John B. Johnson Writes about the Book that Mr. Padgett Was Reading

April 18, 1919
Received by James Padgett
Washington, D.C.

I am here, John B. Johnson.

Let me say just a word. I have been with you tonight as you read the book and saw that in it you found something that agreed with your ideas of what was necessary for men to do in order to regain their conditions of pristine purity from which they fell. Well, these things are very helpful and true, and when the author said that men should exercise self-control, he stated a truth which is necessary that they may attain to a condition of purification.

It will not do for men to teach and believe that they have a higher self which as soon as relieved from the burdens of the lower self, which takes place at death, is sufficient to make that man's soul fitted for the Heavenly Kingdom.

No, the soul is one and the self is one, and unless that self is purified by the efforts and struggles of man himself, he will never become a pure spirit and fitted to occupy the place that was his before the fall. I was interested in the book, and saw that it contained much of the truth that applies to man as the mere man. It knows nothing of the Celestial Angel or the manner in which the soul of man can become transformed into the Divine Essence of the Father, but has many suggestions, which, if followed, will lead into the way of the perfect man. This is all that I intended to say tonight.

Your friend,
John B. Johnson

**********

Helen confirms the writer to be a very beautiful spirit.

I am here, your own true and loving Helen.

Well dear, I see that you have been much interested in the book that you have read, and the spirit who wrote you is a very beautiful spirit, and of the Celestial Heavens, but I do not know him. He wanted so much to write you, and we thought it best that he should do so.

I understand how you have been feeling today and am not disappointed that you did not give me the opportunity to write tonight, for I will come again and write you. You are now in better condition than you have been for several days, and you must pray to the Father for an increase of His Love in your soul and for greater faith, so that you may do the work that is before you. We are all anxious that you receive our messages and the benefit of the increased Love.

I will not write more tonight, for you had better go to bed and get up early and attend to your business. Turn your thoughts to your mission and then with all the powers of your own soul, and with the help that will be given you by the spirits without your disposition to take things in the easy manner that you do. Yours is a work that needs courage and determination and fortitude, and you must try to let these qualities possess your soul. Well my dear Ned, I will say good night.

Your own true and loving,
Helen

St. John, the Guardian Angel of James Padgett, Writes that He is Again Getting into a Spiritual Condition to Receive the Spiritual Truths

December 16, 1917
Received by James Padgett
Washington, D.C.

I am here, St. John.

I will say only a few words. I am John, and your Guardian Angel, and am so thankful that you are again getting into a spiritual condition when we may come and write you of the spiritual truths that we are anxious to communicate. While I have not written as to these truths, yet I have been with you a great deal trying to help you and encourage you in your longings for the Father's Love and for the development of your soul. Very soon I can see, we will resume our writings and then you will be very happy in the thought that you are again in condition to do the Father's work and to benefit humanity.

The most ancient spirits - those who have lived in the spirit world from the entrance of the first spirits therein - can, if the medium is in the proper or necessary condition of rapport, communicate to mortals. It is a very mistaken belief that the highest spirits do not communicate through mediums or rather may not, for these spirits have not lost their interest in the destiny of the human soul.

Of course, there is much of the work done by spirits for mortals in which these higher spirits take no part, but such work is generally more of a material nature and, so far as manifestation to mortals is concerned, performed only for the purpose of convincing men that intercommunication between the two worlds is possible and a fact and that there is the persistence of life. But when the work is of a nature that leads men to a true conception of the vital spiritual truths and the way that leads to the Father, then these high spirits participate in the work.

Jesus is now the leader of the great effort to establish a Kingdom of God in the Celestial Heavens, and all spirits who have received a portion of the Divine Essence of the Father, through love, know the work that is being done and the aim thereof and are working to bring about the great consummation of this plan. And here I will say, that in furtherance of this plan, and because you have been selected to work on earth among mortals, yourself a mortal, the highest spirit of the Celestial Heavens has been and is in communication with you, and the most ancient of all the spirits and first of mankind have written. You must believe this, for every message that you have received from spirits who are working to reveal this plan, forms a link in the great chain of revelation, and to not believe any of these messages and their sources would greatly harm and injure the truth of the whole.

No matter what you may read as to the opinion of men who are investigating spiritualism and receiving messages from this side of life, do not for a moment doubt that you have received and are receiving these great spiritual truths from those who profess to deliver the same. I will come soon and write you a formal message on this subject.

Believe that my love is with you and that I am endeavoring to help you in your great work. Pray more and turn your thoughts more to your mission and you will do the work more satisfactorily, and the Father will bless you with a great abundance of His Love. Good night, and trust in what I have written.

Your brother in Christ,
John

Nero Writes His Testimony, of Meeting His Soulmate, and How Divine Love Changed the Vilest Sinner into a Celestial Angel

January 16, 1917
Received by James Padgett
Washington, D.C.

I am here, the spirit of one who lived on earth the life of a wicked man, and a persecutor of the Christians, and a blasphemer of God and everything that was pure and holy; and when I had lived the life to its end and shuffled off the mortal coil and became a spirit, I also became a dweller in the lowest Hells where all is darkness and torment, and the abode of devils and everything that tends to make the spirit unhappy and at variance with the loving God.

I introduce myself in this way in order to demonstrate to you the wonderful power of the Divine Love, for now I am an inhabitant of the Celestial Spheres, and know that this Love is not only real, but is capable of making the vilest sinner a partaker and owner of the Divine Essence of the Father.

My sufferings were beyond all description and I was the most desecrated of mortals, and was almost worshiped by the devils of Hell because of the great injury that I had done to the followers of Jesus who, in my time, were possessed of this Love and faith, which even the terrors of the wild beasts of the arena, or the torches of my own evil designs could not cause them to renounce in this great religion that the Master had taught them, and the disciples were still teaching when I put so many of them to death.

The devils loved me for the very evil that I had done, but strange to say the spirits of those who I had sent unto the spirit world before their time were not revengeful to me or came to me with their imprecations or cursings.

Then when I had been in the spirit world a sufficient time to realize my surroundings and the nature of these evils, these spirits of the martyrs, which I had made, came to me in sympathy and pity and, in fact, tried many times to help me out of my great sufferings and darkness. I did not understand all this unexpected kindness and evidence of love, and I would not for a long time believe that these spirits were sincere; and so I suffered for year after year, and century after century, and became convinced that my condition was fixed and that for me there was no hope, and that the God that I had heard of was not my God, and that devils were the only companions that I was destined to have through all eternity.

And so I endured, wishing to die, but I could not. Oh, I tell you it was horrible and beyond all conception of mortals! The Law was working and I was paying the penalty, and there seemed no end to the penalty. I could find no consolation among those who surrounded me, and the pleasures that I first enjoyed became to me mere things of mockery and derision, and my darkness and torment became the greater. How often I called upon God, if there be a God, to strike me dead, but the only answer to my call was the laughter of the grinning devils, who told me to shout louder as God might be asleep and may be deaf.

What to do, I knew not, and so I became isolated as best I could from these terrible associates and many years of my living were spent in the darkness of lonesomeness with never a ray of hope or the whisper of one word to tell me that for me there might be a fairer destiny. And so time went by and I waited in my misery for some kind power to come and annihilate me, but I waited in vain. During all this time the recollections of my earthly deeds were like hot irons scorching my soul and burning my body, as I thought, and the end came not.

Well, I suffered the tortures of the damned, and it seemed to me that I was paying the penalties for all the sins and evil deeds that had ever been committed by all the wicked kings and rulers and persecutors of earth. Many times the shrieks of the Christian children and the groans of the men and women as they were being torn asunder from limb to limb, or burned as living torches which I had made of them, came to me and increased my torment. I lived the life of centuries of torment in a few moments, as it seemed to me, and not one cooling drop of water was mine. It may seem impossible that I should have continued to live in this ever increasing suffering, but I did, because I was compelled to. The Law did its work and there was no one to say "enough." I might write a volume on this suffering of mine, and yet you would not comprehend its meaning, and so I will pass it by.

In my loneliness and suffering there came to me on an occasion a beautiful spirit, full of light and love, and all the beauty of early womanhood, as I thought, and with eyes of pity and longing, and said:

"You are not alone. Only open your eyes and you will see the star of hope, which is the sign of the Father's Love and desire to help you. I am a child of that Father and the possessor of His great enveloping Love, and I love you, even though you took from me my young life when you threw me to the wild beasts to satisfy your desire to gratify your thirst for innocent blood, and see the suffering and hear the groans of your victims, yet, I love you, not because I am a human with a kindly nature and a forgiving disposition, but because I have in me this Divine Love of the Father, which tells me that I am your sister, and that you are a child of the Father, just as I am, and the object of His Love just as I was the object of His Love. You have suffered, and while you suffered, His great Love went out to you in sympathy and desire to help you, but you, yourself, prevented it from coming to you and leading you to light and surcease from sufferings.

"And now I come to you, your young and innocent victim, who had never done you any greater harm on earth than to pray for you and ask the Heavenly Father to take away from your heart, the great wickedness that caused so many of my people to suffer persecution and death. We all prayed for you and never asked our Father to curse you, or do anything to you to make you suffer. And we have prayed for you often since we came to the spirit world, and we are now praying for you, and this because we love you and want you to be happy.

