Gospel of Thomas offers the reader Jesus' 'secret teachings' about the Kingdom of God
Online Self-Realization (Second Birth/Atmajñana/Sibghatu ‘I-Lah)
Nothing less than the Gospel message of salvation is at stake
"In the Book of Acts the Kingdom of God was still the general formula for the substance of Christian teaching..." (Hastings Dictionary of the Bible, Vol. II, p. 855).
On the lips of Jesus the term Kingdom of God unquestionably summarized the very heart of His Message. "The Kingdom of God is the central theme of the teaching of Jesus, and it involves His whole understanding of His own person and work" (Theological Word Book of the Bible, Alan Richardson, p. 119).
Yet the voluminous discussions of the meaning of the Kingdom of the God, the heart of the Gospel preached by Jesus, and therefore the Christian Gospel, continue to leave the impression that the subject is complex in the extreme, indeed that the truth of the matter is virtually beyond recovery. An enormous amount of scholarly energy has gone into analyzing the biblical and non-biblical evidence in an effort to explain what Jesus taught as His central theme. Can it really be that our New Testament records provide no clear idea of what Christ and the Apostles meant us to understand by the Kingdom of God? Nothing less than the Gospel message of salvation is at stake."
Here, as in Luke 17:20, the Kingdom of God is said to be an interior state; "It's within you," Luke says.
This book opens with the lines, "These are the secret words which the living Jesus spoke, and the twin, Didymos Judas Thomas wrote them down." Then there follows a list of the sayings of Jesus. ... Some of these sayings are familiar. We know them from Matthew and Luke — Jesus said, "I have come to cast fire on the earth." Or "Behold, a sower went out to sow," and so forth.... Others are as strange and compelling as Zen koans. My favorite of these is saying number 70, which says, "If you bring forth what is within you, what you bring forth will save you. If you do not bring forth what is within you, what you do not bring forth will destroy you." The gospel opens as Jesus invites people to see....
The Gospel of Thomas also suggests that Jesus is aware of, and criticizing the views of the Kingdom of God as a time or a place that appear in the other gospels. Here Jesus says, "If those who lead you say to you, "look, the Kingdom is in the sky," then the birds will get there first. If they say "it's in the ocean," then the fish will get there first. But the Kingdom of God is within you and outside of you. Once you come to know yourselves, you will become known. And you will know that it is you who are the children of the living father."
In this gospel, and this is also the case in the Gospel of Luke, the Kingdom of God is not an event that's going to be catastrophically shattering the world as we know it and ushering in a new millennium. Here, as in Luke 17:20, the Kingdom of God is said to be an interior state; "It's within you," Luke says. And here it says, "It's inside you but it's also outside of you." It's like a state of consciousness. It's hard to describe. But the Kingdom of God here is something that you can enter when you attain gnosis, which means knowledge. But it doesn't mean intellectual knowledge. The Greeks had two words for knowledge. One is intellectual knowledge, like the knowledge of physics or something like that. But this gnosis is personal, like "I know that person, or do you know so and so." So this gnosis is self- knowledge; you could call it insight. It's a question of knowing who you really are, not at the ordinary level of your name and your social class or your position. But knowing yourself at a deep level. The secret of gnosis is that when you know yourself at that level you will also come to know God, because you will discover that the divine is within you." (Elaine H. Pagels, PBS and WGBH/FRONTLINE, 1998)
Helmut Koester KNOW THYSELF
Helmut Koester:
John H. Morison Professor of New Testament Studies and Winn Professor of Ecclesiastical History Harvard Divinity School
One of these documents [found at Nag Hammadi] begins with the scribal note in the margin, "The Gospel According to Thomas." And the first sentence of that document says, "These are the secret words which the living Jesus taught and which Judas Thomas Didymos wrote down." And then they start a total of over 110 sayings, each introduced by "Jesus said...." Some of those sayings have parallels in the gospels of Mark, Matthew, and Luke. Some of these have not. Some of these sayings may go back to a very early period of Christianity, some of them may have been added later. The document itself comes from the fourth century.... As with all gospel text, with this one in particular, we have to remember that these texts were fluid, that scribes could add, that scribes could leave out things, that scribes could add comments, or add an interpretation. So we cannot with certainty reconstruct what did the Gospel of Thomas look like around the year 100 or earlier. But it is very likely that it existed at that time, and that a good deal of the material that's now in that manuscript was already in a Greek manuscript that dates back to the first century. Which of course, is very exciting because here we have a collection of sayings of Jesus, additional sayings of Jesus, that were not known before, and the whole beginning of a new field of studies has opened up....
