The voice of the heart,
the eternal truth, the eternal law of God,
given by the prophetess of God for our time

The fundamental issues of our time -
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»The Prophet« No. 9

The Oldtimer and the Prophet

 

The old-timer:
Hi there, prophet, fancy seeing you today – I’ve been keeping an eye on you Original Christians for some time now. When a person talks to you, you folks are quite okay and appear to be very open but oh, so terribly religious. In the meantime I’ve come to think that much of the gossip told about you by a lot of church officials can’t be true, because I often have dealings with you. Occasionally I go shopping in your shopping center, and sometimes I visit your church – which you call the “Inner Spirit-Christ Church” – because I’ve wanted to see what’s different with you, different from us Lutherans and Catholics. A lot of what’s talked about is a bit too much for me, but some things are quite clear. What I like about your church is that everything is so informal, including the way you treat each other.
What I particularly like is that in your Inner Spirit-Christ Churches you can laugh as well, and you can ask questions about simply everything. I don’t always understand the kind of language you use, but of course everyone has his own “dialect.” I think perhaps it’s the dialect that makes you Original Christians different.
Prophet, I’ve been wanting to ask you something for a long time: Are all of you so holy that you never go to a bar? Aren’t you allowed to enjoy a beer or a glass of wine? Why don’t you eat sausage and meat?

The prophet:
I’m so pleased that you’ve approached me – and so frankly, spontaneously and without any reservations. As Original Christians – of whom I count myself as one, because a prophet, as you call me, is nothing special – we try to take the commandments of God and the Sermon on the Mount of Jesus seriously, and to put them into practice step by step in our daily lives. Some are more successful than others, but many make the effort, and that’s an essential factor in our life – in the life of all of us. Whoever strives each day to measure his thoughts and behavior against the commandments of God and the Sermon on the Mount will one day gain mastery over his all-too-human failings, that is, his worst sins. In this way, he becomes more pleasing to God because he carries out God’s will more and more.

It would be a good thing if some of the people who watch us would speak freely to those they are watching, just like you did. They would soon come to the conclusion that many of us are, as you said, “quite okay,” and take their belief seriously.
Isn’t our whole life on Earth an endeavor to achieve this or that which we consider worthwhile? Many of us Original Christians want to grow closer to God – and this, of course, never goes without effort. One has to be uncompromising with oneself. But if we want to and do make the effort, we can take many steps toward the One who is the Father of us all. Because we are constantly trying to take steps toward God, it may seem to you as though we are – as you say – “oh so terribly religious.”
I don’t know whether you are Lutheran or Catholic, and it’s irrelevant anyway. We Original Christians consider all our fellow men as our brothers and sisters, because we all have ONE God, one Father, whose children we are. As Original Christians, we believe in the truth, which is partially found in the Bible as well. One can, however, discover the truth in the Bible only when one also strives to grow toward God every day – by fulfilling the commandments of God step by step. In this way, one’s spiritual horizon broadens, and one becomes more sensitive toward truth and untruth.
When you refer to a “dialect” that, as you say, is particularly noticeable in the Inner Spirit-Christ Church, the Meeting of All God-Seekers, I’m sure you don’t mean the different inflexions of pronunciation that result from the fact that we come from different towns and cities in all parts of the German-speaking countries and from many other countries in the world.
What perhaps distinguishes us from many – but not all – institutional Christians is that we believe that everything we send out as thoughts, words and actions will return to us, and that in this way we ourselves bring about our own joys and sorrows. This is why we react quite differently to everything that happens to us, and don’t speak in the same way as many Lutherans or Catholics – but not because we are different.
Whether you are Catholic or Lutheran, your Bible also says that God does not let Himself be mocked. For what a person sows is what he will reap. Perhaps this is why we have a different way of expressing ourselves – because we believe in this old original Christian teaching.
I’m pleased that you think things over – something many people never do – and that you think about the so-called church leaders, and don’t believe their gossip without first checking it out. It has always been like this. Official churches have always labeled (and still do) as a sect everyone and everything that is not oriented to man, his works, and his statutes – those people who instead strive to walk in the footsteps of Jesus, that is, to fulfill God’s law. In order to do so, of course one doesn’t need outer churches, or rites, ceremonies and dogmas, for Jesus never taught such things. The so-called sect-watch agents are joined, in turn, by other people who are also one-sidedly biased toward the institutions, as well as many a pastor who fears his flock may desert to the Original Christians, thus making both him and his office superfluous.
Every person thinks. The one who examines his own thoughts will gradually sense what others conceal in their words. He then realizes that those who are one-sidedly biased toward the institutions and are also paid by them have to denigrate others in order to gain their superior’s favor.
Narrow-minded people, too, who play the “big shot” in order to look good in public, walk in the footsteps of the so-called sect-watch agents or ministers and priests. Their “reward” is then their aggrandizement by their “superiors.” Many a person goes the way of talking badly about others perhaps simply so that no one sees his own baseness. The church institutions also have to distract attention from themselves so that their machinations are not seen. This is why they focus their light – their sanctimoniousness, which has already lost much of its “shine” – on others.
You say that you occasionally visit the Inner Spirit-Christ Church, and that sometimes we have a good laugh there. And why not? God is also a God of joy. God is not the God of theology, which tries to press Him into a schematic system of sacraments, rites and dogma, the content and substance of which is a mixture of human intellectual ideas, thought up all on their own in order to gain power over God-seekers, thus binding them and keeping them bound – but this is not the law of God, His holy Will, from which springs the water of life.
All that is dark and forbidding, sinister, menacing, punitive and merciless people have attributed to the Eternal, God, yet this is nothing more than a projection of their own lack of love. The darkening of God’s image took place when the knowledge of the law of sowing and reaping (which Jesus Himself taught) was taken from the people, so that they were no longer able to see that everything that happened to them was the result of their own thinking and doing. One then attributed every inexplicable aspect of his fate to an unpredictable, merciless God, and sought his salvation with those who claimed that this was only to be found in their hands. It’s true that the love of God was and is still spoken about – but what individual person finding himself in hopeless misery and dire straits can really believe in this?
The deed of redemption of Jesus, the Christ, the good news, likewise remained a nebulous construct, since nobody knows exactly why, and about what, he should be joyful. For every Sunday his eyes fall on Jesus nailed to the cross, who, His body broken and tortured, hung (and still hangs) on the cross. A picture of misery and of utter helplessness. It’s true that one sings “Jesus lives, and with Him I, too,” but how, and in what way, remained and remains nebulous in the end. It is the divine core of our being, the Christ-Redeemer-Power in our hearts, which we have to thank for the fact that the spark of hope in man could never die out.

The old-timer:
Prophet, do the Original Christians commemorate the suffering and death of Jesus on Good Friday, and do they celebrate His Resurrection at Easter?

The prophet:
You have a particular talent for mentioning awkward subjects. So now, dear brother, I have a riddle for you: Year in, year out, down and up, down and up – up and down, up and down. What is that?

The old-timer:
I don’t know what you mean. Are you perhaps thinking of the Catholic Church and of the constantly recurring kneeling-down and standing-up during Mass? Or of the standing-up and sitting-down time and again in the Protestant service? If that’s what you mean, then I must tell you that this is simply part of our tradition.

The prophet:
No, that’s not what I mean. I mean the calendar of events in the Church, year in, year out. With the tradition of down and up and up and down I mean, on the one hand, Christmas, and on the other, Easter. At Christmas we are to get the little wax or wooden figure from the at-tic, to remove the dust from it and to lay it, for a couple of days, in the little dusted manger. We then most dutifully sing devout and sentimental carols around it, and then, when Christmas is over, we take it back up to the attic again. Therefore, on the one hand down, and on the other hand up. After Christmas is over, the spell is broken. It’s time for Carnival and Mardi Gras. Easter is similar to Christmas. Every year the same old procedure: Before Easter the crucifix is veiled by a purple cloth, thereby spiriting away the crucified One. During this time one should (and I deliberately emphasize one should) internalize the suffering and death of Jesus – whether the Catholic Christians do it or not . On Good Friday the corpse on the cross is uncovered to be gazed upon. On Easter Sunday the Church Christians celebrate the Resurrection of our Lord. For this, a cross without a corpus is often put on display. Some days later, Jesus hangs on the cross once more according to traditional usage. And so, on Good Friday and at Easter it is down with the corpse; after the unveiling of the cross, up with the corpse once more. And so, on Good Friday and at Easter, down – and then up.

As Original Christians, we remember the suffering and death of Jesus in that we thank Christ for drinking this bitter chalice for us humans. In our gratitude to Him lies also our promise that we will do, step by step, what He called upon us to do in His Sermon on the Mount: “I compare the one who hears these words of Mine and follows them with a wise man who built his house solidly upon a rock.” (Mt. 8:24) We don’t eat fish, even on Good Friday; neither do we eat smoked and consecrated ham at Easter.

We don’t eat any form of meat, neither fish or any other kind of animal. We don’t merely want to be vegetarians in that we spare ani-mals; instead, we want to become spiritual vegetarians in that we think vegetarian more and more. This means that we endeavor to act against life less and less, that is, to sin less and less, so that we may follow Him who is the life – Jesus, the Christ.

