Absence of occupation is not rest, a mind quite vacant is a mind distressed. “The Lord bless thee, and keep thee. The Lord make his face shine upon thee, and be gracious unto thee,” reports Numbers 6.24. The illumined being gives oneself, the unenlightened one gives one’s possessions. If they are judged by appearances only, the truth of the situation will become reserved, and falsity will appear as truth. That is, the illumined being will seem the most uncharitable. They master’s motive may easily remain unknown to others, especially when one has a mission to fulfill for them, and by this unenlightenment they may just as easily misunderstand one’s actions. If this happens and they turn away from one, an opportunity for their higher growth will be missed. The distorted reading of one’s actions will also cause them to judge one unfairly and incorrectly. One will accept this injustice as part of the price of descending into an evil World where one does not really belong. T expect from such a being at all times and in all places, as both sceptics and followers often expect, a pharisaical propriety of conduct simply shows how little they have comprehended the perfect selflessness and utter purity of one’s character. For they expect ne to behave rigidly according to the patterns of conventional morality, although these are not always sincere or generous or wise. #RandolphHarris 1 of 10

Because one’s guidance must come from within, from one’s diviner consciousness and not from outside, from a society led by its ego consciousness, these will be occasions when one’s actions will not conform to these patterns. And this is so in spite of the fact that one knows well, and obeys where possible, the requirement that one shall set an example to others. One’s nonconformity will then be denounced or misunderstood, reviled or viewed with bewilderment. There are those who lightly appraise such a being’s spiritual worth by the superficial signs which accident throws their way or by the stories gossip brings to their ears. They are wasting their time. To offer no contradiction to false or slanderous statements made by others in their presence about a Spiritual teacher, is silently to consent to such criticism. It is such a being who most serves one’s fellows yet who least receives the recognition of one’s service. This is because humanity fails to understand where its true interests are possessed, what its true goal is, and why it is here at all. One will be the victim on one side of friendly enthusiasts who credit one with powers and adorn one with virtues which one does not possess, and on the other side of prejudiced enemies who malign one with motives and besmirch one with weaknesses which are wholly foreign to one’s temperament. #RandolphHarris 2 of 10

One’s illusionless life may not seem attractive to the mass of people who cannot afford the high cost of truth. Why do so many people stumble over this parable in the Holy Bible, Matthew 20.12-15, about the labours who did less work being paid as much as the one who worked twelve hours, and consider the landowner to be unfair? I believe it is because we Christians instinctively identify with the workers who had worked all day. We place ourselves in their shoes instead of in the shoes of those who worked only one hour. We look at society around us, instead of at Jesus Christ, and we begin to feel pretty good about ourselves. We consider ourselves to be twelve-hour workers, and we expect to be rewarded accordingly. That is the way Peter felt and that is the way many people feel today. I was talking one day with a man whose mother, a faithful servant of God for over forty years, was dying of painful cancer. He said, “After all she has done for God, this is the thanks she gets.” Such a statement sounds irreverent to us, but the man did not intend it to be that way. He simply thought God owed hos mother a better life. He only verbalized what many people feel in their hears. There are other occasions when we remind God of the sacrifices we have made to serve him. “Lord, I have done this sacrificial service for You, and now I am in need of this special answer to prayer.” #RandolphHarris 3 of 10

When we assume such an attitude, we are putting ourselves in the position of the twelve-hour workers. We suggest to God that we deserve this answer to prayer because of our sacrificial service. With such an attitude we may grumble about blessings not received instead of being grateful for those we have received. We need to adopt the attitude of the Roman centurion described in Luke 7. The man sent some of the Jewish elders to Jesus asking Him to come and heal his sick servant. When the elders came to Jesus, they pleaded earnestly with Him: “This man deserves to have you do this, because he loves our nation and has built our synagogue” (verses 4-5). Notice the Jewish elders’ emphasis on deserving. The centurion surely was a remarkable man. He was an officer in the Roman occupation army, yet he served the occupied people by building a synagogue for them. Think of an occupying army in today’s culture and ask yourself how many “enemy” officers would do such a thing. However, the centurion’s attitude about oneself is even more remarkable than one’s deeds. Instead of thinking of what one should receive because of what one deserved, one freely confessed one did not deserve anything. He sent word to Jesus, saying, “I do not deserve to have you come under my roof. That is why I did not even consider myself worthy to come to you” (verses 6-7).  #RandolphHarris 4 of 10

The centurion placed oneself in the shoes of the eleventh-hour workers. Because of this he not only experienced the joy of having one’s request granted, but also the added joy of knowing he had received what he did not deserve. He experienced the joy of knowing he had received a gift—not a repayment of a debt. Thus no one chooses in the abstract to go to hell or even to be the kind of person who belongs there. However, their orientation toward self leads them to become the kind of person for whom away-from-God is the only place for which they are suited. It is a place they would, in the end, choose for themselves, rather than come to humble themselves before God and accept who he is. Whether or not God’s will is infinitely flexible, the human will is not. There are limits beyond which it cannot bend back, cannot turn or repent. One should seriously inquire if to live in a World permeated with God and the knowledge of God is something they themselves truly desire. If not, they can be assured that God will excuse them for his presence. They will find their place in the “outer darkness” of which Jesus spoke. However, the fundamental fact about them will not be that they are there, but that they have become people so locked into their own self-worship and denial of God that they cannot want God. #RandolphHarris 5 of 10