Now what is typical about these sayings is that in each instance, these sayings want to say that if you want to understand what Jesus said, you have to recognize yourself. You have to know yourself, know who you are. It begins with a saying about the Kingdom of God, "if you seek the Kingdom of God in the sky then the birds will precede you. And if you seek it in the sea, then the fish will precede you, but the Kingdom is in you. And if you know yourself then you know the Kingdom of God." (The Kingdom of the Father, in fact, it always says in the gospel of Thomas. Normally the Kingdom of the Father, not the Kingdom of God.) "But if you don't know yourself, you live in poverty." And poverty is understood as the ignorance of a life in its physical existence. Knowledge is understood to be the knowledge of one's divine origin, of the fact that one has come from the Kingdom. That we are on this earth only in a sojourn....
What does it mean really to know oneself? To know oneself is to have insight into one's own ultimate divine identity. You can go back to understand this to Greek models, which certainly exist. "Know yourself" is a very old Greek maxim... that is, you have to know that your own soul is divine, and then you know that you are immortal, whereas the body is the mortal part of human existence. Now this is radicalized in the Gospel of Thomas into saying that everything that is experienced physically and through sense perception, everything in this world that you can perceive in this way is nothing. It is, at best, chaos and, at worst, it doesn't even exist in reality. The only thing that really exists is your divine spirit or your divine soul, which is identical in its quality with God himself. And Jesus is the one who teaches that....
[When one truly knows oneself], one understands that one is divine, but also one understands that one is mortal. In such a way, you recognize that this mortality is really meaningless, as physical existence is meaningless. And therefore, death is no longer a problem, but death is a solution, because in death finally all this mortality will fall away, and the true self will be liberated to an independent existence that's no longer dependent on physical existence. And on everything that goes with physical existence, sickness and poverty and so on. And so physical existence is often described as poverty. But when you know yourself you are no longer in poverty.
A leading authority on the Gospels in early Christianity, Helmut Koester has served as editor of the Harvard Theological Review since 1975. A former president of the Society of Biblical Literature, Koester is also a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Among his numerous publications are books and articles in both German and English, including Trajectories Through Early Christianity (with James M. Robinson). His two-volume Introduction to the New Testament and Ancient Christian Gospels are seminal works in the field. Koester studied at the University of Marburg where he received his doctorate in 1954; he was ordained to the Lutheran ministry in 1956, and began teaching at Harvard Divinity School two years later.
"When the historical Jesus started his pilgrimage into the 20th century he did so with Mk 1:15 as his mandate presented to him by Johannes Weiss on behalf of Jesus of Nazareth. Albert Schweitzer ensured that he not only spoke about this eschatological “Kingdom of God’”, but that he arranged (and rearranged – if need be) his life according to its principles, only in order to be confused later by Bultmann with a Geschichte of a totally different kind. However, it was not long before his eschatology was historicised again by introducing his parables into the “life setting” of Jesus of Nazareth. Then, one day, people started asking what he meant by this “Kingdom of God” which he presented so strikingly in his parables, and he had to admit that he was not quite sure."
The Language of the Kingdom and Jesus
Jacobus Liebenberg, Walter de Gruyter (October 2000), page 1
The entrance (into the Kingdom of God) of which Jesus speaks is a future entrance, coincidental with final judgment
"Central to the synoptic gospels is Jesus' proclamation of the
Kingdom of God. Jesus' primary mission to his people was to offer
them the possibility of eschatological salvation, which, for the most
part, he expressed by the term "Kingdom of God." (A synonym for the
Kingdom of God is the Kingdom of Heaven, found in the Gospel of
Matthew.)...
Kingdom of God in the midst of You (Luke 17:20-21)
20 Being asked by the Pharisees when the Kingdom of God was coming,
he answered them, "The Kingdom of God is not coming with signs to be
observed; 21 nor will they say, 'Lo, here it is!' or 'There!' for
behold, the Kingdom of God is in the midst of you."
