July 22nd, 1917
Received by James Padgett.
Washington D.C.
I am here, St. Luke, writer of the Third Gospel that was. Well, I desire to write a few lines on the subject contained in the book which you were reading tonight. I mean the book dealing with the "Creation and fall of man."
Well, the man who wrote the book is endeavoring to reconcile the Bible doctrine of the creation and fall of man with the scientists' doctrine of evolution, and to show that these two views of the subject are not antagonistic, and if properly understood, may be used, one to support the other. But in this he has not succeeded, nor can he, for this reason, if there were no others, that man did not evolve from the beast or lower animal, but was always man, the creature of God, perfect in his creation and wholly natural.1
There was nothing of the supernatural about him and he never possessed any nature of the superman from which he fell at the time of his disobedience. He has never been anything more or less than the perfect creation of his Maker, although he has degenerated in his qualities and in the exercise of his will.
Evolution or the doctrine of evolution has its limitations, and its founder, or those who follow him either wholly or in a modified way, are not able to retrace this doctrine to the fall of man, and hence, when they attempt to pass beyond that stage when man seemed to have been very degenerate and a product of the animal progenitors, they get into the field of speculation, and knowledge ceases to exist.
Man was not created with any of the Divine qualities, as the writer seems to think but was made the merely natural man that you see now, without the defilement of his soul qualities which involves only the elimination of those things from his soul that cause the departure from the condition of his creation. That is, when he was created he was in perfect harmony with the will of God and His laws and when he shall be restored to that harmony of unity with these laws, he will then be in what was his before the fall.
So the idea put forward by the author that man was created with something of the divine in him, which took him out from a kind of physical condition of imperfection, and that when he lost these Divine qualities he fell into that imperfect condition, is all wrong. The great truth connected with man's creation, is that man was created perfect, that as regards his order of creation or the qualities of his moral and physical nature there could be no progress, for the next step in progression would be the divine.
Thus you will see that he was so wonderfully and perfectly made, that he was only a little lower than the angels, and by angels I mean the souls of men which have ceased to be incarnate and have partaken of the Divine Love and become a part of the Father in His Divinity of Love - not the mere souls in the spirit world which have only the development of their moral qualities, because these, whenever they have become purified and in harmony with the laws and will of God, are only men perfected in their natures and organisms as they were at the time of man's creation.
I say, the perfect man possesses those qualities and attributes that were his at the time of his creation, and he cannot progress or become greater or other than he was at the time of such creation. He was made perfect as a creation, and beyond the perfect there can be nothing greater evolved from the qualities and faculties, one and all, that made him perfect. And to progress, there must come into his nature, from without, the Divine Love, that which will add to these qualities and faculties, which you may understand is no part or method of evolution.
When the first parents fell, they lost that which destroyed the harmony of their existence with the laws of God, and also were deprived of the great potentiality of becoming Divine in their natures of Love and Immortality, like unto the Father - but as mere created men they fell from perfection and not from divinity. Nor were they by that fall deprived of the possibility of living forever in the physical bodies, because those bodies were made only for the purpose of enabling the souls to individualize themselves, and thereafter die and become dissolved into their derivative elements.
The physical body was never created to live forever, and men were never created to live on earth forever, for a greater and larger world was provided for their eternal habitation, where things are real and only the spiritual exist. The earth is a mere image of the realities of the spirit world, and exists only as the nursery for the individualizing of the soul. That you may not misconceive my meaning, remember the soul is the man - the ego - and that when man fell, it was not the physical part of man that fell, except as it was influenced by the soul, but, it was the soul that fell; and the sentence of death was not pronounced upon the physical, but upon the soul potentialities, and, hence, you may see, that when man shall again become the perfect man, it will not be necessary that the physical body be restored.
Even if it were not contrary to the physical laws of the universe, or, to speak more correctly, to the laws controlling the material part of the universe, that the material body of man be resurrected and again be housed, the soul, it would not be necessary, for the soul has its spirit body which manifests its individuality. There is no necessity for the resurrection of the physical body, and there will be no such resurrection, for God never does a useless thing.
As I say, man has never ceased to be the man of God's creation, although he has become degenerate and defiled, and at one time in the history of his existence devolved to that degree, where, save for the essential qualities of his creation, he appeared to be lower than the brutes; but he was always the man of God's creation, and never an animal of the lower order. The scientists in their geological search and research and in their finds of fossils and traces of ancient man, and in their biological theories, conclude that man was of a lower degree of intelligence and manner of living, and they may be justified in so concluding, and also that he has gradually evolved from that condition and state, and draw apparent correct theories there from, yet when they attempt to go further, they enter only into the realm of speculation and become lost in the darkness of mystery. They can rightly acclaim the evolution of man from where they lose him in their retracing of that evolution, but can know nothing of his devolution anterior to that time; and, hence their speculations are without foundation of substance.
No, man has not evolved from the lower animal, but only from himself when he reached the bottom of his fall. In this particular, the history and experience of man is this - he was created perfect, - he sinned, he fell from the condition of his created state - his condition at the bottom of his fall was inferior in some phases to the brute animal - after long centuries he commenced to rise from his base condition, and had made progress when the scientists by their discoveries found evidence of his then condition, - and since then he has been the subject of their "evolution." But the scientists and all mankind must know that all during these centuries of descent and ascent, man was always man, the greatest creation of God, and the most fallen.
Well, I have written enough for tonight but as I was with you to-day as you were reading and saw the misconceptions of the writer of the book, as well as those of the scientists to whom he referred, I thought it advisable to write the few incompleted truths about the subject. I will soon come and write. So with my love and blessings, I will say good night.
Your brother in Christ,
Luke.