The Resurrecting Power of the Word

[Guest guest]

IT IS PLAINLY taught in the Bible that God created a spiritual,

undying man; that death came into the world through transgression of

the law, called sin; that sin was the work of one man, and that sin

would be overcome by one man. " As in Adam all die, so in Christ shall

all be made alive. " Jesus Christ is the fulfillment of that promise.

The race has so long existed in the negative mental conditions that

bring sickness and finally death that it is very difficult to

convince men that they can live forever in their bodies. They have

been taught that death is natural, that death is part of the scheme

of life, that through death we progress to better conditions. This

negative teaching has been a part of the race thought so long that

death has been accepted as the necessary end of existence. But such

is not the teaching of Christianity.

Every organ of the body is capable of being constantly renewed

through the inflow of an unseen force called mind or life or Spirit.

Therefore we should be continually renewing and spiritualizing the

body. But we are not doing so because of our lack of faith in our

possibilities as offspring of universal life. We find it hard to

believe that the renewing and spiritualizing of the body can be

accomplished, yet the history of the Hebrew race (considered as an

allegory) shows that this is possible.

We look on the wanderings of the Children of Israel in the wilderness

as typical of our wanderings through the wilderness of materiality

and ignorance on our way to the Promised Land; but we have always put

the Promised Land away off somewhere in heaven! The teaching of Jesus

is that we can demonstrate over all the ills of the body, all the

discords and inharmonies of the flesh, and finally overcome death as

He did, here and now.

The lesson of Easter, when learned, convinces us that one man

demonstrated what has been taught throughout the centuries in the

religion of Christianity. Jesus evidently did not know in the

beginning of His life that He was to make this great demonstration.

He was a carpenter and worked with ph, but for thirty years He

must have been growing in spiritual power. In meditation He doubtless

caught glimpses of the great Truth, and it dawned on Him that He was

the man who had been selected, or that through His own demonstration

He had attained the ability, to overcome the negative thoughts, the

sins that were tearing down the bodies of the race, and that He had

the power to gain complete mastery of the human weakness called

death.

When Jesus received the illumination and stepped forth as a teacher,

He found it very difficult to impress on others that He was anything

more than one of the common people. He claimed immortality, He

claimed that He was the Messiah they had been looking for, and they

said in effect: " This is ridiculous. We know this man. He is Jesus,

the son of and ph. We know Him and His brothers and His

sisters. We have been brought up with Him. It is absurd to think that

a man can step right out of the common herd and become the Messiah. "

It is an adage that a great man is not without honor except in his

own country. From the physical viewpoint we are part of the common

people and we will not concede that one of our number can by any

possibility become divine. The Scriptures plainly teach that Jesus'

own followers did not believe His claim that He was divine. They

admitted that He was a great teacher. He taught truths that they

accepted in the abstract, but they were not ready to concede that one

of their number had attained the demonstration of Truth. In a sort of

wonderment Jesus' disciples followed Him, but they had not grasped

the underlying truths that He was teaching: that the body is the

temple of the living God, and that the man Jesus could lay it down or

take it up; that He was going to make a demonstration over death that

would satisfy not only them but the whole world; that when He was

ready He was going up to Jerusalem to be crucified there. Christian

metaphysicians see symbology in all this, but it actually took place.

Jesus knew that He must demonstrate over death and that He must

prepare for that test. He told all His friends that He was going to

accomplish this thing, but they were incredulous. attempted to

dissuade Jesus from His announced purpose of going to Jerusalem to be

crucified, but Jesus would not be swerved from His course. We often

think that if Jesus would only come now and make a demonstration over

death, we should all believe. Probably only a handful of us would

accept Him if He came among us today and made such a demonstration.

The newspapers would say it was a fake, a trick. The scribes and the

Pharisees and the doubters reported that the soldiers were paid to

open the tomb and let Jesus escape. Incredulity exists today. That is

the reason why the demonstration of eternal life is so difficult.

That is the reason why after two thousand years the world at large is

not convinced that it is possible for man to be raised out of the

thought that death is inescapable. Even after Jesus demonstrated

resurrection the disciples found it hard to believe Him.