"Look into my eyes and you will see that love is there, and what I tell you is true. And now, can you not love us a little and open up your soul to our sympathy, and let your feelings of gloom and despondency leave you for a moment, and realize that in this world of spirits there are some who love you?"

Well, to say that I was surprised, does not express my feelings, and as I looked into the lovelit eyes of that beautiful spirit, I felt the great sins of my earth life overwhelm me, and in my anguish, I cried: "God be merciful to me, the greatest of sinners."

And for the first time in all my life in the hells, tears came to my eyes, and my heart seemed to have a sense of living; and there came to me feelings of remorse and regret for all the evils that I had done.

It would take too long to tell what followed this breaking up of my soul, all shriveled and dead, and suffice it to say that from that time, I commenced to have hope come to me, and to get out of my awful condition of darkness. It took a long time, but at last, I got into the light, and this Love which the beautiful spirit first told me of gradually came into my soul until, at last, I reached the condition of bliss in which I now am.

And during all the time of my progress, this radiant loving spirit came to me very often with her words of love and encouragement, and prayed for me, and never left me when I became, as I did at times, doubtful and discouraged. And as my awakening continued, the Love came into my soul, and as she told me of the Heavenly things that would be mine as I progressed and reached the soul spheres, where beautiful homes and pure bright spirits are, I became more and more bound by my love to her.

After a while I got into the Third Sphere and realized that what she had told me was true, only I had not been able to comprehend the greatness of the truth. She then commenced to tell me of the happiness of the beautiful spirits of the two sexes, that I so often saw together, and explained that they were soulmates, and that their love was the greatest of all the loves except the Divine Love, and that every spirit in all the spheres had its soulmate and at the proper time would find it.

My love for this loving spirit had then become so intense that in the very depths of my soul, I wished and prayed that my soulmate might be such a one as she; and, at last, I became so filled with my love for her that I told her that the only thing in all the Heavens that I needed to make full my happiness was she as my soulmate, but that I realized that that desire was hopeless as I had destroyed her life and, of course, she could not be my soulmate. And oh, how I suffered when I realized that she could not be mine, but was another's.

As I told her of these longings and hopeless feelings of my soul, she came close to me and looked into my eyes with such burning love and threw her arms around me, and said:

"I am your soulmate and knew the fact a short time after you came to the spirit world and entered your Hells of darkness and during all the long years, I prayed and prayed for the time to come when I could go to you with my love and awaken in your dead soul the response to my great love. And when the time came that I could go, I was so thankful to the Father, that I almost flew to you, with some dread of disappointment I confess to tell you that you were not neglected or unthought of, but that there was some love in the spirit world that was going to you. Of course, I could not tell you of my soulmate love, for you would not then have understood, but as your soul awakened and the Love of the Father came to you, I became happier and happier and have waited so anxiously for this moment, when I could tell you that this love that had been consciously mine for so long is all yours."

Well, I will draw the veil here, but you can imagine what my happiness was, and as I progressed from sphere to sphere, my happiness and love for her increased and increased. Thus, I have told you the story of the life in the spirit world of the wickedest man that God ever permitted to live and gratify his feelings of hatred and revenge. And I, who have passed through this experience and realized all that it means, say that the Divine Love of the Father is able to and does save the vilest sinner and transforms the chiefest of devils into a Celestial Angel of His highest spheres.

I have written long and you are tired. I thank you and will say good night and subscribe myself,

Your brother in Christ,
Nero, The Roman Emperor, and at one time persecutor of God's true children.

Julius Caesar Writes of His Progress and is Praying for Divine Love

December 13, 1916
Received by James Padgett
Washington, D.C.

I am here, Caesar.

Well, I merely want to say that since I last wrote you, I have followed your advice and have listened to the advice of the high spirits to whom you sent me, and I have been praying as they instructed me, and now I am in a much better condition than I was and the view that I now have of life in the spirit world is very different.

I am still in some darkness, but light is breaking into my soul and consciousness, and I am commencing to realize that my fate - as I have for so many years conceived it to be - is not fate at all, and that my conception of what my fixed state was is all wrong and was the child, if I may so call it, of my condition of mind and beliefs that came to me when I came to the spirit world and realized that the fact of my having been what the world called "a great man on earth" did not fit me for any greatness in the spirit world.

I was then so disappointed and shocked by finding myself a naked spirit of qualities that brought me into darkness and suffering that I tried to avoid the association of all other spirits and nursed my disappointment in isolation and the belief that for me, there could be no change in my condition or possible progress out of the awful lonesomeness and weariness of my soul.

And now, when I know how different the truth is, I feel that all these long years of my spirit life have been wasted, and I bewail the fate that held me so long in that condition of stagnation and pride and resentment and utter hopelessness. I am now so thankful that I came to you when I did and told you of my condition; and when I realize that my coming to you was more a matter of curiosity to be satisfied - that I could communicate with the mortal world - than because of any hope of receiving any help or benefit that could possible come to me, I thank my curiosity.

When you told me the things that you did, I thought that you were an idle dreamer and the recipient of some of the harmless vices that existed among the men of my earthly days, who used to declaim upon the glories of the spirit world. I had no faith in them, and I had none in you; and it was only when I realized that you were so earnest in what you were declaring to me, and when I came in contact with the higher spirits that you called to my assistance and saw that they had in them something that I had not - and which I had never seen in any other spirit - did I commence to think that what you had told me might have some foundation of truth.

And I also thought that I could not make my condition any worse by listening to these spirits and learn what they had to tell me as to what they declared was the truth of spirit progress; and the more I listened the more interested I became. After a while I was convinced that there might be some truth in what they so earnestly asserted to be true and, as an experiment, I concluded to follow their advice and seek for this wonderful Love that they told me would not only relieve me from my darkness and suffering but would make a new spirit of me in body and soul.

And oh, the wonderful surprise and experience that came to me; for I am no longer the gloomy, despondent and isolated Emperor, but a mere spirit who recognizes that death is the great leveler, and that rank and position and greatness of earth do not in one iota determine the status of the spirit for position of exaltation. I am now in my consciousness a plain spirit having those qualities only which the condition of my soul gives me and realize that I must pursue the same course and suffer the same purgatory as must other spirits in the same condition of soul be they princes or peasants.

Well, as I said, I am so thankful that this knowledge has come to me, for now I am rid of pride and ideas of superiority and all those things that had caused me to believe that the Almighty had treated me unjustly in not recognizing my earthly qualities and giving me a position which, as I believed, my greatness entitled me to. I resented all this and in my resentment, I became a spirit who fed on my imaginary injuries and thoughts that I would be sufficient unto myself and not seek the favor of such a God. So you see what can be the effect of arrogance and pride and a self-glorious estimate of one small mind upon the possibility of a spirit's happiness and progress.

But now these things have left me and I realize that I am a nothing, except that I am a child of God and the object of His Love, as your spirit friends have told me and are telling me. And in my humility - and I am humble, for I want to tell you that my fall was great and the consciousness of my littleness extreme. I know that I need the help of the Father in order to become in the least degree a spirit of light. And I am praying and longing and seeking, oh so earnestly, for this Love.

Caesar, the once mighty, is now Caesar the most humble and weak but the most hopeful. I realize the greatness of God's mercy and the great possibility of its making me one of these glorious angels that came to you so often with their messages of truth and salvation to mankind.

I was considered on earth a man of brilliant mind and wonderful intellect, and what of this I had, I still possess; and now that the way has been shown me, I am exercising these qualities to the best of my ability to help me in my search for truth and light.

I thought that I would write this tonight, for I know that you are interested in my advancement and, besides, it does me much good to tell you. I am praying and longing, and these spirits are praying with me; but as yet, I have not very much of this Love in my soul, but enough to know - I say know - that it is real and that it makes the hard, unbelieving soul open up to the inflowing in greater abundance of its Divine Essence. The Father is good, and I am trusting Him; and with all the possibilities of my soul, I am longing for its filling with this Love and the getting rid of all these century-old doubts and hardness of heart and unbeliefs.

I know the way and now I will never relapse into the state of mind that was mine for so many centuries; and I can say that Caesar has seen the beacon light of hope and the great sun of knowledge that these things which the loving spirits tell me are true. I must stop now, but as I progress I should like to come to you and describe my progress. I will say good night, and subscribe myself.

Your friend and well wisher,
Julius Caesar

Paul Writes About "Hell: What It Is and What Its Purpose Is"

November 21, 1916
Received by James Padgett
Washington, D.C.

I am here, St. Paul.

I desire tonight to finish my message on: "Hell: What it is and what its purpose is."

As I said before, Hell is a place as well as a condition and, the man who believes that it is nothing more than a condition of his mind or soul will be wonderfully surprised as well as disappointed. I know the condition of mind and soul to a very large extent creates a man's Hell and is the chief source of his suffering and the darkness that surrounds and envelops him; yet, this condition is not the only source of that suffering or of darkness in which he finds himself.

Hell is a place; and a place that has all the appearances and ingredients that are in exact agreement with his state as produced or caused by the condition of his mind or soul and is not a place of universal character and fitted for the habitation of souls, irrespective of conditions of degrees of defilement and sin and darkness.

It is not a single place forming a common home for all fallen souls, but is composed of many and different places and as has been said, there are many Hells having gradations of appearances and surroundings that are suitable for causing additional sufferings which souls may have to endure.

