Angelic Revelations of Divine Truth, Vol. II
The True Mission of Jesus
By Dr. Daniel G. Samuels[1]
I. Jesus and His Relationship to God.
Whatever one may believe regarding the source of the Messages from Jesus and the Celestials[2], the contents are so new and evolutionary, yet so compelling by their logic and sublime simplicity, that a serious study of them must be undertaken in order to comprehend their significance and challenge.
In these messages, Jesus of Nazareth stands forth as the Master of what he calls the “Celestial Heavens,” wherein only those spirits possessed of the New Birth through prayer to the Father for His Divine Love can dwell in light and happiness and become conscious of their immortality through their At-onement with Him in soul nature.
If these messages are authentic as coming from Jesus and his Celestial spirits, then mankind has at last been given the true mission which Jesus proclaimed on earth. This mission taught the transformation of man’s soul from the image of God—the work of the original creation—into the very Essence of God through the bestowal of the Father’s Love upon whomsoever should seek that Love in earnest longing. It revealed that Jesus himself first manifested the Father’s Love in his soul, thus making him at-one with the Father in nature and giving him that clear consciousness of his kinship with the Father and his immortality of soul. It showed that, in this development of soul, Jesus was indeed his Father’s true son, not in the metaphysical and mysterious way of a hypothetical virgin birth, but through the Holy Spirit—that Agency of the Father which conveys His Love into the souls of His creatures who seek It in earnest prayer. It brings to light that Jesus was born of Mary and Joseph, of human parents like other human beings, but that he was nonetheless the Messiah promised to the Hebrews and to mankind in the Old Testament. For wherever he taught the “glad tidings” that God’s Love was available, and that it was this Love which bestowed immortality upon the soul filled with this Love, Jesus brought with him the Nature of God—the Kingdom of God. At the same time, Jesus tells us that neither was he God; nor was his mother, Mary, the mother of God; nor a virgin after her marriage to Joseph, but that she was, in truth, the mother of eight children, of which he was the eldest; and that he had four brothers and three sisters in the flesh, and not cousins, as some versions of the Bible relate.
In addition, he relates that he did not come to die on a cross, nor did, nor does, his shed blood bring remission of sins. He also shatters the time-honored statements now found in the New Testament that he ever instituted a bread and wine sacrament on the eve of his arrest at the “Last Supper.” This pious statement, he declared, was never his, nor did any of his apostles or disciples ever teach it, but was inserted about a century later so that such a doctrine might accord with the ideas then prevalent among the Greek converts of Christianity. Communion with the Heavenly Father can never take place through the mistaken notion that Jesus had to be impaled on a cross by Roman soldiers, on the order of Pilate, the Procurator of Judaea, and in accord with the uncomprehending high priests, so that he could appear as a sacrifice for sin. There is no sacrifice for sin, affirms Jesus, and his dried-up blood cannot do what only man himself must do by turning in repentance and prayer to the Heavenly Father to effect that change in his heart whereby his soul will give up evil and sin and embrace what is righteous. The Father’s Help in the elimination of sin from the human soul is His Divine Love which, on entering the soul through prayer, removes sin and error from that soul and provides not only purification but also its transformation into a divine soul, at-one with the Father’s Great Soul in nature. This real communion, which Jesus himself had achieved, he declared, is the only communion between God and His children which God has provided for their salvation and eternal life with Him. The vicarious atonement, Jesus states, is a myth, and its appearance in the New Testament is one of many false statements inserted therein to make it harmonize with later concepts concerning his relationship to the Father, which these later Greek and Roman copyists did not understand. It is a terrible thing to believe that God, in order to bring about His son’s sacrifice, approved the unlawful arrest of Jesus on the Passover, the bloody scourges, the treachery of Judas, the palpably unfair trial by high priests and Sanhedrinites, as well as Pilate’s fear of Judean revolt against Roman rule, to encompass the inhuman death of Jesus, His Messiah, on a cross, as though God needed to bring about, through wickedness and sin, the very wickedness and sin He seeks to blot out in His children.
