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John the Baptist is now the harbinger of the Master as he was on earth
and confirms Jesus’ writing through Padgett
August 10, 1915
I am here, John the Baptist.
I came to tell you that I am now the harbinger of the Master as I was
when on earth, and that he is the true Jesus who writes to you in all
the communications that you will receive signed by him. I tell you this
so that you will believe and not doubt the messages that you receive. He
has written you, and you must rely on what he says, for what he has said
to you will surely come to pass.
I am the same John who appeared in Palestine and announced Jesus’s
coming, and just as I told the people what was actually to take place,
so I tell you what is actually taking place now. You will not only
receive the messages of truth that he will write you, but they will also
be distributed to all mankind wherever the written and spoken languages
of the world exist. So you have before you a wonderful and important
mission, and one that will do more to make men true brothers and lovers
of God than anything that has happened since the Master was on earth and
taught and preached the truths of God and did good to mortal man.
I sometimes have wondered why you should have been selected. I see that
your soul development has not been nearly as great as that of many
others who now live and have lived. Nevertheless, as the Master has made
the selection, we understand that he knows what is best, and that his
selection must be the right one. As a consequence of this, we who are
his followers in the celestial world are trying our best to forward the
cause and help you. I must tell you that you have behind you in this
great work, supporting and maintaining you, more spiritual power than
any mortal has ever had before. This may sound surprising to you, but it
is true.
So, my brother, for such I must call you now, try to acquire faith in God’s desire to save all men from the errors of their lives and
to make them at-one with him. This will enable you to stand forth as the
representative of the Master and the authoritative teacher of his great
truths. I am now in the celestial heavens and am very close to Jesus in
his home and in his love for God and for all mankind. I have powers that
are great and a love that is divine, and what I tell you now I will tell
to the world when the opportunity presents itself.
Your brother in Christ,
John the Baptist
John writes about his life and ministry
March 3, 1955 Daniel G. Samuels
I am here, John the Baptist.
I am happy that you are permitting me to write to you. I would like to
supply some information about my life.
I was born in the month of June some six months before that of my cousin
Jesus in the neighborhood of Ain Karim, which is a small town not far
from Jerusalem. I was the son of a priest who served in the Temple in
Jerusalem. My family was pious and devoted and filled with a strict
interpretation regarding the laws that the Jews believed had been
received from God through Moses. To my father, these laws of Moses and
the Ten Commandments represented the most important part of the Jewish
religion, and he taught me a strict moral code that I absorbed in my
youth and that later became the cardinal principles of my brief ministry
as the harbinger of the glad tidings of Jesus.
During my manhood I was an ascetic and shunned all meat and strong
drink. I ate only the simplest of foods in order not to be subject to
the passions of man, and later I became a hermit and lived in a cave
away from the haunts of men and their society.
When Jesus and his family returned from Egypt to Nazareth to be among
his people in Galilee, I had many occasions to see and talk to him
there. This continued over a period of many years up to the time of my
ministry, which began only a few months apart from each other. This
ministry was worked out between us and formed part of a plan prearranged
in advance, and the gospel is not true in declaring that I did not know
Jesus, but that I would anoint the one on whom I would see the dove of
the holy spirit descend (Matthew 3:16).
I did know Jesus, and I did anoint him, not because I saw any dove or
heard a voice from heaven, but because I was convinced in my heart that
he was the Messiah, and that I was the prophet who was to announce his
coming. Although I wish to state that I did not truly understand that
Jesus was bringing with him immortality that comes from possession of
the divine love, nor did I even possess this love in my soul at the time
of my execution.
As a youth and young man, in order to make a livelihood, I used to work
in the fields of wheat and might be said to have been a farmer. My true
vocation, however, was that of a prophet in the sense that Elijah was,
that is to say, to proclaim to the rulers and the people to repent of
their evil ways and to return to the path of righteousness that God had
directed the Jews to follow as the great goal of their religion calling
for love to God and one’s fellowman.
