LECTURE: Lesson Four from the Holy Spirit: The Gifts of the Holy Spirit – July 2, 1994
LECTURE: Lesson Four from the Holy Spirit:
The Gifts of the Holy Spirit – July 2, 1994
LECTURE TRANSCRIPT
INVOCATION:
O Lord, we rejoice in thy Presence. Let thy Presence, beloved Jesus, be upon us. And from the heart of Padma Sambhava and from the heart of Lord Maitreya, Manjushri, beloved Kuan Yin, beloved Seven Holy Kumaras, quicken us in this hour by thy Holy Spirit, O God. Quicken us. Let the fullness of thy Presence seal us now in the original and perfect pattern of our life.
O thou Holy Christ Self, stamp upon this permeal, this body that is mortal, O God, stamp upon it that force of our immortality. And therefore let the imprint of that Christ be with us and in us. O Jesus, as thou didst as Elisha, so place thy chakras upon our chakras. Let our chakras be filled with the full fire of our original creation, the original Adam Kadmon. We desire to accelerate, O God.
Holy Spirit, we ask in simple prayer, purge us of all that is unacceptable. Infill our temples with the Holy Spirit. We ask it in the name of Jesus, in the name of the Father/Mother God. Therefore we come to thy altar, O God. Receive us.
In the name of the Father, the Son, the Holy Spirit and the Divine Mother, Amen.
LECTURE:
This is “Lesson Four from the Holy Spirit.” Today we take up the gifts of the Holy Spirit. First of all, we open with the words of Paul most of you are familiar with. In Corinthians 12, Paul lists nine gifts of the Holy Spirit.
1 Now concerning spiritual gifts, brethren, I would not have you ignorant….
4 Now there are diversities of gifts, but the same Spirit.
5 And there are differences of administrations, but the same Lord.
6 And there are diversities of operations, but it is the same God which worketh all in all.
7 But the manifestation of the Spirit is given to every man to profit withal.
8 For to one is given by the Spirit of the word of wisdom; to an¬other the word of knowledge by the same Spirit;
9 To another faith by the same Spirit; to another…gifts of healing by the same Spirit;
10 To another the working of miracles; to another prophecy; to another discerning of spirits; to another divers kinds of tongues; to another the interpretation of tongues:
11 But all these worketh that one and the selfsame Spirit, divid¬ing to every man severally as he will. [I Cor. 12:1, 4-11]
The apostle Paul focuses on the unity of the Church. He points out that the several gifts manifest within the several members of the Church, but each gift is of the same Holy Spirit. Each gift is intended not to glorify an individual member but to bless all members of the Mystical Body of God.
Scholar G. Campbell Morgan defines the gifts of the Spirit as “capacities for service,”capacities for service. How can we serve lest we have the capacity to serve? And what gives us that capacity is the gifts.
There are a number of Christian views on the Holy Spirit. Christian groups differ in their views on receiving the gifts of the Holy Spirit. Sometimes we get confused by labels. Among Christian sects, it is not always clear who is who. So before I talk about Christian views on the gifts, I will tell you what characterizes some of these groups and give a brief history of the movement of the Holy Spirit in Christian churches in this century. Let’s take a look at four Christian groups that people sometimes confuse: the Evangelicals, the Fundamentalists, the Pentecostals and the charismatics. The names themselves are a key to remembering what they represent.
What, then, is an Evangelical? Evangelical Christians emphasize personal conversion to Jesus Christ, the authority of scripture, and the importance of preaching as contrasted with ritual. Their majol, their major goal is to spread the gospel and give others the chance to choose salvation. Evangel literally means “good news,” or “gospel.” It is derived from the Greek word euangelos, which means bringing good ne, “bringing good news” or “messenger”— one who proclaims the gospel message. An evangel is one who goes before the angels.
What, then, is a Fundamentalist? Fundamentalism is a form of Protestant evangelicalism that emphasizes the literal interpretation of the Bible. Remember the word fundamental. Fundamentalists believe that the literally interpreted Bible is fundamental to Christian life and teachings.
What, then, is a Pentecostal? Pentecostal theology incorporates both Evangelical and Fundamentalist doctrines. But what sets Pentecostals apart from Evangelicals, Fundamentalists and most other Protestants is their emphasis on the Holy Spirit. Pentecostals seek the blessing of the Holy Spirit such as the apostles received at Pentecost.
Now in general, mainline Christian denominations do not emphasize the Holy Spirit in their doctrine. How many of you have attended churches in your life that never stressed the Holy Spirit? It’s quite amazing, isn’t it, since our Lord has announced the coming of the Holy Spirit to the apostles and since the Holy Spirit did descend on Pentecost.
A mainline Christian denomination is defined as an established, traditional denomination that is accepted by society. In the United States, mainline denominations include the Luth, the Lutherans, Presbyterians, Episcopalians, Baptists, methods, Methodists and Catholics. Denominations that are not considered mainline include Pentecostals, Unitarians, Mormons, Christian Scientists and Jehovah’s Witnesses. Mainline Christian denominations acknowledge the Holy Spirit as part of the Trinity, but most members do not actively pursue a relationship with the Holy Spirit.
I sometimes believe that that is the case because the level of sacrifice we make to be one with the Holy Spirit is something that certain folk are not apt to want to make and therefore they do not pursue it. They simply take it as the Father, Son and the Holy Ghost, as part of the blessing, and that seems to be it. I also wonder about people who don’t read their Bibles and don’t find such a glorious message of the Holy Spirit coming to us, as we mentioned earlier, from Genesis to Revelation.
But Pentecostals believe that baptism in the Holy Spirit, accompanied by speaking in tongues, should be the experience of all Christians. I agree. They also believe that a Christian can attain holiness if he abandons his own efforts to achieve perfection and allows the Holy Spirit to live and work through him. Even Jesus said, “I can of mine own self do nothing. My Father worketh hitherto and I work.” He also said, “With men it is impossible but with God all things are possible.”
You have to let the Holy Spirit take over and do God’s work through you. You have to let yourself become the instrument of the Holy Spirit. But this doesn’t mean that you just go limp. You need to continually strive to fulfill the prerequisites for a relationship with the Holy Spirit. We have covered those prerequisites in the Ten Commandments and in the Sermon on the Mount.
Now we come to the fourth group——the charismatic. Charismatics are mainline Christians, including Catholics, who pursue the baptism of the Holy Spirit but who remain in their respective denominations. The Charismatic Renewal Movement, originally called the Neo-Pentecostal Movement, emerged in 1960. The word charismatic is from the Greek charisma, meaning “favor,” “gift,” “grace.” Do not mistakenly use the word charisma for somebody who has the ability to attract people and to put out a little glitz and make themselves important. It’s really a very holy word about finding favor with God, finding the gifts and finding the grace. Webster’s defines it as an extraordinary power (such as healing) given a Christian by the Holy Spirit for the good of the Church.
Now I will give you the key doctrinal differences that distinguish Pentecostals. How do Evangelicals and Fundamentalists differ from Pentecostals in their views on receiving the Holy Spirit? All three groups believe that at Pentecost the Holy Spirit came to dwell permanently as an abiding presence with all believers. All three define a believer as one who accepts Jesus Christ as his Saviour. And all three believe that the Holy Spirit comes to dwell in the believer at the moment of conversion.
