The path to the spiritual home

In The Word of God are texts published and offered which Bertha Dudde was permitted to prophetically receive and record. One promise of Jesus Christ was (John 14.21): ‘Whoever has My commands and obeys them, he is the one who loves Me. He who loves Me will be loved by My Father, and I too will love him and show Myself to him.’

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Please take special notice of the fact that God’s Words addressed to us are non-denominational. The contents of the publication by no means intends to attract members of any Christian religious affiliation nor to recruit members into any other religious affiliation.

Its sole purpose is to make the present-day Word of God .... accessible to all people. May this Word of God become a blessing to many people.

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Distribution of the proclamations is very much desired. Only complete and unaltered proclamations must be passed on.

Who was Bertha Dudde?

Bertha Dudde wurde am 1. April 1891 als zweitälteste Tochter eines Kunstmalers in Liegnitz, Schlesien, geboren.

Bertha Dudde was born on 1. April 1891, as the second oldest daughter of a painter, in Liegnitz, Silesia. She became a dressmaker and began to receive pronouncements from God through the ‘Inner Word’ on 15. June 1937.

“In a clear dream I was moved to write down my thoughts after devout prayer. Understandably this often gave way to doubt and inner conflicts until I was convinced that I was, myself, by no means the initiator of these exquisitely gracious words; but instead it was the spirit within me, in other words, the love of the Heavenly Father was obviously responsible for them and introduced me to the truth”.

“I was given knowledge of the spiritual world which far exceeded my elementary school education. I received and receive this knowledge as a dictation in a state of complete consciousness; I write down everything I am told in shorthand, in order to then transfer it word for word to clean copy. The procedure does not take place in a state of compulsion, for example in a state of trance or ecstasy, but in an absolutely level-headed frame of mind. However, I have to want it to happen and then I can receive these dictations voluntarily; they are neither bound by time nor place.”

“Now I only have one wish, which is to be able to make these gifts of grace accessible to many more people and in accordance with the will of God Himself to be allowed to do much more work in His vineyard.”

(Quotations from an autobiography from 1959).

Bertha Dudde died on 18. September 1965 in Leverkusen, Germany.

Published by friends of the New Revelation, Hans-Willi Schmitz und Wilhelm Wegers

http://en.bertha-dudde.org

Autobiography of Bertha Dudde

At the request of many friends Bertha Dudde wrote the following biography in 1953:

I have been writing messages received through the inner Word since June 15, 1937. In answer to the many requests of my friends I will give you a picture of my earthly life, a short explanation of what I received spiritually, and my own feelings about all this.

I was born April 1, 1891, the second oldest daughter of an artist of Liegnitz in Silesia, today's Poland. I had a normally peaceful childhood, with six sisters in our parent’s home. I learned the cares of life at an early age. The desire to make money to help my parents made me learn the trade of a seamstress. As the financial needs of my parents continued, so did the burden, and in this way I made myself useful.

My parents belonged to different denominations. Father was a Protestant - Mother a Catholic. We children were brought up in the Catholic faith but never experienced pressure or force to follow the practices of the church so that each child in later years was able to pursue their own chosen course.

I myself was religious but could not accept the doctrine of the Catholic system although I respected the church. I could not represent something on the outside that my inner conscience had not accepted. So I did not continue to attend church, heard little preaching and had no knowledge of the Bible. I did not read any religious books or scientific literature and did not join any other group or religious sect.

Anyone knowing the Catholic teaching knows what a conscious struggle one finds himself in when he wants to release himself from it. I was not spared from this either. But the question as to what is the Truth and where it is to be found, remained.

Often when I prayed the Lord's Prayer I would beseech the Lord to allow me to find His kingdom. This prayer was answered in June 15, 1937, as I prayed quietly and waited for the inner voice. In this attitude I persisted often, for a wonderful peace came over me and thoughts which came to my heart, not my head, gave me comfort and strength.

Still I did not know that these thoughts were given to me until, in a strange dream I experienced something which later proved to be the Truth and caused me to write down these thoughts.

So on a certain day as I listened inwardly a stream of words came to me, which I wrote down. This was the first message I wrote which started like this: "In the beginning was the Word, 'a Te-Deum' to the Creator of Heaven and Earth."

Then came doubt, …. did you write this by yourself? In short, I have wrestled, prayed and gone through many struggles, but again and again the words came to me like a stream, a wisdom, which made me tremble. Then God Himself took away my doubts. He answered me and I acknowledged Him as our Father, in His Word. My faith grew, doubt diminished, and I received and wrote daily.

The contents of the writings were beyond my understanding. Phrases, which I had never heard of or read about, strange and scientific expressions and references continually came to me. Then came unheard of expressions of the Heavenly Father's Love giving refuge and providing enlightenment to all the questions of life.

The Words came to me in the following manner: After sincere prayer and a short period of composure I listened inwardly. Thoughts then followed coming to my mind, clearly, distinctly, and the words flowed smoothly always three or four, one after another, like writing a radio announcement or a weather report, slowly so that I could easily keep pace, writing line after line.

Now I write the words in shorthand as a dictation without having any constructive or intellectual part in it. I am in no way in a 'trance', nor do I even form the sentences, but it comes to me one word at a time, neither do I understand the context while I am writing the words down.

After days, sometimes weeks, I transcribe the shorthand writings into longhand without changing or correcting a syllable. Each dictation takes about half an hour. I must stress that this could not happen forcibly or in a state of ecstasy. It all takes place simply and consciously, without any excitement or influence of my own will. I can interrupt myself at any time and finish the sentence after hours or days without reading the previous writing the dictated words continue again.

My will is under no compulsion, all that I desire is to serve God and do what His will wants me to do.

I can truthfully say that I was led into this Truth, and these concepts were, in every respect, foreign to me. It was only after years that I found confirmation of what I received when I came to know the writings of Jacob Lorber. No one can imagine my joy when I discovered the literature of Jacob Lorber; ‘The Great Gospel of John’ and ‘The Youth of Christ’. Then I understood that other people were also given the Word of the Lord, that God had spoken to His children at all times and that God will continue to do this in His endless love and mercy.

I found in Lorber's writings the same as was given to me. I often could not understand the Word that came to me, but in His love the Heavenly Father gave me the explanation. How wonderful are the innumerable manifestations in which the Father displays His exceedingly great goodness.

It became clear to me that my limited education due to lack of money, and my lack of time to read good books or visit performances, became my advantage. I was now able to concentrate on my work from early morning to late at night, and each day I received that precious spiritual Word without knowing for whom I received it.

It is because of my ignorance of the Bible and the Catholic doctrine that I accepted the Word from above without resistance. In my experience, an earnest Catholic or Protestant whose knowledge is rooted in dogmatic theories is too much bound to dogma to accept and embrace divine revelations without resistance.

Still, there are scientists at several faculties who earnestly discuss these divine teachings with increasing interest. Their interest not only concerns the irrefutable explanation of the origin of matter and the possibility of its dissolution, but also the principle of the wrong teachings of different religions, systems and confessions. In the messages I received, these errors are recorded and everyone is urged to give instructions concerning these doctrinal errors whenever there is an opportunity. But everyone is free to take the Lord's Word to heart or not. But whoever understands the spirit in the Father's Word and does not act accordingly increases the distance between himself and the Father even more. When he does not follow the warning Words of love he puts himself inevitably under the law. He will also, in the same measure, lack in grace by disregarding God's commandment of love.

In God's grace people are led anew to the Gospel, which emphatically points out the purpose of man's being. For the merciful love of God seeks to save all who still can be saved before the turning point comes. And it will come. The end-time which seers and prophets have proclaimed is now here. According to the revelations given to me, the Lord does not differentiate between His children. ‘Come ye all to Me’ sounds His call and blessed is he who hears His call and follows Him. God loves His children. He wants to make them all happy, even when they do not want to know Him.

Recorded November 22, 1953

Bertha Dudde

Bertha Dudde was permitted to leave her earthly shell on September 18, 1965 to return to the Father’s heavenly house.

Table of Contents

2545 - Spiritual gift gateway to the spiritual realm....

5083 - Supply of revelations proof of reality of the spiritual realm....

What is the soul?

8008b - Every soul is an original spirit....

8012 - Further explanation regarding the soul....

7146 - Every soul starts its earthly progress consciously....

1618 - The soul.... The spiritual spark in the human being....

Transience of the earthly -imperishability of the soul

1500 - Recognizing the transient and the imperishable....

7219 - Transience of the earthly.... disasters - misfortunes....

2860 - Imperishability.... soul.....

1034 - Immortality of the soul.... granting of grace....

Belief in the survival of the soul after death

2544 - Belief in the immortality of the soul necessary to work on oneself....

3299 - Belief in the survival of the soul....

8059 - Belief in the soul's continuation of life....

The influence of body and mind on the soul

2532 - Mind and body seek to win the soul....

3414 - Spiritualizing the soul.... overcoming matter....

3205 - Unification of spirit and soul.... Rebirth....

The earthly life - the path to the spiritual home

5854 - Acquiring the spiritual kingdom on earth....

5314 - Love is the key to the spiritual kingdom....

6298 - Earthly world is a passageway to the true home....

8490 - Overcoming the world....

7470 - Taking stock of oneself and contact with the spiritual realm....

7837 - Free will....

7464 - Using the time on earth to break free from the mould.... Jesus Christ....

7486 - Responsibility in earthly life....

Suffering for the soul

1106 - The thorny path to the eternal home....

1481 - Physical pleasures.... infirmities of old age....

5904 - Blessing of suffering....

6076 - Blessing of the Illness.... cross bearer for the soul....

Fear of death

2145 - Fear of death.... moment of parting agony or happiness....

2776 - The will to live.... Fear of death

6616 - Fear of death....

6637 - Fear of dying.... Beholding the spiritual kingdom before death....

6042 - Hour of death without fear.... Readiness....

Ask Jesus Christ for forgiveness of guilt even before death!

7959 - Conclusion of earthly progress only with Jesus Christ....

7717 - The way to the cross must be taken....

7660 - Forgiveness through Jesus Christ.... Degree of light and love....

6850 - Jesus Christ opens the gate to eternal life....

6579 - 'No one comes to the Father....'

The hour of death

1798 - Hour of death....

2348 - Hour of death....

4033 - Hour of death.... Explanation of suffering....

7458 - Think often about the hour of death....

Death of the body

6817 - The soul's change of abode.... Death of the body....

5696 - Death of the body beginning of real life....

7161 - Nothing can cease to exist.... Gate of death.... True home....

Danger of the spiritual death

2144 - Transformation of the external shape after physical death.... Being spiritually dead.... Activity - Inactivity....

4088 - Spiritual death.... term "life"....

7853 - Strokes of fate.... Spiritual death....

Resurrection of the flesh

6000 - Resurrection of the flesh....

7262 - Resurrection.... Decomposition of the flesh....

Early death

3258 - Premature departure from the world.... Purpose....

3260 - Early death.... God's mercy.... Old age....

8770 - The process of creation has taken eternities....

3135 - Blessings of the last days.... Death before the event.... The beyond....

7538 - Short or long lifetime....

Suicide

6807 - Imperishable beings.... 'taking life itself'....

6005 - Arbitrarily taking one's own life....

Cremation of the ead body

1899 - Cremation.... Accelerated disintegration process....

Thoughts of death

2912 - Keep death in mind....

5329 - Serious reminder to remember death....

7445 - Thoughts of death are favourable for the soul....

Mental striving for the spiritual realm

5336 - My kingdom is not of this world....'

5916 - Swing up of the soul into spiritual spheres....

5180 - Serious admonition to consider the life after death....

The wide and narrow path to height

6549 - The path to the eternal home....

6177 - Wide Street.... temptations.... narrow way to the height....

4503 - Wide way to perdition, narrow way to the height....

7634 - The true home ....

6305 - Create and work for eternity....

2125 - The path to eternal home with God.... prayer....

Spiritual gift gateway to the spiritual realm ....

B.D. 2545 from November 11th 1942, taken from Book No. 33

Only spiritual gifts can be offered from the realm of the spiritual, and so it is understandable that this gift brings no earthly advantage but only brings salvation to the human being's soul. Spiritual gifts are nevertheless more valuable because they have eternal value. It effectively opens the gates to the spiritual kingdom for the person who accepts this gift and organizes his earthly life accordingly. The spiritual kingdom, however, is the true home of that which the human embodiment has requested for the purpose of its maturing. And this embodiment as a human being is only a temporary state. But the real life only begins in the spiritual kingdom, where no earthly shackles oppress the soul anymore, where light and freedom replace the darkness and lack of freedom in earthly life. The inhabitants of the spiritual kingdom know about the unfree state of the human being on earth and they endeavour to help the human being attain a state full of light, a stay in the spiritual kingdom. However, the human being's soul must spiritualize itself, i.e. seek contact with the spiritual within itself. It cannot do this on its own and therefore the spiritual beings assist it by imparting strength to it in the form of spiritual teachings .... thus offering it gifts of the spirit which are nourishment for the soul, so that the soul thereby matures and joins the spiritual beyond itself more and more. And it acquires the right to the spiritual kingdom by seeking to follow everything that is recommended to it through the spiritual gifts, by living as it is advised, by thus forming itself according to these spiritual gifts. The human being has to walk the earthly path, there is no other way to reach the goal and there is no other means to mature on earth than the supply of the divine word, which is therefore offered to people as a spiritual gift. This word has to result in the soul's maturity, for the spiritual beings transfer the strength from God to people, which they constantly want to receive from Him and pass on in their love, because this signifies an exhilarating activity for them, to be able to hand out delicious gifts to those who need them. But people on earth all need this supply of strength from God, and this is why God also wants to convey it to all people, this is why He tries to make His word accessible to them through a mediator .... He instructs the beings of the spiritual kingdom to instruct people who offer themselves to God as mediators so that through them His divine word will be spread on earth, thus strength and light will be conveyed to all those who desire strength and light. These people now receive spiritual gifts from the spiritual kingdom, and the earth with its possessions loses its significance for them; they flee from the earthly kingdom as soon as they receive spiritual gifts, and thus they mature themselves and also help their fellow human beings to mature their souls by imparting the spiritual knowledge to them as well if they desire it. And the more willing people are to listen to the spiritual teachings and shape their lives accordingly, the more the spiritual kingdom will spread throughout the world. But to the same extent that they increase in spiritual wealth, they must also despise the world and its goods, for both together can never be given to people. They must decide in favour of the spiritual kingdom or the earthly world, and they will be considered according to their decision ....

Amen

Translation handled by Doris Boekers

Supply of revelations proof of reality of the spiritual realm ....

B.D. 5083 from March 13th 1951, taken from Book No. 57

The necessity of My direct influence on you arises from the fact that faith in general has become rotten, that people find it difficult to believe what they are taught by the church and therefore reject both truth and falsehood at the same time if they are not helped in that the truth is conveyed to them in an unusual way and they can now decide for themselves to accept or reject it. People are to be excused if they are of good will and they are offended by educated teachings of faith which instinctively arouse resistance in them. However, they are not able to judge for themselves in order to recognize wrong and right teachings, although a loving person can have the right feeling for it. But the world has such a powerful effect on people that everything spiritual seems unreal to them, and therefore it is necessary to also let the spiritual become a 'reality', thus to convey an obvious proclamation, a divine revelation, to people which can make them believe in the spiritual kingdom. Through the revelations they receive clarifications, and these then also enable an examination of truth and error, which coexist in the world, which have to be recognized. The supply of revelations is a proof of the reality of the spiritual kingdom .... I Myself take care of people who want to believe but who are not touched by the church's teachings in such a way that they can believe .... What I demand of people to believe is well accepted with good will and only little knowledge. I want to impart the latter to those who have good will, and if they now listen to the teachings and act accordingly they will also learn to recognize and be able to believe. The spiritual kingdom is not so unreal if only a glimmer of realization is present, and it becomes ever more real the higher the person's realization rises. I Myself reveal Myself to people, I establish the connection with the earthly kingdom, with the person who also carries the desire for a connection with Me within himself. This person then serves Me as a mediator for all other people who are certainly capable of teaching but who do nothing to make contact with teaching forces because the spiritual kingdom is not yet a concept of reality for them. But the mediator can provide them with proof if they desire it, the mediator can convey spiritual results to his fellow human being, the origin of which is the spiritual kingdom .... the origin of which is Me Myself .... And thus people receive revelations from Me, and what they now believe has become their conviction; they now know what is truth and what is error, they recognize that not all doctrines of faith may be rejected, they know about the correlation and now become living representatives of what has become their conviction. And once they have recognized Me Myself as the source of all truth they will also speak for Me and likewise want to introduce their fellow human beings to knowledge which comes from the spiritual kingdom and yet is more real than earthly knowledge. Anyone who once stands in the light will no longer want to miss it but will take care that the light sends its rays even into the deepest darkness .... he will relinquish his knowledge because he has recognized it as truth ....

Amen

Translation handled by Doris Boekers

What is the soul?

Every soul is an original spirit ....

B.D. 8008b from October 2nd 1961, taken from Book No. 84

Every substance, every spiritual being which once emerged from My love, is emanated strength .... In their fundamental element they are the same as Me Myself, they are made of the strength of My love .... The fallen spirits were dissolved into countless tiny particles for the purpose of being led back to Me; the once emanated strength was reshaped into all kinds of creations, for the strength had to become active again somehow because this is the law of eternity. But these dissolved tiny particles gathered again, and every once fallen original spirit receives its self-awareness back as soon as it lives on earth as a human being, as soon as it starts the final stage of the infinitely long process of development before it enters the spiritual realm once more. Hence this gathered spiritual substance animates a human being's external form .... The soul itself is therefore the once-fallen original spirit, it is the self-aware being which once originated from Me in an abundance of light and voluntarily fell away from Me and which My adversary .... the first-fallen spirit of light .... pulled into the abyss. The host of originally created spirits was innumerable and the number of beings which remained with Me was also inconceivably great .... Yet they, too, were basically the same: emanated strength of love from Me. If therefore a spirit of light, an angel-being, takes the path across the earth for the purpose of attaining childship to God, it enters the same situation as every fallen spirit .... It enters a cover of flesh which consists of more or less tiny matured spiritual particles, for the flesh belongs to this earth .... The body can certainly be more clarified and shelter fewer substances opposed to Me but it is always earthly material substance which is, after all, the reason why all earthly progress becomes a difficult trial or test of will for the soul inhabiting a body of flesh ....

For challenges need to be present, even a soul of light must experience battles of the flesh which My adversary will initiate, time and again, by using an external cover in order to attack the soul in every way. And thus, even a soul of light will be subject to severe temptations, since the earthly body is in My adversary's realm and he will especially provoke a soul of light in order to make it fall, since he had not succeeded in the past. Yet such a soul's exceptionally strong willingness to love also assures it a constant flow of strength from above, for it will not renounce its bond with Me, it is powerfully drawn to Me and this yearning of love is a formidable weapon in the battle with the adversary, from which it will certainly emerge victoriously .... However, you must not think that a spirit of light .... a non-fallen spirit .... will join a fallen spirit in order to take the path across earth together .... Every soul is an original spirit, whether fallen or not .... The fallen original spirit goes through the process of development dissolved in countless substances until it is permitted to embody itself as a human being, until it therefore enters a human external shape as a 'soul' .... The non-fallen spirit does not need to be dissolved; instead, it enters a human cover as a soul from above .... just like those beings of light which attained a high degree of light in the kingdom of the beyond and, for the sake of a mission, want to repeat the path on earth with the goal of attaining childship to God .... Such souls directly embody themselves in the flesh .... My once emanated strength flows as a 'breath of life' into the external human form and gives life to this form .... You humans should always remember that everything which was once 'created' by Me is My emanated strength of love which, as a result of My will, became self-aware beings which can never perish. But I can also reshape this strength, I can dissolve these beings and let other creations arise if I thereby pursue a purpose which is based on My love and wisdom .... However, I can also clothe such a self-aware being with the cover of a human being if My love and wisdom thereby hopes to achieve a purpose .... And every soul, which ought to be regarded as a human being's real life, is an original spirit .... to whom My infinite love offers the opportunity of attaining childship to God on earth, which every created being must strive for and accomplish itself ....

Amen

Translation handled by Heidi Hanna

Further explanation regarding the soul ....

B.D. 8012 from October 5th 1961, taken from Book No. 84

It is necessary to clarify the concept of the 'soul' so that you do not live in error: Everything you see around yourselves is spiritual strength .... which was once emanated by Me as beings which were dissolved when they did not use the strength of love, which flowed to them ceaselessly, in accordance with My will. For this strength must become active according to the law of eternal order. Thus I reshaped this strength of love, once emanated as 'beings', into works of creation which perform a serving function. And so all of creation which surrounds you is basically the strength which was externalised by Me as independent beings. And regardless of how solidified the spiritual strength is that became matter .... they are all sparks of light and love which emanated from Me, My will merely gave them a shape according to My love and wisdom .... However, this spiritual substance can no longer cease to exist, My once emanated strength will inevitably return to Me again .... Yet the degree of maturity of everything around you varies considerably, because the meaning and purpose of creation is to bring the spiritual substance to full maturity since, as a result of its fall into the abyss, it had completely reversed its nature and, by means of this process of probation, this purification process through the whole of creation, shall deify itself again, thus become an independent being once more, which will work in light and strength and freedom for its own happiness. Sooner or later all tiny particles of a dissolved original spirit will gather again .... and this will then live on earth in the external shape of a human being in order to achieve its final perfection of its own free will. Hence this soul is My once emanated strength of love, yet all of its substances still need purification .... Nevertheless, it is a spiritual substance, for everything you see is spiritual strength, even if it is consolidated as matter as a result of My will .... The spiritual essence which now animates the human being as a 'soul' has certainly reached a certain degree of maturity already, or it would not be permitted to embody itself as a human being; however, one cannot speak of a 'perfect' soul, because it travelled through Lucifer's realm and its thoughts and intentions are still satanically inclined. But it is the once fallen original spirit which, through earthly progress, can entirely release itself from all unspiritual influences, which can freely want and act and therefore also has the opportunity to achieve final perfection on earth and to enter the kingdom of the beyond as a radiant spirit of light again when it has to leave the earthly body. Hence the soul is something invisible to the human eye which is everlasting, which continues to exist for all eternity, whilst matter .... every external form that is visible to the eye .... is transient but will also only be disintegrated by My will in order to release the spiritual substance concealed therein ....

So the visible creation is likewise a spiritual substance which was once externalised as beings, it merely goes through these creations in a disintegrated state, yet one day it will be mature enough so that the fallen original spirit will be permitted to embody itself as a soul in a human being. Although the soul has the shape of a human it is, however, only visible to the spiritual eye, that is, only a certain degree of maturity enables another soul to see the former, just as the beings in the spiritual kingdom were once able to recognise and communicate with each other, but only because they possessed spiritual vision, which the human being or soul which departed from earth in an immature state does not possess. Thus the soul is not a substantial form anymore, if 'substance' is to be understood as something material, visible .... It is a spiritual form, it is My emanated strength which gives life to a dead form .... the human body. Even so, the soul can think, feel and want, which the body itself cannot do once the actual life, the soul, is missing .... The human organs certainly perform their functions, yet always driven by or animated by the soul, the real Self, which determines the activity of all these functions. This is why the whole responsibility for the existence on earth rests on the soul, never on the body .... but it would always think and act wrongly had I not provided it with the spiritual spark as My share, which subsequently tries to influence the soul to subordinate itself to its urging and which always wants to advise it according to My will yet never forcibly influence the soul. It is entirely up to the soul to submit itself to the desire of the spirit or to the body's wishes; this is the actual test of earthly life the soul will have to pass in order to be able to enter the spiritual kingdom in a perfect state. You humans must get used to the idea that this very 'fallen spirit' is your real Self .... But that this original spirit at the beginning of its embodiment as a human being is still very impure, for it lives in Lucifer's realm, it travelled through all creations in which everything satanic is bound. And the human external frame is matter too, thus a spiritual substance that is still in the process of development .... For the final perfection shall only take place during earthly life but it can be attained, because the act of Salvation was accomplished by Jesus Christ, My first begotten Son, Whom I sent to Earth in order to redeem the immense original sin which denied all fallen beings entry into the kingdom of light ....

The soul of the man called Jesus was therefore a soul of light which, for the purpose of a mission, descended into the realm of darkness .... A soul of light embodied itself in a cover of flesh, in the body of a temporal human which was just like any other human. Although the soul of light prepared this shell first, for it had to be a pure vessel, because I Myself wanted to take abode in Jesus, the man. Nevertheless, the body of flesh consisted of earthly material substances, because Jesus the human being had to accomplish an act of deification on Himself which was to serve other people as an example .... which therefore all people will have to accomplish in order to perfect themselves.