Luke contains a saying in which Jesus describes the nature of the
appearance of the Kingdom of God; in it he connects the Kingdom with
himself. The Pharisees ask Jesus when the Kingdom of God will come in
17:20a. Jesus' response in 17:20b-21 is constructed in antithetical
parallelism. The negative member of Jesus' response consists of two
coordinating clauses joined by "nor," which describe how the Kingdom
of God does not come: "The Kingdom of God is not coming with signs to
be observed, nor will they say, `Look, here it is!' or, `There it
is!'" The first way in which the Kingdom does not come is "with signs
to be observed" (meta paratêrêseôs). In the context, the meaning
of "signs to be observed" probably describes empirically observable
phenomena associated with the inception of eschatological
fulfillment. Jesus' questioners hold the view that the coming of the
Kingdom of God will be universally recognizable by its accompanying
manifestations, and they want to know when Jesus believes these
premonitory manifestations will begin to occur, thereby heralding the
Kingdom. (On this interpretation "come" has a future meaning since it
is referring to the future Kingdom of God.) The second way in which
the Kingdom of God does not come is in such a way that someone could
say "Look, here it is!" or, "There it is!" The meaning seems to be
the same as "with signs to be observed." In other words, Jesus is
saying that, contrary to their expectation, the Kingdom of God will
not come in such a way as to be universally recognized as such. He
rejects the presupposition behind the question, namely that the
Kingdom of God will all at once come as a publicly observable event.
In other words, the Kingdom will not come all at once, as full-blown,
so that no one could deny that it has come. Rather, Jesus' conception
of the Kingdom of God is that it begins inconspicuously, so that it
is possible to deny that it has come at the earliest stages of its
historical development.
The positive member of Jesus' response is the remarkable statement
that the Kingdom of God has already come: "For behold, the kingdom of
God is in your midst (entos humôn)." Jesus' point is that the Kingdom
of God is in the midst of his questioners insofar as he is in their
midst, so inseparable is he from the Kingdom. Of course, the Kingdom
is in its initial phases and so is still only partially and even
ambiguously present. For this reason, the possibility exists to deny
that it is present at all, in which case Jesus would be seen as
having no salvation-historical significance at all. When it comes to
completion, the Kingdom of God will be undeniable, but until then a
person will be able to accept or reject Jesus' claim that the Kingdom
of God is already present insofar as he is present...
Entering the Kingdom Maimed (Mark 9:43-48 = Matt 18:8-9)
Mark 9:43-48
43 And if your hand causes you to sin, cut it off; it is better for
you to enter life maimed than with two hands to go to hell, to the
unquenchable fire. 44 [omitted] 45 And if your foot causes you to
sin, cut it off; it is better for you to enter life lame than with
two feet to be thrown into hell. 46 [omitted] 47 And if your eye
causes you to sin, pluck it out; it is better for you to enter the
Kingdom of God with one eye than with two eyes to be thrown into
hell, 48 where their worm does not die, and the fire is not quenched.
Matt 18:8-9
8 And if your hand or your foot causes you to sin, cut it off and
throw it away; it is better for you to enter life maimed or lame than
with two hands or two feet to be thrown into the eternal fire. 9 And
if your eye causes you to sin, pluck it out and throw it away; it is
better for you to enter life with one eye than with two eyes to be
thrown into the hell of fire.
Jesus teaches that a person must remove all impediments in order to
to enter the Kingdom of God (eiselthein eis tên basileian tou theou)
(Mark 9:47), which is synonymous with to enter into life (eiselthein
eis tên zoên) (Mark 9:43, 45), since it is better to do without any
so-called advantage than to miss entering the Kingdom of God or into
life. (The term "Kingdom of God" is synonymous with "life.") This is
expressed metaphorically as being willing to cut off one's hands and
one's feet and being willing to remove one's eye, if necessary. The
analogy between sin and a part of one's body is that, like the
latter, the former may be a cherished part of one's livelihood and
identity, which one may be understandably reluctant to thrust aside
since the loss of it would be keenly felt. One's bodily parts
represent what is closest and most valuable to a person, which must
be given up if it impedes entrance into the Kingdom of God or life.
