14. The Redeemer

The Saviour on the cross! Thousands of these crosses are erected as symbols that Christ suffered and died for the sake of humanity. They call out to the faithful from all sides: “Remember!” In lonely fields, in busy city streets, in quiet chambers, in churches, at graves and at wedding celebrations, everywhere it serves to comfort, strengthen and admonish. Remember it! It was for your sins that the Son of God, who brought salvation to earth, suffered and died on the cross.
 
With a heartfelt shudder the believer approaches in deep reverence and full of gratitude. He then leaves the place with a feeling of joy, convinced that through the sacrificial death he has also been freed of his sins.
 
But you, earnest seeker, go, step before the emblem of holy earnestness and endeavour to understand your Saviour! Throw off the soft cloak of comfort which warms you so pleasantly and produces a feeling of cozy security, which lets you doze off until the last hour on earth, when you will be suddenly torn from your half-slumber, detached from your earthly close-mindedness and suddenly find yourself face to face with unclouded truth. Then your dream to which you clung, with which you sank into inaction, is quickly forgotten.
 
Therefore awake, your time on earth is precious! For our sins the Saviour came, that is inviolable and literally true. Also, that He died for the sake of the guilt of mankind.
 
But this does not take away your sins! The Saviour’s work of redemption was to take up the battle with the darkness in order to bring Light to humanity, to open the way to the forgiveness of all sins. Each one must walk this path alone, according to the immutable Laws of the Creator. Christ did not come to overturn the Laws, but to fulfil them. Do not forsake Him who is to be your best friend! Do not take an erroneous meaning for the true words!
 
When it is rightly said: “For the sins of mankind all this happened”, it means that Jesus’ coming became necessary only because mankind was no longer able to find its way out of the darkness it had created and to free itself from its clutches. Christ had to reopen this path and show it to humanity. If humanity had not been so deeply entangled in its sins, that is, if humanity had not gone the wrong way, Jesus’ coming would not have been necessary, and He would have been spared the struggle and suffering. Therefore, it is quite right that He had to come only for the sake of humanity’s sins, if it was not to slide completely into the abyss, into darkness, on the wrong path.
 
This does not mean, however, that every individual will be forgiven of his personal sins in the twinkling of an eye as soon as he truly believes in the words of Jesus and lives according to them. But if he lives according to the words of Jesus, his sins will be forgiven. However, only gradually at a time, as soon as the redemption takes place through the counter-work of good will, according to the Words of Jesus in reciprocal action. Not otherwise! In contrast, forgiveness is not possible at all for those who do not live according to the words of Jesus.
 
But this does not mean that only members of the Christian Church can obtain forgiveness of sins.
 
Jesus proclaimed the Truth. His Words must therefore also contain all the truths of other religions. He did not want to found a church, but to show humanity the true path which can just as well lead through the truths of other religions. That is why there are so many echoes in His words of religions that already existed at that time. Jesus did not take these from them, but since He brought the Truth everything that was already present as truth in other religions had to be found in His Words.
 
Even those who do not know the words of Jesus themselves and earnestly strive for truth and ennoblement often already live completely in the spirit of these words and therefore certainly also go towards a pure faith and the forgiveness of their sins. Beware therefore of one-sided views. It is a devaluation of the work of the Redeemer, a degradation of the Divine Spirit.
 
Those who earnestly strives for truth, for purity, do not lack love. They will, even if sometimes through hard doubts and struggles, be led up spiritually from step to step, and regardless to which religion they belongs, will already here or only in the Ethereal World meet the Christ-spirit, which will then ultimately lead them on to the Father, in which the Word is also fulfilled: “No one comes to the Father except through me”.
 
The “final end”, however, does not begin with the last earthly hours, but at a certain stage in the evolution of the spiritual human being, for whom the passing over from the Gross Material World into the Ethereal World only means a transformation.
 
Now to the event of the great work of Redemption itself: Humanity was wandering in spiritual darkness. They had created this darkness for themselves by subjecting themselves more and more to the intellect which they had first laboriously cultivated. In doing so, they also drew the boundaries of the intellectual faculty ever tighter until, like the brain, they were unconditionally bound to space and time and could no longer grasp the path to the infinite and the eternal. Thus they became completely earthbound, limited to space and time. Every connection with the Light, the pure, the spiritual was thus cut off. The human will could only be directed towards earthly things, except for a few who, as prophets, did not have the power to penetrate, to create a free path to the Light.
 
