Vol. 58 No. 22 - Beloved Elizabeth Clare Prophet - November 15, 2015
Apostles All
Your Place in Apostolic Succession
“Tarry Ye in the City of Jerusalem
until Ye Be Endued with Power from on High”
Part 2
Even until the final culmination of the mission of our Lord, he was no exception to temptation but he was tried by God. He was no exception to persecution by the fallen ones and the Adversary. He was not exempted from the crucifixion, from the agony on the cross. And finally, having passed through all of these, which are specific steps of initiation, he came to the place where he said, “All power in heaven and in earth is given unto me.”1 All power in heaven and in earth is given unto me.
That means the full potential of Spirit, the full potential of Matter—the fullness of the Father-Mother God as the spiritual cosmos and the material cosmos. This is the gift which God is waiting to bestow on every son and daughter of God who will elect to be a joint heir with Christ and have the courage to defy the tempter, the same tempter who said to Siddhartha, “You have no right to be pursuing God consciousness.”2 That same tempter tempts the Christian with the lie, “You have no right to be the Christ. You blaspheme the name of the Lord.”
They told Jesus that. The same tempters who assailed Siddhartha assailed Jesus. He said he was the Son of God and they were furious with him: “How dare you proclaim yourself to be the Son of God, thereby making yourself equal with God!”
And Jesus said to them, “Is it not written in your law, ‘I said, Ye are gods’?3 Then why do you accuse me when I say I am the Son of God?” And they were silenced in their argument. So let us silence the fallen ones, who would tear us from our inheritance as joint heirs with Christ. If we do not claim that inheritance, claim it because we are the children of the Most High, we will not attain to the fullness of the stature of Christ. And if we do not attain to the Christ consciousness, we will not be eligible to receive the Holy Ghost.
The Initiation of the Descent
“Now that he ascended, what is it but that he also descended first into the lower parts of the earth?”4 This concerns the initiation of all the sons and daughters of God who return unto the I AM Presence in the ritual of the ascension. After the crucifixion, after the apparent death in Matter, the soul descends into the astral plane, into the very depths of hell, to preach to the fallen ones, to stand as a witness unto Christ, that by the flame of Christ they, too, can be saved.
We are daily experiencing our crucifixions with our Lord. We are willing to be on that cross because we know that he is there. We must understand this initiation also because it has to do with our being apostles. We are called by Jesus to bear witness of him “unto the uttermost part of the earth,”5 referring to his descent into hell. We are called to preach to the fallen ones, to show them the opportunity to be the Christ. And thereby, before they pass through the second death in the Final Judgment, they can have the continuous opportunity to see and to know that with God all things are possible, that they, by the power of the Christ flame, can also be saved.
There are times when you also need to endure the initiation of the dark night. Someday you may ask yourself, “Why am I suffering?” You may repeat the words of Christ, “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?”6 And that is the moment, when you are on the cross, of the dark night of the Spirit, when you must show your utter dependence upon the Christ consciousness within—when for a few moments in eternity you are cut off from the I AM Presence so that you can prove your absolute loyalty and oneness with God by your own inner flame.
There are many periods of suffering that lead up to the initiation of the dark night of the Spirit. When you come to these periods, you may be going through episodes in the dark night of the soul, which are preparation for the dark night of the Spirit. It is important to remember that this is part of the Path. It is not unusual; you are not an exception. It is not because God does not love you or because you are a miserable sinner that you cannot feel the fullness of the warmth of the noonday sun, but instead you feel enveloped in dark clouds. It is not because somehow you are an exception to the whole world but because God is fulfilling himself in you.
God is fulfilling the way of the cross, the initiation of the fourteen stations. He wants you to become more of himself and so he is providing the ritual of the rebirth day by day. And therefore, having gone through the sacred initiation, the initiation which is number thirty in the way,7 you will come down from the cross and you will be required to go and preach to the rebellious ones.
This is your mission as an apostle. For Jesus it lasted a number of hours while he was in the tomb. For you it may last years or decades, because initiations are shortened and lengthened according to the need of the soul to be tutored. When you realize that it is a requirement of the Law for you to take the next initiation—that it is a requirement, it is a pattern, it is a path that all of the saints have walked (like a path with snow that has been packed down and padded with the footsteps of the saints)—you get on that path. You leap for joy and you say, “I am going to place my feet where the saints have trod, where Christ has walked. I am worthy to walk where he has walked.”
