IN THE WORDS OF JESUS–Part 193

Love is the Fulfilling of the Law

The Miracles of Jesus (continued; part v)

We ended yesterday with a thought from the Book of Acts regarding the healing power of the Apostle Peter as regards his ability to do as the Master and to heal en masse. The message we should get from Peter’s ability to heal is much the same as we should get from the writings about the Christ. Although there are places in scripture where Jesus’ healing of groups of people are encapsulated in words that tend to paint a picture of people being brought to Him, this does not necessarily mean that He went about to heal each individually. As the Master healed the lepers by His word when they “stood afar off” is likely the more realistic approach for us to take and this is enhanced for us by the statement by the Apostle Luke that “for there went virtue out of him, and healed them all” (Luke 6:19). The word translated here in the King James Version (KJV) as virtue is translated as power in most other bible versions and this is how we should see it, as healing power flowing through the man Jesus, the healing power of God. Our understanding here should not be limited and although we do not know that this emanation of power is ever a  constant occurrence we can as least be sure that the Master could do this when He so disired; that is to heal the people merely by His Presence. This is the same thing that we can see with Peter from the saying with which we ended yesterday:

“Insomuch that they brought forth the sick into the streets, and laid them on beds and couches, that at the least the shadow of Peter passing by might overshadow some of them. There came also a multitude out of the cities round about unto Jerusalem, bringing sick folks, and them which were vexed with unclean spirits: and they were healed every one” (Acts 5:15-16).

Here we have a graphic idea of the healing power of Peter; it is so great that one can be healed just by being in the shadow that he cast while passing by. This verse tells us that “they were healed every one” and in this is the same reality that each of us can achieve when we can be accounted worthy of His Kingdom. We likely know of the trials and the tribulation of Peter and of course about his doubt but the very nature of this statement in Acts tells us that he was able to overcome this and stand solidly with the Master. We know from the whole of the gospel story that Peter, Simon Peter, was chosen by the Lord as a chief among the apostles. He was among the three that were privy to the more esoteric happenings; the transfiguration of the Master and His prayer time in the Garden among them. It is Peter that the Master asks to take care of His flock in that familiar exchange after His resurrection which ends with “He saith unto him the third time, Simon, son of Jonas, lovest thou me? Peter was grieved because he said unto him the third time, Lovest thou me? And he said unto him, Lord, thou knowest all things; thou knowest that I love thee. Jesus saith unto him, Feed my sheep” (John 21:17). We should remember that from our view there is no accident of meeting by any of the disciples with the Master but that this was all a carefully orchestrated encounter of advanced Souls, if we can use such a term, who found themselves together on the form side of Life ready to assist the Master in His task but still having to themselves overcome the pulls of the world. These are Souls who we can say had garnered enough spiritual capital, treasure in heaven if you will, in previous lives as to put them in position to consciously choose to come again into the world in their assigned roles.

Our view here is of course contrary to the view of the majority of Christian denominations and is especially contrary to much of the Protestant understandings as put forth by Calvin and the reformers. The views on election and predestination are verbose and subject to much contradiction by the words of the Master and are, in our view, the result of a basic confusion of the nature and the constitution of man. That God chooses is for us the equivalent to the Soul, the Christ Within, prompting the carnal man to react to him and not to the carnal world and, as Life progresses through births and deaths the Soul builds for itself more suitable bodies that are more capable of right response. This is essentially what we should see here with Peter and the other apostles and the disciples of the Master; men in form through whom the power of the Soul could function through a more willing personality consciousness that is not overwhelmed by the emotions and the thoughts of life in the world. This too is the teaching of the Christ to all, that we not be overwhelmed by the things of the world and that we try to hear and to listen to the call of the Soul for it does call everyone in some way.

