November 5th, 1916
Received by James Padgett
Washington D.C.
I am here, St. Luke.
I come tonight to write you a message upon the truth of: What the Holy Spirit is. I know that the orthodox generally believe and classify it as a part of the Godhead, being one with and the equal of God, the Father, and not merely a manifestation of the Father, as spirit, and hence, necessarily identical with the Father, though having a different and distinct personality. In this belief and in this classification is included Jesus, having a distinct personality.
The orthodox preachers and theological writers teach that it is a fact that these three are one, co-equal and existing, and that fact is the great mystery of God, and that men should not endeavor to fathom the mystery, because the sacred things of God are His own, and it is not lawful for men to enter into these secrets. Well this declaration and admonition are very wise as men's wisdom goes, and saves the expounders of these doctrines of mystery from attempting to explain what they cannot explain, because it is impossible for them to unravel that which as a fact, has no existence.
Men of thought all down the ages have sought to understand this great mystery, as they called it, and have been unsuccessful, and as the early fathers met with the same defeat in their endeavors to understand the mystery, and, then because of such defeat, declared the explanation of the doctrine to be a secret of God, not to be inquired into by men, so all these other investigators of the church when they became convinced of the futility of the search, adopted the admonition of the old fathers that God's secret must not be inquired into, for it belonged to Him alone, and sinful man and the redeemed man also must respect God's secret. And thus from the beginning of the established church, after the death of Jesus and his apostles, was declared this doctrine of the trinity - one in three and three in one, yet only one - and made the vital foundation stone of their visible church's existence. Of course, from time to time, there arose men, both in the church, who, having more enlightenment than their brothers in the church, attempted to gainsay the truth of the doctrine and declared and maintained that there was only one God, the Father.
But they were in the minority, and not acting with the more powerful, their views were rejected; and the mystery became the church's sacred symbol of truth, unexplainable and therefore more certain and entitled to more credence. And it seems to be the tendency of men's minds, or at least of those who believe in the Bible as the inspired word of God, to welcome and encourage as the more wonderful and important and the more to be cherished those things which savor of the mysterious, rather than those which a man may read and understand as he runneth. (Habbakuk 2:2).
Nowhere, not even in the Bible, is there any saying of Jesus to the effect that God is tripartite, consisting of the Father, Son and Holy Ghost; and, as a fact, never did Jesus when on earth teach any such doctrine, but only this: that the Father is God and the only God, and that he, Jesus, is his son and the first fruits of the resurrection from the dead, and that the Holy Ghost is God's messenger for conveying the Divine Love, and as such, the comforter.
I know that in some of the Gospels, as now contained in the Bible and adopted as canonical, it is said, in effect, that the Godhead consists of the Father, Son and Holy Ghost - these three are one - but such Gospels do not contain the truth in this respect and are not the same Gospels that were originally written. These original Gospels have been added to and taken from in the passing of the years and in the copying and the recopying that occurred before the adoption of the same.
They, the adopted ones, were compiled from many writings, and as the compilers in those early times differed in their opinions as men do now respecting religious truths, the more powerful of these having authority to declare what should be accepted, according to their interpretations of those manuscripts that were being copied, directed the copies to be made in accord with their ideas, and I may say, desires, and announced and put forth such productions to be true copies of the originals. And as these copies were successively made the preceding ones were destroyed, and hence the earliest existing manuscripts of these Gospels came into being many years after the originals from which they were claimed to be compiled, were written and destroyed.
And I, Luke, who did write a gospel and who am acquainted with the present gospel ascribed to me, say that there are many vital things and declarations, that I never wrote and that are not true, contained in it; and many truths that I did write are not contained therein - and so with the other gospels.
In none of our Gospels did the mystery of the Godhead appear, and that for the reason that there was not and is not, and we did not teach that there was any Godhead, composed of three personalities. Only one God, the Father. Jesus was a son of man in the natural sense, and a son of God in the spiritual sense, but he was not God or a part of God in any sense except that he possessed the Divine Love of the Father, and in that sense was a part of His Essence. The Holy Spirit was not God, but merely His instrument - a Spirit - the Holy Spirit.
