Birth of Seth: Divine Compensation (Rabel)

Birth of Seth: Divine Compensation

Now, we read in Chapter four a very brief paragraph, but a very significant, highly significant paragraph, verse 25, chapter four,

“And Adam knew his wife and she bare a son and called his name Seth. For God, said she, hath planted me another seed, instead of Abel, whom Cain slew.”

This passage is the first Biblical reference to the action of the Law Of Divine Compensation. Now again, this is something Jesus will take up and give much fuller attention to. But this is its first mention in our Bible. The word Seth itself means substituted and compensation. The word means what it stands for; that doesn’t often happen. This time it does. The death of Abel illustrates the fact that our life contains experiences wherein we do something which will cause us to have a reaction of a feeling of loss or deprivation, and when this happens our attitude is one of somehow feeling cheated by life. I’ve been cheated; something has been taken away from me. It wasn’t fair; it isn’t right. Or, I’ve made a mistake, caused me to endure this particular loss. Every time a person goes through this, it has a very saddening effect upon the state of his consciousness, which must have been the state of Adam and Eve when they learned of the death of Abel. But the birth of Seth comes along, caused by God; it is an act of God. The birth of Seth symbolizes the action of God-law of divine compensation in our lives.

Seth comes to make up for the loss of Abel, and this fact parallels how God’s law works for us. This particular law of God is the one which sees to it that a suitable substitute or compensation comes to make up for what seems to have been taken out. But like all spiritual laws, divine laws, for it to have a direct benefit in our lives, we must believe, we must believe there is such a thing, and trust it. Then its action becomes unmistakable and recognizable to us. It stays a law whether we believe in it or not, but in order for us to connect ourselves directly and consciously with its benefits, we must believe.

The part of our job in this world is to help people believe there is such a reality, a law of divine compensation, or divine justice. We know that as we go through life we feel like we have many experiences of a mixed or contradictory nature. We meet justice and injustice, sometimes wrapped up in the same package. We meet praise and criticism. You all know that in speech class. You can’t believe it was the same speech; you get this varying reaction to it. We get kindness and unkindness, sometimes from the same person, profit and loss; and this may cause us bewilderment, sadness or fury, but then we calm down, and when we calm down we keep learning and growing.

And that which calms us down and enables us to keep learning and growing is life; I use life now in it generic sense. Some light shown through in our consciousness when all else seems so dark and whenever even a little light once gets in the interior consciousness, it touches the whole body. And this is what calms us and refreshes us and encourages us for further adventures in living. Now, if a person will learn what God’s divine law of compensation is about, if he will accept it as a truth, and believe in it, that person will find more and more and more light entering his understanding and changing his whole tempo of life.

Let us look at the law itself. One of the greatest frustrations of earthly life is to lose something that we value or to have to give up something that we simply do not want to. We hate being deprived of something we long for, and these are traits which all human beings seem to share in common; for example, possibly the most challenging is when I have a loved one pass on, then with all my heart, I don’t want that loved one to pass on. This is one of the most challenging of experiences, that sense of loss of the loved one. Or, not to get a job that you know you’re well qualified for; or not to get the recognition in the job that you know you deserve. Another very common illustration of this is the pain that is caused when I see someone that I care for and have done things for, lose interest in me and give her affections to another. And another one, this one more subtle, is the thread many persons feel about the falling away of some of the activities and pleasures of youth, because of growing older.

See, we could give a lot of example of this, and this could be very long; but the fact is that many of the losses and changes which occur in our life seem unfair to us. They were not looked for, they are not wanted; and they may be feared, but this is unnecessary because God has established a law under which your real good can never be taken away from you. If by some chance, some form of your good or some state of your good is removed, and this can happen, then the Law will see to it that your loss will be more than—did you get that?—it will be more than made up to you. Not just made up, but more than made up, either by restitution in kind or by replacement of the former good by some greater good.

If you and I must suffer a loss of one thing, it will be balanced by our being blessed with another. If you and I are, as we sometimes are, forced to sacrifice something, we’ll be blessed with some other good we didn’t expect. If a certain person in you life bids you good-bye and makes you sad, another person will enter your life and say hello and you’ll be glad. Now, hear this paradoxical illustration of this fact. Every time I bring this into a class, there are half that get it and half that don’t. So, let’s see what happens. So you realize that the only way the new you comes into existence is by you becoming old?

