Martinus: Livets Bog, vol. 3, sect. 867

867. And what was Jesus' higher teaching? That it was not "forgiveness of sins" is made one hundred per cent clear through his way of relating to his disciples and from his Sermon on the Mount and other talks to the people. Here he did not use the formula: "Thy sins are forgiven thee". This was only a means with which he could help those who came to him as unhappy, unintellectual human beings, but who had the ability to "believe". But this formula was just as useless at that time as it is today for those human beings who cannot "believe" but who have the ability to "understand" and are therefore thirsting for knowledge. And we can also see that the great part of Jesus' mission was not to distribute "forgiveness of sins", but was rather to teach or explain the highest wisdom in the form of important warnings against wrong ways of living, or those realities that cause suffering, in order to prepare them to "inherit – eternal life". The fact that his pronouncements about this "eternal life" are extremely cautious, without detail and refer to the future and to the "Helper, the Holy Spirit" shows that this was the very maximum of what he could relate to the intellectually hungry of that time. But that he nevertheless knew the exact details of this "eternal life" and that this, as far as terrestrial human beings are concerned, exists as identical to only reincarnation or rebirth becomes clear, not only from his explanation to Nicodemus, but even more directly from his reference to John the Baptist when he says: "And if ye will receive it, this is Elijah, who was to come. He that hath ears to hear, let him hear". Is it not clear that he was dealing with an area that he was not at all sure they would be able to understand and therefore "receive"? He was at any rate clear that the subject was not for everyone but only for "he that hath ears to hear", in other words, he who has such a developed intellectual capacity on the strength of which he can grasp the matter. Was it not precisely the same thing that he sensed about Nicodemus when he told him not to be surprised, and referred to the wind that no one knows from where it comes, and so on? He knew that this would cause Nicodemus' ability to understand to be strained and put to its hardest test. It is therefore no wonder that he spoke very cautiously about this "eternal life". Is it not so that even now, nineteen centuries later, one has to be careful about speaking about this subject with representatives of authorised knowledge? Do not many of these beings consider the thought of reincarnation insane or foolish?