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The necessity for men to turn their thoughts to
spiritual things
October 16, 1916
I am here, St. Luke.
I desire to write my promised message, and if you feel that you can
receive it, I will try to write. I desire to declare certain truths with
reference to the necessity for men turning their thoughts to things
spiritual and letting the material things of life consume less of their
time and thoughts.
In the first place, what is eternal is of more importance than what is
temporal and has an existence for a short time only, even though these
things of time are necessary to sustain and preserve man while living
his life on earth. I would not be understood correctly as implying that
these material things are not necessary and important for man to acquire
and use to the best possible advantage. They are a necessity to his
earth existence, and it is not only a privilege but a duty for man to
make the best possible use of these material gifts and to place himself
in that condition that will enable him to enjoy to the utmost these
things that have been provided for his material comfort and happiness.
Further, it is his duty to bend his efforts to develop the use and
application of these things so that the greatest possible benefit and
utility may be derived from the proper use of them.
To do this, I understand that man has to give a portion of his thoughts
and devote a part of his time to their consideration and to the means
and methods by which the best results may be brought about. In doing
this, man is not disobedient to God’s laws or to the requirements that
the laws of his own being call for. The discoveries of the inventors are
desirable, and men’s work in making these discoveries is commendable and
so are efforts of the merchant and mechanic and financiers to succeed in
their different undertakings and as a result accumulate money and use it
for their comfort and sustenance.
But these things, or the thoughts and efforts used to accomplish these
results, do not help the soul development or even the development of the
spiritual side of man’s nature. If man devotes himself for the greater
number of his hours of living to material pursuits, when he comes to lay
his burdens down and pass into the land of spirits he will find that he
is very poor indeed because the eternal part of his being has little
development, and his soul is fitted for a place where those who have
laid up their riches on earth must go.
So attractive is this accumulation of money and the gaining of fame or
position to man that when once engaged in, and especially when
accompanied with what he calls success, he naturally devotes his whole
waking time and thoughts to these efforts. As a consequence, very little
of this short time on earth is given to thoughts of and striving for
things of the higher kind.
If mortals, and especially those who are so
arduously and constantly engaged in the effort to win the success that I
have just mentioned, could only see and know the condition of those who
when on earth were engaged in similar pursuits with like aspirations and
who are now in the spirit world, they would realize the utter futility
of such efforts and the great soul-killing harm that the so-called
success on earth has brought to these spirits.
While we may assume that many of these spirits did not do affirmative
wrong or injury in their work and did not enter into the condition to
which I refer because of any such wrong or injury, yet, they are in a
stagnated and shriveled condition of soul and spiritual qualities. This
is because when in their earnest pursuits of these material things they
neglected the development of their souls or the cultivation of their
spiritual qualities. Their sin was that of omission, and it is a sure
one in its results and the more common one among men who think too much
of material things or think not at all or are indifferent to everything
and satisfied to live in an atmosphere or state of vegetating
contentment.
The law operates the same upon the man who neglects his spiritual nature
because of his absorption in the things material as upon the man who is
guilty of such neglect because of indifference or contentment with the
pleasures that these material things give him. In both cases the results
are the same - the soul remains stagnant and the spiritual qualities lie
dormant; the man of such neglect will find his place in the spirit world
to be one of darkness and suffering.
Life is short and time is fleeting, even though a man may live his
allotted time of three score and ten years, and there is no place in all
of God’s universe where it is as important that man should start on his
way to spiritual progress as in the earth life. There, the soul should
have its awakening and be fed with thoughts and strivings for things
spiritual. When the start is thus made on earth, it is so much easier
for the continuous progress of the soul in the spirit world, If not, the
awakening may be delayed for years, and the progress that follows
generally is very slow.
So, I say let men not devote so much of their time to those things that
are of time only while they remain in the world of time until the mortal
becomes a spirit. Thoughts are things and when applied to man’s
spiritual development they are things of the most vital importance. A
little thought may start a dormant soul in hardly a living state to grow
and increase into a thing of beauty and harmony. As it has been said,
“Where your treasures are, there will your heart be also.”
So with all my love, I will say goodnight.
Your brother in Christ,
Luke
What is the fact in reference to the authenticity of
the Bible
March 12, 1917
I am here, Luke of the New Testament.
I desire tonight to write on the subject of what
is the fact with reference to the authenticity
of the Bible. I was with you at the lecture of
the preacher on this subject, and I was surprised
that he could announce with such apparent confidence
that the Bible is the authentic word of God actually
written by the men whose names appear therein as
the writers of the same. The fact that he traced
back the existence of certain manuscripts and
versions to a hundred and fifty years subsequent
to the time of the teachings of Jesus does not
establish the truth of his declaration. By such
establishment, does not guarantee the authenticity
of the Bible or the genuineness of the manuscripts
as they now exist, or that they contain the real
writings of the Apostles or of those persons who
are supposed to be the writers of the same from
the fact that their names are associated with
these manuscripts.
