Two Natures — Norman Grubb

Fellowship Growing into Spiritual Community

For what it's worth, these are comments from Norman and me, or maybe just from Norman, on what we are seeing in our loving, lovely fellowship.

Well, I'm just noticing in the various areas where there are various ones of us, it's becoming like Jacob, who said, I went out with my staff, now I've become two bands. And let's say, I go to different places, whether it's just one or other, there's a whole company, and the men come in with the women, and people commenting on the men with the women, the husbands with the wives, who know what we're talking about, who say as we do, this is all there is, this is the final truth, God, all in all, and know, so we are becoming companies who will share with each other, and participate, where we were, more or less, lonely individuals, and they're becoming visible all around the country.

I could name about ten different, which are almost like groups of those who know what I call the total truth, just around this country. And there are others like it, of course, I mean, there's Where You Are Here Now, with you and Alexandra, and of course there's Louisville with John and Linda, and there's Glen Ellyn with Bill and Marge, and the Merrills, there's others coming in, and then there's, I don't know, High Point with John and Francis Orson, quite a company there, there's Jackson with Tom and Paige, quite a company there, they're really like, usually like family centres, any of us can dodge here and out, there's one arising with Jake and Nancy Gilmore, they're arising there, there's Merrillville with Rob and Martha Lee, there's Glendale California with John and Karen Huffman, and in San Francisco, or it's really Cupertino, with Alice Pruitt, and these groups are arising, some are, many of those are, as I say, maturing into groups.

There's Buzz and Marge Williams who moved to Denver, and I really have a cause to be, even in life, full-time sharers, and they've started in Denver, and so there are others. Aren't they at Priscilla Rummel?

With Priscilla Rummel, I think you say so, I didn't know that, of course we're linked together. Then there's Med and Ann have quite a group, Chamraz in Miami, there are the Wingardens in Birmingham, their home is called, of course, a university centre, that's Brad and Linda Wingardens.

And the Morthams? And there's Bill and Ann Mortham in Tampa, in St. Petersburg. I'm sure those we miss as the mind goes round. These ones are springing up, they're really becoming like family centres, so that any of our crowd can drop in at any time, they're like becoming some sort of union, like Grand Centrals.

Right, Ken and Luann Deetz up in Manton, Michigan, have a place where anybody could drop in at any time, and they have a group that's springing up.

Yes, yes, that's very good. Bill and Janelle Rod in Fort Worth are becoming that, I think, that's where we go to stay there, it's a different one. And Dean and Phyllis McMahon, the Episcopal Rector. Are they in Texas?

Fort Natchez, Texas.

And then the Trailers and the Baldwins up in New York State, they certainly have homes that are totally open.

Bill and Millie Baldwin, Birmingham. The Trailers, they're up in Syracuse. Syracuse, yeah. Vera and Al. Al, yes, Al's parking up.

And there are Dick and Freddie Hood in Martinsville, who have their own fellowship in their home.

I see so many different ones. We're just beginning in Britain, we'll find out when we go over there, of course. We have Jack and Alice Corcoran in Simsbury, Connecticut, who are really our center in New England.

Simsbury, is that? Simsbury, yes, Simsbury, Connecticut. That's all at the moment. There's Arnie and Connie Saria in Traverse City, Michigan. They're really a center for us, whenever any of us can go there.

That's another. There's Al and Neil Sindel in Oklahoma, in Bethany, Oklahoma. And there's Millie Mimi Anderson of Hopkinsville, Kentucky. My old friend Evelyn Nissen and Carla Price at Winters Helen. They're a center for us there.

So different ones are rising up. Tom and Kathy Morrison of Chester, Pennsylvania. Well, you're Dave and Hope Slotin in Richmond. Art and Fran Giles in... I meant to be, Fran and I, I should mention their names, in Flemington.

No, Flemington. Flemington. New Jersey. Yes. Then in Canada we have Rosamond Beattie, and we have that other... The Rollers? Yes. Dan and... Oh. Dan and Bernice. Bernice Roller. And then the Halazel Johnson, who are our oldest links in...

Canada? Canada. Ontario? So they're scattered around like that. So that's just a brief run around of some of them.

There are really many more, aren't there?

Yes, there's parking up, parking up. Catching on, and they're becoming links where we can visit. As we know, that's what Paige was saying, that's the real value of our fellowships, like Louisville. And we have this one down in Carraway Camp.

