word of God

153:3.2One of the vis­it­ing Phar­isees, mount­ing a lamp­stand, shouted out this ques­tion: “You tell us that you are the bread of life. How can you give us your flesh to eat or your blood to drink? What avail is your teach­ing if it can­not be car­ried out?” And Je­sus an­swered this ques­tion, say­ing: “I did not teach you that my flesh is the bread of life nor that my blood is the wa­ter thereof. But I did say that my life in the flesh is a be­stowal of the bread of heaven. The fact of the Word of God be­stowed in the flesh and the phe­nom­e­non of the Son of Man sub­ject to the will of God, con­sti­tute a re­al­ity of ex­pe­ri­ence which is equiv­a­lent to the di­vine sus­te­nance. You can­not eat my flesh nor can you drink my blood, but you can be­come one in spirit with me even as I am one in spirit with the Fa­ther. You can be nour­ished by the eter­nal word of God, which is in­deed the bread of life, and which has been be­stowed in the like­ness of mor­tal flesh; and you can be wa­tered in soul by the di­vine spirit, which is truly the wa­ter of life. The Fa­ther has sent me into the world to show how he de­sires to in­dwell and di­rect all men; and I have so lived this life in the flesh as to in­spire all men like­wise ever to seek to know and do the will of the in­dwelling heav­enly Fa­ther.”

155:6.12You must cease to seek for the word of God only on the pages of the olden rec­ords of the­o­logic au­thor­ity. Those who are born of the spirit of God shall hence­forth dis­cern the word of God re­gard­less of whence it ap­pears to take ori­gin. Di­vine truth must not be dis­counted be­cause the chan­nel of its be­stowal is ap­par­ently hu­man. Many of your breth­ren have minds which ac­cept the the­ory of God while they spir­i­tu­ally fail to re­al­ize the pres­ence of God. And that is just the rea­son why I have so of­ten taught you that the king­dom of heaven can best be re­al­ized by ac­quir­ing the spir­i­tual at­ti­tude of a sin­cere child. It is not the men­tal im­ma­tu­rity of the child that I com­mend to you but rather the spir­i­tual sim­plic­ity of such an easy-be­liev­ing and fully-trust­ing lit­tle one. It is not so im­por­tant that you should know about the fact of God as that you should in­creas­ingly grow in the abil­ity to feel the pres­ence of God.

10:3.3The di­vine Sons are in­deed the “Word of God,” but the chil­dren of the Spirit are truly the “Act of God.” God speaks through the Son and, with the Son, acts through the In­fi­nite Spirit, while in all uni­verse ac­tiv­i­ties the Son and the Spirit are ex­qui­sitely fra­ter­nal, work­ing as two equal broth­ers with ad­mi­ra­tion and love for an hon­ored and di­vinely re­spected com­mon Fa­ther.

6:0.1The Eter­nal Son is the per­fect and fi­nal ex­pres­sion of the “first” per­sonal and ab­so­lute con­cept of the Uni­ver­sal Fa­ther. Ac­cord­ingly, when­ever and how­ever the Fa­ther per­son­ally and ab­so­lutely ex­presses him­self, he does so through his Eter­nal Son, who ever has been, now is, and ever will be, the liv­ing and di­vine Word. And this Eter­nal Son is res­i­den­tial at the cen­ter of all things, in as­so­ci­a­tion with, and im­me­di­ately en­shroud­ing the per­sonal pres­ence of, the Eter­nal and Uni­ver­sal Fa­ther.

6:1.3The Uni­ver­sal Fa­ther never per­son­ally func­tions as a cre­ator ex­cept in con­junc­tion with the Son or with the co-or­di­nate ac­tion of the Son. Had the New Tes­ta­ment writer re­ferred to the Eter­nal Son, he would have ut­tered the truth when he wrote: “In the be­gin­ning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. All things were made by him, and with­out him was not any­thing made that was made.”

6:2.2The Eter­nal Son is the eter­nal Word of God. He is wholly like the Fa­ther; in fact, the Eter­nal Son is God the Fa­ther per­son­ally man­i­fest to the uni­verse of uni­verses. And thus it was and is and for­ever will be true of the Eter­nal Son and of all the co-or­di­nate Cre­ator Sons: “He who has seen the Son has seen the Fa­ther.”

6:8.3As per­sons you may con­ceive of the Uni­ver­sal Fa­ther and the Eter­nal Son as sep­a­rate in­di­vid­u­als, for they in­deed are; but in the ad­min­is­tra­tion of the uni­verses they are so in­ter­twined and in­ter­re­lated that it is not al­ways pos­si­ble to dis­tin­guish be­tween them. When, in the af­fairs of the uni­verses, the Fa­ther and the Son are en­coun­tered in con­fus­ing in­teras­so­ci­a­tions, it is not al­ways prof­itable to at­tempt to seg­re­gate their op­er­a­tions; merely re­call that God is the ini­ti­at­ing thought and the Son is the ex­pres­sion­ful word. In each lo­cal uni­verse this in­sep­a­ra­bil­ity is per­son­al­ized in the di­vin­ity of the Cre­ator Son, who stands for both Fa­ther and Son to the crea­tures of ten mil­lion in­hab­ited worlds.

