Chapter 6
GOD SAID, AND IT WAS SO
Charles Fillmore
Jesus Christ Heals
EMERSON said that the utterance of true ideas by one with a mission causes
kings to totter on their thrones. Words of Truth from a zealous man possess
dynamic power to heal and bless because the spiritual man enters into them. This
is why they move multitudes and are not stayed by conditions or time. When the
zone of Spirit, from which healing words emanate, is unobstructed, they feed the
souls of men and are creative as well as re-creative. This is why the sayings of
the prophets and mystics have such enduring qualities. They are attached by
invisible currents of life to the one Great Spirit, and they have within them
the germ of perfect wholeness that keeps them perpetually increasing.
The scriptures of the different races are examples of the outward expression
of this inner germ. The Book of Job is a dateless work that has been preserved
through great changes, including the rise and fall of nations. Who wrote it no
one knows, but it was not lost with the loss of its custodians. They were wiped
out, their lands taken from them, and they are no longer known among the nations
of the earth, but the mystic word of Job was not consumed. If they had applied
in their own lives the power of the germ word, the fate of these people would
have been very different. But the history of the Book of Job is that of nearly
all the sacred writings of all peoples. Secular histories and records of the
exploits of men and the affairs of nations have disappeared and been forgotten
because they told the tale of the passing world of flesh; but the records of
those who had to do with the spiritual are preserved, and they are living today
as they have lived ever since they were given forth: through the power derived
from Spirit. The true prophet of God does not even have to write his words down.
He may speak them to the ethers, and through their own inherent power of
perpetuation and growth they will find their way into the minds of men to uplift
and to heal. Jesus did not write a line except in the sand, yet His words are
treasured today as the most precious that we have.
We know by these many examples that the word of Truth has life in it, that it
has power to restore and make whole, and that it cannot perish or grow less with
the changes that come with the fleeting years. The more spiritual the individual
is who gives forth the words the more enduring they are, and the more powerfully
the words move men the more surely they awaken them to their divine nature.
The words of Jesus Christ were given to common people--according to the
world's standard--by a carpenter in a remote corner of the earth. Yet these
words have moved men for more than nineteen hundred years to realize, to dare,
and to do as no other words that were ever uttered.
When Jesus said, "The words that I have spoken unto you are spirit, and are
life," He was speaking in terms of that inner Word which creates all things. He
knew that His words were vivified with a life essence and a moving power that
would demonstrate the truth of His statement.
These words have rung through the souls of men and set them afire with God's
Spirit throughout the ages. This is because they are spiritual words, words that
have within them the seeds of a divine life, of a perfect wholeness. They grow
in the minds of all who give them place, just as a beautiful flower or a great
tree grows from the seed germ planted in the ground.
Jesus knew that the consciousness of man was submerged in the things of
sense, that it could not perceive Truth in the abstract, and that it must, under
these conditions, be stirred into activity through some stimulating force
dropped into it from without. Hence He sent forth His powerful words of Truth to
the thirsty men, and said unto them, "Keep my word."
To "keep" a word is to resolve it in the mind, to go over it in all its
aspects, to believe in it as a truth, and to treasure it as a saving, healing
balm in time of need.
All peoples have in all ages known about the saving power of words and have
used them to the best of their understanding to cast out demons and to heal the
sick. The Hebrews bound upon their foreheads and wrists parchments with words of
Scripture written upon them. The Hindus, Japanese, Chinese, and nearly all other
nations have their various methods for applying sacred words to the alleviation
of their ills, and for invoking the invisible powers to aid them in both their
material and their spiritual needs. Although these methods are faulty in that
they tend to use the letter of the word instead of its spirit, they are
significant as indicators of the universal belief in the power of the sacred
word.