Moreover, Jesus' soul, a profoundly pure soul of light, found itself in dark surroundings; it descended into Lucifer's realm and was subsequently exposed to all onslaughts on him. However, Jesus' soul was not a fallen spirit. But since it had to travel through the abyss it was unable to resist everything unspiritual which badly besieged it on Lucifer's instructions. Jesus' soul was light in all its fullness .... Yet when it descended into the abyss it left the light behind since it would irrevocably have consumed the people in darkness. Jesus therefore only entered His physical shell to a limited extent, He did not let His light of love shine yet love was in Him, He did not deprive Himself of love and this love intimately united Him with Me, His Father of eternity. Thus Jesus' soul consisted of spirit made of My spirit, it, too, was emanated by Me as light of love and did not surrender it either when it came into the world. But then My adversary's influence started, who wanted to prevent Jesus' act of Salvation and also sought to draw Jesus' soul down into the darkness. By virtue of the enormous light of love Jesus could easily have resisted his every onslaught but this would have put the following of Jesus into jeopardy, he would never have exemplified, as a 'human being', the life His fellow human beings should live in order to release themselves from My adversary, instead, divine strength alone would have accomplished something which would never have been possible for any human being. This is why a soul of light consciously took up the battle against My adversary by offering him every target .... He challenged him deliberately and that meant, at the same time, not fighting the demons when they tried to take possession of His soul .... He did not defeat them by virtue of His power but by virtue of His love, that is, He pacified them, He brought redemption to them, for His love was greater than great and, during His earthly life as a human being, it grew into a sea of flames .... He accepted Me Myself as the Eternal love in Him .... He did not yield to the adversary's temptations but overcame every challenge, every desire by these demons with boundless patience and mercy in order to help these unredeemed spirits and to place them into a state that they could adapt to His soul .... And love accomplished the work that all still unredeemed physical substances adapted to His soul, that soul and body radiated in supreme abundance of light and united with Me, the eternal light of Love ....

And this very same process happens when a most elevated spirit of light .... an angel-spirit .... wants to take the path through the abyss in order to attain childship to God, in order to voluntarily become a supremely perfect spirit which can create in and with Me in free will .... In that case, the spirit will always limit its abundance of light and strength, because it would burst the human body, which is not a pure spiritual body as yet .... Thus the spirit of light takes on the shape of the human body and yet remains a spiritual body .... And this spiritually 'limited' form is the soul which animates the otherwise dead body of flesh in the first place .... When this soul leaves the body of flesh again it will no longer be restricted and will be a free spirit again, full of light and strength .... but it does not exclude the possibility that this spirit had once taken the path through the abyss as a human soul .... But such a spirit will also have extraordinary spiritual abilities at its disposal in earthly life, for although it is exposed to the most severe temptations on the part of My adversary it will never completely lose its connection with Me, and the strength of its love will also ensure that it will emerge as the victor. For what My adversary failed to achieve when he caused the apostasy of the great host of originally created spirits from Me, he will not achieve now either .... And yet, a light spirit's life on earth will always be a particularly difficult one until it has quite openly passed the important test of will which turned it into My child that will forever be united with Me, with its Father, and then enjoy unlimited beatitudes ....

Amen

Translation handled by Heidi Hanna

Every soul starts its earthly progress consciously ....

B.D. 7146 from June 17th 1958, taken from Book No. 76

Many of you are not aware of the fact that their souls started their final incarnation entirely volitionally and that the knowledge of their earthly course of life was not withheld from them before they were allowed to embody themselves. But this knowledge did not stop them since they also recognised the opportunity to thereby end an excessively long state of torment and therefore did not hesitate in starting their path across earth. That their past memory was then taken away from them had to happen to safeguard their freedom of will .... but that the human being on earth is experiencing this or that situation shall always be his proof that he had not rejected it earlier despite having been shown all his circumstances, his destined course of life, for he would not have been compelled to take this path had he not agreed to it himself.

Although no-one on earth will believe this assertion, it shall nevertheless comfort those who have to bear a difficult fate on earth; they shall know that they will be accordingly successful, that it could be their last short path of suffering which they will exchange for a carefree, glorious fate on departing from this earth, and they shall always remember that their time on earth won't last forever. Indeed, many people will fail even though they had been willing to complete this short earthly life successfully .... but no-one will lack strength either as soon as they draw this from God by establishing a connection with Him .... It is up to their free will, which is not influenced in any way, as to whether they do so or not.

The prize to be gained in earthly life is too high as to not require a certain amount of effort .... The human being, that is, his soul, cannot be granted a blissful life as a gift, he has to acquire it for himself, he has to fight for the most glorious possession, for freedom, light and strength .... he has to muster the will to be victorious himself. And he is able to do so in every walk of life, and the more difficult it is, the greater will also be his accomplished reward.

And if only you consider how much effort you are prepared to spend in earthly life in order to achieve a specific goal, which is truly not comparable to the said goal, then you know full well that it is just a matter of will as to whether you apply yourselves to this fight .... And therefore you should also muster the same determined will where far more is at stake than mere earthly success and earthly happiness .... And if you always bear in mind that you once had been willing to travel this earthly path then you will also draw strength from this certainty and always know that One is walking with you Who is at all times willing to provide you with strength, to support you, and Who will also help you overcome the most difficult situations in life .... providing you appeal to Him for help .... No human destiny is by chance, it is appropriate to his degree of maturity and good for his blissfulness. And a person will always be able to master his situation as soon as he requests strength from God .... But he will have lived his life in vain if he relies on his own strength and thereby hands himself over again into the hands of the one from whose chains he should release himself in earthly life ....

Amen

Translation handled by Heidi Hanna

The soul .... The spiritual spark in the human being ....

B.D. 1618 from September 18th 1940, taken from Book No. 25

The human soul is the unification of countless soul-substances which are assembly points for spiritual strength, i.e. which are receptacles for the spirit of God. Each one of these countless substances was previously embodied somewhere else, that is, enclosed in an outer form for the purpose of the spirit’s higher development and for the prospect of later unification with an equal substance. Hence each single substance of the human soul has passed though every work of creation and has, so to speak, matured for its last embodiment on earth. The soul always assumes the same shape as its surrounding outer shape .... If a person with spiritual vision would contemplate the human soul in its composition he would be presented with an incredibly charming and varied picture. This work of God’s creation, invisible to human beings, is beyond description, both in its structure as well as in its usefulness. But a description of the formation of the soul would only confuse human thought for he cannot understand the countless miracles within the human body. What human beings understand to be ‘soul’ is all of creation in miniature. The soul is the innermost part of the human being and includes the whole of creation .... intended to become enlightened during its life on earth and in glorification of God to enjoy the delights of heaven.

The soul has the divine spirit within itself. Although the original substance of the soul is also spirit in all its phases of evolution .... the divine spark of spirit is placed into the incarnating soul of the human being by God Himself .... He instils His breath into the human being .... He places the divine into him and gives the soul the task to chose between the divine and the human during its last existence on earth. If the soul .... the spirit out of God which at one time had opposed God .... is now willing to unite with the divine spirit, the transformation of what was once far away from God begins and the human soul becomes enlightened. The unity of the human soul with the divine spirit occurs when the soul steadfastly overcomes all human desires, which, for the purpose of testing and for strengthening of the will, cling to the human body as temptation .... when it resists all that the body as such requires and willingly submits to the requirements of the divine spirit.

Then the soul finally surrenders its former resistance to God. It chooses God, it is no longer in conscious opposition to the divine and accepts the emission of love, the strength, to increase the spirit within itself, to bring about the unity of the spirit within itself with the spirit outside of itself, and thus consciously strives to draw closer to God. If, however, the body’s desire dominates then the divine spark of spirit stays dormant and completely buried deep within the human being, it cannot emit light and the soul dwells in utter darkness. Its earthly life goes by without the smallest accomplishment; the spirit within is condemned to stagnate, its earthly process is not a path towards higher development but a time of standstill or even regression. The divine spark of spirit in the human being had been ignored and therefore could not manifest itself. The strength of divine love could not flow into the being and, as a result, the unity with the spirit of the eternal Father could not take place either. The soul takes this lightless state, which it had chosen for itself on earth, across into eternity and there, with endless pain of regret, contemplates the wasted time on earth and now has to struggle far more strenuously to improve its situation ....

Amen

Translation handled by Heidi Hanna

Transience of the earthly -imperishability of the soul

Recognizing the transient and the imperishable ....

B.D. 1500 from July 2nd 1940, taken from Book No. 24

It is tremendously important to know about the transience of everything earthly and about the responsibility towards that which is imperishable. People lack the evidence for the immortality of the soul, they therefore try to minimize or deny everything which presupposes precisely this immortality of the soul, and thus they take little account of this immortality. And this is the result of not realizing that a spiritual life can be lived alongside the earthly life and that only this spiritual life brings the human being everlasting success. The spiritual life alone is important, although it is apparently only the accompanying life of earthly existence .... Earthly life can certainly be lived without any connection with the spiritual, but this is completely unsuccessful for eternity. However, once a person focusses his attention on the immortality of the soul, if he takes this factor into account, he already consciously assumes responsibility for the soul. And his efforts will now be directed towards collecting spiritual treasures, for he now regocnizes everything that is earthly possessions as worthless because he knows that none of it is permanent but must pass away according to divine law. Thus he clings to that which he regocnizes as imperishable, i.e. he seeks it first in order to make it his own .... And the imperishable is spiritual .... Thus he seeks the spiritual and also finds it, for God supports this endeavour because it corresponds to the actual purpose of earthly life. Once the human being has knowledge of what is worth striving for in eternity, his sense of responsibility towards the soul will become increasingly stronger and he will live a second life, as it were, which is completely separate from his actual earthly life. He establishes spiritual connections, he lets his thoughts wander upwards into the spiritual kingdom, he communicates with spiritual beings, confides in them, asks for information and advice, he lets himself be taught by them, and he does everything to increase his spiritual knowledge .... He therefore consciously strives for the imperishable, and he will learn to despise earthly life, i.e. everything that is transient, to the same extent. He is therefore still on earth, but detaches himself from the heaviness of earth and is far more often in the spiritual realm than on earth. Therefore, the human being must first be given the knowledge of the worthlessness and futility of everything he can see and grasp, and at the same time spiritual knowledge must be presented to him so that he can now decide for himself which life is more appealing to him .... He must surrender the treasures of the world, he must try to satisfy his desire other than with earthly pleasures. He must willingly surrender these in order to receive spiritual pleasures. He must realize for himself that only the imperishable, the soul, must be considered during earthly existence, but that both cannot be satisfied at the same time, thus in order to receive imperishable good, earthly good can also be desired. The one must be given in order to receive the other .... The human being must make a decision, he must allow his will to become active, and this can only apply to either the earthly desirable or the riches of the soul .... Man must choose between perishable and imperishable good ....

(2.7.1940) And he will be blessed whose spirit regocnizes the value of imperishable good .... For it will now also become apparent to him that striving for it also brings the human being closer to God at the same time. And he will feel the bond with God if he disregards the transient and only seeks to enrich himself with spiritual possessions. His state of soul is considerably freer because matter, i.e. earthly desirable things, is no longer desired and is therefore overcome, i.e. the shackles of the soul have been loosened through the desire for imperishable, for spiritual good. And this freedom is incomparably fruitful. In its now unbound state it is inconceivably lively and seeks the connection with likewise spiritual things. And the union with this imparts wisdom and light .... in the form of knowledge, which he now wants to bring back to his soul. Thus the human being is guided into truth and the soul now shares in all spiritual wealth. For it receives, as it were, the spiritual strength which has come to the spirit from God through augmentation with spiritual substances. A soul thus permeated by the divine spirit must irrevocably ascend, for its goal was to reach the highest possible spiritual level, which is now achieved by overcoming everything that belongs to earth, thus is transient and therefore worthless for eternity. This increase of the spiritual means liberation from the form, and therefore the soul of man is united with the spirit out of God, it is truly immortal, i.e., it lives in eternity ....

Amen

Translation handled by Doris Boekers

Transience of the earthly .... disasters - misfortunes ....

B.D. 7219 from December 1st 1958, taken from Book No. 76

You constantly receive admonitions from above to prepare yourselves for the end, to be concerned about your soul's salvation and to put earthly interests aside, because there is only one thing that is important: your soul's life after the death of the body. The transitoriness of earthly things, the transitoriness of yourselves as far as your earthly body is concerned, is something so certainly to be expected, and yet you humans reckon so little with it, otherwise you would not undauntedly chase after earthly goods. Yet you neglect to care for your souls just as unflinchingly and will bitterly regret it one day. And therefore you humans yourselves are the reason why the transience of earthly things obviously has to be shown to you, why the sudden end through death should so clearly startle people so that they also think of their own end. And therefore you also have the explanation for the many disasters and accidents, for again and again it has to be shown to you how nonsensical it is to only strive for earthly pleasures or earthly possessions which can become void from one day to the next, and how death can also befall you yourselves on any day and then nothing remains but a miserable, wasted soul which is exceedingly pitiful in its adversity. But now it has caused the hardship itself, for on earth all its thinking, wanting and feeling was only directed towards what makes the body comfortable, but the human being did not think about what the soul needs .... thus the soul itself .... and therefore the 'real I' enters the kingdom of the beyond in greatest distress. Whatever admonitions and warnings people receive from above are not heeded .... And this causes God to take ever more severe measures which are intended to prove to people the transience of all earthly things. And this will also explain the coming sorrowful events where the destruction of earthly possessions and many human lives will take place through the forces of nature .... always only for the purpose that people wake up from their dream state, which is only their life on earth. Admittedly, the consequences of this will also be that people will again try to acquire what they have lost with increased eagerness, but some will also awaken and realize that there are also spiritual possessions to be gained which are everlasting, and they will now turn their attention to these possessions. For God tries everything to still save souls from the end, but just as He again and again leaves every human being the freedom of will to determine himself and his fate .... But a terrible darkness will befall the majority of humanity, for where not even the smallest light could be kindled there is little hope that the human being will change until the end, and his fate will be deepest darkness, his fate will be a new banishment into matter, which the human being regarded as the only desirable thing on earth and which will therefore also be his abode for endless times again. Admonitions and warnings will still sound until the end but no human being can be forced to heed them, and therefore everyone's will is self-determining .... but accordingly also his fate on the day of judgement ....

Amen

Translation handled by Doris Boekers

Imperishability .... soul .....

B.D. 2860 from August 25th 1943, taken from Book No. 37

Everything that God has created is spiritual power and as such is imperishable. Nevertheless, the visible creations are subject to constant change, thus they do not completely cease to exist but merely change within themselves, and even if it is no longer visible it nevertheless does not cease to exist, because God only temporarily dissolves matter until the spiritual substance therein requires a new external form again. This change now also contributes to the fact that the spiritual develops further, that it therefore never remains in the same stage, but that it reaches an ever higher degree of maturity, until it can enter its last embodiment as man. The human being, too, is to a certain extent transient, but again only the external form, whereas the soul, the spiritual substance in the human being, also outlasts the final external form and enters eternity as a disembodied being. To man on earth this spiritual, the soul, is not visible; and nevertheless it is the actual being, which only needs the bodily cover for the purpose of the last maturing on earth. But after the death of the body the soul continues its life without any cover and therefore also only visible to the spiritual beings, which are completely independent of earth and every earthly substance. What God has created remains eternally, yet the form of existence, the state of that which was created through God's will, can be very different .... accordingly also more or less visible, although it cannot pass away eternally. The human being with his bodily eyes is only able to see everything created in the stage where it has material shells, for only these are visible to the bodily eye since it can only see the spiritual in its external form in a high degree of maturity. And this is why the immortality of the human soul is usually doubted because the human being only wants to believe what he sees and what he can prove. However, after some reflection he comes to the realization that everything originated from God and therefore cannot be transient, even though it loses its earthly shell. Only when he has recognized the spiritual in himself, when he leads a spiritual life alongside his earthly, external life, does he regard matter as a shell necessary for development, which is only a means to an end for the spiritual. Then he also knows that there is no end for the spiritual, but that the outer cover is only of limited duration and remains as long as it is divine will, which then releases the spiritual for a life outside of earth, outside of matter, which never ever ends but lasts forever. Earthly life can therefore only be regarded as a transitional stage in which the spiritual, the soul, has to overcome its last external form so that it can then enter a sphere completely uncovered where its actual life begins .... in freedom and in the awareness of its strength, which it lacked on earth as long as it had not yet attained the necessary maturity .... where it is aware that it lives eternally, that it can never ever perish because that which is of God is imperishable ....

amen

Translation handled by Doris Boekers

Immortality of the soul .... granting of grace ....

B.D. 1034 from August 1st 1939, taken from Book No. 19

So hear the voice of the lord and pay attention to it: You deprive yourselves of the greatest favour as long as you doubt the immortality of the soul, because on the assumption that life has found its end with the death of the earthly body, you desire nothing that lasts for eternity. You are therefore as it were content with the care of your body on earth and do not ask for any help for life after death. And you do not consider the spirit but are content with what is only beneficial for the body. And if you do not ask, help cannot be granted to you. You will certainly end the life of the body with the death of the body but not the life of the soul. In a form, which your way of life on earth determines itself, will be the soul's new stay according to this bodily life, you will no longer be able to do anything out of your own strength, however use your senses exactly as on earth and therefore feel joy and also suffering, and this is every soul's inevitable fate that it has to take upon itself the just atonement or the just reward and cannot escape it. And therefore it is of utmost importance to count on the soul's continued life on earth, because without faith in it the human being does not avail himself of God's grace, that is, he believes that he does not need divine help and only focuses all his thoughts and actions on the fulfilment of earthly duties, and this lets him fall seriously behind when he is asked for spiritual merit in eternity .... Nothing depresses the soul more than unutilized opportunities of earthly life .... And every earthly life will remain unused for eternity if the concept of 'eternity' is incomprehensible to the human being without faith in the soul's continued existence, for who cares for eternity if he simply lacks faith in it? .... And thus a soul certainly enters into earthly rest but can only bask in the peace of heaven if it was restlessly active on earth for life in the beyond. Or else it must now seek to reach it by a laborious path, which would have been many times easier for it when it was still in the body of flesh. And so I call out to all doubters on earth: Remember life after death and do not live in the delusion that everything ends with the death of the body .... but know that only then does the real life begin .... know that you only have to pass a probationary period on earth, but that only then does the real life begin and this life is completely dependent on how you have utilized earthly life. For it is a dreadful certainty for the soul that it let earthly life pass by and now has to regocnize its poverty of spiritual treasures at the entrance into the beyond. And therefore make use of your life as long as you are still in full possession of your strength and ask for grace unceasingly, for it alone enables your spiritual progress and clears the path to your eternal home ....

Amen

Translation handled by Doris Boekers

Belief in the survival of the soul after death

Belief in the immortality of the soul necessary to work on oneself ....

B.D. 2544 from November 10th 1942, taken from Book No. 33

People must realize that earthly life is only a means to an end, but never an end in itself. Only this realization spurs them on to strive to reach the goal for the sake of which man walks on earth. Consequently, the belief in the soul's survival after death must be conveyed to him, the immortality of the soul must be explained to him, even though this cannot be proven to the human being. Knowledge must be made accessible to him which makes the doctrine of immortality understandable to him, so that it now becomes easy for him to believe even without proof. Only then does he regard the earth as a means to an end and orientates his whole life towards survival after death. Only this thought allows him to look at earthly goods with different eyes, for he now learns to assess their transience and focusses his attention on the things that last for eternity. And what he now does, he brings into connection with the life beyond. As soon as the human being believes that life has no end with death he thinks about what kind of life after death may be; thus he sends his spirit upwards, i.e. to regions which are the soul's abode after the end of earthly life. And in these regions he is now given information, namely mentally, so that the human being now full of conviction regards himself as a traveller on earth whose course of life will soon be over and he tries to make productive use of this short time on earth. The belief in immortality is therefore inevitably necessary if the human being is to begin the work on his soul, just as this belief also prevents the human being from living a purely worldly life. However, there is no irrefutable proof of the soul's survival. This, too, is a teaching that can never be proven, but which can become the deepest conviction through diligent reflection, just as everything spiritual is not to be proven, so that the free will of man is not restricted and faith is therefore an unconstrained one ....

Amen

Translation handled by Doris Boekers

Belief in the survival of the soul ....

B.D. 3299 from October 19th 1944, taken from Book No. 43

The certainty that there is life after the death of the body makes it much easier for people to bear earthly suffering, for they then only regard earthly life as a preliminary stage to beatitude, to the actual life in the spiritual kingdom. For them earthly life does not mean the highest, and therefore they do not attach so much importance to adversities and suffering, just as they pay little attention to earthly goods and the pleasures of the world because they know that these are transient. The life of the soul after death is a happy thought for them, and even death itself loses its terror because they do not fear it but only regard it as an entrance into spiritual life. Therefore, a person who believes in the soul's continued life on earth has an advantage in every respect over those who deny the soul's continued life. The latter only seek to exploit earthly life in an earthly sense, and they only strive to live long and well on this earth, since they consider themselves to have passed away with the death of their body. But the human being can only gain the convinced belief in the soul's continued existence through his own reflection, it cannot be conveyed to him by fellow human beings, instead, the human being can only be stimulated to think, and he must come to the conclusion of his own accord that God's creations must be enduring, otherwise the creator would have delivered a defective work. Yet everything the human being looks at is again a work of creation in a more perfect form than already existing works of creation, thus a constant upward development can be observed in it, which understandably cannot stop with the human being but continues in the spiritual kingdom. Yet this cannot be proven to the human being if he does not accept his own feelings as proof, which more joyfully affirm the thought of a continuation of life after death than the thought of a complete end with the conclusion of earthly life ....

So the human being must believe what cannot be proven to him .... and yet he can still have the inner conviction of it which now also allows him to live consciously without doubt. For a person with faith in survival after death will arrange his earthly life completely differently than a person without faith in it, because he sees higher spiritual development as the purpose of earthly life, because he recognizes a state of spiritual maturity as the aim, which is the prerequisite for a blissful life after death. He now pays more attention to his soul, whereas the human being without this faith only seeks to maintain physical life and only pursues earthly aims. He is touched by everything that concerns the body, be it joy or suffering, because he does not find the compensation for it in his soul life. Emotionally and mentally he is indeed also in spheres which lie outside of the earthly, yet he is not aware of the fact that this is a search of the soul for which earthly aims alone are not enough. But the body's desire will always prevail and fetch the soul back from these spheres, and it will also succeed before the belief in its continued life has awakened and it then resists the body's desire. The adversity of the coming time will therefore be much easier to bear for people who firmly believe in survival, while others will be seized by despair since they consider their temporal end to have come and the knowledge of it triggers a paralysing horror in them. For faith will always be a source of comfort and strength, faith will never depress but uplift, faith will not be a weakness of will but a strength of will and likewise generate a strong will. Faith is not something human but something divine, although the unbeliever tries to smile disdainfully about it .... He lacks the strength which flows from strong faith. And therefore this faith should be struggled for first, for as soon as the human being believes himself to be immortal he also works for the salvation of his soul and is not satisfied with the successes of earthly life. However, the immortality of his soul can only be made credible to him when he is active in unselfish love .... otherwise selfish love will prevail and this will always reject the belief in a continuation of life after death, because the soul is aware of its inadequate state and therefore rather fears a continuation of life. And therefore love must be preached first again and again so that the human being's thinking will change and he will come close to the right faith, so that he will only learn to recognize earthly life as a transitional station and consciously strive for perfection in order to be able to enter the life in the beyond in a state which will ensure him eternal life ....

Amen

Translation handled by Doris Boekers

Belief in the soul's continuation of life ....