In the light of these messages, a new interpretation of Jesus’ death on the cross is certainly in order. We are told by the orthodox churches that Jesus gave himself up willingly as a sacrifice, and because, as the Messiah, he had come for that purpose. He is supposed to take the place of the Hebrew sacrifice, the lamb, and he is called in the New Testament the “Lamb of God.” As a matter of fact, the Old Testament sacrifice of an animal was never intended to take away sin, and this is shown by the fact that, although these sacrifices were not permitted during the Babylonian captivity, the people still put their faith in redemption through turning away from sin and seeking God through a life of moral and ethical conduct.
Jesus did sacrifice himself, indeed, but in a way never related or understood by the writers of the New Testament. Jesus went to his death because he would not deny his mission: that as the first human to attain through prayer an immortal soul filled with the Essence of the Father—the Divine Love— he was in this way the first true son of God, and therefore the Messiah. Jesus could have saved his life if he had retracted at his trial, but he died because he remained true to himself, true to his Messiahship, and true to the Father Who had sent him. Jesus sacrificed his whole life preaching the Father’s Love: He gave up home, his chance to marry and have a family of his own, and a chance to devote himself to the quiet pursuits of a Nazarene carpenter. Instead, he chose the hatred and opposition of those who understood not and preferred the status quo; he chose the incomprehension of his loved ones who considered him mad and sought to have him leave Galilee; he chose constant travels and journeys, so that often he had no place to lay his head; he chose to preach in the Temple at Jerusalem, chase the moneylenders, defy the conspiracy of those who sought his death, and bravely face the consequences of what he knew must inevitably occur. Yes, Jesus did sacrifice himself, but it is high time to put aside myth and metaphysics, and to know and to realize what that sacrifice consists of. When we understand his sacrifice, then Jesus stands forth in all his greatness, in all his courage, in all his serenity and forgiveness and love for mankind, with his absolute faith in the Father and His Love in that day of his teaching, tribulation, and death.
Jesus tells us many things about himself and his life in the Holy Land. He states that the Bible story of his birth, minus the many supernatural elements in it, is substantially true: that he was born in Bethlehem, taken by his parents to Egypt to avoid destruction by Herod, that the Wise Men did come from the East to pay him homage, and that he was taught the elements of the Hebrew faith from teachers; but that it was the Father Himself Who taught him the Truth of the Divine Love and made him realize what his mission was. He tells us that John the Baptist, his cousin, was a great psychic and had some understanding of him as the Messiah, and that both planned the Master’s public ministry. He states that John never sent emissaries, when in prison, to be reassured that Jesus was “him whom we seek,” and that Jesus, as a boy of twelve, never appeared before the doctors of the law in the Temple of Jerusalem.
Jesus also tells about some of the miracles which he performed. Most of these, he explains, dealt with his healing power, but that he never raised Lazarus or anyone else from the dead, nor has anyone else been able to do so, regardless of what the Scriptures say; for the spirit body cannot return to the flesh once the physical conditions of life have been destroyed. He also relates that he never quieted a storm by rebuking the waves on the Sea of Galilee, but that he did calm the fears of the disciples with him through his example of courage and assurance.
Some of the greatest messages which, to my mind, Jesus and some of the high spirits wrote are those connected with the Master’s resurrection from the dead after his crucifixion. Jesus informs Mr. Padgett that he did die on the cross and that he did appear to Peter, John, Mary Magdalene and his mother on the third day, but that the true explanation of this occurrence is quite different from the accepted views of the churches. Here, Jesus is supposed to reveal his divinity by arising from the dead, but, actually, Jesus’ soul never died, as no man’s soul dies with the physical death. And the Master goes on to state that, with the power inherent in his soul with the Divine Love, he simply dematerialized his mortal frame, announced in the spirit world the availability of immortality to mortals and spirits through the Father’s Love, which he was the first to manifest, and then, on the third day, materialized a body like flesh and blood drawn from the elements of the universe; and that it was in this materialized body, which he was able to assume without mediumistic aid, that he appeared to Mary Magdalene and the others. It is the reason, he states, why Mary did not at first recognize him and thought him to be the gardener, and the same may be said of his disciples at Emmaus. The great misconception of Christians of all ages has been to believe that Jesus revealed himself to be part of the “Godhead” by this resurrection—that is to say, rising from the dead—but actually his feat consisted in the assumption of a flesh-like body, indeed, so real as to convince even the doubting Thomas.
