By Rodd Cayton, On-line Forty-Niner
April15, 1997
Elizabeth Clare Prophet is trying to get into heaven and she feels that she has more than one chance to get there.
Prophet, head of the Montana-based Church Universal and Triumphant, is a firm believer in reincarnation.
"It's a very important, pivotal chapter in history that got left out," Prophet said. "It's the missing link in Christianity."
Prophet, who will lecture tonight on reincarnation and the afterlife at the Pointe in The Pyramid, presents a theory which has early Christian leaders conspiring to remove reincarnation from the doctrine.
"The church fathers knew that their power rested on the idea that we only have one chance in life," Prophet said.
Prophet said that people do not need religion to get into what she calls the "Heaven World."
"We've been taught that [one] can't get to heaven except through the church," Prophet said. "But we have to go to the god within, and commune with that god."
Prophet discredited the concept of reincarnation as counter to Christianity.
"Reincarnation was important to early Christians," Prophet said.
Prophet said her belief in reincarnation came to her when she was a child in New Jersey.
"I was playing in my sandbox," Prophet said. "And my soul was transported and I was sitting on the Nile. After a while, I drifted back to my sandbox.
Prophet said her mother then told her that she was remembering a past life.
"[Reincarnation is] the only thing that's made sense my entire life," Prophet said.
Prophet said the members of the Heaven's Gate cult, who recently orchestrated a mass suicide, are not on the path they expected to take.
"Suicide is a sin no one has a right to commit," Prophet said. "They were misguided. They did not have enough self-identity to [question what they were being told]. They are exactly where they were when they died. Their actions were unwise and their logic untenable."
Prophet said she has a problem with traditional Christianity's structure, which condemns sinners.
"I don't believe in an angry god," Prophet said. "Not everyone is good enough to go to heaven or bad enough to go to hell. It's not an all or nothing ... situation."
Prophet said she does not affirm or deny the idea of evolution. She said it co-exists with reincarnation.
Prophet said she believes that people are always returned as humans. She said the only exceptions are people like Jeffrey Dahmer.
"He's the type who would go into an animal body," Prophet said. "Until he's made resolution with God."
Prophet will bring her message to campus at 7 p.m.