IN THE WORDS OF JESUS–Part 518

Love is the Fulfilling of the Law

ON LOVE; PART CVII

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GoodWill IS Love in Action

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Our diversion from our discussion on the Book of Genesis story of the creation of man took more time that anticipated but there are very worthwhile lessons for ALL in the words of the Master and His apostles regarding the way that we, as aspirants to discipleship, view the ways and the things of the world. Jesus teaching on these matters is clear and our comment yesterday regarding the convincing arguments offered by those who teach doctrine should for us be seen in the context of the words with which we started our diversion…..”Take heed what ye hear” (Mark 4:24). Hearing and listening and believing in the words that we receive from our own Souls, our Christ and God Within, should be the source of ALL the Good, the Beautiful and the True as measured against the Truth of the Apostle James’ sayings on the Wisdom from above and the Apostle Paul’s sayings regarding the fruit of the Spirit as it is in the honest and True measurement of our own thoughts that we can KNOW that they meet with these scales of Truth. And, what we hear and see from others can also be measured against these same ideas from the apostles and we should KNOW and understand that in the final analysis of ALL that we hear from whatsoever source, that in the True Wisdom from above and in the True fruits of the Spirit there is no quarter given for the things of and for the self.

While it may seem that our topic above and for the last two days is rather far removed from our discussion of the creation of man from Genesis, there is really NO separation at all as we will see as we progress into the next points below. Our understanding so far is that the creation of man as recorded in the saying that leads off our scripture below is a spiritual creation of the Soul of man which is not so much a creation as it is a manifestation of the Spirit of man which is ever one with the Spirit of God. We have premised also that as Souls and as Spirit man has been in the Earth scheme for many eons albeit not in the gross carnal form that we KNOW as man. This we see from the reasoned understanding that if man IS, that he should be doing something as a part of the Great Movement of Evolution of the Earth and all that had been put there in the mineral, vegetable and animal kingdoms, that from our own perspective as Souls, that we would function as a part of, as a force, in this evolutionary journey. One may ask how we KNOW these things and our clear answer is that we do not KNOW these things any better than one would KNOW the inner workings of the creation in the common literal interpretation of the instantaneous creation of ALL things.

We have tied this premise of man’s activity in the Earth as a Soul, an angel of God of you will, who has “dominion over…..every living thing that moveth upon the earth” and in this word dominion we see only that we are the guiding Light which we take from the Webster’s definition saying: Sovereign or supreme authority; the power of governing and controlling; independent right of possession, use, and control; sovereignty; supremacy ¹, and, of course, we must understand these ideas from the perspective of the Soul; that ALL is done in the Spirit of Love, which is the Spirit of God of whom we are divine representatives. Closing this part of our dialogue we find several lines of commentary by God regarding the vegetable kingdom and its relationship to the animal kingdom of which the form of man will eventually become a part. It is rather clear that in these early days of Life in the Earth that is is the intention that all beings would feed on the vegetation of the planet and it is interesting the way it is worded; the herb bearing seed and the and the fruit bearing seed are indicated for man while “every green herb” is destined to all forms in the animal kingdom. While we cannot readily discern the reasoning for this way of saying this, we can try to see that in the seed is the management of the vegetable kingdom and, since as Souls one would not require food, that perhaps the message here is to the True man, that he should take responsibility for the plant kingdom itself as the source of food for the animal kingdom. While there is no real proof of these things, there is a certain logic to it in the early days of Life on the Earth. We continue now with our next point below our text.

