Father Divine’s message given at New Paltz extension (the Promised Land), New York on Sunday, June 30th, 1940 at 3:03 a.m.
Man’s realization of his place in the sun, or in other words, his reasons for existence, bring him a rich reward; for by applying this realization, which is to praise GOD continually by every means possible, he is completely emancipated first mentally and spiritually and then physically.
The person filled with enthusiasm and praises to GOD sees, and seeing, vividly visualizes and manifests only the positive and perfect and thus has no space nor place for negation, criticism or condemnation of others. This was stressed along with other vital points by our Savior in a beautiful Message delivered after the singing of a significant inspiration given to one of the assembly, HIS closing Words showing the protection, peace and tranquility which would result through the acceptance of HIS Proposal of the union of the twenty-one Republics of the three Americas and the use of one language under one democratic government.
For this magnificent, inspiring Message, blessed Lord, we humbly thank THEE!
(The foregoing statements are those of the transcriber, and FATHER’S Message follows the song referred to above and in HIS opening words.)
SONG
“FATHER gave us two feet to walk with,
FATHER gave us two eyes to see,
FATHER gave us two lips to praise Him,
FATEHR gave us a heart that is free.
FATHER gave us a FAITH that is boundless,
In Him and in His love ─
I am going to follow FATHER,
For truly I know He is GOD.”
FATHER DIVINE Speaks as follows:
PEACE, EVERYONE!
Good Health, Good Will and a Good Appetite, with Liberty a full and a plenty for each and everyone who will praise GOD aright. That little composition is well worth considering if you will but consider it and put it forth into expression with the spirit of sincerity and with all conscientiousness. As it was given by inspiration to the composer by the spirit of sincerity, may it be put forth into expression by the composer continually and also by those who may sing it.
If you would but realize, if you will but serve GOD and give your spirit, your energy, your ambition, your mind and your attention, your love and your devotion to GOD and GOD alone, with all sincerity and conscientiousness, it would be a matter of impossibility for you to be a failure. It is only for the lack of practical, profitable and constructive service that men or mankind fail. They cannot fail so long as they are in a place in consciousness where they are of some real, practical, profitable and constructive, unselfish service, especially when their hearts are tuned to sing GOD’S praise, to give GOD thanks and praise for all they say and for all they do.
You Will Lose Contact With the Earth
By this the Spirit will apparently develop in you. You will lose all contact with the earth, which is to say yourself, and you will contact the Christ Consciousness by such a concentrated thought, and by raising your vibrations to contact the Christ Consciousness mentally and spiritually, you are lifted physically through that contact and automatically you become to be new creatures.
But when you stop to complain, to make complaints whichever; to condemn, criticize and ridicule; you are deteriorating and lowrating your standard of thinking; hence you are lowrating yourself characteristically and dispositionally and your character has become to be a lowrated character by lowrated thinking and by a constant deterioration in thoughts and in mind from the uplifting thoughts and mind of GOD, through giving GOD praise with your lips and all of your members of your body, as described in part in that composition.
“GOD gave you hands to―”what?” (“To serve HIM!” shouted the assembly.) And “GOD gave you two eyes to see. GOD gave you lips to praise HIM.” Then HE gave you some knowledge to know something, and by such a recognition and such a conviction you are lifted mentally and spiritually, because your bodies vibrate and are lifted according to your conscious thinking and according to your concentration. You can be not so well in mind, if you do not wish to be; but if you wish to be well in health and also in mind, as you have said in writing letters, if you write as they did in old times, “I am well in health, but not so well in mind,” you would say. But if you desire to be well in health, you must make yourself well in mind by lifting your mind above the limited concepts and disturbances of the world. It is indeed wonderful.
