Chapter V

The Initial Step toward Redemption

Genesis 12, 13, and 14

ACCORDING to Jesus, when a man turns toward a new country, a new state of consciousness, he must quicken his faith. Formerly he has had faith in material processes; he has attached himself to material things. Thus Abraham long lived in the sense world or consciousness, represented by Sodom and Gomorrah. His higher ideal, Jehovah, urged him to flee from that world and not to move back but to detach his mind from the things of sense and turn his face toward the light. This new land that the Lord desired him to go to represents new ideas and their manifestation, a new relationship to the substance of things. When the new ideas begin to multiply in man's mind, his environment changes; as Paul says, "if any man is in Christ, he is a new creature." But the beginning is to believe further than you can see or feel in terms of the senses. A man often finds it necessary to go into a "new country" that he knows nothing about; and he has to trust the Lord to carry him through. "Blessed are they that have not seen, and yet have believed." To put faith in things spiritual is the essential step.

The call of Abraham is considered the initial step in a great plan for the redemption of the Adam race from its material, sensual consciousness, called the fall of man. From any mortal viewpoint the time seems

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