Christ within You Is Worthy
The sense of worthiness is something that the fallen ones have taken from Christians. What in you is worthy to receive God? Of course not that which has the sense of sin or of the sinful, but Christ within you is worthy to be Christ. And since we have established that Christ is able to be in you, for God has ordained it, then you must feel the worthiness of that Christ. Then you must begin to defend your right to be Christ against all lies, all doctrine, all dogma, whether they are two thousand years old or a hundred years old or a month old.
Time does not sanctify a lie, an error. If we have believed a lie for a thousand years, then let us not allow our pride or our ambition to make us sustain the lie. That is the trap that the fallen ones are into. They have committed their egos and their identity to the lie. They dare not say, “I was wrong. I made a mistake.” But it is better to make a mistake and admit it than the alternative. As Paul says, “They believed a lie and their damnation is just.”8
How could the apostle Paul say that the damnation of the children of God was just? Because he understood free will. By their free will they accepted the lie. By their free will they made that lie the law of their life, and that lie became the law of sin unto death.
So souls demanded free will. They used that free will to go against the Christ flame; therefore it is just that they be condemned. But they are condemned only so long as they believe the lie.
Once you see through the lie of this weight of sin that the fallen ones have placed as condemnation on the children of God, you are no longer condemned by it because you are free from it. It goes poof! It is dissolved in a moment. And you stand on your feet, you hold your shoulders erect, and you say, “I am a son of God, worthy to be initiated, worthy to walk the Path with Christ. And I will, by God’s grace.”
The Oneness of the Body of God
And he gave some, apostles; and some, prophets; and some, evangelists; and some, pastors and teachers;
For the perfecting of the saints, for the work of the ministry, for the edifying of the body of Christ:
Till we all come in the unity of the faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of God, unto a perfect man, unto the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ:
That we henceforth be no more children, tossed to and fro, and carried about with every wind of doctrine, by the sleight of men, and cunning craftiness, whereby they lie in wait to deceive;
But speaking the truth in love, may grow up into him in all things, which is the head, even Christ:
From whom the whole body fitly joined together and compacted by that which every joint supplieth, according to the effectual working in the measure of every part, maketh increase of the body unto the edifying of itself in love.9
In these words, Paul is conveying how the cells in the body of God are interdependent. Indeed, as we go through our initiations on the Path, we need each other.
Why doesn’t God give to us wholeness before he puts us through the chastening process of initiation? Because he does not want us to be satisfied within ourselves. He wants us to have to turn to the person on the right and the person on the left and say in all humility, “I need you. I can’t live without you. I can’t fulfill my mission without the God that is in you. Friend, brother, sister, pilgrim on life’s journey, I need you. Help me.” How difficult it is for many to say this. Can you look at the person next to you, whether friend or foe, known or unknown, and say in all humility, “I need you. Help me”? That is what God wants, because when we have a need for love, to give and receive love, then we will work as one body. But when we have no need for sharing love, then there will not be the flow of cosmic consciousness among us.
When we have the sense of the body of God, the oneness of God, we work together. Even in silence we understand one another’s needs and we supply them. We understand the concept of each of us fulfilling our part to bring into manifestation the kingdom of God, the New Jerusalem, the City Foursquare.
It is necessary to understand the concept of the many members of the body of God as Paul gave it to the Ephesians: “There is one body and one spirit even as ye are called in one hope of your calling.”10 This is the mystical body of God. As we commune together, we commune in the oneness of that body. It is a consciousness of wholeness. In time and space we fulfill aspects of that wholeness, and by the grace of the Holy Spirit we are made whole in the pursuit of our calling. There is “one Lord, one faith, one baptism.”11
This is not an invitation to mankind to create doctrine and dogma. This must be read with the Holy Spirit. The one Lord of Christ, the one Son of God, said, “This is my body which was broken for you.”12 The fragments of the Christ consciousness can instantaneously anchor within you the whole loaf of that consciousness. We must have the understanding that the Christ—as a totality of oneness, as the one Son of God, as the Second Person of the Trinity—is able to manifest personally to you as your Christ Self and is not the exclusive ownership of one or any son of God.
This does not deprive Jesus from being the fullness of the Son of God, nor does it take from Saint Francis or Mary the Mother or Pope John or you your essential wholeness. Why must we consider that God is so limited that the fullness of the stature of Christ Jesus cannot be within us all?