But there is a key point on which they differ. Evangelicals and Fundamentalists say that the believer does not need to continually seek the Holy Spirit because the Holy Spirit alway, already dwells within him. But Pentecostals seek a second blessing by the Holy Spirit after conversion. They call this blessing “the baptism of the Holy Spirit,” which is usually evidenced by speaking in tongues. Their view is that a believer who is baptized of the Holy Spirit can be his instrument to pour out the Holy Spirit’s blessings upon others.
Now I want to take up these doctrinal points one by one. First, the three elements of the Evangelical and Fundamentalist view: At Pentecost the Holy Spirit came to dwell permanently as an abiding presence with all believers. Two, The Holy Spirit comes to dwell in the believer at the moment he accepts Jesus Christ as his Saviour. The believer does not need to continually seek the Holy Spirit because the Holy Spirit already dwells within him. As far as I am concerned, and you know you are all free to think what you desire to think, but I see these doctrines as simplifying and neutralizing the teachings of Jesus Christ.
First of all, I do not believe that the Holy Spirit automatically dwells permanently in anyone. Yes, the Holy Spirit is available to all believers. But accepting Jesus Christ as your Lord and Saviour does not guarantee your salvation—nor does it guarantee that you will receive the Holy Spirit. There are prerequisites. I’ve already mentioned the Ten Commandments, the laws of Moses and the rules of conduct for the Piscean age that Jesus gave in the Sermon on the Mount.
I just want to be certain that everyone can hear me? [“No.”] Can you hear me? [No.”] I think we just need to turn up the volume.
The Holy Spirit will dwell in your temple only when you merit his presence. And he will stay with you only if you continue to merit his presence every day. It is possible to get the Holy Spirit. And it is possible to lose the Holy Spirit. You know that if you do not pray to Jesus every day, Jesus will not be as close to you as he is on the days that you do pray. Likewise with the Holy Spirit. First you need to seek and find him, and then befriend him and daily culiv, and daily cultivate the presence of the Holy Spirit or of Jesus or of the Father-Mother God, or their presences will fade from you. So getting and keeping the Holy Spirit is never automatic. And Christians must not ignore the conditions that Jesus stipulated.
What are these conditions? As we’ve mentioned and as I have presented to you my exegesis on the Sermon on the Mount, you know that they are very specific stipulations, requirements, a code of conduct. The Sermon on the Mount was given to the multitudes as well as the apostles. In John 14 and 15, Jesus tells his apostles the prerequisites to a Master-disciple relationship with him, and hence with the Holy Spirit. This is very personal teaching to the twelve that he had taught and had with him for three full years and possibly more.
We know that Irenaeus saw Jesus when he was about the age of fifty-one or fifty-two and when he was yet teaching and preaching. But in any case, after three years when Jesus comes to the end of his mission in Palestine, he gives this very personal instruction to those whom he has taught. This is the intimate group that he has prepared. He says, “If a man love me, he will keep my words. And my Father will love him, and we will come unto him, and make our abode with him. He that loveth me not keepeth not my sayings.”
The love relationship between an apostle of Jesus— and I believe that there have been other apostles besides the twelve down through this entire 2,150-year dispensation of the age of Pisces— so the love relationship is all-important to Jesus. “This is my commandment, that ye love one another, as I have loved you.” This means we need to approach the love of Jesus for his disciples. It’s that quality of love that we must have to one another. “Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.” And this Jesus proceeded to do.
In Matthew 25 Jesus says that love means treating others as you would treat Jesus. He names the conditions upon which the righteous will “inherit the kingdom.” He says that on the day when the Son of man comes in his glory, the King will say to the righteous, “I was an hungered, and ye gave me meat. I was thirsty, and ye gave me drink. I was a stranger, and ye took me in: Naked, and ye clothed me. I was sick, and ye visited me. I was in prison, and ye came unto me.” The righteous then ask the Lord when they ever did these things to him and he answers, “Verily I say unto you, inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me.”
Jesus explains that loving involves sacrifice and it involves loving God above all else, even family. He says, “If any man will come after me, let him deny himself, take up his cross,” which is his karma, the full burden of his karma, “and follow me. For whosoever will save his life shall lose it…whosoever will lose his life for my sake shall find it. For what is a man profited, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul? Or what shall a man give in exchange for his soul?” “If any man come to me, and hate not his father, and mother, and wife, and children, and brethren, and sisters, yea, and his own life also, he cannot be my disciple.” “There is no, no Guru-chela, Master-disciple relationship with me,” with Jesus. This is what he is saying. These are higher standards than we read in the Sermon on the Mount.
Another requirement Jesus gives for receiving the Holy Spirit is joy. Where there is no joy there is not true friendship with Jesus Christ. We cannot know him as our Saviour, our Lord. We cannot know him as our brother or our friend. Jesus says this to the disciples shortly before he enters the Garden of Gethsemane. “These things have I spoken unto you, that my joy might remain in you, and that your joy might be full.”
Joy, to me, is the Light of the Holy Spirit, the joy in the presence of Jesus, the joy in the presence of the open stairway of light that takes us to higher octaves. When we are not manifesting joy, when we let ourselves descend below the heart flame and the candle of joy goes out, you can be sure that we are caught up in our own self-concerns, our selfishness, all of the things that take us away from the center of joy. I consider it sinful not to maintain the joy of your own Holy Christ Self at all times.
Many of us, I don’t think anyone is excluded, have found a great opening of the door to our consciousness through our work with our psychology, our inner child. And we have realized that resolving that psychology, resolving the conditions of our childhood or even memories of past lives, that we are able to maintain the level of joy and the level of oneness with God more easily because we have mended the rents in our garments. We have all seen this and we are extremely grateful for all of the experts who are speaking to us at this conference that we might be acquainted with their books and their teachings. So we know we have work to do before we can attain the fullness of joy, but the work should include the affirming of the positive and finding the joy that is there if we will seek and find it.
So there are, of course, many more injunctions of Jesus in the Gospels. I suggest that you keep on hand a red-letter edition of the Bible, with the words of Jesus printed in red, so that you can quickly turn to the words of Jesus when you are in need of his instruction and comfort and consolation. We must keep in mind that the Gospels do not record everything that Jesus taught. There are many passages that portray Jesus teaching but they do not record what he said. If someone was there to record that he was teaching, then that someone no doubt wrote down what he said. But somebody decided to expunge it from the scriptures.
In addition, we can’t be sure that Jesus’ words as recorded in the Bible are one hundred percent accurate. Most scholars today believe that the Gospel writers edited, and at times even embellished, their accounts. We also know that scribes and translators unwittingly introduced errors into biblical manuscripts as they were copying and translating them. What we do not know is what passages early Church Fathers may have expunged from the Gospels because they did not agree with the emerging Church doctrine. So we see that the Bible is not a complete record of Jesus’ teachings. Yet, nevertheless, what is there we can penetrate. We can go beyond the type and into the heart of Jesus and understand profound mysteries directly from him.
Another source of Jesus’ teachings as they have been handed down to us is the Gnostic texts discovered near Nag Hammadi, Egypt, in 1945. These manuscripts belonged to Christian Gnostics who claimed to possess the secret teachings of Jesus that had been handed down to them from his disciples. The Gnostics emphasized salvation through gnosis, or self-knowledge, rather than through faith. Scholars believe that these texts date from the first through third centuries A.D.