The expression, "The lowest depths of Hell," is not a meaningless one, but portrays a truth, a real existing fact that many spirits are now experiencing the reality of. In its broadest sense, Hell is every place outside of Heaven, and Heaven is that place where everything entering into it - its appearance and qualities and its inhabitants - is in perfect harmony with the respective Laws of God and His will concerning the same.

And this statement involves the fact that there are several Heavens, because the Heaven of the redeemed, or those who have received the Divine Essence in their souls and become of the Divine Nature of the Father, is a distinct Heaven from that wherein live those who have been restored in their natural love to the perfect condition that the first parents possessed before the fall - the condition of the restitution to mankind of that perfection which was lost by the disobedience of the first man and woman.

Mortals usually believe that Heaven is a condition, and the Bible, in which so many believe, attempts to describe this Heaven with its streets of gold and pearly gates, etc., and as a fact, it is a real substantial place having all the elements and appearances of a home of bliss, which help to bring to its inhabitants happiness and joy in addition to the happiness which their soul perfection and development cause them to have.

Then as Heaven is a place having real substance perceptible to the spirits that inhabit it, why should not Hell be a place of real substance, also, with those qualities and appearances exactly suited to add to the unhappiness of those who are fitted for it? The spirit world, both Heaven and Hell are places of substance having their planes and divisions and limitations of occupancy and not mythical, invisible conceptions of mind as you mortals ordinarily conceive ghosts to be. The spirits of mortals are real and more substantial than are the physical bodies of mortals, and these planes and divisions, whether of Heaven or Hell, have a more real existence than have the mortals in their places of habitation or confinement in the earth life.

The Hells are places of darkness and sufferings but in them are no fires or brimstone, etc., as have been so commonly represented by the preachers and teachers of the orthodox churches, because there is nothing therein that would feed fires or that fires could affect, and there are no devils or Satan, though there are evil spirits of men that are more wicked and vicious and horrifying than have ever been pictured of the devil and his angels.

In your communications, you have had some very realistic descriptions of Hell from those who are actually living therein and are realizing its tortures and realities, and I will not take the time here to attempt to describe it in detail and will only say that as it has not entered into the minds of men to conceive the wonders and beauties of Heaven, neither have they ever conceived of the horrors and sufferings of Hell. But from all this, men must not understand that the punishment and darkness which the spirits of evil endure in the Hells are specifically inflicted by the Father because of any wrath that He may have towards these spirits, or to gratify any feelings of revenge, or even to satisfy any outraged justice, for it is not true.

Man, when he becomes a spirit, is his own judge and executioner, submitting to and receiving the inexorable results of the Law that: "Whatsoever a man sows that shall he also reap." This is a law that is necessary to preserve or bring about the harmony of God's universe, which, of course, is absolutely necessary, and while it may appear to man, at first sight, to be a harsh and cruel Law, yet in its workings and results, even to the individual spirit who may suffer in the reaping, it is a most benign and beneficial law, for the darkness and sufferings of a few years, as you mortals say, bring about an eternity of light and happiness.

The Law must rule; and in all the apparent harshness and suffering and want of mercy, the Great Divine Love of the Father overshadows the sufferer and finally makes the defiled and wicked soul become one of purity and goodness. Men may never have thought of the fact; that if it were possible for these evil spirits to live in Heaven, their sufferings and unhappiness would be greater than what they endure by living in the place that is more in agreement in its surroundings and appearances with their own distorted conditions of soul. So even in their Hells, the Father is Merciful and Good.

And regarding the second proposition of the preacher (Dr. Ratcliff) in his sermon, namely, the duration of suffering or of the life of the spirit in Hell. His conclusion was that this duration of the spirit is eternal, everlasting and without end. How it must have hurt and violated the teachings of his soul and his conception of the loving Father to come to such a conclusion! But, yet, being bound by his creeds and the domination of his belief that the Bible is the sole authority upon Hell, as well as Heaven, in the conviction of his mind - and here I want to emphasize mind, for his heart was not in agreement - he declared that the duration of the sufferings and life of the Hells is eternal and the saying of Jesus proved it to be, not only because it was in the Bible, but because the true meaning of the original Greek word can have no other translation; not knowing, or if knowing, not recalling, that Jesus, even if he used such expression, did not speak in Greek, and that back of the Greek word, in order to obtain the true meaning of the word used by Jesus, he, the preacher, must go to the word as it was uttered by Jesus and its true meaning.

So many preachers and commentators on the Bible attempt to determine a most vital truth by a shade of meaning that they conceive a particular word in its original, may have, when they are not justified in concluding that such word had at the time used, such shade of meaning, or that the original as they conceive it to be, was the original word actually spoken or written. They seem to lose sight of the fact that the writings of the Bible, I mean the manuscripts, to which they make reference to prove the correctness of their conclusions, are far removed from the original writings, and that by reason of the copying and recopying of the word upon which they rely, and the shade of meaning that they give it in their interpretations may not have been the word originally used. Of course, they have no way of learning this fact and, consequently, they have to resort to the best authority that they can have access to. But under such circumstances, it is not a justifiable thing to have a vital question of man's future and destiny determined by the shade of meaning that may be given to one word or more words, without reference to other declarations of the same Book having relation to the subject matter of the inquiry.

The preacher said that in his conclusion as to the question, he must be governed by the Bible alone and had no right to indulge in speculation of the philosophies of other men and, that in the Bible, he could find nothing that would justify him in coming to any other conclusion than that the duration of punishment in Hell is eternal. Well, he was not honest with himself, for if he had searched a little more deeply and have given as much credence to other parts of the Bible as to the passage that he quoted, he would have found a strong statement to the effect that the evil spirits in Hell have the possibility of leaving it, and not only that but that a part of the great mission of Jesus, upon whose supposed declaration the preacher based his conclusion, was to show the way and induce these spirits of evil to leave their Hells.

This was the Master's first work after he became a spirit, and he would not have attempted to preach to these wicked spirits in Hell, so wicked, according to the Bible, that God because of their great sins when mortals, punished them as He never punished any other of His children, for their disobedience, utterly destroying them as a race and His only living human creatures from the face of the earth, by one great catastrophe, leaving only Noah and his family as a reminder of the great failure of God in His creation - the most perfect and the "very good." So I say, if the preacher had searched the Bible, he would have found that the Hell that contained the spirits of all the human race that was living at the time of the flood, except Noah and his family was not in its duration eternal.

And again, had the preached searched further he would have found that the Master Himself declared by necessary implication, that, at least, for some of the wicked who became inhabitants of Hell, there was possibility of release and certainty upon conditions. I refer to the declaration attributed to him where he said, "He that sinneth against the son of man, it shall be forgiven him, but he that sinneth against the Holy Ghost, it shall not be forgiven him, neither in this world, nor in the world to come." (Matt. Chapter 12--Verse 32)

Now, to any reasonable man there is only one interpretation of this declaration and, that is, that for any and all sins, except that against the Holy Ghost, there is forgiveness in the next world as well as in the mortal world, and that being a fact, it is an irresistible conclusion that the Father would not compel a spirit to remain in Hell after He had forgiven that spirit's sins.

No, the preacher had not searched the Scriptures, as he was in duty bound to do, else his conclusion, could he have ridden his mind of the beliefs that the creeds of his church had driven into his intellect, and of the teachings of the ancient fathers, and of the churches that had taught such false and damnable doctrines for so many years, would have been very different. The preacher repudiated the old teachings that there would be physical suffering in Hell, or fire or brimstone, etc., and expressed his commiseration for those preachers and others who had taught such doctrine and for their awful responsibility and accounting, and his commiseration was needed and appropriate. But l want to say here that he needs as much, if not more, commiseration for the preaching of his false doctrines, as did those preachers to whom he refers. He has more light, or may have, and his accounting will be correspondingly greater.

I have written a long letter, and you are tired and I must stop, but before doing so, let me declare the truth to be that:

"Hell is not a place of eternal punishment; that all the Hells as well as other parts of the spirit world are places of progression and the privilege of probation is not taken from any spirit no matter how wicked, for all are God's children and in His Plans for the perfecting of the harmony of the universe, and man's salvation, all the Hells will be emptied and the Hells themselves destroyed."

But men must not think from this that the duration of suffering in these Hells is necessarily short, for that is not true; some of the evil inhabitants of these places have been in such darkness and suffering for centuries, as mortals count time and may be for centuries more, but the time will come when they will have the awakening to the fact that they may become children of light, and then when they make the effort to progress, they will succeed. The sooner that mankind learns that Hell is not a place of punishment to satisfy the wrath of an angry God, but merely the natural and necessary living place of the spirit, whose condition of soul and mind demands, and that condition changes, and it will change, the Hell of its habitation will change until finally for that spirit all the Hells will disappear.

You are tired and I must stop. So thanking you, and leaving you my love and blessings,

I am your brother in Christ,
Paul

Jesus Writes on How the Soul of a Mortal Receives the Divine Love

November 10, 1916
Received by James Padgett
Washington, D.C.

I am here, Jesus.

I come tonight to tell you that you are in a better condition than you were last night and, in fact, have been for some nights past. I desire to write you a message on the question of: "How the soul of a mortal receives the Divine Love, and what its effect is, even though subsequently his mind may indulge in those beliefs that may tend to prevent the growth of the soul - what is a lost soul?"

