THE MYSTERIES OF THE FOUR GOSPELS
Lesson Seven. Luke 14.
Unity Interpretation of
You Cannot Be My Disciples Unless
CHARLES and CORA FILLMORE
02/26/1942
CHARLES FILLMORE: OPENING SONGS
We will sing No. 50, “If I Could but Tell the Glory”. The author of this song, which is a Fillmore, lives in Cincinnati. I have been asked quite a few times if this was a relative of the Fillmores of Kansas City. I will say it is a cousin of the Fillmores of Kansas City. Eleanor Cehrell, the author of the words, is a resident of Cincinnati. Jim Fillmore is a brother of the original publishers of Cincinnati. We are going to sing: “IF I COULD BUT TELL THE GLORY”
1. If I could but tell all the glory
Or if I could but tell of the Saviour
Till echoes would ring on for aye;
I’d shout it aloud from the mountain.
I’d sing it o’er valley and plain.
I’d tell it and tell it and tell it,
Till millions would hear the refrain.
CHORUS:
But better is living than telling.
For living a life every faithful and true,
Then souls that are seeking to know him,
Will see Jesus’ love shining through.
2. If I could but tell of His goodness,
His love and his infinite care.
Or if I could but show you the vision
I see when I meet him in prayer;
Or if I could tell the old story
Till others would feel He was near;
I’d tell it and tell it and tell it,
All nations His presence would hear.
3. If I could but tell you of Jesus,
Of how I was saved by His grace;
Or if I could paint the compassion
I see in the dear Master’s face,
I’d sing till the faraway echoes
Would ring from earth to the sky;
And tell it and tell it and tell it
In phrases that never would die.
Charles Fillmore: All join in The Lord’s Prayer: (repeat) ... Amen.
CORA FILLMORE: MEDITATION:
This is our seventh lesson in the course, Mysteries of the Four Gospels. Today our lesson is based on the 14th chapter of Luke: 25 to the end of the chapter. Here in the Bible we read:
14:25Now there went with him great multitudes: and he turned, and said unto them, 14:26If any man cometh unto me, and hateth not his own father, and mother, and wife, and children, and brethren, and sisters, yea, and his own life also, he cannot be my disciple. 14:27Whosoever doth not bear his own cross, and come after me, cannot be my disciple. 14:28For which of you, desiring to build a tower, doth not first sit down and count the cost, whether he have wherewith to complete it? 14:29Lest haply, when he hath laid a foundation, and is not able to finish, all that behold begin to mock him,14:30saying, This man began to build, and was not able to finish. 14:31Or what king, as he goeth to encounter another king in war, will not sit down first and take counsel whether he is able with ten thousand to meet him that cometh against him with twenty thousand? 14:32Or else, while the other is yet a great way off, he sendeth an ambassage, and asketh conditions of peace.14:33So therefore whosoever he be of you that renounceth not all that he hath, he cannot be my disciple. 14:34Salt therefore is good: but if even the salt have lost its savor, wherewith shall it be seasoned? 14:35It is fit neither for the land nor for the dunghill: men cast it out. He that hath ears to hear, let him hear.
Now that 26th verse: “If any man cometh unto me and hateth not his father and mother (and so forth) he cannot be my disciple.”
In Farrar Fenton’s translations, which is very good, it says: “Whosoever cometh to me and lessens not his regard for his own father and mother, and wife and children (etc.) cannot be my disciple.” The true meaning of this scripture is that under all circumstances, God must come first and we must be willing to put the Christ idea into every situation that comes into our lives. It does not mean that we are not to honor and to love father, mother, sister, brother, etc... But it does mean that under all circumstances, we should honor and love, yes and adore the great Source from which we came. Above all, we must love, honor and adore the living Christ, God’s perfect idea, and we must love, honor and adore the Divine Principles of Being, which have revealed to us through Jesus Christ. We know God Himself is Principle, and we must direct our lives from spiritual Principle. Also, we must bear our own cross, or in other words, we must stand on our own feet. We must make our own spiritual overcoming. We must do our own spiritual unfoldment. We must work out our own salvation and we must unfold quick, keen, alert judgment with which to meet every situation. We must solve our own problems, otherwise we are dross. We must realize the true objective in life is to truly discover God, to truly discover the depths, the heights, the greatness, you and the richness of God’s nature. Thus trying to discover God, we know leads us into never-ending study for realization, affirmation for realization of the God consciousness, realization of God’s laws.