II. God and the Human Soul.
As to Who and What is God, I dare say that never has the Bible, either the Old or the New Testament, given man an understanding of the Deity and His Attributes to the extent and depth as appears in the messages signed by Jesus and the Celestials. According to these high spirits, man is at-one with the Father to the degree that His Love abounds in their souls. God is Soul, composed of His greatest Attribute, Divine Love, which is His very Nature and Essence, followed by Mercy, Goodness, Power, Omniscience, and Will; and with the Mind, so much worshiped by mankind, only an aspect of His Being. Although God has no form such as He gives to mankind on incarnation, nor a spirit body which is manifested by man after his physical death, yet, God possesses His definite Soul Form, which becomes more clearly perceptible to the soul which feels or perceives God’s Oversoul, or the Divine Attributes thereof, as it comes into closer rapport with God through its soul development. For while God is Soul, Alone, unique in Its Oneness, and while He has no material or spirit body, yet, He has Personality—the Divine Personality manifesting His Love and Mercy, His Kindness and Solicitude for all His creatures. God, then, is not a cold intellect, an abstract mind, or forces indifferent and unfeeling, but a Personal, Warm and Loving Father, eager for the happiness of His children and regardless of race or color or creed. He seeks through His ministering angels to turn His children to Him and have them keep in harmony with His Laws, or have them come, indeed, to Him in the longing of their human souls for that something they know not what, and obtain At-onement with Him through the inflowing of His Love into their souls in response to their earnest prayers. Soul is God and God is Soul, and all His Attributes added together do not make up Who and What God is. These Attributes radiate from His Great Soul and flood the universe. So, when men say they live and have their being in God they are in error, for they do not. But they do live and have their being in the attributes that God has given them in the human soul. When one obtains the greatest Attribute of God, the Divine Love, which manifests itself as a warm glow burning in the soul, as occurred to the refugees at Emmaus (Luke 24:32), then he is actually feeling or perceiving the Great Soul of God to the degree he partakes of that Love.
Information regarding the human soul, not even mentioned in the Scriptures, which presumably should be the place to look for such material, abounds in the messages from Jesus and other Celestial spirits. To be sure, we are told in Genesis that God created man “in His image,” but everything that such a statement implies or suggests is tantalizingly wanting, and we are left to our own ideas or compelled to accept what the churches believe should be the meaning. The result is that the conception of what was meant by the creation in man varies in accordance with the interpretation which each church, claiming for itself the truth, lays upon those meager words. The early Hebrews, of course, were not interested overly much in the life beyond the grave, and their conception of the soul, or its habitat after mortal experience, is limited mainly to Paradise or Gehenna (and these, we may note, were originally conceived to be places on this earth; in the first case, the Garden of Eden, supposed to be near the Euphrates; in the second, in the valley of Hinnom where the Jebusites once offered up human sacrifices). It is strange, perhaps, that the Greeks, with their love of physical culture, form, and beauty should have a much more detailed view of the afterlife: the dark realm of Pluto, the glory and happiness of the Elysian Fields (where the souls of the righteous dwell in peace and communion with their god), the shadow forms of the harpies, the influence, perhaps, of an older Egyptian religion.
But in these messages signed by the Master and his Celestial spirits, the information given is clear and logical, even though such information is new and hitherto unknown. Certainly no one up to the time of Padgett’s mediumship was able to obtain the messages of that high quality directly from these spirits themselves, although Swedenborg, the Swedish seer, was permitted experiences in the spirit world which in many respects parallel what Padgett obtained.
Jesus tells us that just as God is Infinite Love, so is His Universe infinite matter which, like God, has no beginning or end. At some time in this infinity of time and space, God created a habitat designed for man. Exactly when we men were created as living souls (that is to say, before or after the creation of our world), is not known, but God created human souls which dwelt, and have been so dwelling, with Him before their incarnation in the flesh. After the mortal experience, the soul, manifesting its spirit body acquired with incarnation, returns to the spirit world to inhabit a locality commensurate with its condition.
Human souls created by the Father, according to the messages, are duplex: They are male and female in composition, and, at the time of incarnation, divide into their two component parts. Each thereafter in the flesh is a complete soul as to itself. The soulmates may or may not meet and marry in the flesh, depending upon various conditions and circumstances which prevail at the time of their marriage; but such marriage is in no way a guarantee of happiness, for the different education, religious beliefs, family traditions, upbringing and other circumstances of each may often hinder rather than aid in their marital relations. On the other hand, souls which are not mates have a better chance of marital harmony if their marriage is based on similar interests, upbringing, education and general social condition on the plane of the material world. Soulmates, after death, eventually meet and stay together in real soulmate love, though not before a period of purification, and in accordance with their condition of soul.
