All Powerful Human Word

And in us, everything is forgiven. The one who played that part tonight, or the one who stole that truck and the contents to embarrass my friend, who has no money to replace his great love – suppose that one in the physical sense was my brother? Do you know what I would say? “Set him free.” I wouldn’t care what he did. I so love my brothers that if they were caught in any act – I don’t care what it was – if it was a violent act, I would ask the judge to set him free. That’s what I would do, and I would mean it because he is my brother. Well, behind the mask he is my brother. Every being in the world is my brother; and all my brothers together form God. They all form the Elohim – a plural word: one made up of others. This is God!

So, we are here to learn a lesson. One of the great lessons is repentance: how to change my attitude towards a seeming fixed, unalterable state. It’s unalterable, and yet I want what that, if it could be changed, would produce. Now, learn to change it! Ignore it completely, and go to the end where it has been changed – like: so he took the piano, maybe he sold it. Maybe he burned it, but I am going to hear him [Freedom] play the most glorious instrument and so enjoy it. So, I ignore the facts of life – completely ignore the facts, and go in my imagination to the end as I want it to be and there I will see it. I tell you, this is profoundly spiritual and so directly practical!

So, he comes into the world and tells a story that the world does not understand, because he has reached the climax of God’s plan of salvation, and having reached the climax, he tells you he must go. He must disappear as a teacher. But where could he go, save to the Father? And where is the Father, but in you?

Now he’s going to send the Spirit of Truth. But he says, “I am the Truth”, therefore who is he going to send but himself? But when he comes now he is going to be wearing a different name. He will bear a different name. He is one with the Father in control of The Whole, but he will now send himself bearing a different name to continue the teaching, and tell the whole vast world of God’s plan of redemption. There’s only God!

It was God Himself who came down into the world of humanity and buried Himself in man, and only God can be redeemed, and God planned the process of redemption “before that the world was.” This is not an after-thought. This is not emergency thinking. This was “before that the world was.” This is how it’s going to be. You are going to go straight through to the end until you reach the climax.

The climax is Resurrection from that little cleft in the rock, and you come out, and then you are going to go back.

So, the Evangelists – the four of them – they begin the story of the ministry of Jesus with the final act, which is baptism when the dove descends upon him in bodily form as the symbol of the Holy Spirit. And they all begin it that way, and then they go back.

John being the most profound, he goes back to the grave and he tells it in symbolism, and all the signs are really – all the signs that he uses in that wonderful picture of the grave are all – well, signs. They are all figures, but the things that they signify are literal. So, he tells the story of the birth by using the sign of a napkin, which means the afterbirth, the placenta. He tells you what took place in that concrete state called the tomb: that when you found that little napkin, then a birth took place. Well, this was a different kind of a birth; this was the birth from God. God was born in this state. So he begins it with the very first act, for there are four “mighty acts,” and the first act is the Resurrection. A few moments later it’s followed by the “birth from above”, John ends it with that, but he begins it with the descent of the dove. So the whole thing is showing you, it’s going to be backwards now.