Neither is it true that John’s life was prolonged to the end of the
first century in order that he might write the declarations of the
eternal truths as declared by Jesus. John did not live until that time,
and his writings were not preserved as he had formulated them, nor were
the results of his declarations transmitted truthfully as claimed by
those who teach the inviolability of the Scriptures.
I was a writer upon these sacred subjects, and as I have told you
before, I wrote a document that was called the “Acts of the Apostles”
and left a number of copies of my writings when I died. Such compilation
was merely a history of what I had heard from those who had lived with
and heard the teachings of Jesus and of their efforts to circulate and
teach his doctrines after his death. I also had the benefit of some
writings of the disciples about Jesus, but such writings were very few,
for these disciples and followers of Jesus did not commence to place in
the form of manuscript his teachings or the experience of his life until
a longtime after he had left the earth. They expected his speedy return
when he would become their king and legislator, and, hence, they saw no
occasion or necessity for preserving in the form of writings the truths
in which he had instructed them.
I know that after my own death the writings that I had left were not
preserved intact, and that many things that I had incorporated therein
were left out and ignored in the numerous copying and recopying of my
manuscripts. Many things that I did not write and that were not in
accord with the truth were inserted by these various successive copyists
in their work of reproduction. Many of the things that were omitted and
were of vital importance to the truth of things spiritual as they had been
declared by the disciples as containing the truths that Jesus had
taught.
During the period, the short period as the lecturer named between the
earliest writings of the fathers of the Church and the times of the
actual occurrences of the things that these writings are supposed to
relate and correctly describe, there were many changes made in the
writings that I had left, as well as in those left by the other original
writers. Even in the epistles of Paul, which these theologians and Bible
students claim have more authenticity and greater certainty than the
gospels or other epistles of the Bible, many changes were made between
the time of their writings and the time of the execution of the
manuscripts or of the sermons by the fathers of the early church.
Within that one hundred and fifty years the truths of the spiritual
teachings of the Master had become, to a more or less extent, lost to
the consciousness and knowledge of those who attempted to reproduce the
original writings. These men had become less spiritual, and their
thoughts and efforts had become more centered in building up the Church
as an establishment than in attempting to develop and teach and preserve
his great spiritual truths. The moral precepts became the dominating
objects of their writings and teachings. They were more easily
comprehended by them than were the precepts that taught the way to the
development of their souls and to a knowledge of the will of God. The
mission of Jesus was as a way-shower and savior of souls rather than as
a Messiah to establish his kingdom on earth.
No, I declare with authority that the authenticity of the Bible cannot
be established as the word of God, for in very many particulars it is
not but, on the contrary, contains many assertions that are not truths
and are diametrically opposed to God’s truths, and to Jesus’ teachings
of the truth.
The Bible has changed and perverted the whole plan of God for the
salvation of man and has substituted a plan that arose from the limited
wisdom of those who attempted to convince men that they had a knowledge
of God and of the designs for their creation and destiny. They were
influenced very largely in this particular by their knowledge of and
belief in the teachings of the Jewish church and the history of the
Jewish race in its dealings with God, as they supposed, and in the
teachings of the Scribes and Pharisees. This fact was conspicuously
shown by these writers attempting to substitute Jesus in their plan of
salvation in the place of the animals of sacrifice in the Jewish plan of
salvation.
Now, in order for the God of the Jews to be appeased
and satisfactorily worshipped, blood and more blood
was demanded, so the God that Jesus declared was
the God of all the peoples of the earth, in order
to be satisfactorily worshipped, demanded the blood
of his dearly beloved son. Among these writings
of the Bible there are many things declared to
be truths and embodied as the actual words of God
that are contradictory and unexplainable, and
which, if they were the words of God or even the
teachings of Jesus, would contain no contradiction
or admit of any constructions that were not consistent
with each other.
As the additions, emasculations, and interpretations were made in the
original writings of those who declared the truths as they had heard
them from the Master, the decreasing want of comprehension of spiritual
matters and the growing wisdom of their own finite intellects caused
them to conceive of a plan on the part of God for man’s salvation. As
the recopying continued, the thoughts of those who copied, or who
dictated the same, became more centered on this plan. These copies were
gathered together and considered, and efforts were made to have some
agreement in the declaration of this plan. As the new copies were made,
they were constructed with the view of showing forth this agreement.
It must not be supposed that the copies from the manuscripts that are
the basis of the Bible were executed and preserved in a manner that
caused them to be isolated one from the other, and that they were not
all known to the persons who copied or caused the copying of the
writings from which the manuscripts were made, for that would not be
true. These, then, may be called the basic copies, and they were in
circulation at the time the Christian fathers wrote, and they had access
to them, quoted from them, and helped to give them the interpretations
that now prevail in the churches with the additional interpretations
since those days.
