With loving greetings from all souls at this station, this is Matthew. With the December solstice came another powerful influx of light, as if to salute the year nearing its end and greet the new with a rousing cheer. And, if indeed a salute, how well deserved it is! Every time you acted upon a soul-level inspiration—something you considered only a nice gesture or “the right thing to do”—you added light to your world.

You may wish to review the message wherein we mentioned some of the many ways your society has been generating light in abundance. Feeling grateful for the myriad contributions to the betterment of your world sends forth its own light in grand amount. [The referenced message is August 15, 2013.]

Yes, a great deal still is to be done and shall be. The energy momentum keeps strengthening the forcefulness of all thoughts and feelings, so we repeat our guidance to not think of needful conditions with a heavy heart; instead, envision Earth within golden-white light so this image and your desire for benevolent changes go out into the universe and return with additional light. Although some closed minds and hearts are trying to keep the status quo, changes toward peace, cooperation and sufficiency for all are solidly underway, and the more light energy they receive, the sooner they will be manifested.

Please continue being discerning about all information, including articles and channeled material on the Internet. Mainstream media still are controlled to a large extent, with emphasis on the negative and scandals; but it is heartening that more and more stories of kindness, sharing of resources and successful endeavors from grass roots upward also are being featured.

Reporters are among the majority of your populace who have no idea that members of our universal family would prevent the talked-about possibilities, such as North Korea may detonate nuclear warheads and wipe out vast areas or radiation from Fukushima eventually may kill millions. They don’t know that it isn’t Gaia’s desire for oceans to become so warm that all marine life dies and all coastlines move inland hundreds of miles, so those will not happen either. Most of Earth’s residents don’t know that prevailing frequencies are conducive to national leaders choosing to talk instead of do battle, or economic and diplomatic discussions are going on behind the scenes, or many millions of souls are experiencing what they chose to balance other lifetimes and evolve.

You do know that, beloved family, so surge forward throughout this new year with uplifted hearts and positive thoughts and keep expanding the light in your world. You ARE the changes you want!

Now I am speaking as Matthew only. I asked my mother to copy a response to our December message: Your message was lovely except for leaving out that Jesus’ birth is the reason for this holy-day season. I think I am open-minded and intuitive, but what you have said about Jesus not being crucified is NOT believable. How can someone as evolved as you make yourself out to be not know something that important?

The writer is one of the many, many people who believe the biblical story about the crucifixion. Knowing at conscious level the truth you know at soul level is a vital part of evolvement, and holding fast to beliefs based on falsehoods deters advancement. That’s why I felt it could be helpful to tell you how I know the Bible differs dramatically from the truth. God said “Yes, it is the time,” and so I shall.

Always I have spoken from personal knowledge as Matthew the apostle—it is the best known today of my lives on Earth—and the thousands of other lifetimes that began when Archangel Michael’s powerful energy manifested its first personage in this universe. The cumulative knowledge of all my personages has enabled me to speak about things I didn’t consciously know during the lifetime that became known as Matthew, the apostle; however, I shall call upon that knowledge as I tell you about my years with Jesus.

My mother has known about that lifetime since our earliest conversations, twenty years ago, and when she asked if I would ever mention it in a message, I told her perhaps, someday, but the apostle identity isn’t important. What is important is that the information she received from me and the others be respected for itself. Readers of the books and messages need to intuitively know the truth of the information, and offering guidance to help them hear, trust and heed their “inner voice” in all life circumstances is one of the primary reasons for our mother-and-son collaboration.

Now then, many people believe everything in the Bible is true because they have been taught that it is the “word of God” written by God-inspired individuals. That is not so. The innumerable erroneous parts of the Bible include mistakes in translations of Aramaic and Greek records—one is “babe in a manger”—along with translators’ alterations that fit their personal beliefs. Those were compounded by more of the same in later translations; however, the most serious departures from authentic records are the omissions and additions that were deliberately meant to deceive.

