The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want.
He maketh me to lie down in green pastures,
He leadeth me beside the still waters, He restoreth my soul.
He leadeth me in the paths of righteousness for His name’s sake.
– Attributed to King David, from Psalm 23 of the Book of Psalms (1000 BCE)
Learning and adopting a whole new way of thinking and living is a very big task! For the past six months we have been laying the ground for a new Christianity that is not based in the Roman councilors who claimed they were being “inspired by God,” even though in fact they were being inspired by the needs of Constantine the Great. And Emperor Constantine’s corrupted version of Christianity has persisted for two thousand years as what Jesus would likely call the fruit of a poisonous tree (MT 7:17-18). Jesus tells us He came to teach us the truth, and those that we used to think were dead have abundantly confirmed that His words are true. Christianity uses Him as a sacrifice, but otherwise He has been sadly ignored by Constantine’s version of Christianity. And we are being called now to introduce to humankind a fresh and eternally pure Christianity that has nothing in common with Constantine’s version but is based in the Gospel teachings of Jesus. So we began this cycle of posts in January by sharing what Jesus tells us in the Gospels about why He came to earth; and we end it now by talking about how our abandoning that false and fear-based version of Christianity and beginning to share with all the world the love-based and non-religious teachings of Jesus will make it possible for us to begin at last to heal this hurting world.
I apologize for the fact that I didn’t know until this morning that we have been building a cycle of information for the past six months! As I have confessed to you, the genuine authors of all that I write are my primary spirit guide and his team. He gives me the titles and the general ideas for each blog post a week or two beforehand, and then he lets me flounder until the day before each post is made. (This can be frustrating! He tells me he is teaching me to write on my own, but I can tell from his tone that I am a slow learner.) I had written an entire post for this weekend which has turned out to be another miss, so I begin again now with Thomas’s help. He chose the 23rd Psalm for our frame, and he asks that we think of those beloved words as having been the Lord’s first Gospel message, delivered a thousand years before His birth. Thomas then reminds us, as Jesus also did, of the words of David’s Psalm 118:42-43:
“Jesus said to them, ‘Did you never read in the Scriptures,
“The stone which the builders rejected,
This became the chief corner stone;
This came about from the Lord,
And it is marvelous in our eyes”?
Therefore I say to you, the kingdom of God will be taken away from you and given to a people producing the fruit of it’” (MT 21:41-43).
When Thomas pointed this passage out, I had gooseflesh. For two thousand years Christians have assumed that they were the inheritors of God’s work that King David had told us would be based on Jesus as its Cornerstone. But is it possible that David spoke those words, and then Jesus later reminded us of them, because in the long fullness of additional time all religious fears would be outgrown, and we would at last actually read and follow the Lord’s Gospel teachings? Then those teachings, which Constantine’s Christianity has ignored, will in this new day become the true Cornerstone? And does this then mean that we who devotedly follow the teachings of the Lord might be granted the gift of cultivating the vine which will at last bear God’s kingdom as its fruit? Is this passage from David that was quoted by Jesus a thousand years later more important than anyone has imagined?
Long before our current cycle of posts began six months ago, I was being shown and I was sharing with you the fact that Christianity is shockingly altogether unrelated to the Gospel words of Jesus. And this is all notwithstanding the fact that Jesus tells us in the Gospels that His teachings are what matters! He says, “If you hold to my teaching, you are really my disciples. Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free” (JN 8:31-32). But to this day, adherents of the Roman version of Christianity consider what the Lord taught us to be nothing more than good suggestions. And Jesus says, “Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives, and he who seeks finds, and to him who knocks it will be opened” (MT 7:7-8). But modern Christians are taught that Constantine’s dogma-based version of God long ago gave us all the answers that we ever are going to get.
Jesus rants against the clergymen of His day, saying, “But woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites, because you shut off the kingdom of heaven from people; for you do not enter in yourselves, nor do you allow those who are entering to go in” (MT 23:13). And, “Neglecting the commandment of God, you hold to the tradition of men… You are experts at setting aside the commandment of God in order to keep your tradition” (MK 7:8-9). Man-made religious traditions are anathema to the Lord! He says, “Why do you transgress the commandment of God for the sake of your tradition?… You hypocrites! Rightly did Isaiah prophesy of you: ‘This people honors me with their lips, but their hearts are far away from me. But in vain do they worship me, teaching as doctrines the precepts of men’” (MT 15:3-9). Back when I was reading the Bible every day and assuming that I would join the clergy, I used to wince when I would come to these passages. Why do modern clergymen not also wince? Do they think the Lord’s disapproval of our placing human traditions over God’s divine Word somehow ended when Constantine came along, even though he ignored what Jesus actually said?
