The Revelation of St. John the Divine

Interpreted by Herb Fitch

Class One: Only Christ Knows Christ

We have a book which the world has passed by, and yet in it, are contained everything, every idea, every truth that we have been seeking and wondering about; the answer to every frustration, the answer to all the problems that man of earth faces, the answer to disease, the answer to the meaning of life. All these and more, are hidden here, but not really hidden, merely latent, awaiting the recognition of those who would call themselves servants of the most high. And every single truth that you uncover in this journey will be a task dedicated to a life of truth.

We have to find an authority we can believe in; that seems to be one of the basic problems of life. We turn to authorities and find them wanting. We find the clay feet of those who we would have lead us all too late and all too tragic. There was an authority on this earth before the world began and that authority never left this earth. Before Abraham was, I AM and I still AM, and I AM forever. I AM the Eternal Self; I AM your Authority and when you find Me, you will discover why human authorities have never been sufficient. You will discover why the Word of God can never be found outside of your own being. You will discover the path of revelation.

Now I know that quite a number of us have discovered this path of revelation and are permitting the Word of the Father within to come through to guide us, to teach us, to feed us, to in every way, lead us into Sonship with God. Unfortunately, the way of the world today is not Sonship with God. Hardly any of us can even claim to have penetrated that inner realm called the Kingdom of God, and yet, the message of the Christ is, “My Kingdom is not of this world; but the Kingdom of God is within you.” And there is then, a way to this Kingdom of God and a very strange thing is said about it. The Master says, “It is a straight and a narrow way that leadeth unto Life.” And when you measure those words, “leadeth unto life,” you might say to yourself, “And where am I now? If I must find a way to life, what is this?” This is the world, which is not your Father’s Kingdom. This is the imitation of life. This is the human concept of life and this is the human concept that can never sustain itself unto eternity, and it must end, unless, unless we discover the way to enter into that Oneness with the Father, that Sonship with the Father which leadeth unto Life.

There is a passage in John which begins this way:

           “If ye love me, obey my commandments.” It’s in the fourteenth chapter. “If ye love me, keep my commandments. And I will pray the Father, and He shall give you another Comforter that He may abide with you forever, even the Spirit of Truth, whom the world cannot receive because it seeth Him not, neither knoweth Him. But ye know Him, for He dwelleth with you and shall be in you. I will not leave you comfortless. I will come to you. Yet a little while, and the world seeth me no more. But ye see me. Because I live, ye shall live, also. And at that day, ye shall know that I am in my Father, and ye in me, and I in you. He that hath my commandments and keepeth them, he it is that loveth me. And he that loveth me shall be loved of my Father, and I will love him and will manifest myself to him.”

And then just above that:“Verily, I say unto you, he that believeth on me, the works that I do shall he do also. And greater works than these shall he do because I go unto my Father. And, whatsoever ye shall ask in my name, that will I do, that the Father may be glorified in the Son.”

You might ask, then, if these important words were spoken in the midst of the world, “If you love me, obey my commandments. And whatever you ask in my name, I shall do.” Who, then, in this world has obeyed his commandments? Who, then, in this world can say that whatever I ask in his name he is doing? Who can wave a magic wand and bring peace to this world? Who knows the way to purify the air we breathe, to prevent the fires that come like a thief in the night? Who knows a way to prevent disease? Who knows the way to overcome death? Who knows the way to eternal happiness? And so we discover that the Bible, and 50 million more Bibles, and 50 million more sermons, and 50 million more prayers have turned away from the commandments, have lost the way. And religion itself has found another way, not the way of the Christ, for there is no demonstration of the way of Christ in religion at all. There is no demonstration of the Christ in the way of science. There is no demonstration of the Christ on this earth. Where will you find Christ demonstrated? In what home, in what city; in what country can we say, “There is the Christ incarnate, there is the purity of His teaching appearing as the joy, the peace, the truth, the miracle of God on earth?” But the Master knew this, and so the Master did a very strange thing. He was on the cross, at the time, and it’s a passage that is very important if we are to understand the Revelation of St. John.

The teaching of Jesus Christ has not been fulfilled on this earth. Your schools do not teach it; education of men today has nothing to do with teaching the message of the Christ. Religion does not teach it; religion has no interest in teaching the message of the Christ, whatsoever. Its purpose is to teach its doctrine, its beliefs about a man. It does not know how to turn away from sixteen centuries of darkness. But Omniscience never fails; Omniscience is always going before, even before the Church to prepare the way, before the three and a half billion who walk the earth unaware of the basic fact of life itself.

