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Transcript

Tape 804

Introduction by a brother: “This statement is made to the brothers of the Holy Order of MANS and to the world at large, by Rev. Dr. E. W. Blighton, Director general of the Holy Order of Mans. This is a statement of our purpose and acceptance of the teachings of our Lord and Master, Jesus Christ.”

As I have read and heard, historians say that history repeats itself. This I know is true and I believe that the history of the Christian church and the Christian belief and its teaching repeats itself in many ways. For as my ear is turned to the airways of this world, to the speech, the questions and the talking of men, I hear some strange rumblings. Many of these do not sound Christian, even though uttered and sometimes spoken directly by clergymen, by laymen and some who are presumed to have belonged to holy orders.

I want it to be made clear that this order stands for exactly what it portrays to stand for. And let me read to you something which I believe could be well adopted by many orders of the earth and many churches of the earth. And this is the daily Prayer of the Brothers, or the striving of the order:

“I strive, O Father, Creator of all, to be the Nameless Wanderer, to be perfect and all-sufficient, so poised, so balanced, that none but Self can comprehend.

“All of this was unknown and unknowable, the greatness, the splendor, the magnificence of all, with the majesty of Thy power. I, more than mind of man can conceive.

“For in the beginning, O Father all-knowing, Thou didst speak the Word, and the Word was with Thee, and the Word was Thee. And the greatness and the splendor of Thy power didst manifest, not through mind, but through Thyself.

“For then the Word took flesh, and the great being of the Christos was born, in all magnificence and power. For this is the mystery that man has not understood. For Thy Word Thou spokest once again, God in great humility, sealed in the fleshy body of a little child. Thus was the Master Jesus born.

“My every prayer shall be, and is, that in this holy family I be received, to be the servant of all, to receive the great call. Glory, glory, glory, Lord God of all.”

Amen.

Truly, brothers, and any of those who are listening, this is our prayer. This is our way. We are not interested in what any man seeks to interpret the New Testament as. We are only interested in what the New Testament says: not what we think it says, but what it does say.

Down through the ages of Christian reality and Christian men, we have had wars to try to choke down the throats of other people Christianity. We have had hangings, burnings, and anti-witchcraft movements. This is going back over history. Let us forget history, and let us stand on the teachings of Jesus Christ.

And, my brothers, I want to let you know the answer to some things which will certainly come to your ears, some of the questions. One of those questions which is probably most prevalent is, where do we receive our Apostolic rights?

Let me answer that question with decision and with truth. We receive our Apostolic rights the same as many other churches have, and the same as Paul did: through revelation. And if this isn’t sufficient, let me add this little bit to it, that I am Paul, and I have come back to bring the churches of Christ together. I am not here to change religions, but to manifest in a reality the actions of a Christian.

We of this order are not taking issue with any church, either Christian, Mohammedan, Hebrew or any other. We are only interested in teaching people how to use the laws of creation and the teachings that Jesus taught. And let me add that if people wish to discuss theologically these teachings, we are not interested. Because the teachings on theological discussions for two thousand years have brought this world into a state of chaos and war, which has been tolerated by the churches and has practically destroyed our young men, and brought evil of its worst kind into existence.

So we are not taking issue with any church, any doctrine, any occult or any mystic group. We are going to hold to the teachings of Jesus and the ancient teachings which show you how it works, how you may be healed by the power of God and the Spirit. How you may receive your supply and the fruits of the earth which God promised. How you can live in this world without saying the other brother is wrong.

And let me state here, that we have asked no one for money, we have asked no one for help, except God and our Lord Jesus, and it has come through Him. We feed the sick and the hungry and we give them shelter, as He directed us to. We teach the Truth, but we do not preach on the streets. We seek only to aid those who are in trouble and to help those who would like to give their lives in service to man, to glorify God.

Let us remember this: you may not—whomever may listen to this tape—you may not accept what I have stated, but you may not deny it, because if you do, you must deny the entire letters of Paul, you must deny the entire Christian Bible, you must then deny the Old Testament, most of its work. We are not interested in the Old Testament, because that is history.

We are interested in the New and the promises and the realities of our Lord Jesus. And the head of this order is accepted as our Lord; and we know it is so, because he has spoken to some of us.

Now, if you wish, any of the brothers or any of the outsiders, wish to take issue with this, take to an issue of this, he may take the issue, but we will not defend it, because right does not need defense. Truth is its own defender. Here is the results and you can see them here in our order, in the brothers, in the sisters, who have gone through any part of the training.