At Christmas, Jesus, the Christ, is trivialized as a baby and made to look silly. At Easter the same thing happens, in that He is nailed to the cross time and again, although He rose from the dead long ago. One can well imagine why the tradition of the corpse nailed to the cross is kept up. Perhaps the intention is, among other things, to instill a bad conscience into church-believers, so that they continue to respectfully pay homage to those who traditionally maintain the most venerable traditions. This means that the “believer” continues to believe – or, to put it another way, to be dependent – and goes on paying his church taxes. Only the venerable supporters of tradition say that Jesus, the Christ, should remain silent in accordance with words of the Grand Inquisitor in Dostoyevsky’s work. There, the Grand Inquisitor says to Jesus: “What could you possibly say? I know only too well what you would say. And you have no right to add anything to what was said by you in former times. …”
“It was all told by you to the Pope and so now all of it is in the Pope’s possession, and now we should appreciate it if you would stay away altogether and refrain from interfering, for the time being, at any rate.”

The old-timer:
In part, I see it this way, too. But what can one do with the holidays of Christmas and Easter? I have no solution.

The prophet:
Use a solvent, which means to break away from traditional thinking and doing, for Jesus never called us to do such things. Live, step by step, what Jesus taught us, and then you will no longer need the reverends of tradition, but instead will honor Him to whom all honor is due.

The old-timer:
But that’s difficult when I think of my family and my relatives all of whom are tied up in the old traditions.
The prophet:
If a volcano were to think like you, it would never erupt and let its lava cover up a vast area of land, so that the Earth later becomes fertile. If you merely let yourself be stirred up by your thoughts, but keep quiet outwardly in order to conform to your relatives, then you nip your inner development in the bud, and you will never be able to stimulate a fruitful life in your fellow man. They will remain blind and tied to the most venerable traditionalists, in order to remain faithful to tradition – which has nothing in common with the active teachings of Jesus, the Christ.
If God really were as He is portrayed by the institutions of the church, then in truth it would be no laughing matter. But God is love, joy and peace. God is with us and for us all, because we are His children. God is not in a church of stone, where one may neither speak nor laugh, where the severity of the sacraments rules, and the crucifix with its corpus gives everyone who looks at it closely a bad conscience.
Jesus, the Christ, is risen. That should fill us with joy; for through His great deed of redemption we, too, may resurrect, if we turn toward the risen Christ instead of the dead man on the cross, who apparently should instill us with a bad conscience so that we give honor to the mainstream churches – giving more weight to the dead man than to the risen Christ. But because of the churchgoer’s guilty conscience – which is supposed to be prompted time and again by the man on the cross – many a one pays his mite, in the hopes that God will forgive him, the poor sinner, his sins.

But God does not accept payment for what He does for us. He loves us; and when we turn to Him in profound prayer and in watchfulness toward ourselves, we grow closer to God in our hearts. And so, it’s a matter of being vigilant as to whether we make use of the day, whether we make and keep peace with our neighbor. It’s a question of keeping a watchful eye on what we think and say about our fellow man, how we behave toward him, and whether we improve ourselves, by repenting of the sins we have recognized with the help of our Redeemer, by asking for forgiveness, by forgiving our neighbor and by no longer committing these sins. And so, we do not have to pay God; instead, we should dedicate ourselves to Him by gradually doing what Jesus called on us to do: Love one another as I – and this means Jesus – have loved you, and as He, in the end, loves us eternally.
Someone who trustingly goes to church on Sundays rarely questions whether Christ really wants what the church authorities would have their faithful believe. They dish up a theological-intellectual system of doctrine and make an ado Jesus never wanted.
Jesus’ disciples and apostles certainly were informal people. According to what one can read, they spoke to Jesus as good friends, as His equals. Why shouldn’t we be able to speak to Jesus the same way today? He hears and understands us because His spirit dwells in us. Since as Original Christians, we speak to Christ in our prayers, and by the step-by-step actualization of the commandments of God and the Sermon on the Mount – also because we endeavor to be for our fellow men and not against them – we are bound to have another way of expressing ourselves, as you noticed, but it is not a particular Original Christian “dialect.” We can also laugh – even in our Inner Spirit-Christ Church at the Meetings of All God-Seekers – because God is a God of love, freedom and joy, and because the living Christ of God liberates us from the shadows of our past which show up in our daily life.
Incidentally, we have changed the name of the Inner Spirit-Christ Church because many God-seekers took offence to the word “church,” since they associate it with the institutional church. “Inner Spirit-Christ Church” should mean: the church of the inner being, which signifies that we are God’s temple and that the Spirit of Christ dwells in us. Since we can’t always explain the full meaning of the words “Inner Spirit-Christ Church,” we have complied with the request of many God-seekers from all over the world, and have expressed the meaning of the words “Inner Spirit-Christ Church” in the new designation: Original Christian Gathering Place – Meeting of All God-Seekers. The Cosmic School of Life. Christ, the Key to the Door of Life.
God wants us to be people that are happy from the heart, not perpetually burdened with guilt feelings. Nevertheless if we have these guilt feelings, it means that we are not following the path Jesus showed us and do not accept His Redemption.
Dear old-timer, may I address you as brother? We may very well be religious people, but we are no saints. We don’t believe in the so-called “Holy Father,” the Pope, and we don’t commemorate All Saints’ Day because we believe in the one Holy One, in God, who is the Father of us all, and in Christ, the Redeemer of us all. Whether you believe it or not, we do visit bars now and then, and enjoy one or two beers or a glass of wine, but we don’t get drunk. That has nothing to do with being “tipsy,” which some Original Christians may also experience from time to time. And who shall forbid this to us? Not Christ, and definitely not me, for I do not give orders, even if there are church agents who say so and who have painted and paint a picture of me that has nothing to do with reality.

It is true that we eat neither sausage nor meat. In the animals we see the life of the Creator, and know – in the end, from our own experience, and surely you can confirm this yourself – that in many cases animals have finer perceptions than we humans. The gist of what Jesus said is: Do not do unto others what you would not have them do unto you. Or, do unto others as you would have them do unto you. The “others” are, for us, not only our fellow men, but also the animals, our second neighbors. Whatever we do to them, even when we kill them for our own ends, is an act of violence which one day we will experience ourselves. The same applies to hunting and shooting animals in the woods and fields. The one who does not want to be treated as the animals are often treated should treat these creatures just as he would like to be treated.

The old-timer:
So that’s the way it is. It seems to me that you must be better than we are. I’m a Protestant ...

The prophet:
Wait a minute, dear brother! We are no better than you are. Between ourselves, we are all brothers and sisters, and all equal before God, even if you are Protestant Lutheran. We entreat you to make no difference between Protestant Lutherans and Original Christians. We all have the same God, because there is only the one Eternal One. We all are His children. We differ from the church Christians solely in that we don’t believe in the doctrines and all the outer fuss prescribed by the ecclesiastical institutions, both Protestant Lutheran and Catholic. Neither do we believe that alone the belief in our redemption through Christ is sufficient to receive forgiveness for all our sins, as the Lutheran teachings assert. If that were true, everybody who measured his life by the Ten Commandments and the Sermon on the Mount would have to call himself a fool. Why then would we need the Commandments and the Sermon on the Mount, if mere belief alone were enough? If Jesus had said this, then Martin Luther’s statement would be correct: “Sin steadfastly, but believe even more steadfastly.” This would mean that it is not important whether a person does wrong, for thanks to Christ he will be completely forgiven if he only has the right belief. If what Luther preached, “Sin steadfastly, but believe even more steadfastly,” corresponded to the will of God, then why would God have explained in the Ten Commandments, and Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount, how we could conduct ourselves?
Jesus spoke about doing His teachings and likened a person who puts them into practice to a wise man, who builds his house upon a rock. He also taught us that the person who hears His teachings and does not do them is like a foolish man, who builds his house upon sand. As Original Christians, we strive to follow Jesus’ teachings and to act accordingly.

The old-timer:
I can accept that it wouldn’t be right to speak and act differently from what you think and what you know to be correct. I’m slowly realizing that you Original Christians are no different from us, when seen in this light.
Since it’s my turn to ask questions: What do you Original Christians do when one of you – an Original Christian – dies? Do you bury him yourselves or what?

The prophet:
When one of us is very ill and senses that his physical death is approaching, he informs his relatives about how he wishes to be buried. For the most part, it is usual that before the coffin is given into the earth, a short contemplation takes place and several heartfelt prayers are spoken; we also sing two or three Christian songs. Then the coffin is given into the earth – by the undertaker’s workers, of course. There are basically no ceremonies at Original Christian gatherings. This applies to the burial of an Original Christian, too. When an Original Christian dies without having given any instructions for his burial, his relatives will arrange this for him. There are many undertakers who accompany the deceased on his last journey much more aesthetically and sympathetically than a pastor or priest who, for decades, has always cited the same Biblical quotations, recited the same prayers and followed the same fixed ritual when giving the body over to the earth.
All people are, more or less, afraid of dying. But why are they so afraid of not being buried as they deem worthy? Does the living person take care that he remain respected even as a deceased person, and that, according to his still existing worth, his relatives have him buried in a dignified manner, in a sensational way if possible, so that friends, acquaintances and neighbors see what he has? Dear brother, do you think that God takes notice of how a deceased person is buried? God takes into account how the deceased person lived as a human being. And the soul receives its reward correspondingly, according to the principle: What you have sown is also what you will reap.

The old-timer:
Prophet, I think you have no reverence, no respect for death.

