is God
Who And What Is God
I am here, Jesus;
The question is: 'Who and What is God?'
In dealing with this question you must realize that it is not so easy to describe in language that mortals can comprehend the essence and attributes of God, and I feel the limitations that I am under in endeavoring to give you a satisfactory description of the only and true God. Not because of the paucity of knowledge and conception on my part, but because of the fact that you have not the required soul development to enable me to form the necessary rapport with you in order that through your brain may be expressed the exact truth as to who the Father is.
Well, to begin, God is soul and soul is God. Not the soul that is in the created human, but the soul that is Deity and self-existent, without beginning or ending, and Whose entity is the one great fact in the universe of being.
God is without form such as has been conceived of by humans in nearly all ages, and especially by those who believe in the Bible of the Hebrews, as well as in that of the Christians. But nevertheless, He is of form, which only the soul perceptions of the soul of a person which has arrived at a certain degree of development - that is, taken on the divine nature of the Father and thus become a part of the soul of God - can discern and realize as an entity.
There is nothing in all nature with which people are acquainted or have knowledge of that can be used to make a comparison - even in the spirit perceptions - with this great soul; and hence, for people to conceive of God as having a form in any manner resembling that of a human is all erroneous, and those who in their beliefs and teachings deny the anthropomorphic God are correct.
But nevertheless, God is of form such as to give Him an entity and substance and seat of habitation in contradistinction to that God which, in the teachings of some people, is said to be everywhere in this substance and entity - in the trees and rocks and thunder and lightning, and in humans and beasts and all created things - and in whom humans are said to live and move and have their being. No, this concept of God is not in accord with the truth, and it is vital to the knowledge and salvation of people that such conception of God be not entertained or believed in.
To believe that God is without form is to believe that He is a mere force or principle or nebulous power, and, as some say, the resultant of laws; which laws, as a fact, He has established for the controlling of His universe of creation, and which are expressed to people by these very powers and principles, that to some extent they can comprehend.
The child has asked, "Who made God?" And because the wise persons cannot answer that question, in their wisdom they conclude and assert that there can be no real God of personality or soul form, and hence, only force, principle or evolved laws can be God, and in their own conceit think that they have solved the question. But the child may not be satisfied with the answer and may ask the wise men: "Who made principle and force and laws that must be accepted as the only God?" And then, the wise persons cannot answer unless they answer 'God,' which they do not believe, but which, let me say, is the true and only answer.
God is back of force and principle and law, which are only expressions of His being, and without Him could not exist; and they are only existences, changeable and dependent and subject to the will of God, Who only is Being.
God, then, is soul, and that soul has its form perceptible only to itself or that of a human which by reason of the sufficient possession of the very substance of the great soul has become like unto God, not in image only, but in very essence.
We spirits of the highest soul progression are enabled by our soul perceptions to see God and His form. But here I use the words 'see' and 'form' as being the only words that I can use to give mortals a comparative conception of what I am endeavoring to describe.
When it is remembered that mortals can scarcely conceive of the spirit body of a human - which is composed or formed of the material of the universe, though not usually accepted to be of the material - it will be readily seen that it is hardly possible for me to convey to them a faint idea, even, of the soul form of God which is composed of that which is purely spiritual, that is, not of the material, even though to the highest degree sublimated.
And although I am not able, because of the limitations mentioned, to describe to people that form which they may glean a conception of the soul's form - as such form can be seen only with the soul's eye, which such eyes humans do not possess - it must not be believed that because humans cannot understand or perceive the truth of the soul's form, therefore, it is not a truth.
A truth, though not conceived or perceived by people, spirits or angels, is still a truth, and its existence does not depend upon its being known. And even though all the mortals of earth and the spirits and angels of heaven, save one, could not perceive the existence of that truth, yet its existence perceived by that one irrefutably proves its reality.
The truth of God's form, the soul's form, can be testified to by more than one of the spirits of persons passed from earth, and the possibility is before mortals of the present life, if their souls become possessed of the divine substance of God's love in sufficient abundance, to perceive God as I have attempted to explain.
The created soul of a human has its form, it being made in the image of God, yet people cannot see that form, although it is a fact and can be testified to by many in the spirit realms. And here it needs to be said that when in our messages we speak of God as being without form, we mean any such form as persons have or think they have conceived of, and our expressions must not be considered as contradictory to what I have tried to explain as the form of God.
Well, in addition to the form, God has a personality, and this is expressed and made known to people by certain attributes which to the consciousness of people is existent in the universe. And to some philosophers and scientists and wise persons, these attributes are their impersonal God himself and to them the only God. They make the created the Creator, not realizing that behind the expression must be the cause, and that greater than the attribute must be that from which the expression of the attribute is projected, or, as they better like to say, evolved.