14:6.15The Ha­vona worlds and their per­fect in­hab­i­tants are the first and the eter­nally fi­nal dem­on­stra­tion that the Son is the Word of the Fa­ther. Thereby is the con­scious­ness of the Son as an in­fi­nite com­ple­ment of the Fa­ther per­fectly grat­i­fied.

20:5.1The Eter­nal Son is the eter­nal Word of God. The Eter­nal Son is the per­fect ex­pres­sion of the “first” ab­so­lute and in­fi­nite thought of his eter­nal Fa­ther. When a per­sonal du­pli­ca­tion or di­vine ex­ten­sion of this Orig­i­nal Son starts on a be­stowal mis­sion of mor­tal in­car­na­tion, it be­comes lit­er­ally true that the di­vine “Word is made flesh,” and that the Word thus dwells among the lowly be­ings of an­i­mal ori­gin.

56:2.1The Thought-Fa­ther re­al­izes spirit ex­pres­sion in the Word-Son and at­tains re­al­ity ex­pan­sion through Par­a­dise in the far-flung ma­te­rial uni­verses. The spir­i­tual ex­pres­sions of the Eter­nal Son are cor­re­lated with the ma­te­rial lev­els of cre­ation by the func­tions of the In­fi­nite Spirit, by whose spirit-re­spon­sive min­istry of mind, and in whose phys­i­cal-di­rec­tive acts of mind, the spir­i­tual re­al­i­ties of De­ity and the ma­te­rial reper­cus­sions of De­ity are cor­re­lated the one with the other.

179:5.3When they had fin­ished drink­ing this new cup of re­mem­brance, the Mas­ter took up the bread and, af­ter giv­ing thanks, broke it in pieces and, di­rect­ing them to pass it around, said: “Take this bread of re­mem­brance and eat it. I have told you that I am the bread of life. And this bread of life is the united life of the Fa­ther and the Son in one gift. The word of the Fa­ther, as re­vealed in the Son, is in­deed the bread of life.” When they had par­taken of the bread of re­mem­brance, the sym­bol of the liv­ing word of truth in­car­nated in the like­ness of mor­tal flesh, they all sat down.

174:5.7“He who be­lieves this gospel, be­lieves not merely in me but in Him who sent me. When you look upon me, you see not only the Son of Man but also Him who sent me. I am the light of the world, and whoso­ever will be­lieve my teach­ing shall no longer abide in dark­ness. If you gen­tiles will hear me, you shall re­ceive the words of life and shall en­ter forth­with into the joy­ous lib­erty of the truth of son­ship with God. If my fel­low coun­try­men, the Jews, choose to re­ject me and to refuse my teach­ings, I will not sit in judg­ment on them, for I came not to judge the world but to of­fer it sal­va­tion. Nev­er­the­less, they who re­ject me and refuse to re­ceive my teach­ing shall be brought to judg­ment in due sea­son by my Fa­ther and those whom he has ap­pointed to sit in judg­ment on such as re­ject the gift of mercy and the truths of sal­va­tion. Re­mem­ber, all of you, that I speak not of my­self, but that I have faith­fully de­clared to you that which the Fa­ther com­manded I should re­veal to the chil­dren of men. And these words which the Fa­ther di­rected me to speak to the world are words of di­vine truth, ev­er­last­ing mercy, and eter­nal life.

98:7.96. The per­sonal view­point of Paul of Tar­sus. And it should be re­corded that Mith­ra­ism was the dom­i­nant re­li­gion of Tar­sus dur­ing his ado­les­cence. Paul lit­tle dreamed that his well-in­ten­tioned let­ters to his con­verts would some­day be re­garded by still later Chris­tians as the “word of God.” Such well-mean­ing teach­ers must not be held ac­count­able for the use made of their writ­ings by later-day suc­ces­sors.

155:6.2You have come out from among those of your fel­lows who choose to re­main sat­is­fied with a re­li­gion of mind, who crave se­cu­rity and pre­fer con­for­mity. You have elected to ex­change your feel­ings of au­thor­i­ta­tive cer­tainty for the as­sur­ances of the spirit of ad­ven­tur­ous and pro­gres­sive faith. You have dared to protest against the gru­el­ing bond­age of in­sti­tu­tional re­li­gion and to re­ject the au­thor­ity of the tra­di­tions of rec­ord which are now re­garded as the word of God. Our Fa­ther did in­deed speak through Moses, Eli­jah, Isa­iah, Amos, and Hosea, but he did not cease to min­is­ter words of truth to the world when these proph­ets of old made an end of their ut­ter­ances. My Fa­ther is no re­specter of races or gen­er­a­tions in that the word of truth is vouch­safed one age and with­held from an­other. Com­mit not the folly of call­ing that di­vine which is wholly hu­man, and fail not to dis­cern the words of truth which come not through the tra­di­tional or­a­cles of sup­posed in­spi­ra­tion.