A woman was the first person to come to Jesus' tomb after His

resurrection. Women are more receptive to Truth than men. Women have

more spirituality and faith than men, but if today a man died who had

claimed that he would resurrect his body on a certain day, it is

doubtful whether even the women would go to the tomb to see that

resurrection. and the other women did not go to the tomb of

Jesus expecting Him to be there alive. They did not expect to see Him

come out of the tomb; on the contrary they had spices and herbs for

the embalming of His body. The body was not there and they began to

inquire about it. The angel told them, " He is risen " ; but they could

not believe it, and they looked into the tomb. There were the grave

clothes, but the body of Jesus was gone. The disciples, when told

that Jesus had risen, were skeptical. We are told that Jesus walked

with two of them on the way to Emmaus and explained the Scriptures to

them. After a time they recognized Him; then He disappeared from

their midst.

Shortly after the incident at Emmaus Jesus appeared again to the

Eleven, and to prove to them that He had the same body that He had

had before His resurrection, He " showed them his hands and his feet, "

and He ate a piece of broiled fish. After that He disappeared again.

All this would be thought " spooky " in our day, and we cannot blame

the apostles for being " amazed. "

Followers of Jesus do not understand the difference between the

astral or ghostly body of the dead and the resurrected body of Jesus.

There is a difference made by the mental power of the individual and

the way he thinks about life, soul, spirit, and matter.

If we believe that the body is the temple of the living God, we shall

follow Jesus in the resurrection.

Why are we not resurrecting the body? Why are we giving it up to

disintegration? Sin is the cause of death; then it must be that

through the elimination of sin we shall come into eternal life and

save the body from the disintegrating effects of death. In fact we

are all striving for the resurrection of the body when we try to

overcome its oncreeping feebleness. But our efforts are material

instead of spiritual. We should remember that " it is the spirit that

giveth life; the flesh profiteth nothing. " We try in many ways to

renew the life supply within us.

Some very absurd methods have been advocated by so-called scientists

to perpetuate man's life, to make him healthier, wealthier, happier.

We all want more life, more happiness, more good; and we can have

everything we want if we comply with the divine law as Jesus did. The

body is composed of elements that are essentially perfect. We have

not understood the law of harmony and have therefore thrown these

primal perfect elements out of adjustment. By our thoughts we are

continually moving the cells of the body. The original impetus is

given by the conscious mind, hence we must regulate our thinking to

the end that harmony be set up in the cellular life throughout the

organism.

It is very evident that Jesus understood the science of right

thinking. We hate our enemies and have bodily disorders as a result.

Jesus said, " Love your enemies. " This is but one of many laws of mind

activity that Jesus carried out in His life. We must first follow

Jesus in controlling our thoughts; then we shall be able to follow

Him in the resurrection.

Jesus controlled His thoughts by harmonizing them, by continually

thinking constructively, by continually bringing into action in His

conscious mind all the mental factors that lead to the new life, to

the understanding of what life is. We know that the body is destroyed

by discord, by fever, and by other inharmonies. Fever is but a

clashing of the cells of the organism, a tearing down process; but

back of fever are harsh thoughts. We can trace every ill to some

thought. We must eliminate these sinning thoughts. The sinning

thought is the thought that fails to measure up to the high calling;

it is not a true thought. We have limited our ideas to a small realm.

We have thought that sin covered only the transgressions of the moral

man. But I assure you that sin becomes visible in the physical; hence

we should look for a physical resurrection after we have crucified

the carnal mind.

Jesus laid great stress on the power of the word. The word has two

activities: One is that of the still small voice in the silence, and

the other is that of the " loud voice " that was used by Jesus when He

raised Lazarus from the dead. In the beginning " God said, Let there

be " --and there was.

We are the offspring of God, and our words have power proportionate

to our realization of our in-dwelling spiritual kingdom. In the world

today there is ample evidence of the power of words to move

multitudes. That same power can heal and make people happy. If you

will recognize this power and increase it and apply it in all your

thoughts and acts, the impetus given to your spoken thought will

produce a body so constructed, so harmonized that it will renew

itself and never allow you to go to the grave. Jesus did a work of

this kind. He said that a man would be held accountable for his

slightest word. Jesus sent His word to heal people. He said, " If a

man keep my word, he shall never taste of death. " What were His

words? They were words of life, of peace, or harmony. " Ye have heard

that it was said, An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth, "

but " This is my commandment, that ye love one another. "

So long as we have destructive thoughts, so long as we war in thought

with our neighbor next door or on the other side of the earth, just

so long shall we have inharmony, just so long shall we fall short of

being true followers of Jesus. We must love, we must forgive, we must

harmonize our thoughts under the divine law; then we shall heal and

resurrect the body.