I was prompted to write this article by a sheer lack of logic in the statement that Oskar Ernst Bernhardt, who conveyed the Grail Message to people, is the Son of Man, is Abd-ru-shin. In this article, I address those who genuinely seek the road to the Light, who strictly follow the call of the Word to measure each step by personal experience and intuitive perception.
I am nearly being demanded to abandon my stance on this matter. Here are my arguments:
- If Oskar Ernst Bernhardt is the Son of Man, where is the Forerunner - Ismael? He must exist! It is stated quite clearly in the chapter "The Primordial Spiritual Planes VII" of the 3-rd Volume of the Grail Message:
"You will understand me best if I give you one name therefrom: Is-ma-el!
Here he lives, from here his activity goes forth! Is-ma-el, who once brought up Ab-ru-shin on this earth, who was incarnated on earth for His sake, who then as John the Baptist also proclaimed Jesus, and who had to prepare all the seven parts of the World for the coming of Parsifal!"
No one can deny the fact that before the appearance of Oskar Ernst Bernhardt and of the Grail Message written by him, no remarkable events or significant spiritual figures had preceded his arrival.
Read the last paragraph of the chapter "The Stranger," Volume I, and of the chapter "The Son of Man," Volume II. From these paragraphs, as well as from many others, it becomes evident that Abd-ru-shin will live on Earth by the time the global Catastrophe begins, which has not happened yet.
"But when the faithless deserters in their blind hate already thought themselves close to victory, and the Darkness once more assumed that the Work of the Light had been destroyed, because it hoped that the Bearer of this Work had been rendered quite impotent on earth, then this time God revealed His Will with Omnipotence! And then ... even the mockers sank trembling to their knees, but ... for them it was too late!"
"It does not lie with mankind to elect the Son of Man sent by God. But the Power of God will uplift Him at the hour when mankind in their helplessness are whining for deliverance! Then they will cease to revile, because horror will silence them, and they will willingly accept all the gifts the Creator offers His creatures through His Envoy! But he who will not accept them from Him shall be cast forth for all eternity!"
But how to make sense of the discrepancy between the fact that Oscar Ernst Bernhardt, aka Abd- ru-shin, died 80 years ago and the statement in several chapters of the Grail Message that He will come out to people during the Catastrophe and support them?
While visiting Germany and Czechoslovakia, I personally heard from leaders of the movement the following version in support of their argument: Abd-ru-shin will lead the process from the Other World.
Let's assume so. But which one of us is able to see the Other World, not to mention Its pure level and not the "dirty" astral? To do this, one must be completely sinless. But people are far from it. The Grail Message states that help will be granted to mankind. Again, this shows inconsistency and contradiction.
There will be a direct and visible dialogue between Abd-ru-shin and people. And His last call: "Are you with God or with the devil?", in all fairness, should be heard and understood by millions of people.
- O. E. Bernhardt died on December 6, 1941, i.e. 81 years ago.
Advocates of the idea that he is Abd-ru-shin argue that the Thousand-year Kingdom has already begun.
If He died, and the Thousand-year Kingdom, according to the Grail Message, began during the life of Abd-ru-shin, then, naturally, there was a temptation to assume that the Kingdom had already come approximately in 1940-1941. Then, it turns out, the Last Judgment somehow passed unnoticed so we may relax.
It seems rather strange that these people, on the one hand, firmly believe in everything written in the Grail Message and, on the other hand, stubbornly refuse to take notice of the contradicting information in the same Message that conflicts with their opinion. They suppress the inevitable doubts within themselves, which O. E. Bernhardt warned against by saying that without clear understanding there will never be a conviction.
Again, blind faith? Isn't Abd-ru-shin sent to Earth to fight this phenomenon? In His address to people, doesn't He demand not to read the Message superficially, but to work with It, penetrating the depths of the Book layer by layer, dispelling any doubts that arise along the way?
- Why do I disagree with the notion that the Thousand-year Kingdom has already begun?
- Volume I of the Grail Message, report 28, "The Millennium". Read the last two pages. "The mankind are being deprived of their rights…" It has not happened yet! The Holy Will will reign, and no one will have an opportunity to sin or else they will perish. Clearly, for the time being, people still have freedom of choice.
- Volume II, report 52 "I am the Resurrection and the Life, no man cometh to the Father but by Me!", the last two paragraphs:
"The compulsory purification connected with the anchoring of the Light is the same as an absolutely new birth!"