The messages are unequivocal in their insistence that human souls are, as the Book of Genesis states, creations in the image of God, and that therefore there is nothing of the Divine in us. They also insist that man is not the product of evolution, such as Darwin or his followers have taught, but that ours represents a material form similar to, but more highly developed than, other creations consistent with the development of life on this planet, and harmonizing with the conditions for life which this planet presents. Man was provided with a human soul which, with its special appendage, the mind, enabled him to make the advances and progress which exalt him as lord over the other creatures of this life, and give him the potentiality of exploring and mastering the physical surroundings into which he has been placed.
But men are tragically mistaken, declares Jesus, when they believe that the mind is superior to, or the equal of, the soul, or that the soul is merely a name which is given to an entity whose existence is either doubtful or has no basis in fact. For the mind is limited and dependent upon the soul, the seat of the emotions and the passions, and it is the soul which is the real man. It is through the soul perceptions that man knew instinctively that he was linked to his Creator, Whom he was to revere and obey. Man, says Jesus, can know and knows God only because he possesses a soul; and he can never know God if he seeks Him intellectually and with his mind alone. Doubt and speculation are a product of the mind, but faith is a product of the soul; and we know that God exists through our soul perceptions. We can therefore create the spiritual link with God through prayer—not a mental prayer, but a prayer that comes from a man’s soul: earnest, sincere, full of longing, faith and love.
III. The Problem of Sin.
When the first parents, or whom they represent, possessed their God-given souls, these souls were in the image of God, but they had nothing of the Essence of God in them. They were given the opportunity, however, to obtain the Nature of God through prayer for His Love, which, on entering the human soul through the agency of the Holy Spirit, transforms that soul from the image of God into the Essence of God. But the first parents, instead of turning to God and His Love, sought mastery of their material surroundings alone, and, instead of developing their souls so that they would partake of the Nature of God through Divine Love, they chose the development of their intellectual faculties. For it is through his intellectual attainments that man acquires the material possessions and wealth by which he so much sets his store, and which marks him as a success by worldly standards. And thus came the story of the “apple” and the “Tree of Knowledge.” And it is through this material knowledge that came sin, for man turned from God to be independent of God, and with it came pride. He became puffed up, cruel, heartless and merciless, where he had been created with a soul full of human love and mercy and tenderness and sympathy for his fellow beings. Thus, man, in his ruthlessness, lost the use of his soul qualities and the potentiality of partaking of the Father’s Nature through the inflowing of the Divine Love into his soul, and this was the “death” which man suffered when he sinned. For, says Jesus, the material body was not in question; it was, rather, the penalty of having lost the opportunity of achieving At-onement in soul with the Father whereby men lost the potentiality for salvation through becoming immortal souls. The wages of sin, as Jesus explains it, is spiritual death: loss of the soul’s chance to partake of God’s Nature and live. Death in the flesh, Jesus assures us, is merely an incident in the progress of man’s soul from preexistence to the point where he returns to the spirit world with his individuality assumed at the time of incarnation, and manifested in his spirit body.
The problem of sin, then, is the defilement of the soul during its period of incarnation. Sin is the violation of God’s Laws, says Jesus—this given to mankind by those of His messengers who transmit His Will to mortals attuned to their suggestions, either because they are more pure in heart and are closer to the Father, or because of their psychic or mediumistic powers. An interesting message signed Elijah tells us that he would receive messages from the unseen world because of prayers and religious instinct. Here, perhaps, is the story of the great religious founders and reformers of all lands and ages up to the coming of the Messiah. They all sought to turn man to the moral life. And the Eight Steps of Buddha, the Hammurabi Code and the Decalogue of Moses may, perhaps, be viewed as the success which the Father’s messengers attained in planting into man’s mind an awareness of the existence of God’s Laws, which were to be observed by all His children for the purity of their souls.
