King David

Michelangelo’s David

King David (c.1043–c.973 B.C.) is one of the most loved and revered figures in Hebrew history.

He was born the youngest son of Jesse of Bethlehem and anointed by the prophet Samuel to be king of Israel. David is honored as the “ideal king”—symbol of the bond between God and nation.

His soul reembodied as the Lord Jesus Christ.

Samuel anointing David, by Velázquez

Anointing by the prophet Samuel

When the disobedient King Saul rejected the word of the LORD and the LORD rejected him from being king, “for rebellion is as the sin of witchcraft, and stubbornness is as iniquity and idolatry,” the LORD directed Samuel to fill his horn with oil and go to the house of Jesse the Bethlemite, for among his sons he would find the next king.

After Samuel called Jesse’s family to sacrifice, the prophet looked at one of his sons, Eliab, thinking this was surely the LORD’s anointed. “But the LORD said unto Samuel, Look not on his countenance or on the height of his stature, because I have refused him. For the LORD seeth not as man seeth; for man looketh on the outward appearance, but the LORD looketh on the heart.” Not until Jesse’s youngest son, David, stood before Samuel, did the LORD tell him, “Arise, anoint him: for this is he.” When Samuel anointed David, “the spirit of the LORD came upon David from that day forward.”

David Playing the Harp to Saul, Nikolai Mikhailovich Plyusnin

David and Saul

After Samuel had secretly anointed David as king, the Bible records that the spirit of the LORD departed from King Saul and an “evil spirit” troubled him.

And Saul’s servants said unto him, Behold now, an evil spirit from God troubleth thee.

Let our lord now command thy servants, which are before thee, to seek out a man, who is a cunning player on an harp: and it shall come to pass, when the evil spirit from God is upon thee, that he shall play with his hand, and thou shalt be well.

And Saul said unto his servants, Provide me now a man that can play well, and bring him to me.

Then answered one of the servants, and said, Behold, I have seen a son of Jesse the Bethlehemite, that is cunning in playing, and a mighty valiant man, and a man of war, and prudent in matters, and a comely person, and the LORD is with him.

Wherefore Saul sent messengers unto Jesse, and said, Send me David thy son, which is with the sheep.

And Jesse took an ass laden with bread, and a bottle of wine, and a kid, and sent them by David his son unto Saul.

And David came to Saul, and stood before him: and he loved him greatly; and he became his armourbearer.

And Saul sent to Jesse, saying, Let David, I pray thee, stand before me; for he hath found favour in my sight.

And it came to pass, when the evil spirit from God was upon Saul, that David took an harp, and played with his hand: so Saul was refreshed, and was well, and the evil spirit departed from him.

The melody of the hymn “Jesus, Master Divine” was sung and played by David for the calming of the entities and the demons in King Saul. This song came from the heart of David as it came from the heart of God, for David composed his songs and was truly the instrument of healing. It contains the Electronic Presence of Jesus and his healing.

The slaying of Goliath

David with the Head of Goliath, Caravaggio

1 Samuel 17 records how, as a young shepherd boy, David single-handedly slew the Philistine giant Goliath. Prior to this encounter, David had killed a lion and a bear that had taken a lamb out of his father’s flock. He slew both animals with his fist, by the force of the Kundalini. When he went to battle the giant Philistine, David was offered King Saul’s armor: a brass helmet, a coat of mail, and a sword. But David rejected the armor because he was not skilled in its use.

In the Biblical account of David and Goliath, Goliath represents David’s dweller-on-the-threshold. Before David could be crowned king of Israel, the Great Law required that he slay Goliath, the champion of the Philistines. This was a spiritual initiation. God initiated the soul of David that he might prove himself before Goliath and the Philistines and before King Saul and his people.

So David, the naked soul, took his staff in hand and chose five smooth stones (symbolic of the five secret rays?) out of the brook and put them in a shepherd’s bag. With his sling in hand, he drew near to Goliath. And Goliath mocked him and “cursed him by his gods,” for David was “but a youth and ruddy and of a fair countenance.”

But David demonstrated his confidence in himself and in his God. He said to Goliath, “I come to thee in the name of the LORD of hosts, the God of the armies of Israel, whom thou hast defied. This day will the LORD deliver thee into mine hand.” His courage was unparalleled. He told Goliath exactly what he was going to do and he did it, affirming again, “The battle is the LORD’s and he will give you into our hands.” Not for one moment did David even consider that the battle was his alone: he knew it was his and God’s.