As you know, the inflowing of this Love is caused by its bestowal by the Holy Spirit in response to sincere prayer and longings. I mean prayer and longings for the Love Itself, and not prayers in general,for the material benefits that men more often and more naturally, as they believe, ask for and desire. The prayers of mortals for these things that may tend to make them successful and happy in their natural love are answered also, if it be best that they should be, but these are not the prayers that bring the Divine Love or cause the Holy Spirit to work with men.

As the prayers of the sincere, earnest soul ascend to the Father, that soul becomes opened up to the inflowing of this Love, and the soul's perceptions enlarge and come more in rapport with the conditions or influence that always accompanies the presence of this Love and, consequently, its entrance into the soul becomes easier and its reception more perceptible to the soul sense. The more earnest the prayer and sincere the longings, the sooner faith comes and with this faith, the realization that the Divine Love is permeating the soul.

When once the Divine Love finds a lodgment in the soul, it, to the extent that it receives the Love, becomes as it were a changed substance, partaking of the Essence of the Love; and as water may become colored by an ingredient foreign to itself, and which changes not only its appearance but its qualities, so this Divine Love changes the appearance and qualities of the soul, and this change of qualities continues ever thereafter. The natural qualities of the soul and the Essence of the Love become one and united and the soul is made altogether different in its constituency from what it was before the inflowing of the Love, but this only to the extent of the Love received. As this Love increases in quantity, the change and transformation becomes correspondingly greater, until at last the transformation may and will become so great, that the whole soul becomes a thing of this Divine Essence, and partakes of its very Nature and Substance, a being of Divinity.

When once this Love enters and truly possesses the soul and works the change mentioned, It, the Love, never leaves nor disassociates Itself from the soul - its character of Divine Essence never changes to that of the mere natural love, and so far as It is present, sin and error have no existence, because it is just as impossible for this Essence and sin and error to occupy the same parts of the soul at the same time as it is for two material objects to occupy the same space at the same time, as your philosophers say. Divinity never gives place to that which is not of the Divine. Man is working towards the attainment of the Divine, when he pursues the way provided for obtaining the Divine Nature, and as he advances and obtains a portion of this Divine, no matter how small, he can never retrace his steps to the extent of ridding himself of this transforming Essence, and again become without its presence.

But this does not mean that a man may not lose the consciousness of the existence of this Essence within his soul, for he frequently does. The indulgence of his carnal appetites and evil desires will place him in the condition that he may cease to have a consciousness of the existence of the Divine Love in his soul, and to himself, he will be as if he had never had any experience of the change that I speak of.

And while this Love can never be eradicated by the evils that man may indulge in or by the mental beliefs that he may acquire, yet the progress of this Love in his soul may be checked and become stagnant, as if the Love were not, and sin and error may appear to be the only dominant elements of his life and being. But yet, when once possessed, the Love cannot be crowded out of his soul by sin and error, no matter, how deep and intense they may be. I know that this may seem strange and impossible to man's intellectual thinking, and that it is not in accordance with what has been attributed to me as teaching that a soul may be lost, nevertheless, a soul that has once received this Divine Essence cannot be lost, though its want of realization of the presence of this Love and its awakening from its dormant condition caused by sin and error and its misdirected beliefs may delay its manifestation of life and existence for a long time, and much suffering and darkness may have to be endured by the soul that is in such condition. And I must not be understood by this, as meaning that a soul cannot be lost, for it can, and many have been and will be, and many will realize the fact when too late.

Now, what is a lost soul? Not one that a man may actually lose in the sense of being deprived of it,  separated from it actually, or even as regards his consciousness of not having a soul, for while, at times, he may believe that he has lost his soul in the sense of not having any, yet he is mistaken, for the soul, which is the man, can never be separated from himself, and as long as he lives in the physical body or in the spiritual body, his soul will be with him. And yet he may have a soul, consciously or not, and at the same time have lost it. This may seem a paradox to the mortal intellect or to the intellect of spirit, but it is true.

Then what is a lost soul? When God gave to man a soul, that soul was made in the image but not in the Substance of its Maker, and at the same time there was bestowed on him the privilege of having that soul become of the Substance of the Father, and to an extent, Divine, and entitled to and capable of living in the Celestial Kingdom of the Father, where everything is of the Divine Essence and Nature. When the first parents by their act of disobedience forfeited that privilege their souls lost the possibility of becoming of the Divine Nature and at-one with the Father in His Kingdom, and they thereby lost not the natural soul, which was a part of their creation, but the soul having the possibility of obtaining the Essence of Divinity and Immortality as the Father has Immortality.

As I have said, heretofore, with my coming this great privilege was restored to mankind, and the lost soul became again the object of man's recovery, and now he has that privilege as did the first parents before the fall; but also men may lose it as did they. As with them their souls were lost until they received into it the Divine Essence of the Father, so with men now, their souls are lost until and unless they receive this Divine Essence therein. As the first parents by their disobedience and refusal, forfeited their privilege of having their souls become a living, Divine Substance, so now, men by their disobedience and refusal will forfeit their privilege to save their souls from separation from the Divine Unity with the Father. The lost soul is as real as the verities of the Father's immutable laws, and only by the operation of the Divine Love can the soul lost, become the soul found.

Men may believe and teach that within them is a part of the Divine that will cause their souls to progress and develop until it reaches the condition of Divinity that will make it a part of the Divinity of the Father. But in this they are all wrong, for, while man was the highest creation of God, and the most perfect, and made in his image, yet in man is no part of the Divine, and having no part of the Divine, it is wholly impossible for him to progress to the possession of the Divine. He, of himself, no matter what his development may be, can never become greater or more perfect or of a higher nature, than he was at his creation.

The Divine comes from above and when once planted in a man's soul, there can be no limit to its expansion and development, even in the Celestial Heavens. Let all men seek this Love and there will be no lost souls; but, alas, many will not do so, and the Spiritual Heavens will be filled with lost souls not having the Divine Essence of the Father.

I have written enough for tonight, and I am pleased at the way in which you received my message. Continue to pray to the Father for more and more of His Divine Love, and your prayers will be answered, and you will realize with the certainty of conscious possession of the Divine Essence, that your soul is not lost and never will be. So with my love and blessings, I will say good night and God bless you.

Your brother and friend,
Jesus

Constantine Writes that He Only Wanted the Allegiance of the Christians But He Wasn't Really a Christianity

September 5, 1916
Received by James Padgett
Washington, D.C.

I am here, Constantine.

I was the Roman Emperor and died as the head of the Christian Church. I wasn't really a Christian and did not understand the true principles of the Christian teachings, but I adopted Christianity as a State religion because of political purposes added to my desire to destroy the powers of my antagonists who were believers in and worshipers of the gods of paganism. I was a man who cared not in the slightest whether the cross or the symbol of the oracles was the true sign of religion, or whether the followers of religious beliefs belonged to the Christian church or the worship of the gods which our country had for so many years adopted and followed.

My great desire when I made Christianity the State religion was to obtain power and the allegiance of the majority of the people of the empire. The Christians were very numerous and were persons of such intense convictions - so intense that not even death could remove or change these convictions. I knew that when they once gave me their allegiance, I should have a following that could not be overthrown by those who were worshipers of the old gods. The latter people were not so interested in their religious beliefs, individually, as to cause them to have such convictions as would interfere with any religion that I might establish, when they realized that their material interests would be advanced by at least, formally recognizing that religion as a state establishment. Their beliefs were not the results of conviction but merely those of what had been accepted by their ancestors and transmitted to them as a kind of inheritance. They believed in the gods and the oracles as a matter of course without ever having made the objects of their beliefs matters of investigation in order to learn if those beliefs were true or not. Truth was not sought for and, hence, conviction was a mere shallow acquiescence.

During all the time of my office as Emperor, I never changed my beliefs and never accepted the teachings of the Christians as the revelation of truth and, in fact, I never considered such a matter as religion worthy of my serious consideration. Many doctrines were proposed and discussed by the ecclesiastical teachers and leaders of this religion, and those doctrines were approved by me which were adopted by a majority of these leaders as true and the correct declarations of what the Scriptures of the Christians contained. I let these leaders fight their own battles as to doctrines and truths, and when they decided what should be accepted and declared by the church to be true doctrines, I approved the same and promulgated them as binding upon all the followers of the Christian faith.

So I, though it has been frequently said, did not establish the canonicity of the Bible or determine and legalize the doctrines which were declared and made binding by the conventions of the leaders of the church. Of course, I gave them my sanction and official approval, but they were not mine and should not be said to have been established by me, for if the doctrines of the Arians had been accepted and declared by a majority of these ecclesiasts as the true teachings of the Christian scriptures, I should have sanctioned and given them the State's authority. As I said, I was not a Christian when I lived and I did not die a Christian, notwithstanding all the fantastical and miraculous things which have been written about me and my conversion to Christianity.

When I came into the spirit world, I found myself in great darkness and suffering, realizing that I had to pay the penalties for the sins thought and committed by me on earth; and all the masses which were said for the benefit of my soul never helped me one particle to get out of my unhappy condition.

