Posted by Roberta Grimes • December 21, 2024 • 0 Comment
Jesus, The Source
Joy to the world, the Lord is come.
Let earth receive her king!
Let every heart prepare Him room,
And heaven and nature sing!
And heaven and nature sing!
And heaven and Heaven and nature sing!
Joy to the world, the Savior reigns.
Let men their songs employ.
While fields and floods, rocks hills and plains
Repeat the sounding joy!
Repeat the sounding joy!
Repeat, repeat the sounding joy!
– Isaac Watts (1674-1748), from “Joy to the World” (1719)
The first time Thomas took me to visit with Jesus in the astral plane and he allowed me to remember the event was in the spring. it was the night of April 6, 2022. But now I am coming to see that the joy of that night is something that will always be in my mind most vividly at Christmastime, because the Jesus that I met that night was so much more like the gift that we celebrate at Christmas than He was like the one that we imagine needing to celebrate at Easter. Those two versions of Jesus are two such very different gifts! And it gives me no pleasure to point out the fact that two such entirely different versions of Jesus even exist in our minds at all, since the one that most modern Christians know isn’t even the genuine Jesus at all, the glorious Jesus that amazingly I met in person three years ago this coming Spring. And until very recently, I harbored the fear that only the Roman version of Jesus, the version that the Emperor Constantine created with his Christian religion, might be the one that ultimately survives in people’s minds.
Only think of that Roman Christian version of Jesus, and the God that Constantine dreamed up for Him to serve. Now, I could be wrong about this. I would love to be wrong, because even as I write it down it makes no sense to me now, and it never has made any sense to me at all, even though I was an ardent Christian for the first fifty years of my life. My goodness, I even have a degree in this subject from a prestigious college! But let’s simply reason it through now together. As I understand Christian doctrine, God created everything that exists, and God has infinite powers. God also loves us infinitely. How am I doing so far? Okay, so but as I understand it, the one power that God lacks is the power to forgive us unassisted. No matter how much God loves us, and even though God insists that we all learn to forgive, still we are so far below our ultra-perfect God that God can never forgive us for even our most basic human failings. Therefore, God had to send His own beloved Son to be horribly tortured and murdered as punishment for our sins in our place. Only then could God forgive us for anything. Do I have this right?
My problem with all of this is that it makes no sense to me. If God is all-powerful, and if God insists that each of us must learn to perfectly forgive, then why can’t God also learn to forgive and just forgive us all outright, for heaven’s sake, without putting Jesus though all that trauma, and without putting us through so much guilt for Jesus’s suffering? For years after I stopped being a Catholic, I used to go to church with my husband, to support him in his faith and to keep him company. We often went to Saturday evening Mass, and then afterward we would have a nice dinner-date. But that life-size, full-color plaster Jesus bleeding on the cross over the altar in my husband’s church was so upsetting to me that sadly there at last came a time when I could no longer go to church with him at all.
But, okay, let’s assume for a moment that the Jesus-died-for-our-sins thing had to happen. God is so far above us spiritually that He needs a pure Vessel to take all the whole world’s sins upon Himself so they can be punished once and for all, and then God can forgive us all. And that ultra-pure, sinless Vessel is Jesus. Okay. Hard for me to accept, but let’s assume that I am a spiritual dunce. So then it was done. Okay. But so why then did Jesus also rise from the dead afterward, and why did He make such a big point of doing that as a display for His disciples? Jesus’s rising from the dead doesn’t seem to have been needed as part of the script that says that He died for our sins. Or does it? Am I still missing something? And nor does Jesus’s having spent more than three years lovingly teaching His disciples and His thousands of followers how to ever more perfectly love and forgive ever seem to have been needed as a part of the script of Jesus’s life before He became God’s pure and sinless sacrificial Lamb. If being that Lamb and taking all our sins upon Himself, and then suffering and dying in our place really was the purpose of Jesus’s life, then why did He teach us anything at all? Wasn’t Jesus needlessly risking a loss of His sinless purity as the all-important sacrificial Son of God with these side-excursions to argue with the clergy and to teach for so long before His crucial death for our sins at last occurred?
