Belief in reincarnation has been with
us since the earliest days of human life. Buddhists have held to the
belief for many centuries. According to the doctrine of
reincarnation the soul has successive bodies of flesh and,
therefore, many lives upon the earth. Through these many lives, the
individual soul is able to evolve. What a person does not work out
or achieve in one lifetime, he completes in the next.
Assuming this is the case, the theory of reincarnation purports to
answer questions such as the following: Why is one person so well
placed in life, given every advantage that money and culture can
confer, while another person is born into very difficult
circumstances, where it seems impossible to make any advance in
life? Why is one child born a cripple, or born blind, while
another child arrives in this world with a healthy body? Why does
one child live to a ripe old age, while another child dies after
only a few days or years? Men and women are not born free and equal
but start this life like horses in a handicap race, no one two
bearing an equal burden.
How can this be, the reincarnationist is likely to ask, if indeed
God is loving, just, and all-powerful? The reincarnationist answer
is that we are reaping today, for good or evil, the results of the
seeds we have sown during the course of many previous lives. Many
times we have been a man, and many times a woman. Some of those at
the bottom of the social ladder today have walked the earth as
kings, presidents, generals, admirals and high priests; and some who
now sit in the seats of the mighty have toiled as simple peasants in
days gone by, pulled at the oar of a galley, or worn the chains of a
slave.
Human beings were not designed to take a physical form again and
again, however imperfect one is at the end of his life on earth.
Assuming one can progress only on earth, the doctrine of
reincarnation ignores God's design for the blessed eternal spiritual
afterlife in Heaven, in which there are innumerable spheres and
regions for man's evolution and where he has great opportunities for
improvement.
Many people turn to God and for the first time find inner joy and
high purpose in life after a serious illness or accident. Why?
Because an easy life and luxurious environment are often hindrances
to one's spiritual growth.
Regardless of such argumentation, there are nevertheless many cases
cited of people who, while reading ancient history or tales of other
lands and times, "remember" the events about which they are reading.
This occurs when
cooperating spirits strengthen the mental images invariably created
while reading.
Swedenborg, the great psychic and revelator of the seventeenth
century, once explained that if a spirit were to speak from his own
memory with a man, the man would not know otherwise than that the
thoughts then in his mind were his own, although they were in fact
the spirit's thoughts. Thus, startling ideas and thoughts can be
influxes from the memories of cooperating spirits.
Finally, if reincarnation had been a fact throughout the ages,
should we not find evidence of it in a goodly portion of perfected
souls among us? Surely by this time we should see many mature and
advanced spirits among the wealthy, the beautiful, and the powerful
on earth. But is this true? On the contrary, in many instances
such people are just as immature and imperfect as the rest of
mankind, if not more so!
A spirit person can reach maturity only in conjunction with physical
body. Because of this principle, discarnate spirits are destined to
return to contact earthly people in order to advance to the state of
completion. Discarnate beings do come back as spirit persons
to be invisible teachers, to guide and help humanity. They more they
serve others, the
more they progress. This is especially so at this time. By
serving and cooperating with those who work for the Lord of the
Second Advent, those in spirit world can advance more rapidly than
at any other time in history.
Sometimes a spirit man influences an
individual so much that he even behaves like that spirit manlike
Buddha or Confucius, for example. People may think that the
individual is the reincarnation of Buddha, but actually it is only
the spirit of Buddha assisting him. In order to further develop
man's spiritual progress, God hand-picked numerous prophets to
extend the highway. That is how God has made spiritual progress
possible for all mankind.
Spirit men from all the realms of the
spirit world will come down to earth to assist and inspire
individuals here to follow God's central person and thus be able to
benefit from his spiritual accomplishment. By assisting in that way
spirit men can reap the same benefit. The key to man's situation is
here on earth; whatever we loose here on earth shall be loosed in
heaven. In spirit world there is no solution; spirit men have to
work through this physical world to receive salvation.
At the time of the Second Advent all spirit men must
manifest themselves once again here on earth and assist people with
the same level of life as they have. By helping people on earth to
progress to a higher level they too can reap the same result.
Buddha cannot become another Buddha here on earth, but Buddha can
appear in spirit and assist people of the same spiritual level. Some
people mistake this phenomenon for reincarnation, but reincarnation
itself is not possible.
