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January 22nd, 1917
Received by James Padgett
Washington D.C.
I am here, Elohiam (Euliam).
I am the spirit of a Jew who lived in the time of Jesus and was
a member of the Sanhedrin and sat as one of his judges at the time
of his condemnation for blasphemy and iconoclastic teachings against
the beliefs and doctrines of the Hebrew faith, and was one of those
who voted for the sentence of death upon him, and in doing so was
as honest in my conviction and action as it was possible for an
earnest believer in his faith to be.
Consequently, I was without prejudice against Jesus as a man and,
as I believed, a fanatic; and it was only because I was convinced
that he was an assailer of, and dangerous to, our religion and the
welfare of my race that I consented to his death. Mortals of these
days cannot fully understand the exact relationship of Jesus and
his teachings to the security of our religion and the preservation
of the faith which we believed had been handed down to us by God
direct through our prophets and teachers, and when we were confronted
with what we believed to be the destructive and irreligious teachings
of Jesus and after making the numerous efforts to suppress him by
threats and persuasion without effect, we concluded that our absolute
and indisputable duty to God demanded that he be removed from the
sphere of his activity even though such result could only be accomplished
by his death.
And if mortals of the present day could understand our deep religious
convictions and the sense of obligation that rested upon us to protect
and keep whole the divine doctrines and teachings of our faith and
especially that one which declared the oneness of God, they would
not judge the action of the Jews in condemning Jesus to death to
be a thing unusual or unexpected. He stood in the position to us
and to our religion of a breeder of sedition just as in modern times
men have occupied the position towards the civil governments of
breeders of treason and have suffered the punishments which have
been with approval inflicted upon them by such governments.
But to us he appeared not only guilty of treason to our national
life, but of treason to the higher and God-given life of the religious
government of our race, the chosen one of God, as we sincerely and
zealously believed. Even in latter days men have appeared and claimed
to be the especially anointed of God with missions to perform and
have gathered around them a following of people whom they have impressed
with the truth of their character and mission and of their teachings,
and for a short time were permitted to declare their claims and
doctrines and then suddenly brought to death by the decree of those
who were in authority, as trouble-makers and enemies of the church
or state, and have been forgotten and their doctrines disappeared
from memory. And only in the instance of Jesus has his death been
remembered through all the ages, and those who were the cause and
responsible for his death have been desecrated and cursed and charged
with the murder of God.
Well, I write this to show you that the Jews who took the life
and demanded the crucifixion of that just man were actuated by motives
other or different from those that have many times since caused
the very followers and worshippers of that Jesus to murder and crucify
other men who have claimed to be the sons of God endowed with special
missions for the salvation of mankind.
The sincerity of the Jews who took part in this great tragedy cannot
be assailed, and even their Roman masters at the time understood
that the demands for the death of Jesus did not arise from personal
spite, or the satisfaction of any revenge against the individual,
but solely because they believed and so declared that Jesus was
an enemy and would-be destroyer of the divine faith and teachings
of the Israelite nation, and a seducer of the people, and it is
only because of the subsequent rise and spread of his teachings
and the truths that he declared - which have made so large a portion
of the inhabitants of the earth followers of him - that the act
of the Jews in causing his death has been called the great crime
of the world and the people themselves to be hated and persecuted
and destroyed as a nation and scattered to all points of the earth.
I do not write this to excuse or palliate the great error which
we committed in causing the crucifixion and death of the true son
of God, but only to show that they, though as I now know, mistakenly,
did that which other men with the same faith and convictions and
zealous for the religious preservation of the nation, be these men
Jews or Gentiles or pagans, would have done in similar circumstances.
But the great element of tragedy in all this is not that Jesus was
crucified, but that the Jews were so mistaken and failed to recognize
and accept Jesus as their long looked for Messiah and Deliverer,
not from their material conditions of bondage, but from the bondage
of sin and error in which they have lived for so many centuries.
This, I say, was their tragedy, and it has been their lasting and
deadly tragedy from that time until the present day, and the prospects
are that it will continue theirs for many years to come, and that
generations of them will pass from the earth life to the spirit
world under the shadow of that great tragedy.
They still believe - and that belief is a part of their existence
and as firmly fixed as in the days of the great mistake - that they
have Abraham for their father and that his faith and example are
sufficient to show them the true way to God and salvation and that
they are the chosen people of God, and by worshipping the one and
only God and observing the sacraments and feasts and commands of
God that were given to them by and through Moses and the prophets
and as are contained in the Old Testament, they will find the heaven
of God here on earth and after death rest in the bosom of Abraham.
That the observance of the moral and ethical precepts of their Bible
is all that is necessary to develop their spiritual natures, and
that beyond such development there is nothing to be desired or to
be sought for. That some time they will attain the Adamic condition
of reward and happiness, which is the ultimate of man's future existence.
Some are still looking for the coming of the Messiah who will restore
to them their former glory and rule on earth as the king and governor
of all the nations and that they will be his chosen subjects and
selected to assist in the administration of that Messiah's kingdom.
How certain it is that their dreams will never be realized and that
unless they have an awakening to the true nature of their God they
will never become inhabitants of the Father's kingdom!
And I want to say to my people with the certainty of knowledge
arising from experience and actual observation, that Jesus of Nazareth
was the true Messiah who brought to the world, and first to the
Jews, the truths of God and His plans for the salvation of mankind
and their restoration to all that they had lost by the fall of their
first parents because of their disobedience, and that if the people
of my nation had received him and accepted and followed his teachings,
they would not now on earth be the scattered, homeless and persecuted
race that they are, and in the spirit world would not now be satisfied
with their homes and happiness in the spiritual heavens, but would
be, many of them, inhabitants of the Celestial Heavens and the possessors
of immortality and God's Divine Love.
You have received many messages describing the plan of the Father
for the salvation of men and what the Divine Love is and how it
may be obtained and its effect on the soul of man and spirit when
once possessed, and I will not attempt here to enter into an explanation
of these things, but with all the love that I have for my race,
superadded to a knowledge of the great error and insufficiency of
their faith to bring them into at-onement with God, I advise and
urge them to seek the truth and apply it to their individual souls,
and affirm that the truth is contained and the way be found in the
messages that you have received from Jesus and the other high spirits.
I am a believer in these truths, a follower of the Master and an
inhabitant of the Celestial Heavens; but I want to say that these
truths did not come to me as a part of my faith until many long
years of life in the spirit world, and that some of these years
I lived in darkness and suffering. So I will say good night and
subscribe myself your brother in Christ,
Elohiam
This may also have been more correctly "Euliam."
This message is a composite of two, being published
in Volume I on page 361 and Volume III on page 224. For more details
see this page.
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