In this sermon, the speaker reflects on the development of spiritual life within their fellowship. They observe that in the past, relationships were based on fleshly values and only lasted as long as they were beneficial. However, in this fellowship, they see a shift towards a more honest and genuine way of living, guided by the spirit of God. The speaker emphasizes the importance of embracing confrontations and challenges, as they are designed by the spirit for personal and collective growth. They also mention the concept of universal truth and the role of Jesus Christ in connecting humanity to the universe.

For what it's worth, these are comments from Norman and me, or maybe just from Norman, on what we are seeing in our loving, lovely fellowship. Well, I'm just noticing in the various areas where there are various ones of us, it's becoming like Jacob, who said, I went out with my staff, now I've become two bands. And let's say, I go to different places, whether it was just one or other, but now there's a whole company. And the men coming in with the women, and people commenting on the men coming in with the women, the husbands and the wives, who know what we're talking about, who say as we do, this is all there is, this is the final truth, God all in all, and know. So we are becoming companies who will share with each other, and participate, where we were more or less, lonely individuals. And they're becoming visible all around the country. I mean, I could name about ten different, which are almost like groups of those who know what I call the total truth, just around this country. And there are others like it, of course. I mean, there's Where You Are Here Now, with Ewan Alexander, and of course there's Louisville with John Linden, and there's Glen Ellyn with Bill and Marge. And the Merrells. And the Merrells. And the Merrells, there's others coming in. Then there's High Point with John and Frances Orson, quite a company there. There's Jackson with Tom and Paige, quite a company there. They're really like, usually like family centres, any of us can dodge in and out. There's one arising with Jake and Nancy Gilmore, their book is already arising there. There's... Merrillville? Yes, there's Merrillville with Rob and Martha Lee. There's Glendale, California, with John and Karen Hoffman. And in San Francisco, or it's really Cupertino, with Alice Pruitt. And these groups are arising. Many of those are, as I say, maturing into groups. There's Buzz and Marge Williams who have moved to Denver, and I really have a cause to be, even in life, full-time sharers. And they've started in Denver. And so there are others, there's... Aren't they at Priscilla Rummel? With Priscilla Rummel, I think you said so, I didn't know that, of course we didn't think together. Then there's Med and Ann have quite a group, Chamres in Miami. There are the Wingardens in Birmingham, who their home is called, of course, a university centre, that's Brad and Linda Wingarden. And the Morthams? And there's Bill and Ann Mortham in St. Petersburg. I'm sure there are others we've missed as the mind goes round. These ones are springing up. They're really becoming like family centres, so that any of our crowd can drop in at any time. They're like becoming some sort of union, like grad centrals. Right, Ken and Luanne Dietz up in Manton, Michigan, have a place where anybody could drop in at any time, and they have a group that's springing up. Yes, yes, that's very good. Bill and Janelle Rudd in Fort Worth are becoming that, I think. That's why we go and stay there, it's a different one. And Dee and Phyllis McMahon, the Episcopal Rector. Are they in Texas? Fort Ditch is Texas. And then the Trailers and the Baldwins up in New York State, they certainly have homes that are totally open. Bill and Millie Baldwin, Birmingham. The Trailers, they're up in Syracuse. Syracuse. Al. Al, yes, they are sparking up. And there are Dick and Freddie Hood in Martinsville, who have their own fellowship in their home. I see so many different ones. We're just beginning in Britain. We'll find out when we go over there, of course. We have Jack and Alice Corcoran in Simsbury, Connecticut, who are really our nice center in New England. Simsbury, is that? Simsbury, yes, Simsbury, Connecticut. That's all at the moment. There's Arnie and Connie Saria in Traverse City, Michigan. They're really a center for us whenever any of us can go there. That's another. There's Alan Neal Sindel in Oklahoma, Bethany, Oklahoma. And there's Billy Mimi Anderson of Hopkinsville, Kentucky. And my old friend Evelyn Nissen and Carla Price of Winchester-Helen. They're a center for us there. So different ones are rising up. Tom and Kathy Morrison of Chester, Pennsylvania. Well, you're Dave and Hope Soden in Richmond. Art and Fran Giles in... I meant to be, Fran and Art, you mentioned their names, in Flemington. No, Flemington. Flemington. New Jersey. Yes. Then in Canada, we have Rosamond Beattie, and we have that other, we have... The Rollers? Yes. Dan and... Dan and Bernice. Bernice Roller. And then the Halazel Johnson, who are our oldest links in... Canada? Canada. Ontario? So they scatter around like that. So that's just a brief run around of some of them. There are really many more, aren't there? Yes, there's parking up, parking up, catching on, and then becoming links where we can visit and as we