[Start of new lecture given on Sept 22, p. 61 in transcript]

We will be studying the Law Of Eternal Replenishment and many other points which we’re going to bring out in this course. I said that man must be aware of this law and believe in it in order to receive its benefits and blessings. I was not completely correct; the students caught that, and I appreciate it. These laws work, period, whether one understands them and believes in them or will or won’t cooperate; these laws still are. That’s true, I made the error. I jumped to a conclusion that was not correct. We all do it and thank God that we have each other to keep an eye out. However, I was not totally incorrect.

These laws, such as this one, the law of divine compensation, will work, even for a person who doesn’t care, who doesn’t understand, doesn’t believe. That law will still work for him. However, he will not be fully aware of its working and will not fully appreciate it. Even though it’s working for him, he will be under a dark cloud, figuratively speaking, of unawareness’ or incomprehension, and so he will be a person who doesn’t care, is not interested, not cooperating; and the law is still working for him. This person is analogous to a person who’s blind to his own good. He will attribute it to things like luck; I was just lucky this time, or bad luck; and therefore, he will not function in conscious awareness of the spiritual law even though spiritual law is very much working in his life. So this person will not be very comfortable; he will not have a sense of security and well-being, knowing that divine law is working on his behalf. Now stay with me.

Because he does not know this, or believe it, or care about it, and he has this sense of belief in luck and uncertainty and insecurity, this is a negative attitude, a sense of unbelief, insecurity, a belief in luck, these are errors, and these are parts of a negative or erroneous state of consciousness. So that even though the law of divine compensation is working to bless that unbeliever, his negative state of consciousness will keep manifesting more negative-like conditions in his environment. So you see why it is important, then, to learn these spiritual laws, to believe in them, and to cooperate with them, because they’ll work anyway, but you’ll be in a better state while they’re working for you, and you’ll develop the right state of consciousness that will bring constantly improved conditions into manifestation.

Please remember the three ways that man expresses the formative power of thought. You see, life in consciousness. You can’t get away from that, that the conditions, the environment, the events of your life are all results of consciousness. And consciousness manifests, expresses and manifests, under the formative power of thought, mind, and man’s mind, as he is now constituted, operates in three general modes. First, is modes of thought, that is the actual character and type of thought that you generate and express. Modes of thought, mental states and third, and possibly the most important, the most frequently overlooked, persistent attitudes. You express yourself, the consciousness, with the formative power of mind, spiritual-law, these three main modes of thought, mental states, and persistent attitudes.

In our Bible course, especially in the Old Testament course, you’re going to be presented with many things, such as the one we’re going to cup with today, which as useable knowledge, isn’t of much value. What it’s going to do is to become a part of the raw material which will help shape and color your more persistent attitudes about life, attitudes about existence, about your being, and these go into the forming of that most subtle part of the formative power of thought, the attitudes we have. If you can’t see how this information is going to be directly, immediately usable to you, then you know its usefulness lies on another level, in the attitude-forming level of you.

I’m going to give you a very brief synopsis of this business again, of the law of divine compensation, very condensed. The word Seth, itself, means substituted compensation, his birth to Adam and Eve stands for the action of spiritual law, which sees to it that no person can have his or her good taken away from him permanently. It may often seem to us that a serious or even tragic loss has occurred in our life. Yet, if we observe carefully, we shall soon see that somehow compensation has come. It may or may not come in the same form as the thing which was lost, but the good which the lost thing represented to us will definitely make a reappearance.

The law of divine compensation is not acknowledged by all persons. There are those who still believe in fate, luck, finalities and closed doors, and also, too late. But these are false beliefs and they cause unnecessary grief. The truth is that under the law of divine compensation, no good is ever really lost. Forms may come and go. For instance, you can lose your house key, and all the screaming and yelling in the world that nothing is lost in spirit will restore those house keys, but you haven’t lost your ability to enter your house because keys can always be replaced. The substance of any good attained through consciousness is permanent. If you are healed once, you can be healed always. The substance of healing is yours, because you’ve gained it through consciousness, no finalities, no closed doors. Seth replaced Abel; so does an incoming form of good compensate for any departed form of good.

Transcribed by Bill Nelson on 02-12-2015