It's the interaction, isn't it? People catch on. Well, like Henrietta and Paige caught on to each other, and now they can begin to build. That's the real point. People get to know others who have a like mind and like spirit.

We're aiming not to become anything structured. We're aiming not to be. As far as we can keep, to have nothing except just these magazines and witnesses for our Lord's continuities, and different ones of us linked up by fellowship.

That's all. Of course, we're to be lights and seed sowers and fruit producers in the body of Christ, all over the world. It's the one body, isn't it? We're only part of the one body, that's all we see.

So we're nothing in it, beyond just a voice that can underline what we see to be certain central truths of the Gospel, which is indeed refreshing and underlying in every generation. And ours is this replacement.

It's the total truth. It's God all in all in us and in all. That's all, isn't it? That's all.

Spiritual Life and Honest Relationships

I'd like to make a couple of observations. I have... It seems to me as if we are watching the life that is spirit life developing in our fellowship, our far-flung, loosely connected fellowship. I'm sure that this has been happening down through the ages, since the beginning of time, really.

But for me, I have not before seen the kind of rough-and-tumble, gut-level living on the level of honesty that I am seeing in this developing fellowship. Before, in my own experience, the kind of relationship I've seen has been that which continued as long as it was of value to the people in the relationship.

Flesh value. Good flesh. Religious flesh. What we thought was spiritual flesh, we didn't know. But in this fellowship, I see that we're caught by the spirit of the living God. And when it seems not to be advantageous to our flesh, the spirit shows us that it is very advantageous.

And the very thing that we seem to want to run from, the confrontations, are the things that the spirit shows us were spirit-designed for us and for others. And so, in my experience, and in the experience of the people that I see around me and the people that I know out from me, I see this marvelous thing happening.

It's really a thing that I feel all of the different psychological movements are trying to achieve, but are not able to because the end of their purpose is still in flesh. And when you've come to the end of that, you're still in flesh, and flesh is never going to know success.

So what we're seeing is there's an open end. Once we've seen the Lord handle a relationship that seemed to be impossible, there's an open end. It's not clogged by our thinking, well, that was the purpose then, to get that relationship straightened out.

We see that that was just a step in the purpose of the living God. Now He moves out through that, the things that He's done in the two people who evidently were having problems in their relationship, now He moves out to ever greater things, to others that may have the same kinds of problems or whatever.

But it's a fantastic thing to see. It's like breathing fresh mountain air when you no longer have to run from relationships that don't seem to be working, but you stand having been convinced by the Holy Spirit in you that this is now your place, that this is your family.

And if it's rough and tumble, it's rough and tumble. If you don't approve of it, you don't approve of it. But it is your family, and there is no moving from it. And another thing that's been of great value to me has been just my having to stand and watch you, Norman, because you have loved me so unstintingly, so wholly.

The Holy Spirit love has grabbed me in you, and because I have loved you, I have been forced time and time again to hold my peace, where I would, oh, I probably have spoken, but it was a weak speaking, because I knew that you had been loved to me in such a way that my life had come to me.

And so when I have seen you apparently standing and approving of others of whom I did not approve, I have had the freedom to speak to you about it, but I've also had to stand and watch, because I knew of the validity of your life with me.

And now as I see person after person that looked impossible to me, to my flesh eyes, person after person coming into the reality of life and the joy and now sensing validity in those people that I really didn't believe would ever come.

I was a little believer. This has been such an aid to me, because now I find myself standing against others who say, oh, well, forget that, where my flesh may be feeling the same way, but now the Spirit comes up in me and reminds me, no, Norman stood for such and such and such and such and such.

And he saw through. He didn't see flesh. He didn't let that influence him. And so I can also do that same thing. And I think this is what is happening throughout this fellowship, people who are probably who stood before I did.

I think I've been one of little faith. I felt that I was a negative person, and fine. I don't feel downgraded about that at all. But I just want to say how thrilled I am that I see this building up in me now, that I can really stand and say that looks impossible, but I say that God's got that person.

That's wonderful. That is true.

That certainly is happening. Well, there are these rising first year, then the blade, then the year, then the full corn coming up, yes. Certainly, you see, this in some sense must become universal in the whole Church of Christ.

Universal Truth and the Divine Nature

And I think God's given us empathy, which I don't know how to find elsewhere. The mystics knew it. They're all through history. But they're difficult to read, and of course most people have to date and so on.

