Martinus ended his time here on earth by publishing his complete works under the common title “The Third Testament” shortly before he passed on. As we shall see in the following, the title was not a sudden impulse. Martinus had to create his works before he could present it to the world in its finished context.
The author's choice of title is a direct extension of the events of Easter 1921, where Martinus experienced that a living Christ figure entered into him and became one with him. This has also been called Martinus' cosmic initiation. After this event he found that he had within himself directly an answer to any question, and thereby knowledge of his own and all beings' (the universe's) highest identity as the spirit and body of the Godhead. This continuous stream of knowledge is the source of the Third Testament.
1933 Martinus writes: "I have received the promised Counsellor: 'the Holy Spirit'. It is 'teaching' me about all things and 'reminding' me of all things. And to every one of my readers this will be an indication that what I am saying is absolute truth …" Kosmos no.5/1933
1947 Martinus writes this in Livets Bog 5 section 1849: "Is this not the very demand that is now giving rise to spiritual science and that therefore has to become a third and final testament?"
1951-52 Martinus gives a lecture on 29 October 1951 with the title "Prophets and dogmas cannot save the world". The lecture has the subtitles: Christ and the new science (spiritual science), "The Comforter, the Holy Spirit". “The Third Testament”.
1955 In a lecture Martinus describes the three epochs of Christianity and the testaments that belong to them: "The world epoch of Christianity is made up of three main stages, of which the first constitutes The Old Testament and Judaism, and the second The New Testament and Christianity, which is where the material state should develop. The third stage is The Third Testament or spiritual science which will form the basis for the further development of human beings, and will guarantee that they will within this epoch become one with God"…"We can therefore see that the final stage in the Christian world epoch, the new world culture, was already built into the previous cultures."…"Spiritual science is not spiritual science if it does not confirm all the points in Jesus' Sermon on the Mount."…"It is true Christianity, the true divine way of being, true love of one's neighbour." The lecture is reproduced as an article in Kosmos 11/1991 entitled "The world epoch of Christianity".
1960 The writing of Livets Bog is completed on the 25th November.
1969 On the 13th May Martinus held a lecture in Jönköping with the title "The Third Testament". Quotation: "it is the new science; it is what Christ had announced as the Comforter, the Holy Spirit.
1969 On the 2nd October Martinus held a lecture in the Martinus Institute with the same title "The Third Testament". Excerpt: "… it is The Third Testament that is beginning now"… "The Third Testament is the continuation of Christ…" "…it will carry on Christ's mission…"
1971 Martinus: "The time has not come for the great revelation because it will only come when I am no longer here. Because it is not meant to be a cult of personality. It's not ... after all, it's the analyzes that matter and not the person."
Source: Lecture on 24 March 1971, later published as an article with the name "The Age of Intuition".
1971 Martinus: "Now the time has come when we have to recognize and need to make evident what is going on here in Scandinavia, and it is The Third Testament. It is all that, which Christ could not tell his disciples, but which he said that the spirit of truth, 'the Helper the holy spirit,' the Father should send, and it should teach mankind what they did not then understand. It should deepen his explanations; it should take from his and give to the people.
And then I have to say, that when I now, like Christ, stand here and say it, it is because I was initiated to create this world picture where everything adds up evenly and where love is the foundation of all existence. There is not a single attack on anyone, but it is just a great defense for everything that happens to all people, for everything they do, and it shows that there is no damnation, and there is no hell beyond the devil consciousness that humanity must go through since it is a part of God's plan. I got this initiation through the figure of Christ entering me and remained there, then I saw the world like the globe, and knew that his rays from me would go out all over the globe and the next day I had an experience that completely opened up my brain and from that moment on I was able to answer all these cosmic questions. But it is a moral for me that I must not direct these questions to private subjects."..."It must be kept within what concerns the salvation of humanity." Source: Martinus speech on 11 August.
1974 In a letter of thanks Martinus mentions "the explanation of the cosmic analyses of life or The Third Testament".
1975 Martinus made public that the title "The Third Testament" covered all of his books. "The Third Testament" is all the books and all the analyses I have written, and all the guidance and aids that I have made. This is The Third Testament. Quoted from the speech of welcome at Klint in the summer of 1975. (Reproduced in Kosmos 7/2004)
1975 Quotation from a conversation with his friends on the 5th August: "But The Third Testament – there is nothing in the name that tells us what kind of a testament it is"… "It will be made completely clear that what I am in the process of doing is writing a continuation of The New Testament."
1975 Quotation from a conversation with his friends on the 16th December: "The Bible has been brought to completion. The Holy Spirit as Christ announced."
1978 Martinus presented the final covers for The Third Testament at a gathering at Inge Sørensen's house the 13th of August.
On the cover one could see the title The Third Testament and the two large, very clear symbols "Light" and "Darkness". Present were Tage Buch, Mischa Lim, Ray Hopkins, Martinus, Catherine Wooten, Sysse Buch and Inge Sørensen.
1978 Martinus asks Grethe Brinkhardt to gather all the books in The Third Testament together and show them to Jarl Borgen. Martinus asked specifically that Livets Bog, Logic, Funeral Rites, The Eternal World Picture I+II+III, and all the small books be shown as the future editions of his collected works.
1979 Martinus gave a lecture in which The Third Testament was mentioned many times, for example: "… what Livets Bog or The Third Testament is about is what has been called the second coming of Christ." Martinus refers as always to Christ's own words about this event (darkness, unrest and false prophets), stressing that it is not Christ as a person that will come again. The lecture is connected to the beginning of The Old Testament: the creation of the human being in the image of God. "If one is not almighty and all-loving one is not in the image of God." Love opens the way for cosmic consciousness and for the consequent melting together with the other Christ beings. This is the highest yoga. This is the reason why Jesus could say "All power is given unto me".
1979 On Martinus' 89th birthday, in a lecture given to 500 people in the Hotel Sheraton, Martinus once again refers to Christ's words about a counselor that is to come. "That time has now come and I now have the authority to say that "The Third Testament" is "the Counselor, the Holy Spirit". This lecture has now been published under the title "The second coming of Christ – the coming of the Counselor" in Kosmos 8/1994.
In the above lecture Martinus also says that "there are a great many Christian people who are hidden. We do not call them Christian…" And quoted from the lecture "The religious principle": "It will be through Christianity that the whole world will be redeemed and blessed."
1980 1,200 people attended Martinus' 90th birthday and for that reason it had to be held in Falconer Centre, where on the 9th August Martinus held his last lecture and again made his decision public: "I have received the impulse that my work should be called The Third Testament"… "Old Christianity is not so naive or so stupid"…"The second coming of Christ is a new world epoch that Christ initiated 2,000 years ago when he preached on Earth"… "Christ's task was to be God's model for the human being in his image. There had to be a model in order for human beings to see how they should be"… "We will evolve to become like Christ"… "For this reason Christianity is a great mystery to human beings, but now the mystery has been solved in The Third Testament, where one can read and study it"… "What I am speaking about is what the Counselor, the Holy Spirit is speaking about"… "In a short while human beings will have access to it when Livets Bog will be published for the first time by a public publishing house under the title The Third Testament." The lecture has been published under the title of "The Christ Principle".
1980 The final agreement finally falls into place with Borgens the publishers regarding the publication of Livets Bog under the title The Third Testament. (November/December)
1981 Martinus' departure on the 8th March signaled the start of the publicizing of his entire work under its correct name. The period of camouflage, characterized by the name "Martinus cosmology" is over.
1981 In November Martinus' collected works begin to come out by Borgens Publishers under the title The Third Testament with the two symbols "Light" and "Darkness" on the cover.