The prophet:
If you think I am irreverent, and have no respect for death, that is your opinion. I will not justify myself. I will merely tell you my basic attitude toward death. Whether you believe it or not – that’s up to you.
The word “death” means “the end” of the earthly body, which is nothing else than a “transitory shell.” It disintegrates as soon as the life that is inherent in the soul withdraws. I cannot have “respect” for something that has already ceased to exist. I have respect for the being who was present in the person, and which left him at death. What remains is an empty shell, and one pays respect to it on its last journey because one has respect for the being that left the shell. In the being that left the shell is the life, God. And before Him I have not only respect, but reverence. But I don’t consider even a dead body to be a waste product, but a part of the earth, for the corpse consists of water and earth and reverts to the earth substances. I respect the laws of nature. And therefore, I pay respect to the corpse, the discarded garment, but don’t consider it to be more important than the soul now journeying back to God. On the other hand, the funerals of denominational Christians do not always show reverence – for instance, when subsequently a boisterous funeral meal is held, or there are, perhaps, even squabbles over the inheritance.
How do you see this, my brother?

The old-timer:
Prophet, you don’t mince your words where I may be wrong – I like that! And when I hear all this I realize that there really is something to what you say. Sometimes I even thought so myself. Even when you quite plainly say how you see things, nevertheless, I sense that you don’t wish to convince me. That is good; there is no coercion; I am free.
Prophet, one thing I don’t understand: Just now I was quite impudent with you, and said you had no reverence and so on. But you didn’t say anything. I would have understood if you had hit back at me. But you didn’t. Prophet, why don’t you defend yourself?

The prophet:
Why should I defend myself? In doing so, one opinion would merely clash with another. More and more misunderstandings would occur, and in the end, one would part in disagreement or even at loggerheads. Then each one would believe himself to be in the right. I do not base myself on my rights or on always being in the right, but on justice, and that is God, according to the law:
What a person sows is what he will reap, or, as the saying goes: God’s mills grind slowly but surely. And so, one day, everything will come to light, if not dur-ing this life on Earth then in an other existence – even if it is as a soul in the spheres of purification where the souls are.

We Original Christians have a principle of not disputing about religious belief. We simply say how we do it ourselves, and put right what is wrong. Our neighbor can then accept it or not.
The old-timer:
So now you want to have me believe that there is something to reincarnation, that we come into this world as human beings time and again. Only, that isn’t Christian, but an eastern teaching.

The prophet:
I do not want you to believe anything, because I don’t proselytize, not even about reincarnation. I believe in reincarnations of the soul; it’s the only explanation for much that I could never understand before I had this knowledge. For example, why things go well for someone who exploits or despises people, or who is a thief or a murderer and so on; or on the other hand, why someone else who followed his conscience from childhood on and leads a modest life may have to endure much sorrow and pain his whole life long. The latter, if asked, wouldn’t be able to recall that in this life he had “sowed,” that is, caused, what could have led to this intolerable “harvest.” The harvest is there, and can be felt: illness, dire straits, pain and sorrow. And since he is harvesting this way, he must have sown it. Only someone who knows that he has lived as a human being before this life on Earth can explain such a fate satisfactorily to himself. Then he will no longer lay the blame for whatever befell him on “fate,” or God, or certain of his fellow men.
And whoever sins today, and doesn’t yet suffer the corresponding consequences in this life on Earth, can be certain he will have to do so in future lives – if he is not aware of God’s grace that constantly appeals to his conscience to clear up the recognized sins, which show themselves in one’s thinking, speaking, and acting, in the way taught by Jesus: Repent of the sins you have recognized, ask the one you have harmed for forgiveness, forgive whoever has sinned against you, make amends for whatever can still be made good, and commit these sins no more.
The knowledge of reincarnation does away with the sheer terror institutional Christians face with eternal damnation and purgatory, that is, with the punishments of hell. Don’t denominational Christians often live under an anxiety-psychosis? It is true that reincarnation is neither a Protestant Lutheran nor a Catholic doctrine. Nevertheless, it is a truth to be found not only in eastern teachings, for it was also a part of the teachings and belief of the first Original Christians about two thousand years ago, the Early Christians, as proved by apocryphal documents. Jesus was neither Protestant Lutheran nor Catholic. This is the reason why both institutions do not teach reincarnation. They simply teach what is Catholic or Protestant Lutheran, but not the teachings of Jesus of Nazareth.

The old-timer:
That’s all very new to me. Can you prove that there really is reincarnation?

The prophet:
Belief and reincarnation cannot be proved. That’s why we don’t proselytize – we don’t want to convince anyone. We teach our belief, for example, in Original Christian meetings – to which anyone who wants to may come – but we do not force anyone to accept our belief. Religious belief is best proved by believers doing what they believe in. Our Original Christian motto is: Don’t merely speak of your Christian belief, but do what you believe in. That is much more convincing than any amount of talking. Therefore, you’ll not find Original Christians doing any kind of missionary work.

The old-timer:
What you say sounds plausible enough. It’s really quite exciting! The thought that I have probably lived before and that I have further lives ahead of me makes me more and more curious. Prophet, please tell me more about reincarnation! Why should we keep coming, over and over again? What’s the point?
By the way, I have to tell you: you really are an original. I’m liking you more and more.

The prophet:
Aren’t we all? Everyone is an original in his own way. Every person is of his own making. Perhaps reincarnation may be deduced from this.
If we really take a good look at reincarnation, it is not to be seen as a punishment but as a chance, by means of which our soul can incarnate in a physical body again. This way it is possible, as a human being in the brevity of years to pay off debts and to recognize and repent of sins, and to clear them up with the help of the Christ of God. The central teaching of Jesus of Nazareth, which we cannot bring to mind often enough, is, among other things: Repent of your sins; ask your fellow man, whom you have done wrong in thought, word or deed, for forgiveness, and forgive those who have done you wrong. If we then no longer commit the offences we have cleared up, our soul will become more light-filled and things will go better for us, the human being. Then we have more joy in life and are for our fellow man more and more, which means that we live more consciously and healthily.

If we apply the central teaching of Jesus, the Christ, it also means: Love God, your Father, with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your might – and your neighbor as yourself.
We will then envy, hate and disparage our fellow men less and less, and will cease treating them as second-rate beings. The result will then be peace.

The old-timer:
Prophet, may I interrupt you? I now understand that reincarnation makes sense. You said that the central teaching of Jesus, the Christ, is the repentance of sins, asking for forgiveness, forgiving, making amends where possible, and not doing again whatever it was that we did wrong previously, thus harming others. Did I understand this correctly? And if it’s true that everyone reaps only what he has sown himself at some time or other, then, according to the teaching of reincarnation, all are responsible for their misfortunes themselves. But then how would mercy fit in this? How can mercy be compatible with the fact that precisely in our time countless people have to suffer: through starvation, illness, homelessness, unemployment, and much more? And then the tremendous crime rate comes to mind. Things are going from bad to worse every day. There were never so many brutal, cruel and evil, even diabolical, crimes as nowadays. Where is God’s mercy in this?

The prophet’s answer:
Dear brother, do you mean to claim that God is to blame for this dreadful state of affairs? Let’s take a look at our judicial system, which always lays the blame on the instigator, and then punishes him or her. If God were to blame for everything that takes place in this world, then in the end He would be the originator of all these wrongdoings and thus a being which would deserve not only contempt but also opposition. In that case, our legal system ought to, strictly speaking, punish the original instigator and not just the instigator, the human being.

For better understanding, I will give you a picture which is in keeping with our world, and by which we can deduce God’s attitude toward us.
A very wealthy landowner has three sons and two daughters. His five children are mature human beings, whom he, their father, holds in high regard and loves. One day he says to his children: “My wealth is infinitely great. I shall leave it to the five of you. Each one of you owns everything, but each one of you has, according to his abilities, his own sphere which he should work on and increase. I don’t want to divide this great wealth and create allotments, but instead, as already mentioned, I shall give to each of you equally. However, since you all possess different talents, each one of you should, according to his abilities, manage and increase the area that corresponds to his or her creative predispositions. I don’t want to keep anything for myself, yet I feel myself integrated into this great wealth.”
Dear brother, you believe in the words of the Bible, don’t you? The parable of the inheritance is found in the Bible as the parable of the talents, or the parable of the entrusted money.
“The Kingdom of Heaven is like a man travelling into a far country, who called his servants and entrusted them with his possessions. And to one he gave five talents, to another two, and to the third one, each one according to his abilities, and left straightaway.
Then the one who had received five talents went forth and traded with them and made five talents more. Likewise, the one who had received two talents made two talents more. But the one who had received one went forth and dug a hole and hid his master’s money.”

The Bible also recounts what happened when the man returned from his travels: The first two servants had behaved correctly, but the third servant had not made use of the talent entrusted to him because he was afraid of making a mistake.