The fallen ones use the illusion of time and space to confuse the true teaching. In time and space we appear separate, but in infinity we know instantaneously that we are the body of God. We are not separate. Our hearts are one. We burn with the love of the presence of our Lord together.
The Nine Gifts of the Holy Spirit
Even as we are one, each of us makes our own way on the spiritual path, praying that we might be prepared to receive the gifts of the Holy Spirit. We may be mindful of them no matter what our form of worship, our church, our calling or our profession. Let us pray for these gifts, yet not for the gifts themselves but for the path that leads to preparedness to receive the gift. We cannot be denied the gift for which we are prepared, because God never violates his own law.
Cosmic law is the fulfillment of God. Things equal to the same thing are equal to each other. If the anchoring of light within us is equal to the light that is in the gift, we will attract that gift and the Holy Spirit will grace our temple as God wills it.
The first gift of the Holy Spirit is the utterance of wisdom, and the second is the utterance of knowledge. There is a difference. Wisdom is the understanding of the planes of Spirit and the things of the Spirit. Knowledge is the understanding of Matter and the things of Matter. Wisdom is the love of the Father that comes from the heart. Knowledge is the science of Mother, the understanding of the planes in which we live.
The third gift is faith. The fourth is healing. The fifth is miracles, which is the alchemy of Christ. The sixth is prophecy.
The seventh gift of the Spirit is discernment of spirits, discerning who and what is acting, not confusing discarnates for the Holy Spirit. The eighth gift is diverse kinds of tongues, and these are the tongues of angels, but not of fallen angels. And the ninth gift is the interpretation of tongues.
The fallen angels come and they speak with tongues that have, you might say, a very heavy accent. They came forth from the original tongues of angels, but it is a perverted speech by those who have perverted the energy flow of the Word incarnate. We must have discernment of spirits to discern the tongues. We must be careful that we do not rush in where angels fear to tread, demanding the gift of speaking in tongues before we have the other seven gifts.
The Gift of Grace
Let us be filled with the Holy Ghost. Let us pray for the Holy Ghost to give us the understanding of sacred scripture. The one God and Father of all, who is above all and through all and in you all, that one God is the I AM THAT I AM, who appeared as the flame.13
Our God is the consuming fire.14 The flaming Presence of God is the Divine Monad, above all as the I AM Presence, through all as the all-pervasive essence of the Holy Spirit, in you all as the threefold flame in your heart. It cannot be denied. It cannot be taken from you except you yourself deny it, and denial of that flame is the sin against the Holy Spirit which cannot be forgiven until it is forsaken.15 For when you deny your divinity by free will, it is taken from you. And therefore you suffer from the law of sin that is of your own creating.
And so unto every one of us is given grace according to the measure of the gift of Christ.16 What is grace? It is the oil, the unguent, that is poured upon our head as we, too, are prepared with our Lord for the crucifixion. Grace is the intangible quality that works miracles every day in our lives. Grace is the movement of God among the members of God. Grace is the joy, the living, the thanksgiving. It is the appreciation of love. It is the sudden manifestation in our lives of something that is a gift of God, the unexpected, or an achievement that we thought we ourselves were incapable of achieving, but by God’s grace he filled us with a flame and the victory came.
“Wherefore he sayeth when he ascended up on high, he led captivity captive and gave gifts unto men.”17 Those who were captive of the carnal mind were made captive of the Christ consciousness when he ascended. When he ascended, those who were in bondage to the carnal mind received the Holy Ghost and were transformed.
The Apostles on the Cosmic Clock
We are all, indeed, called to be apostles. Although the Christian Church was built on the foundation of both the apostles and the prophets, there is a distinction between the two. While the prophet was God’s spokesman to the believing Church, the apostle was his envoy to the unbelieving world. It is to unbelievers, to those who know not the Christ within, that the apostle must have the courage to preach. There are many, many more apostles than prophets in the true Church.
Now, there is a pattern and a blueprint for the twelve apostles, who each occupy a specific position in cosmic hierarchy. Just as we are all born under one hierarchy of the sun, one of the signs of astrology, so we are born to fulfill the mission of one of the original twelve apostles.
