THEY DENY THE BIBLE by Joseph Harvey Waggoner

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Jul 28, 1874

THEY DENY THE BIBLE

By Joseph Harvey Waggoner

Modern Spiritualism.—No. 2.

In Isa. 8:19, 20, are the following words: “And when they shall say unto you, Seek unto them that have familiar spirits, and unto wizards that peep and that mutter; should not a people seek unto their God? for the living to the dead? To the law and to the testimony; if they speak not according to this word, it is because there is no light in them.”

We think the present work of spiritualism is here pointed out. Peeping and muttering well characterize the discordant utterances of spirit mediums. But as it will be our first object to show that they speak not according to the word of God, and that there is no light in them, we quote the following words of Paul in 1 Tim. 4:1: “Now the Spirit speaketh expressly that in the latter times some shall depart from the faith, giving heed to seducing spirits, and doctrines of devils.”

As a person cannot depart from a place at which he has never been, so one cannot depart from a faith which he never held. This would lead us to expect just what we now see, many professed, religious teachers turning to the advocacy of spiritualism. In the early days of spiritualism a large part of its public teachers were ministers of various religious denominations. Its friends among professors of religion cannot now be enumerated. This scripture is literally fulfilled.

And they shall give heed to seducing spirits. This brings us to notice the claim continually set up that they are good spirits, doing good, &c. In order to seduce, they must have the appearance and profession of goodness. Seductive, says Webster, is “tending to lead astray; apt to mislead by flattering appearances.” Flattery is the seducer’s strong hold; and this is a characteristic of the teachings of the spirits.

And this is the real secret of the success of spiritualism. Man is constituted to receive and enjoy the influence of God’s Spirit, and by sin his mind is so blinded, and his powers perverted, that it is absolutely necessary for him to receive its aid to guide him through the journey of life. This the Bible offers to him only on condition that he shall be humble, cross-bearing, and self-denying. On the contrary, while spiritualism professes to supply the same wants, it deludes by flattery, fills the heart with pride, and grants such a license of life as is congenial to the carnal mind. Thus again, in this particular, we find a remarkable fulfillment of the prophecy.

A bare statement of their teachings is sufficient to show that they contain the “doctrines of devils.” We will enumerate some of their positions with a few evidences on the several points.

THEY DENY THE BIBLE.

A. J. Davis says that nature is “the true and only Bible.”

Dr. Weisse read a lengthy paper before the “investigating class” of New York, to prove that the Bible is a mere transcript of heathen fables, and remarked:—

“If I am wrong in my views of the Bible, I should like to know it, for the spirits and mediums do not contradict me.”

Dr. Hare exalts spiritualism above the Bible, because the former teaches the immortality of the soul, and the latter does not; he says:—

“The Old Testament does not impart a knowledge of immortality, without which religion were worthless. The notions derived from the gospel are vague, disgusting, inaccurate, and difficult to believe.” Spir. Sci. Dem., p. 209.

Again he says, page 138:—

“The Bible of the spiritualist is the book of nature—the only one which by inward and outward evidence can be ascribed to divine authorship.”

Deacon John Norton (a spirit), through Mrs. Conant, medium, says:—

“I can assure my friends on earth it is very hard for me to give up believing in the Bible. . . .”

“The Christian would say, you must not alter one word of that book. I once believed thus, and I do not blame the people of your day for doing so; for the tide is mighty, and the multitude is being borne that way. A few have stemmed the torrent, and are struggling against wind and water. When a majority of the souls shall perceive the new light [spiritualism], the tide will flow the other way [against the Bible].”

Of this we have no doubt. We think “the spirits” are laboring to this end.

But their denial of the Bible is now so well known that it seems needless to multiply proofs. The reader may be interested to know that, as they are fruitful of substitutes for Bible truth, so have the spirits attempted to produce in form a substitute for the Bible. A few extracts from their first chapter of Genesis are here copied. It was given, professedly, by an exalted spirit, under the title of “Disclosures from the Interior.”

