by Anne Perry
Man of Holiness: Those who have sought My face and to whom I have spoken as one man speaks to another and who have then turned from Me will follow their road to its end, which is the eternal darkness because it is where they wish to be. My heart yearns within Me, My soul grieves, the angels water heaven with their tears, but it is not in My gift to change it, even as I cannot change you. If I were to, I should cease to be God, and chaos would consume the stars. It would be the end of all things.
Asmodeus: Then when you spoke of mercy and love, it was mockery, a hideous farce of pretended light. You knew before he began that he would fail! Over and over he would fail. Sin and error would flow from him like the rivers of the firmament. You begat him for damnation!
Man of Holiness: I know he will sin and make mistakes. He is yet learning. His life in the flesh is a journey, not an arriving. For this reason has My best beloved offered Himself to face all frailty, all pain, and all darkness and loss, that the creation which surrounds us and has kept its holy estate without strain, may grant Him the wish of His heart, which is the eternal life of all the children of My spirit and the workmanship of My hands. Thus even until the last day of judgment before Me, there may be repentance.
But repentance is more than words and more than sorrow. It is understanding the bitter from the sweet, the light from the darkness, casting aside all sin because it is vile to the soul, and loving the light above cost or price. To repent is to change, no longer to desire that which separates from Me, which injures and cramps and withers the soul. When hunger for that change fills the heart of man, then will I give the grace and the power to accomplish it. And when it is done, I will wash the sin from all remembrance, and it will exist no more.
Asmodeus: Repentance takes time and experience. What of those, countless as the leaves of the forest, who will have no time? What of the legions of those lost in wars and famines and pestilence?
Man of Holiness: For them I have decreed a space between the death of the flesh and the last judgment. In that time will be the teaching and the repentance of the dead. No spirit of man ever conceived shall be without knowledge and time to choose all that he will be.
Asmodeus: You ask man to live in hope and faith in that which he cannot see. You give him nothing but words in the air!
Man of Holiness: I will never leave him alone. The night and the day are filled with the spirits of those who love him, who will speak to him in the language of his friend, and in the voice of the stranger who passes his door, whose hands will bless him and whose arms will bear him up when he is weary and broken. Hope is the gift of angels.
Asmodeus: Another gift! You have promised him all manner of gifts and powers if he obeys. If you then withhold them, you break your word. Yet if you keep it, and give him power to perform miracles, then he himself will remove the need for faith and for the growth you hold as prize above all. The righteous will walk the earth healing the suffering. They will calm the tumult of the elements, create bread out of the dust, command war to cease, and it will do so. And you will be defeated by your own gifts.
Man of Holiness: I will give power to man only as he learns wisdom to use it and as he understands the purpose of life. And if he misuses it, I shall take it from him again. There is no swift or easy path. The power to feed the hungry, clothe the naked, heal the sick, even to raise the dead does not bring one soul a step closer to the fire of courage, the purity of honor, or the love which is the light of the universe. If it did, then I would do it myself. Man in his frailty and his hope, his blindness and his compassion, already has all he needs to teach the truth, to heal the heart, and to lead the way upward.
Asmodeus: The seeds of contradiction are in your words. If you do not give him power, he will never learn its use; if you do, then soon he will abuse it because he will forget who gave it to him, and in the imagination of his mind he will think it is his own. He will tyrannize and oppress because it is his nature.
Man of Holiness: Real power is to understand the difference between good and evil, to know who he is and what he desires to be, and then to have such a passion, a hunger, that he can govern himself until he becomes what he wishes, until he has the courage, the integrity, and the compassion he has glimpsed in vision. When he has strength and can stay his hand from using it, when he trespasses on no man’s agency, when he can let go of an injury and forgive, when he loves Me with a whole heart and there is no division in him, then he has real power. And in suffering oppression he will learn the fragility of freedom, and its cost. He will learn to treasure it for others as deeply as he does for himself, knowing that in the end it is the same thing.
Through pain and knowledge of what it is to sin, he will learn to forgive others, as he himself longs to be forgiven. Love is the beginning of all redemption, and no one can love with the infinite passion and tenderness, the laughter and the patience and joy that is My way unless they first forgive.
Asmodeus: Man may forgive when he is weak and knows his own need of mercy, but he will not see another’s offense with the same eyes as he sees his own. Wait until he is strong; then it will be far different. Power is the ultimate corrosion of the soul. It is the worm in the night grown monstrous on its own blood. In the end it will devour all else. Yet without power, he cannot go where you have gone, nor become as you are.
Man of Holiness: The probation of the flesh has many purposes, but none greater than learning to use power righteously, and none more difficult or more dangerous or beset with as many traps and snares for the soul. He must learn to stay his hand, never to trespass on another’s agency, no matter how much wiser he may believe his vision to be or how much greater his own light. He may see the path far ahead and every precipice that hovers on the lip of the abyss, every morass that would suck a man into its bowels and consume him utterly. He may plead and teach, exhort and implore, yet he must not rob another of his right to choose for himself, good or ill.
