The Trustees of the Church recognize the necessity of preserving unchanged the contents of TRUE GOSPEL REVEALED ANEW BY JESUS throughout the four volumes of these unprecedented teachings. Only in the twentieth century did conditions become favorable for the reception of these truths, through the opportunity given by one mortal, Mr. James E. Padgett, to bring these highest religious truths to light once again by means of spirit-to-mortal communication in the form of automatic writings, and afterwards to publish them, as received, for general distribution to the Father's children.
Never in the history of mankind prior to Jesus' public ministry in Palestine had the truths of the Heavenly Father's Divine Nature of Love been perceived and revealed, and not since the death of Jesus and his disciples, when they were changed and interpolated, has the way to true soul salvation been so successfully revealed to mortals and attested to by so many spirits who have actually experienced the immortality of soul which only God's Divine Essence of Love can bestow.
In January 1960, Jesus approved both the title and the contents of TRUE GOSPEL REVEALED ANEW BY JESUS, after suggestions were made by a Church member who claimed to have received an automatic writing from him to the effect that the contents of the volumes should be presented in a logical manner, with explanations. He wrote the following through his second chosen instrument, Dr. Samuels: "In connection with the Truths of the Father, let me say emphatically at this point that these truths do not need any explanations for if what Mr. Padgett received in his hundreds of messages need additional explanations then I and those of my disciples and those many other spirits who collaborated with me in the formation of the collection, have indeed failed to do our work. For let me repeat that these truths do not need to be expounded upon but that rather the task is to bring these truths to the attention of mankind and let each man choose as he will but none can make this great choice unless he has a knowledge of these messages first--and that is our task."
He went on to say that these truths cannot be understood with the mind, that it is only through appeal to the soul that they can be understood; that any statement to the effect that what is needed is a presentation of these truths in a practical and logical way is not true and cannot have come from him or any spirit in the Celestial Heavens or in the soul spheres. He wrote:
"One cannot attain the Divine Love through law and logic and fragmatism, for this is exactly what I protested against when I appeared on earth. It was as a protest against the legalisms of the oral laws that I set out on my mission, contrasting these laws of the oral law with the Divine Love of the Father, for this Divine Love fulfills the law and made man not only perfect in his natural love but transformed him into a Divine soul. So you see that I cannot have approved any explanations of the Padgett messages nor given assent to any plan to present these messages in a logical or practical manner. Nor can there be any method whereby soul perception and love can be proven by any physical means, for if God Himself is doubted as existing by many who profess to give credence to these scientific methods alone, how can God's Love be proven by this same means."
He asserted this great truth: "God and God's greatest attribute are soul and spiritual, and proof of God and His Love can only be proven by soul and spiritual perceptions, therefore any claim that I have given to anyone wherefore I would set forth such a plan is an impossibility and false....I say this merely to remind you how careful one must be before accepting on face value the claims of any medium or would-be medium to be receiving messages from me or my apostles."
When Jesus and his Celestial co-workers delivered their automatic writings through Mr. Padgett and, thirty years later through Jesus' second instrument, Dr. Samuels, they wrote them as continuous script with no separation of sentences, very little capitalization, and no punctuation marks. These refinements had to be supplied by those who transcribed the writings, calling on their own limited or extensive knowledge of grammar, punctuation and spelling. Because of the challenge of deciphering continuous writing that has no dotted "i's" or crossed "t's," it would have been easy, in separating the continuous script, to occasionally mistranscribe or even bypass a word here and there.
Even though typographical errors, misspelled words and mistakes in grammar and punctuation are to be found in the volumes of TRUE GOSPEL REVEALED ANEW BY JESUS, the Trustees prefer to leave them uncorrected rather than open the door to possible future changes in the meanings of these vital truths. The Trustees also recognize that the volumes contain what twentieth century grammarians refer to as run-on sentences, dangling phrases and dangling clauses.
Wherever these errors show up in the volumes, they never prevent an understanding of the truths of Divine Love which Jesus brought to light. The true seeker, hungering and searching for the way to At-onement with the Heavenly Father, never fails to understand the spiritual meanings of the messages conveyed, and always finds them to be soul-satisfying.
