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The Fifth Commandment

In most Bibles the fifth commandment reads simply and clearly: “You shall not kill.”

It is also this way in the “Scofield Bible”, but a footnote says more or less: “The Hebrew language uses various words to express the term “kill”. The verb that is used here is a special word that can mean only murder and always indicates intentional killing.”

In the standardized translation of the Bible used by the Protestant and Catholic churches in Germany, it is already “official”. There it now says: “You shall not murder.”

This raises questions. What is now correct? Is it “You shall not kill” or “You shall not murder”? How should we behave as Christians?

The footnote in the Scofield Bible mentioned above says that we should not kill intentionally. When considering the animal world, this commandment to not kill intentionally makes sense; for wherever we place our foot, there are many animals under our feet – in part very tiny ones. We crush some of the animals, but we don’t do it intentionally. When we lean against a tree, we may also kill some tiny animals; we don’t see them, and so we don’t do it intentionally. However, when we want to kill a person, then we will do this intentionally. And according to the common use of language, this is nothing other than murder. And so, killing is actually the same as murder.

When we look more closely at the facts, we recognize that when a human being kills another human being, then he has certain thoughts beforehand, and thoughts are powers. We may not see the thoughts, but they are energies, realities, and they have their effects. For example, in war, we have thoughts of fear. The enemy – this is what we call our brother – could kill us. And so, we kill him first. If one is a soldier, he has to have the thought that he will kill, for a soldier learns and practises killing in order to then do it.

If an institution – like, for instance, the Catholic institution or the Protestant institution – approves of war, then it’s not surprising that a footnote like the one given in the Scofield Bible is conveniently added.

Whether killing or murdering – everyone knows: The one who goes to war will probably kill his brother. Since Jesus of Nazareth told us that we are all brothers and sisters, children of  one  Father, this is simply fratricide, whether killing or murdering.

A question to you, dear reader: Does it make any difference to you whether you are killed or murdered? Probably not, because dead is dead.

If we are real Christians, then we have to ask ourselves what would Jesus say about this? When Peter cut off a soldier’s ear, He said to him: “Put your sword in its scabbard”, and Jesus healed the ear. Why? “Do not do violence or injustice to any person.”

Jesus said as follows: “The one who takes up the sword will die by the sword.” And so, this means that the one who takes up his pistol and kills his brother will also be killed by the pistol, by the shot, unless he strives for the grace of God and has pangs of conscience and clears up his guilt with his whole heart. But when we say right from the beginning: “Today I will kill my brother, who is my enemy, tomorrow I can clear it up”, then this won’t help us.

Violence will always produce violence. We know the senselessness of war. There, soldiers are sent to war so that there will be peace. But can one make peace with weapons, with cannons, with killing our neigh­bour?

We know that everything sinful that goes out from us comes back to us. The fear of our neighbour who feels the shot in his heart and senses that he will die, his pain, his many thoughts, his hatred, his desire for revenge are all energies that don’t dissolve into nothing. They will show themselves somewhere, partly in the one who dies, because he, too, was a soldier. He takes this part of the negative energies with him as burden into the realm of the souls and usually into a future earthly life. But the feelings and thoughts of the dying person will also fall back on the one who did it. He killed intentionally, because he knew beforehand that as a soldier he would kill.

What is not atoned for in this life will lead us into similar situations in future lives. For instance, we will be born in a country where war prevails. Through the wheel of reincarnation, the doer of the deed and his victim will come together again and again. They will be the culprit and the victim, enemies, again and again, until someday when they offer their hands to each other and make peace. The guilt that binds them to each other – that chains them to each other, so to speak – will be cleared up and dissolved only by asking each other for forgiveness and by forgiving.

The wheel of reincarnation, the reality of reincarnation is clearly visible in many of the occurrences of today. Everything is energy and no energy is lost. In war, for example, a tremendous wave of concentrated and aggressive negative energy becomes effective. It is the sin-potential of many people that has not been cleared up, and which has – possibly over centuries – accumulated and built up.

