The Spirit World and a Future Life
By Geo. W. Rine
IX. Prophetic Forecasts of Latter-Day Delusions in Process of Fulfilment
THE reader will recall that in our previous study we found that the Scriptures contain a surprisingly large number of prophecies in attestation of the fact that in the latter times Satan and his host of wicked spirits would ply their hellish arts “with all power and signs and lying wonders.” We learned that the father of lies would practise his insidious wiles with such extraordinary skill and power that, if it were possible, the very elect of God’s children would be taken in his snares; and that he will be suffered to go even so far as apparently to bring down fire from heaven; and that by the “miracles” which he shall have power to perform, he will DECEIVE “them that dwell on the earth.” Knowing that his time is short, he is even now, in “great wrath,” captivating the world with his last fatal, overmastering deceptions. The Great and Wise of This World Falling a Prey to Satanic Craftiness
The eminent English scientist and author, Alfred Russell Wallace, in his elaborate work, “Miracles and Modern Spiritualism,” says: “During the last sixty years evidence has been accumulating in every part of the world which affords demonstration that the so-called dead have never really died at all, but have passed into a new and higher stage of existence.” Professor Wallace goes on to tell his readers that many of the spirits of the departed are able to communicate with us, and that they find themselves much more alive than they ever were before. He alleges significantly that “we have all kinds of phenomena which are inexplicable even to the scientific mind, except on a spiritualistic hypothesis.” By “a spiritualistic hypothesis” he means the assumption that these “phenomena” are produced by the spirits of the dead. It should be remembered that when Wallace began his scientific study of spiritualistic phenomena, he was an avowed skeptic of the materialistic school, and was brought to a belief in human immortality solely as the result of the “signs” and “miracles” wrought by the sinister unseen powers back of all spiritualistic manifestations. Professor Wallace makes this significant admission: “Outside of modern Spiritualism I know nothing in recognized science to support the belief in immortality.” He might truthfully have added that he knew nothing in the word of God “to support the belief in immortality.” The great Italian scholar, Pio Foa, a professor in the University of Turin, asserts that “during recent times certain strange manifestations known under the title of ‘Spirit Phenomena,’ appear to offer an argument in favor of the continuation of life after death, in a spiritualistic sense.” Regarding the supernormal wonders of spiritistic manifestations which he has observed, he admits that “one can not deny that they are astonishing and, at the present state of scientific development, inexplicable.” True, they are unintelligible to science, but, as we have seen, the inspired word accounts for them in a way that can not be misunderstood. Another famous investigator of psychical phenomena, the French astronomer Camille Flammarion, makes the following explicit confession of faith: “That the soul survives the destruction of the body I have not the shadow of a doubt.” He also arrived at this expressed conviction, not by the study of divine revelation, but by observing the “signs and wonders” of Spiritualism. The greatest French dramatist of the past quarter-century, M. Sardou, who died last November, wrote not many months ago: “I believe that we are surrounded by intelligent beings who are different from ourselves so far as the material body is concerned, but who have certain qualities which correlate with our own. But as to the origin of these beings—whether they be the souls of the dead, or whether they constitute a world apart, a people who have never lived on this planet, I am not certain. . . . Personally, my experiences lead me to believe that these beings are probably the souls of the dead.” He adds: “I have seen and touched materialized bodies, hands and hair, and on one occasion, when I was sitting at my table, a bunch of roses, fresh and fragrant, fell upon the table.” Again it was the “lying wonders” of Spiritualism that inclined this literary genius to the belief in the heathen dogma of human immortality. Archdeacon Colley, of the Anglican Church, expresses in the following unqualified fashion his belief in immortality, and how he reached this conviction: “Of human kind there are no dead. Man is man because he is, as the Sanskrit ‘Mann’ suggests, the ‘thinker,’ or one that has consciousness of his being; which consciousness survives the change called ‘death,’ which is as but sleep to wakefulness. . . . For true is the Latin statement, mors janua vitae, death the gate of life; hence, continuous and immediate and conscious being, with no sleeping in the grave.” Why does the Rev. Dr. Colley hold to the musty old pagan aphorism, “Death is the gate to life,” when the Prince of life, whom Dr. Colley professedly represents, declares, “I am the6WAY, the truth, and the LIFE.” There is “no sleeping in the grave,” says the Archdeacon. Yet the very Bible in which, presumably, he finds the texts for his sermons, gives us this bit of reasoning: “For if the dead rise not, then is not Christ raised. . . . Then they also which are fallen ASLEEP in Christ are perished.” Again and again the sacred Book refers to the dead as being asleep. Dr. Colley emphatically asserts that he did not derive his belief in human deathlessness, from the study of any creedal or ecclesiastical affirmations, “but from the teachings of many years’ experience