BD 2767                received  07.06.1943

Belief in the soul’s life after death ....
God’s mercy ....

God’s mercy shows you a path which, if you walk this path, will inevitably result in progress. No gift from above is as beneficial as the offering of the divine Word because it gives you the guiding principle for your earthly way of life and informs you of God’s will. Implementing the divine Word is spiritual progress and thus the meaning and purpose of life on earth. Humanity’s spiritual poverty, its disturbingly low emotional degree of maturity, is not acknowledged by people, they do not believe in spiritual higher development on earth because they are psychologically and physically only attached to earth. All their intentions and efforts purely aspire towards the acquisition of earthly goods, and the perfection of soul as the purpose of earthly life is considered to be a mere fantasy or imagination which came forth from human will itself and cannot be proven. Only few believe in life after death but only this belief makes the necessity for higher development on earth understandable, because only then all of creation makes sense .... namely to serve the higher development of the spirit .... But since this belief is lacking in people, since they negate the soul’s life after death, they do not recognise a spiritual purpose of creation either, they merely regard everything from the point of view that earthly life itself is meaning and purpose and that everything simply exists to serve the body in order to provide it with the greatest possible comfort. And this attitude does not improve the human degree of maturity but is more likely to reduce it if the human being does not receive help, if God’s love does not intervene with His mercy and enlightens him. And this mercy is now flowing to them yet it is not understood by many people or they would be highly delighted and able to accomplish their struggle on earth with increased resistance. But human beings are spiritually blind .... they do not know the purest truth from heaven and only have eyes for the world, they understand all worldly things but lack the inner urge to look beyond these to know the hidden things because no one can provide them with the evidence of life after death ....

(Break)

BD 2768                received  07.06.1943

Significance of Jesus’ crucifixion and consequences of rejection ....

Jesus Christ died on the cross for the whole of humanity and humanity wants to describe this crucifixion as a minor point, as a sentence of execution for a national activist or even as an entirely unlikely myth .... Therefore people deprive themselves of every entitlement to God’s mercy since they do not acknowledge this greatest work of mercy, hence God’s mercy cannot express itself in them either. As a result their will remains feeble, God’s adversary aims to subdue human will in his favour, i.e. the individual does not have the strength to resist this influence if he does not accept Christ’s act of Salvation. Jesus’ sacrifice on behalf of humanity can never be lessened by it. However, people who attempt to devalue or to completely invalidate Christ’s act of Salvation resemble the people during Jesus’ time on earth in spirit, thus they also have to accept the same consequences, they have to prepare themselves for much destruction as was the fate of those who were hostile towards Jesus Christ on earth, who refused to acknowledge Him as Son of God and Saviour of the world. Since those people were followers of Satan they allowed themselves to become so influenced by him that they opposed all evidence of Jesus Christ in order to belittle Him and to suppress His spiritual accomplishment.

And now humanity is striving to destroy what still testifies of Jesus’ time on earth and, in comparison, this resembles the same chaos as took place in those days. Spiritually and physically this chaos will express itself in complete destruction which human will can no longer evade .... Christ’s crucifixion was the only means to transform human thought on earth, i.e. Jesus Christ’s sacrifice on behalf of humanity strengthened the fragile willpower of the human being, enabling him to resist the opponent’s demands with conviction without becoming overwhelmed by him. Thus the acknowledgment of God in Jesus Christ is at the same time the most reliable guarantee for the human being to detach himself from the adversary. Jesus Christ’s crucifixion has gained people a stronger will. The human being cannot apply this will in any other way since without Jesus Christ he would still be subject to the power of God’s opponent and would lack sufficient willpower to liberate himself. Thus the intention of the world to deny Jesus Christ is extremely significant as it lessens the strength of resistance and constantly increases the influence of God’s adversary. Humanity’s conduct therefore reveals ever more heartlessness as a result of this influence which can only be offset and neutralised by Christ’s crucifixion. The souls of human beings are in utmost danger because they will fail when they are expected to confess Jesus Christ before the world. Only the belief in Christ’s crucifixion enables people to do so because only then is their will strong enough to overcome every resistance. And Jesus Christ paid for this strength of will for human beings with His death on the cross .... He has released them from the adversary’s captivity if they believe in Him ....

Amen

BD 2775                received  15.06.1943

Incarnation ....
Instincts ....
Preliminary stages ....

