A MALIGNANT POWER

Pacific Press Publishing Association · Mountain View, California, U.S.A. · Sep 16, 1930

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 57, No. 36.

A MALIGNANT POWER

In these days of perplexity multitudes are turning away from the old landmarks of faith and are following in strange ways and after strange gods. Into the forbidden and enchanted ground of occultism men are wandering, never to return to the faith of their fathers. The advance of spiritism is alarming. Leaders in scientific thought, ministers of orthodox churches, editors of long-established church papers, openly declare their faith in this movement, which professes communication with the dead.

Now and then the headlines of the great metropolitan dailies blaze forth the news of some supposed message from the great unknown. And the world looks on in helpless fascination, while spiritism, with its Christ-like phrases and its mystic allurements, challenges the men of earth to enter its portals.

It is not surprising that men are lured into the dark mysteries of the séance. There comes into some home a messenger of death; drapes of darkness are hung upon the walls, shades of sadness are drawn over the windows, and the vacant chair tells the sad story. “They return,” comes the enchanting call of spiritism, “they return with tidings from the great beyond; they return with a message of hope and cheer; they return with healing balm for bleeding hearts.” A voice from beyond the tomb is heard, a messenger from the spirit world speaks through mysterious mutterings, and the lonely mourner seeks to drown his sorrow by delving deep into the mystic art.

A MALIGNANT POWER

There is no need of attempting to discredit the innumerable “proofs,” the attested “demonstrations” of the séance chamber, for no sooner is one manifestation shown to be the result of trickery than a hundred more are brought forward which cannot be ascribed to the magician’s wiles. But it is well to turn the searchlight of truth upon this dark agency of death, to reveal the hidden voice behind the mask of the departed, to expose the malignant power that masquerades as an angel of light.

In the sixteenth chapter of the book of Revelation is a description of the last battle that will be fought in this world,—the battle of Armageddon. In this conflict hatred reaches the moment of its greatest intensity. But there is something dark and sinister behind the movements of men; there is an unseen, an impelling power that drives men on to battle. “They are the spirits of devils, working miracles, which go forth unto the kings of the earth and of the whole world, to gather them to the battle of that great day of God Almighty.” Verse 14.

Men may imagine that sin is only an apparent evil; they may speak of death as a friend and not an enemy; they may say that the devil is a myth “born of superstition and ignorance,” but it is a fact, nevertheless, that this old world of ours, sick unto death with the cancer of sin, madly delirious, and in its death throes, is largely controlled in its seething hatreds, its inordinate pleasures, its unbridled passions, by the malignant powers of darkness.

“Wicked spirits gather round thee, legions of those foes to God— Principalities most mighty—walk unseen the earth abroad; They are gathering to the battle, strengthened for the last deep strife, Christian, arm! be watchful, ready, struggle manfully for life.”

Once an angel of light, Lucifer made himself a messenger of darkness and death. Once a shining angel of peace, he made himself the archangel, and led a host of angels into rebellion against God. These fallen angels are the powers of darkness that have waged relentless warfare against the truth of God and against the government of God. They are the instigators of every evil passion, the originators of every dark and horrible deed. Here in this world the deadly conflict between light and darkness, truth and error, righteousness and unrighteousness is being fought out. And the record of your life and mine is a record of how we stand in this conflict of the ages.

SATAN IS FIRST “FAMILIAR SPIRIT”

There is a spirit world. The spirits appear in the séance, but they are the spirits of demons impersonating the dead for the sole purpose of deceiving the living and binding them with the fetters of sin. Spiritism is not a new religion. Its modern manifestation may have started with the Fox sisters and the mysterious rappings, but spiritism is as old as sin itself. Its founder was the father of lies. (John 8:44.) In the Garden of Eden came the great test of the loyalty of man to the law of God. The devil as the first familiar spirit, through the serpent as his medium, told our first parents that God had deceived them. “Ye shall not surely die,” were the deceptive words, and these words are the foundation of spiritism,—its basic creed.

The spirits that appear at the instigation of the medium are not the spirits of the dead, because the dead are dead. Death is not life in a higher sphere. Death is not a larger life. Death is the opposite of life. In death there is no life. Let me read to you the positive declaration of the word of God: “The living know that they shall die: but the dead know not anything, neither have they any more a reward; for the memory of them is forgotten. Also their love, and their hatred, and their envy, is now perished; neither have they any more a portion forever in anything that is done under the sun.” Ecclesiastes 9:5, 6. Spiritism says, “The dead know more than the living.” The Bible says, “The dead know not anything.” Spiritism says that in death man finds a fuller expression of a more abundant life. God says that even the thoughts of men perish at death. Which statement do you believe?

In the dogma of the “immortality of the soul” is found the key to the phenomenal success of spiritism. The late Arthur Conan Doyle challenged the inconsistency of the religionist who rejects spiritism and yet accepts her cardinal doctrine, and said, “How strange that the church should attack us for confirming its own doctrine of immortality,—its basic creed, in fact.” Who could answer such a challenge? If the soul is immortal, then spiritism confirms the fact. If man cannot die, if to his “immortal” spirit is given the power to hover around the abode of the living, then spiritism demonstrates the power of communication. Little wonder that so many conscientious Christians follow the will-o’-the-wisp into the desert of demonism, when they cherish the creed that makes spiritism the deception it is.

There was the venerable minister, Russell H. Conwell, who wandered perilously near to the enchanted land. He said: “Some years ago I had a dream that recurred every morning just before I awoke. It seemed to me that the figure of Mrs. Conwell appeared each morning and sat smiling at the foot of my bed. It must be, I thought, a delusion of old age. Yet the figure was as real as life, smiling and asking questions and answering my own. One morning I said, or seemed to myself to say, ‘I know you really aren’t there.’”

“‘Oh, but I am,’ she replied.

“‘To-morrow I will ask you a question; will you be ready for it?’”

She nodded. The next morning she was there again. . . .

“‘Tell me, then, where are my discharge papers?’ I had not seen them for years. . . .”

“‘She answered, ‘Why, they are in the black japanned box behind the books in your library.’”

“I jumped out of bed and found them.”

No one would be deceived by the fallen angel who masquerades behind the form of