The Earth is today resplendent with much intelligence; all the ages of the past have yielded their treasures; and the world is brilliant with the results of many Dispensations; yet you are now in the shadow; between two great mountain heights of Messianic Dispensations the world is now throbbing, oft-times in agony, pulsating toward an added Light.

The Hebraic Epoch, or Era, as it is called, was a great mantle of protection thrown athwart the Orient, concealing the Religious Dispensations of the past; concealing as well as preserving them.

In the Kabalistic mysteries that were well nigh blotted out until the Hebraic records, concealed from the unlettered and uninitiated, were known. There were preserved, however, two separate branches of those sacred records that finally have been handed down to you in such complicated form as the books of the "Old Testamcnt" part of the Christian Bible. But for the luminous Glory beyond - on the other side of the mountain - you could have no conception of what other Dispensations might have been. It is only by contrast that you are able to judge. Most of the Hebrew Inspiration is given you with great limitations; most of their prophecies were prophecies of penalty and shadow; most of their prophets were inspired toward the shadow because, approaching the Light, they were in the shadow between two lesser Dispensations; and most of that which overtook "Jerusalem" and "Israel," as illustrated in the Hebraic history, was the penalty of shadow. The very mother of Christ is pictured in tears; "The Mother of Sorrow"; and the very Messiah who came to Earth as the "Crown," the "King" of a Dispensation, came in the midst of such shadow that the light was scarcely visible. The "Man of Sorrow, acquainted with grief," such was the Christ; and therefore the tears, Gethsemane, the crown of thorns, the mother brooding in sorrow above her Son, all the light seemingly vanished, only the shadow remaining, through which the seriously spoken word came with awful promise, yet bearing the Divinity of Hope and Love.

With each receding tide, there is always an overbrooding of the Messianic Dispensation by the shadow; ever with the incoming tide Messiahs are not crucified, are not put to death; there is light and there is joy, and the principal first Messiah of each Dispensation is usually crowned with the glory of the light that is there in full tide, in absolute splendor. But when the receding tide begins, then the shadow encroaches; then the light is growing dim, then the truth is becoming obscured, then crystallization has taken place, and the worldly powers prevail; and all who have not been gathered into the Kingdom of Light are intent on putting out the light. So what remains of any past Dispensation when the next begins, becomes the persecutor of the New Beginning; having put its own later teachers and prophets to death it must needs reach forward to arrest the New Beginnings which are so full of hope and promise to the world. They cannot be destroyed, the shadow cannot overcome them, they go on and on to victory under the new Awakening.

The "Evil One." There are more than a hundred names for the "Evil One" in the Religious systems which have been handed down to you through the Hebraic and Christian records. In other religions they are content with fewer evil genii; and those are but the symbols of the power of darkness, not meaning an Infinite evil, but only the operating shadow of His light. Ahriman is the antithesis of Ormuzd in Persia; and India has Siva, one of the "sacred three"; Brahma, Vishnu, Siva. In the ancient Egyptian ritual the Night ("Nox") was abandoned by the moon, and the shadow of "Night" and "Death" rested where "Hades" and "Oblivion" began. The "Satan" of Christian Theology, bearing all the synonyms of darkness and evil, has been transmuted from this impersonal Shadow of the Silence of the past, into an active, aggressive personality of evil. It is only in the receding period of Dispensations that men talk about "evil genii"; it is only then that demons of darkness seem to prevail; it is only then that religion is encumbered with the shadow of what is called "evil" in the form of personality. The Hebraic Era is largely responsible for the name and nature of the shadow of Satan that rests upon you.

That you may know how surely it is that the light of Jesus of Nazareth was the closing of a Great Cycle, a complete Dispensation, it has only taken these two thousand years to entirely pervert, eclipse, and enshroud the Light that He gave; in fact, where Kingcraft and Priestcraft began - the shadow began. What other than the Shadow could have wrought the monstrosities contained in some of the creeds in Christendom? What other than the Shadow could have made Evil the most prominent power in a religion of Good, and could have made such surpassing strength to rest in the power of evil, that the mighty force of that Dispensation of Jesus has seemed utterly unable to resist it?

The "Sermon on the Mount" is His glorified utterance; the "Beatitudes" His perfect promises; yet they are hidden in the shadow of warring nations.

The world is now in the valley of that shadow; the trembling lines of light of the New Beginnings are not sufficiently advanced to overcome the oppressiveness of that darkness; but when you understand that the shadow is as necessary under human conditions as the light, that the shadow-bearer may be the message-bearer (by contrast) of the new Dispensation, that veiled in your midst, even in these days, one who in the midst of shadow still bears the token of light, may be immured, you will understand that there are messengers of darkness who come between the Dispensations, to "rule the world a thousand years," for which time it was said "Satan, or his synonym, was let loose upon the Earth." This is typical of the Cyclic period of Shadow, of the time when the preceding Dispensation loses its power because of its receding light under self-seeking rulers and nations, and when the new Dispensation has not yet begun to be seen. Then is the time, seemingly, for all-conquering evil and error; then all the "powers of darkness" are let loose upon the world; then war, crimes, striving and selfishness, and that concentrated power which prevails in "mammon," are upon the nations. You are witnessing the shadow, the nations of the Earth are in the midst of this deep valley and such as are aware of its meaning and of the New Light that is to come, can watch as one on a mountain may behold the darkness and tempest beneath.