SURVIVAL ""■DEATH?

What Do the Scriptures Say About "Survival After Death”?

PUBLISHERS

Watchtower Bible and Tract Society, Inc. International Bible Students Association Brooklyn, New York, U. 8. A.

copyright, 1955 by

Watch Tower Bible & Tract Society

Abbreviations of translations of THE SCRIPTURES quoted or cited herein

AS -American Standard Version, by American Committee of Revision

AT -An American Translation, by J. M. p. Smith and E. J. Good speed

Da   - The 'Holy Scriptures', a New Translation, by J. N. Darby

Dy   - Translation of the Latin Vulgate made at Douay and

Rheims

Le - The Twenty-four Books of the Holy Scriptures, translated by I. Leeser

LXX -the Greek Septuagint Version of the Hebrew Scriptures

Mo - A New Translation of The Bible, by James Moffatt

NW -New World Translation of the Holy Scriptures

Ro -The Emphasised Bible, a New Translation, by J. B. Rotherham

RS - Revised Standard Version, by the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America

Yg -The Holy Bible, translated by Robert Young

Any quotation not followed by any specific abbreviation is from the Authorized or King James Version.

Made in the United States of America

WHAT DO THE SCRIPTURES SAY ABOUT

"SURVIVAL AFTER DEATH"?

WWTE ARE O.K.” “Don’t grieve for us. We’re

W the lucky ones. We’ve never been so happy as we are now.” These were messages from the invisible, received during World War n. Yet they were not sorrowful messages, but seemingly messages to drive away grief and give comfort. From whom did such strange messages come? From men who died in the service of their country during that war! So averred the receiver of the messages in 1943, the retired Air Chief Marshal of Great Britain, Lord Dowding. He was wanting to spread good cheer to those who had lost friends and relatives in battle and to those who might yet die before the world conflict ended. Said he: “I have the largest number of messages from men who have passed over in this war. The fact I want to stress is that the tone of these messages is ‘We are O.K.’ and ‘Don’t grieve for us. We’re the lucky ones. We’ve never been so happy as we are now.’.” Lord Dowding continued: “There is a great organization of Air Force men on the other side and I receive frequent messages from them.” He was thus reaffirming his belief in spiritualism by reading before a public audience in London a letter he believed was dictated by a dead seaman. The report of this was received from

London, September 1, 1943, by cable to the New York Times and published in its columns the following day, under the heading: “Dowding Says Dead Send Him Messages.” Doubtless in the minds of many readers the questions were raised: Are those who die in war the lucky ones? Are we who survive the unlucky ones?

Somewhat over nine months later, at solemn mass in St. Patrick’s Cathedral, New York city, the following war prayer was offered by the Roman Catholic Father Thomas Lester Graham: “We pray these men making such heroic sacrifice for us will know we are walking with them every step on their way of the cross. We pray for their mothers, fathers, wives, sweethearts, that their burden may be lightened and that they may be reunited with their loved ones and never again separated by the disease of war. For those who have made the supreme sacrifice we pray that Almighty God may receive them into His kingdom as martyrs and grant peace to their souls.” He urged prayer in church for “our martyr dead.” —Reported by the New York Times the following day, Monday, June 12, 1944.

Both of these expressions, the message by the former commander of the British Royal Air Force and the prayer by the Catholic priest, were based on one belief held in common, “survival after death.”

The common belief is that the human soul does not die but is deathless, deathproof, immortal; that since the human body is observed to die and crumble to dust, there must be some part of man that survives the death of the body and it must be an invisible, untouchable something called the “soul” or “spirit.” Since it is believed to survive the death of the body, it must be distinct from the perishable human body and must be separable from it. At the body’s death it separates and, being invisible, it is no longer held down to inhabiting the human body but is free to move about in the invisible or spirit realm and to ascend to planes of life high above the earth. It enters into all the mysteries of the spirit world and so knows more than when it was hampered by the human body, and it will live in the unseen, immaterial world forever.

Religions of Christendom in general, including the Roman Catholic, hold that the soul and the spirit are many times used the one for the other. But spiritists make a distinction between the two terms: “In spiritualistic terminology ‘spirit’ means the etheric body of ah individual having all his characteristics. A clear distinction must be drawn and borne in mind between the terms ‘soul’ and ‘spirit.’ The former is vague and intangible without any size or form while the latter is the exact counterpart of the physical portion of the individual.”—Spiritualism in India—Theory and Practice, by V. D. Rishi, page 8, 2d edition of 1946.

Regardless of the distinctions drawn or not drawn between the terms “soul” and “spirit,” the believers in survival after death hold that the dead are not dead at all but are more alive than ever, in a spirit world that we cannot see, the so-called “next world”; and we must not be deceived concerning survival after death by the visible death of the human body. Taken as a strong, unshakable proof of this is the widespreadness and the ancientness of this belief. In recommendation of this belief Rishi, on page one of his above-mentioned book, says:

"The belief in the existence of the next world and the possibility of communication with the departed souls is to be found in almost all the sacred books of the East and West. Rig-Veda [or Veda of Verses] the oldest book contains reference about the Pitris [the departed forefathers; semidivine fathers and patriarchs]. In Mahabharata and Ramayana we read how the wives of the Kauravas [the 100 cousins of the Pandavas] had the pleasure of an interview with their departed husbands and how king Dasharath manifested himself after death to Sri Ramachandra. The Bible is full of references regarding survival after death and communion between the dead and the living. ... To discredit all this testimony about survival after death is gross and rank materialism.”

In all parts of the earth the belief in survival after death explains the conduct and acts of behavior of many persons, as when they set out food, flowers, incense or other gifts on little altars to saints or dead relatives, or as when, on September 3,1945, the Japanese emperor Hirohito, clad in ceremonial robes and attended by two younger brothers, worshiped at three sanctuaries in the Palace of Tokyo and personally “informed” the Imperial ancestors that Japan had lost the war. —New York Times.

Once the teaching of survival after death is accepted, a string of reasonable questions presents itself: Can we get in touch with the dead? Can we do anything for their benefit? Can they do us any good or harm? Can we get in touch with the “next world,” or, Is there communication between the “two worlds”? Various religions answer these questions to agree with their other beliefs, but the religion known as “spiritualism” answers with a confident Yes. While some spiritualists claim that the Bible of Jews and Christians is based upon spiritualism or teaches and supports it, the spiritualists do not put their main dependence upon the Bible or other reputed sacred writings. They positively assert that the proof of the spirit world and of human survival after death is found in actual hearable, seeable, feelable manifestations from the spirit world and by numberless, regular cases of where the living get in touch with the dead and receive messages from identifiable dead persons. Rishi, on page 7 of his book, lists among the principles of spiritualism this: “The possibility of communication, by mediums between the visible and the invisible, namely, between the living and the dead,” and then adds: “It will be worth while to bear in mind that the above principles are not based on any text, tradition, or institution, but upon observed facts and phenomena.”

Spiritualists, sure of themselves, have willingly let their spiritistic manifestations be investigated and put to the test by hardheaded, materialistic scientists of the day. While much that has passed for spiritualism commercially had been exposed as a fraud, science has come away from many investigations baffled by the results of their foolproof tests. It has been obliged to agree that there are living, intelligent forces in the realm of the unseen. In an article entitled “They Never Come Back” by Lester David he quotes Hereward Carrington, director of the American Psychical Institute, as saying: “Despite the illusion, fraud and superstition which have unfortunately associated themselves with this subject, there are genuine psychic phenomena which are unexplained by modern science.” In the following paragraph regarding appearings or apparitions of the dead Lester David says: “The American Society for Psychical Research once received 30,000 replies to a questionnaire it distributed on this phase. After studying the reports, it concluded: ‘Between deaths and apparitions of the dying person a connection exists which is not due to chance alone. This we hold as a proven fact.’ ”—Mechanix Illustrated, December, 1952, pages 166, 167.

As a result of its investigations modern science has discovered what it calls “ectoplasm,” that is, human matter that streams forth from various parts of the spirit medium’s body and that produces certain phenomena or takes certain shapes. Because it is protoplasm pushed out from the medium’s body, Webster’s dictionary defines ectoplasm as “exteriorized protoplasm.” Marcus Bach, in his book They Have Found a Faith (1946), describes it on page 112:

“The reason for concealing the medium ... is because a red light is used during a materialization seance. Even a dim light interferes with the generation of the ectoplasm necessary in building spirit forms. The cabinet shields the medium during the time this force is being assembled and then, when complete, the form can stand the light rays long enough to be seen outside the cabinet by the sitters—from thirty seconds to three or four minutes. The medium entranced is also sometimes disturbing to the spectators. It is not a pleasingly aesthetic sight—especially not during a materialization, for ectoplasm exudes from her mouth and body in the nature of gauzy, foggy, smokelike substance from which figures are formed by the spirit chemists.”

Says Rishi (page 3 of his above-mentioned book):

“In Europe and America several scientists have made important discoveries in this science. Some persons are aware of the discovery of ectoplasm, a white snowy matter emanating from the body of the medium. However much the existence of this matter may be denied by ignorant persons and fraudulent people, it is weighed and analysed by great scientists.” (Page 2) “The proof regarding survival after death has been mainly obtained through the inherent psychic power of a medium and hence the phenomena of mediumship have been recognised as the one basic factor of modern spiritualism. It is impossible to define or describe this power as it is not possible to define electricity or magnetism, although we all perceive their effects every day.”

Mrs. Leonore Piper performed unexplainable things to make her one of the greatest mediums known. Researchers of psychic phenomena, including the American psychologist William James, Dr. Richard Hodgson, Sir Oliver Lodge, Dr. Walter Leaf and many others, made a study of Mrs. Piper for years. They even had detectives to shadow her to learn if she got her information by normal methods. In vain. They could find out nothing. Mrs. Piper would go into a deep trance and then start writing. She would impart information, such as names, dates and facts of all kinds, which she could not possibly learn by herself. William James wrote she knew things that she could not have acquired by the normal use of her eyes and ears and wits.

There are other evidences of secret or occult power, enabling ordinary persons to do things superhuman or ordinarily impossible for a human, that science is unable to explain or account for. In the practice of Voodooism (Vodun, as the Haitians call it) extraordinary feats have been performed. The French naturalist Descourtilz, for instance, awed by the manifestation of the occult, describes a woman who, under the seizure of her god, took a live coal in her hand without being burned. In the Gold Coast, Africa, the mediums are called woyel, and profess to act as mouthpieces of the gods and of the dead. There when a medium becomes seized by the occult power, it is said, “she speaks with a voice not her own, and greater than that of any human being.” Under possession of the mysterious power, a medium will jiggle and shake in every limb and will remain on her feet in continual motion for hours. She will often perform feats of endurance that are impossible for ordinary humans.—Religion and Medicine of the Ga People by M. J. Field.

Medical science is at a loss to explain such a feat as reported in the New York Times under the date line “Bombay, India, Feb. 19, 1950 (United Press Dispatch)”:

"Huge crowds saw a 45-year-old yogi, Swami [Master] Ramdasji, dug out alive today [Sunday] from an ‘airtight’ cement crypt in which he had been ‘buried’ for eighty-seven hours [or three days fifteen hours] on a bed of nails. The mystic had been ‘completely submerged’ in water from 4 p.m. Saturday [Feb. 18] until his release at 7:30 a.m. today [Sunday]. He climbed into the wooden coffin at 5 p.m. Wednesday [Feb. 15]. He ’lay on a bed of nails and the sides of the coffin also had nails jagging into his flesh. The coffin was sealed inside an 8-by-8-by-6-foot cement crypt. Ramdasji’s disciples then sat by the crypt day and night chanting Vedic prayers while keeping a sacred fire burning. Saturday [Feb. 18] his disciples bored a small hole into the crypt, pushed in a hose and immersed the air-starved Hindu in water. Thousands of spectators watched tensely as the disciples hacked the cement away with picks and lifted Ramdasji, still in a trance, onto a dais. The followers massaged Ramdasji’s head, arms and body until he opened his eyes and smiled. Dr. Jal Rustom Vakil_t a heart specialist, examined Ramdasji immediately. The doctor said Ramdasji’s respiration was slow, but otherwise he was normal in every way.”

According to medical science, such a feat would have killed an ordinary human within two or three hours.

Instances of fire walking, which have been observed in India and elsewhere, have generally been attributed to some occult influence or power,, but science has been able to prove with some success that there is a trick about this, dependent upon ordinary laws of nature, thus removing this from the realm of the really occult. But the more science investigates the more it is faced with the evidences of a truly occult power, of invisible forces producing supernatural acts and happenings among men.

Whether superstitious or not, many people have a peculiar fascination for the occult, for powers with a hidden source, for happenings of a supernormal kind. There are also many sorrowful persons who crave to get in touch with dead loved ones. Naturally they are inclined to seek mediums who claim to be able to communicate with the dead, for the seeming comfort that this brings. Increasing numbers of persons are worried about the uncertainties of life or face great problems or are anxious about the outcome of political, commercial, sporting or other developments and desire some guidance for the future. They look to some higher, hidden power, unidentified though it may be, that promises to foretell the future and thus guide them, relieve them of fears, safeguard them from possible dangers or lead them to success. Hence there are many who do not ordinarily claim to be spiritualists or spiritists and who may be members of orthodox churches, yet who resort to spiritistic practices. In America, although some 131,100 profess to be spiritualists or members of spiritualist societies, yet there are far more who dabble with spiritism. An appeal to the spiritualistic or spiritistic has become the fashion, not only of the grief-stricken, comfort-seeking ordinary man or woman or the superstitious theatrical people or the worried, success-seeking businessman, but also of high political circles, world-wide.

THE OCCULT IN POLITICAL CIRCLES

July 17, 1918, the date of Nicholas Romanoff’s execution by the Bolsheviki, is not too long ago for us to remember the last of the Russian czars, Nicholas II. Of him The Encyclopedia Americana (volume 20, page 315) says: “His superstition was shown by his consultation of fortune-tellers, spiritualists, mystics and charlatans in his desire to secure a male heir, his first four children being all girls.” He is all too well known for his connections with the notorious Russian monk Gregor Novikh, nicknamed “Rasputin,” meaning "dissolute, profligate, libertine, licentious,” because such he was. Rasputin came of a peasant family with an inherited gift of mesmerism. He started a new cult, in which dancing and debauchery were mixed in with mystical seances. He was introduced to the Russian Imperial Court, where for years he exercised a powerful influence with Nicholas II, who retained him in his court, even against the protest of others.

Today political science alone does not figure in running political government. Astrology does also. "Astrology” first meant the "science of the stars.” Now it means the study of the stars to foretell human and earthly events by the aspect and position of the stars, as though stars exercised some hidden or occult influence upon the inhabitants of earth and upon the earth itself. Astrology was long ago practiced by the Chaldeans, the Egyptians, the Greeks, the Romans, the Arabs and others. It developed from the belief in survival after death, and that the stars were notable humans who had been transported after death to the position of the stars and planets, from there to exercise their influence upon earthly affairs.

In the thirteenth century A.D. priests from India introduced astrology into the Siamese court life, since which time both kings and the common people have hesitated to make a move without first consulting their horoscope or the position of the planets with regard to the twelve signs of the zodiac. As his consultant each Siamese king appointed a royal astrologer, with a rank of nobility. King Mongkut was the only monarch who refused the services of a royal astrologer. He was a noted astrologer himself and preferred to read his own horoscope. In 1932 the absolute monarchy over Siam was overthrown, but astrologers continued with even a firmer hold on political matters. Numerous legislators planned their political careers only after secretly consulting astrologers. From their own observations the Siamese say: “Politicians make the best astrologers, and astrologers become the most successful politicians.” Due to spending so much time with the astrologers, such politicians develop the ability to read horoscopes. As a matter of course, by telling from the stars when to take up public activity, astrologers make a success in politics, so it is believed, and so it could be when practically all the people yield themselves to astrology. Astrology has a stronger grip on the Siamese or Thailanders than any science or religion.

Astrology exerts a power even on modern Western rulers and that, too, in the matter of waging war. The January, 1952, issue of Mechanise Illustrated had this to say: “One of the most amazing, and least-known facts of World War II is that the Allies actually waged a counter-astrological warfare against Hitler. Knowing that the Nazi leader took his horoscope mighty seriously [while at the same time being a Roman Catholic], Britain established an agency known as the Psychological Research Bureau and placed at its head a noted astrologer, Louis de Wohl. Captain de Wohl plotted the horoscopes of Hitler and his chief aides, following as closely as possible the ‘good’ and ‘bad’ days. Britain thus knew at all times what Hitler’s astrologers were telling him. It was the first time since the Thirty Years’ War, De Wohl said later, that astrological warfare was waged.” Not that this resort to astrology aided the Allies to win the war against the Nazis and Fascists and their axis partners, but that it shows the willingness, even by rulers who claim to be Christian, to consult the occult powers for selfish advantages. It reminds one of the ancient Chaldean king, Nebuchadnezzar, when marching to conquest over Palestine six centuries before Christ. He came to a fork of the roads, one branch leading to Rabbah, capital of Ammon to the east, the other branch leading to Jerusalem, to the west. Says the Bible: “The king of Babylon stands at the parting of the ways, at the fork of the two roads, practicing divination; he shakes the arrows, he consults the teraphim, he inspects the liver. Into his right hand falls the lot marked ‘Jerusalem,’ calling for slaughter, for the shout of battle, for the planting of battering-rams against the gates, for the throwing up of mounds, for the building of a siege-wall.” (Ezekiel 21:19-22, AT) So Nebuchadnezzar marched against Jerusalem. It fell before him.

Americans now. have on their silver dimes and on their postage stamps the slogan “In God we trust,” but the prevalence of astrological fortunetellers and their present prosperity in America bespeak a disturbed and hesitating America. So John R. Saunders, at the nation’s capital, Washington, D.C., has said. As the Associate Curator of Education at the American Museum of Natural History he said, in 1946: “In Washington 10,000 customers weekly consult the capital’s astrologers. . . . Some of our most prominent people have patronized fortune tellers of one kind or another. Evangeline Adams, the astrologer, made $50,000 a year. J. P. Morgan, Mrs. Leslie Carter, Mary Garden and Richard Harding Davis were among her clients. On a horoscope, the Duke of Windsor cancelled a trip, some years ago. Hitler [although a recognized Roman Catholic] kept at Berchtesgaden a teeming nest of fortune tellers. Mussolini, Napoleon, Hitler, Julius Caesar, Alexander [the Great]—each believed in and talked about his Star. It is still told in Washington how President Harding and his wife had a ‘personal’ seer forecast for them weekly at the White House.” Fortunetelling, he continued, “flourishes now in Washington, D.C., where a number of our prominent legislators are reported to have their personal seers. One Congressman has his horoscope cast weekly at his office. By its dictates he votes for this bill, against that.”—The American Weekly, July 21, 1946.

