The Word

“In the beginning was the WORD, and the WORD was with God, and the Word was God.”

From this definite statement of the WORD does all creation proceed in orderly fashion until the day of rest is attained. The symbolical description of the creation of the world is the key to the bringing forth of everything that is to come into your life. It—the manifest world—was brought forth by the “God spake” power, once the recognition of “in the beginning was [already established] the WORD.”

Until we grasp the difference between the WORD and “words”we will never be able to understand why the heathenish habit of repeating words accomplishes nothing. “Be not like the heathen, who thinks because of vain repetition to gain the ear of God.” “But speak the Word” and the deaf shall hear, the blind shall see, etc., etc.

The WORD spoken of in the beginning is the substance of things hoped for and the evidence of things not seen”—the permeating essence of Spirit, which, when recognized in any degree, starts a flow of “words.” Thousands of affirmations have shaped themselves round about the WORD of life, but unless the WORD has been consciously recognized as the Power and substance of God, nothing has happened, and the “appearance” has not taken place. “Peace, peace, and there is no peace” and “Peace be still” bring out the idea of the substance of the WORD.

The reason words will not call the Deity into expression is that the Deity is not at the beck and call of man; but He is eternally urging upon man new and lovelier dimensions of expression. At no time is God waiting to do your bidding, nor to materialize your little human desires which you would only “con­sume upon your lust” for personal power and place.

Once the WORD is recognized, the creation of a universe follows.Once you recognize the Presence, then whatsoever you “ask” in that natureis accomplished: for you have come to the place of “Let there be.” This does not in any sense put you in the place of a creator, but makes you a revealer of the WORD. The moment man imagines that he can in any way control God, or create, he has stepped down into the mental plane. There for a short time he is able to procure phenomena inter­mittently; but presently these become clouds without rain, and he is finished.

The “Let there be” is merely the word of release. The ways and means of manifesta­tion are completely outside the understand­ing of man. There is no way to tell how it shall appear. That one who has arrived at the “Let there be” state isn’t trying to imagine how it can come to pass. It is glorious even to glimpse the fact that all of this takes place”not by might, not by power, but by My Spirit.” It happens by the movement of Spirit which immediately makes itself felt when it is acknowledged. This is a new dimen­sion, and cannot be squared by the yardstick of human intellect.

When the WORD is recognized and spoken, “In the beginning” of your new world, it acts as a magnet. Like the proverbial snow­ball, it gathers momentum and substance every instant as it moves into action. No sooner is the WORD recognized than the con­firmation begins to appear, and eventually the impossible thing takes place—the “dry land” out of”wet” water. The “Whereas before I was blind, NOW I can see” happens, and the outer voice exclaims with deep feeling, “All things are possible to God”if you can “believe.” This belief is not credulity; it is the “feel” which comes from recognition of the Presence. Of necessity it must rest in the secretplace of the Most High, or else the power will be wasted in idle words.These idle words, the talking of and about the thing, will demand an accounting—they will be pre­sent when the bridegroom passes by; be­cause of their “chattering about the impos­sible” they will have consumed all the “oil” from their lamps and they will be unable to see HIM, even though he pass by closely to them.

The revelation that is breaking over you will cause you to pause a moment and rest in the serene sense of the Presence, and you will say in the deep recesses of your being, “MY LORD and MY GOD.” Can anything stand in the way of the Lord? Ask yourself this question and see whether the time-­honoured beliefs which have seemed so real and true have power against this “WORD.”

It doesn’t make any difference whether it has ever happened before or not, or whether it is possible to the human sense. Jesus came, who dealt wholly with equations which were impossible, knowing that if a thing were pos­sible, man would have done it. So will you begin to see the need of secrecy. The “man you pass on the highway” will not believe the story. You will be talking from one level, he from another. By reason of his material surroundings he will prove to you that it cannot happen. If you can for a moment understand that you do not have to prove to the other man that God is able to transcend the limitations of three-dimensional thinking, but that you are permitted to “show” him the works, then will the secrecy preserve thee. It is only possible to do the “WORKS that I do” when you are governed by this secrecy. Remember that Jesus was “laughed to scorn” because they could not think on the level at which he was speaking. His eagerness to “show” them the power brought about this rebuke.

