Posted by Roberta Grimes • December 19, 2016 • 20 Comments
Human Nature, Jesus, The Source
It has been half a millennium almost to the day since Martin Luther issued his Ninety-Five Theses that attacked some of Christianity worst excesses. Whether he actually nailed his Theses to the door of All Saints’ Church in Wittenberg, Germany, is unclear; but just the publication of his complaints began what is known as the Protestant Reformation.
What Martin Luther began was a great step forward. It pruned away some of the most appalling practices of the overbearing Church hierarchy, from the sale of indulgences as tickets out of hell through the refusal to allow Christians to read the Bible in their mother tongues. It helped, but it didn’t go far enough. So even 
centuries after the Reformation, the religion that nominally follows Jesus remains steeped in irrelevant dogmas while it all but ignores His Gospel teachings.
Among my whole life’s biggest surprises was my first read-through of Liberating Jesus. I had no time to read while the Master was using my hands to write: the whole book was written in fourteen days. So it was only when I was left with the finished book that I understood how radical it was! And I was appalled. Was it possible that Christianity had been so altogether wrong about everything from its earliest days, but still the Lord had let well-meaning Christians live in error for two thousand years?
Apparently it was possible. Both testimony from those we used to think were dead and the Gospel words of Jesus themselves abundantly confirm that most of what Christianity preaches is contrary to what is true. Here are the core dogmas of mainstream Christianity that turn out to be wrong in light of the Gospel words of Jesus and in light of what the dead now tell us:
loving Spirit. Jesus tells us this in the Gospels, and the dead have been saying it for hundreds of years, yet Christians still worship a Jehovah God who is jealous, judgmental, and quick to anger.
God, so Jesus came to end the influence of religions and teach us to relate to God individually. I recall that when I read the Gospels as a child I would wince to see how sharply Jesus condemns religious leaders and religious traditions. He meant it then. He really means it now!It ought to come as a relief to Christians to learn that God loves us ![Pageflex Persona [document: PRS0000038_00067]](http://robertagrimes.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/12/Liberating-Jesus-Metallic-Front-Cover.jpg)
perfectly and never judges us. Yet most of the Christians I have heard from about Liberating Jesus are not relieved by its message, but instead they are annoyed to be told that the death of Jesus is not a spiritual shortcut. Jesus actually does require that His followers take His Gospel teachings seriously!
I find this attitude confounding. Liberating Jesus isn’t out on a limb, but rather it simply restates what Jesus tells us straightforwardly in the Gospels. But the problem is that despite the fact that the Bible is available in countless languages, very few Christians actually read it. Even fewer take the Gospel teachings of Jesus as seriously as He means them to be taken. Most Christians seem not even to know nor care that their religion and their Bible would be foreign to the living Jesus! Instead, too often Christians will go after the superficial emotional highs of their religion, and not seek the spiritual work and the deeper rewards that come from actually following the Master.
We tend to think of faith as a virtue. Faith means believing in something, which seems to be better than believing in nothing. For most of my life I thought faith was a virtue, but now I am coming to understand that what Christians call faith is comforting pap, a diversion from any real pursuit of the truth, and the single biggest obstacle that Jesus faces in bringing His teachings to the world.
So it’s time for a second Christian Reformation. And this time, for the sake of a world that desperately needs what the Lord came to teach us, let’s really work to get this right!
To me one if the most powerful, and genuine, moments in the gospels is when the crowd starts to complain about how hard this stuff is, and they go away. Then Jesus says to Peter, one of his closest friends, “Are you going to go too?”
Ever since I first read Liberating Jesus, my greatest craving has been to somehow know more of what Jesus actually said! He taught for more than three years. That’s a lot of teaching, and nearly all of it has been lost. You are so right, Mike! Those poignant moments touch our hearts, and they hint at much more complexity in His relationships with those around Him. It would be wonderful to have all that He said to them now, so we could use His wisdom as we work to spread what we have of His teachings to all the earth!
I feel that Jesus was ahead of his time and that most of his teachings have been so distorted and misunderstood that we will probably never know his exact words. There is no doubt that there are many “dark” realms in the afterlife and I feel he was attempting to keep us away from these. When he said if someone slaps you on one side of the face, you should turn the other cheek, he meant that holding onto hatred and revenge will prevent us from moving to higher planes and keep us in kind of a hell of our own making. There are many other things he said that point to this, but they have been ignored and misinterpreted, leading to the horrors of the Inquisition, the slaughter of the Hugenots, the slaying of Native Americans, the practice of slavery, etc. The list goes on and on. I think he came to teach us not only how to live but how to die. Unfortunately, since he was way ahead of his time, few “got” his message, leading to a religion that was formed to control the masses.
