Man was created, as the Scripture says, "a little below the Angels," (Psalms 8:4-6) but endowed with the potentiality of having his soul transformed into a Divine soul, of becoming a Divine Angel, fit to live a life of conscious Immortality in the Celestial Heavens. The potentiality of receiving the Divine Love had been lost when our First Parents forfeited the Gift of receiving the Divine Love. Two-thousand years ago, God re-instated the potentiality of receiving the Divine Love, and sent His son, Jesus of Nazareth, to inform us of the glad tidings that, after the long dark wait since the Fall of our First Parents, man could again pray for, and receive the Divine Love.

In order to bring about the transformation of the soul, the New Birth, every person can pray for the Divine Love, the very Substance of the Father. No person is born with the Divine Love, no matter how Divinely constituted he may appear to his fellow man. Man is only born with the natural love. The Divine Love is separate and distinct from the natural love, and comes only in response to the sincere, earnest prayer of a soul that is filled with longings for Its coming. It is the result of individual acquirement, and not the object of universal possession. It may be possessed by all, and each man must determine for himself whether it shall be his. With God there is no respect of persons; neither is there any royal road to the obtaining of this Love. All must pursue the same way and that way is the one that Jesus taught: the opening up of the soul to this Love finding a lodgment therein (John 6:44, "No man can come to me, except the Father which hath sent me draw him;") No mediator is needed, nor are the prayers or ceremonies of priests or preachers, for God comes to man, himself, and hears his prayers and responds thereto by sending the Comforter, the Holy Ghost, which is the Father's messenger for conveying into the souls of men this great Divine Love.

No soul who asked for the Divine Love in the proper way, has ever been denied. "Everyone who asketh receiveth." (Luke 11:10) In fact, it is His Greatest Wish that we become at-one with Him, and partake of His Great Love, which He has bestowed upon us through His Mercy and Desire that we become, in truth, His children, and One with Him in very Substance, and not in likeness only. 1 Corinthian 6:17, "Whosoever is joined to the Lord becomes One Spirit with Him." Such is the way of our loving Father, that He seeks no atonement, but at-onement.

There is a spirit world, consisting of several spheres, seven in number, each holding countless planes. The even-numbered spheres are meant for those spirits who primarily intend to develop their mental abilities, the odd-numbered spheres are the "soul-spheres" and hold inhabitants whose main goal is to develop their soul. Above the spiritual spheres are situated the Celestial Heavens, that only hold inhabitants who have experienced the New Birth, the full transformation of the natural soul into a Divine soul. Although the Celestial Heavens themselves are numbered too, due to the fact that souls growing in the Divine Love are unlimited in their progress, their potential number is actually really infinite too, depending on the progress of the souls living therein. Jesus is Master of the Celestial Heavens (John 10:29, "My Father, who gave them me, is greater than all,") and no soul is as developed in the Divine Love as he is.

When a spirit enters the spirit world, the condition of that soul determines the locality as well as the appearance of the spirit body. This is called the Law of Attraction. The Law of Attraction is not a Law which only comes into operation to meet newcomers into the spirit world, so to speak, but is always working, in that no soul can occupy a place for which his soul does not render him fit to occupy yet. The spirit body has not, of itself, the power to determine its own location or destiny as regards place, for the Law of Attraction, which operates in this particular, operates upon the soul, and the condition of the soul determines the location of itself.

The Law of Attraction determines that a soul be surrounded by and must associate with spirits of a similar condition of development as his own, until some change comes to him which fits him for a higher place. Of course, this change may come in a short time, or it may require a longer time to bring it about--all this depending upon the realization by the spirit as to what his condition is, and the fact that there is a possibility of progressing. Of himself he cannot bring about this change, for the Law which fixes his place or condition does not cease to operate until there is called into operation another Law which permits and helps the change. The only way in which this changed condition can be brought about is by the influences of other spirits of a more enlightened and higher position than that of the spirit whose position I have spoken of. These influences do not necessarily come from spirits who have received the New Birth, but may come from spirits who know nothing about it, and who have only the natural love, and even they may not necessarily be of a high order of development of either intellect or soul. But they must be in such condition that they know and are able to tell the lower spirit of the possibility of progress and the way in which it can be made.

