METAPHYSICAL BIBLE INTERPRETATION OF THE OLD TESTAMENT
This is a series of lectures given by Mr. Edward Rabel, member of the faculty of S.M.R.S.
Fall semester 1975 - 2nd. Yr. Class. Lecture given on October 3, 1975
Topic: 31
Gen. 18:1-2, pp. 119-120 of transcript.
Topic 29: Producing a son symbolizes the development of a new, added dimension of spiritual awareness... [but the process of spiritual growth can't be forced by willfulness, else we get Ishmael, born out of divine order and who] "becomes the founder of a whole line of troublemakers for the Jewish people."
Topic 30: Sarai, representing our emotional nature, undergoes a drastic change and becomes Sarah.
Topic 31: Jehovah appears to Lot, the unillumined part of us, as two-fold being: soul and body. But Jehovah appears to Abraham as three-fold being: "God is perceived by man as Father, Son, Holy Spirit, or Mind, Idea and Expression. Then, that trinity of God is duplicated in the pattern of man as spirit, soul and body."
A Son Is Promised
Now, in the next chapter we read concerning Abraham,
"And the Lord appeared unto him in the plain of Namre and he sat in the tenth door in the heat of the day, and he lifted up his eyes and looked, and lo, three men stood by him."
One Lord, but to the mind of Abraham, three persons. What are we talking about? Right. This is the O.T. foreshadowing, and by the way, folks, the trinity was a religious belief long before the Mosaic Bible, so it's not anything new, it's just tuning in on it, and it's what Christians did later.
The doctrine of the trinity. One God, three aspects, because God as such, in His totality, in His total Oneness, cannot be conceived of by the human mind. We can only know it is. We can only know there is only One Presence, One Power, the transcendent unity of Being. We can just know that has to be, but we cannot make a concept of that in that form, in that shape because it's too vast, so, God, to be perceived in human thinking has to be limited. It's only our concept which is the limitation of God in heaven, but we form a limited God-thought so that we can work with it and follow it. We have done this so that we could think of God in a three-fold manner of thinking of God.
God is perceived by man as Father, Son, Holy Spirit, or Mind, Idea and Expression. Then, that trinity of God is duplicated in the pattern of man as spirit, soul and body.
So, just as these apparently three men were in reality the One Lord, so are the three aspects of God perceivable by the human mind all one principle.
It's interesting that later this same lord appears and Lot sees Him as……? [TruthUnity note: the following is a reference to Gen. 19:1 where Jehovah, who had appeared in Gen. 18 to Abraham as as three men, now appear to Lot as "two angels"] So, the unillumined part of us, as Mr. Fillmore says in Mysteries of Genesis, leaves out spirit. He's just soul and body. Now, the three-in-one Lord promises to Abraham and Sarah the birth of a son. This same Lord describes, or foretells to Abraham the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah and in the next chapter there is this destruction.
Transcribed by Margaret Garvin on February 25, 2015.
