The Greatest Argument For an Oak Tree

The Greatest Argument For an Oak Tree

by Norman Elliott

Transcribed from the original recording; may contain errors.

Heavenly Father, Lord Jesus and Holy Spirit, thank You for the close of the day and the coolness that comes with it. And with the quietness that comes, make us quiet too. And let all the tensions and anxieties and doubts and confusions that we might have had this day sort of sink into the ground and be buried there.

And now, sort of in… give us this adjustment to the things of wisdom and height so that we’ll be open to thoughts that are bigger than our ordinary thoughts. Sort of, in a phrase, open a window of heaven and give us a look in.

So because of the vision, we’ll never be the same anymore. This we ask in Jesus’ name. Amen.

You know, years ago, when I met Charles King, he wasn’t as smooth as he is now and as educated. He had a church of his own then. And I knew that this man had that extra spark of that… that little extra thing which in the old days we used to call it.

Because the first time that I heard him talk, he flipped open the Bible and he said, “Now I shall read the scripture.” And he said, “And King Solomon was the wisest man in all the world. And he had 500 wives and 500 concubines. Now,” he says, “I just wish us to digress for just a moment and to put this thing into more modern language. Concubine means stenographer. Stenographer.” And I immediately witnessed with him. And of course, Mary, Mary Harris, I mean, she has helped out more people than anybody you will ever know. And especially bishops.

And she knew a bishop once and she really did change him. I mean, she… And this bishop had the… Well, he had no memory at all. He would go into the pulpit and he would… And he had to have notes stuck all over his pockets in order to remind him of names and dates and places and everything else. And he would get up and he would say, “Now,” he says, “there was this man that… Well, he saw this ladder going up to heaven and… And… Jacob.” And he would go on like that for a while and he’d say, and he says, “there was… They were led through the wilderness by one of the greatest leaders of all time. And he was a wonderful speaker, Moses.” And he’d go like that… And he went through this and… And he preached this long sermon. And Mary had stuck all of these notes into his pocket to try to help his memory, you know. And they get up and he says, “Some of the greatest heroes of this world, why, they even walked through fire. And there were… And there were these three Jewish boys that… They got into the… Into the furnace and they… They were… Oh, they were men of great faith. Hart, Schaffner and Marx.”

Every so often it’s a good thing to sort of stand off to one side and to look at the kind of habits that we’re into. And this is especially true when it comes to prayer.

And every so often I find myself, and I find others also… Well, I think that all of us do it every so often. We get into a panic and we say, “Let’s pray about this.” Or about that. Or about the other thing. And we get down and we start running off at the mouth just as fast as we can go. And really, if some person from another planet happened to drop in on us and looked at us, and didn’t really know our history and culture, we would appear to be like primitive people. It would be almost the same as if you went back, I don’t know, five or six thousand years back, or probably a million years back, and we were beating drums in order to call God down from some distant mountain.

It’s really a very primitive thing. Oftentimes it is as if we are trying to argue God or reason God into doing something that we already know is good. And this is your… Prayer is your attitude toward life. As well as your attitude toward your… toward yourself.

And I think that when you come to the realization that God isn’t something or somebody that’s up on the top of some mountain, but He’s right here. And I don’t know, as you can say, He even. Of course, everybody admits that men are superior. But I mean, I’m talking about God now. Great and all as men are. Mary, don’t look at me in that way.

We’re human beings and we have to talk from a human point of view and we say he, she, it. But God is spirit, not a spirit. A spirit would mean a separated spirit. Just like I probably am a spirit or a soul. You can get lost in terms here. But God is spirit of all spirits. Now you can say spirit with a capital S. I’m sure you can say life with a capital L. I’m sure you can say energy with a capital E. God is infinite. And the old Hebrews had a lot of good wisdom when they say that you couldn’t name God. That in some fashion or other that if you took the name of God, and I’m not sure what they meant by the name of God, or the nature of God, or this secret word, that it was a forbidden thing. Because once you start to name the infinite, why, there’s no end to it. And God goes under many, many hundreds of names even in the Bible. He’s a refuge and a tower and a strength and a king and a counselor. He’s a rock. Oh, and everything else. He’s an arrow.

He’s a breath. He’s a breeze, a redeemer, a savior. And well, it’s like once you begin to start to name the infinite, you can go on for infinity and never come to the end of it. And I think this is what they meant. And even using the name God, G-O-D.

The minute you name anything, you separate that thing from everything else. If you say this is God, then the way the human mind acts is then that isn’t God. But if God is this, Logos, principle, word, call it what you will, that started all things, that created all things, that out of Himself or however they would say it, started all things and at this very present moment contains and sustains and directs intelligently all things. Even the smallest atom. Even the smallest atom. Nucleus of the smallest atom.

