Ascended master Jesus, February 22, 2004 through Kim Michaels

You have heard my statement that the first shall be the last and the last shall be the first, but so few have bothered to ponder what this statement might mean. And even fewer have understood the true meaning of this most profound statement. So let me attempt to explain the meaning, so that those who have ears might hear.

This statement can best be understood in connection with my saying that unless you become as little children, you cannot enter the kingdom of Heaven. The advantage that children have, and which many adults have lost, is the innocence of mind, the open mind and the open heart. These innocent children have no prejudices and no preconceived opinions about life. This then stands in stark contrast to the scribes, the Pharisees and the other religious authorities who attacked me so viciously during my mission in Israel.

Why did these people attack me? The answer is simple. They had lost the innocence of the child-like mind and heart. Instead, they had built a mindset that was entirely dominated by prejudice and that was so full of preconceived opinions, that there was no room for the Living Truth that I brought, the Living Truth that I am. They had taken away the key of knowledge, which is the Living Word that flows from God through the power of the Holy Spirit.

These people thought they knew how the Word of God should be delivered and what it should say. Yet the most profound truth you will ever hear about the Holy Spirit is that it bloweth where it listeth. As is the case with God, the Holy Spirit is no respecter of persons or of their expectations and prejudices. Therefore, the Holy Spirit will not conform to people’s expectations about what they think a spiritual teaching should be like, what the teaching should contain or how and by whom it should be delivered. The Holy Spirit will blow where it listeth, and in so doing it will often contradict or go beyond the expectations that people have built up with their carnal minds.

Those who think they are first

You see my beloved, there is a certain type of people on this planet who have an insatiable need to feel that they are above and beyond other human beings. These people have created an elitist mindset, and they will do anything to reinforce that mindset and to strengthen the belief that they are somehow better or more important than those whom they consider to be the masses, the “little” people.

Over the course of history, it has happened many times that such people have been attracted to this or that religion. When they are converted to a particular religion, they will always strive to attain high positions within the hierarchy of that organization. They will do this by whatever means are available in the particular organization, but one of the common means is that they attain an extensive knowledge of the outer scriptures of the organization. They will also do everything possible to conform to the outer rules and sacraments of the organization. They will be the ones who seem to be doing everything right from an outer standpoint, and they will have no compunctions about letting other people know how right they are. These are the ones that I denounced for doing their alms in public, giving their prayers in public or fasting in public.

So what these people will do is that they will set themselves up as being first, meaning that they are more important than other members of that religion. Once they feel they have attained such a position, they will then begin to build a mental image of how everything should be within that religion. In so doing, they are actually building a mental image of how they think God should be, how they think a representative of God should behave and how they think the Holy Spirit should flow. They will then seek to make others accept their mental image and conform to that image. These people are completely convinced that they have a right to define how “their” religion should function, and they believe that their mental image is completely right and in alignment with the truth of God.

The most subtle temptation

Oh my beloved, the temptation to think you are first among humans, to think that you know better than others, even better than God, is such a subtle temptation. It is the very temptation that the devil himself presented to me after my fasting in the wilderness. He attempted to make me compromise the truth of God in order to make myself seem important in the eyes of men.

Oh my beloved, this is truly the most subtle and persuasive temptation that the devil has come up with in his never-ending attempts to lead human beings astray. The logic of the devil is so subtle, and it is so easy to fall for this temptation. And there is a certain class of souls who are easy prey for this temptation, and what causes them to fall every time is their desire to feel better than others. They want to be favorite sons and daughters.

Once the soul has fallen for this temptation, it begins to truly believe that it has the right and the obligation to define how the religious organization should be run. It even has a right to change the spiritual teachings of the organization in order to make them conform to and support the mental image that the elite has created.

This is indeed what the Pharisees, the scribes, the Sadducees, the lawyers and the temple priests had done to the revelations given to Israel by the prophets, by Moses and by Abraham. They had taken the original spiritual teachings and changed them ever so slightly, and in so doing they created a set of doctrines, a mindset and a culture that was out of alignment with the truth and the reality of God. That culture had become the way that seems right unto a man, but the ends thereof are the ways of death.

I stirred up the waters

So consider what happened when I suddenly appeared on the scene to stir up the pot and challenge these people’s sense of being in control of the Jewish religion. My beloved, I had the Holy Spirit and I allowed the Holy Spirit to flow through me and to blow where it listed. As I said, I of my own self could do nothing; I spoke what the Father gave me to speak. And the Father gave me many things to say that were designed to challenge and replace the counterfeit culture created by the false leaders of the Jewish religion.

