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January 23, 1917
I AM HERE. Elohiam:
I am the spirit of a Jew who lived in the time of Jesus and was a member of the Sanhedrin and sat as one of his judges at the time of his condemnation for blasphemy and iconoclastic teachings against the beliefs and doctrines of the Hebrew faith, and was one of those who voted for the sentence of death upon him, and in doing so was as honest in my conviction and action as it was possible for an earnest believer in his faith to be.
Consequently, I was without prejudice against Jesus as a man and, as I believed, a fanatic; and it was only because I was convinced that he was an assailer of, and dangerous to, our religion and the welfare of my race that I consented to his death. Mortals of these days cannot fully understand the exact relationship of Jesus and his teachings to the security of our religion and the preservation of the faith which we believed had been handed down to us by God direct through our prophets and teachers, and when we were confronted with what we believed to be the destructive and irreligious teachings of Jesus and after making the numerous efforts to suppress him by threats and persuasion without effect, we concluded that our absolute and indisputable duty to God demanded that he be removed from the sphere of his activity even though such result could only be accomplished by his death.
And if mortals of the present day could understand our deep religious convictions and the sense of obligation that rested upon us to protect and keep whole the divine doctrines and teachings of our faith and especially that one which declared the oneness of God, they would not judge the action of the Jews in condemning Jesus to death to be a thing unusual or unexpected. He stood in the position to us and to our religion of a breeder of sedition just as in modern times men have occupied the position towards the civil governments of breeders of treason and have suffered the punishments which have been with approval inflicted upon them by such governments.
But to us he appeared not only guilty of treason to our national life, but of treason to the higher and God-given life of the religious government of our race, the chosen one of God, as we sincerely and zealously believed. Even in latter days men have appeared and claimed to be the especially anointed of God with missions to perform and have gathered around them a following of people whom they have impressed with the truth of their character and mission and of their teachings, and for a short time were permitted to declare their claims and doctrines and then suddenly brought to death by the decree of those who were in authority, as trouble-makers and enemies of the church or state, and have been forgotten and their doctrines disappeared from memory.
And only in the instance of Jesus has his death been remembered through all the ages, and those who were the cause and responsible for his death have been desecrated and cursed and charged with the murder of God.
Well, I write this to show you that the Jews who took the life and demanded the crucifixion of that just man were actuated by motives other or different from those that have many times since caused the very followers and worshippers of that Jesus to murder and crucify other men who have claimed to be the sons of God endowed with special missions for the salvation of mankind.
The sincerity of the Jews who took part in this great tragedy cannot be assailed, and even their Roman masters at the time understood that the demands for the death of Jesus did not arise from personal spite, or the satisfaction of any revenge against the individual, but solely because they believed and so declared that Jesus was an enemy and would-be destroyer of the divine faith and teachings of the Israelite nation, and a seducer of the people, and it is only because of the subsequent rise and spread of his teachings and the truths that he declared--which have made so large a portion of the inhabitants of the earth followers of him--that the act of the Jews in causing his death has been called the great crime of the world and the people themselves to be hated and persecuted and destroyed as a nation and scattered to all points of the earth.
I do not write this to excuse or palliate the great error which we committed in causing the crucifixion and death of the true son of God, but only to show that they, though as I now know, mistakingly, did that which other men with the same faith and convictions and zealous for the religious preservation of the nation, be these men Jews or Gentiles or pagans, would have done in similar circumstances.
But the great element of tragedy in all this is not that Jesus was crucified, but that the Jews were so mistaken and failed to recognize and accept Jesus as their long looked for Messiah and Deliverer, not from their material conditions of bondage, but from the bondage of sin and error in which they have lived for so many centuries. This, I say, was their tragedy, and it has been their lasting and deadly tragedy from that time until the present day, and the prospects are that it will continue theirs for many years to come, and that generations of them will pass from the earth life to the spirit world under the shadow of that great tragedy.
They still believe--and that belief is a part of their existence and as firmly fixed as in the days of the great mistake--that they have Abraham for their father and that his faith and example are sufficient to show them the true way to God and salvation and that they are the chosen people of God, and by worshipping the one and only God and observing the sacraments and feasts and commands of God that were given to them by and through Moses and the prophets and as are contained in the Old Testament, they will find the heaven of God here on earth and after death rest in the bosom of Abraham. That the observance of the moral and ethical precepts of their Bible is all that is necessary to develop their spiritual natures, and that beyond such development there is nothing to be desired or to be sought for. That some time they will attain the Adamic condition of reward and happiness, which is the ultimate of man's future existence.
Some are still looking for the coming of the Messiah who will restore to them their former glory and rule on earth as the king and governor of all the nations and that they will be his chosen subjects and selected to assist in the administration of that Messiah's kingdom.
How certain it is that their dreams will never be realized and that unless they have an awakening to the true nature of their God they will never become inhabitants of the Father's kingdom!
And I want to say to my people with the certainty of knowledge arising from experience and actual observation, that Jesus of Nazareth was the true Messiah who brought to the world, and first to the Jews, the truths of God and His plans for the salvation of mankind and their restoration to all that they had lost by the fall of their first parents because of their disobedience, and that if the people of my nation had received him and accepted and followed his teachings, they would not now on earth be the scattered, homeless and persecuted race that they are, and in the spirit world would not now be satisfied with their homes and happiness in the spiritual heavens, but would be, many of them, inhabitants of the Celestial Heavens and the possessors of immortality and God's Divine Love.
You have received many messages describing the plan of the Father for the salvation of men and what the Divine Love is and how it may be obtained and its effect on the soul of man and spirit when once possessed, and I will not attempt here to enter into an explanation of these things, but with all the love that I have for my race, superadded to a knowledge of the great error and insufficiency of their faith to bring them into at-onement with God, I advise and urge them to seek the truth and apply it to their individual souls, and affirm that the truth is contained and the way be found in the messages that you have received from Jesus and the other high spirits.
I am a believer in these truths, a follower of the Master and an inhabitant of the Celestial Heavens; but I want to say that these truths did not come to me as a part of my faith until many long years of life in the spirit world, and that some of these years I lived in darkness and suffering. So I will say good-night and subscribe myself your brother in Christ,
ELOHIAM.Vol. I, p. 361