Keep Your Mind on a High Plane by Giving Thanks for Your Blessings
I recall going west once and when we were flying we flew above the storm and at times we flew around the storm. GOD gave you a mind to think and a heart and lips to praise HIM. If you keep your thoughts above the turmoils of life, human pity, local disturbances and confusion, and recognize the supernatural Presence of Something better, GOD can and will lift you, and your physical condition will not be weakened. If it is weakened, it will be strengthened by lifting your mind to a higher realm and by giving thanks and praise for the blessings you have received.
But as soon as you can find one thought for condemnation and set aside that thought for accusation, you are bringing about a foundation whereby you will be a failure, if you will stand upon a foundation of accusation and condemnation.
“GOD gave you two lips to praise HIM.”
If you use your energy, your ambition, your mind and your attention, your love and your devotion all for the purpose of giving praise to GOD and to GOD in others and through others who are worthy, you will have a plenty to do without using your thoughts for accusation and for condemnation. Can you not see the mystery?
Then I say, “GOD gave you two lips to praise HIM.” There are enough blessings bestowed upon you all to praise GOD all day and all night long, and yet not have any spare time to condemn, ridicule or find fault with anyone. That is what I AM talking about! If you are fault finders, you will find faults, for you will seek them, and your thoughts of negation through your concentration in that direction will create them and will bring about the results of your thoughts as well as the positive results are brought. Can you not see the mystery?
How to Get Positive Results
The positive results are brought by constant thinking and by uttering words of the positive instead of the negative. The positive results after a while, and is effective and effectively results into outer expression when you let the positive have free access in expression, by you giving freedom to the thoughts of praise and thanksgiving.
By thinking and looking in the positive direction, you lift your thoughts from disappointment, from failure, from accusation and from condemnation; hence you will bring about the desirable results by thinking in that direction and acting accordingly.
Now, wheresoever I AM it is just the same as it is here now: I find the abundance of the fullness of the consciousness of good, no space vacant of the fullness thereof. Of all of the fullness of good, of wisdom, of knowledge and of understanding, of peace, of comfort and of convenience, of harmony, of tranquility, of love and of devotion; by sending out such thoughts and directing MY thoughts in that direction in words, in deeds and in actions, I AM bringing into outer expression and reproducing that on which I AM concentrating and that with which I AM harmonizing. Can you not see the mystery?
If we speak of the banquet table as an abstract expression as a sketch and a reflection, observe the abundance of the fullness if you wish to. Observe the comfort and the convenience that surround you when you are with ME, when you are with ME Personally. Then, be the same when I AM Personally absent and hold in evidence and in your own experience the very same conditions that surround you when I AM Personally present; and you will have the very identical evidence of them. That is what I AM talking about!
Telling Others GOD Is GOD to You
Why change? Change not your attitude towards GOD, neither change your disposition or your mind. Do not change your ways, neither your actions, neither even change your words, illustrations or your expressions when I AM Personally absent, and when I AM Personally absent you will have the same results of everything that is good as when I AM Personally present. That is telling others with whom you come in contact GOD is GOD to you.
But when you change in disposition, words, deeds or actions, if you change your circumstances or your surroundings when I AM Personally absent, you are telling ME as well as telling others, you are not actually conscious of ME. The consciousness of GOD’S Presence will bring the same results now, henceforth and forever; but the lack of the consciousness of GOD’S Presence will result in something else that is different. Can you not see the mystery?
The consciousness of GOD’S Presence will bring harmony, I say, now, henceforth and forever, and will bring success and prosperity, for it is the consciousness that brings it. It is the consciousness resulting in harmonious conditions in outer expression by the consciousness of GOD’S Presence. Those who are conscious of MY Presence here tonight, things are resulting harmoniously, peacefully and pleasantly because you are conscious of it. Can you not see the mystery?
Be Conscious of GOD’S Presence Continually
Now stress these thoughts in your memory continually and be conscious of MY Presence now, henceforth and forever, and the conditions that surround you will result the same when I AM Personally absent because you are conscious of MY Presence. It is for your own good. It is for the advancement of yourself and for the betterment of others when you are conscious of MY Actual Presence and bring forth the conscious results of it and it comes forth into expression. The conscious results, in other words, the results of the consciousness of GOD’S Presence will result when you are actually conscious of it.