Realize what the self-knowledge is that the Gnostics pursued, that they actually received from Jesus. Self-knowledge was the knowledge of the divine spark, the Atman within. Self-knowledge was the awareness of the Inner Christ and the seed of Buddha that is in every man. The parallel teachings of Jesus Christ and gautam, Gautama Buddha are absolutely astounding. Then there is the overshadowing of the inner Teacher, whom we call the Holy Christ Self, that is above us and one with Jesus to whom our souls must be bonded before we can inherit eternal life. Then there is the Presence of the I AM THAT I AM. It is very possible that the devout Jews of the time, having received from Abraham the Kabbalah, also incorporated this understanding into their knowledge.
I think sometimes we think that the farther back history is that the less intelligent or bright were the people when in fact when you come down to the twentieth century with illiteracy so high, you can see that with no electronic devices of any kind, people had a great deal of opportunity to strengthen the memory body, to record the words that people said and to be able to keep those words in their hearts. The faculties of perception were in no way polluted by the types of pollutions we have today.
So there is a c, a certain crystal clarity that we find especially in the groups throughout the world who have formed communities all the way at the dawn of the Piscean age and in the preceding age of Aries and people were very knowledgeable in the Old and New Testament. Jesus founded his work on the Old Testament and brought forward those teachings to a new height in the Piscean dispensation. So we ought to consider just how much they knew and just how much we don’t know of what they knew about what was going on spiritually.
So concerning the Gnostic texts, scholars believe that these texts date from the first through the third centuries A.D. Some of them are considered to be earlier than the four Gospels. To give you a sense of these texts, I will quote from just a few of them. There is a text called “The Teachings of Silvanus.” It says, “Keep the holy commandments of Jesus Christ, and you will reign over every place on earth and will be honored by the angels and the archangels. Then you will acquire them as friends and fellow servants.” Most of you here today consider yourself to be a friend of Archangel Michael and each of the Seven Archangels and seraphim and so on. It is not unusual at all for you to consider that you are walking and talking with angels even as you call to them for intercession.
This text continues, “Do not bring grief or trouble to the divine which is within you.” Grieve not the Holy Spirit. If you grieve the Holy Spirit, the Holy Spirit may depart from you. “He who guards himself against doing anything insolent is one who keeps his guiding principle. Although he is a man who exists on earth, he makes himself like God….Let Christ alone enter your world, and let him bring to naught all powers which have come upon you.” The reference to powers is the powers of fallen angels who are always attempting to move against the children of Light. “Let him dwell in the temple which is within you, and may you become for him a priest and a Levite, entering in purity.” That is the end of the quote from “The Teachings of Silvanus.”
Gnostics taught that ignorance is the major enemy to spiritual progress. Buddha taught the same. He spoke of the five poisons and gave us the five wisdoms to antidote those poisons, five types of ignorance. Jesus says in “The Gospel of Thomas,” “When you come to know yourselves, then you will become known, and you will realize that it is you who are the sons of the living father.” They are not teaching one exclusive Son of God. They are teaching about the Sons of God, those who attain to that realization of the Christhood to which Jesus attained. “But if you will not know yourselves, you dwell in poverty,” poverty of the things of the Spirit, and you will remain in ignorance.
Then there is the “The Gospel of Philip.” He records Jesus’ teaching that we must be fierce in overcoming ignorance because it gives power to the evil that would root itself within us. “Jesus pulled out the root of the whole place, while others did it only partially. As for ourselves, let each one of us dig down after the root of evil which is within one, and let one pluck it out of one’s heart from the root. It will be plucked out if we recognize it. But if we are ignorant of it, it takes root in us and produces its fruit in our heart. It masters us. We are its slaves.” That is the end of the quote from “The Gospel of Philip.” As you know, these gospels are not those that Church Fathers codified in the New Testament.
“Since it is said that you are my twin and my true friend, examine yourself and understand who you are, how you live and what will become of you.” Those words are from “The Book of Thomas the Contender” and Jesus is speaking to the apostle Thomas.
Why did he call Thomas his twin? It is not because Mother Mary gave birth to twins. It is because Thomas has most reflected the Christ of Jesus. He has internalized that Christ, and so Jesus calls him his twin because he has that presence. He also sends him to India to open Christianity there. Jesus says to Thomas, “Since you are called my brother, you should not be ignorant about yourself….For whoever does not know self does not know anything, but whoever knows self already has acquired knowledge about the depth of the universe.”
I have just mentioned to you the presence of God in many forms that is a part of our consciousness and our being, our spiritual bodies, our chakras. But just remember, the most important thing to know about yourself in order to have your victory in this life are the zeros, the points of ignorance, the negatives, the momentum and the building of the dweller-on-the-threshold that has been mentioned in a number of esoteric books. So the dweller-on-the-threshold is the accumulation of the identity of all forces that oppose your reality, your Christhood, your Buddhahood. And that dweller-on-the-threshold will continually attempt to block your overcoming and your victory.
So we call to the Archangels to bind that dweller, which is also representative of the human ego rather than the Christ ego or the Divine Ego. So unless we know the negatives about ourselves and do not remain ignorant of them, then, you see, we will not be able to ta, take advantage of the positives.
So what he is saying is, “For whoever does not know self does not know anything, but whoever knows self already has acquired knowledge about the depth of the universe.” That’s the end of quo, of the quote from “The Book of Thomas the Contender.”
Another prerequisite to union with the Holy Spirit or to discipleship under Jesus which Jesus emphasizes in the Gnostic scriptures is the need to conquer idolatry. Idolatry is the first commandment, “Thou shalt have no other gods before me.” These texts show that Jesus did not want his disciples to see him as a “god” but to follow his example and become Sons of God themselves. It is important to let people know that you have faults. It is very important that you do not cover your faults and only let them see you as some exalted being. You want to keep yourself on an even par with all those who are on planet earth and not position yourself above anyone.
In “The Gospel of Thomas,” Jesus says, “He who will drink from my mouth will become like me. I myself shall become he, and the things that are hidden will be revealed to him.” Jesus will become one with your Holy Christ Self. Your soul will become one, bonded to the Holy Christ Self, even as the Holy Christ Self is one with Jesus Christ. “I shall become he.” It’s like things equal to the same thing are equal to each other. “If you equal me in your qui, in your Christhood, then we are one,” says Jesus. “He who will drink from my mouth will become like me. He who takes in the essence of myself will be as I am.” This is the end of the quote from “The Gospel of Thomas.”
Philip describes the follower of Jesus who walks fully in his footsteps as “no longer a Christian but a Christ.” I have great love for that scripture because a Christian is somebody who belongs to something but a Christ is somebody who belongs to Jesus. In “The Apocryphon of James” Jesus says, “Become better than I. Make yourselves like the son of the Holy Spirit.”
You remember that Jesus said, “He that believeth on me, the works that I do shall he do also and greater works than these shall he do because I go unto my Father.” Jesus, one with the Father and the Father-Mother God as one, is empowered from the ascended state to work greater works through us, to assist us in exceeding him, which tells us that age upon age there is an increase of opportunity, a tremendous increase of opportunity to transcend oneself. And as the ages pass and the dict, the dispensations of religion are handed down for those ages, those who reincarnate have greater opportunities to excel, to transcend themselves. And this will go on and on and on. And so Jesus left us those words, I believe, so that Christians will recognize that Jesus expects them to do greater works. If greater works, then they are also one with that Christ and transcending themselves through that Christ.