The father in our picture gave his children the whole fortune. They are all heirs to the whole, and thus also responsible for their actions. What would the heirs say if the father who had bequeathed them everything suddenly intervened in their way of handling things and ordered his children to do whatever he, the father, wished? A rebellion of the children would be the result. If they then did as their father commanded them they would remain inexperienced. They would not be able to develop their own individual capabilities. The result would be that they would not administer their inheritance, and in time they would be incapable of administering it, because their father had taken away their freedom of creative development. A person who makes no mistakes or isn’t allowed to make a mistake cannot learn from his mistakes. Neither can he manage his inheritance wisely nor increase it.
How does the matter stand as far as God, our eternal Father, is concerned?
Let us bring to mind that before the Fall of Man we were pure heavenly beings, and that through Christ, our Redeemer, we will find our way back to our true home as pure beings, as sons and daughters of God. The eternal, heavenly Father gave His pure children – including us, since we were once pure beings – the whole of infinity, the heavens with all their forms of being and forces as our heritage. Our pure spirit body is the essence of the divine heritage, which, in turn, is the law of God, the law of love, kindness and freedom.
All pure beings therefore are heirs to all that is pure in the whole of infinity. All divine forces of the Being are the inherent laws of God, love, kindness, freedom and unity. In this vast and lawful course of creation, every pure being gives expression to his divine mentality, in which various abilities are active. Because God gave the pure beings the whole of infinity as their divine heritage, and because He is, as the stream and life force, the immeasurable source of creation of all further giving, He is also integrated into the unending heritage, which He increases in cycles, in that He allows further primordial forces to stream into it, which the pure beings then receive as additional heritage.
And so, God gave His pure children the whole of infinity as their heritage, and thus the free will as well, to create and to shape and form. Since they are at one with the infinitely eternal heritage – which is also the all-prevailing law in the divine forms, such as minerals, plants, animals and pure beings – they are absolutely free beings and thus unrestricted in their actions, fully mature sons and daughters of God who shape and work in harmony with their eternal Father and His great creative power.
God is. And what God has given to His pure beings He will not take away from them, not even when a part of His creatures have turned away from Him, and have acted and act against Him. He is always the same, always the Giver, who does not intervene in the course of events, because His children are heirs to infinity.
Dear brother, whether you want to believe it or not, God, our eternal Father, sees us human beings – we who transgress against our divine heritage – not just as sinners and immature beings, for He does not intervene in the endless gifts, in our divine heritage. He always sees in us human beings the heirs to infinity, His sons and daughters of the heavens – even when we act against our divine heritage, against the law of love, kindness and peace. God does not intervene in our sinful doings, otherwise He would make us into immature human beings who would then also be immature beings in the eternal heavens. God gave us the essence of our divine heritage. It is the Ten Commandments and the Sermon on the Mount of Jesus. If we orient ourselves to these, then we consciously take up our divine heritage because we then do what is in accordance with the law of God, which is love, kindness, freedom, unity, justice and much more.
Particularly we Christians are called upon to orient ourselves to Jesus’ teachings, so that Jesus, the Christ, can lead us back to the Father-house. If we fulfill the inherent laws, the Ten Commandments and the Sermon on the Mount, which, in the end, are our divine heritage, then we will experience God’s great mercy, which extends a hand to us through Christ, our Redeemer, and leads us home, out of the wheel of reincarnation, back to our divine heritage and into the Father-house, where our mansions have been from time immemorial.
God’s mercy, which is a help for us in recognizing our sins and in doing them no longer, can be granted to us only when we ourselves also want this. In other words, when we are ready and willing, as it were, to make the necessary moves or steps toward our divine heritage, toward God, our Father.
At this point I would like to mention the parable of the lost son, who went to a foreign country and was first received by his father when he returned, filled with remorse. He brought nothing with him from the world in which he had lived until his return; he brought just himself to his father, meaning that his heart was purified and his filial love, the pure heart, found entry into his father’s house. It is similar with us human beings. If we leave the world of sin, if we purify our soul with the help of our Redeemer, then we, too, will bring a pure heart into our Father’s house – and that, in turn, is our divine heritage, the pure, noble and fine, the love, kindness, gentleness, freedom and unity. So even in our remoteness from God, we still have the freedom we received from the eternal Being, and therefore the free will either to do the will of God and what is ultimately our divine heritage – or to turn away from our divine heritage and to create our heritage of sin which – through the law of sowing and reaping – will in time bring illness, dire straits, suffering, fate, and much more. It is what we have created during the course of our various lives on Earth and not cleared up with the help of the Christ of God. It is our heritage of sin that once again comes toward us, just as our divine heritage comes toward us, insofar as we do what God commanded us in the Ten Commandments and Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount.

Dear brother, just think: God has not given us orders – He just calls on us, thus saying to us: You have the freedom from Me, the free will either to take up your divine heritage and to be free, or to create your own heritage of sin which will come back to you.
And so, it may be said that whatever befalls us is a part of our sinful heritage; it is what we ourselves have created.
And let us ask ourselves the question: Who bears the main responsibility – and I deliberately stress the words, the main responsibility – for the state of this world? It is the so-called Christian mainstream churches. They teach all that ballyhoo, with their rites, cults and ceremonies. The plain and simple teachings of Jesus of Nazareth are merely mentioned on the side, and partially declared to be unrealizable. But they are most essential for the life of every Christian: Recognize your sins, repent of them with all your heart and clear them up, which means to ask for forgiveness, to forgive, to make amends for what you still can, and to commit these sins no more. The central teaching of Jesus, the Christ, may be also expressed in the following way: What you do not want to have done to you, do not do to anyone else. Or: What you want to have done to you, do first to others.

If all people who call themselves Christians would orient themselves to this central teaching of Jesus, in the knowledge that what a person sows is also what he will reap – unless he makes use of the chance of mercy, by recognizing his sins in the occurrences of his daily life, and following the path of repentance and clearing up whatever sins he has committed – then there would be far fewer victims and culprits in this world. In being upset by their feelings and sensations, in their negative thoughts and desires, which could even drive them to sinful actions, people would recognize in time their wanting to sin, and would give it up, by way of Jesus’ teachings, by repenting and clearing things up. Then we would no longer need mainstream churches, no pope with his pageantry and pomp, no cardinals, bishops, priests, pastors and assorted clergymen. Then Jesus, the Christ, would be our principal teacher, whom we would follow as He commanded us: Follow Me.
Christians are called upon to take Jesus’ teachings into the whole world. This means the gospel of love, peace and unity – not merely the word, of course, the letter, that is, the knowledge of it, but the message that has been lived, the word that is thoroughly lived, in which the power of God is brought to bear: the deed carried out in His Spirit. When we take a look at the past, we see that it looks very different. The Christians came with swords and lances – see the Crusades – with wood and torches in order to build pyres, and to set them afire, thus lending expression to their delusion that their fellow men were in league with the devil.

One should be clear in one’s mind what kind of example the representatives of the Church gave to their flock by ordering and carrying out such things. Also what the alleged pastors brought about in souls and human beings, who, for the most part, were used to following them blindly. They incited people to denigrate their neighbors even to the point of denunciation. By means of the cruel spectacle of burning people at the stake whom they labeled “heretics and witches” – but who were perhaps nothing more than conscientious, steadfast God-seekers – they stimulated the basest and most reprehensible instincts in those people who congregated to form the masses of curious and sensation-seeking onlookers.
This all took place under the sign of the cross and in the name of “Christ,” accompanied by invocations to God. The people who behaved in this manner – who tortured, tormented, condemned and murdered – called themselves “Christians.” What mockery and derision of Christ! And truly no stimulus to seriously carry out the Nazarene’s teachings: Recognize yourself in your fits of emotion and clear up the beam in your own eye; what you do not want others to do to you, do not do to others either.
“Blinded by sin” means that by acting repeatedly against the commandments of God, the conscience becomes dulled, and finally falls silent. But our conscience is the admonishing voice in the law of sowing and reaping. Reincarnation gives everyone the opportunity to clear up even very grave sins. But not every soul that becomes a human being again makes use of this chance.
There are no more people being burned at the stake these days. The curious and sensation-seeking Christian gets his cheap thrills from television, video games, surfing the Internet, etc., etc. The representatives of the Church no longer burn “heretics” at the stake either. Nowadays, instead of the word “heretic” they use the term “sect.” And the Inquisition, too, is no longer found under this name.
In our world of today, it is the so-called sect-watch agents who again persecute those who do not belong to the existing, centuries-old alliance for the persecution of their fellow man, but instead often earnestly practiced and practice the teachings of Jesus. The representatives of the mainstream churches and those servile to them have failed. This world is as they are.
The risen Jesus, the Christ, lives on through those people who honor Jesus, the Christ, and not a destructive power.

The old-timer:
I have to think about what you just said.

