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Whatever one may believe regarding the source of the Messages from Jesus and Celestials,* the contents are so new and revolutionary, yet so compelling by their logic and sublime simplicity, that a serious study of them must be undertaken in order to comprehend their significance and challenge.
In these messages Jesus of Nazareth stands forth as the Master of what he calls the Celestial Heavens, wherein only those spirits possessed of the New Birth through prayer to the Father for His Divine Love can dwell in light and happiness, and conscious of their immortality through their at-onement with Him in soul nature.
If these messages are authentic as coming from Jesus and his Celestial spirits, then mankind has at last been given the true mission which Jesus proclaimed on earth. This mission taught the transformation of man's soul from the image of God--the work of the original creation--into the very essence of God through the bestowal of the Father's Love upon whosoever should seek that Love in earnest longing. It revealed that Jesus himself first manifested the Father's Love in his soul, thus making him at one with the Father in nature and giving him that clear consciousness of his kinship with the Father and his immortality of soul. It showed that in this development of soul Jesus was indeed his Father's true Son, not in the metaphysical and mysterious way of a hypothetical virgin birth, but through the Holy Spirit, that agency of the Father which conveys His Love into the souls of His creatures who seek it in earnest prayer. It brings to light that Jesus was born of Mary and Joseph, of human parents like other human beings, but that he was none the less the Messiah promised to the Hebrews and to mankind in the Old Testament. For wherever he taught the "glad tidings" that God's Love was available, and that it was this Love which bestowed immortality upon the soul filled with this Love, Jesus brought with him the nature of God--the Kingdom of God. At the same time Jesus tells us that neither was he God, nor was his mother Mary the mother of God, nor a virgin after her marriage to Joseph, but that she was in truth the mother of eight children, of which he was the eldest, and that he had four brothers and three sisters in the flesh, and not cousins, as some versions of the Bible relate.
In addition, he relates that he did not come to die on a cross, nor did, or does, his shed blood bring remission of sins. He also shatters the time honored statements now found in the New Testament that he ever instituted a bread and wine sacrament on the eve of his arrest at the Last Supper. This pious statement, he declares, was never his, nor did any of his apostles or disciples ever teach it, but was inserted about a century later so that such a doctrine might accord with the ideas then prevalent among the Greek converts to Christianity. Communion with the Heavenly Father can never take place through the mistaken notion that he had to be impaled on a cross by Roman soldiers, on the order of Pilate, the Procurator of Judaea, and in accord with the uncomprehending high priests, so that he could appear as a sacrifice for sin. There is no sacrifice for sin, affirms Jesus, and his dried up blood cannot do what only man himself must do, by turning in repentance and prayer to the Heavenly Father, to effect that change in his heart whereby his soul will give up evil and sin, and embrace what is righteous. The Father's help in the elimination of sin from the human soul is His Divine Love which, on entering the soul through prayer, removes sin and error from that soul and provides not only purification but its transformation into a divine soul, at-one with the Father's great soul in nature. This real communion, which Jesus himself had achieved, is, he declares, the only communion between God and His children, which He has provided for their salvation and eternal life with Him. The vicarious atonement, Jesus states, is a myth, and its appearance in the New Testament is one of many false statements inserted therein to make it harmonize with later concepts concerning his relationship to the Father, which these later Greek and Roman copyists did not understand. It is a terrible thing to believe that God, in order to bring about His son's sacrifice, approved the unlawful arrest of Jesus on the Passover, the bloody scourges, the treachery of Judas, the palpably unfair trial by high priests and Sanhedrinites, as well as Pilate's fear of Judaean revolt against Roman rule, to encompass the inhuman death of Jesus, His Messiah, on a cross. As though God needed to bring about through wickedness and sin the very wickedness and sin He seeks to blot out in His children.
In the light of these messages, a new interpretation of Jesus' death on the cross is certainly in order. We are told by the orthodox churches that Jesus gave himself up willingly as a sacrifice for sin because he loved humanity to the degree of self sacrifice, and because as the Messiah he had come for that purpose. He is supposed to take the place of the Hebrew sacrifice, the lamb, and he is called in the New Testament the Lamb of God. As a matter of fact, the Old Testament sacrifice of an animal was never intended to take away sin, and this is shown by the fact that although these sacrifices were not permitted during the Babylonian captivity, the people still put their faith in redemption through turning away from sin and seeking God through a life of moral and ethical conduct.
