A Thousand Burnt Offerings

Burnt offerings are sacrifices or a tribute to God. The word "burnt" literally means to "ascend," to "go up in smoke." The burnt offering1 was the highest order of sacrifice in the Old Testament ritual. The bloodless offerings were made only in connection with it.

Solomon, the son of David, became king after him, and he made famous the thousand burnt offerings of the self. As you walk the Via Christa, you, too, must make a thousand burnt offerings of self, which are steps in a formal initiatory series that leads to fully opened spiritual faculties. Solomon's thousand burnt offerings symbolize a thousand days of loving God enough to declare everything in your life good.

The thousand burnt offerings are one thousand days of perfection, complete sublimation and sacrifice of self, thirty-seven lunar months, three years and one month with never a negative thought.


1^ Burnt offering: Morris Jastrow, Jr., et al; Jewish Encyclopedia.







Edna Lister on a Thousand Burnt Offerings

You do this slowly, according to your use of faith, according to your ability to stand serene in the midst of confusion, seeing nothing of darkness, admitting only that which is Light. – Edna Lister, November 14, 1940.


God ordered Abraham to take his son Isaac to Mt. Moriah and offer him there as a burnt offer. When he raised his knife to slay his son, "the angel of the Lord called unto him out of heaven, and said, Abraham, Abraham: and he said, Here am I. And he said, Lay not thine hand upon the lad, neither do thou any thing unto him: for now I know that thou fearest God, seeing thou hast not withheld thy son, thine only son from me. And Abraham lifted up his eyes, and looked, and behold behind him a ram caught in a thicket by his horns: and Abraham went and took the ram, and offered him up for a burnt offering in the stead of his son." – Genesis 22:11-13.

A "ram in the thicket" awaits you, once you lay self on the altar completely. You may not hold out small portions of self, lest you never see the ram in the bushes (thicket). – Edna Lister, December 14, 1942.


The 1,000 burnt offerings are one thousand days of perfection, complete sublimation and sacrifice of self with never a negative thought. When you have lived in complete perfection for that long, you will see and hear spiritually. If you fall off your cloud, you must start again. The 1,000 days of sublimation open the pineal body and pituitary gland, balancing the vital centers. You must raise all glands and plexus centers in unison; otherwise, the Power hits the stomach, heart, lungs and abdominal organs, creating an imbalance. Anything that causes emotional concern backfires through the plexus centers.

The minute you look up to God, you begin the 1,000 burnt offerings; this leads to 144 steps, obedience to the twelve virtues and lifting the twelve vices to complete the 33rd Degree. Each Wheel of Ezekiel has three sets of 144 steps in initiations, and 1,000 days to each wheel. As you seek the 1,000 days of perfection, you accumulate strength and credits. As you strive for 1,000 days of perfection, you move toward success. – Edna Lister, May 19, 1947.


You must consciously breathe the higher vital degrees of breath. The amount of electronic or atomic charge that moves through the pituitary to the pineal body determines the chemical rejuvenation of the body. We are born with the thymus open and quite large. As you enter puberty, the thymus shrinks to the size of a pea. When the full Light of the Oversoul comes through, it awakens the thymus. You cannot have eternal youth without an open thymus. Making one thousand burnt offerings will open the thymus gland. – Edna Lister, July 30, 1951.


Solomon's 1,000 burnt offerings are 1,000 days of loving God enough to declare everything in your life good. Tell the Father, "It makes no difference to me, Father. This is just more dirt to lift." At the end of each day of sacrifice say, "I love You, Father. It is good." On each day of no record of taint, a single lotus petal opens. – Edna Lister, August 11, 1955.


As you open a new 1,000 days of burnt offerings, you build each day on the last one. You are building on the ascension level of the time. – Edna Lister, November 21, 1955.


If you must begin to count your 1,000 burnt offerings over again, remember that you are gaining the strength of mind and emotional conquering to sustain you. – Edna Lister, January 5, 1956.


The 1,000 burnt offerings consist of a thousand consecutive days of perfect living. You give up self and declare everything good with no desire to speak or even to think negativity, which is the perfection of desire. – Edna Lister, October 3, 1957.


When you want to release Power, offer a burnt offering. To whatever degree you desire to draw in, you must give. You can gather all the misused life sparks of soul substance and return them to the fire. – Edna Lister, March 13, 1958.


At age thirty-five, you begin your first thousand days of burnt offerings. This is when you move up in consciousness and become one with your Oversoul; this draws greater magnetic power from the earth than ever before, pulling the creative fire from the sacrum plexus to awaken the pineal body fully, which results in becoming a seer and prophet. – Edna Lister, April 10, 1958.