B.D. 8059 from December 9th 1961, taken from Book No. 85

If only people would believe that their soul .... their actual Self .... is immortal, if only they would believe that the soul as a human being on this earth is preparing its own fate in the kingdom of the beyond when it leaves its earthly body .... One day people will bitterly regret their indifference to their later fate, for one day they will realise what they had neglected to do in their earthly life, what they could have achieved had they believed the warnings and admonitions which were constantly given to them on earth. The indifference to their future fate is the great evil which threatens to pull many people into the abyss .... And therefore they shall only ever be informed of the fact that there is a continuation of life after death, that they cannot cease to exist even if they have to shed their earthly body .... their thoughts shall be directed towards this time which will come as certain as one day will follow the other .... If only they were able to gain the belief in a continuation of life after death they would also live more responsibly. This, too, cannot be proven to them, they can only believe it .... but they can gain a convinced faith if they think about it and question their actual purpose of earthly life .... Just a spiritually directed thought would suffice for a person to mentally receive an answer from the kingdom which is the soul's true home .... Yet such questioning thoughts have to be sent out by the human being of his own free will, for he cannot be forcibly urged into such spiritual thinking. But the smallest impulses are enough for him to question himself, and it will definitely only have beneficial results. Hence the human being will often have to suffer severe losses which can affect everything he loves .... earthly commodities or even people dear to him, the loss of which can motivate him to such thoughts .... And then even harsh strokes of fate will have become a blessing for him if they lead the person into a spiritual train of thought and thus enable spiritual powers to intervene, trying to instruct him. And if a person is asked whether he assuredly believes in the soul's continuation of life he will usually doubt it, even if he is religiously instructed in such a way, because he has not yet openly contradicted it. But he lacks the inner conviction and this makes him indifferent in his conduct, which should be aimed towards this life in the spiritual kingdom. But time and again the human being will have to deal with experiences which can and should direct his thoughts to the end which is certain for him and yet will not denote an end for his soul. And frequently he will also receive instructions by way of conversations or as printed material, although he can accept or reject them of his own free will ....

And even the loss of earthly goods can make the human being think and wonder whether owning these is the real purpose of earthly existence .... Then it is possible that he will change his way of thinking; then it is possible that he will not regard a continuation of life after death to be out of the question and afterwards he will lead a conscious way of life, because he believes that he will have to be answerable for it one day. And then the certainty that his body's death is not the end will steadily grow, for wherever there is the slightest will to live expediently on earth the human being will also receive help and he will not go astray ....

Amen

Translation handled by Heidi Hanna

The influence of body and mind on the soul

Mind and body seek to win the soul ....

B.D. 2532 from November 1st 1942, taken from Book No. 33

Spirit and body have one thing in common, that they want to possess the soul, that they seek to mould it, but in different ways. The body tries to mould the soul according to the world because the world itself seems to be the only thing worth striving for and therefore it tries to transfer its desire to the soul. The spirit, on the other hand, has a different desirable goal; it wants to occupy the spiritual realm and seeks to mould the soul according to this realm; it therefore seeks to shape it in a different way .... according to the divine will. Thus the divine will is opposed to the desire of the body .... The body strives for matter, whereas the spirit is completely removed from matter .... Its will and endeavours are only aimed at aligning itself with the eternal divinity, it only knows one desire, the union with God and the eternally light-filled state. Thus it also tries to determine the soul to join its desire, it tries to induce it to the same will, it draws the soul to itself, so to speak, and thus detaches it from the world, which for the body means giving up its desires, thus overcoming matter, the world, which is the opposite of the spiritual world. If the spirit succeeds in winning the soul for the spiritual kingdom, then the soul has passed its test of earthly life, for this means a turning of the will towards God and a turning away from the one who is lord of the world. The body still belongs to this world but if it joins the desire of the soul, thus willingly yields, if it wants to unite with the spirit, the spiritual substances, of which the body consists, are also ripe for the next moulding, and they cover the course of development in form considerably faster because they have given up their resistance. The spirit in man has overcome the body, and the body has declared itself defeated .... The body has left the soul to the spirit, thus the spirit has taken complete possession of the soul, the soul has united with the spirit. And now all thinking, feeling and willing is only determined by the spirit, and it must therefore be right, for the spirit is part of God and it will always determine the soul to do and think that which corresponds to God's will. And this is the state the soul should strive for .... in union with the spirit towards God and strive for union with Him in order to seek and find eternal bliss in the contemplation of God ....

Amen

Translation handled by Doris Boekers

Spiritualizing the soul .... overcoming matter ....

B.D. 3414 from January 22nd 1945, taken from Book No. 44

It is absolutely necessary that you learn to despise the world if you want your soul to mature, for only when it no longer desires it will it turn to the spiritual kingdom, to the world which is its actual home, which offers it everything that helps it to ascend and which is therefore also the aim it should reach through earthly life. The more the human being detaches himself from material things, the more his senses deaden themselves for earthly pleasures and enjoyments, the more the soul spiritualizes itself .... As long as the human being lives on earth he must indeed submit to the demands of the body up to a certain limit, he must fulfil earthly obligations, he must carry out earthly activities; thus he is earth-bound and cannot detach himself from it purely physically until God calls him into the spiritual kingdom. Nevertheless, the human being can live a second life next to his earthly one .... The life of the soul need not be completely involved in the life of the body, the soul need not strive for the same as the body, but it can form its kingdom completely independently of it, which, however, lies far away from the yearning of the body .... it can turn to the spiritual kingdom, and then the body will certainly fulfil its earthly task but never strive for earthly pleasures for itself again, instead, it will soon join the soul's desire and likewise seek to be spiritually active as soon as its earthly duties allow it time and opportunity to do so. And as soon as this degree is reached, that the human being now disregards all material goods, as soon as he sets the spiritual kingdom as the aim of his striving, he is also immune to strong temptations on the part of the world. He can no longer fall prey to it, he will only have to endure slight struggles at times, if the world presents itself to him again and again with its joys and pleasures and wants to win him over for itself. But these are only temptations which he will always overcome because the powers of the spiritual kingdom .... the kingdom towards which his soul is striving .... never ever let him go, because they pull him with tireless love and thus constantly influence his soul so that it feels the strength within itself to offer resistance. The greater the renunciation of the material world, the stronger the transmission of strength from the spiritual kingdom. And this influx of strength not only benefits the soul but also the body, for the latter is now also able to master its earthly task without therefore neglecting the soul. And the earthly task will be a service in active neighbourly love, the human being will also attain maturity of soul through his earthly activity because this is now in accordance with God's will. For the human being who disregards earthly aims, who no longer desires the world's goods, will also only carry out an activity which benefits his fellow human beings, he will only give but not want to possess and thereby strive ever more towards the spiritual kingdom. Thus the soul voluntarily fulfils its actual purpose .... it overcomes matter and spiritualizes itself, it kills off the body's desire which is originally its own and makes it inclined to join the soul's desire; it pulls it over into the spiritual kingdom with it, and thus it seriously pursues the aim which is set for it for its earthly life, and it will also reach this aim, for all forces of light stand by it so that it finds the path into the eternal home ....

Amen

Translation handled by Doris Boekers

Unification of spirit and soul .... Rebirth ....

B.D. 3205 from July 29th 1944, taken from Book No. 42

The soul will feel an irresistible urge to ascend when, due to its actions of love, it unites with the spirit within itself, since the latter seeks to influence and lead it to the kingdom which is its true home. And, to the same degree, it will detach itself from earth, i.e. its intentions and thoughts will no longer be directed towards the body and its wishes but will be focussed on spiritual values. As soon as this stage has been reached the soul will be reborn in spirit, it will have started a new chapter in life, it will have recognised its true purpose of earthly life and become conscious of its earthly task. From this point on it cannot turn back, it cannot regress into the previous condition when it had no spiritual knowledge and only paid attention to earthly life. And from now on it will gather spiritual wealth, by consciously striving to ascend it will open itself to mental influences from the spiritual realm and will thus act with kindness, because the beings of light express themselves through the spiritual spark within the human being and this consistently encourages actions of love.

The more the human being acts with kindness the more capable he becomes of hearing the voice of the spirit within himself and increases his knowledge. He can fulfil his actions of love in two ways: he can help his fellow human beings worldly as well as spiritually; he can help other people by supporting them in times of earthly distress, but he can also take care of another person’s soul by teaching and giving what he previously has received from his spirit .... spiritual knowledge which corresponds to the truth .... He can pass on everlasting wealth and thereby help other souls to ascend too, and this loving action is extremely beneficial, it is the kind of support for which the souls will be eternally grateful. Because spiritual help always denotes an awakening to life, as long as the human being accepts help, as long as he does not reject this help. However, as soon as the human being has started on the spiritual path himself he will never want to ascend alone but will always encourage his fellow human beings because he realises that spiritual aspiration is the most important part of life, since it can lead to the goal, providing the person is willing.

The soul no longer feels comfortable on earth and constantly strives to escape; and for that reason it can lift itself anytime and anywhere into the spiritual realm, as the bridge shall always be built from there if the human being desires to enter the spiritual realm. The beings of light are always willing to impart the strength they receive from God to the human soul, and the spiritual spark within the human being is always willing to pass on the spiritual gifts to the soul, because the spiritual spark is in permanent unity with the light-giving world and therefore with God, Who communicates the knowledge of truth through the beings of light to any human being who wants to receive it. This is because the soul’s desire, its thoughts and intentions determine the amount of spiritual gifts it receives, which are unrestricted providing the soul shares the received spiritual wealth with other people for their benefit too ....

Amen

Translation handled by Heidi Hanna

The earthly life - the path to the spiritual home

Acquiring the spiritual kingdom on earth ....

B.D. 5854 from January 15th 1954, taken from Book No. 63

My kingdom is not of this world, but it can only be acquired in this world .... For if you want to become children of God, if you want to be able to take up your father's inheritance, thus to rule and reign with Me in My kingdom, you have to acquire the right in this world, for at first you are My living creations who still have to gain your childship. Earth is not the kingdom which you should take possession of forever, but My kingdom is the spiritual world which is permeated by My light of love, which offers bliss without number and which is your true home .... The fact that you have to acquire the right on this earth to eternally inhabit this kingdom of My light is the result of the fact that you once voluntarily left this kingdom of Mine and that it can therefore only be returned to you if you prove yourselves in a test of will .... And this test of will has to be passed on earth, in the midst of temptations of all kinds, in the midst of a kingdom which is your task to overcome but which you may never make the aim of all your wishes and endeavours, otherwise you will lose your right to My kingdom again and remain bound by the lord of this world for a long time, whose creations are all bearers of the spiritual substances which still belong to him. It is his world, although he has no power over any earthly creation .... yet all creations are shells of the spiritual substance which once fell away from Me and which I want to enable to become free again and one day enter the spiritual kingdom. But you humans on earth should strive for something higher, you should certainly walk through earth as a training station but with the success of maturity for My kingdom, which will then make you unspeakably happy. As long as you are without realization of your actual earthly task, the earthly world may well be desirable to you, yet again and again you will be reminded that you have a task to fulfil on earth .... If you now pay attention then you will also certainly attain realization, and if you then want to do the right thing, if you want to fulfil the will of the one Who gave you life, then you will also strive for My kingdom and overcome the earthly world, for it costs overcoming all your earthly desires .... it is a battle you have to wage against yourselves, and My kingdom can only be seized by force, My kingdom is to be acquired, thus something has to be exchanged for it .... something must be given away which belongs to this world; the soul must voluntarily part with it in order to then receive something far more delicious .... spiritual goods which secure its entrance into My kingdom and signify inestimable wealth for the soul .... Nevertheless, I do not make too great demands on you, and it is possible for every individual to become an aspirant of My kingdom, which is not of this world .... For I help you as soon as you sincerely want to become My children .... I help you because I love you and want you all to become blissfully happy, and because only My kingdom can grant you these beatitudes. I help you because I want you to return to your father's house as My children and, united with Me, can now work in bliss ....

Amen

Translation handled by Doris Boekers

Love is the key to the spiritual kingdom ....

B.D. 5314 from February 10th 1952, taken from Book No. 59

You will only be able to comprehend Me through love .... There is no other way you can win Me, no other way to recognise Me but through love. And thus you have the key which will open the door to My heart for you, the gate into the spiritual kingdom, to your Father's house. Without this key all access will remain blocked, everything My love, wisdom and omnipotence has created in the spiritual kingdom will remain hidden from you, without this key all knowledge of truth will remain concealed, you will lack all divine wisdom because without love you will be engulfed by darkness, since only love will give you light .... thus leading you into realisation. You would be incredibly mighty if you would heed My Words and live a life of love .... For love is also strength and nothing would be impossible for you if you would change your nature into love. Hence, with these Words I Am giving you the promise of an abundance of light and strength, of blissfulness, through the inflow of My Fatherly love, if you just unite yourselves with Me through deeds of love, if you just reciprocate My love for you .... Yet you don't believe My Words or you would all endeavour to live a life of love.

Why don't you put it to the test .... Let go off all selfish love, look around yourselves and wherever you see hardship try to bring help, wherever you find people suffering physical or psychological ailments try to heal them, give to them earthly and spiritually whatever they need, give them food and drink, and let go of your possessions if you thereby can ease the hardship of people in need. Try it and you will experience the truth of My Word, you will grow in strength and light, you will rise above your own earthly suffering, nothing will affect you which previously appeared to weigh you down, you will feel the strength of love in yourselves and the happiness of your union with Me, which you establish with every deed of love, will compensate you a thousand fold for what you have given away .... You will recognise Me and feel My hand holding you, you will feel the flow of My love's strength pour into you and, being spiritually brightly enlightened, you will be able to hear and behold what otherwise is hidden to you humans ....

Take the test and believe My Word, practise love .... and you will win Me and never ever lose Me again .... Believe Me, for I truly won't instruct you wrongly, I want you to become blessed, and since only love is able to turn you into happy beings I constantly just urge you to love ....

Yet then you will have to combat the spirit within you which is lacking all love and to which you owe your earthly existence .... He impels you to selfish love, he wants to extinguish the divine spark within you, he wants to prevent you from living a life of love. Hence you will have to fight it, that is, you have to fight your own cravings which only increase your selfish love and weaken the true love towards Me and your neighbour, so that you will be unable to experience the strength of love yourselves .... Fight against it and follow Me, accept these Words in your heart and act accordingly, and your fate will be the complete union with Me and infinite bliss ....

Amen

Translation handled by Heidi Hanna

Earthly world is a passageway to the true home ....

B.D. 6298 from June 29th 1955, taken from Book No. 68

The inclination towards the world is still the sign of the bond with God's adversary, although you humans do not like to hear such a judgement about yourselves, yet you would unhesitatingly despise the world, if you had already completely detached yourselves from it. You could find no pleasure in material things, in joys and pleasures which lie outside of the spiritual kingdom, for your soul would .... long to return to the spiritual kingdom where it had been in the beginning, if it had detached itself from its enemy, it would know and feel that the material kingdom is only a passageway which imposes fetters on it, but it would never ever desire it. As a result of your ignorance, you humans believe that life on this earth is the epitome of what you call happiness, if you can shape this earthly life as you please .... because you don't know true happiness, which is entirely different from the unfree, burdensome life in the flesh on this earth .... You do not know freedom in abundance of strength, you do not know the radiant light in which you are allowed to move once you have detached yourselves from the desire for the world .... because you still belong to the one who is lord of this world. Yet all desire will cease, when you seriously turn away from the one to whom you owe your existence as a human being .... And your desire now applies to another goal, the soul desires other pleasures than the world is able to offer it .... the soul recognises its weakness and inadequacy, and now desires strength and light, it longs for the state of perfection again, it strives with all its senses towards the spiritual kingdom of which the human being's intellect cannot conceive. But the soul, which has detached itself from God's adversary, knows that its true home is desirable. And that is why it is also unable to gain anything from the goods of the world, which it has learnt to recognise as empty appearances and which it therefore despises. As long as you humans desire the world, you are also still under his control, you still belong to him because you have not yet been able to muster the strength to detach yourselves from him, to renounce what he offers you in order to exchange goods, which can make you happy in truth. Yet you cannot possess both at the same time .... You have to give up the one in order to gain the other, you have to .... venture the step into the spiritual kingdom even if you still live on earth, for this is your decision of will, to want to exchange the material kingdom for the spiritual one of your own accord .... And once you have succeeded in doing so, you will have passed the test of will, you will have freed yourselves from the power of the one who holds you captive. And you will be helped in every way that you dare to take this step, you will be enticed and offered help, yet you will not be forced .... But the transience of earthly-material possessions is so often made clear to you that it should truly not be difficult for you to strive for that which is imperishable. And time and again God lets His call resound: Free yourselves from the fetters which prevent you from returning to the Father's house .... give up the world, so that you can take possession of the spiritual kingdom again, which offers you peace and bliss, which the world can never offer you ....

Amen

Translation handled by Sven Immecke

Overcoming the world ....

B.D. 8490 from May 7th 1963, taken from Book No. 89

Anyone who loves the world still belongs to My adversary, for the earthly world is his kingdom where he rules and reigns. All desiring thoughts which apply to the world's goods are whispered into your ear by him, and therefore you will hardly accept the guidance of light beings' thoughts which try to direct you towards spiritual things and would like to induce you to turn away from this world's goods, to recognize them as transient and to strive for imperishable goods. But you have to go through this world in order to overcome matter, for you shall become free from it, you shall leave earth as spiritualised, for this is your goal. My help for you now consists of the fact that I repeatedly make you aware of the transience of earthly goods, that I often also take from you that to which your heart is particularly attached, not in order to inflict suffering on you as a result, but through such suffering you shall come to the right realisation: that everything passes away, that everything has no value for eternity .... Only when you learn to recognize the true value or unvalue of material goods will you detach your heart from them and strive for more valuable possessions which remain with you and which you can take over into the kingdom of the beyond. Yet you lack one thing and therefore only think purely earthly .... That is the belief in a continuation of life after the death of your body. Only your earthly body can die, precisely because it is matter, but what animates the body .... the soul .... cannot die, it can only leave your material shell, and then it can be poor or rich when it enters the kingdom of the beyond. And you yourselves prepare this lot for your soul during earthly life. Its purely earthly attitude puts the soul into an extremely miserable state which it will one day feel bitterly and ruefully remember the unused earthly time as soon as it has a small glimmer of realisation. But in earthly life you can also gather riches for the soul if you learn to overcome earthly matter and think of the soul spiritually, if you direct your thoughts into the spiritual kingdom, which is your true home. And believe it, you will easily and joyfully leave this earth when the hour of your departure has come; matter will not hold you back and you will gladly detach yourselves from everything that belongs to earth. And because a far more beautiful life then awaits you I am only ever concerned to make you overcomers of the earthly world and its goods, to help you recognize their worthlessness and to free you from things to which you chain your heart and which nevertheless can easily signify a danger for you, that you forget your spiritual striving over them, that you still pay the tribute to My adversary which he demands from you. Earthly life is short but the whole of eternity lies ahead of you, and you can easily forfeit a glorious life in eternity for the sake of this short earthly lifetime because you misjudge earthly goods, because you attach a value to them which they do not possess. And thus you have an explanation why fate sometimes hits you hard by taking what you love, be it people or earthly possessions, because I only want to direct your thoughts to spiritual things which will compensate you a thousand fold for earthly losses and for earthly suffering of all kinds. Everything is a blessing if it is able to detach your senses from worldly possessions, and I will truly reward you abundantly with spiritual possessions for every voluntary renunciation, and one day you will be very grateful to Me that I helped you to become free from material desires and cravings and that you were able to enter the spiritual kingdom unencumbered by such .... Everything that belongs to the world is still an obstacle on the path to Me, therefore you should overcome such obstacles and cast off all desire in order to be able to enter your true home freely and light-heartedly in order to be allowed to be eternally blissful there, as is your destiny ....

Amen

Translation handled by Doris Boekers

Taking stock of oneself and contact with the spiritual realm ....

B.D. 7470 from December 3rd 1959, taken from Book No. 79

You should quite often abandon yourselves to thoughts of eternity, you should leave the earth and everything relating to it behind you at times and mentally occupy yourselves with the fact that everything is transient after all and question what you should do in order to gain everlasting possessions which will last for eternity. Furthermore, you should consider your relationship with God, whether it is the relationship of a child with the Father or whether God is still far away and out of reach for you, to Whom you only rarely turn to with the right kind of prayer. You should take a seriously critical look at yourselves as to how you conduct your life .... whether it complies with God's will which is, after all, known to you: whether you live a life of love, true to His commandments .... An introspection like that will always be a blessing, even if you can only spend a short time on it but every spiritually directed thought will be taken hold of by the beings of light and answered accordingly and you will always derive spiritual benefit from it. But you should not only consider the world and its demands. For its commodities are transient and will only serve your sense of well-being for a short time but they will not bring you spiritual achievement. However, the time is approaching its end and you all still have to do much work to improve your souls, that is, you have to discard your own faults and weaknesses, for which a continuous battle needs to be waged and the strength it requires should constantly be requested from God. Therefore, you should pray ceaselessly, i.e., always direct your thoughts heavenwards and present all your worries and concerns to the Father and appeal for His blessing. Whatever you do, be they spiritual or earthly tasks, shall be done with God's blessing, and they will always benefit your soul, for God only requests your bond with Him in order to convey His strength to you which you require for the work of improving yourselves. And a constant bond with Him requires you to frequently dwell with your thoughts in the spiritual kingdom and a conscious turning away from the world. Every minute you withdraw into silence, every thought you send upwards, is one step higher to the goal, which you will then also surely reach. You should not just live an entirely unspiritual life, for then your earthly life will be a waste of time and will not result in spiritual achievements ....

However, your bond with Him will detach you ever more from the world and tie you to the spiritual kingdom, into which you will withdraw even more frequently the more insistently the world approaches you, which soon will no longer attract you, because once a soul has entrusted and joined God He will hold on to it. But it always involves an inner battle, for the world keeps the person captive with its enticements and attractions and it requires a serious will to resist these temptations and to be content with spiritual possessions, the true value of which cannot be judged by a person for as long as he lives on earth. But one day he will be happy about the treasures he acquired on earth, one day he will know that they alone are of value and that only the soul with spiritual treasures at its disposal can consider itself happy, for it will be able to work with them in the spiritual realm after everything of an earthly nature has fallen away from it and it has to relinquish all transient possessions of the world. Then it will be wealthy and blissfully happy, a worldly person, in contrast, will stand deprived and lonely at the gate to eternity, for the possessions he acquired on earth do not follow him into eternity and he will have no spiritual possessions to show .... For this reason you should think often of death and your spiritual state, and try to gain spiritual possessions on earth, which one day will constitute the degree of light and bliss when your soul leaves the body and enters the kingdom of the beyond ....

Amen

Translation handled by Heidi Hanna

Free will ....

B.D. 7837 from February 28th 1961, taken from Book No. 82

Only your will determines whether you achieve perfection on this earth. Hence earthly life is a matter of your free decision of will. But this does not relate to earthly questions or opinions about earthly plans, it is purely a matter for your soul to make the right decision as to which Lord it accepts above itself. But the human being cannot be forced by either side to make this decision, consequently 'free will' cannot ever be refuted, in spite of the fact that people repeatedly attempt to do so. Only the human being's innermost thoughts matter and this is not subject to any force. For this reason the person can only be influenced by ideas, speeches and various events which are thus intended to affect his thoughts (his will). And this is attempted by the divine as well as by the God-opposing aspect. However, it is always the person's own decision as to which influence he submits himself (yields) .... The human being's will is free .... Hence one day he also has to be accountable for the direction he gave his will, because he was given his life as a human being for the purpose of testing his will and sooner or later the soul will have to endure the consequences of its will's decision.

The human being is able to turn his will towards God in every situation of life .... And he can equally submit himself to His adversary .... but he will never be able to hold anyone responsible for his decision of will, neither his fellow human being nor a worldly power, neither God Himself nor His adversary, because it is entirely up to his free will as to whether the direction of his thoughts aim towards God or His adversary .... But his destiny is always determined by God such that he can easily find God, as long as he no longer offers Him inner resistance .... which is thus determined by his free will. People are inclined to refute free will because they are not always able to do what they want to do, however, it is not always a question of what they do, but what they want. For they can be prevented from carrying out actions, again due to the effects of spiritual influences .... but the volition itself cannot be prevented. Therefore the human being should be critical of himself with regard to the direction of his will's expression .... because during his life on earth he knows that he is expected to turn towards God, because God Himself constantly conveys this information to him and he does not live his earthly life entirely without knowledge .... But since he is also influenced by God's adversary it will be inevitable that he has to think about it, and therefore he is already urged to make a decision ....

And thus this, too, is the battle between light and darkness, which has to be settled by the person himself and which would be inconceivable without the human being's free will, otherwise only the positive and negative powers would fight each other and one power would then emerge as the winner .... But this is not how the battle between light and darkness should be understood, because it concerns the human being's soul which, in free will, makes its own choice regarding itself. The human being's life on earth is therefore an uninterrupted chain of experiences, discoveries and impressions which stimulate his thinking and which can also enable his thoughts to move into the right direction. But since God's adversary was granted the right to fight for the soul as well, his thinking will also be subject to negative influences and then he will have to make his choice. And the intensity of his resistance to God determines the outcome, it determines the soul's fate after the body's death, which can be exceedingly joyful but also intensely painful. However, irrespective how the will decides .... God's love never abandons the soul, and if it does not achieve its goal in this earthly life it will indeed delay its salvation for an infinitely long time, but sooner or later the right decision will be made by the will, since God's love is strength which the soul will not oppose forever ....

