Why Do So Many Christians Believe Christ Died For Our Sins?
This post answers a question for The Council from an anonymous reader who wonders why a common belief in Christianity is that Jesus died on the cross for our sins.
The Council says it was planned in spirit that people would believe one of the purposes Jesus died on the cross was to forgive our sins. Many people needed to have the belief that the Messiah came and freed everyone from their sins. If they followed Jesus’s teachings he would give them a way to everlasting life in heaven. This is part of the Christian belief. Not all Christianity follows this belief. There are many who choose this belief in their current lifetime to help them through whatever other lessons they bring into this life.
Anonymous quotes a popular Christian website that says: “We deserve to die and be separated from God forever because of our sins, but Christ took our place. By his death on the cross he paid the price for our sins. Now all we have to do is accept his forgiveness by trusting him alone for our salvation.”
The Council says when you learn who you are and what this life is about, you never die to be separated from God. God is within you. These are man-made thoughts and rules created to try and get you to follow them, but the spiritual purpose is different.
Some people choose to hear these rules to go through them and question them and then find their own beliefs. What do you find comforting? Do you believe this? Does it give you a sense of moving forward with a goal of being a better person? Or is it too strict, makes no sense, and you believe there’s no separation between yourself and God?
Do you believe Christ’s death on the cross took away your sins, and you can misbehave, and do whatever you know isn’t right, and goes against your feeling good because Christ will take away these sins? What’s your belief about this?
Anonymous says this seems like a strange way to guilt people into believing. The Council says some people use this form of guilt. Many ancient teachings and religious leaders tried to control people by guilting them and preaching fear to get them to go along with whatever they wanted.
You have heard and read these things so you’d question what you believe, and digging deeper into this question you’d find more about who you truly are and find your way to better feeling thoughts. You’d discover you don’t need to follow anyone’s rules to come back into spirit, to have a wonderful spiritual life, and to come back into another lifetime and choose new lessons. Asking this question is a way you’re trying to find the feeling and the knowing of who you truly are.
Christ dying on the cross for our sins was something believed at that time and for many people this is very helpful. This did happen in your reality, and how you follow it and what you believe about it is there to help you grow.
The Council closes by saying there is no way they see in the teachings of Jesus that he was in any way trying to guilt anyone into following rules. He was only trying to get people to love themselves.
Listen to the entire 5-minute audio recording of our session with The Council (below) to hear all their guidance for Anonymous and the rest of us and let us know what you feel about it, or ask your own question.
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Who Dictated the Ten Commandments to Moses?
This post answers a question for The Council from a reader named, Keith, who simply asks: Who dictated the Ten Commandments to Moses?
Ordinarily we like to summarize The Council’s guidance for those of you who don’t feel like listening to the audio recording. Sometimes we use the summary to try and clarify what The Council says during a session.
In the case of our session with The Council to answer Keith’s question, we’re concerned that our words won’t do justice to the guidance The Council provides and we suggest you listen to the 5-minute audio recording of this session.
This session highlights the idea that we all create the reality we experience with our beliefs. It talks about soul group agreements. And The Council reminds us that as a spirit we can create anything.
Listen to the 5-minute audio recording of our session with The Council (below) to hear all their guidance for Keith and the rest of us and let us know what you feel about it, or ask your own question.
If you like this post, please consider clicking the LIKE button in the section following the recording to let us and other readers know. Thanks.
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Why Do People Believe in Divine Retribution for Abortion?
This post answers a question from a reader named, Pakt, in response to a post we published titled, Life Feels Over After An Abortion. Pakt asks why so many people believe there will be divine retribution if you have an abortion when The Council says there isn’t any divine retribution and you won’t be struck down by God.
The Council starts by saying God or whatever you believe in has granted you free will and you will never be punished for what you choose to create in your life. Everything is allowed. You learn from everything you do, either during your current lifetime or when you return to spirit. In spirit you’ll review this life and learn what you’ve gone through, how you handled it, and the lesson is always learned.
The Council says you believe in divine retribution because from almost the beginning of time, man was afraid of this all powerful God, and if you didn’t please this God you’d have to pay. The priests and people in authority made rules that when you don’t follow the law, you’ll suffer. Man made these rules, including the rule that God gave you life and if you ended that life, God would punish you. But The Council says this isn’t the way things are; it’s only the way man believed it would be.
The Council says there is a contract between two or more souls to have a child or to abort the child. This contract allows you, according to what you want to learn, to have the child or abort the child. When you learn there is a gentler God who is only love and not some monster that will punish you if you don’t follow his laws, you’re free to make choices. When you learn you are spirit, when you learn God is love, when you learn everything is allowed, then you’re closer to who you truly are as a spiritual being in a physical body.