Now I’d like to get back to the history of the Pentecostal and charismatic movements. The dawn of the twentieth century marked a turning point in the movement of the Holy Spirit among Christians. In 1897, Pope Leo XIII in an encyclical letter urged renewed devotion to the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit, he said, is “the forgotten person of the blessed tri, Trinity, of the Blessed Trinity.”
On January 1, 1901, a Christian at Bethel Bible College in Topeka, Kansas, after praying intensely for the baptism of the Spirit, began speaking in tongues. Other instances of speaking in tongues soon followed around the globe. The Topeka incident, viewed as a recurrence of Pentecost, was the birth of what became known as the Pentecostal movement. From Topeka, it spread quickly throughout Kansas, Missouri, Texas, Alabama and western Florida.
Five years later, in 1906, bapteem, baptisms of the Spirit and speaking in tongues became a regular occurrence at the Apostle Faith Gospel Mission in Los Angeles. Believers who flocked to the Mission from all over the world were deeply moved by their encounter with the Holy Spirit there. Word traveled, and Pentecostal missions began to spring up in many parts of the world. At first, Pentecostal believers stayed in their own denominations, expecting that their churches would also, expecting that their churches would also become Pentecostal. But within a few years, the mainline churches began opposing and persecuting their Pentecostal members. ”That ye love one another as I have loved you”—that wasn’t particuly on their minds.
Those who wanted to keep their charismatic way of life were forced to form their own churches. Among these, some of the better known are the Assemblies of God, the Church of God, the International Church of the Foursquare Gospel, founded by Aimee Semple McPherson.
In the late 1950s, interest in the Holy Spirit again began to increase in mainline churches. Some members began reporting Pentecostal experiences. Father Dennis Bennett, an Episcopal priest in Van Nuys, experienced speaking in tongues in 1959. A year later, he shared his experience with his congregation. In reaction, one of his assistants threw off his vestments and stormed out of the church. Father Bennett’s announcement in 1960 is seen as the beginning of the Neo-Pentecostal Movement, or the Charismatic Renewal Movement. Before long, Lutherans, Presbyterians, Baptists and Catholics were also reporting charismatic experiences among their clergy and members.
The movement spread first along the West Coast and then across the country. For the most part, the churches took a cautious and critical view. But this time, church members who embraced the Pentecostal experience insisted on remaining within their own denominations. In 1961, Pope John XXIII invited all Christians to pray to God to “renew his wonders in our time as though for a new Pentecost.” In the early 1970s, annual gatherings of the National Conference on Charismatic Renewal in the Catholic Church attracted more than 10,000 people. Despite expectations to the contrary, the Pentecostal and charismatic movements have experienced phenomenal growth internationally in this century.
Have you ever wondered what happens at a Pentecostal or charismatic service? Well, those of you who’ve been in the churches know but many of us have not known. So I will give you the description of John Thomas Nichol, Professor of History at Bentley College in Massachuchet, in Massachusetts. He has written an article describing Pentecostal services, which in a general sense also applies to charismatic worship.
You know what I would like to do right now is sing to the wind “Onward Christian Soldiers.” [laughter; 5-second applause] So let’s sing to the wind. It’s number— [“Number 82.”] You can take this as a stretch break also. And it is 82, number 82. You can make your calls to the Holy Spirit.
*[Song no. 82, “Onward Christian Soldiers,” sung once.]
Thank you. Please be seated.
So Nichol says, “Some churches encourage demonstritif, demonstrative meetings in which opportunities for hand-clapping, crying, shouting, and the exercise of the charismata (spiritual powers) abound. In other churches, worship is more orderly. Disrupting manifestations of emotionalism have largely disappeared. Even in the more sedate churches, however, Pentecostal worship is still joyful, emotional, and sometimes unpredictable. Strong men weep, and quiet women shout ‘Hallelujahs.’
“The Pentecostal worship service may include spirited singing of gospel hymns, extemporaneous prayers, personal testimonies, biblical, evangelistic preaching and the altar service, during which time those who wish to be ‘saved, sanctified, filled with the Holy Spirit, or healed’ are invited to go forward to the altar, where they are prayed for by the minister and many of the members.” End of quote. A portion of the service may also be dedicated to the laying on of hands, in the tradition of Jesus and the apostles after him.
Now this is how mainline churches view charismatics. To answer this question, members of my research team called representatives from the major denominations and here is what they found. Episcopalians, Methodists, Lutherans, Presbyterians and Catholics are generally tolerant of their charismatic members. But the more conservative members tend to be less tolerant. And intellectual members view the charismatics as emotional. The ultra-conservative Southern Baptists expel clergy or members who display the gift of tongues or prophecy. It’s most unfortunate. We have so many divisions in a religion that should be one from the heart of Jesus.
American Baptists tolerate charismatics but are suspicious of spectacular manifestations. All the denominations we spoke with noted that initial enthusiasm for charismatic renewal has been tempered by divisiveness. They reported that in some cases those who have manifested gifts of the Spirit have been condescending toward those who have not. What a pity. In some churches, this has prompted strong resistance to charismatics.
Do Christians believe that the gifts of the Holy Spirit are for our time? Within Protestant denominations, you will find a range of answers to that question. Some Christians believe the gifts of the Holy Spirit that manifested at Pentecost were a special endowment intended only for the apostolic age. They say these signs were necessary at the outset of Christianity in order to confirm the gospel, but af, but that after the apostolic period Christianity no longer needed outward confirmation.
Unfortunately, I believe, these Christians have misunderstood the promise of scripture. As Mark Prophet always used to say, Jesus c, may have come and gone and if you were not embodied in that time you missed him. Or if he’s going to appear on a one specific occasion when every eye shall see him a-, at the conclusion of this age, what happens if you’re not here? You’ve missed him again. [laughter] I cannot understand why Christianity or the teachings of Jesus Christ or Gautama Buddha are not for all time and eternity as long as there’s a single lost soul on earth who needs a saviour, whichever saviour he may pick. It’s quite amazing to me. [9-second applause]
You know, I’ve, I’ve noticed a certain thing among people who judge our movement and judge our Church. And of course they say, “First of all, you’re not Christians. You can’t have Jesus because you don’t believe our doctrine.” So we are outside of the framework of Christianity as Christianity views us. And what does that tend to make us do and feel? Perhaps subtly at a subconscious level we feel ostracized. We feel we have no right to Jesus because we’re not practicing Jesus the way they prak Jesus, practice Jesus. And we tend not to have the eth, enthusiasm which we really do have in our souls and in our beings for Jesus himself as the Ascended Master, as the avatar of the aquar, as the avatar of the Piscean age, that we have him as a personal friend, that we understand that God did anoint him as his Son to save those who were lost. And so in that sense of the word, since we know we cannot save ourselves, we cannot pull ourselves up by our own bootstraps, we know that we need a Saviour. Avatars have come age after age after age in unrecorded history and they have brought a message that has liberated people and saved them.
So we accept that God sent Jesus to us. We love him. Many of you feel you know him personally from this or that lifetime and have a deep and abiding tie to Jesus. You have a right to Jesus as you understand him, as you see him. You have a right to not accept this or that doctrine. You have a right to disagree with me on my opinions about scripture and Jesus. I call them to your attention so that you can go and read for yourself and say, “Well, where do I stand on those issues?” But overall, the condemnation of us as being non-Christian and nonacceptable to Christians, I think, tends at a certain level to dampen the spirits of many of you.
