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REVELATION 10
Jesus' Meeting with Nicodemus
I am here, Jesus:
I have already spoken to you about my meeting with Nicodemus, son of
Gurion,
the Pharisee, when I was teaching in Palestine. Nicodemus was the son of a
rabbi who held religious discussions with groups, as was the custom of
those
days and before. He was not a priest and held no services in the Temple.
As
a matter of fact, the Pharisees were the ones who were most interested in
the law, not only the written laws of the Scriptures, but the
interpretations which the centuries and cir***stances made necessary in
those laws, and these interpretations were known as the Oral Law. They
were
discussed mainly by the Pharisees, the common people of Jerusalem, because
they were the ones most interested in the religion of the Hebrews; they
were
poor; they were the artisans and tradesman, downtrodden by the rich and
the
aristocratic priests who cared nothing for the scriptures except as their
own interests were therein protected. These Pharisees were deeply
concerned
with immortality of the soul, inasmuch as their own plight on earth made
them seek for justice in an ideal world beyond the grave and they felt
that
God's righteousness had to, of necessity, embrace that Kingdom where
justice
and righteousness would be the established order. That is why the
Pharisees
were willing to listen to me and my mission -- the availability of
immortality of the soul through prayer to the Father for His Love.
While they were intrigued, then, by my affirmation that the Kingdom of God
had come with my appearance -- that is, that soul immortality was a fact
and
could be achieved, yet they were not capable of understanding the
principle
of the Divine Love and Salvation through the Divine Love. For some
centuries
they had battled stubbornly against the Saducees' denial of immortality,
and
had clung to the faith of man's entry into Paradise through keeping of the
Ten Commandments and the Torah (the 5 Books of Moses) and the decrees,
precepts and interpretations which stemmed from these Holy works, so that
Divine Love and Salvation from it were alien to their thoughts and
fundamental concepts of religion. This then, very briefly, is the
background
of their initial sympathy with me and later disagreements.
Nicodemus, however, had an intuitive feeling that I was right and since he
was not able to fully understand my meaning, he came secretly one night to
hear from me in private what he had only been able to glimpse in my public
sermons in the market place. He felt, also, that my miracles of healing
among the people must be due to great piety and that, therefore, I must be
a
man of God. He wanted to know about the Kingdom of God, and how to enter
therein. Since he could not, as I saw, understand Divine Love, nor
transformation of the soul from the human into the divine through the
Father's Love, I had recourse to a parable, as I usually had in speaking
to
the people, "EXCEPT A MAN BE BORN AGAIN, HE CANNOT SEE THE KINGDOM OF
GOD."
Nicodemus could understand a spiritual rebirth only through obedience to
the
laws of God, the doing of good, the practicing of mercy and charity,
righteousness in conduct and piety for the widow and the orphan; in short,
he understood repentence from evil and a return to God in the prophetic
sense of the term, and thought this gave immortality of the soul. I had to
show him that his practicing of the virtues purified the soul, and made it
a
perfect human soul in the eyes of God, but that to enter the Kingdom of
God,
the soul had to be transformed into a divine soul, through God's Nature,
Love.
To his query, I showed that being born of the flesh was the work of the
womb, and that here there was no possibility of rebirth, but that
spiritually, the soul could be reborn; it was born as the human soul, but
could be born again into a divine soul, the transformation -- or rebirth
--
taking place as the individual sought the Father's Love through prayer and
obtained that Love, which permeated the human soul and made it divine. It
was this divinity of soul that rendered it immortal, and enabled one to
see
the Kingdom of God, and not the perfection of the human soul resulting
from
the doing of good works and practicing charity and righteousness.
If Peter and John, my most advanced disciples, could not readily
understand
the significance of Divine Love, then neither could Nicodemus ben Gurion
in
the talk I had with him, for I saw the conflict which Divine Love raised
in
his mind with his deep seated doctrines of the law and the precepts of the
Torah, and his inability to accept my glad tidings immediately.
He asked, "HOW COULD THESE THINGS BE?" and so I told him that, inasmuch as
there were many earthly things he could not understand, like the wind, and
its movements, it was not strange that he should not understand these
things
of the spirit: "THE WIND BLOWS WHERE IT LISTS, AND THOU HEAREST THE SOUND
THEREOF, BUT CANST NOT TELL WHENCE IT COMES, AND WHITHER IT GOES; SO IT IS
WITH THE SPIRITUAL REBIRTH." (St. John, Chapter 3, verse 8).
Since he could not understand the workings of the wind, a material
phenomenon, neither could he understand an operation of a spiritual thing,
the rebirth. And since Rauch (wind), also means spirit in Hebrew, I used
this play on words and tried to show him that as both were of the Father,
the Rebirth as well as the existence of the wind could be believed in and
accepted.
I did not say, or mean, that Nicodemus had to be born of the spirit in the
sense that Christians usually interpret the words attributed to John, that
is, the Holy Spirit, for the soul is not reborn of the Holy Spirit, but of
God's Love, which comes into the soul conveyed by the Holy Spirit, that
manifestation of God which has as its function this great mission. Neither
did I say that he had to be born of water, for this is simply a much later
interpolation referring to baptism. This is all wrong, for baptism has no
efficacy in the soul's obtention of the Divine Love. Certainly, Nicodemus
would have understood these Christian interpretations much less than he
did
the Divine Love, which I insisted was now available to mankind because it
was present in me.
Nicodemus left with an inkling of the Father's Love and heard me explain
several times that the Kingdom of God had come; he was confused, because
of
the new concept of soul transformation and his ideas of a Messiah ushering
in a new ideal Kingdom on earth, but he understood later at Pentecost,
when
mental concept was replaced by emotion, for Nicodemus greatly respected
me,
and his reverence was turned into love and sorrow, and brought into his
soul
the Divine Love. Nicodemus finally understood with his soul, and he now
stands by me in the Celestial Heavens, eager with his love and influence
to
bring mankind into At-onement with the Father.
Jesus of the Bible
and
Master of the Celestial Heavens
www.divinelove.org
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