Reincarnation does not require an angry God to judge and punish us after we pass on. Rather, this belief system tells us that God loves us unconditionally, but it asks us to take responsibility for our thoughts and actions. All of it is governed by a Universal Truth that applies anywhere in the universe: What we put out comes back to us, this lifetime or next.

Spiritual wisdom tells us that after the death of our physical body we are the ones who will evaluate every one of our thoughts and actions in a process called a "life review." Then, if we so chose, we will set new goals and challenges for our next life, especially those which attempt to heal lesser choices (negative karma) with love. In other words, karma is not a punishment - it is an opportunity to bring our past actions with others into loving alignment, life after life, until all of it is healed. 

Many people on this planet also believe in the Christian, one-life concept. In this belief system, an angry God punishes us if we have been bad by sending our souls to hell for eternity, or He sends us to heaven if we have been good. We have one lifetime to get it all right, regardless of our age when we pass on. Needless to say, this misguided notion has been the source of much guilt and anxiety for those who believe in this man-made dogma. 

Who is right? Billions of people are betting an awful lot on these two vastly different doctrines. I believe there is enough information available today to say that the process of reincarnation and karma makes far more sense.

Before we go further, there are some very important facts that should be mentioned about the origin of the Bible and what we know about the Old and New Testament. A visit to any well-stocked library can provide this same information. 

This is crucial, because there are many people today who take things for granted about this book without examining its history...

The Holy Bible, as we know it today, can be traced back to the fourth century A.D.

During that time, the emperor Constantine formed a council of historians and scholars (the Council of Nice).

The purpose of that council was to take all the loosely organized religious and historic traditions of the time and simplify them.

As a result of that council, many sacred documents concerning ancient mysteries and Jesus' teachings were modified, edited or secreted away for a privileged few where they remain to this day in the Vatican. 

The council produced a single document in A.D. 325 known today as the Holy Bible.

Many documents and historical writings have been edited out of our modern Bible, in addition to those deemed inappropriate by the Catholic Church in the fourth century.

In essence, much of today's Bible is someone else's version of what they want you to believe and many fear-driven dogmas have resulted because of it.
 

Who invented the "we only have one life" dogma anyway? When did it happen? Why did it happen? God didn't invent it. It certainly wasn't Jesus' idea.   

From 1991 to 2002 I have read well over 400 metaphysical/New Age books. From time to time, I would come across a statement explaining that many centuries ago reincarnation was a widely accepted belief even when Jeshua (Jesus) walked the Earth. There is solid evidence that some of the early philosophers, Christian fathers, and saints believed in and supported that concept.

Who were some of these people? 

  - Plato (582-507 B.C.)
  - Origen (185-254 A.D.)
  - St. Clement of Alexandria (150-220 A.D.)
  - St. Gregory (257-332 A.D.)
  - St. Augustine (354-430 A.D.)

   Note: please visit their connections to reincarnation at the end
   of this article ⁽¹⁾

I had been raised a catholic and was taught in school that we only have one life to get it all right or there was hell to pay (literally). The church asked me to trust them on this one. They programmed me to believe that they had all the answers and asked that I place blind faith in their teachings. 

After my spiritual awakening, I wondered where that dogma really came from. That led to tougher questions such as, "At what time in religious history did the one-life law originate? Who came up with this teaching? Why did the majority of people on this planet believe in something totally foreign to me called reincarnation? Most importantly, who was right?"

As I began to dig into this puzzle more and more, I suspected that the answer could be found somewhere between the time Jeshua died (33 A.D.) and 600 A.D. During that time, the Christian religion was born, organized, defined, politicized and "dogmatized." All of this information is available in the libraries and has been well researched over the years. Why don't we hear more about it? The leaders of Western religions don't want you to know this.

Modern Christianity began with James (the brother of Jeshua), Paul, the early church fathers and others. As a teacher of righteousness, Jesus' seeds of spiritual wisdom and universal truths were given to many people. After his death, some of those people brought those seeds to local and foreign lands. Many religious groups or sects were formed based upon his teachings. There was a lot of opinion and disagreement on what to do with them and how they were to be interpreted. 