The Council says what you believe will show up in your life. If you believe you’ve done something horrible, you’ll find ways to punish yourself. There isn’t any God that will punish you for what you’ve done. You believe God will punish you because you’ve been taught this in other lifetimes and your current lifetime, and you’ll believe this until you find the truth that works for you.
Listen to the entire audio recording of our session with The Council (below) to hear all their guidance for Pakt and the rest of us, and let us know what you feel about it.
If you like this post, please click the Like button in the section after the recording to let other readers know. Thanks.
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Are All Human Beings Descendants of the Annunaki?
This post answers some very interesting questions for The Council from a reader named, Kristi, who asks if a group of beings reported to live in ancient Sumeria called the Annunaki are real?
The Council begins by saying there are many stories about the Annunaki and these stories are real if you allow these stories into the reality you’re creating. This is a reference to The Council’s previous guidance in other posts that each person creates their own reality according to what each person believes. This can be a difficult concept for many of us to understand and accept, but if you’re interested in reading additional posts of ours on this subject, you can find them here, or by clicking on the last link in the Categories column titled, You Create Your Reality, at the bottom right-hand column of most of our pages.
The Council sees the stories that the Annunaki, who were a scientific and intelligent people, came to Earth from the planet, Nibiru. One of the stories is that they came to Earth looking for gold.
After being on Earth for many years they decided to reproduce with humans by artificial insemination so their offspring could do menial work for the Annunaki. These offspring had the combined DNA of the Annunaki and humans and they considered the Annunaki to be gods. These humans allowed the Annunaki to make rules for them and take over the way these humans lived. These human believed the Annunaki would show them how to live a better life. After thousands of years, some of the Annunaki left Earth, but many of them are still here and teach the rest of us.
The Council says what you choose to believe exists for you. If the idea of the Annunaki is something you wish to explore, then they are real for you. For people who don’t believe in the Annunaki or have never heard of them, The Council says the Annunaki don’t exist for these people. When The Council asks Bob if he understands this, Bob says it’s not easy to understand.
The Council says perhaps you’ve experienced the Annunaki in a past life and so they’re real for you. The Council feels Kristi was a worker in ancient Sumeria and had connections with the Annunaki, and she should have a familiar feeling about them. Kristi has brought the subject of the Annunaki into her current lifetime to explore it and maybe to teach others about this.
Kristi specifically asks if the Annunaki created humans as their worker force and The Council says yes.
Next Kristi asks if Enlil or Enki is considered to be the god of the Old Testament? These are apparently names two of the Annunaki. The Council says Enki is the god in the Old Testament and is linked to the story of Noah’s ark. It’s believed that when there was to be this destruction on Earth, like in the Bible, Enki is the one who saved the animals and some humans.
The Council says the Annunaki are here on Earth right now, in our medical fields, in scientific fields, in government. All humans in this current reality are descended from the Annunaki.
It seems to us that we’ve just scratched the surface on the subject of the Annunaki, which we were unfamiliar with prior to Kristi’s asking about them. We’re very grateful for her questions and we feel this subject deserves further looking into.
Listen to the audio recording of our entire session with The Council (below) to hear all their guidance for Kristi and the rest of us on this important subject, and let us know what you feel about it.
If you like this post, please click the Like button in the section beneath the recording to let other readers know. Thanks.
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Is God Evolving?
In this post The Council answers a question I (Bob) had recently while reading the book, Conversations With Mary, by Anna Raimondi. Ms. Raimondi is an intuitive, like Cynthia, who is able to communicate with the spirit of the virgin Mary, the mother of Jesus. In a chapter titled, Why Are We Here?, Anna asks Mary if God is evolving. The short answer (p. 82) is that God is constant and always the same. This struck me as unusual because I was under the impression from our sessions with The Council that what we call God is continually evolving.
So I asked The Council if God is evolving, they answered, always, which appears to contradict Anna’s message. The Council goes on to say when God decided to create life, little pieces of itself (God’s self) go into every individual, and God learns from these experiences he’s having in each soul that’s creating life. … And so we say, God is evolving, God is always creating more, and is always learning from the experience.
When I ask what Mary may have meant when she says that God’s always the same, The Council says it was Mary’s belief that her God already knew everything that would ever happen. The God Mary believed in didn’t need to evolve. He was the all mighty, the always was and the always will be. No growth is needed in this version of the all mighty God because it was believed it already was and always would be.
When Bob asked if we understand God differently now, The Council says as we learn that we are spirits in physical bodies, and we are creating our lives, and we are learning, God is within us. As we are learning, God is learning.
