The Summit Lighthouse Definition
The Summit Lighthouse is an international spiritual organization founded on August 7, 1958, in Washington, D.C., by Mark L. Prophet. Today it is the outreach arm of Church Universal and Triumphant, founded in 1975 by Prophet’s wife Elizabeth Clare Prophet. The stated mission of The Summit Lighthouse is to “publish and apply the teachings of the ascended masters as taught by Mark and Elizabeth Clare Prophet.”
Ascended masters are believed to be individuals who have lived in physical bodies, acquired the Wisdom and Mastery needed to become Immortal and Free of the cycles of “re-embodiment” and karma, and attained their “Ascension”. The “Ascension” is considered to be the complete permanent union of the purified inner self with the “I AM” Presence – an identity that is the unique Individualization of God of each person.
History Of The Summit Lighthouse:
The Lighthouse was founded in 1958 by Mark Prophet, along with the Press and Fraternity. The Church was incorporated in 1975 by his wife Elizabeth and has since become the public face of the organization.
The group believes that their messengers are the continuation of prophetic dispensation from God. They gained media notoriety when Elizabeth Clare Prophet made predictions of an impending nuclear holocaust that was prophesied to occur on April 23, 1990.
When these predictions failed to come true, she reiterated her statements of impending doom, stating to her congregation: “We need your sacrifice. The world is about to fail. I don’t know where the bombs are coming from. But we must be ready.”
The group had stockpiled their shelter with military-grade weaponry, and members of the organization were later arrested on federal weapons charges. After Prophet was diagnosed with epilepsy and Alzheimer’s disease, the group’s leadership tried to draw the focus of its work away from doomsday predictions.
Spiritual Practice Of The Summit Lighthouse:
In Summit Lighthouse, it is believed that man is characterized by having an innate divine spark in the heart. The goal for the individual is to make this spark bigger to eventually become one with God.
The central religious practice practiced at Summit Lighthouse is described by Mark L. Prophet and Elisabeth Clare Prophet in Science of the Spoken Word. It is a method by which the individual can gain access to the divine within himself. The method consists of three components: prayer, meditation, and decrees (repeated prayer).
By performing these three actions, one invokes the light of God and the violet flame, whose function is to transform the bad karma stored in man and on the planet into light, wisdom, strength, and love. Through this practice, it is believed that on the individual level one can achieve becoming one with God and on the planetary level promote the spread of peace and love in the world.
The course and content of these rituals (“Services”) are fixed on the individual days, with Saturday being seen as the most important, as it is the day of the ritual of the violet flame. The various rituals can be performed both collectively and individually and are mandatory for communicants (for example, communion can be taken individually without an authorized person having to bless the bread and wine).
In Summit Lighthouse Århus, the communicants meet every Friday afternoon and pray for a set ritual course. On the other days, also at the Saturday service, keepers and communicants can perform the rituals themselves, or they can follow the recitation of the prayers, which are transmitted directly from the main organization or other places in the world. In addition to the prescribed rituals, as a keeper and communicator, you receive individual training via lessons sent from the USA. When rituals are performed in Summit Lighthouse Aarhus, it must take place in a certain atmosphere, which includes achieved by including a large number of symbols. Among these, the transportable altar (Chartres) is considered to be of great importance. It symbolizes, through religious objects and images, man’s unity with God and shows how the divine spark can grow so that man becomes one with God.
Since the group sees itself as related to all world religions, a large number of symbols from these are also used. One uses, among other things, images of saints, figures of Jesus, figures of the Virgin Mary, crystals, and prayer beads. But one also uses images or figures that relate only to the Summit Lighthouse, including the violet flame, images of the Ascended Masters, and Mark L. Prophet and Elisabeth Clare Prophet.
World Religions
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