Many people look for tangible and external proofs of their belief before they can respond with any kind of faith and hope. They need and seek security, something to rely on. The problem is that creativity and freedom forbids this kind of dependence, because both are based on true individuality. Hence the evil powers are not slow to present their demonstrable credentials, like Satan when he offered Jesus the world in return for his obedience. But in matters of faith substantiating evidence is a two edged sword. On one side it can cut faith short, on the other it can make faith grow, depending on how it is retrieved and used. Jesus himself was confronted with this problem, and then he sighed deeply and said, “Why does this generation ask for a miraculous sign? I tell you the truth, no sign will be given to it.” [Mark 8:12]

Anyway, we cannot ignore the fact that faith for many Christians focus on the resurrection, the Second Coming and the promise of salvation and eternal life in the Kingdom of God. This is of course what they hope for and what motivates their faith, but we think that kind of approach to faith is questionable. On existential and spiritual grounds, the act of faith can never happen in anticipation of a reward or in any way be conditioned, and the inherent structures of expectancy or dependence in this creed-attitude open up for self-deceit and childish transference. Faith relates properly through worship and is not an assurance. On the other hand, hopeful faith is preferable to other types of reliance, for example in the engineering techniques of Eastern traditions, since Christian prayer and expectation functions within genuine values of relation and uses a valid human ideal, instead of the mental outdistancing and impersonality displayed in Buddhism and elsewhere. In the present context we will not discuss the ways and principles of an imitation of Christ, and our only concern here is with the importance of hope. In our opinion the life and death of Jesus is sufficient to guide us and give us a reasonable hope and faith, like in the testimony of the centurion, who stood there in front of Jesus, heard his cry, saw how he died, and said, “Surely this man was the Son of God!” [Mark 15:39] But the subsequent tradition interpreted and proclaimed Jesus as the Christ, referring to his own understanding of himself, and it gave witness to the reality of his resurrection and appearances. This tradition now forms an integrated nexus of belief that no Christian faith can free itself from or should completely ignore.
 
Thus the Christian hope is actually substantiated and nourished from real events and structures. We have mentioned imitation, tradition and witness and could add sacrament, service, prayer and experience, all of them being the work of the Holy Spirit, which emanated from the Christ-being and the Christ-event. The words of Jesus to his disciples anticipated this future situation: “For where two or three come together in my name, there am I with them,” and: “Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.” [Math. 18:20; 28,19f] This kind of hope is not just hopeful and expectant, but also realistic, because the hope is made fresh and alive from reality, thereby strengthening the growth of faith. Even though faith is certainly established from within, it is definitely helped from without through the words and life of Jesus, and in addition everything that wells forth from this fountain of life then begets hope and enlivens faith.
 
Because that is what hope is all about, a reinforcement and an opening of faith. Faith is the decision, hope is the act and love is the outcome. Hope is the opposite of desperation and despair, which often turns faith retreating, yielding and declining, and hence there is comfort, trust and joy in hope. Whenever hope is present, you feel more confident and relaxed. Real and true hope, then, is a great blessing. Few people receive this in abundance, others only as a faint glimmer once in a while and many can only begin to hope. But maybe renewed hope is ahead of us, and we would like here to present the ideas of Rudolf Steiner on the reappearance of Christ in the etheric.

