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#34 published Oct 11, 2003
THE FOUNDATIONS
OF RELIGIOUS FAITH
6. THE CERTAINTY OF RELIGIOUS FAITH
The philosophic elimination of religious fear and the steady progress of science add greatly to the mortality of false gods; and even though these casualties of man-made deities may momentarily befog the spiritual vision, they eventually destroy that ignorance and superstition which so long obscured the living God of eternal love. The relation between the creature and the Creator is a living experience, a dynamic religious faith, which is not subject to precise definition. To isolate part of life and call it religion is to disintegrate life and to distort religion. And this is just why the God of worship claims all allegiance or none.
The gods of primitive men may have been no more than shadows of themselves; the living God is the divine Light whose interruptions constitute the creation shadows of all space. [Stated another way, the huge space-time Supreme creations are God's purposive voids within the Eternal Infinite and Absolute Paradise-God Existential Level. Our local universe is made and maintained and perfected by our One True Master and Maker Jesus Christ Michael. Michael is a title of Jesus which means "HE Who IS just like GOD"; and our GODMAN Jesus IS our True God and loving Creator Father and eternally our very Elder Brother ! Thus we know in Spirit that we do have a Glorious Destiny forever unfolding without end !]
The religionist of philosophic attainment has faith in a personal God of personal salvation, something more than a reality, a value, a level of achievement, an exalted process, a transmutation, the ultimate of time-space, an idealization, the personalization of energy, the entity of gravity, a human projection, the idealization of self, nature's upthrust, the inclination to goodness, the forward impulse of evolution, or a sublime hypothesis. The religionist has faith in a God of love. Love is the essence of religion and the wellspring of superior civilization.
Faith transforms the philosophic God of probability into the saving God of certainty in the personal religious experience. Skepticism may challenge the theories of theology, but confidence in the dependability of personal experience affirms the truth of that belief which has grown into faith.
Convictions about God may be arrived at through wise reasoning, but the individual becomes God-knowing only by faith, through personal experience. In much that pertains to life, probability must be reckoned with, but when contacting with cosmic reality, certainty may be experienced when such meanings and values are approached by living faith. The God-knowing soul dares to say, "I know," even when this knowledge of God is questioned by the unbeliever who denies such certitude because it is not wholly supported by [mere] intellectual logic. To every such doubter the believer only replies, "How do you know that I do not know?" [I also state in the Spirit of Truth of God and Jesus as One that I Know and have seen Him/Them as They both have first Known, created and seen me; I am a Beloved Son of I AM; I Am Eternally Certain since being taken up in Spirit and reborn in Jesus and God -- as One Holy and Infinite Spirit upon us all, and now fully indwelling all faith sons of God in Jesus. In Him, we are becoming one perfecting Brotherhood of all Mankind - the Family of our loving Father God in Heaven and now forming here on earth.]
Though reason can always question faith, faith can always supplement both reason and logic. Reason creates the probability which faith can transform into a moral certainty, even a spiritual experience. God is the first Truth and the last Fact; therefore does all truth take origin in him, while all facts exist relative to him. GOD IS Absolute Truth. As truth one may know God, but to understand -- to explain -- God, one must explore the fact of the universe of universes. The vast gulf between the experience of the Truth of God and ignorance as to the fact of God can be bridged only by living faith. Reason alone cannot achieve harmony between Infinite Truth and universal fact.
[Intellectual amd manmade] Belief may not be able to resist doubt and withstand fear, but faith is always triumphant over doubting, for faith is both positive and living. The positive always has the advantage over the negative, truth over error, experience over theory, spiritual realities over the isolated facts of time and space. The convincing evidence of this spiritual certainty consists in the social fruits of the spirit which such believers, faithers, yield as a result of this genuine spiritual experience. Said Jesus: "If you love your fellows as I have loved you, then shall all men know that you are my disciples."[Jesus dared to love even His enemies ! and He still calls us to go and do the same ! Dare you ? If we did, pretty soon, there would no longer be any enemies; just EQUAL Brothers and Sisters in the Family of God on earth under the Sovereign Universe Rule of Jesus !
