Lord of Karma, Page 18

Heb 9,27-28:

(27) And just as it is appointed for men to die once, and after that comes judgment, (28) so Christ, having been offered once to bear the sins of many, will appear a second time, not to deal with sin but to save those who are eagerly waiting for him.

Vs 27 was discussed at some length in “Karma and Reincarnation” herein; the present remarks extend that to take into account the meaning added by vs 28. To begin with, Hebrews is probably the most extensive, certainly the most systematic, treatment of sin in the New Testament, and of how Christ, “once for all” (Heb 7,27; 9,12,28 and 10,10,12-14) paid the price for it. In vs 28, Paul again points to the “once” aspect to emphasize that Christ dealt with “sin” the first time. But in doing so, he only made the “offer” to “bear the sins.” Heretofore, vs 28 has generally been skimpily dealt with on the assumption that the Second Coming is simply to confirm or claim those already saved. But the anthroposophical view accords it independent significance. For those who have “accepted his offer,” and are thus “eagerly waiting for him,” we are told that he came “not to deal with sin,” for he had dealt with that “once for all” the first time for those who accepted his offer. Why then, if such acceptance effects salvation, was it necessary to come the second time to “save” those who have already accepted him? Surely a different verb would have been used had it simply been to “pick up” his flock. Something more is implied in the dynamic word “save,” something that is in accord with Jas 2,24 (“a man is justified by works and not by faith alone”). That “something more” has to do with administering the karmic laws as to the restitution that must be made over and above the burden Christ first lifted from the sinner’s shoulders—one’s subjective, as distinguished from objective, sins. That function is the one he is to perform as Lord of Karma. This becomes even clearer in the passage from Heb 12 considered next.

Another important aspect of these verses is that, as part of the larger passage (vss 23-28), they give precisely the same message Steiner gave, typically in quite unbiblical language, in JTC, quoted at length near the first of this essay. The verses confirm that the Lord of Karma office passes from Moses to Christ, and that it was yet, as Paul wrote, to occur in a future time, e.g., “will appear a second time.” We shall see that Christ’s Second Coming andhis assumption of the Lord of Karma role from Moses are both twentieth-century spiritual developments, thus fully in accord with vss 23-28.

Heb 12,22-24:

(22) But you have come to Mount Zion and to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to innumerable angels in festal gathering, (23) and to the assembly of the first-born who are enrolled in heaven, and to a judge who is God of all, and to the spirits of just men made perfect, (24) and to Jesus, the mediator of a new covenant, and to the sprinkled blood that speaks more graciously than the blood of Abel.

Hebrews is one of the books that had some problem getting into the canon, and finally did on the basis of Pauline authorship, thus being placed with Paul’s other letters, albeit at the end. One of the problems was that it alone among them does not specifically identify itself as being from him. In particular, every other such letter is identified in its caption as being “of Paul,” but Hebrews is not—it is simply “The Letter to the Hebrews.” Scholars have raised serious objection to its Pauline authorship. It is my position that his authorship is established (see “Paul/Hebrews”). While Romans speaks most extensively about the Jews, as though to them, near consensus has it that it was addressed to Christians generally at Rome preparatory to Paul’s first visit there. While Hebrews clearly applies to all humanity, it is uniquely to the Jews. That Paul wrote it out of his known anxiety for the Jews is strongly suggested not only by its title and other evidence, but by its emphasis upon Melchizedek. The esoteric nature of Melchizedek’s connection with the Jews is suggested in Heb 5,11, but it is clarified by Steiner (see text and fn 7 in “Spiritual Economy”), who shows that Melchizedek took on the preserved original etheric body of Noah’s son Shem, from the Atlantean evolution, in order to bring over to the Semites the necessary spiritual “impetus to their culture.” An avatar still inhabited that etheric body. Melchizedek could then be given the unique descriptions of Heb 5 and 7 as being of similar character to Christ, for Christ was an avatar—by far the greatest of them all, but nevertheless of that unique spiritual character that had no earthly mother or father.