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March 18th, 1916
Received by:James Padgett.
Washington D.C.
I am here, St. John, Apostle of Jesus.
I wish to write tonight on a subject that is of importance to the
members of the orthodox churches as to the belief in the efficacy
of the atonement of Jesus by his death and crucifixion.
All the orthodox believe and their preachers and evangelists teach
in their sermons and addresses, and the teachers of Bible classes
instruct their students, that the blood of Jesus and his death on
the cross were the two factors in his career on earth that save
men from their sins and satisfy the great penalty of death which
overhangs them, because of man's first disobedience and the sins
that followed therefrom.
Well, this doctrine has prevailed in the beliefs and teachings
of the church ever since the church became established by the convention
that met in pursuance of the orders of Constantine, when the books
that now constitute the Bible were given the sanction of the church
as canonical. Before this time some of the early fathers believed
in the doctrine of the atonement as above stated, and the controversies
between them and others who did not subscribe to this doctrine were
very bitter, and at times, very unchristian according to the Christianity
that prevailed among the early followers of the Master, or according
to his teachings.
From that time until the present, although the great Roman church
has been seceded from and reforms have been made by churches founded
on such reforms, this doctrine has been incorporated in and believed
by most of the churches, no matter what name they may have adopted
and what form of government they may have prescribed.
This doctrine constitutes the foundation principles of these various
bodies of church entity, and to-day, these principles are as much
a part of faith and teachings of the churches as they ever were
in all the centuries that have passed.
Of course, with this cardinal doctrine there have also become incorporated
in these faiths and teachings certain other principles, which apply
more to the individual members of the church than to the church
itself as a body. I mean belief in the truth that there is a close
relationship between God and the individual which may be established
by prayer and the longings of the soul for the inflowing of God's
love, and the regeneration of the nature of man by the influence
of this love by the Father.
But in these latter days, this truth has been known to and its
workings experienced by a comparatively few of those who call themselves
orthodox Christians. The large majority has depended upon the belief
in the doctrine that Jesus, by his sacrifice and death, paid the
debt which man owed to God; and when the members of the church in
an intellectual belief assert that they believe in and accept Jesus
as their Saviour because he paid the debt, and by the shedding of
his blood washed away their sins and made them at one with the Father,
and thereby became saved from the wrath of the Father, and in a
moment become the truly redeemed and accepted children of God, and
that as long as they maintain that belief and attend to their duties
as such members and observe the regulations of the church, they
are safe and fitted for the enjoyment of heaven and the presence
of the Father.
They also believe that unless a man accepts Jesus as his Saviour,
in the way I have mentioned, that man will be eternally lost, and
in the beliefs and teachings of some of these members, will be sent
to hell to be eternally damned and punished.
Well one view of this doctrine is just as true as the other, or
rather just as untrue because both of these phases of belief have
no foundation in fact, and are not in accord with the teachings
of the Master, or with the fact as I know it to be, not from any
mere belief but from personal experience and observation.
Oh, how the pure teachings of the Master have been distorted and
made the means of preventing so many human souls from reaching the
heaven of happiness that they wished for, and that they thought
would be theirs when they should give up their mortal lives.
This doctrine, so long believed, has worked the damnation of many
a man, as regards his soul development and his becoming at one with
the Father and reaching the heavens that are prepared for those
who obtain that soul union with the Father.
I know it may seem surprising to some, who are really, true, believers
in this doctrine and, as they think, in the truths of God and the
teachings of Jesus, which are believed to be infallibly contained
in the Bible, that I announce the falsity of these beliefs and their
utter ineffectiveness in enabling these sincere people to obtain
that which they so earnestly desire.
But such is truth, and truth never changes, never compromises with
untruth, and never permits the erroneous beliefs of a really sincere
mortal to swerve in one iota from the results and consequences of
that false belief. And the great injury that this false doctrine
has done to humanity, and is now doing, will continue in the world
to come, until the belief in truth shall supercede the belief in
that which is false. And thus not everyone who shall say "Lord,
Lord," will enter into the Kingdom of Heaven.
