These Messages from Jesus and Celestials, received through the hand of James E. Padgett, are so extraordinary in concept and contents (claiming as they do to bring to mankind the highest spiritual teachings of Jesus as an epoch-making revelation from the spirit world), that it is indispensable that, as the publisher and firm believer in the Truths contained in these messages, I give to interested readers and for future reference some firsthand information regarding the man through whom these messages were received, and how it was that he was enabled and selected to obtain these amazing communications.

At this point, I must state that I was very often in Mr. Padgett's room when he was receiving these writings, and that I am the eyewitness to the formation and development of Mr. Padgett as the medium par excellence through whom the Truths of the Heavenly Father and life in the spirit world have come to mankind.

Mr. Padgett invited me to visit him regularly at his home at 514 E Street, N.W., Washington, D.C., where, in the course of time, I met Eugene Morgan and Dr. Goerger. Padgett told me that the messages he was receiving were from his wife, Helen, who had died early that year. She had written him many things about the spirit life she was living, describing her experiences at the time of her death, the sphere of her spiritual abode, and her love for her husband in the flesh who, she had then discovered, was her soulmate. I was thereafter very often present as he continued to receive these messages. They came in a rapid sweep of connected words that obviously gave no time for thought on the part of the writer, and, in fact, he often insisted that he had no clear idea of what his pencil was writing until he read the messages afterwards. It was in this way, then, that he received from 1914 to 1923 some twenty-five hundred messages, many of them coming, I have not the slightest doubt, from those highest spirits whose signatures were testimony to the personalities they represented...

...I do not know exactly when the first message signed "Jesus of the Bible" was received, for as I write this, more than forty years later, I cannot remember the date. Padgett evidently felt it was absurd to believe that Jesus had written him and, alas, threw away the message. As a matter of fact, Mr. Colburn, who up to that time had formed a part of our fellowship, declared he could not be persuaded that Jesus had actually written. However, his friends, Dr. Goerger, Mr. Morgan and I had an instinctive feeling that Jesus had written a genuine message. The earliest message allegedly from Jesus to Padgett which is in my possession, therefore, is dated September 28, 1914, and refers to an earlier message written a few days before. It is a long message, urging Padgett to pray for the Father's Love, and stating that certain passages in the New Testament, thoroughly believed in by Padgett, were false. The Master went on to say that he was neither God, nor had he been conceived by the Holy Spirit in the way taught by the preachers of the churches. Further, that "...Neither is God Spirit only, a Spirit of Mind. He is a Spirit of everything that belongs to His Being. He is not only Mind, but Heart, Soul, and Love." The message urged Padgett: "...Go to your Father for His Help. Go in prayer, firmly believing, and you will soon feel His Love in your heart."...

Whatever one may believe regarding the source of the Messages from Jesus and the Celestials, the contents are so new and revolutionary, yet so compelling by their logic and sublime simplicity, that a serious study of them must be undertaken in order to comprehend their significance and challenge.

In these messages, Jesus of Nazareth stands forth as the Master of what he calls the "Celestial Heavens," wherein only those spirits possessed of the New Birth through prayer to the Father for His Divine Love can dwell in light and happiness and become conscious of their immortality through their At-onement with Him in soul nature.

If these messages are authentic as coming from Jesus and his Celestial spirits, then mankind has at last been given the true mission which Jesus proclaimed on earth. This mission taught the transformation of man's soul from the image of God-the work of the original creation-into the very Essence of God through the bestowal of the Father's Love upon whomsoever should seek that Love in earnest longing. It revealed that Jesus himself first manifested the Father's Love in his soul, thus making him at-one with the Father in nature and giving him that clear consciousness of his kinship with the Father and his immortality of soul. It showed that, in this development of soul, Jesus was indeed his Father's true son, not in the metaphysical and mysterious way of a hypothetical virgin birth, but through the Holy Spirit-that Agency of the Father which conveys His Love into the souls of His creatures who seek It in earnest prayer. It brings to light that Jesus was born of Mary and Joseph, of human parents like other human beings, but that he was nonetheless the Messiah promised to the Hebrews and to mankind in the Old Testament. For wherever he taught the "glad tidings" that God's Love was available, and that it was this Love which bestowed immortality upon the soul filled with this Love, Jesus brought with him the Nature of God-the Kingdom of God. At the same time, Jesus tells us that neither was he God; nor was his mother, Mary, the mother of God; nor a virgin after her marriage to Joseph, but that she was, in truth, the mother of eight children, of which he was the eldest; and that he had four brothers and three sisters in the flesh, and not cousins, as some versions of the Bible relate.

In addition, he relates that he did not come to die on a cross, nor did, nor does, his shed blood bring remission of sins. He also shatters the time-honored statements now found in the New Testament that he ever instituted a bread and wine sacrament on the eve of his arrest at the "Last Supper." This pious statement, he declared, was never his, nor did any of his apostles or disciples ever teach it, but was inserted about a century later so that such a doctrine might accord with the ideas then prevalent among the Greek converts of Christianity. Communion with the Heavenly Father can never take place through the mistaken notion that Jesus had to be impaled on a cross by Roman soldiers, on the order of Pilate, the Procurator of Judea, and in accord with the uncomprehending high priests, so that he could appear as a sacrifice for sin. There is no sacrifice for sin, affirms Jesus, and his dried-up blood cannot do what only man himself must do by turning in repentance and prayer to the Heavenly Father to effect that change in his heart whereby his soul will give up evil and sin and embrace what is righteous. The Father's Help in the elimination of sin from the human soul is His Divine Love which, on entering the soul through prayer, removes sin and error from that soul and provides not only purification but also its transformation into a divine soul, at-one with the Father's Great Soul in nature. This real communion, which Jesus himself had achieved, he declared, is the only communion between God and His children which God has provided for their salvation and eternal life with Him...