PSYCHO-SCIENTIFIC FRONTIERS Selected publications from a variety of subjects of psycho-scientific research. Editor: Rolf Linnemann (Certificated Engineer) * Steinweg 3b * 32108 Bad Salzuflen * Tel. (05222) 6558 Internet: https://www.psygrenz.com Translator’s email : evak30@optusnet.com.au E-Mail: RoLi@psygrenz.de Pastor Johannes Greber Communicating with God’s World of Spirit – its laws and its purpose Personal experiences of a Cathol ic priest Index Chapter 7 7. 0 Christ - His Life and His Work ......................................................................................................... 2 7. 1 The Human Birth of Jesus, his childhood and his siblings...............................................12 7. 2 Jesus’s assignment as God’s envoy .......................................................................................24 7. 3 The connection between Christ and the World of Spirit ....................................................31 7. 4 Christ’s suffering in the light of its meaning for the salvation .........................................36 7. 5 Descent into hell and victory .....................................................................................................42 7. 6 The return of the redeemed souls to God ..............................................................................44
- 2 - 7. 0 Christ - His Life and His Work For us Christians there is but one God, the Father, in Whom everything originates and for Whom we were created, and there is but one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom all things came into being and to whom we owe our existence. Corinthians 8: 6 What think ye of Christ? This question was written in letters of fire before my eyes from the day on which I had resolved to become a priest. It was to be my duty not only to proclaim Christ’s teachings to my fellow believers, but also the truth concerning his person, his life and his work. • Who was Christ? • Who had he been before he became a man? • What was he as a man? • Was he God, or only a Son of God? • Was he, after his human birth, a man like us in mind and body? • Was he begotten and born like all men? • As a child, was he obliged to acquire knowledge, as are all children? • Did he, too, have to come to recognize God step by step, and to travel the same road travelled by all who seek to know God’s nature and His will if they want to reach an understanding of God? • Was he exposed to the temptations of evil, and to all of the fateful consequences attendant upon his choices, as happens to all of us daily? • Was it possible that he, like the rest of mankind, might have succumbed to these temptations? • Could he, perchance, like millions of others, have been induced by the Powers of Evil to forsake God? • And if he had been sent to redeem humanity, wherein did the Redemption lie? What was the explanation for all these related questions? After I had become convinced at the spiritistic Divine services that God’s spirits speak through mediums, as they had in the early Christian communities, it was above all full enlightenment on these questions concerning Christ that I asked for. My request was granted, to the smallest details. And that knowledge constituted the most precious possession of my soul.
- 3 - In what follows, I repeat the truths regarding Christ, his life, and his work of Redemption, as they were imparted to me by the spirit that taught me. (Information from the SPHERES of LIGHT) Thus, spoke a teaching spirit to me: You are in search of enlightenment as to the person of Christ, his birth as a man, his life, sufferings and death as a man, and as to the truth relating to the Redemption. A few of those questions I have already answered by telling you of God’s Creation and its fate, as well as of His Plan of Salvation. At that time, you were told that Christ is the first and the highest of the spirits created by God and the only one to be created directly; that the rest of the spirit world came into being through Christ and, together with him, formed a great spiritual community, or kingdom, with Christ as its king, according to God’s will. In this kingdom Christ was, therefore, in a sense God’s representative. Christ himself was not God. He was only the first Son of God. He received his power, and his glory and his kingdom from God. He was but one of God’s creatures and, as such, not eternal like God. It was against Christ’s reign that the revolt of the spirits headed by Lucifer was directed. After the defection of a part of the spirit world and its fall into the spheres of the abyss, Christ volunteered to bring back the fallen spirits to God’s kingdom in accordance with the Plan of Salvation God had conceived. Christ’s work of Redemption was begun immediately after the apostasy of the spirit hosts had occurred. It was Christ who created the stages of rehabilitation of which I told you in detail in the course of my teachings on God’s Plan of Salvation. • Christ thus became the creator of the whole material universe, which forms the stairway for the ascent of the fallen spirits from the abyss to the heights of God’s kingdom. From the earliest days after those spirits had risen to the level of human existence, Christ became the guide of mankind and strove to turn people’s thoughts, which tend toward evil, toward God. But the ruling Powers of Hell also did their utmost to maintain their sway over mankind. This led to the mighty struggle between Christ and Lucifer over the spirits incarnated as human beings, a conflict that forms the main theme of what has been preserved for you in the writings of the Old Testament. In this conflict Christ was supported by the good spirit world under his command, many of the spirits volunteering to become mortals in order that they might, by preaching the truth and by setting an example of righteous living, lead humans unto God. One of the celestial spirits who was permitted to incarnate on earth was Enoch, who taught his contemporaries about the true God and the right path to a knowledge of Him. Above all, he taught