One major offshoot, was the formation of the Christian (Roman Catholic) religion. Throughout those first 500 years, other man-made laws were added to those that Jesus first taught. After His death, each new generation reinterpreted those original teachings. Then they were edited and embellished for many different reasons. 

Part of Jesus' wisdom was put into the New Testament. But, the earliest existing (hard) copy we have of that document is dated to the 4th century, almost 400 years after Christ's appearance. We have nothing earlier in writing except bits of pieces here and there found on various ancient parchments.

Sometime during the first 600 years of early Christianity, several major events happened...

Early references to reincarnation in the New Testament had been deleted in the fourth century by Emperor Constantine, when Christianity became the official religion of the Roman Empire.

In the sixth century, the Second Council of Constantinople ruled that reincarnation was a false belief punishable by persecution and death.

At the same time, the Church and the Roman Emperors knew that the concept of prior lives would weaken and undermine their power over their followers, since it would give these people too much time to achieve salvation. The threat of a Judgment Day and punishment by an angry God at the end of one's life worked a lot better to control the masses. 

Furthermore, reincarnation is a system of belief in which each individual must take responsibility for his or her choices and actions through the universal law of, "What you put out comes back to you." We don't need an organized religion for this system of belief to work. That was a threat to the existence of the Roman Catholic Church. 

The Roman Catholic Church realized it would have more power and influence by becoming not only a religious organization, but also a political one. As a result, the church formed powerful alliances with the Roman emperors. 

Why did the church form these alliances with the Roman emperors? Because the emperors wanted to make sure that the people didn't riot and an organized religion that controlled the masses through fear could help to accomplish that.

Why did the emperors want to make sure there were no rebellions by the masses? Because they wanted an uninterrupted flow of tax collections. 

Listed below is an excellent historical explanation of what happened during those early times regarding reincarnation and the one life dogma. It can be found in a book written by Nick Bunick called, In God's Truth. Again, it is offered not to offend, but to make one wonder and think. Ultimately, please form your own conclusions.

~~~

"At the time that Jeshua walked the earth, the Judaic religion had three different sects. One was the Sadducees and they professed they did not know what happened to the soul or the spirit upon death. The other two sects were the Pharisees and the Essenes. They absolutely believed in transmigration of the soul, what we call reincarnation.

In the fourth century A.D., Constantine was the emperor of Rome. He appointed a pope named Damascus. In conjunction with that, they founded the Council of Nicaea and made an effort to purge everything out of the Scriptures of the New Testament that spoke of reincarnation as they were translating the Scriptures from Aramaic into Latin, their contemporary language. [Encyclopedia Britannica says the Council of Nicaea, A.D. 325, '... is an event of the highest importance in the history of Christianity. It was the first attempt to fix the criteria of Christian orthodoxy, by means of definitely formulated pronouncements on the content of Christian belief...' - SP]

Then, in the fifth century A.D., when Justinian was the emperor, he called together the Fifth Ecumenical Council. The Council met in Constantinople with the specific purpose of condemning the idea of reincarnation, committing themselves, from that time on, to always speak of life being one experience on earth, that redemption and salvation must take place during this one lifetime.

Pope Vigilius refused to participate in that meeting because he totally disagreed with their trying to change the entire teachings of hundreds and hundreds of years, teachings that did believe in reincarnation, and more importantly, the teachings of Jeshua. 

I do not think it was done maliciously. I believe it was probably a decision of mortal people at that time who had good intent, and felt they could better influence the people who were attending their churches by making them believe they must receive redemption and salvation in this one lifetime. But unfortunately, in doing so, they changed dramatically the true messages of Jeshua, and that is that we are all part of God, and being part of God, we are all immortal. 

We do come back in human bodies in order to experience the material world so that we may become, through the experiences in the material world, pure again. I want to emphasize again, I do not believe it was malicious on the part of the decision-makers at that time. I feel their decision was based on what they thought was in the best interests of the people."