Teacher-Brother Dave's Compilation of TOPICAL STUDIES from THE NEW EPOCHAL REVELATION OF TRUTH. Topical Study number 100 "New Revealed Truths and Promises of God" [Part 14] Teacher-Brother Dave's initial comments: I am presenting some of my Topical Studies from the fully public domain, 2097 page, Fifth Epochal Revelation of Truth and with my added comments. The Revealed text is free of copyright, so you may freely share individually these supernal quotes with your friends and relatives. But my order of selections, font types for emphasis and my added comments are Copyright 2012 through 2018 by Dave@PureChristians.org All Rights Reserved. Contact me first about using the whole Study or group of Studies. These will be published here each Monday, Wednesday and Friday at 8:00 PM CDT.] [My added comments of explanation below are in these square brackets] The earlier Parts 1 - on of prior Study 95 start on this page; click this link: Topical Study 95 PAPER 101 THE REAL NATURE OF RELIGION 0. Introduction [Paper:Section.Paragraph (page.paragraph)] 101:0.1 (1104.1) Religion, as a human experience, ranges from the primitive fear slavery of the evolving savage up to the sublime and magnificent faith liberty of those civilized mortals who are superbly conscious of sonship with the eternal God. 101:0.1 Religion is the ancestor of the advanced ethics and morals of progressive social evolution. But religion, as such, is not merely a moral movement, albeit the outward and social manifestations of religion are mightily influenced by the ethical and moral momentum of human society. Always is religion the inspiration of man's evolving nature, but it is not the secret of that evolution. 101:0.1 Religion, the conviction-faith of the personality, can always triumph over the superficially contradictory logic of despair born in the unbelieving material mind. There really is a true and genuine inner voice, that " true light which lights every man who comes into the world. " And this spirit leading is distinct from the ethical prompting of human conscience. The feeling of religious assurance is more than an emotional feeling. The assurance of religion transcends the reason of the mind, even the logic of philosophy. Religion is faith, trust, and assurance. 1. TRUE RELIGION 101:1.1 True religion is not a system of philosophic belief which can be reasoned out and substantiated by natural proofs, neither is it a fantastic and mystic experience of indescribable feelings of ecstasy which can be enjoyed only by the romantic devotees of mysticism. Religion is not the product of reason, but viewed from within, it is altogether reasonable. Religion is not derived from the logic of human philosophy, but as a mortal experience it is altogether logical. Religion is the experiencing of divinity in the consciousness of a moral being of evolutionary origin; it represents true experience with eternal realities in time, the realization of spiritual satisfactions while yet in the flesh. 101:1.2 The Thought Adjuster [the pure Spirit Essence of God within you -- the will of God -- to fuse with and Be You when you are all perfected in Spirit !] has no special mechanism through which to gain self-expression; there is no mystic religious faculty for the reception or expression of religious emotions. These experiences are made available through the naturally ordained mechanism of mortal mind. And therein lies one explanation of the Adjuster's difficulty in engaging in direct communication with the material mind of its constant indwelling. 101:1.3 The divine spirit makes contact with mortal man, not by feelings or emotions, but in the realm of the highest and most spiritualized thinking. It is your thoughts, not your feelings, that lead you Godward. The divine nature may be perceived only with the eyes of the mind. But the mind that really discerns God, hears the indwelling Adjuster, is the pure mind. "Without holiness no man may see the Lord." All such inner and spiritual communion is termed spiritual insight. Such religious experiences result from the impress made upon the mind of man by the combined operations of the Adjuster [from the Paradise Father] and the Spirit of Truth [of Jesus Christ, and One with/as the Father and the Son as One] as they function amid and upon the ideas, ideals, insights, and spirit strivings of the evolving [perfecting and spiritually ascending] sons of God. 101:1.4 (1105.1) Religion lives and prospers, then, not by sight and feeling, but rather by faith and insight. It consists not in the discovery of new facts or in the finding of a unique experience, but rather in the discovery of new and spiritual meanings in facts already well known to mankind. The highest religious experience is not dependent on prior acts of belief, tradition, and authority; neither is religion the offspring of sublime feelings and purely mystical emotions. It is, rather, a profoundly deep and actual experience of spiritual communion with the spirit influences resident within the human mind, and as far as such an experience is definable in terms of psychology, it is simply the experience of experiencing the reality of believing in God as the reality of such a purely personal experience. 