Jesus Didn’t Die for Our Sins: Those Are on Us

On September 11, 2001, much of the world watched in horror as hijacked planes struck the Twin Towers in New York, leading to their collapse and the deaths of almost 3,000 people. It was the most audacious attack on an American city in the nation’s history.

Emotions were running high, and Americans were understandably traumatized. In the following days, President George W. Bush, speaking from Camp David, told reporters, “This crusade—this war on terrorism—is going to take a while and the American people must be patient. I’m going to be patient. But I can assure the American people I am determined.”¹

The word crusade rippled round Europe and the Middle East, resurrecting the ghosts of medieval wars fought in the name of Jesus—wars in which thousands, possibly hundreds of thousands, of Muslims, Jews, Pagans, heretical Christian sects such as the Cathars, and the papacy’s political enemies were exiled, massacred, or enslaved. It was a blunt reminder that violence in the name of God is always crouching at the door.

The American people didn’t have to wait too long. Three weeks later, the United States and its allies launched a full-scale invasion of Afghanistan—not because the hijackers were Afghan, but because the country’s leader was accused of sheltering Osama bin Laden, the Saudi playboy-turned-terrorist, and in accordance with the Pashtun tribal code, refused to hand him over. The war on terror had begun.

In Washington, plans for regime change in the Middle East were already taking shape, and next in line was Saddam Hussein, the president of Iraq—an old foe of former president George H. W. Bush, who was now in his son’s gunsights.

On October 2, 2002—five months before the United States and its “Coalition of the Willing” invaded Iraq—five prominent Christian leaders wrote to Bush:

“In this decisive hour of our nation’s history we are writing to express our deep appreciation for your bold, courageous, and visionary leadership. … We believe your stated policies concerning Saddam Hussein and his headlong pursuit of biochemical and nuclear weapons of mass destruction are prudent and fall well within the time-honored criteria of just war theory as developed by Christian theologians in the late fourth and early fifth centuries A.D.”²

God’s self-appointed representatives were saying: “We’ve got this, George. God is with you. Go and kill those Iraqis!”

It is reasonable to suggest that Bush—a born-again Christian—found his confidence boosted by those Christian leaders who invoked their Just War theory—a doctrine developed centuries after Jesus’ and fundamentally at odds with his core teachings. Jesus never said, “kill your enemies to balance the scales.” He said, “Love your enemies … turn the other cheek … and blessed are the peacemakers.” 

Throughout the centuries religion and politics have colluded and collided, reshaping Jesus’s teachings, and today they are often dismissed, even by some Christians, as idealistic or impractical. The “time honored” Just War Theory is just that: a theory, something usually more akin to science than to faith. An analogy might be the “get out of jail free” card in the board game Monopoly—produced at death by the theorists in the hope that they will bypass the basement of the Many Mansions and proceed directly to the celestial kingdom, where the upscale neighborhoods are.

In the New Testament, Jesus has much to say about judgment:

“But I tell you that everyone will have to give account on the day of judgment for every empty word they have spoken. For by your words you will be acquitted, and by your words you will be condemned” (Matthew 12:36–37).
“And just as it is appointed for man to die once, and after that comes judgment” (Hebrews 9:27).

In No One’s Dead: The Jesus Messages, I share contemporary communications said to come from Jesus—warnings that Christian doctrine is flawed and steering its followers through the “wide gate.” Many dismiss these later messages, but if one accepts Paul’s visions in the 30s–50s CE, John’s Book of Revelation around 95–100 CE, and later messengers such as Emanuel Swedenborg, who received his communications between 1744 and 1772, why would Jesus stop there if the doctrine was incorrect?

