assurance

100:2.7Je­sus por­trayed the pro­found surety of the God-know­ing mor­tal when he said: “To a God-know­ing king­dom be­liever, what does it mat­ter if all things earthly crash?” Tem­po­ral se­cu­ri­ties are vul­ner­a­ble, but spir­i­tual sureties are im­preg­nable. When the flood tides of hu­man ad­ver­sity, self­ish­ness, cru­elty, hate, mal­ice, and jeal­ousy beat about the mor­tal soul, you may rest in the as­sur­ance that there is one in­ner bas­tion, the citadel of the spirit, which is ab­so­lutely unas­sail­able; at least this is true of ev­ery hu­man be­ing who has ded­i­cated the keep­ing of his soul to the in­dwelling spirit of the eter­nal God.

102:7.1The Uni­ver­sal Fa­ther, be­ing self-ex­is­tent, is also self-ex­plana­tory; he ac­tu­ally lives in ev­ery ra­tio­nal mor­tal. But you can­not be sure about God un­less you know him; son­ship is the only ex­pe­ri­ence which makes fa­ther­hood cer­tain. The uni­verse is ev­ery­where un­der­go­ing change. A chang­ing uni­verse is a de­pen­dent uni­verse; such a cre­ation can­not be ei­ther fi­nal or ab­so­lute. A fi­nite uni­verse is wholly de­pen­dent on the Ul­ti­mate and the Ab­so­lute. The uni­verse and God are not iden­ti­cal; one is cause, the other ef­fect. The cause is ab­so­lute, in­fi­nite, eter­nal, and change­less; the ef­fect, time-space and tran­scen­den­tal but ever chang­ing, al­ways grow­ing.

102:7.2God is the one and only self-caused fact in the uni­verse. He is the se­cret of the or­der, plan, and pur­pose of the whole cre­ation of things and be­ings. The ev­ery­where-chang­ing uni­verse is reg­u­lated and sta­bi­lized by ab­so­lutely un­chang­ing laws, the habits of an un­chang­ing God. The fact of God, the di­vine law, is change­less; the truth of God, his re­la­tion to the uni­verse, is a rel­a­tive rev­e­la­tion which is ever adapt­able to the con­stantly evolv­ing uni­verse.

102:7.3Those who would in­vent a re­li­gion with­out God are like those who would gather fruit with­out trees, have chil­dren with­out par­ents. You can­not have ef­fects with­out causes; only the I AM is cause­less. The fact of re­li­gious ex­pe­ri­ence im­plies God, and such a God of per­sonal ex­pe­ri­ence must be a per­sonal De­ity. You can­not pray to a chem­i­cal for­mula, sup­pli­cate a math­e­mat­i­cal equa­tion, wor­ship a hy­poth­e­sis, con­fide in a pos­tu­late, com­mune with a pro­cess, serve an ab­strac­tion, or hold lov­ing fel­low­ship with a law.

102:7.4True, many ap­par­ently re­li­gious traits can grow out of non­re­li­gious roots. Man can, in­tel­lec­tu­ally, deny God and yet be morally good, loyal, fil­ial, hon­est, and even ide­al­is­tic. Man may graft many purely hu­man­is­tic branches onto his ba­sic spir­i­tual na­ture and thus ap­par­ently prove his con­tentions in be­half of a god­less re­li­gion, but such an ex­pe­ri­ence is de­void of sur­vival val­ues, God-know­ing­ness and God-as­cen­sion. In such a mor­tal ex­pe­ri­ence only so­cial fruits are forth­com­ing, not spir­i­tual. The graft de­ter­mines the na­ture of the fruit, not­with­stand­ing that the liv­ing sus­te­nance is drawn from the roots of orig­i­nal di­vine en­dow­ment of both mind and spirit.

102:7.5The in­tel­lec­tual ear­mark of re­li­gion is cer­tainty; the phil­o­soph­i­cal char­ac­ter­is­tic is con­sis­tency; the so­cial fruits are love and ser­vice.

102:7.6The God-know­ing in­di­vid­ual is not one who is blind to the dif­fi­cul­ties or un­mind­ful of the ob­sta­cles which stand in the way of find­ing God in the maze of su­per­sti­tion, tra­di­tion, and ma­te­ri­al­is­tic ten­den­cies of mod­ern times. He has en­coun­tered all these de­ter­rents and tri­umphed over them, sur­mounted them by liv­ing faith, and at­tained the high­lands of spir­i­tual ex­pe­ri­ence in spite of them. But it is true that many who are in­wardly sure about God fear to as­sert such feel­ings of cer­tainty be­cause of the mul­ti­plic­ity and clev­er­ness of those who as­sem­ble ob­jec­tions and mag­nify dif­fi­cul­ties about be­liev­ing in God. It re­quires no great depth of in­tel­lect to pick flaws, ask ques­tions, or raise ob­jec­tions. But it does re­quire bril­liance of mind to an­swer these ques­tions and solve these dif­fi­cul­ties; faith cer­tainty is the great­est tech­nique for deal­ing with all such su­per­fi­cial con­tentions.

