The Memories of an Apostle: An Interview with The Messengers' Nick Bunick by Scott Parshall
Two thousand years ago, Jesus the Christ walked the earth. He spoke to those who would listen, revealing the mysteries of God. He performed miracles for God's sake. Even unto his own crucifixion, Jesus spoke only of God and our relationship to God. If only we could have been there then, listening with our own ears! So much time has passed and so many people have interpreted Jesus' words. I think we all would secretly relish the opportunity to hear for ourselves the messages of Jesus the Christ. The initial offering of the emerging publisher, Skywin, offers us something that just may turn out to be the next best thing to the return of Christ: The Messengers, A True Story of Angelic Presence and the Return to the Age of Miracles. With the succinct eloquence of a single brush stroke, The Messengers delivers proof of angels acting toward a larger, loving plan for humanity. It also serves perfectly as testimony to the original messages of Jesus the Christ.
This true story is a phenomenal account of the experiences surrounding a man named Nick Bunick. Through the combined efforts of the book's authors, G.W. Hardin and Julia Ingram, the main character, Nick, shares his exciting experience with us. Nick's story is told in two parts. The first half of The Messengers shares the climactic fruition of a journey that began in 1977, when it was first mentioned to Nick that he had "walked with the master." Had it been left solely to Nick Bunick, the messages in this book might never have surfaced. He had a young family and a business to run.
Enter the angels. Holy messengers intervene, convincing the human participants to move ahead fearlessly and share this story with the world. Nick is joined by a supporting cast of people, and angelic experiences happen almost every time two or more are gathered together in one place.
Part Two of The Messengers is transcribed tapes from 13 hypnotherapy sessions, in which Nick relives memories of a past life he lived as Paul the Apostle. Through Nick we have the rare opportunity to walk the sands of time and witness firsthand the life of Jesus. We also see Paul, the world in which these two men lived, and their intentions under a whole new light. The revelatory fact that Paul was not the persecutor history displays is peripheral to his close friendship with Christ.
The entire account of The Messengers is filled with revelation, insight, and a vision that is believable. My telephone conversation with Nick was scheduled for a Sunday. Having read the book, I imagined angels might be flying around as I prepared for the call. There were so many questions I wanted to ask. After all, according to The Messengers, Nick remembers Christ as a friend, which is why he will sometimes call him Jeshua instead of Jesus.
Scott: All we know from the book is that you are a businessman. Exactly what kind of business have you been involved in?
Nick: My past business experiences have been many. I have been involved in the high-tech world. I was the co-founder of a corporation which is now an international corporation. I have been involved in the bio-tech world; I have been involved in the medical world; I have been involved in doing major land developments; also in the sports world. The reason I choose not to dwell on these past experiences in the business world is because I have put all of them behind me totally. I want people to think of where I'm going from this point on, as opposed to where I've already been.
Scott: This is explained in the book, but briefly tell me why, after keeping the knowledge of your past life as Paul secret for 15 years, you decided to come public?
Nick: First of all, I want to explain why I didn't want to go public with the information. I felt that my credibility would be challenged; that many people would say it was fabricated, it was a sham, and that I would be ridiculed. I recognized that it was going to have a major impact on my private life, my business life and the life of my family. The reason I chose to go public began in 1995, on January 14th, when I began to have the angelic experiences. I felt compelled to bring forth the information and to accept the mission that I had been ordained to do. I no longer have the concerns regarding credibility or any consequences that come as a result of my sharing this message with the world. I'm actually grateful everything happened this way, Scott, because I wouldn't have this personal relationship I now have with the angels, or be underneath the angelic umbrella.
Scott: Can you explain your shared consciousness with Paul, or how your awareness of your past life works? Do you consider that you are Paul, or that you were Paul?
Nick: I consider myself Nick Bunick, and I recognize the fact that I am a product of my own environment and my own experiences. But at the same time I accept and also understand that I have the same soul that Paul had two thousand years ago. I am told by the angels that I also have the same personality, intellect and some of the other elements that make up a person.