So let it be known to the world that we are not here to take theological issue with anyone, and it is a waste of time. This has been going on for two thousand years and over. It is time that we follow what the Master Jesus said, “By their works ye shall know them.” It is time that we stop one thing or the other. Either stop calling ourselves Christians or stop fighting with one another; because a Christian cannot fight over the Lord Jesus. This is a thing which we must realize. This is the reality. And it is later than you think.

It is best that you go to your knees and pray for His help, in reality, so that you may know He is real and not a myth. It is time that you seek the reality of His teaching rather than just the words and whether you think they are right or wrong.

I am sure that anyone who is not narrow-minded, anyone who is not set on finding us wrong, can come here and find the evidence, as well as other places in this world, of the workings of God and the Spirit, and our Lord Jesus. So let us remember this. Take no issue, brothers, with any priest, with any minister, on the teachings of our Lord Jesus. They don’t need defending, neither do the principles or the premises, which we have accepted and are using daily, need to be debated. Do your duty each day, brothers. Go to the communion rail, accept his body and his blood, and our prayer services at night, and we have nothing to fear. For he will be with us whether you are in the center or in the brotherhouse or the chapel, or on the street. You have seen this demonstrated. Remember it, and walk with head high and full confidence and faith.

Speaking of faith, let us remember this: that faith is that which we know works. When we have faith in something, it is the words, the ways of creation, working, and we have faith in it. We know that it works. We have faith of its works. In other words, we have confidence. And as the old mystics used to say, know that one of the greatest stumbling blocks they referred to of man was in his use of mental and spiritual power, was the lack of faith. We pray and if we do not have faith, it does not work. Man does not know his powers. And he has had no confidence in them till now.

Many of us have prayed and had no answers until we were taught the inner truths that our Lord had taught, and therefore could not use them with the assurance and confidence of the power of the Word given to us by our Father, which comes when knowledge gives that confidence; and thus we have faith. The problem then was, and still is, how to establish the real confidence in the laws that govern the power of God and the forces of nature, that we may have confidence in the authority of that Word.

The man and woman on the street, and the ones who scoff or have no interest in spiritual things or mental powers of man given unto him, as we know them, cannot use these great powers. And thus we are called, perhaps, charlatans or occultists, or some other pet name, even witches and other things, because our prayers are answered and because we do not lack confidence. It is not that they do not know the laws, in many cases; that is a secondary thing. Many of us have had the uttermost confidence in the powers, often, of the things of mind, without knowing how.

Remember the books you have read? Remember the psychology you have been taught? Knowledge you have received, but confidence in the Word and the laws of God, that is something else. Without the knowledge of this, therefore, of the Law which we must use, in order to have our prayers answered, in order to have the reality of the greatness of God, this comes back to the very first Commandment of “thou shalt have no other gods before Me.” And so I ask this question, if you are going to put the word of man before the Word of God or our Lord Jesus Christ: are these not gods if we have the uttermost confidence in some power or some process within us to carry out our desires?

It was not the knowledge but the confidence that these powers and these laws work, that enable us to do what we wish to do. When we raise our hand, we have no question but what we can raise it. This is confidence in a rather childish way. But didn’t he say, “Lest you be as a little child, you cannot enter the kingdom of heaven.”? There is a peculiar principle back of this secret of confidence. It is as little known and understood by those who talk most about it as are the great spiritual laws.

Every salesman is told to have confidence, the popular books on psychology tell us to have confidence in our ability. And every clergyman and preacher preaches the principles of having confidence in the love, goodness and justice of God. But they ask us to assume or to wear a cloak of confidence, and such a process, such a symbol, such a method does not work. It is not psychologically right. We have doubt or we wouldn’t assume. We have hesitancy and therefore must assume an attitude of confidence, merely to hide the true condition of our minds that may fool our objective selves but it cannot fool the inner Self. We cannot fool the Father, the Master …there… which continues to doubt. No matter what cloak we wear objectively, the doubt is there, and it is like a wall between us and the manifestation of our prayer or Word.

What is the secret of this confidence? How does it make for power? What is back of the force of confidence? These are questions which we will discuss as we find the secret of the Word which was projected to us.

First let us consider this necessarily primary step. How can we have real confidence? That has been and always will be a great problem, as long as we study and are taught in the way we have been in the past. As in this order we know this so well, that from the very first lessons and teachings you have been led along from one principle to another, from one step to another, and through various experiments; and you’ve seen the demonstration around us, until within your inner Self there has been laid the foundation of real confidence, the foundation that our Lord is real, that God is real, that the powers and forces of creation are real.

