17th September 1916.
Received by James Padgett.
Washington D.C.
I am here, Jesus.
I was with you tonight at the meeting and heard what the preacher said, and he declared some truths, and also said some things that were not true. He said "only those who have been converted are sons of God."
All men are the children of God, and His love and care are over all, and they are very dear to Him, otherwise He would not have rebestowed His love upon them and given them the privilege of becoming inhabitants of His Celestial Kingdom.
The mere fact that they are sinners makes them no less His children, who He is so anxious to redeem and fill with the Divine Love, and when the preacher says "they who are sinners are not the sons of God," he does not declare the truth, for they are all His sons - some to enjoy the pure life and bliss which the purification of their natural love will bring to them, and others to enjoy and inhabit the Celestial Kingdom which the New Birth will bring to them.
But all are His sons, though some have wandered and become strangers to His Love, just as was the prodigal son who left his father's house for a far country. This doctrine of the sinful not being sons of God is a damnable and harmful doctrine, and will cause many to give up hope of ever becoming anything else than the sons of perdition - or as these orthodox say - of the devil.
The Father's mercy is for all, and if certain of His children do not choose to seek and receive the Divine Love which, when possessed, will make angels of them, yet they are His sons, and will in the fullness of time, or before the time of the great consummation, become pure and happy beings, as were the first parents before the fall.
And while this preacher has a great amount of the Divine Love in his soul, and is earnestly and in the right way seeking for more, yet his beliefs and teachings as to the destiny and future condition of those who may receive this love and become at one with the Father are all wrong, and will tend to retard his own progress in the development of his soul and in his advancement towards the Kingdom of God.
He, of course, is possessed of these beliefs because of his study and construction of some of the declarations of the Bible, and therefore, is not teaching what he does not believe, or what, to his own conscience, is false. Nevertheless, it is false and he will have to suffer the consequences of such false beliefs and teachings.
Ignorance, while it will not relieve him from its consequences, and neither will it invoke the penalties of the law that apply to the willful deceiver or teacher of false doctrines, yet neither will it excuse him or relieve him from the penalties of that law which demands the truth, and only the truth to be believed and taught. He will have to get rid of these false beliefs, even though he may have some of the divine in his soul; for whenever there exists untruth in belief in the heart and soul of man, to that extent it interferes with the inflowing of the love into and the progress of that soul towards perfect unity with the Father.
Truth is of itself a fact. It can have no affiliation with untruth, no matter that untruth is the result of ignorance, for all untruth is the result of ignorance, and must be eradicated from the hearts of men before there can be that harmony between God and man which the very nature of truth itself requires. So that if no man could be the son of God, who has not the perfect harmony which truth absolutely demands, God would have no sons amongst men. The condition of the sinner and that of the man who has experienced the New Birth differs only in the fact that one has not commenced to have in his soul the essence of Truth, while the other, to an extent, has that essence. All may have that essence, and to a great abundance. Some may never have the essence of Divine Truth, yet no man will be left without the essence of the truth which leads to the perfect man. The truth of the angel existence, and the truth of the perfect man are equally truths, though the former is of a higher degree and nature than the other.
Our first parents were the children of God - His own creatures - good and perfect, and after their fall they became no less His children, for His love was so great for them that in the fullness of perfection of His plans He again bestowed upon them the privilege of receiving His Divine Love, and sent me to proclaim the fact and to show men the way to obtain that great love. The death that had existed for all the long centuries was supplanted by life potential, and I became the way, the truth and the life, and immortality became a possibility to men. So that, all men are the sons of God in one relation or the other; depending in the one case whether a man will turn from his sins and be satisfied with the perfection of his natural love and the home that belongs to the perfect man, or seeks for the inflowing into his soul the divine love which will enable him to enter the Divine Heavens and have the certainty of immortality.
When God rebestowed this Divine Love on man, there was no man in existence, or spirit either, who could be called His son, if it were necessary that he had been converted as the preacher said, because none had received this love which is the only thing or power in all God's universe that can convert a man dead in trespass and sin: yet God loved all His children and conferred upon them this great gift, because they were His children. If God had loved only the righteous there would have been no one who could have been the object of His bounty. He would have had no sons or children of His love. And now that He has rebestowed this gift, and some of the sons of men have received and possess it, and are more in harmony with Him, it is not true that those who were His sons and children before its bestowal are any less His sons and children, because they may not have sought and made this gift their own.
No, the Father's love is so great and broad and deep, that it goes out to all the children of earth, waiting to bestow it upon them, and the lost sheep is as much His child as the ninety and nine who are safe in the fold, and although the lost one may never find or enter the fold, where those are that possess His Divine Love are sheltered, yet that sheep remains and is the object of His love.
So let preachers and others, who have assumed the responsibility of teaching men the truths of the Father, cease from proclaiming the doctrine that only those who have received the new birth are the sons of God. They, of course, are not His obedient sons until they have obtained either the Divine Love and Essence of the Father, or the purity of the first parents before the fall, but yet they are His, even though defiled by their own creations of sin and error.
God is love - and love knows no limitations in its heights or depths. It exists in the highest heavens, and reaches to the lowest hells, and will in its own way and in its own time work its own fulfillment. All men will come into harmony with the will of the Father, which is perfect, and even though some, and I may say the majority of men, will not accept the invitation to become angels of His Celestial Kingdom, which is not compulsory, yet they do His will by becoming in the future, near or far, free from the sin and error of their own creation, and pure and perfect as were they, whom the Father first created and pronounced good.
Man's greatest enemy to man is he, who having received the assurance of possessing the Divine Love, and thereby becoming as it were, a divine son of the Father, and who believes in the errors of the Bible and the misinterpretations of its truths, declares that all others of mankind are hated of God, and are objects of His wrath, and certain of eternal damnation and everlasting torment. It is deplorable that such beliefs and such declarations should exist and continue to be made, especially on the part of those who undertake to lead the masses in the way to God's truths and plans for men's happiness, and redemption from the evils and sins that cause them so much suffering.
But all this shows the power and blindness of belief founded upon error and untruthful teachings. And strange as it may seem, these leaders of the ignorant may have some of the Divine Love in their souls, and yet their mental and intellectual beliefs be so fixed and unmoveable that the possession of this love will not cause them to understand that the Father's love is for all, and that wrath is not a part of His being, but a quality of sinful man that these believers in error attribute to Him.
If God may be said to hate anything, He hates sin, but He loves the sinner, who is the creature of His will, and who is so unfortunate as to have created that which defiles him and to wander away, not only from the Father, but from his own perfect and pure creation.
Well, I have written enough for to-night and I hope that what I have said may prove beneficial not only to the sinner, but to the man, preacher, or layman, who possessing some of the Divine Love, proclaims that only he or others like him, are the sons of God.
As Paul said, "they see through a glass darkly," but then they shall see face to face, and when they do, they will see such evidences and manifestations of the Father's love that they will know that they and their sinning brothers are all sons of the Father, although one may be an heir to the Celestial Kingdom and the Divine Essence of the Father, while the other may be an heir only to the pure love of the Father, to bless and make them happy in the pure natural love and perfect manhood which the so-called Adam possessed before his fall.
I must stop now, but in doing so say, that you must not let what any of these orthodox believers may say disturb your faith in our communications, for they know only what the Bible tells them, and you know the truths that we declare. I will soon come and write to you a message of truth that I have been waiting sometime to write.Believe that I love you and am with you, praying for you and helping you with my influence.
Goodnight, and may the Father bless you.
Your brother and friend,
Jesus.