Amen

Translation handled by Heidi Hanna

Using the time on earth to break free from the mould .... Jesus Christ ....

B.D. 7464 from November 27th 1959, taken from Book No. 79

The plan of redemption takes place according to a just order, every phase has to be passed through by the once fallen original spirit, and every phase has to be regarded as a time of probation for the spiritual being, which therefore cannot be arbitrarily omitted or skipped. And that is why redemption also requires a certain time which, however, can then be terminated in the stage as a human being or also be endlessly prolonged again, but which always required an endlessly long time before, until this embodiment as a human being once takes place. This time of pre-embodiment can indeed also be somewhat shortened when the beingness gives up its hard resistance and now ascends in lighter deformation, but this shortening of time is minimal in relation to the time where the being is still bound in hard form and is to free itself from it. Thus you humans lack the concept of estimation for this period of time, and you have to be content with the fact that you have already lived on this earth for endless times before you were allowed to experience the grace of embodiment as a human being .... And therefore you should value and appreciate this grace particularly highly and do everything in order to finally get rid of your last form, in order not to be begotten again into hard matter and to have to travel the agonizing path once more if you fail. You can truly speak of eternities, since you walk your path separated from God and are wretched, but you yourselves can put an end to this state, and therefore you are informed again and again of what your task on earth consists of: to redeem yourselves from a captivity which has already lasted for eternities .... You can do it, for many means of help are at your disposal, you need not have travelled the earthly path in vain, you have a completely certain guarantee for your redemption: the divine redeemer Jesus Christ Himself, Who ransomed you from captivity with His blood on the cross. Without His help you would truly be too weak to complete the work of redemption; but with Him you can do it, for He helps you to do so, He provides you with strength where you alone are too weak, He sets you free from your previous lord if only you have the will to let Him redeem you .... Then your earthly life can be completely finished, you can be released from all external forms and re-enter your true home as a pure spirit .... The endless time of your imprisonment has now come to an end because your will has proven itself, because it turned to the one Who alone can bring you salvation: to Jesus Christ, in Whom the eternal deity embodied Himself in order to redeem you, in order to redeem your guilt of sin, which resulted in this long distance from God .... But your earthly life is only short and therefore you must do everything in order to attain this redemption before the death of your body, so that you will not enter the kingdom of the beyond still bound, where your redemption will be far more difficult, because your free will applies there too, because you yourselves must want to find redemption through Jesus Christ. Don't let the time on earth pass without having seriously worked on your redemption, without having surrendered yourselves to the one Who alone can set you free from sin and death .... Remember the endless time you already had to cover and now make use of the gift of grace of embodiment as a human being by seeking the bond with Jesus Christ, Who died for you on the cross in order to end your eternity-long state of torment and to open up the kingdom of light for you, so that you can enter it after your earthly life and be blissfully happy again and remain as you were in the beginning ....

Amen

Translation handled by Doris Boekers

Responsibility in earthly life ....

B.D. 7486 from December 25th 1959, taken from Book No. 79

As soon as you take the path across earth you will exist in undreamt of heights, compared to the abyss you found yourselves in after your apostasy, after your fall into deepest darkness. Truly, only a few more steps have to be taken by you, compared to the infinitely long path you have covered already .... You only need to take a short stretch of path ahead of you in order to reach the goal that was given to you an eternity ago: to be permitted to stay in close proximity to Me as a child of God, to be able to blissfully enjoy the glories of heaven, to be intimately united with Me as it was in the beginning. You are close to your perfection when you may enjoy the grace of the final embodiment as a human being .... and after a short time of testing your will can enter this very kingdom of glory which I promised you when I said 'Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man, the things which God hath prepared for them that love Him ....' You can reach your last goal in this very short earthly life, compared to the time which lies behind you .... But you can also fall abysmally low again .... you can return to the places you left an eternity ago with My help in order to travel the path of ascent. If you consider that the long path of your preliminary development might have been futile, that you will have to take the same, infinitely long lasting path again .... if you consider that you will be forfeiting My kingdom and its magnificence for the sake of short physical pleasures by allowing your soul to starve in favour of your body .... then a great sense of responsibility should make you strive twice as hard in order to reach your goal while you are still on earth. You should do whatever it takes in order to attain My kingdom and its glory, in order to escape the fate of a renewed banishment and to conclude your process of development, so that you will be released from the form and able to enter the kingdom of the beyond .... Only a few more steps need to be taken and you will have succeeded.

Gather all your strength once more and don't regret the difficult ascent .... comply with My Words, do whatever I say to you, try to fulfil My will, and you will thank Me forever that time and again I convey this serious admonition to you in order to protect you from a repeated fall into the abyss. I incessantly appeal to you and try to awaken your sense of responsibility; strength will continually flow to you through My Word, My love is constantly striving to help you to progress, so that you will cover the last short path with My support, so that you will not become too weak in order to complete your pilgrimage .... Time and again I will guide you to a source from which you will be able to draw from My water of life to gain strength and vigour on your pilgrim's journey .... Time and again I will make you aware of the agonising state of a renewed banishment, only to encourage you to follow your goal, to establish the bond with Me and to venture the last short rise at My side, which will surely not be in vain but will truly lead to the goal as long as you make a serious effort to reach this goal. It is not My will that your earthly path should have been futile, it is My will that you should soon be able to enjoy total freedom in light and strength .... I want you to return to Me as My children, to desire with all your heart to escape the abyss and to belong to Me, Whose children you will have become once you have overcome the abyss. I want to know you as blissfully happy, I want you to work in light and strength and freedom, so that you fulfil the purpose that was designated to you from the very start but which presupposes your change from a 'living creation' into a 'child' of God, which you should thus accomplish in earthly life. This is why I constantly speak to you and exhort you to heed My voice. And I will pursue you with My Words until the end. For I don't want My living creations to be wretched. I want them to become and remain blissfully happy forever ....

Amen

Translation handled by Heidi Hanna

Suffering for the soul

The thorny path to the eternal home ....

B.D. 1106 from September 22nd 1939, taken from Book No. 20

I will protect the one who desires to stand in truth from all error .... And he who trustingly abandons himself to Me so that I may lead him, his steps will never go astray, for I watch over him and prevent him from going astray. And now hear My voice: The path to the eternal home is like a steeply ascending footpath that leads through undergrowth and thorns .... He who bravely and powerfully overcomes all obstacles will safely reach his goal and rejoice in his ascent, for now that he has reached the end, all the difficulties of the path lie behind him, but before him lies the most magnificent view of all the land that lies beneath his feet .... And he will revel in the pleasure of being able to take in the picture that now presents itself to his eyes after his arduous ascent. And the same will happen to an earthly child at the end of its days if it has chosen Me as its guide and has travelled the thorny path of life by My hand. There are indeed many paths through earthly life, and they are often easy to walk and bordered with ornamental shrubs of all kinds, and they entice the traveller to rest and promise refreshment and rest to him who walks these paths, but he will never reach his destination .... For such paths certainly lead far from the goal, and in his restlessness and sluggishness, man does not regocnize where he is heading and moves further and further away from the right path, which, although arduous and difficult, inevitably leads to the heights. And this alone is the certainty that you have found the right path when you are weighed down by suffering, which are the thorns and undergrowth on the path to your eternal home. Whoever disregards these and courageously continues on his way will easily overcome all subsequent obstacles .... Only you must not shy away from them, you must not seek the comforts, but your mind must be simple and uneducated, then the path upwards will not seem difficult to you .... Everywhere along the way My messengers wait and support the traveller who wants to tire and is looking for a place to rest .... For such is only a danger for the one striving upwards. The path must be continued undeterred in joyfulness of heart and driven by the desire to see Me at the end of the path .... And all distractions must be avoided, all resting places inviting rest must be shunned, for they make the spirit of man sluggish and unwilling to make the arduous ascent. Yet without overcoming oneself, without renouncing all comforts, it is impossible to reach Me, and again My love draws every being upwards if only it is willing and does not resist Me .... And so I also advise you again to patiently bear your little cross, not to become weary, even if the path seems difficult to you, and to always trust your lord and saviour with a bright eye and a believing heart, Who holds everyone's fate in His hands and considers people as it is necessary for them .... And My love protects you and all My little children from missing the right path, I guard all My little sheep and carry them carefully over insurmountable, difficult paths, so that they reach the heights, the eternal home, undamaged ....

Amen

Translation handled by Doris Boekers

Physical pleasures .... infirmities of old age ....

B.D. 1481 from June 19th 1940, taken from Book No. 24

It is obvious frivolity to look at life on earth only from the point of view of what is beneficial to the body. It is difficult to begin to make such people understand the true purpose of earthly life, for they will never want to exclude physical enjoyment and will therefore be inaccessible to other views and teachings, since the content of life is sufficient for them if it consists of earthly pleasures. But the awakening of an erring person will be terrible. For the body will soon no longer be able to cope with the demands of earthly life, it will regocnize its weaknesses and infirmities with increasing age, and nothing will remain of the earthly life that was taken so seriously that will endure when its outer form, the physical shell, begins to become frail. He must now realize that even the most beautiful earthly pleasures lose their appeal when the body no longer possesses its youthful vigour. So life must now also seem dull and empty and useless to him as long as he is only concerned with his body. And again it is a gift of favour when man's body approaches decay faster and faster, because only now there is hope that man gets in touch with his spirit and takes contact with the powers which lovingly take care of man who has now become thoughtful, present to him the uselessness of the previous way of life and try to move him to seriously occupy himself with the spiritual, with the higher development of the soul. The human being is still given ample opportunity to suppress or fight physical desires if he is willing, i.e. if he subordinates himself to divine laws and only allows this will to prevail. However, it is far more meritorious if a person fights earthly pleasures while he is still young and full of zest for life, for the sooner he will attain knowledge, realization, for then his striving will have become active in fullest freedom of will, he will not have been forced to renounce them through physical hardship but will renounce these pleasures of his own accord, and his spirit will have done so, which can now unite with its own kind, as well as its soul, which is determined to think and want differently, will thank it with all intimacy, for only it knows about the right purpose of earthly life, it also regocnizes the dreadful plight of the imperfect spiritual beings torn away from this life, but which first has to be brought before the human being's eyes if he is to be able to free himself from the power which hinders him on the path upwards ....

Amen

Translation handled by Doris Boekers

Blessing of suffering ....

B.D. 5904 from March 16th 1954, taken from Book No. 64

Sooner or later you all will realise why you had to suffer on earth, and you will be grateful to Me if it brought you the success that you would never have achieved without suffering .... I would truly not let you suffer without reason, yet My love recognises the effect of suffering on you and thus makes use of it, even if you are often incapable of recognising My loving care. But believe that every stirring of your heart is known to Me, and that I therefore handle especially My Own seemingly harshly, because I want to give them even more blessings in My kingdom, which they are guaranteed to inhabit when their physical end has come.

On earth you cannot imagine the beatitude I want to provide for you .... But I know how a soul has to be in order to endure this beatitude, only I know how it can attain this quality, and only I know the right means and therefore also use them .... and I do this because I love you and know that your will strives towards Me. But also bear in mind that the soul in the human stage is not yet crystallised enough, that it would not endure the abundance of My emanation of love, that it therefore still has to go through suffering in order to become totally purged .... You should know that the soul's layers were not the fault of your earthly way of life, but that it came to earth already surrounded by thick covers, the dissolution of which is now every human being's task .... Doing deeds of love to a large degree will considerably aid the removal of the soul's impurities, and profound suffering helps where the strength of love is not yet powerful enough .... But you will feel inexpressibly happy when your soul is able to rise freely and permeated by light into the spiritual kingdom after your earthly death .... Then you will have overcome all difficulties, all earthly suffering, and an eternity of supreme happiness lays ahead of you ....

Although every day of suffering seems long to you, and yet it is but a moment in time compared to eternity. At times you deem your suffering to be unbearable, and yet I give you no more to carry than you can endure .... and you can always turn to Me, to Jesus Christ, the bearer of the cross, with an appeal for help when your burden seems too much to bear for you .... Take up your cross and follow Me .... Would I, as the man Jesus, have spoken these Words if it were impossible for you to endure the cross placed upon you? But He Himself also offered you His help with the Words 'Come to Me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest ....' And true to His Word He will always give you strength .... For your Saviour Jesus Christ knows you, He also knows that you are willing to follow Him, and He will grant you strength and grace as long as you live on earth ....

Amen

Translation handled by Heidi Hanna

Blessing of the Illness .... cross bearer for the soul ....

B.D. 6076 from October 12th 1954, taken from Book No. 65

This is what My word teaches you, that you should follow Me .... Avoiding the path of following Jesus will not lead to perfection, for then you will take a path which does not correspond to My will and therefore cannot lead to the aim either .... To follow Jesus means to take up the cross imposed on you in the same love, with the same gentleness and patience. He truly walked the path of the cross, and no human being took away the suffering He had to bear for His fellow human beings. But through these sufferings He took the great burden of debt from people and atoned for it .... He suffered for others .... And so you humans should also bear the cross for your soul .... which would have to suffer immeasurably in the kingdom of the beyond if you had not proven yourselves to be cross-bearers on earth by following Jesus .... The human being should create a spiritual garment for his soul which is suitable for receiving light one day .... And thus the soul's coverings, which still signify impenetrable resistance to the rays of light, must be melted away, as it were. For the human being himself should also do something about it and not rely solely on the forgiveness of sins through Jesus Christ as long as he is given the opportunity on earth to improve his state of soul with the help of divine grace .... At the same time you should dissolve the covering itself, not only free the soul from it .... you should again bear the guilt of the unredeemed spiritual that imprisons your soul .... you should likewise help this spiritual to develop further upwards .... you should suffer patiently for the spiritual being which is still far below you, which chose you to come out of its bondage. For all physical ailments and afflictions are manifestations of this wretched spiritual substance which you can and should help again by taking the path of following Jesus, by patiently taking up the cross and likewise compensating for a debt for this spiritual substance which is far below you, so that its path of ascent will become easier, so that it will already be free of a debt before the ascent development of this spiritual substance also begins .... Jesus has called you to follow Him .... But He has also redeemed you from sin and its consequences .... How do you want to find harmony between the two? He wants to free you from your guilt, but He still demands that you carry the cross .... Just as His love was for you, that is, for His fellow human beings, your love should also be for the one who needs your help, so that he will also reach the state where redemption through Jesus Christ can be accomplished in him .... You, too, should contribute to the redemption of the unfree, and it is your responsibility to take care of the spiritual substance which surrounds your soul as a cover, which has to be dissolved in order to grant entrance to the rays of light which signify life for the soul. The dissolution of these coverings is a work of mercy in which you must participate yourselves, which is why you were given Jesus' command: 'Take up your cross and follow Me ...."

Amen

Translation handled by Doris Boekers

Fear of death

Fear of death .... moment of parting agony or happiness ....

B.D. 2145 from November 9th 1941, taken from Book No. 31

Man can live and yet be dead in spirit, and likewise he can lose his bodily life and awaken from the sleep of death to eternal life. And both are up to him, he decides for himself about the death or life of his soul and yet attaches so little importance to this favour of a free decision during his life on earth. The state of death is an uncomfortable thought for every human being as soon as he is in the midst of life. And yet very few people do anything to make this thought less uncomfortable. They can do it with ease by living in such a way that there is no more death for them, that they are born again to eternal life. And then death has lost its sting for them, and the moment of departure from earth can be the most marvellous moment, without fear and terror or anxious uncertainty about one's future fate. Giving up earthly life need not be painful, the soul can detach itself from the body without any agony as soon as it has not paid attention to the body on earth and the union with the spirit was its endeavour on earth. Then the spirit has already hurried ahead into the spiritual kingdom during its lifetime, for it recognized this as its true home. It will now also describe this home to its soul in such a way that it also has a longing for that kingdom, and thus nothing keeps soul and spirit back on earth. But the body of such people is also in a certain state of maturity and no longer pressurizes the soul. Consequently, the soul easily detaches itself from it and enters the realm of peace .... But where the body has not yet given freedom to the spirit within itself, it will still exert the greatest influence on the soul, and since the body is attached to earth it will also transfer this desire to the soul, and now the soul only sees that it has to leave the stay on earth it has grown fond of, and since it cannot stop or avert the hour itself, it is overcome by a great fear of the 'after'. For in the hour of death it clearly recognizes what it has done wrong and this burdens it extraordinarily, and the hour of death becomes a torment for it, for it enters darkness where bright light could shine for it. And its state now is desolate and full of horror. Man has lived on earth only for his physical well-being, and so he now reaps the fruit of his life. The body and the soul suffer great agony, for the soul cannot enter the kingdom of light, consequently it is condemned to inactivity, whereas the souls in the kingdom of light are allowed to be active without interruption and the activity alone is already infinitely blissful. Life or death is the fate of souls who leave earthly life, and life or death is determined by the human being himself during his earthly life. And blessed if he still lets his will become active in time, that he learns to despise the world and restlessly works on himself. Then the hour of death will also be welcome to him, for for him it means awakening to eternal life .... for him it is not an hour of terror but the final redemption from a bound state ....

Amen

Translation handled by Doris Boekers

The will to live .... Fear of death

B.D. 2776 from June 16th 1943, taken from Book No. 34/35/36

The human will to live is very strongly developed as long as his soul’s maturity is still very low, which is quite understandable since the world still captivates him and pretends to fulfil his wishes. The human being finds it extremely difficult to give up his earthly life as long as he lacks faith in life after death, because the latter makes him look at all life on earth differently. A profoundly devout person merely looks at earthly life as in intermediate place, as a school which he has to attend in order to be admitted into the kingdom where real life begins. And this faith will also give him the strength to overcome all obstacles and difficulties of earthly life, whereas the unbeliever often breaks down and discards his life assuming that he is able to permanently end it himself. Anyone with profound faith will gladly give up his life if it is demanded of him because he directs his attention towards the life after the death of his body and his longing towards the union with God, since he feels that this is primarily the true life. As long as the human being only pays attention to the earth and its goods he inhibits his aspirations to ascend, he desires the world with every fibre of his being and the thought that he will have to leave this world one day is intolerable and depressing to him.

And this reveals his state of mind because his love for the world diminishes his love for God and other people, and thus the person is still spiritually immature, i.e. his soul has not yet united with the spirit within himself, he is not yet aware and knows nothing better than his earthly life. In that case he finds every thought of death appalling, he wants to live to enjoy, he desires worldly goods and disregards spiritual values. And this spiritual low level cannot be criticized enough since the human being is now in great danger to lose his earthly as well as his spiritual life. If he does not use his earthly life to find a connection to God he will live in vain and it is better that he should suffer the loss of his earthly life than to fall into deepest love with matter, which amounts to spiritual death. Earthly life is a mercy given to the human being for higher development and for rising above matter in order to enter the spiritual kingdom .... However, if the human being’s real task on earth is disregarded he chains himself to matter and forcibly has to be pulled away by the termination of his earthly life. As long as the thought of physical death is intolerable to a person he is not paying any attention to his real earthly task. The will to live is so strong in him that he will do anything to protect and lengthen it in the belief that his life is in his own hands, and yet again he feels fearful of having to lose it prematurely. Only in view of the beyond, in the belief of the soul’s life after death, the terror of death begins to subside and then the human being understands that his earthly life is a mere preliminary stage for the real life which will last eternally ....

Amen

Translation handled by Heidi Hanna

Fear of death ....

B.D. 6616 from August 8th 1956, taken from Book No. 71

Death is just the passageway into a life which will last forever. You humans would not have to fear death if your life on earth corresponded to My will .... if you had travelled this earthly path in divine order, for then you would not feel terror-stricken in view of death, because then your soul would just rejoice at being able to escape the body in order to return to its home where the earthly body is utterly superfluous, where ceasing to exist cannot be spoken of but where a free life in an abundance of light and strength will await the soul. Jesus Christ arose from the grave on the third day .... He demonstrated to you that there is no such thing as ceasing to exist after the body's demise, he has provided you with the evidence that a correct way of life merely results in the change of the earthly into a spiritual body, that the human being continues to exist, that only his shell has experienced a transformation, which is absolutely necessary for staying in the spiritual kingdom .... And you all are able to accomplish this change yourselves, and death would then truly have lost its sting. But since you humans do not believe in life after death, you neglect to prepare yourselves for a stay in the spiritual kingdom, and since your soul has therefore no prospect whatsoever to clothe itself after physical death in a radiantly bright spiritual garment you fear death, and rightly so, for you cannot cease to exist but earthly heaviness can still cling to you, and your awakening after the body's death will not be a happy one .... But you will awaken, regardless of how imperfectly your soul is shaped .... it will find out that it has not and cannot cease to exist .... And this fate is unconsciously dreaded by you humans who fear death.

Yet you ought to remember the One Who has overcome death .... Jesus Christ wants to awaken you to life, He wants to give you an eternally-indestructible life which you shall never lose again. Accept His gift of grace, remember Him during fearful hours and commend your soul to Him, and appeal to Him not to let it fall prey to death, but to have mercy on it and to help it attain life .... And, truly, you will not have sent your appeal to Him in vain .... Your fear will disappear to be replaced by blissful calm, a calm which only Jesus Christ can bestow upon the soul. The living faith in Jesus Christ dispels all dread of death, for the human being knows that he will rise again, just as Jesus Christ arose on the third day.

But anyone without this faith in Him will fear death or believe that he will cease to exist, that he will return into oblivion from where he imagines himself to have emerged .... And he, as well as all others who lived on earth without Christ, will have a rude awakening .... And it will take a long time until they are convinced that they have not perished, but that they can only escape their lifeless state if they call upon the One Whom they refused to acknowledge on earth, but Who alone can give them life again .... Death need only be the transition into a new and immortal life .... It need not worry people on any account, because Jesus Christ has prevailed over it, because He accomplished the act of Salvation in order to deliver people from a condition which had been brought into the world by His adversary .... But Jesus' act of Salvation and resurrection are not properly valued by people .... Many know of them and yet do not believe, and therefore they are also unable to derive the benefit from the effects of the act of Salvation and resurrection .... But the living faith gives people firm confidence and therefore also removes their every fear of death .... And these will blissfully fall asleep in the Lord and joyfully awaken with Him in the kingdom of light and beatitude .... For they will eternally not taste death again, they will only ever have eternal life ....

Amen

Translation handled by Heidi Hanna

Fear of dying .... Beholding the spiritual kingdom before death ....

B.D. 6637 from September 6th 1956, taken from Book No. 71

Spiritual death is far more dreadful than physical death. And it is spiritual death which people unconsciously fear if they are frightened to die, for they fear what will happen to them after the death of the body .... this fear can befall the very person who does not believe in a continuation of life after death .... The soul feels that it is in a wretched state, and it transmits this awareness as fear onto the body, which therefore fights death as long as possible.

Fear of death is an involuntary confession of psychological immaturity, for the person lacks all realisation and therefore also confidence in God's mercy, in hope for help, which it certainly would always receive if it would call for help. The soul is in utter darkness and unconsciously fears to approach an even darker night. A fully matured soul expects its final hour with complete calm, it longs for deliverance from its bodily shell, it hands itself over to the One in Whom it believes, and commends itself to Him and His grace. And often such souls are allowed to take a glance into the kingdom that awaits them and can radiantly happy open their eyes, in order to then close them forever and to escape from their body into the kingdom they beheld. Fear of death is a distinct indication of the soul's state, and such souls must be given much help by their fellow human beings so that they will still awaken in the last minute and turn to the One Who wants to help and is able to help them ....

Anyone who witnesses the death struggle and fear of a soul will be able to send a quiet, heartfelt prayer to Jesus Christ if he wants to help this soul to find inner peace .... For the soul will feel this help and reach out for the last rescue anchor, and it will be carried by the fellow human being's love when it leaves the body .... to Jesus Christ, Who will not close His ear to a sincere prayer for help. For this reason people should take especially good care of those who are afraid of dying and who thereby admit that they are still far from the light, from the right realisation and therefore also from God .... Fear of death confirms that they need help or they would be permeated by blissful calm when they feel that the hour of their departure from this earth is approaching.

And it is an act of utmost mercy and love to support a fearful soul, when nothing else can be done but to call upon Jesus Christ Himself that He may have mercy on this soul. This loving appeal will be heard and can save the soul so that it will be spared the darkest night ....

Amen

Translation handled by Heidi Hanna

Hour of death without fear .... Readiness ....