"Seek ye first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things shall be added to you." – Matthew 6:33. Righteousness is applying your highest vision to everything you do, the "right-use-ness" of Power. The kingdom of heaven is the perfect realm of "I accept." Declare, "I accept the obligations I have formed, the commitments I have or have not fulfilled." You lose the kingdom if you have not fulfilled your thousand days of burnt offerings once started, because you must use your credits and soul substance to repay unfulfilled commitments. – Edna Lister, Constancy in Obedience, October 26, 1958.


In every degree you earn, you receive the credits, even when you break your thousand days of burnt offerings. – Edna Lister, May 11, 1959.


Your purpose here on earth is to bear witness to the love of God in heaven. It is a matter of choice. You can be as perfect as your Father in heaven. It is not easy, and requires 1,ooo burnt offerings of self. You do this by always keeping your mind and attention fixed on God. – Edna Lister, I Am the Truth, October 11, 1959.


The purpose of all opening of spiritual vision is for extended seeing and soul flights, to live both sides of life easily, naturally, and to go through the silver fields of light ripples, through the rainbow fields of geometric patterns and symbols. Through all of this, you continue to perfect your thousand days of burnt offerings through hourly and daily polishing of the 144 virtues. – Edna Lister, December 5, 1961.


The cycle of a thousand days of burnt offerings is thirty-seven lunar months, during which you must be perfect in sacrifice of self every day. You glance at it to lift whatever you see or hear. When you begin, it is automatically a challenge to lift force and dark substance from your own separated Mind, Substance, and Power. It's like working for patience instead of poise, and everything challenges your patience a thousand times a day.

Edna Lister said, "I began my burnt offerings in 1922, and made it 600 days until I developed brother-in-law-itis. Then I had to start over again." When you reach the point where you involve no personality in your just appraisal of another, you are justice itself. – Edna Lister, April 4, 1963.


The initiation of the "crown of thorns" happens to every soul, and represents 1,000 chastisements from the outside, ridicule, contempt, someone making fun of your greatest goal. The 1,000 burnt offerings represent 1,000 days of sacrifice of self. If you sacrifice one thing a day, one petal in the 1,000-petaled lotus opens, the Light of the Holy Breath touches the petal and illumines it. The crown of thorns may be a device for deflating a big head, but also represents what enemies can do if you allow their darts to puncture and snuff the light of an awakened petal of Light (the antennae of the nerves that awaken to divine Mind). – Edna Lister, The Crown of Thorns, July 7, 1963.


Solomon went to Gibeon and made a thousand burnt offerings because he wanted to be sure he had no buried taints to dilute his ability to hear God's answer to prayer clearly. He touched the gamut of his emotional life in the thousand burnt offerings, and so do you. You move up in consciousness to spiritual surrender as you make your thousand burnt offerings. If you complete nine hundred perfect days, but slip on the nine hundred and first day, you must do it all again.

No matter how many or few perfect days, you have gained that much. Your body is not sum total of you, but it registers what you are. High breath descends from your spiritual life to the mental to the emotional, and a thousand burnt offerings breaks your bondage to earth as you apply the law of nonresistance. A thousand burnt offerings cleanse "little me" until Light resets you to gain understanding through balance of love and wisdom. – Edna Lister, Love and Wisdom, October 4, 1964.


You must awaken the mental body 1,000-petaled lotus center with your 1,000 perfect days of burnt offerings. Time has accelerated to the point where it no longer takes three years of days, provided the 24 hours a day are absolutely perfect. If you have even one idle word, statement or thought, you must repeat it all, just as you must repeat another thousand days. You can do this between Twelfth Night and Ascension Day, provided the whole 24 hours is perfect — not just the desire to be perfect, but lived perfectly as our Father in heaven is perfect.

During this period, you must perfect 144 virtues. Each virtue includes one of the 144 high spiritual steps. Everyone who has striven to eliminate taints has worked at the 144 virtues, none of them perfected, but worked on the three different grades of 144 virtues, emotional, mental, and spiritual. As you strive for high perfection, you need greater effort. Self-pity or any self that you indulge in grows more corrosive, deeper, harder to lift. The challenges come from different temptations, experiences, and people. As this goes on, you draw the life sparks from the outer physical to the desire body vital centers, into the mental body lotus centers, into the electronic body sun centers, at whichever of those levels your body is functioning. – Edna Lister, February 12, 1966.