The prophet:
In order to round off the whole thing, I would like to give you a further example so that you can deepen your knowledge of reincarnation even more.
Our journey back home to the Father-house and reincarnation may be illustrated by the picture of a hot air balloon. In the balloon there is gas. Under the balloon hangs a pannier with people and sandbags in it. The weight of the sacks more or less determines the altitude of the balloon’s flight. The balloon in our picture represents our soul. The Spirit of God dwells in the soul and wants to carry it to the highest heights, to the eternal Father-house. The pannier with the sandbags is the soul’s burden. The more sandbags there are in the pannier, the closer to the Earth the balloon will be. If there are heavy burdens in the soul, then after the physical death of the person it remains close to the Earth and will return to a further incarnation.
We, the individuals sitting in the pannier, decide ourselves, whether we load further sandbags into the pannier, thus inflicting ourselves with additional sins and thereby preventing the ascent into the higher atmosphere, into the pure spheres of the soul, or whether we gradually throw off the ballast, the sandbags, that is, cast off our sins and soar heavenward.
If, after the death of the body, the soul cannot reach higher spheres, that is, higher realms of the worlds beyond, because it is burdened by the weight of its sins, then it has the opportunity to return as a human being with certain lessons to learn on its journey through life.
And so, the Earth is a school of life for beggars and kings, for you and for me, too, for every human being. A person having some knowledge about reincarnation is more and more able to comprehend God’s mercy, which helps the wanderer on his way toward his eternal homeland to become free of his sins. Reincarnation also helps us to comprehend more profoundly that God is not a punishing God but a God of mercy, kindness, love and help. Reincarnation also points to the law of sowing and reaping which signifies: What we sow we will also reap. But it also shows us that there are no such places as hell or purgatory, for we can return to clear up whatever weighed our soul down and thereby prevented us – remember the image of the hot air balloon – from soaring up, that is, from becoming free.
The law “what a person sows is what he will reap” also signifies, among other things, that we ourselves create our own hell or purgatory. Hell and purgatory are states of consciousness in us. In accordance with our hellish seeds – for in-stance, through our spiteful, jealous and vindictive thinking and acting or through our malicious words and deeds – we create a state of affairs within us which may truly be hellish. When we then reap what we have sown, this can be torments of hell, such as illness, pain, suffering, misery and much more. In this case we have – as a form of expiation – “hell” or “purgatory” here on Earth. The place of heaven or hell is in ourselves.
Therefore, everyone is of his own making, both chaff and wheat. The chaff is the sin, the burden. The wheat is the liberation from sin, the path to heaven. And so, each person is an original according to what he has sown. The original is unique, as is whatever moulds the original, all that is original in him, his “personality.”
No two persons are as alike as two peas in a pod. And therefore, the sins of one person are not the same as the sins of another. We may believe that two people have the same way of living or thinking; yet what they put into their feelings and sensations, into their thoughts, words and deeds, will be different. The content of what we think and do is decisive, and it is what shapes a person’s character, his habits and his way of life.
In the final analysis, our behavior is brought about by our feeling, sensing, thinking, speaking, and acting. In this way, we create our habits. These give rise to the markings of our body. And so, we are “marked beings.” We ourselves undertake the markings with the content of our five sensory perceptions: seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting and touching. These components of perception – which, in turn, influence our feeling, sensing, thinking, speaking and acting, and vice versa – may be likened to different types of colored paintbrushes that mark our body and shape our behavior. Our fate will then be accordingly.

The old-timer:
And so, all people are different. And after what you’ve explained just now, every person’s fate must be different, too. Apropos fate: When I think about it, I feel quite peculiar. Prophet, please define God’s mercy for me once more.

The prophet:
Gladly! Mercy means that you receive mercy in time as a help before one of your many causes becomes effective, before your seed metes out a particular harvest in the form of a blow of fate. Mercy is the strength to repent of your sins and clear them up – only when you want to, of course. The decisive factor is that you want this.
To this, Jesus said the following: Ask, and you will be given; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you.
If we do not ask for support and help in order to recognize and overcome our sinfulness, then we want to continue to sin, and who shall take away our sins when we want to sin? Should mercy force us to sin no more? And so, it depends on us whether God’s mercy can become effective or not. Or would you be prepared to invest energy in something if you knew that your neighbor did not want any help, that he wanted to continue behaving as he did in the past? Our fate lies in our own hands.

The old-timer:
Prophet, I can’t swallow that just like that. I don’t want to believe what you are saying, even though quite a lot of it seems logical to me. All of a sudden I’m at a complete loss. What you say about God – that is not the God I know from school or from confirmation classes! Surely, there can be only one kind of God! Which is the right one? What can one believe?

The prophet:
Belief is a funny thing because – as already said – it cannot be proved. No one else can give you proof of what is true. Only you can convince yourself of the truth by gradually entrusting yourself to God.

The old-timer:
How? Do you have a formula?

The prophet:
I don’t have a formula, but I will give you an account of how I was able and am allowed to experience God.
About 30 years ago I was not yet an instrument of the Spirit of God. However, after a hard blow of fate I began to ask questions about the institutional Catholic God, whom I assumed –as many Catholics do – lived high up above the clouds in heaven, dispensing kindness, love and punishment. My questions were more or less as follows: Does God really exist? If so, where is He? Is there a life after death? If so, I reflected, then there must be a higher being who is life itself, even that of the so-called dead. Where are our dead relatives if a hereafter exists? Where are, for example, “the poor souls”? Where will I be after my death?
Moreover, I asked God questions, at first randomly, the gist of which was the following: Do you hear me? Do you understand me? Are you even prepared to accept a sinner, too? Is there any point in praying when you are so far away? Can you, or are you prepared to, hear peoples’ prayers at all, or do you have no time, because you are too busy writing in the pros and cons of each person in your bookkeeping? Why do you punish innocent people and take children and adults away from Earth in the prime of their life? Why do you allow such suffering – of animals, too? Perhaps you do not really exist! Why do you hide yourself from us human beings? Why does one say of you, God, that you are the Father of all people? A good father looks after his children, but you let many people go to seed and kill them while they are still young. I long for a just God who should be my Father. On the one hand, I want to believe that you exist, but when I see all the suf-fering of people I cannot believe it. Do all people have to make such a big ado about you as the Catholic priests do, in order to favorably impress you? I have no feelings for such things; so, I must give you up.

Suddenly I had an idea: I will try out whether there is a God who would still be favorable toward me even when I don’t join in all that fuss and bother. – A short time lat-er someone gave me a book, saying: “You are seeking God. Maybe you can find a few clues in this.” – The contents of this book appeared logical to me. The next step was that I opened a Bible and – what do you know – discovered the Sermon on the Mount in the book of Mathew. I read it and thought: So that is what Jesus wants to tell me! Over and over again, I took some statements from His Sermon on the Mount and thought about them every now and then. Strangely enough – it became ever more still in me. The angry thoughts against God ebbed away, and the statements from the Sermon on the Mount seemed more and more logical to me. Then out of the blue came another thought: Perhaps I ought to pray. I began to pray, but somehow it wasn’t quite right. The picture of a God enthroned somewhere rose before my eyes again and again. However, thoughts about the teachings of the Sermon on the Mount kept coming to me. I stopped stammering out my prayers and thought: God most certainly cannot hear these prayers! It was such a meaningless babbling.
Again I thought about God. All at once I thought: He can’t be so far away! If He is the Father of all people, then He is also my Father. A wise God cannot be so far away, and therefore He must be able to hear my prayers. I sought out a quiet corner in my home and tried to pray with concentration. Suddenly, I noticed that I was becoming more calm and composed as a result of my prayers. It was as though I had received an answer from God. This quiet and calm were good for my sore and seeking heart, for it was all worked up inside by further blows of fate.
Time and again I sought out prayer. And all of a sudden, I realized that my prayers were becoming quite different. I no longer expressed expectations, but began to speak to God quite freely in prayer, like, for example: If you are my Father, then I will come trustingly to you and tell you that my heart aches, because I have lost a person who was very dear to me. I ask you to keep the soul in your kindness, love and mercy. –All at once I felt startled – how could I pray like that? Where did it come from? What prompts such prayers in me? Until now I had known only the recited prayers of the priests, or the prayers in the songbook.

I was drawn more and more to the corner to pray, and I always felt strengthened following the prayers, cheerful, joyful and confident. I thought: This could be God’s answer. I became ever more courageous and spoke to God as my Father. I came to Him in prayer as His child, laid everything before Him that depressed me, but also told Him what made me happy or what irritated or angered me. I had the feeling after praying that I should not get annoyed or have negative thoughts, but should entrust myself to God. And I began to pray again, saying: Lord, I should put my trust in you. It is so very, very difficult! Suddenly I realized that it was difficult only because I did not trust Him, because I did not put my trust in God, but instead wanted to test God to see whether He really did exist.

Now the thought came to me: I will place before God all those all-too-human thoughts of doubt and worry, of problems or thoughts against my neighbor. I did so in prayer – and felt new strength. After praying it was as if these thoughts had been wiped away. I felt strength in me, and had an inkling of what trust is, what it means to be able to go to God, the eternal Father, as His child and to lay down everything before Him. I did this over and over again. The trust in God, our eternal Father, grew and finally a tiny flame of love for God began to burn; it was the love for a Father who calmed me, who helped me to put my trust in Him and gradually come to believe in Him.
Suddenly I began to rejoice, and my heart was filled with joy. I felt that there is a God who hears me! There is a God who understands me! There is a God who helps me! My prayers became increasingly deeper and profound, and my life transformed.
I picked up the Sermon on the Mount time and again and read there, for instance: Whatever you want that others do to you, do it first to them. And it follows that: Whatever you do not want done to you, do not do it to others either. That was difficult! But I tried it by trusting in God. Always when I succeeded I felt joy and thankfulness toward God. I felt that I was becoming freer and less troubled. Soon all my efforts and energies were concentrated on praying to Him, on being close to Him in prayer.

Dear brother, in this way I experienced that there is a near God, a God of love, a Father to whom we may all come. He will not always do what we want, but He acts according to His just and holy law of love.
Five years later the word of God, which is the divine, prophetic Spirit, broke through. God has called me His prophetess for 25 years now, and I call myself His child. I love God, my Father. I know that He does not want any fuss, no hollow, external forms and creeds. What He desires is the trusting heart of His children; that we go to Him in joy and in sorrow, and that we fulfill, step by step, His holy Commandments and the Sermon on the Mount of Jesus.
At the time the prophetic word broke through, I was told by the voice of the heart: The steps leading to prayer and the experience during and after prayer – the peace, calm and quiet, the growing trust in God, the inner joy and the confidence that God is a near God, the help in finding a way out of doubt, worries and trouble, the tiny flame of love, which lit up for God all of a sudden, and much more – these were my first experiences of God. In the course of the following 25 years, I felt how my soul became immersed in the stream of life that is God, and how the communication with God became more and more intense. Now, after 25 years, I am in constant communication with the Spirit of God in the very bottom of my soul. It is the language of the heart, which speaks to me and through me. It is God: the unending love.