Parts of the Old Testament came from the early leaders of church and state. Individuals had a closer relationship with God then, and to make the populace conform to the leaders’ desire for control and wealth, they needed to distance the people from God. They concocted a wrathful, fearsome God who told some of the people that others were their enemies, go forth and slay them; and told a father to kill his son as proof of his obedience to His commands.

During the ensuing centuries, principals in the Catholic Church wrote religious rules and called them “God’s laws” so as to cement their control over the masses and acquire ever-vaster fortunes. To put more distance between the people and God, they added a layer of saints; and to exalt themselves, they instituted papal infallibility and established the Vatican as an independent state. They came up with an immaculate conception, whereby Mary was conceived, and made her the virgin mother of Jesus to convince the masses that he is the “only son of God.”

I shall tell you from whence Jesus came. The soul that eons later embodied as Jesus originated in the Christed realm, the cosmic realm closest to Creator, where the first souls, the archangels, came into being. At some point, they made the next angelic realm and the highest gods and goddesses. These souls were given the choice to remain as the pure love-light energy essence of Creator—that was the choice of the Supreme Being of this universe that many call God—or to incarnate. One of the souls that chose the latter is known in this universe as Sananda. This soul has had lifetimes in civilizations throughout the cosmos and is the “parent,” or more properly, the cumulative soul of the person you know as Jesus.

To continue about the Bible, much of its most deceptive information is ascribed to the four apostles, and somewhere along the line we were given saint status. Some scholars think Luke and I copied parts of what Mark wrote in his gospel and added them to ours, but I’m curious as to why they left out John—the blatant lies that were put in our gospels were put in his, too. Some modern versions of the Bible dropped our sainthood; however, in my mother’s old, well-worn King James edition, it is the Gospel According to Saint Matthew, and she will accommodate me by copying the parts I request.

First, though, I shall describe Jesus and Mary Magdalene so you can imagine them as I speak about them. Jesus was outgoing, not as vivacious as Mary but always pleasant of temperament. He was what I would call a commanding figure—taller than most men and slender but strong and muscular, with erect posture. His fair skin had tanned from years in the sun and his gray eyes sometimes had a tinge of blue; his hair was light brown and long, as was the style, but he kept his beard and mustache closely trimmed. Mary was an extremely pretty and delightfully personable, gracious young woman. In appearance she was petite, fair-complexioned and had sparkling brown eyes and cascading brown hair.

Both of them were born into respected upper-class families, intelligent, well-educated for the times, and the finest of friends for many years before they married. They had a large, happy family, and after long, full lives, they left their bodies and moved on to lifetimes of service to God in other places in this universe; however, the power of their love-light energy always is with souls on Earth, just as elsewhere.

But I’m getting ahead of myself and way ahead of the gospel of St. Matthew. As a young man I started keeping a journal of interesting encounters and, like my notes before I met Jesus, those afterwards were meant to serve only as reference and reading enjoyment in my old age.

My records did not begin with the lineage from Abraham to Joseph, Jesus’ father, but since St. Matthew does, I shall speak about that. Several months after I met Jesus, the genealogy was shown to me by a man who copied it from someone’s record who copied it from another’s record and so on and so on. I tucked into my journal the list I wrote with the note that I’d been told its accuracy couldn’t be verified. It was not a broadly literate society, thus lore and legend were handed down from one generation to the next, and it was commonly understood that often the accounts were embellished or details forgotten by successive storytellers. Yet, it became biblical “history.”

Next in St. Matthew comes: “Now the birth of Jesus Christ was on this wise: When as his mother Mary was espoused to Joseph, before they came together, was found with child of the Holy Ghost.” …. “Joseph knew her not till she had brought forth her firstborn son: and he called his name Jesus.” None of that was in my records, and why would it be? I didn’t meet Jesus until many years later, and neither he nor his parents ever told me anything like that. Nevertheless, it was attributed to me and written similarly in the other gospels to substantiate the Catholic Church’s version of Jesus’ birth.

