Part III (cont):
“In order to find that way, it is necessary that you take Christ’s teachings and read them carefully with the new light that is shed upon them by the thoughts herein embodied. And as you read and muse and study these thoughts, see if you are ready to choose between the things of this world and its pleasures, and the things of the Spirit and Its uses. If you make the decision to follow the Spirit wholly, you must sit down quietly and count the cost, for you will find that the cost is greater than the Christian world now believes. Touching this point, Christ gave the following instructions:
“A man’s foes, shall be they, of his own household. “ “He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me; and he that loveth son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me.” “If any man come to me, and hate not his father, and mother, and wife, and children, and brethren, and sisters, yea, and his own life also, he cannot be my disciple.” “And whosoever doth not bear his cross, and come after me, cannot be my disciple.” “No man can serve two masters; either he will hate the one, and love the other; or else he will hold to the one and despise the other. Ye cannot serve God and mammon.” (See also Luke 18:24-30)
Do you wonder that He said, “Strait is the gate, and narrow is the way, which leadeth unto life, and few there be that find it”? Now that he has sent forth his angels to gather the ripe fruit into the garner, it becomes necessary that he should do as the farmer does in the fall – when his wheat is ripe, the farmer puts in the sickle and cuts down the wheat and threshes it, and gathers the precious seed into his barn. We should think a farmer very foolish who knew only how to cultivate his grain, who watches over it and takes care of it during the months of its growth, and who is so tender with it to see that it is cultivated, and then feels that it is a great hardship to see it cut down, as if all his labor and toil had been for nothing.
So will it be when the harvest of the world has come (and has it not come already), when God sends his angels to gather his wheat into the garner; the old condition in which it has grown, like the standing straw of the wheat, must be cut down and destroyed. This means literally the breaking up of all old relations and conditions. The churches have been good; our colleges, our institutions, our social relations, the love and fealty of the son for the father and of the father for the son, and all the relations of the present existence have been good; but when the people see these things being destroyed and even being ignored by an individual, they are like the unwise farmer, knowing not that the old must be destroyed that the new may be builded thereon – knowing not that “angels must go out, that archangels, may enter in.”
Hiram Butler
The Mark Of God: Understanding Your "I AM Presence" 