These stepwise, small experiences of God gradually became a yearning stream of communication with Him who, in the smallest of these experiences of God, let me have a taste, so to speak, of what it means to be in conscious communication with Him, what it means when the soul is immersed in the mighty, All-stream – GOD. It is similar to what a fish must feel knowing that it is in its life’s element – water – and feeling itself safe and secure in it.
I experienced – just as many of my brothers and sisters experience on the Inner Path which is taught in Universal Life – what it means for a person to find a way out of doubt, fear, need and blows of fate, entrusting oneself to Him who is the only mercy and help; and who is the only One who can make us joyful and happy, who lets us have a taste, even in the smallest experiences of God, of what it means to grow closer and closer to Him. This, of course, results in the need to first come to terms with one’s life on Earth, by asking oneself the question: Do I want to remain as I am? Or do I want to attain higher ethical and moral values? Do I really even want to set myself the goal of growing closer to God? If I do, then first of all I must declare war on myself, and deal with my own inflated ego, which wants to lord it over others and knows everything better – better even than God.

Dear brother, what I have laid before you just now is no finished formula – but perhaps it is a help for you. Perhaps a help, too, for many who will read this pamphlet “The Prophet.”

The old-timer:
Can I try it out? Shall I put God to the test?

The prophet:
You know that I do not proselytize. If you like, you may do it in a similar way, to feel that God is very close to you and to all of us.
The old-timer:
Will I then become a prophet?

The prophet:
One can’t become a prophet. All things prophetic are based on a mission from above, from God. When the time has come for the prophetic office to be taken up, then God prepares the human being for the prophetic service. Just as I was prepared, through a blow of fate and by being led to the true God, it is the same with all prophets. The mission given by God to be a prophet lies in the soul of a prophetic person while a human being. When the hour has come, God calls the human being to his prophetic mission. God has many ways of awakening a prophetic person whose soul bears the task for the prophetic office. With me, a blow of fate came first, followed – without my knowing it at the time – by five years of preparation for the prophetic office. When I was about age 40, God called me to take up my vocation as a prophet.
As I have said already, an individual cannot become a prophet of his own accord. Many are of the opinion, and undoubtedly you, too, that the task of being a prophet – I would prefer to say: the yoke of being a prophet – is something to aspire to. I can only tell you from my own experience that it is truly not something to strive for, for the prophet has no freedom, as far as his prophetic duties are concerned. He must carry out his mission as a prophet because it lies in his soul. Through this, he is, so to speak, a prisoner of God.

Dear brother, you can believe me when I tell you that I often wanted to escape from my office as prophet. He, the great God, caught me time and again, and I have to admit that I let myself be caught. You will ask: Why – when the task of being a prophet is such a yoke? I cannot tell you. In the prophet’s soul, there is a willingness to make sacrifices, a spirit of sacrifice, a devotion to God, which time and again overpowers the prophet, the human being, urging him, so to speak, under His yoke – of doing whatever is the will of God. If one reads the story of the Old Testament prophets, one can ascertain that they all suffered unspeakably because of their divine mission. Many a prophet rebelled against God – and yet each one turned back and took up the yoke of the prophet again, in order to carry out the will of God.
When I look back on the last 25 years of being under the prophet’s yoke, as it were, then I have to ask myself, the human being: How did you manage to survive all this? I literally went through the “hell” that my fellow men made for me and, in part, still make for me today. I fared a fate similar to that of a tormented animal that is at the mercy of human beings and in the end can’t break the curse of torment, because the human beings do not want it any other way. I had to experience, for instance, that people who had given God the greatest promise withdrew it without the slightest pangs of conscience when one or another of their neighbors reprimanded them for improper behavior or reminded them of their promise to God to settle their differences with their neighbors and keep peace. Or that so-called church representatives, whose job it is to slander dissenters, discriminated against and slandered Original Christians, including my person, and circulated the worst lies about the work of Christ and about myself – which incidentally, continues until the present day. Why? I know very well that it concerns not only myself, my person. The point is to discredit in public all those who have stepped forward to put the Sermon on the Mount into practice and, in the end, to rehabilitate Christ throughout the world – the Christ in whose name so much ignominy has been done over the last centuries.
Over and over again, I picked myself up and shook off the most vicious of defamations and discriminations, and oriented myself to God with the sentence to which I have held fast for 25 years: “O God, my Lord, I will never let you go, for you give me your blessing.”

Dear brother, do not think for a moment that the Inquisition and the Middle Ages are gone. Nowadays there is a modern kind of In-quisition. In the Middle Ages, people were slandered, witchcraft or heresy was attributed to them, and many of them were burned at the stake before thousands of people. Over the past 25 years all kinds of lies have been spread about the work of the Christ of God and about me; as welcome targets we have been slandered and disparaged. I was pilloried in front of millions of Germans on radio and TV, and have been pelted with the filth that is characteristic of those who wanted to mistreat me. They were given a useful weaspon into their hands, because their lies, slander, discrimination and disparagement were allowed by the German Courts as so-called “expressions of opinion.” This enabled them to systematically and accurately throw these “expressions of opinion” at God’s work and at me.

The old-timer:
How can you stand all that?
The prophet:
What was the gist of what Jesus said: “As they have persecuted Me, so they will persecute you.” – That a work and people who are Original Christians, including myself, are so persecuted and discriminated against is a sure sign that we take Jesus’ word seriously. It therefore follows that God is with us. The knowledge of reincarnation helped me. For, it’s similar to the way the scribes and the Pharisees behaved toward Jesus 2000 years ago, and then later Nero, the Emperor of Rome, by having the first Christians thrown to the lions; things happened in a similar way under the guise of “Christ” in the Middle Ages, during the Crusades, and, to a lesser degree, even right up until today. At Nero’s time they had the arena. Today the forum is radio, TV and the press. No one is killed any longer; instead, they are stigmatized as an outcast of society.
In the Spirit of God, 2000 years are not even a day. So what are 2000 years in view of reincarnation! If the same people come back again, with the same vices, ten or twenty times, it does not mean by far that they will have improved by the twenty-first time. I do not want to assert this, but it sounds as if those who spread lies about Jesus, the Christ, nearly 2000 years ago, who slandered and mocked Him, who persecuted the first Christians and threw them to the lions, who in the Middle Ages pursued the stigmatization of others and supported the Crusades – now reappear as hu-man beings again today, in order to continue their activities against God’s work, and against those people who endeavor to take the steps that lead toward Christ.
Had I, for example, remained a housewife, and had I rejected the office of prophet – in other words, not allowed the Spirit of the Christ of God to speak through me, and, above all, not in public – then no sect-watch agent would have persecuted and discriminated against me, the housewife, and nobody would have spread lies about me. But because I did and do the will of God – namely, that I be His instrument – all these things happen to me. If you take a good look at ev-erything the attacks against me consist of – the lies, the discriminations, the ridiculing – then you will conclude that in this case it is not a woman who is being attacked, but the prophetic Spirit, which calls upon people to make peace with each other and to keep peace, and to measure their negative thinking, speaking and doing against the commandments, in order to see whether they correspond to the teachings of Jesus. Since Jesus, the Christ, is speaking out again today against the ecclesiastical, institutional fuss and bother, according to ecclesiastical opinion, it may not be the Christ of God who is revealing Himself. If they were to acknowledge this, then the pope, the cardinals, bishops, priests and pastors would be out of a job. But the state with its tax revenues would also be in a better position, because the subsidies for the institutions of the church and the high salaries paid by the state to cardinals and bishops would be canceled. And the church believer, the human being held in bondage by alleged eternal damnation, could breathe freely in the knowledge that God is present, and that His great love for all people is His mercy and, at the same time, His help. The fear of a punishing God would cease, and many a person would gain new heart by fulfilling step-by-step the commandments of God and the Sermon on the Mount. He would follow Jesus, the Christ, without any ceremonies, but solely because of his love for God, our eternal Father.
It was not my person, and not personal motives, but my soul which helped me to get up again time after time so that I might be pilloried again in public. One thing I know for sure is that I love God, your Father, my Father and the Father of us all, with all my soul, with all my heart and with all my strength, and this is why I love my neighbor, too. This is what has al-ways put me back on my feet again and enabled me to go to my fellow men and be with them. Yet in the Covenant Community New Jerusalem, for instance, there were truly not always brothers and sisters of strong character who kept faith with Christ; there were even Judases among them, who, however, had not yet thrown their pieces of silver into the temple.
And so, Christ cannot rely on all those who have pledged their word to God. You can take my word for it when I say that such people of weak character have made life unspeakably difficult for me.

But there are others who steeled their character by repenting and clearing up their sins – which are this very lack of character – with the help of Christ, our Redeemer. And since they no longer commit the same sins, they have become faithful followers of Jesus, the Christ. Nobody is perfect. But the one who builds his belief up until it becomes trust in God will gain inner experience, and with it, the assurance that God is close to all of us and loves us. It is exactly this divine experience that helps us to grow from blind belief into trust, and then into the knowledge that God, the love, is with us and wants to guide us, if we want. Someone who has steeled his character will no longer spread lies about his neighbor; he will no longer slander him or discriminate against him. He will become neither a Judas nor a blackmailer.

