What is the Living Word

Kim: You talk about a Living Church based on the Living Word. It seems like such a church has no fixed doctrine. If not, how can people know what is true? I mean, traditionally people have used religious doctrines as a stable foundation. How can people just leave that behind?

Jesus: I am not suggesting that people leave it behind. As I have said many times, the soul cannot exist in a vacuum; it needs a foundation for its exploration of the world. There is nothing wrong with using a belief system or religious doctrine as your foundation, as long as you realize that it should be a springboard to a higher understanding and that it must never become a prison that entraps your mind. This is what most religious people have failed to understand.

The Living Church will have a body of teachings that give people a basic understanding of the spiritual side of life. This might incorporate elements from all of the world’s religions as well as newly revealed teachings. The important point is that outer teachings are seen as a foundation instead of being elevated to an infallible doctrine. A Living Church must give people basic teachings and allow them to develop their own, personal understanding without seeking to control them in any way.

The true goal of spirituality is to help people attain salvation, meaning individual Christhood. You will not enter the wedding feast by belonging to an outer religion. You will enter the feast only by wearing the wedding garment of the Christ consciousness. To put on that garment, you must increase the contact with your Christ self until your soul accepts itself as being one with that Christ self, as being the bride of Christ, as being the Christ in embodiment. When you attain that Christhood, you attain the ultimate standard for discerning what is true (meaning what is in harmony with God’s laws) and what is not true.

I have tried to explain that it is simply not possible to define an outer doctrine which accurately describes the reality of God. You can only know the reality of God through a direct inner experience. The true purpose of the Living Church is to give people the best possible opportunity to have such a direct experience. That experience does not automatically come about as the result of hearing a minister read and interpret an outer doctrine. The experience is much more likely to happen as the result of hearing the Living Word.

When I sent my disciples out to preach my message, I told them, “Take no thought for what ye shall say; it shall be given unto you.” They did not go out with a fixed outer doctrine. They preached the Living Word by the power of the Holy Spirit.

The Living Word is not meant to be taken as an infallible or fixed doctrine. It is given to people in a specific state of consciousness, and it is given with the distinct purpose of helping these people rise to a higher level of consciousness. When they do rise to that level, they can receive an even higher understanding which might go far beyond the original delivery of the word. You must never fall into the trap of thinking that the Living Word is somehow unchangeable.

The Living Word is precisely that; it is living and ever flowing. If you turn it into a fixed doctrine, it is no longer the Living Word, and it can quickly calcify as a dogma filled with dead men’s bones.