It is not anything I do especially Personally to bring about the desirable conditions and circumstances that surround you, but by the consciousness of MY Presence when I AM Personally present, it brings about harmonious conditions, success and prosperity, health and happiness, Peace and pleasure and you become to be super successful and prosperous. Well, the same consciousness of MY Presence will do the same when I AM Personally absent, for it is not the Person that does it! Aren’t you glad?
Now live in this recognition. You will act according to this version and you will bring your bodies into subjection to the higher leading. Even if it is a leading intuitively and inspirationally, you will be governed by a higher leading than that of the limited mortal concept concerning yourself and others. You will let go and let GOD by denying yourself for the benefit of the rest. That is the mystery.
You Must Harmonize With the Teacher to Learn
At this particular time, as usual, the minds are concentrating in a direction that will eventually bring to you the information necessary for your advances. You cannot advance from any angle expressible unless you harmonize with the Advancer. You cannot learn unless you harmonize with the Teacher, but through harmonizing with the teacher, you take on the information and the understanding the teacher has to give you. Can you not see the mystery?
Then through harmonization, even whether you are conscious of things that are not yet revealed or not, you will get the same results as if though you were conscious of them, and through harmonization by the transmitted thoughts, the very Spirit itself will reveal things as I have spoken so stressfully concerning the mystery of intuition and your inspiration.
Through harmonizing, that which is invisible will come forth into expression even though it is not revealed or developed personally. You see the mystery? Then if you desire to be successful, harmonize with the successful, harmonize with the progressive and the prosperous and you will take on the Spirit of the successful and the progressive and prosperous, and that Spirit within you will reproduce just what the Spirit has produced for the prosperous and has caused the prosperous to be prosperous, loving to be loving, the kind to be kind, the wise to be wise and the one who has knowledge to have knowledge.
As I have said in time past, why live in lacks, wants and limitations when there is the abundance of the fullness for each and every person? Harmonize with the person that has the abundance and the abundance will result in your experience, for you are one with that one.
A Parable of the Mystery of True Christianity
If you retrace your thoughts back to, no doubt, a good many of your past experiences, you would have liked to marry a man or marry a woman who had a-plenty of money ─ that is, in mortal consciousness. It is but a parable parably speaking, of the mystery of true Christianity, of this standard of Truth which makes you one with HIM in Whom you harmonize. You are heirs and joint heirs together with Christ and this is not merely something supernatural, yet if it could be supernatural, how much more could it be natural or material? If the supernatural or that which is mental and spiritual, could be a reality by harmonization, how much more could the material things be that life demands, through harmonization with the One Who has access to them? Those things would come forth into expression automatically, even as wisdom, knowledge and understanding and as your heirship degree of expression, even according to the religious version as an heir and a joint heir with Christ by harmonization, by harmonizing with HIM by taking on HIS characteristics, by taking on HIS disposition.
According to the Scripture, yea, the Epistle, you are heirs and joint heirs together with HIM. By concentrating on HIS
Fullness as observed in him, as
“the Word was made flesh and dwelt among us, we behold his glory as the glory of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and of truth,”
and by beholding such an unfoldment of the fullness of the Glory of GOD, of all of such as you beheld in Him,
“His fullness,” one said, “you received grace for grace.”
Then, why not produce the fullness by concentrating on it by harmonizing with it, whether it be material or spiritual or mental? You need not be destitute for or of anything, for through your rightful contact you will produce and bring into your experience and to your service and at your disposal everything necessary for your comfort and for your convenience, to bring an abolition to all destitution. Can you not see the mystery?