The old-timer:
Slowly I’m beginning to understand you all better and better – and you, too. How do you Original Christians behave when your fellow men, who once called themselves Original Christians, leave you?

The prophet:
The Community of the Original Christians does not bind anyone to itself.
We respect every individual’s freedom – even when some of them become “informants” for the agents of the Church whose job it is to slander minorities. In our community we do not have compulsory baptism. Jesus of Nazareth basically taught us: Teach first, and then baptize. This means that if a person fulfills the commandments of God and the Sermon on the Mount step by step, he becomes immersed in the stream of the Holy Spirit and is thus spiritually awakened and therefore baptized with the fire of the Holy Spirit. The baptism of infants is the baptism with water. And water is simply the Earth’s water, even when it is blessed threefold at the hands of a priest, whose hands are just as stained as the hands of any other citizen.
Original Christians allow everyone his or her freedom. A person who comes to us with a sincere heart is welcome. And whoever leaves us again will not be held back.

The old-timer:
The Covenant Community New Jerusalem , that is simply the Original Christians in Universal Life. Time and again, one hears that you have such a singular attitude toward marriage and partnership. What is it all about? Can you give me an answer to this, too?

The prophet:
Why not? Marriage means that two people promise one another love and faithfulness. They also promise to be good parents to the children resulting from their marriage, that they will care for them and be responsible for them until they have grown up. But when we take a look at many marriages, we come to realize that the fighting and squabbling had started even before the marriage took place. From time to time, one worked things out with the other, and, in a harmonious phase, or under the pressure of responsibility, or because a baby was on the way, one got married. At the latest after the honeymoon, the honey lost its sweetness, and the pre-nuptial squabbling continues. By living together closely and because of various problems, perhaps even financial worries, a trouble spot brews and, at some point or other, comes to a head. The first arguments are often about trivial things, maybe just because the one doesn’t do what the other expected of him. This results in mutual reproaches, then in being sick of each other, where the one talks to the other only when something has to be said. If the marriage has produced children, they are frequently the topic of conversation; one speaks about them or with them, but the married couple doesn’t have much to say to each other.
If the veneer of the promise to love and be faithful to each other has largely worn off, then one starts toying with the idea of another woman or another man. This turns into coquetry, then flirting, and later perhaps into a “blatant affair.” The man has a “girlfriend,” the woman a “boyfriend.” The ones who suffer are the children. The two are now hostile toward each other. A new trouble spot has flared up. Now the main point is to establish who was the first to be unfaithful. If one partner has “slipped up” on his marriage vows, the other employs all kinds of means and schemes to catch and tie to himself the one who had an escapade, because, after all, they are married, although even before marriage it was – as the popular saying goes – a fight to the bitter end. In other marriages, one of the partners takes to alcohol to drown his or her grief and the feeling of being tied down. Yet another throws himself into his work so that he doesn’t have to come home too early. There are countless ways of drifting apart with all the resulting consequences.

People are resourceful when it comes to crowning their ego. No matter what the cost – the guilty party is always found, but the one is never a partner in guilt. Often it does not matter what methods are employed: whether physically, making eyes at someone, discrimination, intrigue, using a child to blackmail – what is important is that one gets what one wants. What does the individual care whether he is a Christian or not? What does he care what the Bible has to say about it? What does he care about God when his unsatisfied desire and his ego are screaming? The weaker one always has to bear the suffering.
Many people feel that they have to put on a brave front, and carry on as though they were keeping to the same old tracks. But how long until the freight train loaded with reproaches, adultery and spitefulness, overturns? It simply wasn’t just loving-kindness that brought them together again. It was the fully-loaded freight train with its unresolved and insatiable ego that jumped the rails. Many people feel they have to get the train back on the tracks again without bothering to unload it first. The freight train now comes to its last stop. One has come to an arrangement by shunting the cars backward and forward. The weaker person gives way and does what the stubborn one wants. They have grown used to each other over the decades; each one has taken over the programs from the other – thus becoming “one flesh.” Now they think they have it made; they understand each other well; their marriage is saved. Why? The glow has gone out, and everything has turned to ashes. Life has become cold. And, quite simply – the ashes are getting along with each other.
Cross your heart, quite honest- ly – aren’t many marriages just as I have described? If it were not so, there would not be so many divorces or last stops where each one does what the other wants, because by shunting back and forth they have, quite simply, come to an ar-rangement. They have become one program, which, however, is not Christian but marital – each one now does what the other one wants.
Many people live in hope of another, better marriage. One day Mr. or Mrs. “Right” just has to come along! And it happens. You fall in love again. Over and over again, you believe that it is the great love, until you have to realize after a short time that it was just another compulsive relationship.

Many brothers and sisters came to Universal Life and then later to the Covenant Community New Jerusalem from the jungle or dense undergrowth of compulsive relationships – whether we call them “friendship,” partnership or marriage. In this community, people have set themselves the task of striving for higher ethical values – in marriage and partnership, as well – in order to live according to Jesus’ words: “You have heard that it was said: You shall not commit adultery. But I say unto you: Whoever looks at a woman and desires her has committed adultery with her in his heart already ...” (Mt. 5:28) What holds true for a man holds, of course, for a woman, as well.
Soon after, some individual brothers and sisters began to show the first signs of again practicing what is so common in our present society. Not all of them kept their promise to strive for higher ethical and moral values. One began to flirt with the person to whom he or she had taken a fancy, or to drive here and there with this person on the pretext that it was an official assignment, etc., etc. Quite a few oriented themselves more toward their lust-filled inclinations, which might possibly be fulfilled by this woman or that man, instead of striving for the divine principles of the Ten Commandments and the Sermon on the Mount, which they had voluntarily set as a goal for themselves.

Compulsive relationships leading to a change in relationships, or to flirting with others are not in accordance with God’s laws. Consequently, these old vices were addressed again and again by brothers and sisters of the Covenant Community New Jerusalem who took Jesus’ teachings seriously – to strive for higher values and ideals. Some of those concerned, who were living in this conflict, had second thoughts and asked their partner for time to think things over – not in order to separate but to orient themselves anew. Others separated for a while in order to clear up the programs of conflict they had brought with them. The divine commandments serve those who are willing. Others, in turn, continued to fight within their marriage and kept on squabbling until they could no longer remain among the willing brothers and sisters of the Covenant Community New Jerusalem. They left the community. Still others kept their differences in marriage and partnership within limits, but quarreled all the more with their colleagues at work. In many enterprises, the consequence of this was that the effects of this came to the fore, and serious mistakes were made. Those who caused this were addressed by the others who unerringly adhered to the commandments of God and the teachings of the Christ of God. They were advised to make peace in their marriages – in other words, to make peace according to the commandments of God and the Sermon on the Mount. If the marriage situation was a hopeless mess, and serious mistakes continued to be made in the enterprise – because of which the situation had to be addressed again and again – then sometimes they left the community. Others wanted to carry on with their previous escapades just as is common everywhere, and many a one used the children as an excuse to blackmail the spouse who endeavored to take the teachings of Jesus seriously.

Here is an example so you can see what undesirable trends had to be averted in the Covenant Community New Jerusalem:
Many years ago, a brother of distinguished standing joined the Original Christians in order to work with them. Soon it became evident that alternating affairs were being cultivated despite the existing marriage. It became known that an il-legitimate child resulted from this game of alternating relationships, from marriage partner to affair and from affair to marriage partner. In this merry-go-round of compulsive relationships, a second illegitimate child was fathered. The first marriage ended in divorce. The affair, from which both illegitimate children had originated, now became the second marriage. It wasn’t long before a new “affair” crossed the path of the second marriage. In the course of this marriage with “affairs” – as it turned out to be many years later – additional escapades of the adulterous partner took place. Whether the “partners in the affairs” were married or not played a minor role in the feature films of both partners, for neither was particularly scrupulous about being faithful to the other.
As all this, and much more, gradually leaked out to the Original Christians, the gateway to the Covenant Community New Jerusalem closed – as a result of this immoral conduct. In this case, too, the members of the Community resolved to follow Jesus of Nazareth uncompromisingly, and to keep the commandment of faithfulness, respectability and peace in marriage and partnership.
Massive behavioral patterns or programs are effective in us which have been built up and become fixed over thousands of years. This is true particularly in the relationship between man and woman, and with regard to marriage and partnership, as well. And so, the effort of every single individual is needed in order to get out of age-old well-worn tracks and to apply the ethical principles of the Sermon on the Mount. This was, at all times, the endeavor of the people who walk the Inner Path and of the members of the Covenant Community New Jerusalem, as well.

It is not easy, yet whoever takes steps in this respect feels how becoming free of carnal desires, of compulsive relationships and the like has a favorable effect on his life and on his being with others – including in marriage and partnership.
The old-timer:
I’m surprised. You speak about all this so openly – just as it ap-parently is at the moment. I think it’s good that you’re uncompromising. While such things are talked about in my own religious community, in the end everything remains the same. Lutherans continue to be Lutherans, whether they have three marriages behind them or not, whether they have several “affairs” on the side, or whether they take Jesus’ teachings seriously or not. And it plays no role in the long run whether one partner is continuously unfaithful, or whether both partners in marriage still remain faithful to each other despite arguments and quarrels. Then the latest news in the matter may sometimes be the talk of the town, but I’ve never heard of any consequences taken in such matters within the framework of the church community.