Some of the finest messages in this collection are those from Old Testament Prophets, like Elijah, Samuel, Moses and Daniel, who tell us of their efforts to turn their compatriots away from sin and error, in the conduct of their lives, to standards of ethical living, seeking to give effect to their sermons through recourse to threats of punishment to be meted out by an “angry” and “wrathful” God. They explain that His Love was not available to them, nor was it known to them as a reality, and they conceived of Him as a “stern taskmaster” who was “vengeful” and “jealous” of His Name. Their highest concept of Judaism, which graces the most exalted pages of the Old Testament, was intense faith in God, righteousness and obedience to His Laws. There also runs through the Scriptures the theme of the New Heart—the promise of the Father’s Love, to be bestowed in the fulness of time upon the Jews first, and thereafter upon all mankind; but this is a subject which, as far as I know, has never been given adequate treatment in the study of the Hebrew religion.
IV. Redemption from Sin.
To the pious Hebrew of the Old Testament, it appeared that wickedness, both as a nation and as individuals, was the cause of Hebraic national disasters, and that successes were the result of faithfulness to the Covenant between God and the patriarchs. The prophets emphasized the necessity to avoid alliances with other countries in times of national stress, and to put their faith in God’s Protection. Failure to heed the warnings of the prophets led to calamity, as in the days of Jeremiah when disregard of his advice brought captivity in Babylonia. Again, in the sorest hour of Judaea’s history, when the people were being provoked almost beyond endurance to bloody rebellion against mighty Rome, a prophet out of Nazareth came with a message of peace and forbearance, only to be rejected by those in power; Judaea was crushed and the people—those that remained—were dispersed over the face of the globe. For those of us who know that the Heavenly Father is our God of Love, we cannot believe that He brought about the horrible destruction of the Hebrews in the revolt of 67-70 A.D. But we do believe that the condition of men’s souls was such that it embraced wrath and the violence of warfare, rather than love and patience, and that this condition of the soul made the dreadful consequences that followed inevitable.
In the spirit world, the soul that sins must likewise reap the whirlwind. On leaving the flesh, it is received by spirits whose duty it is to instruct it in the things of its new existence. It is told that everything in the spirit world is controlled by law. One of these is the Law of Compensation, applicable to all spirits who pass over from mortal to spirit life. This law calls for the expiation of the sins which the soul has committed as a mortal.
Since the soul is the real man, and is in possession of its faculties, this includes the memory of deeds committed in the earth life. All the evil works and thoughts which the soul has accumulated as a mortal now come back to haunt and assail him, and the terrible remorse and suffering that ensues continue constantly and unabated until these evil memories have left him; and it is this that constitutes the judgment day and the hell. The condition of the soul creates the home in which it lives when it first passes over into spirit life—a home which accurately and exactly reflects the state of that soul and the spirit body which it manifests. Hence, a soul filled with spiritual thoughts and deeds, and in accord with God’s Laws, will abide in a place suitable to its soul condition, filled with light and reflecting the happiness of that soul; but a soul filled with deeds and thoughts of the material plane alone, and out of harmony with God’s Laws, engenders an abode of darkness and suffering in accordance with the abuses and unlawful material pleasures which it pursued when on earth.
But one of the most pernicious doctrines taught by the churches, and whose damnable falsity is exposed by Jesus, is that which fixes the destiny of the delinquent soul in hell for all eternity. This is not true. For as soon as the individual wills it, and repents of his sins as a mortal, he may make his progress out of the lowest hells to the Spiritual Heavens, or, should he seek and obtain the Father’s Love, continue to eternally progress as an immortal soul in the Celestial Heavens towards the Throne of God. The reason for this, the Master explains, is that the soul of man is the same, whether in the flesh or as a spirit, and the same conditions of forgiveness obtain here as in the spirit world. All sins are pardonable in this world or the next whenever the soul makes the sincere effort to receive pardon. The only sin not pardonable is that which, in the New Testament parlance, blasphemes against the Holy Spirit, or, in the language which the Master makes clear, refuses the Divine Love of the Father which can transform the human soul into a divine soul and bestow upon it immortality.
