This is end, this is the climax to the entire book. This is what all that precedes it is for. This is why the readers were made to slog through descriptions of the Central and Superuniverses, of God creating himself and of all the major orders of beings between us and God. It's why readers were made to see the entire history of Earth from its beginning as a speck, all told in bizarre science fiction terms, and finally the fourth and last section, the one closest to our humanity and the one dearest our hearts, a detailed description of Jesus' mission on Earth, but in its own way in accordance with scriptural outline but in much greater detail and with mentions of beings beyond Earth, so that readers grasp exactly who this man is and how fortunate our world is that he chose us, the worst of the inhabited worlds the one planet that suffered the most spiritual setbacks of all planets in His universe. Readers understand why Jesus bothered, what it meant for him as creator, what his life here meant for beings beyond our low status planet and the profound affect that his life here has on Jesus' entire universe. And if you are not sobbing in tears at this point of the very long story and reading through vision blurred by redness of eyes, then there is something psychologically wrong with you too damaged to cure.
But that wouldn't happen.
The section starts by admitting that little is known of the period of a day and a half that Jesus' body lay in the tomb of Joseph. The beings who wrote this section (channeled through a medium) say they can relate what the Son of Man put in this record of events about his resurrection but they cannot give much information of the nature about what really happened during this period of thirty-six hours from 3:00 Friday afternoon to 3:00 Sunday morning. It began shortly before he was taken down from the cross by the Roman soldiers, having hung there an hour after his death. He would have been taken down sooner except for the delay in killing the two brigands.
The Jewish rulers planned to have Jesus' body thrown in the burial pits of Gehenna as the custom to dispose of victims of crucifixion, where his body would have been exposed to wild beasts.
But Joseph of Arimathea and Nicodemus went to Pilate and asked for the body to be turned over to them for proper burial. This was not unusual for people of privilege with large sums of money for bribes to Roman authorities.
But Pilate would not take the money. Instead, he quickly signed the order to turn over the body. In the meantime, the sandstorm having abated, a group of Jews representing the Sanhedrin went to Golgotha to make sure that Jesus' body was with those of the brigands to be taken to the open public burial pits.
When Joseph and Nicodemus arrived at Golgotha, they found soldiers taking down Jesus and the Sanhedrin representatives who raised a fuss when Joseph gave Pilate's order to the centurion. They sought to take possession of the body violently and when they got out of control the centurion ordered four of his soldiers with swords drawn to stand astride Jesus' body as it lay on the ground. The centurion ordered the other soldiers to leave the two thieves while they drove back the mob of infuriated Jews. Order was restored. The centurion read the permit from Pilate and stepping aside, said to Joseph: "This body is yours to do with as you see fit. I and my soldiers will stand by to see that no man interferes."
Jews had a strict law forbidding a crucified person from being buried in a Jewish cemetery so Joseph and Nicodemus decided to bury Jesus in Joseph's new family tomb cut from rock. No one had ever lain in this tomb. Joseph really believed that Jesus would rise from the dead but Nicodemus was doubtful. The former members of the Sanhedrin kept their faith in Jesus a secret although their fellow Sanhedrists suspected them even before they withdrew from the council. From hereon they were the most outspoken disciples of Jesus.
At half past 4:00 the burial procession of Jesus started from Golgotha for Joseph's tomb. The body was wrapped in a linen sheet as four men carried it, Joseph, Nicodemus, John, and the Roman centurion, followed by faithful women from Galilee.
They carried the body into the tomb where they rushed it for burial. Jews didn't bury their dead, rather, they embalmed them. Joseph and Nicodemus brought with them large amounts of myrrh and aloes, and they wrapped the body with saturated bandages. Completed, they tied a napkin about Jesus' face and wrapped the body in a linen sheet and placed it on a stone shelf cut into the tomb.
The centurion signaled for his soldiers to help roll the doorstone before the entrance to the tomb. Then the soldiers departed for Gehenna with the bodies of the thieves and the others returned sadly to Jerusalem for the Passover feast.
They raced though this burial because it was preparation day and Sabbath was coming on quickly. The men hurried back to the city but the women hung out at the tomb until it became dark.
Through all this, the women were hiding nearby so they saw it all where Jesus was laid. They secreted themselves because it was not permissible for women to associate with men at such times. The women thought Jesus had not been properly prepared for burial and they agreed to go back to the home of Joseph, rest over the Sabbath and get spices and ointments ready and return on Sunday morning to do the job properly. These women were Mary Magdalene, Mary wife of Clopas, Martha Jesus' aunt, and Rebecca of Sepphoris.
Except for David Zebedee and Joseph of Arimathea, very few disciples really believed or understood that Jesus was due to rise from the tomb on the third day.
Although Jesus' followers didn't pay much attention to Jesus' promise to rise from the grave on the third day, his enemies expected it. The chief priests, Pharisees, and Sadducees all remembered they had reports of Jesus saying he would rise from the dead. On this point, the enemies of Jesus had more faith in the supernatural aspects of Jesus than his followers did.