Love does not excuse. Even I must watch and wait, because to do otherwise would begin the chain of ruin which would in the end destroy heaven itself. There must be opposition in all things; without the darkness, there is no light.
Asmodeus: Man will never understand that! He will not accept loss! It is beyond his concept of morality with its urgency, its blindness to all but the individual and the moment. His small, finite mind cannot imagine so far! The strong will abuse the weak, most of all when the weak believe they love them. They will protect them unwisely because they glory in their own strength. They will trust their own wisdom above yours. Their pride will not allow admission of error in themselves or in those of their blood or their race.
They will foster dependence because to be needed is the ultimate dominion. They will demand obedience because in it is the illusion of glory. Thus the weak will lean upon the strong, and both will be damned.
Man of Holiness: It is the test of the strong that they should help the weak for as long as that need exists, that their patience should never tire or grow short. They should nourish the young, the tender, the frightened, and the weak until they too become strong and no longer need them. To love is to desire growth, that every soul may reach the greatness of all its possibilities.
Asmodeus: But what of the impaired of body or mind? What of those who are not whole?
Man of Holiness: The impairment is temporary. The limping step of the cripple is to see if the swift will stay his speed and bend to lift him up—If need be, to forfeit the victory to carry him who is maimed and weary, to guide him who is lost and bear his burden for him. To all I will visit some weakness, in the full tide of life or in the limitations of age. I will test his humility to accept the help of others with grace, and without anger or envy, self-pity or despair.
Asmodeus: He will rail against you when his strength fails him. Man is born to ingratitude. He will let nothing go, except you force him. You will break his fingers before he will lose his grip on what he deludes himself is his. Allow him authority over another and then take it from him, and he
will hate his successor. He will hate you also for his pride’s sake. He will imagine that to magnify another diminishes him, and that service is a lesser call.
Man of Holiness: I give him earthly power not to exercise dominion but to minister to his fellows, and in ministering to learn those skills which he does not yet possess, each in its turn, until he has them all. And as he gains each, he must step back and with the patience of love and his greater skill, sustain his fellow while he too learns, and forgive him his errors.
Asmodeus: And is the earth also to forgive? Man in his arrogance will imagine himself its master. He will defile it, corrupt it in his greed and his stupidity, desecrate its beauty for his pretty gain, pollute its very life, murder and torture its creatures. Is that too merely experience?
Man of Holiness: The creatures of the earth are Mine also, the workmanship of My hands. In beauty have I formed them, in infinite complexity, each perfect in its sphere, and their innocence is blameless before the judgment of eternity. They have kept their order and have no sin for which to answer, and on the last day it will be well with them. Every bird that flies, every fish that inhabits the oceans and creature that runs or creeps upon the land, every flower and herb or tree of the forest from the smallest to the greatest, whether the span of its life be an hour or a millennium, not one of them is hurt without My knowledge and My grief. I know all things, and they shall not perish from My sight.
For a space the earth is lent to man to be under his stewardship, not in his possession, and he will answer to Me for every stick and stone of it, every leaf, every living thing upon its face, for good or ill. Just as there are those who will ruin and destroy, so there are those who will cherish and make beautiful, those who will love and who will heal, those who will praise and see My hand in all things.
All gifts, all wealth, whether it be of goods or of talents, of health or of intelligence, of wit or laughter or the art to create or to build, or of time itself, are a trust, to see whether they be used with generosity of heart or with meanness, with love or without it, with joy and gratitude and humility, that he return it to Me, rich with the harvest of sharing. And I will magnify it to him in time and eternity without end.
Asmodeus: Then you have to command him in all things, because he will do nothing that does not repay his own need. He thinks only of the day, or the hour.
Man of Holiness: Man who loves, whether he seeks My face or not, will do much without command. He will always be engaged in searching for good. The joy of others will become as dear to him as his own. He will not look upon any man’s sorrow without seeking to heal it. I will instruct him in the first thing, and he will find the hundredth for himself. He will rejoice with those who win, and his heart will ache with those who lose and who mourn. Every man will be his brother.
Asmodeus: As long as all is well for him, why should he do otherwise? But what when the earth fails him? What of his care for the weak then, the burdensome, the profitless mouth when there is famine, the sick when there is plague? And there will be, because you have not removed either their foolishness or their greed from them, nor their ability to destroy. Neither have you taken My power from the world. I can still spread rumor with My word and My breath. I can sow hatred and whisper lies, and I can reap the last grain of destruction. I can cover the face of the earth with war until the armies of humanity have drowned the soil with blood, or with disease and deformity in the noonday and madness in the night, until a man knows not the face of his brother and the flesh rots from his bones. I can corrupt nations in the light of the sun, and lead them open-eyed to the grave. And I will! My promise is as sure as yours!
