May 23rd, 1917.
Received by James Padgett
Washington D.C.
I am here, Jesus - Jesus, your brother and friend.
I come tonight to say a few words that you may be encouraged in your spiritual condition and made to feel that I am with you in your doubts and despondency.
I was with you last night and realized just what your condition is, and tried to influence you with my love and sympathy, and when you felt that you were all alone I endeavored to impress you with my help and the power of the love that I have received from the Father.
I know that while you are in the flesh and temptations come to you, there will be times when you will think that you are forsaken, or that the Father's love is not in and about you in all its beauty and sustaining influence, and that then thoughts will come to you, such as Job speaks of in the book that you have been reading, and God will seem a long way off. But, my brother, let me tell you with all the knowledge and love that I have, that God is never a way off from you in his love and that he is always ready and willing to help and comfort you, if you will only have faith and let your longings go out to him for the inflowing of this love into your soul. It is never absent from you, and awaits only your invitation for making itself real and consciously present with you. You only can prevent its coming into your soul, and, if you will believe that this is true and endeavor to realize how close this love is to you and how anxious the Father is that you receive it, you will be able to overcome these thoughts that arise from the weakness of the flesh, or rather, from the strength of the animal part of your nature.
So try to remember what I say, and whenever these thoughts come to you, look upon them as merely thoughts that come in the visions of the night and have no real foundation for their existence. As you may not know, real thoughts can arise only from that which is real, and when this love of the Father comes into your soul, appetites and passions that arise from the perversion of the animal nature of your being, cease to be real and are merely the recollections of what has been - a resultant of that perversion. This love makes that which aforetime was perverse a genuine thing of truth, in harmony with God and goodness.
Life is of God and, when not perverted by the will of man, is like unto the goodness from which it comes; and good and evil are conditions which are only, as in the one case, God is real, and in the other, evil is not real as being a part of the creation of God. It, sin, is the creation of man, and that man disobedient and out of harmony with his own creation and the laws of his creator.
I write this to encourage your faith in the goodness of God, and in the inherent goodness of yourself, and to confirm your faith and knowledge in the truth that in God's universe all is good, and only that is sinful which man himself, in violation of the will of the Father, had created and afterwards cultivated and nurtured. So believe this, that when this love comes into your soul you have the possession of that which will enable you to forget the creatures of your own will and make successful your efforts to cease the cultivation of this resultant of your own creation.
It is only when you, for the moment, forget or cease to realize that this love is yours, does the existence of the evil, which was as you may think to be naturally yours, become to you real, at least in your thoughts appear to be real. You have experienced the condition of soul when these thoughts had no place in your life, and were to you as if they had never been; and what you have thus experienced may, if you let live your faith in the possession of this love, continue to be your condition without intermission, and you be enabled to enjoy consciously the reality of its continuous existence.
Add I further know, that this state of freedom from thoughts of evil requires you to watch and, upon the first suggestion of such thoughts, pray to the Father for the increased expression of his love and you will not be disappointed, As in the prayer which I have given you, you are taught to ask that help may be given you to overcome all temptations of the flesh and the influence of the evil ones, so I repeat, let your supplications for this help ascend to the Father when first you feel the temptation, for so far as regards your condition of soul qualities, these temptations and influences are real.
The evil ones are with all mortals, and the condition of the soul determines whether they, the evil ones, can or not make a rapport with the mortals; and when this love comes into the soul such rapport is impossible. Then the secret of overcoming temptations is to have the soul qualities in such condition that the rapport cannot be made.
I know that men, sometimes, by their course of thinking of things good and pure invite this rapport, but this is not to be relied on as a sure preventive, for thoughts are changeable and the results of the appetites and emotions, and the natural, as I may say, tendencies of men are to gratify these appetites when not curbed by the higher development of their moral qualities, which qualities are very susceptible to the influence of the sensual natures of man.
I felt the necessity of writing to you as I have, for it is so important both for yourself, personally, and as my instrument for the work that has been given you to do, that you acquire more of this love and the knowledge by which you may be helped so very much to overcome these temptations and influences. The more love, the less the power of temptation and the possibility of thoughts that do not find their source in this love. So I say to you: watch and pray.
Well, I will not write more tonight, and with my love and blessings will say good- night and God bless you. I will come soon and write another message, and hope that you may be in condition to receive it as successfully and correctly as you did my last one.
Your friend and brother,
Jesus.