You can determine by your birth date which apostle you will receive the flame of apostolic succession from. Once you understand that you are fulfilling the line of apostolic succession, then you need to call, in the name of Jesus Christ, to God Almighty to give you the mantle of that apostle.
What is the mantle? Remember, mantle means momentum. Elisha received the mantle of Elijah, his teacher. Elijah told him, “If you see me when I ascend, then a double portion of my spirit will fall upon you.” So Elisha’s cape was the cape of Elijah. Elijah’s cape fell upon Elisha and he smote the waters and they parted, and all the prophets of Israel acknowledged him as a true prophet.18
Now, you are not looking for acknowledgment, but you are looking to be endued with power from on high as a signal of the commencement of your apostleship. And so you must seek the one whose mantle you are to wear, whose momentum of service can be bequeathed to you if you pray for it in the name of Jesus Christ.
The twelve apostles came forth to represent twelve cosmic hierarchies around the central sun who was Christ Jesus, the one who showed forth all of the twelve aspects of the Christ consciousness and therefore had passed the initiations to stand in the center of the circle. The Christ standing in the center holds the balance for all twelve.
We are born under the sign of the hierarchy who gives us our initiations in the Christ consciousness. The apostle on that line is the one whose mantle you would wear. So whatever sign you are born under, you can strive to get to know the apostle on that line of the clock. When you have their names, you can do your research and study these apostles and their lives, including their weaknesses and their strengths.
Not all of the apostles made their ascension. But it doesn’t matter whether or not the apostle of your line ascended, because it is the office in hierarchy, the mantle of the God flame, and the momentum of the causal body, the good works, of that apostle that come to you. We are calling, then, to fulfill the office of that apostle where that apostle has failed and where that one has succeeded.
The apostle on the twelve o’clock line of Capricorn is Andrew, the brother of Simon Peter and a disciple of John the Baptist. Capricorn is the first sign in the etheric quadrant of the clock, the quadrant that contains the divine blueprint. For the clock of disciples, this would be the etheric blueprint of Jesus’ mission. Andrew was the first disciple called to this mission and he responded.
Philip of Bethsaida is on the one o’clock line of Aquarius. Thomas is on the two o’clock line of Pisces. He was cautious and questioning, doubting the reality of his Lord. The line of Pisces presents the opportunity to overcome doubt and fear. Having this goal, you can strive to not take so seriously your doubts and fears but to see them as testing and temptation. You can see them as an opportunity for overcoming, that you might better see and know the Christ.
Simon Peter is on the three o’clock line, for all those born under the sign of Aries. Although he was the foundation of the Church, he had an impetuous nature, which reflects a certain amount of pride of the ego. Impetuosity is a trait that we on the Path would do well to guard against.
For good or for bad, for better or for worse, Peter was the Vicar of Christ. He had great virtues and he had weaknesses. And we can see certain seeds of his weaknesses that have come down through the Church, just as we see his strengths. Bartholomew is on the four o’clock line of Taurus. On the five o’clock line of Gemini is Matthew. James the Greater is under the hierarchy of Cancer on the six o’clock line. James had a great deal to do with the building of the Church. Jude, also called Thaddaeus, is on the seven o’clock line of Leo. James the Less, the first bishop of Jerusalem, is on the eight o’clock line, for those under the sign of Virgo. John the Beloved is on the nine o’clock line under the sign of Libra.
Judas Iscariot is on the ten o’clock line of Scorpio, succeeded by Matthais after his betrayal and suicide.19 On the eleven o’clock line of Sagittarius is Simon the Canaanite.
Judas failed the test of Scorpio, which is the test of selflessness on the ten o’clock line. This is called the test of the ten, and it is the most difficult of all the twelve. This test comes to every one of us. It is the temptation to forsake the cause of the light, of the Christ, for human comfort, human pleasure, human concern, selfishness and self-love. Judas was so remorseful of his betrayal of the Christ that when he reembodied in his next life he became a flawless devotee of Christ. And so he passed many of his initiations and he earned the right to ascend. We see, then, that God can forgive to the uttermost. If God can forgive the betrayer, he can forgive us all of our sins.
This clock is like Ezekiel’s wheels within wheels.20 When you look at all the little wheels on the gas meter, there is a clock on every line. Similarly, there is another little clock all tied up inside of Capricorn, Aquarius and all of the other lines on the clock. So while you are pursuing apostleship and testing on any specific line of the clock, you are still walking around the entire clock and going through the tests and temptations of all the disciples. So as you are aware of the line of the clock of your birth sign, you need to also be aware of all the other lines of the clock.
