Answer

26th March 2006

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Hi Didier,

Thanks for your enquiry. Your 'spiritual instinct' seems to be serving you well and it does you great credit that you are brave enough to follow it.

I have had a look at the website you mention and there are enormous problems with Smith's ideas his own interpretation of the bible is just not logical, in fact it is just as ludicrous in my opinion as the Church's explanations. As you thought there are BIG BIG problems with what you call the 'free will issue' and how Smith views this. He is an advocate of predetermination. He believes that God determines all things and free will is an illusion. Do you remember the chapter in 'The Song of the Greys' that discusses the concept of an implicate or directive God? You will find all the arguments against predetermination there. Basically it all comes down to the simple logical point that the absolute perfection of the state of all knowing would not play games with existence!!! Why would God set up an artificial arena in which he is in control of all that happens? Does Smith really think he would be that bored? Human beings face real suffering, real anguish. Would God dictate all of that through his own choice? The whole scenario is so ridiculous it reminds me of a game set up by a group of kids, they decide who will be the "baddies", they decide who will be the "goodies", they decide who will be the hero - who saves everyone i.e. Christ and then they play act the whole thing.

Smith is also of the opinion that there is no conscious awareness after physical death. He believes that souls go into a "sleep" state after death and await the "resurrection" in the final days spoken of in Revelations. This idea is totally opposite to what Kerner suggests in 'The Song of the Greys' in fact it also denies the validity of so many Near Death experiences in which the sphere of existence beyond atoms is experienced so vividly. If conscious awareness is not a product of atoms why would it need atoms to be consciously aware? According to Kerner the soul exists in an extra-atomic state, in the space between atoms after physical death. The space between atoms is most enforced closest to the atoms and least enforced in the centre of the space. Soul rests in death at its resonant point with the more restricted, more forceful heavier souls settling near atoms and the freer souls moving towards the centre. All based on free choices made in life. 'Hell' is just another way of describing the entrapment faced by more restricted souls close to the force of atoms because they are not free and clear enough to move towards the centre. You mentioned a movie "where a scientist says about Satan;"He lives at the subatomic level where all our knowledge collapses..."! In my opinion that could well be so, Satan, or the 'Greys', may well operate at the edges of atoms, using their supreme technology to exert a force that will trap souls unable to progress towards the centre of the space between atoms. It's not a bogey man, or a creature with a forked tail, it's not a deliberately evil creature. It's just programmed entities carrying out their programme come what may.

Smith's concept of no-awareness until the final day of judgment reminds me very much of Old testament ideas that were delivered, in Kerner's opinion, by the physical 'god' of the skies, the Greys.

The only kind of afterlife that seems to be alluded to in the OT is a physical form of resurrection a physical form of eternality.

Physical eternality is of course a contradiction in terms as any physicist and, no doubt, most theologians will tell you but the closest thing I can conceive of to a physical immortality is the perpetuation of our physical identity through cloning. The spiritual implications of this may well be terrifying as the cloned bodies might be like a prison holding our souls captive. One is reminded of a passage in the bible referring to the days when people would pray for death but death would not come.

Nigel Kerner is of the opinion that the New Testament is basically a tabloid version of Christ's ministry on the earth. The real in depth report can be found in the texts, like the Nag Hammadi, that were excluded from the Bible because they threatened the power, status and material wealth of those controlling the exclusion. As I'm sure you will have read in 'The Song of the Greys' he feels that the Old Testament is a vast collection of subjective reports based on the personal experiences of many individuals. Many of these experiences involve concourse with a different 'god' altogether, a machine God originating from a space ship. This is the 'jealous' god described in the OT, the 'god' who says 'vengeance is mine', or 'an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth'. I'm sure you yourself will have noticed the difference between this 'god' and the loving god described by Christ. As you will have read Kerner is full of reverence for the examples of all the great teachers and is particularly touched by the warmth and humanity of Jesus Christ.