- 4 - them of communication with God’s spirit world, with which he himself was in daily contact. For in his day, almost all the people were given to communicating with evil spirits and had been led into idolatry of the most abominable kind and into all manner of depravity. Unfortunately, the result of his efforts was not lasting. The power of evil was so strong that the nations of those times became addicted to abominations of which you today can form no conception. The highest of the infernal spirits made use of human deep-trance mediums not only for speaking, but also for purposes of propagation, for just as the spirit of a medium can use his body for that purpose, so a foreign spirit can enter that body and, through it, propagate, and the corrupt female world population of the time considered it an honour to be thus abused at the idol worship. You will find confirmation of this in the Bible, in the passage relating that the sons of God came to the daughters of man, and these bore them children. (Genesis 6: 4) • The term ‘sons of God’ here refers to those once leading spirits of heaven that had fallen away from God, taking a prominent part in the revolt. These are the same spirits of which Job says: Job 1: 6: ‘Now it came to pass one day that the sons of God came to present themselves to the Lord, and Satan appeared among them.’ Here, too, it was only the apostate sons of God. Satan, as you know, was the second son of God. • As rulers of the kingdom of Darkness, these sons of God are not free to do as they like, but remain subject to God’s sovereignty, and are, at times, called to account by Him. The efforts of Christ and his good spirit world to influence the completely corrupt human race were fruitless. • So, the whole generation had to be wiped out and replaced by a new one. The annihilation was brought about by the Flood, from which only one family, that of Noah, was saved to become the progenitors of a better human race. However, very soon after the Great Flood, evil once more raised its head among Noah’s descendants, as witness the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah and the family of Lot. The more widely mankind spread out, the more zealously did men serve the Devil through idol worship and vice. In order to accomplish his end in spite of the terrible sway of evil over humanity, Christ strove, long before his incarnation, to win over at least a small fraction of mankind to the cause of God, a fraction that was to be the bearer of the faith and of the hope of salvation for later generations. It was to be the sourdough through which the whole mass of humanity would ultimately be leavened, the mustard seed that in time would grow into the great tree of the true belief in and search for God, and gather all mankind under its sheltering boughs through the ages. When this tree had attained a certain growth, the ‘fullness of time’ would have arrived for the Redeemer to descend to earth as the Son of Man, to complete the last part of his mission of Salvation. Not until then would it be worthwhile to build the bridge by which the righteous spirits could cross from Lucifer’s realm into the kingdom
- 5 - of God, even as you do not build bridges unless the number of persons likely to use them warrants their construction. Abraham was chosen as the sourdough and the mustard seed of the faith and of the hope of Redemption, a man of unshakable loyalty to God. Christ communicated with him, at times directly, at times through his spirits, for Abraham was also an incarnated spirit of heaven. Abraham’s devotion to God was soon put to a very severe test. • As is the case with all to whom God thinks of entrusting a particularly important mission. When you humans build a railroad bridge to be used by freight and passenger trains, you also test its capacity before opening the bridge to traffic. If it fails to meet the tests, it is reinforced, and if it proves unsafe even then, it is condemned, and you must build a new bridge. God proceeds similarly in the case of mortals selected to fulfill tasks of importance to His kingdom. If they fail to hold up under His tests, and if His efforts to strengthen them are futile, they are put aside as unfit, and others are selected instead. It often happens that people otherwise fit for God’s great ends must be rejected because of disqualifying defects for which they themselves are responsible, but which they persist in retaining. Many are called, but few are chosen. • Fearsome indeed was the test to which Abraham was put when he was commanded to sacrifice his son, for he who loves his father or mother, his brother or sister, his son or daughter, or his friend more than he loves God is not worthy of God's great gifts or of performing God’s great work. Abraham passed the severe test, and was rewarded with God’s promise: Genesis 22: 16-18: ‘Because you acted as you did and did not withhold your only son from me, I will richly bless you and will make your seed as numerous as the stars in the sky and the sand on the seashore ... and through your seed shall all the peoples of the earth be blessed.’ The seed mentioned in this promise does not refer to Abraham’s human progeny, for that could not have embraced all the nations of the earth and would not have been as numerous as ‘the stars of the heavens and the sand on the seashore.’ God does not exaggerate, and what He says is always the whole truth. Abraham’s descendants were spiritual and would ultimately embrace all of the fallen spirits, in the sense that Abraham’s faith in God and his devotion to Him would little by little extend to all who had forsaken God. Indeed, it would not have proved a blessing to Abraham had he had countless human progeny, who might fall into evil ways. As a matter of fact, in later days whole generations of Abraham’s descendants forsook the true religion and turned to the worship of idols.