I knew nothing about the Divine Love or the mission of Jesus in coming to earth, and I found that my sins had not been washed away as the teachers had often told me on earth would be done for me. Many long years I remained in this condition of darkness and unhappiness, without finding any relief by reason of the mystical workings of Jesus' atonement of which the priests had told me, and which I did not believe, nor the help of the gods in whom I had been taught to believe by our philosophers and religious teachers. No, I found no relief and my condition seemed to be fixed and hope of the Christian Heaven that was never mine, and of the fields Elysian that would be mine in a hazy way, did not cause me to feel that my sufferings would at sometime come to an end and the glad face of happiness appear.

But after a time the light of the truth, in which Jesus came to teach, broke in on my understanding and soul, and the Divine Love of the Father commenced to flow into my soul and continued until I became a possessor of it to that degree that I was carried to the Celestial Spheres, where I now am, a redeemed pure and immortal soul, having undoubting knowledge and conviction that I possess in my soul the Divine Essence of the Father, and the certainty of eternal life in the Celestial Kingdom.

I cannot tonight write you of my experience in either the dark planes or in the successive progressive spheres, but sometime I will come and detail that experience. But before ceasing my writing, I wish to say with all the force that I have that only the Divine Love of the Father can save a soul from its sins and make it at-one with the Father in His Divine Nature.

Let creeds and dogmas and man made doctrines take care of themselves, and learn the Truth, and in that Truth abide, for Truth is eternal and never changes, and no decrees of man or dogmas of church tradition of the early fathers or writers, or creeds of ecclesiastical conventions, so solemnly adopted and declared, can make that a truth which is not a truth. Truth existed before all these things and is not subject to them, nor by them can it be added to or taken from.

I must not write more now and thank you for having permitted me to write. So with my love, I will say good night.

Your brother in Christ,
Constantine

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St. Luke Confirms Constantine's Writing


I am here, St. Luke.

I am glad to write once more and feel that very soon you will be able to receive our messages. I will not attempt to write at length tonight and will only say that as you may doubt the identity of the one who has just written you, I desire to confirm the fact that it was Constantine, the Roman Emperor, who wrote you. He was very much pleased that he could write and in a hurried way correct some of the historical errors that have existed concerning his true position as to Christianity.

He is now a very bright spirit and an inhabitant of the Celestial Spheres and, of course, a possessor of the Divine Love. I desire to tell you though, that he was scourged by his conscience, as it were, before he got out of his condition of darkness and suffering superinduced very largely by pride. In his own conceit, he was an emperor for a very long time after he entered the spirit world and retained all the pride of an emperor. But I will leave all this for him to write about as he promised and stop writing for the time.

Well, you must not become discouraged for the Divine Love is a reality, and you have some of it and may have more. Only pray the Father for His help and guidance. We all love you and are trying to helping you. Only believe.

Your brother in Christ,
Luke

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Helen Affirms that Constantine and Luke wrote
   

I am here, your own true and loving Helen.

Well, my dear, you had an unusual message tonight or rather, I may say, an unexpected one, and I see that you doubted the identity of the author; but as Luke is acquainted with him, you can rest assured that what Luke said is true.

But he is only one of a great number of spirits, who as men were prominent on earth, are here in the spirit world, and if given the opportunity would write to you, but as we have work to do - which will take a great deal of your time and energy - these spirits will not be permitted to write at this time of the truth that we wish to convey. The one who wrote is or was an important personage in the history of Christianity and, hence, we thought it advisable to let him write.

Your own true and loving,
Helen

Jesus Writes on "Why the Divine Love of God is necessary for man to possess in order that he may become at-one with the Father"

June 27, 1916
Received by James Padgett
Washington, D.C.

I am here, Jesus.

I wish tonight to write you upon a subject that is of interest to all mankind, and I hope that we will be able to communicate and you receive the message. I desire to write on the subject of : "Why the Love of God - I mean the Divine Love - is necessary for man to possess in order that he may become at one with the Father and an inhabitant of the Celestial Kingdom."

Already I have written you what this Divine Love is in contradistinction to the natural love, and how it is necessary to save men from their sins so that they may become inhabitants of the Celestial Kingdom, and that nothing but this Love will make a man at-one with the Father, and that no mere ceremony or belief in me as the saviour of men will effectuate that end; and now I will try to show you why this Divine Love is necessary, or as your learned men might say, show you the philosophy of the transformation of the mere man into the Divine Angel, which every man becomes who receives this Love into his soul.

In the first place, man, as you have been informed, is a special creation of God, and is no greater than the component parts that enter into his creation as they are in their individual and aggregate qualities, and these parts are merely what God in His act of creation designed them to be.

It must not be assumed that these parts or any of them are a part of God, or of His Essence or qualities, for they are not, and are as separate and distinct from Him and His qualities as are the lower creations of His will, such as animals and vegetables and mineral substances. The only difference is that man is of a much higher order of creation, and in one particular, made in the image of God, and no other of His creatures has this image in its creation. But, nevertheless, man is no part of God, but a merely distinct creation, and in his best and purest state - only a man, having simply those qualities which were created in him at the time of his coming into existence.

There are certain qualities which man possesses, such as love and wisdom and the reasoning faculties which may be said to resemble the God-like attributes, and so they do; but yet, they are not a part of God's Essence or qualities, and when men assert that man is Divine, or that he has in him the Divine Nature, or even a portion of the Divine Essence, they are wrong for the qualities in them that appear to be of this Divine resemblance are merely those which were created for the purpose of making the human a perfect man.

And because of this conception of man as to his inherent qualities, he has and does and will lose the opportunity of becoming possessed of the nature or Essence of the Father which he may obtain, if he will pursue the proper and only method that God has provided for him in order to be at-one with Him.

The universe of man can and will continue to exist, even though man may never become a partaker of this Divine Nature of the Father, and man will live and enjoy the happiness that was bestowed upon him at the time of his creation, and he will not lose the perfect condition of this creation after he shall have been separated from sin and error, his own creatures. But he will not be anything more than the perfect man and in the time to come will not be anything less and, yet, he will always, as long as he exists remain distinct from the Nature and Essence of the Father, just as he was at the time of his creation, unless he obtains this Divine Nature and Essence of the Father in the way that I mentioned.

The highest endowment of man, either in soul or heart or intellect is merely that which belongs to him as a part of his creation and is not the smallest part of the Divine Nature and qualities of the Father. No part or portion of Divinity enters into man's creation, no matter how divinely constituted man may appear to be or God-like, he may seem in the greatness of his intellect or in the extent of his love nature.

So you see, man is as distinct from God and from His Divinity, as is the animal - the brute - from man and must forever remain so unless he follows the only way the Father has prescribed for him to obtain a portion of this Divinity.

Now, all this shows that man, no matter how highly he may develop his intellect or to what extent he may develop his moral and love nature cannot become more than the mere man that he was in the beginning - perfect in every particular - for he was in the beginning perfect in every particular, and as I have said before, God never makes a mistake as to the perfection of His creatures, even though in the case of man it may appear that He did in giving him the great power of free will, which in its wrongful exercise has caused sin and evil to appear in the word of man's consciousness.

And man was made finite, and his capacity for exercising any and all his qualities, is limited beyond which he cannot possibly go. His intellect is bound by limits as determined as the Law of God which controls it and, also, his capacity for loving and for the enjoyment of his happiness; and though he may live for all eternity either as man or spirit, he cannot possibly extend or pass beyond the boundary lines of his creation. He cannot enter into the Realm of the Divine where limitations do not exist and capacity for receiving knowledge and wisdom and love and for progression that is commensurate with the very fountainhead of God Himself.

Then such being the nature and limitation and capacity of man, it is apparent that he can never, by virtue of his creation and the qualities which he possess, become a partaker of the nature and Essence of God, unless he receives something in addition to these qualities, and he must receive this something from without. It will not do to say, that there is within him, as an inherent part of him that, which when developed, will make him of a nature divine and a part of the essence of the Father for this is not true. There is nothing in man of this nature, and it is impossible to produce an Essence Divine unless there be something from which it can be produced, that in some degree has the nature of that Essence. It would be the equivalent of producing something from nothing which even God does not attempt to do.

Then as man is, thus, limited all that flows from the qualities and attributes which he possesses is necessarily limited. The enjoyment of his intellect, the pleasures of his love, the satisfaction of his reasoning powers, and as a sum total, his capacity for happiness have their bounds and besides the consciousness of immortality can never be his, either as spirit or mortal, even though he may strive for it to be.

When man takes on the Divine Nature and becomes absorbed in the Essence of the Father, he then becomes like the Father, and whatever his image to the Father may have been when he was mere man, now he becomes the real Substance and limitations of possibilities become removed, Love sees no ending and intellectual development, no boundaries, happiness no limitations, and Immortality becomes a thing of knowledge, and the soul a new creature having the Divine Essence of the Father; and until this new creation has taken place, and the transformation becomes a thing of reality, and the soul be made at-one with the Father, man cannot enter into the Kingdom of Heaven. Then no longer man, but now an Angel.

Now, as I have written you before, all this can be accomplished only by the operation of the New Birth, that is, the inflowing into the soul of man of the Divine Love of the Father. This Love contains the Essence of God's Divinity, and when man obtains it, he is then of the same Essence as the Father, and for the first time becomes a part of the Divine and fitted to inhabit the Celestial Heavens. In no other way can man partake of this nature, and it does not require much reasoning to show the logical truth of this statement, for man in his earthly affairs and in his material experiments in producing compounds from elements applies the same principle that I assert in my statement, "The dough cannot be leavened unless leaven is placed in the batch."