Man of Holiness: I have known you from the birth of time. You too are My son, and I will not take the right to choose even from you. You will be what you wish to be, and the everlasting recompense for that will be yours, as it will be all men’s and has been from the beginning.
Asmodeus: You have not answered me! What of man then, in the day of my power, when his world has crashed about his ears and there is death and despair on every side?
Man of Holiness: In tribulation he will find his greatest strength and his utmost nobility. When he is persecuted, there will be those who will bear it with patience and without hatred, self-pity, or vengeance. There will be those in flight from a monstrous foe who will still return to the very jaws of destruction to rescue the weaker and the slower, though they know them not, those who will comfort the terrified and the grieving without thought of self. When there is starvation there will be those who will give their last morsel to feed the stranger or nurse the dying, though the plague afflicts them also. Where there is tyranny and war there will be those who will offer their own lives for their fellowmen, and who will look upon even your face rather than deny the good they believe. They will sacrifice all they possess for love of the light they have seen. And those are they who in eternity I shall take to My heart, and all things shall be theirs, even My glory. They shall see the light of the worlds like the risen sun on the dew of the grass. The heavens shall be before them, and they shall understand and be filled with that shining peace which has no end and that joy which is the everlasting laughter of the stars.
Asmodeus: And what of the others, those lost millions who do not seek the heights of courage and sacrifice? Have you no pity, no love for them?
Man of Holiness: For each one there shall be the glory he can abide, the kingdom and the dominion whose laws he is able and wills to keep. In any more or less, he would find no peace. It can be no other way. When a man leaves his tabernacle of clay for a space, and then at the last is made complete again with a perfect flesh, never more to be divided, he carries with him nothing but the wisdom he has gained and the nature and desires of his heart.
Experience shall make him whole, for good or ill, and that is his treasure, the sum of what he is, which shall never be taken from him.
Asmodeus: Where is the proof for him? You have left in the world no evidence that cannot be disputed a hundred ways. You ask him to walk an unknown path with belief rooted in no more than hunger and hope, a shred of meaning, the cry in the night of a watchman on a tower he cannot see. No echo is left from the time before the veil was drawn over his soul. He will not do it.
Man of Holiness: No man can give another his faith. It is learned little by little, by accepting the small things, putting to the test one principle at a time. Nourish it with courage and hope, and it will grow until it has the power to divide oceans, or create bread out of ashes, or any other thing that is wisdom in Me. I shall never fall short nor give less, until faith shall become knowledge.
But more blessed is he who trusts Me when he has not yet seen but walks by faith, and with courage. From the first stumbling beginning until that day when he walks upright beside Me and needs no command because he sees all things, I shall ask of him nothing whatsoever, except it be for his eternal good. But he must have the white fire of courage, which defies even the darkness of the pit. It is that virtue without which all others, even love itself, may in the end be lost.
Asmodeus: So much is wasted in your economy. Man is proud, rebellious, and full of doubts, like shadows in the wind, and disobedient to the core. Everywhere he will see waste and pain, futile effort, hope destroyed, and trust betrayed. Weariness and disillusion is the common path. Your prize is for the few. Mine would have been for all!
You are bound by the very laws which make you God to allow man his choice! Then let him choose between my plan and yours. See if he will not take mine, with the lesser reward—and the lesser risk! Not one will perish or lose that which should be his. And the hosts which follow me shall be mine forever!
Man of Holiness: No good or lovely thing will be lost to those who keep My law and who have loved Me with a whole heart. To no one is My glory impossible. Every man is My child, with My image graven upon his soul. But many will not choose Me, and if they choose you, then they are yours to have and to hold forever. The morning that he was born of My spirit, I gave him
his freedom.
Asmodeus: That was your first and great mistake. On that rests all the others. He is a flawed creature and will never be what you want him to be. He will always betray you in the end.
Man of Holiness: He is My child, even as you are, and I have taken all into reckoning. My purpose cannot be frustrated. I am God, and from the beginning have I known the end.
Asmodeus: The end will be war, and the abomination of destruction! Ruin will cover the face of the earth as the waters cover the sea. When that time comes there will be no more middle ground, no safety for the heart or mind or body, and in terror and despair man will choose me!
Man of Holiness: There never was middle ground, only for a space of sunlight was there the illusion of it, while the thunder of guns was far away. But out of that desolation I will create a new earth, and those who have chosen Me I will welcome home, and they shall be before My face forever. They shall never again taste fear nor stand alone, and they shall know Me as a man knows his father, and together we shall dance to the music of eternity.
Asmodeus: But why? Why all these aeons of labor and pain, all this waiting and yearning, the making and toiling of worlds, the hope and the failure, the disappointment and the agony of pity, all for a creature who is worthy of nothing? A firefly on the winds of darkness.
Man of Holiness: You do not understand. It is because I love him.
Asmodeus: Is that all?
Man of Holiness: That is all. It is the light which cannot fade, the life which is endless. I am God, and Love is the name of My soul.
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this ebook onscreen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.