TOPICS: Universal salvation – counterweight to Christian exclusivity – rift between science and religion – free will means no one must be saved – what will return to God –
Question: What does Jesus think about the concept of universal salvation, meaning that all souls will inevitably be saved in the end.
Answer from ascended master Jesus through Kim Michaels:
The concept of universal salvation was inspired by the ascended masters and given to several individuals in the 1800s. Some understand the concept to mean that since every lifestream came from God, every lifestream must inevitably return to God. However, this was not our intended interpretation.
The original concept was given as a counter-weight to the increasingly heavy emphasis on Christian exclusivity – only members of our church will be saved and all others will burn forever in hell – seen in several large Christian churches. This emphasis was to a large degree a reaction to the increasing popularity of science and materialism. The Christian churches felt threatened – realizing their grip on the minds of the people was loosening – and they responded by seeking to scare people into accepting Christian doctrine uncritically because of the fear of going to hell.
We foresaw that this reaction would only deepen the rift between science and religion and attempted to counter it with a more universal view of salvation. Our intent was to make it clear that your salvation is not the automatic result of outer criteria, such as membership in a certain church, being baptized or declaring me to be your Lord and Savior. Instead, your salvation depends on your state of consciousness, which is an inner criteria that can be met regardless of your outer religious affiliation—or lack thereof.
The interpretation that since all lifestreams came from God, all lifestreams must return to God is actually taking the concept of universal salvation to the opposite dualistic extreme of the fundamentalist view that only members of one church will be saved. It is an ultimate attempt to set up an outer criteria for salvation—because you were created by God, you MUST be saved. If that was the case, it would be a denial of free will. If you cannot refuse to be saved – coming back into God’s kingdom – then you do not truly have free will.
Thus, while there is some truth to the concept of universal salvation, the real picture is far more complex. The most detailed description of this is given in Maitreya’s book, which clearly explains the importance of free will and why this means lifestreams can choose not to be saved.
The short explanation is that all energy comes from God and will inevitably return to God as a given sphere ascends. However, what most people call a soul is a being with free will, and thus this being can choose to go against the process of a sphere ascending. Ultimately – because everything in the material universe must have a time limit – a lifestream can run out of opportunity, and thus the awareness of the lifestream is dissolved in the second death. The energies that make up the lifestream are purified and returned to their source, but the consciousness and memories of the lifestream are erased as if they had never existed.
The I AM Presence and the Conscious You are not dissolved, but they are “reset” to their original state, meaning that the lifestream cannot build on its prior experiences but starts over with a clean slate. It is comparable to what you do to a computer by reinstalling the system software and reformatting the hard drive.
Thus, one might say that the Conscious You will inevitably return to God, but God’s intent for creating that lifestream was not that it should return by being purified to its original status. God’s intent was that the lifestream should multiply its talents and thus return as being MORE than it was created to be.
Copyright © 2007 by Kim Michaels