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Message
1
Nero's experience in the hells and
his progress to the
celestial heavens
January 16, 1917
I am here, the spirit of one who lived on earth the life of a wicked man
and a persecutor of the Christians, and also a blasphemer of God and
everything that was pure and holy. When I had lived life to its end and
shuffled off the mortal coil and became a spirit, I also became a
dweller in the lowest hell where all is darkness and torment, an abode
of devils and everything that tends to make the spirit unhappy.
I introduce myself in this way in order to demonstrate to you the
wonderful power of the divine love, for now I am an inhabitant of the
celestial spheres and know that this love is not only real, but capable
of making the vilest sinner a partaker and owner of happiness.
My sufferings were beyond all description, and I was the most desecrated
of mortals. I was almost worshipped by the devils of hell because of the
great injury that I had done to the followers of Jesus, who, in my time,
were possessed of love and faith. Even the terrors of the wild
beasts of the arena, or the torches of my own evil designs, could not
cause them to renounce their faith in this great religion that the
Master had taught them and the disciples were still teaching when I put
so many of them to death.
The devils loved me for the very evil that I had done, but strange to
say, that those who I had sent to the spirit world before their time
were not revengeful to me, nor did they come to me with imprecations or
cursings. When I had been in the spirit world a sufficient time to
realize my surroundings and the evil there, these spirits of the
martyrs, which I had made, came to me in sympathy and pity, and, in
fact, tried many times to help me out of my great sufferings and
darkness. I did not understand this unexpected kindness and evidence of
love, and I would not for a long time believe that these spirits were
sincere. So I suffered year after year, and century after century, and
became convinced that my condition was fixed, and that for me there was
no hope, and that the God that I had heard of was not my God, and devils
were the only companions that I was destined to have through all
eternity.
I endured, wishing to die, but
I could not. Oh, I tell you it was horrible and beyond
all conception of mortals! The law was working, and
I was paying the penalty, and there seemed to be
no end to it. I could find no consolation among those
who surrounded me, and the pleasures that I first
enjoyed became to me mere things of mockery and derision,
and my darkness and torment became the greater. How
often I called upon God, if there be a God, to strike
me dead, but the only answer to my call was the laughter
of the grinning devils, who told me to shout louder,
as God might be asleep or may be deaf.
What to do I knew not, and so I became isolated as best I could from
these terrible associates, and many years of my living were spent in the
darkness of lonesomeness with never a ray of hope or the whisper of one
word to tell me that there might be a fairer destiny. So time went by,
and I waited in my misery for some kind power to come and annihilate me,
but I waited in vain.
During all this time, the recollections of my earthly
deeds were like hot irons scorching my soul and burning my body, but the
end came not. I suffered the tortures of the damned, and it seemed to me
that I was paying the penalties for all the sins and evil deeds that had
ever been committed by all the wicked kings and rulers and persecutors
of the earth. Many times the shrieks of the Christian children and the
groans of the men and women as they were being torn asunder from limb to
limb, or burned as living torches that I had made of them, came to me
and increased my torment. I lived the life of centuries of torment in a
few moments, as it seemed to me, and not one cooling drop of water was
mine. It may seem impossible that I should have continued to live in
this ever increasing suffering, but I did, because I was compelled to.
The law did its work and there was no one to say “enough.” I might write
a volume on this suffering of mine, and yet you would not comprehend the
meaning, and so I will pass it by.
In my loneliness and suffering there came to me on an occasion a
beautiful spirit, as I thought, full of light and love and all the
beauty of early womanhood. With eyes of pity and longing she said, “You
are not alone. Only open your eyes and you will see the star of hope,
which is the sign of love and God’s desire to help you. I am a child of
that God and the possessor of his great enveloping love, and I love you,
even though you took from me my young life when you threw me to the wild
beasts to satisfy your desire to gratify your thirst for innocent blood
and see the suffering and hear the groans of your victims. Yet, I love
you, not because I am a woman with a kindly nature and a forgiving
disposition, but because I have in me this love that tells me I am your
sister, and that you are a child of God just as I am and the object of
God's love, just as I am.