All of this really was the biggest reason why my conversation with Jesus on the night of April 6, 2022, was so extraordinary for me. Truly, I had spent most of my life until that night fighting the Roman Christian dogma that Jesus died for our sins! The entire idea that God had sent His Son to die as a sinless sacrifice to God always had been so repugnant to me. But, could Jesus have known that fact about me, in particular? That I was so upset by the Roman Christian dogma of substitutionary atonement? I wonder about that only now. I haven’t really wondered about this detail until lately because the fact that OMG Thomas took me to meet with Jesus Himself has for the past two years been my headline fact about that amazing night! But Thomas took me to meet with Jesus for a reason of the Lord’s own. And that reason was that Jesus wanted to share with me His actual purpose for being born on earth from out of the Godhead on that blessed night in Bethlehem two thousand years ago. He wanted me to share His actual purpose with you, and then to share it with all the world.
My dear ones, it is impossible to encounter Jesus and not to know right away who He is. No question! In the gigantic astral plane, we know one another by our energies, and Jesus’s personal energy is one high, pure note so intense that unless He remembers to tone it down for us, it actually is painful for you and me to be close to Him. But the joy of being in Jesus’s presence is hard for me to adequately convey. Because all that He ever cares about is you! He looks at you as if He has been waiting for you for His entire life; He looks deeply into your eyes and with the warmest smile, and He asks you about your day, what you have been doing, even what you are thinking. All that He cares about is you. It’s incredible. He loves you so overwhelmingly! I have given you in a blog post written just two months after that wonderful night Jesus’s story in abbreviated form as He told it to me then, so I won’t repeat much of it here; but I do urge you to read it at the link. This version at last makes perfect sense!
Jesus came to earth as an infant so He could spend a whole lifetime here studying us, to make sure that He could understand and teach us. And then for three years He taught us how to forgive and love perfectly, so we can make this our last necessary earth-lifetime. His original life-plan that He had made with His Council was that eventually He would walk away and be subsumed back into the Godhead. But instead, He chose to give up the protection of His Archangels, and He allowed Himself to be arrested, tortured, crucified, and entombed. All, so He could two days later reanimate that corpse, and He then could rise from the dead and thereby prove to us all that in fact there is no death!
And now here, Thomas and I give to you for reading on Christmas Eve the beloved tale of the birth on earth two thousand years ago of the genuine Jesus, the eternally-living Christ. Jesus loves us so much that He devoted thousands of earth-years to persuading the Godhead Collective to grant Him His wish to be born on earth as our Spiritual Teacher of God’s greatest Truths so He would be our Savior, able to Save us from our ignorance. And now Jesus remains with us forevermore. Down through the ages, these words from the Gospels of Luke and Matthew still eternally sing!
2 Now in those days a decree went out from Caesar Augustus, that a census be taken of all the inhabited earth. 2 This was the first census taken while Quirinius was governor of Syria. 3 And everyone was on his way to register for the census, each to his own city. 4 Joseph also went up from Galilee, from the city of Nazareth, to Judea, to the city of David which is called Bethlehem, because he was of the house and family of David, 5 in order to register along with Mary, who was engaged to him, and was with child. 6 While they were there, the days were completed for her to give birth. 7 And she gave birth to her firstborn son; and she wrapped Him in swaddling cloths, and laid Him in a manger, because there was no room for them in the inn.
8 In the same region there were shepherds staying out in the fields and keeping watch over their flock by night. 9 And an angel of the Lord suddenly stood before them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them; and they were terribly frightened. 10 But the angel said to them, “Do not be afraid; for behold, I bring you good news of great joy which will be for all the people; 11 for today in the city of David there has been born for you a Savior, who is Christ the Lord. 12 This will be a sign for you: you will find a baby wrapped in cloths and lying in a manger.” 13 And suddenly there appeared with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host praising God and saying,
14 “Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace among men with whom He is pleased.”
15 When the angels had gone away from them into heaven, the shepherds began saying to one another, “Let us go straight to Bethlehem then, and see this thing that has happened which the Lord has made known to us.” 16 So they came in a hurry and found their way to Mary and Joseph, and the baby as He lay in the manger. 17 When they had seen this, they made widely known the statement which had been told them about this Child. 18 And all who heard it wondered at the things which were told them by the shepherds. 19 But Mary treasured all these things, pondering them in her heart. 20 The shepherds went back, glorifying and praising God for all that they had heard and seen, just as had been told them.
21 And when eight days had passed, before His circumcision, His name was then called Jesus, the name given by the angel before He was conceived in the womb.