The prophet:
That’s just the problem. If only the ecclesiastical authorities were an example to their believers, by following Jesus, the Christ, step by step, they would be in a position to address such a deplorable state of affairs. And the Catholic and Protestant Lutheran teachings would then become the Christian teaching of higher ethics and morals. As a result, there would be much fewer declared running battles in marriage and partnerships, and also less and less brutality, less and less crimes and fewer wars.
That does not mean that the Original Christians in the Covenant Community New Jerusalem are perfect. What is important is that their days are shaped by the goal of higher ethics and morals and of following in the footsteps of Jesus, the Christ, where the individual takes the steps toward higher ethics and morals by gradually following in Jesus’ footsteps. The reason why I speak quite openly and frankly about the deplorable state of affairs that was in the Covenant Community New Jerusalem is that we had resolved to fulfill the will of God step by step as it is revealed in the Ten Commandments and in the Sermon on the Mount of Jesus. And we have openly made this known. As a small people of about 700 brothers and sisters, we want to carry out what we have declared in public. The cleansing processes that take place thereby particularly point out that we take the teachings of Jesus seriously and don’t just talk about them.
Despite all this, the Original Christians in the Covenant Community New Jerusalem are not a pious folk. Those who take Jesus’ teachings seriously fight their own shortcomings, their own weaknesses, and their old negative behavior patterns; they struggle with themselves in order to grow closer to their objective of higher values and morals. And in this way, the Covenant Community New Jerusalem may in many cases be compared to a bowl filled with impure water. Those who take their steps toward higher ideals and values endeavor to purify what is impure, so that the water in the bowl becomes clear and may be offered to those who honestly and sincerely also strive to fulfill the will of God. That those brothers and sisters who reach into the impure water to filter out the dirt so that it may become purified are increasingly attacked, publicly in the media, as well, is a logical consequence of this. Those who swim against the current, who battle with the impure current, are always the spoilsports.
These battles resulting from the purifying and cleansing processes must be. After all, the Covenant Community New Jerusalem came into being in order to fulfill the Sermon on the Mount of Jesus step by step. And so, the peace required of us by the Sermon on the Mount has first to be gained – in the life of each one of us, and in the community life of the Original Christians in the Covenant Community. The struggle to keep to our objective shows that we do not behave as institutional Christians usually do, namely, to call yourself a Christian but live just as you please, even if it is un-Christian.
In this way, a small folk cleansed itself and continues to do so, in order to remain, in the end, true to its promise: To follow Jesus, the Christ, in order to do the will of God. The Ten Commandments and the Sermon on the Mount teach us this; they are our standards.
A large part of the brothers and sisters in the Covenant Community New Jerusalem honestly strive and try hard to fulfill what is presented in books and lectures: To put into practice, step by step, the teachings of Jesus, the Christ, and in this way to grow into a life according to God’s laws. That this cannot take place overnight goes without saying. But good will brings us the way and leads us to the path of doing what is willed by God.

That is the truth, dear brother. The so-called experts of the Catholic and Protestant Lutheran institutions do not preoccupy themselves with finding a way to attain an original Christian life. They preoccupy themselves solely with the fact that former Original Christians leave the Covenant Community New Jerusalem. And thereby only those get a hearing who were filtered out of the impure water in the bowl of the Covenant Community and were given the alternative: Either to stick to the goal we have decided for together and declared publicly, or, if they have changed their minds, to leave the Covenant Community New Jerusalem. What the sect-watch agents make of the naturally lopsided and personally biased statements of those who have left which may be described as a kind of slime is, on the other hand, a product of the slime and mire that they so eloquently present to all those who are prepared to swallow it. It contains all kinds of muddled and absurd things, more closely connected to many a church agent, whose job it is to discriminate against those who think differently, than to the higher morals and values Christ taught.

As has been already said, the original Christian followers of Jesus, the Christ, are not perfect; yet those who are of good will lead the way, in order to prove that one can live by the Sermon on the Mount – even if it is difficult at times, since it is a question of no longer staying on the same old immoral track any longer. It goes without saying that those who wish to continue shunting back and forth on the tracks of all-too-human habits will be asked to leave the Covenant Community by the brothers and sisters of the Covenant Community who have made it their aim to fulfill Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount. If the compromises made are not too great, and if one orients oneself again and again to the promise to follow Jesus, the Christ, then a religious community cleanses itself in this way – and that is good.
It is unfortunate that some of these so-called original Christian dropouts went or go to Catholic or Protestant “experts” who have made it their task to discrimin- ate against those who think differently and against small religious groups – but everyone has free will. Particularly those who could not act out their immoral and unethical inclinations in the Covenant Community New Jerusalem then say that the Original Christians in the Covenant Community New Jerusalem are required to behave strangely in marriage and partnership.

Dear brother, we are all human beings like you. However, the struggle with ourselves in order to keep peace with our neighbor begins already in marriage and partnership. When there is peace there, and if we succeed in establishing a flourishing togetherness, then we can make peace with other fellow men, and enlarge our sphere of activity for one another.
Many a one sees the striving for higher ethical and moral values, principles and ideals from his own perspective, which in this respect is fashioned by his way of thinking and his way of life.
We are not against marriage and partnership; we are merely against such marriages and partnerships as I have outlined above, and which are quite common in our society. We want faithfulness peace and togetherness, in marriage and partnership, as well; we want a union – and not compulsive relationships where both partners look only to their physical advantages. Nor are we against physical relations – many call this sexuality – but we are against compulsive relationships, against infidelity, discord, and ever-changing relationships of a physical nature.

Many Original Christians in the Covenant Community New Jerusalem have set themselves an ideal with respect to higher ethics and morals, and have made it their aim to ennoble themselves and take positive steps in marriage and partnership, and in living communities where families live together – but where, however, the couples are faithful to each other so that they grow in unity, forming a big family. For, as has been said already, it shall be similar on Earth as it is in heaven, according to what we pray in the Lord’s Prayer:“Your kingdom come, Your will be done, on Earth as it is in heaven.”

The old-timer:
Actually, it seems to me that it must be a good feeling to have a worthwhile goal, even if it aims high and costs effort. One knows then for what one is living and making an effort.
Prophet, I’m sorry, but another question came to mind: What does a quarrel among you look like? How do you behave?

The prophet:
People get carried away sometimes, but as soon as the emotional outburst has somewhat died down at the latest the following occurs to the Original Christian on the Inner Path: “Wait a minute! Whether my brother or sister behaved wrongly in this situation or not – I will look for my part first, the beam in my own eye, and clear it up.

When I get upset about my neighbor, it shows that I still have the same fault in me, too, both inwardly and outwardly.” – Then it is no longer so difficult to clear things up with one’s neighbor and to sort things out with oneself, thereby making peace. Both of us have gained in insight.
In the Covenant Community New Jerusalem, those who make an effort to become faithful to Christ still clearly speak their minds to this day, in order to carry out, little by little, what we have set ourselves to do. In a conflict, we do not just look at the one who wants to be right, but we strive for justice which means: In an argument not only one is to blame, but both. And like-wise both have to learn something from the incident and the underlying problems.
We have all taken it as a task to help our willing brothers and sisters, by weighing things in such cases. But when somebody does not want what we strive toward – to become noble and fine in our cast of mind, helping faithfulness and love to reach their crowning glory and attaining the “with and for one another” – such a person will, in the long run, not feel happy among us, and will, sooner or later, leave the Covenant Community New Jerusalem.

The old-timer:
You don’t make it easy for yourselves, one’s got to hand it to you!

The prophet:
There’s always a battle before a victory – and particularly in the little everyday situations. Christ is our model, and He gives us the support of His strength if we remain aligned with Him.

God is not just simply above the clouds, but very close to us all. And if we follow His commandments, many things in and around us may take a turn for the better.

The old-timer:
I feel that what you’re telling me is true. Therefore, I believe it and I’ll concern myself with it for the future and see what experiences I have.
Your example speaks for itself, but it hasn’t been proved as far as I’m concerned. Do you know what I mean?

The prophet:
I understand what you are trying to say. The mere believer has simply to believe what the Bible says, and that is that. But in this case, it is just the same as during our whole lives: One finds the truth – also in the Bible – only when one strives for, and does, what Jesus, the Christ, taught us, and lived as an example for us. If you like, take your Bible and immerse yourself in the Ten Commandments of God and in the Sermon on the Mount of Jesus. Measure yourself, your thoughts, speech and your whole behavior against them, your marriage or partnership, too. If you recognize something that is not in accordance with these principles of God’s laws, then repent and clear it up by way of asking for forgiveness, forgiving and making amends for it – as far as this is still possible.

And when you no longer behave in an unkindly manner, and no longer commit those faults you have come to recognize, your sins, then you will gradually find your true self, and will achieve more and more the gift to distinguish between what is true and what is untrue. Then you will no longer have to rack your brains so often and to ask questions – everything will be given to you from the heart, for God is the giving love.

The old-timer:
Will I then be an Original Christian?

The prophet:
That does not necessarily have to be. To become a true Christian – that is what matters. And that is the aim of all those who not only believe in Christ but who make their belief come alive through deeds that are willed by God, works that are in the will of God, but which should come from one’s heart and not from the intellect.
The old-timer:
But mustn’t I then become an Original Christian after all?

The prophet:
You mustn’t do anything – apart from discarding your body at some time or other, which we call death. Be a Christian, or become a Christian, and then we will be united under the canopy of heaven, which means: God is love, and we are all His children, brothers and sisters in His Spirit.

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