Oh how angry they were, when I dared to open my mouth in defiance of their mental images of God and religion. Oh how spiteful they were in trying to discredit me in any way possible. Can anything good come out of Nazareth? How could a humble carpenter, whom they considered to be a complete nobody, dare to bring forth teachings that challenged their mental image of how things should be. Oh if only you could have heard how they were howling like hyenas in their outrage that anyone dared to gainsay their authority, which they had allowed themselves to believe came directly from God.

Read the scriptures and see how often they attacked me, how often they challenged me and how often they attempted to trick me according to the outer law. Oh if you could only have heard the secret councils they held against me, and which I have been able to hear replayed from my ascended state. It would have been so clear to you that these people truly were empty sepulchers, filled with man-made doctrines that sprang from pride and the idea that these people knew better than God.

So who is the one being that first embodied the consciousness that he could know better than God? My beloved, it was Lucifer himself who first rebelled against God from the prideful belief that he knew better than God how the universe should be created and how souls should be saved.

Therefore, you see that these people who think only they know how to run a religious organization have embodied the same consciousness as that embodied by the devil himself. And that is why I told them that they were doing the deeds of their father and that they were the sons of the devil.

What does it mean to be a son of someone? In the spiritual sense it means that you embody the consciousness of the father. So if you embody the consciousness of pride and think you know better than God, then you make yourself a son of the devil. Yet if you embody the Christ consciousness and realize that you, of your own self, can do nothing and it is truly the Father who is doing the work through you, then you become the son or daughter of God. That is what I came to demonstrate, but of course these blind leaders could not understand my message, and therefore they attacked me with all their anger, their pride and their arrogance. They truly believed that I was a false prophet, that I was a fraud and that my miracles were no more than tricks played upon the minds of ignorant people.

These people believed with absolute certainty that in trying to silence me they were doing the work of God. They were defending the purity of the Jewish faith against a false prophet who came to destroy that faith. They truly believed that they themselves were the real saviors of the people, because they had been anointed by the tradition of the outer church. They believed the outer church was the key to salvation, and therefore the leaders of the outer church were the real saviors of the people and the real representatives of God on Earth.

Why a new religion is attacked

My beloved, the main reason for giving you this discourse is to show you that these people were so firmly ensconced in this state of consciousness that I, Jesus Christ, a person who had attained the fullness of the Christ consciousness, could do nothing to shake these people out of their mindset and their arrogant belief that they knew better than any power in Heaven and on Earth how the Jewish religion should be run.

My point is to show you that the Law of Free Will is the absolute law in this universe, and therefore not even a true prophet of God can open the minds and hearts of those who have set themselves above God out of pride and arrogance. There is literally no way for anyone to make such people see the unreality of their beliefs. You can lead a man to the Living Waters, but you cannot make him drink the Living Truth or hear the Living Word.

My point here is to show you what happens to most religions on this planet. We of the ascended masters have given many true and valid religions on this planet. Our purpose for giving a new religion is to help people rise to a higher state of consciousness, rise to the next level of the spiritual path that humankind has been following for thousands of years. So when a new religion is given, that religion will go beyond the doctrines and the culture in which it appears. Our purpose is to take that culture to the next level.

Yet what inevitably happens is that those who have set themselves up as the false rulers will fail to see the validity of the new religion. In their pride and arrogance, they will refuse to believe that God could possibly bring forth a new religion that goes beyond the existing one. They will refuse to let the Holy Spirit blow where it listeth and to bring forth teachings that contradict their images and expectations of how religion should be.

Therefore, in their spiritual blindness, which is the inevitable result of pride, these false leaders will reject the new religion. This is what you saw them do to me 2,000 years ago. Sadly, I must say that even today many Christian leaders will reject the possibility that I, Jesus Christ, could bring forth a new religious teaching, such as I am doing on this website and through other people who in the humbleness of their hearts have agreed to serve as my messengers.

You now see that the false leaders of the old religion will always be the first to viciously attack the new religion that we bring forth. If the new religion is not destroyed by the onslaught of the old religion, then it will gradually attract more and more followers. Many of the people who are the first to be attracted to a new religion are those who have the open minds and the open hearts of little children. They are the humble, the meek, the downtrodden and those who are open to a higher understanding of God. These people are the ones that the ruling elite label as being last, meaning that they are unimportant and unworthy compared to the elite. So truly, those who are last in the old religion often become the first to embrace the new religion. That is indeed why you saw me reach out to those who were considered outcasts in the Jewish culture.

How a religion is perverted

Now then, as the new religion begins to grow, there comes a turning point. There comes a point where the new religion has attained a critical mass and begins to attract a substantial number of followers. What suddenly happens now is that some among the false leaders begin to fear that the new religion might one day become more powerful than the old religion. And therefore they might lose their outer positions or their status in society.