- 6 - The second generation of Abraham’s human descendants, Jacob and his sons, were led into Egypt, where they settled in the fertile land of Goshen, there to become a great nation, isolated from the idolatrous inhabitants of Egypt, and free to uphold the true faith. • But continuing worldly prosperity always endangers a nation’s faithfulness to God. That is why God permitted the pharaohs to sorely oppress the Hebrews, as Abraham’s descendants had come to be known, and to hold them in rigorous servitude. It was not God who instigated Pharaoh to pursue this course, but the spirit Powers of Evil, which had realized that the Hebrew nation, as the bearer of the true faith, was a dangerous weapon in Christ’s hands and might be used by him against them. Hence, it was to be wiped out, and since this end was not being accomplished by the forced labour the Hebrews were compelled to perform, the demoniacal powers drove the pharaohs to exterminate them by the simplest and most effective method. Every Hebrew man-child was to be killed at birth. As a justification for this measure, the Powers of Hell had filled the king’s mind with the thought that the Hebrews within his dominions, having already waxed strong in numbers, might become a source of danger by allying themselves with the enemies of Egypt. Evil well knows how to attack men, and the rulers of men in particular, at their weakest point. Which, with a king, is always a fear that his throne is in peril. Hence Pharaoh fell a ready victim to the insinuations of the evil ones, and began the slaughter of all the newborn male infants of the Hebrews. According to Pharaoh’s plan, this would have resulted in the extinction of all Hebrew men within a comparatively short period. The Hebrew women would then have become the wives or slaves of Egyptians, would have been absorbed by that people and, like it, have fallen into idolatry. Thus, all the efforts of Christ and his spirit world to provide for human bearers of the true faith would have been nullified at one blow. But once again it happened, as it happens so often in nature and in the lives of men, that the very force that was intent upon doing evil promoted the cause of good, for the moment at which a people is driven to the greatest desperation through the slaughter of its children by a ruler is also the most favourable moment for persuading that people to leave the scene of its sufferings. There was still another, more important reason why it was high time for the Hebrew people to be led out of the land of the pharaohs. During the 400 years of their sojourn there the Hebrews had gradually drifted toward Egyptian idol worship, and quite a few of them were already participating in the pagan rites. This grave danger to the Hebrew people's faith in God could be prevented only by an exodus from Egypt, and this was the most appropriate moment for that, since the massacre of their infants was making their stay in Egypt a living hell for the Hebrews. “Leading so numerous and unmanageable a people out of Egypt was a task that called for a great human leader. Christ selected one of his high heavenly spirits for the purpose, and caused it to be born as a human being., It was Moses. The son of Hebrew parents, he was saved from death by Pharaoh’s daughter, who saw to it that he was instructed in all of the sciences of the time, thus equipping him, as a mortal, with the skills he would need as the head of a great people.
- 7 - When he had grown to manhood, Christ spoke to him from the burning bush and appointed him as the leader of ‘God’s people’. Moses was called upon to perform, first of all, two tasks. One of these was to reveal himself to the enslaved Hebrews as God’s envoy, charged with the mission of leading them out of Egypt. His second task was to persuade Pharaoh to allow the Hebrews to leave his realm. Superhuman power was conferred upon Moses by Christ for the execution of these two tasks, but the evil spirits, seeing their annihilation plans thwarted, also appeared on the battle scene in full force and used the Egyptian sorcerers as their instruments. Then began the greatest battle among spirits ever fought on earth. On one side stood Christ with his good spirit world, and Moses as his visible champion; on the other, hell with its helpers, the Egyptian magicians. With the aid of God’s spirits, who stood invisible beside him, Moses performed the greatest miracles the world has ever seen apart from Christ. Moses thus hoped to convince both the Hebrew people and Pharaoh of the Divine nature of his mission. By these signs that took place before their eyes, God’s people were to be moved to obey Moses as their leader, and Pharaoh was to be induced to allow the Hebrews to depart. At first, and for the purpose of counteracting any effect Moses might produce upon Pharaoh and the people, the evil powers accomplished miracles similar to his, but before long their efforts began to fail, and the sorcerers themselves were forced to admit: ‘This is the finger of God.’ “Never had such mighty spirit materializations been witnessed as in this battle. • On Moses' side, a good spirit, dematerializing Moses' rod, changed into a serpent. • The same thing was done for the sorcerers by the evil spirits. • Entire hosts of spirits were materialized as frogs at Moses’ command. • and at the command of the sorcerers, low spirits did the same. • Moses turned the waters of the river to blood with the aid of God’s spirits. • And, with the help of the infernal powers, the sorcerers did the same. God allowed the wicked to exert their powers to the utmost of their ability, in order that, in the end, He might have the opportunity of showing His full omnipotence and thereby, above all, fortify the faith of the Israelites – for this was a life-and-death struggle in which the Hebrews, as God’s people, were the stakes. Israel was the first-born of the true faith; should it fall victim to hell, a long time would elapse before another people fit to take that part could arise among mankind. Christ, God’s first-born, fought against the first-born of hell on behalf of the first-born human bearers of the faith and of the hope of salvation. Christ was the victor. God’s avenging angel smote all of the first-born in Egypt, thus forcing the decision. Pharaoh and his people were seized with fear, and at the insistence of his own subjects he allowed the Hebrews to depart.
- 8 - Travelling in a pillar of cloud, Christ led the Israelites, and out of the cloud he spoke to Moses, protecting the people from the pursuing hosts of Egypt. The good spirit world divided the waters of the sea and made the waves as a wall on the right hand of the people and on their left. Putting their trust in him who spoke from the pillar of cloud, the children of Israel fearlessly walked upon dry land in the midst of the sea. They received their first baptism unto Christ, with full faith in the ‘Angel of the Lord’, who was none other than Christ himself. God and Christ led Israel through the desert; at their behest the good spirit world brought forth water from the rock and provided manna. Hence Paul says, rightly: I Corinthians 10: 1-4: ‘I do not want to leave you in ignorance of the fact that our fathers were all under the protection of the cloud, and all passed through the sea; and all were baptized in the cloud and in the sea as followers of Moses; and all ate the same food and drank the same spiritual drink: for they drank from a spiritual rock that accompanied them, and the rock was Christ.’ God and Christ, as well as the good spirit world, gave the people whatever advice and instruction were necessary. It was God Himself who issued the Commandments on Mount Sinai. “The long sojourn in the desert was necessary in order that the people might be tested, to show whether their faith and belief in God were strong enough to enable them to withstand the perils that would threaten them from the pagan inhabitants of the country that they were later to take over. It was imperative that this people preserve its faith in God, since otherwise all the previous efforts would have been in vain. Still another menace to their faithfulness to God had to be eliminated. It was greed for worldly belongings and excessive attachment to material things, which tend to drive men into the arms of evil. Christ resorted to every measure that would prevent, or at least diminish, these dangers, taking radical steps to cure his people of these failings by enacting laws whereby the Israelites, as the Hebrews eventually came to be known, • were obliged to pay a tithe. • Furthermore, they had to offer their first fruits, or to redeem these with some other offering. • and in addition, they were called upon to make numerous sacrifices of beasts and fruits, such as burnt-offerings, meal-offerings, peace-offerings, sin-offerings and trespass-offerings, for which only unblemished gifts were accepted. • When harvesting, they were forbidden to reap their fields completely or to gather up the gleanings of the harvest; they had to leave them for the poor and for strangers. • Every seventh year they were not allowed to till their land. • Every fiftieth year they had to ‘return unto every man his former property’.