Then wherever you look, you can say God. Now, some people accuse you of pantheism when you talk like this. And pantheism means that God is the sum total of all things. But I don’t think you have to say that. God is the sum total of all that we know or can even conceive of and He’s more. Thank goodness that God is not only immanent, but He is transcendent. For while it’s nice and warm to think of God within the tree and within the human being and within the mind and within the atom, there’s something when we say immanent. Human beings that we are and realizing that some days we are up or down and that we love or that we hate and that we’re hot and we’re cold and all this. Then we… that gives us the idea of God as a temperamental being like we are. So the transcendency of God has to be added to the balance wheel of the immanency of God. The interior has to be that God is, in many words of the Bible, steadfast, sure. Like the tides which go out and come in.

And as we have said here before, my word shall not return unto me void. This is a law: what goes out has to come in. Whatsoever you sow, that shall you reap. This is not only a law of agriculture, but it’s a law of the tides and it’s a law of the spirit and it’s a law of the mind. Whatsoever you sow and thought, you’ll get it back too. So it’s nice to know that whether I am tired or filled with energy or well or sick, that God is the same. I can depend upon Him at all times. He is steadfast.

Now, if this is so, and there are other things too. Where did we come from? Why are we here? Where are we going? Were we just an accident on this earth? I think it is Lou Austin in his book, which I forget the title of now, but he says, “Do you think that you are an accident on the face of this earth?”

Well, according to scientists, the chances that you were born instead of somebody else that might have been your brother or your sister is one in I don’t know how many million. And all you can say is that it wasn’t a brother or sister, but it was you. And it took a lot of selection in some form or other. Now, take also this thing. And this is not just theory or science or idealism or philosophy. But they say that whenever anything is born into this world, whenever anything changes, whenever anything is added, all creation has to make room for it. And in a way, it is somewhat similar to when a baby is about to be born into the home.

Long before the baby arrives, there is a room and a crib and there’s blankets and bottles and what have you. All prepared for it. And maybe the baby, if it had conscious thought at that time, would feel that it was an accident. But great plans, far superior to anything that the baby could possibly imagine in its own mind, have already been formed. The whole house has been shifted around just a little bit to make room for it. And you know, scientists say that even if you drop a pin, I don’t know whether they say that it’s vibrations or whatever it is, but there is a reaction in every part of the universe, not only on this earth, but in all over the universe. When anything moves, everything else has to move in order to come into balance with it.

This is the relationship, almost the sea of atoms or whatever else you want to call it, ultimately the sea of spirit that there is. So were you an accident? Well, even in scientific fact, when something new has been added, something had to make room for it. And this is a realization that when a man reaches maturity, and reaches a certain number of years, has had so much experience under him, he looks back, and he sees that God had had a finger in his life, all the time, long before he was even aware of it.

I was at a conference with some men some years back in Minnesota. And this man said, oh, he said, “These preachers, they get up there and they’ll pick out some sentence or verse out of the Bible. And,” he says, “they’ll make a mountain out of it. And I don’t see how that can be.” Well, how we operated this retreat for men was that a certain subject would be introduced. And then the men would take their Bibles or their New Testaments with them. And they would wander around for an hour in silence and sort of mull it over. And then we would come back and discuss it.

And this fellow was a businessman in Minneapolis. And he was the one that said that, “I just don’t see where they get all this stuff out of there.” And he happened to open the little New Testament that he had. And it was to… and it was to the… I think it was the first chapter of Mark. And he came back all excited. He said, “I started to read about the call of the disciples.

“And you know what? I found out that Jesus saw the disciples first. He saw them before they saw Him. He had His eye on them all the time.” And then he began to wonder if God hadn’t had His… long before he even thought of God. Or was interested in religion or prayer or anything of this sort. Or the meaning of life or what cosmic wholeness is or anything of that sort. He said, “You know, I think God has had His eye on me. For a long time too.” Well, this is the realization that comes in everybody’s life. When you look back, you think you’re living by accident. You think that all these things just plain happen. Then you begin to look back and find that there’s a pattern in it. And oftentimes when you have made up your mind as to what you want to be, and as to where you want to go and why you go to a certain place, then you begin to look back and wonder, why? The things that you thought you were doing something for were really not the reasons, because they’ve been fitted into a bigger and higher pattern than you ever dreamed of. And of course, this is what the psalmist says in the 139th Psalm.