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Stories That Illustrate One Thousand Burnt Offerings

King Solomon's One Thousand Burnt Offerings: And Solomon made affinity with Pharaoh king of Egypt, and took Pharaoh's daughter, and brought her into the city of David, until he had made an end of building his own house, and the house of the Lord, and the wall of Jerusalem round about. Only the people sacrificed in high places, because there was no house built unto the name of the Lord, until those days. And Solomon loved the Lord, walking in the statutes of David his father: only he sacrificed and burnt incense in high places. And the king went to Gibeon to sacrifice there; for that was the great high place: a thousand burnt offerings did Solomon offer upon that altar.

In Gibeon the Lord appeared to Solomon in a dream by night: and God said, Ask what I shall give thee. And Solomon said, Thou hast shewed unto thy servant David my father great mercy, according as he walked before thee in truth, and in righteousness, and in uprightness of heart with thee; and thou hast kept for him this great kindness, that thou hast given him a son to sit on his throne, as it is this day. And now, O Lord my God, thou hast made thy servant king instead of David my father: and I am but a little child: I know not how to go out or come in. And thy servant is in the midst of thy people which thou hast chosen, a great people, that cannot be numbered nor counted for multitude. Give therefore thy servant an understanding heart to judge thy people, that I may discern between good and bad: for who is able to judge this thy so great a people?

And the speech pleased the Lord, that Solomon had asked this thing. And God said unto him, Because thou hast asked this thing, and hast not asked for thyself long life; neither hast asked riches for thyself, nor hast asked the life of thine enemies; but hast asked for thyself understanding to discern judgment; Behold, I have done according to thy words: lo, I have given thee a wise and an understanding heart; so that there was none like thee before thee, neither after thee shall any arise like unto thee. And I have also given thee that which thou hast not asked, both riches, and honour: so that there shall not be any among the kings like unto thee all thy days. And if thou wilt walk in my ways, to keep my statutes and my commandments, as thy father David did walk, then I will lengthen thy days. – 1 Kings 3:1-14.


After the Flood: And God spake unto Noah, saying, Go forth of the ark, thou, and thy wife, and thy sons, and thy sons' wives with thee. Bring forth with thee every living thing that is with thee, of all flesh, both of fowl, and of cattle, and of every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth; that they may breed abundantly in the earth, and be fruitful, and multiply upon the earth.

And Noah went forth, and his sons, and his wife, and his sons' wives with him: every beast, every creeping thing, and every fowl, and whatsoever creepeth upon the earth, after their kinds, went forth out of the ark. And Noah builded an altar unto the Lord; and took of every clean beast, and of every clean fowl, and offered burnt offerings on the altar.

And the Lord smelled a sweet savour; and the Lord said in his heart, I will not again curse the ground any more for man's sake; for the imagination of man's heart is evil from his youth; neither will I again smite any more every thing living, as I have done. While the earth remaineth, seedtime and harvest, and cold and heat, and summer and winter, and day and night shall not cease. – Genesis 8:15-22.


Abraham Offers His Firstborn, Isaac: It came to pass after these things, that God did tempt Abraham, and said unto him, Abraham: and he said, Behold, here I am. And he said, Take now thy son, thine only son Isaac, whom thou lovest, and get thee into the land of Moriah; and offer him there for a burnt offering upon one of the mountains which I will tell thee of. And Abraham rose up early in the morning, and saddled his ass, and took two of his young men with him, and Isaac his son, and clave the wood for the burnt offering, and rose up, and went unto the place of which God had told him.

Then on the third day Abraham lifted up his eyes, and saw the place afar off. And Abraham said unto his young men, Abide ye here with the ass; and I and the lad will go yonder and worship, and come again to you. And Abraham took the wood of the burnt offering, and laid it upon Isaac his son; and he took the fire in his hand, and a knife; and they went both of them together. And Isaac spake unto Abraham his father, and said, My father: and he said, Here am I, my son. And he said, Behold the fire and the wood: but where is the lamb for a burnt offering? And Abraham said, My son, God will provide himself a lamb for a burnt offering: so they went both of them together.

And they came to the place which God had told him of; and Abraham built an altar there, and laid the wood in order, and bound Isaac his son, and laid him on the altar upon the wood. And Abraham stretched forth his hand, and took the knife to slay his son. And the angel of the Lord called unto him out of heaven, and said, Abraham, Abraham: and he said, Here am I. And he said, Lay not thine hand upon the lad, neither do thou any thing unto him: for now I know that thou fearest God, seeing thou hast not withheld thy son, thine only son from me.