This condition opened all gates to evil. Spiritual darkness welled up and flowed ominously over the earth. This could only bring one end: Spiritual death. The most terrible thing that can befall man.
 
But the people themselves were to blame for all this misery! They had brought it about because they voluntarily chose this direction. They had wanted it and brought it up and were even proud of their achievement in their immoderate delusion, without recognizing the dreadfulness of the consequences in their laboriously self-imposed narrowness of comprehension. From this there was no way to the Light for humanity. The voluntary constriction was already too great.
 
If rescue was to become possible at all, help had to come from the Light. Otherwise the fall of humanity into darkness could no longer be stopped.
 
The darkness itself has a greater density due to its impurity, which brings with it spiritual heaviness. Because of this heaviness, it is only able to rise up to a certain weight limit, if it is not helped by a force of attraction from another side. The Light, however, possesses a lightness corresponding to its Purity, which makes it impossible for it to sink down to this darkness.
 
There is thus an unbridgeable gulf between the two parts, in which man stands with his earth!
 
It is up to human beings, depending on their will and desire, to meet the Light or the darkness, to open the gates and pave the way so that either the Light or the darkness floods the earth. They themselves form the mediators through whose willpower light or darkness gets a firm hold and from there can work more or less forcefully. The more the Light or the darkness thereby gains power on earth, the more it showers humanity with what it has to give with good or evil, salvation or disaster, happiness or unhappiness, peace in Paradise or torment in hell.
 
The pure will of mankind had become too weak to offer the Light a point in the heavy, all-suffocating darkness on earth to which It could cling, to which It could connect in such a way that It could split the darkness in unclouded purity and thus undiminished force and redeem humanity, which could then draw its strength from the Source thus struck and find its way upwards to the Luminous Heights.
 
But it was not possible for the Light to lower Itself so far into the dirt without a strong support. Therefore, a mediator had to come. Only a Messenger from the Luminous Heights could, through incarnation, break down the dark wall formed by human will and underneath all evil form the coarse material footing for the Divine Light, which stands firmly in the midst of the heavy darkness. From this anchorage, the pure Rays of the Light were then able to cleave and disperse the dark masses, so that humanity did not completely sink into darkness and suffocate.
 
So Jesus came for the sake of humanity and its sin!
 
The new connection with the Light thus created, could not be cut off by the darkness, given the purity and power of the Messenger of the Light. Thus a new path to the Spiritual Heights was opened for humanity. From Jesus, this earthly support of the Light that had come into being through Incarnation, its Rays now penetrated the darkness through the Living Word that brought the Truth. He was able to transmit this Truth unadulterated, since His connection with the Light was pure through the Force of It and could not be clouded by the darkness.
 
People were now shaken out of their stupor by the miracles that were happening at the same time. Following these, they came across the Word. But with the hearing of the Truth that Jesus brought and the reflection on it, the desire to pursue this Truth, to know more about it, gradually awoke in hundreds of thousands. And thus they slowly strove towards the Light. Through their desire the darkness surrounding them was loosened, one ray of light after another penetrated victoriously, as people thought about the words and found them to be right. It became brighter and brighter around them, the darkness no longer found a firm hold on them and finally fell back, slipping away from them, thus losing more and more ground. Thus the Word of Truth worked in the darkness like a germinating mustard seed and like leaven in bread.
 
And this was the redeeming work of the Son of God, Jesus, the Bringer of Light and Truth.
 
The darkness, which thought it already had dominion over the whole of humanity, rebelled against it in a wild struggle to make the work of the Redeemer impossible. It could not approach Jesus Himself, it slipped away from His pure intuition. So, it was only natural that it should make use of the willing tools it had at its disposal for the fight.
 