And here, I, who know, desire to say that these manifested attributes or forces and powers and principles and laws and expressions do not, all together, constitute or be that from which they flow or in which they have their source. God is Himself, alone. His attributes or expressions manifested to mortals or spirits are only the results or effects of the workings of His spirit, which spirit is only the active energy of His soul, Himself. And hence, the form of God is not distributed over the whole universe of creation where His attributes may be, or because they are everywhere manifested.
No, as was said by Moses of old, and as was said by me when on earth, God is in His heavens. And although it may be surprising and startling to mortals to hear, God has His habitation, and the God of substance, the self-existing and soul form, has His locality, and persons do not live and move and have their existence in God, but in His emanations and expressions and spirit they do.
Your brother and friend, Jesus
Discourse continued...
I am here, Jesus;
I see that you were much interested in what the preacher said tonight about God and His personality, and that you gave him several questions which he could not answer. This must be expected, for to persons is not given, ordinarily, a true conception of God, or who or what He is, and only by the development of their souls by the divine love can they obtain any conception of His Being. As their souls thus develop they become a part of His Divinity, and their soul perceptions become opened up to a realization of who God is to a small degree at least, and then they know that He is something more than an all enveloping energy, supplemented by a purposeful will.
The preacher has not these soul perceptions and cannot conceive of God the soul, but can only express to you the truthfulness of the evidences of God's existence, such as the energy that he spoke of.
As you know, this energy is His spirit, although the preacher has not the exact conception of what this spirit is or how it operates. He confuses the soul and spirit, and makes the mere instrument by or with which God expresses His energy to be the real true substance of God the soul. He is right when he says that he cannot go back of this energy to find God, for his soul perceptions have not yet been awakened to a cognition of that from which the energy proceeds or which is the very source from which flows all the manifestations that to his mind constitute God. He is like the theologians and philosophers who believe that these manifestations and energies and forces are the only God, the only personal God, and he may be shocked to hear that his teachings amount only to this. But it is true, and to him there is no more personal God than to the others, with this exception: that he attempts to believe that in some manner and in some way connected with this energy there is a will which has in it a purpose of love or kindness or fatherly care; but the real personal God with His great soul of love, which is being always bestowed upon the individual person, he does not conceive of or make his own.
God is soul and only soul, which has in it all the attributes of love and wisdom and thought for the welfare of His creatures. He is a thinking and seeing God, and all the energies of His soul are used to make people better and happier. As is the natural father of a human a personal father, so is the great soul of God a personal father to all His children; and persons when they have the development of their souls in the divine love will know that God is personal - something more than an all-enveloping energy or force or mere manifestation of His existence.
The preacher says in substance that God is everywhere, and His presence may be realized by all who are willing to receive that manifestation, and that whether they are or not willing, that presence exists just the same. This is pantheism toned down a little by his beliefs in a more personal God, but still pantheism and wholly wrong and violative of God's Being.
The source of things can never be the things themselves, although the things as they flow from the source have some of the qualities of the source itself; and so these manifestations of God's existence, while they are of His qualities, yet they are not equivalent of His presence or the source from which they flow. God is not everywhere but in His heavens, and all these expressions of His powers and will and energies are merely evidences that there is a source from which they all come, but they are not the source itself.
And again, the preacher said that God created the body of the human and not the spirit, as he calls it, meaning the soul, so that the body is a creation by itself and cannot contain in it the spirit or the spirit body, but that this spirit is outside of the human body and is in a general way a part of the one great spirit that is universal and everywhere, and that therefore all persons, no matter what their conditions may be in the earth life or in the eternity part of life, are brothers and God is the Father of them all. Well, in this the preacher is mistaken, for every person has his own individual spirit, soul, and on the state or condition of that soul depends the happiness or misery of the man. And he is merely the brother of other persons because he is a creature of God and made in His image, and not because he is a part of the universal spirit which the preacher believes permeates everything and exists everywhere; and God is the Father because these children are His creatures, the objects of His creation and individualized, each working out his own destiny. Some of these children will always remain the merely created children, while others will partake of His divine love and become a part of His Divinity and inhabitants of the celestial spheres.
The preacher has many things to learn, and as he believes in the search for the truth, if he will let the divine love flow into his heart and transform his soul into the very essence and substance of the Father's Divinity, he will be able to learn many things spiritual as well as of things material are governed by law, and unless the soul gets into a condition that enables it to see and realize the higher truths of the spirit world, it can never obtain knowledge of things spiritual, and one of the objects of such knowledge is God.
With all my love, I will say good night.
