I Appeal to You
... through Bertha Dudde  - 14.08.1956 

6621   Enforced actions are worthless for eternity ....

What you accomplish under duress does not lead to bliss. Regardless of what you do, it has to arise from a degree of love in you, you must do it voluntarily for love if it is to result in a spiritual blessing for you, if it is to lead you towards perfection. This is why the fulfilment of a commandment can never help you attain higher development unless the commandment of love is fulfilled, which I Myself have given you as the most important and exclusive commandment but which cannot be counted as a lawful commandment, precisely because love is something that is free which does not abide compulsion. Thus you must indeed live in love in order to become blessed .... This is what I want to achieve through My commandment .... However, acts which are accomplished without love are hardly the ‘fulfilment of My commandments of love’. For I did not command you to accomplish acts but to practise love, and love cannot be forcibly demanded, love must be a matter of free will and arise from the heart. And thus I can count everything that is done under compulsion as worthless for eternity, even if they are actually good works which .... were they based on the right love .... could provide the soul with supreme possessions. If, however, the accomplishment of good works without love is already worthless for eternity, how much more worthless is the fulfilment of laws given to you by people. Only what you freely do of your own accord is valued by Me according to your degree of love, but I will never look at what you do in order to comply with the duties expected of you unless you also do it because of love for Me and not because you are obeying an order.

You must always make this difference and know that the value of every deed and every thought rests in love alone, but that everything else is worthless if it lacks love. If you therefore seriously examine your thoughts and actions you will soon find out whether you have gathered riches for yourselves or whether have you so far remained poor .... And you will also recognise that I could never have been the originator of commandments which should be complied with as a matter of duty and whose fulfilment is strictly observed .... You will also recognise the invalidity of requirements I cannot have demanded because they signify a certain coercion for the human being which, however, does never correspond to My will. I only value what is done by free will, for I only gave free will back to you in the stage of a human being because you are meant to put it into practice. You shall determine your fate in eternity yourselves, and in order for you to use your will correctly you must also be instructed correctly .... The latter is the only task I asked of My disciples when I lived on earth, and which I have always asked My representatives on earth to do: to teach and to proclaim My will to people .... However, at no time ever did I give the order to establish laws and, under threat of temporal or eternal punishments, force people to keep them .... The consequences of a true life of love as well as heartless conduct should certainly be presented to people, but that should be more than enough .... But people should not be frightened with threats of eternal punishment into conscientiously doing everything that is demanded of them and thereby more likely stifle than arouse the love in them. All spiritual compulsion is to be condemned for it prevents people from making a free decision. The soul’s life in eternity can only be gained through love alone; love, however, does not abide coercion otherwise it cannot be called ‘love’. This is why every person should pass judgment on himself as to whether his thoughts and actions are determined by love or whether they merely comply with laws which were supposedly decreed by Me .... I require nothing else from you other than love for Me and your neighbour .... but which you must grant Me of your own free will .... Only then will you fulfil My commandment and can become eternally blessed ....

Amen