There is a widespread reliance of politicians on psychometry or the finding out of certain facts or hidden knowledge about an object or its owners by contact with that object or by nearness to it. On October 19, 1952, the New Haven (Connecticut) Register published this statement by its Fulton Oursler: “I have actually seen reports of psychometrists sent to key officials of our Government, and have been taken by wives of important lawmakers to seances.”

Not altogether shocking, therefore, but quite to be expected comes the report of spiritism in the White House by the popular radio commentator Drew Pearson, in his column entitled “Washington Merry-Go-Round,” published throughout the land. In newspaper editions of August 24,

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J | MONDAY, AUG. 24,195?

DREW PEARSON

WASHINGTON MERRY-GO-ROUND

during the spring and summer, carrying her crystal ball. She is vivacious Jeanne Dixon, who foretold the Korean truce, forecast that Native Danc-Ier would place in but not win the Kentucky derby and, for 10 years, has been telling the future for Mamie Eisenhower.

Since Mamie moved to the White House, the psychic Mrs. Dixon has been called in occasionally to keep the first 'lady up to date on her future. Furthermore, 'she has done some crystal-ball gazing for [the president, himself

z "1 can use three psychic mediums—the {crystal ball, palmistry and astrology,” Mrs. Dixon acknowledged to this column. How-

ever, her usual procedure, she explained, is j .to touch the subject’s fingertips and slmul-l taneously peer over her shoulder into the! ^crystal ball.                                     <

Asked what she saw in the crystal, she replied that the images varied—sometimes symbols, sometimes pictures. In the case of Native Dancer, for example, she saw a dear picture of the Dancer running behind an, “unknown long-shot" Once she even saw a number in her billiard-sized crystal. She< didn’t know what the number meant, but< a gambling friend won $10,000 playing itZ To show his gratitude, he bought Mrs. Dix- j on a brand new $800 crystal ball, J starlike imprint on her own palm and explained it to be the mark of the “true psychic.” However, her usual way is to touch the subject’s fingertips and at the same time peer over her shoulder into the crystal ball. Mrs. Dixon refused to talk about the Eisenhowers or the rest of her clientele. Persons close to the White House, though, say she has amazed President Eisenhower by reading his golf scores in the crystal ball.

In the political field Mrs. Dixon forecast the partitioning of India, President Harry S. Truman’s surprise victory over Thomas E. Dewey in 1948 and the Republican sweep in the presidential campaign in 1952 putting General Eisenhower into the White House. A real estate broker by profession, Mrs. Dixon does not charge for her psychic service. She takes no credit to herself for her occult powers, but says: “The Bible says that all events are foreshadowed. I am just the means of communication.” The published report of the invasion of the presidential White House by spiritism by means of this psychic has never been disputed, denied or disproved.

Now cross America’s northern border into Canada. There, too, spiritism has made inroads into the prime ministry. It was not generally known that the late W. L. MacKenzie King, onetime prime minister of Canada, was a secret spiritualist, although till his death July 22, 1950, a member of the Presbyterian church like President Eisenhower. In a biography of King entitled “The Incredible Canadian” by Bruce Hutchison (1953), the author lays open King’s deep spiritualistic convictions. Even as prime minister of Canada King consulted spirit mediums, and felt sure of “direct communion with the dead.” He approached every problem, personal and political, dominated by his belief in human immortality as taught by religion in general and now apparently confirmed by spirit mediumship. As he neared death, he patronized mediumship, especially over in England, to consult the dead. At a seance a year after President Franklin D. Roosevelt had died, King made contact with the dead Roosevelt by a medium and was told to stay in political office and that Canada and the world could not yet spare him. But at his frequent seances King would not consult the spirits on the affairs of government and told the mediums that he preferred to decide government matters for himself. Yet his handling of political matters could not but be influenced by his private spiritualistic convictions. By his seeming contact with the dead he increasingly convinced himself by such kind of proof that his earthly journey was nearing its end but his real journey was only beginning and then he in his real self would be free to take on his true shape. When he died, says author Hutchison, King “had completed one pilgrimage to begin, as he believed, a second.”—Pages 86-88, 423, 424, 450.

Though by no means everything has been told, yet from all the foregoing it is plain that spiritualism is spreading and already has a greater hold on human society than most people may realize. The groundwork for such spread of spiritualism still farther has been laid, as we shall show. Some spiritualists are very hopeful about their religion, as betrayed in the title of a book by Arthur Findlay, “The Rock of Truth or Spiritualism the Coming World Religion.” (Thirteenth impression, 1949) The spiritualists seem to produce the proof of their belief in their actual experiences and in the phenomena they are able to show, apart from all trickery. That they really get in touch with an unseen world and with intelligent spirits there can be proved by them and is not to be doubted. But the question arises, Is it really with the spirits of those who once lived on the earth and died that they get in communication? Is it truly “survival after death” that their getting in touch with the spirit world proves? Does it uphold “immortalism,” that is, the belief in and the doctrine of the immortality of the human soul? So is it possible for those living on earth to talk with the dead? Is it a genuine source of comfort for people who have lost loved ones, relatives or cherished friends, to go to spirit mediums in the hope of getting in touch with such dead ones or to make use of such other spiritistic means as table tipping or the planchette or the Yes-yes board or Ouija (Owl, French for Yes, and Ja, German for Yes) ?

How shall we learn the safe, true and satisfying answers to these questions? By going to a book with ancient historical accounts and descriptions that are constantly being proved correct, a book of prophecy that has had its many marvelous predictions come true throughout the centuries and find fulfillment also in world events and conditions of our own day, particularly since A.D. 1914; by going to a book to which even spiritualists refer and in which many spiritualists claim to find support for their teachings and beliefs. What book is that? It is the Bible, the Holy Scriptures.

From Sweden we have the report: “Spiritists here seldom use the Bible to prove their belief; their 'experiences’ are given as proof of what they claim as the death state.” However, in the book Spiritualism for the Busy Man, page 14, W. H. Evans has the subheading: “Spiritualism confirms Biblical facts.” V. D. Rishi, as already quoted, states: “The Bible is full of references regarding survival after death and communion between the dead and the living.” Adding to such argument Ernest Thompson, in The Teachings and Phenomena of Spiritualism, pages 115-120, has this to say:

“All religions are based upon the conception of an 'after life,’ for without the hope of a spiritual future, the idea of God would never have evolved in man’s mind. The Christian Religion is based upon the evidence of survival which is contained in the Bible, particularly of course upon the evidence of the return of Jesus from the dead ... The principal figure in the New Testament is Jesus, . . . his works can be classified as the achievements of a highly developed medium and healer. . . . Jesus was certainly the most remarkable medium that ever lived. From his period of ‘trial’ in the wilderness up to his resurrection his story is mainly impressive because of his ‘supernormal powers.’ The fact that he was clairvoyant and clairaudient was indicated when, ‘angels came and ministered unto him.' He was not only clairaudient to the spirit people, but to those about him, for he often received their thoughts telepathically. ... He apparently used Peter, John and James as materialisation mediums as in the instance of the materialisation of Moses and Elias. . . . Like D. D. Home, Jesus permitted himself to be levitated. Tn the fourth watch of the night, Jesus went unto them walking on the sea.’ ... It is notable too that he made certain that his ‘conditions’ were favourable for the specific phenomenon desired.... Conditions in the upper room were favourable when, with the mediumistic aid of his disciples, Jesus ‘appeared unto the eleven’ after his crucifixion, and ‘and upbraided them with their unbelief and hardness of heart.’ ”

WHY BRING IN THE SCRIPTURES?

Since spiritualist authors themselves bring the Bible into their argument and interpret it as they do, we are all the more compelled to turn to the Bible and examine directly the questions, Does it uphold spiritualism? May it be used as a handbook of spiritualism? Or does it hold out another hope and comfort for bereaved, sorrowing, distressed, perplexed, groping, imperiled mankind? We cannot get to the truth of the matter any quicker than by examining first and at once the really one foundation upon which spiritualist teaching rests. What? Immortalism. As stated by Rishi: “The knowledge regarding life after death is commonly called Spiritualism. Its principles though as old as humanity are being proved by new methods. As affirmed by the International Congresses in Europe [of spiritualists] they are: —1. Existence of God, supreme Intelligence and first cause of every thing. 2. Existence of the soul, linked during earthly life to the physical corruptible body by an intermediary element called perispirit or fluid body. 3. Immortality of the soul and its continual evolution towards perfection by successive stages. 4. The possibility of communication, by mediums between the visible and the invisible, namely, between the living and the dead.” The question that faces us, then, is, Does the soul survive the death of the human body? Is the human soul immortal? What do the Holy Scriptures of the Bible say?

Take the first five books of the Bible. The prophet Moses wrote them. Whether as a prophet he was a spirit medium, as spiritualists claim of Bible prophets, we shall let our discussion go on to show. But right here we note that this Moses was. “instructed in all the wisdom of the Egyptians,” because he was reared at the king of Egypt’s court in the sixteenth century before the Christian era. He was acquainted with the wise men and wonder-working men of Pharaoh the king. When Moses appeared before Pharaoh with the demand that Pharaoh let the enslaved people of Jehovah God go free and backed up his demand by turning his shepherd rod into a big snake by God’s power, then, as we read Moses’ own account, “Phar'aoh also called for the wise men and the sorcerers, and the magic-practicing priests of Egypt themselves also proceeded to do the same thing with then’ magic arts.” When Moses later turned water into blood, these men seemingly duplicated the miracle. When Moses miraculously produced frogs Pharaoh’s men did the same. Ah, but when Moses turned the dust of Egypt into Hee or into gnats, “the magic-practicing priests tried to do the same by their secret arts, in order to bring forth gnats, but they were unable. And the gnats came to be on man and beast. Hence the magic-practicing priests said to Phar'aoh: ‘It is the finger of God!’ ”—Exodus 7:10, 11, 20-22; 8:6, 7, 17-19, NW¹

So Pharaoh’s wise men, sorcerers and magicians admitted that Moses was able by his God Jehovah to do wonders that they themselves with their secret or occult power were unable to do. Now it is this Moses who under the power of God’s spirit or under inspiration gives us the first definition to be found in the Bible of the human soul. Also from the opposition between this Moses and the men of occult power in Egypt we can begin to form correct ideas as to whether Moses was a spirit medium or not.

WHAT THE HUMAN SOUL IS

Religious teachings of Christendom surround the human soul with mysteries that philosophers need to explore. Differently from them, Moses calls all the fish, birds and land animals that God created before making man “souls,” “living souls.” (Genesis 1:20, 21, 24, 30; 2:19, NW; Ro; Da) So, long before man’s creation, billions of animal souls or earthly souls had died. Moses then tells how the first human soul came to be, saying: “Then Jehovah God proceeded to form the man out of dust from the ground and to blow into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man came to be a living soul.” (Genesis 2:7, NW; AS; Da) This flatly disproves what is stated about the wherefrom of man by the spiritualist author, Arthur Findlay, in advertising his book On the Edge of the Etheric or Survival After Death Scientifically Explained. He states: “We retain in the Etheric, to which we pass at death, our bodily appearance, our memories, and our affections. ... As we are now so shall we be _/hereafter; as we sow so shall we reap. We have come from the Etheric; we return to the Etheric. Our physical life is but a small part of our life, which, coming from the Etheric, returns to it at death. There it continues to function in a world both real and tangible.” Moses says nothing about “the Etheric.”

Nor does Moses’ inspired account of the creation of the human soul agree with V. D. Rishi and say anything about an “intermediary element called perispirit [surrounding spirit] or fluid body.” The Creator, Jehovah God, gave the first man just one body, made from the different elements in the dust of our earth. What made that material body come to life? It was God’s blowing into man’s nostrils, thus into man’s lungs, the “breath of life.” It was not by his breathing into man an invisible soul and connecting that soul with the material body by a fluid body or a surrounding spirit of the same form as the earthly body. God breathed, as it were, into the lifeless body his lifegiving force, which was to be sustained by man’s breathing. What resulted? The body came to life. What did that mean? It meant a soul, a visible, touchable, feelable human soul, came into existence. “The man came to be a living soul.” That living soul did not come from “the Etheric,” so called, for it had never existed before. By God’s combining body and breath of life it now came to life. Thus the explanation of what a human soul is may be reduced to this simple, unmysterious “soul equation”:

human soul = body + breath of life from God.

This is not just the thought of the pre-Christian Hebrews or Jews; it is also the true Christian thought. The Christian apostle Paul, writer of fourteen books of the Bible, supports Moses’ writings, saying: “It is even so written; ‘The first man Adam became a living soul. . . . The first man is out of the earth and made of dust.” (1 Corinthians 15:45,47, W) Thus the first living human soul was the first man Adam. The living human soul is the living human creature. For that reason Young’s English translation of the Bible (1862) uses the word “creature” instead of “soul” here.

The Bible is the final authority on the soul. In the Hebrew part of the Bible the word neph'esh (translated “soul”) is found about 800 times; in the Christian Greek part of the Bible the word psyche' (also translated “soul”) is found 102 times. In each case the New World Translation renders this Greek word “soul.” This yet uncompleted translation is also consistently rendering the Hebrew word neph'esh “soul.” Thus the readers of the Bible may see how the Creator of the soul uses the word in his inspired Bible.

Since the Bible recognizes and teaches that the living human creature himself is the human soul, it is perfectly reasonable that the Bible should state that the human soul has blood—“the blood of the souls of the poor innocents” (Jeremiah 2:34)—God himself saying: “Your blood of your souls shall I ask back.” (Genesis 9:5, NW) In fact, God the Creator of souls shows the dependence of the human soul upon the blood stream to be so heavy that he says: “The soul of the flesh is in the blood.” More than that: “The soul of every sort of flesh is* its blood.” “The blood is* the soul and you must not eat the soul [yes, not eat the soul] with the blood.” (Leviticus 17: 11,14 and Deuteronomy 12:23, iVW) Human souls

» ''Is,” that is to say, "means” or "Is equivalent to.” This is the same as saying that a hand mill or an upper grindstone Is a soul seized as a pledge.—Deuteronomy 24: 6, NW. can eat blood and fat, but God’s law forbids it: “For anyone eating fat from the beast from which he presents it as an offering made by fire to Jehovah, the soul that eats must be cut off from his people. Any soul who eats any blood, that soul must be cut off from his people.”—Leviticus 7:25, 27, NW.

A human soul can also eat an animal body: “As for any soul that eats a dead body or something tom by a wild beast.” (Leviticus 17:15, NW) The human soul craves material food: “Because your soul craves to eat meat, whenever your soul craves it you may eat meat.” (Deuteronomy 12:20, NW) Also fruit: “You must eat enough grapes for you to satisfy your soul.” (Deuteronomy 23:24, NW) Or a honeycomb.—Proverbs 27:7.

The human soul is the living, intelligent creature himself, the material, visible, tangible person, and not an invisible, untouchable, ethereal something inside the human body. Hence the human soul can tear its own self or can be torn by a lion, can be delivered from a threatening sword, can fall into a pit dug for it, can be brought back again from a pit, or can be brought out of a prison. (Job 18:4, margin; Psalm 7:2; 22:20; Job 33:18, 30; Jeremiah 18:20; Psalm 142:7) The human soul can be bought for money; it can be kidnaped and sold; it can be hunted like a wild beast. (Leviticus 22:11; Deuteronomy 24:7; Exodus 4:19, NW) After the creation of the first human souls on earth, Adam and Eve, all other human souls have been born. They have not come out of “the Etheric.” They have come out of the bodies or loins of fatherly human souls and from the wombs of motherly human souls. Of Jacob’s wife Leah we read: “In time she bore these to Jacob: sixteen souls. All the souls who came to Jacob into Egypt were those who issued out of his upper thigh, aside from the wives of Jacob’s sons. All the souls were sixty-six.” (Genesis 46:18, 26, NW) “And all the souls who issued out of Jacob’s upper thigh came to be seventy souls.” (Exodus 1:5, NW) The soul is, therefore, not something separate and distinct from the human body that can leave the body in dreams and at death or that can transmigrate or pass at death into another body, to be thus reborn at death into another body.

Now a question: Does the Bible itself show a difference between body and soul? Indeed it does, and that right at the beginning, at Genesis 2:7, at man’s creation. The man’s body that Jehovah God formed out of the dust from the ground in Eden was not a human soul; it was just a lifeless, inactive body that neither saw, heard, tasted, smelled, felt or thought. To make the body live and use all its sense organs and powers, God combined the perfect human body with the breath of life that he blew into the body. Thus there came to be a living human soul that had never existed before. So the human body is a necessary part of the human soul, and the human soul cannot exist apart from the human body. Many times the Bible speaks of the life that we human creatures enjoy as “soul.” Jesus said: “If anyone comes to me and does not hate . . . even his own soul, he cannot be my disciple.” (Luke 14:26, NW) “He that is fond of his soul destroys it, but he that hates his soul in this world will safeguard it for everlasting life.” (John 12:25, NW) “They did not love their souls even despite the danger of death.” (Revelation 12:11, NW) “I am the right shepherd; the right shepherd surrenders his soul in behalf of the sheep.” —John 10:11, NW.

In harmony with this unseparableness of the soul from its body, when a speaker uses the expression “my soul,” he really means “I myself,” or, “me myself.” Jesus gave an illustration of a rich man, who, after storing up his increased good things, said: “I will say to my soul: ‘Soul, you have many good things laid up for many years; take your ease, eat, drink, enjoy yourself.’ But God said to him: ‘Unreasonable one, this night they are demanding your soul from you.’ ” Without soul or life as a human creature, how could the rich man enjoy the good things he had stored up? (Luke 12:16-21, NW) Even God himself uses the expression “my soul,” saying: “Look! my servant whom I chose, my beloved, whom my soul approved!” (Matthew 12:18, NW; Isaiah 42:1) “ ‘My righteous one will live by reason of faith,’ and, ‘if he shrinks back, my soul has no pleasure in him.’ ” (Hebrews 10:38, NW) “Your new moons and your appointed feasts my soul hates.” (Isaiah 1:14, RS) Likewise, the expression “your (thy) soul” is used to mean “you yourself,” and “his soul,” “him himself.” For example, “Yahweh of hosts hath sworn by his own soul.” (Jeremiah 51:14; Amos 6:8, Ro, margin) “So it shall be well unto thee, and thy soul shall live.” (Jeremiah 38:20; Isaiah 55:2, 3) Thus the word “soul” is used to refer to the person himself.