Gradually we come to know, as Jesus taught, undoubtedly that as we develop and grow spiritually, there is such a thing as forming new ties on the spiritual plane; yes, even forming what we would call family groups on the spiritual plane. This may or may not include our earthly or mortal family ties. We know that gradually we are entering the great universality of all things and that those who live closest to God, to the God of righteousness, are the ones we love and honor most; we come to know that spiritual ties are really stronger than mortal ties. We find do we not, that through Jesus Christ, God indeed is a living God and that His perfect ideas form the most important thing in our lives. This perfect idea of the Christ is the most important thing in our lives. Through the superbly tuned mind and brain of Jesus Christ, we have come to know that the Divine Mind is indeed a rich soil, a soil eager with ideas of life, light and substance. These ideas which right now we are endeavoring to incorporate into our consciousness and to us in reconstructing our lives more and more after the divine pattern.
Thus, God comes first in our lives and his perfect idea, the Christ is the most important thing in our lives.
Now let us turn within realizing: I AM THAT I AM. May we say that very softly together:
I AM THAT I AM
Now can we realize that the I AM in you and me is the central magnet, the great central magnet which right now is functioning in Divine Mind? We have the power to say: “I AM THAT I AM” until the most sacred ethers respond; the most sacred, healing, adjusting ethers respond. I AM THAT I AM. It is possible for us to penetrate the ethers into the I AM consciousness.
Victor Hugo once said, “Heaven, on occasion, opens its arms to us and that is the great moment.” Heaven right now is opening its arms to us and this is our great Moment. I AM THAT I AM. I AM THE CHRIST. MY HEALTH SPRINGS FORTH SPEEDILY WHEN I TRUST WHOLLY IN THEE.
Very softly together: (repeat).
There is no condition, no situation we cannot penetrate into through this inner activity of the mind and set into operation the divine law of justice right now. Let us penetrate into this so-called war situation. Know that God’s laws of justice, of righteousness, of peace, are now set into operation. “UNTO THE NAME OF JESUS EVERY KNEE MUST BOW, EVERY TONGUE CONFESS TO THE GLORY OF GOD.” Amen
LESSON: CHARLES FILLMORE:
You are all aware in these gatherings; we are seeking to unravel some of the mystical sayings of Jesus Christ. I am going to call your attention again to the lesson for today that is part of it, which is: “If any man cometh unto me and hateth not his own father and other, and wife, and children, and brethren and sisters, yea and his own life also, he cannot be my disciple.” “Whosoever doth not bear his own cross and come after me cannot be my disciple.” The rest was summed up: “Count the cost before you build your castle, and before going to war count your soldiers. You cannot be my disciple unless you relinquish everything and follow after me.”
Now you attention has been called to the fact, to this word “hate”: “If any man cometh after me and hateth not his father, mother, etc. he cannot be my disciple” and so forth. That really is a mistranslation. We should remember the Bible as we have it now has passed through two languages at least and many translations. What we all want is to get to the real interpretation of the Bible.
Of course, Jesus is emphasizing love here as the magnet and seeking to eliminate that personal love, or the love for our kin in order that we may have a fuller realization of love. You know there is now no doubt but what the human love is more or less selfish, and the love of God unselfish. So in another chapter, Jesus said. “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all they heart, and with all thy soul and with all thy strength and with all thy mind, and thy neighbor as thy self.”