And I just want to tell you today that Jesus Christ belongs to you as much as he belongs to everybody else all over the world. [16-second applause] Whatever you are ready to practice, to believe, to accept and internalize, whatever you’re willing to tear down as walls of separation between you and him, that’s up to you. Jesus doesn’t want you to accept anything just on my word or anybody else’s word, but it’s a day by day assimil, assimilation of the sponsor of this age whom we have been with all these centuries.
It’s a marvelous thing to know Jesus. And I have talked to many people who have been turned off to Jesus because Christianity has turned them off to Jesus. They couldn’t believe the way Jesus was. They wouldn’t believe that he would have a doctrine such as they are perpetuating. And so as I have said to a number of people lately who have gotten so fed up with the indoctrinations of Christianity, Jesus is not Christianity. Jesus is Jesus. Christianity is something else. And that’s what we have to remember. [12-second applause]
I was, it was amazing to me. It took me a number of weeks talking to someone on and off who was so turned off to Christianity that they had turned off to Jesus and were at, angry at Jesus for how they’d been treated in the churches. And so finally this person really came to the realization that this is the Jesus that I want to know. This is the Jesus I want to befriend and befriend me.
So let’s get out of this shroud of condemnation and cast it into the violet flame during these days. Let’s get the violet flame through Christianity. Let’s get them awakened to the fact that they have responsibility for karma, et cetera. [10-second applause] I think Christians have misunderstood the promise of scripture. We need the gifts of the Holy Spirit today as much as the disciples needed them at the time of Christ. And the Holy Spirit is ready to give his gifts to you when you qualify to receive them.
Now I’d like to talk to you about the nine gifts, what some people say about them and what teaching I also have to say about them. First of all, I believe that the nine gifts of the Holy Spirit are complementary and that they come upon the seeker gradually. They’re like nine potted plants; they grow and blossom together. And they grow and increase in you as you co, become closer and closer to God, closer to the Holy Spirit, closer to Jesus and all the saints robed in white whom we acknowledge as the Ascended Masters. So I think that as your light increases throughout your body, throughout your chakras, so these gifts are growing. They are truly growing like flowers.
As your spirituality increases, as you define what is important in your life, the gifts increase in you. When you truly have the Holy Spirit and the Holy Spirit dwells in you bodily, it is an indication that you have attained oneness with your own Holy Christ Self, which some call the Higher Self, and the I AM Presence. And so I am going to review each gift according to the interpretation of Bible commentators and then give you some of the Ascended Masters’ teachings on that gift.
The first gift of the Holy Spirit is the word of wisdom. And as you know, the Greek word for wisdom is sophia. Why is that so? Because without wisdom you will not appreciate the remaining eight and because Jesus faithfully taught the path of Buddha. And it is wisdom you must have so that you will not find ignorance growing at the roots of your soul. Clement of Alexandria defines wisdom as “the knowledge of things human and divine and their causes.” Aristotle describes it as “striving after the best ends and using the best means.” That is wisdom, “striving after the best ends and using the best means.”
According to Bible commentator William Barclay, wisdom is “nothing less than the knowledge of God himself.” Wisdom comes, he says, “not so much from thought and the mind as from communion with God.” Ellen White, in her commentary on this gift, makes the point that those who are graced with the word of wisdom are not only wise but are able to convey their wisdom to others.
My sense of wisdom is that it is the understanding of the things of the Spirit. Wisdom cannot come from the human mind but only from the Higher Mind. It’s an exciting and astounding moment to experience instantaneous wisdom that does not come from any outer source. As I have meditated on wisdom and on the Higher Mind, I have, I have gained wisdom and actually observed that wisdom bypass my brain. It did not go through my brain. It came directly from a higher source into my heart. My heart was the vessel and understanding of that wisdom. It’s a wonderful thing to realize that. Think of all the handicapped people who have some impairment that has to do with the central nervous system or the brain. And they can commune with God as clearly through the Christ Mind, their own Higher Self. You should keep a record of those moments when you gain that insight into wisdom, when you suddenly know something that you could not possibly have known without your Holy Christ Self impressing it upon you.
The second gift of the Holy Spirit is the gift of the word of knowledge. Wisdom to me is practical. It is of the Spirit. It is of the Universal Mind. The word of knowledge, the word of knowledge is the knowledge of the things of this world that you have to know in order to fulfill your reason for being, your profession, your calling in life, and so that you have abundant access to the situations of our time that you can draw upon. If you are ministering to life or if you are someone who is a preacher or just a disciple of Jesus, to be able to compare the teachings of scripture to the politics of the day that we see parading for us, before us is very important, making the scriptures relevant through knowledge.
The Greek word for knowledge is gnosis. It is a practical wisdom that knows the right thing to do in any situation. It is the practical application of divine wisdom. White says the gift of the word of knowledge is the ability to understand spiritual truth and communicate it to others in an orderly, practical manner.
Eighteenth-century commentator Matthew Henry interprets the gift of the word of knowledge as “a skill and readiness to give advice and counsel in perplexed cases.” I know people like that, people that I go to because they have such an understanding of the way something is either right or wrong. There’s a right way and a wrong way to do everything. And you seek and find those people wh, who have that advice.
The Maha Chohan says that the difference between the gift of the word of wisdom and the word of knowledge is this: when you have wisdom, you understand the things of the Spirit and the mysteries of God.
I spent many years of my life from a small child through college talking with spiritual teachers, priests, nuns, ministers of all kinds. And I found that so many of them were lacking in wisdom of the things of God. So I would ask them about church doctrine and so forth and they would always reply, “It’s a mystery.” [laughter] “It’s a mystery.” And that just kind of deals with everything and you don’t have to study, you don’t have to pray, you don’t find out, well, what is this mystery.
I believe that God intends us to break the bread of life and to know his mysteries. I believe that because since a very small child when I finally was reading, Jesus would come and tutor me and tell me what the references in the Bible I was reading were all about. He would tell me what was incorrect in the scriptures. I would go to the various churches and listen to the ministers’ sermons and Jesus would be there and he would be telling what is, me what is accurate and what is inaccurate and that in this age all the inaccuracies had to be exposed and the truth of his teaching had to be made known again.
Then when I was in college and I was studying, no matter what course I was studying, I would have one page for what the professor was saying and the other page was what, was what Jesus was saying [laughter], commenting on the professor and what he was teaching. I especially enjoyed this [laughter] in religion and philosophy courses. [laughter]
But Jesus is there to teach us and he will teach you personally. And you don’t have to accept anything by blind faith, although faith is a wonderful gift of the Spirit. But God intends us to have gnosis, to have knowledge. And it is not God who is keeping us from that knowledge but ignorant men.
When you have knowledge, you understand the things of this world. The great prophets and avatars have all had tremendous knowledge in the fields of learning. Think of the prophets in Israel. They knew everything that was going on. They knew the politics of their time. They knew the intrigue. They knew what the kings were doing, good and bad. They were very current on the scene, and therefore when they received the messages from God through his Archangels, they were speaking right to the issues of their time. They didn’t bring a blank mind to God and God suddenly wrote on it. They had full understanding of those issues and who were the bad kings and who were the good kings. And they could speak out and say, “If you don’t repent, God is going to destroy this city of Nineveh,” and so forth. So don’t think that you can be ignorant and be successful in spreading the joy and the teachings of Jesus. And so these prophets and avatars did not shun knowledge; they mastered it. They became it. They embodied it.