To science God is a possibility, to psychology a desirability, to philosophy a probability, to religion a certainty, an actuality of religious experience. Reason demands that a philosophy which cannot find the God of probability should be very respectful of that religious faith which can and does find the God of certitude. Neither should science discount religious experience on grounds of credulity, not so long as it persists in the assumption that man's intellectual and philosophic endowments emerged from increasingly lesser intelligences the further back they go, finally taking origin in primitive life which was utterly devoid of all thinking and feeling. [True scientists know and teach that "energy can neither be created nor destroyed", and thus that "only Something can come from something". Belief in an Eternal Creation to Infinity under GOD is much more logical and scientific; and we faithists in Jesus Know this Truth and much more !]
The facts of evolution must not be arrayed against the truth of the reality of the certainty of the spiritual experience of the religious living of the God-knowing mortal. Intelligent men should cease to reason like children and should attempt to use the consistent logic of adulthood, logic which tolerates the concept of truth alongside the observation of fact. Scientific materialism has gone bankrupt when it persists, in the face of each recurring universe phenomenon, in refunding its current objections by referring what is admittedly higher back into that which is admittedly lower. Consistency demands the recognition of the activities of a purposive Creator. [Also these materialistic "scientists" are operating on an equal "mere blind faith" of believing in may unproven "a priori assumptions" ! Ha ha How puerile they are ! But Jesus still loves and prefects these blind and nearly blind souls ... some Day they will have their Spirit Birthday-reBirth and then they will really Know Him as our True God and loving Creator Father, and also fuller cosmic reality.]
Organic evolution is a fact; purposive or progressive evolution is a truth which makes consistent the otherwise contradictory phenomena of the ever-ascending achievements of evolution. The higher any scientist progresses in his chosen science, the more will he abandon the theories of materialistic fact in favor of the cosmic truth of the dominance of the Supreme Mind. Materialism cheapens human life; the Gospel OF JESUS tremendously enhances and supernally exalts every mortal. Mortal existence must be visualized as consisting in the intriguing and fascinating experience of the realization of the reality of the meeting of the human upreach and the divine and saving downreach. [Amen ! Very True ! I was downgrasped and taken up into Paradise-God by my Maker Savior Jesus Christ on A.D. 5-24-1977 and forevermore ! Wholeheartedly seek Reality; and you will be rewarded with finding much more than you ever could have imagined !]
#35 published Oct 18, 2003
THE FOUNDATIONS
OF RELIGIOUS FAITH
7. THE CERTITUDE OF THE DIVINE
The Universal Father, being self-existent, is also self-explanatory; he actually lives in every rational mortal. [Yes, this world now needs to know that each and every Person on this planet is now a Beloved Son of God, thanks to the Spirit of Truth Bestowal of our Master/Maker Jesus Christ upon all flesh !] But you cannot be sure about God unless you know him; sonship is the only experience which makes fatherhood certain. The universe is everywhere undergoing change. A changing universe is a dependent universe; such a creation cannot be either final or absolute. A finite [ Supreme] universe is wholly dependent on the Ultimate [Transcendental] and the Absolute. The universe and God are not identical; one is cause, the other effect. The cause is absolute, infinite, eternal, and changeless; the effect, time-space and transcendental but ever changing, always growing. [without end !]
God is the one and only self-caused fact in the universe. [Yes, God, the Infinite Father I AM on Paradise, IS the One uncaused Cause of all Reality !] He is the secret of the order, plan, and purpose of the whole creation of things and beings. The everywhere-changing universe is regulated and stabilized by absolutely unchanging laws, the habits of an unchanging God. The fact of God, the divine law, is changeless; the truth of God, his relation to the universe, is a relative revelation which is ever adaptable to the constantly evolving universe.