Here, Jesus was teaching that if our love was summed up in the love of our own family, in certain degrees of affection, we are to minimize that; that is, disregard that in order that we may have this fullness of love. You can readily see, if you can get in touch with the Principle of Love, why you would have a much larger love capacity than if you were confined to a small personal love, love for merely your friends, those that would love you in return. This of course is good philosophy, and we can see if we had this large love, we would automatically love all people, love our so-called loved ones more than we ever did before, for we just use the larger understanding of what love is.
Now many of us long to love our friends, that is our relatives, but we lack the capacity to give them the things they need. For example, we would like to see them have more of the temporal things, but we haven’t got the temporal things to give. But if you have got the larger love of God, you would draw to you everything needed, and you would be able to help your friends more than you ever helped them.
We must also remember in reading the scripture that it is all virtually mystical. It is a question whether the historical facts are to be followed. The history veils something deeper than history. What is that? It is a reality; it is man’s relation to his Source.
Now we use the “word of God”. That gives a very inadequate idea because of its association with this wonderful Source of all. So we must remember that these parables and these things were given at a time when people lived in an imaginary world. They were looking for the Kingdom of Heaven to come down out of the skies and set up in earth, with Jesus Christ as king, and all that sort of thing; and they didn’t have a real understanding of Truth. And you find that same thing prevailing in America today.
I read of a literal-minded minister who came across a well-known quotation from Shakespeare: “Sermons in tones and books in running brooks”, and he read it to his wife for an amazing misprint. “No one ever saw a sermon in a stone, and a book in a running brook would be all wet and useless. I guess what the writer evidently meant was “Sermons in books and stones in running brooks.” That’s the way some people would reduce everything to a literal, fleshly, material standpoint and take all the poetry out of life.
We like to imagine things. We like to see an imaginary world. Some people live in that world too much. But it is something that we need to cultivate more than we cultivate this temporal side of things.
Now Jesus Christ was so at one with the Source of his being that, as he said, the very words he spoke were not his, but the Father’s dwelling in him. If you can imagine yourself so at-one with the source of your being, with God, Spirit, you don’t have to put your ideas into words. You can see to what extent you have attained that unity. Now, we get an idea. We have to clothe it with our own words. But, there is a possibility of our getting so at-one with this One Mind, it even infiltrates itself even in our words. That is real at-one-ment. That is….that’s the message we are to have when we reach into the Father-Mind.
Now this “becoming as one with the Lord Jesus Christ”: We all know that we are to become one with the original God idea of ourselves. This rich idea, this perfect man, is always right with us and that all we do is open ourselves unto it; to smooth the way, to erase, not to hate; not hate the outer things, but simply eliminate them as having power, having anything to produce real effects. The only effect we get is temporal, changing. But, when we come into unity with this divine Source of things, we will attain supremacy; attain power over all these outer things. That is what Jesus did; and we think of him as a great Master Mind. That Master Mind is ours. We tell our children in any great period of need, whatever it may be to throw it, the whole burden upon this Master Mind, and lo and behold; it works! When they have a hard lesson, we tell them, “Don’t worry or be anxious. Take it unto the Lord and He will handle it for you.” And there are even men of science who are giving attention to this unity with the All-hearing.
I remember reading about a great singer, Jenny Lind, that before every public appearance she had her doors locked to her dressing room, and she went into the silence, got very quiet, stood right in the middle of the floor and broke into one of her high notes and then got very quiet and she said this: “Master, Master be Thou with me in my singing tonight.” And she got into her key and got that receptive state of mind, which realized the Lord, and she always made a success.
Now that, we can see, is according to the law that we are teaching. We have to cross out, get rid of all these earthly bonds. They are like guy ropes tying the balloon of our minds down to earth. If you can cut them, you find you get higher and higher in your spiritual realizations. In all these lessons, all our thoughts are tending toward that one thing, to get out of human limitation. And if you can do through study, that’s good. But it is better to get through realization and especially to do away with this looking at out things and judging by outer things.