I hope this has answered some of your questions. The sequel to 'The Song of the Greys' is written and awaiting publication. I too am full of excitement at the prospect of reading it. For thoughtful intelligent people like yourself, I feel that Kerner's work can provide an island of reason and well argued good sense in the middle of a sea of wishy washy 'new age' nonsense or equally silly 'ufology'.

Thank you for your sincere enquiry.

Anne Jones
(Website Coordinator)

Hi Didier,

Thanks for your interest and for taking the time to share your thoughts with us.

It is refreshing to see that people like Smith are willing to take a fresh look at the bible to attempt to undo the distortions placed on it by mistranslations.

The concept of divine punishment does seem patently to be a fine example of the human imagination making gods in the image of man and it is heartening to see that Smith has a healthy contempt for this notion.

The Darwin/Creation debate is an interesting one. By framing the question in terms of these two opposing camps perhaps we are duped into believing that at least one of them must be true. Darwin just said that creatures adapt to their environment such that those who are fittest survive and those who are not don't. What he didn't do is suggest where that adaptation leads.........

Let me put it this way cockroaches could survive a nuclear holocaust, bacteria can survive in volcanic vents. Perhaps Kerner was right about evolution within devolution making a monkey out of man and perhaps the scripture was right when it was written..."the meek shall inherit the Earth".
You ask how 'The Song of the Greys' relates to the scriptures. Well one thing Kerner seems to have in common with Smith perhaps is that neither are particularly keen to be told by the men in black, purple, red or white how to read the scriptures or what they mean but would prefer to make a sincere attempt to allow reason to be the guiding principle. Incidentally Kerner is not content to let organised religion or religious authorities pick and choose what is admissible as scripture but also considers texts such as the nag hammadi and pistis sophia to try to get a less distorted insight into the teachings of Christ independently from organised religion.

After all Christ said I am the Truth...he didn't say I am the Church.

I think you've put your finger on the most pivotal issue of all.....Free Will

I can conceive of several possible ways of considering the question of free will which I shall list below as opposing statements:

1. There is no free will, we are in a material "mechanical" universe in which all action and "choices" are predetermined and predictable from the "moment" the universe begins.

2. There is no free will, we live in a chaotic randomised universe where random changes in our brain (with perhaps dice "weighted" by nature and nurture) produce thought patterns we mistake for choices.

3. There is no free will....as the Turkish saying goes: "allahin dedigi olur" which translates as "God decides everything".

3a There is no free will.....we are laboratory mice: God created the universe and us and put us in our cages to watch us spinning in our wheels blissfully or painfully unaware of our divine creator and jailer.

4. There is no free will.....will would only be free if we could have at least any option we could dream of......if I’m not free to be, have or do whatever or whoever I want then I am not truly free.

5. There is no free will....the mind only appeared or 'evolved' once language had evolved to give the concept of mind or will a name..........

6. There is no free will.....all possible choices are actually made, at each point of decision the whole universe branches off into separate universes for each choice

7. There is no free will.....you have no free will because you are a figment of my imagination and I have no free will because I’m mad enough to believe this

8. Free will Is.........at least I choose to believe that it is.

I choose not to believe in a puppet-master god who decides on my behalf whether I will believe in him/her/it. Surely the only way to "square the circle" of a loving god with the existence of suffering and injustice in the world is to stop blaming the one being who taught us how to overcome the world. Why would he need to overcome his own creation..."if a kingdom is divided against itself then how will it prosper?"

Many thanks for your email which gave me much food for thought and prompted me to think a little deeper than I otherwise might have about the issues that you raised. I always find that I learn most when considering new and unfamiliar points of view.

By the way, it took me a while to find Smith's thoughts on the web. I initially thought you were pointing us to www.bibletruth.com but I was perplexed that you were suggesting a site that just seemed to be selling stuff, then I did a Google search of L Ray Smith and realised that the site you meant was www.bible-truths.com I haven't read everything on the site but there were some interesting points there and I like that he keeps going back to the previous translations trying to get closer to the original words.

Kind regards,

Eugene Peters
(Webmaster)