A well-known minister of other years used to ask rhetorically, “You say you will accept God when you want to?” And then he would add, “How do you know you will be able to want to when you think you will?” The ultimately lost person is the person who cannot want God. Who cannot want God to be God. Multitudes of such people pass by every day, and pass into eternity. The reason they do not find God is that they do not want him or, at least, do not want him to be God. Wanting God to be God is very different from wanting God to help me. Is it insulting to suggest that someone is or may be lost? That his or her soul is ruined? There are so many fine-looking people all about us! Well, is it insulting to say, in appropriate circumstances, that someone has poor social hygiene and it could be fatal, when you know it to be true? Perhaps treatment depends upon coming to know it. Say it is cancer or worst? No doubt, in our hypersensitive, egotistical age, that could be insulting to some people. However, that merely illustrates the delusional human condition that has been described earlier. If I am god, people should not say such things to me. Lostness is a factual condition of the self, of the ruined soul. You either have it or not, just as you either have or do not have a certain physical disease that can kill you. #RandolphHarris 6 of 10

If you have that condition of lostness, you may not know it. Indeed, it is most likely you will not know it, because it is inherently a condition of self-blindness. You need treatment nevertheless, if you are not to be lost forever; and being informed of your condition and what to do about it can help you find relief. Should I say nothing to you merely because you might find it insulting? I must think more highly of you than that. The reality of evil in the human heart is not something to be ignored or treated lightly. God is supremely immutable, it supremely belongs to Him to be eternal. Nor is He eternal only; but He is His own eternity; whereas, no other being is its own duration, as no other is its own being. Now God is His own uniform being; and hence as He is His own essence, so He is His own eternity. The “now” that stands still, is said to make eternity according to our apprehension. As the apprehension of time is causes in us by the fact that we apprehend the flow of the “now,” so the apprehension of eternity is caused in us by our apprehending “now” standing still. God is the author of eternity, and this is to be understood of participated eternity. For God communicate His eternity to some in the way as He communicates His immutability. God is before eternity, according as it is shared by immaterial substances. That is why intelligence is equal to eternity. #RandolphHarris 7 of 10

In the words of Exodus, “The Lord shall reign for eternity, and beyond,” eternity stands for age, as another rendering has it. Thus it is said that the Lord will reign beyond eternity, inasmuch as He endures beyond every age, for instance, beyond every kind of duration. For age is nothing more than the period of each thing. Or to reign beyond young eternity can be taken to mean that is any other thing were conceived to exist forever, as the movement of the Heavens according to some philosophers, then God would still reign beyond, inasmuch as His reign is simultaneously whole. Eternity is noting else but God Himself. Hence God is not called eternal, and if He were in any way measured; but the idea of measurement is there taken according to the apprehension of our mind alone. Words denoting different times are applied to God, because His eternity includes all times; not as if He Himself were altered through present, past, and future. “And again, behold I say unto you that one cannot have faith and hope, save one shall be meek, and lowly of heart. If so, one’s faith and hope is vain, for none is acceptable before God, save the meek and lowly in heart; and if a human be meek and lowly in heart, and confess by the power of the Holy Ghost that Jesus is the Christ, he must needs have charity; for if her have not charity he is nothing; wherefore he must needs have charity,” reports Moroni 7.43-45. #RandolphHarris 8 of 10

O Lord, the Saviour and Guardian of such as fear Thee, turn away from Thy Church the deceitful allurements of this World’s wisdom; that under the teaching of Thy Spirit, we may find pleasure in the prophetic delineations and the apostolic instructions, rather than in the terms of philosophy; lest the vanity of falsehoods should deceive those whom the teaching of truth illuminates; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Blessed and glorious Trinity, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, thanks be to Thee, very and one Trinity, one perfect Godhead. Thee, God the Father Unbegotten; Thee, the Only-begotten Son; Thee, the Holy Spirit the Paraclete; the Holy and Undivided Trinity, do we confess and praise with heart and mouth; to Thee by glory forever Alleluia. O God, the Strength of all Thy Saints, Who hast granted them in Thine abundant bounty the grace to come to their present glory; vouchsafe, we beseech Thee, pardon to our sins, that we may be able worthily to celebrate their solemnities; through Jesus Christ our Lord. O God of unsearchable greatness, before thee I am nothing but vanity, iniquity, perishing; sin has forfeited thy favour, stripped me of thy image, banished me from thy presence, exposed me to the curse of thy law; I cannot deliver myself, and am in despair. However, a resource is found in thee, for without my desert or desire thou didst devise an everlasting plan, honourable to thy perfections, and which Angels desired to look into. #RandolphHarris 9 of 10

And the word which announces all the glory of this goodness is nigh me, invite me, beseeches me. May I, a convinced and self-despairing sinner, find Jesus as the power unto salvation, his death the centre of all relief, the source of all gospel-blessings. Help me to repair to that cross, be crucified to the World by it, and in it find deepest humiliation, motives to patience and self-denial, grace for active benevolence, faith to grasp eternal life, hope to lift up my head, love to bind me forever to him who died and rose for me. May his shed blood make me more thankful for thy mercies, more humble under thy correction, more zealous in thy service, more watchful against temptation, more contented in my circumstances, more useful to others. The seeker whose preconceived picture of what constitutes a master is correct—but this is uncommon—will be able to recognize one at their first meeting. One will feel with absolute certainty the inner greatness of the master of the master. Yet it does not follow that this is one’s particular master. There must also be a feeling of personal affinity as well as an intellectual appeal f the doctrines taught. Without this feeling of affinity and the considerable satisfaction which derives from it, one would be prudent to look elsewhere and not accept this person as guru. Take that person as your teacher whose character mentality approach the ideal you have formed, and with whose doctrine and personality you feel in sympathy. #RandolphHarris 10 of 10

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