{"id":2423,"date":"2023-02-17T10:32:31","date_gmt":"2023-02-17T10:32:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/teachingsbyjesus.com\/dev\/?p=2423"},"modified":"2023-02-17T10:35:43","modified_gmt":"2023-02-17T10:35:43","slug":"fishers-of-people","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/teachingsbyjesus.com\/dev\/fishers-of-people\/","title":{"rendered":"Fishers of People"},"content":{"rendered":"\t\t<div data-elementor-type=\"wp-post\" data-elementor-id=\"2423\" class=\"elementor elementor-2423\">\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<section class=\"elementor-section elementor-top-section elementor-element elementor-element-91d88c9 elementor-section-boxed elementor-section-height-default elementor-section-height-default\" data-id=\"91d88c9\" data-element_type=\"section\">\n\t\t\t\t\t\t<div class=\"elementor-container elementor-column-gap-default\">\n\t\t\t\t\t<div class=\"elementor-column elementor-col-100 elementor-top-column elementor-element elementor-element-82356f6\" data-id=\"82356f6\" data-element_type=\"column\">\n\t\t\t<div class=\"elementor-widget-wrap elementor-element-populated\">\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<div class=\"elementor-element elementor-element-c24811e elementor-widget elementor-widget-text-editor\" data-id=\"c24811e\" data-element_type=\"widget\" data-widget_type=\"text-editor.default\">\n\t\t\t\t<div class=\"elementor-widget-container\">\n\t\t\t<style>\/*! elementor - v3.10.1 - 17-01-2023 *\/\n.elementor-widget-text-editor.elementor-drop-cap-view-stacked .elementor-drop-cap{background-color:#818a91;color:#fff}.elementor-widget-text-editor.elementor-drop-cap-view-framed .elementor-drop-cap{color:#818a91;border:3px solid;background-color:transparent}.elementor-widget-text-editor:not(.elementor-drop-cap-view-default) .elementor-drop-cap{margin-top:8px}.elementor-widget-text-editor:not(.elementor-drop-cap-view-default) .elementor-drop-cap-letter{width:1em;height:1em}.elementor-widget-text-editor .elementor-drop-cap{float:left;text-align:center;line-height:1;font-size:50px}.elementor-widget-text-editor .elementor-drop-cap-letter{display:inline-block}<\/style>\t\t\t\t<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><strong>The road is long, with many a winding turn<br \/>That leads us to who knows where, who knows when.<br \/>But I\u2019m strong, strong enough to carry him.<br \/>He ain\u2019t heavy, he\u2019s my brother.<br \/><\/strong><strong>\u2026 So on we go. His welfare is of my concern.<br \/><\/strong><strong>No burden is he to bear. We\u2019ll get there.<br \/><\/strong><strong>\u2026 For I know he would not encumber me.<br \/>He ain\u2019t heavy, he\u2019s my brother.<br \/>\u2013\u00a0<\/strong>Bob Russell &amp; Bobby Scott, from \u201cHe Ain\u2019t Heavy, He\u2019s My Brother\u201d (1969)<br \/><br \/><\/p><p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft size-full wp-image-2425\" src=\"http:\/\/teachingsbyjesus.com\/dev\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/02\/vecteezy_brothers-embraced-sitting-in-the-field_6130878_959-300x200-1.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"200\" \/><strong>Ever since my Thomas took me to\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/robertagrimes.com\/jesus\/alleluiah\">meet Jesus<\/a>\u00a0last April on the third level of the astral plane, I have been thinking about the profound symbolism of all those neon-colored fish.\u00a0<\/strong>As Jesus told me His personal story, He sat with Thomas and me side by side on a riverbank while deer grazed behind us, and we fed His fish with grain that just appeared in our hands. More symbolism. And why should anyone care that Jesus has chosen to live so simply now? Why should it be important that Jesus even has a backstory? Why isn\u2019t it enough for us to just start a website to teach the Lord\u2019s Gospel words to people who want to begin a closer walk with Him? To be frank with you, I got to the point by early May of trying to pretend it hadn\u2019t even happened.\u00a0<strong><em>It had all been just a dream, right?\u00a0<\/em><\/strong>And Jesus now doesn\u2019t want to look like church-Jesus? Come on! He has been hanging with my spirit guide for six thousand years?\u00a0<strong><em>Everyone else sees Jesus as God Incarnate with a halo around His head, while in our little world He\u2019s just a part of the family?<br \/><br \/><\/em><\/strong><\/p><p><strong>But my Thomas is such a practical man.\u00a0<\/strong>I was going through what felt like stages of grief, and he handled it so matter of factly. When I was in the \u201cWhy me?\u201d stage, he said patiently, repeatedly, \u201cWhy not you?\u201d When I was in the \u201cIt was just a dream\u201d stag<strong>e<\/strong>, he would bring moments from that amazing night to my mind again, and in such detail that I knew freshly that of course it had not been a dream. Then when I stopped denying it sometime in July, and I finally began to try to make sense of what seems to be unfolding in my life, he was patient with me about that as well. He has lived this truth for six thousand years, and although incarnational amnesia blocks it for me temporarily, I have come to accept on an intellectual level that I have lived it with him and with Jesus for a third of that time. Thomas should long since have become a perfected being himself, but he has chosen instead to stay with Jesus.