“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.”

The first thing we can say about the person of Jesus Christ is that He was pre-existent. Jesus didn’t begin at Bethlehem. He was in heaven before the world began. We’ll speak in a moment of some things He was doing, but before anything existed there was the LOGOS of God. The Word from the mind of God existed before anything that we know exists.

Jesus Christ was different than anyone else ever born. Everyone else began physically at conception and was brought into the world as a human at birth. Scripture also tells us, that before we were conceived, we existed in the mind of God who planned our being. Think of that for a second. You existed in the mind of God before you were conceived. Ps 139 reveals that. Is that what John is saying also about Jesus? No, it is much more than that.

One thing that surprises me is, how many born-again Christians believe in re-incarnation. Re-incarnation comes from the Hindu religion which teaches that everything that lives lived before in some other form or person. Depending on how well people live their lives, a Karma is assigned to them. It defines the form that they will become around the next time. Some people claim they have flashbacks living as a king or peasant or whatever they may have lived before.

In the Hindu view, cows are especially sacred, and it would be a great to come back after they die as a cow. The reason many Eastern Indians do not kill any animals is simply because the ant or the bug or the cow might be a relative and if they kill them it will affect how they themselves might return.

Re-incarnation is one of the worst lies that maintain poverty and social prejudice in India. If someone is born in poverty as an untouchable, who am I to ruin his Karma? He must live that life suffering to pay for his sins in a previous life and therefore maintain a better position in the next life

Many westerners like to re-create the belief to fit their lifestyle. They might accept the reincarnation but go ahead and eat meat. It is recreating their own religion which people do all the time, but there is no teaching of re-incarnation in the teaching of Jesus. The Bible clearly states, “It is appointed unto man once to die and after than the judgment.” Hebrews 9:27.

Jesus didn’t live in some other life, then die and come back on earth as a baby and then die at the age of 33 and then get up again in some spirit form through a series of re-incarnations. He always was and always will be. It is similar to one who puts on a coat to go outside in the winter and takes it off again when he gets inside. Jesus took on the coat of humanity for a few years only to cast it aside when He returned home. Jesus pre-existed in glory as part of the godhead from the beginning.

Application:  Pray for the people deceived by these teachings in India and beyond.

Prayer:  Father, today I pray for all those who have been deceived with the teachings.   Give to me a boldness of Spirit to use every opportunity You provide to share these truths.   

Dale