from the pastor's study

(At times I will send messages from history, )
 In 1959 James Andrews wrote:
"Without understanding, life is existence without consciousness."
  As far as we know, it is possible that there is no material substance apart from the understanding of such in man.  "God's thoughts are higher than man's thoughts and his ways, than man's ways." The concept of time and the understanding we now have of all material aspects of our life will be brushed out of our consciousness, when in God's will they have served their purpose.
 God recognizes things as they are as well as the way they appear to be to every living creature.  
  God is the author of things as they appear. He holds our present mode of existence.  He causes all things to appear to us as they appear.  He upholds all things by the word of his power.
There is a divine purpose in every state of consciousness  which you may be exercised.   He knows all about everything. He knows how I am moved with a sense of care, or responsibility, or distress, or fear, or love, or hope, or  joy.  All is known to God and he permits all the conscious states known to man for a purpose.
  In the fullness of time it was in his plan to reveal in Christ Jesus an understanding unknow to man.  It was  not his good life or morality alone, but that spiritual consciousness which he possessed, that God desired to reveal.
  His understanding was different.  It was fom God.   "Lazarus sleepeth, I go to awake him out of his sleep."   "Fear not it is not your father's pleasure that one of these little ones should perish."  "In my father's house are many mansions, I go to prepare a place for you."
  There was an understanding in his mind for which the whole world had waited.  Peter recognized it.  It shone in his countenance and vibrated in his words  -- "Thou alone hast the words of eternal life!"
It is God's desire for that understanding to be known in personal conscious realization of each one of us.  That is the place  Christ went to prepare for you  --- a place of spiritual understanding,  that where Christ is there ye may be also -- shut in with God, clothed upon with that house not made with hands eternal in the heavens, conscious of those things that are not seen, that will abide when the understanding of sun, moon and stars has served its purpose and been forgotten.
  What is the consciousness that fills you today?  Is it a dead system of religious thought alone, words you read in the Bible and accept as true or is it a spiritual understanding that makes your soul aflame with the realization of peace and rest and joy in the Holy Ghost -- a consciousness that swallows up death in victory?  Eternal Life ! Eternal Love