The
Reincarnation of Jesus |
"Who
do people say I am?" This was the question that Jesus asked
his disciples. Their reply was that people were saying he was
one of the Old Testament prophets "raised from the dead."
Considering that the Last Judgment and the Resurrection of the
Dead had not occurred, this begs the question, "What did they
mean by "raised from the dead?" They were not talking about
resurrection because the orthodox Christian doctrine of
resurrection originated with the ancient Persian religion of
Zoroastrianism and this doctrine holds that corpses do not
crawl out of their graves until the Last Judgment and the End
of Days. And considering the fact that
reincarnation was an orthodox teaching in Jesus' day
(see Flavius Josephus) then the answer becomes crystal clear.
They were talking about reincarnation. Even
the Bible is filled with teachings of reincarnation
including those taught by Jesus.
The
early Christian sect known as the
Ebionites taught that the Holy
Spirit had come as Adam and later reincarnated as Jesus. Other
Jewish Christian groups such as the
Elkasaites and
Nazarites
also believed this. The
Clementine Homilies, an early
Christian document, also taught many incarnations of Jesus.
The
Samaritans
believed that Adam had reincarnated as Seth, then Noah,
Abraham, and even Moses.
Reincarnation has always been a part of
Jewish and Christian history. In fact,
orthodox Judaism still teaches reincarnation.
A large number of early Christians were believers in
reincarnation. Most bishops of the
early church were pagan by birth and were well educated in the
reincarnational ideas. But
ideas concerning reincarnation were suppressed by the Church
in the West, probably for political
reasons, and in the name of "orthodoxy" the Church destroyed
the writings and persecuted the Christian believers in
reincarnation. But despite the historical changes of New
Testament canon, a large amount of references to reincarnation
can still be found there. These believers were
Christian Gnostics and they claimed
to possess the secret teachings and mysteries of resurrection
that was handed down directly from the apostles. According to
these mysteries, resurrection was not a physical event at all,
but a spiritual event of spiritual rebirth and regeneration by
the Holy Spirit within a living believer which liberates them
from reincarnation. The Christian Gnostics also believed that
Roman orthodoxy (which was based primarily on Pauline
Christianity rather than the Christianity taught by Peter and
James) held a definition of "resurrection" which was a
vulgarization and a misinterpretation of the mysteries of
Christ which he taught only to the apostles and not the public
at large. These mysteries, which even Paul mentions in his
epistles, concerns a believer's liberation from death and
rebirth through the spiritual resurrection of a believer from
spiritual death to spiritual life by the Holy Spirit. Bodily
resurrection involves corpses crawling out of graves.
Spiritual resurrection involves a spiritually "dead" person
becoming spiritually regenerated, spiritual awakened,
spiritually born again, and liberated from reincarnation.
The Reincarnation of Jesus
http://www.near-death.com/experiences/origen04.html |