He said, “There was a good man who owned a vineyard. He leased it to tenant farmers so that they might work it and he might collect the produce from them. He sent his servant so that the tenants might give him the produce of the vineyard. They seized his servant and beat him, all but killing him. The servant went back and told his master. The master said, ‘Perhaps they did not recognize him.’ He sent another servant. The tenants beat this one as well. Then the owner sent his son and said, ‘Perhaps they will show respect for my son.’ Because the tenants knew that it was he who was the heir to the vineyard, they seized him and killed him. Let him who has ears hear.”
This saying focuses upon the plight of the prophets in Israel, and not only Israel but the world at large, and is a prophecy of the complete rejection of the Great Prophet of God who embodied the soul of Messiah. At the same time, the Master gives a teaching on the purpose of humanity in the material world and the fields of sentient existence and why you and I are incarnate in this life. The purpose of humanity is Nature awakening and becoming conscious of herself and uniting herself to the Beloved, the Lord our God. The Lord has made us caretakers of his Creation, of the world and all that lives in it, and of each other, and he has made us co-creators with himself, destined to evolve into a Divine human being, one anointed with the Supernal Light as Yeshua Messiah and Lady Mary. We do not come into the world for ourselves. We come for a divine labor for the sake of the evolution of our soul and God’s Creation; for the sake of heaven and the Lord. The children of Light know they are from the Light and of the Light and serve the Light and Spirit, but the children of Darkness live in ignorance and forgetfulness, and do not know they are from the Light and so rebel against it. To this very day, we see the conflict and struggle between the Light and the Darkness in the dualistic state as we watch the great evils humanity commits and the perpetual destruction of life on earth because of selfishness, greed, and hatred. Believing we are here for ourselves alone, we act in such a way as to destroy the blessings and good that God has given to us and we lose our human spirit and the Spirit of God to gross materialism. We do not serve the Lord our God; only our own deluded interest, and, quite naturally, we suffer on account of it.
It is certainly not that the advancement of humanity on any given level is inherently wrong or evil. Neither is it evil or wrong that we should advance ourselves in life or seek to live life more abundantly. It is the intention of God that we evolve and advance as a species of his creatures, and that we access and actualize all possible material, psychic, and spiritual powers, the powers of nature and our soul. It is the Will of God that we live life abundantly, but the fruit of our labor is not our own—rather, it belongs to the Lord. Our role is that of a co-creator with God, to evolve and awaken Creation and bring it into fruition in God itself. As we activate the powers of Nature and powers of our soul, we are to put them into the service of the Lord’s plan for Creation and to restore all powers to God. We are to use all resources and powers wisely, not as though they are our own, but use them for the sake of heaven. In so doing, we become more and more like unto God and unite ourselves with God.
How wonderful! The Lord reveals to us the purpose and meaning of our lives, so that knowing the purpose and meaning of our lives, we might live life abundantly. The Lord does not call us out of life, but out of materialism, worldly mindedness, and the selfishness that leads us to destruction and death. The Lord calls us to the Divine Life, the development and evolution of our soul, to become more than hu-man—to become like unto the angels and to ascend in our evolution even beyond the heavenly hosts. Likewise, the Lord calls us to develop and evolve the world into the image of the heavens and to unite heaven and earth within and through ourselves. How awesome and marvelous the calling of the human spirit! Let us praise the Lord who has fashioned us in the Divine image!
So the Master is speaking of the purpose and meaning of our life on earth. Yet he is also addressing the ignorance and forgetfulness in humanity of its purpose on earth and the dominion of the cosmic forces that holds the majority of humanity in bondage. So great is the power of cosmic ignorance and the intoxication of materialism in the world that, when the Lord sends prophets and apostles to the people, the people turn against the holy ones and seek to destroy them. Worldly people, under the influence of cosmic ignorance, would seek to destroy even an incarnation of the soul of the Messiah, the great World Teacher, so that they can continue to gather in power for themselves and serve their own self-interests. Perhaps today we may not physically beat and kill the prophets, but we continue to persecute them, to ignore them, and to shun them. We may not act to kill their body, but we do seek to kill their spirit and to crush their zeal. The result is the same. Business, politics, academics, dogmatic religion, and mass humanity is the same today as in the day of Yeshua; unenlightened society remains fundamentally the same, and the response to the holy and enlightened ones whom the Lord sends is the same.