Since the condition of the soul determines the locality of the soul, when a soul makes progress in its development, it naturally progresses hierarchically in the spheres too.

Sin is violation of God's Law. (1 John 3:4, "Whoever commits sin transgresses the Law: for sin is the transgression of the Law.") In the spirit world, when a man has committed sins on Earth, The Law of Compensation demands that he must pay the penalties for these sins until there has been full expiation, or until The Law of Compensation has been fully satisfied. Man, when he becomes a spirit, is his own judge and executioner, submitting to and receiving the inexorable results of the Law, that whatsoever a man sows that shall he also reap.

If we bear in mind that sin does not exist in the abstract, but is rather the inharmony caused by violation of God's Law, then forgiveness, in the sense of a magnanimous God turning a blind eye to our inharmonies, such forgiveness is indeed not of our Lord. For the only remedy to inharmony is the restoration of that harmony. Neither can thus the blood of Jesus, nor that of any other creature, vicariously atone for ours sins, nor priests, preachers, or any other person, make intercession on our behalf. Our own inharmonies, brought on by the operation of our free will towards the inharmony, must be removed in the exact same manner as we incurred them: through the operation of our free will, geared towards restoration of the harmony. Jesus' death, unfortunate and unexpected as it was, does not change our individual soul state any more than, for instance, sprinkling ourselves with water does.

Naturally, when we still live out of harmony with God, we feel no particular need to judge ourselves. Or, as Paul said in 1 Corinthians 11:31, "For if we would judge ourselves, we should not be judged." But when a person comes to the spirit world, that person will then, sooner or later, have an awakening as to his sinful state, and the recollections of his former transgressions cause him anguish and suffering. And as long as conscience works, he will suffer; and the greater the sins committed, the greater will be the suffering. Sin itself calls the Law into operation (1 Corinthians 15:56, "The strength of sin is the Law,") the Law is only the resultant of the workings and scourgings of our own conscience and recollections of our deeds. Paraphrasing Shakespeare, Our judgements in ourselves do lie, which we ascribe to Heaven.

The Law of Compensation is necessary to preserve, or bring about, the harmony of God's universe, which, of course, is absolutely necessary, and while it may appear to man, at first sight, to be a harsh and cruel Law, yet in its workings and results, even to the individual spirit who may suffer in the reaping, it is a most benign and beneficial Law, for the darkness and sufferings of a few years bring about an eternity of light and happiness. Or, as was written in Hebrews 12:10, "For they verily for a few days chastened us after their own pleasure; but He for our profit, that we might be partakers of His Holiness."

That is in effect the Law of Compensation: that when a person has committed sins on earth, the Law of Compensation demands that he must pay the penalty of these sins until there has been a full expiation, or until the Law is satisfied. The key-phrase here is "until the Law is satisfied". For next to the long expiatory way of satisfying the Law, where sins have to be paid for to the last farthing, thus bringing with it forgiveness in the end, there is a Higher Law, the Law of Love, which can bring about Divine Forgiveness. For when one receives a portion of the Divine Love, that soul has then become sinless to the degree it has received this Divine Love. So far as the Divine Love is present, sin and error have no existence, because it is just as impossible for this Essence and sin and error to occupy the same parts of the soul at the same time, as it is for two material objects to occupy the same space at the same time.