The consequence of not being willing to sacrifice anything to enter
the Kingdom of God or life is punishment in Gehenna (or eternal
fire). The entrance of which Jesus speaks is a future entrance,
coincidental with final judgment; in fact, one must pass through
final judgment in order to enter the Kingdom of God as future or
life."
JESUS' PROCLAMATION OF THE KINGDOM OF GOD
Professor Barry Smith
Product Details (Barnes & Noble)
Pub. Date: May 2009
Publisher: Sheffield Phoenix Press Ltd
Format: Hardcover, 328pp
ISBN-13: 9781906055684
ISBN: 1906055688
Synopsis
Recent research on Jesus' teaching about the Kingdom of God has in common the assumption that it remains the same throughout the time of his proclamation of it. The data that cannot be harmonized are usually judged to be inauthentic, originating from Christian prophets in the early church.
Smith shows in closely argued detail how essential it is to differentiate two historical contexts for Jesus' teaching about the Kingdom of God. The nature of the Kingdom of God is conditional upon its acceptance and the acceptance of its messenger-which is to say, Jesus' teaching about the Kingdom of God is hypothetical. This is the non-rejection context of Jesus' teaching about the Kingdom of God.
But some of Jesus' teaching about the Kingdom of God presupposes a context of the rejection of his message by the majority of Jews and especially the Jewish authorities. In this new context, Jesus teaches that the Kingdom will still come but not in the way first delineated, in the non-rejection context. This can be called the rejection context of Jesus' teaching about the Kingdom of God.
No attempt should be made to assimilate all the data into one historical context. Distinguishing two contexts for Jesus' teaching about the Kingdom of God allows us to appreciate how Jesus modifies his teaching in the light of the rejection of the Kingdom. Without this differentiation of two historical contexts, it is impossible to make sense of Jesus' teaching about the Kingdom of God.
Before Jesus departed He promised that a Paraclete will one day be sent by Him,
a divine personality who will glorify Him, and will guide mankind into all truth.
So many souls can and will be saved by the truth spoken by the
Comforter, Shri Mataji Nirmala Devi, by bringing humanity towards
Jesus and His teachings. They must be brought to remembrance that
before Jesus departed He promised that a Paraclete will one day be
sent by Him, a divine personality who will glorify Him, and will
guide mankind into all truth. The main signs and characteristics of
the Comforter are as follows:
i) The Comforter must abide with the believers forever (John 14:16).
This is only possible if the Comforter remains within each and every
human for the rest of the natural lives and beyond i.e., for all
eternity;
ii) The Comforter must testify on the behalf of Jesus (John 15:26).
This is only possible if the Comforter is human too i.e., meeting,
speaking, explaining in detail, as well as answering questions, in
languages humans can understand;
iii) The Comforter must bring all aspects of Jesus' teachings to
remembrance (John 14:26). Obviously they must concern unlocking
the deep secrets of Jesus' parables, of which the Kingdom of God
within tops the list;
iv) The Comforter must reprove the world of sin, and of
righteousness, and of judgment i.e., issue warnings of impending
judgment to a world full of sin and ungodliness (John 16:8);
v) The Comforter must at all times guide and speak the truth of
events that are coming (John 16:13). Obviously the truth, directed
exclusively to a world of sin and ungodliness, has to be absolutely
unprecedented, radical and explosive;
vi) The Comforter must glorify Jesus and declare all that the
later wants delivered to humanity (John 16:14). This task of
informing humans on a global scale requires many, many years to
accomplish;
vii) The Comforter, whom the Father will send in Jesus' name, and
teach all things and remind humanity of everything Jesus has said-
will be the Holy Spirit (John 14:26). Thus the personality
enlightening humanity of Jesus' teachings will be both the Comforter
and Holy Spirit sent by God Almighty in Jesus' name.
Shri Mataji is the Comforter, the Helper or Paraclete who has for
more than three decades glorified Christ and-through Her Divine
Message of the Last Judgment and Resurrection-guided mankind into
all truth. All who receive their second birth by the Spirit (Self-
realization) experience today what Jesus' disciples experienced
two millennia ago on the day of Pentecost. The awesome,
fundamental difference between both phenomena is that the
present experience of the Holy Spirit manifesting within humans was
promised by Lord Jesus ..... and is taking place all over Earth.