It is not true that man has the sorry alternative of either repenting of his evil ways, in the brief existence in the flesh, or living in hell throughout all eternity as a spirit. Some churches state that man cannot live a mortal life of pleasure and evil and then turn to God to avoid eternal suffering as a spirit. At the same time, they teach that, despite a life of sin, a last minute return to God will insure forgiveness of their sins when they come to the next world. These churches seem to be unaware of the existence of the Law of Compensation which exacts payment for the evils committed in the flesh “to the last farthing.” This is justice, indeed, if that is what these churches desire. But the time comes when the debt is paid, the soul is released from the workings of the law, and forgiveness is achieved.
The law, then, acts upon the soul undergoing the process of purification, but the soul that seeks the Father’s Love invokes the higher Law of Grace. Here, no justice is involved; only the Divine Love which the Father bestows upon His aspiring children and which transforms them into divine souls, bringing about the elimination of those evil desires and the forgetfulness of those evil deeds upon which the Law of Compensation operates. The pernicious doctrine of eternal damnation often prevents the unhappy soul from seeking the Father’s Love through prayer, in the terrible belief that his position in hell is fixed forever and that God can no longer help him. Yet, God, as Jesus explains it, helps His children wherever they are, in this world or the next, or in whatever condition of soul they may be in, provided they come to Him as their Heavenly Father, in earnest longing of their souls, and seek His Love and Mercy.
It is the awakening of the soul to the iniquities it worked and cogitated as a mortal that brings about the workings of the Law of Compensation and the abode of the spirit. Sometimes, the soul that passes over, because of the peculiar character of its make-up, is impervious at first to this awakening, and, in that case, the soul lives on the level of its evil earth plane life, and seeks in spiritual counterparts those evils which it practiced as a mortal, or it roams the earth seeking to obsess mortals susceptible to its baleful influence. Jesus refers in the gospels of the New Testament to his having liberated mortals from possession by demons, and these demons were nothing more than evil spirits which had taken possession of human beings at the time. In respect to these evil spirits of once mortal beings, Jesus tells us that some of the narratives related in the New Testament are true, but that others are false. And he refers concretely to the story of the possessed swine which ran madly down the cliff to be destroyed. This, he asserts, he never brought about, first because he would harm no creature, and because of the financial loss such an act of his would have entailed their owner. But, as regards the evil spirits, these awaken in time to the Law of Compensation and pass through their period of suffering for their mischief and evil. They are helped in this condition by others who are somewhat more advanced than themselves, and who instruct them in the ways that exist to progress out of their deplorable condition.
Hence, souls in suffering eventually learn to give up their evil inclinations, whether it be a fondness for money, possessions, gratification of pleasures or the desire to injure others—greed, lusts, covetousness, hatred, envy, injustice and other sinful creations of the human heart—and they may use their will power and intellectual faculties to enable them to cause the forgetfulness of the things that make for a soul stricken with remorse. But the soul in suffering and darkness may also seek outside aid if it so wishes: the Divine Love of the Heavenly Father which, pouring out into the soul which earnestly seeks His Love, causes the purification of that soul through possessing it, and thus forcing from it the excrescences that mar and defile that soul. And, indeed, as the Father’s Love continues to fill the soul of him who seeks It, there takes place the transformation of the human soul, reflecting the Soul of God, into a divine soul filled with the very Nature and Essence of God—His Love. With that Love, the soul is changed and the evils which contaminated it are eradicated, and the memories thereof, so that the Law of Compensation has nothing on which to operate and the soul is freed from its inexorable workings. For God’s Love, sought for by the soul in earnestness and longing, invokes a higher Law of Love. And the once evil soul, now filled with God’s Love and Mercy, and Kindness, Consideration, Pity and Sympathy, progresses out of its abode of darkness and suffering into realms of Love and Light, and eventually into the Celestial Heavens where only those souls filled with His Love can enter. Jesus is the Master of the Celestial Heavens where the inhabitants are the possessors of the Father’s Love to that degree in their souls that they are conscious of their immortality. For, God’s Soul being Immortal, those souls possessing His Love to a sufficient degree are in the same way immortal. This is what Jesus meant when he said, “The Father and I are one.” He meant there was a oneness between God’s Soul and his own because of the great abundance of the Father’s Love which he possessed, which enabled him to realize that in this way he was the Father’s real and redeemed son. He did not mean, as some churches have erroneously interpreted the remark, that he was God or equal to God; only that there was a kinship in nature between his soul and God’s which had been established by his possession of the Father’s Love through prayer.
