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| Who Do You Say That I Am? |
| "Men, you have been with me sometime now. Yet you are still unsure who I am, and what my work is. Who do men say that I am?" They quickly answered, "Some say you are John the Baptist, others say you are Elijah, and others say you are Jeremiah or one of the prophets." Jesus then looked at them intently and asked, "But who do you say that I am?" In typical aggressive style, Peter immediately replied, "You are the Christ, the Son of the living God." Jesus looked at Peter and said, "How blessed you are for having this truth revealed to you without the aid of religion. In fact, religion cannot reveal this truth to anyone because it does not identify with what is inside the man, being more concerned with those things that the outside of the man does. Only the spirit of man understands my identity, since my identity is spirit and not flesh. In recognizing my true identity, you have recognized your own. This recognition is the rock on which I will build my church. Just as you have come to this recognition on your own, without the aid of men, so will others come to know me. And they will know themselves in doing so. The Son of God is not a single fleshly being. He is all of mankind, forever unified with the Father who created Him. This truth is hard to learn by those who choose to identify with the body, because the physical world consists of many individuals. But this is an illusion, which can only be undone by the revelation of the True Identity within. This is why my kingdom is not of this world, because my true identity is not of this world." The disciples were shocked by these words. They could not grasp the depth of what Jesus said. All their lives they had been taught to trust in the ancient traditions of Judaism. Was Jesus saying that it is impossible for this religion to lead men to the knowledge of who he is? Was he saying that this system must be undone in order for mankind to recognize who he is? How could this be? This message was hard to bear. It went against everything they had been taught from birth about how God's kingdom would be established on earth. "Who do you say that I am?" This question rang in their ears. This question can only be answered by looking inward instead of outward. How strange to look inward instead of outward! How odd to seek an answer for yourself without consulting the ideas of men. Is it possible to answer such questions in this maner? Do such resources reside in each of us? As impossible as it is to believe, each man knew it was true. Something inside of them witnessed that it is so. But something else also told them that this was too hard to believe. Sensing their conflict Jesus said, "The gates of hell will not overcome the truth of what I just spoke to you. You have been taught to identify with your bodies and not your spirit. Yet all the while something feels foreign about it. Am I right? Even now, you are conflicted. On the one hand, you sense that what I said is undoubtedly true. Yet you question it because until now, nobody has provoked you to think otherwise. But you still can't shake it, that ringing inside your souls telling you it is true. In your true mind, you know you are connected with every other person on this earth. But the mind you have identified with so long is telling you it cannot be so, because its' identity is with the physical and not the spiritual. The ideas of this identity are its' defense system, whose purpose is to keep conflict alive inside of you. After all, to this identity death is the most dreadful of all consequences. Death is to be feared at all costs, even if the cost is your sanity. This defense system has literally made you insane because it is built on an insane premise. That premise being that you can separate yourself from others and can therefore harm them, or be harmed by them. What is spirit cannot be threatened by the physical. The eternal cannot be diminished by the temporal." "Do not seek to defend yourself against the truth. If defense is at work inside you, you are conflicted. Conflict always brings fear, which is the atmosphere of hell. Do you know what I mean by fear being the atmosphere of hell? As with the earth, we could not survive without the atmosphere it provides. So it is with hell. Hell is the place of the dead, the place where death never dies. Fear is what sustains the life of that idea. You believe hell to be a literal place, one consisting of physical properties such as fire and brimstone. This does not surprise me, nor should it surprise you. Since you identify so closely with the physical, to you hell must be a physical place. To those who identify with the physical there must be a place of punishment. Since you identify with the physical, death is an essential part of that identity. The idea of death is the basis of conflict. Life and death are opposites. Opposition is the essence of conflict. In fact, conflict cannot remain without it. Since the identity you created is based on a world of opposites, heaven and hell must also exist. Good and bad, right and wrong, punishment and reward, make this world meaningful to the identity you have created." 1 |
| Copyright 2002 |
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