Christians Remember Your Past Lives Learn How

Many people think that the Bible as we know it was created by Jesus and the apostles during the first century AD, but this is definitely not true. For a long period of timefor hundreds of yearsthe early Christians had no such concept as a closed canon of Scripture (a collection of books viewed as final). Actually, it was quite the opposite. During the creative years of Christianity, people felt free to compose new Scripturespsalms, odes, proverbs, and lettersthat they felt inspired them. During these early years, Christianity was much more of a supernatural religion, and there was a great deal of emphasis placed on experiencing the spiritual realm or “kingdom of God.” We have a great number of spiritual leaders today who write and teach, yet their work is not recognized as Scripture. I say, “Why not?” God can inspire anyone at any time to write great things. This great, intelligent force that flows through everything would never have limited men spiritually. Nor would God allow only certain books that were authorized by the church for us to follow. This type of organized religion is what Jesus was against. His objection to the organized church at that time led to his eventually being crucified. Now, let’s move forward to the first three hundred years after Jesus’s death, when many factions of Christianity flourished. Some believed in reincarnation, and some did not. The different beliefs were in constant conflict. There were two major movements in early Christianity: the Paulinians and the Gnostics. In AD 325 Emperor Constantine laid down the foundation for the present form of the church. He obviously did this more to have power over the people than because he was a true believer. Some of the records from that council are incomplete, but it is known that the Gnostic Christians were not allowed to participate in the meeting. Their petitions were burned without opening them, and reincarnation was removed from the Bible, even though it was part of Jesus’s original teachings. This was an early attempt to unify Christianity with one set of beliefs for all Christians to follow. Therefore, the Council of Nicaea formulated and established a new doctrine from which reincarnation had been removed. Again in AD 553 reincarnation was dropped from Christian doctrine at the Fifth Ecumenical Council at Constantinople. At that time, the Roman Empire was divided into two parts: the Eastern Empire at Constantinople and the Western Empire at Rome. It has been noted historically that the rejection of reincarnation, with its possibility of past and future lives, was personally motivated by Justinian, the emperor of the Eastern Empire, and his wife, Theodora. Although the vote on reincarnation at the Council relied on bishops from both the Eastern and Western Empires, only two bishops from Rome came to Constantinople to vote. Two previous popes had been murdered after they had denounced the dropping of the belief in reincarnation from the Bible and Jesus’s teachings. Many of the Roman bishops were afraid to vote against the wishes of Justinian. After the vote, all Bibles throughout both empires were confiscated, burned, and rewritten. Just think about how these power-hungry people, in their attempt for control, edited and changed the original teachings of Jesus and the Bible. I believe that, at the time, the church wanted Christians to think that they had only one lifetime in which to do good deeds, so they would likely be frightened into following the rules set by the church. As Christians, we should be appalled by these actions, but it seems that, even with all the evidence, Christians have a totally blind faith in following texts that are known to have been manipulated. Again, churches are hindering you and the spirit that’s within you. Man started making up all these rules and restrictions about how to make the journey to God. Different religions came into being, attempting to deny and restrict the mystical, spiritual nature of man. Another idea pushed by the church is this: if you don’t believe in Jesus, you will go to hell, and you won’t have eternal life. Are they telling me that the intelligent force that flows through all of us is going to let little babies, in countries that haven’t heard of Jesus, die and go to hell? I think not. That concept borders on insanity, and those who teach it should be ashamed of themselves. Another area I have become curious about is this. After studying the four Gospels of the New Testament, I was surprised that each of them only devoted a short chapter to the teachings and activities of Jesus after the resurrection. Let’s be real here. Wouldn’t you think that, if someone rose from the dead, the event would immediately become the most dramatic event ever for humanity? Don’t you think everyone would have been obsessed with recording every word, every movement, and every deed of the person raised? The fact that someone had risen from the dead should have become the only focus of writers at that time. There should have been books written about this unbelievable time in human history. But the New Testament simply says that there were many other things that Jesus did as he continued to appear to the disciples. Another Bible story falls to the wayside. The Gospel of Judas Iscariot has been authenticated, and it proves that Judas did exactly what Jesus asked him to do: call the authorities and let them know where Jesus was hiding. Jesus wanted to be executed so that his spirit could be released from his body. Jesus knew he would come back again, if he chose, through reincarnation. Needless to say, even with all the deletions and changes to the original text, the Bible still has a tremendous amount of spiritual wisdom that all of us can benefit from. But remember that the Bible has been written and rewritten many times by different people with different agendas, both political and personal. God, the intelligent force that flows through everything, never intended for man to make up various religions and then pronounce death to anyone who did not believe in their version of the truth. Jesus said it best when he said that there is no need for a church or organized religion, because God lives in all of us.