In short, we come to the real explanation of “forgiveness,” which is startlingly different from the traditional conception imposed upon mortals by the churches. God does not arbitrarily forgive sin; but, rather, God aids those who, truly penitent and contrite, come to Him to seek His Forgiveness with the intention of mending their ways. He may therefore send the Spirit of God to strengthen the soul that seeks to avoid sin and error through its own will power; or, in response to prayer, He will send His Holy Spirit to convey His Love into the soul so that His Own Nature and Essence provide the aid in eradicating the evils with which that soul is contending.
In the same way, Jesus lays bare the sterility of the traditional concept of the “judgment day.” It is not a weighing in the balance of the good and evil deeds of man during his earth life; neither is it a vague indefinite time when the earth shall be destroyed and men’s souls tried for condemnation or resuscitation into physical life from the grave. For, as St. Paul says in Corinthians, “…flesh and blood cannot inherit the Kingdom.” And Mary, the mother of Jesus, explains that the flesh of the lifeless body must return to the elements in accordance with God’s Law, and that therefore any writings to the effect that she ascended into heaven in the flesh is mere speculation and wishful thinking on the part of those who exalt her because of her relationship to her son. Mary states that, indeed, as a spirit filled with the Father’s Love, she is an inhabitant of the Kingdom high up in the Celestial Heavens; yet not because of any relationship to Jesus, but because of her own exalted condition.
Eventually, declares Jesus, all souls will progress out of their condition of suffering and unhappiness and attain to either the Sixth Sphere, known to the Hebrews as Paradise (for such is the condition of man possessing purity of soul, whether he be in the flesh or devoid of it) or will accept the Way to the Father’s Love and reach the Celestial Heavens. The perfect natural man, however, must eventually reach a state of stagnation, for the time comes when he can no longer progress beyond the perfection of his human soul. But the soul possessed of the Father’s Love may continue to obtain His Love throughout all eternity, for It is infinite. And the soul thus filled with the Father’s Essence continues to obtain more and more of It and, consequently, to progress nearer and nearer to the Fountainhead of the Father’s Abode, with increased knowledge of things Divine, and gaining in happiness and joy as a divine son of the Father.
In accordance with this desire to explain conditions of spirit and soul life, Jesus is emphatic about the utter falsity of reincarnation. He states, and ancient spirits of the East write to add their corroboration, that while this theory is known to devotees of Oriental cultures, reincarnation has, as a matter of fact, never taken place in the spirit world, and that believers in this sterile idea have been waiting in vain for countless thousands of years to be reincarnated. Jesus, and others of the high spirits, state that the soul makes its progress from sin to purity, or to divine transformation, in the spirit world, which it can never again leave except to materialize briefly with the aid of material substance borrowed from mediums. The oriental concept of renunciation, or expiation of sin from the soul, adds Jesus, is correct, as is the doctrine that eventually the soul will eliminate the evils which defile it; but the errors consist in locating the earth as the place where such expiation takes place, and teaching that the soul, on freeing itself of iniquity, also loses consciousness of itself as a personal entity through absorption of the soul into the Deity.
In connection with life on the other side, one of the most interesting spirit writers is the seer, Swedenborg, who tells us about his experiences in the spirit world. He declares—and here Jesus corroborates his messages—that he was indeed permitted to come to the spirit world in a trance state, and that he really saw the spheres and the conditions of the spirits as they existed in the 18th century. Swedenborg tells us that he was informed throughout the world of spirits that God is One, and that a triune God, as believed in by Christians, was nothing but pious fiction. He states that he spoke with Jesus, who confirmed this, but thought that, since Jesus was so much brighter and more glorious than all the others of the spirit realm, this same Jesus must be God, and so he declared in his writings. Swedenborg relates that he was informed about the Divine Love, but that he did not truly understand what Jesus and the high spirits meant by It.
One important matter which the messages clear up is the true meaning of the “divine within you” doctrine. Actually, Jesus brought the divine with him when he preached throughout the Holy Land when on earth, and, when he walked among men, the Kingdom was with men but not within them. When preachers talk of the divine within man, they are really referring to the soul—the creation of God, indeed, but a human soul withal, not a divine one. What they mean, then, by developing the divine within man must be viewed as simply developing the latent powers in the human soul through development of the will, and the natural human love through moral and intellectual growth. These, of course, were given to man at his creation and have no part of the Divine. The Divine in the human soul is the Divine Love, which can come only through prayer to the Father. The Divine comes from without, from the Heavenly Father, and can enter the soul and effect its transformation only when that soul seeks It in earnest longing. When Jesus spoke to his disciples about the Divine within them, these disciples actually had some of this Love in their souls, even before the Pentecost, when the Father’s Love, through the Holy Spirit, was poured out upon them in great abundance.
