Saint Paul: Difference between revisions

<blockquote>And as he journeyed, he came near Damascus: and suddenly there shined round about him a light from heaven: and he fell to the earth, and heard a voice saying unto him, “Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou me?”</blockquote>

<blockquote>And he said, “Who art thou, Lord?” And the Lord said, “I am Jesus whom thou persecutest: it is hard for thee to kick against the pricks.”</blockquote>

<blockquote>And he trembling and astonished said, “Lord, what wilt thou have me to do?” And the Lord said unto him, “Arise, and go into the city, and it shall be told thee what thou must do.”... And he was three days without sight, and neither did eat nor drink.<ref>Acts 9:3–9.</ref></blockquote>

<blockquote>That Great Doctor of the Law, the Lord himself, who appeared to me on the road to Damascus, allowed even me to experience that blindness that accrues from the dead ritual of the untempered zealot.</blockquote>

<blockquote>He took away my blindness to the things of the Spirit. Ah, indeed I was blind to the light indwelling in his chosen disciples. So great had been the darkness in me that I must persecute that light that was about to swallow up the whole ... philosophy of Serpent and his seed. How my soul longed to be rescued, though I knew it not!</blockquote>

<blockquote>Of the same measure that I fought with fury the light that would deliver me was my longing to be free. It was a question of polarization. And when men are polarized to the anti-Christ position, if they be truly of God and of Christ who is All and in all—though they deny him, yet by his Holy Spirit he will repolarize them out of the deadness of their words and more words unto the Alpha and Omega of the living Word.</blockquote>

<blockquote>Oh, how I love that Christ who is All and in all! O thou Great Deliverer of my soul, I walk the earth in the power of thy love seeking my instruments through whom I might convey that conversion of the Holy Ghost that came upon me in the encounter with my Lord.</blockquote>

<blockquote>He chose me as an ensample. Yea, the tears yet stream upon my face when I think of my former estate, the proud Saul of Tarsus.<ref>Hilarion, “A Door of Utterance,” {{POWref|23|5|, February 3, 1980}}</ref></blockquote>

<blockquote>The fact is, brothers, and I want you to realize this: the Good News I preached is not a human message that I was given by men, it is something I learned only through a revelation of Jesus Christ....</blockquote>

<blockquote>God, who had specially chosen me while I was still in my mother’s womb, called me through his grace and chose to reveal his Son in me, so that I might preach the Good News about him to the pagans. I did not stop to discuss this with any human being, nor did I go up to Jerusalem to see those who were already apostles before me, but I went off to Arabia at once and later went straight back from there to Damascus.”<ref>Gal. 1:11–17, Jerusalem Bible.</ref></blockquote>

<blockquote>It is not expedient for me doubtless to glory. I will come to visions and revelations of the Lord.... And lest I should be exalted above measure through the abundance of the revelations, there was given to me a thorn in the flesh....</blockquote>

<blockquote>For this thing I besought the Lord thrice, that it might depart from me. And he said unto me, “My grace is sufficient for thee: for my strength is made perfect in weakness.” Most gladly therefore will I rather glory in my infirmities, that the power of Christ may rest upon me.</blockquote>

<blockquote>Therefore I take pleasure in infirmities, in reproaches, in necessities, in persecutions, in distresses for Christ’s sake: for when I am weak, then am I strong.<ref>II Cor. 12:1, 7, 8–10.</ref></blockquote>

<blockquote>Then Paul stood in the midst of Mars’ hill, and said, “Ye men of Athens, I perceive that in all things ye are too superstitious. For as I passed by, and beheld your devotions, I found an altar with this inscription, TO THE UNKNOWN GOD. Whom therefore ye ignorantly worship, him declare I unto you....</blockquote>

<blockquote>“Forasmuch then as we are the offspring of God, we ought not to think that the Godhead is like unto gold or silver, or stone, graven by art and man’s device. And the times of this ignorance God winked at; but now commandeth all men every where to repent: because he hath appointed a day, in the which he will judge the world in righteousness by that man whom he hath ordained; whereof he hath given assurance unto all men, in that he hath raised him from the dead.”</blockquote>

<blockquote>And when they heard of the resurrection of the dead, some mocked: and others said, “We will hear thee again of this matter.” So Paul departed from among them.<ref>Acts 17:22–23, 29–33.</ref></blockquote>  

<blockquote>Our story begins in the cold and rain by a kindled fire on the island of Melita midst the people who received the shipwrecked Paul and his companions with no little kindness. Paul himself had gathered a bundle of sticks and laid them on the fire; and there, out of the heat, came a viper and fastened on his hand.</blockquote>

<blockquote>The barbarians, when they saw the venomous beast hanging on the hand of Paul, being superstitious, said among themselves, “No doubt this man is a murderer whom, though he hath escaped the sea, yet vengeance suffereth not to live.”<ref>Acts 28:4.</ref> But Paul, the beloved, empowered of the Holy Ghost, shook off the beast into the fire and felt no harm. And the barbarians, seeing no harm come to him, changed their minds and said that he was a god....</blockquote>

<blockquote>And others in the island which had diseases came to the beloved apostle and were healed by the laying on of hands—because the Lord Jesus Christ and the angel of God stood by him....</blockquote>