We know that words express ideas, and to get at their substantial part we
must move into the realm of ideas. Ideas are in the mind, and it is there we
must go if we want to get the force of our words. The Hebrew's phylacteries and
the Buddhist's prayer wheels are suggestive of the wordy prayers of the
Christian; but this is not keeping the words of Jesus, nor reading the inner
substance of the mystical words. This can be done only by those who believe in
the omnipresent Spirit of God and in faith keep in mind the words that express
His goodness, wisdom, power, and wholeness.
Jesus voiced this nearness of God to man more fully than any of the prophets,
and His words are correspondingly vivified with the divine inner fire and life
and wholeness. He said that those who keep His words will even escape death, so
potent is the energy attached to them. This is a startling promise, but when we
understand that it was not the personal man Jesus making it but the Father
speaking through Him, then we know that it was not an idle one; for He said,
"The word which ye hear is not mine, but the Father's who sent me." This is why
these words of Jesus endure and why more and more they are attracting the
attention of men as the years go by. That is the reason why Jesus' words heal.
Whoever takes Jesus' words into his mind should first consecrate himself to
the Truth that they represent. That Truth is not the formulated doctrine of any
church nor the creed of any sect; not even of Christianity. That truth is
written in the inner sanctuary of every heart, and all men know it without
external formulas. It is the intuitive perception of what is right in the sight
of God and man. It is this Truth and justice which every man recognizes as the
foundation of true living. Whoever consecrates himself to follow the inner
monitor, the Spirit of truth, and lives up to its promptings regardless of
social or commercial customs has consecrated himself to do God's will, and he is
fitted to take Jesus' words and make them his own. His words are then spirit and
life.
It is no idle experiment, this keeping in the mind the words of Jesus. It is
a very momentous undertaking, which may mark the most important period in the
life of the individual. There must be sincerity and earnestness and right
motive, and withal a determination to understand its spiritual import. This
requires attention, time, and patience in the application of the mind to solving
the deeper meanings of the sayings that we are urged to "keep."
People have a way of dealing with sacred words that is too superficial to
bring results. They juggle words. They toss them into the air with the heavenly
tone or the oratorical ring and count that a compliance with divine
requirements. But this is only another form of the prayer wheel and the
phylactery. It is that lip service which Jesus condemned, because the purpose is
to be "heard of men."
To keep the words of Jesus means much more than this. It has peculiar
significance for the inner life, and it is only after this inner life is
awakened that the true sense of the spiritual word is understood. But through
his devotions the sincere keeper of Jesus' sayings will awaken this inner life
or Spirit, and the Lord will come to him and minister to him as carefully as to
the adept mystic.
Jesus said, "The words that I have spoken unto you are spirit, and are life."
Spirit is that indescribable invisible cause that produces all reality. He who
lives in the consciousness of effects alone can know nothing about Spirit,
because he has not made himself acquainted with the realm in which it operates.
But no one is barred from becoming acquainted with Spirit and residing in its
domain. It is just as accessible as the material and far more attractive. If you
want to know about Spirit, you will have to take up spiritual ways. You cannot
go to the realm of Spirit by traveling the lower road. The road to the realm of
Spirit does not lie on the map of the earth, and no man has found it in his
physical geography. That spiritual things "are spiritually discerned" was the
discovery of someone long ago, but he had no copyright on it. To him it was a
revelation, just as it will be to you and to everyone when it dawns on the
consciousness. It is a great advantage to the spiritual seeker to make this
discovery. Millions of persons in every age have tried to find Spirit through
matter and material ways, but they have returned unsuccessful to the dust. "For
verily I say unto you, that many prophets and righteous men desired to see the
things which ye see, and saw them not; and to hear the things which ye hear, and
heard them not." They did not fulfill the promise of Jesus, because they saw
death and succumbed to its dissolving hand. They missed the goal because they
did not keep the words of Jesus. They kept the letter instead of the spirit.
They applied in an abstract way what was intended for everyday practical use.
