And this anxious question is justified, for
it comes from the intuitive perception and is intended as a
warning!
The spirit rebels and wishes
to speak through the intuitive perception. Therefore this warning can
never be silenced with empty words which hint that God Himself is
Love and that Divine Love remains incomprehensible to
mankind!
One seeks to use such words to fill the
gaps that arise wherever true knowledge is lacking.
But the time is now past for empty phrases!
The spirit must now awaken! It must, for it has no other
choice!
He who is satisfied with
shallow excuses in matters concerning men's salvation proves himself
spiritually indolent in the most important questions of this Creation,
and thus indifferent and lazy about the Laws of God which rest in this
Creation.
'It is finished!' That was the last sigh of Jesus as He ended His
earth-life and thereby His sufferings through mankind!
Not for mankind, as they in their
irresponsible conceit try to deceive themselves, but through
mankind! It was the cry of relief that now the suffering was coming
to an end, and thus the special confirmation of the hardships He had
already suffered." (Abd-ru-shin,
"IN THE LIGHT OF
TRUTH: THE GRAIL MESSAGE", chapter "It Is Finished!" - Read the entire
chapter.)
"At the death of Christ the
veil which shut out the Holy of Holies from mankind was rent in twain.
This happening is taken as a symbol that the separation between Divinity
and mankind ceased at the moment of the Saviour's sacrifice on the
cross, and that direct communication was established in its
stead.
However, this interpretation
is wrong! Through His crucifixion men rejected the Son of God as
their expected Messiah, and this made the separation all the greater!
The veil was rent because henceforth the Holy of Holies was no
longer necessary! It was exposed to all eyes as well as to impure
currents because, symbolically speaking, after this deed Divinity would
no longer set foot on this earth, thus rendering the Holy of Holies
superfluous!
This is the exact contrary of the existing
interpretations, which express nothing but a great presumption on the
part of the human spirit!
Neither was the death on the
cross a necessary sacrifice, but a murder, a dastardly crime!
Every other explanation is a misinterpretation which either has its
origin in ignorance or is meant as an excuse. Christ certainly did not
come to this earth with the intention of letting Himself be crucified;
neither does redemption lie in the crucifixion! Christ was
crucified because of His teaching, as a troublesome Bringer of
Truth!
It was not His death on
the cross that could and should bring redemption, but the Truth
He gave to mankind in His
Word!..
His violent death, in
the form at the time used by the Romans to execute people, was not in
itself the redemption, nor did it bring redemption. It atoned for
none of mankind's guilt, liberated them from nothing, but
burdened them still more with a dastardly
murder!
If still here and there a
cult has arisen which sees in this murder a necessary and principal part
of the Son of God's Work of Redemption, this only distracts man's
attention from the greater value which alone could bring this
redemption. It diverts him from the true mission of the Saviour,
from that which necessitated His coming from the Divine Sphere to the
earth!
The purpose of His Mission,
however, was not to suffer death on the cross, but to bring the Truth
into the maze of dogmatic rigidity and emptiness which debase the
human spirit, and to explain the relations between God, the Creation and
mankind as they actually are!
Through this knowledge the
illusions which the constricted spirit of man added, and which covered
up the reality, had feebly to fall away of their own accord. Not till
then could man see clearly before him the way leading
upwards!
Redemption lies solely in the bringing of this Truth and the consequent
liberation from errors!
It is redemption from obscured vision, from
blind faith! The word 'blind' most suitably depicts this false
state!
The Last Supper before
Christ's death was a farewell meal. When He said: 'Take, eat, this is my
body!' and: 'Drink ye all of it, this is my blood of the New Testament,
which is shed for many for the remission of sins,' He declared thereby
that he was willing even to embrace death on the cross if only as an
opportunity of bringing the Truth to erring mankind through His
teaching, which alone shows the way to the forgiveness of
sins!
He says expressly:
'Forgiveness for many', not 'forgiveness for all!' Thus
only for those who take His teachings to heart and make vital use of
them!
