Nor is enthusiasm the fire in question, for one can be enthusiastic for or against the truth. The truth itself is more closely related to the fire in question than is enthusiasm per se. If enthusiasm is added, however, in the form of involvement to knowledge of the truth (gnosis) and desire to follow it, one comes much closer to comprehending the fire Christ came to cast.

If theology says that in practice Christianity divides families, it neither endorses nor encourages that in its practical urging, nor should it. But theology has also attempted to equate two other concepts to the fire in question, namely, baptism and judgment, and with or as a part of judgment the element also of purification. The first of these, baptism, has been enshrined in Christian doctrine as a sacrament and cause célèbre whose mechanics have been the subject of bitter internecine controversy within Christendom's own family.³ What is practiced relates in some way to water,⁴ though lip service is given to the idea that fire is in some way involved, reverting to the idea of inner enthusiasm so as again to beg the question.

The idea that this fire meant baptism seems based on the Baptist's statement that, in contradistinction to his own practice of water immersion, Christ would baptize with fire (Mt 3,11), as well as on Christ's own statement (Lk 12,50) that he still had a baptism to go through. Obviously this latter baptism had nothing to do with the sacramental practice that has since prevailed, nor can it merely mean that he would receive the Holy Spirit (cf. Jn 1,33), for he had already become one with that at his baptism in the Jordan. And it begs the question to equate that Holy Spirit baptism with fire based upon the Pentecostal experience, for we have yet to explore the meaning of the tongues of fire on that occasion (Acts 2,3). Nor again can that baptism have anything to do in Christ's case with judgment or purification, for Christendom has always properly insisted that he was beyond the need of these. Surely the baptism that he spoke of in verse fifty had reference to the entire sweep of his passage from the material body into the resurrection body, an event that mandates the passage through what only the ancients and the initiates knew to be fire. This passage was encompassed in the Crucifixion that Paul preached. Christ, as the first fruits, had to go the way that humanity itself would have to tread over the ages that were to follow.

The practice of baptism at the time of Christ, which even then was not a new procedure, having been practiced as we now know by the Essenes and others of an earlier time, served a very important function that cannot be served today. The etheric body in human beings has drawn progressively more and more into the confines of the physical body. It is this evolutionary process that over the ages has caused us to lose our conscious presence with the spiritual world (what the Bible sometimes calls God's "hiding his face"). At the same time it has brought brain thinking more and more into being.⁵ Steiner tells us that by the time of Christ the etheric body had so entered into the veil of the mineral-physical body (for brain thinking) that people were no longer able to remember what they had come from in primordial times. Even in the early church, baptism was only a symbol, but it was a symbol of something that had actually taken place in a few of those who had been immersed in the water, as in the case of John's baptism. For these few were held under water long enough to experience something akin to what sometimes happens to drowning persons—their lives flashed before them. In this case the etheric body was separated sufficiently from the physical body (as could then still happen with some people, though not enough to bring death) that it was able to perceive the past whence it had come. It was a remembrance (Eccles 1,11) of ancient times and of the spiritual world. It brought about the certain knowledge of the existence of that relationship, and consequently also a change in the way one thought. When John admonished repentance, he was saying, "Change your way of thinking." It was not so much a matter of remorse for past misdeeds as a recognition of them and of the pathway that was now to be opened for humanity's redemption. Related to this baptism with its change in one's way of thinking was the idea of purification and judgment. Even in that day, only some were able to have this experience of remembrance, but it was known and became the basis for the symbolic act of baptism. This was the baptism of John. Such baptism accomplishes nothing of this sort today, though the symbol remains as a sacramental relic in virtually all Christian doctrine and ritual. Better that it be looked at as a symbol of belief in the true fire of the Christ baptism, once the nature of this fire comes to be recognized.⁶

But the baptism that Christ brought was one of actual death to the physical world and birth into the world of fire, the etheric and higher worlds. Paul preached Christ and him crucified (1 Cor 1,23; 2,2), for death in the physical world is essential to life in the higher worlds. For Christ, it was brought about in one lifetime, but to accomplish this even the Christ had to have an earthly body more advanced than any other, one that he and his legions had prepared even from the time of Adam (Heb 10,5 ["When Christ came into the world, he said, '… a body hast thou prepared for me'"]; see "The Nativity" in The Burning Bush as well as The Incredible Births of Jesus). For the rest of humanity it would take more, but the pathway to the future was opened by Christ, and it was the pathway of fire. Only through that fire could the Prodigal Son return home to the spiritual world.

Paul himself appears to have minimized water baptism in his ministry. True, he had himself been baptized, but this appears to have been at the hands of an Essene community in Damascus, a community we now know had practiced baptism in its initiatory rites before the time of Christ. And Christ had been baptized, but for different reasons than others. While Paul admitted to baptizing one household with water, he appears not to have done so otherwise (1 Cor 1,16-17). Instead he preaches baptism into Christ's death (Rom 6,4).

Just as division was a foreseeable consequence of this fire, so also is judgment; neither however is its equivalent, its meaning nor its synonym. The subject of judgment is rather fully addressed in my essay "Lord of Karma" in The Burning Bush, where the basis for understanding its relationship to fire is laid down. Nor is baptism as understood and practiced in Christendom to date the equivalent of the fire Christ came to cast upon the Earth. It can only become such an equivalent when the nature of that fire is understood—then passed through. In other words, the baptism of Christ can be explained by fire, but fire cannot be explained by baptism as we have known it within the beliefs and practices of Christendom to date.

So an understanding of fire eludes Christendom, for it is not enthusiasm, division, baptism, judgment nor purification, though each of these can and normally does have some consequential relationship to it.