It must be very clearly understood, that when we receive a portion of the Divine Love, the Law of Compensation--that what a Man sows, that shall he reap--is NOT set aside. But the nature of the Divine Love being such that, when received, causes the purification of that soul through possessing It and thus forcing from it the excrescences that mar and defile that soul, God, in thus forgiving our sins, does not annihilate the Law of Compensation, but removes that upon which this Law may operate. When we receive a portion of the Divine Love, the Law of Compensation is not pushed aside. In fact, it still functions, unto Itself, in the exact same manner as before: operating on that which it can operate. Except, of course, that having received the true Grace of the Father, His Divine Love, and thus having sin removed from the soul, the Law of Compensation may, in its workings, appear to that soul as if the very Law Itself had been instructed to ease up on that soul. But this is decidedly not the case. The workings of the Law of Compensation are still as inexorable as ever before--the only difference being that it finds less to operate on in that particular soul. Therefore, the Divine Love of God, when given to us, is not the abolishment of the Law, but the fulfilment of the Law.

The Divine Love is the greatest thing in all the world, and the only thing that can make man at one with the Father, and change the soul of man as it has existed since his creation, into a Divine Substance filled with the Essence of the Father. There is nothing else in all the universe of God that can cause man to become a new creature, and an inhabitant of the Father's Kingdom. This is what Jesus tried to explain to Nicodemus, a Pharisee, who did not understand that until a man receives this New Birth (John 3:1-21) he cannot possibly enter into the Kingdom of Heaven (Cf. Galatians, 6:15, "For in Christ Jesus neither circumcision availeth anything, nor uncircumcision, but a new creature.")

Since the Divine Love is the only thing that can make man at one with the Father, and an inhabitant of the Celestial Heavens, souls who have only perfected themselves in the natural love, will only be able to progress to the highest spiritual Heaven, the Sixth Sphere, called Paradise. And so, when the world will end, that is: the world of men's thoughts and deeds and sinful conditions that are not in harmony with God's Laws or the Laws of His creation, and all souls have either been purified in the natural love, or have received the transformation of the New Birth, the final spiritual outcome will be that all souls either find themselves in the Kingdom of God in the spirit world, which may be obtained by man, or spirit, by obeying the will of God in those essentials that will work a purification of his natural love, and cause that coming into harmony with His Laws which affect and control man as mere man; that is, that will restore man to the condition of perfection that existed before the fall of the First Parents, or in the Divine Kingdom of God, the Celestial Heavens, not made with hands or by the mere fiat of any spirit, but made and populated only by the souls of men and women who have experienced the New Birth and received the Divine Essence of the Father.

When Jesus himself had received the great Gift, as the first human ever, and his Immortality and Divine nature became to him a conscious possession, he then knew that he had been lifted from death into Life, and thereupon proclaimed, "I am the Resurrection and the Life!" (John 11:25) And by this he meant, that as by Man's disobedience there had occurred the death of the possibility of his becoming at one with the Father and partaking of His Divine nature, so with his coming Man had again been placed in the condition of Life. Only in this way was Jesus the Resurrection and the Life. Therefore, the true resurrection from the dead, as taught by the Master, was not the rising of corpses long since returned to the elements from which they were crafted, but the fact that God had rebestowed upon mankind the privilege of arising from the condition of death to Life, the resurrection from death to the glories of Immortal Life.

Although Jesus' Magnificence surpasses that of all souls, and his Love is beyond all Earthly comprehension, Jesus himself emphatically declared that his mission was to bring Mankind the Good News that the Gift of receiving the Divine Love was not just meant for him alone, but that the Father had ordained that every human soul could partake of the Divine Essence too. We read so in John 17:26, "And I have declared unto them Thy name, and will declare it: that the Love wherewith Thou hast loved me may be in them, and I in them." Jesus was not the "only-born" to be allowed the transformation into the Image of the Father, the New Birth, but, as Paul says in Romans 8:29, "For whom He foreknew, He also predestined to be conformed to the image of His Son, that He might be the firstborn among many brethren."

Man, while created "a little below the Angels," can become a true Divine Angel, through the transformation of the New Birth. Luke 20:34-36, "And Jesus answering said unto them, The children of this world marry and are given in marriage. But they that shall be accounted worthy to obtain that World [the Celestial Heavens] and the Resurrection from the dead, neither marry nor are given in marriage, neither can they die any more; for they are equal unto the Angels and are the children of God, being the children of the Resurrection."

In Christ,

- Rev. Mark Kramer

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