Every Desirable Expression for GOD Is Really With Us
Wisdom, knowledge and understanding and every other desirable expression from the mental and spiritual realm, from the material and physical plane on which you are functioning ─ wheresoever you may be found, all things that are necessary can be produced and brought into expression over and above every opposition, for GOD is really with you! Oh, how glorious it is to observe the mystery.
I recall right after the trial of the Brown versus FATHER DIVINE case, some men who sold the material, a good part of the material for the building of this garage here to the followers, started a suit against ME, or tried to start one against MYSELF and others. MY Spirit just brushed it right out of the way like nothing and everything that they start against us, MY Spirit
overcomes it as nothing, for the Master of Omnipotency and the Controller of your destiny has all Power in HIS Hand; and especially being the Master over all mankind. Therefore they need not rise in opposition. But even though the merchandise was paid for when the purchases were made before the building was finished, still they thought, through graft and greed, because they thought that the odds were against us, that they could sue and collect a whole lot of money for the materials that were purchased in building this garage, though it has been about five years more or less. You can see the spirit of unrighteousness enacted in business, profession, labor and trade; and if you are not with GOD and you are not for GOD, GOD cannot be for you; hence you would be a loser on such grounds because you would not have the One Who could overcome for you because you are not for HIM. But if you are for GOD, GOD is for you, and if you have chosen GOD, GOD has chosen you, therefore GOD is for you in all you say and in all you do if you are lost in the will of GOD and absolutely unselfish in all of your endeavors. That is the mystery.
Then if GOD Is for You, Who Can Be Against You?
Then I thought of two cases that came up no longer ago than Friday ─ the one which you heard read in The New Day in reference to Mr. Cherubim. This man thought he was going to have him sent to prison just through maliciousness, but I had the case dismissed and he was set free completely. We brushed it out of existence just as the chaff before the wind.
“If GOD is for you, who can be against you?” Not a one!
Then the same day the case came up against another one who they thought or they said had broken this woman’s jaw bone who was against ME down in the City there, and they thought sure that they would give him at least a long jail sentence or penitentiary sentence no doubt. Aw ─ they did not even hear the case hardly. They said, “Oh, I know,” and did not even give them a chance to get any witnesses or call on witnesses though some were there. They said, “Come back on Friday;” just found him guilty; “Come back on Friday to be sentenced.” He went back to be sentenced on Friday. Something got in even though the door was shut, and they suspended sentence so they could not even do a thing with him.
So this is just some few sketches of what GOD can do for you if you are for GOD. If you are with GOD, GOD will be with you, as it is written:
“I have been with you in the sixth tribulation; the seventh I will not leave you.”
So then I say, it means something to be with GOD and to be in harmony with GOD! Through harmonization you are partakers of GOD’S nature; you are partakers of GOD’S Spirit and you become to be heirs and joint heirs together with HIM in whatsoever HE has in HIS possession. Can you not see the mystery?
Now just look at those of you who have been fortunate enough to be unfortunate enough, in other words fortunate enough firstly to deny yourselves enough to choose ME and make a sacrifice of everything, that you might be MINE. By such a sacrifice, as it may be termed, you are blessed above measure, and by living in such a recognition continually GOD will bless you more and more if you will allow HIM to. See the mystery?
It Means Something to Live in This Recognition!
Then I say, it means something to live in this recognition. It is more than life to you, more than all the world, for as you are one with your GOD, you are one with HIM as an heir and as a joint heir of the possessions of HIS own inheritance and you have victory by so doing, over undesirable conditions, by thinking and looking in the positive direction; by singing and giving praise to GOD; by keeping your energy, your ambition and all of your strength in service to GOD and to HIS love and mercy and to HIS Cause.
I cannot stress these thoughts too vividly for it is essential for each one to get them. I have long since declared and I re-declared the same; one percent of a grain of a percent of a grain of prevention is worth a million tons of cure. This may not be exactly as mortality says it; “An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure,” something like that; but I AM sitting and speaking, stressing, emphasizing and advocating the Truth as I have it, and AM giving it for the purpose of preventing such conditions that result in the lives of the disobedient.