What happens is that the new religion suddenly becomes attractive for those who are the proud souls, the arrogant souls, those who think they should be the most important people in society. Such souls look at the new religion and the rapid growth of the new religion, and they suddenly feel a spark of fear. They have the thought that perhaps they could be left behind. And so the proud souls begin to wonder if they should jump ship and join the new religion. After all, if we can’t beat’em, why not join’em. Often, the first people to jump ship are those who never quite attained the position they wanted in the old religion. They hope to achieve the status in the new that they did not have in the old.

At the moment such arrogant souls are attracted to a new religion, that religion faces a severe test. These souls will immediately begin to seek positions of authority in the new religion. In their firm belief that they know best, they will begin to change the religion in many subtle ways, so that it becomes more suitable as a vehicle for power and prestige.

When the Ascended Host gave the new religion to humankind, it was intended to be a vehicle for spreading truth. Yet the arrogant souls have no commitment to truth. They have a commitment to power and prestige, and they have no compunctions about changing the truth of a religion to further their goals of attaining power and prestige. This can lead to a number of very subtle changes in a religion so that it is often, over several generations, transformed into the same kind of rigid, letter-of-the-law religion as the old religion.

The perversion of Christianity

My beloved, this is indeed what happened to Christianity. I came to replace the false religion of the orthodox Jewish culture, the religion that had been perverted by the false leaders, who in their pride and arrogance thought they knew better than God. Yet as soon as Christianity started to become a powerful religion that had prestige in society, the false leaders began to enter Christianity. And no sooner had they entered, before they started to turn Christianity into the same kind of outer religion that they believe is the only true religion. This development started only a century after my death on the cross. It progressed slowly but surely until it reached a climax with the so-called conversion of the Roman emperor Constantine.

From the moment Christianity became the official state religion of the Roman Empire, Christianity reached a point of no return, and it has never been the same. Over the following centuries, Christianity was gradually transformed into a religion that portrays an image of me and my teachings that is almost entirely false. I have exposed this fallacy in many of the teachings on this website, so I will not go into detail here.

My point is to show you that there are people in Christianity today who are absolutely convinced that their image of Christianity is correct, just as the people who attacked me were convinced that their image of Judaism was correct. This is no coincidence. Reincarnation is indeed a reality. There are people who hold high positions in the leadership of Christian churches who were the very ones that persecuted me 2,000 years ago.

The people who were directly responsible for my death back then received their judgment, and they are no longer on this planet. Nevertheless, there were many lower-ranking people in the Jewish hierarchy that did not receive their final judgment back then. These souls, and similar souls from other religions, have continued to reembody within the Christian religion for the past 2,000 years. They often attained high positions in the churches, and they have taken Christianity in a direction that is entirely out of alignment with the reality of my teachings.

As a result, the religion that I founded has now become the way that seems right unto a man, but the ends thereof are the ways of death. My beloved, do you think I am happy with this development?

The spoilers

As I explained to you, I could not open the minds and hearts of the false leaders of the Jewish religion. And today, I find it equally difficult to open the minds and hearts of the false leaders of the Christian religion.

Take a look at some of these leaders and see how they are so firmly ensconced in their beliefs that there is no way to convince them that their beliefs are false. These people have used their perverted versions of my teachings to prop themselves up, through their pride and arrogance, in a mental box that they believe is infallible. They have encaged themselves in a mental prison that is virtually impenetrable. Their minds have become such hardened shells that there is no opening through which my Living Truth can enter.

They do not want the real Jesus Christ to enter their minds and hearts. They do not want to be disturbed by the Living Word. They only want the false image of Jesus Christ that has been built over these past 2,000 years, and nothing I could possibly say or do would make them realize and admit that they are worshiping an idol and dancing around a golden calf of their own making. They believe it is their sacred duty to keep Christianity – the false, man-made Christianity – pure and to defend it against all onslaughts from dangerous and subversive new ideas. They believe that in so doing, they are being loyal to me and doing God’s work. They believe they are the true representatives of Christ on Earth. They believe they are the true saviors of the people.

Oh my beloved, I sometimes understand why Moses flew into a fit of anger and smashed the tablets, when he came down the mountain and saw the Israelites dancing around that golden calf. I somehow wish I could shake the foundations of Christianity and awaken the people to the errors and the subtle lies, the serpentine lies, embedded in the doctrines created by these arrogant leaders who think they know better than God. They even think that they have a right to define Christianity, and they believe they know better than the person who founded Christianity, namely myself. This is the consciousness that you saw express itself through Peter, as explained elsewhere.

When these arrogant leaders come across my true inner teachings, as expressed on this website and through many other messengers over the past 2,000 years, they immediately fly into a fit of what they see as righteous indignation. In their arrogance and anger, they immediately look for some little detail they can use to reject the entire teaching. They think it is their holy duty to destroy the new teaching in order to preserve the purity of the old teaching.