101:1.5 While religion is not the product of the rationalistic speculations of a material cosmology, it is, nonetheless, the creation of a wholly rational insight which originates in man's mind-experience. Religion is born neither of mystic meditations nor of isolated contemplations, albeit it is ever more or less mysterious and always indefinable and inexplicable in terms of purely intellectual reason and philosophic logic. The germs of true religion originate in the domain of man's moral consciousness, and they are revealed in the growth of man's spiritual insight, that faculty of human personality [soul] which accrues as a consequence of the presence of the God-revealing Thought Adjuster in the God-hungry mortal mind. 101:1.6 Faith unites moral insight with conscientious discriminations of values, and the pre-existent evolutionary sense of duty completes the ancestry of true religion. The experience of religion eventually results in the certain consciousness of God and in the undoubted assurance of the survival of the believing personality. [What a Sacred Gift from our infinitely loving Father God ! Amen !] 101:1.7 Thus it may be seen that religious longings and spiritual urges are not of such a nature as would merely lead men to want to believe in God, but rather are they of such nature and power that men are profoundly impressed with the conviction that they ought to believe in God. The sense of evolutionary duty and the obligations consequent upon the illumination of revelation make such a profound impression upon man's moral nature that he finally reaches that position of mind and that attitude of soul where he concludes that he has no right not to believe in God. The higher and superphilosophic wisdom of such enlightened and disciplined individuals ultimately instructs them that to doubt God or distrust his goodness would be to prove untrue to the realest and deepest thing within the human mind and soul -- the divine Adjuster. [One of the most profound revelations in the Spirit of Truth, and with the spirit of God within you, is that: GOD has now become AS YOU ARE, so that you may become AS HE IS !! (all perfect in your domain in Eternal Paradise Finality and in further spiritual adventures in a Cosmos-infinite without end !) Thank You our loving Father God of All in Jesus !!] 2. THE FACT OF RELIGION 101:2.1 The fact of religion consists wholly in the religious experience of rational and average human beings. And this is the only sense in which religion can ever be regarded as scientific or even psychological. The proof that revelation is revelation is this same fact of human experience: the fact that revelation does synthesize the apparently divergent sciences of nature and the theology of religion into a consistent and logical universe philosophy, a co-ordinated and unbroken explanation of both science and religion, thus creating a harmony of mind and satisfaction of spirit which answers in human experience those questionings of the mortal mind which craves to know how the Infinite works out his will and plans in matter, with minds, and on spirit. 101:2.2 (1106.1) Reason is the method of science; faith is the method of religion; logic is the attempted technique of philosophy. Revelation compensates for the absence of the morontia [soul] viewpoint by providing a technique for achieving unity in the comprehension of the reality and relationships of matter and spirit by the mediation of mind. And true revelation never renders science unnatural, religion unreasonable, or philosophy illogical. 101:2.3 Reason, through the study of science, may lead back through nature to a First Cause, but it requires religious faith to transform the First Cause of science into a God of salvation; and revelation is further required for the validation of such a faith, such spiritual insight. 101:2.4 There are two basic reasons for believing in a God who fosters human survival: 101:2.5 1. Human experience, personal assurance, the somehow registered hope and trust initiated by the indwelling Thought Adjuster. 101:2.6 2. The revelation of truth, whether by direct personal ministry of the Spirit of Truth, [Our Creator Jesus here in Spirit upon all humans !] by the world bestowal of divine Sons, or through the revelations of the written word. 101:2.7 Science ends its reason-search in the hypothesis of a First Cause. Religion does not stop in its flight of faith until it is sure of a God of salvation. The discriminating study of science logically suggests the reality and existence of an Absolute. Religion believes unreservedly in the existence and reality of a God who fosters personality survival. What metaphysics fails utterly in doing, and what even philosophy fails partially in doing, revelation does; that is, affirms that this First Cause of science and religion's God of salvation are one and the same Deity. 