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I am here, Jesus:
I am glad to write you again, tonight, and as the Doctor* has the impression that I want to write you about Jehovah, I will do so, for the subject is an extremely interesting one, for it embraces the concept of God as He is revealed to man in the Old Testament and as He is further revealed to mankind in the Gospels of the New Testament.
It may be surprising for man to learn that God is both Jehovah, or Yahweh, of the Jewish Scriptures and, at the same time, the Heavenly Father to whom I referred in the New Testament; and this despite the fact that Yahweh is a God of "wrath" and "vengeance," and the Heavenly Father is a God of Love and tenderness and mercy. And yet they are both the same unseen, true God, the Creator of mankind, and He has always been one and the same and changeless, except that His Love has been bestowed upon mankind with my coming, which was not given previously; and it is this additional something which makes the real difference in the concept which mankind has formed of the Father in Heaven.
So you see that God has always been the same, with the exception that He gave to mankind His Divine Love with my appearance on earth, and thus the entire concept of Him by man has been changed. For with my coming, He revealed Himself truly, in revealing His greatest attribute, His Love, which is also His Nature.
Jehovah, or Yahweh, revealed Himself first to Abraham, in the Near East, but not the first in the entire world, for the Orientals were really the first who had a perception of the true, unseen God. And to Abraham and his seed, Yahweh appeared as a tribal God, a God who dealt more with the community than with the individual. And the most important lesson that Abraham's seed, as Jews, had to learn for many centuries was that of remaining faithful to the true, unseen God, who then took on the proportions of Protector of the tribe and, later, the nation; and to understand that this faithfulness to Jehovah would bring about its rewards and, conversely, that faithlessness to Jehovah and worship of images would entail communal suffering and defeats in warfare with pagan peoples and adverse conditions of nature.
And while God never was a wrathful or a jealous, or vengeful, God, this was merely the concept which the Jews of the times formed of Him; and their ideas concerning Him were conditioned by their experiences and general views of the times to which they belonged. And, finally, the concept was broadened to include the highest concept of God which was possible without the Divine Love, and that was the concept that Jehovah was a just God who wanted righteousness of conduct from His children as individuals; and this concept gradually became more important than the others due to the influence of the prophets, who had a greater insight into the rich and the poor alike, and united as brothers in their worship of the true God.
Jehovah, as I have said, never was a wrathful God, as He was conceived to be by the children of Israel, but the fact is that the sins committed by the ruling classes created conditions which inevitably worked themselves out into a corrupt people unable to withstand the invasions and ravages of invaders, not because the prophets learned this from God but because that line of conduct inevitably led to conditions that brought about disaster. And this might be called a law, for conduct not in harmony with God's laws called forth conditions which prevented spiritual assistance for the people who practiced those inharmonies and transgressions. So that, just as the Law of Compensation works inexorably in the spirit world, there is a corresponding law in the material world which acts, though not quite with the same precision and exactness in the material world. At any rate, conduct in harmony with God's laws creates conditions favorable to spiritual help; and, by this, it means help from spirits called upon by God to render assistance to the people or to individuals.
So, you see that Jehovah was not a God of wrath or vengeance, as He was conceived to be, but neither was He a God of Love, for His Divine Love was not active, and the prophets who understood Him to be a Just God came as close to an understanding of Him as He had revealed Himself to them, but Love was lacking, and the prophets could not sense a Love which was not in evidence. Yet, some of them did have an insight that God did have this Love, which would some day be bestowed into the hearts of His children, and some thought of it as loving-kindness, or mercy, or tenderness, yet without really knowing it to be what it was because they could not experience it.
God revealed Himself to be a God of Love only with my attaining this Love, and it is in this way that the Law of the Old Testament was superseded, or I should say better, fulfilled, by the Grace of the New Testament. And by Grace I mean the Divine Love. The Divine Love, when possessed by a mortal, can create conditions that may to some extent overcome the deceitful influences of the flesh and enable beneficial spirits to help the possessors of the Divine Love. But its effect is manifest, above all, in the spirit world, where sin is no longer active but is in the process of being eradicated, although in some cases this process is a long and tedious one and sin continues to exist as it did in the flesh. Where I say "sin is no longer active," I mean that no new sinful acts due to sinful soul conditions can be used by the Law of Compensation against the spirit, once that spirit has entered the spirit world.
God, or Jehovah, or Yahweh, the Heavenly Father, is therefore the same, but the last-mentioned title shows a different relationship towards His children, for now it is one of Love and togetherness in the possession of His Divine Nature, whereas before the Divine Love was given, the relationship had not that warmth but was one of Ruler to His subjects. Yet, God was conceived by the Jews as a Being with a body like those of human beings and there was no notion that He is an Infinite Soul without beginning or end and that His Nature is Divine Love, and that His attributes are those of wisdom and power and will, without end. Even today, this concept of God is not well understood, but the fact that man's mind is finite and imperfect prevents a conception of Who and What God is.
I think that I have written sufficiently on the subject of the relationship between Yahweh and the Heavenly Father, and I shall stop now and say good night, with all my love to you and the Doctor. Continue to pray to the Father for more and more of the Divine Love while it is still available, for it is the greatest thing in all the universe; and have faith that He is the Father and that He will not abandon you if you ask Him in earnestness and sincerity. And I shall sign myself
Jesus of the Bible
and
Master of the Celestial Heavens
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* Dr. Leslie R. Stone.