- 9 - • Finally, the taking of interest was forbidden, thereby forestalling usury at the outset. If the people of Israel observed these statutes, the danger of their being ruled wholly by worldly considerations and breaking faith with God out of love for Mammon would not be all too great. The other danger that threatened their faith was, however, far greater. This was the idolatry of the peoples the Hebrews would encounter in the so-called ‘promised land’.. This idol worship was all the more dangerous because, like all of its kind, it consisted of humanly perceptible communication with the evil spirit world. The spirit realm is mysterious in human eyes, and mystery exerts an irresistible attraction on everyone. Ghost stories are listened to with the greatest attention, and wherever anything mysterious and spectral actually or allegedly happens, a crowd will gather. Thus, the Israelites had already in the past been attracted by the mysteries of Egyptian idol worship. The Apostle Paul refers to this in writing to the Corinthians when he says: I Corinthians 12: 2: ‘You know that when you were still heathens, it was the dead idols to which you were irresistibly drawn.’ I need scarcely add that the Israelites did not content themselves with merely looking at idol images, for lifeless stone and wood attracted the people of those times as little as they attract people today. • The allurement of idol worship lay in the actual communication with the low spirit world. The speaking of spirits through images and human mediums and the performance by them of other marvellous feats were the factors that attracted people. It was here that they were told so much that was mysterious, that they received answers to their questions relating to their worldly prospects, and that they heard predictions about their supposed future, something that all people welcome eagerly. In addition to this, they were told things highly gratifying to their human passions, for here vice was elevated to virtue, while virtue was branded as vice. Whoever once became addicted to this kind of spirit communication found it difficult to desist from the habit. “As the leader of God’s people, Christ took two measures to try to prevent his followers from lapsing into idolatry. • One of these measures was to give them the opportunity of communicating with good spirits, as a substitute for the form of spirit communication that had been forbidden. He gave the Israelites the Tabernacle, the breastplate of judgment, and the good mediums, known to you as ‘prophets’, as I have already taught you at length in my previous accounts. • As the second measure, he commanded the Israelites to exterminate certain tribes into whose land they were to emigrate. There were six of them that had fallen into such idolatry and abomination that their conversion to a faith in God seemed impossible. Instead, there was every reason to fear that they would soon have corrupted the Israelites who settled among them. The command to exterminate these peoples has led many of you to look upon the God of the Old Testament as a cruel Deity and to maintain that the writers of the Old Testament were as yet incapable of conceptualizing a God such as Christ preached, since otherwise they would never have attributed such cruelty to the will of God. In this you are mistaken.
- 10 - • It was one and the same Christ who preached the conception of God that you find in the New Testament and who commanded the destruction of those idolatrous peoples. In one case as in the other, Christ appears as the Saviour. By ordering the extermination of those peoples, he preserved them from sinking still further into disbelief and depravity. • Christ indeed gave them the opportunity of working their way, in a new existence, out of the depths into which they had fallen. The underlying motive was the same as that which, in earlier times, had led to the [near] extinction of the human race in the Flood and the destruction of the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah. An even more important motive was that of preserving faith in God among God’s people. When men make war, they do not hesitate to shoot anyone who tries to induce a soldier to desert, a measure that you accept as perfectly justified. Was not God equally entitled to order the death of those who wanted to instigate his chosen bearers of the faith to desert their colours and to go over to the Powers of Darkness? Besides, it was through God’s people that the hour of the Redemption of all mankind was to be prepared. Was Christ, then, to stand idly by while this work, difficult enough at best, was ruined by those who were enemies of God and instruments of Lucifer? You mortals become very tender-hearted when God in His wisdom and justice orders the destruction of utterly wicked and irretrievably depraved people, lest they corrupt millions of others and in order that they themselves may as spirits be brought back into the path of salvation. Remember, also, that it was God who did these things, the Master of life and death, who had shown these people unmerited forbearance, even though they had committed everything abominable in His sight in their idol worship, going to the length of sacrificing their own children as burnt offerings to their idols. (Deuteronomy 12: 31) When making war upon other tribes the Israelites were commanded to conduct themselves humanely. Deuteronomy 20: 10: ‘When you approach another city to besiege it, you shall invite them to come to a peaceful agreement.’ They were forbidden even to injure fruit trees when laying siege to a city and were commanded to build their catapults of the wood of trees bearing no edible fruit. Moses received his first taste of the danger of idolatry in the story of the golden calf. Soon afterwards also, when they approached the land of Moab, Numbers 25: 1-2: ‘When the Israelites had settled down in Sittim, they began to engage in harlotry with the daughters of Moab, for these invited them to the sacrificial celebrations of their idols and the people of Israel took part in their sacrificial feasts and worshiped their gods.’ The harlotry alluded to here was part of the pagan ritual and was demanded by the demons through the mediums as particularly pleasing to their gods. It was part of the idol worship, as among all other heathen peoples. Armed with the weapon of idolatry and its attendant vices, the Powers of Evil subsequently did much harm among God’s people and thereby to the preparations for the Redemption. Almost entire generations of the Lord’s chosen people later forsook the true faith in God.