In the Bible it says: “What the person sows, that will he reap.” And so, if we sow death, by killing our neighbour intentionally, then we will also reap death in this way, if we don’t recognize our causes in time, clear them up with the grace of God and no longer do them. For this is what Jesus taught us.

The wheel of reincarnation keeps on turning and brings again and again to incarnation those souls which have loaded guilt onto themselves and not yet paid it off. When we trace back the various wars in this world, then we recognize that similar wars flare up again and again in the same countries or in neighbouring countries. Why? Because the causes haven’t been cleared up; they are coming into effect.

Through Moses, God gave us the commandment: “You shall not kill.” Why was this passage in the Bible recently falsified into the words “You shall not murder”? Let’s look behind this. The following explanation may be probable:

Both churches that carried out this falsification approve of war. With the reformulation of the fifth commandment, they now have a biblical justification for this; because according to their point of view the killing of a person in war is “only” killing and not murdering. Since killing is supposed to be allowed now, wars can thus be waged without reservation and people can be killed in war.

When we look deeper into the correlations, we again recognize here the wheel of reincarnation. In the past epochs, the Catholic Church marched into the “holy” wars, in order to kill or forcefully Christianize those of different faiths. And so, it was done by the Franconian army in the first crusade, for example, to the Jews in the Rhine valley and to Christian Hungarians and the Saracens. And this is also what happened to hundreds of thousands of Indians in the time of the discovery of South America. And it also took place in the 20th century when it was thought that the Balkan states should be populated only by “Christians”. One killed and robbed – and this supposedly in the name of Christ.

This massive potential of negativity continues to be present in the souls of the culprits of that time, if they have not changed their ways. And so, many church authorities of today, who may have been incarnated in those times and took part in the so-called holy wars, may still have this in their souls. And because it is still in the soul, the word “killing” is perhaps activated in many a so-called prince of the church. Thoughts and feelings come up in him. But instead of recognizing his thoughts and feelings and clearing them up with Christ, he suggests that killing in war is allowed, because it was also allowed in the holy war.

Murder, that is, so-called deliberate killing, slaughtering, was even then subject to the commandment “You shall not kill”. What really happened? How were those of different faith slaughtered?

How was it for the ancient Germanic people? Either baptized or beheaded! And how was it for the Indians? Either “with us, the Christians” – or to “hell”! And how was it for the heretics? Either with the church – or to death! Mocked, mutilated, slaughtered, burned by the hundreds of thousands, by the millions – by whom?

The wheel of reincarnation turns. The same souls come again into different human bodies. Where to? To that place where their soul burden draws them.

Let’s ask ourselves the question once more: Was this killing or murdering? And: What do we prefer? To be killed or murdered?

Both mean dead. Life is taken deliberately.

The fifth commandment also holds true in our relationship with the animals. Both institutions, Catholic and Protestant, approve of animal experiments.

But animals, too, can feel! The animals scream in the slaughterhouses, because they sense that their life will be taken in a few minutes. They sense they won’t be allowed to die according to the laws of nature, but that a bullet will end their lives.

Let’s look into this more closely and ask: Why are so many animals so sad? Because they have suffered consciously, or because they sense that they will suffer enormously, perhaps through animal experiments. The part-souls of many animals carry these experiences, the grief and suffering of hundreds and thousands of years. This makes many animals sad and others aggressive. Who is guilty?

That they were wantonly killed by the millions and billions, that is, deliberately slaughtered and used for experiments, well, what of it? “It’s only an animal” says the person, but the animal, too, can feel. An animal that is beaten feels; it cries; it complains. If we yell at an animal, see how it draws back and moves away from us. We can see that it senses and feels. And its feelings are much finer than those of a human being: It knows when it is going to the slaughtering block; it knows when it will be used for animal experiments.

And from the words “Do not murder”, couldn’t one possibly derive a justification for bull fights and cock fights, for all those occasions where people allow killing out of the lust for a fight, for the destruction of an “opponent” or for the pleasure of killing. But it isn’t murder.

The human being is cruel. So why is one allowed to kill, but not to murder? We Christians should think about this “why”.

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