Gospel of Thomas - coda 10

Gospel of Thomas, coda 10

“Jesus said, ‘I have cast fire on the world, and see, I am guarding it until it blazes.’”

We begin looking at this scripture through the lens of Stevan Davies.  What is this fire Jesus speaks of?  First, what it is not.  It is not a world-historical event that will take place in some indefinite future.  It is not a future judgment day.  Rather, it is kingdom of God or heaven.  In saying 82 Jesus says that anyone who is near him is near the fire and anyone far from him is far from the kingdom.  Jesus’ teaching is about the kingdom.  It is about the realm, reality, or presence of God entering into the world.  Individuals who receive these teachings of Jesus, these sayings, and meditate and reflect upon them fan them into a blaze and Jesus guards them as they do.  The Master protects the disciple as the disciple pursues the path, fanning the flame.  Thomas mixes metaphors coda to coda, but this is like a person cultivating a seed until it grows into a shoot, flowers, and bears seed.    In this context, Jesus is revealing knowledge of the Kingdom (reality) of God that is going to spread like fire around the world.  To blaze is to burst into flame and engulf the world.

From Tau Malachi’s perspective the Master, Jesus, comes with a holy fire, a fire that consumes everything and makes everything like itself.  It is a purifying and transforming fire.  Jesus imparts, kindles and tends the fire until it blazes and his disciples, likewise, once receiving it, kindle and tend it until it blazes.  It is a cooperative venture between Master and Disciple.  Once the Disciple spreads the fire the Master is no longer needed.  The blessing and guardianship of the Master are essential for the effective and fruitful spiritual practice of the disciple.  The Master generates and imparts spiritual energy-intelligence-light to energize the practice of the disciple.  One might see this as emitting grace to the disciple.  And the Master holds around the disciple an energy field of protection against forces that would hinder or obstruct the person and practice of the disciple.  Thus there is a continuum that exists between Master and disciple that remains until it is brought to fruition or completion, culminating in the disciple imparting the teaching to another person.  This continuum, Master to disciple, disciple to next line of disciple, leads to the whole world being set afire with the Word of the Lord.

Jesus, Yeshua, is the incarnation of the Great World Teacher.  More than a Prophet, he is the Messiah, who ushers into the world a new Divine consciousness-force and with it a new dimension of teachings and transmissions corresponding to this Divine light force.  The Master embodies this Divine light-force and transmits it to his immediate disciples, and through his immediate disciples, to the larger collective of humanity and the world.    This light transmission passes generation to generation through the succession of apostles.  The disciples embody something of the light force brought into the world by the Master.   This Divine light force is like “fire.”  It transforms and illuminates everything it touches.  It transforms every level of consciousness into the likeness or image of itself.  This fire is like spiritual nuclear energy and exists hidden as the core of everything in the universe.  When this fire is actualized and released it can radically transform consciousness and matter.  The transfiguration and resurrection stories of the New Testament canonical gospels reveal something of the transformative nature and power of this spiritual consciousness force.

Although the Master, Jesus, has departed this world, his presence and power remain in the Holy Spirit, by which the Lord initiated and ordained the apostles.  This Divine presence and power remains and is alive in the world today in various spiritual orders and wherever grace manifests itself.  Indeed, the Master Jesus is present whenever his name is spoken with understanding.  In this way, the Master continues to cast his fire on the world and guard it until it blazes.

The blazing fire this passage anticipates represents a quantum leap in human consciousness.  When the leap finally occurs it will seem like it appears instantaneously.  But that transformation is developing gradually over time through the process of human development where the ground is being cultivated and prepared for that radical transformation to occur.   The Master is doing his job of transmitting the knowledge of the Kingdom and guarding it until it grows to its fruition in the great transformation or resurrection of the world.  It is the job of his disciples to labor faithfully toward the advent of the Second Coming.  This is the moment that we will experience the world ablaze in the transformative fire of enlightenment.  For this to occur, many people must embody and bring this divine fire into the world.  Therefore, you must embody the Spirit of Christ Jesus and work to bring about this Second Coming in your own lifetime.

The soul of the Messiah is coming from the universe of Adam Kadmon, the primordial human being, bringing divine power with it into the world.   In the process chaff is burned away and holy sparks released and the body of Adam Kadmon is restored to its primordial state to take its place in the image of the Lord in the new heaven and new earth.  Recall that the Master, Jesus, endeavored not only in the heavens on earth, but entered through the gates of Hades to liberate the souls who were bound in the hells.   As a result, each of the domains are blessed and liberated, even hell, darkness and demonic powers being transformed because the divine light hidden it them has been revealed and overcome them.