Furthermore, all of my notes were about Emmanuel, the name everyone called him. I don’t know why it was decided that in the Bible, his name should be Jesus, and it’s odd, or an oversight, that this also was put into that chapter: “… and they shall call his name Emmanuel.” It’s because you know him as Jesus that I always have referred to him by that name.

Those were indeed harsh, cruel times. The slaughter of infant and toddler males is true—however, I didn’t note that in my journal—and so is the flight of Jesus’ family to Egypt and return to their homeland when it was safe. I recorded what they told me about their experiences then as well as numerous other family highlights during the many enjoyable evenings I spent with Jesus, his siblings and their parents. Often Mary Magdalene was there too, and conversations were lively. We spoke Aramaic, occasionally lapsing into Greek for an apt expression, and there was much laughter because we didn’t always talk about serious matters. Jesus listened attentively to whomever was speaking, and many a time I saw his eyes twinkle when Mary was excitedly chattering about something or other.

As a part-time teacher of elementary and advanced students—there was no word for tutor then—the closest I came to the tax collection profession was meeting Jesus on a street where men were busily engaged at the collecting and counting tables. I recognized him from a small group I had chanced upon the previous evening, so I greeted him, he invited me to accompany him, I did, and we talked as we walked along. That’s how I wrote about our meeting, along with discovering that we both enjoyed water sports and had a mutual acquaintance and Jesus said he recently started speaking in public. That was the point in my journal where my notes about our friendship started, and I wrote about it in first person—it was my experience.

However, according to St. Matthew: “And as Jesus passed forth from thence, he saw a man, named Matthew, sitting at the receipt of custom: and he saith unto him, Follow me. And he arose, and followed him.” Evidently it didn’t occur to whoever changed my notes that folks might think it strange that Matthew would write so awkwardly and briefly about a life-changing experience and very strange that our meeting came after the “sermon on the mount” that previously “I” had written in St. Matthew. It does explain, though, why I am thought of as the tax collector who became a disciple.

Jesus didn’t call us disciples. After he became known for his teachings, some in the Sanhedrin started referring to people who attended gatherings where he spoke as “his disciples.” As for the twelve the Bible gives that designation, Jesus met each of us in his travels around the Sea of Galilee and friendships were formed, but he didn’t ask any of us to forsake our livelihoods and “follow” him. I had the good fortune of living near him, which afforded me the enjoyment of his company far more often than the other “disciples” could spend time with him.

According to St. Matthew: “These twelve Jesus sent forth, and commanded them:… “Heal the sick, cleanse the lepers, raise the dead, cast out devils.” That endows us with abilities none of us had! But we did know Jesus’ abilities and how he had come by them, so when I was along on a boat outing, I had no reason to put in my journal, we “marvelled” that “even the winds and the sea obey him!” and I didn’t.

In St. Matthew, after Jesus met two men “possessed with devils,” he cast them out and put them in a swine herd that “ran violently down a steep place into the sea, and perished in the waters.” …. “And, behold, the whole city came out to meet Jesus: and when they saw him, they besought him that he would depart out of their coasts.” As Jesus recounted the incident to me, after he ushered into the light the entities that were tormenting the men’s minds, he continued on his solitary way until he and I met up, and that’s how I penned my account of it.

The gospel’s version of Jesus spending forty days in the wilderness, where he refused to be tempted by the devil, is a dreadful elaboration of the short note in my journal: Jesus liked to spend time in solitude with Nature, where he could talk with God or muse without distraction and, like the others who knew him well, I honored that by keeping my distance.

What became known as “sermon on the mount” was someone’s compilation of my copious notes at numerous small gatherings where Jesus would speak, people would ask questions and he would answer—there was a lot of interaction early on. But as word of his teachings spread and crowds grew, people listened without interrupting and he spoke about many of the things that became the “sermon.” I didn’t call it that. Jesus wasn’t a preacher, he was a teacher who was passionate about sharing his knowledge. He knew it was what he was meant to do, and that was the great difference between him and everyone else—his conscious mind always was connected with his soul and he lived accordingly.