B.D. 6042 from September 4th 1954, taken from Book No. 65

Always be ready to exchange your earthly life for a life in the spiritual kingdom, then the hour of passing away from this earth will never come as a surprise to you and neither will you ever have to fear it. Whatever you think and do, always ask yourselves whether it is right before My eyes, then you will live consciously and work to improve your soul .... thus you will live for the kingdom of the beyond, and this kingdom of the beyond will be the kingdom of light for you, for which you will gladly surrender your earthly life because it is your true home.

If only all you humans were able to realise that you merely live on this earth as a test, that it is not real life but just a preparation for this real life, and that you therefore should only ever focus on evaluating it correctly .... But you regard earthly life as the only important life and consider real life in the spiritual kingdom far too little .... if you believe in it at all. You use all your strength for completely irrelevant things and don't prepare yourselves enough for the life that lies ahead of you.

The hour of death was intended to be the hour of your deliverance, when you discard your earthly garment in order to enter in light and freedom into the kingdom of peace and beatitude .... You were meant to consciously and joyfully look forward to this hour and gladly relinquish earthly life in exchange for a far better one. However, you will acquire this consciousness when you, in living faith, have lived a life of following Jesus, because only then will you clearly recognise the purpose of your earthly life and your objective .... because only then will you know of all correlations and also of a free and blissful life in the spiritual realm .... Then your spirit will be awakened, and then you will therefore place little value on earthly life and consciously strive towards the life in the spiritual kingdom, in light and happiness ....

You are certainly informed of it but you will only accept it as truth when love has kindled a light within you .... Hence you first have to live a life of love .... Then death will not longer scare you, then you will already have the connection with the spiritual kingdom, then so many hands will reach out to you from there which will show you the way until the end of your life .... And then you will live every day on earth as it is My will .... Then you will prepare yourselves for a blissful end, and the hour of your passing away from this earth will be for you the awakening into a life in light and magnificence ....

Amen

Translation handled by Heidi Hanna

Ask Jesus Christ for forgiveness of guilt even before death!

Conclusion of earthly progress only with Jesus Christ ....

B.D. 7959 from August 6th 1961, taken from Book No. 83

You have come a long way already but the fact that you are still walking on earth is proof that you have not yet concluded your path of development .... with the exception of those who incarnated on earth for the purpose of a spiritual mission and whose souls had thus previously covered this progress of development and had found admission in the realm of light .... But I speak to you humans who are not yet perfect, who had once deserted Me and had to walk this long path of development so that you can now, at the human stage, voluntarily take the last test of will, the passing of which will ensure your entry into the realm of light. Hence you are not yet perfect but you have ascended from the deepest depths to the heights, if only by law of compulsion .... The depths had to release you because My will had intended this long path for you which pulled you away from My adversary's domination, or your ascent would have been impossible .... But now he has been given his right once again because you are still his property since you had previously followed him into the abyss voluntarily and this free will has not yet made the new decision: for him or for Me, Who longs for your return but will not force you if you willingly want to stay with him.

Thus, at the human stage, My adversary once again applies his power by influencing your will but he is unable to force it as you have to decide of your own accord which lord you will choose. However, I cannot stop him using all his persuasions to chain you to him .... I cannot stop him from using ploys to tempt you, only to keep your soul or to regain it if he has already lost it .... You now have to face him yourselves voluntarily and fight against him if you want to free yourselves from him. And you really need not fear his strength because you have a strong Helper by your side Whom you only need to ask to win the battle with Him: Jesus Christ, your Redeemer from sin and death .... Even though you, as a human being, have already overcome the deepest abyss, even though you, thanks to My help, have also come considerably closer to Me during the infinitely long period of development .... yet the burden of your original sin as a result of your desertion from Me, constantly pushes you down again and you would never be able to resist the will of My adversary if Jesus Christ would not help you, if He would not give you an intensified will which He Himself acquired for you by His death on the cross.

My adversary's power over you is too great that you could resist it with your own strength .... But you are guaranteed a supply of strength by just giving yourselves to Jesus Christ and requesting Him to take upon Himself the guilt of which you are not yet released and which therefore inescapably chains you to My adversary .... Jesus Christ, in Whom I manifested Myself, will now take on the guilt because, with His death on the cross, He paid the purchase price for all souls to the adversary who now has to release the souls, if they want it themselves .... And with His help you can conclude the path of your earthly life, with His help you can become free of all guilt and enter through the gate into the realm of light, which otherwise is closed to you, but which will be opened by Jesus Christ for all souls who have voluntarily decided to take the path to the cross to liberate themselves from the burden of sin. As a human being on earth you only have a short time at your disposal but it is sufficient to completely release yourselves from every form, however, this always depends on the human being's attitude towards the Divine Redeemer Jesus Christ .... because your former sin consisted of your rejection of Me and in the resistance of My strength of love .... In Jesus Christ, however, you shall know and acknowledge Me Myself, then you will also consciously accept My strength of love again and then nothing will stand in the way of your unity with Me .... Then the infinite long walk through the creations of earth and as earthly human being will have led to the right goal .... it will have resulted in your liberation and you will once again be candidates for My kingdom which will admit you and offer you blessings as it was in the beginning ....

Amen

Translation handled by Heidi Hanna

The way to the cross must be taken ....

B.D. 7717 from October 1st 1960, taken from Book No. 81

All of you will return to the heavenly home, all of you will be embraced by My fatherly arms again, and all of you will be immeasurably blessed. This is certain for you who are still unfinished in the flesh on this earth or in the kingdom of the beyond. For one day the time will come when your heart will be aglow with love and press towards the father's heart, and then I will have achieved My aim which I set Myself when I created the spirits. And if only My love were decisive then the heavenly realms would have welcomed you all long ago, for I long for My children and want to make them immeasurably happy. But My love cannot act against My law of eternity .... And this demands the voluntary return of the beingness which had once departed from Me and had also distanced itself from Me of its own free will. And thus the path to ascent for you humans .... who are the once fallen original spirits .... of quite different lengths of time. It can be covered in a short time, but it can also require eternities, it can need several periods of development and also mean for you endless long times in torment and bondage .... But you will reach your aim one day. As human beings you don't know about the agonizing state of bondage, but I know about it and I love you and would like to spare you the agony so that you don't sink back into the same state again which you have long overcome as human beings. This is why I offer Myself as your guide on your earthly path of life, this is why I approach you on the pilgrim path in order to show you the shortest path which leads upwards. And this path leads to the cross .... The path of ascent leads to Jesus Christ, and anyone who takes this path will most certainly return to Me in the father's house, because Jesus Christ and I are one .... because you acknowledge lf Me Myself when you recognize Him and His act of salvation and thus allow yourselves to be redeemed by Him, Who has redeemed the guilt of your past apostasy from Me for you. This path has to be irrevocably taken on earth or in the beyond, the path to the cross, because then My love, which had to step back for the sake of justice when you fell, can become active again. But justice was satisfied through the man Jesus, in Whom I embodied Myself .... Thus My love has created the balance, justice has not been eliminated, for as a human being I took upon Myself an abundance of suffering and pain as a sacrifice of atonement for the great guilt which once was your apostasy from Me .... But your will must now also accept this sacrifice of atonement, your will must consciously request the forgiveness of guilt, thus you must confess yourselves guilty under the cross .... You must freely call upon the divine redeemer Jesus Christ for forgiveness of the guilt of sin, for His mercy and His grace .... You must take the path to the cross .... And then My love can take hold of you again, for you then recognize Me Myself, Whom you once refused to acknowledge, for He and I are one, I Myself redeemed you on the cross from sin and death in the human being Jesus .... And once you have taken this path to the cross, then your earthly progress will be complete, then the stage of development will have been reached which secures your entrance into the spiritual kingdom. Then you need no longer fear a repeated path through earthly creation, then you can ascend ever higher in the spiritual kingdom, My love will draw you and your love for Me will become ever stronger .... father and child will unite, and the beatitudes I prepare for My children will be unlimited, because My love is also unlimited and wants to give itself away eternally ...._>Amen

Translation handled by Doris Boekers

Forgiveness through Jesus Christ .... Degree of light and love ....

B.D. 7660 from July 30th 1960, taken from Book No. 80

And you will enter eternal peace, for all adversity will have ceased to exist, all worries and anguish will be over, you will be surrounded by an abundance of light and your life will be a blissfully happy one .... Nevertheless, you must have attained maturity of soul, all guilt of sin must have been taken from you, you must have become My Own during your life on earth and have returned to the Father from Whom you once came forth. Hence, you must have found redemption through Jesus Christ, otherwise you would still not be free from the guilt of sin and your entrance to the kingdom of light and bliss would be closed for you. Therefore you should strive to find forgiveness of the guilt of sin while you are still living on earth. Try .... if you still can't believe in Him as yet .... to find clarification about Jesus, the Son of God and Redeemer of the world. And appeal to Me Myself for conveying this clarification to you so that you can believe in Him with a living faith and subsequently step under His cross with your burden of sin and ask Him for forgiveness .... And all guilt will be taken from you. This will ensure your entrance into the kingdom of light, because Jesus Christ had paid for your guilt with His death on the cross. However, the degrees of light after your death can be quite different, for it depends on your soul's state of maturity as to how light-receptive it has become on earth .... It depends on your way of life on earth and to what extent you lived up to My will .... that is, whether the commandments of love for God and your neighbour had become your guideline for your conduct and you had changed your nature into love. Only the degree of love determines your soul's maturity. And no-one can practise love on your behalf, love is the law of eternal order in which you must live in order to adapt to your fundamental nature again, in order to become My image once more according to your purpose. And to become love means to discard all faults and flaws which still adhere to your soul, to fight against all low cravings, to shape your nature into humility, gentleness, peacefulness, mercy, righteousness and patience .... to dispose of all bad habits and to always remain in heartfelt contact with Me, Whom you acknowledge in Jesus Christ as your Father of eternity. You must fight against all faults during your life on earth, then your soul will become as translucent as a diamond and able to receive the rays of light which signify its beatitude in the spiritual kingdom. Then it will live forever, it will not know death anymore, no sin and no blemish .... it will be pure and clear and thus also worthy of My presence, and it will be able to behold Me face to face .... For it will see its Saviour Jesus Christ, in Whom I made Myself visible to My living creations, just as they once desired .... Shaping yourselves into love must be accomplished by you humans on earth yourselves, if you want to be inconceivably happy one day. Yet first take care to dispose of your burden of sin, for this will draw you down, and being burdened by sin prevents you from entering the kingdom of light. If you find it difficult to believe in Jesus Christ then try to pray to your God and Creator Who called you into life and appeal to Him for enlightenment and for His help to believe .... And I will truly grant you this prayer, I will not leave those in ignorance who desire to know, and I will present the truth to him such that he will be able to accept it .... For faith in Jesus Christ as the Son of God and Redeemer of the world is absolutely essential in order to be accepted into the kingdom of peace and bliss. Only then will you acknowledge Me, Whom you once refused to acknowledge, from Whom you once separated of your own free will and fell into the abyss .... You must want to return to Me voluntarily, and you can make this will known by turning to Jesus Christ and admitting your guilt of sin with an appeal for forgiveness .... Then your sins will be forgiven, I Myself, Who accomplished the act of Salvation in Jesus, the man, will absolve you from them, and I will also help you to attain maturity while you are still on earth, providing you want to unite yourselves with Me, to return to Me voluntarily and to shape yourselves again as you were in the beginning ....

Amen

Translation handled by Heidi Hanna

Jesus Christ opens the gate to eternal life ....

B.D. 6850 from June 12th 1957, taken from Book No. 73

The gate into a life of light and glory is open to all of you who have found Jesus Christ; however, it remains closed to those who are still distant from Him and His act of Salvation. Therefore you all should seriously ask yourselves whether you have already taken the path to Him, to the cross; for His path on earth ended with His death on the cross, hence you will have to seek and find Him there, and that is where you must go if you want to participate in His act of Salvation. The goal of His life on earth was the cross, because the crucifixion was intended to bring redemption to you humans.

Thus you will find the divine Redeemer under the cross, which means that you will carry your guilt of sin, for which the human being Jesus died on the cross, to Him under the cross, that you will thereby prove your belief in His divine mission and so also reveal your will to be released from the guilt which separates you from Me, your God and Father of eternity .... In that case you acknowledge Me Myself Who accomplished the act of Salvation in the human being Jesus .... Your path must lead to the cross of Golgotha if you want to reach the gate into eternal life, for no other path leads to this gate. All of you should seriously question your attitude towards Jesus Christ .... However, with the exception of a few, you fail to do so, even if His Gospel is repeatedly proclaimed to you, even if His teaching of love is time and again presented to you and you continue to hear His name mentioned as that of the divine Redeemer .... You keep your ears closed and all Words bypass you like empty talk. You are barely touched by what you hear about Jesus Christ and His labour of love, it does not enter your hearts, it has not yet come alive in you and you have not yet spent any serious thought on what you have received so far. One day you will have to stop short at the gate to eternity, you will not find admittance, for you had not found salvation as yet because you did not take the path to the cross, His blood was unable to cleanse you and therefore you will arrive at the gate to eternity burdened by guilt. It is not enough to merely voice Jesus' name with your mouth in order to be released from your guilt .... You must approach Him yourselves, you must hand yourselves over to Him with childlike trust and in awareness of your fault and sincerely appeal to Him that He should accept you, that He might also have shed His blood for you, and you must faithfully wait for His forgiveness .... And the weight of your guilt will fall away, clearing the path to the light and opening for you the gate into eternal beatitude .... Jesus Christ Himself will escort you into His kingdom, but without Him you will never be able to go through this gate. If only you would believe that His name is everything, that calling upon His name with profound faith will lift you out of all the adversity which is the result of the sin which still weighs you down .... This is why I descended to earth in the human being Jesus, in order to relieve you of the immense burden of sin and I died on the cross in order to redeem the great guilt which makes all of you sigh while you live on earth .... I died on your behalf .... but you must want to belong to those for Whom I have died .... Hence you must also take the path to the cross, you must make contact with Jesus Christ Who concluded His life on earth on the cross .... Then He will walk with you and guide you into His kingdom which He promised to all those who believe in Him ....

Amen

Translation handled by Heidi Hanna

'No one comes to the Father ....'

B.D. 6579 from June 25th 1956, taken from Book No. 70

No one comes to the Father except through Me .... The extreme importance of these words also explains the necessity of leading those people who are not yet believers to faith in Jesus Christ, or of advocating a living faith where knowledge of Jesus Christ is already present. For no one can come to Me who does not recognise Me Myself in Jesus Christ .... Because there are people who indeed say that they believe in 'God', since He gives evidence of Himself in everything which surrounds the human being, but who do not want to accept Jesus Christ as Son of God and Saviour of the world although they do not consider themselves unbelievers. But these people are still very distant from their God and Creator, they have not yet come into closer contact with Me and hence their thoughts cannot become enlightened.

They are still burdened with the sin of the former apostasy from Me, and this sin ties them to My adversary, they will not get away from him without Jesus Christ. But not many people know about this sin of the past apostasy from Me, consequently they are not aware of the significance of Jesus and His act of Salvation either. Providing people know the teachings of the Gospel, providing they know the words spoken by Jesus on earth, they could also reflect on the words 'No one comes to the Father except through Me ....' And if only they seriously wanted more information about this, they would certainly receive it, and the thought of these words would certainly never leave them again ....

The only way to Me is through Jesus Christ, since the redemption of the guilt of sin has to come first in order to be accepted by Me .... No being who had voluntarily become sinful can approach Me before salvation through Jesus Christ. This is a law which even My infinite love cannot reverse. And no human being will really feel completely confident in his heart about God either, Whom he may well acknowledge with words or superficial thoughts, because on serious reflection he would know that he does not have the right relationship with his eternal God and Creator ....

He will never confide in Me like a child to his Father, he will only believe that God exists but not establish a close connection with Me, which requires love .... Because love also enlightens his spirit, love would improve his spiritual vision .... Love would make him question but not make an erroneous statement. Every person will feel slightly uneasy when he contemplates spiritual thoughts and will not yet have made contact with Jesus Christ .... The course of suffering and crucifixion will not remain unknown to him, time and again he will enter into conversations with other people or be reminded by them of Jesus Christ because I constantly guide his thought to the human being Jesus, Who lived on earth and experienced a painful end .... Even if he does not yet acknowledge Him he does know of Jesus' earthly life, and I Myself will remind him of Me in Jesus Christ.

And corresponding to the human being's degree of love will be his acceptance or rejection .... Wherever there is love I take hold of the person Myself, and his resistance will steadily lessen, until he finally sees the human being Jesus in an entirely different light than at the beginning, when He was still defensively opposed to Him. However, if he does not want to learn, if his will is still hostile at the hour of his death, he cannot expect blissfulness in the spiritual kingdom, in spite of a right way of life he can only be accepted into the realm where all deniers of Christ dwell, because he refused to be redeemed on earth, and he will enter the spiritual kingdom in a constrained state .... But even there he can still find his divine Saviour and Redeemer ....

And again, it is a great mercy on My part that I will meet all those in the spiritual kingdom who so far had rejected Me, that I will hear every appeal sent to Me as the Redeemer, and that I will then take hold of the caller's hand and lead him from that realm into My divine region .... Because I will still retrieve the souls from the abyss providing I Am acknowledged .... providing a soul has found the way to Jesus Christ, Whom it had rejected on earth but without Whom it cannot reach its goal. The kingdom of light is closed to every soul as long as Jesus Christ does not open the gate for it, but this necessitates that He is acknowledged as Son of God and Redeemer of the world. For this reason the human being Jesus said the words 'No one comes to the Father except through Me.'

Because I Myself spoke through the human being Jesus, I Myself wanted to be acknowledged in Him, Who merely served as a cover for Me during earthly life .... but which I kept even in the spiritual kingdom so that I could be a visible God to all My living creations, since I was an eternal Spirit after all .... and as such could not be seen by the created beings. I chose a form for Myself in order to become a visible God for you humans, and in this form I accomplished the act of Salvation. Consequently, you also have to acknowledge the form in which I had dwelled, and then you will already have taken the right path to Me, your Father of eternity .... However, without Jesus Christ you will not ever be able to come to Me, because without Jesus Christ My adversary will not release you, since you still belong to him as a result of your will ....

Amen

Translation handled by Heidi Hanna

The hour of death

Hour of death ....

B.D. 1798 from January 31th 1941, taken from Book No. 27

The hour of death has become the subject of insurmountable fear for many people, they are anxious and afraid of every thought of it, and this is always a sign of insufficient maturity of soul. The soul unconsciously recognises its deficient condition and perceives that the death of the body is the end of its earthly existence .... it intuitively senses that it has not made the best use of its earthly life, hence the human being finds the thought of death frightening. The uncertainty after death disturbs him, he is full of doubt about life after death yet he is not entirely convinced that his life is finally over either. And precisely this uncertainty about the ‘afterwards’ makes him anxious about the hour of separation from this world. The more mature a human being is the less he is affected by the thought of death, the reason for this rests in the realisation that the real life does not start until after the death of the body. Prerequisite for entering the spheres of light is the ability to surrender the earthly life with an easy heart as then the human being is no longer attached to earthly possession, he has overcome matter ....

Everything the human being leaves behind on earth are earthly possessions which should no longer be desired but gladly and joyfully abandoned. Everything the human being holds dear on earth he should be able to give up with an easy heart, then his departure from the world is easy. There should be nothing to hold a person back or the release from earth would always be a fight. Consequently every desire should be overcome at an early stage so that death can approach the human being at any hour and never take him by surprise. Equally decisive for the physical ending of the human being is the will for God because anyone who longs for God is happy when his earthly life comes to an end. Spiritually he is already in those spheres and just yearns for the hour which finally takes him where the spirit wants to go, to his true home. Hence the hour of death can mean anxiety, fear and horror for one person, while for the other it can be the granting of what he had long dreamt of and hoped for. It is the release from every form for him, it denotes his entrance into the eternal kingdom, into everlasting glory ....

What the human being regards as death can be his entrance into eternal life if he has lived life consciously, i.e. with God, and is therefore mature for life in eternity .... However, it can also really signify death, the soul senses this and fears the hour that will inevitably come when the time of earthly life, which God has designated for the human being, is concluded. Every human being should therefore think of the hour of his death and in view of it live his earthly life consciously, i.e. to improve his soul that it may achieve the degree of maturity which guarantees an easy and painless passing over from earth into the eternal kingdom ....

Amen

Translation handled by Heidi Hanna

Hour of death ....

B.D. 2348 from May 27th 1942, taken from Book No. 32

The soul’s separation from the body is usually a painful experience for the body because a certain degree of maturity is necessary for a painless separation, which is rarely achieved by the person. The human being’s hour of death will always make him aware that he no longer will be able to strive, that he no longer will be able to achieve anything by himself when he has left the human shell. And depending on the state of his soul the hour of death will then become more or less difficult for him. As long as the human being is on earth he still has the choice to purify himself, and the soul in the beyond will thank its Creator for having been given this opportunity before its departure that it will not have to suffer as much in the beyond. Since God is righteous the soul has to accept its fate in the beyond and needs far greater suffering to attain the degree of maturity. Nevertheless it is not possible to enter the spheres of light without it, consequently this higher degree of maturity has to be achieved through suffering and pain and thus a long struggle before death should always be viewed as an ascent. It is true that people only see the state of suffering, which contributes towards their fear of death since the hour of death seems unbearable to them, and yet it is only bestowed upon the human being by the greatest love to provide for him a brighter light in the beyond.

And this love is the foundation of everything .... God only sends suffering and pain to earth for the purpose of removing a person’s physical desires, that he then will pay more attention to his soul and attempt to perfect it. Every suffering which results in this is blessed by God .... Time on earth passes quickly and with good will can be used to abandon everything worldly, then the soul shapes itself in accordance to God’s will and at the end of its earthly life requires no further exceptional suffering to enter the kingdom of light. However, suffering always contributes towards higher maturity and is therefore a blessing for the human being who otherwise would have to dispose of his errors and failings in the beyond which would also be rather wretched .... thus his suffering cannot be prevented even though the hour of death apparently proceeds silently and without pain. God knows every human being’s state of soul and his willingness to fight all impurities; hence He complies with the human being by offering him the opportunity to accomplish his goal .... by allowing the hour of death to be his last opportunity for arriving in eternity purged and purified ....

Amen

Translation handled by Heidi Hanna

Hour of death .... Explanation of suffering ....

B.D. 4033 from April 30th 1947, taken from Book No. 49

You never know how your end will happen, and therefore you should call upon God's mercy every day that you might receive it in the hour of your death. Even if you live in accordance with God's will your end can be difficult if it is to serve you to completely purify and liberate yourselves forever. God's wisdom and love is yours until your last hour on this earth, and as long as your souls are still able to change you will be given the opportunity even at the hour of death. For this reason devoted people often have to suffer in the flesh and cannot find an explanation for it because they are unable to detect God's love therein. And yet, divine love causes this suffering because it is the best means for the soul to acquire a degree of maturity within a short period of time which allows the light to permeate the soul in the beyond, and the soul will thank its Creator once it is free and recognises God's great love and mercy. Thus all suffering has to be seen as evidence of God's love, and even the end is blessed if it is accompanied by suffering, although it does not appear to the human being that way. The soul indeed separates itself from the body with pain, but immediately lifts itself into the kingdom of the blessed spirits. It not only leaves earth physically but also spiritually and also takes the body's fully matured substances along, because every degree of suffering dissolves the cover which still encloses the soul. And the person who is still able to free himself completely from immature substances on earth will be blessed .... he will have used his earthly life for his deliverance and will no longer revolt against God's will either.

In the hour of death he will certainly struggle for the peace of his soul but he will never consider his physical suffering to be unjustified, for his soul will know that the end is near, that his physical suffering will also come to an end and that the soul will derive benefit from it even if it is no longer able to convey this realisation to the body. The body, however, will separate itself from the soul as soon as it senses its perfection, because then it will have fulfilled its task of having served as an abode for this soul. The hour of death can be difficult for all of you but it can also be a blissful falling asleep in order to awaken in the kingdom of light if the soul needs no further suffering, if it has already found the union with God on earth and He then brings it home into His kingdom, into your Father's house, in order to make you blissfully happy. But you do not know how your end will happen, and therefore pray to God for mercy, ask Him for His grace and strength if God still needs to afflict you, and you will also endure the hour of death. The body will suffer but the soul will joyfully leave the body and lift itself into the spheres of light ....

Amen

Translation handled by Heidi Hanna

Think often about the hour of death ....

