King's Business - 1961-07

of the numberless manifestations, or invidualities, how­ ever insignificant, contains the whole . . . Each is God come forth, shall I say? in different quantity or degree” (Lessons in Truth, Cady, pp. 8, 9.) In other words, God is in nature, in inanimate things, in animals, in you—all in different degree but all are a part of His substance. This is Hinduism; this is Christian Science; this is pure pantheism; this is heathenism of the most degraded type. They go even farther: “ I believe the Hottentot, or the truest heathen that ever lived, he who worships the golden calf as his highest conception of God, worships God” (Lessons in Truth, p. 126). You can get no farther from the God of the Bible than that. “ . . . So that they are without excuse: Because that, when they knew God, they glorified him not as God, neither were thankful; but became vain in their imaginations, and their foolish v eart was darkened. Pro­ fessing themselves to be wise, they became fools, and changed the glory of the uncorruptible God into an im­ age made like to corruptible man, and to birds, and four- footed beasts, and creeping things” (Rom. 1:20-23). To stun up briefly, Unity’s conception of God is that He is not personal, and therefore cannot be known as a personal God and Saviour; that He is really yourself; that He is in everything; that He is Mind; that He is an abstract something—but certainly not the God of the Old and New Testaments. UNITY AND THE LORD JESUS CHRIST Unity is full of contradictory statements regarding the Lord Jesus Christ. For instance, they teach that He was not real, only an allegory: “ Jesus Christ was himself a parable, and his life an allegory of the experiences that man passes through in development from natural to spiritual con­ sciousness” (Christian Healing, Fillmore, p. 68). They also believe that He evolved: “ The evolution of Jesus was a combination of mind and body unfold- ment . . . We must conclude that the body of Jesus was an unfoldment from sense to Spirit” (Teach Us to Pray, Chas. and Cora Fillmore, p. 66). “He was more than man . . . because there came into His manhood a factor to which most men are strangers . . . the Christ-con- sciousness. The unfoldment of this consciousness by Jesus made Him God incarnate, because Christ is the mind of God individualized, and whoever so loses his personal­ ity as to be swallowed up in God becomes Christ Jesus, or God-man” (Talks on Truth, p. 169). The logical con­ clusion of this is that anyone may eventually become a little Christ. Unity teaches that Christ went through many incar­ nations: “This world and everything in it was brought forth by Him in many earthly incarnations” (Unity, Dec. 1, 1936, p. 6). These incarnations of Jesus took the forms of Moses, Elisha, David and others: “ These were His days at school, and he arrived at a state of conscious­ ness, while manifesting as Jesus of Nazareth, where he remembered his past lives” (Unity, Vol. 14, 1901, p. 149). But the Word of God states that “ . . . now once in the end of the world hath he appeared to put away sin by the sacrifice of himself. And as it is appointed unto men once to die, but after this the judgment: So Christ was once offered-to bear the sins of many; and unto them that look for him shall he appear the second time without sin unto salvation” (Heb. 9:26-28). Unity does not acknowledge that man needs a Saviour or that he is seeking salvation, but rather “The recogni­ tion of this higher consciousness and the reorganization of our place in Being that we are seeking . . . we want

also among the people, even as there shall be false teach­ ers among you, who privily shall bring in damnable heresies, even denying the Lord that bought them, and bring upon themselves swift destruction. And many shall follow their pernicious ways; by reason of whom the way of truth shall be evil spoken of. And through covet­ ousness shall they, with feigned words make merchandise of you: whose judgment now of a long time lingereth not, and their damnation slumbereth not.” UNITY AND GOD Unity does not believe that God is a Person, with the intelligence, will, emotion and ability to think and act which denote personality. Charles Fillmore stated it bluntly: “ God is not lov­ ing . . . God does not love anybody or anything. God is the love in everybody and everything. God is love.” (Jesus Christ Heals, p. 13). This is a direct denial of John 3:16 and hundreds of other scriptures. Fillmore further states: “ From the teaching that the Deity is a person we have come to believe that God is changeable; that He gets angry with His people and condemns them; that some are chosen and favored above others; that in His sight good and evil are verities and that He defends the one and deplores the other. We must relieve our mind of these ideas of a personal God ruling over us in an arbitrary manner” (p. 23). Our Bible is full of evidences that our God does exhibit all the attributes of personality. In Psalm 7:11 we read: “ . . . God is angry with the wicked every day.” We could fill this article with verses that show Him feel­ ing every emotion that He Himself has put into the heart and mind of man, and yét without sin. As He is perfect, His very anger, His judgment, and of course, His love, are holy. Dr. Fleener, who- made a very thorough study of Unity, states that at the source of all of Unity’s teachings about God is that He is inexorable Principle. Unity teaches that actually we are God. “We 'all have direct access through the Father in us—the central T of our being — to the great whole of life, wisdom, power, which is God. What we now want to know is how to receive more from the fountainhead and to make more and more of God (who is but another name for All-good) manifest in our daily life” (Lessons in Truth, Cady, p. 11 ). The Bible says that the only way we have access to God is through Christ. “ . . . no man cometh unto the Father, but by me” (John 14:6).. “Having . . . boldness to enter into the holiest by the blood of Jesus, By a new and living way, which he hath consecrated for us, through the vail, that is to say, his flesh” (Heb. 10:19, 20). He made the way to God for us through His sacri­ fice on the cross, and no one can find Him within him­ self, or by any other route except God’s. Fillmore declared: “ The Father within you . . . is not far away in a place called heaven” (Christian Heal­ ing, p. 8 ); “ God lives in you and you depend upon Him for every breath you draw” (Jesus Christ Heals, p. 36); “We believe that we live, move, and have our being in God-Mind; also that God-Mind lives, moves and has his being in us, to the extent of our consciousness” (Unity’s Statement of Faith, p. 3). Unity teaches an unqualified pantheism: “ God, then, is the substance (from sub, under and stare, to stand), or the real thing standing under every visible form of life, love, intelligence or power. Each rock, tree, animal, everything visible, is a manifestation of the one Spirit— God—differing only in degree of manifestation; and each

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THE KING'S BUSINESS

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