Surely the worst sin of the Roman Christianity that is dying all around us now is the fact that it is cheerfully willing to directly contradict the Gospel words of Jesus! We know that the Gospels were edited as Roman Christianity was being developed, including by the First Council of Nicaea in 325. Those who were building one uniform Christian faith out of many early versions tried to scrub from the Gospels everything that contradicted Constantine’s nascent Christianity, including all talk of reincarnation; and they added to the Gospels passages on church-building, sheep-and-goats, end-times, and God’s judgment that are frankly anachronistic. So it seems to me that we must consider the words of Jesus that were allowed to remain in the Gospels to be especially important, and maybe even doubly-certified to have come from God!
And Jesus tells us right in the Gospels that God does not judge anyone. Jesus says, “For not even the Father judges anyone, but He has given all judgment to the Son, so that all will honor the Son even as they honor the Father” (JN 5:22-23). And furthermore, those that we used to think were dead have been telling us all along that God never judges anyone, and that the death of Jesus on the cross has never made an afterlife difference for a single human being. But, wait! Doesn’t Jesus judge us, then? No. He says, “If anyone hears My sayings and does not keep them, I do not judge him; for I did not come to judge the world, but to save the world” (JN 12:47). “Aha!” say adherents of Roman Christianity. “So He says He did come to save the world!” Yes. But not from a divine judgment that He assures us never happens. It is abundantly clear from the Gospels that what Jesus came to save the world from was ignorance and man-made religious notions. So there you have it. The core belief fostered by the early version of Christianity that Constantine founded turns out to be a defamation of God that Christians easily could have discovered if they ever had actually read the Lord’s words. As always, Jesus is precisely right.
This has been a hard personal journey. When the Lord first called me out of Roman Christianity in the late nineties, I was sure I couldn’t be hearing Him right. I kept going to Mass. I tried to ignore Him. When He asked me through Thomas to channel Liberating Jesus, I refused until Thomas broke into my daytime life and told me why I had to do it. But even after having channeled the Lord, and after having studied the Gospels obsessively, I realize now that I still have been fighting this calling to give the rest of my life to the Lord’s own Christianity. He insists to all of us that it is His words that matter! He says, “Truly, truly, I say to you, if anyone keeps My word he will never see death” (JN 8:51). And, “Why do you call me ‘Lord, Lord,’ and do not do what I say?” (LK 6:46) “Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only he who does the will of my Father who is in heaven will enter” (MT 7:21). But still, I was resisting. Who am I to be doing all this? So Thomas has given me this last six months of posts to be shared with you, but he tells me now that he has done them primarily so he could convince me it is finally time for us to begin to fight for the victory of the Lord’s truth on earth.
Thomas is telling me amazing things! I’m having trouble getting my mind around it all. He says, first, that I must stop thinking of Roman Christianity as a mistake, since this entire history was planned by the Godhead. He says that King David was the Lord’s precursor, and his prediction that the teachings of Jesus that the builders of the first Christianity would reject were later going to become the Cornerstone of a genuine Christian movement is being fulfilled now, three thousand years later. He is telling me, too, that he ended this six-month series by talking last week about the Founding Fathers of the United States because they, too, were motivated by the Godhead; and the nation they founded is meant to be the vehicle by which the Lord will operate on earth and assist all of humankind in elevating our consciousness vibrations. On a personal note, Thomas tells me that the first draft of the Declaration of Independence actually was channeled, and enough of what was important in it survived its editing for us to consider it a sacred document.
I am sorry to sound boggled, but this is all news to me! Thomas has shared more about our next week’s offering, and he assures me that I will find it easier to understand and accept. There isn’t space enough to summarize so many posts, so I hope that you will reacquaint yourself with the information in the posts that our beloved friend has asked me to link; and please, if you have time, skim these last six months. I think I can find this next stage easier, if only we can do it together….
Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death,
I will fear no evil, for thou art with me.
Thy rod and thy staff, they comfort me.
Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies.
Thou anointest my head with oil; my cup runneth over.
Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life,
and I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever.
– Attributed to King David, from Psalm 23 of the Book of Psalms (1000 BCE)