Source: https://www.bertha-dudde.org/en/proclamation/1937

1937 Will – Grace .... (Objection Philippians 2 – 13)

June 3, 1941: Book 28

Spiritual standstill sets in when the human being’s will is too weak to overcome obstacles. No further progress can be made anymore. Although everything depends on God’s grace, the human being must participate in order to become richly blessed, he must use his will and appeal for strength, then he will strive towards ascent. No way exists which excludes the human being’s will, and thus he must activate his will first. No person can be released from this. Were God’s grace designated to come first, the human being would be released from actively using his will. And this is an error which, in turn, results in further errors. God’s grace and mercy certainly take hold of a person by providing him with every opportunity for his final deliverance. For it is an inconceivable grace on the part of God that the human being may travel the path of earthly life in order to return to Him again .... But in the stage of free will, only free will is decisive as to whether or not he will receive further blessings; otherwise life on earth would not be a probationary period which the human being has to pass. God wants to convey the pure truth to earth. Thus He must clarify where people are mistaken or have erred. He must rectify that which hitherto has been misunderstood, for He wants to separate the truth from the untruth. If the human being resists God’s effort to guide him into truth he also actively uses his will but in a God-opposing way and he can never become enlightened. God gave the human being the ability to think things through and to make a free decision. This is God’s grace again, nevertheless, the free decision depends on the human being’s will in turn, thus a person must want God’s grace to take effect in him .... His will opens the heart to become receptive for God’s grace, and his will must also make use of God’s grace .... It is this clear realisation which lets a person develop a sense of responsibility in the first place, whereas the hitherto wrong attitude that the human being is incapable of doing anything without divine grace .... that this motivates the human will in the first place .... weakens his urge to be active. In that case one could not speak of a person’s free will, if God Himself were to influence this will by conveying His grace. Unlimited means of help are certainly at a person’s disposal, thus it is made easy for him to let his will become active, yet the latter must be done by the person himself of his own accord. The actual purpose of life is for a human being to make a decision for or against God of his own free will .... Consequently, God will never precipitate this decision by determining the human being’s will, for this would truly defeat the purpose of life on earth. This is why people are repeatedly informed so that they will pay attention and release themselves from that which is mistaken, and from those human ideas and human interpretations which became erroneous without consciously intending to spread error. Yet precisely this interpretation, that God Himself determines the human being’s will, carries much weight for it leads to wrong thinking. Neither the Deity can be properly recognised nor does it strengthen the human being’s sense of responsibility .... He will ultimately only rely on divine grace, which seizes the person depending on divine will .... which flows to him, providing that God has intended to bestow grace upon him. But in that case he could not be held accountable if he does not reach the goal given to him at the beginning of his embodiment. The crucial point can only be found in free will; however, anyone who argues the human being’s free will regards himself as a puppet which is always and forever guided by a higher Power without taking any kind of active part in it. God’s wisdom and love prevents a restriction of will, otherwise higher development would be impossible for the human soul and the long process on earth would be unnecessary if God’s will were to select the aspirants for God’s kingdom by conveying His grace to them, which people would subsequently seize and thus be safely guided by it into the kingdom of heaven.

Amen

Translated by Heidi Hanna