What the prophet Elijah said regarding the child whom he was used to restore to life is no Biblical proof that the human soul is distinct and is merely linked to the human body by some element called a “perispirit or fluid body,” and that at death it carries on a separate, independent, outside existence in the immaterial, spirit world. We read: “The son of the woman, the mistress of the house, fell sick, and his sickness came to be so severe that there was no breath left in him. And [Elijah] proceeded to stretch himself upon the child three times and call to Jehovah and say: ‘O Jehovah my God, please, cause the soul of this child to come back within him.’ Finally Jehovah listened to Elijah’s voice, and the soul of the child came back within him, so that he came to life.” (1 Kings 17:17, 21, 22, NW) Does the Bible here say the child’s soul was alive in an invisible, spirit world and that the child was lucky that it had died and that it had never been so happy on earth as it was then in the spirit world? No! Did the child’s mother ask Elijah to act as a male medium and put her in touch with her dead son so that she could talk with the departed soul through Elijah? No! If the child was better off for having died, then it was an injustice and extreme selfishness for Elijah to pray as he did and for him to restore the child to life in the human body.

The same holds true for the Shunammite’s son whom Elijah’s successor, Elisha, restored to life. It holds true also for the dead whom Jesus and his apostles restored to life in the flesh on earth: Jairus’ daughter, the widow of Nain’s son, Lazarus the brother of Mary and Martha, Dorcas (Tabitha) of Joppa, and Eutychus of Troas. (2 Kings 4:8-37; Matthew 10:1, 8; Luke 8:41-56; 7:11-15; John 11:1-44; Acts 9:36-41; 20:6-12) What the prophet Elijah really prayed for was, not for a departed soul to return from the spirit world into the child’s body, but for the child’s life as a human creature to return by Jehovah God’s power that his dead body might become alive again and the child might-come to be a living human soul again. In agreement with this An American Translation reads here: “May this child’s life return into him again.” “So the Lord hearkened to the voice of Elijah; and the life of the child came back to him again, so that he lived.” “ ‘See, your son is alive,’ said Elijah.” (1 Kings 17:21-24, AT; also Mo) Hence it is no more difficult for us in English to say a human soul has soul than it was difficult for a Jew to say in Hebrew that a neph'esh has neph'esh or that neph'esh is in a neph'esh (“soul”).—Leviticus 17:10-14, NW.

THE SPIRIT IN MAN

But in this case does not the scripture, Ecclesiastes 12:7, apply: “Then shall the dust return to the earth as it was: and the spirit shall return unto God who gave it”? Yes. And does not the report, at Luke 8:54, 55 (BS), of Jesus’ raising Jairus’ daughter to life say: “But taking hei’ by the hand he called, saying, ‘Child, arise.’ And her spirit returned, and she got up at once”? Yes. Are we, then, to reason from this that, before Elijah raised the widow’s dead son to life, and before Jesus raised Jairus’ girl to life, their spirit was alive in a spirit world and that it had returned to God who gave it and was living with him? No; for the “spirit” is not, as Rishi describes it, “the etheric body of an individual having all his characteristics. . . . the exact counterpart of the physical portion of the individual.” According to the Bible the spirit {ru'ahh, Hebrew; pneu’ma, Greek) is God’s invisible active force that causes life or makes alive.

As it is described in Revelation 11:8-11 {NW): “And their corpses will be on the broad way of the great city . . . And after the three and a half days spirit of life from God entered into them, and they stood upon their feet.” Also as it is described in Ezekiel’s vision of the valley of dry bones: “Thus saith My Lord Yahweh, unto these bones, Lo! I am about to bring into you spirit, and ye shall live; . . . And when I looked then lo! upon them were sinews, and flesh had come up, and there had spread over them skin above, but spirit was there none within them. Then said he unto me, Prophesy unto the spirit, prophesy, Son of man, and thou shalt say unto the spirit, Thus saith My Lord Yahweh—From the four winds come thou, O spirit, and breathe into these [breathless] slain that they may live. And when I prophesied as he commanded me, then came into them the spirit and they lived and stood upon their feet, an exceeding great army.”—Ezekiel 37:5-10, Ro; also Yg; Le.

Jehovah God is the source of the life-imparting spirit or invisible life-giving active force. Hence when the dead body returns to the earth as it was, that spirit or active force that animated that body returns to its source; it quits operating in that body. So the power to make that human creature live again rests with God, the Source of life. By the sentence of death that God pronounced upon Adam and Eve he has subjected all their offspring to condemnation and at the limit of their condemned lives he requires of them their life force, for they are condemned to death through inheriting sin from Adam and Eve. God’s just law requires that life force or spirit of them, and thus it returns to him. When God lifts that condemnation or removes it, then he can make the relieved offspring of Adam live again by his spirit or invisible activating force. Hence the inspired Psalm says to God: “Thou hidest thy face, they are dismayed, thou withdrawest their spirit, they cease to breathe, and unto their own dust do they return: thou sendest forth thy spirit and they are created, and thou renewest the face of the ground.” —Psalm 104:29, 30, Ro; also Yg; Le.

This life force sustained by breathing is what returned to Jairus’ daughter when Jesus took her by the hand and commanded: “Child, arise.” God heard Jesus and caused His life-imparting active force to make her body alive and breathe again and keep it from returning at that time to the dust of the earth. Jesus referred to such spirit or life force when, at his death on the stake at Calvary, he said to God: “Father, into your hands I entrust my spirit” (Luke 23:46, NW) On the third day afterward God restored that spirit or life force by resurrecting Jesus from the dead. (Acts 2:2228, 32-36) So Ecclesiastes 12:7 cannot be used to teach that immortal spirits of the human dead are in a spirit world enjoying greater life, knowledge and freedom than ever before and that they have all, good and bad alike, returned to God. Instead, it proves that all mankind are under condemnation of death and hence must grow old and approach death and that when they die the body will return to the dust, for God’s righteous law requires their life force of them.

In this respect, mankind, because of the condemnation to death that they inherited from Adam, are like the lower animals that die, not because animals are condemned to die for sin, but because their Creator did not decree that they should live forever. Showing that thus man’s spirit is just now like that of the lower animals, the inspired wise man says: “I said in my heart concerning the speaking of the sons of men, that God might make it clear to them, and that they might see that they by themselves are but beasts. For that which befalleth the sons of men befalleth beasts; even the same thing befalleth them; as the one dieth, so dieth the other; yea, they have all one kind of spirit: so that the preeminence of man above the beast is nought; for all is vanity. Every thing goeth unto one place: every thing came from the dust, and every thing retumeth to the dust. Who knoweth the spirit of the sons of man that ascendeth upward, and the spirit of the beast that descendeth downward to the earth?” (Ecclesiastes 3:18-21, Le; also Yg; Ro) We see, therefore, that the spirit or invisible, activating life force that makes animals live is the same as that which makes mankind live, and hence the only thing that can give man any pre-eminence

above a lower animal is God’s decree or God’s arrangement concerning man’s future. By God’s undeserved kindness man does enjoy such a preeminence over lower animals, for God has willed and provided that believing, obedient mankind may enjoy everlasting life in a righteous, death-free new world. So the enjoying of such life does not begin when the body returns to the dust at death, for the spirit that then returns to God is not an invisible, immortal counterpart of that mortal body, having all its characteristics. Such an idea of the spirit in man is simply an imaginary theory that spiritualists invent to support their teaching of “survival after death.” Their “next world” is not God’s righteous new world.

IS THE HUMAN SOUL IMMORTAL?

For a human soul to live there must be (1) a human body and (2) the invisible, active force or spirit from God combining with that body to make it breathe and live. The human creature thus brought to life is the human soul. (Genesis 2:7) Now since the human soul must breathe earth’s atmosphere and must eat material food here on earth, and since it may be tom, be imprisoned and be laid in irons or be reached by the sword and may be brought down to the pit (Psalm 105:18, Da; Yg; Jeremiah 4:10; Luke 2:35), is the human soul death-proof, immortal? Spiritualism rests mainly upon the belief in the immortality of the human soul; it bases its teaching of “survival after death” upon the soul’s immortality, and it says that the Bible is full of references to survival after death and the communicating between the living and the dead. Consequently the claims of spiritualism require us to examine the special question, Does the Bible teach the immortality of the human soul, making survival after death possible?

Immortality is of course mentioned in the Bible, but does the Bible say the human soul has it? Look it up and surprise yourself to find that the word “immortality” does not occur once in the Hebrew Scriptures of the Bible; and in the Christian Greek Scriptures the Greek word a-tha-na-si'a, which is translated “immortality,” occurs only three times. Here are the three times:

“For this which is corruptible must put on incorruption, and this which is mortal must put on immortality. But when this which is corruptible puts on incorruption and this which is mortal puts on immortality, then the saying will take place that is written [at Isaiah 25:8]: ‘Death is swallowed up forever.’ ” (1 Corinthians 15:53,54, NW) Here the apostle Paul is discussing the Christian resurrection from the dead and he shows how the faithful Christians are raised from the dead and with what body. He does not say they now have immortality any more than they now have incorruptibility, for in Romans 2:6, 7 he tells Christians that God “will render to each one according to his works: everlasting life to those who are seeking glory and honor and incorruptibleness by endurance in work that is good.” (NW) Incorruptibleness as well as immortality is a future reward that is to be bestowed upon faithful Christians at their resurrection from the dead. The apostle showed that this resurrection and putting on of incorruptibleness and immortality was not to take place at death but at. the second coming and presence of Jesus Christ when he raises his faithful followers from the dead. “For just as in Adam all are dying, so also in the Christ all will be made alive. But each one in his own rank: Christ the firstfruits, afterward those who belong to the Christ during his presence. So also is the resurrection of the dead. It is sown in corruption, it is raised up in incorruption. . . . and we shall be changed.”—1 Corinthians 15:22, 23, 42, 52, NW.

Notice no mention here of the human soul. Instead of the inherent immortality of the human soul, the above two mentions of a-tha-na-si'a or immortality teach directly the contrary.

The remaining or third mention of a-tha-na-si'a or immortality is found in the following quotation: “Observe the commandment in a spotless and irreprehensible way until the manifestation of our Lord Jesus Christ. This manifestation the happy and only Potentate will show in its own appointed times, he the King of those who rule as kings and Lord of those who rule as lords, the one alone having immortality.” (1 Timothy 6:1416, NW) The apostle Paul is here telling Timothy that of all the earthly potentates who rule as kings and as lords and who claim immortality none really have it, but the “happy and only Potentate” Jesus Christ, the King of kings and Lord of lords, has it exclusively since his own resurrection from the dead. We grant you that the pagan Babylonians, Egyptians, Greeks, Romans and Hindus taught their heathenish doctrine of the inherent immortality and incorruptibility of the human soul. But Jesus Christ, who is the first one upon whom the immortal, ‘incorruptible God’ bestowed immortality and incorruptibility when raising him from the dead, is the first one that- brought the truth concerning these to light by his preaching of the good news about God’s kingdom. “Now it has been made clearly evident through the manifestation of our Savior, Christ Jesus, who has abolished death but has shed light upon life and incorruption through the good news.”—2 Timothy 1:10 and 1 Timothy 1:17, NW.

From this it is seen that this third Scriptural mention of a-tha-na-si'a or immortality flatly denies that any humans, even earthly potentates, dictators, kings and lords, have inherent immortality of the human soul. In the Roman Catholic version of the Bible, in the apocryphal or deutero-canonical books of its “Old Testament,” the words “immortality” and “incorruption” do occur, but even these references do not show or prove that the human soul is inherently immortal. For instance, Ecclesiasticus 17:29 (Douay) plainly says: “For all things cannot be in men, because the son of man is not immortal.” See also Ecclesiasticus 6:16 and The Book of Wisdom 1:15; 2:23; 3:1, 4; 4:1; 6:19, 20; 8:13, 17; 15:1, 3, all of which, if showing anything, show that immortality is a prize to be gained in the future and is not possessed inherently.

DOES THE HUMAN SOUL DIE?

If, now, the Bible does not teach the inherent immortality of the human soul, it ought to say that the human soul is mortal, that it dies! Does the Bible do so? Directly so, in plain language that even a child can grasp. Since spiritualists, Roman Catholics and other religions of Christendom cannot produce one Bible verse saying or proving that the human soul is deathless, immortal, it ought to be enough if we produced just one Bible verse in witness that the human soul is mortal, dies. But we can produce many verses in witness, and the New World Translation of the Holy Scriptures, which regularly translates the Hebrew word neph'esh and the Greek word psy-che' as “soul” from Genesis 1:20 onward, shows more fully than any other translation that the Bible says the human soul dies.

In the original garden or paradise of Eden the perfect human souls Adam and Eve did not have to die. Those two perfect human souls could have lived on forever in their earthly paradise. How? By sustaining their human, material bodies with the natural food that Jehovah God there'provided and by obediently nourishing their hearts and minds with the spiritual food that he provided when he talked to them out of the invisible. But God warned them that the human soul, despite its ability to live on earth forever by God’s provisions, was mortal, able to die. Genesis, chapter two, after describing God’s creation of the first human soul Adam, goes on to say: “And Jehovah God proceeded to take the man and settle him in the garden of Eden to cultivate it and to take care of it. And Jehovah God also laid this command upon the man: ‘From every tree of the garden you may eat to satisfaction. But as for the tree of the knowledge of good and bad you must not eat from it, for in the day you eat from it you will positively die.” (Genesis 2:15-17, NW) If Adam the soul disobeyed God, then Adam the soul would die. If Adam the soul obeyed God and ate of all the trees in Eden except this forbidden one, then Adam the soul would continue living as long as his obedience kept up. This offered the opportunity for the human soul to live eternally, not in a spirit world, but in human perfection in the earthly paradise of Eden.

When God pronounced the sentence of death upon Adam after he disobediently accepted some of the forbidden fruit from the hand of his wife and ate it, God said: “In the sweat of your face you will eat bread until, you return to the ground, for out of it you were taken. For dust you are and to dust you will return.” (Genesis 3:17-19, NW) Note that God did not say to Adam, ‘Your body will return to the dust but your spirit will be freed from the body and will live on consciously in the unseen world where I dwell, because your spirit is immortal and I cannot destroy it.’ No, but God said, ‘You [not your body, but you, the soul] were taken from the ground and to the ground you will return, for you [the soul] are dust and to the dust you [the soul under death sentence] will return.’

As a living soul Adam was just some animated, quickened, enlivened or vivified dust molded together in a man’s form, just the same as the other land animals. To put the death sentence into force God drove the man out of the paradise of Eden. Why? “Jehovah God went on to say: ‘Here the man has become like one of us in knowing good and bad, and now in order that he may not put his hand out and actually take fruit also of the tree of life and eat and live forever,—’ With that Jehovah God put him out of the garden of Eden to cultivate the ground from which he had been taken [and to which he must now return]. And so he drove the man out and posted at the east of the garden of Eden the cherubs and the flaming blade of a sword that was turning itself continually to guard the way to the tree of life.” (Genesis 3:22-24, NW) God did not keep him away from the tree of life that Adam might die only as to his body but pass alive in spirit to a spirit world, beginning an immortal journey there, knowing more and being freer there and thus really benefiting by his having disobeyed his Creator and dying. God drove him out of the paradise of Eden away from the tree of life that the human soul Adam might not live at air anywhere but cease to exist, “positively die,” just the same as a brute beast.

Because he fell from human perfection, the human soul Adam lived many centuries even on the cursed ground outside the paradise of Eden. “Meanwhile he became father to sons and daughters. So all the days of Adam that he lived amounted to nine hundred and thirty years and he died.” (Genesis 5:4, 5, NW) On the very day that Adam sinned and God condemned him and drove him outside Eden’s paradise, Adam was dead from God’s viewpoint and so was dead in sin. He became a father of disobedience and produced sons of disobedience. For this reason the apostle Paul told the Christians: “You were dead in your trespasses and sins, in which you at one time walked according to the system of things of this world, according to the ruler of the authority of the air, the spirit that now operates in the sons of disobedience.” (Ephesians 2:1, 2, 5, AW) From that standpoint, too, Eve as well as Adam was “dead though she [was] living.” (1 Timothy 5:6, W) Now being dead in sin was not the full measure of death for Adam and Eve, but when they ceased to breathe and when the spirit or life-causing active force returned to God who gave it to them, then the first two human souls, Adam and Eve, died. Adam lived seventy years less than a thousand years. So, if we take the apostle Peter’s time measurement, “One day is with the Lord as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day” (2 Peter 3: 8), then Adam as well as Eve positively died “in the day” that he ate from the forbidden tree. He died in the first thousand-year day of humankind’s existence.

But where are the scriptures that say in so many words that the human soul dies? At Numbers 23:10 (A⁷W) the prophet Balaam is inspired by Jehovah God to say: “Let my soul die the death of the upright ones, and let my end turn out afterward like theirs.” Other verses (NW) on soul death read: “You must deliver our souls from death.” “Our souls are to die instead of you people!” (Joshua 2:13, 14) “Zebulun was a people that scorned their souls to the point of death.” (Judges 5:18) “His soul got to be impatient to the point of dying.... Samson proceeded to say: ‘Let my soul die with the Philis'tines.’ ” (Judges 16:16, 30) “And he [the prophet Elijah] began to ask that his soul might die and to say: ‘It is enough! Now, O Jehovah, take my soul away, for I am no better than my forefathers.’ ” (lKingsl9:4) Also: “Their soul dieth in youth, and their life among the defiled.” (Job 36:14, Yg; Da; Ro; Le) “To deliver their soul from death, and to keep them alive in famine.” (Psalm 33:19) “He spared not their soul from death, but gave their life over to the pestilence.” (Psalm 78:50) “Thou hast delivered my soul from death.” (Psalm 116:8) “He hath poured out his soul unto death.” (Isaiah 53:12) “Will ye pollute me among my people for handfuls of barley and for pieces of bread, to slay the souls that should not die, and to save the souls alive that should not live, by your lying to my people that hear your lies?” (Ezekiel 13:19) “The soul that sinneth, it shall die.”—Ezekiel 18:4, 20.

