From the Publisher
An excerpt from "My Testimony", by Dr. Leslie R. Stone:
These Messages from Jesus and Celestials, received through the hand of James E. Padgett, are so extraordinary in concept and contents (claiming as they do to bring to mankind the highest spiritual teachings of Jesus as an epoch-making revelation from the spirit world), that it is indispensable that, as the publisher and firm believer in the Truths contained in these messages, I give to interested readers and for future reference some firsthand information regarding the man through whom these messages were received, and how it was that he was enabled and selected to obtain these amazing communications.
At this point, I must state that I was very often in Mr. Padgett's room when he was receiving these writings, and that I am the eyewitness to the formation and development of Mr. Padgett as the medium par excellence through whom the Truths of the Heavenly Father and life in the spirit world have come to mankind.
Mr. Padgett invited me to visit him regularly at his home at 514 E Street, N.W., Washington, D.C., where, in the course of time, I met Eugene Morgan and Dr. Goerger. Padgett told me that the messages he was receiving were from his wife, Helen, who had died early that year. She had written him many things about the spirit life she was living, describing her experiences at the time of her death, the sphere of her spiritual abode, and her love for her husband in the flesh who, she had then discovered, was her soulmate. I was thereafter very often present as he continued to receive these messages. They came in a rapid sweep of connected words that obviously gave no time for thought on the part of the writer, and, in fact, he often insisted that he had no clear idea of what his pencil was writing until he read the messages afterwards. It was in this way, then, that he received from 1914 to 1923 some twenty-five hundred messages, many of them coming, I have not the slightest doubt, from those highest spirits whose signatures were testimony to the personalities they represented...
...I do not know exactly when the first message signed "Jesus of the Bible" was received, for as I write this, more than forty years later, I cannot remember the date. Padgett evidently felt it was absurd to believe that Jesus had written him and, alas, threw away the message. As a matter of fact, Mr. Colburn, who up to that time had formed a part of our fellowship, declared he could not be persuaded that Jesus had actually written. However, his friends, Dr. Goerger, Mr. Morgan and I had an instinctive feeling that Jesus had written a genuine message. The earliest message allegedly from Jesus to Padgett which is in my possession, therefore, is dated September 28, 1914, and refers to an earlier message written a few days before. It is a long message, urging Padgett to pray for the Father's Love, and stating that certain passages in the New Testament, thoroughly believed in by Padgett, were false. The Master went on to say that he was neither God, nor had he been conceived by the Holy Spirit in the way taught by the preachers of the churches. Further, that "...Neither is God Spirit only, a Spirit of Mind. He is a Spirit of everything that belongs to His Being. He is not only Mind, but Heart, Soul, and Love." The message urged Padgett: "...Go to your Father for His Help. Go in prayer, firmly believing, and you will soon feel His Love in your heart."...
From the Author
Excerpt from a letter written by James Padgett:
...Permit me to state that I am a practical lawyer of 35 years experience and, as such, not inclined to accept allegations of fact as true without evidencing proof. I was born and reared in an orthodox Protestant church and, until quite recently, remained orthodox in my beliefs; that a little more than a year ago, upon the suggestion being made to me that I was a psychic, I commenced to receive messages by way of automatic writing from what was said to be the spirit world. And, since that time, I have received nearly 1500 such messages upon many subjects, but mostly as to things of a spiritual and religious nature, not orthodox, as to the errancy of the Bible.
I have not space to name, nor would you probably be interested in, the great number of the writers of these messages; but among the writers is Jesus of Nazareth, from whom I have received more than 100 messages. I will frankly say that I refused to believe for a long time that these messages came from Jesus because, God, while He had the power, as I believed, would not engage in doing such a thing. But the evidence of the truth of the origin of these messages became so convincing, not only from the great number and positiveness of the witnesses but also from the inherent and unusual merits of the contents of the messages, that I was forced to believe; and I now say to you that I believe in the truth of these communications with as little doubt as I ever believed in the truth of a fact established by the most positive evidence in court. I wish further to say that, to my own consciousness, I did no thinking in writing the messages. I did not know what was to be written nor what was written at the time except the word that the pencil was writing.
The great object of these messages from Jesus, as he wrote, is to make a revelation of the Truths of his Father. He asserts that the Bible does not contain his real teachings as he disclosed them while on earth; that many things that he said are not therein contained, and many things that are ascribed to him therein he did not say at all. And he wants the Truths made known to mankind. And I must say that many of these Truths, which he has already written, I have never heard of before, and I have studied the Bible to some extent. One thing in particular impressed me, and that is what the truth is of his bringing "life and immortality to light." The Bible does not state it, and I have not been able to find an explanation of it in any commentaries on the Bible....