know, as I saw Paige was saying, that's the real value of our fellowships, like Louisville, and we have this one down in... Calloway Camp. It's the interaction, isn't it? People catch on. Well, like Henrietta and Paige caught on to each other, now they can begin to build. That's the real point, is that people get to know others who have... like mind and like spirit. So we're... we're aiming not to become anything structured. We're aiming not to be. As far as we can keep, to have nothing except just as magazines and witnesses for our Lord's continuities, and different ones of us linked up by fellowship. That's all. Because we're to be lights and seed sowers and fruit producers in the body of Christ, all over the world. It's the one body, isn't it? We're only part of the one body. That's all we see. So we're nothing in it, beyond just a voice that can underline what we see to be certain central truths of the Gospel, which is indeed refreshing and underlining in every generation. Ours is this replacement. It's the total truth. It's God all in all in us and in all. That's all, isn't it? That's all. I'd like to make a couple of observations. I have... It seems to me as if we are watching the life that is spirit life developing in our fellowship, our far-flung, loosely connected fellowship. I'm sure that this has been happening down through the ages, since the beginning of time, really. But for me, I have not before seen the kind of rough and tumble, gut-level living on the level of honesty that I am seeing in this developing fellowship. Before, in my own experience, the kind of relationship I've seen has been that which continued as long as it was of value to the people in the relationship. Flesh value. Good flesh. Religious flesh. What we thought was spiritual flesh. We didn't know. But in this fellowship, I see that we're caught by the spirit of the living God. And when it seems not to be advantageous to our flesh, the spirit shows us that it is very advantageous. And the very thing that we seem to want to run from, the confrontations, are the things that the spirit shows us were spirit-designed for us and for others. And so, in my experience, and in the experience of the people that I see around me and the people that I know out from me, I see this marvelous thing happening. It's really a thing that I feel all of the different psychological movements are trying to achieve, but are not able to because the end of their purpose is still in flesh. And when you've come to the end of that, you're still in flesh, and flesh is never going to know success. So, what we're seeing is there's an open end. Once we've seen the Lord handle a relationship that seemed to be impossible, there's an open end. It's not clogged by our thinking, well, that was the purpose then, to get that relationship straightened out. We see that that was just a step in the purpose of the living God. Now He moves out through that, the things that He's done in the two people who evidently were having problems in their relationship, now He moves out to ever greater things, to others that may have the same kinds of problems or whatever, but it's a fantastic thing to see. It's like breathing fresh mountain air when you no longer have to run from relationships that don't seem to be working, but you stand, having been convinced by the Holy Spirit in you that this is now your place, that this is your family, and if it's rough and tumble, it's rough and tumble. If you don't approve of it, you don't approve of it, but it is your family, and there is no moving from it. And another thing that's been of great value to me has been just my having to stand and watch you, Norman, because you have loved me so unscentingly, so holy, the Holy Spirit loves, has grabbed me in you, and because I have loved you, I have been forced time and time again to hold my peace, where I would, oh, I probably have spoken, but it was a weak speaking, because I knew that you had been loved to me in such a way that my life had come to me. And so when I have seen you apparently standing and approving of others of whom I did not approve, I have had the freedom to speak to you about it, but I've also had to stand and watch, because I knew of the validity of your life with me. And now as I see person after person that looked impossible to me, to my flesh eyes, person after person coming into the reality of life and the joy and now sensing validity in those people that I really didn't believe would ever come. I was a little believer. This has been such an aid to me, because now I find myself standing against others who say, oh, well, forget that, where my flesh may be feeling the same way, but now the Spirit comes up in me and reminds me, no, Norman stood for such and such and such and such. And he saw through. He didn't see flesh. He didn't let that influence him. And so I can also do that same thing. And I think this is what is happening throughout this fellowship, people who are probably who stood before I did. I think I've been one of little faith. I felt that I was a negative person, and fine. I don't feel downgraded about that at all. But I just want to say how thrilled I am that I see this building up in me now, that I can really stand and say that looks impossible, but I say that God's got that person. That's wonderful. That is true. That certainly is happening. Well, there are