I am here, Jesus.
I wish to write you about the phrase, “The Kingdom of God is within you,” as it appears in Luke, chapter 17, verses 20-21, and which has lead to an entirely false understanding of what I meant to convey. The fact is that certain spokesmen for the Pharisees asked me when the Kingdom of God would come, and my answer was that in my person it had already come, for wherever I went I brought with me the Kingdom. That is the meaning of the verses, “And when he was demanded of the Pharisees, when the Kingdom of God should come, he answered them and said, the Kingdom of God cometh not with observation – meaning as a visible manifestation for beholding the kingdom come through the eyes of mortal man – for behold, the kingdom of God is within you.” The Greek word “entos” (entov), however, does not mean “within you,” but “in the midst of.”1 The incorrect translation arose from the fact that the translator sought to write not what the Greek word actually meant, but what seemed to make sense to him in the light of his own imperfect understanding of what those verses meant to him, for he thought that mere faith in Jesus and fidelity to the rite of communion made Jesus – and therefore God – one with him.
There are, in fact, some cults today which have mistakenly understood the translator’s words to indicate that the Kingdom of God is that part of man – the soul – which comes most directly from Him. And that in developing and perfecting the attributes of the soul, man develops the kingdom of God within himself. In truth, development of the faculties of the soul will help man to purify his soul and enable him to reach towards the Paradise of the first parents before their fall from grace. This, however, is not the state of the soul achieved through transformation which takes place only through the efficacy of the Divine Love, which enters the prayerful soul through the workings of the Holy Spirit. Paradise, or purification of the soul, is the state of the perfect natural man, but has nothing of the Divine Angel nor At-onement with the Father.
And there are some who point to I Corinthians, chapter 3 verse 16, – “Ye are the temple of God, and that the Spirit of God dwelleth in you?” And these people fail to understand that the temple of God therein mentioned and referred to is the soul and not the body, for the body does not enter into salvation, nor was fashioned in the image of God as the soul, and that the soul is the temple of God only when the nature of God reposes within it through prayer to the Father for At-onement with Him, and this at-onement is achieved through the Divine Love of the Father, which is of His Essence, so that there is great misunderstanding as to what the temple of God is – and it is only the soul filled with the Father’s Love, for the soul which does not possess this Divine Love is merely an image of God and is not a temple in which God dwells.
And in addition, there are those who mistakenly believe that the kingdom of God is within them because the Christ is within them, in accordance with the teachings of their church and without understanding or knowing what the Christ is, feel they possess at-onement with the Father through faith in my name and in the efficacy of my shed blood and the sacrament of the Eucharist. Now the word Christ, as it is generally used today, is used in the sense of Anointed, or the Messiah, or the Saviour, and this is true, but actually the Christ means the principle of the Father’s Divine Love made available to mankind, as it was first shed abroad in my soul when I first proclaimed my mission on earth, and it is this Divine Love which saves when it enters the soul of the mortal or spirit who seeks it in earnest prayer to the Father. And in no other way – no blood on the cross or in any mysterious sacrament of bread and wine – will at-onement with the Father take place, for only the Father’s Love has the power to cause the errors and evils of the human soul to be dispelled from it and thus give man a new heart, free of sin and transformed from the image of God into His very Essence.
So that having Christ in you means having the Father’s Divine Love dwelling in your soul. And if you will read the Epistle of John the Apostle, you will understand the truth of the saying the Kingdom of God is within you – for John said (I John, chapter 4, verses 10-12 and 16): “Herein is Love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us. – we love one another, with this Divine Love, God dwelleth in us. God is Love and he that dwelleth in this Love dwelleth in God and God in him.”… John made it clear that when he spoke of love, he meant God’s Love – God’s Divine Love for man, and that where His Divine Love is, there also is God and there is the Kingdom of God. Yes, the Kingdom of God may dwell within us, but only if we seek it through earnest longing and prayer to the Father for the gift of His Divine Love – and with His Love will come eternal life and the things necessary to sustain it in this world and in the next.
I have said enough about the phase, the Kingdom of God within you and what it really means, and so, with my love to you and Dr. Stone and urging you all to seek the kingdom through earnest soul longing to the Father, I shall say good night and sign myself,
Jesus of the Bible
and
Master of the Celestial Heavens.
1 A more recent message explains that this meaning refers to this instance and context, and that in other contexts, “entos”, which has two meanings, can mean “within”.