The sermon does preserve much of his wisdom and enlightenment and of course I’m gratified about that, but it doesn’t include some of his important teachings noted in my journal, like the purpose of multiple lifetimes; inseparability of all souls; God is everything that exists in the world—all people, animals, plants, the waters, air and earth are parts of Him and sacred to Him. Jesus didn’t make any notes about his teachings and he was glad that I did.

But anything in my journals that might undermine the corrupt leaders’ authority was left out of St. Matthew and most of what is in that gospel didn’t come from my records. I never heard Jesus say that anyone “…shall be in danger of hell fire” or “…whosoever shall marry her that is divorced committeth adultery.” He talked about how godly thoughts and deeds benefit lives, not “shameful” behavior—that would have been judging and contrary to what he did tell people, “Judge not, that ye be not judged.” I never heard him talk about sins being forgiven—he said “sin” was an error in values or deeds and he told listeners many times over the importance of their forgiving others. He wouldn’t have said, “Think not that I am come to send peace on earth: I came not to send peace, but a sword”—that was in conflict with all of his teachings.

The “parables” sound as if Jesus was speaking in anger—never during the many times I was present at gatherings, large or small, did he do that. And, unlike the parables, he spoke forthrightly and clearly so listeners would understand—he wanted to enlighten, not perplex. It is fortunate—or more likely, unawareness of what he meant—that those who so drastically changed my notes left in“Ye are the light of the world,” “Let your light shine…” and many of his other references to light.

Mentioning all the disparities between my records and St. Matthew would require my comments throughout that gospel, but the most critical additions are the “last supper” and Jesus’ crucifixion and resurrection. It’s possible that the supper may have derived from my notes about one of the rare times that Jesus and all twelve of us were in the same place and we had a splendid celebration dinner. It was after he and Mary Magdalene had married and she was there too, but it was many months before the crucifixion is claimed to have happened. Jesus didn’t perform the service that became known as “holy communion” or say: “Verily I say unto you, that one of you shall betray me,” and everything from that point on in St. Matthew also is fabricated falsehood.

Months later I recorded what I overheard two men discussing near the temple: The Sanhedrin thought that crucifying Jesus would make him a martyr and give impetus to his teachings, so they decided to have him flogged and ordered out of the country—that would discredit him in the eyes of the people and they soon would forget him.

When I told Jesus, he said he couldn’t avoid being beaten and banished—as I noted in my journal, I sensed he felt it was important to let that happen. It did, and shortly afterwards, he and Mary Magdalene left for the Far East, where he knew they would be welcomed. In several of our early talks he had told me about his younger years there, where he learned from the masters how to perform what the Bible calls “miracles,” but as Jesus told the multitudes, everything he could do, they could, too.

Through the years we kept in touch with occasional letters and when one came from him, I tucked it into my journal—by then there were dozens. Finding new students required my moving from time to time, which offered ample opportunity to meet people who heard I knew Jesus and wanted to hear about his teachings. Now and then I saw Luke, who sometimes had news about one or another of the other “disciples,” but our common link was Jesus, and after he left, it was natural that we all would continue along our separate ways.

After my death in old age, the innkeeper sold the chest in which I kept my journals. Eventually they fell into the hands of someone in government and, before being burned, led to the Gospel According to St. Matthew.

In no way what I have told you diminishes one iota the power of Jesus or his accurate teachings! The truth of his life—he had a wife and children, and he had desires, ideas, hopes, friends, opposition, disappointments, heartaches and joyful times like other people—far more honors his teachings than religion’s false claim that he was the “only son of God.”

Nor does anything I have said mean that people who believe the Bible is God’s word are diminished in goodness of heart—they only are misinformed. Every soul has its own journey into the light of truth and there is no time limit—the life of the soul is eternal. If persons you love dearly aren’t on the same pathway as you, confidently continue on yours and respect their divine right to choose theirs.

And now, beloved Earth family, I speak again for all of us at this station. In every moment, we are alongside you in spirit and unconditional love.

LOVE and PEACE

Suzanne Ward
Website: The Matthew Books
Email: suzy@matthewbooks.com