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      The Safety of God's Kingdom Within    
       
October 2012

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     "He who dwells in the secret place of the Most High shall abide under the shadow of the Almighty. I will say of the LORD, "He is my refuge and my fortress; My God, in Him I will trust." (Psalm 91:1 & 2; New King James Bible Version; NKJV).

     "Surely He shall deliver you from the snare of the fowler And from the perilous pestilence. He shall cover you with His feathers, And under His wings you shall take refuge; His truth shall be your shield and buckler. You shall not be afraid of the terror by night, Nor of the arrow that flies by day, Nor of the pestilence that walks in darkness, Nor of the destruction that lays waste at noonday." (Psalm 91:3-6; NKJV).

     "A thousand may fall at your side, And ten thousand at your right hand; But it shall not come near you. Only with your eyes shall you look, And see the reward of the wicked." (Psalm 91:7 & 8; NKJV)

     "Because you have made the LORD, who is my refuge, Even the Most High, your dwelling place, No evil shall befall you, Nor shall any plague come near your dwelling; For He shall give His angels charge over you, To keep you in all your ways. In their hands they shall bear you up, Lest you dash your foot against a stone. You shall tread upon the lion and the cobra, The young lion and the serpent you shall trample underfoot." (Psalm 91:9-13; NKJV).

     "Because he has set his love upon Me, therefore I will deliver him; I will set him on high, because he has known My name. He shall call upon Me, and I will answer him; I will be with him in trouble; I will deliver him and honor him. With long life I will satisfy him, And show him My salvation." (Psalm 91: 14-16; NKJV).

     "Peace I leave with you, My peace I give to you; not as the world gives do I give to you. Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid." (Words of Christ Jesus: John 14:27; NKJV).



     The world doesn't offer much safety and harmony, these days. Wars seem to be everywhere. Yet, here is a spiritual fact: The kingdom of God is never in a state of war.

     The kingdom of God is an everlastingly, peaceful place. It remains so because our divine Creator and Source of all good is the infinite Intelligence of Its spiritual creation, of which we are still a part. Harmony permeates the realm of God's true creation because the Almighty doesn't war with Itself.

     Since God, Spirit, is the only real power, anywhere and everywhere, (even in this false, material sense of existence) there can be no conflict for God to encounter throughout the entire realm of Spirit. What that means is this: beneath the endless chaos and conflicts of our external, physical environment, there exists the invisible harmony of God's spiritual kingdom, wherein all conflict, and all forms of evil, are forever banished. (That's why it is called, Heaven.)

     Now, since the true creation of infinite Spirit remains spiritual in substance and form, this harmonious, spiritual creation cannot be found, or evidenced, in the faulty and various, material forms we experience, here, where we seem to be physical (fleshly) beings, with a spiritual soul inside. When we discover that we are really only the spiritual children of God, never, actually, the children or off-spring of the flesh, our rules change. The flesh has never been our source or origin of being. God is the only Source, Origin and Creator of all that exists. We belong to God—not to a material chain of finite, material descendants.

     Now, what we believe to be our material reality is filled with both good and evil forces, and we seem to be alone in battling them. Yet, we're never out of God's reach. The safe and harmonious realm of Spirit is still invisibly present, resting and waiting beneath the surface of our material perceptions. (This is what Christ Jesus meant when he said, "…the kingdom of God is within you." (Luke 17:21; NKJV). This kingdom within us remains invisible to the five, physical senses, leaving us to perceive this invisible realm of Spirit, (wherein all our safety dwells) only from within our deeper, spiritual consciousness, which is termed, the Christ Consciousness.

     It is for this reason that the ever-lasting, harmonious, spiritual creation that underlies the physical façade, is still present to be mentally recognized and reached by each and every one of us. But we must invite it into our thought process, before its higher reality becomes expressed in our outer world of physical form and our deliverance and healing begins to take the form that we humanly need.

     This spiritual consciousness, (the Christ Consciousness) is our higher sense—our true sense of things. It is the mind that was in Christ Jesus, to be remembered and tapped into for our own deliverance from all the seemingly evil powers of this finite, earthly experience. In other words, we must believe in the Infinite Invisible, (which we do not perceive with our senses of sight, hearing, taste, touch or smell) before we can experience Its divine, protecting presence and power with us.