As far as the memories of Paul: When I experienced the hypnotic regressions, there were many, many things I was exposed to beyond just the questions I was asked. The best way I can describe this is that if you were watching a two-hour movie, and at the end of the movie someone asked you one question regarding one scene, you would answer that one question, even though you had the knowledge of the entire two hours. And so it was with my hypnotic regression experiences.
Scott: According to the Bible, Paul and Jesus did not know each other.
Nick: It's inconceivable that Paul and Jesus wouldn't have known each other. Paul was living in Jerusalem. Jerusalem [did not have] a huge population by the standards that we live in today. Paul being the person with the curious intellectual mind, it's just inconceivable that they wouldn't have known each other. Reading the letters of Paul, one can see he had a much greater understanding of Jeshua as a person than anything written in the Gospels. The reason Paul was not mentioned in the Gospels is very simply that he was not a disciple. It's important that people understand Paul was never a disciple, which means a pupil. He became an apostle later on, but he and Jeshua had a one-on-one relationship. A one-on-one friendship, whereas the disciples did not have that relationship with Jeshua at the time He walked in a mortal body.
Scott: The Messengers gave the picture, as I understand it, that the churches controlled the people; that the reason for the distortion of many of the messages of Jesus involved ones regarding the end of taxes, profit and control.
Nick: I understand what you are asking, Scott. You are raising a question that is going to require a fairly lengthy answer, and I am prepared to explain it because I have done a tremendous amount of research in the last six months. At the time that Jeshua walked the earth, the Judaic religion had three different sects. One was the Sadducees and they professed they did not know what happened to the soul or the spirit upon death. The other two sects were the Pharisees and the Essenes. They absolutely believed in transmigration of the soul, what we call reincarnation.
In the fourth century A.D., Constantine was the emperor of Rome. He appointed the first pope, whose name was Damascus. In conjunction with that, they founded the Council of Nicaea and made an effort to purge everything out of the Scriptures of the New Testament that spoke of reincarnation as they were translating the Scriptures from Aramaic into Latin, their contemporary language. [Encyclopaedia Britannica says the Council of Nicaea, A.D. 325, "...is an event of the highest importance in the history of Christianity." "It was the first attempt to fix the criteria of Christian orthodoxy, by means of definitely formulated pronouncements on the content of Christian belief..." - SP]
Then in the fifth century A.D., when Justinian was the emperor, he called together the Fifth Ecumenical Council. The Council met in Constantinople with the specific purpose of condemning the idea of reincarnation, committing themselves, from that time on, to always speak of life being one experience on earth, that redemption and salvation must take place during this one lifetime.
Pope Vigilius refused to participate in that meeting because he totally disagreed with their trying to change the entire teachings of hundreds and hundreds of years, teachings that did believe in reincarnation, and more importantly, the teachings of Jeshua. [In 553 A.D. Pope Vigilius delivered his Constitutum ad Imperatorem to the fifth Council of Nicaea, refuting the Edict of Milan (A.D. 313), in which Constantine and Licinius, Augustus had established a policy of religious tolerance, equalizing Christianity and paganism - SP]
I do not think it was done maliciously. I believe it was probably a decision of mortal people at that time who had good intent, and felt they could better influence the people who were attending their churches by making them believe they must receive redemption and salvation in this one lifetime. But unfortunately, in doing so, they changed dramatically the true messages of Jeshua, and that is that we are all part of God, and being part of God, we are all immortal. We do come back in human bodies in order to experience the material world so that we may become, through the experiences in the material world, pure again. I want to emphasize again, I do not believe it was malicious on the part of the decision-makers at that time. I feel their decision was based on what they thought was in the best interests of the people.
Scott: Do you know what the belief system was at that time around Satan, or the devil? Did that come as a result of the meeting in Constantinople?
Nick: At the time that Jeshua lived, the concept of Satan was totally different than what the concept is today. First of all, there is no such thing as the devil. But before I say that, let me go back to two thousand years ago.
