Jesus was not the only one who taught and believed in reincarnation. He himself was a Jew and many of the Jews of his day also believed in reincarnation, including the Pharisees and the Essenes according to Josephus the historian. But obviously what really established reincarnation in the minds of the Jewish Christians was the teachings of Jesus. John chapter 3 is one of the only teachings of Jesus from the bible about reincarnation that was not completely carved out by the correctors hired by the church fathers because it didn’t fit into their doctrines.
Lots of the original parts of the teachings of about Reincarnation have been removed as you will see below. However, most Christians see this biblical passage as a teaching about salvation, especially since only the acceptable phrases are there. Their theologians, scholars and pastors have convinced them that “born-again” means salvation — saved from going to ‘Hell’. The truth is though, we are born again and again and again…
The truth is we are all born again and again and again…
Christianity: the religion of fear and hellfire.
Adherents of Christology won’t accept that being born again means literally that: the spirit is born into another body. It really means the spirit of a person being born again into a new body in a new existence — another chance. But Christianity will not accept that God is so merciful that he gives us mere human beings many chances to get it right. No!
For them God gives you one chance and if you happen to be born into the wrong religion or you don’t end up believing the doctrines of Christianity, just the right way, that’s just too bad, you’re on the highway to hell for an eternity of constant agonizing non-stop suffering with no second chance — only one! This is that God of hell-fire and brimstone and fear that that church fathers have conjured up to force people with fear into being a faithful member of the Christian religion.
But this is far from the true picture the bible paints of our loving Father in Heaven.The allegory of the wind and rebirth of the spirit of man. There are many suggestions and outright evidence that the Jewish community believed in reincarnation. But, in my opinion the one verse that stands out the most in the bible is John 3:8. In old English it’s not so clear, this is how it reads right from the King James Version:
The wind bloweth where it listeth, and thou hearest the sound thereof, but canst not tell whence it cometh, and whither it goeth: so is every one that is born of the Spirit. (Jn 3:8) (KJV)
Paraphrased and translated into plain every day English we get this:
The wind blows where it will and you hear it, but you can’t tell where it is coming from or where it is going to: that’s how it is with every one born of the spirit.
Now, I just can’t see how this analogy can fit anything else but reincarnation. There is just no way that the wind could possibly be like their idea of salvation: coming and going and not knowing where. This analogy is a perfect picture of the spirit of man between his incarnations.
What is like the wind, you can hear it but you can’t see it or tell where it’s coming from or going to? You know that the spirit of a man leaves once his body dies, but you don’t know where it’s going to. And you don’t know where the spirit of a new born baby comes from. The churches teach that a person’s spirit is created at the time of conception (and that there is no such thing as pre-existence as Origen the famous church father taught).
The Re-Generation of the Soul: perfection through suffering
(For those who don’t know Jesus’ real name given him at birth was Yashua)
Yeshua sat in the porch of the temple, and some came to learn His doctrine, and one said to Him, “Master, what do you teach concerning life?”
And He said to them, “Blessed are they who suffer many experiences, for they will be made perfect through suffering; they will be as the angels of God in heaven and will die no more. Neither will they be born any more, for death and birth have no more dominion over them.” (Gospel of the Nazirenes 37.1,2)
The bible tells us that Jesus was “made perfect through the things he suffered” (Heb 2:10-13). This is the one of the purposes of reincarnation, for without perfection there is no salvation. It would be almost impossible for one to become perfect in merely one existence. When man reaches a certain state of perfection in his progress, the cycle of birth and death is broken.
“They who have suffered and have overcome will be made pillars of the temple of my God, and they will go out no more. I say to you, except you be born again of water and of fire, you cannot see the kingdom of God.” (Gospel of the Nazirenes 37.3)
Water is a representation of physical birth and fire signifies the purification of our spirits that we pass through in our lives, until we have reached a state that we are able to finally become one with God as Jesus did. Jesus prayed that “they all might be one in You as I am”.
We came from God and we finally return to God from whence we came. Jesus has a God and he himself said that he came from God: this is one of the most powerful examples of reincarnation in the bible. Jesus speaks of his God. He could not BE God, since God has no God. Those who have finally broke the birth/death cycle will no more have to go out to be born again, but they will be pillars in the house of God.
And a certain Rabbi, Nicodemus, came to Him by night for fear of the Jews, and said to Him, “How can a man be born again when he is old? Can he enter a second time into his mother’s womb and be born again?”
Yeshua answered “Except a man be born again of flesh and of spirit, he can not enter into the kingdom of God. The wind blows where it lists (where it will), and you hear the sound of it, but can not tell from where it comes or to where it goes.” (Gospel of the Nazirenes 37.4)
Here is what that verse in John 3:8 in the bible comes from. And Jesus uses it in the context of the regeneration of man’s soul: to be born again into a physical body. However the following is a passage that the church fathers left out of the original manuscripts (among many other things) and it didn’t get included in out bibles, unfortunately:
“The light shines from the East even to the West; out of the darkness. The sun rises and sets into darkness again; so is it with man, from the ages to the ages.”
“When it cometh from the darkness, it is that he has lived before, and when it goes down again into darkness, it is that he may rest for a little, and there after again exist.” (Gospel of the Nazirenes 37.6-7)
It is clear that Jesus taught reincarnation
Jesus teaches that man has lived before and will live again in the future, this cycle of birth and death goes on from the “ages to the ages”. The wicked who constantly refuse to change will cease to exist.
“As therefore the noxious weeds are gathered and burned in the fire, so will it be at the end of the world. The Son of Man will send forth his angels, and they shall gather out of his kingdom all things that offend, and them which do iniquity, and shall cast them into a furnace of fire, and they who will not be purified will be utterly consumed. Then will the righteous shine forth as the sun in the kingdom of heaven.” (Gospel of the Nazirenes 40.7)
Next: Reincarnation 2 | Manipulation Through Fear