”The LORD hath appeared of old unto me, saying, Yea, I have loved thee with an everlasting love: therefore with lovingkindness have I drawn thee.” (Jeremiah 31:3). ”Touching the Almighty…he is excellent in power, and in judgment, and in plenty of justice: he will not afflict.” (Job 37: 23). “Doth a fountain send forth at the same place sweet water and bitter?” (James 3: 11). ”Come now, and let us reason together, saith the LORD: though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool.” (Isaiah 1: 18). “As far as the east is from the west, so far hath he removed our transgressions from us.” (Psalm 103: 12).
As with most people who follow the Christian faith, I’ve heard, repeatedly, the story of original sin, where our ancestors, Adam and Eve, disobeyed God and were thrown out of Spirit’s presence and heavenly, spiritual creation. As descendants, we’re supposed to now be in ‘this place’ of materiality in order to suffer for this ancient behavior. Thus, tribulation and suffering are conditions we’re supposed to deserve, for being related to the original parents of the ‘human race’. Reflecting this view as a young child, I once said to someone when I was feeling low, “I guess I should never have been born.” Immediately the adult that was with me replied something like, “Oh no! That would be disastrous! For if you didn’t exist, the entire universe would be missing someone important. God’s creation would be incomplete. You have to be here, because everyone is of great value to the wholeness and harmony of God’s creation. Always remember, you are of great value to everyone.” I think that was the first time I ‘saw’ the vastness of God’s universe and loving heart, and my very own place in it. It was the first time I sensed a spiritual creation, with feeling and purpose, rather than a merely physical environment. As a small one, I didn’t really know what my particular value was; I only knew I had one. I also realized that God has a great heart of Love, that takes in everyone. Our individual places exist in that Love. That sense of God’s love enveloped me for several days. So, after that, my whole perspective changed. While growing up, the story of original sin, and God cursing humanity, never again made any sense to me. I knew that God had to be infinite Love—for only love and goodness can make creation an immortal place. One speck of evil would ultimately destroy an immortal creation. Nor could I, logically, accept the notion that God was vengeful or petty, using Its power to destroy anyone or any thing. No, we were of more value to God than that! Also, having been the Creator of all, why would God create us to be sinful and full of evil, and then punish us for what It had created us to be in the first place? Thankfully, I don’t think it made much sense to Christ Jesus either; for he repeatedly talked of the heavenly Kingdom of God, where the divine Love of our Creator is still invisibly present and operating on our behalf, to change whatever is wrong and make it right. During his ministry on earth, Jesus faced every type of material and mental evil and made it disappear in a transformation of bodies or minds back to health and wholeness. He raised some who had physically died, including himself. He spoke and demonstrated a view of God that was Love, and Love alone. He showed God’s good will toward all humanity, not in bringing evil trials and tribulation, but in deliverance from them, despite any personal guilt on the part of the afflicted one. Particularly, he showed that God loves and cares for even the most miserable and undeserving individuals on the planet. All are important to God. All have their own value to the whole. So, before I really began to understand how spiritual healing works, I threw out the notion that I was an inherently evil sinner, at my core, or even a mixture of good and evil, deserving punishment from on high. God’s image and likeness would not be such a contradiction. If we are anything at our core, we must be inherently holy and good—otherwise, there’s no way of being God’s image and likeness. The next thing I had to grapple with was what Jesus was really doing concerning his mission to die for our sins. Why did he go through that horrible ordeal on the cross? I concluded that he was addressing, not a reality that God was wrathful and wanted a sacrifice to appease Its anger; but rather, that the beliefs of sin and suffering that were held in this world (to explain the presence and seeming power of evil over good) needed to be addressed and settled, once and for all, so that the truth of spiritual being—the universal Christ Selfhood—could be revealed to humanity. So, in essence, it’s my belief that Christ Jesus had the spiritual mission of communicating man’s oneness with God and the heavenly kingdom, still present but invisible to the physical senses—and, then, paying the price for everyone who believed a sacrifice was needed to free all of God’s children from the whole notion that they were innately corruptible (bound to a sinful nature) and mortal (bound to die due to lack of spiritual substance). His spiritual goodness and everlastingness substance defeated the Roman Empire and the entire world. He said his way of becoming the Christ was