The Master makes it clear that the kingdom of heaven must begin with, and be centered in, the dual concept of the truth of the fatherhood of God and the correlated fact of the brotherhood of man.
The acceptance of such a teaching, Michael declares, would liberate man from the age-long bondage of animal fear and at the same time enrich human living with the following endowments of the new life of spiritual liberty:
1. The possession of new courage and augmented spiritual power. The gospel of the kingdom is to set man free and inspire him to dare to hope for eternal life.
2. The gospel carries a message of new confidence and true consolation for all men, even for the poor.
3. It is in itself a new standard of moral values, a new ethical yardstick wherewith to measure human conduct. It portrays the ideal of a resultant new order of human society.
4. It teaches the pre-eminence of the spiritual compared with the material; it glorifies spiritual realities and exalts superhuman ideals.
5. This new gospel holds up spiritual attainment as the true goal of living. Human life receives a new endowment of moral value and divine dignity.
6. Michael teaches that eternal realities are the result (reward) of righteous earthly striving. Man’s mortal sojourn on earth acquires new meanings consequent upon the recognition of a noble destiny.
7. The new gospel affirms that human salvation is the revelation of a far-reaching divine purpose to be fulfilled and realized in the future destiny of the endless service of the salvaged sons and daughters of God.
The Master distinctly teaches a new concept of the double nature of the kingdom in that he portrays the following two phases:
First. The kingdom of God in this world, the supreme desire to do the will of God, the unselfish love of man which yields the good fruits of improved ethical and moral conduct.
Second. The kingdom of God in heaven, the goal of mortal believers, the estate wherein the love for God is perfected, and wherein the will of God is done more divinely.”
Michael teaches that, by faith, the believer enters the kingdom now. In his various discourses he teaches that two things are essential to faith-entrance into the kingdom:
1. Faith, sincerity. To come as a little child, to receive the bestowal of sonship as a gift; to submit to the doing of the Father’s will without questioning and in the full confidence and genuine trustfulness of the Father’s wisdom; to come into the kingdom free from prejudice and preconception; to be open-minded and teachable like an unspoiled child.
2. Truth hunger. The thirst for righteousness, a change of mind, the acquirement of the motive to be like God and to find God.
Michael teaches that sin is not the child of a defective nature but rather the offspring of a knowing mind dominated by an unsubmissive will. Regarding sin, he teaches that God has forgiven; that we make such forgiveness personally available by the act of forgiving our fellows. When you forgive your fellows in the flesh, you thereby create the capacity in your own soul for the reception of the reality of God’s forgiveness of your own misdeeds.
Michael impresses upon his apostles and disciples that they must acquire, by faith, a righteousness which would exceed the righteousness of ephemeral works of appearance, and so, not to parade vaingloriously any acts before the world.
Though Michael teaches that faith, simple childlike belief, is the key to the door of the kingdom, he also teaches that, having entered the door, there are the progressive steps of righteousness which every believing child must ascend in order to grow up to the full stature of the robust sons of God.
It is in the consideration of the technique of receiving God’s forgiveness that the attainment of the righteousness of the kingdom is revealed. Faith is the price you pay for entrance into the family of God; but forgiveness is the act of God which accepts your faith as the price of admission.
And the reception of the forgiveness of God by a kingdom believer involves a definite and actual experience and consists in the following four steps, the kingdom steps of inner righteousness:
1. God’s forgiveness is made actually available and is personally experienced by man just in so far as he forgives his fellows.
2. Man will not truly forgive his fellows unless he loves them as himself.
3. To thus love your neighbor as yourself is the highest ethics.
4. Moral conduct, true righteousness, becomes, then, the natural result of such love.
It therefore is evident that the true and inner religion of the kingdom unfailingly and increasingly tends to manifest itself in practical avenues of social service. Michael teaches a living religion that impels its believers to engage in the doing of loving service. But Michael does not put ethics in the place of religion. He teaches religion as a cause and ethics as a result.
The righteousness of any act must be measured by the motive; the highest forms of good are therefore unconscious. Michael is never concerned with morals or ethics as such. He is wholly concerned with that inward and spiritual fellowship with God the Father which so certainly and directly manifests itself as outward and loving service for humankind.
Michael teaches that the religion of the kingdom is a genuine personal experience which no one can contain within themself; that the consciousness of being a member of the family of believers leads inevitably to the practice of the precepts of the family conduct, the service of one’s brothers and sisters in the effort to enhance and enlarge the brotherhood.
The religion of the kingdom is personal, individual; the fruits, the results, are familial, social. Michael never fails to exalt the sacredness of the individual as contrasted with the community. But he also recognizes that man develops his character by unselfish service; that he unfolds his moral nature in loving relations with his fellows.
By teaching that the kingdom is within, by exalting the individual, Michael strikes the deathblow of the old society in that he ushers in the new dispensation of true social righteousness.
This new order of society the world has little known because it has refused to practice the principles of the gospel of the kingdom of heaven. And when this kingdom of spiritual pre-eminence does come upon the earth, it will not be manifested in mere improved social and material conditions, but rather in the glories of those enhanced and enriched spiritual values which are characteristic of the approaching age of improved human relations and advancing spiritual attainments.
Michael's Teaching About the Kingdom
Christ Michael never gives a precise definition of the kingdom. At one time he discourses on one phase of the kingdom, and at another time he discusses a different aspect of the brotherhood of God’s reign in the hearts of men.
In the course of one afternoon’s sermon Christ Michael noted no less than five phases, or epochs, of the kingdom, and they were:
1. The personal and inward experience of the spiritual life of the fellowship of the individual believer with God the Father.
2. The enlarging brotherhood of gospel believers, the social aspects of the enhanced morals and quickened ethics resulting from the reign of God’s spirit in the hearts of individual believers.
3. The supermortal brotherhood of invisible spiritual beings which prevails on earth and in heaven, the superhuman kingdom of God.
4. The prospect of the more perfect fulfillment of the will of God, the advance toward the dawn of a new social order in connection with improved spiritual living—the next age of man.
5. The kingdom in its fullness, the future spiritual age of light and life on earth.
Wherefore must we always examine the Master’s teaching to ascertain which of these five phases he may have reference to when he makes use of the term kingdom of heaven. By this process of gradually changing man’s will and thus affecting human decisions, Michael and his associates are likewise gradually but certainly changing the entire course of human evolution, social and otherwise.
The Master on this occasion placed emphasis on the following five points as representing the cardinal features of the gospel of the kingdom:
1. The pre-eminence of the individual.
2. The will as the determining factor in man’s experience.
3. Spiritual fellowship with God the Father.
4. The supreme satisfactions of the loving service of man.
5. The transcendency of the spiritual over the material in human personality.
Michael Of Nebadon Sovereign Trust