22 And when the days for their purification according to the law of Moses were completed, they brought Him up to Jerusalem to present Him to the Lord 23 (as it is written in the Law of the Lord, “Every firstborn male that opens the womb shall be called holy to the Lord”), 24 and to offer a sacrifice according to what was said in the Law of the Lord, “A pair of turtledoves or two young pigeons.”
25 And there was a man in Jerusalem whose name was Simeon; and this man was righteous and devout, looking for the consolation of Israel; and the Holy Spirit was upon him. 26 And it had been revealed to him by the Holy Spirit that he would not see death before he had seen the Lord’s Christ. 27 And he came in the Spirit into the temple; and when the parents brought in the child Jesus, to carry out for Him the custom of the Law, 28 then he took Him into his arms, and blessed God, and said,
29 “Now Lord, You are releasing Your bond-servant to depart in peace,
According to Your word;
30 For my eyes have seen Your salvation,
31 Which You have prepared in the presence of all peoples,
32 A Light of revelation to the Gentiles,
And the glory of Your people Israel.”
33 And His father and mother were amazed at the things which were being said about Him. 34 And Simeon blessed them and said to Mary His mother, “Behold, this Child is appointed for the fall and rise of many in Israel, and for a sign to be opposed— 35 and a sword will pierce even your own soul—to the end that thoughts from many hearts may be revealed.” (LK 2:1-35)
2 Now after Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea in the days of Herod the king, magi from the east arrived in Jerusalem, saying, 2 “Where is He who has been born King of the Jews? For we saw His star in the east and have come to worship Him.” 3 When Herod the king heard this, he was troubled, and all Jerusalem with him. 4 Gathering together all the chief priests and scribes of the people, he inquired of the magi where the Messiah was to be born. 5 They said to him, “In Bethlehem of Judea; for this is what has been written by the prophet:
6 ‘And you, Bethlehem, land of Judah,
Are by no means least among the leaders of Judah;
For out of you shall come forth a Ruler
Who will shepherd My people Israel.’”
7 Then Herod secretly called the magi and determined from them the exact time the star appeared. 8 And he sent them to Bethlehem and said, “Go and search carefully for the Child; and when you have found Him, report to me, so that I too may come and worship Him.” 9 After hearing the king, they went their way; and the star, which they had seen in the east, went on before them until it came and stood over the place where the Child was. 10 When they saw the star, they rejoiced exceedingly with great joy. 11 After coming into the house they saw the Child with Mary His mother; and they fell to the ground and worshiped Him. Then, opening their treasures, they presented to Him gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh. 12 And having been warned by God in a dream not to return to Herod, the magi left for their own country by another way.
13 Now when they had gone, behold, an angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream and said, “Get up! Take the Child and His mother and flee to Egypt, and remain there until I tell you; for Herod is going to search for the Child to destroy Him.”
14 So Joseph got up and took the Child and His mother while it was still night, and left for Egypt. 15 He remained there until the death of Herod. This was to fulfill what had been spoken by the Lord through the prophet: “Out of Egypt I called My Son.”
16 Then when Herod saw that he had been tricked by the magi, he became very enraged, and sent and slew all the male children who were in Bethlehem and all its vicinity, from two years old and under, according to the time which he had determined from the magi. 17 Then what had been spoken through Jeremiah the prophet was fulfilled:
18 “A voice was heard in Ramah,
Weeping and great mourning,
Rachel weeping for her children;
And she refused to be comforted,
Because they were no more.”
19 But when Herod died, behold, an angel of the Lord appeared in a dream to Joseph in Egypt, and said, 20 “Get up, take the Child and His mother, and go into the land of Israel; for those who sought the Child’s life are dead.” 21 So Joseph got up, took the Child and His mother, and came into the land of Israel. 22 But when he heard that Archelaus was reigning over Judea in place of his father Herod, he was afraid to go there. Then after being warned by God in a dream, he left for the regions of Galilee, 23 and came and lived in a city called Nazareth. This was to fulfill what was spoken through the prophets: “He shall be called a Nazarene.” (MT 2:1-23)
… And so it was very well begun! My dearly beloved friends, may the genuine Jesus, who is all pure love and grace, fill your heart now and forevermore. Merry Christmas!
He rules the world with truth and grace,
And makes the nations prove
The glories of His righteousness
And wonders of His love!
And wonders of His love!
And wonders, and wonders of His love!
– Isaac Watts (1674-1748), from “Joy to the World” (1719)
(Many photos are from Vecteezy.com)