Men now know that among these Christian fathers were bitter disputes as
to what was a part of the word and as to what should be accepted and
what rejected among these writings antedating the manuscripts that form
the basis of the Bible. Many manuscripts purporting to be the word of
God were rejected as such for the reason that they could not have been
the records of God’s word, because they did not agree with what the
bishops of the Church in their human knowledge and reason accepted as
what God’s word should be. Even these bishops disagreed and differed,
just as the human minds and reason disagree with one another.
Then I say the lecturer did not prove the authenticity of the Bible as
being the word of God. He did not go down the “stream of time”, as he
called it, far enough to discover the existence of any authenticity,
and, that being so, his argument of proof is just as weak as if he had
started from the time of the printed Bibles, when their contents were
substantially the same, but not being the originals, the similarity
proves nothing. What I have said with reference to my own writings,
applies to the writings of all the others. The Bible does not contain
their writings as they wrote and left them for mankind.
The Bible contains many truths and enough to enable man to reach the
kingdom of heaven, provided they are correctly understood and applied.
There are, however, so many things taught therein as truths that are
just the opposite of truth that makes it difficult for men to discern
and apply the truth and comprehend the will of God with respect to men
and the destinies that must be theirs as they follow and obey that will
or not.
I will not write more now as you are tired, but I will soon come and
write a message on another subject that I have been desiring to write
for some time.
With my love and blessings.
Your brother in Christ,
Luke
Why Spiritualism as now taught does not
satisfy the soul's longings
December 5, 1915
I am here, Luke.
I want to write a few lines on the subject about which you and your
friend (Dr. Stone) were talking, and that is as to whether Spiritualism,
as now understood and taught, supplies what satisfies the souls of men
in their longings for happiness, peace and contentment.
I have heard, from the time of my first entrance into the spirit life, a
great many preachers and teachers of Spiritualism, both in recent years
and all along the ages. Spiritualism is not a new
thing, having its origin or belief in the recent years that followed the
manifestations in America. Through the ages, spirits have manifested
themselves to mortals in one form or another, and men have believed in
Spiritualism and discussed it.
Of course, in former times when the churches had the great power that
enabled them to dictate the beliefs of men, Spiritualism was not so
openly taught or discussed as in these latter years. Nevertheless, it
has always, during the time that I have named, been known to men. Though
its teachings have not gone far beyond the phenomena that demonstrated
to its believers the continuity of life and the communication of
spirits. The higher things of the soul’s development and the kingdom of
heaven, as you have been instructed, were never thought of, or, at
least, never taught or believed in. Only the two facts of which I have
spoken of were discussed and accepted. Even today, the scientific men
who are investigating it deal only with the phenomena and are satisfied
with proof that man never dies.
At no time has the existence of the divine love or the kingdom of God
been sought or taught by the teachers of Spiritualism. In fact, such
things could not have been taught, for they have not been known. God has
never been anything more to the spiritualist than some indefinable
abstract force whose existence is not of sufficient to make God anything
more than a mere principle, as some say. The laws governing all nature
are the only things that men look to for their ideas of right and wrong
and the governing of their conduct in life.
The spiritualists speak of the love of man for one another, the
brotherhood of man, the cultivation of the mind, and the moral
qualities, but they admit to no outside help other than from some
departed friend who may not be at all competent to help. Such help is
only what one can give to another, and even when the help of what is
called the “higher spirits” is spoken of it involves no different
quality of help. I know that spirits do help mortals and also harm
mortals, and all such help, according to the ideas of the spiritualists,
is based upon what they suppose these spirits possess in the way of
superior intellectual acquirements or moral qualities.
The soul of man is that part of him that is made in the image of God,
although unconsciously it may be longing for what will actually make
such image become substance, with its resultant happiness and joy. Yet
you will not find that any spiritualist that teaches or attempts to
teach how or in what way such substance may be acquired or the fact that
there is such a substance. They do not know that the divine love, coming
through the working of the holy spirit, is the only thing that can
enable the soul to be transformed into the substance. Hence, they cannot
teach the higher truths and, as a consequence, the longings of men’s
souls are not satisfied by the teachings of Spiritualism.
Spiritualism, with all the truths that belong to it, is the true
religion of the world and one that would prove more effective in
bringing men into a state of reconciliation with God than all other
religions combined. However, it is powerless and without drawing power
as a religion because it has not the teachings that show men the way to
God’s divine love and to the satisfying of the soul’s longings. Someday,
in the near future, this defect will be remedied, and then you will see
men and women flock to its bosom so that they can enjoy not only the
happiness that communication with their departed friends give them but
also the happiness that the development of the soul by this love gives
them.
Why the great revelation of this truth has been delayed to spiritualists
so long, I do not know, except it may be that they were not ready to
receive it before. But now the time has come, and the false beliefs of
the orthodox churches and the want of belief of the spiritualists will
both disappear and men be made free and the possessors of the combined
truths of Spiritualism and the existence of the divine love, which
brings not just peace, but immortality. I must not write more tonight as
you are tired, so I will say goodnight.
Your brother in Christ,
Luke
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