These false beliefs have operated in two ways to injure man and
render him unfit for an entrance into the Kingdom. First, by the
belief that brings about the injury that results from the positive
operation of error, which is great; and next by the want of belief
in the truth, which prevents progress in the acquirement of those
qualities which belong to and are necessary parts of that truth.
When men believe in the doctrine that I have stated they become
satisfied, and, knowingly or not, remain in a state of false security,
not attempting to develop the soul qualities, which are the only
ones that are in relationship with God. Their mental beliefs are
strong and may increase in strength, but their soul communions with
the Father and their growth and expansion in the soul development,
becomes stagnant and, as it were, dead.
This is the great injury that these false beliefs do to the man
and to the spirit. I mean in his individual capacity, for it must
be known as a truth, that the salvation of man or his soul progress
towards an at-onement with the Father is an individual matter solely,
and men as aggregations or in church communities are not redeemed
from sin, nor as such, can they have any relationship with the Father
or receive His Divine Love, which is the only salvation.
There is only one possible way in which man can come in unison
and at-onement with the Father, and thereby fitted to enjoy or inhabit
the mansions in His Kingdom, which Jesus spoke of when on earth,
and that is the way that will make the soul of man like the soul
of the Father, and a partaker of his Divine Qualities of Love and
Life. No belief that will not bring about this uniting and commingling,
as it were can possibly make the soul of man a partaker of these
qualities that are a part of the soul of God.
Then let man consider for a moment what possible connection there
can be between these Soul Qualities of God and the death and blood
of Jesus. God is the creator of life and death, and also of blood
and flesh, and He can destroy as well as create. Had the sins of
man called for the sacrifice of that which was mere flesh and blood,
or the extinguishment of a life that God had created in order to
pay the penalty of that sin, then a God who demanded such a payment
- and this implies of course, that such a God was wrathful and could
only be appeased by something that He could not of and by Himself
obtain - would not possibly be satisfied with that which He had
created and over which He still had absolute control, and which
He could destroy and make non-existent at any time He pleased. Jesus'
life was already a possession of God, and when he surrendered that
life he did not give to God anything that he did not already own
and could not have taken. And when his blood flowed on the cross,
it was not that which God could not have made flow at any time and
in any manner.
So the absurdity of such a doctrine is too apparent for serious
consideration. For its logical meaning is that God was demanding
a debt that had long been unpaid, all wrathful and insatiable, and
would be satisfied only with the death of a living being and the
flowing of his blood; and that death and that flow of blood in one
way or manner only, namely, on the cross. And yet with all this
demand that has been sounding down the ages for centuries, relentlessly
and unpityingly, He became satisfied and His wrath assuaged by seeing
His own creature die - and that creature His best beloved son -
and by hearing the trickling of the blood of that creature from
a wooden cross; by all which, the life and the blood being already
His to let live or destroy as He might see fit, man became at one
with Him.
The simple reduction of such a proposition is that God, in order
to pay a debt that was owing to Him, accepted in payment thereof
that which was already His, and which no power or being in all His
universe could have taken from Him.
Now, I say all this reverently as your preachers say, but the fact
is, that the mere assertion of such a doctrine, as I have been dealing
with, is so blasphemous that no treatment of it, showing its falsity,
could be irreverent.
And again, the absurdity of believing that God demanded that Jesus
should die on the cross as one of the necessary accompaniments of
his death, in order to carry out God's plan for this death and make
the payment satisfactory, is so apparent and absurd, that I and
all of us spirits in the Kingdom of the Father wonder that mortals
can believe such an unreasonable dogma.
To follow this absurd proposition to its logical conclusion, it
was necessary not only, in order that the debt might be paid, that
Jesus should die on the cross, but that Judas should become the
traitor, that the Jews should clamor for his death and that Pilate
should pronounce the sentence. These were all necessary means to
the satisfaction of the debt, and being so, why is it then that
Judas and Pilate and the Jews are not saviors of mankind also, even
if you say in a secondary sense. Jesus could not have clamored for
his own death, or erected his own cross or nailed himself thereto,
or pierced his side with a spear in order that the blood might flow,
for if he had done this he would have been a suicide; but it may
be, there would have been more of the elements of the payment of
a debt in that method of dying than in the way in which his death
was brought about.