These were the people who quite rightly called themselves “intellectuals”, i.e. they submitted to reason, and were thus, like it, firmly bound to space and time, whereby they were no longer able to grasp higher, spiritual concepts that were far above space and time. It therefore became impossible for them to follow the teaching of the Truth. According to their own convictions, they were all standing on very “real” ground, as so many still do today. Real ground, however, means in reality a very limited ground. And all these people were precisely the majority of those who represented power, i.e. who had authority and religious power in their hands.
 
Thus, in raging opposition, the darkness whipped up these people to the gross assaults they carried out against Jesus with the earthly violence in their hands.
 
The darkness had hoped to make Jesus waver and to be able to destroy the Work of the Redeemer at the last moment. The fact that it was able to exercise this power on earth at all was merely the fault of humanity, which had narrowed its understanding through its self-chosen wrong attitude and thus given the darkness the upper hand.
 
This guilt alone was the sin of humanity, which brought all other evils after it.
 
And for the sake of this sin of humanity, Jesus had to suffer! The darkness continued to lash out to the extreme: Jesus would have to suffer death of the cross if He stuck to His claims to be the Bringer of Truth and Light. The final decision had to be made. A flight, a complete withdrawal from everything could save Him from the death of the cross. But that would have meant a victory of the darkness in the last moment, because then the whole work of Jesus would have slowly come to nothing and the darkness could again close in victoriously over everything. Jesus would not have fulfilled His Mission, the work of redemption that had begun would have remained unfinished.
 
The inner struggle in Gethsemane was hard, but short. Jesus did not shy away from earthly death, but remained steadfast and calmly went to earthly death for the Truth He had brought. With His Blood on the cross He put the seal on everything He had said and lived.
 
Through this act He completely overcame the darkness that had played the last trump card with Him. Jesus was victorious. Out of love for the Father, for the Truth, out of love for humanity which thereby remained the path to freedom in the Light, because it was reinforced by this victory in the Truth of His Words.
 
To have withdrawn by fleeing and thereby abandoning His Work should have brought them doubts.
 
Jesus died for the sake of humanity's sin! If it had not been for the sin of mankind, turning away from God in confinement by the intellect, Jesus could have spared Himself His coming, as well as His way of suffering and His death on the cross. Therefore, it is quite correct to say: For the sake of our sin, Jesus came, suffered and died the death of the cross!
 
But this does not mean that you do not have to solve your own sins yourself!
 
You can only do it easily now because Jesus has shown you the way by delivering the Truth in His words. Jesus’ death on the cross cannot simply wash away your own sins. If such a thing were to happen, the entire Laws of the Universe would have to be overthrown first. But that does not happen. Jesus Himself often enough refers to everything “that is written”, that is, to the old. The new Gospel of Love does not intend to overthrow or reject the old Gospel of Justice, but to supplement it. It wants to be connected to it.
 
Therefore, do not forget the Justice of the great Creator of all things, which cannot be moved by a hair's breadth, which has stood firm from the beginning of the world and until its end! It would not allow anyone to take upon himself the guilt of another in order to atone for it.
 
Jesus could come, suffer, die, appear as a fighter for the Truth for the sake of the guilt of others, but He Himself remained untouched and pure from this guilt, therefore He was not able to take it upon Himself personally.
 
The work of the Redeemer is therefore not less, but a sacrifice that cannot be greater. Jesus came from the Luminous Heights for you into the dirt, He fought for you, suffered and died for you, to bring you light to the right path upwards, so that you do not lose yourself in the darkness and perish!
 
This is how your Redeemer stands before you. This was His mighty work of Love.
 
God’s Justice remained serious and strict in the Laws of the Universe; for what a man sows, that he will reap, says Jesus Himself in His Message. Not a penny can be forgiven him on the basis of Divine Justice!
 
Think of this when you stand before the landmark of holy earnestness. Give heartfelt thanks for the fact that the Redeemer, with His Word, has opened a new path for you to forgive your sins, and leave these places with the serious intention of walking this path shown to you, so that you may be forgiven. But to walk the path does not only mean to learn the Word and to believe in it, but to live this Word! To believe in it, to consider it right and not to act according to it in everything would not help you at all. On the contrary, you are worse off than those who know nothing of the Word.
 
Wake up, therefore; earth time is precious for you!