Based on these words, before this Kingdom begins, the Light will rid the Earth of the Darkness and its bearers. All evil will vanish. But evil is still painfully persistent, which is obvious.
- The Book "Echoes to the Message of the Grail", the chapter "Old is gone, everything must become New":
"The old is gone! In this lies Verdict and Execution at the same time. Everything must become New! In this lies a coercion, a "must", which was yet foreign to man. Such a measure is now implemented by God!
First of all, the grand “New” for man on Earth is the still unknown “Must”! The Higher Will is now established for him in the Secondary Creation. This Will is Directly Acting, Inevitably Forcing, and Coercive. This is something so new that man wants to bristle up in his old habit to be able to allow and do as he thought to himself until now.
This "must" is the very core of the New! Because It compels and entails everything else, the Complete Change of everything Existing.
It has never been in this Secondary Creation as it will be now. The old has passed, which means you, people, are deprived of your heritage, denied of the legacy of the Power that was granted to you in this Secondary Creation. For all people, for the first time, it means: you must! Whereas up until now it has been said: you should!"
This is the dictatorship of the Holy Will, depriving man of an opportunity to do evil. It is an indispensable and strict condition for people who have earned the right to live in the Millennial Kingdom.
And now, my dear opponents, I invite you to open your eyes and look at our world today with its current events, violence, hypocrisy, lies, LGBT propaganda, epidemics, and so on. All those 80 years, during which you allegedly live in this Kingdom, humanity exists in a growing nightmare. World War II claimed more than 50,000,000 lives, and nuclear weapons were invented and utilized. There was one war after another: Korea, China, Vietnam, Cambodia, Angola, Syria, Libya, Egypt, Iraq, Yugoslavia, and so on, and so forth.
Whether you like it or not, with your stance, you involuntarily assert that all the events mentioned above occur according to the Will of God; and that His Will, having taken away the freedom of choice from people, for some reason left complete freedom and impunity to the world-class hard-core criminals, social deviants, and pathological liars.
- There is another quite strong Look at the well-known biography of O. E. Bernhardt. We are talking about the life of a person who was well-off since childhood. He grew up to be a highly decent man and, by the time the Message was written, he had not been noticed in any sinful life affairs.
Such a relatively comfortable life (with the exception of the three-year stay on the Isle of Man and, later, arrest and restriction of freedom) was given to him so that he could engage in the delivery of the Message with no obstacles. And, thanks to significant wealth, he organized the publishing and distribution of the Message worldwide.
A biography of the Son of Man is not yet known to us. But it must be completely different from that of O. E. Bernhardt. I will illustrate this by quoting some paragraphs from the Echoes, the chapter "The Living Word (Trinity 1935)":
"... He had to discover the very nature of people with all their shortcomings and distorted concepts; He first had to find the root of all evil in people."
"…However, for a Messenger from the Light it is never achievable to "become knowledgeable" through observation or inquiries, but only through His own experience."
"… Thus, for Parsifal this Part of the Path was the hardest. If He wanted to help, then only one thing remained: He had to live for some time as a man among people, not knowing about His Origin or His Mission; because, otherwise, experiences could never have happened! However, not only this, but He had to come into direct contact with all mistakes of humanity without exception. He had to endure them Himself in order to at least achieve knowledge about them through His own suffering…”
From childhood, the Son of Man had to immerse Himself into a dysfunctional environment. He had to experience hardships and, in the struggle for life, sometimes compromise His conscience and, like any ordinary person, commit many mistakes. Seemingly, in His adulthood, the moment will come when the Lord will call upon His Servant and send Him to help people (See Volume I of the Grail Message, the chapter "The Stranger").
Volume II, the chapter "The Son of Man":
"As a condition for the fulfillment of His task, which in comparison to that of the Son of God was more terrestrial, the Son of Man, coming as He did from the highest Heights, also had to descend into the deepest depths; not only in the beyond but also here on earth, so that He might personally "experience" all the misery and suffering man is heir to. Only then will He be in the position, when His Hour comes, to interfere effectively in their shortcomings and help to bring about changes!
For this reason, He could not merely stand beside the experiences of mankind but had to stand in the midst of them through His own personal experiences. He even had to stand in and suffer under the bitter side of life. Again it was only for the sake of men that He had to serve His time of apprenticeship in this way! But it is just on account of this that people will try to reproach Him in order to make His task more difficult as they had done previously with Christ, because the human spirit, with all its limitations, can never understand such high guidance, being only able to judge by externals!"
