Excerpt from Father Divine’s message given at the banquet table 1887-1889 Madison Avenue New York City, N.Y. on Saturday, July 6, 1940 A.D.F.D at 3:20 p.m.
At this particular instance I have arisen to say, as you see the outward expression of the Unity of the Spirit, of Mind, of Aim and of Purpose, so can it be with every one of you even as it is here with us!
Peace and happiness where there once was anger and cursing
I was just thinking a moment ago of this Peace, Love and Happiness and yet Tranquility, with Passiveness and Quietness and Assurance. These wonderful blessings I have made a living reality – even where those of you once upon a time would be sitting at your tables where you would be dining, eating and taking food for the sustenance of your body, and for the benefit of your soul – at times a good many of you would be cursing and swearing. You would be in all sorts of rages of anger and excitement and confusion. But from those conditions you are completely emancipated! Now you are living in Peace, and Quietness, and Blessed Assurance. Aren’t you glad! Whilst thinking on that, by your conscious conviction through and by what you are actually observing from the physical , yea, from a personal point of view, make the comparison of this dining room table with your former tables and the tables of thousands of others who are called American citizens. Not only those who are of the underworld, disrespectable and malicious and low-charactered people, but those among you who you have considered yourselves to be self-respecting, law-abiding and even law-making citizens, you have not enjoyed the Peace, Unity and Tranquility and the outward expression of Harmony systematically exhibited as you all are enjoying in these different audiences and dining rooms where I preside! Just look over this vast audience, the Spirit of the Omnipotent One controlling everyone, bringing you and others with whom you come in contact into subjection to Righteousness, Truth and Justice and into subjection to Love and Kindness and Tranquility, where the very Spirit of Peace abides and is in evidence in our daily experience, in our diverse audiences and in our dining rooms wheresoever I am presiding!
The contrast is the same as between the “Other Place” and Heaven
Take these thought to consideration. If it was only for the purpose of having Peace and Harmony, if it was only for the purpose of Unity and Tranquility and the Love and the Spirit of Peace and Harmony such as we are exhibiting, you would see definitely from that angle of expression it is just as much difference in these two expressions of your past life and the lives of those with whom you come in contact daily as it is in that which you once called the “other place” and heaven!
Just think of being assembled here together daily in the Unity of the Spirit, of Mind, of Aim and of Purpose with the outward expression of Love and Tranquility that brings and abolition to all segregation and discrimination among us!
What a privilege to live in such a recognition as this one in which you have actually recognized the Actual Presence of your God! This is the outward expression of the unfoldment of the mystery of God’s Actual Presence in Love and Kindness exhibited, and God himself in Peace and Blessed Assurance so freely giving you Peace of mind and of your physical conditions by adjusting matters satisfactorily for you and healing your physical bodies!
Whilst sitting and listening and looking at the unfoldment of this mystery and the outward expression of this Infinite Presence of the Supernatural, of Love and of Mercy and Tender Compassion being demonstrated in these My followers and following, I beheld as though it was something to give you a slight sketch of a reflection of what God is actually doing for this people; then give you the chance to make the comparison between this unfoldment, this dining room and any of the dining rooms where I’m presiding, and in any of the auditoriums or places of worship or business places where I have access, to yourself and others who are living in mortal consciousness.
Just think of how men and women at their private homes at times, only two or three in one family, and at times there maybe five or six in mortal consciousness, the life in which you once lived, and the life in which thousands and millions are now living, they would be and they do be throwing plates and platters and cups and saucers across the table at one another, cursing and swearing and using profane language in the presence of their little children, those that are born, and even those that are yet unborn!
The effect of such conditions
By prenatal influence, what will be the expression and the character and the disposition of your offspring? Tell me in your own consideration, is not that which in evidence and prenatally established vividly in your conscious mentality before birth, the prenatal influence of your offspring, that which comes forth in the next birth given of yourself?
Train a child seven years before he is born, and then train him seven years after he is born! You may let that child go where he or she wills or where you will to send it; it will be prenatally influenced by your character and by your disposition and by your prenatal training of the child before the birth was given.
These thoughts are well worth considering. This is only a sketch of a reflection of a percent of a fraction of a grain of the mystery of the Love of God to this people in reinculcating and reincarnating the Spirit and the Life and the Love of your Savior that you might be in the future the outward expression of your preconception of that which is mental and spiritual.
I am dropping these mental and spiritual ideas and opinions and I am demonstrating them in your presence and stressing them in your memory so that you as individuals who observe, can see and feel the atmosphere and the spirit and the environment in which you are now living, and observe what I am actually exhibiting.
When this is stamped in your lives by concentration you will become to be the reproduction of that on which you are concentrating, and be the reproducer of that of which you are actually partaking by your mental and spiritual conception, the thing you are now conceiving.
How glorious it would be if the whole world had but a slight sketch of this peace!
Oh, how glorious it is to live in such a recognition! Ans while I was passing the food around in Blessed Assurance and Quietness and Peace and Love exhibited, yet the perfection of Happiness brought to fruition in this people, I thought of how glorious it would be universally if all of the families of the earth would catch but a slight sketch and a reflection of it and attempt to demonstrate it by concentration and by endeavoring to live according to the Teaching.
Oh, how glorious it is to observe it! I thought of the thousands and millions of homes daily as they sit around at breakfast and dinner tables, they use all sorts of profanity, obscenity and every adverse and undesirable low-graded, in other words, low-graded and disrespectable language that tends to lowrate your standard and decrease or deteriorate your standard of unfoldment, and cause you to disintegrate and deteriorate until perfection will be something as a stranger among you.
But, oh how glorious it is to come in such an audience as this, if I must say it myself and see the Blessed Assurance of Quietness, of Peace, of Love and Tranquility, of Harmony exhibited by the spirit of harmonization, even systematically serving each other. Everything works like clock work! Can you not see the mystery?
Then I say, this in itself is a blessing beyond degrees of perfection in mortal consciousness, hence it must be the Divine Mind that has inspired and invented such an unfoldment as this that we are now expressing – Unity, Love, Peace and Tranquility – so that we can live in earth in heaven free from confusion, free from cursing and swearing, fee from obscenity and free from profanity completely by living in the recognition of your conscious conviction of God’s Actual Presence.
Father Divine