102:7.7If sci­ence, phi­los­o­phy, or so­ci­ol­ogy dares to be­come dog­matic in con­tend­ing with the proph­ets of true re­li­gion, then should God-know­ing men re­ply to such un­war­ranted dog­ma­tism with that more farsee­ing dog­ma­tism of the cer­tainty of per­sonal spir­i­tual ex­pe­ri­ence, “I know what I have ex­pe­ri­enced be­cause I am a son of I AM.” If the per­sonal ex­pe­ri­ence of a faither is to be chal­lenged by dogma, then this faith-born son of the ex­pe­ri­en­ci­ble Fa­ther may re­ply with that un­chal­lenge­able dogma, the state­ment of his ac­tual son­ship with the Uni­ver­sal Fa­ther.

102:7.8Only an un­qual­i­fied re­al­ity, an ab­so­lute, could dare con­sis­tently to be dog­matic. Those who as­sume to be dog­matic must, if con­sis­tent, sooner or later be driven into the arms of the Ab­so­lute of en­ergy, the Uni­ver­sal of truth, and the In­fi­nite of love.

102:7.9If the non­re­li­gious ap­proaches to cos­mic re­al­ity pre­sume to chal­lenge the cer­tainty of faith on the grounds of its un­proved sta­tus, then the spirit ex­pe­ri­encer can like­wise re­sort to the dog­matic chal­lenge of the facts of sci­ence and the be­liefs of phi­los­o­phy on the grounds that they are like­wise un­proved; they are like­wise ex­pe­ri­ences in the con­scious­ness of the sci­en­tist or the philoso­pher.

102:7.10Of God, the most in­es­cap­able of all pres­ences, the most real of all facts, the most liv­ing of all truths, the most lov­ing of all friends, and the most di­vine of all val­ues, we have the right to be the most cer­tain of all uni­verse ex­pe­ri­ences.

142:5.1One of the great ser­mons which Je­sus preached in the tem­ple this Pass­over week was in an­swer to a ques­tion asked by one of his hear­ers, a man from Da­mas­cus. This man asked Je­sus: “But, Rabbi, how shall we know of a cer­tainty that you are sent by God, and that we may truly en­ter into this king­dom which you and your dis­ci­ples de­clare is near at hand?” And Je­sus an­swered:

142:5.2“As to my mes­sage and the teach­ing of my dis­ci­ples, you should judge them by their fruits. If we pro­claim to you the truths of the spirit, the spirit will wit­ness in your hearts that our mes­sage is gen­uine. Con­cern­ing the king­dom and your as­sur­ance of ac­cep­tance by the heav­enly Fa­ther, let me ask what fa­ther among you who is a wor­thy and kind­hearted fa­ther would keep his son in anx­i­ety or sus­pense re­gard­ing his sta­tus in the fam­ily or his place of se­cu­rity in the af­fec­tions of his fa­ther’s heart? Do you earth fa­thers take plea­sure in tor­tur­ing your chil­dren with un­cer­tainty about their place of abid­ing love in your hu­man hearts? Nei­ther does your Fa­ther in heaven leave his faith chil­dren of the spirit in doubt­ful un­cer­tainty as to their po­si­tion in the king­dom. If you re­ceive God as your Fa­ther, then in­deed and in truth are you the sons of God. And if you are sons, then are you se­cure in the po­si­tion and stand­ing of all that con­cerns eter­nal and di­vine son­ship. If you be­lieve my words, you thereby be­lieve in Him who sent me, and by thus be­liev­ing in the Fa­ther, you have made your sta­tus in heav­enly cit­i­zen­ship sure. If you do the will of the Fa­ther in heaven, you shall never fail in the at­tain­ment of the eter­nal life of prog­ress in the di­vine king­dom.

142:5.3“The Su­preme Spirit shall bear wit­ness with your spir­its that you are truly the chil­dren of God. And if you are the sons of God, then have you been born of the spirit of God; and whoso­ever has been born of the spirit has in him­self the power to over­come all doubt, and this is the vic­tory that over­comes all un­cer­tainty, even your faith.