The third gift of the Holy Spirit is the gift of faith. Barclay defines the gift of faith as “the power to realize the spiritual” and as the power “which turns vision into deeds.” You all know the phrase, “Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.” “Without faith it is impossible to please [God].” You take God on faith until he decides to reveal to you the whole mystery. “For he that cometh to God must believe that he is, and that he is a rewarder of them that diligently seek him.” Faith in the law of God engenders courage.
Do you have the courage to speak the Word as Jesus Christ did? Do you have the courage to rebuke those who do not acknowledge the Law of the Father? That courage begins with faith and trust. When you have faith and trust, you have an intense leak, link, you have an intense link to Almighty God through the indwelling Christ and through your Mighty I AM Presence.
Faith is a wonderful gift. Faith has carried me through this life through many challenges, through many difficulties. I am grateful for the gift of faith. If you do not have faith, please cultivate it. Decide whether you can have faith in God, faith in yourself, faith in Jesus or some higher being. Faith is a very important tool on the Path.
The fourth gift of the Holy Spirit is the gift of healing. Paul calls it “gifts of healing.” Commentator Adam Clarke defines this gift as “the power which at particular times the apostles received from the Holy Spirit to cure diseases.” John Short in the Interpreter’s Bible says, “In the Gospels it is made quite plain that the salvation which the Master proclaimed involved the well-being of the whole man— body, soul, and spirit….His message was for the whole of the human personality, for its physical as well as spiritual aspects.” White observes that those with the gift of healing “possessed divine knowledge and direction in their work and healed only those whom God directed them to heal. They thus possessed certain knowledge of the outcome.”
I think that the healing of the physical body is the least and last important facet of the gift of healing. The goal is to heal the soul so that the soul can heal and cleanse her own temple. Healing is a result of harmony. There is no such thing as a healer who has agitated feelings, anger, pent-up emotions and energies.
Whereas some teach that God intends everybody to be healed, others teach as I have just mentioned. They are selective in who they pray for and call forth healings for. We always submit the calls and prayers we make for healing as being subject to the will of God because we cannot know the will of God and so that we ask if so-and-so might be healed and ask God to heal that person according to the will of God.
Why would it not be the will of God for everybody to be healed? Because people have their infirmities to learn lessons in life. They bear burdens to balance karma. And so if you take from them all of their infirmities and their burdens, then you also take from them the opportunity to balance their karma, and as Paul said, thereby to obtain a better resurrection. Many people suffer a terminal i, illnesses aware of that teaching from Paul, that you endure pain, you endure the burdens of the world, you take upon and into your body the burdens of world karma by way of balancing your own personal karma. And then when you pass on and you are resurrected, you have a better resurrection because you now have a lighter load because you allowed yourself to go through some burden for the sake of sacrifice and humanity.
The fifth gift of the Holy Spirit is the working of miracles. This gift has been translated from the Greek as “the demonstration of mighty powers.” I am sure that as science progresses on, we come to the realization that things that are called miracles can sometimes be explained scientifically. But you cannot explain all miracles away because they are miracles. They are exceptions to the law rather than the fulfillment of the law. Commentators apply, commentators apply it to dramatic, unusual healings and exorcisms. They see the gifts of faith and healing and the working of miracles as interrelated.
The true purpose of miracles is to restore wholeness to the body and to achieve union with the Higher Self so that one can live a life perfected in joy as an instrument of God’s love. You can become so great an instrument for the Holy Spirit that when people contact your aura they receive healing and upliftment. The key to working miracles is the violet flame. It’s the most efficacious use of the sacred fire because the violet flame brings about transmutation when you give those violet flame decrees. And so the miracle of the violet flame is that you are done with a certain situation or problem because you have invoked the violet flame and you have cleared it, you have cleared the record of burden in your body by the use of the violet flame. So once the violet flame, the action of the Holy Spirit, of transmutation—once that violet flame transmutes a certain level of your karma, you will be healed. You will simply no longer have the problem because it has been transmuted and you have balanced that element of karma that you were intended to balance.
So when you diligently give the violet flame, not only will you have the perpetual joy of Jesus, but you will see his miracles happening all around you. Our auras must be dripping with the violet flame so that whe, wherever we go, Saint Germain can use us as his instruments to hurl his miracle pouch into the cause and core of negative conditions. As we know, it is the Holy Spirit and Saint Germain who sponsored the use of the violet flame on this planet for, it’s really for the Aquarian age. It has come to us in the last century of the Piscean age. And this gift enables us to accelerate, to balance our karma and to be able to break the round of the wheel of rebirth in this life. That is how powerful the violet flame of the Holy Spirit is.
The sixth gift is the gift of prophecy. Biblical commentaries often make the distinction that prophecy is not so much “foretelling” as it is the “forth-telling” of truth. Forth-telling. They define the gift of prophecy as the ability to “tell,” to make known, the will of God and to give insight into God’s purposes.
Barclay says, “The prophet is a man who lives so close to God that he knows God’s mind and heart and will and intention, and so can make them known to men. Because of that, the prophet’s function is twofold. He brings rebuke and warning, telling men that their way of action is not in accordance with the will of God. He brings advice and guidance, seeking to direct men into the ways God wishes them to go.”
Prophecy is the vision of the future vouchsafed to an individual by Almighty God. It is a warning of what could come to pass if we the people do nothing. The gift of prophecy is absolute attunement with the Holy Spirit. God strikes a great chord on the organ and the prophet sounds the note. From his Universal Mind, God delivers the Word and the prophet hears, answers, obeys and delivers the Word to God’s people. The people do not have to be warned if they themselves can see what is coming upon them. So the prophet always warns them, “But if you do not repent of your ways, then thus and such will befall you. This karma will descend.”
The seventh gift of the Holy Spirit is the gift of the discerning of spirits, discerning of spirits. That is being able to know what spirits are about people and in people without having any foreknowledge of this. When you are able to discern the spirits, and if these spirits are negative spirits that are in and around people’s bodies, you can protect yourself, you can warn them, you can tell them that they are burdened by foul spirits who will do them no good. You can show them the way of decrees and invocation and Astrea’s ci, circle and sword of blue flame, and so forth.
There is divine and counterf, there is divine and counterfeit inspiration. There are true and false prophets. The operation of God’s Spirit and evil spirits or the unaided human spirit is also there. The apostle John says, “Believe not every spirit, but try the spirits, whether they are of God.”
The gift of the discerning of spirits enables one to determine what is acting through another— whether it be the angelic hosts and the Light of God, or demons and fallen angels. Discerning of spirits can come only through the heart— a heart that is purified, a heart where the Christ-flame does burn.
If you want to receive the Holy Spirit, it is essential that you keep your aura absolutely free of spirits who are the impostors of the Holy Spirit. If you don’t keep your aura clean by using your Archangel Michael sword and doing your decrees to Archangel Michael and beloved Mighty Astrea daily, you cannot be certain whether you are interacting with the Holy Spirit or with masquerading spirits unless you have the gift of the discernment of spirits. The key is not to put your attention on your own human personality, exalting that personality as having the Holy Spirit. Instead, put your attention on the Holy Spirit so that the Holy Spirit can efface your personality.
Remember the advice of Jesus that I’ve also quoted already in this conference that he gave to Catherine of Siena while she was praying. And he said to her, “Do you know, daughter, who you are and who I am? If you knew these two things, you would be blessed. You are that which is not. I am He who is.” “You are that which is not. I am He who is.”
