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I
(Received April 28, 1955)
I am here, Jesus:
Yes, I am here again, and I am going to write on the topic suggested by the Doctor,* that is, "On this rock I shall build my church," in addressing Peter.
Now, first of all, I would like to say that there is nothing in the Gospels that indicates that Peter should have received the primacy, for as a matter of fact, he was not at all the first to recognize that I was the Messiah, for the first to do so was John, the Baptist, and it was as a result of this recognition that he began to preach repentance and the coming of the Messiah in the desert; and it was he who procured disciples, among whom were Andrew and Peter.
It was Andrew who brought Peter and told him that he had met the Messiah, and thus Peter came. And again, Phillip and Nathaniel both proclaimed me the Messiah, that is to say, the son of God, or Redeemer, and so it was not Peter who first made this announcement. At the same time, it should be emphasized that none of them understood my great mission. It was only later that Peter obtained some idea of what was involved in my Messiahship.
When the Gospels were written, the Christian movement was under way and the account, while stressing that Peter acknowledged me to be the Christ, has nothing to show that I had bestowed leadership upon Peter, and his preeminence was the result of the practical turns of affairs at the time. For Peter was the eldest and had held the respect of the disciples and was looked up to because of his closer relationship with me, and because very often I had addressed him in teaching my disciples, and because I had favored him in taking him, among a few others, to go with me to the Mount of Transfiguration. For these several reasons, questions concerning the movement were referred to him for solution after my death and he showed himself capable of holding the leadership, once it had been bestowed more or less consciously upon him.
Now, with respect to what I did say to Peter, "On this rock I shall build my church" is a distortion in my sayings to him made by later writers, so that the Gospel would confirm the leadership given to Peter by the growing church. And the quotation from the Gospels does not accurately represent my words or my meaning. Peter simply spoke for the disciples when he answered the question, "But who do you say that I am?" for there, again, he was the spokesman; and when he called me the son of God, it was not a great pronouncement which had come to him from God, for God does not speak directly to mortals.
And, so, we see that the words of the Gospel are inaccurate, and it was an opinion that was common among the disciples. And when I said, "Thou art Peter," I did not say, "And upon this rock I shall build my church," meaning upon Peter, the rock, nor upon myself, as a greater rock than Peter, but upon the Rock of Ages -- the Father, Himself, as revealed to mankind with His Divine Love now available to mankind. And I sought to build a church that would know the Heavenly Father through the Love that had been brought to light with my coming. I had no intention of building a church based upon Peter nor upon myself, but simply to add the Divine Love to the revelations which He had given to mankind and which would turn man to Him with a heart made new through that Love, and a soul made immortal through its efficacy.
Never did I seek to establish a new religion, for the religion of the Father had already been established with Judaism; and neither did I envisage the change of the new ceremonies or sacraments, nor teach them, in my efforts to turn mankind to the Father and receive His Divine love through prayers. So you see that the primacy of Peter has nothing of truth as far as Christian teachings are concerned and, that, rather than the church of St. Peter, or of Christ, there is only one church, and that is the church of the Heavenly Father.
I think I have answered the Doctor in sufficient detail to let him and you know what the facts really are, and with that and with my great love and blessings for you both for your love and interest, I shall close and say good night.
Your elder brother and friend,
Jesus of the Bible
and
Master of the Celestial Heavens
___________________________________
* Dr. Leslie R. Stone.
II
(Received May 5, 1955)
I am here, Jesus:
I now wish to say a few words about the primacy of Peter, which was discussed by you and the Doctor in the question of the words I was supposed to have said giving Peter the power to bind and loosen in heaven those things which he might find it appropriate for him to do on earth, and this, of course, was something which I never said, and never gave Peter, for I could not make him the representative of God on earth, nor make God to ratify these acts which Peter felt should be done; for only the Father could designate a mortal to be His representative on earth, as He had done in the case of the Hebrew prophets and John, the Baptist and, in a different way, myself. And the fact is that Peter never, and nowhere, claimed to be the representative of God on earth, although it is true that he and John were closer to me than the other apostles, even closer than my younger brothers James and Joseph and, being elder, I naturally gave Peter more responsibility than the others.
This giving of Peter the power to loosen or to bind wherein was not given by me, but by a later Greek writer who used Greek terms to indicate a situation which was now a fait accompli, and was written into the Gospel of Matthew as legal authority for a common practice and generally accepted mold into which the Christian movement had shaped itself.
In the same way, I had never given to Peter the keys of the Kingdom, for the only keys to the Celestial Heavens is the Divine Love, and thus these keys can be possessed by all mortals and spirits who possess the Divine Love to that extent that they are enabled, thereby, to open its doors. But here, again, this symbol of Peter's primacy was written into the Gospel to sanction Peter's position as head of the church; and the writer betrayed his Greek identity by using imagery showing knowledge of Roman paganism, referring as he does to Janus, the god who, with keys and rod, opened the gates of war.
I should like to say, however, that I did not come to destroy the Hebrew priesthood, and I have no thought of destroying a priestly hierarchy that does the Will of the Father, even if their teachings are limited through ignorance to the way to the perfect natural man; and, as a fact, the church could not possibly obtain a better spiritual leader than Peter, possessed as he was with an abundance of the Divine Love after the bestowal at Pentecost, but unfortunately the same cannot be said of his successors.
Neither I nor Peter could forgive sin, and certainly the priesthood of all religious cults cannot do so, and they, the priests, are very much mistaken if they believe they can.
The primacy of Peter was important as a rallying center in the early days of the Christian movement, but insistence upon the Vatican as the head of the Roman church in countries where the Catholic church exists, serves an entirely different function of imposing authority upon the Catholic churches, preventing a divergence of spiritual and doctrinal opinion, with the development and maintenance of a vast temporal power under the guise of saving souls for Christ.
I think I have said enough regarding the subject for the present, and I shall stop, with all my love to you and the Doctor, and with my prayers for the Father's blessings upon you, I shall say good night.
Your elder brother and friend,
Jesus of the Bible
and
Master of the Celestial Heavens
III
(Also Received May 5, 1955)
I am here, Jesus:
I have been listening to the remarks made by the Doctor, and I can inform you at this point that Peter was in Rome for a considerable period of his life and that he established his reputation as the head of the church in that city; and that he was crucified there, more or less at the same time as was Paul, shortly before the destruction of Jerusalem.
Your friend and elder brother, Jesus.