Our brother knows that it is a false method to ask you to have confidence, or to assume it, just ask you. You have to learn through using it, the same as a new carpenter tool, you have to use it before you can understand it and know it. This leads to the self-mastery over the vehicle, the animal, call it what you wish, a perfectly wondrous body which God created and gave it great power that you could use, great life, great vehicles and tools of wisdom.

But somehow, through the years, there are those who seem to want to take them away. In us, in this order, we cherish freedom very highly. This is why we love the country in which we live. We are not political. We are not an “ism” or a church. We are a striving order to bring that freedom to every man, through his knowledge and his learning to have the confidence in the word of Jesus Christ, our Lord and master; that every law and the works of the Testament contains within it the principles.

When you complete in this order the things which have to do with what we call the Tree of Life—which is nothing new—you may have had completed a, so-to-speak, an outline of all the laws and principles, but you have no real confidence yet, until you have gone into the chapel and worked with the spiritual experiments and used these laws and learned the reality that the power of God and His words still exist, and that there is a life hereafter—or continuous, should I say. If there were not, then the laws of cause and effect, the laws of the Holy Family or the Trinity, would be all false.

Because any time that you dream—and you certainly should dream—have set up an ideal which you are going to follow, and you have made up your mind to it, that you are going to follow this, and that you are going to attempt to acquire this, and you have accepted within yourself that you will acquire it. And then somehow, from this completed pattern, you start to work it out. But the full picture takes considerable time, and so you work on it to the best of your ability while you are here on earth. But the whole dream, the whole pattern, is not worked out. So, do you think that God interferes with His own Law? No, I doubt it very much. Therefore you must complete it, and there would have to be life continuous in order to complete it. For where there is a cause, there must be an effect.

I could not believe in an unreal God. I could not accept an unreal master. That is why I have real confidence in them. You may believe them true. You may have trusted in them sufficiently to use them, to pledge your actions by them, to make them your rule or guide in life. That is faith, hope, trust, expectancy, but it is not confidence—not until each law has been proven by you over and over, until one or more demonstrations has proved in your waking self that the laws are truth and that life and love and light are real, real! And that you know they issue from our great Christ, from the Father above.

We know that those of you who have learned something of what you might call a secret—because everyone has read about it, and this is the way secrets are kept—now will hold it as a sacred trust, as dear and truly as any secret you might have possessed. You will try along the way. The sincere have dropped, some of them, by the wayside, the unfaithful have gone from our ranks, so to speak; all of this has occurred by this time in your life, and you remain faithful to Jesus. But is your faith real faith? Do you know it is so? Do you have confidence that it is so? For they have not been prepared words. These are words spoken from the inner knowing and inner wisdom of the man within.

It is necessary that you attain this confidence so that it will function throughout your life. It is necessary that you know that God is, and that it is not just idle words. It is necessary that you know the God of all creation, the Creator of all the created, first conceived and in that manner the Supreme Divine Mind first created, within the essence of mind, and that the thing that was to be manifest externally or objectively, as we might say. Now man has that same mind within him.

What is the soul? And they tell us this is something which we cannot understand, but what good is something that you cannot understand? This does not tally with what Jesus said when he said, “lest ye be as a little child, ye cannot enter the kingdom of heaven.” The divine Mind with the divine essence.

What is mind, the Mind of God? What is God? The Divine Mind. The mind that is within man, not in heaven, not in some distant place, but on another level of reality in vibration. I know you say this sounds so earthy, so occult, so something-or-other, but it is true. Thus God becomes not an entity of some distant place, not a personified Deity in an abstract place, but within each man; and His Word is also there.

The soul of man collectively is simply a part of the being, the God we accept of this universe, the God Who created us and said, “Thou shalt have no other gods before Me.” Thus when the Divine Mind conceived of man in His Image and created man in His Image, His essence dispersed itself, spread itself out into all beings created. And God now resides as an effective, efficient Being, and it is the soul of man in all his experience. Thus in each man is the power and the essence of God, and God personified. Are you willing to deny this? Are you willing to deny that Jesus said, “God the Father gave unto me the Word and I give it unto you”?

I care not where man started. I care not what your interpretation of sin is. I care not what doctrine you have or have decided on. But while the world argues over the theological discussions of doctrine, sin, apostolic succession and others, we will remove from the people their problems and give unto them the ray of hope and reality which our Lord Jesus commissioned us to carry forth as Christians and disciples of the Word and the works and the Light and the love of God. Amen.