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BACKGROUND

The Grail Foundation of Great Britain has its headquarters in Sidcup, Kent. I believe that we can show that the group appears to have 'occult tendencies' even though they use words such as God, salvation and other spiritual terms.

We are told on their website that,

Legally, on the basis of its statutes, the Grail Foundation serves to "further the public welfare in the spiritual and ethical spheres" through dissemination of the work "In the Light or Truth: The Grail Message, by Abd-ru-shin, and the spiritual and ethereal knowledge therein transmitted, through international understanding as well as through the development and advancement of appropriate services and activities." However, the Foundation and its publisher, aside from the works of Abd-ru-shin, can publish literature only based on the Grail Message.

The Grail Message is contained in the book by Abd-ru-shin mentioned above. The author's real name was Oskar Ernst Bernhardt and he was born near Dresden in 1875. He spent World War 1 interned in the Isle of Man and it was here that he experienced the inner need of many people, and the desire to help them, took root.

In 1919 he returned to Dresden and in 1923 publicised the first lectures of the Grail Message. He completed In the Light of Truth in Austria in 1928 but when Nazi Germany annexed Austria in 1938, he was expelled. His work was also forbidden by the Nazi regime.

It was not published until 1945 after Bernhardt's death in 1941. However, even though he spent the last years of his life under the surveillance of the Gestapo he still managed to revise and edit the Grail Message ready for publication.

THE MESSAGE

In the Light of Truth is a collection of 168 essays that the author asks in the Foreword for the reader to be "able and willing to examine this matter objectively."

The website informs us that,

In the Light of Truth: The Grail Message gives spiritual support for the problems and questions that we all encounter in life: Where do we come from? Where do we go when we die? What about fate and karma, Divine justice, free will, the Mission of Jesus, the Son of God, the Laws of Nature and Creation, and many others. The more the reader uses life itself as the criterion for testing the explanations given in the Grail Message, the more the Truth shines from it. In this sense, the title In the Light of Truth is clarified.

It is taught that the Grail Message does not bring a new religion. However, it does deal with spiritual issues and on most areas of belief it differs from evangelical Christianity. A summary of some of its main teachings will show this to be so.

Human beings came from a spiritual realm, which is far above the world of earthly matter, in order to begin a course of development leading down to this earth.

Through repeated earth lives (reincarnation) man's inner, spiritual consciousness develops, grows, and matures. This is the prerequisite for the way back to the spiritual realm, which is the goal of his path of development.

The "Grail" actually exists and is described clearly as a spiritual reality - life-sustaining power from the Divine flows though it into all Creation.

God is the source of all Light, all Power, and all that exists, man can only recognise his Maker not explain Divinity.

The Foundation claims that this book;

clearly answers the unsolved problems of human existence.

And that it comes,

from the same Origin as the true Message of Christ.

But are the answers that this book gives the correct ones? And from what Origin does their 'true message of Christ' come? Below we investigate the Foundation's teachings to answer these vital questions.

BELIEFS

DIFFERENT JESUS

Jesus was procreated physically, otherwise an earthly birth would not have been possible…With this gross material act of baptism, the beginning of the Mission was firmly anchored in the World of Gross Matter. The bandage fell. From this moment Jesus Himself was conscious that He was to carry the Word of the Father among mankind on earth. - In the Light of Truth, Abd-ru-shin, Vol.1, p.82.

This is a very different Jesus to the one evangelical Christians believe is revealed in the gospels. This cannot come from the same source as "the true message of Christ" because it is different. Jesus was not created physically otherwise He would have been as any other man. He was also the Messiah from birth - His baptism was not a mighty turning point as described above, indeed Scripture tells us that He knew at 12 years of age that His work was His Father's work (Luke 2:49).

KARMA & REINCARNATION

Rest assured that this end must come one day, and your ascent will therewith begin! You can then joyfully start working off all your karmic burden.

Then twisting the words of Jesus when He said to love your neighbour as yourself, we read,

With these words He gave the key to freedom and ascent! Because it is an irrefutable fact: What you do for your neighbour you do in reality only for yourselves! Solely for yourselves, since according to the Eternal Laws everything returns to you without fail, good or evil, either already here or there. - Selected Lectures, From the Work 'In the Light of Truth' The Grail Message, Abd-ru-shin, pp.29-31.

But one of the principal mistakes so many people make is…taking into consideration one earth-life, whereas in reality they already have several earth-lives behind them. -Ibid., p.40.

The message of fate (karma) and working at your salvation (reincarnation) are far from the message of grace and forgiveness that the Bible teaches.

SALVATION BY WORKS

Belief in this law of fate obviously leads to a salvation by works of man and not by the free gift of grace of our Lord Jesus Christ.

Through an Eternal Law you are burdened with an irrevocable obligation to make atonement, which you can never cast upon others. What you burden yourselves with through your thoughts, words or deeds can be redeemed by no one but yourselves! Consider, were it otherwise Divine Justice would not be but an empty sound, in which case everything else would also crumble into ruins. - Ibid., p.29.

The gospel shows it to be just the other way round. The death of Jesus Christ means that all can be saved and it is totally fair. Surely it is working for salvation that is injustice because some would be better at it than others!

OCCULT TENDENCIES

The teaching is all about the 'Light' and 'Power' but the source of this power cannot be the Holy God of Scripture because the teaching is very different. Therefore this light and power that has supernatural ability to change lives must come from a source other than God. Such a supernatural source outside of God is potentially occult by its very definition.

There are passages in the teachings that lend themselves more easily to the occult realm than they do to evangelical Christianity. We need to be careful, otherwise a person could open themselves up to these supernatural forces that are not of God.

Through the continuing good volition in every though and deed, a constant reinforcement also flows retroactively from the homogeneous source of power, so that the good becomes more and more firmly established in man himself, emerges from him, and first of all forms accordingly the ethereal surrounding that envelops him like a protective covering…In addition, through the resulting transformation, the actual inner man to whom the returning radiations are adjusted has also become much more refined and lighter through the continuos striving for good volition, so that he no longer has any homogenous affinity with the greater density of evil or base currents. - Ibid., p.41.

CONCLUSION

Just a brief look at the message of the Grail Foundation leads us to conclude that it is different to the evangelical message of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. More than that, as it is leading to a different Jesus and a different spirit, it could have a detrimental affect on the life of anyone taking it seriously.