At that time, the word Satan was used in a different context. We are talking about a different language, the Aramaic language. Satan was thought of as one of God's angels in the Old Testament who was used more for purposes of interfering, not necessarily negative or positive. It might say someplace in the Old Testament that God sent "a Satan" - "a" rather than "the" Satan. That would have been a type of angel.
Two thousand years ago, when people spoke of evil spirits, they weren't speaking as though it were something that had a physical form. They were talking about acts one would commit such as anger or hostility or jealousy. That was considered an evil act and came about as the result of an evil spirit, meaning the characteristics of a person's personality, not an entity.
What happened regarding this concept of the devil concerns me greatly, because God is a God of love, not a God of punishment. This false concept of the devil was created during the same period that I spoke of - the fourth and sixth centuries A.D. - to create a heaven and a hell in order for people to feel they needed the protection from an evil force that could possibly influence their life. As a result of that, they created the modern-day concept of an actual entity that has supernatural powers, called the devil. It is not accurate. There is no such thing as the devil.
God gave us all free will. When a person commits an act in which he or she does not show compassion or love to another person and therefore creates a victim, it is the willful decision of that person and not some other influence, such as some mythical devil.
Scott: Did Jesus believe that anyone could become one with God, as he had?
Nick: Jesus believed that every one of us were the children of God; that God, our Father and Mother, had placed a part of the spirit of God into each one of us in conjunction with our being born on earth. He believed that we are not human beings who, by coincidence, happen to have a spirit and soul; that we are instead spirits and souls who occasionally frequent a human body. Because of that, every one of us is a child of God; it is only a question of do we recognize that.
Scott: Do you have any response for people who do not recognize that, and who might discount past lives, angels and hypnosis all in one breath?
Nick: God gave every one of us free will, and in conjunction with free will we have the ability to make our own evaluations as to how we choose to understand our relationship with God and the spiritual world, or how we choose not to. To those people who are willing to listen and willing to understand, I will make every effort to share with them the messages. And if they still choose not to listen, that again is their free will to do so. I believe that The Messengers is going to tremendously impact the lives of millions of people in our own country, as well as people around the world. It is the truth and it is the messages of Jeshua as they were spoken two thousand years ago. There is a spiritual consciousness just beginning that will spread through the entire world. I'm not the only messenger; I'm just one. I'm sure there are others also in the process of stepping forward.
Scott: Your communication with and awareness of your angels did not end where the story in the book ends, did it?
Nick: Oh, no, it continues on a daily basis. There are many things that have happened after the book ended, which still represent angelic intervention into my life as well as the lives of my colleagues. When people read The Messengers, they will know that there is such a thing as messengers of God, angels functioning in our lives on a daily basis, and that we do have the ability to communicate with them, and to have a relationship with them.
Scott: Before we close, I'm curious: Did Paul have angelic relationships that he was aware of in his lifetime?
Nick: Paul was tremendously inspired, but I don't believe he recognized that the inspiration was coming from angelic influence. I believe there are many, many people in the world today who are inspired by their angelic influences and don't realize it. Paul realized he was being inspired, although at that time thought it to be the Holy Spirit. Maybe there shouldn't be any differentiation between being inspired by the Holy Spirit and being inspired by the messages of God and the angels.
The messages of the angels are the same messages that Jesus the Christ brought humanity two thousand years ago. This story is big enough to be a book, and that's exactly the book The Messengers is. It is with great clarity, and through startling revelations, that Nick Bunick and the other participants in The Messengers act as messengers themselves, clearing our collective spiritual path of the accumulated misunderstandings the centuries have wrought, showing us that angels are alive and well in everyone's life. All I can do is suggest that you read the messages yourself - then go figure.
Nick Bunick will be conducting a spiritual symposium at 2:00 p.m. on Sunday, April 20, at the Washington State Convention and Trade Center in downtown Seattle. Tickets for the symposium, co-sponsored by The New Times, are available at East West Bookshop, 1032 NE 65th.
Scott Parshall is a frequent contributor to The New Times. A local writer, editor, copywriter, and comedian, Scott can be reached at (206) 706-3068.
