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Out of the One, the Many
By John Gavazzoni
I hold this truth to be self-evident, that One is the source of all oneness. The essential oneness of all things is a truth that is presently having its day along a wide spectrum of theological contemplation, and in a sense, it has become fashionable to speak and write of it, albeit often without much depth of understanding, though, as Harry Robert Fox has said so often, it is quite singularly THE truth, at which point nearly all mystics, from all time-periods, and of all stripes, have come together in agreement. To relish oneness without a living communion with the One out of whom all oneness has sprung, is to suffer a strategic missing-of-the-mark, a "problem" that God has well in hand, though, and with the nature of oneness being what it is, it, that oneness, and its students will inevitably find their way home to the One.
One tiny apple seed, according to its life-principle, multiplies itself into countless seeds, and not only that, but into a whole orchard of like seed-bearing fruit hanging from trees that had THEIR origin in that first, tiny apple seed. What was to be the destiny of that one, tiny apple seed, was already within it from the start---more seeds, the tree, the fruit and all. Johnny Appleseed counted on that principle, and his confidence was well rooted. And more to the point, as to our natural man, out of one man, Adam, has come the whole of humanity. Imagine that. We are all one humanity having sprung out of one man. We are all ADAMic. Out of the One Word (Logos) have issued forth billions of words, full of spirit and life, dripping with the anointing from that first Word in which God created all things. AND even more to the point, out of the One Son has come "holy myriads of Himself" (from the Emphatic Diaglott translation). Our essential oneness with God, and with one another, has all come out from that single, only, uniquely-born Son, whose sonship constitutes the whole of all sonship. The eternal begottenness of that first Son, made Deity to be Paternal and to be a Family in which we all share.
There are some, even possibly many, who are in communion with that first Son and who yet are ignorant of His eonian history, and thus do not know Him as who He is--Jesus of Nazareth. But they do really know His "name." That is, they know and are drawn into communion with Him, having been caused by the grace of God to respond to the nature of that Word within them, which is what His "name" implies. For them He is the anonymous Christ of whom they are either completely ignorant, or, they are those for whom He has been so grossly misrepresented by institutional religion that they are unable to connect that historical figure (Jesus) with the pulsating life of the One who is, in that respect, still veiled to them. As re: the anonymous Christ, to quote Harry Robert Fox, again: "Wherever the nature and character of the Christ is found, by definition, there He is. His veiling and unveiling, BOTH being very essential and integral elements of the coming of the Day when 'brother shall not say to brother, "Know the Lord," for all shall know Him, from the least to the greatest.'"
It is almost, if not completely, inevitable that when a truth such as oneness becomes fashionable, that obfuscation creeps in and lack of clarity is heralded as ultra-clarity. Fellow Christian, hear me: The apple tree has not forgotten, and only knows, its original seed-nature. But what of us, who owe all to that One within Whom we were generated, created, and regenerated? Has He become to us merely another seed among all the seeds? If so, to what do we trace our being? Today, the population of the earth is reaching toward seven billion souls, if it has not done so already. Think: God did not create us all at once. He created us all within one man, Adam, who was within the One, the Christ, the Son of the Living God. While I have acknowledged that Christ can be known apart from knowing His history as Jesus of Nazareth, yet that must not be considered normative. To know Him as the eternal Son and Christ, and also as the historical Jesus, is normative. Let us "make (our) calling and election sure," and not veer from the apostolic message: "Therefore let all the house of Israel know assuredly, that God hath made that same Jesus, whom ye have crucified, both Lord and Christ."
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