In the early beginning of the twentieth century Steiner proclaimed that a dramatic shift in the spiritual conditions of the earth and humankind had occurred and was about to manifest. The dark age of the Kali Yuga receded and the descent of humans into the material world of the senses and an isolated ego-intellectualism was now to be succeeded by a new opening to the spiritual world. A form of natural clairvoyance would soon begin to change our belief-structure and world-view – in the beginning only with a few people, but then in still greater numbers, until it finally in the course of millenniums became a hereditary and normal human capacity. This clairvoyant faculty would not override the conscious “I” in any way, but gradually allow men as individuals to contemplate and perceive the etheric dimension. Within this reality they would then reach up to the direct experience of Christ, who is eternally present in the etheric body of the earth. Christ in return would manifest himself in the physical dimension as a real imprint from the etheric and appear as a corporeal manifestation, which would talk to people and advice and comfort them and then disappear again. According to Steiner, the crucial time for this development was between 1930 and 1940. If this event was not utilized or was disregarded, then the evolution of humanity would turn exceedingly materialistic and was at great risk to be taken over by the evil powers. Steiner died already in 1925 and did not live to witness that sad decade of warmongering, but the terrible events of the First World War made him less optimistic in this regard. As we know today, any general spiritual opening of that period was efficiently drowned in the collective fear of approaching destruction and persecution, launched by the satanic occultist Adolf Hitler and his like minded contemporaries. The lower astral dimension of the earth was agitated and overflowed by human misery and cruel death by the havoc and terrors of the Second World War, only to be followed by the threat of a total annihilation of mankind in the cold war and the industrial and technological explosion of materialism in the wake of war-production and -economy. The prevalent symbols of that century was henceforth not the etheric Christ but the mushroom cloud and the concentration camps, and the major spiritual opening was a New Age revival of paganism and Luciferic visionary phantasmagoria as a result of growing individualism and consumerism. Evidently the evil powers were prepared and ready to divert the positive opportunity and replace it with their own awakening of extrasensory perception and religion as foreseen in the Sorath-plan, because that is no doubt the overall direction of modern culture.

This is of course not a very hopeful ascertainment, but then again Steiner could be wrong in his timing or new dynamics could be involved, since evolution is not static. On the other hand, there has been evidence of occasional visions of Christ and the Blessed Virgin Mary throughout the century in the same manner as prescribed by Steiner. The apparitions of Fatima and Medjugorje is some of the most spectacular and collective, but also on the individual level there has been a change of activity. In a broad survey in one of the Scandinavian countries an unexpected large number of people reported live visions of Christ like the following: “Suddenly he just stood there in the room, distinctly and clearly -- a wanderer with brown hair and a folded mantle, hanging from his shoulders. His eyes were gentle and good, and he had a faint smile on his lips. It felt like we were old friends and I smiled back.” And to illustrate the context with the etheric dimension we would like to narrate one more of Adam’s lucid dreams. In a church Adam saw a minister delivering a sermon after the beautiful community singing. He preached on the parting words of Jesus to his disciples as cited above(*henvis til siden eller gentag citatet) and emphasized the faithful and patient imitation of Christ in actual life. Then he blessed the congregation, and during this act Adam saw behind him the etheric Christ. Their hands moved in unity through the parallel dimensions as the priest followed the Lord intuitively. The harmony and mutual connection was so touching that Adam’s own hands began to participate, and the two of them blessed the space between them and moved their hands downwards, where the energy was condensed. Here their united hands found something, which they both recognized and lifted up jointly. It was the Christ-child. There was a joyous and relieving feeling of having found what was searched for.

So, you see, there is still much to hope for and many things, which can sustain and nourish hope. Actually, when you keep up the perspective of faith, then the whole creation shows itself to you as an awing and deeply moving wonder, and you realize that this beautiful miracle is created instantaneously anew and is vibrantly alive, always completely fresh. You only have to cherish that sacred reality, and then infinitely there is hope to be received from any living being or natural creation on earth or in the sky, or from any human artistic or congenial expression, reflecting this creative quality. It is primarily a question of gratitude and adoration towards God, the Creator, which is closely related to faith and hope, opening up the loving heart. Life and existence is only a suffering to a closed heart, that is a simple fact! And this is why the Buddhist philosophy of life is evidently false. Only when there is no love and hope present to engage, interpret and transform suffering, is suffering real and evil. If you then choose to escape suffering and surrender your faith instead of searching for hope and love, abiding with suffering, then you are in evil. Because there is no evil and no suffering that love cannot conquer, and that is the only sovereign human response and the only way to overcome darkness. How do we know that? Ask your heart! And if your heart is closed, then ask your conscience, which is always informed on the affairs of the heart. This is not any abstract or intellectual philosophy, because every human heart has been enlightened by the touch of the Christ-being and can receive this illumination, the baptism of the Holy Spirit. The heart knows how to live with Christ and surmount evil and suffering, but do you want to know it too? That is the truly decisive question no matter how complicated things can get and what the evil powers may concoct now and in the future. The heart is protected in itself and evil has no access to it, because evil is without heart. And so we wish to conclude our presentation of evil with its very opposite principle, the way of the heart.