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Ascended Master Jesus through Kim Michaels.

I AM the Ascended Master Jesus Christ. My aim for this discourse is to show you another aspect of what I think about the religion that claims to represent me on earth. What I wish to discourse on is that Christianity has now become exactly the same kind of religion as the one whose leaders opposed me when I walked the earth in a physical body.

You will recall that it was the leaders of the Jewish religion who plotted to have me condemned to death, even though the sentence was executed by the Roman authorities. This shows you that there has always been a small elite of people who have a desire for ultimate power. One of the ways that they have sought to gain this ultimate power is to set themselves up as the representatives of God on earth.

They define a religion, and then they set themselves up as the leaders of that religion. The people believe that in order to get to God, in order to get salvation, they have to go through the leaders of the earthly religion. This is precisely the kind of power held by the Jewish leaders when I walked the earth. This is precisely what I attempted to challenge when I challenged the scribes and Pharisees, the lawyers and all those who had set themselves up between the people and God.

Jesus challenged the religious elite

What did I say was one of my most important statements? It is that the kingdom of God is within you! Why do you think the leaders of the Jewish religion were so anxious to silence me that they were willing to have me executed in order to shut me up? It was precisely because I said that the kingdom of God is within you. What did their religion say? It said that the kingdom of God is outside of you, far away from you. There is a gap, a chasm, a distance between you as a human being on earth and the kingdom of God. How can you cross that chasm? Not by your own power, but only by the graces of the leaders of an outer religion on earth.

This was the very belief that allowed them to have near absolute power over the people. They were not about to lose that power so what happened when some wandering preacher started going around their domain and claiming that the kingdom God is within you? They saw that this was the ultimate threat. In the beginning, they ignored me and they laughed, but as I began to gain more and more followers, they became afraid. What if the people listened to this Jeshua, going around, barefoot, and preaching this radical message?

Can you not see that the statement that the kingdom of God is within you is a direct challenge to the power of the members of this elite who have set themselves up between people and God? If the kingdom of God is within you, why would you need an outer religion and its leaders in order to get to the kingdom? How can you get to the kingdom that is within you by going outside yourself, by going through an institution that is outside yourself?

The elite that wants absolute power

If you would take an honest look at the history of religion on this earth, you will see that there are two different approaches to religion. The one approach says that in order to be saved, or whatever goal is raised up by that religion, you need to go through some institution or some priesthood outside yourself. The other, the more mystical branch, says that you do not find salvation outside yourself; you find it only inside yourself.

This is the kind of religion, or approach to religion, that I preached when I walked the earth 2,000 years ago. That is why I was a challenge to the established authorities in Israel, and that is why they had me killed. Is it really that difficult for people in the modern age to see this simple mechanism? How much more clearly could it be expressed?

There is an elite on earth – there always has been, at least in known history – who wants to set itself up and gain ultimate power. One of the most efficient ways to get ultimate power is to get the people to believe that they need the elite in order to get to God’s kingdom and avoid a fiery hell with eternal suffering. When people believe in this, then the elite that holds the key to the kingdom has near absolute power over the people.

What did I say, in my last discourse, was my goal of coming to earth? It is to set the people free. One interpretation of this is that I am here to set the people free from the elite, the power elite, that seeks to keep them separated from the kingdom of God.

What did I say about God’s desire to give you his kingdom: “Fear not little flock, for it is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom.” It is not God that makes it difficult for you to enter his kingdom. It is the power elite on earth that wants to make you believe it is difficult to enter God’s kingdom. When you believe that you have to go through something outside yourself in order to enter the kingdom, then it is indeed difficult, even impossible, to enter God’s kingdom.

In fact, you will never enter God’s kingdom as long as you think you have to go through something outside yourself. You will not find the kingdom by observing an outer religion. You will find it only when you go within, look at the beam in your own eye, give up that beam, let your separate sense of identity die and you are spiritually reborn. You are reborn of the spirit into a new person who does not see itself separated from the kingdom.

NOTE: The rest of this dictation is available in the book What Would Jesus Say about Christianity?