You go on, he says: For Thou didst form my inward parts. Thou didst knit me together in my mother’s womb. I praise Thee for Thou art fearful and wonderful. Wonderful are Thy works. Thou knowest me right well. My frame was not hidden from Thee when I was being made in secret, intricately wrought in the depths of the earth. Thy eyes beheld my unformed substance.

In Thy book were written every one of them, the days that were formed for me, when as yet there was none of them. How precious to me are Thy thoughts, O God! How vast is the sum of them! If I would count them, they are more than the sand. When I awake, I am still with Thee.

Do you think really that God has to… that God has to run around… I mean, even speaking as we oftentimes have to, saying he. But do you think that the universe is built in such a way that every time somebody prays, or every time a petition goes out into the air, into the spirit of life, that God has to scurry around and do something about it? That He has to get on the other end of the telephone and sort of madly scramble around in His mind in order to find some way to answer it? I don’t think so. Do you know, from all that we know of the nature of the universe and science…

If you fulfill the conditions, the supply is already there to make the experiment a success. It doesn’t matter whether you’re white, black, educated or uneducated, a Baptist, a Presbyterian or what have you. This is the way science forms.

All that you could possibly want, long before most of the discoveries were made, when a discovery in science and chemistry or whatever it is is made, suddenly the pattern of the universe doesn’t change. Inventors are discoverers. They discover what is already there and has always been there. And somehow or other, when you begin to look at the prayer life of Jesus, this was the attitude that He had. This was the reasoning that He had. He said, “Why are you anxious and troubled about so many things?

“Why is it that the lilies of the field toil not nor spin not? Do you think that by anxious thought you can add an inch to your height, or gain a pound, or lose a pound?

“Why, there isn’t a sparrow in the air that falls, but your heavenly Father knows it.” And He goes on with these kind of arguments from nature and shows people how the fulfillment of nature is already there, and that all the tree or the seed, or whatever it is that falls into the ground has to do, there is to abide in it, to stay there, in simple childlike trust.

And the seasons and the rain and the heat and the day and the night, why, they’re just naturally there to fulfill all that it ever needed. You know, if you had never, if you were a scientist and you had never seen a fish, an ocean and water, and somebody brought you a fish, a strange animal, you would say, “Well, there would have to be something called water. For the way the universe is built, the satisfaction of the needs of this kind of an animal would have to be something called water.” The universe doesn’t make freaks.

And whenever there’s a desire, a cry from the human heart, that means that the answer is already there. The greatest argument for an oak tree would be an acorn. Because there are no freaks in this way, the way that the universe is formed.

And the greatest proof that there is an answer to your need, whatever it is the desire of your heart. Now, when you look at the prayer life of Jesus, there are very few prayers in the Bible where He even uses words. It’s a realization.

It’s a higher consciousness of this sort. Somebody comes up to Him, and either their child is sick, or their servant is blind, or whatever it is, and he said, “If You will, You can make me well.” And you don’t see Him right there getting down on His knees and saying, “Oh, Father, this is Your son, and this is Your brother, and You’ve got to make him well.” In meditation, a lot of it throughout His whole life, by discipline of His mind, by the outpouring desire of His heart into the universe in aloneness, He came to the full realization that the kingdom of heaven is here. And what is the kingdom of heaven? Another word for heaven. And what is heaven? Just a word for all your dreams come true, whatever it is. The complete and full satisfaction of everything you could possibly want. And so, in this realization, like a child coming to an older person who has been through life and knows all of the anxieties of it, but has come out into something sure, restful, contented, knowing, he says, “Yes, yes, yes, I know all about it. I’ll take care of it. And you just go on, and you don’t have to worry anymore.” And suddenly, in the presence of one of contentment and rest and great faith, the little child runs out, and lo and behold, it is right.

The child says, “My prayer has been answered.” The older person would say, “Well, I just know. I just know the way life is formed. I just know that if I can encourage him to go up to the store and ask for a loaf of bread, that the loaf of bread’s there.” And he may think this is a miracle, but it’s just natural and just normal. It isn’t a supernatural event at all. I wonder how often our prayer, miracles or great deeds have not happened to us because we didn’t have, because we got down on our knees and babbled into the air and didn’t step out in the knowing and the realization that it was true, that this wasn’t magic stuff, but that the Father had already built into the universe all the satisfaction of our needs if we would just step out and claim it.

I don’t know how many of you have heard the story of Hannah Hurnard and how she began to speak, but she stuttered ever since she was a child. And for some reason or other, she went to this Bible college in England. She didn’t know it, but all of the students, I mean, every day, so many students had to get up in chapel and say a few things.