Those who would invent a religion without God are like those who would gather fruit without trees, have children without parents. You cannot have effects without causes; only the I AM is causeless. The fact of religious experience implies God, and such a God of personal experience must be a personal Deity. You cannot pray to a chemical formula, supplicate a mathematical equation, worship a hypothesis, confide in a postulate, commune with a process, serve an abstraction, or hold loving fellowship with a law.
True, many apparently religious traits can grow out of nonreligious roots. Man can, intellectually, deny God and yet be morally good, loyal, filial, honest, and even idealistic. Man may graft many purely humanistic branches onto his basic spiritual nature and thus apparently prove his contentions in behalf of a godless religion, but such an experience is devoid of survival values, God-knowingness and God-ascension. In such a mortal experience only social fruits are forthcoming, not spiritual. The graft determines the nature of the fruit, notwithstanding that the living sustenance is drawn from the roots of original divine endowment of both mind and spirit.
The intellectual earmark of religion is certainty; the philosophical characteristic is consistency; the social fruits are love and service.
The God-knowing individual is not one who is blind to the difficulties or unmindful of the obstacles which stand in the way of finding God in the maze of superstition, tradition, and materialistic tendencies of modern times. He has encountered all these deterrents and triumphed over them, surmounted them by living faith, and attained the highlands of spiritual experience in spite of them. But it is true that many who are inwardly sure about God fear to assert such feelings of certainty because of the multiplicity and cleverness of those who assemble objections and magnify difficulties about believing in God. It requires no great depth of intellect to pick flaws, ask questions, or raise objections. But it does require brilliance of mind to answer these questions and solve these difficulties; faith certainty is the greatest technique for dealing with all such superficial contentions.
If science, philosophy, or sociology dares to become dogmatic in contending with the prophets of true religion, then should God-knowing men reply to such unwarranted dogmatism with that more farseeing dogmatism of the certainty of personal spiritual experience, "I know what I have experienced because I am a son of I AM." If the personal experience of a faither is to be challenged by dogma, then this faith-born son of the experiencible Father may reply with that unchallengeable dogma, the statement of his actual sonship with the Universal Father.
Only an unqualified reality, an absolute, could dare consistently to be dogmatic. Those who assume to be dogmatic must, if consistent, sooner or later be driven into the arms of the Absolute of energy, the Universal of truth, and the Infinite of love.
If the nonreligious approaches to cosmic reality presume to challenge the certainty of faith on the grounds of its unproved status, then the spirit experiencer can likewise resort to the dogmatic challenge of the facts of science and the beliefs of philosophy on the grounds that they are likewise unproved; they are likewise experiences in the consciousness of the scientist or the philosopher.
Of God, the most inescapable of all presences, the most real of all facts, the most living of all truths, the most loving of all friends, and the most divine of all values, we have the right to be the most certain of all universe experiences. [Yes, as I have shared here before; I am blessed to have been taken into the Paradise Presence of our infinitely loving Father God by Jesus, and in Their One Combined Spirit, now here upon all Humans and Beings ! This was on A.D. 5-24-1977, and is eternally being progressively Realized into all Finality of God-finding and God-revealing.]
[These added comments in brackets are by Teacher-Brother Dave. I do personally answer all your sincere questions and comments by email.]
#36 published Oct 25, 2003
THE FOUNDATIONS
OF RELIGIOUS FAITH
8. THE EVIDENCES OF RELIGION
The highest evidence of the reality and efficacy of religion consists in the fact of human experience; namely, that man, naturally fearful and suspicious, innately endowed with a strong instinct of self-preservation and craving survival after death, is willing fully to trust the deepest interests of his present and future to the keeping and direction of that power and person designated by his faith as God. That is the one central truth of all religion. As to what that power or person requires of man in return for this watchcare and final salvation, no two religions agree; in fact, they all more or less disagree.
[Christianity is the only major religion containing enough Truth to immortalize it. Having faith in our Father God of love, mercy and unending ministry is sufficient to insure your salvation. Your good works as His willing son of God will later be freely given in service to all in the Family of God.]
