Chapter 10
"I AM THE WAY, THE TRUTH, AND THE LIFE"
Charles Fillmore
Jesus Christ Heals
JEHOVAH GOD restores me to health and wholeness. Words are quickened by those
who speak them and they pick up and carry the ideas of the speaker, weak or
strong, ignorant or wise, good or ill. Thus words descriptive of deity have been
personalized in the thought stuff of the race and those who invoke them in
prayer and meditation are given a spiritual impetus far beyond what they would
receive from common words. It is a fact that the name Jehovah came to be held in
such reverence by the rabbis that they never spoke the word aloud. Jesus said
that His words were so charged with spirit and life that they would endure
longer even than heaven and earth.
Next to Spirit the word of Spirit is the most powerful thing in existence.
The author of the Book of Hebrews says "that the worlds have been framed by the
word of God." We read in Genesis that "God said" and it came to pass. And God
said, "Let us make man in our own image, after our likeness." Thus we see that
man is the incarnate word of God, and it logically follows that our words bring
forth whatever we put into them. Study the 1st chapter of John. Jesus said that
a man will be held accountable for his lightest word.
Spiritually classified, the Jehovah of the Old Testament is identical with
the Christ in the New. One who heals by the power of the word should become
familiar with the inner meaning of all words and use those that appeal to him as
possessing the greatest healing potency. Jesus promised that He would unite with
the Holy Spirit in helping those who called upon Him. Unity healers have found
that this promise is fulfilled when they concentrate in prayer and positive
affirmation on the presence of the Holy Spirit and Jesus Christ. A new and
strong contact is felt with spiritual life, as if it were a mighty battery, when
the name Jehovah God or Jehovah-rapha ("the Lord that healeth thee") is spoken
silently and audibly; then the ethers quicken with the name and shower spiritual
life on both patient and healer. The word Jehovah or Yahweh is charged with
spiritual power far above and beyond any other word in human language.
I am raised to perfection in mind and body by the healing power of Jesus
Christ.
Quite a few Truth students ask why we emphasize Jesus Christ so strongly in
our writings and statements of Truth. Spiritual psychology proves that the name
of a great character carries his mind potency and that wherever his name is
repeated silently or audibly his attributes become manifest. Jesus knew this and
commanded His disciples to go forth in His name. The marvelous works they did
prove that they exercised power far beyond anything warranted by their education
or previous ability, power springing directly from Spirit.
Every thinker who studies the life and teachings of Jesus readily admits that
He attained an understanding of spiritual things far beyond that of any other
man that ever lived. His mind touched heights far beyond those of other advanced
searchers for Truth. As we unfold spiritually we see more and more that Jesus
understood the finer shades of metaphysical reasoning and related His mind and
body to both ideas and their manifestation.
Jesus demonstrated that He understood the healing power stored up in the
body, which He said is released through faith. "Thy faith hath made thee whole."
Jesus identified Himself and His name with the sacred name of the Hebrew
dispensation, Jehovah, and added another link to that long chain of names and
events that brought forth the perfect man ideated by God-Mind, Jesus Christ.
As a directive head is essential in any army, militant or spiritual, so in
every forward movement of the human family there must be a leader. The leader is
chosen because of his ability as a demonstrator of the principles adopted by the
group he represents. The religious principles taught and demonstrated by Jesus
were not originated by Him, nor did He claim them as a "discovery." He said that
Moses wrote of Him, and He often quoted Moses, but with an interpretation quite
different from that of the popular religious leaders. He told them that they
studied the Scriptures expecting through them to attain eternal life when the
only way to attain that life was through Him, and they would not come to Him.
Right here Jesus emphasized the spiritual man, the I AM in man, as the only way
by which man can enter the kingdom of God.
Jesus was undoubtedly the greatest of all exponents of the impersonal I AM,
which is revealed to man when he opens up the supermind within his own soul.
Jesus Christ's real name is Jehovah, I AM. The personal man Jesus is merely the
veil or mask worn by the spiritual man Christ or Jehovah. We are all, in our
personality, wearing the mask that conceals the real, the spiritual, I AM. Jesus
shattered that mask and revealed the spiritual man. He also taught the way by
which we may all do what He did and thus fulfill the destiny implanted in us by
the parent Mind.