But did you ever hear of a dead or deceased soul? Here is where the Bible uses such an expression: “You must not make cuts in your flesh for a deceased soul.” (Leviticus 19:28, NW) “For a deceased soul no one may defile himself among his people. And he should not come to any dead soul.” (Leviticus 21:1, 11, NW; also 22:4) “All the days of his keeping separate to Jehovah he may not come toward any dead soul.” (Numbers 6:6, NW; also 5:2; 6:11; 9:6, 7,10) “Anyone touching the corpse of any human soul must then be unclean seven days.”—Numbers 19:11, also 13, NW; see also Haggai 2:13, where neph'esh (“soul”) is generally translated “dead body.”

The Bible does not contradict itself. With all those verses plainly speaking of soul death, no wonder you do not find any that says that the human soul cannot die or has immortality. But someone might remark, All those Bible verses are from the ancient Hebrew Scriptures, but is the mortalness of the human soul taught in the Christian Greek Scriptures? For, in Matthew 10:28, did not Jesus say: “Fear not them which kill the body, but are not able to kill the soul”? Yes, but Jesus also said: “My soul is exceeding sorrowful, even unto death.” (Matthew 26:38; Mark 14:34) “They did not love their souls even despite the danger of death [or, souls until death].” (Revelation 12:11, NW, margin) “And a third of the creatures that are in the sea which have souls died.” (Revelation 8:9, NW) “And every living soul died in the sea.” (Revelation 16:3) Also Jesus’ disciple James wrote: “He which converteth the sinner from the error of his way shall save a soul from death.” (James 5:20) So Jesus and his disciples did believe in our soul’s mortalness.

The usual way that clergymen try to uphold the teaching of the immortalness and indestructibleness of the human soul is by quoting only the first half of Matthew 10:28. Why? Because in the last half of the verse Jesus goes on to say: “But rather fear him which is able to destroy both soul and body in hell.” That is to say, fear Almighty God who can destroy the human soul as well as the human body, in Gehenna. This is the Greek word mistranslated “hell,” it not being the same Greek word as hai'des and tar'ta.ros, which words the King James Version also translates as “hell.”

Jesus at death went to Ha'des or mankind’s common grave, but not to Gehenna, for his body was buried in the grave of Joseph the rich man of Arimathea. He was not pitched like a cursed criminal unworthy of a resurrection into Gehenna or the valley of Hinnorn to the west and south of the walls of Jerusalem. (Acts 2:27-32, AS; NW) Had Jesus’ religious enemies gotten ahold of his dead body first, they might have hurled it over Jerusalem’s walls into Gehenna to be burned up there in the continual fires mixed with sulphur or to fall on a projecting ledge and be consumed in the warmth of that fire by worms or maggots that would not die till they had left only his inedible skeleton. Those religious enemies certainly did not want Jesus to be resurrected from Ha'des, which was why they had Governor Pontius Pilate seal the stone-closed tomb and post a soldier guard there to prevent Jesus’ body getting out. But, to symbolize that he was deserving of a resurrection from the dead, Jesus was fittingly laid in a memorial tomb; whereas people whose soul as well as body Almighty God destroys in Gehenna will never have a resurrection from the dead and hence will not live again as souls in God’s righteous new world. God destroys their soul in that he hopelessly destroys all opportunity for those in the Gehenna state to enjoy life anywhere again by any means. God does not apply the benefits of Jesus’ sacrificial death to them.—Matthew 27:5766; 28:1-4, 11-15; Acts 4:1, 2; Isaiah 53:9; Mark 9:43-48, NW; Yg; Mo.

Jesus taught that the human soul is mortal and therefore destructible, killable. He said: “Is it lawful on the sabbath to do a good deed or to do an injury, to save or to kill a soul?” (Mark 3:4 and Luke 6:9, NW) “Remember the wife of Lot. Whoever seeks to keep his soul safe for himself will lose it, but whoever loses it will preserve it alive.” (Luke 17:32, 33, NW; Ro, margin) “He that is fond of his soul destroys it, but he that hates his soul in this world will safeguard it for everlasting life.” (John 12:25, NW) The apostle Peter showed that Moses foretold Jesus, at Deuteronomy 18:15-19, and said: “Indeed, any soul that does not listen to that Prophet will be completely destroyed from among the people.” (Acts 3:22, 23, NW) And at Hebrews 10:39 (NW) we read: “Now we are not the kind that shrink back to destruction, but the kind that have faith to the preserving alive of the soul.”

In talking of the soul that way, Jesus and his disciples were in accord with the Hebrew Scriptures, where we read how Israel’s judge Joshua acted as Jehovah’s executioner of the pagan inhabitants of the Promised Land, as follows: “And Joshua captured Mak.ke'dah ... As for its king, he devoted him and every soul that was in it to destruction. ... Jehovah gave [Lib'nah] also and its king into Israel’s hand and they went striking it and every soul that was in it with the edge of the sword. They did not let a survivor remain.” (Joshua 10:28, 30, 32, 35, 37, 39; 11:11, NW) Moses also said to the Israelite soldiers after they executed the enemy Midianites in war: “Everyone who has killed a soul and everyone who has touched someone slain, you should purify yourselves.” (Numbers 31:19, NW) The wise man said: “Whoso committeth adultery with a woman lacketh understanding: he that doeth it destroyeth his own soul.” (Proverbs 6:32) Other scriptures might be quoted, but enough have been quoted here to prove that both the ancient Hebrew Scriptures and the Christian Greek Scriptures agree that the human soul is subject to destruction at the hands of Almighty God and his executioners.

What great fact now stands out beyond all contradiction? It is this: There is no survival of the human soul after death. That is why the apostle Paul said that, if there were no resurrection of the dead beginning with Jesus Christ, then “those who fell asleep in death in union with Christ perished. If in this life only we [Christians] have hoped in Christ, we are of all men most to be pitied. However, now Christ has been raised up from the dead, the flrstfruits of those who have fallen asleep in death. For since death is through a man, resurrection of the dead is also through a man. For just as in Adam all are dying, so also in the Christ all will be made alive.” (1 Corinthians 15:18-22, NW) There is a difference between “survival after death” and resurrection. In fact, it is because there is no survival after death that there must be a resurrection of the dead. Since there is no survival after death, there being no immortality of the human soul and there being no personality to the spirit in man, the dead in the graves are dead and, to live again in God’s new world, they need to be resurrected from the dead. Thus the very foundation of spiritualism must be false and there can be no such thing as communication between the living and the dead. Spiritualism therefore offers a false, misleading comfort to bereaved ones. It subjects them to a deception. It endangers them, for it denies the fall of man into sin, it denies death as the penalty for sin, it denies the need of Christ’s ransom sacrifice to remove mankind’s sin and gain God’s forgiveness of sins, it denies the need of God’s kingdom to destroy this wicked system of things and to resurrect the dead and aid them to attain to everlasting life under God’s kingdom in the earthly paradise of his righteous new world.

MISTAKEN IDENTITY

This is not saying that spiritualists do not get in touch with an unseen, spirit realm. This is not saying that they do not have authentic phenomena, such as messages received from the invisible, predictions come true of future things, disclosures of knowledge not gained by ordinary means, supernatural movements of objects, and the shaping of ectoplasm from the bodies of mediums into human forms, and other experiences, upon which they chiefly base their belief and teaching. Admittedly such experiences and observed phenomena are a proof of something. Of what? Of an invisible realm with intelligent spirit creatures, but decidedly not of “survival after death” or of communication between the dead and the living. In this respect spiritualism is a case of mistaken identity. By this we mean that spiritualists mistake the identity of the individuals in the spirit realm-with whom they communicate by mediums and other means. They think these are human souls once alive on earth but now departed. For their own purposes the spirits do not reveal their true identity but assume an identity that is not theirs.

Who, then, are these spirits who communicate with spiritualists? They cannot be immortal souls or spirits of humans who have died. So since they pretend to be the invisible, living souls of the human dead and thus work a fraud and a deception, they must be lying spirits. They must be demons or devils, who are responsible for what the Bible calls “lying divination” and “lying signs and wonders.”—Ezekiel 13:6, 7, 9; 2 Thessalonians 2:9, NW.

But, objects the spiritualist, the Bible itself gives an account of communication between the dead and the living, between the faithful prophet Samuel and King Saul of Israel before the battle between the Israelites and the enemy Philistines.

In order that we may examine the objection of the spiritualist with all the facts before us, we here publish the entire Bible account as given in the New World Translation:

"Now Samuel himself had died and all Israel had proceeded to bewail him and bury him in Ra'mah his own city. As for Saul, he had removed the spirit mediums and the professional foretellers of events from the land.

“Subsequently the Phi-lis'tines collected together and came and pitched camp in Shu'nem. So Saul collected all Israel together and they pitched camp in Gil bo'a. When Saul got to see the camp of the Phi lis'tines he became afraid and his heart began to tremble very much. Although Saul would inquire of Jehovah, Jehovah never answered him, either by dreams or by the U'rim or by the prophets. Finally Saul said to his servants: ‘Look for a woman who is a mistress of spirit mediumship for me and let me go to her and consult her.’ Then his servants said to him: ‘Look! there is a woman who is a mistress of spirit mediumship in En-dor.’

“So Saul disguised himself and clothed himself with other garments and went, he and two men with him, and they came to the woman by night. He now said: ‘Employ divination, please, for me by spirit mediumship and bring up for me the one whom I shall designate to you.’ However, the woman said to him: ‘Here you yourself well know what Saul did, how he cut oft the spirit mediums and the professional foretellers of events from the land. Why, then, are you acting like a trapper against my soul to have me put to death?’ Immediately Saul swore to her by Jehovah, saying: ‘As Jehovah is alive, guilt for error will not befall you in this matter!’ At this the woman said: ‘Whom shall I bring up for you?’ To this he said: ‘Bring up Samuel for me.’ When the woman saw ‘Samuel’ she began crying out at the top of her voice, and the woman went on to say to Saul: ‘Why did you trick me when you yourself are Saul?’ But the king said to her: ‘Do not be afraid, but what did you see?’ And the woman went on to say to Saul: ‘A god I saw coming up out of the earth.’ At once he said to her: ‘What is his form?’ to which she said: ‘It is an old man coming up, and he has himself covered with a sleeveless coat.’ At that Saul recognized that it was ‘Samuel,’ and he proceeded to bow low with his face to the earth and to prostrate himself.

“And ‘Samuel’ began to say to Saul: ‘Why have you disturbed me by having me brought up?’ To this Saul said: -I am in very sore straits, as the Phi lis'tines are fighting against me and God himself has departed from me and has answered me no more, either by . means of the prophets or by dreams, so that I am calling you to let me know what I shall do,’

“And ‘Samuel’ went on to say: ‘Why, then, do you inquire of me, when Jehovah himself has departed from you and proves to be your adversary? And Jehovah will do for himself just as he spoke by means of me and Jehovah will rip the kingdom away from your hand and give it to your fellow man David. As you did not obey the voice of Jehovah and you did not execute his burning anger against Am'a-lek, that is why this is the thing that Jehovah will certainly do to you this day. And Jehovah will also give Israel with you into the hand of the Philis'tines, and tomorrow you and your sons will be with me. Even the camp of Israel Jehovah will give into the hand of the Philis 'tines.’

“At that Saul quickly fell down his full length to the earth and became very much afraid because of ‘Samuel’s’ words. Also there happened to be no power in him, because he had not eaten food the whole day and the whole night. The woman now came to Saul and saw that he had been greatly terrified. So she said to him: ‘Here your maidservant has obeyed your voice and I proceeded to put my soul in my palm and obey the words that you spoke to me. And now, please, you, in turn, obey the voice of your maidservant, and let me set before you a piece of bread, and you eat, that power may come to be in you, because you will go on your way.’ 1 Samuel 28:3-22, NW.*

‘There now,’ says the spiritualist, ‘the Bible says that it was Samuel that appeared after he died.’ But is that what the Bible does say? No! It shows that King Saul did not see anything at this stance. It was the spirit medium that saw something by her occult powers. Saul merely yielded himself mentally to her that the seance might be successful. ‘But,’ says the spiritualist, ‘what the medium saw and described King Saul himself identified as being Samuel.’ True, but Saul wanted to believe that it was Samuel and he was willing to be deceived by appearances, by resemblances.

Resemblances do not, however, establish exact identity. Other important things have to be taken in account. In his article “A Case for ESP, PK and PSI” published in the magazine Life in 1954,

* See also the book What Has Religion Done lor Mankind? pages 1G5-170, lor a discussion of this account. the well-known researcher into psychic things, Aldous Huxley, had this to say, on page 108:

“Another problem for the psi researchers of the future will be that of human survival after death. . . . Disquieting cases of mistaken identity turn up from time to time in the law courts. . , . Passports, social security cards and even fingerprints can be faked. And somewhere in the world practically everybody has his or her double. (Stalin and Hitler are said to have employed half a dozen or more.) If it is so difficult, even here and now, to prove scientifically that I am I and you are you, how much harder must it be to demonstrate that the person speaking through the mouth of a medium is in fact the person he says he is, and not a projection of information acquired by means of ESP [extrasensory perception] and dramatized, more or less convincingly, by a dissociated part of the medium’s subconscious mind." And then, under a picture of former U.S. president Harry S. Truman alongside that of his theatrical stage doubler Irving Fisher, the article says: “WHO IS WHO? . . . Since physical identity can be counterfeited, Author Huxley points out, it is doubly difficult to assess claims that specific dead people have been heard from in seances through mediums.”

To author Aldous Huxley and other psychic researchers these are “old and still unsolved problems.” But if we accept the full Word of God, the Bible, this case of King Saul and the medium is no unsolved problem. King Saul had previously killed off, not Jehovah’s prophets, but the spirit mediums and professional foretellers of events from the land of Israel. Just as he tricked the spirit medium into practicing her unlawful business, so the spirit that caused the spirit medium to see a god coming out of the earth tricked her and also Saul by counterfeiting the dead Samuel’s former living appearance. Samuel at his death left behind the sleeveless coat he used to wear or was buried in. So where did the spirit get the sleeveless coat? The spirit counterfeited that coat as well as Samuel’s oldness. That invisible spirit working through the medium knew how Samuel dressed in life and what he had said to disobedient King Saul on former occasions and how he had refused to see King Saul any more till his own death and what he looked like at his death. (1 Samuel 15:35) So the spirit could easily counterfeit all that, and he did. Whether it was the next day, or “tomorrow,” that the Israelite army were delivered to the Philistines in defeat and Saul and his sons with him on the battlefield died, the Bible account does not plainly show. The spirit’s expression “you and your sons” meant not necessarily all of Saul’s sons but those in the camp with him; one of Saul’s sons, Ish-bo'sheth, did not die in that battle but ruled as Saul’s successor for a while. (1 Samuel 31:1-7; 1 Chronicles 9:39; 10:2-6) The spirit knew that Jehovah was against Saul and that Saul had displeased Jehovah further by consulting a spirit medium and was condemned to death for that and would not be favored by help from Jehovah in battle. So the spirit could reasonably predict defeat for Saul and death to him and his sons.

Whether the spirit’s prediction came true or not, the spirit was a “lying spirit,” for it made a prediction from a counterfeit or fraudulent background by pretending to be Jehovah’s faithful Samuel and enacting the lie that the dead are not dead and that it is possible for the living to talk with the dead. Samuel was then a dead soul with the hope of a resurrection in God’s new world. He had refused to communicate with Saul any longer after Jehovah had definitely rejected him for disobeying Jehovah in the matter of executing all the Amalekites and their livestock. Samuel had also refused to have anything to do with spirit mediums. Certainly, then, no condemned spirit medium could force Samuel to do after death what he had refused to do during life. Furthermore, the lady medium could not raise the dead. The only one that can do this is “God, who makes the dead alive and calls the things that are not as though they were.” (Romans 4:17, NW) “Jehovah is a Killer and a Preserver of life, a Bringer down to She'ol [mankind’s common grave], and He brings up.” (1 Samuel 2:6, NW) He did not accommodate a condemned medium and bring back Samuel for her.

For rebelling against obeying Jehovah’s command King Saul was the same as one practicing spiritism, as Samuel said to him: “Rebelliousness is the same as the sin of divination, and pushing ahead presumptuously the same as [using] uncanny power and teraphim. Since you have rejected the word of Jehovah, he accordingly rejects you from being king.” (1 Samuel 15:22, 23, NW) But now by consulting a spirit medium he was directly resorting to spiritism and deserved to die. By the medium he got in touch with a lying spirit but not Samuel. Consequently 1 Chronicles 10:13, 14 (NW) says: “Thus Saul died for his unfaithfulness with which he had acted faithlessly against Jehovah concerning the word of Jehovah that he had not kept and also for asking of a spirit medium to make inquiry. And he did not inquire of Jehovah. Consequently he put him to death and turned the kingship over to David the son of Jes'se.”

The attempt by spiritualists to use Saul’s experience as a proof from the Bible that there is survival after death and that the departed ones can communicate from the realm of the dead with those living on earth by spirit mediums miserably fails therefore.

Even the spiritualists themselves admit that the spirits with whom they have contact lie and deceive. On page 162 of his book and under the heading “Intrusion by Undesired Spirits” Rishi confesses:

“In our endeavours to converse with our spiritfriends, we occasionally come across undesired entities, who interfere while others are communicating and even impersonate them. This is a great stumbling block in the way of some experimenters who are at times greatly harassed by annoying intrusions from the other world. For want of a good guide in the unseen regions they are much handicapped and feel helpless in the matter. It seems that these earnest persons are anxious to get rid of the undesired visitors, but no argument or prayers have any effect upon such denizens of the next world, whose intrusions are usually meant to harass those through whom they are communicating their thoughts."

But the late British psychic researcher, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, is even more blunt as to the inclination of the spirits to lie. On page 72 of his book The New Revelation Sir Doyle said this concerning the spirits themselves:

“We have, unhappily, to deal with absolute coldblooded lying on the part of wicked or mischievous intelligences. Every one who has investigated the matter has, I suppose, met with examples of wilful deception which occasionally are mixed up with good and true communications.”

Expressing his fear as to the real identity of the spirits, an Egyptian spiritualist named Aly Abdel Galil Rady, professor of physics at the Faculty of Science in Ibrahim University, Cairo, has this to say on pages 277, 287-289 of his book The Invisible World, as translated from Arabic:

“The spirits who appear can be trouble-makers, liars, and perhaps from demons who can skillfully act as the spirits of the dead humans and can speak with their voice, appear in their image and materialize in their form. ... I can say, therefore, that all the opinions made known by the spirits at their apparitions are questionable. It is true that some of them are right but the majority are wrong. . . . We should not forget that science is full of deceptive phenomena such as the mirage to which the thirsty person runs thinking it is water. Why, then, do we not investigate about the truth regarding the spirits speaking to us, I presume they are demons. And neither I nor those spiritists are sure.’’