But I don't know who else really openly goes a whole way in pronouncing who we are and taking the reactions that we are Christ in human form. So I don't know. And yet this is the truth. We know it's the Bible truth.

I think maybe we're becoming a little better in presenting the Bible foundations. I think that's why more people are moving in. They've got confidence because we're showing what the Bible says. I was talking to somebody, a mature Christian, a day or two ago, a dancer, she knows the Lord, but she'd never seen the fact that we have no human nature, no nature.

And she knows her way. But I could see, oh yes, she said, I could see the scriptures, you know, where the Bible says vessels and barges and so on. Yes, I could see. Oh, I see now. So the scriptures have given her confidence to move into something which is very radical to her, and is, as far as I know, unsaid.

I don't know anyone who says we have no human nature. You always get things from each other, from different people. I've always been, of course, a person of people who have got things from Lanyon. Now Lanyon doesn't quite say this, but by implication he does.

I see a great deal of that in Lanyon, in his own way of putting it, which he put in my way. The point of that, of course, is the basis of saying that if we have no nature, the only thing we can be is expressions of a divine person.

The divine nature, therefore, that's we. And I think, somehow or other, it's the purpose of God that the whole Church of Christ, the redeemed Church of Christ, should, because this is fact, moving in some terms in these facts, maybe not by unionized terms, but by some means, but it's got to be by varieties of Malcolm Smith and other people running around, I don't know.

That's all I'm saying. And that's been, of course, the confidence of Bill Buckman from the beginning, that this has worldwide implications and fruitage. I think that's right. All I keep saying, saying to the Lord, saying to each other, name of the person doesn't matter.

The best we can keep a name out, the better. It's not union life. It's Jesus Christ living his own life again as people. And teachers don't matter. It isn't related to souls. So we want to cut that out.

We can't quite cut it out, because we're human, the best we can. Back down, anyhow, just to be a company of us, not special people. So it doesn't go down as a special thing, but it comes as a revelation of the truth of Jesus Christ in its totality, is what we really mean.

So it may take other forms. Michael Smith isn't what we call union life, but he now is being a public voice very much along this line. I've not heard him, and I think he's got a good deal of what we're saying.

In a way, it doesn't work that way. I'm glad you're feeding him. It would be good, and he could be good, because probably there are lines he needs sharpening, and we all do. He builds on nothing that I know of, except what he got from our books, my books, and some fellowship years back, and his own interpretation of that into terms, into preaching terms.

As far as I know, that's all he gets. We get so much benefit by iron sharpening iron, and the little spots we touch each other up on, and correct each other, and adjust each other, and get new lights from each other.

I wish he could be where he could be. Whether we ought to invite him to Louisville or something, I don't know where he could be. Have a little touch with us, although we should have come under our name, but we didn't wish him to be a propagator of the eternal truth, which he is, I think.

And of course, what we're always saying when we're sitting in a meeting, I know when a person says this, oh, of course, that's all that can be. He sees it. That's all there is. Anything that's dropped off, which means, of course, they've got their own doctrines and teachings dropped off.

When you really see, it's all there is, because if it's God and all in all, it must be all that is. But you have to see in relation to yourself and the universe as one, don't you? That's it. Be Betty Ketchum.

Spiritual Wholeness and Universal Mysticism

There's so much to us. I was going to say, there's Tony and Betty Ketchum, and the newer relations, she has had the wholeness of our person, as spirit, soul, and body, as intercessors for a world, like she gets in Don Quixote.

And interesting touches she has. Some of the books she shares with me and I share with her, which are beyond our usual outreach, where we get glimpses of history, where the universal fact can be seen.

This book she has, The Tao of Phoenix. Tao is the name the old seer, thousands of years ago, Lao Tzu, the Chinese, he called the universal person Tao, T-A-O, Tao. Because he didn't know Jesus Christ, but he did know that all is one.

And of course Buddha really knew this too. He couldn't take you there, or he'd give you works to get there, because he didn't know Jesus Christ. So he had a seven-pointed way, an eight-pointed way, for truth, for central truth.

But you had to get, you had to strive to get there. Well of course that's not the gospel. The gospel is you got there, because the strive was in God himself coming in the flesh and doing it. But he developed a basic truth there.

He has some level of the universal one. Then what I read recently, Walter Russell, who doesn't come the Christ way, although he puts Christ as a unique person in the universe, or in the world, but he certainly has seen something of the, God as light and relates to science today that says everything is light.