This truth is irrefutable as hundreds of thousands have felt the Wind/Cool Breeze
of the Spirit, the sure signs of the Resurrection (Eschatological Evolution). The
tens of thousands of SYs who continue to meditate on the Holy Spirit
within feel it on a daily basis. Yet they neither have the courage
nor the conscience to truthfully tell others, pretending it is all
about the subtle system. But did Jesus send the Comforter just to
teach about the petty subtle system, a subject that countless
teachers and gurus are teaching too? Or did Jesus send the
Comforter to complete His teachings and reprove the world of sin,
and of righteousness, and of judgment; an exclusive honor and
prerogative accorded to no one else?
The Paraclete Shri Mataji
Cabella, Italy — June 9, 1996
Shri Mataji opens the Primordial Sahasrara (May 5th 1970)
The Paraclete Shri Mataji "Without breaking the Sahasrara we could not have achieved the ascent en masse... To keep Sahasrara open should be very easy if the western brains could understand and be aware of your Mother. When your Mother is the Deity of Sahasrara the only way to be able to keep the Sahasrara open has to be complete surrendering....
The area of the Sahasrara is the realm of God. When the Brahmarandhra opens fully then the heavens open within yourself. The Kundalini, which has risen up and given you Realization, creates the opening by which the Divine starts pouring all its subtleties inside your brain...
All of us can achieve that state of Nirvikalpa... After Nirvikalpa you cannot come down."
The Paraclete Shri Mataji
Vienna, Austria — May 4, 1985
The Paraclete Shri Mataji "So one has to understand that evolutionary process is absolutely free, without any effort and you can't pay for your evolution. It is spontaneous. Like you have this Mother Earth and you put the seed in it, then it sprouts by itself. What do you do? Nothing. It is spontaneous and that's what exactly happens to you, that spontaneously you achieve that state of the Spirit....
So science cannot answer many questions and one of them is that why are we on this Earth? What is the purpose of our life? What is the goal of our life? What is our identity? This question is not asked and, if asked, they cannot answer. They cannot answer this simple question, "Why are we on this Earth?" But one has to know that we are on this Earth to become the Spirit, to enter into the Kingdom of God. This is our purpose. That's why we are here and then to be the instruments of that Divine Power, which is All-Pervading."
The Paraclete Shri Mataji
Philadelphia, USA — October 15, 1993
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The Paraclete Shri Mataji "You cannot force on the organization of God anything. He is on His own, His organization is on His own. Only thing you can do is to enter into His Kingdom and become a part and parcel of that blissful domain.
You would never like to change it either. It is so wonderful. It is so protective, it's so loving, is so gentle, so kind, so compassionate, that you would hate to change that organization, but we do! We try to organize God.
For people who think that is the ultimate you have to seek, it's all arranged to enter into the Kingdom of God. The time has come. This is the Day of Resurrection. These are the days of Resurrection."
The Paraclete Shri Mataji
Hampstead, UK — July 22, 1982
Related Articles:
Book Review: The Future of Faith
"His (Jesus) message was ... about the imminent coming ..."
The Kingdom of God: The Christian Bible Reference Site
The Kingdom of God in the Teaching and Ministry of Jesus
The Kingdom of God cannot be understood without the Holy Spirit
Kingdom of God realized during Last Judgment through Comforter
Gospel of Thomas offers Jesus' secret teachings
NOTE: If this page was accessed during a web search you may wish to browse the sites listed below where this topic or related issues are discussed in detail to promote global peace, religious harmony, and spiritual development of humanity:
www.adishakti.org/www.al-qiyamah.org/
www.adi-shakti.org/ — Divine Feminine (Hinduism)
www.holyspirit-shekinah.org/ — Divine Feminine (Christianity)
www.ruach-elohim.org/ — Divine Feminine (Judaism)
www.ruh-allah.org/ — Divine Feminine (Islam)
www.tao-mother.org/ — Divine Feminine (Taoism)
www.prajnaaparamita.org/ — Divine Feminine (Buddhism)
www.aykaa-mayee.org/ — Divine Feminine (Sikhism)
www.great-spirit-mother.org/ — Divine Feminine (Native Traditions)
"Now, the principle of Mother is in every, every scripture - has to be there." Shri Mataji, Radio Interview 1983 Oct 01, Santa Cruz, USA