Jesus did sacrifice himself, indeed, but in a way never related or understood by the writers of the New Testament. Jesus went to his death because he would not deny his mission: that, as the first human to attain through prayer an immortal soul filled with the essence of the Father--the Divine Love--he was in this way the first true son of God and therefore the Messiah. Jesus could have saved his life if he had retracted at his trial, but he died because he remained true to himself, true to his Messiahship, and true to the Father who had sent him. Jesus sacrificed his whole life preaching the Father's Love: he gave up home, his chance to marry and have a family of his own, a chance to devote himself to the quiet pursuits of a Nazarene carpenter; instead, he chose the hatred and opposition of those who understood not and preferred the status quo; he chose the incomprehension of his loved ones, who considered him mad and sought to have him leave Galilee; he chose constant travels and journeys, so that often he had no place to lay his head; he chose to preach in the Temple at Jerusalem, chase the money lenders, defy the conspiracy of those who sought his death, and bravely faced the consequences of what he knew must inevitably occur. Yes, Jesus did sacrifice himself, but it is high time to put aside myth and metaphysics, and to know and to realize what that sacrifice consists of. When we understand his sacrifice, then Jesus stands forth in all his greatness, in all his courage, in all his serenity and forgiveness and love for mankind, with his absolute faith in the Father and His Love, in that day of his teaching, tribulation, and death.
Jesus tells us many things about himself and his life in the Holy Land. He states that the Bible story of his birth, minus the many supernatural elements in it, is substantially true, and that he was born in Bethlehem, taken by his parents to Egypt to avoid destruction by Herod, that the Wise Men did come from the East to pay him homage and that he was taught the elements of the Hebrew faith from teachers; but that it was the Father Himself who taught him the truth of the Divine Love and made him realize what his mission was. He tells us that John the Baptist, his cousin, was a great psychic and had some understanding of him as the Messiah and that both planned the Master's public ministry. He states that John never sent emissaries when in prison to be reassured that Jesus was "him whom we seek," and that Jesus as a boy of twelve never appeared before the doctors of the Law in the Temple at Jerusalem.
Jesus also tells about some of the miracles which he performed. Most of these, he explains, dealt with his healing power; but that he never raised Lazarus or anyone else from the dead, nor has anyone else been able to do so, regardless of what the Scriptures say, for the spirit body cannot return to the flesh once the physical conditions of life have been destroyed. He also relates that he never quieted a storm by rebuking the waves on the Sea of Galilee, but that he did calm the fears of the disciples with him through his example of courage and assurance.
Some of the greatest messages which, to my mind, Jesus and some of the high spirits write are those connected with the Master's resurrection from the dead after his crucifixion. Jesus informs Mr. Padgett that he did die on the cross and that he did appear to Peter, John, Mary Magdalene and his mother on the third day, but that the true explanation of this occurrence is quite different from the accepted views of the churches. Here, Jesus is supposed to reveal his divinity by arising from the dead; but actually, Jesus' soul never died, as no man's soul dies with physical death, and the Master goes on to state that, with the power inherent in his soul with the Divine Love, he simply dematerialized his mortal frame, announced in the Spirit World the availability of Immortality to mortals and spirits through the Father's Love which he was the first to manifest, and then on the third day materialized a body like flesh and blood drawn from the elements of the universe; and that it was in this materialized body, which he was able to assume without mediumistic aid, that he appeared to Mary Magdalene and the others. It is the reason, he states, why Mary did not at first recognize him and thought him to be the gardener and the same may be said of his disciples at Emmaus. The great misconception of Christians of all ages has been to believe that Jesus revealed himself to be part of the godhead by this resurrection; that is to say, rising from the dead, but actually his feat consisted in the assumption of a flesh-like body, indeed, so real, as to convince even the doubting Thomas. (True Gospel Revealed Anew by Jesus, Vol. I, pp XVII-XX).
*The title, Messages from Jesus and the Celestials, was changed with the approval of Jesus to True Gospel Revealed Anew by Jesus.