So you see, that without this Divine Love entering into the soul, it will be impossible for the natural man to become the Divine Angel. Beliefs and creeds and doctrines and sacrifices cannot work this transformation, and even though the beliefs may be without doubt, and the creeds and doctrines satisfactory, and the sacrifices without end, yet they will all be futile to change the soul of the mere man into the soul of the Divine Angel and all this, in part, is why man should seek to obtain the Divine Love and become an inhabitant of the Celestial Spheres.

I have written enough for tonight and I am pleased at the way in which you received it. So with all my love and blessings, I am

Your brother and friend,
Jesus

Helen Writes About the Wonders, Benefits and Blessings Wrought by the Divine Love of God

June 8, 1916
Received by James Padgett
Washington, D.C.

I am here, your own Helen.

Tonight everything seems favorable to my writing you my promised message, and I will try. Of course, you must expect to find some expressions of love in it, for I could not write you if I did not tell you how much I love you, and how happy I am when you love me and want me to be with you.

Well, sweetheart, I am now in the Celestial Sphere with your grandmother, though not in as high a plane as she and have not so much of the Divine Love as has she; yet my happiness is so great that I can hardly realize myself what it means, and it is impossible to tell you of the beauties of my home and surroundings. I have tried when I was in a lower sphere to describe to you my home, and I did it very inadequately, giving you only a glimpse of what it really was. And now, if you could increase that description a hundredfold, you would have no conception of the beauty and glory of my present home and the wonders that surround it.

I so often wish that you had words in your language that could be used to fully describe what this new home means to me, or even the one that I just left; but as you have not, you will have to be content with knowing that if you should take all the imagery of the Revelation and add to it the sum total of all the beautiful descriptions of places and homes and scenery that the whole range of your English literature contains, you would have but a faint idea of what really exists. And besides, the great increase in the Love that I possess and enjoy and the beautiful and loving and holy spirits whom I have for my companions make this home of mine truly one of the mansions of the Kingdom of Heaven that Jesus referred to in the Bible; only the mansions that he there spoke of were not necessarily like the one that I have, for the mansions in the Celestial Heavens vary according to the soul development of their occupants.

I sometimes think that a very few years ago, I was on earth without much soul development and very little knowledge of the things of God; and now I have that development and knowledge of those things that fit me for these glorious mansions of the Celestial Spheres. How wonderful it all is, and how I thank the Father for His goodness and mercy and for having given to mankind such a loving and glorious saviour as Jesus.

And I do not forget that you had something to do with my starting on this great journey of progress, for I remember that when I first came to you, things of the material were very attractive to me, and my appetites of earth had not left me, and how when I displayed some of these desires for the material things, you rebuked me and tried to point the way to the higher things; although I know now that your advice came from your merely mental conceptions of what I should strive for, as at that time you had very little knowledge of the things of the soul and scarcely any soul development.

But your Christian training as a child, and the conceptions that had come to you from these instructions taught you that in the Spirit World there must be something higher and beyond the mere earthly conditions of men, where purer joy and happier lives might be found and lived; and your love for me was such that you desired that I should find and possess these things, if possible. I have never forgotten what you then said to me, although at the time I thought you were unkind and not so anxious for my happiness. But long ago I had come to me the knowledge of the motive that actuated your advice and much happiness has come to me from that knowledge and recollection. Only a little thought of love and an earnest desire on the part of the mortal for the spirit, when it is directed in the way of the soul's progress, sometimes work a greater result than the conquering of a city, for it means the salvation of a soul, which is of more value than all the cities of the earth combined.

And while I am writing in this strain, I wish to say that one of the greatest benefits or possessions that can come to a mortal is to have a mother or husband or wife in whose bosom glows the Divine Love of the Father, even though very faintly, for that little spark of Love, to its own degree, makes that soul a part of the Divine Essence of the Father's Love, and its influence upon the possessor causes an atmosphere of love and help to be felt by all who have the relationship to such possessor of a child or wife or husband. Christian instructions, though mixed with dogmas and creeds that may all be wrong, yet will benefit, as in them are some thoughts that may awaken the soul to a condition that will let in some portion of the higher Love, which will remain, though dormant, until the time comes when something will arouse the dormant Love to action and life.

And this benefit passes with the mortal to the spirit life, and the influence of the teachings, or rather the accompanying impressions of the Christian mother, etc., to help such a spirit to realize its true condition and to start on its progress to the attainment of the higher things of the soul. No wealth or riches or position that a mortal may inherit can possibly equal the influence of that one little spark in the Christian mother who possesses some portion of the Divine Love; and there is none so poor as the spirit who comes into the spirit world without any recollection of having, at some time in its earth life, received in its soul the influence of that little spark.

So I say the man who has a Christian mother or wife who has, at some time in his earth career, taught him to turn his thoughts to God and to pray, even though that man in afterlife forsakes such thoughts and prayers, is a very fortunate being; for in the spirit life, he has with him the memories of his earth life and nothing is lost; and among these memories will be the influence of his mother's teachings and his own prayers. And while he will have to satisfy the Laws of Compensation, yet these recollections of these thoughts and prayers will come to him sooner or later and will help him in his progress to higher conditions. And you must remember, as has been often told you, that all souls will ultimately reach the planes of purification of their natural loves, or the glories of the spheres where only the Divine Love exists.

After I commenced to receive into my soul this Divine Love, I became very anxious to increase its possession and my progress was very rapid, as they tell me, and as I progressed from sphere to sphere, ever were there coming to me new wonders and great happiness and the disappearance of those things which belonged to my mortal life. No one, who has not experienced this progress, can understand what it means and how the happiness increases and also the longings for more; and yet the astonishing fact is that notwithstanding these longings, the contentment of the spirit is perfect and no unhappiness, because of longings yet to be fulfilled, exists.

As you know when I entered the spirit world, I was met by your mother and others and all fear or confusion that usually arises from the change which so-called death brings to the spirit left me and, in fact, never came to me, and I was as tenderly cared for as you can conceive of; and ever thereafter, while I could not go to the home of your mother, yet she and others were with me often enough to keep me from much darkness and suffering, though I did experience some darkness and suffering. But the influence of their love was with me, and they earnestly and lovingly told me of the Great Love of the Father, and how I might get it and become happy and start on my upward progression. And your father came to me also, with his cheer and help and showed me that upon myself, to a certain extent, depended my being able to get into the light. He was so good and kind to me that I loved him at once, although I had never seen him in earth life.

And from all this, can you wonder that I did not remain very long in the lower planes? I tell you that the love and tenderness and influence of the beautiful and loving spirits who have some of God's Love in their souls are things that can take away the terror of death and make a spirit who has just left his mortal home almost happy. And if men could only realize the fact that by attempting to get into their hearts good thoughts and longings of love so that these beautiful spirits could be attracted to them, their entrance and reception in the world of spirits would become one, even if not of happiness, yet of freedom from fear and loneliness. So I advise all mortals to so live as to attract friends on the spirit side of life that can come to them in the times of the great change and comfort and help them. Now, I do not mean by this that such spirits of mortals will not have to endure the darkness and suffering, which the conditions of their souls demand they should endure, but their entrance into the Spirit World will be as I say.

Well, sweetheart, I have written quite a long letter and you must be a little tired, but I must further write and tell you that all this happiness that I have spoken of may be yours and, as your soulmate, I believe and almost know that it will be; for while you are a mortal, no matter how long the years may be, you will have with you my love and longings for your coming, and my prayers to the Father for a great bestowal upon you of His Divine Love. And besides all this, you know that you have surrounding you the loves of those who are higher than I, and who possess so much more of this Divine Love. Oh, it will be a happy day for me when you do come, and I know that you will be happy, also. Just think, that as your eyes close in what the preachers call the last sleep, I will be with you, and when you awake, I will be with you, and the only thing that will greet your newly-awakened vision will be my eyes, so filled with love and joy that you will almost want to die over again just for the sake of having the awakening.

I remember that when on earth, you thought my arms were very beautiful, and loved to have them around you, and thought yourself happy; but when you come to me again, you will find arms so much more beautiful clasping you to a bosom that you cannot dream of, and eyes looking into your eyes with so much love and happiness that you will, for the first time in all your life, know what happiness means; and then when I tell you that I am all yours and that never again will cruel death, as it is called, separate us, and that only love, pure and unselfish and never-dying, will be ours without any lessening or disturbing by jealousy or tiresomeness, you will wonder if you have really awakened from that last sleep or are only dreaming. But then I will give you a long, sweet kiss of love that you will know that it is all real.

Oh, my Ned, I do love you and want you to love me with all your heart! The time will not be long now, until we shall be together in our spirit life, when your cares and worries of life will no longer trouble you. But, sweetheart, you must pray to the Father for a greater inflowing of His Divine Love and blessings, for upon the development of your soul depends our continuous living together, and progress.

I will be with you tonight while you sleep, and I am so filled with love that I know I shall call your spirit from your body and carry it with me to purer planes, where we can, for a few moments, enjoy the bliss of living together without the encumbrance of your body. You may not remember it when you awake, but I will know and will tell you of it when next I write. So, sweetheart, give me my good night kiss.