On Friday night after Passover supper a group of Jewish leaders collected at Caiaphas' home where they discussed their fears about Jesus' assertions that he would rise from the dead on the third day. They appointed a committee to visit Pilate early the next day with an official request for a Roman guard to be stationed in front of the tomb to prevent Jesus' friends from tampering with it. The spokesman said, "Sir, we remember that this deceiver, Jesus of Nazareth, said, while he was alive, 'after three days I will rise again.' We have, therefore, come before you to request that you issue such orders as will make the sepulchre secure against his followers, at least until after the third day. We greatly fear lest his disciples come and steal him away by night and then proclaim to the people that he has risen from the dead. If we should permit this to happen, this mistake would be far worse than to have allowed him to live."
Pilate said, "I will give you a guard of ten soldiers. Go your way and make the tomb secure." They went back to the temple and got ten guards of their own. Then all twenty guards marched out to the tomb. The men rolled a second stone in front of the tomb and set the seal of Pilate on and around the stones. All twenty men stayed on watch up to the hour of the resurrection.
The apostles stayed in hiding through Sabbath day while all Jerusalem discussed the death of Jesus on the cross. There were nearly one and half million Jews in Jerusalem from all parts of the Roman Empire and from Mesopotamia. This was the beginning of Passover week and all these pilgrims were in the city and would learn of resurrection of Jesus and carry the report back to their homes.
Late Saturday night John Mark summoned the apostles to come to his father's home where they assembled in the same room where they had the Last Supper with Jesus two nights before.
Mary the mother of Jesus an Ruth and Jude returned to Bethany to join their family. David Zebedee stayed at the home of Nicodemus where he told his messengers to gather early Sunday. The women of Galilee who prepared the spices stayed at the Joseph of Arimathea's home.
The beings relating this story say again they are not able to explain what happened to Jesus during this period of a day and a half when he was supposed ot be resting in Joseph's new tomb. He died the same natural death as any other person would. They heard him say, "Father, into your hands I commend my spirit." They do not understand the meaning of that insofar has his Thought Adjuster (explained earlier) had already been personalized and existed separate from Jesus. (This is different from all other people.) Jesus' Personalized Adjuster could not be affected by Jesus' physical death. What Jesus put in His Father's hands for the time being must have been the spirit counterpart of the Adjuster's early work in spiritizing the mortal mind to provide for the transfer of the transcript of Jesus' human experience on the physical Earth. They presume, there must have been some spiritual reality in the experience of Jesus that was analogous to the spirit nature or soul of the faith-growing people of physical planets. But that's only their guess. They do not know what Jesus commended to his Father.
They do know that the physical form of Jesus was there in the tomb until 3:00 Sunday morning but they are uncertain about the status of the personality of Jesus during those thirty-six hours. They dare to explain these things to themselves.
The following segments refer to other things in the universe that are described in earlier portion of the book and that are not biblical. They refer to Jesus' role in the universe that are not part of any Christian teaching. These portions are why this material is rejected by earnest biblical scholars and they do not make sense out of context from the whole rest of the book. It's why the section on Jesus is last, so that the reader can appreciate who Jesus is.
After that, the rest of the section discusses the meaning of the death on the cross.
It's heavy. And it runs counter to Christian dogma. It's why Christian scholars reject it as work of the devil.
Christians teach, and this is essential, that Jesus died for our sins. That's fundamental to Christian comprehension of Jesus' life and mission.
Actually, Jesus lived to uplift us. His life is our lesson, not his death. His death on the cross, the most ignominious death possible at the time, was not necessary to fulfill his mission on Earth. We did that to him because we are so backward and so error stricken, so spiritually retarded due to previous failures of Universe programs of planetary uplifting; the rebellion that occurred in our section of the universe, our planetary prince's involvement in that rebellion, our being isolated from universe communication to keep our universe section from infecting the rest, our Eden program failure of planetary uplifting, all caused our planet to be very bad off compared with planets where these these programs succeeded.
Jesus taught that sacrifice is not necessary because we are sons and daughters of God who gets no satisfaction from sacrifice. We know that a person cannot pay for the sin made by another. It is not possible for another to pay for our sins. Our sins are our own mistakes. Sins are mistakes made repeatedly.
Say, for example, you're a caveman and your baby crying annoys you so much that you bash its head in and kill it. That's a mistake. Your Thought Adjuster, your portion of God that bears all your mistakes with you, tries to get you to sense that mistake. It's not your conscious. It's your spark of God. You feel like crap because you sense this terrible mistake. Now, if you repeat that mistake with your second, third, fourth and fifth child, then that's a sin. Failure to learn from your mistakes and make adjustments for them is sin. Nobody else can lift that off from you.
Jesus' Last Supper did not have a Pascal lamb. It was an unusual unique vegetarian Passover. Jesus lifted his bread and said, "Let this bread be my body, let this wine be my blood. Think of me whenever you eat this bread and drink this wine."
What did his followers do? They made Him into the sacrificial lamb. They went directly counter to his direct teaching. They went right back to the concept of sacrifice. They just couldn't accept a God without a sacrifice. And it's ever as such on this backward spiritually retarded planet. We get everything wrong. Everything! And that's why Jesus coming to Earth for his mission on a physical world is so extraordinary. He chose the worst of all possible worst planets. That's how much he loves the world. That's how much he loves his whole universe. He suffered with us. And, boy, did he ever suffer, and the entire universe of celestial intelligences love him all the more for it. It is truly an extraordinary mission.
This odd book, so incredibly dense, shows that better than anything else out there.
The sections after this get even better. They will blow your mind wide open. The story is not told so beautifully, so touchingly, in scripture. Although you will recognize each element. It is real revelation.
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