56. "Come Down From The Cross"
If Thou art the Son of God, come down from the Cross and save Thyself and us. Those were the scornful cries addressed to the Son of God as He hung in agony on the Cross in the burning rays of the sun. Those who cried thus considered themselves specially clever. They scoffed, they triumphed, and they laughed; they were filled with hatred, but they did not know why, for of a truth Christ's sufferings were no reason for scorn or ridicule, much less for laughter. If only for a moment they could have looked into the ethereal worlds and into the spiritual world and have seen what was reflected there, they would no longer have felt inclined to laugh. They would have learnt that their souls were incurring guilt which it would take thousands of years to work off. Even though the reaction was not immediately perceptible in the material world, these wicked souls were punished in every one of their succeeding, enforced incarnations.
They thought they were clever, but they could have given no better proof of their limitation than in what they said, for their words reveal childish ignorance. Those who speak thus are very far from understanding Creation and God's Divine Will. How lamentable it is, therefore, that even today a great number of those who still believe in God and in the Coming of His Son, are convinced that Jesus of Nazareth could have come down from the Cross if He had so willed. Two thousand years passed since then, and still the same sluggish obtuseness — no change — no progress. The naive believer says: "As He came from God, He must have been absolutely unrestricted in His actions on earth." But to expect this shows both poverty of intellect and inertia in thinking.
Through His incarnation, the Son of God voluntarily subjected Himself to the Cosmic Law, the unalterable Will of God. Thus in all that concerned His physical body, nothing exceptional could take place. He said Himself that He did not come to destroy the law but to fulfil it. In becoming man, He was bound to matter as every human being is, and consequently, although He was the Son of God and possessed Divine power and might, He could not come down from the Cross as long as He was in a body of flesh and blood. To do so would have been upsetting the Divine ordinances, instituted by God's Will in Creation. Divine Will was perfect from the beginning. It not only directs gross matter but also ethereal matter, and has dominion in the natural world and in the spiritual world in all their sub-divisions and all their stages of development up to Divinity, to God Himself.
God's method of operating, His Divine power and might are not as man represents them. True godliness manifests itself in absolute obedience to God's Will: true devotion will never seek anything other than the fulfilment of Divine behests. This is the attitude of a man arrived at a high state of spiritual maturity. The higher he stands, the readier he will be to obey unconditionally. Voluntarily and joyfully he will subject himself and never expect arbitrary operations, independent of the law, to take place because he believes that God's law is perfect.
If a physical body is nailed to a cross of wood, really firmly nailed, it cannot free itself without extraneous physical aid. Such is the law as God laid it down in Creation and it allows of no exception. He who thinks differently and who expects another, a different solution to be possible, does not believe in God's perfection, nor in the immutability of His Will. That the knowledge and understanding of men (their ability to grasp the truth) is the same now as it was then; that they have not changed or advanced one step, we see by their present cry: "If He be the Son of Man, He can bring about the catastrophes prophesied as soon as He will." They take it for granted, which means in other words, if He cannot do so, He is not the Son of Man. They do not remember that Christ, the Son of God, pointed out that none but God alone knew the hour when the great Reckoning should begin. Thus in their words they express a double doubt. They doubt the Son of Man and they doubt the Son of God's Word. They also expose their utter lack of comprehension of Creation as a whole and their lamentable ignorance in just those questions that it is urgently necessary for man to know.
If the Son of God, in becoming man, had to submit to the laws, the Son of Man can naturally not be exempt from obeying them. Cosmic laws cannot be disregarded. On entering Creation every man subjects himself to God's unchangeable Will, and the Son of God and the Son of Man did the same. The difficulty in understanding this, lies in the circumstance that man has never sought to know the cosmic laws and that (with the exception of a few fragments of truth they happened to stumble on here and there) they have had no knowledge of these laws up till today.
If the miracles that Christ did were quite beyond what man can do, that does not mean that He set these laws aside. In performing His miracles He did nothing arbitrary but proceeded in perfect harmony with the Divine laws. He only showed that He performed His miracles with the Divine power He possessed, not with spiritual power: therefore, what He did naturally surpasses that of which man is capable. Still His miracles were not performed independently of the cosmic law, but they accommodated themselves to it.
Man is backward in his spiritual development, so that he cannot even make full use of the spiritual forces at his command.
Otherwise he would be able to achieve effects that would seem miraculous to the man of the present day. Naturally, it is possible to do things with Divine power that could never be done with spiritual power. The work of Divine power is different in its nature from the work done by the highest spiritual power; still, whichever work it is, whatever is done remains within the limits of the law, and never trespasses against it.
The only beings guilty of arbitrary action within their own domain are men, for they never really conformed to God's Will in cases where they had a certain liberty of action. They always considered their own will first, and in so doing disabled themselves from ever soaring aloft, and had to remain on a level corresponding to the dictates of their earthbound intellect.
Thus men do not even know those cosmic laws through which their own spiritual powers are made free to operate, and in which, or by means of which, they could further develop them. They are all the more amazed and perplexed, therefore, at what Divine power can do, and they either do not recognise it as divine, or, if they do, expect it to accomplish what is outside the cosmic law. Among such impossible feats would be the descent of a physical body from a cross made of material substance.