with those who have lived in this world, now dead and buried as to their earthly body, . . . from whom by many indisputable proofs, visible, audible, tangible, I and those with me have apprehended that there can be no gainsaying the fact that the so-called ‘dead’ are alive.” Strange indeed that the alleged “proofs” afforded by spiritualistic manifestations should have greater weight with a minister of the Gospel than the plain, unqualified declarations of Holy Writ! The well-known English scholar, Sir Oliver Lodge, affirms: “I am for all personal purposes convinced of the persistence of human existence beyond bodily death; and, altho I am unable to justify that belief in full and complete manner, yet it is a belief that has been produced by scientific evidence—that is, it is based upon facts and experiences.” The context shows that the “facts and experiences” upon which Sir Oliver grounds his conviction, are the marvels of spiritistic manifestations. Professor Lodge says further: “We have discovered that there is a new human faculty for communicating with the dead. The most important set of phenomena are those for automatic writing and speaking.” The late Dr. Richard Hodgson, the founder of the American branch of the Society for Psychical Research, after ten years’ critical study of the remarkable powers of the famous psychic, Mrs. Piper, bore the following testimony as to his belief: “Holding the hypothesis of telepathy from the beginning for several years, I have no hesitancy in affirming with the most absolute assurance, that the spirit hypothesis is justified by its fruits, and the other hypothesis is not.” By the locution, “spirit hypothesis,” Dr. Hodgson means the assumption that the preternatural wonders of Spiritualism are wrought by discarnate human spirits. As another convincing proof that the prince of darkness is deceiving “those that dwell on the earth,” by reason of “those miracles which he had power to do,” I insert here the testimony of the famous English publicist and writer, W. T. Stead, who proudly avows himself to be his own medium. He says: “The question, ‘Do the dead return?’ is best answered by asking another question: ‘Do the dead depart?’ I do not believe the dead depart. They are still with us, closer and nearer than they ever were before they laid down their earthly vestures of decay.” Now contrast Mr. Stead’s teaching as to the state of the dead with that of the inspired Job. In respect to the man who has passed away in death, the sacred writer testifies: “His sons come to honor, and he knoweth it not; they are brought low, and he perceiveth it not of them.” Chapter 14:21. Believes That He Receives Letters from a Dead Son
The following pathetic narrative reasoning is given in Mr. Stead’s own language: “One last word. For the last fifteen years I have been convinced by the pressure of a continually accumulating mass of first-hand evidence of the truth of the persistence of personality after death and the possibility of intercourse with the departed. But I always said, I will wait until some one of my own family has passed beyond the grave before I finally declare my conviction on this subject. Twelve months ago this month of December I saw my eldest son, whom I had trained in the fond hope that he would be my heir and successor, die at the early age of thirty-three. The tie between us was of the closest. No one could deceive me by fabricating spurious messages from my beloved son. Twelve months have now passed, not one week of which I have not been cheered and comforted by messages from my boy, who is nearer and dearer to me than ever before. The preceding twelve months I had been much abroad, and I heard less frequently from him in that year than I have heard from him since he passed out of our sight. I have not taken his communications by my own hand. I knew him too well, and what I wrote might have been the unconscious echoes of converse in the past. He has communicated with me through the hands of two slight acquaintances, and they have been one and all stamped with the impress of his own character and mode of thought as any of the letters he wrote to me during his sojourn on earth. After this I can doubt no more. For me the problem is solved. The truth is established. And I am glad to have this opportunity of testifying publicly to all the world that for me doubt on this subject is henceforth impossible.” This experience is certainly pathetic, if not tragical. To Mr. Stead it is the final proof that the dead are not dead, and do not actually depart from the living. Unwittingly, yet actually, it looks as if Mr. Stead had given “heed to seducing spirits.” Is it safe to accept testimony which contradicts that which comes from Him who “knoweth our frame”—our physical and spiritual organization? The following statement is a succinct declaration of the faith of Sir William Crookes on the immortal-soul dogma: “The soul exists as a real entity independent of the body; it is able to act at a distance, without the intervention of the senses.” Sir William reached his conviction as the result of the many alleged letters he received from the “spirit,” so widely famous under the designation “Katie King.” One of the most enthusiastic and erudite members of the British Society for Psychical Research was the late Prof. F. W. H. Myers. After many years spent in psychic experimentation and study, he felt free to say: “I will briefly state facts which our records have, to my mind, actually proved. In the first place, they prove survival, pure and simple; the persistence of the spirit’s life as a structural law of the7universe, the inalienable heritage of each several soul. In the second place, they prove that between the spiritual and the material worlds an avenue of communication does, in fact, exist. . . . In the third place, they prove that the surviving spirit retains, at least in some measure, the memories and the loves of earth.” (Italics Dr. Myers’s.) Dr. Myers then asks this strikingly significant question: “To what extent has any philosophy or any revelation assured us of this until now?” This question is designed to emphasize the fact that, in Dr. M.’s judgment, no philosophy or revelation has ever assured us that the human soul consciously survives the death of the body; but that now the miracles of Spiritualism have assured us of this momentous fact. What! Spiritualism proved man to be immortal, in direct contradiction of the inspired dictum that God “ONLY hath immortality”? 