The Spirit World and a Future Life
By Geo. W. Rine
VII. Evidence of the Sinister Origin of Spiritualistic Phenomena
The Rev. Dr. J. G. Raupert, of London, after many years of painstaking, scientific research in the world of Spiritualism, asserts: “To me it would be impossible to think of the dead as the originators of these mysterious communications, and of the moral and intellectual confusion and chaos necessarily resulting from them.” No psychical researcher has delved more deeply than has Dr. Raupert. There is no phase of Spiritualism to which he has not given the most careful attention. He is an acknowledged adept in the difficult art of photographing spirit apparitions. He has talked for hours with unseen intelligences in a way that fully persuaded him of their independent individuality; he has witnessed all of the marvelous things known to spiritualistic seances; yet, despite all this experience, he believes that, so far from being produced by the discarnate spirits of the good who have departed this life, everything that he has seen and studied can be traced directly to a distinctly evil influence. He is fully convinced, as are hundreds of the world’s greatest thinkers, that the manifestations which we know as psychical phenomena, are produced by absolutely independent intelligences, and not by the sensitive, or medium. “To me,” he says, “it seems far more reasonable to believe that altho we may have independent intelligences operating, they are not necessarily ‘spirits’ of the dead.” “Spirits” Contradict One Another
Dr. Isaac K. Funk declares that the greatest hindrance to accepting the identity hypothesis is the crass contradiction that characterizes the “messages.” He recounts this experience: “Through one of the best mediums I ever met I was told that the spirit of Theodore Parker wished me to do a certain thing. This was explicit. Three days later, I was with another medium, whom I believed and still believe to be honest. Theodore Parker reported himself as present, but denied all knowledge of the previous interview, saying that he was not there and had said nothing of the kind. Since that time I have had Theodore Parker reported as present at a dozen seances through different mediums, and have not yet been able to have him recognize any previous interview that I have had with him. “This is not exceptional, but is typical of a multitude of experiences. One explanation of this lack of harmony is that these spirits are not what they claim to be.” Dr. Funk says further: “Note this lack of harmony. Through one medium of remarkable power, and, to my mind, unqualified honesty, a spirit described to me with great particularity his trip to the planet Mars; he described the inhabitants, their civilization as further advanced than ours, the fauna, the flora — all this from personal observation. Sometime afterward through another medium equally creditable, another spirit told me of his trip to Mars, telling me that he found it wholly uninhabited and practically destitute of animal and vegetable life. I informed this latter intelligence of what the other spirit had assured me he had found true in his trip to that ruddy planet. His reply was: ‘I can not help what he said. I am telling you what I know.’ “Some spirits assure me that there are animals and flowers and trees galore on the spirit plateaus connected with the earth; others tell me there are not. Some tell me they have there hospitals and schools and churches; others the reverse. Some tell me that no one in the spirit realm believes in what we call God; others that He is preached and believed in far more there than here.” The noted Spiritualist, Dr. J. M. Peebles, wrote Dr. Funk that such contradictions were not uncommon experiences. He gave Dr. Funk an instance of a prominent Spiritualist who had consulted thirty mediums upon the subject of identifying and communicating with a relative of his in the spirit world. “In these communications,” he said, “there were twenty-seven contradictions and no positive proof that identified his brother.” It is undeniably true that even those “spirits” that pose as the highest of spirit intelligences, differ so hopelessly in all their assertions, including their descriptions of conditions existing in the next world, that it is absolutely impossible to harmonize them. In short, their several systems not only show nothing approaching unity, but are utterly destructive of each other. In Budapest and Paris they teach the doctrine of reincarnation; in England and the United States they deny it. Unprejudiced investigators tell us that some “controls” teach what is practically the orthodox view of heaven and hell, while the learned “spirits,” writing through the hand of Stainton Moses, promulgate teachings in which all the tenets of orthodox Christianity are explained away. It is certain, then, that all these spirits can not be right. It must be that some of them are teaching