And how we are light, and therefore we and God are each other really, because Bible says we are light. And he's caught something there, so he gives me, even Zen has got to a point. I don't know Zen, I've not followed, but it knows something.

For instance, uh, uh, uh, it'll, it'll, it'll, there's a saying, you ask some question of a Zen teacher, what about truth? Well he says, that's a table. Well that means nothing. He's saying, face through, and find, till you see through, a table is the form of God.

His way of saying, get through to universal. So all these people, without Jesus Christ, are touching certain elements, which we, which we move into. He is the universal, we're part of the universal, and we are, to us now, we're personal, he's personal, it isn't a vague mystical thing, it's a living Father, Son, Spirit, and we in the family, that's, that's the, we've, Jesus Christ, we've put the whole into focus, so it's a dim, dim flash of light, through history.

That's, that's, Betty's, by the way, is very good, she's, we're catching on some of this. Several of us were, looking over that book yesterday, that a friend brought in, and in the book, it was, it claimed to have a metaphysical solution to all the problems of life, and I think our discussion was fruitful, and maybe we could talk about that some more.

Christ, the Cross, and the Rejection of Self-Salvation

Well, metaphysical is only an expansion of the, of the basic being of a human, the spirit, soul, and body, by which we can, we can move into and observe and relate to spiritual realities, as well as, as well as physical.

Metaphysical means it's beyond the physical, it's spiritual. But it's still, we, from our self point of view, investigating and appropriating certain principles of powers, and this is the, the, the modern way, which we still remain, unbroken, self-affirming selves, instead of sinners saved by grace, by building up ourselves by various philosophies, and saying, well, you can get it this way, develop yourself this way, develop yourself that way, be still self.

As you, you tend to come back to some form of expanded self-development. Self-development is a fall. In that sense, self, self-centered self is a fall, so it's all, all partakes of the quality of the, of the lie of Satan.

Because any self solutions, or self-affirmations, or that are, are, are any any alternative for Christ, are a satanic lie. Because we know the true self-development is the self of Christ, developed by us.

Which means we go onto the cross of sinners and be renewed. And that's why we won't do it, we'll do anything to preserve our own self-affirming selves. So it includes all these philosophies and psychologies.

This was a key, the great key that got hit at and destroyed, we can't go into his philosophy now. So it's quite easy to see any of these things that doesn't, isn't centered in a a a a conscious union relationship with Christ, and the recognition that Christ is the life and the wisdom and so and so, means it's, it's on the lost side of the cross, it's on the fallen side of the cross, it has the quality of Satan and the fall, or whatever it looks, they look like.

It's simply Satan in some of his clever expressions. He's a spirit. Well, we're spirits, so we can, we can move into spiritual um, um, investigations and appropriations and applications and so on. And now our spirit powers can operate.

The Hindus can prove that, the others can prove that, that, I think so. That's, that's why we come back to the word that John gave, that the test of the spirit is in itself as in Jesus Christ having come in the flesh.

That means God has become man and laid himself back to himself um, um, through his, through his um, um, um, saviourhood and lordship and so on. Anything else is, is a false spirit. That's all I've got to say on that.

That doesn't mean we can't pick up bits of information here and there, bits of insights, because we are spiritual people and we can have insights, but unless they're not, unless they come back and fit it in to Christ as our wisdom and so on it's a false guide leading us in the reverse direction.

Divine Power, Healing, and Misused Spiritual Gifts

There are gods, all medical powers are forms of gods and we are, as you say, using in spirit, investigating in new levels. There always has been, of course, now it's ESB and there's hypnotism they're all uh, our human ability to uh, adapt uh, forms of being, which within our reach, spirit being or soul being or body being and adapt them and operate in them so that I can produce certain apparently miraculous results.

That's all right. And they're all powers of God but the powers of God have been stolen by Satan and are being used by Satan for Satan himself is a power of God stolen himself all his tremendous powers which come out in selfhood are forms of God of course just misused so that's so difficult.

The, uh, the great conflict between,.

Is it, is it Satan misusing, um, especially himself as a form of God misusing the being of God for self purposes as you said uh, or has it moved over by, by our redemption relationship to Christ to being a, uh, we being a form of God in, in his eternal purposes operating in the world um, along with him for world fulfillment and world blessing as against self fulfillment.