\u00a0<strong><em>And he tells me that I have made a similar choice, although of course I have no memory of that while I am in a body.<br \/><br \/><\/em><\/strong><\/p><p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright size-full wp-image-2426\" src=\"http:\/\/teachingsbyjesus.com\/dev\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/02\/vecteezy_brothers-sitting-on-the-grass_6114358_966-300x199-1.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"199\" \/><strong>What is most interesting is what I now understand is true about Jesus.<\/strong>\u00a0When He ascended after His resurrection, He chose not to join the Godhead Collective or to go even higher, but rather He wanted to remain on the entrance level of the astral plane. The standard route for all of humankind is to endlessly elevate our spiritual vibrations through repeated incarnations. And as we do that, we rise gradually higher, and we add our energies to the various collectives, melding more and more, until eventually we achieve the perfection of level seven, at which point we can merge with the Godhead Collective. Or else we might choose to elevate ourselves even above the Godhead level, as Jesus easily could do, since He is vibrating even higher than the Godhead Collective.\u00a0<strong><em>But these choices are irrevocable. Once you merge with the Godhead Collective or you elevate beyond it, there can be no coming back.<\/em><\/strong>\u00a0And Jesus loves\u00a0<em>people!<\/em>\u00a0He loves people so much that He vowed long ago that He was going to stay with us and teach us until every last one of us is elevated. And His vow is beyond just an oath at this point. It has become His central joy.\u00a0<strong><em>It is the core of who He is.<br \/><br \/><\/em><\/strong><\/p><p><strong>I am writing about Jesus intimately, so I should add that I write at His request.<\/strong>\u00a0Jesus has come to see after He and Thomas and some few others of His circle have done a lot of talking about this that while a figure named \u201cJesus\u201d has achieved ultimate fame on earth, that figure was shaped by Roman Christianity and is just a kind of magical Creature at this point, altogether disassociated from what Jesus taught. And knowing that bothers Jesus very much. So at His further request, we will be telling Jesus\u2019s personal story in\u00a0<em>The Fun of Loving Jesus\u00a0<\/em>and on teachingsbyjesus.com.\u00a0<strong><em>And the book is about to go to press. The website will be up by March.<br \/><br \/><\/em><\/strong><\/p><p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft size-full wp-image-2427\" src=\"http:\/\/teachingsbyjesus.com\/dev\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/02\/vecteezy_two-little-brothers_2022256-300x207-1.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"207\" \/><strong>You would think that it would be a simple matter for Jesus to maintain His humanity, but it is not.\u00a0<\/strong>The fact is that all of us are aspects of\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/keithgiles\/2022\/10\/what-if-god-is-all-of-us\/?utm_source=Newsletter&amp;utm_medium=email&amp;utm_campaign=Best+of+Patheos&amp;utm_content=57&amp;lctg=333440&amp;rsid=Legacy&amp;recipId=333440&amp;siteId=7DF2956C-D2F1-40D4-A777-98E450E58360\">Consciousness<\/a>. So all of us are aspects of God exploring the human experience, and our natural cycle is to rise ever higher. Which means that for Jesus to remain in any way human when He is at the same time even above the Godhead Collective level in spiritual development is an experiment with Consciousness that needs constant maintenance. And that is in large part what His close relationship with Thomas seems at this point to be about.\u00a0<strong><em>My Thomas calls his role for Jesus \u201cbalance.\u201d<\/em><\/strong>\u00a0He spends so much time talking with Jesus, teasing Him, even mocking Him sometimes, playing with Him, just whatever it might take to help Jesus maintain His solid human grounding. It shocked me at first to see how disrespectful Thomas could be to Jesus, but that is what the Lord wants from him. He gets nothing but worship otherwise. And worship is the very last thing He wants! But at least his pet fish and his deer don\u2019t worship Him. The aborted children see Him as just some version of a doting Uncle, and even the Lord\u2019s elevated energy seems to be only normal to all those gleeful toddlers, who giggle and play as they climb all over Him. Even the older children gladly crowd around what is almost the only father figure they have.\u00a0<strong><em>Jesus is doing all that He can as God to maintain Himself as also human.<br \/><br \/><\/em><\/strong><\/p><p><strong>So His brother relationship with Thomas seems to feel very\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/robertagrimes.com\/jesus\/pearl-of-great-price\">important<\/a>\u00a0to Jesus.