“In the beginning was the WORD.” In the beginning is the WORD,the idea swimming about in your consciousness. It is a desire pressing upon you for expression. The next thing is whether it goes within or comes without. If it comes without, it is talked about with thousands of words, until every bit of its energy and life is dissipated and it is nothing but sheer imagination. But if it goes within it is “with God.” It becomes one with God.It becomes a unit of omnipotence. It actually becomes God in essence, and nothing can keep it from expression. It is ready for the “Let there be “command of releasement.

All this symbology is inadequate to express the Power of this magnificent revelation given to us by Jesus Christ. It only faintly reveals the”something” which is resident in every human being, the Light which”lighteth every man.” Until this is recognized as true, man will continue to seek for ways and means of “demonstration.”

Once the WORD is recognized, and once it is with GOD, the confirmation begins to take place. Your desire begins to take shape, first inwardly with strange agreements and strange, interesting confirmations coming into the line of vision. Then one day the “child is born” or the full WORD becomes manifest, and that which was only an invisible Word in the beginning is now handled–-is embodied, is reality.

Everything that is to come into your life must pass through this process of creation, because that is the only way it can come. And this law, stated at the very beginning of the Bible, is followed with a thousand and one stories and allegories explaining it. Rules, laws, lessons, are all set forth to elucidate this one LAW which is so simple it entirely evades the erudite.

A million words form themselves around the WORD whenever it appears, hence we have endless talking about a demonstration that is made. It grows in the telling; it is dis­torted and twisted until in a short time there is not a vestige of truth left. The anxious mind trying to cull some favours from God by praising Him with lip-service forgets the demarcation between truth and imagination, and we hear weird and fantastic accounts of the precipitation of food, money, clothing. They go on until they rise to such proportions that they become ridiculous even to the per­son telling them, and he suddenly feels a weariness of words and falls by the way.

“God is not mocked.” Praising God because you fear Him, or because you think to gain favours from Him, is the surest way to find nothing but defeat. It is marvelous when you begin to perceive that those using most words possess the least. Talking of and about the truth will get you nowhere. That which is back of the affirmation is the determining factor. If there is naught but “wish­ing, hoping, or beseeching,” nothing will be accomplished. The affirmation which ac­complishes is merely the utterance of a state of consciousness already recognized. This strange wording coming to you through the inspiration will unlock itself and release the secret to you—when you are ready. “When you are ready, I will do the works through you.” Do you hear? Do you believe?

          “Having eyes, ye see not.” Then of a sudden you begin to SEE just what the power is. You begin to understand precipitation, levitation, and all the other weird things which cannot possibly be explained, but which can be experienced and known. In the state of consciousness which Jesus of Nazareth entered called Jesus Christ—the going to the Father—an entirely different set of laws exist, and these laws cannot in any way conform to the limitations of the consciousness of Jesus the carpenter. All thee words seem to spin a web about an unknown God, and must therefore be nothing but fool­ishness and confusion to the conscious-thinking man. If they do not appear as foolishness to the learned, then they do not measure up to the required standard of WISDOM, for the Wisdom of God is foolishness in the eyes of man, just as the wisdom of man, so often set aside, is foolishness in the eyes of God.

“The works that I do ye shall do also is the Waterloo of all metaphysicians. They have tried every possible trick of the human thought to accomplish the works of Jesus Christ. They can arrive at the same place,or even exceed, the Jesus the carpenter, but the “works that I do” are utterly beyond them. Why? Because these “works” exist in a new state of consciousness. They come under the head of the impossible, and they cannot be analyzed by human language.