our way, too. He was our example…our way-shower. I often imagine what Jesus might say to us here, today, with all the world’s terrorism and wars. How should we face these hostilities that seem to be natural to mankind? I think he might say something like: ‘OK…you think that your spiritual holiness and eternal life has been taken from you, and now you’re all alone, in a place and body, where God won’t help you. World belief has convinced you that you’ve been cast out of your spiritual, immortal bodies and placed in vulnerable, fleshly forms. You believe that God’s spiritual, perfect creation has been re-created into finite form, including all identities--personalities that are both good and bad (unloving, unworthy). This is not so. No one can change or destroy what God has created. No one has corrupted creation or our true, God-created identities. No one has the power to do so. The Kingdom of God is within you, and you’re still within it. The physical level of awareness hides it for awhile, but knowledge and remembrance of your Christly Self is still within your spiritual sense—your inner conscious awareness. You can turn to this higher self and bring its good and right formations into the outer world of form. But humanity still tends to believe that this material illusion over consciousness has re-created reality into physical form—and that this outer universe of form is God’s creation, instead of man’s collective delusion. Thus, the evils of this ‘place’ are also real to you. Neither the material world of form, nor individuals claiming to be evil, are real—materiality is a false interpretation of God’s spiritually perfect creation, where good alone is real and everlasting, including all God’s immortal children. It’s the belief that God’s children of Spirit are also the children of the flesh which is the corrupting influence in your thinking. Spirit is your substance and essence. So long ago, I, Jesus, demonstrated for you the spiritual power of God to take away all evil appearances in the fleshly illusion of being. And when I finished with my healing ministry, I was the sacrifice which humanity believed God required. I was the lamb to the slaughter, so none of you ever have to be. The price for the sins and sinners, which you believe in, was paid for all time. God sent me, an awakened one, to pay the price for you. It is done, and it never even harmed me. Now, awaken yourselves to what I have shown you. Come back to your selves—your REAL selves. Go deep within yourselves to learn who you really are, and where you really are. See that I’m your spiritual brother—but one who has stayed within the fuller conscious awareness of the Father/Mother God. I was not asleep in the dream of mortal, material existence, even when visiting this realm of thought. I came down into your material level of thinking to awaken you and bring you home. I bring you home by spiritually awakening you to the reality that existence is not both spiritual and material; there are not two of you in identity. Life is in and of Spirit alone. I’ve actually entered your dream of life in matter to show you that even here, in this seemingly God-forsaken place (lower mental level), God is supreme. It is your own divine Selves I’m showing you, who still exist outside of the illusion of materiality. Allow this Mind to be in you which is also in me. This is who you really are—the Christ of God—the spiritual children of God. My name is not Jesus Christ (like John Smith); my name is Jesus the Christ—Jesus the spiritual son of God. You are Nancy the Christ—the spiritual daughter of God; or you are Thomas the Christ—the spiritual son of God. Every earthly name and identity is really a Christ (spiritual) identity. The Christ is the term that describes an office, not a name. It’s the universal core of everyone’s being; it’s the spiritual Self, not the human self you’ve learned to believe you are. I entered here as a fleshly man called Jesus, to show you the falsity of this mortal identity. I came to reveal the spiritual nature of the Christ within all—the true identity of all. Don’t believe in Jesus, a mortal material man—believe in the Christ of Jesus. Then my resurrection will become your resurrection, when you realize that your Life is like mine; and Life never dies. Killing the flesh does nothing to the Christ of your being. I demonstrated the eternal life and health that’s always with you, just as with me, throughout every illusion of ill-health and death. That’s why I’m called the Savior. I save you from all the lies of the false material sense of existence; then you find the Life that is Truth and the Life that IS (not just going to be) everlasting. When I was here, I changed those illusions of ill-health and death. Now you must learn to do the same. Put on the Christ. Be the incorruptible and immortal one you really are. You were never anyone else. Every human enemy is really your spiritual brother and sister; although under the influence of the false material sense of things, they don’t realize this. You must know it for them. Call forth their true nature that is God’s nature. Mentally see that God is your only origin and Parent. You’ve inherited nothing from a material line of existence, for no such existence