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I am here, Jesus:
I am here, again, to write you on the truths of the Father, and I wish to comment on The Prayer given to Mr. Padgett many years ago -- the only one necessary to obtain the Father's Love; and the Doctor* is very much to be commended for his perspicacity in perceiving all the implications of the Prayer. It should be also understood that when I wrote, "through the death and sacrifice of any one of Thy creatures," I was referring to the Hebrew custom of pardon through the sacrifice of lambs and bullocks, which were considered to take away sin. I did not at that time refer to myself as being one considered the equal of the godhead, for this prayer was originally given before any idea had entered the mind of man that I could be such a being; and it was not taught by me but simply inserted when given to Mr. Padgett in my capacity as the risen Christ, and in order to point out a false interpretation developed over the years. So it is understood that in the original teaching of the Prayer, these later words rejecting my person as being "one with the godhead" did not appear.
I merely mention this in order to explain any queries that might arise as to how such a thought, which is nowhere found in my teachings in the Gospels, is to be found in a prayer supposed to contain my original language, at least in substance.
I know you have been studying the Gospel of John because it is the one that deals most with my relationship to the Father, and wherein is contained that material which when interpreted correctly reveals the Divine Love to be the Substance which made me Messiah and which enabled me to assume that position, even as a mortal, which exalted me in the eyes of those who understood my teachings and recognized the special relationship I had with the Father. And it was this Divine Love which permeated and filled my soul at the time of my appearance to undertake my public ministry.
At the same time, as you already know, many of the statements contained in John's Gospel were never written by John but by successors who revised and rewrote the Gospel in accordance with their own lesser understanding of the spiritual truths and in the light of the transformed doctrines that gradually replaced the truths, in order to meet the conditions imposed by the diminished comprehension of those truths.
I wish to continue tonight with the true meanings of dubious statements in John's Gospel which are attributed to him but which he never wrote. In Chapter 5 occurs the verse, "For just as the Father raises the dead and makes them to live, so the Son of man makes alive whom he wills." (Vs. 21) Now, this passage is very misleading, for it insists upon the thought that God imposes His Will upon mankind in the spirit world and that I do, likewise, presumably in the spirit world as well as in that of the flesh. Now, nothing can be further from the truth than this statement, for it means that man, whether in the mortal or spirit world, is bereft of free will and is subject to the Father's Will as well as my will; and if this were the case, then man would not be the greatest of God's creations but a mere puppet. And furthermore, it attributes to me a power which I do not possess, nor would I care to exercise it if I did possess it, for I have no desire to compel man to come to the Father, for such a compulsion would be a violation of the laws that apply to the creation of man, and such a desire would be a desire to violate God's laws, which is foreign to my nature. It must be emphasized that man has a free will with which he determines his actions on earth and in the spirit world, and no man, and not even God Himself, can infringe upon that free will without violating the laws of man's creation.
When the writer wrote those words, he was under the mistaken impression that fate, or God's superior Will, determines whether the man will or will not seek the Father; but actually the passage should be interpreted to mean that the Father causes the dead soul, through His Laws of Compensation which will eventually purify the soul of its sins, to inherit the plane of the perfect natural man. And if that soul is open to the teachings of the Celestial spirits and their collaborators, then that soul, on applying such teachings, may be transformed into a Divine soul through prayer to the Heavenly Father. And in that way is the soul not only awakened from death -- that is to say, unawareness of its existence -- but becomes aware of, and is the owner of, immortality.
And that is what is meant by the dead soul that God raises from the dead. But this process results from man's will and his soul's desire, and not through the Will of God imposing His dictates upon man. And this also applies to the references to me as the Son, for the writer, in his mistaken belief, put me on an equal footing with the Father, and to this I made reference in my Prayer to Mr. Padgett. But the statement is false, for I do not force people to have faith in me or in my message, but I seek to give the message of the Father's Love to all mankind and then allow those who have heard the message to choose of their own free will whether they will accept or reject it. And this choice is given to mortal man as well as to spirits.
Mankind has the choice, whether in the flesh or in the spirit, to decide to either escape the hells through obtaining a sufficiency of the Divine Love through prayer to the Father, and eventually reaching the Celestial Heavens, or stagnate in suffering and darkness to eventually be purified. But this is a free choice of man, himself, and there is no compulsion on the part of the Father, nor is there such a thing as "fate" which rules man's destiny; for in these matters man creates his own destiny, and any statement implied or explicit in the New Testament contrary to what I say here tonight is false and damnable, for it weakens man's will to make his own choice and causes him to resign himself to illusory and impossible speculations.
I think I have covered the subject of free will and man's destiny as it is rejected in some of the writings attributed to John. But the subject is an important one in man's seeking, of his own free will, for the Father's Love, and I may come again soon to point out other like falsities in John and in others of the Gospels.
So, I will thank you for allowing me to write tonight and I will close, saying I am your friend and elder brother,
Jesus of the Bible
and
Master of the Celestial Heavens
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* Dr. Leslie R. Stone.
