2412 Spiritual coercion.... Human commandments.... Fighting the teaching of Christ....
July 17, 1942: Book 32
All spiritual coercion has to be condemned because the human being’s action resulting from it cannot be valued by God.
Only complete freedom of will determines the value of people’s actions. Therefore they should be informed of Christ’s teaching, but they should not be duty bound to lead a specific lifestyle as a result of rules and regulations, which they will then dutifully and habitually observe. People should certainly be educated to think and behave correctly, but they should only ever be shown the rights or wrongs of their actions. They have to be advised to practise love but they should never be urged into actions by rules which do not match their inner will. Only the commandment of love should be observed and therefore also taught.... because anyone who fulfils the commandment of love shapes his heart such that it will want to carry out of its own accord those things which correspond to God’s will. However, commandments which oblige a person to conduct his life in a certain way, even though a failure to comply with them does not demonstrate heartlessness towards other people, are not given by God, i.e. they are outside of Christ’s teaching, because this teaching only preaches love which, however, does not aim to achieve the fulfilment of divine commandments by means of external force.
The human being has to be able to shape himself in utmost freedom of will if this transformation of thought is to be of value for eternity. Freedom of will, however, is restricted as soon as a dutiful transformation is demanded. Every good deed which does not arise from the heart, i.e. which is not accomplished by the inner urge to carry out an action of love, will only be valued for what it is in reality.... an implementation of duty without warmth of heart. And there is great danger that the human being will give too little account to himself about his thoughts and actions because he believes to have done what he was meant to do on earth, and this belief has its foundation in the commandments which people had added to the teaching of Christ. Only the divine teaching of love is to be understood as the teaching of Christ, but never humanly decreed commandments which aim to achieve something else than just true actions of love....
Where love is taught love also has to be practised, and actions of love should be understood to be everything that is beneficial to other people. Thus the human being is merely expected to do good to his fellow human being, and therefore the divine teaching of love will only expect people to fulfil those requirements which protect their fellow human beings from damage or are of benefit to him. When the human being considers the wellbeing of his fellow human being he is living within love, because it is urging him to help other people. This is the true activity of love which is required from people by God and which was constantly practised by Jesus Christ on earth. However, if people are demanded to do something, even though failing to comply by no means damages or injures other people, then this is due to humanly decreed laws which should not be confused with the teaching of Christ.
Nevertheless, there is great danger that the commandments of love will be ignored in favour of these humanly added commandments and that the significance of Christ’s teaching of love will not be recognised, which is evidenced by the fact that humanity, ignorant of its true value, wants to replace Christ’s teaching of love completely. Because it pays more attention to commandments which more or less enslave the human being because they represent spiritual coercion to him.
The world takes offence to this and is now attempting to fight against and replace everything, including the pure teaching of Christ, which is only preaching love. Everything added by people to the divine teaching of love was only done to infiltrate the pure teaching of Christ with error, because it is deviating from what Jesus Christ has left to people as His Work. However, only what is of God will remain.... but human work will pass away....
Amen
This proclamation is used in the following themebook:
| Themebook | Title | Download |
|---|---|---|
| 60 | God corrects misguided teachings and errors Part 3 | ePub PDF Kindle |
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