Jesus continued, “If you have this knowledge in your soul, the enemy can never deceive you. You will escape all his snares. You will never consent to anything contrary to my commandments. And without difficulty you will acquire every grace, every truth, every light.”
The way I interpret this saying of Jesus to Catherine is Jesus is saying, “I AM the impermeable Yang. You are the permeable Yin.” I’ve drawn charts showing the T’ai Chi and the yin and yang as the positive, the yang as the positive and the yin as the minus. In the absolute realm of Spirit we have the absolute yang and yin that are impermeable. In the Matter cosmos we have the relativity and the yang and yin are permeable. And so if you are looking at Catherine who’s embodied in the earth, she is the permeable yin. Jesus abiding in absolute Spirit is the impermeable yang. And so he being the impermeable yang, when she is tied to him, her yin is no longer permeable. Her yin becomes enfired with his, his power of the yin that is of the Spirit. So when you self-empty and continually self-empty and you say to Jesus, “Thou the All, I the nothing,” it’s a complete self-emptying process so that God can enter and fill you, the Holy Spirit can enter and fill you.
In one of the Gnostic gospels Jesus is talking to his disciples and the disciples are not pleased with the favoritism he is showing to Mary Magdalene. But he states that he has made her male. He has made her male. Now the feminist movement today does not like to hear about women being made male. The male is the yang of the Spirit. The Christ in you is male, both men and women, and the soul of you is yin. The soul is not yet perfected, has not attained her immortality and is mutable. And so certain of the disciples, whether they were male or female, were made male by Jesus. They were made the plus polarity or the yang force. So when our Christ Self is more real to us than our not-self and we are in that Christ Presence, we are masculine in the spiritual sense of the word, even if we are wearing a male or a female body.
So Jesus is telling Catherine to repeat the mantra, “O Lord Jesus, Thou the All, I the nothing.” The more you repeat that, the more you become infilled with the Christ until Jesus makes you male by bonding your soul to him and to the Inner Christ. Until you can see yourself as nothing, not identifying with any part of the ego, you cannot be certain that when you think you have received the Holy Spirit you have not actually received lower spirits. The lower spirits are of the astral plane. They come preceding the Holy Spirit to tempt you and to fulfill your ambitions, your spiritual pride, your desire to speak in tongues and so forth.
If you are attached to your desires, you will be vulnerable to the impostors of the Holy Spirit. If you want the gifts of the Spirit for reasons of pride and you want them more than you want the Holy Spirit, you see, you are vulnerable. You must have desirelessness, which takes us full circle back to Gautama Buddha, desirelessness when approaching the gifts of the Spirit. The lower spirits can cause you great pain and grief if you allow yourself to be bewitched by them.
I will give you an example that I have noticed among Keepers of the Flame over the years and I ask you to really play, pray diligently for the gift of the discernment of spirits so that you are not led this way and that way. This is just an aside. It certainly doesn’t tell m, tell you of all the wonderful things about you but it is a warning that I think we should all hear. I have seen some members continually falling for “get-rich-quick” schemes because they are proposed to them by other members of the Church whom they think they should trust completely, without question and without really examining what is this business venture and will it be successful or not. And many times the people who propose such ventures are really not, not balanced, they do have serious psychological problems and they do have lower spirits tied to them. And so they can become very convincing just by the, by the power of the lower spirits that are not of the Holy Spirit.
And so not having the discernment of spirits to recognize that these people are not centered on the rock of Christ, Church members blindly follow them to their own destruction. But what is their Achilles’ heel is their own greed, counting on making a bundle of money on this scheme that someone is telling them is, absolutely cannot fail. And so our vulnerability to greed must be conquered because when we have it we are blinded by it.
Eight is divers kinds of tongues. The eighth gift of the Holy Spirit shows primarily two types of speaking in tongues. In the first type, the language spoken is a foreign language, unknown to the speaker but easily understood by one who speaks that language. Its purpose is to instruct people of different countries and to facilitate the spread of the Gospel. This type of speaking in tongues was demonstrated by the apostles at Pentecost.
In the second type, the language spoken is an unknown spiritual language not spoken by men and not understood unless there is someone present who has the gift of interpretation of tongues. This type of speaking in tongues was seen among the congregations Paul preached to in Corinth. It is done in a state of ecstasy and its purpose is to confirm the faith of new converts or to provide personal spiritual educ, edification. The speaker addresses God rather than men, and the intent is more to praise God than to preach the Word. In I Corinthians 14, Paul instructs that the gift of prophecy, which is intelligible to all, is preferable to the gift of speaking in unknown tongues, which is intelligible only to God unless an interpreter is present.
Paul writes, “Follow after charity, and desire spiritual gifts, but rather that ye may prophesy. For he that speaketh in an unknown tongue speaketh not unto men, but unto God: for no man understandeth him; howbeit in the spirit he speaketh mysteries. But he that prophesieth speaketh unto men to edification and exhortation and comfort. He that speaketh in an unknown tongue edifieth himself; but he that prophesieth edifieth the church.” He writes, “I would that ye all spake with tongues, but rather that ye prophesied: for greater is he that prophesieth than he that speaketh with tongues, except he interpret, that the church may receive edifying.”
This is kind of amusing because I think it’s kind of a, a joke that gets passed around and has for a long time that someone is speaking in tongues but someone has to get, have the gift of interpreting tongues to tell everybody else what the first one is saying. But this is what Jesus gave me for this lecture on why it is a good idea to have both.
The gift of divers kinds of tongues involves the mastery of speech, communication and the delivery of the Word. It ranges from the mastery of earth’s languages to proficiency in the tongues of angels. Most particularly, it is the ability to speak the language of the soul to each person you meet. It means that when you come into the aura of a person, the Holy Spirit empowers you to speak in the thought patterns and at the level of understanding and need of that person. Thereby, you can reach that one with a message that is relevant to his or her life. The gift of tongues facilitates understanding between peoples and it figures in the art of diplomacy. It helps you to get along with your neighbor. It can involve the bridling of the tongue or the comforting of a child.
Those who are of impure motives and who inordinately desire and demand of the Holy Spirit the gift of speaking in tongues often receive instead the mutterings of fallen angels. So this last point that I want to make on the subject is that the spiritual tongues and their interpretation are of the angelic hosts. They are tongues which are currently being spoken in heaven by angels.
Now we know that angels took embodiment on earth to be teachers, to be wayshowers and to protect everyone on the planet from the wiles of the fallen angels and the traps that are set before the children of God. So they speak these tongues in heaven, they spoke them when they were in heaven, and they still retain the record of these tongues when they asked God if they could embody to help to save his children. Embodied angels who retain the patterns of their heavenly tongues in their souls are often quickened by the Holy Spirit to speak in those tongues, so that the earth might be imbued with the higher vibration of “angelspeak.”
So to me that is the real reason why it is so important that when this language is spoken by those who receive the gift, they are in embodiment, they are still angels but now they are working out their karma and their salvation as sons and daughters of God, so then they can contribute this vibration in their churches, in their homes, and the vibration of heavenly tongues is therefore present in the earth.
There are some languages in the earth that are literally languages of fallen ones. And these languages have been put upon people who are not fallen ones but they simply are there from fallen angels rather than good angels.