Your brother and friend, Jesus
The question is: 'Who and What is God?'
In dealing with this question you must realize that it is not so easy to describe in language that mortals can comprehend the essence and attributes of God, and I feel the limitations that I am under in endeavoring to give you a satisfactory description of the only and true God. Not because of the paucity of knowledge and conception on my part, but because of the fact that you have not the required soul development to enable me to form the necessary rapport with you in order that through your brain may be expressed the exact truth as to who the Father is.
Well, to begin, God is soul and soul is God. Not the soul that is in the created human, but the soul that is Deity and self-existent, without beginning or ending, and Whose entity is the one great fact in the universe of being.
God is without form such as has been conceived of by humans in nearly all ages, and especially by those who believe in the Bible of the Hebrews, as well as in that of the Christians. But nevertheless, He is of form, which only the soul perceptions of the soul of a person which has arrived at a certain degree of development - that is, taken on the divine nature of the Father and thus become a part of the soul of God - can discern and realize as an entity.
There is nothing in all nature with which people are acquainted or have knowledge of that can be used to make a comparison - even in the spirit perceptions - with this great soul; and hence, for people to conceive of God as having a form in any manner resembling that of a human is all erroneous, and those who in their beliefs and teachings deny the anthropomorphic God are correct.
But nevertheless, God is of form such as to give Him an entity and substance and seat of habitation in contradistinction to that God which, in the teachings of some people, is said to be everywhere in this substance and entity - in the trees and rocks and thunder and lightning, and in humans and beasts and all created things - and in whom humans are said to live and move and have their being. No, this concept of God is not in accord with the truth, and it is vital to the knowledge and salvation of people that such conception of God be not entertained or believed in.
To believe that God is without form is to believe that He is a mere force or principle or nebulous power, and, as some say, the resultant of laws; which laws, as a fact, He has established for the controlling of His universe of creation, and which are expressed to people by these very powers and principles, that to some extent they can comprehend.
The child has asked, "Who made God?" And because the wise persons cannot answer that question, in their wisdom they conclude and assert that there can be no real God of personality or soul form, and hence, only force, principle or evolved laws can be God, and in their own conceit think that they have solved the question. But the child may not be satisfied with the answer and may ask the wise men: "Who made principle and force and laws that must be accepted as the only God?" And then, the wise persons cannot answer unless they answer 'God,' which they do not believe, but which, let me say, is the true and only answer.
God is back of force and principle and law, which are only expressions of His being, and without Him could not exist; and they are only existences, changeable and dependent and subject to the will of God, Who only is Being.
God, then, is soul, and that soul has its form perceptible only to itself or that of a human which by reason of the sufficient possession of the very substance of the great soul has become like unto God, not in image only, but in very essence.
We spirits of the highest soul progression are enabled by our soul perceptions to see God and His form. But here I use the words 'see' and 'form' as being the only words that I can use to give mortals a comparative conception of what I am endeavoring to describe.
When it is remembered that mortals can scarcely conceive of the spirit body of a human - which is composed or formed of the material of the universe, though not usually accepted to be of the material - it will be readily seen that it is hardly possible for me to convey to them a faint idea, even, of the soul form of God which is composed of that which is purely spiritual, that is, not of the material, even though to the highest degree sublimated.
And although I am not able, because of the limitations mentioned, to describe to people that form which they may glean a conception of the soul's form - as such form can be seen only with the soul's eye, which such eyes humans do not possess - it must not be believed that because humans cannot understand or perceive the truth of the soul's form, therefore, it is not a truth.
A truth, though not conceived or perceived by people, spirits or angels, is still a truth, and its existence does not depend upon its being known. And even though all the mortals of earth and the spirits and angels of heaven, save one, could not perceive the existence of that truth, yet its existence perceived by that one irrefutably proves its reality.
The truth of God's form, the soul's form, can be testified to by more than one of the spirits of persons passed from earth, and the possibility is before mortals of the present life, if their souls become possessed of the divine substance of God's love in sufficient abundance, to perceive God as I have attempted to explain.
The created soul of a human has its form, it being made in the image of God, yet people cannot see that form, although it is a fact and can be testified to by many in the spirit realms. And here it needs to be said that when in our messages we speak of God as being without form, we mean any such form as persons have or think they have conceived of, and our expressions must not be considered as contradictory to what I have tried to explain as the form of God.
Well, in addition to the form, God has a personality, and this is expressed and made known to people by certain attributes which to the consciousness of people is existent in the universe. And to some philosophers and scientists and wise persons, these attributes are their impersonal God himself and to them the only God. They make the created the Creator, not realizing that behind the expression must be the cause, and that greater than the attribute must be that from which the expression of the attribute is projected, or, as they better like to say, evolved.
