Source: https://www.bertha-dudde.org/en/proclamation/6571

6571 Death or life.... Overcoming the world....

June 13, 1956: Book 70

He who loves the world will lose his life, he who despises it will gain his life.... For the world brings death to the soul, but overcoming the world awakens it to life.... You humans certainly stand in the midst of the world, and it is your earthly task to carry out the position where you have been placed also in an earthly manner. Nevertheless, apart from this task you can fulfil your actual earthly task: You can give life to your soul by valuing another goal higher than the world, by striving spiritually in the midst of the world. However, this actual earthly task of yours first requires of you to overcome the world, i.e. it must not dominate you but you must be and remain master over everything that belongs to the world.... you must only pay attention to it as far below you as it should serve you. But you should focus your attention on the spiritual kingdom which you can acquire if you live right on earth. You can choose between life and death, for you alone determine the state of your soul after the body's demise. But you can never gain life if you are enslaved by the world, if nothing else occupies your thoughts but only the attainment of earthly goods and goals.... Consider this well and strive to give life to the soul.... You cannot possess or gain both the earthly and the spiritual kingdom at the same time, you must decide for one or the other, for both kingdoms are opposites as are the demands each kingdom makes on you. But remember that one kingdom is transient whereas the other lasts forever.... And do not use your strength, your worries and efforts for something worthless which you will lose again, but use all your vitality to gain eternal values. Life or death is the result of your earthly life, and you yourselves determine this.... So let yourselves be admonished and warned time and again and be reminded of the end of your life, which you cannot escape, which is present to your mind as a certainty. If you want to live forever and not need to fear earthly death, then you must also already on earth take care of this life by paying more attention to the soul than to your body.... by trying to awaken and maintain its life and just allowing the body to live in want, which cannot live forever after all.... And therefore you must not pay too much attention to the world, which only serves the body but not the soul. If you regard the world as your enemy who only wants to hand you over to death.... because the world embodies God's adversary.... then you will also lose all love for the world and turn your thoughts to the kingdom in which God reigns, Whose concern is only ever to awaken everything that is dead to life so that it can be eternally blissful in His kingdom.... Then the world will also no longer be a danger, then you will have overcome it, then you will be able to stand in the midst of the world and yet gain for your soul the life that lasts forever....

Amen

Translated by Christian Taffertshofer