Whatever line of the clock your birth sign is on, you can call for the causal body attainment of the apostle on that line to be transferred to you as a mantle and a momentum of victory. So the attainment and the good works that the apostles did manifest are yours for the calling, yours for the asking, by the fiat in the name of the Christ.
Now, while not all of those who were with Jesus made their ascension, two of them, only two, did ascend at the conclusion of that life. One was Jesus’ mother, Mary, and the other was John the Beloved. And John was the apostle who had the greatest love. By love he conquered all, with Christ.
The other apostles reembodied. Some of them have continued to reincarnate until this century. And therefore the command of Jesus “Tarry ye in the city of Jerusalem until ye be endued with power from on high” had a different meaning for them. They have tarried two thousand years in Matter, waiting for the coming of the Holy Ghost. Some of them had a mission to fulfill in the twentieth century and they could not ascend because their blueprint, their divine plan, had not been fulfilled. Others continue to reincarnate through willfulness, stubbornness, resistance to the Christ. And so they continue to make karma and to have karma to balance.
When we occupy the position of an apostle of the Church, let us remember that those who come after us will suffer from our weaknesses and will be borne up by our strengths. And so we want to overcome our weaknesses and build up our strengths. Our teacher Jesus wants us to excel and to accelerate the God flame and the crystallization of that God flame.
Be God Where You Are
I bid you, then, concern yourself with apostleship. Concern yourself with being worthy to be apostles for Christ. Accelerate your path of initiation. Get God where you are and throw out everything that impedes your getting of God. Accelerate going into the fiery core of you own Christ consciousness. Put your house in order. Bring yourself into alignment with the sacred Word. Be God where you are. Speak with authority as Jesus did and not as the scribes.
We don’t want to be scribes and Pharisees. We want to be apostles for Christ. We, each one, are called to this mission.
“The Summit Lighthouse Sheds Its Radiance o’er All the World to Manifest as Pearls of Wisdom.”
This Pearl of Wisdom is a compilation of excerpts from the lecture “Apostles All,” delivered by the Messenger of the Great White Brotherhood Elizabeth Clare Prophet on January 25, 1976, in Minneapolis, Minnesota.
1. Matt. 28:18.
2. As Siddhartha Gautama (soon to be the Buddha) sat beneath the Bo tree, where he had vowed to remain until fully illumined, Mara, the Evil One, tempted him with visions of desire and death, finally challenging his right to be doing what he was doing. Gautama, who remained unmoved, responded by tapping the earth with the “earth-touching” mudra (left hand upturned in lap, right hand pointed downward, touching the earth) and the earth thundered her answer: “I bear you witness!” All the LORD’s hosts and elemental beings acclaimed his right to pursue the enlightenment of the Buddha, whereupon Mara fled.
3. John 10:34-36; Ps. 82:6.
4. Eph. 4:9.
5. Acts 1:8.
6. Matt. 27: 46; Mark 15:34.
7. The initiation which is number thirty. In order to make the ascension, every soul must pass through thirty-three steps of initiation, which unfold as the four times seven plus five. They are the fourfold initiations of the four cosmic forces on each of the seven rays plus the five steps of the five secret rays. The five steps are the water baptism, the fire baptism (called the transfiguration), the crucifixion, the resurrection and the ascension.
8. II Thess. 2:11, 12.
9. Eph. 4:11-16.
10. Eph. 4:4.
11. Eph. 4:5.
12. Matt. 26:26; Mark 14:22; Luke 22:19; I Cor. 10:16, 17; 11:23, 24.
13. Exod. 3:2, 13-15.
14. Heb. 12:29; Deut. 4:24.
15. Matt. 12:31, 32; Mark 3:28, 29; Luke 12:10.
16. Eph. 4:7.
17. Eph. 4:8.
18. II Kings 2:9-15.
19. Acts 1:23-26.
20. Ezek. 1:15, 16.
Copyright © 2015 Summit Publications, Inc. All rights reserved.
Pearls of Wisdom®, the Pearls of Wisdom® masthead, Keepers of the Flame®, The Summit Lighthouse® and The Summit Lighthouse® logo are trademarks registered in the United States Patent and Trademark Office and in other countries. All rights to their use are reserved.