Henry Ward Beecher says it was his custom, “in my house to rise from sleep and wash and read “His sermon on of the moment.” “One night while thus engaged, my father, who is a man of practical mind said, “Son, why are you not asleep?” “Behold, I said to him, Thy other children are lost in irreligious slumber, while I wake to praise God.” He said “Son of my soul, it were better for thee to be engaged in irreligious sleep than to wake to find fault with thy brethren.”
That is a good lesson for every one of us. We look at the other fellow and think, “Well, how does he get anything? He doesn’t pray, and he certainly doesn’t understand truth as I do. He doesn’t make his affirmations like I do.” Well, there you, finding fault, wasting your time, building up separation between you and that other fellow. So it is better for us to be at-one with the Spirit in everything that we do and everything that we think, and in that way we come into a wonderful inner world, a world that we know nothing about in our outer experience.
I was reading the other day in “Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great”, by Elbert Hubbard. I read about this Madame Guyon, a great French mystic who lived three hundred years ago. I thought how close that woman was with what we teach. He said, “The fervor that greeted Madame Guyon was very great. Her amazing animation and devout enthusiasm won her entrance into the homes of the great and noble everywhere. She organized societies of women that met for prayer conventions, and thousands of them gathered to hear her and the burden of her philosophy was “Quietism”, the absolute submission of the human soul to the will of God. “Give all. Lay aside all striving, reaching out, all unrest. Cease all efforts and really lean on the Lord’s hands. He endureth all things and makes life within continuing, radiant with his wholeness. (That is holding a silence) Thus, all good comes to us. We attract good; we attract God. He is our friend. His spirit dwells with us.”
She taught all persons through the power of peace, through quiet repose and thought that we can never gain peace by striving for it like fury. This philosophy stretched out into limitless ramifications bearing on every phase and condition of life, connecting everything everywhere with the mystic. Mysticism affording endless opportunity for thought and it is the same philosophy that is being expounded by thousands of people in this day.
We find in it all that is vital and joyous in the so-called advanced thought, for we can also know there are larger facts if anything that have not been taught before.
Madam Guyon lived almost before her time. As he says here, “Madame Guyon’s success was too great. The guardians of dogmatic religion are ever on the scent for heresy. They are jealous and fearful and full of alarm lest their institutions shall suffer or disappear. Quietism was getting ahead throughout France. The name of Madame Guyon was becoming known. She went from town to town.” Now he states she gave courses of lectures to which women flocked to hear. Wherever she organized clubs, preachers sometimes appeared and argued with her, but by the high fervor of her speech they were quietly silenced. Then they took revenge by thundering sermons against her after she had gone.”
“As a traveler, she lived it her way, a psycho-technic way or an electro-dynamic way. They dared her to come back and fight it out. The air was full of challenges. One prelate was bold enough to say, “This woman may teach Christianity, but if people find God everywhere, whatever will become of us?” Madame Guyon spent twelve years in prison because of her heresy.”
We all thank God that we live in a freer age than that of 300 years ago religiously, and teach whatever we are moved to teach and what are teaching today if we had taught it 300 years ago, they would have put us all in jail. We are only in jail to what? Our own limitations; in jail to this lack of a fuller understanding of the Spirit-Life as something that’s here and now at all times, and that we must cultivate our minds until they get so strong in this inner consciousness they are like increased muscles; and we feel the Presence and we will know there is a living Spiritual Power here.
We know that by analogy, by reflection we see it exists. But, is it possible to know it ourselves like we can touch material things? Can you touch with you mind? You can if you cultivate it long enough. If you wish to know about the living Christ in you, and that Christ being, open the door to the great universal Mind of all, you will get the consciousness. There is no other way about it. It isn’t something that depends on God. It depends upon you. God is here. You open up your lungs, open up the cells to get in air. So you with God-mind, open up your mind if you need unlimited capacity love. As Jesus said, we must do away with these limited loves, we are holding to in people and in things.