these rising first year, then the blade, then the year, then the full corn coming up, yes. I certainly see this in some sense must become universal in the whole Church of Christ. And I think God's given us everything that I don't know ought to be found elsewhere. The mystics knew it. They're all through history. But they're difficult to read, and of course most people are out of date and so on. But I don't know who else really openly goes a whole way in pronouncing who we are and taking the reactions that we are Christ in human form. So I don't know. And yet this is the truth. We know it's the Bible truth. I think maybe we're becoming a little better in presenting the Bible foundations to it. I think that's why more people are moving in. They've got confidence because they're showing what the Bible says. I was talking to somebody, a mature Christian a day or two ago, in Atlanta, where she knows the Lord. She'd never seen the fact that we have no human nature. No nature. And she knows her way. But I could see, oh yes, she said, I could see, I could see in the Scriptures, where the Bible says we're vessels and barges and so on. Yes, I could see. Oh, I see now. So the Scriptures have given her confidence to move into something which is very radical to her, has been to her, and is, as far as I know, unsaid. I don't know anyone who says we have no human nature. You always get these parts from each other, from different people. I've always been, of course, a person of people who have got things from Lanyon. Now Lanyon doesn't quite say this, but by implication he does. I see a great deal of that in Lanyon, in his own way of putting it, which has come pretty much my way. But the point of that, of course, is the basis of saying that if we have no nature, the only thing we can be is expressions of a divine person. The divine nature, therefore, that's we. And I think, somehow or other, it's the purpose of God that the whole Church of Christ, the redeemed Church of Christ, should, because this effect, moving in some terms, in this effect, maybe not by unionized terms, but by some means, whether it's going to be by varieties of Malcolm Smiths and other people running around, I don't know. That's all I'm saying. And that's been, of course, the confidence of Bill Bookman from the beginning, that this has a worldwide implications and fruitage. I think that's right. And all I keep saying, saying to the Lord, saying to each other, name of the person doesn't matter. The best we can keep a name out, the better. It's not union life. It's Jesus Christ living his own life again as people. And features don't matter. It isn't related to souls. So we want to cut that out. We can't quite cut it out, because we do the best we can. Back down, anyhow, just to be a company of us, not special people. So it doesn't go down as a special thing, but it comes as a revelation of the truth of Jesus Christ in its totality, is what we really mean. So it may take other forms. Like Malcolm Smith isn't what we call union life, but he now is being a public voice very much along this line. I've not heard him, but I think he's got a good deal of what we're saying. In a way, it doesn't work that way. I'm glad you're feeding him. It would be good if he could be with us, because probably there are lines he needs sharpening, and we all do. See, he builds on nothing that I know of, except what he got from our books, my books, and some fellowship years back, and his own interpretation of that into terms, into preaching terms. As far as I know, that's all he gets. We get so much benefit by iron sharpening iron, and the little spots we touch each other up on and correct each other and adjust each other and get new likes from each other. I wish he could be, if he was in, where he could be, whether we ought to invite him to Louisville or something, I don't know, where he could be, have a little touch with us, although we should have come under our name, but we wish him to be a propagator of the eternal truth, which he is, I think. And, of course, what we're always saying when I'm receiving a meeting and I know what a person says, is, oh, of course, that's all there can be. You see, that's all there is. Anything that's dropped off, which means, of course, we've got our own doctrines and teachings dropped off. When you really see, it's all there is, because if it's God, all in all, it must be all there is. But you have to see him in relation to yourself and the universe as one, don't you? That's it. It'd be better to catch him. There's so much to it. I was going to say, it's totally better to catch him. And the new revelations, she has had the the wholeness of our person, as spirit, soul and body, as intercessors for the world, like she gets in Don Quixote. And interesting touches she has. Some of these books she shares with me and I share with her, which are beyond our usual outreach, where we get glimpses through history, where the universal fact can be seen. This book she has, The Tao of Physics. Tao is the name the old seer, thousands of years ago, Lao Tzu, the Chinese, he called the universal person Tao, T-A-O, Tao. But he didn't know Jesus Christ, but he did know that all is one. And of course, Buddha really knew this too. He couldn't take her there, or he gave him works to get there, because he didn't know Jesus Christ. So he had a seven-pointed way, an