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Livets Bog, vol. 4
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The fate of the Jewish people is a model for the other peoples in the world, a fate through which they can see what happens to a people when it suffers from the superstition that it is the only people that has attained salvation, thus rendering it impossible for them to regard these other peoples as anything other than "heathens", whom it can plunder to a greater or lesser extent and whom, from their position as a kind of "master race", they can look down upon
1303. It is a well-known fact that the "Jews" were "God's chosen people", but this must not be taken to mean that the Godhead has any particular "pets" or "favourites" among nations or single individuals. All are of course equal in the sight of the Godhead. But the Godhead must guide, teach, develop and lead the living beings onwards in the cycle – upwards towards the light as well as downwards towards the darkness. But even a godhead cannot undertake this guidance by means of nothing; it must undertake it solely by means of "living beings". As we have seen here in "Livets Bog", all living beings are of course the Godhead's instruments. And the "Jewish people" are merely "God's chosen people" in the way that it has become the people in whom "all the families of the Earth should be blessed". This in turn means that it is a people that is ahead in the spiral or the cycle of evolution. It has thereby become a people whose fate can be looked back on by the nations or peoples that followed them. Its fate is thus laid bare for all the rest of the world. Since the Jewish people is thus ahead of the rest of the world, the latter will be able, through the history of the Jewish people, to follow the entire course of its fate or evolution. From the fate of this people the peoples of the rest of the world can see what happens when one, to far too great an extent, misunderstands one's identity as "God's chosen people" and believes that this "selection" consists in one being called to be a "master race", which thus in reality means that one is called to "command" and "have dominion" over all other people in the world, and that these people thus shall be merely one's "obedient servants". In other words this means that one suffers from the terrible delusion that world society or all terrestrial mankind should be an oppressed, enslaved people with the exception of the single little nation of people that, by virtue of the "favour of the Godhead", are to be the sole possessors or sovereign masters and oppressors of these enslaved peoples. A considerable proportion of all terrestrial mankind should thus be mere playthings and objects for the idle whims, imperfection, perversities, immoral inclinations and desires of this "master nation". Is it conceivable that such a state can be the "blessing" that the Godhead intended for "all the families of the Earth" through the "seed of Abraham"? Owing to the fact that the "Jewish people's" place in the cycle was in front of that of their contemporary peoples in this cycle, we can see how its dreams or superstitious ideas about its identity as "God's chosen people" have formed its external dark fate, just as we have seen that internally its national laws and ideals have ultimately, down through the ages, had to break down. Terrible disappointments, persecutions and sufferings, terrible oppressions and life in exile and degradation have been inflicted on this people by the peoples of the rest of the world or the "heathens". It has thus been oppressed and degraded by precisely the peoples that it thought – on the grounds of its belief that it constituted "God's chosen people" – it was far superior to, and had the right to command and have dominion over, which in this case actually means to plunder them economically. In every possible way life has shown this people that it was in no way a "master race", that it was not a people chosen by the Godhead to command and have dominion over all others, or a people that had the right to misuse these other fellow beings on the planet as slaves, as objects for its undisguised or camouflaged plundering and desire for material assets, earthly goods and gold.
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