B.D. 7458 from November 18th 1959, taken from Book No. 78

Let it be said to all of you that every day the time you have left until the end is getting shorter .... that the time of grace, in which you can work and create after your own will, will soon be over. All your work and activity should only just relate to the salvation of your souls, you should only consider your souls and put aside all worldly things, for when you take care of your soul's salvation everything else you require will be given to you, so that you would nevertheless be maintained without your own effort. But your soul's salvation is in great danger by living your earthly life as you do now .... by only paying attention to worldly things and forgetting that your lifetime will soon be over. You keep going with the wrong attitude and just consider your body, even if you want to present yourselves to the world as 'Christians' .... You do not live with Christ, Who is and wants to remain your eternal salvation, but Who can only be united with you if you live a life of love .... You still love yourselves too much, for all you think about is to improve your standard of life; you just try to please your body ....

But do you consider your soul and what it needs to become blessed? After all, you know that you will not stay on earth forever, that you can be called away even tomorrow, and that then only the state of your soul will determine the fate that is awaiting it in the kingdom of the beyond. Then all the things the body had owned and the person will have to leave behind in this world will be worthless. Then all efforts for the sake of the body and its comfort will have been futile, but the soul stands poor and needy at the gate of eternity .... If only you humans would bear the soul's unhappy state in mind, if only you would seriously think more often about your hour of death, and if only you would believe that the short time of grace you were given as a reprieve in order to change will soon be over ....

Every day can bring riches to your soul if you live fully in the right way, if you do kind deeds, if you radiate love and kindness to your fellow human beings and help where your help is required; if you make contact with your eternal Father in prayer, if you establish the right relationship with Him like a child with its father .... It need not be a sacrifice for you, you can truly lead a God-pleasing life, yet you have to think of Him more often, you should not exclusively spend your thoughts on the world and its demands, you must always realise that everything the world can offer you is transient, but that everything which comes from God will last forever .... And in order to receive something from God which you can keep as a spiritual treasure, you will have to establish a connection with Him and remain in contact through prayer and loving actions .... Not much is asked of you but without this heartfelt bond you will always remain poor, and at the time of death your soul will be very deprived and miserable ....

And yet, it cannot be given anything that it has not acquired itself .... For this reasons you humans can only ever be warned and admonished not to walk through life irresponsibly but always think about the hour of your death, when you have to give account of how you have utilised your earthly life for the benefit of your souls .... Take stock of yourselves, think things over and strive towards the maturity of your soul, and you shall always receive help if only you verify to God your good will of coming closer to Him in order to one day being allowed to stay with Him completely once your soul has become worthy of it ....

Amen

Translation handled by Heidi Hanna

Death of the body

The soul's change of abode .... Death of the body ....

B.D. 6817 from April 28th 1957, taken from Book No. 73

The soul's change of abode .... Death of the body ....The soul is your actual Self which is immortal, which merely changes its abode after the death of the body, which has concluded its earthly progress in order to continue maturing in other spheres if it does not stay in opposition to Me and thus descend into the abyss. Hence the thought that you don't have to fear death should make you very happy, that you will live although you have to leave this earth .... and that this life is far more pleasant and joyful than earthly life as a human being could ever be. You should look forward with cheerful anticipation to the day when your external cover will be taken from your real Self, when all heaviness will fall away from you and you will be able to easily and light-heartedly lift yourselves up into your true home, which truly offers you inconceivable splendours. You should rejoice at the fact that there is no death for you because your soul will merely experience a change of abode which can make it infinitely happy ....

Why do you therefore fear death or anticipate the end of your earthly life with unease? Why has death become a horror for you humans, why does it trigger in you a feeling of fear when, in reality, it is just a transition into another sphere after all? Because you unconsciously sense that you did not live your earthly life correctly, and because your soul is not acquiring the light which would take all its fear away .... For a person who complies with My commandments of love, who thus lives on earth in accordance with My will, has no fear of death but yearns to shed his earthly cover because he longs for his true home, because love has kindled a bright light in him and, looking ahead, he also knows himself to be near to Me, where no suffering and pain, no affliction can touch him, where he feels sheltered by My love .... All people could have this blissful certainty, that they will exchange a sorrowful and difficult existence for this feeling of security when they depart from this earth, if only they would live their earthly life with this aim in mind .... if they would always follow their inner voice which clearly informs them of My will .... if they would already on earth enter into the right relationship with Me, their God and Father of eternity. The thought that their existence ends with the body's death is already the best evidence that the person's way of life does not correspond to My will, for this idea comes from the opposing spirit's influence wanting to prevent people from gaining correct realisation and therefore also constantly increasing their desire to enjoy earthly existence to the full .... for these people do not believe in the immortality of their soul, they impose on it the same restrictions as is the fate of the external frame ....

And thus they try to savour earthly life in every way, only ever considering their body but not their soul which, after physical death, has to accept a rather uncertain fate, which will be unable to experience the splendours of its true home, since due to its imperfect disposition it cannot find admission to the spheres where inconceivable beatitudes await it. Although it is still possible for the soul to detach itself from the abyss and enter into higher spheres, it nevertheless requires far more effort and exertion than on earth and will be impossible without help, yet even then the soul will have to muster its own will, which is far easier on earth. The Self cannot cease to exist but it creates its own fate of blissfulness or agony .... and only when people no longer consider their body as being 'alive' but learn to recognise the soul within the body as their actual Self, only when they learn to believe in the immortality of their soul, will they live more responsibly on earth and then no longer fear death either, which only concerns the earthly body but not its indwelling soul. Then they will live in accordance with His will and long for the hour when the soul will be allowed to leave its external cover in order to then enter the kingdom which is its true home ....

Amen

Translation handled by Heidi Hanna

Death of the body beginning of real life ....

B.D. 5696 from June 12th 1953, taken from Book No. 62

If you successfully cover the earthly lifetime for your soul, then death will no longer frighten you but you will welcome it as a gateway to eternal life. For only then will actual life await you, a blissful activity in blissful communion with like-minded souls awaits you, and you will be able to work in light and freedom, in strength and fullest knowledge. Then death will also be overcome for you and you will be blissfully happy in the vision of God. You must have attained maturity of soul .... And you can only achieve this by fulfilling God's commandments, by living a life of love for God and your neighbour. Therefore you should only strive to help your fellow human beings in spiritual and physical adversity, you should give them love and not miss a single day when you have not accomplished at least one good deed, then you will shape yourselves more and more into love and be increasingly more filled by God's strength, Who will now also turn His love towards you more, because love will always kindle love again and you will assimilate yourselves to God's fundamental being until He can draw you to Himself, until you have united yourselves with Him and will never be able to separate from Him again, because love wraps an unbreakable bond around father and child which you will never want to loosen. The actual life only begins with the death of the body, for every cover falls off you, you are free and remain free and will now live for eternity ....

Amen

Translation handled by Doris Boekers

Nothing can cease to exist .... Gate of death .... True home ....

B.D. 7161 from July 7th 1958, taken from Book No. 76

You humans must never forget that I Am Lord over life and death .... that all the strength which is needed for life flows forth from Me and that I Am also able to end all life by withdrawing My strength .... However, since I Am the primary source of all strength, it also corresponds to My fundamental nature that I will only ever grant life, guiding what is dead back into life, because the state of death .... thus, complete lack of strength .... does not correspond to My fundamental nature and therefore cannot ever be intentional on My part. I certainly have the power to destroy what I once brought into being, and this would in fact impose utter death on the being .... but it does not correspond to My perfection either to discard or change once determined resolutions ....

Once something has emerged from My strength, which was awakened to life through My will and My might, it will also exist forever, merely its composition can change because this is determined by the being itself. Hence the being itself is able to bring death upon itself, and yet it is not its own master, but I Am the Master, even over death .... that is, I will not allow the being to remain in its self-chosen state of death forever; I will not rest until it has regained life, for nothing is able to permanently resist My strength and might, and even My adversary .... who once caused this transformation from life into death .... is unable to prevent Me from sooner or later imparting the energy of life to the being again anyway, thus to awaken it from death into life ....

I Am Lord over life and death .... Consequently I also determine the hour when the human body .... the spiritual being's temporary cover .... will release the latter, when the physical life is thus concluded by 'death', but this death is only a change of the external form. For what had once emerged from Me can never cease to exist again, it is not subject to the law of death, which is indeed the fate of all things of this earth but not that of the 'spirit' within the material form. But I even determine the hour of earthly demise Myself, if the human being does not manifestly oppose Me and end his life himself and thereby indeed prolongs the state of death for an infinite time again, but he will never be able to end his existence ....

And since you now know for certain that you cannot cease to exist anymore, and that the duration of your earthly life is determined by Me, you should confidently put everything into My hands, for I truly know what signifies 'life' for you and how you will be able to attain it .... I also know that you are only able to enter into life by the gate of death, but this gate of death is just an entirely natural process without which true life is unthinkable. As yet you live on earth .... but your true home is the spiritual kingdom, and the step from the former into the latter kingdom has to be taken. But then life will be indestructible, then you will be granted strength and light and freedom, and only then will you be and remain forever blissfully happy ....

Amen

Translation handled by Heidi Hanna

Danger of the spiritual death

Transformation of the external shape after physical death .... Being spiritually dead .... Activity - Inactivity ....

B.D. 2144 from November 8th 1941, taken from Book No. 31

The human being requires vital energy for every activity, thus activity signifies life. If this strength is withdrawn from him he will be incapable of reshaping himself or other things .... he will be lifeless. But as soon as the human being has become lifeless, the external shape will nevertheless change within itself. It will dissolve, and this process will last until all substances are taken in by a new external shape again, i.e. once the spiritual substance has escaped the form, the remaining form will certainly be released from its previous purpose, nevertheless, it must find a new purpose .... it must contribute towards increasing some other external shape. The substance dissolves in order to be joined to a new external shape. This process once again requires a longer period of time .... Hence the old shape seemingly dissolves; in reality, however, the spiritual substances which the external shape also consists of enter into contact with other spiritual substances and form a new external shape because the spiritual substance, which had solidified into an external shape, must likewise undertake the path of higher development on earth, for it is still at the beginning of its development. As soon as spiritual substances are placed into this new external shape again, it will begin its function of service, thus the shape will awaken to life .... for activity is life. Each work of creation receives the flow of strength from God so that it can actively be of service, no matter in what way, and every activity results in higher development for the spiritual substance in the form. Consequently that which is alive .... thus active .... must advance in its development without fail. Only the state of death signifies a standstill of its development. But all matter shelters life within itself, for it constantly changes, albeit over various lengths of time. Even the hardest form, through external influences relating to light radiation .... thus the activity of the bearers of light .... will be stimulated to be active, although this is not noticeable to the human eye. But life also stirs in this shape and accomplishes changes which therefore confirm its life. Matter can therefore not be called entirely dead, although for the human being it appears to be lifeless. And yet, a state of lifelessness exists and this occurs in the stage as a human being .... In this stage the being receives the greatest flow of vital energy which it should use for actively being of service. And despite of this it is possible for the human being to spend his life on earth in complete idleness .... as soon as he does not use the vital energy in order to fulfil the task which is the purpose of his earthly life .... if he neglects or refrains from doing what will gain him higher development .... if he avoids accomplishing acts of love .... the pursuance of activity for which God provides the human being with the flow of vital energy .... Then his higher development will come to a standstill. This signifies a state of lifelessness, of death, and this is the worst state because it can only be remedied by the being itself .... but since the state of death is a state of weakness, the being will no longer be able to release itself from it because it rejected the strength it had previously received .... Death of the external shape merely signifies a transformation into a new form, thus, in a manner of speaking, a further possibility for higher development of the spiritual substance which the external shape consists of. But to be spiritually dead is the most horrific state, because the final grace which is at the being's disposal has been left unused .... because the flow of vitality God conveyed to this being has not been used for helpful activity and the being remains on the same level of development it was in at the beginning of its embodiment as a human being. Spiritual progress without activity is impossible; the being becomes weak as a result of its inactivity and enters the beyond without strength ....

Amen

Translation handled by Heidi Hanna

Spiritual death .... term "life" ....

B.D. 4088 from July 22nd 1947, taken from Book No. 50

The human being can live and yet be spiritually dead, but conversely he can also die and yet enter eternal life, except that this is a spiritual life, whereas the former only concerns the body, whereby the soul is in a state of lightlessness and consequently also without strength, thus a state of death is its fate, even if it lives in the midst of a joyful environment. For earthly life is only an illusory life which does not last, yet the human being who is spiritually dead is also without realisation and therefore places the illusory life before the actual life, the life of the spirit in eternity. But what are you human beings basically and really? You are spiritual, only enclosed by a material cover, and as soon as this cover falls, which is transient, the spiritual in you is free, no matter in what state the soul leaves the body .... It is free from its outer form, but not every soul is free to will and able to create. But wanting and being able to create out of itself is its bliss, it is the state which was its original purpose and which has been lost. Wanting and being able to create, however, is synonymous with life .... being able to be continuously active according to its will .... On earth, too, 'life' means being able to be active unhindered by physical weaknesses and infirmities, for an earthly life which is accompanied by the latter is not fully valued and is regarded as a shortcoming as long as the human being does not have the right knowledge about his earthly task. On earth, however, even the inactive person usually compensates himself by fulfilling earthly desires and thus helps himself to overcome his state of weakness or conscious inactivity .... idleness .... taking himself day by day, which was given to him for the upward development of his soul. In the spiritual kingdom, on the other hand, the soul must do without any anaesthetic, it must feel the state of its inactivity oppressive, it must become a torment to it so that it seeks to escape from it. Its lack of strength prevents it from changing its state on its own authority, it is poor in every respect and has to live in want until help is brought to it in its adversity through the prayer of people close to it on earth. For where love sends such a prayer after it into eternity, a glimmer of realisation will come to the soul in a flash. If it uses this, the light around it will soon become stronger and the dreadful torments of lightlessness will subside. But the desire for life now awakens in it and stimulates it to activity, but activity in the beyond is: to work in love, just as the soul can only gain eternal life on earth through a life of love, which only gives its soul the right life. And thus death need never frighten a person who endeavours to live a life of love on earth, for he will not die but live in eternity. But for the others, who only value earthly life alone, death will retain its sting, for they are truly in the state of death after their demise, only that they are not completely extinguished but that the awareness of their existence clings to them extraordinarily and often such that they only think of themselves and pay no attention to the hardship of the souls around them. And then they are in deepest danger of having to remain in the state of death for eternities, for only love can give life, because the law of love has to be fulfilled on earth as well as in the beyond, because without love there is no life and the human being can never be saved. Life and death can therefore be close together, a person's passing away need not signify his death, just as a person's life on earth can only be called life if the spirit is constantly active, if the person sets himself a spiritual aim and eagerly pursues it; if he works with love as his spirit tells him to do, for he will not die but live for eternity ....

Amen

Translation handled by Christian Taffertshofer

Strokes of fate .... Spiritual death ....

B.D. 7853 from March 17th 1961, taken from Book No. 82

People who no longer have faith in a God and Creator, in the soul's continuation of life after death, have already succumbed to spiritual death, for they do not believe that they live on earth for a purpose and reason but only regard this life as an end in itself. They only move on an earthly level, their thoughts don't find the path into the spiritual kingdom, for they refuse to accept and follow thoughts which originate from there. They are purely humanly-orientated creatures with such a low degree of maturity that the destiny of a renewed banishment almost certainly awaits them, because their free will, instead of striving upwards, aims downwards again .... They have already attained some life and yet surrender to death again .... And neither can they be stopped because it is their free will, because it concerns the last and entirely free decision of will in earthly life. God, however, wants to give everlasting life to people .... And people must accept it from His hand, they cannot receive it from anywhere else than from their eternal God and Creator, nevertheless, they don't believe in Him and thus they won't ask Him for it either. Consequently, He can only impose upon them a destiny in earthly life which dissuades them from the material world and makes them think .... He can only shatter their earthly happiness and hopes because he wants to save them, because He wants to help them to attain the life which will last forever .... For if the human being's every earthly wish and craving finds fulfilment, he will constantly want more and increasingly turn his thoughts towards earthly things, and then his life will only be an end in itself for him but never become the means to an end.

You should therefore not be surprised that events which, in an earthly sense, have a disastrous effect on those who are affected by them, will increase during the last days .... that accidents and all kinds of disasters will claim countless human lives, that earthly possessions will be destroyed and that people will have to suffer illness and distress .... These are merely the means used by God Himself in order to find access to those people's hearts who refuse access to Him as long as their earthly way of life is good .... Anything He can still do will be done by Him in order to save those people who are approaching death. For spiritual death is far worse than physical death, which need not affect the soul if the person has lived his earthly life appropriately .... the soul cannot die but it must suffer the consequences of the person's thinking and conduct on earth. It will irrevocably have to experience the fate of renewed banishment if it still hasn't found God before the end, if it does not learn to recognise Him before the end and consciously acknowledges Him and appeals to Him for help and mercy in its spiritual adversity. And to make this possible much is yet to happen which you don't think you can reconcile with the love of a God .... But it is love, no matter how cruel it seems to you, for the soul's spiritual death is far more painful than the most horrendous strokes of fate can be on this earth .... For earthly life comes to an end, the soul, however, must spend an infinitely long time in torment and darkness again before it will receive the grace once more to live on earth as a human being with the same task: to voluntarily make a decision in favour of the One from Whom it once originated .... to voluntarily decide in favour of God from Whom it once voluntarily turned away and therefore became wretched. And it can only become blissfully happy again if it has fulfilled the meaning and purpose of its existence as a human being .... Then it will attain life again, it will no longer need to fear death, it will live forever as soon as it returns to God once more, as soon as it has united with Him again, for which its existence as a human being provided it with the opportunity to do and its will made the right decision ....

Amen

Translation handled by Heidi Hanna

Resurrection of the flesh

Resurrection of the flesh ....

B.D. 6000 from July 13th 1954, taken from Book No. 65

The will for truth guarantees correct thinking and correct understanding .... You, who want truth, will receive the purest truth, you need not fear any error and thus will always be blessed if you want to spread the truth. Let Me know what you cannot understand as yet .... what gives rise to doubt .... and I will teach and enlighten you ....

The doctrine of the resurrection of the flesh .... as you humans would dearly like to understand it .... becomes untenable as soon as you have penetrated spiritual knowledge to some extent, as soon as you have come closer to the truth and tried to explain the meaning of My Words in a spiritual sense. What I said is eternal, unchangeable truth .... but the meaning you try to read into it is truly not in My Word .... But every person will be able to grasp the spiritual meaning of My Words if only he sincerely strives for truth. Anyone who prays to Me Myself for understanding, who tries to penetrate the truth, will soon plainly and clearly realise the spiritual meaning of the Word, and he will not get stuck to the letter .... ‘Resurrection of the flesh ....’ These words mean the same to you humans as ‘life after death’ ....

To you, the word ‘life’ has the same meaning as ‘to live in the flesh’ as long as your spirit is not yet awakened, as long as the real meaning of ‘life’ is still unknown to you. People who do not believe in a continuation of life believe that their existence ends with their physical death. Being in their physical body means ‘life’ to them. However, they know that they will lose this shell through death but they do not believe in a trinity of body, soul and spirit .... Only the body exists for them, the ‘flesh’, and once this has died the expression ‘life’ is over for them. Resurrection of the flesh signifies the resurrection of the body to them. They only associate this with their physical body, and it is a difficult doctrine .... the ‘resurrection of the flesh’, which people are expected to believe ....

Nevertheless, it can be a blessing if, due to this teaching, the human being believes in resurrection .... in life after death. As a result of this belief he will also change his nature and this change can result in an awakening, in an illumination by My spirit .... And then he will also understand the Word ‘resurrection of the flesh ....’ Then he will comprehend its spiritual meaning .... Resurrection means: to awaken from death into life .... to arise from a state of sleep .... to step out of darkness into light .... And thus, for the first time, everything that was concealed by the darkness of night will come into light .... It will arise and reveal itself .... it will come alive in order to bear witness .... In the state of death nothing happens that could be declared. However, what happened in life, in the state when you lived on earth in the flesh, now becomes evident, it reveals itself, it arises to give evidence for or against you .... And not, that the physical body of flesh rises again from the dust in order to shroud you once more for a new life. For this body of flesh is just a transient shell for the immortal soul, which cannot die but it can be spiritually dead on its departure from earth. Nevertheless, it can still awaken to life in the spiritual realm .... thus still rise from the dead even there .... if it finds its way to Jesus Christ, Who will then give it ‘life’ ....

Even Jesus became flesh when He came to earth, and even this flesh had to suffer earthly death. Jesus rose from the dead to confirm to you that your life will not end with the death of your body, that your soul, too, can arise to eternal life .... but to confirm the truth of His Words He let His body rise from the dead too .... and yet, it was not a resurrection of the flesh, for His body had spiritualised itself. The soul had donned the garment of the spirit and withdrawn all spiritual substances from the earthly body since, due to His life and death, it had already become completely spiritualised .... Thus the body’s physical substances, which are essentially spiritual substances too, had already achieved their final objective on earth and thus could join the soul and .... because it had been Jesus’ will .... also become visible to His disciples in order to strengthen their faith. And since a perfect spirit is not earthbound, Jesus could rise into spiritual spheres .... when He ascended to heaven ....

You humans, too, will have a body after your resurrection .... a spiritual garment, and this will be in accordance with your flesh, for ‘you will reap what you have sown ....’ If you have sinned in the flesh, the garment of your soul will give it away. If you have done good works out of love, you will be radiant and thus recognisable too. Yet your soul will never again put on the heavy earthly garment, which was its abode during the short earthly time in order to be able to survive in the material world .... Anyone who knows the meaning and purpose of the material creation, who knows about the fallen spirits’ development through this creation for the purpose of ascending to Me, will not need such explanations, but he needs to be able to refute a doctrine which is absurd due to wrong interpretation ....

But if you absolutely want to speak about the resurrection of the ‘flesh’, let the explanation suffice you that My Word will rise again to bear witness for or against you .... I Am the Word that was made flesh .... and I approach every human being in the Word .... And when the last day has come, when every one of you will have to be judged, My Word itself will judge you .... you, who received My Word and considered it in accordance with your will .... The flesh will rise again .... because it was offered to you as nourishment, you were meant to ‘eat My flesh’ and ‘drink My blood’, you were meant to accept My Word eagerly and let it strengthen you .... And you will have to justify yourselves before Me how you have used My gift of love. This explanation also corresponds to the truth, and it should encourage you to use your life in the flesh on this earth by accepting His food and drink, Who is the eternal Word that became ‘flesh’ for your sake ....

You will find wisdom shining forth from every explanation, even if you humans have not yet penetrated into spiritual knowledge. And if your spirit is awake, you will readily accept every one of My explanations, for they will satisfy you, whereas the wrong interpretation of My Word will only stir a will of resistance in you and must do so, because this wrong interpretation stems from My adversary whose aim it is to confuse a person’s thoughts, to divert him from the truth and to remove any belief in life after death. A wrong interpretation such as this also proves the spiritually low level of people, and also of those who bring My Word to them even though they have not yet penetrated the meaning of My Words themselves .... The letter kills .... only the spirit gives life .... And all of you should ask for this spirit, you should pray for enlightened thinking and strive for pure truth, and your prayer will certainly not go unheeded ....

Amen

Translation handled by Heidi Hanna

Resurrection .... Decomposition of the flesh ....

B.D. 7262 from January 21st 1959, taken from Book No. 77

Everyone of you living on earth will physically die, but your soul will either arise into life or remain dead, if it did not strive for life on earth. Thus, resurrection is assured to all of you who desire to live .... For those who do not believe in the resurrection do not desire life for their soul either, instead, only the life of their physical body is possibly desirable for them, which they seek to prolong as far as they are able to do so. But they will die and remain dead for an infinitely long time to come, even though one day resurrection will be assured to them too .... However, anyone who seeks and strives towards attaining life for his soul can also be certain that it will rise from the dead after the death of the body, for Jesus Christ provided the evidence for this, Who arose from the dead on the third day, Who had conquered death and the one who had brought death into the world. Admittedly, His resurrection is being doubted by believers and unbelievers, for even the believers are unable to grasp this greatest of miracles and are often inclined to harbour quiet doubts as long as they merely 'believe' but have not yet brought this faith alive properly. But as soon as My spirit can work in the human being these doubts will be clarified and Jesus' resurrection will be the clear evidence of his own resurrection for him, he will know that he will not die but only enter from this life into the kingdom of the beyond, where he will live forever.