To raise the dead by Divine agency is not contrary to the cosmic law, as long as it is done within a certain time after death (which is different in every case). The more mature the human soul, that is leaving its physical body, is, the quicker will it be released from it and consequently the shorter will be the span of time in which it can be recalled; this can only be done as long as the soul is still bound to the body. The soul, which is animated by the spirit, must obey the Will of God, and when it is called, it must return along the bridge of fine ethereal matter and re-enter its forsaken physical body, as long as the bridge is not destroyed.
When we speak of Divine power and spiritual power, this is no contradiction of the fact that there is only one power that proceeds from God and that permeates all Creation, but there is a difference between Divine power and spiritual power. The latter is dominated by the former from which it proceeds. Spiritual power is not Divine power diluted, but Divine power transformed and transferred to a category, which has a more limited field of action. Thus there are two species of active energy, working differently, but only one power. Next in order is the animistic power of nature, which again is a transformed species of spiritual power. Hence it appears that there are three basic powers of which the spiritual and the natural powers are supplied by the dominating Divine power. Yet all three are one. There are no other species of power, although there are many varieties, which result from the spiritual and the natural fundamental species. Each work in their own way, and are each controlled by their own rules. These rules or laws, appearing to differ in form, are but parts of the one law and all varieties of power are but parts of the highest, the one Divine power. Each species and each variety, with the exception of Divine Will itself, forms only a part-species which is governed by part-laws. It is also the object and ambition of all these parts and varieties to unite with the pure Divine power from which they proceeded. This power is identical with Divine Will, which again is translated into immutable, unchangeable, adamantine law.
Each species of power (with the exception of Divine power) with all its different varieties, sub-divisions and degrees, expresses itself in matter, both, gross physical and fine ethereal, corresponding to its nature, and fashions therein worlds or planes in countless varieties.
Each of these worlds or planes is but a segment of Creation, because the power that shaped or formed them is but a part, a fractional part, of the transmitted power of God. The laws that rule these worlds are also fractional. It is only when all these fractions are united that they combine to form the perfect law expressing God's Divine Will established in Original Creation, the realm of pure spirit. It follows that the human seed-grain or spirit-germ must traverse all these worlds and planes, where it must personally experience the working of their separate laws and make them a part of itself. When man has gathered all the good possible out of them, they will become a part of his inner consciousness. He is then enabled by their help to enter Paradise. If he makes use of them as God wills, they will bear him there; from there, having attained to knowledge and understanding, he can work in the planes below, helping and advancing, which is the highest task of every mature human spirit. There can never be over-crowding as the worlds and planes, now existing, can be extended without limit: they are floating in the infinite.
Thus the Kingdom of God is ever increasing in size. The energy of pure human spirits adds to it and extends it, and the field of their future work will be in Subsequent Creation. This they will be able to direct from Paradise; having themselves wandered through all its stages, they will be thoroughly acquainted with every condition. These explanations are here given, so that there may be no misconception with regard to Divine power and spiritual power, for in truth it is but one power which has emanated from God, out of which the different species and varieties issue. He who is cognisant of all this will never childishly expect impossible things to occur — things outside the jurisdiction of the law.
Thus, even the Son of Man cannot, by stretching forth his hand, give rise to catastrophes which are to happen immediately. That would be contrary to the existing unchangeable natural law. The Son of Man, God's servant, transmits God's Will to the basic powers, whereupon they take a new course in obedience to the Divine directions they receive; but whatever they do, it is strictly within the laws. In this case they operate with the utmost speed, but never beyond what is possible within their limits.
As the spirit is more mobile, lighter and quicker than natural substance, it follows that it takes longer to affect natural substance (the elements) than spiritual substance, and that the manifestations in the natural world (the elements) will take place later than they did in the spiritual world.
In the same way the ethereal material worlds are more mobile, more quickly moved than the gross physical world.
All is strictly regulated by and dependent on the law. All these laws are familiar to the Light and the despatch of the messengers or of special orders is so arranged that the final results converge to do the Will of God.
An apparatus of a magnitude and complexity far beyond man's power of comprehension has been necessary to organise the great Reckoning, the Day of Judgment, that is now at hand. Its mechanism is, however, in perfect working order, and where it works alone, there will be no delays, but wherever human agency is required and a call is sent out to man, he fails. Human vanity disinclines him to all reforms, and with stupid persistence he even aggressively interferes with the accomplishment of every promised blessing.
Fortunately this was considered and taken into account after the great and general failing of mankind during Christ's life on earth. Man can only hinder the Son of Man on his path on earth by obliging him up to a certain time to wander on circuitous by-roads, but he is not able to delay or in any way to influence the ultimate result, the pre-ordained end, for he no longer has the Powers of Darkness behind him to give him strength and to encourage his foolishness. And as for that bulwark of intellectuality, from the shelter of which they still shoot off their poisoned arrows, it will soon crumble and fall before the rays of advancing Light. Then all will give way and tumble about their ears, and no mercy will be shown to them, for have they not ceaselessly planned new evil in their hearts?
Thus the Day will break — the Great Day so earnestly longed for by the righteous, by those craving for Light — not an hour later than was originally ordained.