You are right, Lola. it seems highly unlikely that we might have preserved for two thousand years, through as much as a century of oral preservation and then through two successive translations, exactly the words that Jesus spoke! This is why I find it so astounding that when we put the fruits of nearly two centuries of communications from those we used to think were dead beside what Jesus says in a modern translation of the Gospels, we find that He told us things about God, reality, death, the afterlife, and the meaning and purpose of our lives that precisely match what the dead are telling us now! The extent of these correspondences is too extensive for it to be coincidental. I consider it to be a literal miracle, especially when translations directly from the original Aramaic (skipping the intervening Greek) are not nearly so precise. Whatever Jesus might have said then, the modern Gospels are confirmed to be what Jesus is saying to us now!
Close analysis of the Gospels indicates that what Jesus came to do was to teach us to raise our spiritual vibrations while here sufficiently away from fear and toward love that we can bring what He called the Kingdom of God on earth. All His spiritual teachings are meant to support that, but of course two thousand years ago people didn’t understand that their minds were part of eternal Mind; even today, most people still don’t get that fact.
And you are tragically right in detailing some of the horrors Christianity has inflicted on the world! I have been sent a copy of an important book called The Dark Side of Christian history, and I mean to blog about it soon. The Christian religion is based in fear and coercion and utterly ignores the teachings of Jesus! You can’t read a litany of its horrible deeds down through the centuries without assuming it must have long since lost the franchise :-(.
Great post, we do need another christian reformation focused on the teachings of Jesus rather than the doctrines and dogma of the Christian religion. Man in an attempt to gain power and control over people has misused the life and teachings of Jesus to keep people living in fear of the God who unconditionally loves them.
Thank you for such a lovely comment! There is nothing so powerful as an idea whose time has come, and finally – after two thousand years – the idea that Christians might, you know, actually need to follow the teachings of Jesus seems to have found its historical time. No matter how they might try to fight it, church leaders have no defense against the simple suggestion that what Jesus said might be more significant than the way He died!
I Get Jesus was a Wanderer, volunteered from a higher realm of a different planet to come and help Humanity with spirituality. He had about 105 lives here and completed his contract with source in the 1700s. He had a really high skill level and his best life when he was Jesus. There are over 75 million Wanderers on Earth helping Humanity now with all different skill levels and hardly any of them know they are Wanderers. They are just like everyone else, don’t get to remember their past, but have a higher evolved soul. The evil Illuminati took Jesus’s life and totally distorted what happen and created a religion to control people. The Illuminati took some of the writings about him altered some of them added other writings and created some of their own writings and made the Bible. I get using the pendulum that 77% of the Bible is positive and about 23% of the Bible is negative or lies. That’s how the evil Illuminati operate they take good stuff sneak in some bad stuff and try to pass it off as all good. Jesus was a spiritual teacher/person that greatly helped Humanity. Jesus was not God, that was a lie created by the Illuminati.
I’m sorry, Gary, but none of what you say rings true to me, although it is a fascinating story! But it is mythology, just as Christianity is mythology. Neither has anything to do with the genuine Jesus.
Dear friends, the reason why I call my radio program Seek Reality is that unless we bring a science-like order to the search for the truth, and base our theories upon demonstrable facts, we will never get anywhere. All the religions are myths, and this story of the Illuminati is a myth as well.
But we can demonstrate now that Jesus is real.
Communication with the dead has been fairly easy for more than a century. And over all that time, wherever they have spoken, those that we used to think were dead have told a consistent story about reality that is consistent, too, with many aspects of science (although of course the scientists themselves remain adamantly clueless). The Gospel words of Jesus agree with what the dead tell us about God, reality, death, the afterlife, and the meaning and purpose of our lives; and for such abundant correspondences to happen by chance would be close to mathematically impossible.
So we can demonstrate now that Jesus is real, and He came to us as an aspect of God. We can demonstrate these facts just as scientists can demonstrate many things about the physical world.
As I have said many times elsewhere, my primary spirit guide, Thomas, has told us that Jesus is an aspect of the eternal Mind – or God – which is all that exists; that He came to earth two thousand years ago to teach humankind how to raise our spiritual vibration so we can bring the kingdom of God on earth; and that He is now restating those teachings because unless we can elevate this planet’s consciousness fairly rapidly, we face a descent into barbarism. Many advanced beings are working on this project to elevate the planet’s consciousness, and Thomas now suggests that we will prevail. But it is a near thing.
