Sacred Journey. M.K. Welsch
was this same unyielding certitude about the presence and power of his God that caused Joshua to send forth the Ark of the Covenant to conquer Jericho. Carried among the armed troops and surrounded by an assembly of priests blowing on rams’ horns, the Ark circles the city seven times—until the people shout and its walls fall down, allowing the Israelites to take that stronghold. (Josh. 6:1-20) Repeatedly the biblical account describes Joshua’s army winning the day, vanquishing even the most formidable foes as the Hebrews capture city and field in an all-consuming quest to take their “rightful” place in the land pledged to the people of God.
And under Joshua’s extraordinary leadership—shaped and guided by his intimate relationship with the divine—the ragtag group of former slaves is ultimately triumphant. But there is a catch. The unmitigated violence by which the victory is won becomes a karmic debt demanding recompense someday—a squaring of the cosmic accounts in order to help the soul awaken to its error of violating the Law of One. It is only with the advent of the Master who institutes a new covenant in the earth—the Law of Endless Mercy—that karma will lose its grip on humanity. Still, generations later in a final act of willingness to live out the consequences of what he had sown, the Adam/Joshua/Jesus soul will accept personal responsibility for indulging in such cruelty by choosing to experience a savage crucifixion.
Additional links in the metaphysical chain tying the Joshua soul to Jesus appear in the Cayce information. One reading indicates that a study of the life of the ever-patient Joshua will help us interpret the meaning of the life of Jesus. It mentions the pair were much alike in their earthly activities, not in terms of the combative soldier’s warlike behavior but “ … in spirit and in purpose, in ideals, these were one.” (3409-1) In an intriguing parallel, the general area Jesus traverses over the course of his public ministry includes many of the old Canaanite cities Joshua had conquered during his career. The Master will heal and minister to people residing in some of the same places he had vanquished as a man-of-arms whose bloody assaults destroyed untold lives.
Ordained to fulfill the divine plan, Joshua completes his soul mission as the Israelites enter the Promised Land. Similarly, Jesus of Nazareth’s purpose was to lead the children of God to occupy a new place in consciousness—the original, celestial state of being promised to souls since the dawn of creation. But unlike the warrior Joshua whose ruthless battles expropriated actual physical soil, Jesus’ work involved the conquest of an internal terrain. And conquer he did, providing the pattern for human beings to follow if and when they choose to break free of their enslavement to selfishness and enter into the “land of milk and honey.” One can almost imagine Jesus speaking the selfsame words Joshua used to instruct the tribes of Israel centuries before the birth of the Messiah: “But take diligent heed to do the commandment and the law, which Moses the servant of the Lord charged you, to love the Lord your God and to walk in all his ways, and to keep his commandments, and to cleave unto him, and to serve him with all your heart and all your soul.” (Josh. 22:5)
Jeshua
Jesus answered and said unto them, “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.” John 2:19
Generally less well known but equally significant is the lifetime the Master-soul spent as the Old Testament figure Jeshua, listed among the Jewish exiles who returned to Jerusalem following their captivity in Babylon. Identified by the name Jeshua, meaning “Yahweh is deliverance” in the books of Ezra and Nehemiah, this same individual is referred to as Joshua in the writings of Haggai and Zechariah. The high priest Jeshua is known to be a descendant of another religious figure noteworthy in his own right. His grandfather Seraiah was the last high priest of the Old Temple in Jerusalem before the Babylonians destroyed it when they sacked the city.
Around 538 BC, after Cyrus of Persia had issued his edict permitting the Jews to return to their homeland and proclaimed he would use funds from the royal treasury to help rebuild a temple there, Jeshua and a provincial governor named Zerubbabel took responsibility for organizing the Israelites’ return to Zion. Shortly after their homecoming the two men began the process of reviving some of the religious practices sacred to the Jews by presiding over the building of an altar, very likely constructed on the same spot where Solomon’s original temple had once stood. “Then stood up Jeshua … and his brethren the priests, and Zerubbabel … and builded the altar of the God of Israel, to offer burnt offerings thereon, as it is written in the law of Moses the man of God.” (Ezra 3:2) Naturally the high priest Jeshua would inaugurate the resettlement of the Jewish remnant in the Promised Land by erecting an altar since it was impossible to offer sacrifices without one. Given that the primary mission of the Adam soul was to lead other souls back to an awareness of the divine, it is no surprise that Jeshua served as the chief architect in reestablishing the act of worship for the people of the one God.
Approximately two years after the Israelites were restored to their homeland Jeshua and Zerubbabel appoint the Levites to begin rebuilding the actual temple. In an interesting twist to the story some Samaritans, considered “foreigners” even during that early period long before the appearance of the Christ in the earth, approach the leaders to inquire if they might assist with the construction. Apparently because the Jewish elders did not trust the group’s sincerity and possibly regarded their offer to join the project as a veiled attempt to undermine its progress, they decline the help, intimating that the Jews must rebuild the structure themselves. The Israelites’ instincts turn out to be correct for according to the book of Ezra, the Samaritans “weakened the hands of the people of Judah, and troubled them in building” by hiring counselors to “frustrate their purpose.” (Ezra 4: 4-5) Soon, due to continued, strong opposition by the Samaritans as well as pushback from other groups, temple construction grinds to a halt. The biblical account reports that the work stagnated for a very long time, but finally, spurred on by the prophets who had urged the community to finish, rebuilding gets underway again. It continues until the second temple is completed more than two decades after the Israelites’ repatriation.
Edgar Cayce amplifies what we know about the Old Testament figure Jeshua adding several new details to the story. The process of repatriation he led must have posed significant challenges because in referencing the Adam soul in that lifetime, the readings mention that “ … this is the same soul-entity who reasoned with those who returned from captivity … ” (5023-2) Another individual who had requested help from Cayce was told he had been an associate in the household of Jeshua in a previous life and in that capacity had interacted with those not of “the entity’s own group or faith,” which apparently had created within him a desire to learn how to associate with many different types of people. (2905-3)
Overall, the Cayce information ascribes momentous meaning and purpose to the appearance of the entity Jeshua in the earth, claiming that besides reinstituting the act of worship of the one God, he was the scribe who “ … translated the rest of the books written up to that time … ” (5023-2) Jeshua is literally credited with having rewritten or translated the spiritual record of humanity compiled over generations and recorded in the books of the Bible. In a reading for someone described as having worked as one of Jeshua’s closest aides, Cayce again noted the high priest’s remarkable legacy as a scribe in “ … interpreting of the law to the language of the peoples of that period.” (2498-1) In other words the same soul, which many generations later will incarnate as the great Teacher of teachers elucidating the Father’s message to his children, is sowing the seeds for that future lifetime living as Jeshua, recognized for making the word of God more accessible to all.
Perhaps the most the most striking example of the congruity between the ancient high priest and the Master Jesus is this soul’s clear-cut mission to rebuild the temple. In Jeshua’s case the enterprise involved the construction of an actual physical building with four solid walls and a roof. When Jesus comes to earth, he assumes responsibility for revealing the temple within—an edifice not made with hands but fabricated out of finer stuff which was the spirit of God in man. During the course of his ministry, the Master will refer to his flesh-and-blood body as the temple, leading one of his accusers during the sham trial prior to his Crucifixion to charge, “We heard him say, I will destroy this temple that is made with hands, and within three days I will build another made without hands.” (Mark 14:58) In this instance destruction of the temple did not entail