Thus out of the mouths or from the pens of prominent spiritists themselves comes the damaging evidence or testimony. It is useless to try to defend spiritualism with the weak argument that there are good spirits and bad spirits and the intention of spiritualism is to get in touch with the good spirits. Spiritualism is founded on a great untruth, the lie of survival after death and of the immortality of the human soul. Therefore all spirits that would be willing to communicate with spiritualists on the foundation of that lie and try to make that lie appear true must be bad spirits, demons that try to give the lie to God and his Word. The Christian apostle Paul writes: “Let God be found true, though every man be found a liar.” (Romans 3:4, NW) That statement includes every man that is a spiritualist and that gets in touch with these proved lying spirits.

WAS THE TRANSFIGURATION A MATERIALIZATION ?

Still attempting to play all his cards in the game, the spiritualist will say: 'But was not the transfiguration of Jesus on the high mountain a return of Moses and Elijah from the dead and did not Jesus therefore use his three apostles Peter, James and John as mediums in their sleepy condition to bring about the materialization of those dead prophets?’ To answer this, turn to the authentic record, as given at Luke 9:28-36 (NW): “He took Peter and John and James along and climbed up into a mountain to pray. And as he was praying the appearance of his face became different and his apparel became glitteringly bright. Also, look! two men were conversing with him, who were Moses and Elijah. These appeared with glory and began talking about his departure that he was destined to fulfill at Jerusalem. Now Peter and those with him were weighed down with sleep; but when they got fully awake they saw his glory and the two men standing with him. And as these were being separated from him Peter said to Jesus: ‘Instructor, it is fine for us to be here, so let us erect three tents, one for you and one for Moses and one for Elijah,’ he not realizing what he was saying. But as he was saying these things a cloud formed and began to cover them protectingly. As they entered into the cloud, they became fearful. And a voice came out of the cloud, saying: ‘This is my Son, the one that has been chosen. Listen to him.’ And as the voice occurred Jesus was found alone. But they kept quiet and did not report to anyone in those days any of the things they saw.”

This was no materialization of the dead prophets Moses and Elijah by means of producing ectoplasm. There was no ectoplasm extruded from either Jesus or Peter or James or John. They were conscious and observed what was going on, for they were to be made witnesses of this transfiguration so as to make more firm the prophecies of the Bible, not the predictions of spirit messages. As Peter himself confesses, saying: “No, it was not by turning aside to follow artfully contrived false stories that we acquainted you with the power and presence of our Lord Jesus Christ, but it was by having become eyewitnesses of his magnificence. For he received from God the Father honor and glory when words such as these were borne to him by the magnificent glory: ‘This is my son, my beloved, on whom I have set my approval.’ Yes, these words we heard borne from heaven while we were with him in the holy mountain. Consequently, we have the prophetic word made more firm, and you are doing well in paying attention to it.” (2 Peter 1:16-19, NW) This could not he a spiritistic materialization of Moses and Elijah, for they were both dead souls, and the time for their resurrection from the dead has not even yet arrived.—Hebrews 11:23-29, 32, 38-40.

This was a vision, like the vision that the apostle John had about sixty years after he witnessed the transfiguration and which vision was so real that John talked with those appearing in the vision. (Revelation 1:1, 2; 5:4, 5; 7:13, 14) Jesus himself pronounced it a prophetic vision, in which Moses and Elijah served as symbolisms of the offices that Jesus was to hold in order to do certain works. The apostle Matthew proves that the transfiguration was a vision when he writes: “And as they were descending from the mountain, Jesus commanded them, saying, ‘Tell the vision to no one until the Son of man is raised up from the dead.’ ” (Matthew 17:9, NW) The spiritualists are therefore authoritatively barred from using the transfiguration of Jesus in support of their teaching.

Immediately after coming down from the mountain of transfiguration Jesus healed a demonpossessed, lunatic boy. Concerning this we read: “Then Jesus rebuked it, and the demon came out of him; and the boy was cured from that hour.” (Matthew 17:14-18, NW) This adds to the proof that the transfiguration had nothing to do with spiritism, which is carried on by the demons.

Jesus was not a spirit medium. He never yielded to the influence of demons or unclean spirits. His religious enemies accused him of being possessed by an unclean spirit, a demon. (John 7:20; 8:48, 49, 52; 10:20, 21) But Jesus himself cast out demons and he empowered his disciples also to cast out demons. (Matthew 10:1, 8; Luke 9:1; 10:17-20) His enemies said he cast out demons by the power of the “ruler of the demons,” Be el'ze-bub. But Jesus said that this would mean that Satan was divided against him so that his kingdom could not stand. Well, then, does that mean that when spirit mediums and priests of false religion exorcise demons God is using them to cast out demons? No, but Satan is using them to do so. In his use of these Satan is not divided against himself, because these spirit mediums and false priests are on his side and are upholding his kingdom by the wonderful thing they are performing, and they are giving seeming support to Satan’s religious lies. And so their expelling demons, even in Jesus’ name as a magical name, does not prove that such mediums and false priests are not “workers of lawlessness” against God. (Matthew 7:21-23, NW; Acts 19:11-16) But Jesus himself was not on Satan’s side. He was Satan’s greatest foe on earth and what he taught and preached was directly against Satan’s lies and kingdom. So Jesus’ casting out demons was a proof that he was doing it by Satan’s enemy, by the “finger of God,” and it gave support to God’s truth and kingdom. (Matthew 12:22-30) His faithful disciples likewise expelled demons by God’s power, not by the Devil’s. Power to do so back there in the first century was a miraculous “gift” of the holy spirit. But since Christ’s twelve apostles died that gift has ceased among his faithful followers and is not possessed or exercised by them today.—1 Corinthians 13:8-11.

Jesus had nothing in common with the demons, and the demons themselves admitted that fact. One of them shouted out: “What have we to do with you, Jesus you Nazarene? Did you come to destroy us? I know exactly who you are, the Holy One of God.” Jesus “reproved it, saying: ‘Be silent, and come on out of him!’ ” Jesus would not let the demons testify concerning him, as we read: “He expelled many demons, but he would not let the demons speak, because they knew him to be Christ.” (Mark 1:23-25, 34, NW) Jesus’ walking once on the Sea of Galilee to reach the storm-tossed boat of his disciples was no act of spiritistic levitation. (Matthew 14:24-32) When Jesus was baptized and then filled with God’s holy spirit and spent forty days in the wilderness, Satan the Devil tried to induce Jesus to perform a levitation to mystify the Jews and win them over at the temple of Jerusalem. On a temple battlement the ruler of the demons said to Jesus: “If you are a son of God, hurl yourself down from here; for it is Written: ‘He will give his angels a charge concerning you, to preserve you,’ and, ‘They will carry you on their hands that you may never strike your foot, against a stone.’ ” But Jesus refused, quoting the scripture: “You must not put Jehovah your God to the test.” (Luke 4:1, 9-12, TVW) His ascension from Mount Olivet forty days from his resurrection from the dead was no spiritistic levitation. It was his return to heaven and his entry into the presence of his heavenly Father with the value of his human sacrifice for the sake of sinful mankind.—Acts 1:9-12.

THE SCRIPTURES FALSELY ACCUSED

The Scriptures are therefore falsely accused of offering support to the claims of spiritualists. For mankind’s protection and safe guidance into the truth the Scriptures expose spiritualism to be what it actually is, spiritism or demonism. Hence the law of Jehovah God to the Israelites forbade their having anything to do with spirit mediums who pretended to put the living in touch with the dead. It commanded: “Do not turn yourselves to the spirit mediums, and do not consult professional foretellers of events, so as to become unclean by them. I am Jehovah your God.” Those Israelites who resorted to spiritism of any kind were to be killed. “As for the soul who turns himself to the spirit mediums and the professional foretellers of events so as to have unfaithful intercourse with them, I shall certainly set my face against that soul and cut him off from among his people.” Spirit mediums were to be stoned to death. “As for a man or woman in whom there should prove to be a mediumistic spirit or spirit of prediction, they should be put to death without fail. They should pelt them to death with stones. Their own blood is upon them.”—Leviticus 19:31; 20:6, 27, NW.

“There should not be found in you anyone who makes his son or his daughter pass through the fire, anyone who employs divination, a practicer of magic or anyone who looks for omens or a sorcerer, or one who binds others with a spell or anyone who consults a spirit medium or a professional foreteller of events or anyone who inquires of the dead. For everybody doing these things is something detestable to Jehovah, and on account of these detestable things Jehovah your God is driving them away before you. You should prove yourself faultless with Jehovah your God. For those nations whom you are dispossessing used to listen to those practicing magic and to those who divine, but, as for you, Jehovah your God has not given you anything like this.” Hence to indulge in such things would be certain to turn them away from the coming Messiah, the Greater Moses, who is Jesus Christ.—'Deuteronomy 18: 10-19, NW.

What, though, if spirit mediums or fortunetellers or astrologers or users of Ouija boards or planchettes make predictions and those predictions come true? Still this does not prove spiritism or spiritualism true, the right religion. Why not? Because this goes contrary to Jehovah God’s commandments and it turns those who rely on such spiritistic things away from God’s approved means of giving hidden knowledge and of prophesying concerning the future. It also works in support of the great lie concerning Jehovah’s Godship and concerning the dead, and so leads into error. God’s law commands: “In case a prophet or a dreamer of a dream should arise in your midst and he does give you a sign or a portent and the sign or the portent does come true of which he spoke to you, saying, ‘Let us walk after other gods, whom you have not known, and let us serve them,’ ” what then? “You must not listen to the words of that prophet or to the dreamer of that dream, because Jehovah your God is testing you to know whether you are loving Jehovah your God with all your heart and all your soul.... And that prophet or that dreamer of the dream should be put to death, because he has spoken of revolt against Jehovah your God, who has brought you out of the land of Egypt and has redeemed you from the house of slaves, to turn you from the way in which Jehovah your God has commanded you to walk, and you must clear out what is evil from your midst.” (Deuteronomy 13:1-5, NW) A prediction that comes true but that is used to turn you from Jehovah the only living and true God is a false disguise to throw you off your guard and to mislead you away from the divine source of life and truth. It is meant to bring you under the power of the “father of the lie,” Satan the Devil, the "ruler of the demons.”—John 8:44, NW.

Jehovah God knows who these demons are. He knows their methods of operation and the destruction they cause to their victims. In his written Word he therefore warns his people and those who want salvation against these unseen wicked intelligences. To believe in the existence of demons is not superstition. It is not only Christian but also scientific to believe in the existence of demons and to believe in a spirit realm, for there is where the invisible Creator, God, who is spirit, dwells and he is certainly not alone in that vast, immeasurable spirit realm. Unknown time before he created our 4i-billion-year-old visible universe Jehovah God made his first creation. It was a spiritual creation, namely, his beloved “only-begotten Son,” the “firstborn of all creation,” who in due time came to earth and became the “man Christ Jesus.” (John 3:16; Colossians 1:15, NW; 1 Timothy 2:5) Then by him Jehovah made other intelligent creations, also spiritual ones, namely, all the glorious, perfect, holy angels, and it was these spirit “sons of God” that “shouted for joy” at the creation of our earth for mankind’s everlasting home. (Psalm 104:4; 103:20; Job 38:4-7) Thus the spirit realm existed before ever our material universe came into being. The marvelously designed, visible material creation testifies to the existence, power and intelligence of the great Spirit Creator, Jehovah God. Materialistic scientists are without excuse for their unbelief toward him. “For his invisible qualities are clearly seen from the world’s creation onward, because they are understood by the things made, even his eternal power and Godship, so that they are inexcusable.”—Romans 1:20, NW.

Mankind has not had to wait upon the rise of spiritualism for proof that the spirit realm exists. What spiritualism has really tried to foist upon mankind is the belief that the spirit realm is inhabited by the spirits or so-called “immortal souls” of the human dead and that there is survival for mankind after death. Such a belief may have come from the Orient or the East, but it has not brought any enlightenment to mankind. Rather it has bedarkened their minds to the truth. The Occident or the West has come under such darkness and so has no light to give. The teaching of “survival after death” is not light, and Shaw Desmond is unfortunately iriistaken when he, in his book entitled “We Do Not Die,” says: “Spiritually starved, Europe no longer looks to the East for light, for light no longer comes from the East but from the West. The East is still, though it will not always be indifferent to the light which it once gave to a darkened world, that light of the World, which in its ultimate analysis may be called the light of ‘Survival.’ ” Spiritualism with its doctrine of “survival,” has only come into existence since the flood of Noah’s day in 2370 B.C.

The first man Adam knew the existence of the spirit realm and realized he was a product of it, and he taught his wife Eve so in the garden of Eden. Both Adam and Eve knew that the spirit realm existed, because Jehovah God talked with them out of the invisible, making his will known to them. They heard his voice, not by means of any spirit medium either, and they talked with him also. They knew they were not talking with any dead and “departed” person. Before Adam and Eve there were no dead humans. They talked, not with the dead, but with the living in the spirit realm, until they were driven from the paradise of Eden. Noah and his family of seven human souls survived the global flood, and they knew of the existence of the spirit realm. It was out of the invisible spirit realm that instructions came to Noah to build the ark of survival and to go into it just in time. It was out of the spirit realm that God spoke to them after the flood and blessed them and gave them instructions. Instead of discovering or explaining and proving the spirit realm, spiritualism has twisted the facts about it and misled men into the clutches of the demons. —Genesis 5:32 to 9:17.

WHO MADE THE DEMONS?

Here now comes up a question with some readers. At Deuteronomy 32:4 (NW) Moses sings of Jehovah God, saying: “The Rock, perfect is his activity, for all his ways are justice. A God of faithfulness, with whom there is no injustice; righteous and upright is he.” That being so, he could not be the creator of demons. How, then, did demons come into existence? The very next verse of Moses’ song gives us the clue, saying: “They have acted ruinously on their own part; they are not his children, the defect is their own. A generation crooked and twisted.” (Deuteronomy 32:5, NW) That is to say, those now demons made themselves such, and this defect is their own and they are no longer God’s children. The Bible also calls them “unclean spirits.” (Matthew 10:1; 12:43; Maik 1:23, 26, 27; Luke 4:33, 36; Acts 5:16; 8:7) But Jehovah God created them as clean spirits, his heavenly sons, members of his spirit family. They were not created immortal, but mortal, yet with the opportunity to live everlastingly by continuing to be clean, holy, spirit sons of God. Otherwise, now that quite a number of these have become demons, they could not be destroyed from the universe.

The first one to make himself a demon became the “ruler of the demons,” for he had other angels or spirits to make themselves like him. (Matthew 12:24 and Mark 3:22, NW) Because he was first in opposing God, in slandering or lying about God, in using deceit and in swallowing up his victims like a dragon, he was branded with four special titles, Satan, the Devil, the original Serpent and the Dragon. (Revelation 12:9; 20:2, NW) This third title links him with the talking serpent in the paradise of Eden. “The serpent seduced Eve by its craftiness.” (2 Corinthians 11:3, NW) It was Satan the Devil that obsessed that serpent and caused it to talk and seduce Eve, for a mere serpent could not talk and act out a seductive course of action itself. It was under invisible control. The invisible one that directed the serpent made himself Satan the Devil by the course of opposition and slander against God that he caused the serpent to take. This invisible spirit had been created a perfect, holy, spirit son of God. Being put in touch with the paradise garden of Eden and its human inhabitants, he saw an opportunity to make himself a mimic god and to capture control over mankind. (Ezekiel 28:13-17) Rebelling in his own heart against his very Creator, he mapped out his plan of action. He did not himself materialize, but used a serpent in Eden. By it he talked, not to the man Adam, but to the woman Eve, to turn her into rebellion against God and to use her to work on Adam to do the same thing.

“So it began to say to the woman: ‘Is it really so that God said you must not eat from every tree of the garden?’ At this the woman said to the serpent [and thus to Satan the Devil]: ‘Of the fruit of the trees of the garden we may eat. But as for eating of the fruit of the tree that is in the middle of the garden [the tree of the knowledge of good and bad], God has said, “You must not eat from it, no, you must not touch it for fear you may die.” ’ At this the serpent said to the woman: ‘You positively will not die. For God knows that in the very day of your eating from it your eyes are bound to be opened and you are bound to be like God, knowing good and bad.' ” —Genesis 3:1-5, NW.

By this statement Satan lied. He called God a liar, a deceiver, not almighty, so unable to carry out the punishment for the breaking of His law. Satan did not here promise Adam and Eve immortality after death, but said they would not die in the flesh as a result of eating the fruit of the forbidden tree. It in itself would not kill them and God would not or could not enforce the death penalty. Instead, they would be bound to be like God, not after death by a survival after death, but while alive in the flesh. They would be like God, not as to immortality, but as to knowing good and bad by their own increased knowledge to decide for themselves what is good and bad without following God’s ruling or decision. So, not with any idea of dying and entering the spirit world and knowing more there than she ever did before in the material paradise of Eden, but with the idea of continuing to live in the flesh with increased knowledge and with independent selfdetermination, Eve listened to the Serpent rather than to the true God. She ate. Then she used her influence to induce her husband Adam to eat. They did get their eyes opened, but to see their own naked shame. They did not feel like a God of superior knowledge, but they feared Jehovah God and tried to hide from him. Instead of looking forward to living endlessly, everlastingly, in the flesh in the earthly paradise, they received God’s sentence of dying without survival and were driven out of the Edenic paradise.

Not only were they sentenced to death, but the rebel spirit Satan the Devil the original Serpent was also sentenced to die, with his head crushed under the foot of the Seed of God’s chosen woman. This showed that holy angels, such as Satan had been up till his rebellion, are not immortal, indestructible, but their living forever is hinged upon their perfect obedience to God. Thus a human’s communicating with the spirit realm is no proof of the immortality of either spirit creatures or of human souls.—Genesis 3:15.