eight-pointed way, for truth, for central truth. But yet, he had to strive to get there. Well of course, that's not the gospel. The gospel is you got there, because the strive is God himself coming in the flesh and doing it. But he developed a basic truth there. He has some level of this universal one. Then, what I read recently, Walter Russell, who doesn't come the Christ way, although he puts Christ as a unique person in the universe, or in the world, but he certainly has seen something of the God as light, and relates to science today that says everything is light, and we are light, and therefore we and God are each other really, because the Bible says we are light. And he's caught something there. So even Zen has caught to a point. I don't know Zen, I'm not following, but it knows something. For instance, they say, you ask some question of a Zen teacher, what about truth? He says, that's a table. That means nothing. He's saying, face through, and find, till you see through, a table is a form of God. His way of saying, get through, to universal. So all these people, without Jesus Christ, are touching certain elements, which we move into. He is the universal, we are part of the universal, and we are, to us now, we are personal, he is personal. It isn't a vague, mystical thing. It's a living Father, Son, Spirit, and we in the family. That's if Jesus Christ put the whole into focus, which is a dim flashing of light through history. That is, by the longer side, that is very good. She's been catching on some of this, Several of us were looking over that book yesterday that a friend brought in, and in the book, it claimed to have a metaphysical solution to all the problems of life, and I think our discussion was fruitful, and maybe we could talk about that some more. Well, metaphysical is only an extension of the basic being of a human, soul and body, by which we can move into and observe and relate to spiritual realities, as well as physical. Metaphysical means beyond the physical, in the spiritual. But it's still we, from our self point of view, investigating and appropriating certain principles of powers. And this is the modern way in which we still remain unbroken, self-affirming selves, instead of sinners saved by grace, by building up ourselves by various philosophies, and saying, well, you can get it this way, develop yourself this way, develop yourself that way, but it's still self. You simply come back to some form of expanded self-development. Self-development is a fall. In that sense, self-centered self is a fall, so it's all partakes of the quality of the lie of Satan. Because any self-solutions or self-affirmations that are an alternative for Christ are a satanic lie. Because we know the true self-development is the self of Christ, developed by us. Which means we go on to the cross of sinners and be renewed. And that's why we won't do it. We'll do anything to preserve our own self-affirming selves. So it includes all these philosophies and psychologies. The great King who got hit at and destroyed, we can't go into his philosophy now. So it's quite easy to see any of these things that isn't centered in a conscious union relationship with Christ, and a recognition that Christ is the life and the wisdom and so and so, means it's on the lost side of the cross, it's on the fallen side of the cross, it has the quality of Satan in the fall, or whatever they look like. It's simply Satan in some of his clever expressions. He's a spirit. Well, we're spirits, so we can move into spiritual investigations and appropriations and applications and so on. And our spirit powers can operate. The Hindus can prove that, the others can prove that. So that's why we come back to the word that John gave, that the test of the spirit is in itself that in Jesus Christ having come in the flesh, that means God has become man and laid himself back to himself through his saviourhood and lordship. Anything else is a false spirit. That's all I'm going to say on that. That doesn't mean we can't pick up bits of information here and there, bits of insights, because we are spirit people there, we have insights, but unless they come back and fit it in to Christ as our wisdom and so on, it's a false guide leading us in the reverse direction. There are gods, all medical powers are forms of gods, and we are, as you say, using in spirit, we're investigating in new levels. There always has been, of course, when I say ESP, and there's hypnotism, they're all human ability to adapt forms of being, which within our reach, spirit being, or soul being, or body being, and adapt them and operate in them, so they can produce certain apparently miraculous results. That's all right. They're all powers of God, but they're powers of God if it's stolen by Satan, and are being used by Satan, for Satan himself is a power of God, stolen himself, all his tremendous powers which come out in selfhood are forms of God, of course, just misused, so that's not difficult. But the great conflict is fixed between is it Satan misusing, especially himself as a form of God, misusing the being of God for self purposes, as you said, or has it moved over by our redemption relationship to Christ to we being a form of God in his eternal purposes, operating the world along with him for world fulfillment and world blessing as against self-fulfillment, and in between there