As Christmas nears, I am reminded of the problems of translations every day on the radio. The classic song, Stille Nacht was written in memory of Jesus’ entry into this world by Josef Mohr and it is beautiful in its original language, free of dogma like similar inspired works. The english translation by John Freeman Young diverges much more from the meaning of the original than cannot be explained by poetic license. Below are the German and English versions side by side, with a literal translation of the German to show the main areas where the original author’s meaning was changed. Using the technique pioneered by Origen of Alexandria, I have prepared a  phrase-by-phrase comparison of the two versions and highlighted the diversions in meaning in yellow. The variations come out of three areas of church dogma:

• Mary is the mother of God – This comes from the logic error that the church was caught in. When the church elevated Jesus to being an appearance of God on Earth, this made Mary the mother of God. This meant that Mary could not have been a normal young mother and that Jesus could not have had any brother and sisters, or a normal childhood. The author of the song says that Jesus was born to a married couple. From Origen’s teachings we know that Jesus was conceived as every other human is by Mary and Joseph. Mary was an Angel sent to earth to become Jesus’ mother, just like all the other Prophets. In this way she is a spiritual virgin, in that she is free from any sin, besides not having had any children yet. Joseph was the father of Jesus’ human body, but His spirit that was incarnated in this body was created by God. Origen teaches us to separate the physical, moral and spiritual messages of the bible in order to understand its full meaning. Church dogma has made this a very difficult task.
• The Holy Spirit – The author refers to multiple Angels in the song, yet the translator seems to have limited their involvement. The trinity dogma created a singular holy spirit to communicate with us and does not recognize the legions of Angels that protect, teach and influence us. The author says that Angels were singing both near and far, not just in Heaven. There were a great number of Angels from the legions of Michael, Gabriel and Raphael who came with Jesus to protect and to serve him. We once belonged to these legions and when we return we keep our individuality. The creation of The Holy Spirit in the trinity dogma stole the individuality from us all.
• Jesus died for all our sins, past and future through redeeming grace – Origen taught that the King of Heaven entered human form and lived a normal life, exposed to the temptations of the king of this world, Lucifer. He resisted all temptation and remained true to His Father, so upon His death, He earned the right to enter Lucifer’s domain in Hell and their two armies fought. Jesus was victorious over Lucifer when Lucifer conceded defeat in order to save his own life. This is when Jesus passed Final Judgement over Lucifer (Death). This new set of laws, restricts Lucifer in that he no longer 100% domain over Earth, but now must share it with Heaven’s Angels who can exert their influence on humanity. The Final Judgement set out the laws that will be effective until the end of the world and every fallen soul is returned to Heaven after repaying our debts. God’s Grace exists, but it takes more than just believing in Jesus as the King of Heaven for us to return to our rightful place in Heaven. This takes many lifetimes and many incarnations on Earth.

We are all fallen angels and our King came from Heaven in order to free us from our prison. Christmas, for the spiritual Christian, is the light at the end of a very long tunnel and the beginning of a new era when we can finally work our way back to our rightful place in Heaven. Men of good will recognize this and take up the battle over evil in this world to earn our way home.