is actual, except in belief. It’s mythical at best, just as your images, feelings, activities, and suffering of your nightly dreams are mythical. They never happened to you. Realize that, in God’s spiritual kingdom and realm, there are no such things as material laws. God’s creation IS the only creation that exists in reality. Spiritual laws govern every element of you lives and being. Belief creates nothing; that’s why the hideous forms belief takes can be ‘healed’ and brought back to images of wholeness and life. Love more and love all, even those appearing as your enemies. Awake and come home.” (End of what I imagine Christ Jesus might say to us if he were here today.) Now, I repeat, this is my deciphering of Christ Jesus’ mission to humanity. In support of my view, I offer some words from Paul the Apostle. (When studying the writings of the disciples, I found that Paul the Apostle was really big on explaining the Master’s teachings. There’s a lot of deciphering in the biblical, I Corinthian, 15th Chapter.) Paul wrote: “For this corruptible must put on incorruption, and this mortal must put on immortality. So when this corruptible shall have put on incorruption, and this mortal shall have put on immortality, then shall be brought to pass the saying that is written, Death is swallowed up in victory.” (I Corinthians 15: 53,54) I’ve always noticed that, in the above passage, Paul never refers to death as the door to eternal life. Rather, Paul speaks of ‘putting on’ both sinless being and immortality. Is he not speaking of putting on our true, spiritual selfhood? Putting on something is an act of attaching something to ourselves. We put on clothing and protective gear. Here, he’s telling us to put on incorruptibility and immortality. He’s basically saying, ‘make this a part of yourself. Adorn yourself with these two spiritual things.’ Never, in Christ Jesus’ teachings, do we have to die to find our heavenly circumstances. That’s because heaven isn’t a location; it’s a divine state of Mind, where we’ve completely awakened spiritually. Then we discover that we’ve always been in heaven; we just didn’t recognize the place. Our abundant, heavenly circumstances are invisibly at hand, within our conscious awareness of them, to be called down from heaven into the earthly experience, by our own choice. We can call upon our heavenly-known kingdom within, to manifest itself into human form, whenever we need it—and, while on this material plane of thought, we always need it. This same enlightened Self knows that there’s no need to fear anything or anyone, for in God’s heavenly kingdom at hand, there is nothing and no one to fear. All identities are divinely good, and evil is not person, place or thing in the spiritual realm of reality. Our enlightened Self within knows that there is no necessity for sin or wrong-doing of any kind, in God’s eternal harmony. All our spiritual brothers and sisters love us and each other. Here, in the heavenly kingdom, all power belongs to God. In the book of Revelation, there appears this passage: "And the great dragon was cast out, that old serpent, called the Devil, and Satan, which deceiveth the whole world: he was cast out into the earth, and his angels were cast out with him. And I heard a loud voice saying in heaven, Now is come salvation, and strength, and the kingdom of our God, and the power of his Christ: for the accuser of our brethren is cast down, which accused them before our God day and night." (Revelation 12: 9, 10). The serpent that beguiles us, on this seeming material plane of existence, is not a colossal evil identity commonly called the devil or satan. The serpent is the false belief in a power and existence apart from God. The ‘power of his Christ’ defeats this belief in evil as a power that can create its material forms of hate, disease, and mortality, in its finite, material environment. The great truth of our Christly, spiritual identity, still at one with our divine, spiritual Source, vanquishes all beliefs in a power and place of existence outside of God, who is the infinite Intelligence, Wisdom, Love, Will, and Creator of all Its everlasting creation. This great truth of spiritual being gives us dominion over all in the human experience, by casting out the lies of material existence and the material effect of such lies which manifest into physical form. When all beliefs in evil vanish from human thought, the forms and actions these beliefs take in the human experience will die out. This happens with spiritual awakening on an individual level. When we become aware, however slightly, of God’s kingdom at hand and our own, valuable place in it, we are beginning to ‘put on’ our Christly Selfhood—our Sonship and Daughtership to God—that we had before this world was. We each begin to express our own unique value to the universe which we were meant to share with the whole. This means that hidden talents may emerge; great purposes or missions, blessing all, may take hold of us; or our unique value will spring to the forefront of our thoughts as we step into a newness of life through a door we’ve never seen before. But through it, we can clearly see our own place in God’s Heart.
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