And so on the cross, he looked down and he saw his mother. And he pointed to John and said, “Mother, there is your son.” And he pointed to his mother and said to John, “There is your mother.” And then scripture says, “Now that he knew that his work was finished, he said, “I thirst.” He could not depart until he had designated the Christ on earth as John, who would receive the Word. And it was said then that John, from that moment on, took Mary unto his home, unto his Christ consciousness.

Now this was the manner in which Spirit prepared men to look to John on this earth now that the Master was moving into the invisible realm. John had the Word, and to John the Word would be revealed. And as we accept the tenets of Christianity, we look to the four gospels, and we find that in them, one of the four is different than the other three. One was written by a tax collector, who had become a disciple, and he recorded what he saw, faithfully. Another was written by a young boy under the jurisdiction of Peter. And that’s how we got the gospel of Mark. And these two, Mark and Matthew, wrote from the viewpoint of the early Hebrews. Luke, coming along, wrote from the viewpoint of the early Hebrew Christians, and, as you know, he had quite a difficulty trying to reconcile the human genealogy of Jesus and also the divine birth of Jesus, so that on one hand he traced Jesus’ humanly all the way back to David, and on the other, he had Him born immaculately.

And so we find only in John a different kind of teaching. The historical facts, to a degree, are there, but in John we find a teaching about the inner self. And it is this John, who, it is said, walked off this earth without leaving a body. No body of John was ever discovered. Like Jesus, he took his body with him. It is this John, upon whom, Christianity has founded itself. In reliance upon his gospel, as well as the other three, it is this John who received the inner Word, which is the Revelation of St. John. It is this John who had reached such a height of awareness that the mother of Jesus was entrusted to him. It is this John who stood on the Isle of Patmos and recorded an inner experience which now, two thousand years later, is as contemporary as the day it was written and as new as tomorrow.

It is this same John whose healing works were so miraculous that he was suspected of witchcraft. And it is said, that the emperor called upon him to see if he really was a witch and made him drink a potion. And before drinking it, he blessed it in the name of Christ and then proceeded to down it without the slightest problem. The same potion was given to a criminal who instantly died. It is this John who was banished. And for those of us who find some discord in our life, let us remember that his banishment, his apparent discord, is the source of the truth that we can now enjoy. What the world saw as a possible evil was glory in disguise, for it took him away from official duties. It took him out of the world into a place where the fullness of all that he had learned in the Inner Kingdom could be brought to a head, given to the world, from the vantage point of one who had traveled, first with Jesus in the flesh, and then for almost fifty years in the Invisible. It is this same John who stood with his disciples one day and when they returned the next, all that stood where John had been was a fountain of water. This is the legend of John.

Many great minds have looked at this revelation. There is not a member of any church in the universe, since the beginning of the revelation in the Bible some sixteen hundred years ago, who has not seen this revelation, who has not been confronted with it, who has not looked at it. And there are few, very few, who have not looked at it and turned away as if it never existed, and this from one of the writers of the Bible; one of the great prophets of all times, the man designated by Jesus as his successor on the earth. How can we turn away and say that we are servants of The Most High? Why then, we say, did John receive another message from the Inner Christ? Was not the work of Jesus finished upon the earth? No, it could not have been, until he had carefully prepared that antidote to what would be done with his message after his departure in the flesh. Spirit being infallible, Spirit knowing all things, Spirit being omnipresent throughout eternity, it was natural that Spirit would know that there would be a need, a need for the truth present right in the Bible as a safety lock, sort of like the House of Representatives and the Senate checking the President, when they can. And this safety lock was the Book of Revelation. It was able to say to the men of earth, “Now, hold on there! You have the Truth in the four Gospels, the Acts, the Epistles. Why are you not following that Truth?”

And the mortal mind, of course, rejected this Revelation; kept it out of the Bible, but the power of the Inner Christ was too much. And in spite of what this has to say about the churches, about the religions of the world, there was no power on this earth to keep the Revelation of St. John out of the Bible. It was finally admitted, and it stands in its glory as a blank page to many, but as a beacon of light to those who, above all, at all costs, are determined that for them there was only one way. And if they need further authority for their way in this book, they’d find it. In this book they can derive the courage to turn to the world and say, “No! What you’re doing to the message of Jesus is not what I want. I don’t want some third-rate mode of behavior. I’m not satisfied with a moral code. I want the Inner Truth, the Higher Truth, the Real Truth, the Truth of Life Itself.

