2866 Spiritual decline.... teaching of Christ.... additions....

September 1, 1943: Book 37

There is a constant spiritual decline, and this is not least due to the teaching of Christ which has been misrepresented to people, which has undergone many additions and thus has become untrustworthy to people. The divine teaching of love as such would be acceptable to people; even if they are unwilling to follow it, they cannot provide any valid reasons for rejecting it as a teaching that does not have an ennobling effect. The human additions, however, find little favor; the right-thinking man rejects them because he does not regard them as divine will; the worldly man, however, also rejects the whole divine teaching with them, because he also transfers the human origin of those additional teachings to the former. To a certain extent this is a justification for him to deny divine origin, thus he does not pay attention to the divine teaching of love, and this results in a spiritual decline which is extremely significant. love alone is spiritual progress, the human being redeems himself through loving activity, and loving activity is constantly preached to him as soon as he allows himself to be taught by those who try to spread Christ's teaching of love in the world. For Christ taught nothing else than that people should live in love, that they should develop themselves upwards by serving in love, thus gaining God's pleasure, so that God's love will flow to all those who respect His teaching of love and thus seek and find union with God, Who is eternal love Himself. But as soon as man believes to be able to live without love he takes a course on earth which leads downwards. He does not strive for spiritual perfection and also does not remain on the same level of development, but his desire, his love, does not turn to the neighbor but to dead things; and therefore it is not a redeeming but an again binding love, which pulls man further and further down, chains him ever more firmly to matter and finally leads to another walk through the whole works of creation. At present, humanity has reached a spiritual level that cannot be emphasized enough as a spiritual regression because humanity no longer has faith in what Jesus Christ taught on earth. It pays more attention to the additional works of men than to His teachings and has thus strayed from the right path.... from the path of active charity.... or it has detached itself from the demands made on humanity by man.... from actions that were made obligatory for people as divine commandments and recognized by them as erroneous. With this human work, the pure teaching of Christ has also been rejected and frowned upon, and people have completely strayed from their mission in life. They live their earthly life without knowledge and consequently also without any success. Love has to be practiced if the human being is to progress in his development, and thus love also has to be taught.... And thus Christ's teaching of love must also be acknowledged and followed, otherwise the human being's development will come to a standstill, a standstill which will gradually lead to spiritual decline. Spiritually and earthly, however, a spiritual decline entails the most evil consequences, which is why God in His love leaves no stone unturned to stop it and to make people realize that they have to strive and that their higher development is extremely endangered.... that they are in danger of sliding down to the abyss, from which they can only develop upwards again under dreadful torments until they are allowed to fulfil the law of love again in free will....

amen

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