Jesus tells us that His words are spirit, and then says to keep them. How can
we keep a thing that we know nothing about? How can we keep the words and
sayings of Jesus unless we get right where He was and grasp them with our minds?
Surely there is no other way to keep His words. Those who are trying to do so
from any other standpoint are missing the mark. They may be honest and they may
be good, sincere people, living what the world calls a pure Christian life, but
they are not going to get the fruits of Jesus' words unless they comply with the
requirements.
"There's no getting blood out of a turnip" is a trite saying. Neither can you
get Spirit and life out of matter and death. Unless you perceive that there is
something more in the doctrine of Jesus than keeping up a worldly moral standard
as preparation for salvation after death, you will fall far short of being a
real Christian.
Jesus did not depreciate moral living; neither did He promise that it would
fulfill the law of God. Very negative persons are frequently trustworthy and
moral. But that does not make them Christians after the Jesus Christ plan.
Jesus' Christianity had a living God in it, a God that lived in Him and spoke
through Him. It was a religion of fire and water, of life as well as purity. Men
are to be alive: not merely exist in a half-dead way for a few years and then go
out with a splutter like a tallow dip. Jesus Christ's men are to be electric
lights that glow and gleam with perpetual current from the one omnipresent
energy. The connection with that current is to be made through the mind by
setting up sympathetic energies.
The mind reacts to ideas, and ideas are made visible in words. Hence the
holding of right words in the mind will set the mind going at a rate
proportioned to the dynamic power of the idea back of the words. A word with a
lazy idea back of it will not stimulate the mind or heal the body. The words
must represent swift, strong spiritual ideas if they are to infuse the white
energy of God into the mind. This is the kind of words that Jesus reveled in. He
delighted in making great and mighty claims for His God, for Himself, for His
words, and for all men: "I and the Father are one." "All authority hath been
given unto me in heaven and on earth." "My Father . . . is greater than all."
"Is it not written in your law, I said, ye are gods?" "He that believeth on me,
the works that I do shall he do also; and greater works than these shall he do."
These were some of the claims with which He stimulated His mind, and He produced
the results: He fulfilled His words. He even raised the dead.
But He did not copyright His words or forbid anyone else to use them. He
importuned you and me to keep them as He kept them--right in His heart--to
realize that this is no idle repetition of words but the setting up of a living
fire in the soul that will never go out. This is what the words of Jesus will do
for everybody who keeps them in the inner sanctuary of the mind. They will
kindle a fire there that will burn higher and higher until it licks the very
canopy of heaven and burns a hole in the blue vault of Truth, revealing the
wonders of God to the astonished eyes of man.
Jesus' words are varied, but all are food for the minds of His disciples.
None of them is too hard for him who would be a disciple, nor is it too far from
his present power of realization. What you now comprehend is not the ultimate of
your ability in any direction. Your not consciously feeling that you and the
Father are one does not militate against its being true. Men in high states of
civilization lived for centuries on this planet without knowing that it was a
globe and that just across the seas were other continents inhabited like their
own. The race today is in the same position as regards the spiritual world. We
look with longing eyes across a sea of doubts, fears, and delusions, trying to
catch sight of the "Promised Land," but there seems to be no one to pilot us
over. But here comes one who is to us a Columbus and who has given us a ship and
compass. He has sailed the sea and found the other shore. He asks us to follow
Him, and keep His words. His words are the ship and compass.
In about twenty places in the New Testament Jesus is recorded as saying in
substance, "Follow me." When we inquire into Jesus' teaching, it is evident that
He meant for us to follow His example of being receptive to God's wisdom, peace,
power, and health. For instance, let us consider His healing of the man at the
Pool of Bethesda who had been afflicted with an infirmity for thirty-eight
years.