142:5.4“Said the Prophet Isa­iah, speak­ing of these times: ‘When the spirit is poured upon us from on high, then shall the work of righ­teous­ness be­come peace, quiet­ness, and as­sur­ance for­ever.’ And for all who truly be­lieve this gospel, I will be­come surety for their re­cep­tion into the eter­nal mer­cies and the ev­er­last­ing life of my Fa­ther’s king­dom. You, then, who hear this mes­sage and be­lieve this gospel of the king­dom are the sons of God, and you have life ev­er­last­ing; and the ev­i­dence to all the world that you have been born of the spirit is that you sin­cerely love one an­other.”

142:5.5The throng of lis­ten­ers re­mained many hours with Je­sus, ask­ing him ques­tions and lis­ten­ing at­ten­tively to his com­fort­ing an­swers. Even the apos­tles were em­bold­ened by Je­sus’ teach­ing to preach the gospel of the king­dom with more power and as­sur­ance. This ex­pe­ri­ence at Je­ru­sa­lem was a great in­spi­ra­tion to the twelve. It was their first con­tact with such enor­mous crowds, and they learned many valu­able lessons which proved of great as­sis­tance in their later work.

117:6.8All soul-evolv­ing hu­mans are lit­er­ally the evo­lu­tion­ary sons of God the Fa­ther and God the Mother, the Su­preme Be­ing. But un­til such time as mor­tal man be­comes soul-con­scious of his di­vine her­itage, this as­sur­ance of De­ity kin­ship must be faith re­al­ized. Hu­man life ex­pe­ri­ence is the cos­mic co­coon in which the uni­verse en­dow­ments of the Su­preme Be­ing and the uni­verse pres­ence of the Uni­ver­sal Fa­ther (none of which are per­son­al­i­ties) are evolv­ing the mor­ontia soul of time and the hu­man-di­vine fi­nal­i­ter char­ac­ter of uni­verse des­tiny and eter­nal ser­vice.

102:1.1The work of the Thought Ad­juster con­sti­tutes the ex­pla­na­tion of the trans­la­tion of man’s prim­i­tive and evo­lu­tion­ary sense of duty into that higher and more cer­tain faith in the eter­nal re­al­i­ties of rev­e­la­tion. There must be per­fec­tion hunger in man’s heart to in­sure ca­pac­ity for com­pre­hend­ing the faith paths to su­preme at­tain­ment. If any man chooses to do the di­vine will, he shall know the way of truth. It is lit­er­ally true, “Hu­man things must be known in or­der to be loved, but di­vine things must be loved in or­der to be known.” But hon­est doubts and sin­cere ques­tion­ings are not sin; such at­ti­tudes merely spell de­lay in the pro­gres­sive jour­ney to­ward per­fec­tion at­tain­ment. Child­like trust se­cures man’s en­trance into the king­dom of heav­enly as­cent, but prog­ress is wholly de­pen­dent on the vig­or­ous ex­er­cise of the ro­bust and con­fi­dent faith of the full-grown man.

102:1.2The rea­son of sci­ence is based on the ob­serv­able facts of time; the faith of re­li­gion ar­gues from the spirit pro­gram of eter­nity. What knowl­edge and rea­son can­not do for us, true wis­dom ad­mon­ishes us to al­low faith to ac­com­plish through re­li­gious in­sight and spir­i­tual trans­for­ma­tion.

102:1.3Ow­ing to the iso­la­tion of re­bel­lion, the rev­e­la­tion of truth on Uran­tia has all too of­ten been mixed up with the state­ments of par­tial and tran­sient cos­molo­gies. Truth re­mains un­changed from gen­er­a­tion to gen­er­a­tion, but the as­so­ci­ated teach­ings about the phys­i­cal world vary from day to day and from year to year. Eter­nal truth should not be slighted be­cause it chances to be found in com­pany with ob­so­lete ideas re­gard­ing the ma­te­rial world. The more of sci­ence you know, the less sure you can be; the more of re­li­gion you have, the more cer­tain you are.

102:1.4The cer­tain­ties of sci­ence pro­ceed en­tirely from the in­tel­lect; the cer­ti­tudes of re­li­gion spring from the very foun­da­tions of the en­tire per­son­al­ity. Sci­ence ap­peals to the un­der­stand­ing of the mind; re­li­gion ap­peals to the loy­alty and de­vo­tion of the body, mind, and spirit, even to the whole per­son­al­ity.

102:1.5God is so all real and ab­so­lute that no ma­te­rial sign of proof or no dem­on­stra­tion of so-called mir­a­cle may be of­fered in tes­ti­mony of his re­al­ity. Al­ways will we know him be­cause we trust him, and our be­lief in him is wholly based on our per­sonal par­tic­i­pa­tion in the di­vine man­i­fes­ta­tions of his in­fi­nite re­al­ity.