101:2.8 Reason is the proof of science, faith the proof of religion, logic the proof of philosophy, but revelation is validated only by human experience. Science yields knowledge; religion yields happiness; [even the true Paradise peace of Jesus !] philosophy yields unity; revelation confirms the experiential harmony of this triune approach to universal reality. 101:2.9 The contemplation of nature does logically point in the direction of intelligent guidance, even living supervision, but it does not in any satisfactory manner reveal a Personal God. On the other hand, nature discloses nothing which would preclude [prevent] the universe from being looked upon as the handiwork of the God of religion. God cannot be found through nature alone, but man having otherwise found Him, the study of nature becomes wholly consistent with a higher and more spiritual interpretation of the universe. [Very true: "Behold, I AM making all things new to you... It IS Done... You are NOW My Beloved Son" See also Rev 21:3-7 which is very important to me, having had the profound Experience of being taken up in Spirit in God and Jesus as ONE, back in 1977 and Eternally; then some years later, reading this Revelation of 21:3-7] 101:2.10 Faith reveals God in the soul. Revelation, the substitute for morontia insight on an evolutionary world, enables man to see the same God in nature that faith exhibits in his soul. Thus does revelation successfully bridge the gulf between the material and the spiritual, even between the creature and the Creator, between man and God. 101:2.11 (1107.1) The contemplation of nature can only reveal a God of nature, a God of motion. Nature exhibits only matter, motion, and animation -- life. Matter plus energy, under certain conditions, is manifested in living forms, but while natural life is thus relatively continuous as a phenomenon, it is wholly transient as to individualities. Nature does not afford ground for logical belief in human-personality survival. The religious man who finds God in nature has already and first found this same Personal God in his own soul.[!!] 101:2.12 Revelation as an epochal phenomenon is periodic; as a personal human experience it is continuous. Divinity functions in mortal personality as the Adjuster gift of the Father, as the Spirit of Truth of the Son, and as the Holy Spirit of the Universe Spirit, while these three supermortal endowments are unified in human experiential evolution as the ministry of the Supreme. 101:2.13 True religion is an insight into reality, the faith-child of the moral consciousness, and not a mere intellectual assent to any body of dogmatic doctrines. True religion consists in the experience that "the Spirit itself bears witness with our spirit that we are the children of God." Religion consists not in theologic propositions but in spiritual insight and the sublimity of the soul's trust. 101:2.14 Your deepest nature -- the divine Adjuster [also called Mystery Monitor, Divine Pilot Light, my Integrity, God within, Will of God, etc ... a pure prepersonal Spirit plus, and difficult to describe with mere human words, but you, in Spirit, Know this as your DEEPEST REALITY] -- creates within you a hunger and thirst for righteousness, a certain craving for divine perfection. Religion is the faith act of the recognition of this inner urge to divine attainment; and thus is brought about that soul trust and assurance of which you become conscious as the way of salvation, the technique of the survival of personality and all those values which you have come to look upon as being true and good. 101:2.15 The realization of religion never has been, and never will be, dependent on great learning or clever logic. It is spiritual insight, and that is just the reason why some of the world's greatest religious teachers, even the prophets, have sometimes possessed so little of the wisdom of the world. Religious faith is available alike to the learned and the unlearned.[!!] 101:2.16 Religion must ever be its own critic and judge; it can never be observed, much less understood, from the outside. Your only assurance of a Personal God consists in your own insight as to your belief in, and experience with, things spiritual. To all of your fellows who have had a similar experience, no argument about the Personality or Reality of GOD is necessary, while to all other men who are not thus sure of God no possible argument could ever be truly convincing. [If any of this long series of Inspired Quotes rings true to you, please write us as a fellow faith-Brother or faith-Sister in Christ, and we will try to share more; and, God-willing, we may coordinate your and our evangelism projects.] 101:2.17 Psychology may indeed attempt to study the phenomena of religious reactions to the social environment, but never can it hope to penetrate to the real and inner motives and workings of religion. Only theology, the province of faith and the technique of revelation, can afford any sort of intelligent account of the nature and content of religious experience. 