Part 3
This is one of the many messianic promises of the Old Testament. It was fulfilled during Jesus' first coming and there is reason to believe it will happen again during Jesus' second coming.
Due to the condemnation of reincarnation by church authorities some 500 years after Jesus left the scene, this doctrine has become an alien, even enemy concept to the Judeo-Christian West. However, it is reasonably certain that reincarnation was not an alien concept to the people Jesus preached to, nor, to Jesus himself. As a natural geographic crossroads, the land of Israel enjoyed a strong and steady flow of both foreign travelers and foreign ideas; the doctrine of rebirth is not only likely to have been a familiar concept in 1st century Israel, but actually seems to have been widely considered a distinct possibility. Even though the idea later became a heresy to the people of the Christian Empire, during the life of Jesus, at least, reincarnation was an open question in the minds of many.
From time to time in Jewish history, there had been an insistent belief that their prophets were reborn. The Samaritans believed that Adam had reincarnated as Seth, then Noah, Abraham, and even Moses. Christ's countrymen seem to have thought of the doctrine of reincarnation as an intriguing, if unproven theory; the Israelites were aware, of course, that their sacred scriptures didn't specifically endorse this theory, but, since they didn't condemn it either, the general population apparently felt it best to keep an open mind about the whole idea. To the chagrin of traditional Christian doctrine, it was apparently actually rather common for Christ's contemporaries to innocently wonder aloud if Jesus himself was the reincarnation of some earlier prophet:
6. "Whom do people say that I am?" (Mark 8:27)
The consensus of opinion seems to have been that He was a reincarnation of either John the Baptist, Elijah, or one of the Old Testament prophets. It is hard to see how Jesus could have been a reincarnation of the prophet by whom He was baptized, but that has not deterred these believers in reincarnation around Jesus.
7. Jesus declares the following to the believers in the Church of Philadelphia:
"Him who overcomes I will make a pillar in the temple of my God. Never again will he leave it."
(Revelation 3:12)
Jesus is stating that people were once inhabitants of the temple of God. This is strongly suggestive of preexistence and reincarnation. As soon as the person overcomes (the world) the person becomes a permanent inhabitant of this temple and never again has to leave it. The flip-side to this is that those who do not overcome must leave this temple of God only to return when they overcome the world.
8."She gave birth to a son, a male child, who will rule all the nations with an iron scepter. And her child was snatched up to God and to his throne." (Revelation 12:5)
This verse describes the birth of a child who is taken to heaven after birth. The interesting aspect is that this child is to rule all the nations with an iron scepter. Because the child was taken to heaven after birth, reincarnation is the only way the child can return to the world in order to grow up and "rule all nations". Although Revelations is mostly symbolic and is often quite abstract, this verse implies the ability to incarnate more than once.
9. Jesus said: "No one who has left home or brothers or sisters or mother or father or wife or children or land for me and the gospel will fail to receive a hundred times as much in this present age - homes, brothers, sisters, mothers, children and fields ... and in the age to come, eternal life." (Mark 10:29-30)
This is another reference to reincarnation in the gospels; an indirect reference, yet an unmistakable one. In all three of the synoptic gospels, Jesus promised that anyone leaving their homes, wives, mothers, fathers, children, or farms to follow him would personally receive hundreds more such homes, families, and so on in the future.
Outside of the doctrine of reincarnation it's difficult to imagine how such a promise could be fulfilled. In one lifetime, one can only have a single set of real parents, and no one seriously proposes that each of the 70 original disciples, who actually did leave their homes and families, ever received as compensation a hundred wives, a hundred fields, and so on. Either this statement of Jesus' occurred when he was waxing so poetic as to allow a falsehood to pass his lips, or he was making a promise that only many reincarnations could fulfill.
10. "All these people were still living by faith when they died. They did not receive the things promised; they only saw them and welcomed them from a distance. And they admitted that they were aliens and strangers on earth. People who say such things show that they are looking for a country of their own. If they had been thinking of the country they had left, they would have had opportunity to return. Instead, they were longing for a better country-- a heavenly one. Therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God, for he has prepared a city for them." (Hebrews 11:13-16)
The following passage in the Book of Hebrews, especially the italisized sentence, is a clear statement of the concept of reincarnation.
11. JACOB & ESAU
Malachi 1:2-3 and Romans 9:11-13 both state that God loved Jacob, but hate Esau even before they were born. These verses are highly suggestive of the pre-existence of Esau, a necessary tenet associated with reincarnation.
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