As the first step, they seek to find some way whereby they can discredit and attack the person who is bringing forth the new teaching. They automatically refuse to believe that I could possibly use a messenger who is not part of their self-appointed church hierarchy. In so doing, they forget that I was attacked by the self-appointed leaders of the Jewish religion and that none of the Old Testament prophets were part of the religious establishment. These false leaders simply cannot fathom that I could possibly speak through a person whom they consider to be beneath them. They cannot fathom that I use those who are humble and have open hearts precisely because their own hearts have waxed gross and their ears are dull of hearing. They cannot fathom that those whom they have made last on Earth could be considered first in the kingdom of Heaven.

As the second step, they look for some aspect of the teaching that goes beyond or seems to contradict the doctrines that they believe represent absolute truth. As I have explained, the purpose of bringing forth the new teaching is to help people come up higher. Therefore, the new teaching always goes beyond the old teaching, especially when the old teaching has been perverted by the false leaders. So it is always easy to find something in the new teaching which seems to contradict the old. And since no human being was ever perfect, it is always easy to find some human imperfection in the messenger. And so they seek to kill the messenger, as they killed me, or they seek to kill the teaching, as they killed my teachings.

Rise above the false leaders

My beloved, why am I bringing this sad story to your attention? I am letting you know because I love you, and because I want to see you rise to a higher awareness and a higher understanding of what is going on in the religious life of this planet. You too have reembodied many times in a Christian culture over the past 2,000 years. You have sometimes been the blind followers of the blind leaders, and I am come to call you to stop following those false leaders and to follow my true teachings in your heart.

I am come to help you see why it is absolutely essential that a spiritual organization must remain open to the Living Word of God, delivered through the agency of the Holy Spirit. Only that Living Word can prevent that a spiritual organization becomes perverted by the false leaders who in their arrogance think they know better than everyone else, even better than God. I have come to present you with the call to choose this day whom you will serve, the dead word of the false leaders or the Living Word of God?

I am come to challenge you to open your minds and hearts to the Living Truth that I am, so that the scales can fall from your eyes and you can see the fallacy of the false doctrines and the false culture created by these arrogant leaders. I am come to give you the truth that will set you free—if you are willing to open your minds and hearts to the Living Truth that cannot be contained or confined by any outer doctrine or any outer organization.

Come apart from them and be a separate and chosen people, a people who has elected to follow the Living Truth of God, rather than the dead “truth” of man. Coming apart means to come apart in consciousness, so that you are free from the subtle lies and the serpentine logic used by the blind leaders. These arrogant leaders are truly the tares sown among the wheat. Yet while the wheat cannot move, you have the option of moving away from the consciousness of the false hierarchy of Christianity—or any other religion. You can come apart, so that God can pull up the tares without pulling up the wheat.

The Bible is a great book, but I am greater than any book. Did I not say that a greater than Solomon is here? I am the real, living Jesus Christ. I am a spiritual being who has transcended the limitations of the carnal mind and time and space. I cannot be confined to any outer doctrine or any outer church. I am more than the image of me painted by the scriptures in the Bible. I am more than the doctrines you find in orthodox Christianity. I am more than the sacraments and rituals of that Christianity.
I am come that all might have life, the life of the Christ consciousness, and that they may have it more abundantly. This means that they might have a more abundant outpouring of the love and the truth of Christ. Yet to receive the gift of life from my Sacred Heart, you must dare to open your minds and hearts, even if what I say goes beyond the Christian doctrines that you have been spoon-fed since childhood. If you do not dare to open your minds, out of the fear projected upon you by the false leaders, then how could you possibly receive my gift?

Repent!

My beloved, I say to you today, as I said 2,000 years ago, “Repent and be baptized, for the kingdom of God is at hand!” Repent means to free your minds from the false doctrines and the false culture created by the false leaders of Christianity. Let go of these false beliefs that have been programmed into your minds for the past 2,000 years. Be baptized means to let the Holy Spirit flow through you and baptize you with the living fire that I brought to this planet. This living fire is the perfect love which will cast out all of your fears.

The kingdom of God is at hand means that the Christ consciousness is available to all, if they will walk the path that leads to union with the Christ self. That path has always been available, but I am here to tell you that planet Earth has turned a corner in her spiritual evolution.

As a result of this, there has never been a time on this planet when there was a greater opportunity to walk the path of personal Christhood. There has never been a time when the Holy Spirit was poured out in such great measure, and when the wind of the Holy Spirit was blowing with such strength.

My beloved, hear the rushing of the mighty wind of the Holy Spirit. It is truly singing a new song to all those who are willing to open their ears and open their hearts and to hear the Living Word that I am. Oh my beloved, you do have inner ears to hear, the ears of the heart. Use them.