The resurrection of Jesus Christ is a constantly disputed problem amongst people, for on the one hand they want to doubt it, on the other hand they want to deduce from it a resurrection of 'the flesh' because they believe that Jesus also arose in the flesh on the third day .... They don't yet realise that Jesus only made Himself visible to people in order to help them to believe, but that they only ever saw his spiritual body which presented itself to them visibly. All the substances of his physical body had spiritualised themselves through His crucifixion, and thus the 'man' Jesus had put on a spiritual garment when He visibly approached His disciples .... And you, too, will put on this spiritual garment at your resurrection into life .... The physical body stays behind and its substances continue the path of higher development; hence the body of flesh decomposes and its substances animate other forms again which are still at the beginning of their development .... Thus they will never enclose the soul again, they will never be the shell for the soul again and be resurrected with it at the same time .... And yet the soul will arise from the dead if it has fulfilled My will on earth, if it strives to enter the life I promised it when I lived on earth as Jesus, the human being. A resurrection is assured to all of you, yet you determine the time yourselves. However, you must gain the right understanding of a 'resurrection of the flesh', for the works of your flesh will certainly be judged and according to these will be your resurrection .... either to life or, if your works give evidence against you, to death, the banishment into hard matter. And this is once again an infinitely long lasting state of helplessness and darkness, a state of death which, however, you aspired to on earth yourselves because you lacked the faith that you are destined for life and not death, which you caused yourselves .... For this reason I arose from the dead in order to provide you humans with this evidence .... And yet, you can only believe it again if you, through a life of love, awaken your spirit which will subsequently explain and instruct you about everything, and then you will also be able to believe with conviction what cannot be proven to you. Strive towards life and you will never ever need to fear death, you will live forever in strength and light and freedom ....

Amen

Translation handled by Heidi Hanna

Early death

Premature departure from the world .... Purpose ....

B.D. 3258 from September 16th 1944, taken from Book No. 42

People are repeatedly reminded of the transience of earthly things, and they are constantly confronted by death when many people pass away prematurely and when they are helpless in the face of events which cause suffering and despair to human beings. Yet they will not change their mind nor think about the real reason for suffering and untimely death. Thus the suffering becomes ever more painful and humanity will observe world events with horror and turn numb at the size of the disaster that engulfs it. Humanity, however, is asking for it, since the despair of the time leaves people entirely indifferent and they derive no gain for their souls. And therefore God applies the harshest measures to disturb their lethargy, because in spite of people’s earthly and bodily suffering their souls remain uncaring, they remain indifferent to the blows of fate or they would attempt to change in the knowledge that their spiritual attitude is the cause of the increased suffering on earth.

Hence many people have to depart prematurely from this life because a longer life would be detrimental rather than beneficial for their souls as they would lose their faith completely and only take care of their physical life. In spite of their inadequate state of maturity God therefore allows the loss of countless human lives to prevent their regression, to give them the opportunity to fully mature in the beyond, because the situation on earth does not remain hidden from them, they can observe the developments and become aware that due to the neglect of their soul’s salvation, due to their wrong way of life, due to their lack of faith and unkind thoughts, human beings themselves are responsible for the severe suffering on earth.

In addition, people who are called away by God prematurely can still become aware when faced with death, they can still truly unite with God, they can still become purified due to intense suffering, and thus achieve a higher degree of maturity which they would not have attained during a longer earthly life, and then a premature parting from earth is a blessing for them. And irrespective of how much earthly suffering exists, it is only a means for the benefit of souls .... yet few people understand this as such. The magnitude of hardship is intended to direct their path to God Who can and will banish every distress if the human being faithfully awaits His help. However, when even the immense suffering is unsuccessful, when human beings forget about Him and are in greatest danger to finally strive towards the abyss, God shall end many an earthly life and permit apparently inhuman disasters because He forever considers the human souls and aims to save these even though the body will perish as a result .... because God never does wrong but only what is good and a blessing for the human soul ....

Amen

Translation handled by Heidi Hanna

Early death .... God's mercy .... Old age ....

B.D. 3260 from September 18th 1944, taken from Book No. 42

God's will determines in which degree of maturity a human being is called from his earthly life into the spiritual realm. This is also an apparent injustice which could further the opinion that God selects certain people to become blessed while others have to suffer being distant from God. And yet this attitude is totally wrong .... because divine love and wisdom always knows the human will and therefore cuts a life short when higher development on earth is doubtful.

During the state of constraint before embodiment as a human being there is only progressive development until the spiritual substance's degree of maturity is ready for this last embodiment. But now the human free will makes its own decisions and development can continue, remain static or even regress; and again it depends on whether the human being as such has already improved his initial degree of maturity and is in danger of coming to a standstill or whether he has remained on the same level as at the beginning of his embodiment and is in danger of regressing. In that case it is always due to God's mercy that the human being is recalled when he has arrived at the highest level of his development on earth, i.e. when God's love protects him

from regressing or from failing to advance his soul during a longer lifetime .... because his guilt will increase the longer he uses his embodiment's time of grace without making proper use of it.

The human being can advance during his younger years and then stop, his development up till now comes to a halt, and then God will recall him and give him further opportunities to mature in the beyond .... But the human being can also change his will in later years and his yet inadequate development can experience a sudden improvement and thus he can attain a higher degree of maturity even though for a long time he had ignored his soul until then. In that case God will give him a long life, because God knows the human being's will since eternity and shapes his life accordingly .... For every human being's destiny is considered by God's love and wisdom and does not depend on God's arbitrary use of power ....

God would not withhold the opportunity to mature on earth from any human being if he is willing to use it. But people pay little attention to His mercy and are unwilling to accept the relevant information. And because God knows since eternity which humans are particularly resentful to Him, because He knows when a person has reached the highest degree of development on earth, the duration of his earthly life has also been established since eternity and varies, depending on what divine wisdom deems best and most successful. God will never cut short an earthly life if the human being could still achieve higher maturity because God's love is forever concerned that the human being should attain highest possible maturity on earth; He would never withhold an opportunity from a human being which would result in complete maturity. But He knows since eternity the human will's every inclination and protects the soul from complete desertion, i.e. from certain regression if He would not end that earthly life.

For that reason anyone who constantly strives will reach old age while, at the same time, old age is proof of steady higher development even if this is not evident to other people. A long earthly life is always a mercy but even a short life is evidence of God's love, which is forever active although it is not always recognised by the human being ....

Amen

Translation handled by Heidi Hanna

The process of creation has taken eternities ....

B.D. 8770 from March 4th 1964, taken from Book No. 92

The process of creation was not the work of a moment, even though it truly would have been within My power .... but then creation would have missed its purpose, since it was intended to ensure a gradual development from the abyss to the pinnacle and therefore continued for an infinitely long time. Hence you humans should understand that the description in the Scriptures, in the Book of the Fathers, only informs you of this act of creation in a pictorial manner, because people who still lack deeper awareness would be unable to understand the true process, and it is only intended to teach them that creation once came forth from My hand, that it was and is the work of My will and My might ....

Anyone who wants to delve deeper will also come to a more profound understanding. At first it is only necessary to know of a Power Which brought everything into existence the human being can see around himself, as well as the creations he is unable to see. Before the far-reaching correlations can be explained to him he has to know about the original beginning of what My strength of love emanated as independent beings .... And he has to know about these beings' apostasy from Me and the immense original sin with which the beings were then burdened. Only then can the emergence of creation and the process of return through creation be explained to him. But anyone with an unenlightened spirit will hold on to the letter and will never clearly understand it since he is not open to instructions by spiritually enlightened people either.

Every work of creation required an infinitely long time of preliminary development which, however, always related to the spiritual substance which should progress within a work of creation .... It had fallen so low that it also needed an endless length of time in order to ascend again within the various kinds of creations .... from the most primitive to the most beautifully formed works brought into existence by My will in order to shelter the spiritual substance and enable its path of ascent .... And therefore the creation work Earth, too, was, in the beginning, a mere cluster of utterly immature spirits whose substances gradually condensed to form a mass which could not yet be described as hard matter but had to be understood as basic elements, without form but with tremendous effect of strength, for they contained totally uncontrolled spiritual substances. Yet My wisdom distributed everything in the right measure and used every element for My creative work, so that separate forms arose which had to comply with their destined purpose; and thus began the slow construction of the visible works of creation which continued for an endless time until the earth started to show vegetation and increasingly more mature spiritual substances were able to occupy those creations to travel the path of higher development in this plant world. Then followed the first living beings .... creations, which could already perform a certain, albeit very small, task imposed on them by natural law.

And, again, an infinitely long time of development passed from these minute living beings to the world of animals which included ever larger and stronger forms, in which many spiritual substances had already come together and united in order to keep fulfilling the task of cultivating the earth for the final crowning work of divine creation .... for the human being .... who had to pass through all those preliminary stages and whose soul now is the composition of all those tiny particles which belonged to a once fallen original spirit and which, in a dissolved state, had to go through all works of creation in order to gradually evolve again in this way.

Consequently, the human being could not have been created at the time of 'creating the world' .... just as all works of creation have never been My instant work, precisely because the slow advancement had to proceed first or the whole of the creation work would have been meaningless and without purpose, for it did not come into being for My sake but for the sake of My fallen living creations and thus was also meant to fulfil the purpose of leading the fallen spirits back to Me again. And yet, every work of creation was My externalised thought which was always implemented when the spiritual substance had reached a certain degree of maturity and required a new form in order to continue its path of development. And thus different creations arose periodically. The plant world only became necessary when the world of rocks released the spiritual substance which then required a new and lighter form .... And likewise small and minute living creations arose after the creation of the plant world .... And only I knew when one was necessary for the other, and I also knew how much time the larger living creations, the animals up to the Pre-Adamites, would need to mature their embodied soul-substances. Hence I also knew when the time had come that the individual tiny particles of the spiritual being had merged again in order to embody itself as 'soul' in the last form. Then I externalised a work of creation again .... the human being, whose external shape is so skilfully created that a maturing to final perfection will be possible. And this creation of the human being also occurred an infinitely long time ago, which you humans cannot establish since your concept of time is still limited, but My work of return has already lasted for an eternity. And although eternities had passed before the appearance of the human being, before the earth with all its works of creation was ready for the human being to take possession of it for the purpose of his final maturing, this point in time is also very remote, because time and again periodical immense upheavals and changes occur on earth which make it impossible to calculate the duration of time since the beginning of earth and of the human being.

But this is certain, you humans will only be able to gain a real insight into My eternal plan of Salvation when you have attained the appropriate degree of enlightenment yourselves .... For until then you will be intellectually incapable to envision the length of time for which the concept of 'eternities' could be applied .... And for as long as your spirit is still unenlightened it has to be explained to you in an illustrative manner .... Only an awakened spirit will be able to gain deeper insight, yet ultimate wisdom will only become explicable when it enters the kingdom of light where everything can be revealed because everything will then also be comprehensible ....

Amen

Translation handled by Heidi Hanna

Blessings of the last days .... Death before the event .... The beyond ....

B.D. 3135 from May 28th 1944, taken from Book No. 41

God will be merciful to those who still recognise their wrongdoing in time and distance themselves from it, but He will inflict severe punishment without mercy on those who are unyieldingly cruel, who have no compassion even for their fellow human beings and thus pass judgment on themselves through their unkindness. And the approaching time will testify of people’s depravity, the most unimaginable means intended for destruction will be devised; and people will not hesitate to use these means to accomplish their plans, and humanity’s despair will increase. The leaders, as well as their followers who agreed and supported their plans, will be held responsible for everything. For God is just and He passes judgment according to thoughts, words and deeds .... Nothing is hidden from Him; He looks into the human heart and every genuine emotion determines the amount of mercy at its disposal, that it is granted to him when the end has come .... For the end will come without fail .... It will be accelerated by people’s behaviour and thus an era will come to an end that would not result in a better human generation even if God extended His patience and offered humanity many more opportunities to change themselves. But they no longer make use of them and thus God will put an end to earthly life ....

This period of development was particularly gracious for humanity and could have sufficed completely for its salvation. Although God will support people until the end with remarkable gifts of grace they will be mostly ignored, just as everything in relation to God or the benefit of their own souls will generally not be taken notice of. Thus a longer stay on this earth would be inappropriate, that is, it will only benefit the body but not the immortal soul. Therefore the soul’s earthly opportunity will be taken away, but it still has the assurance for further development in the beyond if it does not reject God’s Word in the beyond too, and only if it loses its physical life before the Last Judgment, before the end of this earth, and is accepted into the realm of the beyond. Death before this event is even an exceptional mercy for the human being if he has not made his decision on earth. Afterwards in the beyond he will still find ample opportunity to be helpful and serve with love and in so doing continue his interrupted development, indeed he can even start it if he does not refuse to listen to helpful souls. In that case he can regress even further and return into most solid matter, after which he has to repeat the long earthly path before he can embody himself as a human being again. Thus God still has many blessings available before He destroys the old earth but He will not force people’s will, and depending on how they accept His mercy they will derive benefit for their souls .... they will remain empty and incapable on earth as well as in the beyond if they ignore and reject all blessings, or they will rapidly achieve higher development by readily allowing every gift of grace to take effect on themselves and thereby receive much more strength. For God is exceedingly gracious and merciful but also just, and He will give to people according to their will ....

Amen

Translation handled by Heidi Hanna

Short or long lifetime ....

B.D. 7538 from March 4th 1960, taken from Book No. 79

The time given to you for your earthly life is not long, compared to the infinitely long time of your preliminary development, the duration of which cannot possibly be estimated by you. And your earthly life can even be shorter if you are called back into eternity prematurely. Therefore you should eagerly consider your soul, you should provide it with as much nourishment as possible so that it won't have to starve if it only lives for a short time on earth .... You should constantly provide it with ample food and drink and never rely on a very long earthly life, for you don't know the day and hour of your physical death .... But your soul will also be able to mature in a short period of time if you are of good will and help it to mature. No-one can determine or know how long he will live, and precisely this lack of knowledge ought to encourage him into actively improving his soul, his way of life should be such that he can calmly consider every day to be his last without having to worry about his soul's welfare.

And a great many people will lose their lives during the last days, for a large appraisal will still take place and many people will yet be recalled prematurely for the sake of their soul's salvation, because they had neglected their psychological work but nevertheless shall not fall prey to the merciless fury of God's adversary who would only draw them ever deeper into the abyss if these souls were not saved from him before. Especially people without spiritual aspirations don't consider an early death and live irresponsibly although they cannot be called bad. God takes pity on them and wants to help them to develop further in the beyond, which will in fact be far more difficult but not impossible, whereas on earth the fate of souls who live without a sense of responsibility could easily result in a complete descent into the abyss. You are offered enough opportunities on earth to reach full maturity in your earthly life, but if you don't take advantage of them you are not making the most of your life as a human being either, although it was only given to you for the purpose of your soul's maturity. If you don't use the grace of your embodiment as a human being and help your soul achieve final maturity then it is also irrelevant whether you live for a long or just a short time on earth. Yet even if you reach old age, earthly life can still be regarded as brief compared to the time of your preliminary development. Nevertheless, even a very short time on earth will suffice to fulfil your purpose on earth. And thus your maturity is not dependent on the length of your earthly existence but purely on your will of making expedient use of this existence.

Through the Word of God you are shown time and again the right path in order to achieve your soul's perfection .... you are repeatedly reminded of the divine commandments of love, the fulfilment of which is the only purpose and goal of your existence as a human being .... And you can always practise love even if your life is short, your soul will derive a benefit if you live a life of love .... However, if you don't keep these two commandments your life will be in vain and your responsibility even greater the longer you live on earth; in which case you can only be thankful if your life will be shortened and you still have the opportunity to develop further in the kingdom of the beyond, so that you will not go completely astray at the end of the day when everyone will be judged according to his efforts ....

Amen

Translation handled by Heidi Hanna

Suicide

Imperishable beings .... 'taking life itself' ....

B.D. 6807 from April 16th 1957, taken from Book No. 73

Always and forever you will remain, for what has come forth from Me can no longer pass away eternally .... And therefore I cannot and will not destroy what opposes Me, although this is certainly possible by My power, but I will always seek to regain what turned away from Me in the will to rebel .... For My love for everything created by Me prevents complete destruction, which is why even My adversary .... the first-created and first-fallen spirit .... never has to fear destruction because he, too, belongs to those who shall return home again to their father's house. I can certainly disapprove of his actions, I can brand his nature as being completely contrary to My eternal order and warn you humans against him .... I can do everything to protect you from his influence .... but I don't withdraw My love from him either, only this ray of love does not hit him, i.e. it loses its effectiveness because My adversary opposes My illumination of love. But he, too, cannot remain in his resistance forever, he, too, will return to Me one day and live a life of utmost bliss, even though eternities will still pass until this change of will and return to Me .... But he cannot pass away .... Everything created by Me remains eternally. Therefore it is also unimportant to Me how long that which has fallen away from Me remains in its defence, for I am from eternity to eternity, for Me there is no time, and a thousand years are like a day before Me .... But it is significant for the being what periods of time it spends in utter wretchedness, in a state which cannot be called life and bliss .... And you humans would be horrified if you could look back and overlook your previous course of development and measure its endless time, for you neither 'emerged from nothing' nor do you sink back into 'nothingness' with your bodily death ..... You continue to exist, you can only lose your ego-consciousness in great resistance and then have to cover endless long distances again in darkness and torment .... And if you finally return to self-awareness, you can still fail in this state and still have to struggle for eternities as a self-aware being in the beyond until the kingdom of light receives you and you ascend. But you will not perish .... And that is why you cannot extinguish your being as a human being, even if you make your physical shell unfit for further earthly progress, even if you believe that you can 'take your life away' ..... For your actual self remains in existence because the spiritual substance which once originated from Me cannot pass away. And thus you only interfere with My process of development which should bring you freedom from a state which is not life and bliss .... You act against My will, you act arbitrarily and wrongly, you deprive yourselves of the opportunities created for you in My plan of salvation .... You are, as it were, halting the course of your development and are also in great danger of sinking back into the abyss again if you don't change your mind in the beyond and make use of the opportunities My love offers you there. You should seriously consider that you will always and forever continue to exist and therefore not treat your earthly life lightly either, which one day you will recognize as an unheard-of gift of grace because it could bring you final freedom. But people mostly lack faith in continued existence and therefore go through earthly life irresponsibly and don't make use of the great gift of grace. And My adversary, who has distanced himself furthest from Me, encourages them in their unbelief in order to prevent the spiritual from attaining life in beatitude, which he himself has drawn into the abyss. But that is why the time he spends far away from Me will also become eternity for him. And even if he believes himself to be strong and mighty .... the time will come when he will lie weak and helpless on the ground, when he will wish for an end to himself and yet not be able to pass away .... And only then will he desire My illumination of love and also receive it, only then will he also awaken to life and return home to his father's house ....

Amen

Translation handled by Doris Boekers

Arbitrarily taking one's own life ....

B.D. 6005 from July 19th 1954, taken from Book No. 65

You humans are granted a certain length of time for your final deliverance from bondage .... for the ultimate release from the form .... Yet the duration of this time varies such as I had recognised to be good for your soul. Your earthly life is not finished by Me arbitrarily, yet I know the maturity of every person's soul and thus I also know the risk of a decline or the possibility of further progress on earth.

And My love and mercy also ends a human life prematurely in order to prevent the soul from regressing .... or I can see the possibility of a change in the last hour and therefore prolong the natural life, always in wise counsel, for everything that serves the benefit of the soul is known to Me .... And now you will understand that your own ending of the body's life is a serious offence, that you commit a sin, that you act in advance of My love and mercy and don't utilise the opportunities which were offered to your soul to reach perfection ....

You interfere with My plan of Salvation and cause such damage to your soul which one day will trigger immense remorse and self-reproaches in you, yet which no longer can be put right in the kingdom of the beyond, for the advantages you should and are able to utilise on earth can never be offered to you in the kingdom of the beyond again. You have irretrievably forfeited something, even if you still succeed in improving the state of your soul by then striving to ascend ....

Yet there is a great danger that the soul will descend .... that it will rebel, just as arbitrarily taking its own life was a rebellion, and that it will continue to stay in opposition. Such souls require a lot of help as not to be lost for an infinitely long time, yet they, too, only get what they want.

I will truly help everyone, even in utmost adversity, which is instantly lessened when the person just thinks of Me, when he just calls upon Me for help .... And adversity is, after all, only a means of directing your thoughts towards Me, so that you then will also be able to gain success from your earthly life .... Adversity will not befall a person without reason, for his soul is in danger from which it shall escape by means of this adversity. And the more its stance hardens against Me the more it is at risk, in order to finally defy My will and throw away the life which it was granted by My love and grace for its final redemption. For the embodiment as a human being is a grace for the soul .... a gift of My love .... it is the last step towards ascent which it is allowed to take in order to become eternally free and blissfully happy .... The soul has almost reached its goal and is therefore responsible for its actions if it does not utilise this gift of grace but throws it away in blindness of thought.

Every movement of a human heart is known to Me and I truly judge righteously .... I take the weaknesses of My living creations into account yet it is not without their own fault, and the human being's free will incriminates him if it was wrongly orientated, thus was abused. The human being is unable to end his adversity by his intervention, he will have to continue suffering because of it, he will not be able to escape his distress, and that is why the soul will suffer inexpressibly in the kingdom of the beyond .... until it can master it in the same way as it should have done on earth .... until it takes refuge in the One Who is Lord over suffering and adversity, because He is the victor over sin and death ....

Amen

Translation handled by Heidi Hanna

Cremation of the ead body

Cremation .... Accelerated disintegration process ....

B.D. 1899 from April 28th 1941, taken from Book No. 28

Everything proceeds towards deliverance because it has to follow the path of higher development. When the spiritual essence separates itself from matter it has overcome the latter; but the spiritual essence has not always matured enough that it no longer needs an earthly (transformation) form and in that case it will re-enter a new form, which also consists of matter. However, when the soul, the spiritual essence within the human being, leaves the body, the earthly transformation has come to an end; that is, the soul escapes its last form on earth and enters, liberated from all matter, a new and entirely different realm than earth. The body, the final earthly form, is now destined for disintegration again; i.e. the spiritual substances which constitute the earthly body, also have to take the path of higher development, since these substances are still at the initial stage of development, and for this purpose they will join divine works of creation again whose purpose is, after all, the higher development of the spirit. This can happen in various ways but it always has to include the possibility for active service. Consequently, the substance has to join a work of creation where it has to perform some kind of task and serve by fulfilling this task, since the substance can only develop through service. If the opportunity to serve is taken away, the path of higher development is interrupted, which is an extremely agonising condition for the spiritual substance. The time of spiritual suffering can seemingly be shortened but the spirit substance will not thank the human being who intervenes in its progress of development and prevents its service. As soon as the natural decomposition of a human body is prevented by accelerating its process of disintegration by cremation or by chemical means, the path of the spirit is far more painful and has to be so, because this process opposes divine order, it opposes the purpose which God has given every work of creation. It is an unauthorised action by people which does not concur with God’s will. The human body should be returned to the earth as is its purpose ....

"From dust you have been taken, to dust you shall return" .... providing God’s intervention does not determine otherwise by ending a human life in other ways than the human being’s natural physical death. When the soul has freed itself from the body .... i.e. from the spiritual substance which forms the body .... the body’s job to serve the soul is fulfilled. But until it has completely disintegrated it still has other opportunities to be of service, even if the human being finds this difficult to understand, while an accelerated disintegration procedure will not allow the remains to carry out even the slightest act of service. Hence it is completely wrong to assume that the human body will join the soul as a result of this kind of purification process. The external form’s spiritual substance has indeed the same function and eventually unites with countless other substances of soul and likewise walks the path of development on earth as a human soul .... but this cannot happen the way people erroneously believe. All substances are given an appointed time for their development which the human being cannot shorten at his own discretion by means of an external process .... if he does not completely use the only option of spiritual higher development on earth, i.e. that he, by his conduct, his right attitude towards God, his faith and his wholehearted actions of love, acquires a degree of maturity which can also shorten the physical form’s earthly lifespan; however, it must always be left up to God’s will which helpful task He will still assign to it ....

Amen

Translation handled by Heidi Hanna

Thoughts of death

Keep death in mind ....

B.D. 2912 from October 6th 1943, taken from Book No. 37

Imagine the hour of your death and ask yourselves whether you are well prepared for eternity .... Consider your relationship with God and how you have used the pound He has given you for your time on earth .... Ask yourselves whether you could stand before God’s judgment seat, whether your earthly life is right with God, whether you have shown love, and whether you are ready to depart from earth at any hour without fear of having to give account to God .... Consider that your strength will also come to an end with death and that you cannot do anything by yourselves if you depart from this earth with an immature soul. Ask yourselves whether you are satisfied with yourselves and can depart from this world in peace .... And exercise the strictest self criticism, and after that make an effort to perfect yourselves ....