- 11 - In order to lead them back, God subjected them to terrible judgments. Christ sent the prophets in an effort to win them back to the good cause. These prophets were the mediums of the good spirit world, and they were hard put to maintain a successful fight against the influence of the demonic mediums, the ‘prophets of Baal’. God's true prophets were incarnated celestial spirits, although in their life as mortals they were quite as much exposed to evil as the rest of mankind. Thanks to their efforts, the belief in the true God and in the coming Redeemer were not completely eradicated among the generations that followed. The time finally came when a great part of humanity was ready, at least in their yearnings, to accept Christ’s act of Redemption in faith and to cross the bridge he was to build over the gulf dividing the realm of the abyss from the kingdom of God. Countless human souls stood waiting to cross. At last, the fullness of time had come when under God’s Plan of Salvation, the Redeemer was to appear. Shortly before Christ was born upon earth, he sent a herald to prepare for and proclaim his coming. This herald also was a celestial spirit, Elijah, the same spirit which, at a time when idolatry was at its worst, had come to earth on Christ’s behalf and had fought victoriously against the instruments of the Forces of Evil. After accomplishing his mission, he had been taken back to Heaven without having experienced earthly death. Now, as Christ’s predecessor, he was born as a mortal for the second time, as the son of Zacharias, and bore the name ‘John’. Even before John’s birth, the incarnation of God’s Anointed was foretold. The archangel Gabriel, who had brought Zacharias the message of the birth of John as the forerunner of Christ, was also entrusted with the message of the human birth of the Redeemer. Gabriel was sent to a virgin in Nazareth named Mary. She had been chosen as the mother of the saviour.
- 12 - 7. 1 The Human Birth of Jesus, his childhood and his siblings Procreation and birth in God’s Creation follow immutable laws. The union of the seed of the male and the female is required in every instance. • This is a law to which there is no exception! Human procreation can, therefore, come about only when the seed of a human male unites with that of a human female. • Hence, no discarnate spirit, celestial or infernal, can beget offspring without using a human body and human seed. You interpret the Biblical account of the conception of Christ as though a spirit from heaven had begotten the Child in a virgin’s womb without the aid of a male human body and male seed. This is an incorrect interpretation, And it gives countless people, believers and unbelievers, good ground for denying, or at any rate for doubting, the way in which the Son of God became a human being. Here we have an instance in which what is marvellous and unusual, although in complete accordance with the laws of nature, borders closely upon what is unreasonable and, hence, unbelievable. I will tell you the whole truth of the matter, for I know that you will understand it. When a deep-trance medium’s spirit has left his body and a foreign spirit has entered, that spirit is capable of using the organs of the body in precisely the same way as the medium’s own spirit. • Consequently, a foreign spirit, good or evil, that occupies the body of a male medium is capable of begetting offspring with a woman. Did I not, when speaking to you of the idolatry of antediluvian times, particularly call your attention to the carnal intercourse had by the evil spirits, through male mediums, with the daughters of men, by whom, according to the Bible’s own testimony, they had children? If this is possible for evil spirits, should it not be equally possible for the good ones? If the fallen ‘sons of God’ could beget children through human mediums and so corrupt mankind, ought not the faithful sons of God be able to do likewise on behalf of mankind’s salvation? Now you will understand the human conception of Christ without the need of any further explanation. • The human medium was Joseph, to whom Mary was betrothed. Spirits of God had already repeatedly spoken to Mary, through Joseph as their medium, of the coming Redemption. Such spirit messages were nothing out of the ordinary for her; as a matter of fact, the Jewish people generally were thoroughly familiar with communication with the spirit world. This is evident from the account in the Scriptures of the appearance of the angel to Zacharias. When Zacharias left the temple and was unable to speak, the people realized that he had been visited by a messenger from God. (Luke 1: 22)
- 13 - So, Mary was not alarmed when one day a spirit entered Joseph as its medium and brought her a message. But she was taken aback by the form of address the spirit used. It addressed her as ‘blessed among women’, by which the spirit indicated that she would become a mother. This was beyond her comprehension, as she had never had relations with any man and therefore could not be pregnant. But the angel answered and told her that a holy spirit would come upon her and the power of one most high would overshadow her. That is also why the holy being that would be born to her would be called a Son of God. The spirit then told her in detail how it would happen, a point on which your Bible is silent. It told her that, as soon as it had left the medium’s body, a very high heavenly spirit would enter the medium, and that she would become a mother through this spirit by the generally valid law of procreation. Thereupon Mary agreed to the plan. • After Gabriel had departed out of the medium and before Joseph