How did people get saved before Jesus?

Who has beaten this path?

The messengers who pass to and fro rescuing the lost.

You seem surprised, but for how many countless ages have the messengers come seeking the lost?

There were spirits labouring here long before Christ came down to earth.

Was the land of after death organised very much as it is now even before the opening of the Christian era?

Yes, but more spirits had to pass through Hell.

In early primitive days, the astral plane―or Hell held almost all who passed over for a long time.

In the days of the Greeks and Romans, the intellect outran spiritual development, and so Hell became crowded with men who refused to believe in God―or a future life.

The fall of that civilisation made it easier for men in the West to develop their spiritual side.

Those whose whole lives were devoted to fighting and cruelty would naturally go on acting in the same way for a long time after death.

It would only be after a long period spent on this side that they would begin to desire a different kind of life.

All those who resisted the temptation to obsess would probably remain on the astral plane until they had developed sufficiently to pass upward to the spiritual plane.

Is it the whole course of our life that fixes the particular division of Hell into which we finally fall―or is it the type of obsession, which we practice?

These will sink down to the division corresponding with that type of sin which has predominated in their lives, but those who pass over in early or middle life have not yet worn out their astral bodies, nor completely developed their character.

Their division is that which corresponds with the type of obsession, which they have practiced.

In my own case, I obsessed for drink―lust―revenge.

The latter, being a more spiritual sin, dragged me down deeper than would the other two types of obsession.

At the same time, the type of life a man has lived very largely decides the type of obsession, which is likely to tempt him most.

A lustful man if he falls into obsessing will probably do it for the purpose of satisfying his lust and will fall into the division in which lust predominates.