Make use of every day that is given to you, as long as you are on earth you can still achieve a lot. You have the opportunity to purify yourselves even now, because you have the strength to do so and can increase it with actions of love .... Keep death in mind and recognise yourselves as a weak creature who cannot delay for an hour once God has determined your hour of death. And with deeply felt sincerity ask God for His mercy, for His grace, for His support, that He will give you His love and with His love also the strength which guarantees your ascent. Keep only this goal in mind, that you may awaken to eternal life when your earthly life is over, and then live in accord with this goal, carry out God’s will and always think that every day could be your last day on earth .... Then you will prepare yourselves, you will live consciously and without fear pass across into the kingdom of peace, your true home ....

Amen

Translation handled by Heidi Hanna

Serious reminder to remember death ....

B.D. 5329 from March 4th 1952, taken from Book No. 59

None of you humans knows how long you will live on earth, none of you knows when the hour of your recall will come, and none of you knows whether you still have the time to prepare for your end. And you humans should always remember that you could already stand before your judge tomorrow, that He will demand an account from you for your earthly way of life, for the use of your will, for your actions and omissions .... And you should also imagine the consequences of your conduct on earth and therefore seriously endeavour to live in such a way that you need not fear the hour of your recall, your last day. The fact that you are allowed to live on earth is a grace which you should make use of or you will bitterly regret it, for you can gain an infinite amount on earth but also lose an infinite amount. You have the strength to work for a blissful life in eternity, but if you use this strength wrongly, so that you only want to make your earthly life beautiful, then your recall from earth will be a misfortune for you, because you will lose everything you own and will not be able to display any of the possessions which are of value in the world of the beyond. Then you will never be able to return to make up for what you have missed, you will have to create a bearable fate for yourselves with great difficulty because you lack the strength which was abundantly at your disposal on earth. You are still alive and indifferently ignore indications of your end, admonitions and warnings, the life of your body makes you secure but you don't think about the life after death .... Seriously consider the hour of your departure from this earth and ask yourselves what you may take with you, ask yourselves what spiritual possessions you have acquired. Will you have much to show for it? Will the thought of death frighten you? Will you be able to stand before your judge without fear because you have lived according to His will? Seriously consider your situation and change it if it does not seem satisfactory to you, for there is not much time left and no one knows when he will be called away .... None of you can prolong his life by just one hour when his time is up, but each of you can achieve it that there is no hour of death for him but only an entrance into eternal life .... Everyone can gather riches on earth which he takes with him, which are imperishable and guarantee him a life in the kingdom of the beyond .... and what is therefore possible for you, that you should try to achieve, for on the other side it will be unspeakably difficult for you to make up for the shortfall you have through your own fault if you don't recognize your purpose of earthly life, if you only work for the life of the body but not for the life of the soul on earth .... Use every day that is still given to you, for all too soon the hour of death will come for you when you stand before your judge ....

Amen

Translation handled by Doris Boekers

Thoughts of death are favourable for the soul ....

B.D. 7445 from November 3rd 1959, taken from Book No. 78

Again and again you are admonished to think of your temporal end, for you only live consciously on this earth when you think of the time after your physical death, which you create for yourselves during earthly life for a state of bliss or also for a state of distress and agony. If you often think about death then you will also try to fathom the purpose of your earthly life because it seems incomprehensible to you that you should only exist for the short time on earth, which is also of indeterminate duration for every human being .... And emotionally you will already have to acknowledge the continued existence of your soul, for your I, your soul, resists the thought of a complete extinction .... It feels that it lives on, and therefore the human being will nevertheless live responsibly on earth if he remembers that his time is limited according to God's will. That is why such thoughts are only ever useful for your soul, since you deal with the once certain death, for they can only spur you on to do soul work out of the inner impulse to bring it to perfection while it still dwells on earth. For no human being knows how long he will still be granted a life on this earth .... But not everyone is moved by such thoughts, for he who is lured and held captive by the world will always reject such thoughts and want to gain whatever is possible from life. And it is these who arrive in the kingdom of the beyond without any spiritual wealth, who find themselves poor and meagre on the other side in darkness and complete lack of strength .... You should be warned of this fate, and you will certainly try to change your life if you concern yourselves more with thoughts of death, for you will emotionally fear death in powerlessness and darkness and seek to acquire light and strength beforehand already, because the spirit impels you from within as soon as you are only willing to listen to it for a short time, which always favours spiritual thoughts, because every thought of death and the aftermath is already a spiritually directed thought which will always have a favourable effect if the human being's will is good. And these are addressed in particular because they often have a weak will which is to be prompted into action through words or example. Think often of the fact that you will have to die, and think of improving the state of your soul after death while you are still on this earth. And you will only benefit your soul, for it will involuntarily make an effort to lead its way of life well, i.e. in the spirit of God, because it feels the responsibility. The human being can certainly have the grace to reach a great age, but his earthly life can also only last for a very short time, and he should always be ready for the entrance into the kingdom of light, for he can also mature and progress in his development in a short time, but he must also have the will to do so and cover his earthly life with a spiritually directed gaze; and then he will also not need to fear the hour of death, it will only signify a change of his stay, a change of sphere, which now receives the soul...: the kingdom of light and bliss, where it will live and need no longer fear death for ever ....

Amen

Translation handled by Doris Boekers

Mental striving for the spiritual realm

My kingdom is not of this world ....'

B.D. 5336 from March 14th 1952, taken from Book No. 59

My kingdom is not of this world .... Therefore pay only little regard to the earthly world, only let it affect you as far as your earthly task in life requires, but constantly strive for My kingdom which can be found beyond the material world. My kingdom is the kingdom which lasts forever, whereas the earthly world vanishes with the death of your body; but you can already possess My kingdom on earth if you turn away from the pleasures and commodities of the world and raise your thoughts to Me, if you send them into infinity, questioning Me and opening yourselves up for My reply. Then you already enter the spiritual kingdom which will be your abode one day, then the spiritual kingdom will be of greater value to you than the earthly world, and then you will also receive the wealth which belongs to this kingdom but which cannot be physically received by you. My kingdom is not of this world .... Understand that I want to call you into this world with these Words, which is your true home and which also wants to admit you again after the death of your body. My kingdom is the realm of light, which you will only be able to enter if you have become receptive to light, if you aspired on earth for My kingdom and thus became aspirants for the kingdom which belongs to Me and wherein you may behold Me one day.

These Words of Mine clearly allow you to understand that you should not ardently desire the earthly kingdom, but that you must rise above it if you want to be admitted into My kingdom .... I want to explain the difference to you, I want to tell you that this world does not belong to Me but that My adversary is its master and that I thus place My kingdom in opposition to the earthly world .... I want to entice you over into My kingdom because I want to give you what the material world does not offer .... an eternal life in bliss.

Earth is the valley of suffering and tests; it is the place where imperfect human beings are meant to become perfect. Nevertheless, the earth is not a permanent abode; it is just a stage of development of extremely short duration compared to eternity. And the human being himself, his earthly material cover, is transient; it only serves the soul, which ought to achieve higher development, as a temporary abode. Only then will the soul enter the spiritual kingdom which is everlasting but which can still be My adversary's realm if the soul has not achieved spiritual progress on earth, and thus will enter the kingdom of darkness ....

Yet you shall strive for My kingdom, the spiritual kingdom in which I Am King and Ruler, where only light and happiness exist, where I Myself give in order to delight all who have entered My kingdom .... Therefore pay only little regard to the earthly world, strive for the kingdom which reveals to you splendours which you humans could not dream of, the kingdom whose splendours I have promised you with the Words 'Eye has not seen, nor ear heard, the things which I have prepared for those who love Me ....'

Amen

Translation handled by Heidi Hanna

Swing up of the soul into spiritual spheres ....

B.D. 5916 from March 28th 1954, taken from Book No. 64

Enter the spiritual realms as often as you are able, seek to detach yourselves from earth and let your soul soar into that kingdom from which it originated and to which it will also return again when your earthly life is over. In that kingdom it will truly be offered what it cannot find on earth .... Food and drink, the right means to shape it so that it can permanently reside in the spiritual kingdom and be happy. As long as you stay on earth the soul is still deformed, and it shall change, it shall become again as it was in the beginning .... an image of God .... And as long as it stays on earth it can certainly achieve this transformation, however, what it lacks has to be imparted to it, and it also receives it through God's love, but from the kingdom which is meant to be your former home. And therefore, the more often the soul rises there the more abundantly it will return again in order to carry out its work of transformation on earth precisely with the help of that which is imparted to it in the spiritual kingdom. Earth does not hold such treasures, they can only be fetched from the kingdom of light, in those spheres which are certainly made accessible to you but have to be entered in free will. And every soul on earth has the opportunity to ascend into these spheres and to fetch much strengthening nourishment from there, which it then uses in earthly life in order to make itself suitable for a permanent stay in those spheres. Yet no soul will be forced to take this flight of fancy .... but it can undertake it voluntarily as often as it wants. And therefore it is lovingly admonished not to let any opportunity for this flight of fancy pass by, again and again to free itself from earthly heaviness and to rise into the realms of spiritual friends who want to help it into light and strength. And every mental connection with this kingdom, every prayer, every spiritual question is a wandering into the spiritual spheres from which the soul never returns without a gain. The more often you humans withdraw into silence, the more often you detach yourselves in thought from the earthly world and thus mentally know where light and bliss are, the more you will also be cared for by the inhabitants of this world of light and provided with spiritual gifts which will help you to transform your soul .... thus shaping it such that it can enter the kingdom after death which it aspired to on earth .... that the inhabitants of the kingdom of light come to meet it and receive it .... that it has now regained the state in which it was full of light and strength as a divine creature .... that it now returns as a child to its father of eternity .... that it is now active in His kingdom according to His will and filled with His strength ....

Amen

Translation handled by Doris Boekers

Serious admonition to consider the life after death ....

B.D. 5180 from July 29th 1951, taken from Book No. 58

Once again I admonish you humans on earth: Consider your souls and your state after death .... For the forthcoming extremely difficult turn of events in your earthly life is merely intended to make you consider your physical death and what will follow afterwards. I want to draw your attention to it and lovingly inform you of the hard times which will befall you, so that you then will believe it if you are as yet unable to believe, if you still discard as a fantasy what is solemn truth. You are in great danger, for you live earthly life so light-heartedly as if it would last forever and yet, the time left to you is so short that you would be horrified if you knew of it. You gamble your life away, you are moved by trivial worries, and yet it is only important that you consider your soul, so that it will be able to calmly endure every adversity in order to start the true life in light and strength in the spiritual kingdom. Yet it is up to you humans yourselves in which state your soul will enter the spiritual kingdom.

I ever more urgently admonish you to change your attitude, although it doesn't have to be bad it is nevertheless too earthly minded to be suitable for the spiritual kingdom. Like a loving Father I call to My children on earth: Be concerned about your soul, consider your real purpose of life and hurry, for there is not much time left until the end .... Change your attitude before it is too late .... bear in mind what fate will await you when your earthly life is over, and believe that the soul's life will not end with the body's death but that it will live on, yet in the state you have created for it in earthly life.

You are responsible for its fate in eternity, that is, you have to accept the consequences of your earthly life yourselves, which will be a fate in darkness if you have used your life wrongly. And you live wrongly if you live without faith and without love .... if you do not acknowledge Me as your God and Father and therefore do not observe My commandments either, if you only live for the world but not for the spiritual kingdom, which is your true home and which you inevitably will have to enter, albeit its spheres are so different that it can mean both supreme happiness as well as most bitter agony for the soul, depending on its state of maturity. And you humans are responsible for this state of maturity ....

This is what I call to you from above again, so that you will turn inwards and change, so that you will pay less attention to earthly life in favour of advancing your soul's spiritual life .... Listen to My call from above, take stock of yourselves, turn around before it is too late, for the day will come without fail which I have always and forever announced to you .... You don't have much time left, therefore make use of it and take care of your soul, so that it will not have to fear the end which is soon about to happen to you ....

Amen

Translation handled by Heidi Hanna

The wide and narrow path to height

The path to the eternal home ....

B.D. 6549 from May 17th 1956, taken from Book No. 70

The way home can be long and comfortable but also short and arduous, depending on how serious you are of reaching your goal .... But you can also quite easily walk a completely wrong way if you don't care where you go to .... A difficult path will never lead into the abyss, for the one who wants to entice you to descend shows you ways which are appealing to walk .... He will never lure you to himself with a difficult path. This is why it should always give you cause for concern if your earthly path is far too easy and full of joy; then you should always ask yourselves whether you are on the right path, whether it is the path to your eternal home. But you are generally satisfied as long as your earthly life gives to you what you desire, and then you will rarely consider the life of your soul after death .... But you should be concerned .... If you want to reach higher spheres then your ascent must require strength, it will never be possible to cover it effortlessly unless you completely hand yourselves over to Me and let Me be your guide. In that case you will not feel the effort of ascending quite so much and yet your path will lead upwards .... Therefore, take notice of the fact that an even path can never lead to the goal .... and humbly accept all adversities and difficulties, for they guarantee you a path of ascent, to Me, Who should never be searched for below but only ever above.

And also beware that you do not divert from these ascending paths onto the wide and comfortable road again, for you can change your goal at any time, the opportunity will always be offered to you to change from the broad path onto the narrow path which cannot be effortlessly walked; just as the reverse is always possible, for My adversary will never stop enticing you and time and again will show you appealing regions to prompt you to direct your steps to where he wants you to go .... An all too easy earthly life with all kinds of earthly joys and pleasures is such a wide and easily passable path, which certainly can still be exchanged before the end of your life on earth with the steep path towards ascent, but although the achievement of the goal can still be possible it is nevertheless very doubtful, for no person knows when his earthly life will be over and whether he will still have the opportunity at the end to turn onto the narrow path towards ascent. No-one knows whether he can ever catch up on the missed time or whether he will still be able to change the direction of his goal in his earthly life .... This is why you should not be envious of any fellow human being who lives a carefree earthly life which constantly seems full of joy .... He is not on the right path yet, he is still too much taken care of by the one who wants to lure him into the abyss .... And yet, guided by My hand, you too can enjoy your earthly life, but your joys and wishes will be different ones than those which you observe with your fellow human beings. For the gifts distributed by Me are of a different kind but they can make the person far happier than material possessions .... And at the same time they give you the necessary strength you need for the path of ascent .... And you will truly not make a bad choice if you decide quite early to turn off the broad way onto the narrow and seemingly impassable path towards ascent .... For then you will no longer desire what you have left behind .... You will look upwards and follow the light, and you will safely reach the goal, to Me in your Father's house ....

Amen

Translation handled by Heidi Hanna

Wide Street .... temptations .... narrow way to the height ....

B.D. 6177 from January 27th 1955, taken from Book No. 66

The road along which most people walk is wide and level, and it leads through beautiful gardens which are walked through with pleasure, it constantly offers variety and will always entice people to linger and savour what seems appealing to the walker .... And he will never need to walk along alone, there will always be people in his company who walk the same path with the same joys and the same hopes as him, because they all only seek worldly pleasures and enjoyments, because they all succumb to the same temptations and therefore one always has understanding for the other's goings-on .... It is the broad road that is trodden by countless people, which only a few avoid in order to walk narrow paths that lead upwards .... These know that the narrow path leads towards another aim, and in the knowledge of this aim they therefore avoid the broad road, which .... unnoticed by people .... and therefore cannot be the right path to the heights. Again and again narrow side roads branch off from the broad road, and messengers will always stand along these roads and offer to guide those who want to leave the broad road and earnestly strive upwards. Only a few will follow their offer, only a few will be able to separate themselves from the broad road of pleasure and lust .... Only a few will respect those who offer themselves to them for guidance .... For wherever a narrow path branches off to the heights, there the broad road offers special pleasures .... there flash so many dazzling lights that the narrow path is overlooked and all strive only towards these lights which lead them ever more astray. This wide road is laid out by the lord of the world, who always sees to it that it does not become dull and boring for its passers-by, and who especially uses all the arts of seduction where the narrow paths branch off upwards. Then the eye remains spellbound, and the person very easily overlooks the side path and falls victim to those arts of seduction. But there are also people who turn away from all these temptations of the world because they recognize their unworthiness and because they pursue a different aim .... to reach God, Who can never be reached by the broad way. And these seek diversions from the broad road, and they gladly and willingly entrust themselves to those who want to lead them upwards. And they also endeavour to entice other people onto the narrow path and hold the right aim up to them and induce them to join them on the path to ascent .... And they will all reach their aim .... They may give up many earthly things, but they receive far more valuable things .... they take possession of the kingdom which offers far more glorious things, but which can only be reached through constant overcoming, but not through earthly pleasures, through worldly enjoyment ....

Amen

Translation handled by Doris Boekers

Wide way to perdition, narrow way to the height ....

B.D. 4503 from December 5th 1948, taken from Book No. 52

The path you should take is passable as soon as you direct your gaze heavenwards, as soon as you desire to reach Me and have no other desire in your heart than to be united with Me again. I truly do not demand anything unfulfillable from My children, I only warn them to take the broad path which certainly appears comfortable and easy but leads far away from the aim, which the children of the world take who lose themselves to My adversary. The path you should take is narrow and not very appealing, and therefore people hesitate to enter it, yet it leads towards a glorious aim which you all should reach. In addition, figures of light will often appear in your path to guide you and draw your attention to obstacles, to stones and cliffs and undergrowth, so that you will not fall or be harmed by them. You can walk this arduous path quite carefree, whoever has entered it will not go a step further without protection. But you must not look across to the broad path, because from there you will be blinded by illusions which will make your path appear dark. Avert your gaze from it, look up to Me and a mild light will illuminate your path, which will do you good and intensify the closer you get to the aim. And entrust yourselves completely to Me, then I will be able to meet you, take your hand and guide you until the end of your life .... until the path becomes wide and even and ends in your father's house .... until the kingdom receives you, which is your true home, which is radiant with light and wonderful to behold, but which can only be reached via this narrow, arduous path. Difficulties have to be overcome, yet they can be overcome with My help, but what awaits you is worth all difficulties and hardships .... But the broad path leads into darkness .... it is beautiful and appealing as long as the human being walks on earth, but it leads astray and finally into a dark and sinister realm, into ruin. Avoid this path, don't try to make your earthly walk easy for it is only short but life after death is endlessly long, and therefore strive towards the right aim and don't let yourselves be deterred even if the path seems less appealing to you. Enter it and stretch out your hands to Me and I will guide you so that you will safely reach your aim ....

Amen

Translation handled by Doris Boekers

The true home ....

B.D. 7634 from June 27th 1960, taken from Book No. 80

The spiritual realm is certainly an entirely dissimilar region to the earthly realm and it requires a strong will to strive for the former realm while the human being still lives in the midst of the world .... They are two entirely different kingdoms and one kingdom totally seems to exclude the other. However, the more seriously a person wants to enter and stay in the spiritual kingdom, the more real it will become to him and the stronger he will feel that the spiritual kingdom is his actual home, that the earth is merely something transient which the human being simply has to pass through in order to reach his true home. But on the whole the spiritual region will seem unreal to a person and time and again he will have to fight, he will have to exert force in order to mentally escape the world for a short time and to drift over into the spiritual world. Nevertheless, he will succeed if this is his serious will. Yet one thing must be present in him: the desire for God and, as a result of this, a life of love .... In that case the human being’s soul will already be grounded in the spiritual kingdom, for the right kind of love comes from God and leads back to Him, Whose kingdom is not of this world. However, the human being must possess the right kind of love, the love for God and his fellow human beings .... As long as the human being is still dominated by selfish love, he will be more in touch with the earthly realm and a ‘spiritual’ world will seem implausible to him, this spiritual world will be distant to him and also cannot entice him to seek contact with it. Hence, the degree of love will be the decisive factor as to how real the spiritual kingdom seems to a person, to what extent it dominates him and how strongly it will influence his thoughts .... But he can become convinced of it, he can live more in the spiritual realm than in this world if his love for God and his fellow human being has been kindled in him. Then the human being will also convincingly advocate this spiritual kingdom to other people because he will be utterly convinced of it himself, and he will also always mention what he inwardly feels .... He will portray the spiritual kingdom as the only kingdom worth striving for and try to motivate his fellow human beings to likewise strive for this kingdom and to relegate the secular world as worthless into second place .... always regarding this secular world as transient and paying more attention to that which is everlasting. A person who remains in contact with the spiritual kingdom and makes it the goal of his endeavour on earth is far more likely to find inner peace .... The human being will never find complete happiness in the earthly world, for he will also discover the transience of this world and his life will remain unsatisfied if he only ever longs for earthly possessions and is content with fulfilling his earthly wishes, because his soul feels that it needs something different in order to be happy. His soul will not content itself with what the world can offer .... It will only be able to feel truly happy when it is offered possessions from the spiritual kingdom. Only then will it have entered the region of the spiritual kingdom, only then will it have found its true home, only then will it acknowledge the spiritual kingdom as its home and only then will it know that this kingdom is real and that it cannot be taken away from the soul again once it has arrived at home, once it has found its way back to the Father’s house from which it once had originated.

Amen

Translation handled by Heidi Hanna

Create and work for eternity ....

B.D. 6305 from July 7th 1955, taken from Book No. 68

It is your task on earth to create and work for eternal life, and if you comply with this task your temporal fate will also be protected even though you will still have battles to cope with so as not to become tired in your striving for the spiritual goal. However, if you look upon Me as your Father and endeavour towards true childship you will also be in Fatherly care and your earthly life will have to progress such as the Father sees fit for His children. But its trust in the Father's love and care releases the child from all fear and worry, for it is full of confidence that its God and Creator, its Father of eternity, will direct everything just right .... And thus it can create and work for eternity, for it is full of love for Me which also expresses itself towards his fellow human being and thus carries out everything with a view to ascend, it strives towards Me fully consciously and lives a way of live in accordance with My will .... Every human being is given the opportunity to recognise his affiliation to Me because he is able to think about himself and his origin and this will mentally lead to realisation if he genuinely wants it. Thus every person can decide to work for eternal life, yet he is not compelled to do so .... Everyone can lay claim to My leadership and guidance, just as he can separate himself due to his own sense of strength and power, but then he will be isolated and far away, incapable of ascending .... but not striving for it either .... Then he will feel inwardly estranged from Me, he will not think of himself as My child nor look upon Me as the Father Who wants His child's love ....

And then he will not produce anything for eternal life but only ever see the world and its goods and desire them with all his senses. The burden of life will indeed weigh heavily upon him in the beginning because I want to guide his thoughts to Me, yet this burden will become increasingly lighter because someone else will take it from him and give him whatever he strives for .... but also claims his soul in return. Create and work for eternity and do not pay so much attention to earthly life but accept it with all its burdens and troubles, for they are truly only for your own good, just as everything that happens to you merely serves those of you in gaining perfection who dedicate yourselves to Me, who strive for unity with Me, for My presence .... who hand yourselves over to Me so that I can take care of you .... You have truly chosen the best part even though you lack earthly pleasures, yet you will be rewarded in My kingdom and receive so abundantly that you will want to share it again and also be able to do so for your own happiness. Do not forget that earthly life is only given to you so that you will find the entry into My kingdom .... but which you sincerely have to look for .... and not that you forget your task and get caught in the mire of the world, so that you won't succumb to My opponent's temptations to stay away from your true destination .... Be aware that an arduous path is the right path but that I Myself will always meet you on this path, that I will take over your guidance and safely lead you to your true home ....

Amen

Translation handled by Heidi Hanna

The path to eternal home with God .... prayer ....

B.D. 2125 from October 24th 1941, taken from Book No. 30

The path to the eternal home is long for the one who does not walk it with God, for he goes so many wrong ways before he reaches the path that leads upwards, and the time of his walk on earth has been in vain if the goal was not the eternal home. To walk with God means to have a guide who directs every step and to whom a person can completely entrust himself. And then he can go his way without worrying, he will not go astray, even if the path is sometimes arduous and seems difficult to pass. God protects him so that he does not stumble; He takes him by the hand and leads him over rocks and stones, through thorns and undergrowth, again and again onto the right path that leads safely to the goal. And this path is short, as long as man walks with his eyes turned upwards, as long as he walks with God ....

Let every person's preface be:

(Lord, be with me and guide me .... do not let me take a single step alone .... lord, let me always recognize you, let me always be your protégé .... stay close to me in every need and take care of me .... help me to pray fervently to you, my faithful God .... grant me grace and the strength of faith and a pure mind at all times and turn my gaze to you, to my eternal home .... )

Amen

Translation handled by Doris Boekers