So many of those who call themselves MY followers from time to time, through deviation they indulge in self and selfish tendencies, by refusing to continue to give thanks and give praise. Can you not see the mystery? They detach themselves from the Fundamental and take on the spirit of accusation and condemnation, and they are taking in the poison of condemnation all the time when they think they are condemning some other one. You see, you are being condemned in your physical system by condemnation in your mentality and by antagonism and confliction mentally and spiritually and your physical system is being poisoned by the condemnation you are stressing and expressing, the same as the positive is equally true.
Continually Stressing the Positive Produces Enthusiasm
You find one stressing Life, Liberty and the pursuit and the reality of Happiness. These things that are desirable being stressed in your memory by anyone continually, you will find that person or persons filled with enthusiasm as long as they are stressing continually the positive instead of the negative. That psychological thought should tell you by your own observation and by your own experience. At times when you as individuals have been giving praise and thanks vividly for the blessings of GOD to yourself and to others, by filling your every seeming vacant space in your conscious mentality and in your system with praises and thanksgiving, your lives are lifted and you feel fine physically. Because of the praises being illuminating, your physical system by concentration reacts and it reproduces and you are the personification of that on which you have concentrated and that of which you are stressing vividly in your memory continually.
Just notice a person at any time when that person is giving praise continually and fills his mentality and his physical system with the vibrations of thanksgiving and praises. That person is happy! Just start praising someone unselfishly, impersonally and unselfishly, but just start praising and fill your mentality with praise and thanksgiving, and the very physical system will vibrate to the vibrations of praise and thanksgiving and your physical bodies will be lifted above sickness, above diseases, above disappointment, above failure and above every adverse and undesirable condition as long as you are giving praise continually.
This is not a supposition! You have experienced it in your past experience while you were giving praise. While you gave thanks continually and lost sight of yourself individually and became impersonal for an instance, there and then you were filled with enthusiasm; your bodies vibrated with health, vigor and energy because you were doing what you are here to do.
The More You Run Your Battery the More It Charges
Your bodies are not the bodies of condemnation but your bodies are the Temples of the Living GOD, and GOD has said, “I will walk in them and dwell in them,” and when you use GOD’S Temple to that end you will be filled with enthusiasm and praise and thanksgiving, and it continues to react because it is as an electric battery that is charged. The more you run your battery the more it charges, therefore it does not discharge as long as you run your motor. It takes on more energy and more ambition because it takes on more momentum as it runs. Can you not see the mystery? And the very spirit of such as it is, is in evidence in your experience, for you as a person become to be the person of that which you are expressing and that of which you are expressing from you, can be transmitted to others, even as your electric current from your storage battery in your automobile goes to the distributor and from the distributor into the cylinders in the motor by the spark plugs, to keep your motor going.
Oh, how glorious it is to know these simple mysteries as I explain them! To get the significance of praise and thanksgiving; for your bodies are the electric batteries of salvation through which you should give praise, and by giving praise continually and keeping your ideas and opinion motivated with the Spirit and the Energy of the Infinite, your praise and thanksgiving continually flowing by your motor keeping going, you will be charged with so much mental and spiritual energy you will not feel the slightest tendencies of sickness, of disappointment and of failure.
If you do not feel it, you cannot express it. Then by the Unity of Spirit, of Mind, of Aim and of Purpose others are partakers of it.
An Illustration from the Material World
As I was saying, there is just as much difference in an electric bulb with the current in it, one hundred watts of electric energy in it, and a bottle with clay in it, and that difference is the difference between you without MY Spirit and without MY Energy, and one with it when it is expressing within them. Can you not see the mystery? Two extreme reverses and you wonder why at times you feel like an old rag.
It is written, you are filthy rags ─ as filthy rags in the sight of GOD. Then if you will clean up and recognize GOD’S Presence and concentrate in the positive direction by building upon a foundation that is uplifting and refuse to concentrate in the other direction, you will take on the energy, ambition and the nature of your Savior by giving GOD all of the praises.