1 Tim. 6:16. Note, too, that Dr. Myers admits that no revelation has assured us of the deathlessness of man. Very true: but the Christian Revelation does most emphatically assure us that man is NOT immortal in himself. It adds, however, the blessed assurance that all believers in Christ shall have a resurrection from death to immortality; shall then have immortality as a gift from God through Jesus Christ. The following excerpt from an article by Dr. I. K. Funk, is almost startling because of what it suggests. It shows that Dr. Funk believes it possible and even probable that Spiritualism is destined to confirm the fundamentals of Christianity, and even to correct and supplement the Christian Scriptures, and finally to place traditional dogma upon a basis of scientific certainty. It does look as if even some of the very elect are destined to be deceived. This is the doctor’s remarkable deliverance: “It is said that the spiritistic movement in becoming scientific has struck a side-track and has ceased to be religious. Yes, but what if this side-track proves to be the main road, and that main road proves to be Christianity newly interpreted through the new intellectual light which is thereby revealed? What if Crookes and Lodge and Wallace and James and Hyslop should succeed in placing a scientific foundation under psychic communications, and these communications should place a scientific foundation under a future existence and make SCIENTIFICALLY possible and believable the birth and resurrection of Christ? Would not that be religious?” “And what if psychic research is the scientific unfolding of God’s plan in these later days when criticism is making it harder and still harder to believe testimony that has come down to us through ages of darkness?” “Put a scientific certainty under faith in the continuity of life, then it is easy to believe that the church will no longer hobble along on crutches, hobble even tho the crutches be of gold; but that it will fly as in the Pentecostal days. At every step of progress there is need not only of courage and of a lofty idealism, but also of common sense, of sanity—never more needed than to-day.” Mr. Fremont Rider, a popular writer on spiritualistic and other occult phenomena, recently affirmed: “*In fact there are now in all the world but one or two scientists of the first rank who deny the actual probability of the future life; while a large proportion8claim that this life has been actually proved by the occurring phenomena of Spiritualism.*” (Italics Mr. Rider’s.) Mr. Gustavus Myers, in an essay entitled “Beyond the Borderline of Life,” says in closing: “One thing is clear, the mass of learned scientists are united in asserting that our souls or spirits do survive. Furthermore, there is now the very closest connection between religion in its real sense, that is, stripped of its formulas and dogmas, and these truths disclosed by scientific investigation.” Dr. M. J. Savage, the noted Unitarian scholar and writer, tells us that he is constantly receiving letters from multiplied thousands of persons, in the churches and out of them, eagerly inquiring whether psychical research has yet fully succeeded in proving the dogma of human immortality. While Dr. Savage is not quite willing yet to commit himself as to “spirit identity,” he admits that he is strongly prepossessed with the belief that the possibility of communicating with the dead (!) has been practically proved. We see, then, that the masses of the people are turning to the darkness of Spiritualism for light—going to empty cisterns for the Water of Life. How long will it be before the “spirits of devils” will have succeeded in deceiving “them that dwell on the earth”? Here let us revert to the divinely given assurance that “there is no work, nor device, nor KNOWLEDGE, nor WISDOM, in the grave whither THOU goest.” Eccl. 9:10. Dear reader, can God be mistaken? Is it not possible, yea, certain, that Professors Wallace, Lodge, Crookes, Myers, Hodgson, and Messrs. Stead, Flammarion, Sardou, and others, have been deceived? Whose testimony do you accept? These great thinkers, as well as millions of the common people, have come to believe in the survival of consciousness after death, in the very face of the fact that man’s Creator declares that when a man dies and returns to the earth, “in that very day his THOUGHTS PERISH.” Ps. 146:3, 4. Either God has spoken truth, or He has not. If He has not, He can not be God. But we all believe and know that God is. Hence it follows that what He says or has said is the truth. God is truth. The devil “is a liar and the father thereof,” said Christ. “He that hath the Son hath life: but he that hath not the Son of God, hath not life.” 1 John 5:12. Conversely, Spiritualism declares that we have life, even immortal life, whether we have the Son of God or not. Both can not be true. Our Lord commanded, “Have faith in God.” Whom shall we obey? Whom shall we serve?