was sent the cross, and the cross being acknowledged, but I need a saviour and a replacement, and so on. Let's say so. So the thing settles down which side are you, you are the sacred, if you confess Jesus Christ come in the flesh, you're God, if you don't confess him, meaning you identify with as a fact. That's all. The thing that I saw a few years ago regarding that came out of my reading an article about healing in a secular magazine. They cited healings in the name of Jesus. They also cited healings in tribes in South America that had nothing to do with being in the name of Jesus. They cited healings that were now taking place in some hospitals where nurses were being given training in laying on of hands. And after I read that magazine, I'm used over that, and it came to me that God is all and in all. Therefore, any power for anything is God. And He is available God. He is servant God. He is there to be used as we choose to use Him. In our use of Him, if we choose to use Him, then we get the results of going the wrong way. If we rather move over to see that we are containers of Him and are being used by Him for His glory, and certainly for our good, then we get the results of that in our bodies and in our souls, which is usually good. Usually our bodies are rejuvenated. How is it you say it, Norman? The overflowing life of God in our bodies just keeps them going, quickens. But it's having the emphasis on life rather than the emphasis on flesh. I would say the difference is when we are in ourselves, we are using God's power rather than God's person. We don't know the person. The universe is an expression of power. As Walter Rothschild would say, God is light. The universe is divided like. You always see things quite opposite. So the one person who is light has come out. That's not God. It's God coming, a form of that which is divided like, positive, negative, electricity and so on, by which all manifestation comes into being. So that's not God. It's God in a manifested form, a divided light. God is light. So we're using manifested forms of God, which isn't God. So we follow people using our forms of God, but yet we're not God. Because God's a person. You're only in tune with Him when you are a person of the same quality as He is, which only comes to pass, of course, when you are an expression of Him which is now by redemption, that Jesus Christ being an expression of Godliness. So I make that difference there. So everything is a power of God. It's not actually God Himself. It's His expressed powers, which are forms of Him, but a form is different from a person. Our bodies are forms of us, but they're not us. They are expressions of us, but we ourselves are not our bodies. So there's a difference between the person and the form, isn't there? Although they are one, yet within this one, there's a difference between the person and his means of manifestation, that's all. That's only adding to what you said. Well, Walter Russell always says there's a difference between God is light as a person, but things are only manifest by opposites. So it comes out as a divided light, light and dark, positive and negative, the atomic power, positive and negative electricity, everything is known by its interactional opposites. That's forms of God. God comes in forms, but forms are not the person. It's a close matter, because a form is part of you. My body is part of me. It's not me. It's a form of me. I am my spirit. If my body is part of me, it's not me. In that sense, all these things are part of God. In that sense, they're forms of God. In that sense, we can see God in them, because they are forms of God. But they aren't the living God himself. Therefore, a pantheist would say, a thing is a living God. That's a lie. Everything, the word pantheist, means everything is God. So actually, every human, every fallen person, all of us are pantheists till we know God through Jesus Christ, because we're taking something, maybe a philosophy, maybe a false idea of God himself, maybe religion, maybe anything, calling that self-concept as God. It's a pantheist, it's a thing, it's a self-concept of some kind, of course, in the world, maybe our wealth, you know, all the things the world loves, they are God. Well, that's pantheism. Maybe some form of everything is God. But a born-again person has moved out of pantheism, of course, into what we call pan-everything. Everything is a form, God is in, God is everything. We relate now to him, in things, not things, but him in things. Those things are not he, they are forms of him, that's all I can say. And that's why we see through. Yes, that's why we see through. See through people's outer, are their exterior, are their personalities, to him. That's part of him, that's everything, and it is he. Of course, yes, it is he. And see through the chair to the energy that is moving around in that chair. And there are, persons are a little difficult, persons are different, persons are made in his image. So, we live and moan about being in him. So, there is a sense that every person is a form of God in a way a chair isn't. Because a person is a person. And yet, we have broken off persons because we have fallen. So, our personality isn't joined to him who is love. And yet, it is he. So, we can see people's as a misuseful to him, as an against him, as I can put it. I think that's all I can say on that.