lies under the guise of lofty truths. How, therefore, can we believe any of them? The famous psychical investigator, Dr. V. Maxwell of Paris, attests “that there is a formal, absolute, and irreconcilable contradiction between Anglo-Saxon and Continental ghosts.” Dr. Van Eeden, the noted Dutch scholar, gives a glaring illustration of “spirit” mendacity. He said recently: “During several sittings I believed that the question of identity had been solved — that I was really in communication with a friend who had been dead for sixteen years. When I left the medium I felt that the evidence was practically complete. But when I returned to Holland I discovered that there were inexplicable errors. If I were really holding intercourse with the deceased he could never have made such errors as I found in my notes. And what was noteworthy was that these errors were always in the details that I did not myself know, and which I was not able to correct at the time.” Dr. Van Eeden says that he satisfied himself that the intelligence could not have been that of the medium. Neither could the information have come from his own mind. The only possible conclusion left, he declares, is that it was an independent intelligence “that was personating this departed friend.” The exposure of the “control” was owing to the fact that Dr. Van Eeden demanded information that he himself did not then know. As a result, most of that information turned out to be false when subsequently investigated. The Practise of Spiritualism Tends to Disrupt Family Ties
In one of his popular lectures, Mr. G. G. Hubbell said, in respect to the trend of spiritualistic practise, that from its inception it was surrounded by such a vast mass of fraud, credulity, and immorality that it fell into utter disrepute from which it has been powerless to emerge. The movement6tended unfailingly to introduce discord into every family that tampered with it. It arrays husband against wife in the divorce court, and produced all manner of domestic infelicities and sexual irregularities. “This,” says Mr. Hubbell, “is a strange result of a belief which teaches that we are surrounded by the spirits of our beloved dead who see all we do.” Can not Mr. Hubbell see that it is not at all strange? for, Spiritualism, teaching what he says it does, teaches lies, since the inspired word categorically declares that when a man dies “in that very day HIS THOUGHTS PERISH.” Ps. 146: 3, 4. Can anything good come out of a system of lies? Dr. J. G. Raupert testifies similarly, thus: “Personally, I have known hundreds of cases in which homes have been wrecked and lives ruined from paying too much attention to spiritualistic things, and that is the reason why I have been sent to America — that I might warn the people of the dangers they are running in allowing themselves to be carried away by a force of which we know little, and, even in that little, nothing good.” Undermines Faith in the Scriptures
Dr. I. K. Funk gives the following as a sample of many speeches by “spirits” that he has heard in the seance room: “O ye foolish men, when will ye learn that spirits are not infallible and that mediums are not infallible and that Bibles of the earth are not infallible? Your Bible was not given to you as an infallible guide to save you from thinking out these things, but only to serve as hints and suggestions as do the teachings of professors in schools. No man is free from working out his own salvation, intellectual or moral or spiritual. Your Bible has been taken from the greatest and best utterances of the men who lived nearest the plane of God and holy angels; but THINK NOT THAT THESE ARE UNERRING. . . . There is that within us that responds to truth as the soul of the musician recognizes an oratorio of Handel.” Is it thinkable that the spirits of the righteous dead — if such spirits existed — would promulgate teachings so utterly subversive of the divine inspiration of the Christian Scriptures, by which alone they had been led to the only Source of righteousness, the Lord Jesus Christ? Leads to Demon Worship and Tragic Death
Every one who persists in communing with the dark and terrible forces that swarm in the realm of Spiritualism will ultimately become hopelessly enslaved to those malignant powers. Already there are thousands in Europe and America who are irreclaimably enthralled by the powers of death. They find themselves irresistibly drawn down into the terrors and blackness of everlasting death. This collaboration with the diabolic powers of the unseen world our ancestors rightly called magic. To-day, as always, it is a perilous practise — the most perfidious psychic intoxicant. Not long ago Mr. Vance Thompson made an extended study of these dark exploits of modern magic — of Spiritualism run to seed. He confined his observations mostly to Paris. He tells us that he has been able to lift but a corner of the veil that hides the necromantic life of modern