And here, I, who know, desire to say that these manifested attributes or forces and powers and principles and laws and expressions do not, all together, constitute or be that from which they flow or in which they have their source. God is Himself, alone. His attributes or expressions manifested to mortals or spirits are only the results or effects of the workings of His spirit, which spirit is only the active energy of His soul, Himself. And hence, the form of God is not distributed over the whole universe of creation where His attributes may be, or because they are everywhere manifested.
No, as was said by Moses of old, and as was said by me when on earth, God is in His heavens. And although it may be surprising and startling to mortals to hear, God has His habitation, and the God of substance, the self-existing and soul form, has His locality, and persons do not live and move and have their existence in God, but in His emanations and expressions and spirit they do.
Your brother and friend, Jesus
Discourse continued...
I am here, Jesus;
I see that you were much interested in what the preacher said tonight about God and His personality, and that you gave him several questions which he could not answer. This must be expected, for to persons is not given, ordinarily, a true conception of God, or who or what He is, and only by the development of their souls by the divine love can they obtain any conception of His Being. As their souls thus develop they become a part of His Divinity, and their soul perceptions become opened up to a realization of who God is to a small degree at least, and then they know that He is something more than an all enveloping energy, supplemented by a purposeful will.
The preacher has not these soul perceptions and cannot conceive of God the soul, but can only express to you the truthfulness of the evidences of God's existence, such as the energy that he spoke of.
As you know, this energy is His spirit, although the preacher has not the exact conception of what this spirit is or how it operates. He confuses the soul and spirit, and makes the mere instrument by or with which God expresses His energy to be the real true substance of God the soul. He is right when he says that he cannot go back of this energy to find God, for his soul perceptions have not yet been awakened to a cognition of that from which the energy proceeds or which is the very source from which flows all the manifestations that to his mind constitute God. He is like the theologians and philosophers who believe that these manifestations and energies and forces are the only God, the only personal God, and he may be shocked to hear that his teachings amount only to this. But it is true, and to him there is no more personal God than to the others, with this exception: that he attempts to believe that in some manner and in some way connected with this energy there is a will which has in it a purpose of love or kindness or fatherly care; but the real personal God with His great soul of love, which is being always bestowed upon the individual person, he does not conceive of or make his own.
God is soul and only soul, which has in it all the attributes of love and wisdom and thought for the welfare of His creatures. He is a thinking and seeing God, and all the energies of His soul are used to make people better and happier. As is the natural father of a human a personal father, so is the great soul of God a personal father to all His children; and persons when they have the development of their souls in the divine love will know that God is personal - something more than an all-enveloping energy or force or mere manifestation of His existence.
The preacher says in substance that God is everywhere, and His presence may be realized by all who are willing to receive that manifestation, and that whether they are or not willing, that presence exists just the same. This is pantheism toned down a little by his beliefs in a more personal God, but still pantheism and wholly wrong and violative of God's Being.
The source of things can never be the things themselves, although the things as they flow from the source have some of the qualities of the source itself; and so these manifestations of God's existence, while they are of His qualities, yet they are not equivalent of His presence or the source from which they flow. God is not everywhere but in His heavens, and all these expressions of His powers and will and energies are merely evidences that there is a source from which they all come, but they are not the source itself.
And again, the preacher said that God created the body of the human and not the spirit, as he calls it, meaning the soul, so that the body is a creation by itself and cannot contain in it the spirit or the spirit body, but that this spirit is outside of the human body and is in a general way a part of the one great spirit that is universal and everywhere, and that therefore all persons, no matter what their conditions may be in the earth life or in the eternity part of life, are brothers and God is the Father of them all. Well, in this the preacher is mistaken, for every person has his own individual spirit, soul, and on the state or condition of that soul depends the happiness or misery of the man. And he is merely the brother of other persons because he is a creature of God and made in His image, and not because he is a part of the universal spirit which the preacher believes permeates everything and exists everywhere; and God is the Father because these children are His creatures, the objects of His creation and individualized, each working out his own destiny. Some of these children will always remain the merely created children, while others will partake of His divine love and become a part of His Divinity and inhabitants of the celestial spheres.
The preacher has many things to learn, and as he believes in the search for the truth, if he will let the divine love flow into his heart and transform his soul into the very essence and substance of the Father's Divinity, he will be able to learn many things spiritual as well as of things material are governed by law, and unless the soul gets into a condition that enables it to see and realize the higher truths of the spirit world, it can never obtain knowledge of things spiritual, and one of the objects of such knowledge is God.
With all my love, I will say good night.
Your brother and friend, Jesus