Regarding the status of any religion in the evolutionary scale, it may best be judged by its moral judgments and its ethical standards. The higher the type of any religion, the more it encourages and is encouraged by a constantly improving social morality and ethical culture. We cannot judge religion by the status of its accompanying civilization; we had better estimate the real nature of a civilization by the purity and nobility of its religion. Many of the world's most notable religious teachers have been virtually unlettered. The wisdom of the world is not necessary to an exercise of saving faith in eternal realities.
The difference in the religions of various ages is wholly dependent on the difference in man's comprehension of reality and on his differing recognition of moral values, ethical relationships, and spirit realities.
Ethics is the eternal social or racial mirror which faithfully reflects the otherwise unobservable progress of internal spiritual and religious developments. Man has always thought of God in the terms of the best he knew, his deepest ideas and highest ideals. Even historic religion has always created its God conceptions out of its highest recognized values. Every intelligent creature gives the name of God to the best and highest thing he knows. [The best and highest Person I Know is our Master-Maker Jesus Christ ! He is both our God here with us and The Way to the Father-Infinite I AM on Paradise. Always remember, that the Paradise Father is just as loving and merciful as our GodMan Creator Father and Elder Brother Jesus !]
Religion, when reduced to terms of reason and intellectual expression, has always dared to criticize civilization and evolutionary progress as judged by its own standards of ethical culture and moral progress. [In general, Christians should be more forceful in proclaiming the saving Gospel (Good News) of Jesus in both words and deeds, and be more intolerant of the many terrible evils done in this still too dark world. Remember how some of the grosser,evil violence and immoral sex shows on TV did clean up for about 7-14 days right after the "9/11" attack ? This shows that even immoral people producing these shows KNOW right from wrong ! We need to prod them more to learn to do right longer ! Jesus calls us to live and to judge wisely each and every day and moment ! Learn of His life and teachings, and then you will know better what Jesus wants you to do to slowly but surely help bring this "World of the Cross" into God's Light and Life eternal !]
While personal religion precedes the evolution of human morals, it is regretfully recorded that institutional religion has invariably lagged behind the slowly changing mores of the human races. Organized religion has proved to be conservatively tardy. The prophets have usually led the people in religious development; the theologians have usually held them back. Religion, being a matter of inner or personal experience, can never develop very far in advance of the intellectual evolution of the races. [Better whole personality unification lifelong education and more (most voluntary, with money incentives) sterilization of degenerates and defectives will help worldwide intellectual progress. A common language of English will also be of great help.]
But religion is never enhanced by an appeal to the so-called miraculous. The quest for miracles is a harking back to the primitive religions of magic. True religion has nothing to do with alleged miracles, and never does revealed religion point to miracles as proof of authority. Religion is ever and always rooted and grounded in personal experience. And your highest religion, the life of Jesus, was just such a personal experience: man, mortal man, seeking God and finding him to the fullness during one short life in the flesh, while in the same human experience there appeared God seeking man and finding him to the full satisfaction of the perfect soul of infinite supremacy. And that is religion, even the highest yet revealed in our universe --the earth life of Jesus of Nazareth.
[These added comments in brackets are by Teacher-Brother Dave. I do personally answer all your sincere questions and comments by email.]
#37 published Nov 01, 2003
THE REALITY
OF RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE
Introduction
All of man's truly religious reactions are sponsored by the early ministry of the Holy Spirit adjutant of worship and are censored by the Holy Spirit adjutant of wisdom. Man's first supermind endowment is that of personality encircuitment in the Holy Spirit of the Universe Creative Spirit; and long before either the bestowals of the divine Sons or the universal bestowal of the Thought Adjusters, [the spirit of God within you] this influence functions to enlarge man's viewpoint of ethics, religion, and spirituality. Subsequent to the bestowals of the Paradise Sons [our Master and Maker Jesus Christ] the liberated Spirit of Truth makes mighty contributions to the enlargement of the human capacity to perceive religious truths. As evolution advances on an inhabited world, the Thought Adjusters increasingly participate in the development of the higher types of human religious insight. The Thought Adjuster is the cosmic window through which the finite creature may faith-glimpse the certainties and divinities of limitless Deity, the Universal Father.
