Prodigal Son - News, Updates, Images & Quotes

The father's house, of course, is the divine world; the same father's house in which there are many mansions. The father himself represents God, and the two brothers two great waves of life. Of these, the prodigal son is humanity; and the righteous son who does not go forth represents the waves of life that never enter into a physical condition - that is, never go down to Egypt, which in the Bible always represents a material and corrupted sphere. The son who sent forth, descending into a material state, made numerous errors and misused the spiritual powers (wealth) which his father had given him. All the faculties and propensities of man are essentially divine, but material human beings have prostituted these powers and corrupted the spiritual virtues in the cause of material accumulation and power.

It is only after the unhappy experience of worldliness that man desires to return again to his father's house to begin the long and difficult evolutionary process which leads him back to God. At last, after numerous trials, he comes again to his father, who receives him with great joy and gives him preferment above his righteous brother who never having been tempted had never risen above temptation.

— Manly P Hall; How to Understand Your Bible view