So finally, the ninth gift of the Holy Spirit is the interpretation of tongues. Commentators define the gift of interpretation of tongues as the ability to inher, to interpret the message of someone who is speaking in tongues. One of the comments I’d like to make on this is the gift of interpretation of tongues is the ability to relate the teachings of the Ascended Masters to the “nations.” The “nations” means all levels of earth’s evolutions, including their karma and consciousness. Each person requires a certain interpretation of the Path, a certain understanding, a certain tenderness, a certain love and a certain comfort— that is, each person that you would talk to about God. You have a very unique message to bring to people about God, and the Holy Spirit will move you to speak on things that are people’s greatest burdens. For some, the key is inspiration. Others require scientific explanations. As you deliver the Holy Spirit heart to heart, you have no concern for what you will say because the Holy Spirit gives you the words to speak.
So the interpretation of tongues is not merely standing up in a church and interpreting what someone else is saying in tongues. It is the ability to convert the soul by the Holy Spirit because you speak the language of that soul. And every soul has a different language and so the Holy Spirit knows exactly what he is going to give you to say or for you to be silent.
So these are my observations on the gifts, on the getting of the Holy Spirit, on the various movements. You probably, most of you, ha, are surprised to learn that this renewal only came in 1897, and other events are marked notably as having begun in the 1960s, 1960 to be exact. So this is something relatively new and I believe that it is here because we are overlapping the Aquarian age. And the Aquarian age is the age of the Holy Spirit and the Divine Mother and so God is opening up and giving accessibility to those who pray for and ask for the Holy Spirit and those who have accepted the burden of their karma as we see the logic of it and have recognized that the Ten Commandments and the Sermon on the Mount are the guidelines for that acceptable association with the Holy Spirit.
I have visited these churches over the years and I have noted, alas, that where people have not taken Jesus’ full message and even read the Gospels as they ought to be read, that they do not have much defense against these lower spirits and that when you go into these churches you can feel the Holy Spirit sometimes and you can feel the lower spirits and you can see people not having the discrimination to know the difference. And with a certain zeal, an overzealousness of desiring the Holy Spirit, that’s where the, the gaps occur.
I’ve seen another spectrum of religion in this country where people are very much caught up in the pride of their intellect regarding the things of God, and in that pride they attract demons of pride. And then these organizations become personality cults and “Oh, so-and-so is so wonderful and so-and-so is so wonderful,” which is the breaking of the first commandment to begin with.
And so without the full compendium, the circle of knowledge of the Ascended Masters’ teachings and the knowledge especially of how to invoke the Archangels for protection and defense and enlightenment and healing and so forth, I think that without that the whole movement is wanting. And with it, with that knowledge combined with the seeking of the Holy Spirit this planet could be transformed almost overnight. And that is what we need to pray for, the enlightenment of the people of earth and the recognition that these religions of past ages no longer serve them well and they are dead and dying in their orthodox traditions.
We read the teachings of Lao Tze or we read the teachings of Gautama Buddha and we get the original message. But you look at the practice of Buddhism today and it, it does not follow what, what Buddha taught and you are very disappointed when you go and visit Buddhist monasteries. It’s a very liberal attitude, extremely liberal attitude where just about anything goes and it’s, it’s very much set apart from the original founders.
I believe that we need religion in the right form, in the right form for everyone, for this age to pass and for a new age, a golden age of enlightenment and peace and freedom to come. I don’t think the problems that we are seeing today will ever be resolved by politicians or intellectuals or people who are totally emotional without, without good strength of mind and heart and will. Our politicians don’t know what to do with, with things that are happening. They, they bungle all over the place and meantime conditions get worse and worse.
So I am grateful for the opportunity that we have to have this ranch, to have the Heart of the Inner Retreat, to have a path. And I think that what is wanting in our organization is the absolute courage on the part of every member to seek and find and become the embodiment of his Holy Christ Self, his I AM Presence and the Holy Spirit because everything else is here as a path of teaching but you have to come on, come on in. The water’s fine. You have to get your feet wet. You need to get the Holy Spirit in ways that you feel are appropriate to your path. You need to pray for the Holy Spirit because only the presence of the Holy Spirit and the tremendous empowerment, the tremendous joy and love of the Holy Spirit will convince anyone that your religion is legitimate. [41-second standing ovation]
This is an excerpt of Lesson Four from the Holy Spirit (a five part lecture series). Lesson 4 from the Holy Spirit: The Gifts of the Holy Spirit was given by Elizabeth Clare Prophet on July 2, 1994 during FREEDOM 1994: “The Environment of the Soul” held at the Royal Teton Ranch.
LESSON ONE
LECTURE: Lesson One from the Holy Spirit: Who & what is the Holy Spirit? June 26, 1994
LESSON TWO
LECTURE: Lesson Two from the Holy Spirit: Relationship with the Holy Spirit 06-28-94
LESSON THREE
LECTURE: Lesson 3 from the Holy Spirit: The Anointings by the Holy Spirit, June 30 1994
LESSON FIVE
LECTURE: Lesson Five from the Holy Spirit, Healing the Soul – July 4, 1994
What is the Holy Spirit?
Third Person of the Trinity; the omnipresence of God; the cloven tongues of fire that focus the Father-Mother God, also called the sacred fire; the energies of Life that infuse a cosmos. In the Hindu Trinity of Brahma, Vishnu, and Shiva, the Holy Spirit corresponds to Shiva, known as the Destroyer/Deliverer because his all-consuming Love, when invoked in the planes of Matter, binds the forces of evil and transmutes the cause and effect of man’s miscreations, thus delivering him from the prison house of karma and its dark denizens.
Prana is the essence of the Holy Spirit that we take in by the sacred fire breath through the chakras to nourish the four lower bodies. The Holy Spirit focuses the balance of the Father-Mother God in the white-fire core of being. The exorcism of foul spirits and unclean entities is accomplished by the sacred fire of the Holy Spirit in the name of Christ and the I AM THAT I AM. The nine gifts of the Spirit are powers conveyed to the Lord’s servants to bind death and hell and work his works on earth.
The Person and the Flame of the Holy Spirit is the Comforter whom Jesus promised would come when our Lord took his leave—to enlighten us, to teach us, and to bring all things to our remembrance that beloved Jesus has taught us, both in heaven and on earth. Each time a son or daughter of God ascends into the Presence of the I AM THAT I AM, the Holy Spirit descends to fill the void and to magnify the Lord’s Presence on earth. This is the ritual of the descent of the Holy Ghost promised by Jesus to his disciples when the Master said, “Tarry ye in the city of Jerusalem, until ye be endued with power from on high,” which took place on Pentecost.
The nine gifts
The nine gifts of the Holy Spirit are (1) the word of wisdom, (2) the word of knowledge, (3) faith, (4) healing, (5) the working of miracles, (6) prophecy, (7) the discerning of spirits, (8) divers kinds of tongues, (9) the interpretation of tongues.
The representative of the Holy Spirit
The representative of the flame of the Holy Spirit to earth’s evolutions is the ascended master who occupies the office of Maha Chohan. The Holy Spirit is the Personal Impersonality of the Godhead and is positioned on the west side of the City Foursquare.
Meditation Upon the Holy Spirit
Song Blessed Holy Spirit Lord Maha Chohan
The Holy Spirit Streameth
Who and What is the Holy Spirit? Two Parts
(Prophetic Visions and Spiritual Solutions Series)
Good Friday Dictation by The Beloved Maha Chohan
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