had awakened from his mediumistic sleep, Christ himself entered Joseph’s body and through him Mary conceived under the same law that governs conception in all human mothers. Just moments before the birth, the spirit of Christ entered the body of the child, that is, at the same stage at which the incarnation of a spirit occurs with all mothers through the entry of the spirit into the infant organism. That this was the way in which Christ was begotten was well known to the early Christians, to whom it had been revealed in the same manner in which I am revealing it to you. They knew, therefore, that the human body of Christ had been begotten by Christ himself, using Joseph as his medium. That is to say, the holy spirit that, according to Gabriel’s message, was to come upon Mary was Christ himself. He wanted personally to perform everything that he held necessary to achieve the Redemption. He had taken the difficult preparatory work into his own hands from the outset, had chosen God’s people as the bearers of the faith, had led them, taught them, admonished, warned and chastised them. He had sent high spirits of heaven to earth as prophets. The last step in this preparation was begetting the human body that he would enter a few months later in his mother’s womb, so that, by being born as a mortal, he might mingle with mortals as one of them. As soon as Joseph had awakened from his deep trance Mary related to him the things that had happened. It was a hard test to which he now found himself subjected. Should he believe what his betrothed had told him? A terrible battle waged within him. Like all other men, he was but human. Evil assailed him fiercely. The Powers of Hell had but one end in view: to incite Joseph to doubt Mary and to cast her off, for under Jewish law, a betrothed young woman who was found to have had relations with another man was stoned to death. Evil sought to hammer home in him the belief that Mary had become involved with another man, and that she was now making use of the pretext that a spirit of God had used Joseph’s body while he was in a mediumistic state. There was nothing in the way of distrust, jealousy and bitterness to which men are prone by reason of disappointment that the Powers of Evil did not instil into Joseph. Their attacks were terrible and seemed to be more than he could bear. He was of half a mind to put his betrothed away secretly, for Joseph, being a righteous man, was unwilling, in the absence of positive proof that he had been deceived, to denounce a fellow creature for an offense the penalty for which was death. On the other hand, he was not ready to make his betrothed his wife as long as any misgivings persisted. Mary simply said
- 14 - that God would surely reveal the truth to him in one way or another. She, too, suffered unspeakably under his suspicions. That very night, an angel of the Lord appeared to the clairvoyant Joseph and explained everything to him. This ended the conflict within him. I realize that this truth – and it is the truth – will appear entirely too human and too much in accordance with the mundane laws of Nature to convince you mere mortals. It is not marvellous and mysterious enough to satisfy you. The human act of procreation is something debasing in the eyes of many, who, as it were, blame God for making it a part of the order of things. To their way of thinking, God is not chaste enough. Wretched beings that you are, to so misjudge the most wonderful laws enacted by God’s omnipotence and wisdom as exemplified in the procreation, the prenatal life, and the birth of a child! Christ, the highest of created spirits, did not find it beneath him to beget his own earthly body in conformity with the eternally fixed laws of procreation, in order that he might dwell, suffer and die among you. Even if the truth regarding his human conception may not be miraculous enough to suit you, for Christ everything is miraculous that happens according to the sacred laws of his heavenly Father, about which the preacher says: Ecclesiastes 3: 14: ‘I realize that everything that God has ordained is valid forever; nothing can be added to it, nor anything taken from it. God has arranged things thus so that men should revere Him.’ Unfortunately, you mortals do not feel this reverence! That is why you account for the incarnation of Christ by means of concocted theories, which, because of the alleged miracles they involve, are full of contradictions and furnish good grounds to the sceptics for deriding the first step Christ took in becoming a human. Had the incarnation of Christ not followed the laws of human procreation, Paul could not have said of him that he ‘became as one of us’. Then his conception would have differed fundamentally from that of other men. His body would not have come into being from human seed. But Paul was right. Christ became as one of you, even as regards the generation of his human body from human seed. Now I’ll come back to your request that I speak of certain doctrines of the Catholic Church that touch on this subject. As you were a priest of that church it is natural that you should be particularly eager to learn which of its doctrines are true and which are false. The Catholic Church teaches that the mother of Jesus was free from ‘original sin’. This is true, but not for the reasons advanced by your church. Like certain other mortals who lived before her and who had been called upon to perform the work of the Lord, Mary was an incarnated celestial spirit. The same was true of Enoch, Abraham, Moses, Elijah, and others of whom I have spoken. It was true also of John, the forerunner of Christ, in whom Elijah returned to earth.