Imagine taking literally the statement, “If ye have faith as a grain of mustard, ye shall say to yon sycamine-tree, ‘Be ye plucked up by the roots and be ye cast into the sea,’ and it shall be so.” What does the human intellect do with such a statement? It hems and haws about it and tries to slip through some loophole. It cannot believe such a thing, for it is untrue on the plane of conscious thinking. In fact, there is no possibility of its taking place, and, while not many people would care to spend time plucking up syca­mine-trees by the roots, yet every one of us is placed in a position where this power would come into good use. It is only in the calm serenity of acceptance of the Presence as here, there, and everywhere that we can conceive it all as true and possible. A miracle willnever be done just to prove that Jesus was not a liar. There is no reason for proof just to satisfy the little human reason, which would immediately try to explain it away as an illusion. When you are ready to believe in something higher than your human belief, with all its limitations, then will you be able to “sense” this Power of which Jesus spoke so freely, and which was apparently so simple to evoke.

“My ways are past finding out.” Do you hear? Or will you still believe in some “method,” person, place, or book, course of lessons, or short cut which will reveal to you the “how” of this Power? What do you care about the ways and means so long as it comes into being at the appointed time?Does it make any difference whether the answer to your letter arrives by a black, brown, or green coach? Would it enhance the value of the letter to know that a Hindu held it in his hand or a white man passed it along the line? You wouldn’t be bothered with such nonsense; what you want is the letter.

“Awake, thou that sleepest, and Christ shall give thee Light.” Do you hear? It does not say “maybe” or “perhaps”; it says, “And Christ shall GIVE thee Light”; and it is this Light which will light you into the place of rest—the “rest” belonging to the people of God.

“Then went he in and shut the door.” What for? Why didn’t he do it all outdoors, where the curious mind which is looking only for personal power,^–or loaves and fishes, could see? “Then went he in and shut the door.” There is something so final about the “shut the door”: It definitely separates him from the curious three-dimensional mind which is eternally trying to see the “prints of the nails” before it will believe. “Then went he in and shut the door.” Do you hear? Do you begin to see WHY? Do you suppose anybody will believe your report that “in the beginning was the WORD,” and that your word or desire is going to be clothed in the flesh?No, they will laugh you to scorn, and well they may, for you cannot prove it. Go within and shut your door; sense this “in the beginning” of that which is to be for you—you have started the power into operation which will eventually cause the “dry land to appear.” Merge your desire with God and it will become God in action. It will clothe itself, and cause you finally to “show John” that you have “gotten a man from the Lord”—in other words, you have brought forth that which in the beginning was merely a WORD.

I have seen thousands of WORDS in the beginning become dry land in the final analysis, and so I tell you this simple secret of the way of manifestation.

I know that if you have failed repeatedly, and have been turned awry by following one personality after another, you will eventually “Turn ye even unto ME with all your hearts and ye shall find rest for your souls.” You will eventually turn from every belief of man­ made truth into the place”prepared for those who love the Lord,” and in that place you will find the”treasure.”

“Come away from the man whose breath is in his nostrils,” else you will end up by worshipping his little body; presently some­thing may happen to that body, and you may find it is just another mortal concept after all. Come away from the personal teaching which is eternally trying to foist something upon you that is strange and weird. The teaching of Jesus Christ is simple enough for a child to grasp and use. What about the”teach­ing ” with which you were bothering yourself ?

“Take words and return unto Jehovah “—­take the beautiful words you have, and let all their variations melt into the WORD which is “the beginning” of your new world.

Away, then, with every book, teacher, lecturer, and leader—-“follow ME,” and you will possess all of them and yet not be possessed by any of them. The moment person­ality begins to assert itself an automatic shut-off will occur; you will be deaf to such teaching. All personal teaching is recognizable: it starts valiantly forth with “God is Love”; but, seeing its power slipping, it begins to introduce the power of evil, and, before you know it, it is trying to bind you to itself with chains of fear: evil prophecy and prognostications follow, and you find the smallest tenet of all is, ” God is Love.”

Little by little you are emerging from the slough of personal teaching and returning unto ME and finding therein the way of Life.

“In the beginning was the Word, and the WORD was with God, and the Word was God.” You are beginning a new creation today with the WORD, if it is with GOD—-do you see?

 Walter C. Lanyon