And because there must be an authority that you can follow, the Master, through John, again reiterates this message, giving you that High Authority that you seek. That High Authority comes to us in twenty-two chapters: first announcing the Authority for the Revelation; then, what the Revelation will be about; how there will be seven seals broken, seals that are sealing us from the Truth. And then it says to us, “You can take this path. You can elect to follow this path within, in which one seal is broken at a time, and as each seal is broken, another gift of God flows through your being until when the seventh seal is broken, all seven gifts in you are united in one River of Life to sustain the outer self, to take you into that Kingdom of God on earth, where the will of the Father in you is the only will present where you are.”

This is the path that leadeth unto Life. And then on the other side, it shows us that if we do not elect this particular path, in which the seven spirits, or seven gifts, or seven stars, or seven purposes are revealed, and interwoven into a unified Self that is complete in God, that on the other hand, we may be compelled to accept that which we have not elected to do. That’s a little more difficult, a little more time consuming, a little more painful. But in either event, whether we elect, or whether we are compelled, the inevitability of the risen Christ in you is shown forcefully, dramatically, and without the possibility of ever being denied. This is a book that tells us Christ on earth is the fact of every individual who is on the earth and ever will be, and that there is no power on earth to prevent it. It gives us the choice to elect the path of Christ or to be forced through karmic law into the eventual yielding to the Christ. And it always says, “If you have eyes to see and ears to hear, this is your message.”

Now then, you may have read many, many revelations, many interpretations of the Revelation. Some of them are quite appalling. All of them have the fear of an Armageddon, when man will be thrust from the earth. All of them tell us the Day of the Lord will arrive when He will pronounce sentence upon his enemies. And we find that the consciousness of the world has been conditioned in such a way that, even in the priesthood, in the ministry, in men of high places, there is a belief that God has enemies; there is a belief that God has opposition, that God must overcome God’s foes. And so they have all these windmills to fight. And we learn in this Revelation, God has no enemies at all. God has no opposition. We learn the difference between Truth and hypnotism.

Let’s look at our Revelation now, and before we do, let us remember that we are not looking at it now as if we were just beginners. We have come quite a long way in the realization of Truth. So, we know to some degree just what is in this book for us. But now, let us not make the mistake of the world and try to face this book with the human mind.

It came when John was on the isle of Patmos, in a high level of submission to the Inner Voice, in realms of the Soul. It came in the highest consciousness. And like all the books of the Bible which came in the highest consciousness, when you read them from the low consciousness of earth-man, of human mentality, well, you might as well take an untrained ear to listen to Beethoven or Brahms. It takes understanding; it takes study to build your appreciation. And it takes a higher consciousness, which is in you now, to listen to the language of the Soul; with the Soul and not with the mind. Then you will discover that you’re moving on the same level as the Revelation, and it can unfold into your awareness in a different way than if you had stood there in the barrier of a human mind trying to decipher symbols which have absolutely no meaning to our normal human sense of values. So your first step in understanding the Revelation, and really in understanding the Bible itself, and in hearing the Word of the Father within you, is to rest from the thought of the world.

All around you is world thought. You must rest. You must let it go by. You must know by now that everything you see in this world is world thought made visible. Everything you see in this world is a mental image. The conditions, the persons, the places, the things of this world are all world consciousness made visible and tangible. And the channel is thought, and so we take no thought; we rest from human thought; we abide in thoughtlessness. We do not stop our thought; we simply let the world thought go by, until you feel a changing taking place within you, in which a new life stream is forming, not the stream of world thought, but a great Silence, an unusual form of peace where all thought in the universe becomes one nothingness to you. For that is where Jesus always lived. That is where John always lived. And that is the Isle of Patmos. That is where you receive the living waters of Divine thought, when in you the great vacuum of human thought permits an emptying out, so that you are seeking no person, no thing, no power; just content to be on the isle of no thought. And when you can say, “I have overcome world thought. It is not flowing through me consciously or subconsciously; I feel a new life stream beginning.” Then, you are ready for the Master’s voice.

