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February 18th, 1958
Received by Dr Samuels
Washington D.C.
I am here, Jesus.
In my ninth sermon, I wrote about the New Heart, and how it was that
in the long intervals of time recorded in the Old Testament, men became
aware that if man turned to God, He would help them become men after His
Own Heart, which, to them, meant a soul free of evil, and imbued with
a sense of righteousness, justice and mercy towards one another. I showed
how this took place in the time of the prophet Samuel with the anointing
of Saul, and how in later times the prophets were convinced that, in the
course of time, God would pour out His Spirit upon His children and give
them a New Heart, wherein the soul would be without evil and sin, and
bright with the purity of justice, love and mercy.
Now in my last sermon I also mentioned specifically Ezekiel and Jeremiah,
for they were those prophets who made principal use of the term, the New
Heart, or the heart of flesh, in the sense that purification of the soul
was available to man when man sought God's Aid in obtaining it. In fact,
the message received by the prophets said that the day would come when
man would be ready to receive His Help, and that God promised His Help
when that day would come.
But when, as a youth, I studied the Old Testament with the Father's Love
already aglow, and increasing steadily in my own soul, I found that purification
of man's soul was available to humanity by obedience to His Commands as
found in the Ten Commandments given to Moses, and that the promise of
the New Heart, the heart of flesh, wherein the Spirit of God was to be
poured out upon mankind, must mean something above and beyond what was
then available to mankind. And I found, with the Father Himself my mentor,
that the Way to soul divinity was not through sacrifices or rituals out
of fear, nor in the development of the human love, but in doing His Will
of obtaining His Love through sincere prayer to Him.
And I found that, alongside of the concept of God as one who exulted
in the blood of His enemies, or one who punished a believer if he did
not conform exactly to the rituals of the many offerings, which, I must
tell you, God never commanded Moses to write, there was a growing understanding
of God as a Father who loves His children, who exulted in kindness and
mercy and righteousness, wherein His children could come to him and purify
their souls of their defilement. And I saw, from the basis in the inspired
writings in the Old Testament, that God was a God of Divine Love and Mercy,
and that the New Heart promised by God for man was a soul filled with
His Love, which would not only purify that soul but make of it a new soul,
immortal in its possession of the Father's Love. And the Father's Love
in my own soul told me that the New Heart, which up to the time of my
coming could mean only a purified soul, meant that the soul of mankind
could now be transformed into a divine soul, filled with the Father's
Essence, Divine Love, and that I, Jesus of Nazareth, son of Joseph and
Mary, did possess in my soul the Father's Love and that I was to that
extent, divine. In that way I realized that I was the Anointed One, the
Messiah, through whom salvation was to be given to mankind, and that in
me the New Heart of the Old Testament had been fulfilled.
Now for mankind to know and appreciate the wonderful Love and Mercy of
the Father in granting His Divine Essence for the eternal life of His
children with increasing happiness for them throughout all everlasting
time, mankind had to develop an understanding of what this Love was and
its power of eliminating evil, and the only way it could be done was through
the record of the story of human love, for this is what man had been endowed
with at his creation, and was something which he could understand.
And so the message of love in the Old Testament is one of human love,
with the promise of that Greater Love which I was sent to make available
to mankind. But the story of that Greater Love, interrupted by my death
and misunderstood by those who followed my apostles, has been unfolded
fully only to souls in the world of spirits. And those who have accepted
this message as true have come unto the Glory of the Father, and are living
with Him in the Celestial Heavens, redeemed children of the Father and
divine angels of Divine Love. But those souls who live in the material
world, and many who lived in the material world since the day I proclaimed
the message of Divine Love to mankind, are not hearing the message which
I proclaimed, and are seeking their way to God through the development
of their human love, and this love cannot lead to the Celestial Heavens
and the divine soul, but only to the Spiritual Heavens of the purified,
but still human, soul.
Now the development of human love in the Old Testament is a narrative
about which many volumes can be written, and I cannot in these sermons
do more than to lay down the guiding lines for further elaboration, but
already in Abraham, the man after God's heart, human love shines forth.
His love of his son Isaac, breaking with the practice of human sacrifice,
current during his day to appease the deities of wrath in which mankind
then believed; his pleadings with God that
sinful Sodom be spared; his proposals
to Lot, his brother's son, for a peaceful settlement of their dispute
over cattle; and his rescue of this same Lot from captivity when Sodom
was taken by marauding chieftains reveal the love which Abraham had
for his fellowman and for his God many hundreds of years before the First
Commandment to Moses was given to the people as a binding Commandment
from Jehovah.
And the Old Testament writers are concerned with Jacob, son of Isaac,
the digger of wells, and how Jacob became prince of Israel after his turbulent
years of deceit and trickery. From
the robbing of his brother's birthright and blessings, one comes to
a different Jacob, a person who shows
his sorrow when his sons killed the males of the people of Hamor and
Shechem, who sought to marry Dinah, after he had defiled her. And Jacob,
many years after deceiving his brother, seeks not to escape or fight Esau,
but decides upon some restitution in the form of a gift. And Esau, when
he saw his younger brother, ran to meet him, and embraced him, and
fell on his neck, and kissed him, and
they wept.
And this was the kind of human love, between father, brother and son,
which mankind could understand, and had to first understand before they
could understand the love which the Heavenly Father has for His children.
In my next sermon I shall continue with the development of the human
love in the Old Testament.
Jesus of the Bible
and
Master of the Celestial Heavens
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