Now there is in Jerusalem by the sheep gate a pool, which is called
in Hebrew Bethesda, having five porches. In these lay a multitude of them that
were sick, blind, halt, withered. And a certain man was there, who had been
thirty and eight years in his infirmity. When Jesus saw him lying, and knew that
he had been now a long time in that case, he saith unto him, Wouldest thou be
made whole? The sick man answered him, Sir, I have no man, when the water is
troubled, to put me into the pool; but while I am coming, another steppeth down
before me. Jesus saith unto him, Arise, take up thy bed, and walk. And
straightway the man was made whole, and took up his bed and walked.
This healing of the man at the pool represents the power of the Christ
(typified by Jesus) to restore the equilibrium of the organism through the
activity of spiritual ideas in consciousness, independently of the healing
methods utilized by the sense man. The true spiritual healing method employs the
word of authority, as spoken by Jesus, which must be set into activity. Through
the power of the word the "infirmity" gives place to perfect equalization and
strength.
To the rich young man who desired to enter into eternal life Jesus
recommended the keeping of the commandments, but in addition there was the
inevitable "Sell that which thou hast, and give to the poor . . . and come,
follow me." Faithfulness to law alone will never make you a follower of Jesus in
the regeneration. You must go deeper than this; you must know the inner secrets
of the universe. These are revealed in Spirit, and Spirit is found only by those
who go about looking for it in an orderly way. People who have for years been
students of the science of Christ and who have a clear intellectual perception
of its truths are yet outside the kingdom of Spirit. They anxiously ask, "Why is
it that I do not realize the presence of Spirit?"
Have you kept the "words" of Jesus? Have you said to yourself in silence and
aloud until the very ethers vibrated with its truth, "I and the Father are one"?
Have you opened your mind by mentally repeating the one solvent of crystallized
conditions, "Even as thou, Father, art in me, and I in thee"? This means mental
discipline day after day and night after night until the inertia of the mind is
overcome and the way opened for the descent of Spirit.
The personal consciousness is like a house with all the doors and windows
barred. He who lives within may hear voices without, but the doors and windows
unlock from within, and it is left to him to unfasten them. The doors and
windows of the mind are solidified thoughts, and they swing loose when the right
word is spoken to them. Jesus voiced a whole army of right words, and if you
will take up His words and make them yours, they will open all the doors of your
mind, the light and air will come in, and in due time you will be able to step
forth.
No one can do this for you. You do not really want another to do it although
you sometimes think how nice it would be if some master of spiritual ideas would
suddenly help you right into his understanding. But this is a childish dream of
the moment. You want to be yourself, and you can be yourself only by living out
your own life and finding its issues at the Fountainhead. If it were possible
for one person to reveal the Truth to another, we should have heaven cornered by
cunning manipulators of mind and its glories stored up in warehouses awaiting a
higher market. Let us be thankful that God is no respecter of persons; that
Truth cannot be revealed by one mortal to another. God is a special, personal
Father to every one of His children, and from no other source can we get Truth.
Jesus, who has clearly revealed the Father in His consciousness, tells all
men how it came about. He points out the way. He says, "I am the way, and the
truth, and the life"; but there is always a condition attached to its
realization by the seeker. He must "believe," he must "keep my words," "follow
me." Summed up, the condition is that by adopting Jesus' methods you will find
the same place in the Father that He found. But the Father is Spirit and
spiritual understanding is the open sesame to His kingdom. The secrets of Jesus'
words may be said to be in sealed packages to be opened by those only to whom is
given "the mystery of the kingdom of God."
But Jesus did not peddle His doctrine. He did not copyright His "words." He
claimed to hold converse with the Father, and He demonstrated extraordinary
abilities in many ways in substantiation of this claim. He did not found a sect
or in any way fence off His doctrine. He opened wide the way: "Whosoever
believeth on me" and "keepeth" My words--shall do thus and so; shall do as I do
and do greater things. He made a special prayer to the Father that all who kept
His word might be made one with the Father as He was one with Him.
The mighty "words" of Jesus are handed down to us. By using them in the
silent corridors of our own consciousness we may come into the place where He
now is.
