Many Mansions

WED., SEPT. 9, 1998, 9:49 AM
OFFICE, PULLIAM

This is not, of course, the first time this small portion of Holy Scripture has been used as a title. And, surely, it won’t be the last. Let Me use it, today, in relation to the impression you got from your reading and discussion of John I.

John paints the word picture, for you, of one Mansion (and it needn’t be very large) and the rest of humankind being just “out there”, as sinners and non-believers. You know, from many of My Teachings, over the years, that I refer to many Mansions… many ways in which humans come to Me… because of the many ways I come to the diverse persons I have created and allow to develop.

According to John, “love is the answer” (no matter what the question is). Yet, as you tried to express, love, ultimately, is not “something” that can be generated because it is commanded. You assume that love, ultimately, comes from Me, and that the more your hand is in Mine the easier it is to love… and the harder it is to not-love. Yet you suspect that there is a “human environment factor” also: those who are born into a loving home, as a baby wanted, and who grow up being loved, as shown in many tangible ways, are “naturally” more loving and less unloving.

You remember the difficulties you had with your sons as they grew up, “trying” to feel equal love for the five, which made you feel guilty when it was “easier” to feel love for some and harder for others. Should you “reduce” the love for the former to “achieve equality”? If love is manifested in actions what should you do to show your love for each? How should you react when one seemed to be showing less love for you, through actions of which you disapproved?

You got through this era of your life reasonably well, even a bit better than you perceived yourself. Expand this example, then, to Me, the Triune God and this present human population of over 5 billion. Here you see Many Mansions… many ways in which humans gather to acknowledge Me. “The World”, as John portrayed the non-born-again Christians, is not an amorphous mass, but souls, with spirit as the essence of self, abiding in different mansions. And it is usually easier to love those in your Mansion than those in the others.

Even in the Mansion with the banner CHRISTIAN there are many “rooms”, displaying a marvelous range of approaches and responses to Me. There is some “movement” between rooms, but many people know where they belong. You are comfortable as a Presbyterian, but you could be almost as comfortable as a Methodist, as a Congregationalist (the old name), as a Disciple. It is much harder for you to appreciate the Orthodox “room”… or the Pentecostal. These are rooms you appreciate, but not with personal comfort. And so it is when “some of them” would visit your Presbyterian room.

Virtually all Christians would accept this image, but what about the expansion to a Hindu Mansion… Buddhist… Native American… Moslem…? It is just a fact that humans come to Me in ways that differ from the Christian path. And finally it must be concluded that either I Am such that I am perceived in diverse ways or all of these other Mansions are unreal, phony, evil… there is only One Mansion.

So… I proclaim that I Am the God of all, the only One there Is. I am Both/And, personified and mysticized. I come fully to those who want Me only as Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. I also come fully to those who see Me in rocks, trees, skies, and seas. I still come to Jews who honor Me as the One coming to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, but who do not accept Me as Jesus, the Messiah. I come to Muslims who see Me as Allah, the one true God, and who trust that I love and require many and diverse rituals. I Am, to Hindus, Brahma Who cannot be known, but Who comes in different God forms.