The wicked spirit Satan the Devil lived on after Adam and Eve died. He has lived till now by God’s permission, looking to the settlement of the big question in dispute, Who rules the universe? Jehovah God will show that He runs the universe and dictates its laws and determines and decrees what is good and bad. To the Christian followers of the Seed of his woman God has said: ‘’The God who gives peace will crush Satan under your feet shortly.” (Romans 16:20, NW) Jesus Christ his glorified Son is the one whom God will use to crush Satan the original Serpent and his seed, for this faithful Son is the one whom the Serpent bruised at the heel .when he became blood and flesh like the children of Abraham. In proof of this it is written: “Therefore, since the ‘young children’ are sharers of blood and flesh, he also similarly partook of the same things, that through his death he might destroy the one having the means to cause death, that is, the Devil, and might emancipate all those who for fear of death were subject to slavery all through their lives. For he is really not assisting angels at all, but he is assisting Abraham’s seed.” (Hebrews 2:14-16, NW) God healed the bruised heel of his woman’s Seed by resurrecting him from the dead, restoring him to the spirit realm, but rewarding him with the prize of incorruptibility and immortality. (1 Timothy 6:15, 16) But Satan the wicked spirit still remains mortal.

In the Scriptures Satan the Devil is not named before the flood of Noah’s day. He is first named in the life account of Job, which appears to have been written by the prophet Moses centuries after the flood. Spirit mediums together with inquiring of the dead are mentioned as first existing after the

flood, God’s law through Moses warning against these agents of wicked spirits: “There should not be found in you . . . anyone who consults a spirit medium or a professional foreteller of events or anyone who inquires of the dead.” (Deuteronomy 18:10, 11, NW; also Leviticus 19:31; 20:6, 27) After the flood these forms of demonism began with the city of Babylon founded by Nimrod, the great-grandson of Noah. (Genesis 10:8-10) To Babylon the prophet Isaiah said: “These two things shall come upon thee in a moment, in one day, loss of children and widowhood; they shall come upon thee in full measure for [or, in spite of] the multitude of thy sorceries, for the great abundance of thine enchantments. Stand now with thine enchantments and with the multitude of thy sorceries, wherein thou hast laboured [from when?] from thy youth; if so be thou shalt be able to turn them to profit, if so be thou mayest cause terror. Thou art wearied in the multitude of thy counsels. Let now the interpreters of the heavens, the observers of the stars, who predict according to the new moons what shall come upon thee, stand up, and save thee.” (Isaiah 47:9,12,13, Da, margin) The last book of the Bible foretells why modem Babylon must yet fall like ancient Babylon, saying: “Because your merchants were the top-ranking men of the earth, for by your spiritistic practice all the nations were misled.” —Revelation 18:23, NW.

When did the other demons under Satan the “ruler of the demons” come to exist? There is no Bible record that any of the holy angels rebelled with Satan at the garden of Eden or shortly afterward. But the Bible record does show when other spirit creatures did become disobedient to God and thus become demons, imitators of Satan or the “seed” of the Serpent. When was that? At least in the last hundred and twenty years before the flood of Noah’s day. The inspired record by Moses says: “Now it came about that when men started to grow in numbers on the surface of the ground and daughters were born to them, then the sons of God began to notice the daughters of men, that they were good-looking, and they went to taking wives for themselves of all whom they selected. After that Jehovah said: ‘My spirit shall not act toward men indefinitely in that he is also flesh. Accordingly his days shall amount to a hundred and twenty years.’ The Neph'i lim proved to be in the earth in those days, and also after that, when the sons of God continued to have relations with the daughters of men and they bore sons to them, they were the mighty ones who were of that world, the men of fame. Consequently Jehovah saw that the badness of man had become great in the earth and every inclination of the thoughts of his heart was only bad all the time.” —Genesis 6:1-5, NW.

Those “sons of God” who married the “daughters of men” were spirit sons of God such as had sung together and shouted for joy when God laid the foundations for creating the earth. (Job 38:47) “For who in the skies can be compared unto Jehovah? Who among the sons of God is like unto Jehovah?” (Psalm 89:6, AS, footnote 2)* So Moffatt translates Genesis 6:2, 4 as follows: “The angels noticed that the daughters of men were beautiful, and they married any one of them that they chose. (It was in these days that the Nephi-lim giants arose on earth, as well as afterwards whenever angels had intercourse with the daughters of men and had children born to them; these were the heroes who were famous in the days of old.)” Here in Genesis 2:4 the Alexandrine Manu-

♦ An American Translation renders the last part of this verse: "Who Is like the Lord among the heavenly beings?” Moffatt renders It: “What angel can compare with the Eternal?" script of the Greek Septuagint Version also reads “angels of God” instead of “sons of God.”

This explanation of who these “sons of God” were has nothing to do with the Slavonic version of the spurious Book of Enoch.

To marry the daughters of men and have sex relations with them those “sons of God” had to materialize as humans, as men. To live with their wives and enjoy their company night and day and raise their offspring those “sons of God” or angels had to remain materialized in the flesh for as long as they took part in such married life. The evidence is that they continued in this materialized state without interruption until the Flood. During all this time they were neglecting their God-given duties in the spirit realm, in order to enjoy the satisfaction of the passions of the flesh. This was disobedience to God, not only in this respect, but also in the mixing of what is spiritual or angelic with what is human for breeding purposes. The Creator Jehovah God purposed that the human race should be purely human, not a hybrid race by an unequal yoking of angels and women. That was the reason why he made Adam’s wife Eve out of a rib from Adam’s side. As regards all earthly creatures, God fixed it for each family kind to remain inside its own family boundaries. (Deuteronomy 22:9-11; Genesis 1:11, 12, 21, 24, 25) Those disobedient sons of God were thus causing unnatural confusion and working contrary to God’s law respecting mankind. Jesus Christ gives us to understand that, in the spirit realm, “neither do they marry nor are they given in marriage” nor do they thus produce angelic children.—Matthew 22:30, NW.

The natural result was that the offspring of such unnatural marriages were freakish hybrids called “Neph'i lim.” The Israelites compared them to the giants of Canaan, in fact, calling the giants of Canaan “Neph'Llim.” (Numbers 13:33, NW) Being sons of disobedience, they were wicked. Being hybrids without power to reproduce, they made a name for themselves, not by raising families, but .by violent deeds, setting an example for men in general to fill the earth with violence and to have the inclination of the thoughts of their hearts only bad all the time. They were called “mighty ones” or Gibborim and were worldly, “of that world.”—Genesis 6:4, NW.

Leading such an improper, unspiritual life in materialized flesh over an extended period of time, with one or more wives each, those selfdebasing “sons of God” who absented themselves from their God-appointed realm certainly were not keeping their original position but were making their dwelling place with sinful women outside the paradise of Eden. By taking this selfish, lustful, untheocratic course these spirit “sons of God” turned themselves into demons and put themselves on the side of Satan and they too deserve God’s pronouncement of sentence against them the same as did Satan the Devil. It is unquestionably to these self-demonized angels that the disciple Jude refers in the following argument in his letter: “Jehovah, although he saved a people out of the land of Egypt, afterwards destroyed those not showing faith. And the angels that did not keep their original position but forsook their own proper dwelling-place he has reserved with eternal bonds under dense darkness for the judgment of the great day. So, too, Sod'om and Go mor'rah and the cities about them, after they in the same manner as the foregoing ones had committed fornication excessively and gone out after flesh for unnatural use, are placed before us as a warning example by undergoing the judicial punishment of everlasting fire.”—Jude 5-7, NW.

The original position of those “sons of God” was up in heaven in the spirit realm, where they were before the foundations of the earth were laid to provide a home, not for heavenly angels, but for mankind and lower animals. Their proper dwelling place was in the loftier invisible realm of the heavens in companionship with the other spirit angels of God and with direct access to God’s face rather than down here on earth in fleshly companionship with sinful women as wives and as mothers of unnatural children. Adam followed Eve into sin and rebellion against God; these “sons of God” followed the “daughters of men” into sin and demonic rebellion against God. They are the angels whom Jude meant, for Jude compared Sodom and Gomorrah to them, in that these cities committed fornication excessively and went out after flesh for unnatural use, trying even to commit sodomy with the two angels that had materialized as men in order to visit Lot at his home in Sodom. (Genesis 19:1-11) The Israelites, too, committed fornication idolatrously with the flesh of heathen women outside their holy nation. (Numbers 25:1-9; 31:15,16) The sin of the “sons of God” was similar.

For their sinful disobedience these “sons of God” who forsook God’s heavenly service have been sentenced to death with Satan the Devil, as his “seed” or offspring. Jude’s letter shows this, for he locates his reference to these fallen angels in between his mention of those Israelites who were once saved from Egypt but who were afterward destroyed for not showing faith in Jehovah and the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah that underwent the judicial punishment of everlasting fire for their filthy immorality. (Genesis 19:12-29) Jesus Christ, in his prophecy on the “time of the end” of this world, classed the anti-Christian goats in with these fallen angels, saying: “Be on your way from me, you who have been cursed, into the everlasting fire prepared for the Devil and his angels.” (Matthew 25:41, NW) However, the sentence of everlasting destruction was not executed upon those disobedient angels even at the time of the flood. Their unnatural offspring, the Nephilim, were indeed destroyed at the flood, for they were merely human and were not admitted into the ark that Noah built for saving his family and specimens of the lower animals. The wives of the “sons of God,” the mothers of the Nephilim, were drowned in the flood for they, too, were human and the “sons of God” could not take them with them when they dematerialized to escape the flood and return to the spirit realm.

What punishment, then, was inflicted upon those disobedient “sons of God” in this meantime before their coming destruction? Jude says that God “has reserved [them] with eternal bonds under dense darkness for the judgment of the great day.” The apostle Peter also describes their immediate punishment, saying: “God did not hold back from punishing the angels that sinned, but, by throwing them into Tai/tar-us, delivered them to pits of dense darkness to be reserved for judgment; and he did not hold back from punishing an ancient world, but kept Noah, a preacher of righteousness, safe with seven others when he brought a deluge upon a world of ungodly people, and by reducing the cities Sod'om and Go mor'rah to ashes he condemned them, setting a pattern for ungodly persons of things to come, and he delivered righteous Lot, who was greatly distressed by the indulgence of the law-defying people in loose conduct.” (2 Peter 2:4-7, NW) Particularly from the Flood and to the judgment of the great day of Jehovah when he establishes his kingdom by Jesus Christ, the “angels that sinned” have been penalized with having to dwell in Tartarus, unable to return to their lofty “original position.” Tartarus (generally mistranslated “hell”) is not the same as Gehenna and Ha'des (likewise mistranslated “hell”). Whereas Gehenna pictures God’s arrangment for destroying wicked human souls forever and Ha'des is the common grave of mankind from which there will be a resurrection of the dead, Tartarus is where the “angels that sinned” are confined.

The Biblical Tartarus is not the Tartarus of the heathen mythologies, namely, the lowest of the lower regions, as far below Ha'des as the earth is below heaven. There the lesser gods, Cronus and the other spirit Titans, were imprisoned by the victorious god Zeus or Jupiter. It was a place of darkness and it enveloped all the lower regions the same as the heavens enveloped all that was higher than the earth. Comparable with the mythological meaning, Tartarus pictures a condition of deepest abasement and dense darkness, not for human souls, but for wicked spirits, rebels against God. In harmony with this, the Syriac version of 2 Peter 2:4 uses the expression “the lowest places” instead of Tartarus. These rebel spirits, including Satan the Devil, have been abased as if cast down to a literal Tartarus, by being cast out of God’s service and sentenced to destruction, to being crushed at the head like so many serpents by the Seed of God’s woman, the glorified Jesus Christ.

That did not mean they were at once excluded from heaven, kept away from contact with the faithful, holy angels. The book about Job, who lived over seven hundred years after the Flood, pictures how Satan had access into heaven, to enter the meeting of the “sons of God” and to challenge Jehovah to let him put Job’s integrity to the test. (Job 1:6 to 2:10) And Revelation 12: 1-7 reveals that when Jehovah’s kingdom by Jesus Christ was born in the. heavens in 1914 (A.D.), Satan and his angels had been tolerated up in heaven till then. Moreover, Satan and his demons constitute the symbolic heavens of this world, the heavens that have dominated earthly human society and that are to be destroyed as by fire at the battle of Armageddon. (2 Peter 3:10-12) Hence, in the Bible, Tartarus means an abased condition, deprived of privileges of service within God’s universal organization rather than a position or place.

In this abased state or condition Satan and the other angels that sinned are held under dense darkness or are in pits of dense darkness, held there by eternal bonds. The dense darkness is a spiritual one, rather than a literal one, with no light of truth and revelation and favor from God. "Light is sown for the righteous,” not for demonized spirits. (Psalm 97:11) That is why the messages of the spirits through mediums give no explanation of the Bible and throw no light on Bible prophecies. So, being in pits of dense darkness does not mean that their operations in connection with humankind are restricted to seances in the dark with spirit mediums. They can perform through human agents also in the daylight.

Their being “reserved with eternal bonds” evidently means also that they are no more permitted to materialize in the flesh as before the Flood. This power of materialization was exercised by God’s faithful angels, including Jesus Christ, for thousands of years after the Flood, down into the day of Christ’s faithful apostles, according to God’s will and to serve his holy purposes. But the sinner angels were not allowed to use this power longer, for they would misuse it. The materializations that are reported by spiritualists as taking place at mediumistic stances are not materializations such as the “sons of God” performed before the Flood. Their materializations were instantaneous and out in the open daylight without a medium and in independent bodies. The spiritualist materializations today are merely the taking of the protoplasm or material of the medium’s body and extruding it from such body as “ectoplasm” and then shaping it into human appearances. At the end of the apparition the ectoplasm, rather than being dissolved, uncreated and dematerialized, returns to the medium’s body and the medium becomes normal and conscious again. Since the disobedient spirits can no longer materialize, they are obliged to operate through mediums. They alsp try to obsess human victims or take possession of them, fully controlling them. Such were the demon-possessed whom Jesus and his apostles encountered in their day, and many a demon Jesus and his apostles expelled to free their victims. (Matthew 4:24; 10:1, 8; 12:28, NW; Luke 9:1; 10:17; Acts 16:16-18) This they did by the spirit of God to uphold the truth and universal sovereignty of Jehovah God, and not by the power of the Devil the way the spirit mediums and religious exorcists do in order to bolster up the doctrines, beliefs and practices of false religious cults and systems. Operating through mediums at seances or table tippings or spirit knockings or other spiritualistic manifestations, these demons pretend to be “departed souls” of the human dead and thus keep up the lie that the dead are not dead but more alive and know more than ever before.

PREACHING TO SPIRITS IN PRISON

The apostle Peter further identifies the “sons of God” that married the “daughters of men” prior to the Flood as being spirit creatures who acted disobediently, thus making themselves demons. Note how Peter makes this identification: “Christ died once for all time concerning sins, a righteous person for unrighteous ones, that he might lead you to God, he being put to death in the flesh, but being made alive in the spirit. In this state also he went his way and preached to the spirits in prison, which had once been disobedient when the patience of God was waiting in Noah’s days, while the ark was being constructed, in which a few people, that is, eight souls, were carried safely through the water. That which corresponds to this is also now saving you, namely, baptism, (not the putting away of the filth of the flesh [by following the law of Moses to the Jews], but the request made to God for a good conscience,) through the resurrection [in the spirit] of Jesus Christ. He is at God's right hand, for he went his way to heaven, and angels and authorities and powers were made subject to him.” —1 Peter 3:18-22, NW.

The "spirits in prison” are the spirit "sons of God” who took the "daughters of men” as wives and fathered the Nephilim and who after the Flood, on their dematerializing back into the spirit realm, were cast down into Tartarus and reserved in this abased condition “with eternal bonds under dense darkness for the judgment of the great day.” Concerning this judgment the apostle Paul said to the Christian congregation: “If the world is to be judged by you, are you unfit to try very trivial matters? Do you not know that we shall judge angels?” (1 Corinthians 6:2, 3, NW) These "spirits in prison” are not in the so-called “hell” or She'ol or Ha'des. When Jesus Christ was in She'ol or Ha'des he could not preach to anybody, for She'ol or Ha'des is mankind’s common grave and Jesus was dead there for parts of three days. (Acts 2:27, 31, 32; Psalm 16:10) "Whatsoever thy hand is able to do, do it earnestly: for neither work, nor reason, nor wisdom, nor knowledge, shall be in hell, whither thou art hastening” (Dy);

“in Sheol, to which you are going.”—Ecclesiastes 9:10, RS; AS.

Not when Jesus was dead in She'd, Ha'des or the common grave after he had been “put to death in the flesh,” but some time after he had been “made alive in the spirit” by being resurrected from the dead, Jesus Christ preached to the “spirits in prison.” It was “in this state,” as a spirit now divine, immortal, incorruptible, that Jesus could preach to those spirits. Just when did he do this? During the forty,days after his resurrection while he remained at the earth with his disciples? Hardly during the forty days after his resurrection, for then “by many positive proofs he showed himself alive after he had suffered, being seen by them throughout forty days and telling the things about the kingdom of God.” Thus he gave proof of his resurrection to his disciples, who were to be his witnesses, and not to his enemies such as the demons or “spirits in prison” were. (Acts 1:3-11; 2:32; 3:15; 10: 40-42, NW) Well, then, did he preach to the spirits during the ten days between his ascending to heaven from the Mount of Olives and the day of Pentecost? No, for during those ten days Jesus was ascending to his heavenly Father, how many billions of light-years distant from the earth we do not know, that he might appear as a High Priest with the value of his human sacrifice in the presence of the Most Holy One, Jehovah God. (Hebrews 9:24-26; 10:12, 13) He would hardly detour to preach to condemned “spirits in prison,” for whom there is no sin-removing sacrifice, while he was on such an errand of first importance.

Consequently it must have been since arriving in Jehovah God’s presence and sitting down at His right hand with angels, authorities and powers “made subject to him” that Jesus Christ in the spirit “preached to the spirits in prison,” the spirits in Tartarus. What he preached to them was not the Gospel, the Evangel or the Good News of the Kingdom. The word “preached” is different from the word “evangelized,” even in the original Greek in which the apostle Peter wrote. To “evangelize” means to bring a good message. To “preach” (kerys'so, LXX) means merely to proclaim, announce or herald whatever is to be made public. The proclamation, announcement or heralding may be of something bad, as when Jonah was sent to “cry against” Nineveh, and he cried: “Yet forty days, and Nineveh shall be overthrown,” thus preaching a message of adverse judgment. (Jonah 1:2; 3:2, 4, 5, 7, the LXX using the Greek word Ice-rys'so here) Also as when Joel 3:9 (ES) commands: “Proclaim [ke-rys'so, LXX] this among the nations: Prepare war, stir up the mighty men, let all the men of war draw near, let them come up.” Also at Hosea 5:8 (RS): “Sound the alarm [ke.rys'so, LXX] at Beth-aven.”