The Council goes on to say God is always evolving because we, as humans, are always evolving. Nothing is stagnant, nothing stays still, everything changes, everything grows. The more love we feel and show each other, the more love God feels and the more God expands.
Listen to our entire 6-minute session with The Council to hear all their guidance about God’s evolution, and let us know how you feel about it.
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Does Spirit’s Pre-Birth Planning Negate Human Free Will?
This post is third in a series describing a session with The Council on Saturday, March 30, 2013 to answer questions from Jose, Michelle, and D. This post focuses on the first of Jose’s four questions and it’s about guidance from The Council in a recent post and the issue of free will:
“In the case of what was shared in Maria’s Plan for a Spiritual Leap, it appears that the spiritual agreement made prior to the incarnation is more powerful than Maria or her friend’s “godly” power to manifest a new reality of survival and togetherness in this lifetime, as if there is no free will in this incarnation.” —Jose
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Maria’s Plan for a Great Spiritual Leap
This post is about a question Maria asked after reading a Thought for the Day from The Council titled ‘Everyone In Your Life Was Invited By You‘.
Maria explains her best friend is on his deathbed and she’s experiencing a lot of emotional pain about this. She is asking The Council if it is also with her permission that her friend is exiting her life, because she’s having difficulty understanding why she would agree to ‘loose’ him at this time and in this way.
There is Agreement
“No one comes into your life unless you invite them. Their departing your life is something that they plan along with you, so there is agreement for both of you that when it is time, when you feel you have concluded what you needed to do together, one or both [of you] exit [the physical body].
“And so, although you find this very painful, it has been discussed and planned while you were still in the spirit world.”
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Does God Exist?
This is a follow up to previous post titled: Believing in a Loving and Benevolent God When Life Sucks. Barry P. read that post and passed along the following anecdote about believing in God. I found it thought provoking and worth sharing. I hope you enjoy it.
The Young Man & The Barber
A young man, while getting a haircut and his beard trimmed, was deep in conversation with his barber. The conversation turned to the subject of God and the barber proclaimed, “I don’t believe God exists.”
“What makes you so sure,” asked the young man?
The barber walked to the window and replied, “All you have to do is look out in the street to realize God doesn’t exist. If God existed, there wouldn’t be any sickness, or pain, or suffering. I can’t imagine a God that would allow these things.”
The young man was about to disagree with the barber when he had a feeling he should hold back. He was surprised by this feeling, but decided to follow his intuition. He tactfully changed the subject of the conversation, but kept thinking about the barber’s comment about God.
As the young man was leaving the barbershop, he noticed through the window a man on the street who had very long, unkempt hair and a long, unkempt beard. This gave the young man an idea.
He turned to the man who just trimmed his hair and beard and proclaimed, “Barbers don’t exist.”
“Are you crazy,” asked the barber? “You just paid me to cut your hair and trim your beard.” I’m living proof that barber’s exist.
The young man replied, “Look out in the street. Do you see that man with long messy hair and a long straggly beard? If barber’s exist, there wouldn’t be anyone who looked like that. I can’t imagine barbers would allow something like this.”
And the young man turned and left.
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Believing in a Loving and Benevolent God When Life Sucks
This post is a response to a question for The Council from Chris, who wants to know how she can believe a loving and benevolent God exists when her life feels like evidence of the opposite. Chris asks how she can learn to believe and know she is heard and is important when she’s unable to perceive the presence of a loving and benevolent God in her life.
What Is God Like?
Among people who acknowledge the existence of God or a higher power (92% of Americans according to a university survey) beliefs tend to vary about what God is. According to this survey, beliefs in what God is like tend to fall into the following four types: Authoritarian (31%), Benevolent (25%), Critical (16%), and Distant (23%).
Where is God?
Whether we think of God in one or more (or none) of these four ways, we often think of God as being “out there” somewhere—like in heaven or throughout the Universe—rather than inside of us. But The Council advises all of us that it’s important to find God within ourselves—in our own consciousness. This can be a difficult concept to grasp if we’re accustomed to thinking of God as outside of us and we’re used to looking for evidence of God’s existence out in the world.
This is an introduction to this post. Click here to read the full post→
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Welcome
Bob & Cynthia
Welcome to Ask The Council, a blog where you can ask a group of loving and wise spirit guides a question and get an answer, for free. You can also contact us for a paid private phone session with The Council, and you can read the questions other readers have asked and the answers they’ve received. Other posts contain quotations from The Council that we hope you find inspiring, uplifting, and educational.