The religious tendencies of the human races are innate; they are universally manifested and have an apparently natural origin; primitive religions are always evolutionary in their genesis. As natural religious experience continues to progress, periodic revelations of truth punctuate the otherwise slow-moving course of planetary evolution.
On Earth, today, there are four kinds of religion:
1. Natural or evolutionary religion.
2. Supernatural or revelatory religion.
3. Practical or current religion, varying degrees of the admixture of natural and supernatural religions.
4. Philosophic religions, man-made or philosophically thought-out theologic doctrines and reason-created religions.
1. PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION
The unity of religious experience among a social or racial group derives from the identical nature of the God fragment indwelling the individual. It is this divine in man that gives origin to his unselfish interest in the welfare of other men. But since personality is unique -- no two mortals being alike -- it inevitably follows that no two human beings can similarly interpret the leadings and urges of the spirit of divinity which lives within their minds. A group of mortals can experience spiritual unity, but they can never attain philosophic uniformity. And this diversity of the interpretation of religious thought and experience is shown by the fact that twentieth-century theologians and philosophers have formulated upward of five hundred different definitions of religion. In reality, every human being defines religion in the terms of his own experiential interpretation of the divine impulses emanating from the God spirit that indwells him, and therefore must such an interpretation be unique and wholly different from the religious philosophy of all other human beings. [Unfortunately, the spiritually lazy usually prefer to memorize stale creeds and old traditions of past religious individuals, than to strive to advance their own God-given personal God-consciousness in the Bright Light and matchless Life of Jesus !]
When one mortal is in full agreement with the religious philosophy of a fellow mortal, that phenomenon indicates that these two beings have had a similar religious experience touching the matters concerned in their similarity of philosophic religious interpretation.
While your religion is a matter of personal experience, it is most important that you should be exposed to the knowledge of a vast number of other religious experiences (the diverse interpretations of other and diverse mortals) to the end that you may prevent your religious life from becoming egocentric -- circumscribed, selfish, and unsocial.
Rationalism is wrong when it assumes that religion is at first a primitive belief in something which is then followed by the pursuit of values. Religion is primarily a pursuit of values, and then there formulates a system of interpretative beliefs. It is much easier for men to agree on religious values -- goals [We here agree to all be pro-Jesus sharing, pro-life, pro-normal marriage and family, pro-Individual Divine rights for all, etc.] -- than on beliefs -- interpretations. And this explains how religion can agree on values and goals while exhibiting the confusing phenomenon of maintaining a belief in hundreds of conflicting beliefs -- creeds. This also explains why a given person can maintain his religious experience in the face of giving up or changing many of his religious beliefs. Religion persists in spite of revolutionary changes in religious beliefs. Theology does not produce religion; it is religion that produces theologic philosophy. [Our loving Father God spiritally endows Man; then Man tries to explain and interpret this ever-advancing God-Man Eternal Relationship]
That religionists have believed so much that was false does not invalidate religion because religion is founded on the recognition of values [love, mercy, ministry (service), truth, beauty, goodness] and is validated by the faith of personal religious experience. Religion, then, is based on experience and religious thought; theology, the philosophy of religion, is an honest attempt to interpret that experience. Such interpretative beliefs may be right or wrong, or a mixture of truth and error.
The realization of the recognition of spiritual values is an experience which is superideational. There is no word in any human language which can be employed to designate this "sense," "feeling," "intuition," or "experience" which we have elected to call God-consciousness. The spirit of God that dwells in man is not personal -- the Adjuster is prepersonal [before fusing with/as Personal You in Eternity !] -- but this Monitor presents a value, exudes a flavor of divinity, which is personal in the highest and infinite sense. If God were not at least personal, he could not be conscious, and if not conscious, then would he be infrahuman.
[These added comments in brackets are by Teacher-Brother Dave. I do personally answer all your sincere questions and comments by email.]
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