What appears and stays? God Mind. It produces thoughts. Make it a point to get a little closer to God. Fill our hearts with love until we love everybody and everything ... but God-love comes first.
Now we are going to take up this idea of Love as an inner quality and give it fuller attention. But first, we will have our offering. (Laughter)
CORA FILLMORE: OFFERTORY:
This is our part, to give to the Lord. We will ask you to take your offering in your hands and repeat together the usual blessing ... together please:
DIVINE LOVE THROUGH ME BLESSES AND MULTIPLIES THIS OFFERING (three times). In the Name of Jesus Christ. Amen.
Blessing the Offering: Father we thank Thee for this generous outpouring of Thy substance. We accept it in the name of Jesus Christ. Amen.
HEALING POOL.
CHARLES FILLMORE: Now we are entering into this consciousness of the power of spirit to heal and prosper and open the way for those who look to it. Our healing word today is:
MY HEALTH SPRINGS FORTH SPEEDILY AND I TRUST WHOLLY IN THEE.”
In the spirit of the Lord Jesus Christ is the opening to the great Father-Mind. Health springs forth speedily. I trust only in Thee.
Let’s all realize that we are right in the presence of the Source of health, strength, power, prosperity, all good ... in the living presence. Let’s all say that for ourselves. MY HEALTH SPRINGS FORTH SPEEDILY AND I TRUST WHOLLY I THEE. Once more let’s speak it with a little more enthusiasm:
My health springs forth speedily and i trust wholly i thee.
(repeat) that’s better. Put your heart and soul into your words. Let’s say: OUR HEALTH SPRINGS FORTH SPEEDILY WHEN WE TRUST WHOLLY IN THEE.
We are seeing more and more of this almighty Spirit of the Lord. Now let us in our inner spirit release it for those names that have been presented to us today for healing.
CORA: Give us the statement.
CHARLES: Let say to them: “YOUR HEALTH SPRINGS FORTH SPEEDILY AS YOU TRUST WHOLLY IN CHRIST.” Together (repeat). Now you go ahead with these written names, names of your own, names of others, anybody, anywhere that you want to help. You say to them. Let’s all speak that word together for these whose names are given: (repeat) Realize that. Are there any other names?
CORA: Now for prosperity for these same names: YOUR PROSPERITY SPRINGS FORTH SPEEDILY WHEN YOU TRUST WHOLLY IN CHRIST
CHARLES: Together (Repeat) Christ is here and is witness to our thoughts or acknowledgment of him. His power is being expressed through us.
CORA: May I ask special prayers for dear friends in Truth? May we join together in a healing thought for all the boys who are in the quarantine, now under quarantine at Jefferson Barracks at St. Louis, Missouri. YOUR HEALTH SPRINGS FORTH SPEEDILY WHEN YOU TRUST ONLY IN CHRIST. Together (repeat)
CHARLES: Realize the great life-giving, strength-giving, health-giving Spirit is working, working through all these boys. Let’s speak the word for all the soldiers everywhere. This is true of PEACE. Let us speak the word “Peace”. Let’s say: THOSE WHO TRUST IN CHRIST RECEIVE THIS WORD “PEACE”...THEY WILL SPEAK “PEACE” AND PEACE WILL DEMONSTRATE. The promise is that we shall shorten this war through having faith in God’s peace. Will you rise please.
BENEDICTION: We are going forth with this dominant thought that God’s love be built up in us through Christ and that love being the solvent for all of our problems. It doesn’t make any difference what problem you. If you pour the Love of God upon it, that Love will be increased in you and your words will be loving words and it will take care of every problem. Do this in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.
Transcribed by Linda Pezzuti on October 26, 2016.
