Godliness with Contentment is Great Gain

Simply in Scripture

20–05–2022

If you know where I’m quoting from, it is in Paul’s first letter to Timothy. The sixth chapter, the sixth verse. ‘But godliness with contentment is great gain.’ This is the law’s conclusion that Paul wrote here. What he said, ‘But’, is a word that unexpressedly implies ‘Moreover, Now’. The word ‘contentment’ is literally ‘Self-satisfaction’. And the word ‘gain’ would literally be ‘furnishing’ as in ‘a means/way’. So, Paul tells the application of the law time and again. The law of imagining: Imagination Creates Reality.

He started this little letter with the words, ‘But we know that the law is good, if a man use it lawfully; knowing this, that the law is not made for a righteous man, but for the lawless and disobedient.’ Unless he was a poet using some antithesis or paradox, this would appear the most opposite ideas to place side by side. The law is good, if a man use it lawfully, when he knows that the law is not made for a righteous man, but for the lawless and disobedient. Then he cumulates the whole thing in this expression, ‘Now, godliness with self-satisfaction is great furnishings.’ What does he mean? But a perfect, perfect application of the Law of Imagination.

What is the mystery that Paul is speaking of? The mystery of godliness, what is that? This is the key to the whole thing. The Law is Good, but it is made FOR the lawless. A man will Only ever use it lawfully when it is active and applied for the lawless and disobedient. So, who are the disobedient? ‘For God has consigned all men to disobedience that he may have mercy on all.’ He said that in his letter to the Romans. All men are the disobedient. Not by choice, but by the reason of the one who turned over all men to it. All men have been lawless, for all men have lived as though not subject to the Law. Again, the law is that an assumption if persisted in will harden into fact. But all men have lived without it, being disobedient. Well, Blake said the same thing in Jerusalem. ‘What seems to be Is to those to whom it seems to be, and is productive of the most dreadful consequences to those to whom it seems to be, even of torment, despair and eternal death; but the Divine Mercy steps beyond and redeems Man in the one body called Jesus.’ Well, how on earth!

You want something. All men desire! We want this, want that and what not. Well, what do we start to do? Man starts to construct the external means by which he could attain it. We want this, and we start with, ‘I’ll need That to have This.’ Then he begins his hunt for that, in hope when he has that, he will get this too. The Law is there to Use, but he is not applying it now. He’s disobedient and lawless. The Law covers all desires. The Law is simply, ‘Whatever you desire, when you pray, believe that you receive them, and you shall have them.’ He desires ‘Thing A’. Does he believe that he receives Thing A? Does he translate his desire to prayer, to communicating his desire into a definite feeling of satisfaction through imagining the wish fulfilled? No, he is disobedient. To him, it seems to secure Thing A, he must have and use Thing B. Blake says, ‘What seems to be is to those to whom it seems to be.’ So, he continues to live in the torment, despair and eternal longing of Thing A, even if he secures what he thinks is his means, Thing B. There is only One Means! Godliness with Self-Satisfaction is the Great Means, the Great Furnishings. And the lawless can use the Law so lawfully when they turn to this. We will prove by our use of the law that It Is Good!

So, the law is not given for the man who does not have a desire, who does not want something, it is NOT for the equitable, non-discriminatory man. It is for the man who is lawless and disobedient. Who is that? The one who WANTS something and having tried to secure his desire in external means, he has met with the failure of his intellect, his social background, his financial powers, his military ranks or political views to secure what he most desire for him. Now, he could prove the Law is Good by Using it. How? Godliness with Self-Satisfaction is the Great Means.

So, what is the mystery of godliness? It is the key to the whole thing. He says, ‘And without controversy great is the mystery of godliness: God was manifest in the flesh, justified in the Spirit, seen of angels, preached unto the Gentiles, believed on in the world, received up into glory.’

Godliness, that is: Godli-ness. The state that is Godly.

Godly, that is: God-ly. In the quality of God.

So the state that is having the quality of God, that is godliness. The mystery of this state is that it is God who is manifest in the flesh. You are the God who is manifest in the same flesh as I, justified in the One and Only Spirit — the Father is Spirit, seen of angels who are ministering for your awakening, and preached unto the race of humanity, believed on in the world and received up into the One glory (see One and Equal Glory). There can be no other way that you can have godliness, the state of being God unless that you have been God who become flesh. It is inconceivable that a lion will have the state of being a tiger, even when they are in the same jungle. Or that a fish will have the state of being a frog even when they share water for a habitat. So, Man is God become flesh, and that is the mystery of godliness.

Bringing this mystery forward, he said: ‘With God, all things are possible.’ Then he said, ‘If man can believe, all things are possible to him who believes.’ Equating God with the Believing Man. What is the most self-evident expression of a believing man? Self-satisfaction!

Now, this verse was taught to me to restrain me from desire. But he is teaching us otherwise, Paul. He is teaching us the mystery of God, who in becoming man, consigned Self to disobedience. He desires, and forgetting that he is God and is capable of Self-Satisfaction, he tries to employ alternative means. When he failed in his disobedience and lawlessness, he comes to prove the law and he proves that it is good. Only God is capable of Self-Satisfaction, of Contentment because He Has All Things. All are from him and for him. Being Self-Sufficient or being sufficient to all things, he could be Self-Satisfied.

So, take hold of your great means, your great furnishings. I don’t know a man who wouldn’t lavish it if he has the greatest means in the world. Just imagine this hour. Maybe he is an ordinary cobbler. He is not sure from where his next meal will come. He is looking for the next opportunity he may employ for his distress of hunger. And ‘what seems to be is to those to whom it seems to be… even of despair… but Divine Mercy steps beyond.’ He steps beyond that illusion and gives him such great means in self-satisfaction. Our little cobbler finds himself suddenly provided with a book of blank cheques to the wealth of one of the richest men on earth. He has just inherited it. He will lavish himself to satisfaction for his next meal and the next after that. For he realizes that he has come to his great means. But I am talking of your inexhaustible means. This is no finite means. If you would believe, that is, be Self-Satisfied on what you once wanted. How on earth could it be? The mystery of godliness, or Being as God. It’s the mystery, for God is Self-Sufficient, and God dwells within you as you. It is the only way Man can be Believing. God will not share his glory with anyone but himself, and only to him in his glory ‘is all things possible.’ So ‘all things are possible to man who believes,’ because God dwells in man as man. Therefore, ‘Our sufficiency is of God.’

Well, what do you desire? Here is your means. It is All Imagination! This whole vast world is within the Imagination. If you would now assume that you have it, because it already Is. Then you feel self-satisfied. That is your great furnishings of all that you may want. Do not wait for anything on the outside before you feel ‘self-satisfied.’ Become ‘Self-Satisfied’ by your own permission. It is SELF-satisfaction. Take your desire, and assume the possession of it until you are self-satisfied with it. Until you are completely saturated in consciousness of the fulfilment of it. Now, I do not know of a power in the world that will stop you from experiencing your wish objectified. O, all powers in the world that could not have produced it of their own accord, the Imagination (who is God and is in you as you) will march everyone of these little powers to your aid, as many as necessary. Why? It is the Great Furnishing. Now, this is the mystery of godliness. Thank you.