     Unfortunately, since we do not find the invisible realm of Spirit in the outer world of finite form, we tend to imagine, or decide, that it is not here. We grow up trusting only our physical senses of perception, instead of turning within to our higher, spiritual, conscious remembrance of our life in Spirit's realm. Yet, it is still here, all the time, because we cannot exist outside of it. As a sunbeam is always at one with its sun-source, so does all creation continue to dwell within, and fully connected to, divine Spirit—our own Source of being.

     Throughout the Bible there are many stories of the ancients who understood God's ever-presence and power over the situations that humanity battles in this false sense of being. One such story, in the book of Exodus, tells the story of Moses and his own spiritual perception of God-with-us that enabled him to speak with this divine Spirit and receive the Ten Commandments. Prior to this, the spiritual sense of Moses was enabled to lead the Israelites out of the land of Egypt, where they had been slaves, often-times brutally treated. This saga illustrates how one man's spiritual perception of the ever-lasting, invisible presence of the Almighty opened the way for an entire nation of suffering people to be saved. It only takes one individual, in this collective, material-seeming sense of life, to perceive that we are still in the kingdom of God, whatever the material scene tries to tell us.

     So, to experience the delivering power of God-with-us, we must mentally-look above, beyond, and beneath the façade of a finite, physical universe and remember the invisible realm of Spirit, of which we are ever-lastingly a part. We cannot leave our true reality of existence in God's, spiritual realm, even when we're being deceived by the physical scene before our eyes, which appears and feels more real to us.

     So, today's world appears to be quite a dangerous place, for all of us. Yet, acknowledging the 'secret place of the most high' (described in the 91st Psalm at the top of this article) is the beginning step out of any earthly terror that threatens to harm us. When all human help seems to be absent, the power of divine Spirit to deliver us is still available. But we must turn to it, acknowledge Its presence within us, in order to mentally call it into the human, dream-like experience that threatens us.

     When standing before Pontius Pilate, who tried to assert his own power over Jesus, the Master said something that is true for all of us. He said, "My kingdom is not of this world. If my kingdom were of this world, My servants would fight," (John 18:36; to 2nd comma; NKJV).

     What's important to notice, in his particular case, was that Jesus didn't intend to call upon God's deliverance from the death experience. He knew he was to die on that cross. It was his own, spiritual mission to die on the cross, publically, in order to show that one's true life is deathless. The material death process does not touch our spiritual life. Just as when he raised Lazarus from the tomb, the resurrection of Jesus was to show humanity that life is deathless, because life was never material in the first place. Life is our everlasting, spiritual state of being. We live forever in divine Spirit's realm, despite the temporary material-dream of existence.

     But what of those who choose to be terrorists, in this human experience, where we seem to be finite, fleshly creatures? What do we do about those individuals, and even armies, who allow hatred to use them as the agents of destruction throughout the material sense of our world? On what planet are they living? They live in the same, spiritual kingdom of God, where God's power and glory hold absolute sovereignty, even though the human scene doesn't bear witness to that spiritual fact.

     When the false sense of material selfhood and circumstances cause some to believe in their own power, in the glory of their own mistaken personality, and in their own ability to rule others, they are suffering from utter delusion. It's a form of insanity; for insanity prevails when truth and reality aren't perceived. God is still the supreme ruler over all, despite the spiritual blindness of individuals or groups; and the harmony of God's forever kingdom, including the safety of everyone in it, is still the spiritual fact, ready to spring into action when recognized. This fact is present to be mentally recognized and brought into the human experience by those whose consciousness stays with the spiritual truth of God's omnipotence (all-power), omnipresence (all presence) and omniscience (all truth).

     Right where the visible, physical world and universe appears to be reality to the un-spiritualized thought, right there is the infinite, invisible, spiritual kingdom of God. This kingdom is our true home and circumstances, moving harmoniously, and safely, under the presence and power of that infinite one whom we call God, Allah, or whatever other human name is given.

     When the government of God becomes known and expressed through the divine consciousness of those who perceive it, the government of the divine Mind, God, takes over the human scene. Looking away from the physical scene, we see that in the ever-present kingdom of God, there are no competing ideologies; rather, there is one Truth which all know. In this invisible kingdom of God, there is no territory, nor country, where evil dwells, rules, or succeeds in victimizing anyone.

     When Christ Jesus taught us to love our enemies, it was, no doubt, because his clear, spiritual vision of reality, and all identities in it, perceived only the family of God. This true kingdom, which Jesus perceived, equalizes all God's children, supplies all, loves all, and harms no one. And the Bible promises us, "…and of his kingdom, there shall be no end." (Luke 1:33; KJV).

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