1959 New York Closed Class

Tape 293 Side 1

Advanced Instruction In Healing

By Joel Goldsmith

Part 2 of 5

 

        Now, all religions, every religion on the face of the globe has made itself impotent because it has accepted God and devil as being opponents or opposites, as warring with each other, which never has been true, which isn’t true now and never will be. That which you call devil, that which you call a negative power, that which you call evil, must be understood as an impersonal power due only to a belief in two powers, but in and of itself no power. Nothing is good or bad, nothing is good or bad. It’s only your thinking so, or the universal belief in it that makes it so. Actually, there cannot be an infinite God and an opponent of God; there cannot be an infinite God and that which wars with God; and certainly there cannot be an evil condition over which God has no control or in which you have to in some way bribe God to get Him to use His influence to wipe out the disease.

        Now, just as this work of nineteen fifty-nine has a specific purpose, so we must go back to find why. Everyone who comes to this work comes either from Christian Science, from Unity, or from New Thought. That is a perfectly natural thing. In the beginning of this work we had no publishers, and I published our writings, and having no ambition in the line of wanting numbers or followers, they were not advertised. And I was perfectly satisfied to have those find our work who in God’s own way were led to us – without going out to them, without seeking them. And so, not only there was no advertising, there was no promotion, there was no organization, but I never went anywhere to give this message unless I were invited. Never have I asked anyone for the privilege of speaking; never have I gone anywhere to speak unless I was invited there. And, therefore, the message of The Infinite Way moved in a small circle – mostly made up of metaphysicians of one school or another. That was true in this country, and it was true in the beginning in the foreign countries.

        These students, as they read the message of The Infinite Way or heard it, didn’t think to clear their minds of what they knew – to see what message was being presented to them; but, rather, they read the writings with a view to inwardly comparing it with what they already knew; and many cases when it didn’t, they pointed out to me how wrong I was. Now this is a perfectly natural thing; don’t think for a moment that I’m criticizing or judging anyone. This is a natural thing. We read something; we hear something and immediately we go back into our mind to see how it shapes up with what we already know. And then we find points of similarity, or as in this case, we read words like God, mind, principle,treatment, prayer and then we say, “Ah yes, well that’s just like this message or that message; they have the same words in them.” And it is for this reason that so few students ever really understood the message of The Infinite Way.

        Now this same mistake is responsible for the failure of church religions of every denomination in all times throughout history. The reason why religion today – especially church religion – has to be brought up to date, because Jesus Christ was a Hebrew Rabbi preaching in the synagogues the people thought he was teaching Judaism and they heard him through those ears. They never stopped to think that the God of Jesus Christ has no relationship whatsoever to the God of the Old Testament; that Jesus did not teach that God punishes and God rewards; Jesus did not teach that you have to live your Saturday life in a synagogue; Jesus did not teach that you have to tithe and sacrifice and wear sack cloth and ashes; Jesus did not teach that. . . . Oh well, he didn’t teach the Hebrew faith or its theology. On the contrary, in his greatest teaching he said, “Ye have heard it said of old but I say unto you,” and he wiped out what you have heard of old; and he gave us something so entirely new, so entirely different that somebody should have heard his voice. No wonder he had to say, “Do you have ears and do not hear; do you have eyes and do not see?” and finally, “Oh Jerusalem, oh Jerusalem, I would, but ye would not!”

        No wonder, no wonder. He was trying to introduce them to another kingdom, which he called “My kingdom.” And he said, “My kingdom is not of this world,” this world that you’ve been accustomed to. My peace I give you, but not the peace that this world gives you. This is another dimension of life; this is a new kingdom. Don’t worry about those Ten Commandments, wipe out nine of them. Just keep one: “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart with all thy soul;” and to that let us take one out of Leviticus, “Love thy neighbor as thyself,” and then leave that nine commandments alone.

        But with no ears to hear and no eyes to see, you know what happened? They took the whole Ten Commandments and brought them over and called them “Christian teaching.” They weren’t Christian, they were Hebrew, and not only that, they weren’t even the new Hebrew teaching of Jesus Christ. So did he wipe out worshiping in holy temples; so did he wipe out worshiping in holy mountains; so did he wipe out this devotion to ceremony and ritual and creed; so did he wipe out baptism with a “suffer it to be so now,” but let’s not see any of it perhaps two thousand years from now; so did he stop this fasting; so did he stop all of this business, and get right down to cases and say, “Love thy neighbor as thyself, resist not evil” – no revenge, no getting back at your enemies. Ah, no getting back at your enemies: “I say to you, forgive your enemies, seventy times seven.” Not only don’t pray to God as the Hebrews do, “Dear Lord destroy my enemies,” but pray for your enemies.

        That must have been strange message to the Hebrews’ ears, so strange they never heard it. But unfortunately, the church heard it – only they didn’t hear it as he gave it; they heard it as if he were sayingwhat ye have heard of old, and they brought it right along and formed their new church with the old teaching, which should have been discarded.

        There are some Hebrew prophets in the Old Testament, and there are some really worthwhile principles in there; and those few passages could well have been taken over into the New and not fooled the world into believing that all of those old Hebraic teachings were going to set you spiritually free.

 

End Part 2