Article June 9, 1945 Issue

Life Eternal

J. BUROUGHS STOKES

In the Gospel of John we read that Christ Jesus made this statement (8:56): "Your father Abraham rejoiced to see my day: and he saw it, and was glad." Then the Jews answered, "Thou art not yet fifty years old, and hast thou seen Abraham?" Jesus replied, "Verily, verily, I say unto you, Before Abraham was, I am." This passage sets forth the fact that man, as the idea of God, is without beginning or end.

To the gross minds of his questioners this reply seemed ridiculous, for Abraham had lived nearly two thousand years before Jesus. They had not discerned the Christ, to which Jesus referred. He recognized that the Christ, the divine idea, was no more confined to a given time or era than it was to a limited, finite, material body. His understanding of this fact made it possible for him so to realize the nothingness of material life, and the allness and infinite nature of spiritual life, that he was able to destroy all the lies and misconceptions presented by mortal mind, whether in the form of sin, sickness, or death.

There was never a time when God did not exist; hence never a time when His individual idea, man, did not exist. In other words, the divine Principle of man, in whom man is, existed prior to the concept of time, and will forever continue.

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