“1. In the beginning God, the Life in God, the Lord in God, the Holy Procedure, inhabited the dome, which, burning in magnificence primeval, and revolving in prismatic and undulatory spiral, appeared, and was the pavilion of the spirit; in glory inexhaustible and inconceivable, in movement spherical, unfolded in harmonious procedure disclosive.”

“5. And God said, Let there be space! and the firmament was separated from the emanation, and the firmament, unmoved, appeared, and the emanation unfolded within the procedure. And the firmament is manifest infinitude, and the emanation separated, is encompassed space.”

“11. And God made two great lights to rule the zodiac, and to be for creative disclosure, disclosive manifestation, manifest glory, glorious radiation, interpenetrative aggregation; and thence vortices, vortical suns, suns of vortices, solarisms, vortical planetariums, planets, floral universes, universal paradises, paradisiacal heavens, heavens of spiritual universes, celestial heavens, seraphic habitations, seraphimal universes, cities of heavenly seraphima, and final consociative universal intelligence in unity of innumerable individuality, in trinity of unfolding universes, adoring and ascending in beatification unto eternal life.”

Such a piece of nonsense—such a stringing together of words without meaning, we venture to say, cannot be found beyond the limits of spiritualism. And it is truly strange that any one that has capacity to pronounce these meaningless phrases should think it an improvement on the Holy Scriptures!

THEY DENY GOD.

To destroy all just and true ideas of God is to effectually destroy his worship, and to dishonor him. This is Satan’s great aim, and the teachings of spiritualism in this respect fully prove its satanic origin. In the Banner of Light, Feb. 3, 1866, the “controlling spirit, through Mrs. Conant, medium, said:—

“It should be understood that there are as many Gods as there are minds needing Gods to worship; not only one, two, or three, but many. . . . The noble forest trees, sun, moon, and stars, all things are Gods to you, for they minister unto the needs of your soul. It is vain to suppose you can all bow down to, and truly serve, one God.”

By the same medium, and in the same paper of Dec. 2, 1865, it was said:—

“We understand God to be life, simply life; that is everywhere, no more in one place than in another.”

Spiritualists talk a great deal about the love and goodness of God, but when we examine their teachings, we find that they all tend to pantheism or atheism. Those who are most intimately acquainted with them, having been long connected with them, say that such is their tendency.

Joel Tiffany, a spiritualist lecturer and publisher, in his “Monthly” of June, 1858, said:—

“In an article entitled ‘Spiritualism,’ published in the December number of the Monthly, among other faults and errors, I charged that its influence had tended to create a kind of moral and religious atheism—that these modern developments had not awakened religious aspirations in the minds of those who had been the subjects of them. To this charge many took exceptions, as being too severe. I have carefully investigated its truth since that time, and find the charge to be just. My experience has been, go among spiritualists where you will, and, as a general thing, they have no faith in a living, conscious, intelligent deity; possessed of love, volition, affection, &c., as an object of religious aspiration and worship. They feel no demand for worship themselves, and they denounce and ridicule its exercise in others. On an examination, both of their theoretical and practical faith in God, you will find that it amounts to nothing but an indefinite and incoherent pantheism.”

Dr. Randolph, after eight years experience as a spiritual medium and lecturer, said:—

“Harmonialism robs God of personality; converts him into a rarified gas many million times finer than electricity! according to Davis, and elevates Reason to the throne of the Universe by defying human intellect. God, Nature, Love, Panthea, Rarified Gas, Sublimated Oxygen, and Ether, are by this lexicon convertible terms and essences.”

The “Healing of the Nations,” a standard and popular work, published by N. P. Tallmadge, says:—

“If God is one, all must be fractional parts of him, and he alone must be all.”

Woodman’s Reply to Dwight says:—

“I believe in one God, and that God exists in one person; that the universe is filled with an immense ocean of life or spirit, which is the body of God.”

