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The concept of reincarnation in general is plenty disturbing enough to those who subscribe to the modern Christian orthodoxy even before one suggests that Jesus Himself may have reincarnated multiple times on this Earth prior to attaining His “Christhood”.
It’s certainly not my intention to start a holy war over this, but merely to point out – as I did in my 2010 4-part blog installment about reincarnation
[see the link at the bottom of this blog bit] – that there are Biblical clues, if not outright evidence, to suggest that Jesus had reincarnated a number of times prior to living the life we’re familiar with found in the New Testament Gospels.
I am not going to delve into the minutiae of this subject in this blog bit, but just touch upon a few of the highlights. Should anyone wish to dig deeper into the details with me in the comment section, I will be happy to discuss this topic further. And I do mean “discuss”, NOT “argue”; this subject is not important enough to me to argue about it with anyone.
As I wrote in my earlier reincarnation series, it’s important that right out of the chute we draw a distinction between the concepts of Reincarnation and Soul Transmigration.
Soul Transmigration posits that a soul might return to Earth sometime after death as a human being, an animal such as a dog, a cat, a (sacred) cow, or even as ostensibly inanimate objects such as rocks or raindrops. Reincarnation, on the other hand, implies the soul's return to Earth is strictly in the human form. There is no compelling evidence to support the former theory, and much to support the latter.
And here I am speaking strictly of reincarnation – I believe that Jesus likely lived multiple different lifetimes on Earth prior to the one we’re familiar with from The Holy Bible. I do not believe that Jesus ever appeared here in anything other than the human form.
The story of Jesus Christ in a nutshell goes like this: Jesus was born to the virgin Mary. As early as the age of twelve it was apparent that He was on a mission from God [see Luke chapter 2]. Jesus lived a completely faultless, sinless life [see Hebrews 4:15 & 1 Peter 2:22] and representing an unblemished sacrificial lamb for the Atonement of all mankind’s sins [see 1 Peter 1:18-19], He allowed the religious and governmental authorities to crucify Him on the Cross. Three days later He rose from the dead and eventually ascended into Heaven, having promised to return at a future time to cast out the devil and rule this world in the Name of God.
I believe all of the above to be true. But I don’t believe that lifetime described above is the first one that Jesus lived on Earth. I am not positively certain, but I am fairly well convinced that He lived an unknown number of prior lifetimes – perhaps as many as 32 – and when He returns, it won’t be the Second Coming of Jesus, but maybe the 34th.
Here’s my own take on it, again in a nutshell: The Soul we know as Jesus (or Yeshua) had been on His Divine mission for a long time and over the course of multiple lifetimes He had dedicated Himself to redeeming mankind from its sins with His perfect Holy Blood. But in order to serve as our Perfect Sacrifice, our "Unblemished Lamb", He first had to learn and grow into a life of Godly Perfection. Despite being committed to this mission to a greater degree than any one of us has ever been committed to anything in our own lives, it took Jesus a number of lifetimes to attain the state of “Christhood”.
The Old Testament contained plenty of references to a coming Redeemer or Messiah. The Jews knew Someone was coming to save them but fortunately, when He arrived on the scene, few of them recognized Jesus as being that Messiah promised to them.
Galatians 4:4-5 tells us that “when the fulness of the time came, God sent forth His Son, born of a woman, born under the Law, in order that he might redeem those who were under the Law, that we might receive the adoption of sons.”
My position is that there was nothing arbitrary about “when the fulness of time came” – the reason it was then “the fulness of time” is because Jesus had now learned to live a perfectly obedient, Godly life; He couldn’t have come to save mankind any earlier because He wasn’t yet able to live a completely sinless life and therefore able to offer Himself up as our sacrificial Lamb without blemish.
I first encountered the concept of a reincarnating Jesus through the psychic “readings” of
Edgar Cayce. According to Cayce, previous lifetimes of Jesus that are recorded in the Bible include Adam, Enoch, Melchizedek, Joseph, Joshua, and Asaph.
At one time I was extremely knowledgeable in the Cayce readings, but I eventually came to dismiss most of the information that came through him unless it came in the course of a “Health” or healing reading for someone.
That many of Cayce’s Health readings proved to be efficacious and supernatural in origin can not be reasonably disputed. Sadly, however, I believe Cayce eventually fell in with a number of people he ought not to have been associating with – people who did not really share his great spiritual sense and concern for the ill – and as a result, his gift from God was often misused, and was sometimes even manipulated by God’s great enemy the devil.