So when Goliath arose, David ran toward him and “put his hand in his bag and took thence a stone and slang it and smote the Philistine in his forehead, that the stone sunk into his forehead and he fell upon his face to the earth.” David’s feat must become our feat. And our soul must mature, pressing her soles into his footprints. For one day we, too, will be called upon by God to slay our dweller-on-the-threshold in defense of our soul’s ongoing tenure in the Community of the Holy Spirit.

David’s initiation was all about empowerment and communion with God. The confidence David exuded was based not only on his faith in himself and in his God but on his direct communion with God. God told David that he would empower him and give him the victory over the Philistine and his hosts, and he did.

When the soul is empowered by God and she knows it, because all the forces of her being are poised for the victory that she knows is hers, she is fearless not only before the ragings of her own ego and her own dweller but also before the ragings of the entire false hierarchy of fallen angels.

King of Israel

After this victory, David faithfully served King Saul. He went to battle for him. But Saul became jealous of David’s prowess in battle and his popularity with the people. So Saul tried to kill David a number of times, and David had to hide from Saul.

After the death of Samuel, when Israel was gathered for battle against the Philistines, Saul sought out “a woman that hath a familiar spirit at Endor,” and told her to call up Samuel.

And Samuel said to Saul, Why hast thou disquieted me, to bring me up? And Saul answered, I am sore distressed; for the Philistines make war against me, and God is departed from me, and answereth me no more, neither by prophets, nor by dreams: therefore I have called thee, that thou mayest make known unto me what I shall do.

And Samuel delivered unto him a dire prophecy, ending with the words,

Moreover the LORD will also deliver Israel with thee into the hand of the Philistines: and tomorrow shalt thou and thy sons be with me.

The next day Saul fell upon his sword in battle, taking his own life, and the Philistines slew three of his sons and all his men.

When Saul died, David became king of Israel after a short period during which one of Saul’s son ruled over the northern tribes. He reunited the twelve tribes as one nation and greatly extending its borders. He established Jerusalem as the capital and there enshrined the ark of the covenant.

God prophesied through through Nathan, “He shall build me an house, and I will stablish his throne for ever.” The throne that God committed to establish unto David through Solomon, his son, is the throne of the mighty threefold flame. It is the throne of the Christ Self of all who are of the seed of David.

God committed his promise for the establishing of the kingdom of Israel, the kingdom of all who were the descendants of Sanat Kumara through Solomon and through all those who would come after him. And he made this promise to David unto Solomon and to David’s seed, “I will be his father, and he shall be my son: and I will not take my mercy away from him, as I took it from his that was before thee: But I will settle him in mine house and in my kingdom for ever: and his throne shall be established for evermore.”

The seed of David is the seed of God in the earth who have a threefold flame, who have a Christ Self, who have the mighty I AM Presence. And those who do recognize one another recognize that light. And they are in every nation and race and religion, scattered over the earth as God promised to Abraham, “I will make thy seed as the sands of the sea shore innumerable.”

The seed of Abraham descended unto David, the seed of David descended unto the Lord Jesus Christ, which has been established by the orthodox writers of Matthew through the descent and lineage of Joseph, even while Joseph is disclaimed as being the real father of Jesus. It is a contradiction, but nevertheless considered a necessity by Matthew, who had the physical orientation in his attitude toward the gospel. But the real descent of the light of David, the seed of David, incarnated as Jesus Christ is that it is the very same living soul who first incarnated as the temporal king wearing the temporal crown of Israel, yet bearing his sins, who reincarnated to be the king in the spiritual sense who declares, “My kingdom is not of this world.”

The Prophet Nathan rebukes King David, Eugène Siberdt

David and Bathsheba

As you begin to study your past incarnations, you will see that you had great heights of attainment whereby you were able to draw the energies from a previous cycle in Mater up for the fulfillment in Spirit. These are your peak embodiments, the places where your life has left a record of achievement. But then there have been those dips down in the plane of Mater, and if we had full mastery when we made the descent deeper into matter, we would be able to prove that we can be the master, as Above, so below.

However, it is often the case that when it is time for the descent into the uses of the lower chakras, manifestating as devotion and serving the needs of others, so often when we get into an embodiment that requires the mastery of those lower chakras, we flow with the mass consciousness. Generally speaking, these are the embodiments of infamy, ill fortune, misuses of the sacred fire. You might say that the embodiment of David was the mark of Jesus’ descent for the mastery of Mater prior to the thrust of the victory of the ascension in Spirit.

Jesus made quite a success of his embodiment as David. He had very high attunement in the plane of Mater. But at that level, it is noted by historians and theologians that he had great sin in his many wives and in his relationship with Bathsheba.