And she wasn’t there long until she remembered or until she saw her name on the bulletin board and she had to get up with these other ones. Well, by this time, everybody knew that she stuttered and what a terrible time she had speaking. And when she saw her name up on that board, she immediately knew that God wasn’t in this and she ran up to her room in panic and started to pack her things. And she said, just as if an audible voice spoke to her, it said, “Hannah, won’t you trust Me just this once?” And it was so commanding or so real to her that she put all of her things back into the bureau.

And she waited. And she said she was so perfectly positive and filled with faith that when she got up there that she would just open her mouth and nothing would come out with all there’s in it. And she said, everybody else in that hall knew that too. So she said, but she was gonna, in panic, do what God asked her to do. And she walked into the lion’s mouth and opened her mouth and surprise of surprise to herself and everybody else, she spoke as freely as anybody possibly could. Now, Hannah’s prayer was already answered.

But supposing she had gotten down on her knees up in her room and filled with fear and panic like a primitive was trying to call God down from the top of some distant mountain and then knew that it wasn’t true and ran off and went home. Well, she’s had a long life and she’s done a lot of good in many parts of the world.

But Hannah’s prayer was already answered. And it was already answered even if she had gone home. One thing that I discovered about prayer a long time ago is that prayer must never be used as an escape from reality of facing up to the duties and responsibilities of life. And so often, when we know what we ought to do, we get down on our knees and start praying up a storm, which is just a lot of wind.

When I was younger, and when I was in my early teens, I studied very badly also. And I remember that when I would go to my room and get alone and get down on my knees that, well, I just knew that I could do anything in the world. But when I came out of that room and started to walk along the street, if there was anybody that I saw that I knew I was going to have to talk to, I’d either cross the street or I would turn around and walk the opposite way. And one day, even as a kid, this realization came to me. Unless you put yourself into a speaking situation, not even God Himself can help you. In other words, we want to stand off to the side and from a distance, look at… look at… I’m not sure what. Some apparition appear and do something for us. And God says, “No, you’ve got to become like Me. You’ve got to grow to be like Me.” Religion is not a crutch, but it can give you strength to go into the unknown and into the unknown find out that it is the known all the time. And this is prayer. And one of the greatest prayer personalities that I ever knew was a girl who very seldom, I very seldom ever heard her utter a prayer.

And every so often, I would ask her about it. And she said, well, she said, “Why use prayer as a crutch? Why not trust God? Why not put your life into His hands? Why not, if you’re living close to Him in consciousness, if you’re aware of Him, if you think He lives in you, if you think that you’re part of this universal spirit that we call God, if you think He’s your Father and that He’s kind, and if you think that if you being evil know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will He? Why don’t you trust Him? And do, and walk into the situation in the simple childlike faith that in some way or other, you will do the right thing because you’re in the Father’s hand.” And believe me, this was real prayer. And I don’t know how many people would come to this person and ask her to pray for them. And she would say yes. And so often they would expect her right then to get down on her knees and start to mouth a prayer. And she would smile at them and say, “Yes, I will.” And just walk off. And so often they would come back to her and say, “Well, I don’t know what you did, but things seem to be so much better.”

She was a person that lived with God closely every day without saying a lot about it. And God doesn’t read your lips anyway. He reads the intention off your heart. And if you give the most beautiful faith-inspired prayer in the world and your heart is pounding with terror and panic, I’m not at all sure but that the terror and panic isn’t your prayer and that your fears will come upon you. Emerson said we’re praying all the time and unfortunately our prayers are being answered.

What we spend our time on, what we dream about, what we hold up before our mind’s eye day by day by day by day, these are the things that are drawing us like a magnet toward what we’re looking at. Ethel Banks has a wonderful phrase which I don’t think I’ll ever forget. It is in looking, longing, and loving. We become like.

That’s pretty good whether you… But it isn’t… As she says, this isn’t words that you utter with your mouth. But what are you? You are your prayer. Now that’s a wonderful thing to say and it’s a fearsome thing to say also. But all that this means is that your prayers are already answered. There isn’t… Even if you prayed for a million years, nothing new would be added to the universe.

Maybe a lot of new things would be revealed just as an inventor reveals what is already there. But nothing new would have to be created in order to make heaven on earth. Even scientists now are saying that there’s enough land, that there’s enough possibilities of everything on this earth so that if it were distributed right, if the stewardship with all the possibilities that there are on this earth were made right, this earth could be the Garden of Eden.