So, although I first encountered the idea that Jesus may have lived a number of previous lifetimes via the Cayce readings, my conclusion that this is so is not in the least bit based on the Cayce material. I believe this concept solely due to my own intensive Bible study over the course of close to two decades. The verses I am going to illustrate below - which I believe cannot be understood at all unless we consider them to be references to prior incarnations of Jesus – were all revealed to me in the course of my Bible studies. I believe that it was the Holy Spirit of God that opened my eyes to them.
I make no claim that these things are absolute facts (although I presently believe them to be) and I make no claim to having special insight into spiritual matters and The Holy Bible. I am merely showing you what I believe God’s Holy Spirit has shown me. Alright, let’s get on it!
These are only some highlights, the more obvious references to Jesus reincarnating on this Earth. There is more, but this will do. And, unless otherwise indicated, the translation I am using for this blog bit is the New American Standard version, only because many Biblical “scholars” (such as John MacArthur) consider this translation to be the most precise or literal of all those drawn from the ancient Greek New Testament manuscripts.
Personally, I am convinced that the most authentic translation of the New Testament (and perhaps the Old Testament as well) into English is found in George M. Lamsa’s
‘HOLY BIBLE From The Ancient Eastern Text’, translated from the ancient Aramaic manuscripts. But since it is largely mainstream Christians who will find these reincarnation verses so challenging, it makes sense for me to utilize a translation that many mainstream Christians consider to be exacting in their adherence to modern scholarship based upon the Greek writings.
Both Colossians 1:18 and Revelation 1:5 describe Jesus as being “the first-born of the dead”. In this case, as it sometimes is in The Bible, the word “dead” is implying not a physical death but a sense of spiritual death, brought about by a perceived separation from God. This must be so, because Jesus was not the first-born from the dead physically, since He Himself raised individuals from physical death, and at the moment that Jesus Himself died, according to Matthew 27, numerous dead saints rose from their graves and returned to life among the living.
If then Jesus is “the first-born from the dead” it means that He was the first person who returned to a sense of Oneness with God after having previously perceived Himself to be “spiritually dead”. I contend that He achieved this spiritual state of Oneness with God over the course of several lifetimes of successes and failures and a progression toward the Perfect Life.
Let’s look at some passages from The Holy Bible that seem to indicate that Jesus had physically lived and died on Earth in prior incarnations:
PSALM 16:10
The writer of the Sixteenth Psalm is rejoicing in a loving, protective and trustworthy God. In the 10th verse, he writes:
“For Thou wilt not abandon my soul to Sheol; Neither wilt Thou allow Thy Holy One to undergo decay.”
Thy Holy One is a reference to the promised Messiah to come, and the reference to Him not undergoing decay is an allusion to the fact that the Messiah’s dead body would not decay in His tomb. It implies that the dead Messiah will rise from His physical death. Remember that, you’ll need it later.
Now let’s look at . . .
ACTS 13:33-39 . . .
33 …that God has fulfilled this promise to our children in that He raised up Jesus, as it is also written in the second Psalm, ‘YOU ARE MY SON; TODAY I HAVE BEGOTTEN YOU.’
34 As for the fact that He raised Him up from the dead, no more to return to decay, He has spoken in this way: ‘I WILL GIVE YOU THE HOLY and SURE blessings OF DAVID.’
35 Therefore He also says in another Psalm, ‘YOU WILL NOT ALLOW YOUR HOLY ONE TO UNDERGO DECAY.’
36 For David, after he had served the purpose of God in his own generation, fell asleep, and was laid among his fathers and underwent decay;
37 but He whom God raised did not undergo decay.
38 Therefore let it be known to you, brethren, that through Him forgiveness of sins is proclaimed to you,
39 and through Him everyone who believes is freed from all things, from which you could not be freed through the Law of Moses
Now, did you catch that line “no more to return to decay” in the 34th verse? What could that mean, “no more to return to decay”? Doesn’t that imply that the person in question, Jesus, had PREVIOUSLY experienced decay of the flesh after death?
And yet the psalmist, and the writer of Acts, and all the writers of the four Gospels all tell us that the body of Jesus did not undergo decay for He rose from the grave three days after his death on the cross.
So, what could that line
“no more to return to decay” possibly mean if it’s not an allusion to one or more previous lifetimes lived in the flesh by the Soul we know as Jesus - lives in which He died, was buried, and His body decayed according to the natural order of things.