Before helping people, He alone will enter a difficult struggle with the Darkness. First, He will cleanse Himself of sins, of all sins without exception, which will most likely take many years. In this process, He, acquiring experience and knowledge, will develop a method of fighting against each specific sin, each delusion, and each negative emotion.
To sum it up:
- The incarnated Ismael in the person of O. E. Bernhardt had the task of receiving and relaying to people the Message containing basic information about the design of Creation, the meaning of human life, the fact that all human misfortunes lay in the fault of humanity itself, and about the Word and what It brings to He accomplished his Mission brilliantly!
- But to develop a practical method of dealing with vices through overcoming His own numerous mistakes and delusions, and further educating people, sharing His experience with them, is the task of Abd-ru-shin, i.e. the Son of Man. Therefore, the destinies of Ismael and the Son of Man by the Creator's plan must be entirely different.
- In the New Testament, the Gospel of Matthew, chapter 3, verses 11 and 12, you will find: 11: "I baptize you with water for repentance. But after me comes One who is more powerful than I, whose sandals I am not worthy to carry. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire."
v.12: "His winnowing fork is in His hand, and He will clear His threshing floor, gathering His wheat into the barn and burning up the chaff with unquenchable fire."
These words were not attributed to Jesus Christ since He did not burn the "chaff", meaning He did not destroy the part of humanity that was rebellious to the Holy Will. It will happen in our time. The Lord entrusted this task to the Son of Man. The people chosen by O. E. Bernhardt (Ismael) received the rite of Imprinting from the Primordial Being, but not the baptism with the Holy Spirit from Abd-ru-shin.
So I have presented the main arguments, although there are more.
I know what the firm belief of my opponents bases on. The chapter "The Holy Mountain" of the Echoes states:
“I serve God the Father with all I am! After all, you know Who I am: the All-Holy Will of God the Father! Yet there is a Clear Explanation in this: that I come from God the Father, I Serve Him, Fulfilling Everything with His Own Power and Omnipotence, and that I am in Him, and He is in Me! That is how you must consider My earthly Existence and Me Myself! You must not make an idol of Me because it would be false and would only hinder and burden Me!
I am not a Separate God, but I am in My Father, and He is in Me, Acting from Me on this earthly plane through this gross material cloak which is the only thing that can be realized by many of you.”
Readers of these statements believe that O. E. Bernhardt, receiving from Above and presenting this information, is Abd-ru-shin. But they fail to note many arguments in the Book speaking to the contrary. I have mentioned some of them above.
I have read these passages and agree that Abd-ru-shin is the Word of God that came to Earth. My first impression also was that Abd-ru-shin was the writer himself. But many passages contradict this concept. So I had to figure it out.
When I first read the Grail Message, I had already acquired spiritual experience and achieved some results. I tried to comprehend the essence of the Message with my intuitive perception and not only with my reasoning mind, just as the Author demanded. On the one hand, I believed the Author was the Word! On the other hand, my spiritual perception did not allow me to ignore the contradictions and agree with the concept without a clear and intelligible understanding.
Like many readers, I did not immediately sort out this discrepancy. What helped me get to the bottom of it?
By that time, my faith had already transformed into conviction. There was a strong feeling that the Book contained the Truth! However, there was a no less persistent feeling of something remaining that I had not grasped yet. A realization came to me later. I found a reference point in the New Testament, "The Revelation" of John.
Chapter 1, verse 1:
"The revelation from Jesus Christ, which God gave Him to show His servants what must soon take place. He made it known by sending His angel to His servant John"
Consider, for example, the part of the Revelation of Jesus Christ addressed to John. Chapter 2, verse 2:
"I know your deeds, your hard work, and your perseverance. I know that you cannot tolerate wicked people, that you have tested those who claim to be apostles but are not, and have found them false."
I spoke about the meaning of this accusation against the apostles more than once in my articles and lectures. But here I want to mention something else.
Pay special attention to the way the Word of God is transmitted in the First Person, specifically from Jesus Christ, in the New Testament.
If it were different, for example, Ismael on his level and John on his would convey the Word in a different manner (not in the First Person) like so: "I hear the Word and bring to you what the Son of God said to me", that is, in the second person, then the Power of the Word would inevitably and repeatedly be weakened by an admixture of emanations of lower levels. The Perfect Will of the Creator could not allow this to happen.
The same technique, in the First Person, was also used in conveying Revelation from the Son of Man. O. E. Bernhardt, the incarnated Ismael, was the one to receive It, but It was revealed to him by the not yet incarnated Abd-ru-shin, for He is the Word.