“And God said , Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth. So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them. And God blessed them, and God said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth. And God said, Behold, I have given you every herb bearing seed, which is upon the face of all the earth, and every tree, in the which is the fruit of a tree yielding seed; to you it shall be for meat. And to every beast of the earth, and to every fowl of the air, and to every thing that creepeth upon the earth, wherein there is life, I have given every green herb for meat: and it was so. And God saw every thing that he had made, and, behold, it was very good. And the evening and the morning were the sixth day. Thus the heavens and the earth were finished, and all the host of them. And on the seventh day God ended his work which he had made; and he rested on the seventh day from all his work which he had made. And God blessed the seventh day, and sanctified it: because that in it he had rested from all his work which God created and made. These are the generations of the heavens and of the earth when they were created, in the day that the LORD God made the earth and the heavens, And every plant of the field before it was in the earth, and every herb of the field before it grew: for the LORD God had not caused it to rain upon the earth, and there was not a man to till the ground. But there went up a mist from the earth, and watered the whole face of the ground. And the LORD God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul. And the LORD God planted a garden eastward in Eden; and there he put the man whom he had formed. And out of the ground made the LORD God to grow every tree that is pleasant to the sight, and good for food; the tree of life also in the midst of the garden, and the tree of knowledge of good and evil. And a river went out of Eden to water the garden; and from thence it was parted, and became into four heads. The name of the first is Pison: that is it which compasseth the whole land of Havilah, where there is gold;  And the gold of that land is good: there is bdellium and the onyx stone. And the name of the second river is Gihon: the same is it that compasseth the whole land of Ethiopia. And the name of the third river is Hiddekel: that is it which goeth toward the east of Assyria. And the fourth river is Euphrates. And the LORD God took the man, and put him into the garden of Eden to dress it and to keep it. And the LORD God commanded the man, saying , Of every tree of the garden thou mayest freely eat: But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die. And the LORD God said, It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him an help meet for him. And out of the ground the LORD God formed every beast of the field, and every fowl of the air; and brought them unto Adam to see what he would call them: and whatsoever Adam called every living creature, that was the name thereof. And Adam gave names to all cattle, and to the fowl of the air, and to every beast of the field; but for Adam there was not found an help meet for him. And the LORD God caused a deep sleep to fall upon Adam, and he slept: and he took one of his ribs, and closed up the flesh instead thereof; And the rib, which the LORD God had taken from man, made he a woman, and brought her unto the man. And Adam said, This is now bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh: she shall be called Woman, because she was taken out of Man. Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife: and they shall be one flesh. And they were both naked, the man and his wife, and were not ashamed” (Genesis 1:26-2:25).

• The other part of this is in the next chapter where God “formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul“. Here we have either a repetition and explanation of the creation of man in the image of God and both male and female or we have a secondary creation that brings the spiritual man into Life in the earth. Our understanding is the latter and this would become man’s existence in the Garden of Eden.

Above is the original point from the text and our comments from several days ago. Here we should see the reality of man on Earth though not in the literal sense as it is stated and not as a repetition of the former verse that we have been discussing. We should note above that the verses in bold are those that we have already discussed and those underlined are the verses we refer to above; here now we begin after the underlined section. We should see here that there is some housekeeping so to speak as the totality of creation has been completed; there is the universe and the Earth with all its attributes and with the vegetable and the animal kingdoms established along with the reality of man as the Soul who is not in the Earth but plays his part in the evolution of ALL. There is no time line here after the Seven Days of creation and it is as uncertain of the intervening time between the Seventh Day and the remaining text as it is of the actual time that is called the Seven Days. We should remember here that we are talking about the Earth and the scientific estimates of its age are in the billions of years and as another hint to the reality of this we can look at the universe itself, a part of His Creation, which, measured by the speed of Light, is estimated to be much older than the Earth. Creationism has its measured points of contention with scientific theory but these are but extrapolations that use the relative uncertainty of the scientific theory for their basis as there is no actual proof. However, even if we discount the accuracy of scientific theory, we can not reduce the resultant reality to seven to ten thousand years.

So then on the Seventh Day God rested. There is no real way to KNOW what this actually means apart from the understanding that the creative process had been completed and in the ensuing eons there was no additional special creative activity. The Hebrew word shabath that is here translated as rest or rested is considered as rest in the common idea of the word in much church doctrine and is rendered this way in most all of the bible translations. Of those that we regularly use, only the Good News Translation (GNT) and the God’s Word Translation (GW) offer this idea of rest another way with both saying that God stopped working. The primary translation of the word shabath in the King James Version is ceased and in this we can see the effect of doctrine on many of the translations as rested and in the common sense that has become the meaning in much of church doctrine. We should caution ourselves that in the words that are translated as seventh and day there are also a variety of possible meanings and that it is doctrine and tradition of those days and of those people that give us the connotation of a day; Strong’s gives us many meanings for the Hebrew word yowm which is translated as day and among these we find: day (24 hours), daytime (in contrast to night); by extension: an indefinite period of time, an era with a certain characteristic, such as “the day of the Lord” and the prophetic “on that day”³  plus many combinations with other Hebrew word. The lexicon tells us that this word can mean: day, time, year; day (as opposed to night); day (24 hour period); as defined by evening and morning in Genesis 1; as a division of time 1b; a working day, a day’s journey; days, lifetime (pl.); time, period (general); year; temporal references, today, yesterday, tomorrow ². In the combination of these ideas from the lexicon and from Strong’s we should see that the Seventh Day could be the Seventh Epoch as an undefined period in time that is attributed to His rest. Of course, if we can say this of the Seventh Day, we can say it of ALL the days.

