Eschatology is important to you because only from this metaphysical point of view can you possibly find the answers to the many problems of life which have gone so long unanswered. Can it be proved that there is such a thing as a ruling power in the universe? Can it be proved that there is a life hereafter? Can it be proved that there is a reward for good living and a punishment for evil doing? Why is it that it seems true that “the good die young”? Why is it that, seemingly, crime, poverty, misery, disease can go forever unchecked? What are the underlying causes of fluctuations in the business cycle and how can they be eliminated? What is the real cause of health, and how can it be controlled to the point of making health the habitual, continuous condition of the individual?
These and the many other important questions of life have never been adequately answered and will never be answered in medicine, economics or religion. For each of these is right only as far as it goes, like the chemist with his explanation of the difference between wood and gold. The complete answers are to be found only when the problems are approached from the metaphysical point of view; the point of view of Eschatology.
Eschatology is important to you for the same reason that a knowledge of traffic laws is important to the driver of a car, or the knowledge of civic law is important to every citizen. You are living your life under the influence of the laws of life, and you are punished for every violation even more surely and inescapably than you would be punished for traffic violations or for stealing. It is only your lack of understanding of the law and its method of working that prevents your recognizing the fact that the headaches, backaches, stomach trouble, kidney trouble, diseased conditions, financial setbacks, social failures or what not that you occasionally experience or chronically experience are the direct result of your occasional or habitual violations of the laws of nature.
It is only your lack of understanding of the law and its method of working that sends you running to the medicine bottle, to the hospital, to the bankruptcy court, to the divorce mill, for relief from these effect conditions.
A little mature, calm thought will show you that these methods of “healing”
the effect are superficial, shallow and artificial, hence neither real nor permanent.
If you are suffering from some ill effect, regardless of what kind, it is because you have violated in some way the laws of nature. Ignorance of how you have committed this violation does not excuse you. It is your purpose, your job, your aim in life to discover for yourself what those laws are and to live in accordance with them. Trying to circumvent justice by treating the symptom is even more futile than breaking jail to avoid the penalty for crime.
The man who breaks jail finds himself far more tightly imprisoned by the fear and anxiety of his conscience than the man who pays his debt and goes free. In like manner, the man who seeks to escape illness by the “easy” method of medication finds himself getting deeper and deeper into the sinkhole of false understanding. That which looked like firm ground from a distance he finds to be quicksand under his feet at the very time he most needs strong support.
It is only from the metaphysical point of view, the point of view of Eschatology, that these laws and their method of functioning can be discovered. It is only in this way that an individual can learn to grow more and more free from sin, sickness, disease, failure, and ultimately gain absolute immunity from all such things.
Eschatology is important to you because it teaches love. Surely you will admit that love is the element most important in your life and in the life of every one else. Surely you will admit that universal love, the love of man for man, of nation for nation, so filling the consciousness of each individual that there is no room left for fear and hate, is the only possible thing which will wipe the local crimes of murder, swindle, etc., and the international crime of war forever off the face of the earth. No new punishment will ever deter the criminal, no new weapon ever end war, as long as the minds of individuals entertain thoughts of crime and lust.
Replace those thoughts of crime and lust with thoughts of truth and good; let love fill the mind of every individual and cast out fear and hate and dishonesty; and you have a world in which every single one is working together with every other one for the goal of mutual understanding and mutual well‑being.
Eschatology is important to you because it is practical, applied Christianity. It is the science of life taught by Jesus, couched in present day, more easily understood phraseology, stripped of the mystic veil of religion. Up to now, no one individual has reached the degree of understanding of this science that Jesus reached in his time. Nevertheless, we are demonstrably on the right track and the time will come when the prophecy of Jesus will be fulfilled. For he said in speaking to his disciples of the works which he had shown them, “greater things than these shall ye do,” showing that not he alone had the power to do the many wonderful things he did, but that others, too, people like you and us could learn to do them.
Has religion taught you how these things are done? Even the lesser things like the healing of disease in yourself and in others? No, you will have to admit that of all the clergymen engaged in teaching what they believe to be the word of God, the number who can give relief to an individual suffering from simple headache is negligible.
Has medicine taught you how these things are done? No, you and your doctor will have to admit that the medical fraternity, for all its long history of experience, has failed to produce a single substance or single treatment which will work beneficial results in all cases of any one kind.
It is only from the metaphysical viewpoint, the viewpoint of Eschatology, that you can learn these things. No other method you may attempt to use will accomplish for you the permanent, lasting, ever‑increasing good that the method of understanding and applying Eschatology will accomplish. |
Introduction