HEBREWS 5:5-12 . . .
5 So also Christ did not glorify Himself so as to become a high priest, but He who said to Him, “YOU ARE MY SON, TODAY I HAVE BEGOTTEN YOU”;
6 just as He says also in another passage, “YOU ARE A PRIEST FOREVER ACCORDING TO THE ORDER OF MELCHIZEDEK.”
7 In the days of His flesh, He offered up both prayers and supplications with loud crying and tears to the One able to save Him from death, and He was heard because of His piety.
8 Although He was a Son, He learned obedience from the things which He suffered.
9 And having been made perfect, He became to all those who obey Him the source of eternal salvation,
10 being designated by God as a high priest according to the order of Melchizedek.
11 Concerning him we have much to say, and it is hard to explain, since you have become dull of hearing.
12 For though by this time you ought to be teachers, you have need again for someone to teach you the elementary principles of the oracles of God, and you have come to need milk and not solid food.
OK, there are actually a couple of allusions to prior incarnations of Jesus in these verses. First, we know from the Bible that from the moment of His birth through the moment of His death, Jesus was totally, unequivocally devoted to the Will of God; at no point did He ever say or do anything that was not in absolute alignment with the Mind of God. Had He transgressed God’s Will at any time, even in the least little thing, Jesus would not have been utterly sinless, completely flawless, and therefore He would not have been qualified to offer Himself up as an “
Unblemished Lamb”, that sacrificial atonement for mankind’s sins [1 Peter 1:19]. One minor slip-up and the mission of Jesus would have crashed and burned.
Bearing that in mind, what then are verses 8 and 9 referring to? “Although He was a Son,
He learned obedience from the things which He suffered. And
having been made perfect, He became to all those who obey Him the source of eternal salvation…”
Wait a second! Jesus was ALWAYS, from the moment of His birth, obedient to God. He did not “learn” obedience “from the things which He suffered”! Heck, it would be more accurate to reverse that and say that Jesus suffered from His obedience, after all, it was His obedience to God’s Will that sent Him to the crucifixion which He suffered.
I see no other way of interpreting verse 8 than to say that it is alluding to one or more prior incarnations in which Jesus learned through mistakes and corrections or discipline how to be obedient to God. [When he transgressed, He suffered, and over time, through those transgressions and negative repercussions, Jesus learned full, loving, Godly obedience.]
[“My son, do not regard lightly the discipline of the Lord, nor faint when you are reproved by Him; for those whom the Lord loves He disciplines, and He scourges every son whom He receives.”
~ Hebrews 12:5-6]
And verse 9 only seems to confirm that interpretation: “having been made perfect” meaning that having attained the state of perfection through His lifetimes of trial and error, He eventually became the source of eternal Salvation for all of us.
Incidentally, the
George Lamsa Bible translation into English from the Aramaic (rather than from the Greek), the Bible I think contains the most accurate rendering of New Testament manuscripts, states the 9th verse like this:
“And He grew to be perfect and became the Author of life everlasting to all who obey Him.” That’s an even more compelling wording indicative of the idea that Jesus was the firstborn of the dead, that going from a perceived spiritual death to true Life in the knowledge of Oneness with God, was a learning process for Jesus – a process that took multiple lifetimes to master.
The secondary evidence in Hebrews 5:5-11 that Jesus had been on the Earth prior to His appearance as the Messianic Savior is the material pertaining to the priest Melchizedek. The Bible tells us that Melchizedek was a kind of special spiritual entity – he was not born of woman, but just sort of materialized here; nor did he ever physically die but apparently just dematerialized at some point. The priest Melchizedek was on the Earth during the lifetime of Abraham, the patriarch of the Jews, and Abraham tithed to Melchizedek [Hebrews 7].
Well, the conundrum presented in those verses is this: How can Jesus be a priest forever in the order of Melchizedek – and not just a priest in the order but THE HIGH PRIEST OF THE ORDER – if Melchizedek never died and still lives in the spiritual realm? How can Jesus forever be the high priest of a priestly order when the father or originator of that order is still alive?
I believe the answer to that little puzzle is this: Jesus and Melchizedek are one and the same soul! And notice how Saint Paul, the author of the book of Hebrews, says of Melchizedek in verse 11, “Concerning him we have much to say, and it is hard to explain, since you have become dull of hearing.” It’s as if Saint Paul knows that the people he was addressing were not prepared to learn the WHOLE STORY – that Jesus IS Melchizedek, that Jesus had been here on this planet before. In the 12th verse he tells them that they still don’t even grasp the elementary principles at work here, that they are still partaking of milk when they ought to be ready for solid food.