Moving on, we see here Peter who, after the resurrection and ascension of the Master is left alone with only the confidence of his Faith and his recollection of the Master’s teachings. We know that he has had this Faith for some time and, even being of the strongest of disciples, he is the one of whom we are made to note his doubt as it is clearly written of in each of the gospels as his denial of the Christ. What do we see in Peter at this point of denial but a man who, like all men, is subject to the fears and the doubts which are based upon one’s life in form. In the strength of his personality, only hours before this denial, Peter was ready to act and to defend the Master but this too was a personality reaction and the meaning to us of all of this should be rather clear. So long as we allow the personality consciousness to act, it will act according to the ways of the world in which it lives and moves; the thoughts and the emotions and the physical adrenal charge (which term we will use to reflect the hormonal changes in the body brought on by one’s thoughts, emotions and environment) are all of the world. Christ is the great mediator for Peter and the others, it is in His calmness and Light that they are reminded, as He is taken away, of the spiritual part. Apart from Christ, Peter again succumbs to the power of the emotions and the thoughts and the adrenal charge and he reacts in fear for his life and against the possibility that he too could be arrested. Peter’s first point of recovery from this is in the questions asked of his relationship to the Master which he is compelled to answer and thereby think; his second point of recovery is in the fulfillment of the prophecy of the Master, the hearing of the ‘cock’ crowing after his third denial. It is here that Peter gets a glimpse of the reality of it all, the predictions of His own death by the Master and the apparent fulfillment and with these thoughts, Peter wept.

So the Master is crucified and is buried and what is it that Peter is thinking now? Away again from his source of confidence, he appears to be losing Faith; his Master is dead and Peter, and likely the others as well, believe that this is the end. It is here that we find what we can call the Providence of God. Much like we have discussed in past posts about the Great Plan of the Lord working out through the intercession of angels and men in the early lives of Jesus and the Baptist (In the Words of Jesus parts 176-178), we find here again, on a higher turn of the spiral, the intercession of angels and of the Christ Himself for the purpose of ensuring the working out of the Plan. Knowing the nature of man, as it is exemplified by Peter, the resurrection of the Master is a necessary part of the drama played out in the creation of a new era in human thought. Although it is foretold by scripture and by the Master, the Apostle Peter, among the closest to the Master, still cannot understand what is happening in the death of the Christ. It is interesting, the way that Mark tells us that when the women are sent from the tomb by the “young man sitting on the right side, clothed in a long white garment“, that he tells them that they should “go your way, tell his disciples and Peter that he goeth before you into Galilee: there shall ye see him, as he said unto you” (Mark 16: 5, 7); Peter is singled out in the angel’s instructions. The apostles and Peter are given the message by the women and we find in Luke that “…their words seemed to them as idle tales, and they believed them not” but, Luke continues “then arose Peter, and ran unto the sepulchre; and stooping down, he beheld the linen clothes laid by themselves, and departed, wondering in himself at that which was come to pass” (Luke 24:11-12). What is it that we see here? Even with the testimony of the women, Peter has a difficult time seeing the Light as he is apparently all wound up in the carnal happenings and is ignoring the facts of the Master’s teachings as well as His prophecy. The Apostle John tells us this a bit differently in saying that “Then cometh Simon Peter following him, and went into the sepulchre, and seeth the linen clothes lie, And the napkin, that was about his head, not lying with the linen clothes, but wrapped together in a place by itself. Then went in also that other disciple, which came first to the sepulchre, and he saw, and believed.  For as yet they knew not the scripture, that he must rise again from the dead. Then the disciples went away again unto their own home” (John 20: 6-10). Here we see that Peter should not be singled out in his doubt as John also, another of the closest to Jesus, has the same lack of understanding although we are shown that at the time of the crucifixion, John was not encumbered by the same fear.

Aside from the history here we should see that Peter, who is our subject here because of his ability to heal not only by a apparent act of will but by his proximity to those who needed it, had to work through parts of his life in doubt and in fear but was able to overcome these things so as to become an example to us all. Seeing the resurrected Jesus is Peter’s next point of recovery from the illusions of the world. We know from previous posts that the Master appeared in apparently different forms and the apostles did not always know that it was Him until there was some type of interaction. This miracle of His return is too often viewed as the simple raising of His dead body back to life as were raised Lazarus, the young girl and the widow’s son (In the Words of Jesus part 111) but there is so much more. In this same reference we looked at the nature of the resurrection of the Christ, that He was not just Life come back into a dead body; we noted that:

• He appeared to them in different forms: “After that he appeared in another form unto two of them, as they walked, and went into the country“ (Mark 16:12) and ”…she turned herself back, and saw Jesus standing, and knew not that it was Jesus. Jesus saith unto her, Woman, why weepest thou? whom seekest thou? She, supposing him to be the gardener” (John 20:14-15) and “Jesus saith unto them, Come and dine. And none of the disciples durst ask him, Who art thou? knowing that it was the Lord” (John 21:12).
• He appeared from nowhere and vanished: “and their eyes were opened, and they knew him; and he vanished out of their sight” (Luke 24:31) and “and after eight days again his disciples were within, and Thomas with them: then came Jesus, the doors being shut, and stood in the midst, and said , Peace be unto you” (John 20:26).
• He appeared in solid human form as another and as Himself and did eat: “And it came to pass, as he sat at meat with them, he took bread, and blessed it, and brake, and gave to them. And their eyes were opened, and they knew him” (Luke 24:30) and “Jesus then cometh, and taketh bread, and giveth them, and fish likewise” (John 21:13).

This is perhaps the final confidence that Peter needed to come to the final conclusion that the ideas and the thoughts of the carnal mind as well as his emotional response were based on the illusions created by these ideas and thoughts and emotions themselves and that it is in the Light of the Soul that we find the Way and the Truth and the Life, the Path to His Kingdom. We see above Peter’s answers to the Masters prodding question “Lovest thou me?” and perhaps his new found comfort in his new role as shepherd. We see from the beginning of the Book of Acts that Peter does take his place as the leader of the group of disciples and we come next to the day of Pentecost when they were all in one place that the Spirit of God came upon them. While the churches interpret this as the giving to the Apostles and other disciples of the Holy Ghost, it is for us to understand that the Holy Ghost or Holy Spirit was with them all already as He is found within the Light from the Soul, the Christ Within. It is man who has interpreted just what the Holy Spirit is although it is written as it is the Spirit of God or the Breath of God. Aside from the doctrines of the churches, we should see here that the Spirit of God came before them in such a way as to be their final showing of the reality of what was happening to them and to the world at large. We cannot dwell here on this today other than to briefly state that the constitution of man is such that we are the Spirit, the Life that IS, this is our true self and part and parcel of our God which manifests through the medium of the Christ Within, the Soul, which in turn is that manifestation of Life that lives through the conscious personality in form on Earth. When it is the Soul living through the conscious personality, then it is the Holy Spirit living actively in form.

We have come a long way here to show that these disciples of the Christ had come of age; they had, through the intercession of the Master and His saints, finally come to that place where they could say with the Master that “I have overcome the world” (John 16:33) thus ensuring that the Great Plan of God was set in motion. All else was left to the free will of the man in form. Peter is now fully the Apostle of the Lord; confident in his faith and committed to the Plan and, as we are told, full of the Holy Ghost. So here now we find the Apostle Peter grown from a man of doubt and of fear into a man of whom they say:

“Insomuch that they brought forth the sick into the streets, and laid them on beds and couches, that at the least the shadow of Peter passing by might overshadow some of them. There came also a multitude out of the cities round about unto Jerusalem, bringing sick folks, and them which were vexed with unclean spirits: and they were healed every one“

Which is a confirmation to us of those words told us by the Master:

“Verily, verily, I say unto you, He that believeth on me, the works that I do shall he do also; and greater works than these shall he do ; because I go unto my Father” (John 14:12).

We continue with these thoughts in the next post.

Note on the Quote of the Day

If you are awake in the presence of a master  One moment will show you the way.
The fool is his own enemy  The mischief is his undoing  How bitterly he suffers!
Why do what you will regret?   Why bring tears upon yourself?
Do only what you do not regret,   And fill yourself with joy.
For a while the fool's mischief   Tastes sweet, sweet as honey.
Bit in the end it turns bitter   And how bitterly he suffers!
For months the fool may fast,   Eating from the tip of a grass blade.
Still he is not worth a penny   Beside the master whose food is the way.
Fresh milk takes time to sour  So a fool's mischief
Takes time to catch up with him  Like the embers of a fire  It smolders within him.
Whatever a fool learns,   It only makes him duller  Knowledge cleaves his head.
For then he wants recognition A place before other people A place over other people
"Let them know my work,   Let everyone look to me for direction."
Such are his desires,  Such is his swelling pride.
One way leads to wealth and fame,   The other to the end of the way.
Look not for recognition   But follow the awakened   And set yourself free.