Since these “spirits in prison” were reserved with eternal bonds for the judgment of the great day of Jehovah, Jesus Christ resurrected in the spirit realm could preach to them only a message of judgment. Even before he emptied himself of his spiritual power and glory and was made flesh by human birth as the man Jesus Christ, he as a spirit son of God had done this. (Philippians 2: 5-8) On what occasions?

First on the occasion when the prophet Moses died on top of Mount Nebo. Then, when the Son of God “had a difference with the Devil and was disputing about Moses’ body, he did not dare to bring a judgment against him in abusive terms, but said: ‘May Jehovah rebuke you.’ ” The spirit Son of God, as the archangel Michael, kept control of Moses’ body and buried it for Jehovah God at a place in a valley in Moab that no man has discovered and no spirit medium is able to reveal. (Jude 9, NW; Deuteronomy 34:1-6) The other occasion is disclosed to us by the prophecy of Zechariah 3:1, 2 (AS), concerning the high priest Joshua after he and other Jews returned from Babylon to the desolated city of Jerusalem and began to rebuild the temple of Jehovah God there. We read: “And he showed me Joshua the high priest standing before the angel of Jehovah, and Satan standing at his right hand to be his adversary. And Jehovah [Syriac Version: And the angel of Jehovah] said unto Satan, Jehovah rebuke thee, O Satan; yea, Jehovah that hath chosen Jerusalem rebuke thee.” (See also AT; Mo.) Jehovah’s rebuking of Satan means the divine execution of judgment against him on Jehovah’s great judgment day when he brings the end of this wicked world or system of things under Satan and ushers in the righteous world under Jesus Christ the King of kings. In view of that, in the centuries before Jesus was put to death in the flesh and made alive in the spirit by the resurrection from the dead it was not the time for Jehovah by his angelic Son to “rebuke” Satan.

Now have you ever wondered why the apostle, at 1 Peter 3:18-22, when speaking of Jesus Christ’s suffering unjustly even to the death and his being raised to life in the spirit realm, suddenly speaks of spirits that were disobedient thousands of years before in Noah’s day? Well, Peter surprisingly tells that the resurrected Christ preached to those imprisoned spirits because there is a likeness between what happened in Noah’s day and the things Peter now discusses. According to Jesus’ own words at Matthew 24:37-39, Noah was a prophetic figure of Jesus Christ. So Noah’s wife was a typical picture of the “bride, the Lamb’s wife,” that is, the true church or congregation of Jesus’ spirit-begotten followers. The three sons of Noah and their three wives pictured the “great crowd” of believers in Christ, to whom he will become the Everlasting Father during his thousand-year reign over the coming new world. They will not be glorified with Christ in heaven and reign with him on his throne the way the faithful congregation of his spiritual followers will. They will inherit the earthly paradise that Christ’s kingdom will restore to this globe after the battle of Armageddon. Since A.D. 1914 we have been in the “time of the end” of this wicked world, and already a “great crowd” of these earthly believers have been gathered out from the nations and brought into the New World society together with the last members on earth of the “bride, the Lamb’s wife.” —Revelation 21:9.

Just as Noah built the ark for his family to survive the flood, so Jesus Christ as the Greater Noah builds the new system of things. ‘Inside it the members of his “bride” class and the “great crowd” of his future sons and daughters may survive the great execution of Jehovah’s judgment at the coming battle of Armageddon. Inside this ark of the new system of things they must be baptized into the Greater Noah as their Savior, Leader and Example in order to avoid being baptized with the world in the fiery flood of destruction at Armageddon.—1 Peter 3:21, NW.

The apostle Peter reminds us that Noah was a “preacher of righteousness” at the time of the end of the ancient world. (2 Peter 2:5) Since only the seven others of his family were to be saved in the ark, what he preached to the people of that ancient world must have been about Jehovah’s coming judgment upon them at the flood. Those to whom he preached must have included the Nephilim and their fathers, the materialized, married “sons of God.” Thus Noah preached to the spirits that were imprisoned in Tartarus after the flood, but he could do it in the flesh because they were in the flesh, materialized.

Likewise the Greater Noah, the resurrected Jesus, preached to those same spirits in prison since the flood. Shortly before he was put to death in the flesh he said to his followers: “Now there is a judging of this world; now the ruler of this world [Satan] will be cast out.” (John 12:31, NW) But after being “made alive in the spirit,” Jesus up in heaven on the day of Pentecost poured out the holy spirit upon the first members of his “bride” class and began building the ark of the new system of things. In harmony with the prophetic type furnished by ancient Noah it was also proper that the Greater Noah in heaven should preach to the spirits in prison. About the year 96 (A.D.) God gave to the glorified Jesus Christ the marvelous Revelation to give to the aged apostle John, and this Revelation has much to say about Satan the Devil and the demons, his angels. Certainly this delivering of this Revelation to John was a preaching to the spirits in prison, for from chapter twelve on it has much to say about their activities in our day and their defeat, their abyss-ing and their final everlasting destruction.

In 1914, the opening year of World War I, Jehovah God began delivering a stinging rebuke to Satan and his demons who still had entry to heaven and freedom of movement there. In the autumn of that year the “appointed times of the nations” ran out and the time came for Jehovah God to establish his kingdom in the hands of his Son Jesus Christ. (Luke 21:24, NW) As symbolically pictured in the twelfth chapter of Revelation, God brought his kingdom to birth, to rule in the midst of these worldly nations and finally to dash them to pieces at the coming battle of Armageddon. Immediately after the Kingdom’s birth Jehovah’s Chief Angel or Archangel, his enthroned King known in heaven as Michael, “battled with the dragon, and the dragon and its angels battled.” Satan the Dragon and his demon angels were defeated and hurled down from the heavens to the vicinity of our earth to be restrained here until the approaching battle of Armageddon. (Revelation 12:7-9, NW) This was indeed an abasement, in a bodily sense, in addition to their being already in their Tartarus condition of abasement. This was an imprisonment of them in a bodily way in addition to their being “in prison,” in Tartarus, since the Flood, they being forever debarred from heaven and permitted now no higher than the earth where Satan’s rebellion started. Little wonder, then, that the Dragon the original Serpent writhed at this rebuke and now spits out venom at Jehovah God’s organization.

As to Satan’s being cast out of heaven we read, at Revelation 12:10: “Now have come to pass the salvation and the power and the kingdom of our God and the authority of his Ghrist, because the accuser of our brothers has been hurled down, who accuses them day and night before our God!” (NW) Hence there is now a complete and final fulfillment of the above-quoted prophecy of Zechariah 3:1, 2 (page 75, !J2). In Zechariah’s prophecy the “angel of Jehovah” is the same as the “Angel of the covenant” concerning whom Malachi 3:1 (Da; Dy) prophesied that he would come with the Lord Jehovah to the temple for judgment work, namely, the glorified Jesus Christ. Not only is he Jehovah’s Chief Angel or Archangel but he is Jehovah’s High Priest. On earth he is represented by his brother priests, the under priests who follow in his footsteps and who are to be a “royal priesthood” with him. (1 Peter 2:9) It is these that the Dragon, Satan the Devil, accuses. When he accuses them he in effect accuses their Head, the High Priest Jesus Christ, for what is done to them is the same as if done to him. (Matthew 10:40; 25:40, 45) Just as Zechariah’s prophecy shows that Satan tried to be an adversary to Joshua the Jewish high priest after the Jews returned from Babylon to rebuild the temple at Jerusalem, so Satan has fought and accused the remnant of priestly followers of Jesus Christ the High Priest after they got free from modern-day Babylon in 1919 (A.D.).

The facts in fulfillment of the prophecy of Malachi 3:1 prove that Jehovah and his “Angel of the covenant” came to the spiritual temple in the spring of 1918. So now the “angel of Jehovah” is at the temple since then, engaged in judgment work, and his judgments extend to Satan the Devil also. When, therefore, Satan acts as an adversary to Jehovah’s High Priest Jesus Christ by resisting the remnant of his priestly followers on earth, Jesus Christ the “angel of Jehovah” at the temple says to Satan: “Jehovah rebuke thee, O Satan! Yea, Jehovah that hath chosen Jerusalem rebuke thee!” (Zechariah 3:2, Da) After Jesus Christ, Jehovah’s Chief Angel or Archangel, hurled Satan out of heaven down to earth he did not at once proceed to fight the battle of Armageddon and put Satan completely out of action. He has allowed Satan a “short period of time” before again joining battle with him at Armageddon. Thus the days of tribulation upon Satan’s organization have been cut that much shorter, and this has worked for the benefit of Jehovah’s chosen “royal priesthood.” For this reason, since coming to the temple, Jesus Christ the “angel of Jehovah” could not do more than say to Satan: •“Jehovah rebuke thee.” In this way the glorified Jesus Christ now ’preaches to Satan and the other spirits in prison’ in the spirit realm. Asking for Jehovah to rebuke them is a preaching of judgment against them. At the coming battle of Armageddon Jehovah will rebuke Satan and his spirit demons by executing judgment upon them.

Thus the ‘preaching to the spirits in prison’ by the resurrected Jesus Christ continues till the battle of Armageddon. Satan and these other imprisoned spirits sire still in the Biblical Tartarus and its dense darkness regarding God’s favor and his purposes. Their abcised condition at this earth Ezekiel’s prophecy foretells under the name of the “land of Magog,” its ruler Gog being a prophetic symbol of Satan the DeviL—Ezekiel 38:1 to 39:11.

Shortly, when Jehovah deals out his rebuke to Satan at Armageddon, Jehovah by his Chief Angel will bind Satan and his demons and hurl them into the abyss and seal it up over them for a thousand years while Jesus Christ reigns with his glorified royal priesthood. (Revelation 16:14-16; 20:1-6) Hie Biblical Tartarus will then go out of existence. The wicked heavens of this world will cease and the new heavens of Christ and his glorious “bride” will rule the righteous new world. (2 Peter 3:13) Nineteen centuries ago when Jesus was in the abyss, he was not in Tartarus but was in the death state for parts of three days, till he was brought out by a resurrection from the dead. (Romans 10:6-8, NW; Deuteronomy 30:12-14) Likewise, in the abyss Satan and his demon spirits will be in a deathlike state, completely out of action, unable to have contact with men, unable to pretend to be the immortal spirits of dead human creatures. Spiritualism or spiritism with its mediums will thus be destroyed at Armageddon, and those who practice it will be destroyed with it, in the “second death,” which symbolizes total destruction, annihilation. Says Revelation 21:8 (NW) regarding God’s coming new world: “As for the cowards and those without faith and those who are disgusting in their filth and murderers and fornicators and those practicing spiritism and idolaters and all the liars, their portion will be in the lake that burns with fire and sulphur. This means the second death.”

RESURRECTION, NOT COMMUNICATION WITH SPIRITS

Those destroyed at Armageddon will have no “survival after death.” Those humans, however, who keep free from spiritism and all false religion and who worship Jehovah as God and follow in Christ’s footsteps will survive the battle of Armageddon and enter, without dying, into God’s righteous new world. (2 Peter 3:10-15) Then those survivors will not try to communicate with those destroyed at Armageddon. They will know that the dead are dead and there is no survival after death. There will be no mediums left alive to act as agents for the lying spirits, for these spirits will be powerless, in a deathlike state in the abyss and unable to deceive the peoples for the thousand years of Christ’s reign. Instead of seeking to do the impossible, to communicate with the dead, the Armageddon survivors will rather await the resurrection and joyfully get ready for the dead to return. They will lovingly prepare to receive back from the common grave, Ha'des or She'ol, all those that are in God’s memory. (John 5:28,29; Revelation 20:12, 13) They will receive them back from the common grave, not by a materialization through spirit mediums whose bodies supply the ectoplasm for the shaping of the bodies, but by the resurrection power of Jehovah God who will give to each individual an independent human body as it pleases Him. (1 Corinthians 15:36-38) This will be a true, solid, enduring consolation to the living.

The dead will return, not to tell how in a spirit world and on etheric planes of existence they felt freer without their human bodies and knew more than before they died, but to tell how true the Bible is, that the dead are dead in the grave, that the human soul is mortal, that the dead know, do and feel nothing, but their last thought before they died connects up with their first mental impression on awakening from the sleep of death. (Psalm 6:5; 115:17; Ecclesiastes 9:5, 10; Isaiah 38:10,18,19) They will have the same personalities that they had when they died and so will be recognizable by acquaintances. None of the dead, babies, children, young people, old people, will have grown any older or learned anything more while in the death state. Restored to life on earth, they will have the opportunity to learn about Jehovah God and his kingdom by Christ and the provision that He has made for them to gain everlasting life in a paradise earth, all the obedient ones among men to be lifted up to perfection as human souls in God’s image and likeness. All this will be because his Son Jesus died for mankind and was raised from the dead, being “made alive in the spirit,” that he might ascend back to heaven and appear in God’s presence to offer the value of his human sacrifice for mankind.

When the common grave, or She'ol or Ha'des, has given up the last of its occupants, then there will be no more dead, that is, no more persons who were dead due to inheriting sin and its penalty death from our first parents Adam and Eve. This enemy, Death, and its companion, mankind’s common grave, will thus be wiped out, this doing away with any suggestion of communicating with the dead, for there will be no such dead. “For he [Christ] must rule as king until God has put all enemies under his feet. As the last enemy, death is to be destroyed.” (1 Corinthians 15:25, 26, NW) The question then is, Will they prove worthy to live forever, not in the spirit realm in heaven, but as perfect human souls in the flesh on the paradise earth. Each one will determine that question for himself at the end of the thousand years of Christ’s reign. How?

By the loosing then of Satan and his demons. For the thousand years of Christ’s reign these have been restrained in the abyss, out of touch with mankind and thus unable to mislead them or interfere with Christ’s uplift work toward them. “Now as soon as the thousand years have been ended, Satan will be let loose out of his prison, and he will go out to mislead those nations in the four quarters of the earth.” (Revelation 20:7, 8, NW) He and his demons will not be in position to mislead any of mankind on the lie of “survival after death” that enables the living to communicate with the dead. But he will mislead many perfect humans by some form of selfishness that will induce them to join forces with Satan against the Universal Sovereign, Jehovah God, just as he did in the case of the perfect Adam in the original paradise of Eden. (James 1:12-15) Those who yield to selfishness and who war with Satan against the theocratic new world will fail in this final test of mankind’s integrity toward Jehovah God. Their names will not be written in his “book of life.” They will therefore be executed as willful rebels and be hurled, not back into She'd or Ha'des to die for sin inherited from Adam, but into the “second death,” symbolized by the “lake of fire,” to die for their own willful sin.

In this symbolic “lake of fire” they will be joined by Satan and his demon angels, for these also will be punished with the “second death,” which is everlasting destruction, a complete and never-ending blotting out of all existence. There will be no survival after this “second death” any more than there was after the former Adamic death. There will be no resurrection from the fiery lake, Gehenna, as there was from the common grave, She'ol or Ha'des. Thus Satan the original Serpent together with all his “seed,” human and spirit, will be irremediably bruised at the head in a thorough way, as foretold in the paradise of Eden.—Genesis 3:15.

The loyal, obedient ones of perfected mankind will survive on earth. They will be rewarded for successfully passing this heart-penetrating test, not with the gift of immortality, but with being justified or declared righteous for everlasting life in the new world, with having their names written in Jehovah’s “book of life,” to enjoy happiness unendingly amid His perfect provisions for them in their earthly paradise. “And death will be no more, neither will mourning nor outcry nor pain be any more. The former things have passed away.”—Revelation 20:9 to 21:4, 2VW.

DEFENSE AGAINST FATAL DECEPTION

The position of the Holy Scriptures against the false teaching of “survival after death” has been clearly established. However, very few persons know what the Scriptures have to say against soul survival after death. This accounts for it that more and more people grieved by losing friends and loved ones or distressed by world fears and perplexity are falling victim to spiritism, which is demonism. The prophecies of Scripture foretold that, in spite of the plaguelike declaration of God’s judgments against this wicked world, selfish men would “not repent of the works of their hands, so that they should not worship the demons and the idols of gold and silver and copper and stone and wood, which can neither see nor hear nor walk; and they did not repent of their murders nor of their spiritistic practices nor of their fornication nor of their thefts.” (Revelation 9:20, 21, NW) In spite of the progress in human knowledge, man would “fall away from the faith, paying attention to misleading inspired utterances and teachings of demons,” thus to become the prey of the demons to their eternal injury. In fact, all the people of all nations, under the leadership of their rulers, whether in the White House or in the royal palace or in the Communist Kremlin, would be led to their destruction at the battle of Armageddon. The Revelation, by which the glorified Jesus Christ has ‘preached to the spirits in prison,’ foresaw that out from the Dragon ruler of the demons and out through his visible beastly organization there would go “expressions inspired by demons . . . and they go forth to the kings of the entire inhabited earth, to gather them together to the war of the great day of God the Almighty. . . . And they gathered them together to the place that is called in Hebrew Har-Ma-ged'on.” (Revelation 16:14-16 and 1 Timothy 4:1, NW) None of such demon-led ones will survive Armageddon.

All peoples, so-called Christian as well as heathen, stand in the greatest peril of assault by demons to their own destruction. You dare not trust in Christendom. She has proved to be no protection against spiritism, but in her realm spiritism spreads the same as in heathendom. Why? Because Christendom, Roman Catholic, Greek Catholic as well as Protestant, teaches the un-Christian doctrine of the “immortality of the human soul,” the doctrine that is the basis for spiritism and that lays its believers wide open to the appeals and deceptions of spiritism. Roman Catholicism may say it is the most powerful bulwark against spiritism, yet its teaching exposes Catholics to the evil power of the demons. For example:

In answer to the question (318), “Is there any truth in the claims of Spiritualism?” over the Roman Catholic broadcasting station 2SM, Sydney, Australia, Doctor Rumble, Missionary of the Sacred Heart, said:

“There is truth in the claim that the soul is distinct from, and can survive the body. All men instinctively know this, and as they lose faith in Protestantism, this fundamental truth of reason remains. Many of them therefore turn to Spiritualism. Thus this new phase gains ground among non-Catholics. As a religious system Spiritualism is the outcome of human effort, and is in vogue among certain men for a time.