By our reading we can see then that there are Six Epochs of Creation and then a Seventh of ‘rest‘ at the completion, a period of cessation of creative activity and in saying this we can account for the biblical and the scientific perspectives. From here we pick up on a statement of completion with some strange language that is not accounted for in the general doctrinal presentation of the story of creation; we read: “These are the generations of the heavens and of the earth when they were created, in the day that the LORD God made the earth and the heavens, And every plant of the field before it was in the earth, and every herb of the field before it grew: for the LORD God had not caused it to rain upon the earth, and there was not a man to till the ground“. First here we see the idea of the whole of the creative process happening in a single day which should contribute to our notion of epochs as days as one can combine the Six earlier mentioned into One greater one when there is no True time constraint. Then however we come upon the idea that the plant and the herb were made before they were in the Earth and before they grew. There is nothing that we can say here definitively and doctrine traces these ideas back to the days in which they had happened; for example John Gill in his Exposition of the Bible ⁸ tells us that:

• And every plant of the field, before it was in the earth, &c.] That is, God made it, even he who made the heavens and the earth; for these words depend upon the preceding, and are in close connection with them; signifying that the plants of the field, which were made out of the earth on the third day, were made before any were planted in it, or any seed was sown therein from whence they could proceed, and therefore must be the immediate production of divine power:
• and every herb of the field before it grew: those at once sprung up in perfection out of the earth, before there were any that budded forth, and grew up by degrees to perfection, as herbs do now:
• for the Lord God had not caused it to rain upon the earth: so that the production of plants and herbs in their first formation could not be owing to that; since on the third day, when they were made, there was no sun to exhale and draw up the waters into the clouds, in order to be let down again in showers of rain:
• and there [was] not a man to till the ground; who was not created till the sixth day, and therefore could have no concern in the cultivation of the earth, and of the plants and herbs in it; but these were the produce of almighty power, without the use of any means

Now these explanations do not sufficiently explain anything since it is written that on the Third Day that “the earth brought forth grass, and herb yielding seed after his kind, and the tree yielding fruit, whose seed was in itself, after his kind: and God saw that it was good.  And the evening and the morning were the third day” (Genesis 1:12-13). Can we see our point here in that the Third Day results in the herb and the tree in the Earth; God gives this ALL to the animal kingdom in the Sixth Day and in the synopsis above we still read the words above that these are made before they are in the Earth and before they grew. As we said, there are no easy answers here but we can reason out some resolution apart from doctrine and this might be that this “day that the LORD God made the earth and the heavens, And every plant of the field before it was in the earth, and every herb of the field before it grew” is a yet greater epoch than we can imagine or, more likely from our perspective, that the creative process is happening on more than one level of existence and that in these words we can find the resolution to that age old question of ‘what came first, the chicken or the egg’.

There may be a True relationship between our understanding here and the Master’s telling us of the Power to move the mountain. Ponder on this.

We will continue with our thoughts to finish our work on this point so that we can continue to the last two in the next post.

• Next we have the creation of the woman who was, according to the text, already created with the man during the creation in the image of God. Again this is either repetition and explanation or it yet another step in the bringing forth of the spiritual man into the Earth. There is another rather obscure saying in Genesis which may go well here: “And it came to pass, when men began to multiply on the face of the earth, and daughters were born unto them, That the sons of God saw the daughters of men that they were fair; and they took them wives of all which they chose” (Genesis 6:1-2).
• Last we have the trees; “the tree of life also in the midst of the garden, and the tree of knowledge of good and evil“.

Note on the Quote of the Day

This daily blog also has a Quote of the Day which may not be in any way related to the essay. Many of these will be from the Bible and some just prayers or meditations that may have an influence on you and are in line with the subject matter of this blog. As the quote will change daily and will not store with the post, it is repeated in this section with the book reference and comment:

We repeat here again a saying that is from the Bhagavad Gita and which goes well with our topic over the last several days. Today we see the God Within us as the Christ Within and this is good in the Christian world and this is True based upon our understanding of the Christ as the manifestation of God. We should see that it matters not what we call this Inner Man as it is the same in ALL, it is the Soul.

Thou carriest within thee a sublime Friend whom thou knowest not. For God dwells in the inner part of every man, but few know how to find Him. The man who sacrifices his desires and his works to the Beings from whom the principles of everything stem, and by whom the Universe was formed, through this sacrifice attains perfection. For one who finds his happiness and joy within himself, and also his wisdom within himself is one with God. And, mark well, the soul which has found God is freed from rebirth and death, from old age and pain, and drinks the water of Immortality.—Bhagavad-Gita

It is difficult to tell just what verses of the Bhagavad Gita the above is from; whether it is a paraphrase or a combination. It is from the book “The Great Initiates” by Édouard Schuré which was originally published in French in 1889 and perhaps it is in the translation of the verses that they become hard to recognize. However, the sheer beauty of the presentation caught my attention and so I share it with you. The Path to the Kingdom is the same no matter what religion one professes.

•  ¹ Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, 1828 and 1913
• ² New Testament Hebrew Lexicon on BibleStudyTools.com
• ³ Strongest Strong’s Exhaustive Concordance of the Bible – 2001
• ⁸ Bible commentaries on BibleStudyTools.com