And Abraham lifted up his eyes, and looked, and behold behind him a ram caught in a thicket by his horns: and Abraham went and took the ram, and offered him up for a burnt offering in the stead of his son. And Abraham called the name of that place Jehovahjireh: as it is said to this day, In the mount of the Lord it shall be seen. And the angel of the Lord called unto Abraham out of heaven the second time, and said, By myself have I sworn, saith the Lord, for because thou hast done this thing, and hast not withheld thy son, thine only son: That in blessing I will bless thee, and in multiplying I will multiply thy seed as the stars of the heaven, and as the sand which is upon the sea shore; and thy seed shall possess the gate of his enemies; and in thy seed shall all the nations of the earth be blessed; because thou hast obeyed my voice. – Genesis 22:1-18.


Love Is More than All Burnt Offerings: One of the scribes came, and having heard them reasoning together, and perceiving that he had answered them well, asked him, Which is the first commandment of all? And Jesus answered him, The first of all the commandments is, Hear, O Israel; The Lord our God is one Lord: And thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind, and with all thy strength: this is the first commandment. And the second is like, namely this, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. There is none other commandment greater than these.

And the scribe said unto him, Well, Master, thou hast said the truth: for there is one God; and there is none other but he: And to love him with all the heart, and with all the understanding, and with all the soul, and with all the strength, and to love his neighbour as himself, is more than all whole burnt offerings and sacrifices. And when Jesus saw that he answered discreetly, he said unto him, Thou art not far from the kingdom of God. And no man after that durst ask him any question. – Mark 12:28-34.

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New Testament on Burnt Offerings

There is one God; and there is none other but he: and to love him with all the heart, and with all the understanding, and with all the soul, and with all the strength, and to love his neighbour as himself, is more than all whole burnt offerings and sacrifices. – Mark 12:32‑33.


Be not conformed to this world: but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind, that ye may prove what is that good, and acceptable, and perfect, will of God. – Romans 12:2.


For every high priest taken from among men is ordained for men in things pertaining to God, that he may offer both gifts and sacrifices for sins: Who can have compassion on the ignorant, and on them that are out of the way; for that he himself also is compassed with infirmity. And by reason hereof he ought, as for the people, so also for himself, to offer for sins. And no man taketh this honour unto himself, but he that is called of God, as was Aaron. – Hebrews 5:1-4.


The Atonement: For the law having a shadow of good things to come, and not the very image of the things, can never with those sacrifices which they offered year by year continually make the comers thereunto perfect. For then would they not have ceased to be offered? because that the worshippers once purged should have had no more conscience of sins. But in those sacrifices there is a remembrance again made of sins every year. For it is not possible that the blood of bulls and of goats should take away sins. Wherefore when he cometh into the world, he saith, Sacrifice and offering thou wouldest not, but a body hast thou prepared me: In burnt offerings and sacrifices for sin thou hast had no pleasure. Then said I, Lo, I come (in the volume of the book it is written of me,) to do thy will, O God. Above when he said, Sacrifice and offering and burnt offerings and offering for sin thou wouldest not, neither hadst pleasure therein; which are offered by the law; then said he, Lo, I come to do thy will, O God. He taketh away the first, that he may establish the second. By the which will we are sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all. And every priest standeth daily ministering and offering oftentimes the same sacrifices, which can never take away sins: But this man, after he had offered one sacrifice for sins for ever, sat down on the right hand of God; from henceforth expecting till his enemies be made his footstool. For by one offering he hath perfected for ever them that are sanctified. – Hebrews 10:1-14.


Lord is gracious. To whom coming, as unto a living stone, disallowed indeed of men, but chosen of God, and precious, ye also, as lively stones, are built up a spiritual house, an holy priesthood, to offer up spiritual sacrifices, acceptable to God by Jesus Christ. – 1 Peter 2:4‑5.

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The law of burnt offerings is fully described in Leviticus 1:1-17. Burnt offerings, which were offered daily, were the most common of all sacrifices made by the Israelites for atonement and consecration.

Wherewith shall I come before the Lord, and bow myself before the high God? shall I come before him with burnt offerings, with calves of a year old? Will the Lord be pleased with thousands of rams, or with ten thousands of rivers of oil? shall I give my firstborn for my transgression, the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul? He hath shewed thee, O man, what is good; and what doth the Lord require of thee, but to do justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God? – Micah 6:6‑8.

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Edna Miriam Lister
1884 –1971
The original Pioneering Mystic,
American Idealist, minister, teacher, and author


Edna Lister


The thousand burnt offerings of self is a set of formal initiations.


References

The Holy Bible. King James Version (KJV).

Jastrow, Morris Jr., J. Frederic McCurdy, Kaufmann Kohler, Louis Ginzberg. "Burnt offering." Jewish Encyclopedia, originally published between 1901-1906.

The Compact Edition of The Oxford English Dictionary: 2 volumes. E.S.C. Weiner, editor. Oxford University Press, 1971.


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