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In answer to the question (319), “Why precisely does your Church condemn Spiritualism?” he answers:

“The Catholic Church certainly believes in the existence of the spiritual world, of God, of good and evil created spirits, and in the continued existence of the souls of men. But the phenomena of Spiritualism are due at best to natural causes; at times to imposture; very often to evil spirits. Certainly any effects due to the influence of spirits are not due to the intervention of good spirits. The medium acts under uncanny and feverish excitement; the effects are evil only too often; and messages received, as well as the methods adopted, are openly blasphemous and immoral, and quite unworthy of God.”

In answer to the question (320) , “Has the Catholic Church ever been in communication with spirit beings from the next world?” he says:

“In the history of the Catholic Church there are many accounts of messages received from the souls of the departed. The truth of these accounts is subject to the ordinary laws of historical criticism, and some accounts have certainly been proved doubtful. Others leave no room for prudent doubt. As a rule, God permits a soul only occasionally to communicate momentarily a warning, or a request for prayers, but nothing fantastical. Likewise, the messages are spontaneous, and not due to the curious efforts of people seeking the truth from the dead. The Church tests the messages received, or claimed as received, in order to discern whether good or evil spirits are responsible for the communication. (1) The message must in no way conflict with Catholic teaching or moral principles. Gal. I.,9. . . .”—Pages 73, 74 of the book Radio Replies, by Rumble and Carty, with the Imprimatur of Archbishop J. G. Murray, of St. Paul, Minnesota, February 11, 1938, and with a Preface by Monsignor Fulton J. Sheen, D.D. (9th printing of 1939)

Is such official Catholic teaching as the above an impenetrable defense against the invasion of spiritism? No! It is an invitation to spiritism, and the conditions in Roman Catholic lands, such as Peru, Costa Rica, Cuba and Haiti, show Roman Catholicism to be no bulwark against this spreading peril. In such lands the Catholic people, even up to 90 per cent, mix spiritism or voodooism right in with Roman Catholicism, practicing both at the same time with no objection or penalty by the priests. It comes as no surprise that one Johannes Greber, a former Catholic clergyman, has become a spiritualist and has published the book entitled “Communication with the Spirit World, Its Laws and Its Purpose.” (1932, Macoy Publishing Company, New York) In its Foreword he makes the typical misstatement: “The most significant spiritualistic book is the Bible; for its principal contents hinge upon the messages of the beyond to those existing in the present.”

Said Jean Brierre, a Haitian undersecretary of state, concerning visitors to his land of Haiti: “Most of them cannot realize that Voodoo, or Vodun as we also call it, isn’t black magic at all but a benign religion practiced by more than ninety per cent of our people—a religion which in their view does not prevent their being also good Catholics. A Haitian who goes to a Voodoo houm-fort, or temple, on a Saturday evening participates in the rites all night, then goes to a Catholic church and attends Mass early the following morning. ... If you’ll look into it, you’ll find that many of the Voodoo gods and goddesses, or loas, as we call them, have their counterpart in Catholic saints.” (True (The Man’s Magazine), of October, 1949) That includes the “Virgin Mary,” and everywhere the cross is used, especially to try to ward off evil spirits.

Said M. G. Consuegra in articles in the September 1 and 15, 1934, issues of the magazine Rosenda, of Matanzas, Cuba: “In Cuba there exists an enormous percentage of spiritists. In few countries has spiritism conquered as many proselytes as in Cuba, naturally in accordance with the density of its population. And as a proof of this we affirm the undeniable fact that to speak of spiritism is not now something that provokes ridicule or censureship by others and that every one, including the Catholic priests (their natural enemy), respects it more with the passing of each day, and that it is safe to say that within a few years spiritism will be a predominating belief in the 'Pearl of the Antilles.’ ”

Many more examples could be given to show the widespreadness of spiritualism or demonism mingled with the predominant religion in Roman Catholic lands, but space does not allow here.

No, Christendom, as led and dominated by the Roman Catholic religious system, has failed as a protection against demonism in this crucial “time of the end,” when Satan and his demons have been hurled down from heaven to the earth and are filled with wrath and are leading Christendom and heathendom with them to total destruction at the battle of Armageddon. For good reason, then, the cry has rung out from heaven: “W<x' for the earth and for the sea, because the Devil has come down to you, having great anger, knowing he has a short period of time.”—Revelation 12:12, NW.

Where, then, is our protection against the schemes of the demons to cause God to execute all mankind at Armageddon for lack of integrity toward Him and his kingdom? Our protection is in the antispiritualist Book, the Holy Scriptures, the Holy Bible. In it alone we find God’s teaching and testimony and of it Jesus said to God: “Your word is truth.” (John 17:17, NW) To us it comes in this critical day with the words of the prophet Isaiah, who is a prophetic figure of Jesus Christ: "Bind up the testimony, seal the teaching among my disciples. And when they say to you, ‘Consult the mediums and the wizards who chirp and mutter,’ should not a people consult their God? Should they consult the dead on behalf of the living? To the teaching and to the testimony! Surely for this word which they speak there is no dawn. They will ... be thrust into thick darkness.” (Isaiah 8:16, 19-22, RS) Consulting the living God by consulting his teaching and testimony in His written Word—this is our source of light and our unfailing protection against the death-dealing operations of the malicious demons.

Now that utter destruction at Armageddon is impending over both Christendom and heathendom and the unseen demons are slyly leading worldly rulers and their peoples to this destruction there, we are indeed living in a wicked day. Everywhere the "works of the flesh” abound and these works include the “practice of spiritism,” concerning which the apostle Paul warns "that those who practice such things will not inherit God’s kingdom.” (Galatians 5:19-21, A'!V) Neither will the practicers of spiritism be allowed to exist in the "new earth” under God’s kingdom by Christ. (Revelation 21:8; 22:14, 15, NW) If we put the greatest value upon life in the new world, then we need to fight constantly against 1h<> uiin<><*ii enemies of our gaining it. The apostle Paul ex(>< ws those real enemies and at the same time¹ lie <*u courages us to use the only effective means to lieid back these foes and come off victorious as winners of everlasting life in God’s righteous new world. He says:

“Put on the complete suit of armor from God that you may be able to stand firm against (he machinations of the Devil; because we have a (Ighl, not against blood and flesh, but against the gov ernments, against the authorities, against the world-rulers of this darkness, against the wicked spirit forces in the heavenly places. On this account take up the complete suit of armor from God, that you may be able to resist ifi the wicked day and, after you have done all things thoroughly, to stand firm. Stand firm, therefore, with your loins girded about with truth, and having on the breastplate* of righteousness, and with your feet shod with the equipment of the good news of peace. Above all things, take up the large shield of faith, with which you will be able to quench all the wicked one’s burning missiles. Also accept the helmet of salvation, and the sword of the spirit, that is, God’s word, while with every form of prayer and supplication you carry on prayer on every occasion in spirit.”—Ephesians 6:11-18, NW.

It is high time to follow this advice. So gird your mental loins about with the truth of God’s Word. Then you will not weaken in the fight against all the untruthful propaganda of the wicked spirit forces in the unseen places of attack. Let your mind feed upon the truth of the resurrection of the dead. Then you will hold firm and steady against the untruth of the immortality of the human soul and “survival after death.” Also by having on the breastplate of righteousness, your heart will be protected against the sentimental appeals of spiritualism and against its rejection of the ransom sacrifice of Jesus Christ, which is the only means for us sinners to have our sins counterbalanced and to gain everlasting righteousness that will make us worthy of eternal life in the world of new heavens ana a new earth in which righteousness is to dwell.

With your feet shod with the equipment of the good news of peace, you will avoid responsibility for any of the turmoil of this world and you will not be gathered by the unseen demons to the side of the rulers of this entire inhabited earth at Armageddon for a suicidal war against God Almighty and his reigning King Jesus Christ. You will promote peace and reconciliation with God.

Taking up the large shield of faith, you will be able to stop and extinguish all the flaming faithdestroying missiles shot out by the enemy and guard yourself against the faithless course of this world. By your faith-inspired obedience to God and his King Jesus Christ you will overcome this world and keep on pleasing God, who rewards those who hold fast their faith with life.

Accepting the helmet of salvation, you will keep your hope of God’s kingdom from being cracked or mashed in, you will reason with God concerning his way of salvation through Jesus Christ and the theocratic government of the new world. You will sensibly work out your own salvation according to God’s provisions and his requirements, making a "public declaration of our hope” by joining in with Jehovah’s witnesses in preaching "this good news of the kingdom” in all the earth for a witness.

Accepting the sword of the spirit, that is, God’s Word, you will be able to parry the worldly sword of the word of demons, utterances inspired by the demons, religious traditions and materialistic philosophies of men. You will be able to meet the enemy swordsman in close combat and thrust him through, rendering him powerless in argument and influence and delivering yourself from him by quoting and relying upon God’s written Word, as Jesus did when tempted by the Devil in the wilderness.

Offering every form of prayer and supplication in the thick of this theocratic fight against the wicked spirits in the invisible realm, you will be keeping God in mind and be depending upon your unfailing Protector and Helper and not upon any arm of flesh. At every suggestion to you of spiritism and against the occult spells that spiritists try to cast upon you, you will appeal to God to give you the victory over the wicked spirits, their deception and their opposition, and that God’s holy angels may serve as ministering spirits in your behalf. You will be thinking not merely of yourself but also of your fellow Christians who are engaged in the same fight against superhuman powers of wickedness. You will be obeying Jesus’ instruction and praying for God’s name Jehovah to be hallowed or sanctified and for His kingdom to come and put the wicked spirit forces completely out of operation and make manifest the universal sovereignty of Jehovah, bring peace to mankind, restore paradise to the earth, resurrect the dead from the memorial tombs and bless all faithful, obedient families of the earth with eternal life in human perfection. God’s answers to our Scriptural prayers are just as necessary to our overcoming the wicked spirit forces as are the various pieces of the complete suit of armor from God.

Thus praying and thus fighting in God-given armor we shall not be found at Armageddon wi1It the demon-controlled opposers of Jehovah God and his kingdom by Christ. We shall be found on the side of the living God, and he will do the fighting there for us and vindicate his own sovereignty and preserve us into his glorious new world. The wicked heavens composed of Satan and his wicked spirit forces will be destroyed and the wicked earth composed of the human society that these spirit forces have invisibly controlled and misled will be wiped out, and the new world with Jesus Christ and his glorified congregation as the new heavens will be ushered in.

With the help of this information, which is based upon God’s Word the Scriptures, you have been able to follow the apostle John’s instruction: “Beloved ones, do not believe every inspired expression, but test the inspired expressions to see whether they originate with God, because many false prophets have gone forth into the world.” (1 John 4:1, NW; AT) The testing of the inspired expressions of spiritualism has shown that they do not originate with God but with his enemies, the demons and their ruler Satan the Devil. Hence spiritualism is antichristian and its champions are antichrists. Abide now by the results of this test. For your life and to God’s glory resist spiritualism and thus resist Satan and his wicked spirit forces. No longer follow the inspired expressions of demons. Follow the written Word of God, which is the expression inspired by his holy spirit. Then, whether by survival of the battle of Armageddon or by a resurrection after it, you will be rewarded with life in God’s new world rather than be deceived into destruction by the false hope of “survival after death.”

Chief Office and Official Address of

WATCH TOWER BIBLE & TRACT SOCIETY WATCHTOWER BIBLE AND TRACT SOCIETY, INC. INTERNATIONAL BIBLE STUDENTS ASSOCIATION is

124 Columbia Heights^ Brooklyn 1, New York, U. S. A. .

Addresses of Branch offices:

America (U.S.), 117 Adams St., Brooklyn 1, N. Y. ’’Australia, 11 Beresford Road, Strathfield, N.S.W. ’’Austria, Liechten-steinstr. 24, Vienna IX. ’’Bahamas, Box 1247, Nassau, N.P. ’’Belgium, 28 Ave. Gen. Eisenhower, Schaerbeek-Brussels. ’’Bolivia, Casilla No. 1440, La Paz. ”Brazil, Rua Licfnio Cardoso 330, Rio de Janeiro. ’’British Guiana, 50 Brickdam, Georgetown. ’’British Honduras, Box 257, Belize. ’’Burma, P.O. Box 62, Rangoon. ’’Canada, 40 Irwin Ave., Toronto 6, Ontario. ’’Ceylon, 35 Beach Rd., Mount Lavinia. ’’Chile, Mo-neda 1710, Santiago. ’’Colombia, Apartado Nacional 147, Barran-quilla. ’’Costa Rica, Apartado 2043, San JosA ’’Cuba, Avenida 15 No. 4608, Almendares, Marianao, Havana. ’’Cyprus, Box 196, Famagusta. ’’Denmark, Sondre Fasanvej 54, Copenhagen-Valby. ’’Ecuador, Casilla 4512, Guayaquil. ’’Egypt, Post Box 387, Cairo. ’’Eire, 86 Lindsay Road, Glasnevin, Dublin. ”EI Salvador, Apartado 401, San Salvador. ’’England, 34 Craven Terrace, London, W. 2. ’’Ethiopia, Box 1781, Addis Ababa. ’’Fiji, Box 23, Suva. ’’Finland, Vainamoisenkatu 27, Helsinki. ’’France, 3 Villa Guibert, Paris 1««. ’’Germany (Western), Am Kohlheck, (16) Wiesbaden-Dotzheim. ’’Gold Coast, B.W.A., Box 760. Accra. ’’Greece, No. 6 Kartall St., Athens 6. ’’Guadeloupe, B. P. 239, Pointe-ft-Pitre. ’’Guatemala, 11 Avenida Norte No. 5-67, Guatemala ’’Haiti, Post Box 185, Port-au-Prince ’’Hawaii, 1228 Pensacola St., Honolulu 14. **Hon-duras, Apartado 147, Tegucigalpa. ’’Hong Kong, 232 Tai Po Rd., 2d Floor, Kowloon. ’’India, 167 Love Lane, Bombay 27. ’’Indonesia, Postbox 2105, Djakarta. ’’Israel, P.O. Box 385, Jerusalem. ”ltaly, Via Monte Maloia 10, Monte Sacro, Rome 742. ’’Jamaica, 151 King St., Kingston. ’’Jahan, 1 Toyooka-Cho, Shiba-Mita, Minato-Ku, Tokyo. ’’Korea, P.O. Box 7, Sodaemun-ku P.O., Seoul. ’’Lebanon, P.O. Box 1122, Beirut. ’’Leeward Islands, Box 119, St. John’s, Antigua, B.W.I. ’’Liberia, P.O. Box 171, Monrovia. ’’Luxembourg, 66 Boulevard General Patton, Luxembourg. ’’Mexico, Calzada Melchor Ocampo 71, Mexico 4, D.F. ’’Netherlands, Koningslaan 1, Amsterdam-Z. ’’Netherlands West lndies,Breedestraat 12, Otrabanda,Curacao.”Newfoundland, Canada, 239 Pennywell Road, St. John’s. ’’New Zealand, G.P.O. Box 30, Wellington, C. 1. ’’Nicaragua, Apartado 183, Managua, D.N. ’’Nigeria, West Africa, P.O. Box 695, Lagos. ’’Northern Rhodesia, 84 King George Ave., Luanshya. ’’Norway, Inkognitogaten 28 B., Oslo. ’’Nyasaland, Box 83, Blantyre. ’’Pakistan, Post Box 346, Lahore. ’’Panama, Box 274, Ancon, C.Z. ’’Paraguay, Ayolas 394, Asuncion. ’’Peru, Pasaje Velarde 165, Lima. ’’Philippine Republic, 104 Roosevelt Rd., San Francisco det Monte, Quezon City. **Puerto Rico, 704 Calle Lafayette, Pda. 21, Urb. Hip., San-turce 34. ’’Sierra Leone, Box 136, Freetown. ’’Singapore 15, 33 Poole Road. ’’South Africa, Private Bag, P.O. Elandsfontoln, Transvaal. ’’Southern Rhodesia, PO. Box 1462, Salisbury. ’’Surinam, Zwartenhovenbrugstraat 181 Boven, Paramaribo. ’’Sweden, Jakobsberg. ’’Switzerland, Allmendstrasse 39, Berne 22. ’’Thailand, Box 67, Bangkok. ’’Trinidad, 21 Taylor St., Woodbrook, Port of Spain, B.W.I. ’’Uruguay, Joaquin do Snltn-rain 1264, Montevideo. ’’Venezuela, Avda. Honduras, Quin Lu Luz, Urb. Las Acacias, Caracas, D.F.

THE NEW WORLD BIBLE TRANSLATIONS

Why new translations? Languages keep changing; knowledge of the languages in which the Bible was originally written keeps increasing, and the light of truth on God’s Word keeps on shining brighter and brighter, all of which makes better translations possible, yes necessary.

NEW WORLD TRANSLATION OF THE HEBREW SCRIPTURES (Volume I)

This is an entirely new translation (published in 1953) of the fii’st eight books of the Hebrew Scriptures, Genesis to Ruth, in modern English. It has more than 31,000 cross references and footnotes, maps, drawings and a helpful appendix. It contains 864 pages and measures only 7 5/16" x 5" x 7/8". Bound in green leatherette hard cover, embossed in gold, it is available for only $1.50. De luxe edition in green morocco, flexible leather cover, gilt edges, is $5.00.

NEW WORLD TRANSLATION OF THE HEBREW SCRIPTURES (Volume II)

The historical Bible books from 1 Samuel to Esther take on added force and meaning in the modern-day English used in this translation (published in 1955). Like Volume I described above, Volume U has valuable cross references, footnotes and maps. It also comes in two editions: green leatherette hard cover, title embossed in gold, postpaid, on a contribution of $1.50, and the de luxe edition, leather bound with gold-edged leaves, $5.00.

NEW WORLD TRANSLATION OF THE CHRISTIAN GREEK SCRIPTURES

First published in 1950, this translation is based on the best Greek text available, that of Westcott and Hort of 1881. It embodies the very latest findings regarding early Greek manuscripts. No effort has been spared to make this the most accurate translation available. It contains excellent information about manuscripts and versions, and has copious valuable marginal references and footnotes. Especially valuable is its 30-page appendix throwing the light of careful Bible research on many misunderstood texts. Printed on thin Bible paper, 800 pages, bound in green leatherette, it is sent, postpaid, on a contribution of $1.50. De luxe green leather edition is available for $5.00.

See illustrations on back cover.

For ordering the above see addresses on preceding page.

¹

NW stands for New World Translation of the Holy Scriptures. See page 2 for list of abbreviations.