JESUS AND HIS TEACHINGS [PART III]

All of this is the effect of priestcraft. Their nervousness makes in themselves all sorts of evil spirits. This affects the body. Then comes a more hungry swarm of locusts called doctors, and they try to enlighten the sick. This class is worse than the others, for they admit their fears as a real existence independent of spirits. They condemn the phenomena of the spirits but admit all the proof that follows their belief as real phenomena. So you get a superstitious world within a world like a wheel within a wheel. So now all can be satisfied with the effect of their own belief. All this has nothing to do with the wisdom of God or Science. Science is not in the above, neither is Christ; all belong to the superstitions of the natural man or Jesus. Christ never made war with science. Jesus was never known to declaim against any truth that was based on science. All the war he fought was against the priests and doctors. The priests never could understand how there was any intelligence independent of man that could act through the senses. So Christ to them was an imposter.

Jesus tried to separate his knowledge called Christ from his own knowledge as a man. This was the hardest thing to be done, for if this one fact could be settled, it put an end to all the controversy and the science of health and happiness would be established on earth as it was in heaven. This never was established, so the people to this day look forward to Christ just as they did eighteen-hundred years ago. And the Christians say that if Christ was on earth now as he was then they could be cured of all their diseases. For when I ask them, Do you suppose that if Jesus was alive they could be cured? They all say, Oh, yes! Now was it the flesh and blood that cured or was it the power that acted and took flesh and blood? Of course, it was the power and not the flesh. Now if it was the power and not the flesh, what was that power? Here we are just back to the question we started with, this something or power called Christ.

I will now try and see if I cannot separate it, and to do so I must take a patient, for the well know not Christ. It is the sick alone that know him. I will commence with one of my patients. You will admit I take your feelings. "Yes." "Could I have taken them through your ordinary senses?" "Yes." "Well if I feel your symptoms, I must be in sympathy with you, must I not?" "Yes." "Can you tell me how I get in sympathy with you and still retain my own senses?" "No." "What do you call this knowledge; is it not something higher than you possess?" "Yes." "Is it not more than any one of himself possesses?" "I cannot speak for another, but for myself, it is more than I can do."

You admit that I can tell your feelings. "I have no doubt of that, but the well will not believe it." I am aware of that and to such I am not sent, but to the lost sheep or sick of Adam's race. Therefore it is to the sick and not to the well that this is written, to open their eyes so that they can see how they have been deceived. I will now take you as a sick person and try to separate the Christ from the Jesus. You admit that I am with you or your feelings when I tell you what they are. "Yes." Well, what do you call that power? "I do not know." I call that power or that wisdom or that science which feels your feelings: Christ. Now Jesus says that false Christs shall spring up and deceive many, so he warned the people against them, and he told them how we should distinguish a true Christ from a false one. It is not every one that can tell your feelings that is a true Christ, but the one that can take your feelings and explain them away so that you can understand and be wiser by understanding; that is the true Christ. Now what makes the feelings? They are what arises from our belief. "Will you explain what you mean?" If we are in the dark, there are no shadows. Now suppose I tell you of something you never heard of. You of course knew nothing of it only as I explain. Suppose I should tell you of a man and give you a very minute description of his person. You would create such a person in your mind, would you not? "Yes." This creation of a man contains no effect on you one way or another.

After I have made you see him plainly, your belief condenses itself into what is called matter in the shape of an idea called man, but your senses are not affected by it. But suppose I tell you he is a very bad man. Now your mind is affected. This affects your idea or man. This, being your belief condensed into a man, is now disturbed and shadows forth a man according to my description. This last man is the offspring of your belief. So it is your child and I am the father. For you being married to my belief, this is the offspring. Now your senses being attached to the shadow, it troubles you and your trouble is your feelings; all this belongs to this world. Now suppose I sit down and talk to you about another world and try to explain it to you. Can you not see how you create it in your mind? "Yes." I explain heaven and hell and you have the two beliefs condensed into two ideas: heaven and hell. The former for the good and the latter for the bad, and you must govern your life according to the laws I lay down. For I am a minister of the Gospel and have wisdom that you must not dispute. After I bind burdens and lay them on your shoulders, I leave you to shape your life just as you please with this caution: that you must render to God according to your acts. Your life is now in the hands of man's God and as all things that man invents are his own, God has nothing to do with it at all. But you listen to man's wisdom and this excites your belief and sets your heaven and hell in trouble. This shadows forth all the terrors of a bad place and makes you nervous.(To be continued)