With the advent of WWI, in a message on December 24, 1916 to James E. Padgett, a Washington, D.C., attorney, a communicator claiming to be Jesus wrote:

“Never in all the history of mankind has God responded to the prayers of men or nations to assist in the destruction of other men or nations, and this, notwithstanding the accounts in the Old Testament of the many times that he was supposed to have helped the Jews to destroy their enemies. … Take that saying: ‘I came not to bring peace to the world, but rather a sword.’ Now, while it appears in Matthew’s gospel as coming from me, I never said it nor used any expression that would convey the meaning that some of the commentators are endeavoring to place upon the words. I never taught war upon a man’s neighbors, and never at any time was such a thought a part of my teachings to the disciples or to any others. No, militarism is all wrong and against all the precepts of truth, and it should not, for a moment, be believed by any Christian or by anyone else that such action was ever advocated by me. …”

In the Padgett messages the overriding theme is that judgment after death is for everyone. It’s not a punishment by God. It’s a process that’s responsive rather than reactive; it unfolds according to the soul’s state. A comparison could be gravity: it operates universally, regardless of whether people believe in it or “deserve” it. Jump off a cliff, and gravity acts; it’s not a punishment—it’s the operation of physical law. Similarly, we are told judgment is a spiritual law.

In a message to Padgett on February 25, 1918, Jesus wrote:

“Well, the judgment of the human soul is an important accompaniment of the human life, both in the flesh and in the spirit world, and as regards the questions and punishments, hardly anything demands more of the thought and consideration of men, for it is a certainty that beliefs, true or false, he cannot avoid them. Judgment as certainly follows what men call death as does night the day, and no philosophy or theological dogmas or scientific determinations can alter the fact, or in any way change the character or exact workings of this judgment.

“Man is his own bookkeeper, and in his memory are recorded all the thoughts and deeds of his earth life that are not in accord with the harmony of God’s will, which is expressed or manifested by His laws. The judgment is not the thing of a day or a time, but is never ceasing so long as there exists that upon which it can operate, and it diminishes in proportion as the causes of inharmony disappear.

“… No man who has lived and died has escaped, and no man who shall hereafter die can escape this judgment unless he has, in a way provided by the Father in His love, become in harmony with the laws requiring harmony. ‘As a man soweth so shall he reap’ is as true as is the fact that the sun shines upon the just and the unjust alike.”

This concurs with the Jewish description of Sheol: the shadowy underworld of the Hebrew Bible—not the eternal Hell of Christianity, but a neutral abode of the dead, a kind of resting place for souls as they continue their journey.

“There the wicked cease from troubling, and there the weary are at rest. There the prisoners are at ease together; they do not hear the voice of the taskmaster. The small and the great are there, and the slave is free from his master” (Hebrew Bible, Job 3:17–19).

Mainstream Christianity promises forgiveness for sins—an escape route—as long as you accept Jesus as your Savior and repent before you die. In contemporary communications, Jesus appears to be saying, “Not so fast! You will have the opportunity to be saved, but judgment is for all—no exceptions.  I can provide the pathway to salvation—to the Kingdom—and guide you through the atonement process, but your thoughts and actions during life have consequences after physical death. Your conscience is the judge, and your memories stay with you until you atone. I didn’t die for your sins—those are on you!”

If these contemporary “truths” from Jesus are real—and if Christian leaders calling for war truly believed they would face severe consequences after death, even if not in this life—would they still risk countless lives by sending troops into conflicts that pose no existential threat to their own countries? Only they can answer.

These messages can be viewed in several ways: as fiction, as messages from impostors, or as genuine. Depending on the reader’s worldview, they can be ignored or taken as guidance from people who have gone before us—and used as a roadmap of the levels beyond death.

Killing and death is an activity of the world. Jesus is reminding us we are in the world, but not of the world. He’s pointing out that the “get out of jail free” card is not valid after death regardless of religious affiliation or lack thereof. And the sooner we accept that and stop killing each other, the better it will be for all of us.

Jonathan Beecher is the author of No One’s Dead: The Jesus Messages, published by White Crow Books. This article can also be found on Substack. 

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¹https://georgewbush-whitehouse.archives.gov/news/releases/2001/09/20010916-2.html

²https://waynenorthey.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/The-Land-Letter.pdf