Source: https://www.bertha-dudde.org/en/proclamation/2773

2773 Impact of lifestyle on the whole nation....

June 14, 1943: Book 34/35/36

The right faith and the right worship brings man closer to God, for man recognizes God and seeks to fulfil His will.... he lives in love.... and the latter entails all blessings, the former far distance from God is reduced and the purpose of earthly life has been achieved by the human being.... he has found his way back to God of his own free will. And truly, nothing extraordinary is demanded of people, for they don't need to do anything of their own strength but the strength from God is at their unmeasured disposal and they only need to muster the will to utilize this strength. Yet how often does the will of man fail and he does not reach his goal.... But even then, God's merciful love is still ready to show the soul that is still far from Him the path that leads to Him. Even then God will still take care of it, albeit in a form that is often not recognizable as God's love. But the soul has to give up the open resistance, otherwise God's love withdraws and this means a decline, a hardening of the spiritual substance, which results in an extremely agonizing state. Thus the being has to suffer as long as it does not profess God of its own free will and proves its love for Him through love for its neighbour.... The more willing the being is to establish the connection to God, the less suffering it needs for its development and its existence on earth will be a peaceful one. And likewise, a generation which serves each other in love, thus likewise seeks union with God, will live in peace and quiet on earth and have little need of earthly suffering, for it fulfils its actual purpose on earth, it strives to ascend.... just as, conversely, unspeakable suffering will oppress a people which lives without love and does not try to bridge the distance to God through a corresponding way of life in love and true faith. For such a people must be afflicted so that it may come to recognize. Only unkindness and unbelief bring about a painful fate which more or less affects the individual, for God does not abandon these people but seeks to change them through it. If a person tries to distance himself from Him through unkindness, God will use harsher means but leave him free will. He therefore has to gain closeness to God himself through a right way of life on earth, for it is only the result of a life of love which the human being has to live of his own free will. Yet he is constantly offered opportunities to practice love and he can mature if he does not resist, i.e. if he uses his will in the wrong way.... to unkindness. Then his soul hardens more and more and distances itself from God, and it does not utilize its earthly life, i.e. its last embodiment as a human being, so that it has to go through a new process for its redemption, which again requires infinite times. And therefore God tries all means to make this renewed banishment unnecessary because it is unimaginably agonizing.... Yet the human being's free will is the final deciding factor.... And thus all suffering on earth is merely a means to change this free will so that it will strive towards God and the human being will redeem himself from the bound state by living a life of love as long as he still lives on earth.

Amen

Translated by Doris Boekers