Another misconception which Jesus clears up, with the corroboration of Mrs. Baker Eddy, is the doctrine known as Christian Science. We are informed that this woman, through her soul perceptions, understood the Divine Love as a great Spiritual Force coming from God, which could be used for healing purposes, and that it was a reality which could be attained if mortals would but turn from material interests and seek the spiritual. In this way, healers and patients could reach a condition of soul above that of the earth plane so that rapport could be made with spirit healers. Christian Science, to that extent, declares Jesus, is correct and spiritual healing a phenomenon obedient to spiritual law. But the Master points out that sin and error, contrary to Mrs. Eddy’s beliefs, are real, being creations of the human soul, and that the human soul does not reflect the Father’s Love, as she states it does. It either does not have the Love, or, if it does to a certain extent, possesses that Love, and the transformation of that soul into a divine soul is made to the degree it partakes of that Love.
Her teachings, Jesus declared, help in the development of the human soul towards the state of the perfect natural man, but are devoid of the concept of the soul’s possession and conscious ownership of the Father’s Love. And, so, her teachings do not point the Way to the Celestial Heavens through prayer to the Father, nor to transformation of the soul into the divine angel.
A few words might be said with respect to the additional messages printed for the first time in this edition.[3] Although they are all interesting, some commentary is due the communication by a member of the Sanhedrin which condemned Jesus to death at his trial. This spirit is unquestionably a sincere personality, and his writings have the ring of truth. It is understood, of course, that not all of the counselors who were present at the trial have since made their way to the Celestial Heavens, as he has; yet, at the same time, it shows clearly that not all members of the Sanhedrin—and here we recall Nicodemus—were supporters of the high priests or acted out of pure malice and rage. There were those, like this patriarch, who consented to the unfairness of the trial and summary condemnation of the Master in order to liberate Judaism from what they sincerely considered a menace which threatened its overthrow, or threatened to bring about Roman repression at any sign of Judean revolt. The message gives for the first time the other side of the story, and, while the spirit admits his great mistake and does not seek to justify his action or that of his compatriots, the tone is different from the hatred that breathes forth in the account of the trial found in the New Testament—a tone which we know is inconsistent with the Father’s Love which inspired the original writers.
It would be possible to continue to discuss at great length the numerous interpretations and corrections made in these messages signed by Jesus and the many Celestial spirits, and in the preceding pages we have attempted to point out some of the major precepts which animate them. They emphasize the restoration of the original “glad tidings” of Christianity that, with Jesus of Nazareth, there came a Love distinct from the natural human love as developed and perfected by the Mosaic code of moral and ethical living; that the new Love is the Divine Love, the Essence of the Heavenly Father, which was first manifested in man by Jesus and, through Jesus, was made available to mankind. It is obtained not through mere belief in Jesus’ name, or in any overall vicarious atonement supposedly made by him or through the shedding of his blood, but only as each individual, turning in free will to the Father, seeks His Love through prayer and faith with all his heart, and thus achieves a transformation of soul condition from one of sin and error to one of purity and possession upon receiving that Love of the Divine Nature. It is God’s Love that bestows eternal life upon the soul and thus fulfills the promise of what we call salvation. It cannot be achieved by rites and ceremonies, earned by man or granted to man by the churches, but is the free Gift of the “New Heart”, poured out in abundance by the Heavenly Father upon His children who seek It in earnest.
In short, it would be impossible here to comment on everything which is of interest to those who, whether they believe in this source of revelation or take issue with the material therein contained, are concerned with things of the spiritual and religious. But one thing must be said in closing, and that is: that these messages, whether they be the result of mortal or spirit intelligences, are so thought provoking and challenging in their nature, by declaring At-onement with the Father through prayer for His Divine Love, that they can truly be called a New Reformation in Christian thinking.
DANIEL G. SAMUELS
Washington, D.C.
August l956