Spirit Manifestations not to be believed because of their Signs and Wonders.
“To the law and to the testimony” is the invariable rule the Bible gives us as a test of doctrine. “If they speak not according to this word, it is because there is no light in them.” Spirit mediums, these modern magicians, often appeal in triumph to their signs and wonders, and, in the words of Jesus, demand belief for the “very works’ sake.” But what saith the Scriptures? “If there arise among you a prophet, or a dreamer of dreams, and giveth thee a sign or a wonder, and the sign or wonder come to pass, whereof he spake unto thee, saying, Let us go after other gods, which thou hast not known, and let us serve them; thou shalt not hearken unto the words of that prophet, or that dreamer of dreams; for the Lord your God proveth you, to know whether ye love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul. Ye shall walk after the Lord your God, and fear him, and keep his commandments, and obey his voice, and ye shall serve him, and cleave unto him.” Deut. 13: 1–5. Spiritualism would lead us to other sources for truth than the Word of God; and it would lead us to regard as truth what is in that Word plainly denied. Yet we are not to follow it notwithstanding its miracles, unless its teachings are in accordance with sacred truth. But what are its teachings? First, that the dead are conscious and communicate with the living; an idea which both reason and revelation, if they are allowed to have their proper bearing, instantly repel; and, secondly, it professes to have for its main object, to convince skeptical minds of the immortality of the soul; in other words, that man has inherent immortality; which is the first and greatest falsehood with which Satan has ever cheated our credulous race—greatest, because it has had the greatest effect in our world, and because mankind generally are content notwithstanding the experience of six thousand years, to swallow down the same bait with which our mother Eve was first caught in the garden of Eden. We say then, To the testimony of the Word of God. There learn that death is sleep—not a “perpetual” one as infidels have declared, and we have sometimes been accused of believing—but a sleep till the resurrection, when every man shall be rewarded according to his works; there learn that we have no immortality except through the atonement of our Redeemer. Then we are shielded against the delusive teachings of these spirits, though many legions more should be added to the innumerable number now hovering over the earth to convince the “skeptic.”—Sel.