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January 7-8th, 2008
Santa Cruz, California
Received by FAB
I am here, Jonathan Edwards.
Yes, just as you have suspected, I have had more poor souls than
I can remember come to me with their sad stories, and I saw that
I profoundly misrepresented the Loving God to them.
I see you are curious about my story, so I will oblige you.
When my soul left my body, I felt as light as a feather. I had
often wondered what Heaven must be like, and I knew that I was passing
from this world of tears to a much better one. I looked down on
my body, all sick and careworn, and I had the elated thought, "It's
happened! And I will be there." Then I thought over a lifetime,
and how all the troubles I had would be gone forever.
I was hardly able to focus on these thoughts, for I found myself
in the presence of my beloved grandfather, whom I had assisted in
his ministry, and who had meant a great deal to me. I was overwhelmed
with joy to see him. The first thing he said is that I had nothing
to fear. Though I had often speculated about the afterlife, actually
being there was a shock, and my grandfather's timely comment helped
greatly to relieve the anxiety and discomfort of these strange new
surroundings.
And it was strange to me, unfamiliar because I had read nothing
in the Bible that corresponded with what I saw. But I assumed I
must be in Heaven because everything was so beautiful.
After visiting with other spirits who were family and friends,
my grandfather, noticing my surprise and discomfort, commenced,
in a gentle and gradual way, to explain to me that many things I
believed were simply not true. He explained that he was talking
to me out of concern and benevolence, and that what he said would
be corroborated by my future experiences in this different world.
And he was right, for after much time in these unaccustomed surroundings,
I found myself in a very different place, which was much darker
and much less beautiful.
Let me satisfy your curiosity. You read that I often would sit
in rapture about God's greatness and goodness, so why would my place
of habitation not be correspondingly beautiful?
Well, these sincere periods of contemplation were really just
pious speculation. They could not alter the unhappiness that came
upon me when I began to realize that I had misled not only myself
but so many others.
The Great God Jehovah I never saw, as I had expected to. I thought
I would be sitting near the Father's throne singing hosannas to
the Prince of Peace and the Lamb of God. But instead, all I experienced
was a certain unfriendly dullness on the part of my surroundings
and my neighbors.
You have the thought, if I had been so rigorous in my moral inventory
of myself, why wouldn't this be reflected in my surroundings? After
all, you channeled Francis of Assisi as saying that he inherited
happiness.
Well, I have talked with him, and he told me that there was some
unhappiness he also experienced as a result of his erroneous beliefs.
You do not know me as I was on earth. I did love and care for
people. Yes, I certainly did. But as I now see it, this love for
my fellow mortals, and my preoccupation with religion, could not
overcome a certain hardness of heart, which resulted from my theological
beliefs. I was completely sincere in my profession of faith, but
I didn't attend to those matters that Francis of Assisi did, to
the extent that he did. No, I lived in a different type of space,
and I found over here that there was much I did not comprehend that
Francis understood perfectly well.
This comparison with Francis of Assisi is healthy for you. You
are learning the relative importance of theology in the happiness
or unhappiness of spirits. What you have trouble understanding is,
why was Francis' experience so much happier than mine, when his
theology was exactly the same?
Well, his emphasis, both in his mind and his soul, was more in
accord with the Master. That is, he lived his life and conducted
his inner life more according to Truth, as I now see it.
What perplexes you is the mystery of the human soul. And what
you must realize in my case is what you already know: that soul
condition is the most important factor for spirits. It so happened
that my theological beliefs actually impeded my soul development,
whereas Francis' inner life was closer to the original purity of
the Master's inner life.
But my inner rigor served me well, for as I gradually learned
the truth, I began to progress. My regrets and my remorse were great,
and it felt at times that I would never overcome them, but I did,
with the help of many kind Angels and those spirits who had taken
a particular interest in my life.
At a certain stage in my spirit life, the thought dawned on me
that the Heaven I pined away for on earth could actually be mine,
and that I could attain this Heaven by praying for God's Love. No
matter how many I had misled, I realized that I had the key to my
own salvation.
So instead of torturing and tormenting myself, I used my considerable
energy and commitment, which I had always possessed, toward this
great end of bringing God's Love into my soul. I was told that It
would result in new and different feelings, and sure enough, this
happened.
After this joyful experience, I focused on this Love. I found
that my earthly diligence with my inner life was very helpful. The
virtues of self-control and moral rigor were now transferred to
this great Love, and as I progressed, so my happiness increased,
until I got into the true Heaven. And what I saw there was beyond
words to describe.
As I look back on my entire spiritual life, I see that I was dedicated
to the things of God, and that I was able to bring forward in my
pursuit of God's Love the same qualities that I possessed on earth.
So from this, you can learn that character strengths and virtues
always benefit a spirit, and sometimes in surprising and unexpected
ways.
Well, I have given you this rather long description of my experience
for your edification and enrichment. I can assure you that I am
now a most happy and light spirit, who is entirely unencumbered
with beliefs that surprise me now. And yet that's who I was.
Jonathan Edwards (October 5, 1703 – March 22, 1758)
was a colonial American Congregational preacher, theologian, and
missionary to Native Americans. Edwards "is widely acknowledged
to be America's most important and original philosophical theologian".
He is known as one of the greatest and most profound of American
theologians and revivalists. His work is very broad in scope, but
he is often associated with his defense of Calvinist theology, the
metaphysics of theological determinism, and the Puritan heritage.
His famous sermon "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God,"
emphasized the just wrath of God against sin and contrasted it with
the provision of God for salvation; the intensity of his preaching
sometimes resulted in members of the audience fainting, swooning,
and other more obtrusive reactions. The swooning and other behaviors
in his audience caught him up in a controversy over "bodily
effects" of the Holy Spirit's presence. (Source: Wikipedia)
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