You have suffered, and while you suffered, this love went out to you in
sympathy and desire to help you, but you yourself prevented it from
coming to you and leading you to light and the surcease from suffering.
But now I come to you, your young and innocent victim, who had never
done you any greater harm on earth than to pray for you and ask God to
take away from your heart the great wickedness that caused so many of my
people to suffer persecution and death. We all prayed for you and never
asked our God to curse you or do anything to you to make you suffer. We
prayed for you often since we came to the spirit world, and we are now
praying for you. This is because we love you and want you to be happy.
Look into my eyes, and you will see that love is there and what I tell
you is true. Now, can you not love us a little and open up your soul to
our sympathy, let your feelings of gloom and despondency leave you for a
moment, and realize that in this world of spirits there are some who
love you?
To say that I was surprised does not express my feelings, and as I
looked into the lovelit eyes of that beautiful spirit, I felt the great
sins of my earth life overwhelm me, and in my anguish I cried, “God, be
merciful to me, the greatest of sinners”, and for the first time in all
my life in the hells tears came to my eyes, and my heart seemed to have
a sense of living. There came to me feelings of remorse and regret for
all the evils that I had done on earth. It would take too long to tell
what followed this breaking up of my soul, all shriveled and dead, but
suffice it to say that from that time I commenced to have hope come to
me to get out of my awful condition of darkness. It took a long time,
but, at last, I got into the light, and this love that the beautiful
spirit first told me of gradually came into my soul, until, at last, I
reached the condition of bliss in which I am now.
During all the time of my progress, this radiant loving spirit came to
me very often with her words of love and encouragement and prayed for me
and never left me when I became, as I did at times, doubtful and
discouraged. As my awakening continued, this love came into my soul, and
she told me of the heavenly things that would be mine as I progressed
and reached the soul spheres where there are beautiful homes and pure
bright spirits. I became more and more bound by my love for her, and
after a while I got into the third sphere and realized that what she had
told me was true, only I had not been able to comprehend the greatness
of that truth.
She then commenced to tell me of the happiness of the beautiful spirits
of the two sexes that I so often saw together. She explained that they
were soulmates, and that their love was the greatest of all the loves,
except for that of the divine love. She told me that every spirit in all
of the spheres had its soulmate and at the proper time would find him or
her.
My love for this loving spirit had become so intense that in the very
depths of my soul I wished and prayed that my soulmate might be such a
one as she. At last, I became so filled with my love for her that I told
her that the only thing in all the heavens that I needed to make my
happiness full was her being my soulmate, but I realized that this
desire was hopeless, as I had destroyed her life, and of course she
could not be my soulmate. Oh! How I suffered when I realized that she
could not be mine but was another’s.
As I told her of these longings and hopeless feelings of my soul she
came close to me and looked into my eyes with such burning love, and she
threw her arms around me and said, “I am your soulmate, and knew the
fact a short time after you came to the spirit world and entered your
hell of darkness.” During all the long years I prayed and prayed for the
time when I could come to you with my love and awaken in your dead soul
a response to my great love for you. When the time came that I could go,
I was so thankful to God that I almost flew to you to tell you that you
were not neglected or un-thought of, but that there was some love in the
spirit world that was going to you.
Of course, I could not tell you of my soulmate love, for you would not
have understood, but as your soul awakened and this love came to you, I
became happier and happier and have waited so anxiously for this moment
when I could tell you that this love that has been consciously mine for
so long is all yours. I will draw the veil here, but you can imagine
what my happiness was, and as I progressed from sphere to sphere my
happiness and love for her increased and increased.
Thus, I have told you the story of the life in the spirit world of the
wickedest man that God ever permitted to live and gratify his feelings
of hatred and revenge. I, who have passed through this experience and
realize all that it means, say that God’s love is able to and does save
the vilest sinner and transforms the chiefest of devils into a celestial
angel of the highest heaven.
I have written a long time and you are tired. I thank you, and will say
goodnight.
Nero, the Roman Emperor,
one time persecutor of God’s true children.
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