Now it must be said that even the cosmic forces of ignorance serve the Lord, although not intending to do so. In fact, they are a secret operation of the Holy Spirit of God working toward the fulfillment of God’s plan for Creation. The cosmic forces of ignorance provide the friction, resistance, strife, and opposition necessary for evolution to occur. They put to the test every new development in the progress of evolution to see if it is true and good and strong. We see this in the Holy Scriptures when we read that the Lord hardens the heart of a person. For example, in Exodus, we read that the Lord hardens the heart of Pharaoh. On account of this, the glory and power of the Lord is revealed to a far greater degree, both to the children of Israel and the Egyptians. In the same way, the Lord hardens the hearts of the children of Israel so that they reject and kill the Great Prophet who embodies the soul of the Messiah. Yet on account of the rejection of the Messiah, the Light of the Anointed One is extended not only to the Jews but also to the gentiles. This is not to say that anyone should willfully seek to harden their heart against the Lord, or seek to facilitate the dark and hostile forces, or in any way act in opposition to the Will of the Lord, justifying their evil by a claim of serving God. It is not meant to condone or put a blessing on wickedness. Rather, it is meant to demonstrate how the Lord uses and works through all spiritual forces, even through the cosmic forces of ignorance and the enemy, in order to evolve and perfect his Creation, and to say that these spiritual forces are also in the hands of the Lord, however strange and mysterious that might seem to us.
We learn from the Holy Scriptures that God has a plan on earth for humanity and that the Lord sends messengers to reveal that plan and to establish continuums to link humanity with himself and to carry out that plan. We also learn that humanity has free will and can accept or reject the Will of God, keeping or breaking covenant with the Lord. God changes the plan according to the choices human beings make, ever seeking to bring about the greatest possible blessing and good, and continuing to influence and guide humanity toward its Divine destiny. We come to understand that humanity is part of God’s plan and holds within it the potential of the ultimate fruit of Creation and that God needs the human co-creator to bring about the intended fruition. Without humanity, where would be God’s ultimate joy in Creation? To whom and through whom would God then reveal and give itself?
You may ask of the threat of punishment when we rebel against the Will of God, but the consequences exist in the act of rebellion and activity of the evil inclination itself. Of all the horror and terrible things that have come or will come, is not the sorrow and suffering of them all a natural result of our creating a distance between ourselves and God, or the ignorance that makes us believe and live as though we are in an isolated self-existence, separate and apart from everyone and everything else in Creation and God itself? In truth, the Lord gives no promise of reward or threat of punishment, but rather informs the soul of consequences of its own actions according to the law upon which Creation has been formed and the human being fashioned. Bear in mind that evil is inherently self-isolating and self-destructive. Indeed! What would the murder of the heir of the vineyard accomplish but the loss of exactly what they were trying to take as their own possession and their own suffering or death? Evil always acts in this way and brings about its own destruction.
Perhaps what is central to the teaching the Master is giving here is the cultivation of our discernment and ability to distinguish between good and evil, and a spiritual practice and spiritual living that empowers us to cut off the evil inclination and to choose the good and godly. The anonymous author of the Letter to the Hebrews writes, “But solid food is for the mature, for those whose faculties have been trained by practice to distinguish good from evil” (Hebrews 5:14). Thus, we see that the ability to discern between good and evil is crucial to our spiritual advancement and the enlightenment and liberation that the Spirit of the Lord would bring to us.
In our immaturity, we do not have this discerning power. How could any individual persecute, shun, ignore, harm, or kill a man or woman of God, save that they could not recognize the holy one and could not distinguish between good and evil? Indeed, without some degree of this faculty, how could I recognize a prophet or apostle of God? Surely, I would write them off as some cult leader or crazy fanatic so as to not have to deal with the challenge and trouble they bring, and so I would persecute them, whether on a gross or subtle level, believing myself righteous in so doing! As Yeshua says to his disciples, “They will persecute you and seek to kill you, believing it righteousness.”
I pray to the Lord for you, that the Holy Spirit will manifest the power to discern between good and evil and strengthen you in righteousness, to choose and enact always the greater good. In this way, I pray for the Holy Spirit to guide and protect you and for your success. Amen.