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I AM HERE. Jesus.
I wish to-night to write you upon a subject that is of interest to all mankind, and I hope that we will be able to communicate and you receive the message.
I desire to write on the subject of--Why the love of God. I mean the Divine Love--is necessary for man to possess in order that he may become at one with the Father and an inhabitant of the Celestial Kingdom.
Already I have written you what this Divine Love is in contradistinction to the natural love, and how it is necessary to save men from their sins so that they may become inhabitants of the Celestial Kingdom, and that nothing but this Love will make a man at-one with the Father, and that no mere ceremony or belief in me as the saviour of men will effectuate that end; and now I will try to show you why this Divine Love is necessary, or as your learned men might say, show you the philosophy of the transformation of the mere man into the divine angel, which every man becomes who receives this Love into his soul.
In the first place, man, as you have been informed, is a special creation of God, and is no greater than the component parts that enter into his creation as they are in their individual and aggregate qualities, and these parts are merely what God in His act of creation designed them to be.
It must not be assumed that these parts or any of them are a part of God, or of His essence or qualities, for they are not, and are as separate and distinct from Him and His qualities, as are the lower creations of His will, such as animals, and vegetables and mineral substances. The only difference is that man is of a much higher order of creation, and in one particular, made in the image of God, and no other of His creatures has this image in its creation. But, nevertheless, man is no part of God, but a merely distinct creation, and in his best and purest state only a man, having simply those qualities which were created in him at the time of his coming into existence.
There are certain qualities which man possesses, such as love and wisdom and the reasoning faculties which may be said to resemble the Godlike attributes, and so they do; but yet, they are not a part of God's essence or qualities, and when men assert that man is divine, or that he has in him the divine nature or even a portion of the Divine Essence, they are wrong, for the qualities in them that appear to be of this divine resemblance, are merely those which were created for the purpose of making the human a perfect man.
And because of this conception of man as to his inherent qualities, he has and does and will lose the opportunity of becoming possessed of the nature or Essence of the Father which he may obtain, if he will pursue the proper and only method that God has provided for him in order to be at one with Him.
The universe of man can and will continue to exist, even though man may never become a partaker of this divine nature of the Father, and man will live and enjoy the happiness that was bestowed upon him at the time of his creation, and he will not lose the perfect condition of this creation after he shall have been separated from sin and error, his own creatures. But he will not be anything more than the perfect man, and in the time to come will not be anything less, and, yet, he will always, as long as he exists, remain distinct from the nature and Essence of the Father, just as he was at the time of his creation, unless he obtains this divine nature and Essence of the Father in the way that I mentioned.
The highest endowment of man, either in soul or heart or intellect is merely that which belongs to him as a part of his creation, and is not the smallest part of the divine nature and qualities of the Father. No part or portion of divinity enters into man's creation" no matter how divinely constituted man may appear to be or Godlike he may seem in the greatness of his intellect or in the extent of his love nature.
So you see, man is as distinct from God and from His divinity, as is the animal--the brute--from man, and must forever remain so unless he follows the only way the Father has prescribed for him to obtain a portion of this divinity.
Now, all this shows that man, no matter how highly he may develop his intellect or to what extent he may develop his moral and love nature, cannot become more than the mere man that he was in the beginning--perfect in every particular--for he was in the beginning perfect in every particular, and as I have said before, God never makes a mistake as to the perfection of His creatures, even though in the case of man it may appear that He did in giving him the great power of free will, which in its wrongful exercise has caused sin and evil to appear in the word of man's consciousness.
And man was made finite, and his capacity for exercising any and all his qualities, is limited beyond which he cannot possibly go. His intellect is bound by limits as determined as the law of God which controls it, and also, his capacity for loving and for the enjoyment of his happiness; and though he may live for all eternity either as man or spirit, he cannot possibly extend or pass beyond the boundary lines of his creation. He cannot enter into the Realm of the Divine where limitations do not exist, and capacity for receiving knowledge and wisdom and love, and for progression that is commensurate with the very fountainhead of God, Himself.
Then, such being the nature and limitation and capacity of man, it is apparent that he can never by virtue of his creation and the qualities which he possess, become a partaker of the nature and Essence of God, unless he receives something in addition to these qualities, and he must receive this something from without. It will not do to say, that there is within him, as an inherent part of him, that, which when developed, will make him of a nature divine and a part of the essence of the Father, for this is not true. There is nothing in man of this nature, and it is impossible to produce an Essence Divine unless there be something from which it can be produced, that in some degree has the nature of that Essence. It would be the equivalent of producing something from nothing which even God does not attempt to do.
Then, as man is thus limited, all that flows from the qualities and attributes which he possesses is necessarily limited. The enjoyment of his intellect, the pleasures of his love, the satisfaction of his reasoning powers, and as a sum total, his capacity for happiness have their bounds, and, besides, the consciousness of immortality can never be his, either as spirit or mortal, even though he may strive it to be.
WHEN MAN TAKES ON THE DIVINE NATURE AND BECOMES ABSORBED IN THE ESSENCE OF THE FATHER, HE THEN BECOMES LIKE THE FATHER, AND WHATEVER HIS IMAGE TO THE FATHER MAY HAVE BEEN WHEN HE WAS MERE MAN, NOW HE BECOMES THE REAL SUBSTANCE, AND LIMITATIONS OF POSSIBILITIES BECOME REMOVED, LOVE SEES NO ENDING AND INTELLECTUAL DEVELOPMENT, NO BOUNDARIES, HAPPINESS NO LIMITATIONS, AND IMMORTALITY BECOMES A THING OF KNOWLEDGE, AND THE SOUL A NEW CREATURE, HAVING THE DIVINE ESSENCE OF THE FATHER; AND UNTIL THIS NEW CREATION HAS TAKEN PLACE, AND THE TRANSFORMATION BECOMES A THING OF REALITY, AND THE SOUL BE MADE AT-ONE WITH THE FATHER, MAN CANNOT ENTER INTO THE KINGDOM OF HEAVEN. THEN, NO LONGER MAN BUT NOW AN ANGEL.
Now, as I have written you before, all this can be accomplished only by the operation of the NEW BIRTH, that is the inflowing into the soul of man of the Divine Love of the Father. This Love contains the Essence of God's divinity, and when man obtains it he is then of the same Essence as the Father, and for the first time becomes a part of the Divine, and fitted to inhabit the Celestial Heavens. In no other way can man partake of this nature, and it does not require much reasoning to show the logical truth of this statement, for man in his earthly affairs, and in his material experiments in producing compounds from elements, applies the same principle that I assert in my statement, "The dough cannot be leavened unless leaven is placed in the batch."
So you see, that without this Divine Love entering into the soul it will be impossible for the natural man to become the Divine angel. Beliefs and creeds and doctrines and sacrifices cannot work this transformation, and even though the beliefs may be without doubt, and the creeds and doctrines satisfactory, and the sacrifices without end, yet they will all be futile to change the soul of the mere man into the soul of the Divine Angel, and all this, in part, is why man should seek to obtain the Divine Love and become an inhabitant of the Celestial Spheres.
I have written enough for tonight and I am pleased at the way in which you received it.
So with all my love and blessings, I am
Your brother and friend,
JESUS.Vol. I, p. 98