- 15 - • In Mary, therefore, there was incarnated, not one of the spirits that had forsaken God, but one that had remained loyal to Him. She did not bear the sin of apostasy, which weighs upon all other terrestrial beings. That is the ‘original sin’ from which she was free. The Catholic doctrine, however, that Mary as a mortal was devoid of all sin, even the most venial, is utterly false. • There is no mortal who has no human failings, as you call them, but these have nothing in common with that sin from which Christ was to redeem the world, namely, the sin of having rebelled against God. That is the real sin. All others are human frailties, from which not even Mary was free. Nevertheless, she remained faithful to God, as did Moses, that high spirit from heaven, in spite of the fact that as a man he transgressed on more than one occasion, for which he was punished by not being allowed to enter the Promised Land. The Catholic Church is also wrong when it maintains that Mary remained a virgin even after the conception and the birth of Christ. She was, thereafter, no more a virgin than any woman who has conceived and given birth to a child. Only before Christ’s conception was she a virgin; it was not intended that the Redeemer should be born of a mother who had conceived and borne other children before him. That is the meaning of the words of Matthew: ‘Behold, the “virgin” shall conceive and bear a son.’ (Matthew 1:23) It is furthermore contrary to the truth when the Catholic Church maintains that no more children were born to Mary after the birth of Christ. On what grounds do you assume that after the birth of their first-born, she was willing to waive her right to be a mother, or that Joseph was ready to waive his rights as a husband and a father? The fact that Christ had brothers and sisters who were born after him in no way detracts from his person, or from his life, his teachings and his work. When the original texts of the New Testament speak in various places of the brothers and sisters of Jesus, they are referring to his own flesh and blood brothers and sisters, and not ‘kinsfolk’ as the Catholics desperately try to prove. Had they been ‘kinsfolk’, they would have been called such, and not ‘brothers and sisters’, or do you suppose that the language of those days had no word to express the concept ‘kinsfolk’? You cannot maintain this seriously, for in the story of the twelve-year-old Jesus in the temple, it is related that his parents looked for him ‘among their “kinsfolk” and acquaintances’, from which you see that where ‘kinsfolk’ is meant, the Evangelist uses the word for ‘kinsfolk’. When the same Evangelist later writes: ‘His mother and his brothers came to him.’ (Luke 8: 19), he is surely not trying to convey the meaning that these were merely kinsmen who came with his mother. Also, the people who reported the arrival of his mother and brothers said to him: ‘Your mother and your “brothers” are outside and want to speak to you.’ Matthew and Mark likewise relate that Christ’s ‘mother’ and his ‘brothers’ had come to see him. Do you believe that all three Evangelists used the word ‘brothers’ when they meant ‘kinsfolk’, in which case that was the word they could and should have used? Any such assumption is foolish. Furthermore, in telling of the appearance of Jesus in his native village of Nazareth, Matthew reports: ‘When he came to his native village Nazareth, he preached in the synagogue there and his words impressed his hearers so deeply that they asked of one another:
- 16 - Matthew 13: 54-56: ‘From where does this man have all this wisdom and the power to perform miracles? Is he not the son of the carpenter? Is not his mother’s name Mary, and are not his brothers named James, Joseph, Simon and Judah? Do not his sisters also live here among us? How has he come by all this? ”’ Can any rationally minded person contend that this enumeration of the father, mother, brothers and sisters of Jesus refers to kinsfolk only? Just as the reference in this case is to the real father and mother of Jesus, so too his real brothers and sisters are meant. What purpose could be served by listing the names of his kinsfolk? The inhabitants of Nazareth were astonished at his words and his teachings and asked each other, as you would under similar circumstances: Whence has he all these things? His father, the carpenter, is a man like the rest of us. Mary, his mother, is a simple, unpretentious woman, and his brothers and sisters are nothing out of the ordinary, for his brothers, James, Joseph, Simon and Judas, live among us and we see them every day, but we have never discovered anything unusual in any of them, and as for his sisters, all of them live in this village and are no different from any of the other women of Nazareth. How does it happen that of all the family, Jesus is the only one who is so wonderfully gifted? The contention that the expressions ‘brothers’ and ‘sisters’ of Jesus, as they are used here, refer to ‘kinsfolk’ only, is too absurd to be advanced by anyone without an ulterior motive. You can see here how one falsehood must be supported by another. The Catholic Church has taken the unreasonable stand that Mary remained a virgin in spite of the fact that she bore Jesus, a position that would, of course, be utterly untenable in the face of an admission that she afterwards gave birth to other children. However, there are many references in the Bible to the brothers and sisters of Jesus. Since this conflict with the doctrine of Mary’s perpetual virginity, these historically established brothers and sisters must be branded as ‘kinsfolk’. Otherwise, the dogma of Mary’s perpetual virginity, and, with it, that of papal infallibility, would collapse. • The birth of Jesus took its course like any other human birth, as regards both the mother and the child. The newly-born infant was nursed, cared for and eventually weaned, as are all children. The message of the angels to the shepherds, their salutation of the Redeemer of mankind who had appeared, the presentation of Jesus in the temple, and the coming of the Wise Men of the East all happened exactly as related in your New Testament. These Wise Men were Divine instruments and were highly gifted with mediumistic powers. In their homelands they were the dispensers of the true faith, and through their communication with the good spirit world they had been initiated into many of the truths relating to the Salvation of mankind. The same spirit world that had proclaimed the birth of the Saviour to the shepherds also brought the tidings of the happy event to the Magi. It had already been foretold as imminent by messengers from God. They were now invited to set out in search of the child in whom the Son of God was incarnated. The name of the place at which the child lay was withheld from them, but they were told that a ray of light would go before them to guide them on their way. Not only the Wise Men, but everyone else saw this light, which appeared as a bright star moving before them and leading them, as Moses and the people of Israel had once been led by the pillar of cloud. Their journey took them first to Herod in Jerusalem. This was an act of God, by which that earthly prince was to be apprised of the human birth of him who was to rule the world, and in order that the destiny of the children of Bethlehem might be fulfilled, as had been foretold by the prophet. Here again the spirit forces who were against Christ inspired Herod with