As you have been informed, the soul of man existed prior to man's creation in the flesh, and was the only part of man that was made in the image of God. It existed in this pristine state without individuality, though having a personality, and resembled the Great Soul of the Almighty, which Soul is God Himself; though the soul that was given to man was not a part of the Great Soul, merely a likeness of it.
Some of you mortals have said that man's soul is a part of the "Oversoul," meaning the Soul of God, but this is not true, and if in any of our communications it has been said that the soul of man is a part of the Soul of God, and I mean while it existed before its incarnation, our saying must not be so interpreted. The ego of God as may be said, is the Soul, and from this Soul, emanates all the manifested attributes of God, such as power and wisdom and love - but not jealousy or wrath or hatred, as some of the writers of the Bible have said, for He possesses no such attributes. The ego of man is the soul, and in his created purity and perfection from his soul emanated all the manifested attributes belonging to him, such as power and love and wisdom; and neither were jealousy nor hatred nor wrath attributes of his before his fall.
It is said that man is composed of body, soul and spirit, and this is true. From your life's experience you know what the body is, and I have told you what the soul is, and now the question arises, what is the spirit? I know that there have been for centuries great differences of opinion among theologians and other wise men as to what the spirit is; some contending that it and the soul are the same thing, and others, that the spirit is the real ego of man and the soul something of less quality and subordinate to the spirit, and others having other views, and all wrong, for as I have said the soul is the ego, and everything else connected with man and forming a part at his creation when he was pronounced to be "very good," is subordinate to the soul, and only its instrumentality for manifesting itself.
As Jesus has told you, the spirit is the active energy of the soul and the instrumentality by which the soul manifests itself; and this definition applies to the spirit of man while a mortal as well as when he becomes an inhabitant of the spirit world. The spirit is inseparable from the soul, and has no function in the existence of man, except to make manifest the potentialities of the soul in its activities. Spirit is not life, but it may become an evidence of life - it is life's breath.
And as man was created in the image of his Maker - and as spirit is only the active energy of the soul, by the application of the principle of correspondences, which one of your former psychics declared to exist, it may be assumed and it is truth, that the Holy Spirit is the active energy of the Great Soul of the Father, and, as we know from our experiences and observations, is used as the messenger of the Father to convey to mankind His Divine Love. And I do not mean to restrict the mission of the Holy Spirit to mankind in the flesh, for it also conveys and bestows this Great Love upon the souls of the Father's children who are spirits without the bodies of bone and flesh, and who are inhabitants of the spirit world. And so, it is a truth that the Holy Spirit is not God and no part of the Godhead, but merely His messenger of Truth and Love emanating from his Great Soul and bringing to man Love and Light and Happiness.
So you see there is no mystery of the Godhead, and no secret that God does not wish man to know and understand, and no truth that it is contrary to God's laws and will that man shall search for and possess. It is said that God is Spirit, and it is true; but spirit is not God, only one of his instruments used to work with mankind and the spirits of men. To worship the instrument is blasphemy, and only God alone must be worshiped. Jesus must not be worshiped as God, the Holy Spirit must not be so worshiped, and the sooner men learn this Truth and observe it the sooner they will get in at-onement with the Father, and please the master, who, as some may not know, is the greatest worshiper of the Father in all his universe.
I have written longer than l expected, but I hope from my message many mortals may receive the truth, and believe that the Holy Spirit is not one of the Godhead, and that the mystery of the Godhead is a myth, without body, soul or spirit, and that there is no truth in all God's universe that man is not invited to search for and understand and possess.
I will now stop and in doing so, will leave you my love and blessings, and will pray the Father to send the Holy Spirit to you with great abundance of the Divine Love. Good night and God bless you until I come again.
Your brother in Christ,
Luke.