The Shining Brother, first published more than 50 years ago, remains as fresh as ever thanks to it’s dynamic but gentle message. It includes many scripts and messages purporting to come from St. Francis of Assisi and communicated to Laurence Temple, a practicing architect. The simplicity of the communication bears the hallmark of authenticity which is enhanced by Temple’s own practicality and humility. He comments that ‘I cannot read them without a sense stealing over me that I am in the presence of Holiness.’

There is a quiet but insistent and very real authority inherent in the teachings. Furthermore the evidence is transmitted through several different channels, many of whom were unaware of what had gone before, yet the content and style of delivery remains consistently the same.

St. Francis does not preach but explains that ‘by the way of life, by the offering of self, by the light with which I shall endow thee… Thy father will manifest himself in thee.’  The underlying theme is that esoteric knowledge is of secondary importance to the prime keynotes of love, service and humility.

Laurence Temple was in his middle years when during a severe illness he became aware of a powerful healing presence of such effect that it caused him to realign his life in a more spiritual direction.

In 1932 he was told during a reading that he would build many churches, and although he was an architect such a future appeared most unlikely. He was informed that his spirit guide for the work would be none other then Francis of Assisi, the Christian saint better known as St Francis of Assisi.

At first he found great difficulty in accepting the bond between himself and St Francis, and only the repeated assertions of every sensitive he met finally convinced him that a deep spiritual link did indeed exist between them.

Subsequently, between 1932 and 1941 he was inundated with requests to design, restore and build churches. By the time The Shining Brother was published in 1940 Temple had designed 17 places of worship and altered and restored many more, devoting the rest of his working life to the task.