| |
I am here, Jesus:
I am here tonight to write you again on the Old Testament, inasmuch as the relationship between Jehovah, or Yahweh, and the Heavenly Father, or God, of the New Testament, must be made clear that they are one and the same, except that He had not bestowed His Divine Love upon mankind until my coming, and it was impossible for mankind to know God in that attribute of Divine Love.
The prophets had an understanding that the Messiah would come to save the Hebrew people, and in Isaiah this intuition of the Messiah's coming was associated not with an all-powerful king who would save his people from their enemies but a savior in the spiritual sense -- that is, that the Messiah to come would save his people from sin. This concept of my coming was a correct one and shows the nearness to God that Isaiah stood in. But there, Isaiah met with difficulties of interpretation, for while he recognized that the Messiah would save from sin, it was not given to him to know how this process of salvation, or by what means, was to take place.
Since Isaiah had no conception of the Divine Love, he undertook to interpret his message from the high spirits regarding the Messiah's coming in accordance with the established system of religion as practiced by the Hebrews at the time. The Hebrews obeyed the law as much as they could, but Isaiah realized that man's weaknesses of the flesh made him the constant victim of sin; and thus Isaiah rightly realized that salvation would not be obtained through obedience to the law, or attempts to give obedience to the law, but through a different system.
This was to be in connection with the law of Moses, which enjoined the Hebrew people to make certain sacrificial offerings, some for impurities and others for sin; and Isaiah thought that the Messiah's work of salvation for his people lay in connection with the sin offering. He realized that, unlike other peoples of the time, human sacrifices were unthinkable and were not a part of the Hebrew religion. And he could not accept the teachings of the religions which taught the salvation of human beings through the symbolic sacrifice of their God, such as found in the Hindu religion with Krishna, or the Greek religion with Dionysius, the cult which was beginning to achieve acceptance at this time, in the 8th century B.C.
But Isaiah felt that the soul of the Messiah could be offered up as a sacrifice for sin and, in that way, his soul thus looked upon as the sacrifice for sin would be accepted by God for the sins of the people, and in that way would the Messiah save his people from sin. And it was for that reason that Isaiah wrote, erroneously, "And when those shall make his soul an offering for sin he shall see his seed," meaning that the people, being cleansed of their sins, would be spiritually his.
This mistaken concept of the role to be played by the Messiah to come was used extensively by the Greek writers on Christianity to force their own ideas of my sacrifice on the cross as the means of salvation -- a concept in accord with their own pagan ideas -- and used the prophecy of Isaiah concerning my coming to impose these pagan practices upon Christianity and thus eliminate my true teachings of salvation, or immortality, to be achieved by mankind through earnest prayer to the Father for His Divine Love.
This understanding of Isaiah's prophecy and the reasons for his failure to understand the means by which salvation was to take place is extremely important to show why pagan practices were introduced into the formation of the Christian Church, and Isaiah referred to in support of these practices. This explanation should be used to show that Isaiah was mistaken in his interpretation of the role of the Messiah, and the true teachings of my mission as Messiah emphasized.
I think I shall stop now because there are others who would like to write tonight, but I shall say that the message regarding the Doctor* received by Mr. Huntoon was authentic, because this man has a high regard for the Doctor and thinks about him as one who has enabled mankind to receive the truths; and one of the higher spirits provided him with the message that the Doctor should not worry about the publication of Volume I and, instead, to seek for more of the Divine Love.
So I shall stop, and with my love to the Doctor and to you, I shall close and say good night.
Your friend and elder brother,
Jesus of the Bible
and
Master of the Celestial Heavens
___________________________________
* Dr. Leslie R. Stone