A. J. Davis, in his “Pantheon of Progress,” says:—

“But it is the central principle, the Idea of Ann Lee, for which we now reverently inquire. That principle, in brief, is this: God is Dual—‘He and She’—Father and Mother! Hindu teachers obtained a golden glimpse of this impersonal truth. Forming and destroying principles, male and female energies and laws, were perceived and taught by the early inhabitants. But not one person from God Brahma to President Buchanan, has done what Ann Lee did for this world-revolutionizing Idea. She centrified it in a thousand forms of expression. It took wings in her spirit. Better than the Virgin Mary’s saintly position in the ethical temple, is the simple announcement that God is as much woman as man, a oneness composed of two individual equal halves, Love and Wisdom, absolute and balanced eternally.”—Great Harmonia, Vol. V., p. 196.

In the same work is “the author’s vision of Paul’s teachings,” in which is the following:—

“Yesterday I thought, with Paul, that God was hidden from me except through the medium of a particular ‘Jesus,’ and all at once I beheld immeasurable quantities of worthlessness in every direction. Of the swarming millions that had lived, are now on earth, and will be, only a poor group here and there, felt any faith adequate to the imperative demand. Death and destruction, like the demons of universal despair, went arm-in-arm into every part of the world. Gloom and dimmed glory filled the whole land with suffocating clouds. Amid all I tried to behold the great mercy and wisdom of ‘Our Father’—to be thankful for love I did not behold, and for knowledge I did not possess. Presently as I walked the fields, the curtain was lifted mountain-high. ‘Incarnation’ of an Infinite Father was nowhere particular. His manifestations in material organizations, and in combinations were like himself impersonal. The sun shone with a thousand-fold more splendor. The wave of barbarism had rolled away. My whole spirit breathed from the roots of the superanimal consciousness. Like a rose I felt glad in the sunlight, and my thoughts swept like uncaged birds through the fragrant air. Mysterious beauty held me as by a psychological spell. Every tree from top to germ was a divine image; it was just so much true incarnation of the Infinite Duality. Animals, insects, creeping things, no longer offended and detracted from my soul’s dignity and happiness. My fellow-men all were unfallen demi-gods. I beheld their spiritual interiority, their susceptibility to the common divinity.”—pp. 129, 130.

It is difficult to tell whether the “interiorness” of this and of the majority of spiritualistic writings is deism, pantheism, or atheism. They are rather a strange mixture of all together.

The Scriptures reveal God as a supreme ruler and judge. The attributes of justice and character of judge are entirely denied to God by spiritualists. The spirit of Thomas Paine, according to “Rev. C. Hammond, medium,” was told in the spheres:—

“Your own minds are white thrones. As you are now pure you can judge. But no mind will judge you. All judgment is with you. Each mind will judge itself, and not another. The judgment will be pure, because purity resides in you. The judgment will be right, because it is the judgment of self. . . . The throne is within you. On that white throne determine your works. It is your inalienable prerogative. It belongs to no one else.”

In the Banner of Light of July 23, 1864, the controlling spirit gives the following answers:—

“Q. Are all human beings parts of one great spiritual being?”

“A. Yes, certainly.”

“Q. From whence does the Infinite Spirit derive its principles of life?”

“A. You are constantly giving to all things, and receiving from all things. This, then, proves that God, or the Great Infinite Spirit, has as much need of you as you have need of him.”

Yet Dr. Hare praises spiritualism because it gives us exalted views of God!

Again in the same paper of a later date, same medium, is the following:—

“Q. Do you know of any such spirit as a person we call the devil?”

“A. We certainly do. And yet this same devil is our God, our Father.”

This is surely an honest confession. See John 8:44. So it was not without meaning that the spiritualist lecturers in Boston opened their meeting with a prayer to the devil!

Extracts of this kind might be multiplied to almost any extent, but we tire in the recital. Candid reader, are we not right in saying that this system is degrading? Under its influence multitudes are relapsing into the grossest heathenism, even to worshiping the devil! and that openly and confessedly. Sun, moon, stars, trees, self, everything, is worshiped but the true and living God. The words of inspiration are being fearfully fulfilled; truth is abhorred, and “doctrines of devils” are received with greediness.

J. H. Waggoner.