There are many distractions to keep us from finding the one door into the
inner kingdom and many voices calling to us that they will show us the easy way,
but Jesus Christ is the only one that appeals to those who are grounded in
principle.
Any declaration man may make in which the name Jesus Christ is used
reverently will contact the spiritual ether in which the Christ I AM lives and
will open the mind and body to the inflow of spiritual healing rays. These
healing rays are very much superior to the ultraviolet rays that come from the
sun or our best medical appliances, because they minister to the mind as well as
the body.
Thy vitalizing energy floods my whole being, and I am healed.
The most inclusive name for Being is Jehovah God. Jehovah represents the
individual I AM and God (Elohim) the universal Principle. When man thinks or
says "I am" he is potentially giving freedom to the seed ideas that contains in
its spiritual capacity all of Being. The natural man in his narrowed mental
comprehension barely touches the seed ideas that expand in the Christ man to
infinite power. The more we dwell upon and expand our I AM the greater looms its
originating capacity before us. When Jesus proclaimed, "Before Abraham was born,
I am," He realized that the I AM preceded all manifestation, however great, and
was capable of infinite expression.
The proposition that the seemingly insignificant individual I AM contains
infinite creative capacity appears absurd to the thoughtless, but we have
numerous examples of extraordinary capacity for expansion in the little seeds
that bring forth gigantic trees. The Scriptures plainly teach that men may
become gods. Adam was expelled from the Garden of Eden because Jehovah realized
that he might appropriate eternal life and live forever in his ignorance.
When man realizes that "death and life are in the power of the tongue" and
begins to use his "I am" statements wisely, he has the key that unlocks the
secret chambers of existence in heaven and earth.
The Christ substance (body) and the Christ life (blood) are accessible at all
times and in all places to the one who awakens his soul to spiritual
omnipresence. The table of the Lord is spread everywhere for those who believe
on Him as Spirit and in their Spirit affirmation eat of His body and blood. The
appropriation by His followers of His life and substance is the very foundation
of salvation through Jesus Christ. The mere acceptance intellectually of the
teaching that we are saved by the blood of the Lord Jesus and the partaking of
the bread and wine in a perfunctory manner will save neither mind nor body. The
only thing that will do it is the understanding that Jesus raised His body life
and substance out of the race consciousness into Spirit consciousness and that
with our minds poised in that consciousness we can lay hold of the Spirit
elements that will save us to the uttermost.
Nearly everyone needs both mind and body healing, and those who give faithful
attention to the law as it operates in man are rewarded by demonstrations of
healing. Jesus healed "all manner of disease," the same Jesus has broadcast that
healing Spirit to the uttermost ends of the earth, and today all who will may be
made whole.
The Christ life quickens and heals me.
Although millions have testified that they have felt the quickening life of
Christ, other millions doubt if such a thing as the Christ life exists.
The unseen forces have always been an enigma to the masses, and even those
who are expecting the unseen to spring forth suddenly into some marvelous
manifestation do not recognize it when it comes to pass. It is said that when
Marconi demonstrated to a group of scientists in Paris the power of radio waves,
they doubted his claims and sought in various ways to discover the concealed
wires, which they were sure were being used. So every unseen force man uses has
had to prove its existence by some visible manifestation that can be
mechanically demonstrated. But are there unseen forces that cannot be
mechanically demonstrated? The answer is that all unseen forces can be
mechanically demonstrated and that they are being demonstrated every day the
world over, but scientists have not yet recognized as mechanical all the devices
through which man brings unseen forces into manifestation; for example, his own
brain and the radio. These with many other unseen forces come under the head of
mechanism.
Brain cells are the only material things that will transmit mind, and man has
never yet been able to invent so fine a piece of mechanism outside his own
organism. But brains are mechanical, and man does build and use them in
expressing his intelligence.
The fact is that each of us builds a brain especially designed and fitted for
our individual use and for no one else's. All attempts to turn our brains over
to others in hypnosis or mediumship will prove abortive in the end.