The world wanted to kill the man they called Jesus because he told them the Truth that he had heard of God. He says that: “I have told you the truth that I heard of God, and so you want to slay me.” And so it is that when you hear the Truth of God, it will never be from a human tongue. The Truth of God will only come when you are on the Isle of Patmos, when you are able to know that world thought has no power over you, cannot enter your consciousness to defile, cannot maneuver you, cannot frighten you, cannot persuade you that God is not where you are. This is the ultimate realization, which is the threshold for Revelation. The place whereon thou standeth must be the city of God, the house of God, your conscious awareness of the presence of God. And, the Christ that is to be revealed unto you is not a life apart from you, but Christ is the Spirit that indwells you.

And all of this Revelation of St. John is the Revelation of the Spirit indwelling every man, woman, and child on the face of the earth. John, through Jesus, through God, is bringing you to the revelation that only through the realization of the indwelling Spirit of your being can you know the Truth of God. Only through the realization that the Spirit of Christ indwells you do you find the Inner Church of God. In your taking no human thought, letting the thought of the world go by, all that remains is the indwelling Spirit called Christ to reveal itself where you stand as the substance of your being, as the first begotten, as the first born, as the dependable Truth that can never be found external to you. All this had been fulfilled by John in his earth span to make him a vehicle for the Word. And then in a moment, there was a contact made, and John knew that he was one with God; one with Christ, one with that individuality of Christ called Christ Jesus. And the One who had taught him on earth was now teaching him from the Invisible. Every word spoken now, written now, heard now, becomes the Word of God through Jesus Christ, sent by His angel to John. And if we believe the Gospel of John, if we believe the authority of John, if we believe the words that he has spoken to say that “This is not my revelation, but the Revelation of Jesus Christ sent to me by His angel,” then we are privileged to hear what the Voice of the Father through this channel had to say to the world, for John was the representative of Jesus Christ on earth.

So John says, “This is the Revelation of Jesus Christ which God gave unto him to show unto his servants things that must shortly come to pass. And, he signified it (sic), sent and signified it by his angel unto his servant John.”

What is an angel? The angel of God is the Spirit of God. The angel of God is the presence of God. That spiritual presence of God in you is called the angel of God. The spiritual presence in John was the angel of Jesus Christ. John, being one with the Christ of his own being, being in Christhood, could commune with the Christ of Jesus. The one Christ in John was the one Christ in Jesus, and this was the method of communication. And, that Christ is the angel of the Lord, and that Christ is the substance of your being.

That angel through which John communicated with Jesus is the same substance of each of us. That indwelling spirit is the angel of the Lord. And it says here, “To show unto his servants’ things that must shortly come to pass.” When this was made public, or published by John, there weren’t too many servants of Christ. They were few and far between; they were people who had come to a certain level of awareness which enabled them to forsake all that they had ever believed in prior to the Christ dispensation, and to be willing, even if necessary, to lay down their personal lives in their search for Truth. They were servants of the Christ in every possible way. And this Revelation was for the servant of the Christ, that individual, wherever he might be or she might be, in time or space, who had reached that place in consciousness where he or she could say, “Above all and beyond all else, my one purpose on this earth is to serve the Christ within. I am a servant of the Most High; that is my first, and last and only function on this earth.” To that individual, now, as well as then, this Revelation from God through Jesus through John was meant not just [for] the few disciples on hand in the first century, because Spirit does not work in time; Spirit works in eternity, Spirit works in the Eternal Now.

And now this message of the Spirit comes as fresh as the day it uttered itself through John to say that I am a message only for those who by their way of life are determined to serve Christ and Christ alone. Others who will read this message will receive nothing from it. Others who have not dedicated themselves to serving the Truth have read this message and have received nothing from it. And the reason is that there is no capacity to receive this Truth, except in one who through the desire to be a servant, has been opened up from within, so that their faculties of Soul are ready to receive, to pour forth, to be responsive to the Master’s voice. This, then as now, was the message only for those who seek the ultimate glory of Christ Consciousness, for what is required of them will be possible. And what is required of them is impossible for those who are not ready for that degree of service to the Truth. To be a servant of the Most High is a complete emptying out of my desires, my wishes, my ambitions, my limitations, my fears. To be a servant is to be dead unto the self, to be alive only to the Christ, to awaken, to turn, to repent, to put Christ first, foremost, last and always. That’s why you have a very small percentage on earth who are ready to find the Christ. This is not a service in which you can divide your interest. It demands all that you are. And It gives you all that It is, in return.