Your own true and loving,
Helen

John the Baptist Writes That Jesus Was the True Messiah and the true Christ

April 20, 1916
Received by James Padgett
Washington, D.C.

I am here, John the Baptist.

I have not written you for some time and tonight, I come merely to let you know that I have not forgotten you and am with you quite often trying to help you with my love and influence.

No, I was not present then.

Well, I am glad that you had such an experience, and I will tell you that you shall have many more experiences of that kind for the Celestial Spirits are your friends and companions, and where they are, only love can come.

Well, that does seem contradictory, but the fact is that I never sent my disciples to ask any such question. I knew at the time of the baptism of Jesus that he was the promised Messiah, and that knowledge never left me or degenerated into a doubt. This passage of the Bible has no foundation in fact, for I never thought it necessary to ask any such question and, as I have said, I never asked it.

To me, Jesus was the real Christ, and I knew that he was the true and only one, and that no other would come after him, for when he brought to light the fact that God had bestowed upon mankind the great possibility of obtaining the Divine Love and the Divine Nature, there never thereafter arose the necessity for the existence or coming of another Christ. The Great Gift that was necessary to make man a being Divine had been bestowed and beyond that there was nothing that the Father had to bestow upon mankind.

I am so sorry that such an untruth should have been written and incorporated in the Bible. It did Jesus an injustice and made me appear as a contradictory prophet and messenger of his coming.

When I said, "I am the voice of one crying in the wilderness, make straight the way of the Lord," I meant that I knew that Jesus was the true Christ and that forever thereafter would that knowledge be mine. No, I did not send my disciples to ask the question that you referred to.

As I knew then, I know now, that Jesus was and is the true Son of God, and the savior of mankind, in the sense that he brought life and immortality to light. I will soon come and write you on some of these Bible declarations.

I will now stop, and in doing so say, that you have my love and blessings and the Love of the Father, which is the Great Love that makes you a part of the Divine Essence of the Father. So my dear brother, good night,

Your brother in Christ,
John The Baptist

St. Paul Writes Further About the Truth of the Resurrection that Jesus Taught

February 8, 1916
Received by James Padgett
Washington, D.C.

I am here, St. Paul, of the New Testament.

I desire to continue my message tonight. As I said in closing my last writing, there is a resurrection that is vital to the salvation of men, which Jesus taught and which, after the death of his followers and believers of the early centuries, the knowledge of was lost to the world and to those who assumed to teach the doctrines of the resurrection that he came to declare and teach.

You and all mankind must know that the resurrection which is the foundation stone of Christianity is a resurrection from the dead and not from the mere existence of a man as a spirit in the physical body on earth, and not as a resurrection of the soul from its environments and limitations that the earth life placed upon it.

Then what is the resurrection that Jesus referred to when he said: "I am the resurrection and the life"?

Now in order to understand this resurrection, it is necessary to understand what is meant by the death of man, that is the real man - the ego, - that part of him in which the breath of life exists, no matter whether he is of the physical or the spiritual.

As has been explained to you elsewhere when man was created, his creation was of the physical body, the spiritual body and the soul and, in addition, the most important part of his creation - the potentiality of becoming so at-one with the Father in His nature and certain of His attributes that he, man, would become so possessed of some of the Divine Essence of the Father and a portion of His Divinity that would cause him to be immortal, so that death could never deprive him of his existence; and not only that, but he would realize the consciousness of his immortality.

This potentiality then was a part of his creation and, as we have explained elsewhere, the only part of his creation that died as the result of his disobedience; for it is very apparent from the mere knowledge that man has, or may have, from the ordinary investigation of the qualities of his being, and from the truths of psychical research of modern days, as well as from the understanding of the many instances related in the Bible of the appearance of departed spirits on earth and the manifestations of their existence, and also from the many occurrences of the appearances of spirits related in what is called secular history, that the soul and spirit body of man never died, and that his physical body lived for many years after the day on which the sentence, because of his disobedience, announced that he should die. And as I have said, this mortal body - not man -  but merely the vesture of covering for the real man.

This potentiality then being the only part of the created man that died, and as Jesus' mission was to teach the resurrection of man from the dead, it necessarily follows that the only thing that was intended to be resurrected was this potentiality of becoming a part of God's Divinity. This is the only real and true resurrection, and upon this resurrection must rest the faith and truth of Christianity - and by Christianity, I mean religion which is based upon the true teachings of Jesus the Christ.

There are contained in the Bible some things which, if properly understood, would show to man that no resurrection of the body was intended as the thing which Jesus came to earth to declare and teach.

When he said, "I am the resurrection and the life," he did not say or mean, wait until I die and then I will become the resurrection; or when you see me ascend to Heaven, then will I become the resurrection and you will know it; but his declarations, not only in the instance mentioned but at all times, were that he was the resurrection while living. And these declarations did not refer to the man Jesus, or to any disposition that he might make of his body, either physical or spiritual, or to any apparent ascension of his physical body, which never took place, or to any ascension of his spiritual body which did occur. In these particulars, he was essentially no more or different from other men that had died or should die.

But the meaning of his saying and his mission were that, as by man's disobedience, there had occurred the death of the possibility of his becoming at-one with the Father and partaking of his Divine Nature, and as that possibility had never been restored to man in all the intervening years, and man had remained in this condition of death during all the long centuries, if man would only believe in him as the true Christ and in his teachings as to the re-bestowal of this great privilege of again becoming at-one with the Father and of obtaining immortality and would follow his advice as to the way in which man could realize the benefits of this great privilege, then he would become conscious that Jesus was the resurrection from the dead. Not Jesus the man or teacher or the chosen and anointed one of the Father, but Jesus the impersonation of the truths which he proclaimed as to the re-bestowal of the great gift. Only in this way was Jesus the resurrection and the life.

He, himself, had received the great gift and realized his at-onement and the consciousness of his immortality and the possession of the Divine Nature and knew that he had been lifted from death into life and, therefore, if men would believe his teachings as to the resurrection these teachings, and not the man Jesus or even the fact that he had been resurrected, would draw all men unto him, that is, into the condition of life and consciousness that he possessed.

Then the resurrection that Jesus promised to man was the resurrection of this great potentiality which he had lost at the time of the first disobedience and which had never been restored until the coming of Jesus.

Now let it not be misunderstood as to what was meant by this resurrection. As I have said, after men were deprived of this potentiality they were in a condition of death and it was not possible for them to get out of this condition. They were possessed of only what is called their natural love without any possibility of obtaining the Divine Love, which was necessary in order to give them any portion of the Divine Nature and a consciousness of immortality. When the great potentiality, which was as to them as if it had never existed, was re-bestowed, then men were again placed in the position of the first man before his fall and were no longer actually dead, but were possessed of this potentiality to become that which had been forfeited by the first parents.

But as we have told you, the gift of this potentiality was not of itself the bestowal upon man of those qualities which such potentiality merely made it possible for them to acquire by aspiration and effort. Before this re-bestowal, men could not by any aspirations or efforts on their part obtain the conditions and qualities which this potentiality made possible, no matter how great the effort might be; as to them men were simply and absolutely dead. After the re-bestowal, the impossibility - which this death had imposed - was removed, and then men received, not the full fruition of what was possible to obtain because of such re-bestowal, but the privilege of arising from death to life of the resurrection from death to the glories of immortal life.

And while this privilege had become a part of man's possession, yet, if he had remained without consciousness of that fact, he would, in effect, have remained in his condition of death and have never received the benefit of the re-bestowal of the great gift. So to reveal to man the vital truth, Jesus taught and demonstrated in his own life the possession of those qualities that became his because of the existence of the gift.

And he also taught while men had the privilege spoken of, yet, unless they sought for and prayed to the Father in sincerity for the gift of His Divine Love the potentiality, which had been bestowed upon them, would not bring to them the resurrection from the dead, and they would continue in their lives as mortals and as inhabitants of the spirit world, as if they were still under the doom of death.

I may here state that this potentiality, which was lost by the disobedience of the first parents and was re-bestowed by the Father and revealed by Jesus to mankind, was the privilege of receiving and possessing the Divine Love of the Father which, when possessed, would give to man certain qualities of divinity and immortality.

So the resurrection from the dead, that the master taught and which is the one foundation of the Christian faith, arise from the fact that God re-bestowed upon mankind the privilege of seeking for and receiving His Divine Love which would make the mortal one with Him and Immortal; and upon the further fact that man must, in order to obtain the resurrection, seek and find this Divine Love and thereby become a child of the true resurrection - a resurrection that was never known to prophet or seer or reformer or teachers of faiths, no matter how excellent their moral teachings and private lives may have been before the coming of Jesus.

Truly he was the Resurrection and the Life and I, Paul, who am the recipient of this resurrection and know whereof I speak and have knowledge of the fact that those inhabitants of the spirit world who have never received this resurrection are still in a condition of death so far as obtaining the Divine Love of the Father and the consciousness of immortality are concerned, and so I declare unto you what I have attempted to describe as the resurrection from the dead is the True Resurrection.

I will stop, as I have written a long time. So my dear brother, I will say good night.

Your brother in Christ,
Paul

Aaron, the Prophet of the Old Testament and Brother of Moses, Writes About the Necessity of Receiving Divine Love to Obtain Immortality

October 23, 1915
Received by James Padgett
Washington, D.C.