That is why the name Abd-ru-shin is on the cover of the Grail Message! Thus, He tells us through the intermediary Oskar Ernst Bernhardt: "I am the Word! I am the Son of Man!"
Humanity will cry from the horror of what will be happening, and then those remaining will gratefully accept help from the hands of the Son of Man. We will have to experience these events in the near future.
One may not consider what they read in the Book as internalized knowledge while some part of the Message contradicts another. It takes time to achieve such realization for your own consciousness alone. Moreover, one should not attempt to impose any unverified version upon others or try to convince them of it.
The fate of people who stubbornly cling to their misconceptions is tragic. But it is a thousandfold worse for those who broadcast their fallacies to the masses. The Grail Message also talks about it. It will take a lot of courage to admit personal delusions and to repent. However, only the one with a strong spirit can change their opinion under the pressure of arguments. The weak can never do that!
History repeats itself.
After the death of the Son of God, the disciples (apostles), not quite accurately having learned His Word, presented memoirs along with their errors. The word "apostle" comes from the ancient Greek ἀπόστολος, which means a "messenger or sent to preach". Next, their followers accepted these writings as the Truth and replicated them, calling them the Word of God (see Volume III, the chapter "Christ said…!"). The word of the apostle does not equal the Word of God!
Unfortunately, modern followers also have not fully understood what happened. Their authority is based on the fact that they were at the origins of the Grail Message, and many have been reading the Epistle for decades now.
Now think about this. The Bible has been read for centuries, but sins are conquered not by those who read it for a long time and even know it by heart but those who managed to make the Word their way of life. Millions read It, thousands understand It, but only a few live by the Word. And until you live by the Word, the Truth will keep passing you by!
I am sure that the erroneous point of view is not deliberate, because all who value this monumental work of conveying the Message to people regard O. E. Bernhardt and the One who is yet to come with deep respect. I encourage you to go to the temple, get away from the hustle and bustle for a while, and delve deeper in Prayer, in a humble request for help on the Path to the Truth.
If someone is offended by my stance on this matter, they have complete freedom to reject it. The choice still remains. But with choice comes responsibility, and this circumstance will be decisive in reaching a verdict at the final session of the Last Judgement.
It seems that people who think they have already been allowed into the Millennial Kingdom are somehow oblivious to the fact that their "neighbors" are unworthy individuals or even downright criminals who should not be there.
The Word of Abd-ru-shin is in the Message, and Its paragraphs depict the Millennial Kingdom as strict and absolutely uncompromising toward human sins. Not seeing this indicates spiritual blindness, yet another trap of the Darkness that operates by fueling on unconquered vanity and lack of vigilance in intuitive perception.
Volume III, the chapter "Epilogue. How the Message should be absorbed":
"But fear can also cause a human spirit to be filled with hatred. Especially fear of being treated with disdain in public opinion, fear of it becoming known that the personal knowledge he so proudly displayed in the past will receive a jolt through some matter which he himself is incapable of following..."
You became complacent too soon, ladies and gentlemen, way too soon. Main developments are still ahead!
In conclusion, I want to emphasize that all controversial passages of the Message were taken by me on faith first and then further tested by my spiritual perception and the strictness of the Lord's Prayer.
Gradually, month after month, year after year, as a result of positive spiritual transformation, my personal opinion underwent some adjustment and acquired a clear outline of logic and hence conviction.
At the same time, I did not lose sight of the main goal: to make sure that the battle with my errors would not cease even for a minute and that the movement towards the Light would continue. The chief indicator of that was the sense of my inner Power growing each day.
All those who seriously fight the Darkness know from their own experience what kind of a furious onslaught they must withstand daily if not hourly. They know firsthand how crafty and multifaceted the Darkness is in its attempt to deprive us of faith and, with it, of the support of the Holy Spirit. So, in continuous battles, our will strengthens, and the power of our spirit increases. Along the way, through humility, sins are redeemed. And as a result, we gradually restore the right to our forgotten name - human!
Once again, I appeal to many people inspired by the Message: ignore the betrayal of the apostates, for they have made their choice. But the Darkness has not defeated you! Remain in faith and hope for the upcoming Events. The Son of Man (Abd-ru-shin) is with you; He is near, and He sees and protects everyone faithful to Him.
A little more patience and you will hear His greeting. Await, it will happen soon!
February 2023
Yuri Lutsenko
