Jesus: For if you believed Moses, you would believe me; for he wrote of me

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Jesus: " For if you believed Moses, you would believe me; for he wrote of me "

 

" Do not think that I will accuse you before the Father; the one who accuses you

is Moses, in whom you have set your hope. For if you believed Moses, you would

believe me; for he wrote of me. But if you do not believe his writings, how will

you believe my words? " (John 5:45-47).

 

" Do not think that because you do not heed my words I will accuse you and hold

you blameworthy before the Father. But the prophet Moses will justly accuse you

because you trust in him; and if you truly believed Moses, you would also have

to believe me, for Moses wrote about my coming in the scriptures. If you do not

believe the visible prophetic writings of Moses, how indeed could you believe my

words? " [1]

 

A comparison is made here in Jesus' forgiving the people for their ignorance and

his reference to Moses as accusing them for their nonbelief. (p.370) Moses was a

prophet of God's law. He thus expressed the " fatherly " aspect of God's love as

conditioned by law. If a son is good, the father (in whom the masculine quality

of reason predominates) shows his love for the son; if the son is bad, the

father punishes him. Moses treated his disciples and followers with that

conditional fatherly love. The love that Jesus gave was from the " motherly "

aspect of God; a mother's love (when it comes predominantly from the feminine

quality of feeling) is unconditional toward the son, no matter whether he is

good or bad.

 

The way of Jesus, in his humbleness, was to try to persuade his

ignorance-bewildered brethren through reason and the manifest love of God,

rather than by theological threats and the fear of providential punishment. If

Almighty God used force to make His prodigal children come back to Him, they

would be mechanical, not soulful, creations.

 

Jesus, with all miraculous powers at his command, used only his love and

persuasive reason to plead with the ignorant crowds in trying to awaken their

wisdom, through which they would use their free will to forsake the evils of the

world and seek the lasting ever new bliss of God.

 

The Second Coming of Christ (The Resurrection of the Christ Within

You) Volume 1, Discourse 21, pg. 369-370

Paramahansa Yogananda

Printed in the United States of America 1434-J881

ISBN-13:978-0-87612-557-1

ISBN-10:0-87612-557-7

 

Notes:

 

[1] " For he wrote of me " : Among the passages from the Biblical books ascribed to

Moses taken by some commentators as prophesying the coming of Christ are:

Genesis 22:18 (the seed of Abraham in whom all the nations of the earth would be

blessed); Genesis 49:10 ( " the scepter shall not depart from Judah, nor the

ruler's staff from between his feet, until Shiloh ['the Peaceful'] comes; and to

him shall be the obedience of the peoples " ); Deuteronomy 18:15 (the coming

prophet who would be like Moses himself, and to whom the people of Israel should

listen).