PART VI
“In bringing the thought of Yahveh, the God of the Universe, the Formless Former of all things, and his manifestation in Elohim, to the mind of the public, it is apt to cause confusion in regard to man’s relation to God in his different attributes. In the past, men made an image of God the Father, as the image of a man, and also an image of God the Son, as the image of the Christ, and they bowed down and worshiped them, notwithstanding the emphatic utterance in the Commandments, “Thou shalt not make unto thee a graven image, nor the likeness of any form that is in the heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth”; and the emphatic warning given by Moses before his death in Deuteronomy.
Note. The Orientals worship images of the ideals of their gods, the Catholic church has images of the ideals of the Lord Christ and of the Virgin Mary, and the Protestant church has the image of an ideal man in the mind; and there is really no difference so far as the image is concerned, whether it be materialized or a mental image, it is in the cause world a formation just the same. When man makes an image of the Christ who lived in the form of man, he worships the material body, the flesh, and so do the Pagan nations who worship their idols, which are representations of the flesh.
When the mind has been drawn away from this error, imaging God, it is liable to feel lost for a time, therefore, we want to bring to your mind the relation that we bear to Yahveh, the God of the Universe, and to his embodied form in Yahveh Elohim. Our Relation To Yahveh Elohim is that of a man to an elder brother. You remember that even Christ called us brethren (See Hebrews 2:11); and the great and mighty angel that manifested to John on Patmos rebuked John for falling down to worship him, saying: “See thou do it not; I am a fellow-servant with thee and with thy brethren the prophets.” Jesus not only called his disciples “brethren”, but he justified them in calling him “Lord and Master”, for he said, “So am I.”
Yahveh Elohim, the Creator of the world, is our Lord and Master, even as was the Lord Christ, because he was a manifestation of Eloah, one of the great Body of Elohim. (Note) As “Yahveh Elohim” is the name of the collective Body, we have used it in the singular in many places.
When you realize that you have been accepted as one of the brethren of Yahveh Elohim, a member of that Eternal Brotherhood of all the ages and of systems of worlds, you should realize in yourself the same feeling, only with greater reverence, that you had when you became a member of some fraternity.
When a man becomes a member of the Masonic Order, he feels that he is allied to that order and he is likely to say: “We are doing so and so”, or “We have done thus and so.” He feels his alliance, a oneness with that order, and in his alliance and conscious oneness he has more confidence in the members of that order than in anyone else. He feels that in their compact it is not only a duty, but a pleasure to help each other. You, Reader, by thinking over your own experience can bring this thought more clearly to your mind than we can present it. You need to think only of your experiences.”
Hiram Butler
The Mark Of God: Understanding Your "I AM Presence" 