Paris. Yet he succeeded in getting a very close view of the stormy and mystic adventures in this city of latter-day sorcery. He has seen men die and men go mad in their attempts to explore the land beyond the visible frontier — that weird and misty land where demonic forces hold devouring sway. These dark forces, which science now recognizes but does not name, exercise resistless attraction for a certain class of human minds. “In scores of temples,” asserts Mr. Thompson, “they are worshiped under different names.” There is a little temple in the city of Bruges where the followers of Lucifer regularly gather to observe ghastly rites. Not far from the Pantheon in Paris there is an altar to Pandaemon. Very naturally, the rites wherewith Lucifer is worshiped are veiled in much mystery. Mr. Thompson visited one of the “chapels;” it was in the street named Rochechomart. The Black Mass (which Mr. T. refuses to describe) was celebrated. Of course it was on Friday, at three o’clock. Over the altar was a winged figure of Lucifer, amid flames; he trampled under foot a crocodile, a symbol of the church. “As of old, Satan is worshiped; every Friday the Luciferians gather.” Many of these Satanists are men prominent in the learned professions — in the world of science and of literature. The veterans among these twentieth century worshipers of devils enter at midnight into the catacombs, where amid skulls and bones, with orgies unmentionable, they worship the spirit of evil, calling upon Lucifer and Beelzebub and Baphomet and Ashtaroth and Moloch, with hysterical cries and wailings. It is not at all strange that Mr. Thompson should regard this recrudescence of the worship of the fallen angels as “the most remarkable manifestation of modern Spiritualism.” Yes, Paris, the city of fashion and gaiety, of skepticism and lechery, is dotted over with spiritualistic (Luciferian) temples. We must not forget that Spiritualism insistently avows itself to be a religion. And in the very nature of things, every religion that does not derive its authority from Jehovah through Jesus Christ, must be, in its last analysis, a religion of the devil. Note the testimony of the Spirit of truth to this effect: “But I say, that the things which the Gentiles [heathen] sacrifice, they sacrifice to devils, and not to God: and I would not that ye should have fellowship with devils.” 1 Cor. 10:20. Again, the same infallible witness referring to the apostasy of the Israelites to the worship of heathen gods, says: “Yea, they sacrificed their sons and their daughters unto devils, . . . whom they sacrificed unto the idols of Canaan.” Ps. 106:37, 38. In this divine testimony it is logically demonstrated that to sacrifice to idols or false gods is to sacrifice to devils; to worship idols is to worship devils. The devil being the author of sin, is the author of death; for death is the wages (fruition) of sin. Compare Rom. 6:23 with Heb. 2:14. How natural, yea, necessary, that all false worship, which is devil worship, should inevitably end in death. This is precisely what has happened and is happening in all the great cities of Christendom, the hotbeds of Spiritualism. Mr. Vance Thompson asserts that in Paris the famous scholar, M. de Guaita, lost his reason and ultimately his life in his devotion to the invisible powers of darkness. He reached the conviction that his astral body (soul) was detachable, as the occultists say: that is, his soul possessed the power of leaving his body, without breaking entirely the “fluidic cord” that attached it to the body. “This dangerous practise,” says Mr. Thompson, “led de Guaita to madness and death; it led the poet Dubus to madness and death; and, at one time, Laurent Tailhade was cared for in a madhouse.” M. de Guaita had married the popular actress, Susanne Gay, whom he led with him into the vertigo of sorcery and final death. De Guaita died as the result of sending his soul out to fight distant enemies, as he believed. Just before he expired he declared, “O, I had made my pact [contract] with the people across the frontier!” By this he meant that he had mortgaged his life to the powers (devils) “across the frontier.” And did they not foreclose the mortgage? Again, it is a matter of common knowledge, not only in France, but in all Europe, that the eminent scientist, M. Charcot, and the eminent author, Irving Bishop, actually went so far in their intercourse with the “wicked spirits in high places” that they laid down their lives in sacrifice to those demon spirits. Many others have traveled and are traveling the same miry spiritualistic road to black despair, ruin, and death. It would be easy to name scores of the votaries of Spiritualism (diabolism) who have gone down, down, down into the blackness of the regions of death forever. Lack of space precludes further illustrations of the deadly dangers of paying court to the gods of Spiritualism — the lords of death and hell.