And in between there was Santa Claus and of course he's ignited but I need uh, uh, a saviour and a uh, a replacement and so on. That's it so that's so uh, the, it's uh, the, uh, things settle down. Which side are you John's statement uh, if you confess Jesus Christ come in the flesh or, or God if you don't don't confess in meaning or identify with as a fact.

That's all the thing that I saw a few years ago regarding that uh, came out of my reading an article about healing in the secular magazine uh, they cited healings in the name of Jesus they also cited healings in uh, uh, tribes in South America that had nothing to do with being in the name of Jesus uh, they cited healings that were now taking place in some hospitals where nurses were being given training in laying on of hands and after I read that magazine I'm used over that and it came to me that God is all and in all.

Therefore any power for anything is God and He is He's available God He's servant God uh, He is there to be used as we choose to use Him um, in our use of Him uh, if, if we choose to use Him then we get the results of going the wrong way.

If we rather move over to see that we are containers of Him and and and are being used by Him for His glory and certainly for our good um, then we get the results of that in our bodies and in our souls uh, which, which is which is usually uh, good usually our bodies are uh, rejuvenated our, how is it you say it Norman?

Um, the overflowing life of God in our bodies just keeps them going quickens uh, but it's, it's having the emphasis uh, on life rather than the emphasis on flesh.

God as Person Rather Than Impersonal Power

So I would say the difference is uh, when we're in ourselves we're using God's powers rather than God's person. We don't know the person. Uh, the universe is an expression of power. Uh, as Walter Rothschild would say God is light.

Uh, the universe is divided like you always see things right opposite. So the one He, the person whose light has come out that's not God. It's God coming uh, the form of that which is divided like positive and negative electricity and so on by which all manifestation comes into being.

So that's not God. It's God in uh, manifested form a divided light. God is light. So we're using manifested forms of God which isn't God. So we follow people using our forms of God but yet we're not God because God's a person uh, you're only in tune with Him.

When you are a person uh, the same quality as He is which you only have time to pass. Of course when you're an expression of Him which is now by redemption that Jesus Christ being uh, expression of God in us.

So I make that difference there. So everything is a power of God. It's not actually God Himself. It's His, it's His expressed powers which are forms of Him. Um, but a form is different from a person. Our bodies are forms of us but they're not us they are expressions of us.

But we ourselves are not our bodies. So there's a difference between the person and the form isn't there although there are one yet within this one there's a difference between the person and His means of manifestation.

That's all that's only adding to what you said. Well, what Russell always says is the difference between God is light as a person. But uh, things only manifest by by opposites. So it comes out as a divided light light and dark positive and negative the atomic power positive and negative electricity.

Everything is known by its interactional opposites. That's forms of God. God's coming forms. But forms aren't the person. It's a it's a close a close matter because a form is part of you. My body is part of me.

It's not me. It's a form of me. I am my spirit. If my body is part of me it's not me. In that sense all these things are part of God. In that sense are forms of God. In that sense we can see God in them because they are forms of God but they aren't the living God himself.

Therefore uh, uh, a pantheist would say a thing is a living God. That's a lie everything. The word pantheist means everything is God. So every, actually every human every fallen person all of us are pantheists till we know God through Jesus Christ.

Because we're taking something maybe a philosophy maybe a false idea of God himself maybe a religion maybe anything calling that that self concept as God. It's a pantheist. It's a thing. It's a self concept of some kind of course in the world.

Maybe our wealth our you know all the things the world loves they are God. Well that's pantheism. Maybe some form of everything is God. But a born again person has moved out of pantheism of course into what we call pan-everything.

Everything is form. It's God is in God is everything. We're laid out Him in things not things but Him in things. Those things are not He. They're forms of Him. That's the way I can say. And that's why we see through.

Humanity, the Image of God, and Union with Christ

Yes that's why we see through see through people's outer exterior are there exterior. Yes are there personalities to Him. That's part of Him. That's He. Everything it is He. Of course in yes it is He.

And see through the chair to the the energy yes that is moving around in that chair. Yes and the the obvious is persons are difficult. Persons are different. Persons are made in His image. So that we live and move in our being in Him.

So the sense which every person is a form of God where a chair isn't because a person is a person. And yet we're we're broken off persons. Because we're fallen so our personality isn't joined to Him who is love and yet it is He.

So we can sort of see people's as a misused forms of Him. That's the against us. I can put it I think that's all I can say on that.