The
God Idea

" We have frequently said that God reveals Himself as a man can bear it.

It must needs be so.

He is revealed through a human medium, and can only be made known in such measure as the medium can receive the communication.

It is impossible that knowledge of God should outstrip man's capacity.

Were we now to tell you - if we could - of our more perfect theology it would seem to you strange and unintelligible.

We shall by slow degrees, instill into your mind so much of truth as you can receive, and then you will see your present errors.

But that is not yet.

Indeed, since the conception which each frames for himself is to him his God, it cannot be that revelation can be in advance of capacity.

It is the nature of things impossible.

Hence you see that when you credit God with motives and say, " This cannot be. God is acting here contrary to His nature. He cannot act so now, because He did not so act then," you are simply saying, " My idea of God is so and so, and I cannot at present get another one. According to what I believe, my God would not do so."

And that is precisely what we say.

You have made your God, and you have made Him act as you see fit.

By and by, as your mind expands - either in your present state of being or in another - you will get fresh light, and then you will say, " Now I see that I was wrong. God is not what I fancied at all. How could I ever have entertained such notions !"

This is very much the case with all progressive minds.

To some the time of development comes not only in this life.

They must wait for a newer light in a newer life.

But to some there comes a flood of knowledge even in their present place of existence.

The old grows flat and profitless.

The soul craves for a newer and truer revelation ; for something which shall be as the spirit among the dry bones, and shall give them a resurrection unto life.

Well, you have had, or you are having, your revelation.

Your mind, as some would say, has widened, and has pictured a God more in accord with its advanced capacities.

You have received from an external source - the same whence all other Divine knowledge flows down to man - a newer and richer revealing of the Supreme, others may say.

Call it what you will.

The two operations of revelation and comprehension, of knowledge and capacity, must be correlative.

The knowledge does not come until there is capacity to receive it.

Neither does the mind get a higher revelation until it has so far advanced as to feel the want of it ; and that for the simple reason that it is itself the agent through which comes the revelation of which it is the recipient.

All your fancied theories about God have filtered down to you through human channels ; the embodiments of human cravings after knowledge of Him ; the creation of minds that were undeveloped, whose wants were not your wants, whose God, or rather whose notions about God are not yours.

You try hard to make the ideas fit in, but they do not fit in, because they are the produce of divers intelligences in divers degrees of development. "

From:
THE GOD-IDEA
'Spirit Teachings'
William Stainton Moses
pages 94 - 95