Of all the Biblical characters that Edgar Cayce said were prior incarnations of The Master Soul, Jesus, the one I am most convinced about is Melchizedek, because it seems to be fairly obvious to me from passages about that ancient priest found in the books of Genesis and Hebrews.
By the way, a little
Post-It note here:
As stated above, other Biblical characters that Edgar Cayce claimed to be prior incarnations of Jesus were Joseph and Joshua. There are a few passages in the book of Exodus that I find super-intriguing, particularly if we consider the possibility that Cayce was correct.
For example, in Exodus 13:19 we are told that Moses instructed the Israelites to carry the bones of Joseph with them into “the Promised Land”. So, isn’t it curious that just as Jesus Christ preceded us and leads us into the spiritual Promised Land, so the bones of Joseph (a prior incarnation of Jesus?) accompanied the Chosen People into the physical Promised Land?
We always think of Moses being alone on Mount Sinai when he received the Ten Commandments from God, but according to Exodus 24:13-14 and Exodus 32:17-18, Joshua was right alongside Moses on Mount Sinai. And wouldn’t that make perfect sense if in fact Joshua was also a prior incarnation of the Soul of our Savior?
And this last verse I find extraordinarily compelling: In Exodus 33:11 we find both Moses and Joshua meeting with God in the tabernacle tent, but it says that when Moses exited the tent, Joshua remained within it.
That’s interesting when we remember that Moses was eventually deemed unworthy to lead the Israelites into the physical Promised Land, and it was Joshua who took over the leadership and brought the people into the Land of Milk And Honey. Doesn’t it make sense that the Savior Soul, Jesus, would be the One who would bring God’s children into BOTH forms of the Promised Land – the physical, and later, the spiritual?
Yes, I do strongly suspect that the individual we know as Jesus was also Melchizedek, Joseph and Joshua.
The last verse I will present here pertaining to this subject is a quote that is universally regarded by the Christian churches to have come from Jesus Christ Himself, spoken to Saint John in a vision and recorded in The Bible’s last book, Revelation. In the spirit of full disclosure I want to make it understood that this verse is one that reads very differently in the New American Standard Bible and the King James Version than it does in Lamsa’s translation from the ancient Aramaic.
My interpretation below does not hold up except when considering the wording from the Lamsa translation, so if you are of a mind to dismiss that translation as faulty and not authentic enough for consideration, then you will be equally of a mind to disregard this last bit of evidence I am presenting here, but here goes anyway . . .
REVELATION 2:25-27
In the New American Standard Bible those verses read like this:
25 Nevertheless what you have, hold fast until I come.
26 He who overcomes, and he who keeps My deeds until the end, TO HIM I WILL GIVE AUTHORITY OVER THE NATIONS;
27 AND HE SHALL RULE THEM WITH A ROD OF IRON, AS THE VESSELS OF THE POTTER ARE BROKEN TO PIECES, as I also have received authority from My Father
But in George Lamsa’s translation from the ancient Aramaic – the very language that Jesus Himself spoke – those same verses read like this:
25 But hold fast to that which you already have till I come.
26 And he who overcomes and keeps My works until the end, to him I will give authority over the nations;
27 And he shall shepherd them with a rod of iron; like the vessels of the potter, they shall be shattered, even as I was disciplined by My Father.
The obvious question here being: When was Jesus disciplined by God? Nowhere in the New Testament do we find Jesus being anything but totally obedient to God’s Will, at no point could He have gotten off the track and still been the unblemished Sacrifice for mankind. Not once was it ever necessary for God to “discipline” the Messiah Jesus who remained constantly faithful to God’s nature and wishes.
Therefore, if the Lamsa translation is more accurate than the New American Standard version, and if Jesus was ever “disciplined” by God His Father, then that discipline MUST have occurred in a prior earthly incarnation because it sure didn’t occur in Jesus' New Testament lifetime.
Now some folks might ask, “If it’s true that Jesus lived one or more prior earthly lifetimes in the flesh, why does The Bible not state that plainly?”
My answer to that is, “For the same reason that there are many allusions to reincarnation in general that can be found in The Bible and yet it is not articulated blatantly.” And why is it not?
Well, you will find
that here --->
REINCARNATION & THE HOLY BIBLE [Part 1 Of 4]
~ Stephen T. McCarthy
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