It is not true, as some theologians
believe, that I tried to lead a reform movement independent
of Jesus, nor was I to any extent influenced by the
Essenes, whose views of purity led them to isolated
communities away from the so-called contaminations
of the genuine Hebrew civilization or the Hellenistic
influences and where they carried out their religious
practices. Like Jesus, I believed not in retreat
from the world but in carrying the message of God
to the people, and as I believed in ablution as symbolical
of spiritual purity, I had of necessity to preach
where water was readily obtainable, and that was
the Jordan.
It was in this sense that I was
a real prophet, for I not only preached repentance
to all who would listen, but I also thundered against
what I considered the evil conduct of Herod for transgressions
against God’s laws of matrimony. I looked upon his
marriage to Herodias as illegal (Mark 6:18), an
act that could bring down upon his subjects the wrath
of God. Herodias was not living with Herod while
his half brother was alive for he was dead at the
time the royal pair were married. But to us, the
Pharisees, to which I belonged, the marriage was
not legal because no woman, as we understood it,
could contract marriage with the brother of a deceased
husband when children had been born of the first
marriage. Hence Salome, the offspring of Herodias,
and Herod’s half brother invalidated this marriage
to Herod, and it was this violation of our levirate
marriage law (Leviticus 18:16) that prompted my preaching
against him.
It is true, of course, that Herodias was incensed against me (Mark
6:19), for, as a member of the ruling class, she was a Sadducee at heart
and did not believe in the correctness of my views. She therefore was
elated to see me imprisoned and silenced. Herod did not concern himself
too much about this part of my preaching, for while he disagreed with me
about the interpretation of the marriage laws, wrangling between
Pharisees and Sadducees had been going on for some two centuries and
such legalistic disputes did not have the urgency for him as this
particular one had for Herodias. He was concerned rather with the
attitude that the Roman overlords took towards religious meetings, which
could be a pretext for seditious and rebellious gatherings, and he
thought it wise to remove with my arrest the cause of such possible
sources of disorder in his territory.
Herod sent some soldiers in the
garb of travelers to seek me out without arousing
suspicion, and though I was not preaching in territory
subject to his jurisdiction he had me sequestered
(Matthew 14:3) into his land and brought me to his
fortress of Macherus near the Dead Sea. I was confined
there for about ten months, or until Herodias’ birthday,
on your calendar, late February of the year 29 A.D.
I know that Herod was not too anxious for my death,
but Herodias wanted it, and her request was granted.
Solome did dance at this festival
(Mark 6:22), but it is not true that her dancing
made Herod grant her request for my death; on the
contrary, she has assured me that she never did ask
for my decapitation, and I can state that my head
was never brought in before the king on a platter
(Mark 6:25). These, of course are fanciful details
that students of the Old Testament will associate
with the story of the festival of Purim, wherein
King Ahasuerus vowed to grant Ester anything she
asked for at his banquet.
At the time of my death, I did not, as I have said, possess the divine
love, although I did have an abundance of the natural love in a pure
state and was in a good spiritual condition. At the time of Jesus’ birth
it became possible for spirits to obtain the divine love, and at the
time of the Transfiguration on the Mount, Moses and Elijah had obtained
this love in considerable abundance. The Transfiguration took place less
than six months after my death. I was in that spiritual state that
enabled me to realize its importance and to seek for the great gift. I
was one of those who understood the real meaning of Jesus’ ministry, and
I prayed for the divine love and obtained it.
As a spirit I watched the progress of Jesus’s efforts to win the Jewish
people, and I often came to him to offer him comfort. I also attempted
to warn him at the time of his arrest, (as a spirit) shortly before the
approach of Judas and the henchmen of the high priest in the Garden of
Gethsemane (Matthew 26:47). He seemed to have a realization of his
coming death, although this has been exaggerated by the copyists of the
gospels, who have sought to show that Jesus was fated to die on the
cross, and that it was his mission to shed his blood through betrayal
and crucifixion. All of the statements attributed to Jesus that his time
was not yet come (John 7:6) or that his time had come (Matthew 26:18)
are not true, yet the fact of the matter is that Jesus did have a
foreboding of his coming disaster, and I did try to get his attention
and warn him of the betrayal.
I will not write more now.
Goodnight.
John the Baptist, of the New Testament
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