The destruction of His body
and the shedding of His blood through death on the cross are meant to
help mankind recognise the necessity for and seriousness of the
explanations He gave. The repeated celebration of Holy Communion
and the taking of Holy Communion as such are merely intended to
emphasise this urgency!
That the Son of God did not
shrink even from such enmity on the part of mankind, the probability
of which was already recognised before His coming, should especially
indicate the desperate plight of the human spirits who could only be
dragged back from perdition if they grasped the rope of salvation, of
undimmed Truth.
When during the Last
Supper the Son of God referred to His death on the cross, it was only to
lay special emphasis for the last time on the compelling necessity of
the teaching He had come to bring!
In partaking of Holy
Communion each person should always realise afresh that the Son of God
did not even shun the probability of death on the cross through mankind,
and actually sacrificed His body and His blood so that mankind might
have the opportunity to receive an explanation of the actual happenings
in the cosmos, which clearly show the operation of the inflexible Laws
of Creation that bear the Divine Will!
With this realisation of the
profound gravity of the situation, emphasising as it does the burning
necessity of the Message of Salvation, ever new strength should arise in
man, a new encouragement truly to live the clear teaching of
Christ, not only to understand it aright, but also to act accordingly in
everything. Through this he will also find redemption and
forgiveness for his sins. Not otherwise! And also not immediately! But
he will surely find them through following the way Christ pointed out in
His Message!
For this reason Holy
Communion is meant to vitalise this process ever again, so that the zeal
to follow the teaching brought at the cost of so great a sacrifice,
which could free him, does not weaken; for once indifference or mere
outward ceremony develops people lose their hold on the rope of
salvation and sink back into errors and perdition!
It is a great mistake for men
to believe that through the death on the cross the forgiveness of their
sins is guaranteed. This thought is followed by the terrible harm that
all those who believe this are held back from the true road to
redemption, which lies only and solely in living the Word
of the Saviour, according to the explanations given by Him, Who knew
and could overlook all. And these explanations give practical examples
of the need to obey and observe the Divine Will as expressed in the Laws
of Creation, and also show what happens if It is obeyed and what follows
on disobedience!
His Work of Redemption lay in
bringing this enlightenment, which exposed the defects and abuses of
religious practices because it carried the Truth within itself and thus
brought Light into the ever-increasing darkness of the human spirit. His
Work of Redemption did not lie in His death on the cross, neither can
Holy Communion nor the Consecrated Host bring immediate forgiveness of
sins! Such a thought is contrary to all Divine Law! And consequently the
power of men to forgive sins falls away! A man only has the right and
also the power to forgive what he has personally suffered at the hands
of another, and then only when, quite freely, his heart bids him do
it.
He who seriously reflects
upon these things will recognise the Truth and thus the true path!
Those, however, who are too indolent to think and who, like the foolish
virgins in the parable, are too lazy to exercise the necessary care and
attention to keep in constant order and readiness the little lamp left
to them by the Creator, i. e., their ability to examine and illuminate,
may easily miss the hour when the 'Word of Truth' comes to them! As they
allowed themselves to be lulled into inert ease and blind faith they
will consequently through their slothfulness be incapable of recognising
the Bringer of Truth, the Bridegroom! They will then perforce stay
behind when the wakeful enter into the Kingdom of
Bliss!" (Abd-ru-shin, "IN THE LIGHT OF TRUTH: THE GRAIL
MESSAGE", chapter "The Crucifixion of the Son of God And the
Lord's Supper" - Read the
entire chapter.)
"The structure men so
laboriously erected with the fundamentally false idea of a
necessary vicarious sacrifice in the death on the cross is
already destroyed by the words of the Saviour Himself at the time He was
nailed to the cross!
'Father, forgive
them, for they know not what they do!'
Would this intercession have
been necessary if the death on the cross was meant to be a
necessary propitiatory sacrifice? 'For they know not what they do!' This
is an accusation of the gravest kind! A clear indication that what
they were doing was wrong, that this deed was nothing but an
ordinary crime!" (Abd-ru-shin, "IN THE LIGHT OF TRUTH: THE
GRAIL MESSAGE", chapter "Father, Forgive Them, For They Know
Not What They Do!")