Then for the benefit of advancement and for the advancement of others, the Unity of Spirit, of Mind, of Aim and of Purpose is the great essential for each and all of us ─ not only for those who are on the material plane, but for those who are on the psychic and spiritual planes. The Unity of Spirit, of Mind, of Aim and of Purpose is the great essential, and by unifying together, why, you will have restored batteries through which you can be connected. You see the mystery? And the more energy stored in each and every individual with whom you are connected through harmonization, the more powerful will be the motivation of the Spirit transmitted from you and through you to others and from others to you. That is the mystery.
Unity of Spirit, Mind, Aim and Purpose
For this cause, as a sample and as an example, religiously I have actually established by demonstration and by the actuated words of expression, the Truth concerning this mystery, concerning the Unity of the Spirit, of Mind, of Aim and of Purpose individually or personally firstly and then severally and collectively and then nationally or organizationally. Hence it is an abstract expression and a known fact. I AM telling you by the actuated words of expression. Hence we are the ones who can actually show the nations of the earth how to unite.
For this cause I said, Unite the three Americas; for I knew as I know, without the unity of the Twenty-one Republics of the Americas they will be invaded. The Monroe Doctrine will not work effectively unless they are united effectively together according to our Constitution, unless they are united so effectively until they are one Democracy! So long as there is a line of demarcation in the twenty-one or twenty-two republics, it is a matter of impossibility for the Monroe Doctrine to give them their real tranquility and unity as required by the Infinite.
You cannot be unified together effectively so long as you are representing divers divisions of races, of creeds and of colors and of nationalities, even though you may say you are working in unison or working to that end or the unity of purpose for some limited cause. You must be unified from the within but unified mentally and spiritually and characteristically and dispositionally and then be unified politically, legally and documentally.
Unless the Americas are actually unified documentally, constitutionally, and be of one Democracy, as I have endeavored to unite you all together, it will be a matter of impossibility for the Monroe Doctrine to work effectively. It was a prediction it is true, of what we should do and of what we should be ─ should be One ─ but yet it is a matter of impossibility to be One and One indeed, so long as there are divers Republics and they all are under different governments and different documents controlled by different versions, different systems, different ideas and different opinions.
The United Republics of America
The governmental system should be One System put forth into expression, and when they are Unified together documentally under this democracy and are the United Republics of America even as we have the United States of America and our documents, our Declaration of Independence, our Constitution and its Amendments but the selfsame in all of these countries and in and over all of these republics; then and only then will they be one as you are and as I AM!
They will not be able to stand until they shall have unified together as I have stressed over and over again, as one man at Jerusalem ─ no longer as a League of Nations; no longer as a complication of divers nationalities getting together; but as one man in reality documentally, characteristically and dispositionally, and one man intellectually by having one language and one speech effectively to be real American citizens with the same nature, the same disposition and characteristics, and be of the same tendency even as these United States of America are; the line of demarcation being abolished once and forever.
There will not be a Mason and Dixon Line! There will not be any division of any kind, but they will all be united together effectively as I have endeavored to unite you all together religiously and as I have actually in MY endeavors united a good many of you together. Ninety-nine percent of you are so consolidatedly united, you are not bothering about anything else, and there are those who are on the outside mentally and spiritually and desire to invade our borders, our mental and spiritual borders, but their attempts at invasion do not faze us and do not disturb us in the least.
When you are one with ME you cannot be reached. As with you as followers, co-workers and friends, as with you organizationally or religiously, so can it be with the twenty-two Republics of the Americas and so it must be if civilization survives. The mouth of GOD has declared it! It is the Mouth of your GOD! They all must come to it and live it and express it from every angle of expression, or else they will be failures once and forever by and because of division for the lack of Unity and Tranquility! I thank you.