Although it was lawful for the king to have any wife, it was unlawful in the sight of God that he separated the twin flames of Uriah the Hittite and Bathsheba. David fell in love with Bathsheba, the wife of Uriah the Hittite, and she conceived a child by him. David called Uriah home from battle so that it would not look as though she had conceived a child by David. But Uriah was so devoted to his king and to the victory of the battle that he would not even go near Bathsheba when he returned home. As a result of this, David sent him to the forefront of the battle where he knew he would be killed, and he took Bathsheba as his wife.

The LORD sent the prophet Nathan to tell David that because he had slain Uriah and married his wife, he would be punished. The LORD told David through Nathan that the sword would never be far from his house and that God would give his wives to his neighbor. He said that God forgave David and would not take his life, but the price of his sin would be the life of the child born to Bathsheba. Although David fasted and entreated God to spare the child, the child became sick and died. Their next son, Solomon, became the king who followed in the footsteps of his father.

David had taken another’s life so the life of his child would be taken. And yet we know that God loved David. David had to learn this lesson, and had he not paid the price, he would have had to pay it in a future life. That is the old dispensation of the New Testament, but it is still with us today.

These things weighed heavily upon his soul, but the very reason they weighed heavily upon him was because he was a son of God and he desired perfection and he called upon forgiveness for those transgressions. In a life of great mastery, great devotion and the writing of the Psalms, this perhaps was the only mark of compromise.

Reincarnation as Jesus

The reincarnation of David as Jesus was prophesied by one of the greatest prophets of Israel, who wrote:

And there shall come forth a rod [a scepter of authority] out of the stem of Jesse [out of the Son, or the Christ Flame of Jesse] and a Branch [the Christ Consciousness of David] shall grow out of his roots [shall evolve out of his communion with the LORD]: and the Spirit of the LORD shall rest upon him, the spirit of wisdom and understanding, the spirit of counsel and might, the spirit of knowledge and of the fear of the LORD.”

David himself knew that he would be born again to perform a mighty work for the LORD. Therefore he exclaimed:

My heart is glad and my glory rejoiceth: my flesh also shall rest in hope. For Thou wilt not leave my soul in hell; neither wilt Thou suffer Thine Holy One to see corruption. Thou wilt shew me the Path of Life: in Thy Presence is fulness of joy.

David longed for the day when he would see God face to face, prove His laws, and be found in His image. He would not be satisfied with less. Thus he declared, “As for me, I will behold Thy face in righteousness: I shall be satisfied when I awake with Thy likeness.”

Legacy

The Book of Psalms is David’s tribute to his Maker. It shows forth the love, the wisdom, and the power of a soul determined to become the Christ. It shows how faith, hope, and charity, as seeds of Light implanted within body, mind, and soul, compel the totality of selfhood to engage its energies in the daily striving to be acceptable in the sight of God. The cry of David, the shepherd-king, was answered in the life of the carpenter of Nazareth: “Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable in Thy sight, O LORD, my strength and my redeemer.”

Thus in the Psalms the Israelites have recourse to the teachings of one who has attained Christ-mastery while gentiles also reflect upon the meditations of the Savior, all striving for the same goal set forth by him who is known as both the king of Israel and of the New Jerusalem. And so it is not surprising that today in the Cenacle overlooking the city of Jerusalem, Christians pray in the Upper Room on the site where Jesus and the disciples celebrated the Last Supper, where Christ appeared after his resurrection, and where the descent of the Holy Spirit took place. And in the lower level of the same house, there is a temple where Jews worship at the Tomb of David—“Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God is one LORD.”

See also

Jesus Christ

Sources

Pearls of Wisdom, vol. 27, no. 61.

Elizabeth Clare Prophet, “On the Soul,” Pearls of Wisdom, vol. 38, no. 29, July 2, 1995.

Elizabeth Clare Prophet, “Lesson Three from the Holy Spirit: The Anointings by the Holy Spirit,” June 30, 1994.

Elizabeth Clare Prophet, November 1, 1973.

Elizabeth Clare Prophet, December 13, 1978.

Elizabeth Clare Prophet, March 8, 1981.

Elizabeth Clare Prophet, November 12, 1982.

Elizabeth Clare Prophet, July 2, 1986.

Elizabeth Clare Prophet, October 11, 1991.

Elizabeth Clare Prophet, August 29, 1994.

Elizabeth Clare Prophet, Mary’s Message of Divine Love.

Mark L. Prophet and Elizabeth Clare Prophet, Lords of the Seven Rays.

Elizabeth Clare Prophet, Saint Germain On Prophecy.

Mark L. Prophet and Elizabeth Clare Prophet, The Path of Brotherhood.