The Logical Conclusion

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Oct 27, 1910

The Logical Conclusion

WHY should religious journals, which teach the immortality of the soul, and that after death the spirits of the dead continue to exist as living, conscious entities, deny that it is possible to hold communication with these departed ones? In other words, why should any man who believes that the dead are conscious between death and the resurrection, deny the claims of Spiritualism? Its claims are but the logical outgrowth of this doctrine of inherent immortality and the conscious state of the dead. If one believes that the spirit of a departed friend is still conscious, is still hovering about him, viewing with sorrow his trials and difficulties, and rejoicing in his successes, by what means can he deny its identity when there appears to him, in a Spiritualistic seance or elsewhere, a form which purports to be this dead friend, and which, by evidence appealing to every sense of sight and sound, convinces him of that fact?

No man who believes in the doctrine of the conscious state of the dead, can withstand this influence which, in these closing days of earth's history, will be brought to bear on his life. The Word of God declares that the great wonder-working power of the last days, which is to deceive the multitude, will be the spirit of devils, which go forth to the kings of the earth and to the whole world. We have striking evidence that this prediction meets its fulfilment in the work of modern Spiritualism. The Word of God is our only safeguard. It declares that the dead know not anything; that their love and their hatred perish at death; that, in the very day they cease to breathe, their thoughts perish; that though their sons come to honor or be brought low, they have no knowledge of it. With this knowledge, the soul is fortified against Satan's delusions. The representation of the dead may appear before our eyes, and in look and word and gesture may closely simulate the one we have laid away; it may whisper secrets known only to us and our departed; but in spite of all this, as against the evidence of the natural senses, we may declare to the impersonating demon, "It is written." That Word we may trust beyond our reason. Before it the forces of Satan will be put to flight. It will prove the only true and sure foundation upon which we may stand in the perils of the last days, which are rapidly thickening around us. Thank God that we have the plain testimony of his Word!