\u00a0<\/strong>My Thomas was Jesus\u2019s elder brother in their earth-lifetimes that ended in a war almost six thousand years ago, but still their relationship is so tight that when you see them together their bond is clear.\u00a0<strong><em>When Jesus first set out to call His disciples at the start of His public ministry on earth, He even called pairs of brothers.<br \/><br \/><\/em><\/strong><\/p><p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright size-full wp-image-2428\" src=\"http:\/\/teachingsbyjesus.com\/dev\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/02\/vecteezy_two-boys-sitting-on-couch-are-reading-book-older-brother_13180205_925-300x200-1.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"200\" \/>\u201cNow as Jesus was walking by the Sea of Galilee, He saw two brothers, Simon, who was called Peter, and his brother Andrew, casting a net into the sea; for they were fishermen. And He said to them, \u2018<strong>Follow Me, and I will make you fishers of people.\u2019\u00a0<\/strong>Immediately they left their nets and followed Him.\u00a0<sup>\u00a0<\/sup>Going on from there He saw two other brothers, James the son of Zebedee, and his brother John, in the boat with their father Zebedee, mending their nets; and He called them. Immediately they left the boat and their father, and followed Him.\u201d (MT 4:18-22)\u00a0<strong><em>So\u00a0<\/em><\/strong><strong><em>Jesus first called pairs of brothers.\u00a0<\/em><\/strong>And John, the brother of James, was actually Jesus\u2019s younger brother from the same earth-lifetime that they both had shared with Thomas, while Thomas would soon also join Him in His lifetime as Jesus to be His private witness, going out often among the people and reporting back to Jesus what the people were saying about Him.\u00a0<strong><em>I can only imagine that Jesus expected that the bonds among all those brothers would further strengthen the bonds within His band of disciples.<br \/><br \/><\/em><\/strong><\/p><p><strong>And what really astonishes me is my Thomas\u2019s decision to devote his eternity to Jesus.\u00a0<\/strong>He won\u2019t much talk about it with me, but it is clear that from the moment that Jesus first attained the seventh afterlife level some six thousand earth-years ago, this eternal being who is now my guide \u2013 but only so we can work together on their project of re-starting the spreading of the Lord\u2019s Gospel teachings on earth \u2013 has given himself over to serving Jesus forevermore. Even his one little foray into fame \u2013 his Thomas Jefferson lifetime \u2013 was to him mostly about creating a country where Jesus\u2019s teachings could finally prosper.\u00a0<strong><em>My Thomas\u2019s love for the Man that he still calls his Brother is beyond what I can ever fathom.<br \/><br \/><\/em><\/strong><\/p><p><strong><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft size-full wp-image-2429\" src=\"http:\/\/teachingsbyjesus.com\/dev\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/02\/vecteezy_two-happy-asian-brother-sitting-and-smiling-together-on-the-bed_6419675_371-300x200-1.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"200\" \/>So our task now is to begin to spread these Gospel teachings!\u00a0<\/strong>And I honestly don\u2019t know how best to do that. To become fishers of people? I have no idea. You would think that it would be an easy task, with the name of Jesus already so famous on earth, but our problem is that Jesus is famous at this point mostly for dying for our sins and then rising from the dead, all of which is beside the point. All that Jesus ever has wanted, and all that He ever wants even now, is to be our\u00a0<em>Teacher<\/em>.\u00a0<strong><em>If Jesus came to save us from anything, it was from our ignorance of the certain truth that God is loving Spirit, we are eternally part of Spirit, and we enter these brief earth-lifetimes to raise our vibrations within Spirit.<\/em><\/strong>\u00a0Jesus\u2019s mission was hijacked by Roman Christianity, so then His mission took a seventeen-hundred-year detour. But it remains unchanged from what it was when Jesus first charged His disciples to spread His teachings, saying,\u00a0<strong>\u201cAll authority in heaven and on earth has been given to Me. Go, therefore, and make disciples of all the nations \u2026\u00a0<sup>\u00a0<\/sup>teaching them to follow all that I commanded you; and behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age\u201d<\/strong>\u00a0(MT 28:18-20). As Jesus and Thomas have described their rejuvenated movement to me, it will be:<br \/><br \/><\/p><ul><li><strong>A movement, and not a religion.<\/strong>\u00a0Crucially, therefore, Jesus\u2019s new movement will be devoid of dogmas! There will be nothing that anyone is asked to believe beyond the Lord\u2019s teachings themselves.<\/li><li><strong>Based in the four canonical Gospels.<\/strong>\u00a0People have asked me about the other Gospels, and I think that I have read all of them, but I don\u2019t believe that they add anything crucial. And I have been given to understand that Jesus Himself oversaw the selection at First Nicaea in the year 325 of the four Gospels that made it into the Christian Bible, which should seal that deal for us.