Source: https://www.bertha-dudde.org/en/proclamation/6310

6310 Apostasy and return free will act....

July 13, 1955: Book 68

The separation between God and the beings was accomplished in free will.... The return to God must therefore also take place in free will, and therefore God can only open up every possibility for the beings, yet the will always remains decisive as to how the possibilities are utilized, for even if the being, through God's love and mercy, has reached a degree of maturity again after an infinitely long time which already signifies an approach to God again, the last step towards Him must nevertheless be taken voluntarily, and it is because of this last step that you humans on earth, who are the beings in that degree of maturity which the infinitely long time of pre-development has brought you. And now God again opens up every possibility for you to take the step yourselves, yet He does not force you but leaves you free will. But if you look back on your earthly life you will see how easy it was to take this step.... And with only little knowledge you will not be able to understand that a human being can fail in this last test of will.... Yet you must endure a battle because there is one who wants to keep you in the depths and also does everything on his part to win.... For he fights against God and God against him for every soul, yet this battle is brought to a head by the very human being himself in free will.... Thus he is influenced from both sides and it is up to the human being to choose his fate, earthly life was given to him for this purpose. For he fell away from God of his own free will and must now also take the path to Him again without any compulsion if he wants to attain his former glory again, the state of light and strength and bliss in which he was in the beginning. This is why the return to God is also a process of infinitely long duration, for the distance was too great, so that it takes an extremely long time until the ascent is reached again, where free will then is the deciding factor.... and this time, although only very short, can just as well bring about the renewed fall as the final return to God, and then the process of return to God has to start anew and therefore so often endless periods of time are necessary.... which, however, can never be shortened by God's will if the human being in his freedom resists Him.... Whatever can be done by God to shorten the separated state He truly does not refrain from, because the fallen being's return to Him is His beatitude.... but the human being's free will determines how long the being remains separated from God.... For this cannot be eliminated because it was the cause of the fall into the abyss.... (13.7.1955) otherwise the redemption of the spiritual being would have been accomplished long ago through God's greater than great love. But then it could never reach the highest degree of perfection, for it would then be a being according to God's will which could not be other than as God had shaped it. A being without free will is nothing independent, it is only a creature of God like all other works of creation.... But God wants to have free, independent beings around Him which strive for divinization out of themselves.... And these beings therefore often need endless long times when free will turns away from God again and again and strives towards the abyss. But God's love does not diminish, and God's wisdom always finds new means which can lead to a change of will if the human being is to prove himself in the stage of free will. He does not abandon any being, for His love for the fallen being is boundless.... But free will alone is decisive, which His love will never determine. Yet the human being can feel the strength of divine love and now voluntarily turn to Him, and then he will also be close to his perfection, for whatever voluntarily surrenders to Him will be seized by God and eternally no longer surrendered.... The separation is now lifted and the bond with God is now so firmly established that the being will never ever detach itself from the one Whom it has recognized as its God and father from eternity....

Amen

Translated by Doris Boekers