- 17 - fear for his throne and thus drove him to perpetrate the slaughter of the children, in order that the new-born herald of the truth might perish. The Magi did not reach Bethlehem until after the presentation of Jesus in the temple, his parents having gone there with the child on their way back from Jerusalem and intending to stay for a while before returning to Nazareth. It was during their stay in Bethlehem that the Wise Men appeared, and after the latter had set out for home, the parents of the child also prepared to continue on their way, but a messenger of God appeared to Joseph, warning him to flee into Egypt with his wife and child, as Herod, who on first learning of the birth of a new King of the Jews had determined to destroy him, was now on the point of carrying out his design. After the Christ child had grown out of infancy, his childhood was like that of other children. He learned to walk and to speak, and he played, like the rest. On occasions, he misbehaved, as all children will. With the passing of his boyhood his understanding developed, and inasmuch as he was the incarnation of the highest of created spirits, he was also highly gifted. Nevertheless, he had to begin to learn things as everybody does, even the most gifted. As a child he came to know of God exactly as you yourself did, namely, by what he learned from his parents and teachers. He listened to sermons on God in the synagogue of his native village, and discussed them with his elders, of whom he asked for explanations of the things that he had not understood or that did not seem right to him. Moreover, he was assailed by those temptations that come to all children of men and are of a strength in keeping with a youth’s powers of resistance. He overcame these temptations to the same degree that his knowledge of evil increased with the advancing years. Nevertheless, there were times when he erred and was guilty of failings due to human weakness, as is the case with the best of children. • With every victory over temptation the boy received from God greater inner strength and knowledge of the spirit. As his power of resistance grew, the Forces of Evil were permitted to increase the strength of their assaults upon him. It is so with every mortal. No exception was made in favour of the boy Jesus, for it is a law that applies to all men alike that they gain in ability to resist sin with every victory over temptation, while, on the other hand, Evil is left free to proceed with more vigour than ever, with the result that the whole life of a God- fearing man is a constant battle with the hostile powers. ‘A life of war is the lot of man upon earth.’ As the boy Jesus grew in years, the numerous errors of the Jewish faith professed by his parents caused himmany an inward struggle. These were all the errors that had been introduced in the course of time by the Jewish church in the form of manmade doctrines and alleged amendments to the law of God. When he had reached the point of being able to read and understand the original texts of the Old Testament, Jesus began to question the interpretations given by the teachers of Jewish law, but whenever, in his youthful frankness, he expressed these views to his parents or teachers, he was severely rebuked. It was these convictions conflicting with Jewish religious doctrines that, at the age of 12, he laid before the priests in the temple at Jerusalem, much to their amazement, putting questions to them and replying to theirs out of his own wisdom. To be sure, he was in this respect what you call a ‘child prodigy’, such as you find in all branches of human endeavour. This boy was a ‘child prodigy’ in his knowledge of God’s ways of Salvation. But he was human, like all other humans.
- 18 - • At first he did not know who he was, or what mission he was destined to fulfill as a mortal. However, soon after he had reached the age of reason, Jesus began to exhibit great mediumistic powers. These consisted of the gifts of clairvoyance and clairaudience, which gradually attained great perfection, enabling him to communicate with the spirit world, to see the spirits as a clairvoyant, and as a clairaudient to hear the words spoken by them. These gifts with which the maturing youth was endowed were nothing new; many others before him had possessed them. But in the case of this envoy of God, the gifts were developed to the highest degree attainable by man. Through his communication with the Divine spirit world he was taught, while on earth, everything he needed for the execution of his task, for in these matters he, as a mortal, was as ignorant as all the rest. • Jesus had no recollection of his previous state as the highest of God’s spirits, because in every instance, the incarnation of a spirit in a material body destroys all memory of the past. Therefore, the things that Christ preached while he was on earth were taught to him by the spirit world, as Moses had learned all those things which he later proclaimed to the people by inquiring of God in the Tabernacle. Thus, Jesus passed from boyhood through adolescence to manhood, and as he grew older, his wisdom increased, not only in the way in which this is the case with all people as they mature, but also, above all, by reason of the teachings he received from the Divine spirits. Hand in hand with this went the growth of his goodness, or, as your Bible expresses it: Luke 2: 52: ‘Jesus grew in age and wisdom and became day by day dearer to God and to man.’ It was real progress and not merely a gradual disclosure of himself, as your religion maintains. As a mortal. Christ was not perfect from the outset, as no spirit incarnated in human form can be perfect. All matter is inherently base and full of imperfections. Even a spirit that enters, pure and flawless, into the garment of flesh must, during its life as a human being, fight its way step by step through the debasing influence of evil toward perfection. The weaknesses and failings of every human body react upon the spirit it houses, and it, however perfect it may be, must constantly wrestle with them and can never quite free itself from them during its earthly existence. This is a part of human nature from which not even Christ was exempt. To his last breath he had to fight against these failings, and more than once he succumbed to human weakness in his battle with Evil. In the garden of Gethsemane even this mighty conqueror turned faint and weak, praying that the Father might let the cup of suffering pass from him, yet adding: ‘Not my will, but Thine be done.’ He knew that it was the Father’s will that he must suffer, and his outcry reveals the weak, imperfect mortal, whose nature, being human, quails and rebels at the thought of an agonizing death. A perfect being would have said: ‘Father, send whatsoever torments thou wilt and deemest best. I will endure them.’ He would not have said: ‘Take them away.’ And it was human frailty that spoke through him from the Cross, when he uttered the plaint: ‘My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?’ This cry would never have been uttered by a human being perfect in every way, but such
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy MjI1MzY3