I am sorry, Gary, and I’m also sorry if anyone reading this is a devotee of a religion, but our time now is so short! We cannot devote any more attention to ideas and beliefs that are based in myth, but instead we must all seek reality – and quickly! – or for us to save this planet from the catastrophic effects of all the wrong choices that have been made by its inhabitants over centuries may no longer be possible.
We need no longer rely upon ideas and stories and myths to try to make sense of the world. Let’s all come together now and try to understand and apply what is real!
The lower levels of “conscience” have no problem commandeering what course others should pursue. The higher levels of conscience simply ask that we check in with our core sense of truth. This core sense is our primal connection with Jesus, and His with us. Subjectivity, when childlike, guides us back to Source, which is truth. The child has no need to be humble, because she remembers her origin, and because she remains open. Humility is only required of us us once the ego has closed its borders, and has generated false dichotomies and false dualisms. In brief, the adult requires humility in order to return to the state of the original child. For only the child can enter “the zone”.
As Jesus said, “Truly I say to you, whoever does not receive the kingdom of God like a child will not enter it at all.” (MK 10:15)
Roberta,
Are specific individuals leading the 2nd Christian Reformation?
Jesus/Yeshua teaches us how to pray, and we must learn to love and forgive unconditionally—awesomely difficult! (I thought Thomas Jefferson himself said something like: “Those who beat their swords into plow shares will plow for those who don’t.”? )
The result of the Second Christian Reformation will be an eventual Kingdom of God and individual spiritual growth for life here and Hereafter—but will it be considered “Christianity”?
If you will share your thought and comment, it will be most appreciated. Thank you! :—) Rod Johnson
Oh, Roberta, I SO love your wisdom concerning the real teachings of Jesus as given in the gospels. It makes so much sense to me, and it all rings true in my mind. It all makes sense in a way that allegedly Christian religious thoughts definitely do not. The problem is – or rather ONE problem is – that in attempting to discuss this with a person who perceives themselves to be a loyal Christian you will be rebuffed as a spokesperson of “The Devil”, and as someone who is trying to turn them away from the (perceived) One True Path. I despair. However, bit by bit we are, as a species, learning, I think. (I hope!)
Oh Brian, I know just what you mean! I really stepped in it in the beginning, thinking that those who professed to love Jesus would be glad to hear that we can prove now that He lived on earth, He is indeed an aspect of God, and He came to teach us how to bring the kingdom of God on earth! What could be better than that?
But no matter how I tried to phrase it, I always met with the same insistence that only their religion’s teachings were right and what I was saying was from the devil. I soon came to see that what they loved wasn’t Jesus, the Master, but rather it was the comfort of a religion that promised them “salvation” from the very perils that same religion had first taught them to fear.
And I began to pity them. They are missing out on so much! I began, too, to realize that my job was not to get in their faces, but rather it was to do what I am doing now: to teach in general, and to answer questions from people who have become open and ready to listen. There is a historic decline worldwide in church attendance, while at the same time more people are calling themselves “spiritual” – the rapidity with which interest in this field is growing is dramatic! But going after closed-minded religionists only hardens them unnecessarily. As Thomas Jefferson said, “Take things always by their smooth handle.”
Loved reading all of this. Thank you. Merry Christmas
Thank you, Renee! A joyous Christmas to you as well!!
Amen!
Hi Brian! It’s great to see you here – love and blessings and Merry Christmas to you and yours!
Roberta and Brian et al, once again I am reminded of St. Francis’ comment that we should preach the gospel every day, and if we have to, use words. I’m trying to implement Roberta’s practices from “The Fun of Growing Forever” ( shameless plug 😉) and find that the more I do, the more people who are ready and “interested” just seem to show up. And then we just get talking. It’s weird, but I find myself participating in that more often, and often with people I never expected. Remember, we aren’t trying to save souls. Just remind them of what they already know fundamentally. It gets easier the more we just live it. Words of “wisdom” from a neophyte. Merry Christmas, all!
Thank you so much, Mike! This is beautifully said: We aren’t trying to “save” people, but we are gently reminding them of what they already know and helping them to open their hearts to a better understanding of what they already are.
Another inspiring blog, Roberta, as can be told by all the fine replies. I can’t disagree with the main theme of it, but from where I stand and look around, it will be a long time(in earth years) before there is much improvement on this front. The fundamentalist forces in both religion and science appear to have an “iron grip” on matters in those two areas. Although, there are significant signs that these false paradigms are cracking open, as has been discussed in previous blogs and replies.
A hopeful part is that we as individuals can free ourselves from these fundamentalist forces. We’ll see how things unfold in the coming year.
Meantime, Happy and Healthy New Year to you, Roberta, and to all that reads this!