<blockquote>Now be of good cheer and be encouraged by the great courage of those who have gone before you. Claim the [[mantle]] of the apostle Paul who awaits your coming on the east gate of the City Foursquare where he is the Lamb who is worthy to open the book that is reserved for the initiates of the fifth ray. Serving with the [[two witnesses]], these witness unto the Truth, in order that the original lie of Serpent and all liars that have proceeded after him might be swallowed up by the rod of Moses, by the judgment of the Son of God, by the sacred fire of the Holy Ghost, and by the Light of the Woman clothed with the Sun.<ref>{{OSS}}, pp. 271, 272.</ref></blockquote>

<blockquote>Therefore, see to it also, in thy preparation for our calling, that you bring therefore a live coal, a lively coal of fire and fervor for the Truth as you understand it. For this was the quality of heart of Saul of Tarsus—believing what he had been taught, even a false teaching regarding Jesus Christ, my own name and my life and mission.</blockquote>

<blockquote>Therefore, he persecuted my followers and, in them, persecuted my Presence. For I was in them, and my light was an offense to those who therefore enlisted Saul in their ways of exterminating, imprisoning, persecuting and torturing Christians.</blockquote>

<blockquote>Blessed hearts, realize, then, that the fervent heart when hitched to the wrong star may be unhitched and redirected and therefore scale the heights of mastery, leaving behind those who seek to perfect themselves by the Law without the Spirit, who engage in rituals without love, and who are mechanistic in their judgments, very eager to point the gnarled and bony finger against any [[lightbearer]] for a single sin that they do think does soil the garment.</blockquote>

<blockquote>Well, sin may or may not soil the garment. But the Holy Spirit is able. And that Holy Spirit in me did raise up Saul, and therefore he received upon himself that substance of his [[karma]] that created the state of blindness. And my instrument again, Ananias, therefore did pronounce that he should see by that Holy Spirit—and he did see.</blockquote>

<blockquote>And Saul therefore became Paul and went forth as a chief apostle, one that I would send to the Gentiles. And yet he, being a Jew, determined to preach to the Jews, not realizing how infamous and how wicked was the core of their hatred and their rage against the living Christ. Thus, I came. Though he did not take my advice, so he loved me, and I comforted him and gave to him protection, even through the Romans.</blockquote>

<blockquote>And you see, therefore, that God is no respecter of persons, and we of the ascended hosts may raise up friends of light where you know not.<ref>Jesus, April 3, 1983, “The Glorification of the Son of God,” {{POWref|26|35|, August 28, 1983}}</ref></blockquote>

<blockquote>Jesus the Christ we called him, and we were called of him as you are called this day. I recall the memories of his coming to me, empowering me with his Word.</blockquote>

<blockquote>Yet first he humbled me on that road to Damascus, the humbling I sorely needed that I might bow to my own Christ flame that he revealed to me, as he also gave to me the key of meditation upon that flame that I might walk in his footsteps on the fifth ray of science and healing and apostleship and the preaching of the Word.</blockquote>

<blockquote>Often I felt like the hands and the feet and the heart of Hercules, wrestling with the downward spirals of the earth with their atheism, their agnosticism, their intellectual pride and rancor against the prophets and the Holy One of God so recently come into our midst. Yet, all the while I remembered I was once counted among them. To have been once so proud and so deliberate against the will of God would forever burn in my memory the helplessness that we all have in essaying to be instruments of God.</blockquote>

<blockquote>But the great empowering by the Word comes in the hour of the conversion. It is not the hour of the call, but the hour of the conversion when the soul answers with something that is deep. It is the flowing, it is the giving, it is that surrender when, as He said, “It is hard for thee to kick against the pricks....”<ref>Acts 9:5.</ref></blockquote>

<blockquote>My soul knew Him as of old and recalled to my outer mind the memory of the inner vow. It was not the first time I had seen the Lord Christ. I had seen him before taking incarnation, and yet I had to work through that pride, that karma on the fifth ray of much learning, much studying and superiority in social and intellectual standing that I had in regard to the early Christians. And so it was my own karma that was upon me whereby I was resisting the call.<ref>Hilarion, December 29, 1976, “The Personal Saviour, The Personal Guru,” in {{LSR}}, book 2, pp. 171–73.</ref></blockquote>

<blockquote>If the light that is in thee be filled with the momentum of God and if the gears of the [[chakra]]s be oiled with the holy oil of Gilead, then by the very vibration of your life you can intensify the currents of God, you can be one with God, you can be God incarnate as Jesus Christ was.</blockquote>

<blockquote>This is what I learned from him as he became my inner and outer Guru. This is what I understood: that I, too, could become the Christ as the instrument of the Saviour—that where I walked he would walk, that where I stood he would heal, that where I spoke he would speak. This I learned, and yet I understood the unworthiness of the lesser self in the state of sin that is made worthy by grace, by [[transmutation]], by fiery baptism and by the balancing of karma in service to Life.<ref>Hilarion, December 29, 1977, “Transference of the Healing Flame,” in {{LSR}}, book 1, pp. 203–4.</ref></blockquote>