Prosperity and the Prodigal Son - Law of Attraction Classics: Charles Fillmore

The law also applies to our demonstrations of prosperity. We cannot be very happy if we are poor, and nobody needs to be poor. It is a sin to be poor. You may ask whether Jesus cited any example of poverty's being a sin? Yes.

You will find it in the story of the prodigal son. That is often used as a text to preach to moral sinners, but a close study of it shows that Jesus was teaching the sin of lack and how to gain plenty. It is a wonderful prosperity lesson.

The prodigal son took his inheritance and went into a far country, where he spent it in riotous living and came to want. When he returned to his father's house he was not accused of moral shortcoming, as we should expect. Instead the father said, "Bring forth quickly the best robe and put it on him." That was a lesson in good apparel. It is a sin to wear poor clothes.

This may seem to some to be rather a sordid way of looking at the teaching of Jesus, but we must be honest. We must interpret it as He gave it, not as we think it ought to be.

The next act of the father was to put a gold ring on the prodigal's finger, another evidence of prosperity. The Father's desire for us is unlimited good, not merely the means of a meager existence. The ring symbolizes the unlimited, that to which there is no end. It also represents omnipresence and omnipotence in the manifest world. When the father gave that ring to the son, he gave him the key to all life activity. It was the symbol of his being a son and heir to all that the father had. "All that is mine is thine."

The Father gives us all that He has and is, omnipotence, omniscience, all love, and all substance when we return to the consciousness of His house of plenty.

"Put ... shoes on his feet" was the father's next command to the servants. Feet represent that part of our understanding that comes into contact with earthly conditions. In the head or "upper room" we have the understanding that contacts spiritual conditions, but when we read in Scripture anything about the feet, we may know that it refers to our understanding of things of the material world.

The next thing the father did for his returned son was to proclaim a feast for him. That is not the way we treat moral sinners. We decree punishment for them; we send them to jail. But the Father gives a feast to those who come to Him for supply. He does not dole out only a necessary ration but serves the "fatted calf," universal substance and life in its fullness and richness.

The parable is a great lesson on prosperity, for it shows us that people who are dissipating their substance in sense ways are sinners and eventually fall into a consciousness of lack. It also proves that they may become lawful and prosperous again by returning to the Father-Mind. When there are so many lessons in the Bible for moral delinquents, there is no need to twist the meaning of this parable to that purpose. It is so plainly a lesson on the cause of lack and want.

Jesus expressly states that the youth wasted his substance in a "far country," a place where the divine law of plenty was not realized. There is a very close relation between riotous living and want. Persons who waste their substance in sensation come to want in both physical and financial ways. If we would make the right use of the divine substance and the divine law, we must come back to the consciousness of the Father and conserve our body substance.

Then health and prosperity will become naturally manifest. If we are not resourceful or secure in our use of the one divine substance, we are not secure in anything. Substance is a very important thing in our world, in fact the foundation of it. Therefore we should be secure in our understanding of it and use it according to God's law.

Sign up for your own free Law of Attraction ecourse and get a complementary bonus at findouthow.gothunkyourself.com :: You can get your copy of Charles Fillmore's "Prosperity" at www.lulu.com/content/872394 :: Robert C. Worstell, PhD, has published over three dozen books and numerous articles - visit the Go Thunk Yourself Self-Help Library - gothunkyourself.com

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Prosperity and the Prodigal Son - Law of Attraction Classics: Charles Fillmore
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