In radio terms your brain cells correspond to the tubes in a combined
broadcasting and receiving set, and you have tuned them to certain wave lengths
and turned on the power. If you have not been informed of your innate ability to
turn on or off the mind waves, you are functioning in the established race
programs of personality: what your ancestors have thought, what other people
think, and what little thought you can conjure up yourself. Unless your mind has
been quickened by the light of spiritual understanding, you are living in a
little three-dimensional world whose beginning and end is sin or a falling short
of the divine ideal.
"If a man keep my word, he shall never see death."
"I am the resurrection, and the life."
Jesus stressed the power of words, especially His words. In the parable of
the sower He said, "When anyone heareth the word of the kingdom." Here He
referred to the Logos, the creative Word, which framed the worlds, according to
John. The creative Word or Logos is also identified as Holy Spirit, which is
carrying forward the ideas of God as they unfold in the manifest universe.
As the Word of God, the Logos, is creating in the universe (body of God) so
man's word is creating in his universe (man's body). That is why Jesus said that
we should be judged by our words. We are creating a little universe in which the
cells of the body correspond to the planets of the solar system. "And I say unto
you, that every idle word that men shall speak, they shall give account thereof
in the day of judgment."
The "day of judgment" to us is any day that we get the fruit in body and
affairs of some thought or word that we have expressed. The creative power of
man's word is in proportion to his understanding of God-Mind and his unity with
its law. The creative power of most men does not get beyond their own body
consciousnesss, because they know very little about Spirit and their relation to
its laws. The better we realize our spiritual relationship to creative Mind and
conform our thoughts and words to its laws the greater is the power of our
words. Jesus "tuned in" to Divine Mind until that Mind reinforced His mind and
raised it to superhuman capacity. It was in one of His moments of mental
exaltation that He declared, "The words that I have spoken unto you are spirit,
and are life."
We have thought that we were to be saved by Jesus' making personal petitions
and sacrifices for us, but now we see that we are to be saved by using the
creative principles that He developed in Himself, and that He is ever ready to
co-operate with us in developing in ourselves by observing the law as He
observed it. "I in them, and thou in me, that they may be perfected into one."
Thus we see that when Jesus said, "If a man keep my word, he shall never see
death," He meant that we should realize the life-giving properties of the
creative words of God as He had realized them, that we should have no
consciousness of death.
I have new life in Christ and I am healed.
To attain this realization of the word of life we must create currents of
life in our bodies as Jesus did in His. Of all man's possessions the most
valuable is life. "For what shall a man be profited, if he shall gain the whole
world, and forfeit his life? or what shall a man give in exchange for his life?"
When Jesus uttered these words He was explaining to His disciples that He was
about to pass through a transformation in which He would give up His physical
life, though He would continue His manifestation in a spiritual life. They did
not understand Him, and Peter "began to rebuke him." Jesus told them they did
not understand the things of God "but the things of men." Up to this day the
passing over of the natural life into the spiritual life is not fully understood
by Christians. It is almost universally interpreted as something that takes
place after the death of the body, while in fact it is a transformation of the
issues of life while the body is intact. Paul said, "I die daily." So Jesus
could not have appeared after His crucifixion in the same body if He had not
daily given up the physical life and daily put on the Christ life. It is a
step-by-step or cell-by-cell transformation.
What did Jesus mean when He said, "If a man keep my word, he shall never see
death"? Did He mean death of the soul? There is nothing in His teaching to
warrant such a conclusion. He meant that we shall escape physical death if we
identify ourselves with the creative Word in Him, the Logos.
Then to understand the new life in Christ we must give attention to that
mystical Word or Logos, because in it are wrapped the principles that, planted
in our minds, will spring into new life in mind and body.
Eternal life and strength are here, and I am made whole through Jesus Christ.
Among the seven sacred names given to Jehovah by the Hebrew priesthood is
"Jehovah-shammah," meaning "Jehovah is there." Jehovah is the name of the
ever-living I AM. When the mystic desired to commune with the omnipresent life
he did not speak the name aloud but silently intoned, "Jehovah-shammah!" This
pervasion of his I AM with the ever-living I AM harmonized the spiritual man
with his source, and the individual was merged with the universal.