The teachings of TRUE GOSPEL REVEALED ANEW BY JESUS reveal the one true way to becoming at-one with our Heavenly Father, emphasizing earnest sincere prayer for the inflowing of His Divine Love into our souls, which brings about their transformation into His true nature. To pray in this way constitutes the practice of true religion, and the great reward is eternal life with the Father in His Divine, Celestial Heavens. The Trustees of the Foundation Church of the New Birth feel it important that the original content and integrity of these teachings be faithfully preserved. Therefore, the Foundation Church of the New Birth will not seek any further communications from spirits to enlarge on the truths contained in TRUE GOSPEL REVEALED ANEW BY JESUS, for the following reasons:
1) The receiving of high caliber messages from Jesus of Nazareth and other Celestial spirits for the purpose of instructing others requires great humility, soul development, a mind that is filled with spiritual thoughts, and constant prayer for the inflowing of the Divine Love. It is a special calling, akin to biblical prophecy, and is not given to everyone.
The quality and accuracy of the communications received depend entirely upon the fulfillment of the spiritual law of rapport and communication. A medium who is merely intellectual and morally good cannot receive messages of the higher truths because there can be no rapport between the brain of such a medium and the mind of the higher spirit who may desire to communicate. A thought which can come only from a spirit who has the development of soul that makes that soul divine cannot possibly pass through a human brain which has never been developed by a soul in which the Divine Love has entered and worked its regenerating powers.
Things of the material may be conveyed through a brain purely material, things moral through a brain which has been influenced by moral truths, and things spiritual through a brain which has assimilated those truths that come only with the development of the soul by love. This is the law of rapport and communication and is explained thoroughly by both Jesus and the apostle John in TRUE GOSPEL REVEALED ANEW BY JESUS. (See Vol. I, pp. 2-4; Vol. II, pp. 216-226.)
2) The truths concerning the nature of the Divine Love, what it is, and how it may be obtained are all fully contained within the volumes of TRUE GOSPEL REVEALED ANEW BY JESUS. No further truths are needed. Commentaries elucidating these truths and applying them to specific life situations may be written, but there is no need to seek any further spirit-to-mortal communications from Jesus of Nazareth and his Celestial coworkers.
3) The Foundation Church of the New Birth is not a Spiritualist church. It does not encourage the practice of contemporary mediumship, and perceives certain dangers in such practice. These dangers include the ease of falling into self-deception and mistaking false messages for genuine ones, the possible growth of competing authorities based on conflicting message sources. and the psychological dependence on contemporary "channelers" whom others may turn to for personal guidance. Therefore, the Church strongly discourages this practice, and instead advocates reliance only on the texts already given.
To further explain why it is so important to leave the original transcriptions unchanged and unadulterated, it is precisely to avoid any possible recurrence of what happened to Jesus' original teachings in the early centuries of Christianity, when the Bible was assembled from the writings which his disciples left behind but which copyists and recopyists had already changed to fit their own limited understanding (often in the context of prevailing pagan beliefs) without following his teachings and praying earnestly for inflowings of the Father's Divine Love into their souls. If the copyists had received portions of the Divine Essence, it would have given their souls the satisfying perception of what Jesus had brought to light.
Numerous writings were delivered by the Celestials through Mr. Padgett on the lack of authenticity of the Bible. Their messages have been printed in TRUE GOSPEL REVEALED ANEW BY JESUS. In the publications, "76 Sermons on the Old Testament of the Bible by Jesus" and "New Testament Revelations," additional corrections to inaccuracies in the Bible were made by Jesus in his automatic writings delivered through Dr. Samuels.
In recent years, at a time when volume I of TRUE GOSPEL REVEALED ANEW BY JESUS was out of print, new books based on the volumes and published by other organizations have appeared but with extensive changes to the original contents which Jesus approved in 1960. While the Church of the New Birth will never attempt to prohibit publications of this kind, we cannot conceive that Jesus of Nazareth, after waiting nearly 2000 years to find a suitable medium such as Mr. Padgett would not have presented the vital truths in such a manner as to not be clear and lasting; and we are all the more convinced that there should be one church organization whose sole purpose is to preserve, reprint, and disseminate the vital truths in their original transcribed form so they will not possibly be lost to anyone who wants to learn the way from Jesus's own words to at-onement with the Heavenly Father. Revised, re-edited or re-ordered versions of these messages may be well-intentioned, but there is always the danger that changing the contents or order of the messages will affect the meaning they convey to the reader: in fact, this is virtually inevitable. Therefore, the Foundation Church of the New Birth will continue to maintain the teachings in their original form.
The Trustees desire to maintain TRUE GOSPEL REVEALED ANEW BY JESUS as the one established original, unchanged source of the true teachings of Jesus of Nazareth, whose title and contents he approved for all time in January 1960. The Church of the New Birth is the religious organization that was created to disseminate the writings received from Jesus of Nazareth and his Heavenly Host, in the same wording as delivered from 1914 to 1923 through Mr. James E. Padgett.