102:1.6The in­dwelling Thought Ad­juster un­fail­ingly arouses in man’s soul a true and search­ing hunger for per­fec­tion to­gether with a far-reach­ing cu­rios­ity which can be ad­e­quately sat­is­fied only by com­mu­nion with God, the di­vine source of that Ad­juster. The hun­gry soul of man re­fuses to be sat­is­fied with any­thing less than the per­sonal re­al­iza­tion of the liv­ing God. What­ever more God may be than a high and per­fect moral per­son­al­ity, he can­not, in our hun­gry and fi­nite con­cept, be any­thing less.

34:6.12And when such a life of spirit guid­ance is freely and in­tel­li­gently ac­cepted, there grad­u­ally de­vel­ops within the hu­man mind a pos­i­tive con­scious­ness of di­vine con­tact and as­sur­ance of spirit com­mu­nion; sooner or later “the Spirit bears wit­ness with your spirit (the Ad­juster) that you are a child of God.” Al­ready has your own Thought Ad­juster told you of your kin­ship to God so that the rec­ord tes­ti­fies that the Spirit bears wit­ness “with your spirit,” not to your spirit.

146:3.4And Je­sus said to Thomas: “Your as­sur­ance that you have en­tered into the king­dom fam­ily of the Fa­ther, and that you will eter­nally sur­vive with the chil­dren of the king­dom, is wholly a mat­ter of per­sonal ex­pe­ri­ence—faith in the word of truth. Spir­i­tual as­sur­ance is the equiv­a­lent of your per­sonal re­li­gious ex­pe­ri­ence in the eter­nal re­al­i­ties of di­vine truth and is oth­er­wise equal to your in­tel­li­gent un­der­stand­ing of truth re­al­i­ties plus your spir­i­tual faith and mi­nus your hon­est doubts.

111:7.1Un­cer­tainty with se­cu­rity is the essence of the Par­a­dise ad­ven­ture—un­cer­tainty in time and in mind, un­cer­tainty as to the events of the un­fold­ing Par­a­dise as­cent; se­cu­rity in spirit and in eter­nity, se­cu­rity in the un­qual­i­fied trust of the crea­ture son in the di­vine com­pas­sion and in­fi­nite love of the Uni­ver­sal Fa­ther; un­cer­tainty as an in­ex­pe­ri­enced cit­i­zen of the uni­verse; se­cu­rity as an as­cend­ing son in the uni­verse man­sions of an all-pow­er­ful, all-wise, and all-lov­ing Fa­ther.

118:6.8To rec­og­nize De­ity om­nipo­tence is to en­joy se­cu­rity in your ex­pe­ri­ence of cos­mic cit­i­zen­ship, to pos­sess as­sur­ance of safety in the long jour­ney to Par­a­dise. But to ac­cept the fal­lacy of om­nif­i­cence is to em­brace the colos­sal er­ror of pan­the­ism.

194:0.1About one o’clock, as the one hun­dred and twenty be­liev­ers were en­gaged in prayer, they all be­came aware of a strange pres­ence in the room. At the same time these dis­ci­ples all be­came con­scious of a new and pro­found sense of spir­i­tual joy, se­cu­rity, and con­fi­dence. This new con­scious­ness of spir­i­tual strength was im­me­di­ately fol­lowed by a strong urge to go out and pub­licly pro­claim the gospel of the king­dom and the good news that Je­sus had risen from the dead.

70:9.1Na­ture con­fers no rights on man, only life and a world in which to live it. Na­ture does not even con­fer the right to live, as might be de­duced by con­sid­er­ing what would likely hap­pen if an un­armed man met a hun­gry tiger face to face in the prim­i­tive for­est. So­ci­ety’s prime gift to man is se­cu­rity.

102:2.2One of the char­ac­ter­is­tic pe­cu­liar­i­ties of gen­uine re­li­gious as­sur­ance is that, not­with­stand­ing the ab­so­lute­ness of its af­fir­ma­tions and the stanch­ness of its at­ti­tude, the spirit of its ex­pres­sion is so poised and tem­pered that it never con­veys the slight­est im­pres­sion of self-as­ser­tion or ego­is­tic ex­al­ta­tion. The wis­dom of re­li­gious ex­pe­ri­ence is some­thing of a para­dox in that it is both hu­manly orig­i­nal and Ad­juster deriva­tive. Re­li­gious force is not the prod­uct of the in­di­vid­ual’s per­sonal pre­rog­a­tives but rather the out­work­ing of that sub­lime part­ner­ship of man and the ev­er­last­ing source of all wis­dom. Thus do the words and acts of true and un­de­filed re­li­gion be­come com­pellingly au­thor­i­ta­tive for all en­light­ened mor­tals.