3. THE CHARACTERISTICS OF RELIGION [Paper:Section.Paragraph (page.paragraph)] 101:3.1 (1107.8) Religion is so vital that it persists in the absence of learning. It lives in spite of its contamination with erroneous cosmologies and false philosophies; it survives even the confusion of metaphysics. In and through all the historic vicissitudes of religion there ever persists that which is indispensable to human progress and survival: the ethical conscience and the moral consciousness. 101:3.2 (1108.1) Faith-insight, or spiritual intuition, is the endowment of the cosmic mind in association with the Thought Adjuster, which is the Father's gift to man. Spiritual reason, soul intelligence, is the endowment of the Holy Spirit, the Creative Spirit's gift to man. Spiritual philosophy, the wisdom of spirit realities, is the endowment of the Spirit of Truth, the combined gift of the Father and the Bestowal Sons [our Jesus Christ Michael] to the children of men. And the co-ordination and interassociation of these spirit endowments constitute man a spirit personality in potential destiny. [!!] 101:3.3 It is this same spirit personality, in primitive and embryonic [soul] form, the Adjuster possession of which survives the natural death in the flesh. This composite entity of spirit origin in association with human experience is enabled, by means of the living way provided by our Divine Sons, [our Master Jesus] to survive (in Adjuster custody) the dissolution of the material self of mind and matter when such a transient partnership of the material and the spiritual is divorced by the cessation of vital motion. 101:3.4 Through religious faith the soul of man reveals itself and demonstrates the potential divinity of its emerging nature by the characteristic manner in which it induces the mortal personality to react to certain trying intellectual and testing social situations. Genuine spiritual faith (true moral consciousness) is revealed in that it: 101:3.5 1. Causes ethics and morals to progress despite inherent and adverse animalistic tendencies. 101:3.6 2. Produces a sublime trust in the goodness of God even in the face of bitter disappointment and crushing defeat. 101:3.7 3. Generates profound courage and confidence despite natural adversity and physical calamity. 101:3.8 4. Exhibits inexplicable poise and sustaining tranquillity notwithstanding baffling diseases and even acute physical suffering. 101:3.9 5. Maintains a mysterious poise and composure of personality in the face of maltreatment and the rankest injustice. 101:3.10 6. Maintains a divine trust in ultimate victory in spite of the cruelties of seemingly blind fate and the apparent utter indifference of natural forces to human welfare. 101:3.11 7. Persists in the unswerving belief in God despite all contrary demonstrations of logic and successfully withstands all other intellectual sophistries. 101:3.12 8. Continues to exhibit undaunted faith in the soul's survival regardless of the deceptive teachings of false science and the persuasive delusions of unsound philosophy. 101:3.13 9. Lives and triumphs irrespective of the crushing overload of the complex and partial civilizations of modern times. 101:3.14 10. Contributes to the continued survival of altruism in spite of human selfishness, social antagonisms, industrial greeds, and political maladjustments. 101:3.15 11. Steadfastly adheres to a sublime belief in universe unity and divine guidance regardless of the perplexing presence of evil and sin. 101:3.16 12. Goes right on worshiping God in spite of anything and everything. Dares to declare, "Even though he slay me, yet will I serve him." 101:3.17 We know, then, by three phenomena, that man has a divine spirit or spirits dwelling within him: first, by personal experience -- religious faith; second, by revelation -- personal and racial; and third, by the amazing exhibition of such extraordinary and unnatural reactions to his material environment as are illustrated by the foregoing recital of twelve spiritlike performances in the presence of the actual and trying situations of real human existence. And there are still others. 101:3.18 (1109.1) And it is just such a vital and vigorous performance of faith in the domain of religion that entitles mortal man to affirm the personal possession and spiritual reality of that crowning endowment of human nature, religious experience. [This is living, personal religious experience ! Not merely membership in a church and learning about intellectual human doctrines. Our Sovereign Savior Jesus Christ, here in Spirit upon and within us, is calling us into spiritual UNITY, not merely dogmatic, creedal UNIFORMITY ! ] [The next part of this Study will be published here Monday, April 23, 2018 at 8:00 PM CDT (new Study material here usually each Mon. Wed. and Fri. at 8:00 PM CDT)] Past TOPICAL STUDIES 93 and 94 Past TOPICAL STUDY 1-on Spiritual High-Lights of Jesus Christ Spiritual High-Lights of the Fifth Epochal Revelation FIFTH EPOCHAL REVELATION (full text and my added comments) INSPIRATIONAL QUOTES (shorter, with some FER)