Now, John is pointedly making the point that this is for the servants of the Most High. It is the Word of God given unto Jesus Christ to show unto his servant’s things which must shortly come to pass. You can see there that among the things which must shortly come to pass, there is an implied warning. And the warning is that even authorities on the earth, allegedly in that position of authority which can help lead men to Christ will not do so, but rather will erect monuments to themselves. And this is the warning that men will fall into the hypnosis of their own self-will; that they will adulterate the Christ teaching, and it must be so, that men will go their own ways, men will divide his garment, men will pierce the Christ, because they are a divided household. It is a statement that man of flesh can never be the Son of God until he has renounced every belief in a life apart from God. There is no place in Christhood for anyone who still believes himself to be a physical mortal being, and there is no place in the teaching of Christ where you can falter along the way, and insist on retaining your mortality, and still hope to be called a servant or faithful witness of the Most High. The very nature of Christ is Life Eternal. The nature of mortality is death. How can there be mortality in Life Eternal? And so the consciousness of Life Eternal becomes your consciousness. I AM Life Eternal. This is not a fact to be attained; it is a fact to be known and accepted as a truth basic to all life.

For as the Revelation proceeds, it underlines with increasing certainty that on this earth there is only One Life; it is the Life of God. It is not mortal. It is the life of every individual who appears in a mortal frame. And, whoever would walk the path of Christ must accept the identity of Christ, must accept that I am He. I Am that Self. I Am that Spiritual Being who can never be divided and who is All.

And so we are confronted with the need to pause from every mortal concept that we entertain about a mortal who is becoming older, about a mortal who is aging, about a mortal who is becoming sick or well, about a mortal who is becoming anything. And the servant of the Father says, “God has declared beyond doubt, ‘Son all that I have is thine.” That Son is Christ and that Allness is embodied in the Christ-seed of Being. And for that Allness to be manifest, it can only manifest in one who is conscious that I AM that Christ. And then when you have made that adjustment, that prime step in the acceptance that Christhood is not a state to be attained, but to be accepted now, as the fact of being: that before Abraham was, Christ was your being, that now Christ is your being. And then you are discovering why there cannot be an external church because the Church of God is the Spirit of God indwelling your being, and Its name is Christ.

The Word of God comes in the Church of God, the Kingdom of God; the Christ of God. And that Word is the Allness which is bequeathed unto the Son by the Father. “All that I have is thine” in your being; for your being and my being are one Being. And, there is no authority on this earth except that Christ Being in which the Allness of God is. When Jesus overcame the belief in mortality and knew Himself to be the Christ of the Father; that the Allness of the Father was in the Son which is Christ, and I AM that One, then, he could say, “I AM the Christ. I AM the Light. And all that Father hath is Mine. For I and the Father are One.” And He was the servant then of the Most High. But He was the only servant who was able to prove Himself, to walk out of form and return. And by His resurrection, by becoming the first begotten, the firstborn of the earth, by being the only man on earth who was made alive, He showed us that the power of Christ is the only authority that we can follow.

And that is where you will find the Allness of God, the Word of God, the peace of God, the grace of God; not in the Bible, not in the Church, not from the pulpit, not in your prayers, but in the realization that you are that Spirit of God which is called the Father within. There is the Church of God. There is the Christ. There is the Living God, and the Living Word of that Living God. And, then you will never live again on borrowed quotations or on truth revealed by men. A Living God is a Living Truth now, and yesterday’s words are not today’s manna. And that is why Jesus said, “I will not leave you comfortless. I will come unto you, even the Spirit of Truth.” And that is what has been missing in us all; the realization not of Truth, but of the Spirit of Truth.

And the difference between them is this: Humanly, we accept the Truth to be a phrase, a series of words, and a statement; that is not Truth, that is our human concept about Truth. Truth can only come to you from within, from the Living Spirit of Truth.

Let me show you what I mean: A Woman put her diamond rings in a little glass of alcohol, apparently to cleanse them, and a few days later, to her horror, she discovered that she had thrown those glasses in the garbage, and, of course, it had all been picked up. The rings were expensive. They had a sentimental value of great importance, besides. Well, she was just crushed. What could she do about it? She called up a friend, spoke about it, told her that she had thrown those rings in the garbage by mistake. She just was tearing in her mind for something she could possibly do, and, of course, there was nothing she could do. And because there was nothing she could do, she reached a place where she found that she could not even think. She knew instinctively that all thought was futile. And now she was not thinking.

But something very strange happened. While she was unable to think, she found herself walking across the room into a certain drawer, opened it, reached in, and pulled out her diamond rings. Apparently, she had thought that she had thrown the glasses out before she took the rings out.

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