The source of all truth is God, a source to which man cannot ascend in his earthly form. He must therefore depend upon the bearers of the truth who draw from that source. These are God’s spirit messengers, and only they are admitted to that source. Only they possess the clean vessels in which the truth can be brought fresh and unsullied to mankind. “The first and the greatest of truth-bearers was Christ as a spirit, in the days preceding his incarnation. It was he who, partly personally, partly through his subordinates in the spirit world, brought the drink of truth to early humanity. Hence the active intercourse with spirits by the sick and exhausted world of Old Testament times. Hence, also, the coming and going, in the early days of the Christian era, of truth-bearing spirits, who constantly drew upon God’s fountainhead and brought the water of truth, at Christ’s behest, to the human souls who thirsted for the truth. “It is, therefore, one of the fundamental teachings of the true Christian faith that humans cannot proclaim the truth out of their own consciousness. They can do so only as instruments of God’s spirit world. “Even Christ as a mortal could not ascend of his own volition to the source of the truth. As a man, he had no more inherent knowledge of the truth than other humans. What he had known in the days when he, as the first-created spirit, dwelt with God had been as completely obliterated from his memory by his entry into a material body as the knowledge of a previous existence is obliterated from the recollection of other humans, although there was a time when they too had dwelled with the Father. The property of matter by which the recollection of ones previous existence is wiped out exerted the same effect upon the incarnated Christ that it exerts upon every other spirit incarnated in human form. “Thus after his incarnation also Christ was dependent upon the spirit messengers sent to him by the Father. He acknowledged this when he said: ‘You shall see the messengers of God ascending and descending upon the Son of Man.’ (John 1: 51) He was but God’s envoy, and had no advantage over the Divine envoys that had preceded him, for they, too, had been instructed by God’s spirits. Enoch, Abraham, Moses, and all of the Old Testament prophets did not preach things that had evolved in their own minds, but all of them, in Peters words, ‘spoke God’s word under the guidance of a holy spirit.’ A spirit of God inspired them with what they were to say. “Christ repeatedly assures his hearers that he speaks not of his own knowledge, but only what he has heard from the Father. It was the Father Who gave him the required teachings, through His spirit messengers who constantly ascended and descended above the Son of Man. ‘You will realize that I do nothing of myself but only speak as my Father has taught me.’ (John 8: 28) ‘I speak to the world only those things that I have heard from Him.’ (John 8: 26) “The same fountainhead of truth from which Christ had drawn was to serve all those who came to spread his gospel after him. First his Apostles, who were not simply to repeat what they had learned from Christ as they interpreted it. Misinterpretations easily slip in when humans are called upon to repeat what someone else has said. Of a hundred listeners to the same speaker, every one of them, when asked to repeat his remarks, will in one point or another say something different from what the speaker said or meant. Hence, also the Apostles were to be instructed anew by the spirits of the truth about the things that they had learned from Christ as a man, to make sure that his words suffer no distortion from their erroneous interpretation. They were to receive from God’s spirits both confirmation of the teachings proclaimed by Christ and certain new truths that Christ had had to withhold from them, either because under God’s Plan of Salvation these truths could not be proclaimed before the Redeemer’s death, or because the Apostles themselves were not yet mature enough to receive them, and so would not have understood them. “You will find this statement confirmed in Christ’s own words: ‘I will ask the Father to send you another helper, who will be with you always, the spirit world of truth.’ (John 14: 16) ‘I have much more to say to you, but you cannot bear it now. However, when the spirit world of truth has come, they will introduce you to the whole truth.’ (John 16: 12- 13) ‘The helper, however, the holy spirit world, which the Father will send in my name, will teach you whatever else you need to know and will remind you of all that I have told you.’ (John 14: 26) According to these words, then, the spirits of truth had a twofold task. First, they were to remind the faithful what Christ as a man had told them, and to confirm its truth. Beyond that, they were to continue the teaching that Christ had begun, and to proclaim those further truths that he had purposely withheld for the above mentioned reasons. Moreover, the spirits of God were to be with the faithful forever, since, with the power of evil and the weakness of man, the danger of error was ever present. Subsequent generations must not be dependent upon the religious records of their ancestors, for such human records would bear no guarantee of truthfulness, and those to whom they were handed down could not discern what was derived from God’s wellspring of truth and what was attributable to human error.
Posted on: Sun, 10 Aug 2014 20:14:10 +0000
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