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I will write a little as I am interested in what you have received from Luther to night, and as I am supposed to have written the Gospel of Luke, I desire to say a few things in reference to the correctness or rather incorrectness or many things contained in my Gospel.
As you infer, I am St. Luke the writer of the third Gospel and a follower of Jesus.
My Gospel was not founded on anything I had personal knowledge of, but upon the writings of others and the traditions which were the common knowledge of many Christians at that time. I knew several of the apostles and obtained much of my information from them, as well as from many of the Christians who were members of the congregations to which these apostles preached and expounded the sayings of Jesus.
In my Gospel, as now contained in the authorized version, there are many things that have been interpolated. This version was not based on what I wrote, but upon pretended copies of my writings; and the persons who made these copies did not follow literally my writings, but added to my text and gave their own interpretations of what I had written in such a way as to destroy the true meaning of what was intended to be conveyed by my writings.
There are many truths contained in the Gospel as now written in the Bible, and they are the truths of God, but there are also many errors which contradict these truths. For instance, I never wrote that Jesus commanded his disciples to believe that the wine was his blood or the bread his body, and to eat and drink these things in remembrance of him.
How this interpolation could have been made I do not know, but will observe that the same things are said in all the four Gospels, and this saying must have been derived from a common source, and that must have been the minds of those who pretended to copy the Gospels.
I tell you now that this saying, that the blood of Jesus saves from sin, is not true, and if men depend upon this blood for their salvation they will never be saved, but will enter the spirit world in all their sins, and will be surprised to learn that Jesus is not waiting to receive them in his arms and carry them to the mansions prepared for the truly redeemed of the sons of men.
I know that a vast number of the members of the various churches believe this harmful doctrine, and that as a consequence, many persons claiming to be Christians will realize that their sins have not been forgiven them when they come into the spirit world.
Sometime, as these writings continue, I will point out the errors of my Gospel to an extent that will show you the fact of what great additions and misinterpretations have been made thereto.
- I will stop now. Your brother in Christ, ST. LUKE.