No, I tell you, I, John, who loved the Master more than all the
others and who was closer to him, who was with him when he was nailed
to the cruel cross, which I think of with horror, and who was among
the first to take his body from the tree and first felt his blood
upon my hands - tell you that the death of Jesus on the cross did
not pay any debt that man owed to God, nor did his blood wash away
the sins of any man. And oh, the pity of it all is that mortals
for all these long years have believed that they were saved by his
sacrifice and blood, and by such belief have never come any nearer
to the Master or in at-onement with the Father.
As I and others have written you, the only way in which man can
be saved from his sins and become in at-onement with the Father,
is by the New Birth which the Master has described to you as being
the result of the flowing into the soul of a man of the Divine Love
of the Father, and the disappearing of everything that tends to
sin and error. As this Love flows into a man's soul it permeates
that soul as does leaven the batch of dough, and that soul partakes
of this Divine Love and thereby becomes like the Father in His Divine
Nature, and fitted to inhabit His Kingdom.
Now, you can readily see that there can be no possible relationship
existing between the death of Jesus on the cross and his blood,
and the giving to the soul of a man those Divine Qualities that
belong to the Father's Nature. These Qualities are not imparted
to man by death and blood, but by life and love and faith which
comes with that Love - and here when I say faith, I do not mean
the mere intellectual belief of which I have spoken.
As we have before written, when the first parents were created
they were not given this Divine Love, but the mere possibility of
obtaining it upon their seeking for it in the Way that God had provided.
It was not forced upon them, but it was optional with them whether
they would receive it and become fitted to inhabit the Kingdom of
Heaven. When they committed their act of disobedience they forfeited
this privilege, and, as to it, died, and were left without a mediator
between themselves and God. And here I don't mean any mediator in
the way of paying a debt, for they owed no debt to God - they were
merely, as you mortals might say, disinherited children; and the
only mediator that man needed after that time was one through whom
might come the Glorious Tidings that the Father had changed His
Will, or forgiven the disobedience to the extent of restoring his
original state, which is the re-bestowal of the privilege of obtaining
into their souls His Divine Love.
And, in this sense, never was there any mediator between God and
man until the coming of Jesus and his announcing to man that the
Father had changed His Will and had restored to mankind the great
privilege of partaking of His Divine Nature and Immortality. And
thus, as in the first man, Adam, all men died, so in the man Jesus,
were all men made alive. And Jesus was the mediator not only in
declaring to man the re-bestowal of this Great Gift of the Divine
Love and Immortality, but, also, in showing the Way by which men
could and must seek for that Gift in order to possess It.
The Great Gift of God to man was not Jesus, but the potentiality
of obtaining the Divine Love of the Father and thus becoming Divine
and fitted to reside in the mansions of the Kingdom of Heaven.
And thus Jesus became the Resurrection and the Life and brought
Immortality to light. How much greater a saviour than by paying
a supposed debt by his death and blood.
No, he is the saviour of man by his living and his teachings, for
he was the first to receive this Divine Love and to become Divine
himself, and the first fruits of the resurrection. We have explained
to you before in detail, some of the truths that I have declared
in this message, and it is not necessary to further explain them
here.
In closing, I wish to declare with all the emphasis that I possess,
arising from a knowledge based upon the teachings of the Master
and my personal experience as a possessor of this Divine Love and
a partaker of the Father's Divine Nature, that no vicarious atonement
of Jesus, nor the shedding of his blood, saves any man from sin
or makes him a redeemed child of the Father, or fits him for a home
in the mansions of the Celestial Spheres.
With a love that can come only from a redeemed and Divine nature
I love all mankind, and am working to help them find the way to
life and immortality and happiness beyond the conception of mortals
or spirits who have not received this New Birth of the Divine Love
of the Father.
I have written enough for tonight and you are
tired.
So my dear brother, with all my love and the blessings of a heart
filled with the Love of the Father, I am
Your brother in Christ,
John.
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