Bruce F. MacDonald: "Thank you ,Dennis. An awareness of reincarnation is very important. When I was channelling the book, "The Thomas Book: Near Death, a Quest and a New Gospel by the Twin Brother of Jesus," I was constantly made aware of the importance of reincarnation to Jesus and to the early Christians. There are very important lessons about reincarnation in The Thomas Book, and the way it was written depends on the reality of reincarnation. A modern direct descendent of Jesus' teachings about reincarnation can be found in the Coptic Church in Egypt, which claims it drew its original teachings from St. Mark, who received his teachings from Jesus. They assert that reincarnation was one of the central teachings of Jesus himself, but that it was wiped out of the wider church by some of the later Roman emperors because those rulers did not want to think that they might be born as lesser beings sometime in the future. The emperors, in their pride, did not want to believe Jesus' teaching that "you reap what you sow," and that they might have to face the consequences of their actions in a future life. They wanted to be in the position where they answered to no one for their actions, as when they were emperors, so insisted that the Bishops pass a law that they would go directly to heaven instead of being reincarnated to face the consequences of their often cruel actions.
The first century Jewish historian, Josephus, says that the Pharisees and the Essenes believed in reincarnation. Since Jesus spent much time with the Essenes in his early life, it is natural that he would preach reincarnation. When I was told by Kevin Ryerson, one of the foremost trance channels in the United States, that I was the reincarnation of Judas Thomas, the twin brother of Jesus, it was a great shock in a way, even though I had been told by Jesus, when I was channelling the Thomas gospel in the early 1980s, that I was the reincarnation of Judas Thomas, and that was why I could write the gospel which came from him. To have this confirmed by someone with the stature of Kevin made it seem more striking in the modern world. By the way, for those who wonder about Jesus having a twin brother, there was an early and wide spread belief in this twin brother of Jesus (also wiped out by some of the people in power in the early Roman church) as can be found in "The Acts of Thomas," "The Book of Thomas the Contender," "The Gospel of Thomas" and "The Song of the Pearl" (all available on the internet).
Reincarnation was replaced with a belief in hell, which was a later, non-Christian teaching which found its way into the early Christian church. According to Jesus' teachings about reincarnation, facing the consequences of our actions in future lives is how we are "rewarded or punished" for what we do, and so, as Barbro Karlen says, we make our own heaven or hell.. But none of it is "punishment," even though it might seem like it is. When we face challenges or suffering in our life, it is a way for us to learn the consequences of earlier action -- it is not punishment. And it is the best way to learn. If we have caused suffering for others in the past, we need to learn what that suffering feels like so that we can decide not to do that again. As Edgar Cayce, the famous American "Sleeping Prophet" from the early 20th century says, "We must experience in our own soul what we have brought into the lives of others." That way we learn that bringing love and compassion and joy and peace into the lives of others brings the same to us, and bringing hatred and fear and pain into the lives of others brings the same to us. When Jesus said, "Do unto others what you would want done to you," he is reflecting this idea, because what we do to others is what will be done to us.
Of course suffering is not always punishment. Sometimes we choose to face challenges in our lives in order to strengthen our faith or our compassion or our understanding in some way. And sometimes advanced souls choose to be incarnated as poor people or beggers or others low in the estimation of the world, in order for us to realize that our negative judgement of the "least of these our brothers and sisters," may be all wrong, because, as Jesus puts it, these may actually be Jesus or some other advanced soul incarnate to teach us about the nature of love and compassion. (If people want to read more about this they can go to