<\/li><li><strong>Based in eradicating every fear.\u00a0<\/strong>Fear is the opposite of love, and since spiritual growth requires that we raise our consciousness vibrations away from fear and toward love, Jesus\u2019s website will be associated with seekreality.com, our website which teaches the truth about death and the afterlife, and which thereby helps people to eradicate the fear of death.<\/li><li><strong>Jesus intends this movement to be considered to be a new kind of Christianity.\u00a0<\/strong>\u00a0I have used many Christian hymns as frame-verses here, and with just a few words changed, even more hymns could be used. If we emphatically insist that the Lord\u2019s movement is\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/rogereolson\/2021\/11\/answering-a-question-can-there-be-a-church-without-doctrines\/?utm_source=Newsletter&amp;utm_medium=email&amp;utm_campaign=Best+of+Patheos&amp;utm_content=57&amp;lctg=333440&amp;rsid=Legacy&amp;recipId=333440&amp;siteId=7DF2956C-D2F1-40D4-A777-98E450E58360\">not a religion<\/a>\u00a0at all, but it is instead a living movement without dogmas and its only doctrine is Jesus\u2019s Gospel teachings, then everyone is invited to join us and to learn from the Lord Himself what He taught.\u00a0<strong>\u00a0<br \/><br \/><\/strong><\/li><\/ul><p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright size-full wp-image-2430\" src=\"http:\/\/teachingsbyjesus.com\/dev\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/02\/vecteezy_children-playing-at-sunset_6844639_373-300x200-1.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"200\" \/><strong>So we begin here.\u00a0<\/strong>We will have\u00a0<em>The Fun of Loving Jesus\u00a0<\/em>for our handbook, teachingsbyjesus.com as our source of the Lord\u2019s words and our inspiration, and seekreality.com as a place to go for the eradication of all our fears. All three of these resources have been created at the Lord\u2019s request.\u00a0<strong><em>Jesus intends the modern-day dawning of the kingdom of God on earth to be a gradual process.\u00a0<\/em><\/strong>His original movement had been growing for almost three hundred years and had millions of followers before the Romans under Constantine destroyed it and founded Roman Christianity in its ashes, so even though communications are rather better now than they were when Jesus sent His first followers to spread His teachings to the world, still our own role will be just to begin this work all over again, and Jesus will call others to carry it on after us.\u00a0<strong><em>So now once again it begins!<\/em><\/strong><strong>\u00a0<br \/><br \/><\/strong><\/p><p style=\"text-align: center;\"><strong>\u2026 If I\u2019m laden at all, I\u2019m laden with sadness<br \/>That everyone\u2019s heart Isn\u2019t filled with the gladness<br \/>Of love for one another.<br \/><\/strong><strong>\u2026 It\u2019s a long, long road, From which there is no return.<br \/>While we\u2019re on the way to there, Why not share?<br \/><\/strong><strong>\u2026 And the load Doesn\u2019t weigh me down at all,<br \/>He ain\u2019t heavy, he\u2019s my brother.<br \/>\u2013\u00a0<\/strong>Bob Russell &amp; Bobby Scott, from \u201cHe Ain\u2019t Heavy, He\u2019s My Brother\u201d (1969)<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The road is long, with many a winding turnThat leads us to who knows where, who knows when.But I\u2019m strong, strong enough to carry him.He ain\u2019t heavy, he\u2019s my brother.\u2026 So on we go. His welfare is of my concern.No burden is he to bear. We\u2019ll get there.\u2026 For I know he would not encumber&hellip; <a class=\"more-link\" href=\"https:\/\/teachingsbyjesus.com\/dev\/fishers-of-people\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Fishers of People<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2423","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/teachingsbyjesus.com\/dev\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2423","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/teachingsbyjesus.com\/dev\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/teachingsbyjesus.com\/dev\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/teachingsbyjesus.com\/dev\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/teachingsbyjesus.com\/dev\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2423"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/teachingsbyjesus.com\/dev\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2423\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2433,"href":"https:\/\/teachingsbyjesus.com\/dev\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2423\/revisions\/2433"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/teachingsbyjesus.com\/dev\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2423"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/teachingsbyjesus.com\/dev\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2423"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/teachingsbyjesus.com\/dev\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2423"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}