A certain mystery has always accompanied the use of the sacred name, and the
priesthood gained their ascendancy over the people by performing marvelous works
through the silent and audible intoning of words charged with thoughts of
spiritual power.
However a priest must undergo discipline to acquire mastery of the elemental
forces that function in mind and body. A cursory reading of Exodus conveys the
idea that for forty years Moses was a shepherd, tending the flocks of his
father-in-law Jethro, priest of Midian. But his mastery of nature, as evidenced
by his works in Egypt, plainly shows that he understood the control of matter by
mind better than did the magicians of Egypt, although he was versed in their
magic.
The followers of Jesus did marvelous works in His name, but that name was
also used by those who were not His immediate disciples, and they succeeded in
casting out demons so well that John complained about it. Jesus said, "Forbid
him not: for he that is not against you is for you." So we find that a person's
name identifies him with his character. If that character is mighty in
spirituality and power, he who invokes it in his prayers is automatically raised
into a like sphere of power and what he says comes to pass. "And whatsoever ye
shall ask in my name, that will I do, that the Father may be glorified in the
Son."
Salvation through Jesus Christ is not accomplished by looking forward to
freedom but by realizing that we are now free through His freeing power, which
we are using to cut the bonds with which our thoughts have bound us. Then we
have only to establish ourselves in real life and strength by understanding that
these attributes of Being are omnipresent and that our affirmations of that
presence, will cause us to become conscious that we do now and here live, move,
and have our being in eternal life and strength.
In the name and by the power and authority of Jesus Christ I am made every
whit whole.
Man gives a name--that is, "character"--to every idea that comes into
consciousness, and whatever he conceives a thing to be, that it becomes to him.
So it is written in Genesis: "Whatsoever the man called every living creature,
that was the name thereof."
Jesus taught and demonstrated that man is master of a kingdom far beyond the
consciousness of the natural man, but accessible to those who open their mind to
its laws and observe those laws in thought and act.
The official declarations of a representative of a country are recognized by
all as worthy of credence.
Jesus represented the kingdom of the heavens, and we, His agents, take
possession of that kingdom in His name and declare that we are vested with
authority to bring spiritual forces to bear that will restore man to his primal
perfection.
In the 3d chapter of Acts is recorded the healing by Peter of a man lame from
his birth; and Peter says, "In the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, walk. . . .
and immediately his feet and ankle-bones received strength. And leaping up, he
stood, and began to walk; and he entered with them into the temple, walking, and
leaping, and praising God."
When the people were greatly astonished at this marvelous healing and
gathered around Peter and John, Peter explained, "Ye men of Israel, why marvel
ye at this man? or why fasten ye your eyes on us, as though by our own power or
godliness we had made him to walk? . . . And by faith in his name hath his name
made this man strong."
Shakespeare says, "Good name in man and woman . . . is the immediate jewel of
their souls." But even Shakespeare, with his psychological insight, never
realized how good a name would be or to what heights of power it could lift one
who applies the laws of Spirit in its use.
Those who have searched diligently to know God and His Son Jesus and have
prayed for the light of Spirit find that they possess a certain confidence and
faith in the very name Jesus Christ and that to the one who speaks it the name
draws creative forces far beyond mental comprehension.
Hence we should have confidence in the promises of Jesus that those who in
faith use His name shall do the marvelous wonders that He did and even greater
works of a spiritual character.
Read in the 16th chapter of Mark what are the signs of a real follower of
Christ and see if you are measuring up to them: "And these signs shall accompany
them that believe: in my name shall they cast out demons; they shall speak with
new tongues; they shall take up serpents, and if they drink any deadly thing, it
shall in no wise hurt them; they shall lay hands on the sick, and they shall
recover."
By the grace of God through Christ Jesus I am made whole.
Jesus knew what He had accomplished in breaking the mortal mesmerism of the
race, and He boldly proclaimed His ability to help all those who join Him in
seeking to effect a direct union with creative Mind.
As Jesus healed in Galilee so He is healing in the same spiritual realm of
radiant health today. "To him that overcometh, to him will I give to eat of the
tree of life, which is in the Paradise of God." "I am the way, and the truth,
and the life."