Ask The Council a Question
If there’s a question you’ve been thinking about and you’re curious how The Council might answer it, we encourage you to either use the blog’s Comments feature to ask your question, or contact us for a private phone session. You can click here to go to the ‘Let us know what you think about this post, or ask The Council a question’ section of this Welcome post and type your question there or you can type your question in the same section at the bottom of any post that inspires you to ask a question or leave a comment.
Since the blog is currently a project we do in our spare time it can take a while for us to do a session with The Council on a question and then publish a post on the session. Depending on the question and the session it can sometimes take weeks after a question is asked to publish a post with The Council’s answer. Please be patient.
The Council
Cynthia is able to communicate with a group of five non-physical spirit guides in a manner similar to the way Esther Hicks communicates with and speaks for the spirit guides, Abraham, and Jane Roberts communicated and spoke for the spirit guide, Seth. I (Bob) basically interview The Council as they speak through Cynthia during what we refer to as a session. Sessions generally last 5-15 minutes and are usually audio recorded. During the session Cynthia is aware of what The Council is saying and she also receives visual impressions and other types of telepathic communication from them.
The Council’s Basic Guidance
Since we began these sessions with The Council around 2009 they consistently emphasize a few basic ideas that we attempt to summarize here:
1) You are an eternal spiritual being in a physical body.
You are the energy and vibration of continuously expanding love, intelligence, and joy.
Your physical experience in your physical body and your psychological experience of your personality is a small part of the totality of who you truly are.
Let yourself imagine from time to time what it might feel like to experience more of the wondrous totality of who you really are, and don’t be surprised if you are able to experience this more often.
2) You are the creator of all that you experience.
As you open to the possibility your true nature is greater than you ordinarily perceive, it becomes easier to consider the possibility that this expanded you is truly the creator of everything that you experience.
If you’re used to thinking of yourself in a more limited sense, the idea that you are the creator of your experience may be difficult to understand. Our post, What About This Idea That We Create Whatever We Desire, offers insights into this idea.
3) You are here to expand the love you are into physical reality.
You chose, as a spiritual being, to come into this physical reality to experience the joy of expanding the love you are as a spiritual being, into this physical reality. This is your purpose for being here.
Finding Your Way Around the Blog
Home Page
The left-hand column on the Home page contain a long chronological series of posts with the most recent on top. Each post begins with a title. Clicking on a post title will take you to a blog page dedicated to that particular post. Following each post is a Like button where you can indicate to us and other readers if you like the post.
The footer section of each post identifies the date the post was published, the Categories the post has been assigned to, the keyword/keyphrase Tags assigned to the post, and a Comment link. If readers comments on a post, the Comments link will indicate the number of comments. If a post has no comments yet, the Comment link text appears as “Leave a Comment”.
Clicking on the Comments link takes you to a Comment text box on a post page dedicated to that post. Here you can type a comment in the text box and click the Post Comment button to have your comment displayed just below the text box. If you are replying to someone else’s comment, your comment will appear indented underneath the comment you are replying to.
At the bottom of the left column on the Home page is a ‘Previous Entries’ link that will take you to a page with a list of earlier posts.
Blog Features
The right-hand column of most blog pages contains this Welcome message. Below the Welcome message in the right-hand column are some useful features:
Email Subscription: Use this to subscribe to blog posts. You will receive an email notification with a link back to the blog each time a new post is published.
Search: Type a keyword or phrase and click the Search button to get a list of posts in the left column that contain the keyword or phrase.
Archives: The Archives list indicates the number of posts for each month listed. Clicking on the link for a month will display in the left column of the page a list of the posts published that month.
Categories: This is a list of keywords used to categorize posts. Posts can be included in more than one category, if applicable. Clicking on a category link will display in the left column a list of posts assigned to the category you selected.
Navigation Bar
The Navigation Bar at the top of each page contains a link to the blog Home page and links to the following additional pages:
Welcome: A link that displays this Welcome message in the left column (and the right column). At the bottom of the Welcome message is a Comment box where you can post a general comment about the blog or ask The Council a question.
Questions & Answers: Use this link to display a list of introductions to our longer posts, most of which are responses to reader questions. This is an easy way to check out these more in-depth posts. They are listed in chronological order with the most recent post on top. Clicking on the post title will take you to the page where you can read the complete post.
Contact Us: The Contact Us page contains a contact form similar to the Comment form mentioned above. The difference between the Contact Us form and the Comment forms is that the Contact Us form is a private message to us (Cynthia and Bob). It is not posted on the blog. Comments appear on the post page where the comment is posted. The Contact Us form can be used for communicating with us about private sessions or other private matters you think aren’t appropriate for posting in a public Comment.
Bob & Cynthia
Ask The Council 