The incarnation of a soul can take place when all substances, which have taken the earthly path within the many diverse creations and are thus developed, have joined together. The soul substance of every work of creation has to be present in order to incarnate .... i.e. the human body becomes the cover for a soul which contains all works of creation in miniature within itself. The previous infinitely long earthly progress has resulted in the unification of all these substances who then await their last embodiment. They will be assimilated as soul into the human outer shell to experience the last stage of development. This incarnation is of varied duration due to the different substances’ state of maturity, which have had a certain amount of freedom during their preliminary stages already albeit they had acted under compulsion in accordance with God’s will. However, in the last stages before embodiment as human being this compulsory condition was gradually eased so that certain instincts could be lessened or even increased. This subsequently resulted in a higher or lower degree of maturity which, in turn, determines the duration of the last embodiment as human being. As soon as all soul substances have united as a human soul they strive for the last embodiment on earth, because they know that the human shell is their last physical cover and that they can be free from all earthly restrictions afterwards. For that reason the soul will only spend time where it is offered an opportunity to incarnate. Understandably it will incarnate where people’s nature adapts to its own degree of maturity, i.e. where people have the same instincts and attributes that match its own nature.

However, this does not exclude that a differently inclined soul would not try to incarnate with unfamiliar natured people in order to hasten its embodiment. But then it often has to struggle with added difficulties during its earthly life as its nature is not taken into account and it is unable to fulfil the expected requirements. Nevertheless, since the soul knows the path of its earthly life in advance it is not stopped if it makes this choice itself, since it has the resources at its disposal to achieve its final maturity in every embodiment. Due to its earlier many diverse shapes it has every aptitude within itself at various degrees and can increase or reduce them at will. Thus it is not incapable and the strength to do so is likewise given in accordance with its will. However, if it strives half-heartedly it will remain in the same state of maturity prior to its incarnation as a human being, in that case the incarnation has not resulted in higher development. Although at the time of death it will shed its physical cover but its desires and instincts, which it was meant to overcome during its earthly life, still connect it to the material world. Therefore it has not taken full advantage of its earthly incarnation, and when it realises that it has wasted the right to become a child of God and can no longer achieve it either, it experiences an indescribable state of remorse; even though it still has infinitely many opportunities in the beyond to arrive at the contemplation of God. Yet one day an incarnated soul has to give account before God how it has used earth’s opportunities and what spiritual progress it has achieved at the time of death, because the embodiment as human being is a mercy that cannot be valued highly enough; it is a gift which the human being should cherish appropriately by doing whatever advances his development because he cannot return to earth again once he has left it ....

Amen

BD 2776                received  16.06.1943

The will to live ....
Fear of death

The human will to live is very strongly developed as long as his soul’s maturity is still very low, which is quite understandable since the world still captivates him and pretends to fulfil his wishes. The human being finds it extremely difficult to give up his earthly life as long as he lacks faith in life after death, because the latter makes him look at all life on earth differently. A profoundly devout person merely looks at earthly life as in intermediate place, as a school which he has to attend in order to be admitted into the kingdom where real life begins. And this faith will also give him the strength to overcome all obstacles and difficulties of earthly life, whereas the unbeliever often breaks down and discards his life assuming that he is able to permanently end it himself. Anyone with profound faith will gladly give up his life if it is demanded of him because he directs his attention towards the life after the death of his body and his longing towards the union with God, since he feels that this is primarily the true life. As long as the human being only pays attention to the earth and its goods he inhibits his aspirations to ascend, he desires the world with every fibre of his being and the thought that he will have to leave this world one day is intolerable and depressing to him.

And this reveals his state of mind because his love for the world diminishes his love for God and other people, and thus the person is still spiritually immature, i.e. his soul has not yet united with the spirit within himself, he is not yet aware and knows nothing better than his earthly life. In that case he finds every thought of death appalling, he wants to live to enjoy, he desires worldly goods and disregards spiritual values. And this spiritual low level cannot be criticized enough since the human being is now in great danger to lose his earthly as well as his spiritual life. If he does not use his earthly life to find a connection to God he will live in vain and it is better that he should suffer the loss of his earthly life than to fall into deepest love with matter, which amounts to spiritual death. Earthly life is a mercy given to the human being for higher development and for rising above matter in order to enter the spiritual kingdom .... However, if the human being’s real task on earth is disregarded he chains himself to matter and forcibly has to be pulled away by the termination of his earthly life. As long as the thought of physical death is intolerable to a person he is not paying any attention to his real earthly task. The will to live is so strong in him that he will do anything to protect and lengthen it in the belief that his life is in his own hands, and yet again he feels fearful of having to lose it prematurely. Only in view of the beyond, in the belief of the soul’s life after death, the terror of death begins to subside and then the human being understands that his earthly life is a mere preliminary stage for the real life which will last eternally ....

Amen