I am the spirit of Aaron, the prophet of the Old Testament and the brother of Moses, as it is written. I merely want to say that as you read the message from the spirit of Henry Ward Beecher, I read also and that is a wonderful description of what immortality is and how it first was given to mankind after the fall of the first parents.

I know the truth of what he wrote, for I experienced the want of this Divine Love for many thousand years before the coming of Jesus and the rebestowal of this Divine Love, which is the only thing in all God's universe that can bring to man immortality.

So let this great truth be preached to all the world and let man know that until he gets this Divine Love, he can never become immortal. It is so difficult for man to understand this truth, and for those who come forward as the teachers of men in spiritual things to comprehend that only this Love will save them from their sins and make them a part of the Divinity of the Father and certain of immortality.

I lived at a time when we had not the privilege of getting this Love and, as a consequence, immortality; and we had to find our happiness in our natural love and that meant a love towards God as well as towards our fellow man; but this love, while it enabled us to experience much happiness, yet it did not give that Divine Essence or nature which now makes our happiness supreme and also at-one with the Father.

I had many experiences in teaching the Hebrew children that there was only one God, but at that time my conception of God was not what it is now. I then thought more of Him as a God of wrath and jealousy than as a God of Love and mercy.

In my contest with the magicians of the Egyptian Pharaohs, I was afforded the help of the spirit world, and unusual powers were given me, such as I had never had before nor ever afterwards; but it was for the purpose of causing the king to let the people of God, as we called ourselves, depart from Egypt. When this was accomplished, I never again possessed those powers or had any occasion to.

But those powers were merely the influences that came from the spirit world, and God Himself did not speak to me or to Moses, as it is written; merely his spirits, or angels, told us what we must do and gave us the power to do it.

This power is still existing and, should the occasion arise again, it will be given to the instrumentality that may be selected to do the will of the Father. Even as to Jesus, who had the greatest power conferred upon him of any mortal that ever lived, this power was given him by the angels of God in obedience to the commands of the Father.

I cannot explain to you now in what way these commands were given by God, for you would not understand me, if I should make the attempt. But suffice it to say, that the higher angels have such soul perceptions that they can receive and understand these instructions of the Father. All this is, I know, strange to you, but it is true, and because you do not understand, you must not doubt that there is such a close relationship between God and His Celestial Spirits that they know what the Will of the Father is.

I am in a Celestial Sphere and am very high up, but not so high as are the apostles. But I am high enough to know to be true what I write you of my own knowledge. I will not write more tonight, but will come again sometime and instruct you in the laws obtaining in our Celestial Spheres. So with all my love, I will say that I am,

Your brother in Christ,
Aaron

Jesus Writes and Gives His Love and Encouragement to James Padgett to Have More Faith and to Keep Praying for Divine Love

August 29, 1915
Received by James Padgett
Washington, D.C.

I am here, Jesus.

I was with you tonight and my spirit was in your heart to an extent that made you feel its presence and caused you to suffer somewhat physically - but it was there to tell you that I was present and that my love was helping you to get nearer the Father and His Love.

I know that the people who were worshiping me were not doing what I approve of or like, but their hearts were turned to God; and while they were making me the object of their worship, yet, the spirit of God was with them, and the workings of the Holy Spirit were in the hearts of very many of them showing them the Love of the Father and the truth of His salvation.

They, of course, are mistaken when they talk about being saved by my blood - for my blood has nothing to do with their salvation, but as they have been taught this, I cannot expect that they will know the real salvation which the Father has provided for them. Sometime they will know that only the Divine Love of the Father saves from sin and error, and that not any blood of mine or death on the cross can save them.

But, notwithstanding this false belief, these people in their prayers actually aspire for the Love of God, and He knows the longings of their hearts and sends the Holy Ghost to fill them with this Divine Love, which makes them become very close to the Father and makes them happy.

So, while, as I say, I don't like the worship of me, yet, the truth of God's Love enters into their souls and they become at-one with Him to the extent that such Love enters their souls.

I know that to you, with your enlightenment, it appears that they are making a great mistake in worshiping me and believing that my blood saves them, yet, you must understand that while they make such mistakes, yet, they are receiving the Divine Love and that it is working to redeem them from their sins and evil lives. So let not this error in their belief make you think that I am not with them, or rather that the Christ spirit is not with them teaching them the way to the Love of the Father and to the great happiness, which that Love brings to them.

I know that the meeting did you great good and opened up your soul to the inflowing of this Love and, consequently, to a renewed faith and trust, and renewed love for the Father and belief in me.

Let this Love in you increase and pray to the Father for more faith in His promises, and for a greater inflowing of His Love, and very soon you will realize His actual presence in your soul to an extent that will make you know that you are one with Him in Love, and in the possession of the Divine Essence that will cause all doubt to leave you and give you a faith in which no doubt will appear.

I am glad you went to this meeting tonight and I hope you will go again, for the influences attending it were helpful to you, and were from above.

Soon I will write again as I desire, if you will only pray more and trust more. You are thinking right and I will pray the Father for you, and if you will only persist in your desires and try to act in accordance with our prayers you will succeed for the Father will hear your prayers and will help you to the fullest. And in addition, I will be with you and help you with my power and love.

So do as I say, and above all have faith in the Father and trust me. I will not write more tonight, but will say that I will be with you during the week and will help you in your spiritual efforts.

So with all my love, I am your friend and brother,
Jesus

St. Paul Writes the Truth About the New Birth

August 20, 1915
Received by James Padgett
Washington, D.C.

I am here, St. Paul.

I merely want to write about the truth of the New Birth, because I speak, or rather it is written, that the blood of Jesus saves men from condemnation, and sin and death. This is not true, and I never wrote such declarations of what purports to be true.

Jesus did not save men by his death or sacrifice and, as I am informed now and learned when on earth, he never claimed that his blood or sacrifice saved men. And I hardly see how that could be so, because the blood did not have any efficacy to affect the condition or spiritual development of men, and his death could not help men to become redeemed from any condition of evil or defilement that they might be in and, hence, there can be no possible connection between his blood or sacrifice and the condition of men, whether good or bad.

I know that it is claimed that the blood of Jesus tended to appease the wrath of God towards men as did his death, but this presupposes that God had a wrath against men and that only blood and death could satisfy it. What a barbarous assumption!

God was never a God of wrath, but always of Love, and men can come to Him in reconciliation through Love only, and not through any sacrifice. Jesus never taught this doctrine of sacrifice and does not now, but repudiates it and says that it is a doctrine that is doing his cause and the salvation of mankind a great harm.

If men will only think for a moment, they will see that the only relation between God and man is that which arises from the soul's condition. God, as I said, is Love, and for man to be at-one with Him, man must become Love; I mean that his soul must be filled or permeated with this Love to such an extent, that it will become impossible for anything that is not of Love to be or remain a part of his soul.

I do not mean that it is necessary for men to obtain this Divine Love in order to live and enjoy a happiness which is far above the happiness that they have on earth, for that would not be true. God has given to man a natural love, which, when enjoyed in all its intended purity, is sufficient of itself to make men comparatively happy; but this love does not make man a part of God's oneness, or enable him to partake of the Divine Essence of the Father. And this oneness is absolutely necessary for men to become reconciled to God as Jesus taught.

So while the large majority of men may never become reconciled in the sense that I have mentioned, yet, they will be able to enjoy this inferior happiness in the spirit world, and to such a degree that no sin or evil will be permitted to mar it.

A small minority will become reconciled to God and enjoy the superior happiness which such reconciliation will bring to them. They will be in their nature and substance like the Father, having his Divine Essence and partaking of His immortality.

But this reconciliation can only be obtained by what is called the New Birth, which comes to men not by reason of any power or effort on their part only, but by the operations of the workings of the Holy Ghost, the instrument of God in bringing about this New Birth.

And, yet, man has his part to perform also, in this great renewal of his spiritual being. He must open his soul to the inflowing of this Divine Love, and must pray to the Father for the inflowing of the Holy Ghost, and with his prayers, must believe that the Father is waiting to bestow it.

Without the desire on the part of man to receive this Divine Love with prayer and faith, it will not come to him, for God never forces any human soul to a New Birth against its will.

I tell you this, because in my opinion this is the one great important truth of the mission of Jesus on earth, and the one that human beings should understand and try to comply with. I know now, as I never knew on earth, the full meaning of this truth, and I thank God all the time for His goodness and mercy.

Only those who receive this New Birth become Divine Angels, all other spirits remain mere spirits and subject to all the changes and conditions that belong to spirits; for there is nothing fixed as to those who may remain mere spirits any more than there was in the case of the first man and woman. We know now that changes may take place in the conditions of these spirits during the workings of God's plans.

Many men may, even when they know of the things that I have written, be content to remain mere spirits and live their spiritual lives in the happiness which their natural love gives them, but it seems to me that all men, if they will think a little and understandingly, will seek for the greater Love and happiness and immortality.

I wanted to write this tonight, for I see that some of the teachings of my Epistles may tend to lead men astray on this most important question as to what saves them from their sins and reconciles them to God. I will not write more tonight, but will come at times and write you in regard to the various spiritual truths of this Kingdom.

I will say goodnight.

Your brother in Christ,
Paul