There was this man and I told this to somebody. I don’t know who it was but it’s a good picture to keep in your mind. This man, they say, was given a tour of hell and a tour of heaven. And he went into hell, which was this great big room, beautifully furnished, and banquet tables that ran the length of the room. And the tables were piled high with roast beef and California oranges and everything else. I mean, just anything that you could possibly imagine that anybody would like to eat was right there. And everybody in that room were thin and scrawny and they were quarreling with each other and the language they were using and the screams and everything was just awful. And he looked, he said, “Well, gee whiz, with all this food here, why are they so hungry?” And he looked at them and he found out that nobody had any elbows. And that they all had these great big long knives and forks and spoons which were very, very long. And they were trying to feed themselves and, well, they just couldn’t make it is all. So they got thin and ugly awful. Well, he was so glad to get out of there and they were going to show him heaven.

And he went up there and lo and behold it was just exactly the same room. Same pictures on the wall, same rugs on the floor, same table, same chairs, same food on the table, same everything. And everybody was fat and jolly and happy and they were singing songs and, oh, just having the best time that you can imagine. And he looked at their arms and they didn’t have any elbows either. And he looked at the knives and the forks and the spoons and they were great big long things also. But everybody was feeding everybody else.

I’m not quite sure but that isn’t the difference between heaven and hell on this earth. I’m not at all sure. In fact, I’m sure that the story of creation as you have it in the Bible that God created all things on this earth and that it was a garden of Eden. Well, I suppose that a garden of Eden is just another name for heaven.

Scientists are even saying that there’s nothing that anybody could possibly want which isn’t already here. And this is what it means that God put all the building blocks for heaven right here. And it’s just a change in spirit and the old folks said except a man be born again.

A new spirit. Somebody said that if through some sort of magic God could come down and touch everybody with a magic wand and make everybody rich and have houses and lands and if they were all made beautiful and thin and ulcers were healed and eyes were opened, and I mean if they just made the whole thing right over again just as perfect as you can imagine it, it wouldn’t be. A new intention. A new dedication of the mind and the spirit to something, to helpfulness, to goodness. And I think that’s why in the Lord’s Prayer, Jesus said, “Our Father in heaven, all praise be to Your name. Thy kingdom come on earth as it is in heaven.” And then the third one, which is just as necessary, “Thy will,” Your intention, Your spirit be manifested in people and on this earth as in heaven too. That means that He will write His nature or His laws in your heart or whatever it is. And you know, so many people have said when they have told me stories about Glenn Clark that one of the common things which I so often hear is that when people would come to him in camp and they would ask him to pray for them, that they would expect him to sit down and to give a long prayer of analysis and that so often he would just pat them on the hand and say, “Father, You answer their desires. Amen.”

And just walk off. And a lot of people were just a little bit angry that he spent so little time on it. Well, I think this is a growing awareness, a realization. And it comes from a brooding and from a being alone and from a raising of the conscious mind until this becomes the subconscious mind. And you learn what Paul said, I’ve learned in all things therewith to be content. And I think that you go back and it becomes a simple childlike trust. And ultimately, that’s what prayer is. Except you become as a little child, you shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven. Prayer is not a ferment. It isn’t a screaming into the darkness. Now, God will meet you in on whatever level you are. I’m speaking of the ultimate, the thing that we’re striving for that we will grow to. So that wherever you go, because of your thought, because of the restfulness of your spirit, people will realize that the prayers are answered. And just a touch of your hand will be something that will give strength and new courage and a better feeling of love and will release something within the individual, all the potentialities of creativity that are already there and potentialities for beauty, for expression, whatever it is, that your home, wherever you are, whether you’re rich, poor, indifferent, or whatever it happens to be.

And I think this is what it means, that the whole creation groans and travails for the revealing of the sons of God. Don’t you see what it says? The revealing. We’re already… We already are it, but we just don’t realize it. And I just happened to open this afternoon, and I don’t think… or I don’t ever remember reading it before, but this is an old man of great experience with his God. You know, when we’re young, we just want to know all the answers to everything under the sun, and we’re so smart. And…

This is Psalm 131. This is a mature spirit, one who knows, one who rests in life. And he says, “O Lord, my heart is not lifted up. My eyes are not raised too high. I do not occupy myself with things too great and too marvelous for me. But I have calmed and quieted my soul. Like a child quieted at its mother’s breast. Like a child that is quieted, so is my soul.”

I think this is prayer. And quietness and in confidence is your reward. Be still. And know I am God. Wherever you are. Whatever you’re looking at. Whatever you’re thinking about. Whatever you’re yearning for. Whatever you’re desiring. To have learned to have quieted your soul. In this is life. Shall we pray? Heavenly Father, we thank You for this evening. And now, Father, be with us for the rest of the night. And a lot of good fun. Amen.