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I AM HERE. St. Paul, of the New Testament.
I come to-night to tell you of a truth that is important for men to know, and which you must place in your Book of Truths.
I have written you before on my alleged writings as they are contained in the Bible, and which, as I have said, were not written by me as they there appear.
I desire to-night to write for a short time on the subject of the "Resurrection," because, as I see, the church doctrine of the resurrection is founded more on what is ascribed to me than on the writings of the Gospels, though the latter also contain a basis for the doctrine.
I never said there would be a resurrection of the physical body nor of the individual clothed in any body of flesh, but my teachings were that man at death would rise in a spiritual body, and that not a new one made for the special occasion of his departure from the material body, but one that had been with him through life and that came into an individualized form when he first became a living being. This spirit body is necessary to man's existence, and is that part of him which contains his senses and is the seat of his reasoning powers.
Of course the organs of the physical are necessary for the utilization of these senses, and without these organs there could be no manifestations of the senses, which are inherent in the spirit body. Even if a man should lose the perfect workings of his physical organs of sight, yet the power of seeing would still exist in him, although he might not be able to realize that fact; and this same principle applies to the hearing and the other senses.
So when man loses his physical organs which are necessary for him to see with, he is dead as to sight, just as dead as he ever becomes with reference to all the other organs of sense when the whole physical body dies; and were it possible to restore these physical organs that are necessary to enable him to see or hear, he would be able to see and hear just as he was before their loss. The restoration of these organs does not, of itself, bring him the power to see and hear, but merely enables the faculties of sight and hearing to again use the organs for the purpose of manifesting the powers which are in and a part of the spirit body.
When the whole physical body dies the spirit body, at the very time of death, becomes resurrected, and with all these faculties of which I have spoken, and thereafter continues to live free and unincumbered from the material body, which, these organs being destroyed, can no longer perform the objects of its creation. It becomes dead, and thereafter never has any resurrection as such material body, although its elements or parts do not die, but in the workings of God's laws enter upon other and new functionings, though never that of reuniting and forming again the body that has died.
SO THE RESURRECTION OF THE BODY, AS TAUGHT BY ME, IS THE RESURRECTION OF THE SPIRITUAL BODY, NOT FROM DEATH, FOR IT NEVER DIES, BUT FROM ITS ENVELOPMENT IN THE MATERIAL FORM WHICH HAD BEEN VISIBLE AS A THING OF APPARENT LIFE.
There is a law controlling the uniting of the two bodies and the functioning of the powers and faculties of the spirit body through the organs of the physical body, that limits the extent of the operations of these faculties, to those things that are wholly material--or which have the appearance of the material--and when I say material I mean that which is grosser or more compact than the spirit body. Thus these faculties of sight of the spirit body can, through the organs of the material body, see what are called ghosts or apparitions as well as the more material things, but never, in this way, see things of pure spirit. And when it is said that men or women see clairvoyantly, which they do, it is not meant or is it a fact, that they see through the organs of the physical eyes; but on the contrary, this sight is one purely spiritual, and its workings are entirely independent of the material organs.
Now when this body--the material--dies, the spirit body becomes resurrected, as it is said, and free from all the limitations which its incarnation in the flesh has imposed, and it is then able to use all its faculties without the limitations or help of the physical organs, and, as regards the sight, everything in nature, both material and spiritual, becomes the object of its vision; and that which the limitations of the material organs prevented its seeing, and which to men is the unreal and non-existent becomes the real and truly existing.
This, in short, is what I meant by the resurrection of the body; and from this you will realize that the resurrection is not to take place at some unknown day in the future, but at the very moment when the physical body dies, and, as the Bible says, in the twinkling of an eye. This saying of the Bible attributed to me, I did write and teach. This resurrection applies to all mankind, for all who have ever lived and died have been resurrected, and all who shall live hereafter and die will be resurrected.
But this resurrection is not the "GREAT RESURRECTION" upon which, in my teachings, I declared the great truth of Christianity to be founded. This is not the resurrection of Jesus that I declared "without which is our faith as Christians vain." This is the common resurrection, applicable to all mankind of every nation and race, whether they have a knowledge of Jesus or not. And many times in many nations has it been demonstrated before the coming of Jesus, that men had died and appeared again as living spirits in the form of angels and men, and were recognized by mortal men as spirits who had a previous earth existence.
So I say, this is the resurrection common to all men; and the coming and death and resurrection of Jesus, as taught by the churches, did not bring the great resurrection to the knowledge or comfort of men, and did not furnish the true foundation upon which the true Christian belief and faith rest.
Many of the infidels, agnostics and spiritualists assert and claim, and truly, that the resurrection of Jesus as above referred to, was not a new thing and did not prove to humanity a future life any more convincingly than had been proved before his time by the experiences and observations of men and followers of other sects and faiths, and of no faiths at all.
The great weakness of the church today is that they claim and teach as the foundation of their faith and existence this resurrection of Jesus as set forth above; and the result is, as is plainly and painfully apparent to the churches themselves, that as men think for themselves, and they are doing more than ever in the history of the world, they refuse to believe in this resurrection as sufficient to show the superiority of Jesus' coming and mission and teachings over those of other reformers and teachers who had preceded him in the world's history of faiths and religions. And as a further result the churches are losing their adherents and believers . Christianity is waning and rapidly, and agnosticism is increasing and manifesting itself in the forms of free thought societies and Secularism, etc.
Hence you will see the necessity of making known again to mankind the true foundation stone of the real Christianity that the Master came to teach and which he did teach, but which was lost as his early followers disappeared from the scene of earthly action and practice, and men of less spiritual insight and more material desires, with their ambition for power and dominion, became the rulers and guides and interpreters of the church.
There is a RESURRECTION though that the Master taught, and his apostles, when they came into a knowledge of, taught, and which I as a humble follower taught, which is vital to man's salvation and which is the true foundation of true Christianity; and which no other man, angel or reformer ever before taught or has since taught.
It is too late to-night to explain this RESURRECTION, but I will come again very soon and try to make it plain to you and to the world.
I will now say good-night and God bless you and keep you in His care.
Your brother in Christ,
PAUL.Vol. I, p. 90
