The passage below is in a letter sent to us:
“
I have just had a discussion with the priest here about the Spiritist Doctrine. Talking about reincarnation he asked me to explain which body the Spirit of Elijah would take in the day of the final judgment announced by the Church, before Jesus Christ: will it be the first or the second? I did not know how to respond. He smiled and said that we, the Spiritists, are not strong.”
We don’t know which one of you provoked the discussion. At any rate it is not prudent to engage in a controversy when we don’t have the strength to sustain it. If the initiative was from the part of our correspondent we remind you of what we have endlessly repeated that “
Spiritism addresses those that do not believe or that are in doubt and not the ones that have their faith and to whom it is enough; that it does not ask anyone to resign to their beliefs to adopt ours” and for that matter it is consistent with the principles of tolerance and freedom of conscience that it professes.
For that reason we could not approve attempts made by certain persons to convert the clergy of any belief to our ideas. We then repeat to every Spiritist: Receive with dedication all of those that have good will; illuminate those who seek light for you shall not be successful with those who believe to have it; do not force anyone’s faith, both clergy or lay persons, for it is like seeding in an infertile land; have the light out so that the ones who wish to see may see; show the fruits of the tree and feed the hungry ones and not the ones that are plentiful.
If the members of the clergy come to you with sincere intentions and without hidden thoughts do as you do to the other brothers: instruct the ones who wish that but do not try by force to bring the others who have their consciences compromised, trying to make them think like you; leave them with their faith as you wish that you left with yours; finally show them that you know how to practice the charity taught by Jesus.
If they were the first to attack then one has the right to respond and refute. If they opened the field that it is okay to follow without, however, losing moderation like Jesus exemplified to the disciples. If our adversaries do that by themselves then we must allow them such a sad privilege that is never a demonstration of true force.
If we have ourselves entered the avenue of controversy some time ago and if we picked the glove thrown by a few members of the clergy, justice should be made in the acknowledgement that we have never fed an aggressive controversy. Had they not been the first to attack their names would have never been pronounced by us. We have always neglected the injuries and personalism that we addressed to us but it was our duty to defend our attacked brothers and our doctrine when indignantly disfigured for they have even said from the pulpit that it preached adultery and suicide. We have already said and repeat here that such a provocation is awkward because it forcibly leads to the examination of certain questions that it would have been better to have left alone since once the field is open nobody can foresee where it is going to end. But fear is a bad adviser.
Having said that let us try to respond to the question posed by the priest above. If his counterpart were not as strong as he is in theology, he himself does not look so strong to us with respect to the Gospels. His question sends us back to the one proposed to Jesus by the Sadducee. All he had to do was to refer to the answer given by Jesus that we take the liberty of reminding him since he does not know.
That same day the Sadducees, who say there is no resurrection, came to him with a question. “Teacher,” they said, “Moses told us that if a man dies without having children, his brother must marry the widow and raise up offspring for him. Now there were seven brothers among us. The first one married and died, and since he had no children, he left his wife to his brother. The same thing happened to the second and third brother, right on down to the seventh. Finally, the woman died. Now then, at the resurrection, whose wife will she be of the seven, since all of them were married to her?”Jesus replied, “You are thinking about this in the wrong way because you do not know the Scriptures or the power of God. At the resurrection people will neither marry nor be given in marriage; they will be like the angels in heaven. But about the resurrection of the dead—have you not read what God said to you, ‘I am the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob’?[1] He is not the God of the dead but of the living.” Mathew XXII 23:32.
Since after resurrection men will be like angels in heavens and since angels have no material body but an ethereal and fluidic body, then men will not resurrect in flesh and blood. If John the Baptist was Elijah he is not but one soul that had two envelopes left in different times on Earth and he will not present himself either like one or the other but with the ethereal envelope that is adequate to the invisible world.
If the words of Jesus do not seem clear enough to you refer then to those of Paul that we mention below. They are even more explicit. Do you doubt that John the Baptiste had been Elijah? Read Mathew XI: 13-15 as:
“For all the Prophets and the Law prophesied until John, and if you are willing to accept it, he is Elijah who is to come. He who has ears to hear, let him hear.”
There is no mistake here. The terms are clear and categorical and to misunderstand it is necessary to have no ears or to keep them shut. Since those words constitute a positive affirmation, it must be one out of two: Jesus told the truth or he was mistaken. In the first hypothesis reincarnation is attested by him; in the second case he casts doubt upon all of his teachings since he was mistaken in one point he could be in all of them. You must pick one.
Now, Mr. Priest, allow me, in turn, to ask you a question that will certainly be easy for you to respond. You know that the book of Genesis establishes six days for creation, not only of Earth but for the whole universe: the sun, the moon, etc. That did not account for the discoveries of Geology and Astronomy and Joshua did not take universal gravitation into account. It seems to me that the dogma of the resurrection of flesh did not take into account Chemistry.
True, Chemistry is a diabolical science, as all others, that turn clear what some wanted to keep fuzzy but irrespective of its origin it teaches us a positive thing and that is that our body, like every organic substance animal and vegetal, is composed of multiple elements from which these are the main ones: oxygen, azote (nitrogen) and carbon. Besides, it teaches us – and notice that it is from experimentation – that those elements disperse with death and enter the composition of other bodies so much so that after certain time the whole body is absorbed.
It is also attested that the terrain, where there is abundance of decomposing organic material, are the most fertile and is the vicinity of cemeteries that the bad believers attribute the proverbial fecundity of the gardens of village priests.
Let us then suppose, Mr. Priest, that potatoes are planted in the proximity of a grave. Those potatoes will feed out of the gases and salts resulting from the decomposition of a dead body; the potatoes will feed chickens; you will eat the chickens, enjoying it so much that your own body will contain molecules of the dead individual and that will still be his although traveled through intermediaries. You will then have parts that belong to others. Now, when you both pass on the day of the final judgment each one with their body, how is it going to be? Will you keep what is his and he shall claim what belongs to him or will you still have something from the potato and the chicken.
It is a question at least as serious as the one about the resurrection of John the Baptist with the body of John or that of Elijah. I do that with great simplicity but imagine the embarrassment if, as it does happen, you have in your portions of hundreds of individuals. That is the meaning of resurrection of the flesh. Another different one is the resurrection of the Spirit that does not carry its remains. See below what St. Paul says.
Considering that we are still in the terrain of questions here you is another one, Mr. Priest, that we hear from unbelievers. It is certainly strange to the subject that we are discussing but it is brought up by one of the events that we mentioned above. Still according to the book of Genesis, God created the world in six days and rested in the seventh. That rest is what makes the Sunday in the canonical law. If, then, as demonstrated by Geology, instead of those six days, it represent millions of years, instead of twenty four hours, how long will the resting day last? In terms of importance this question has as much value as the other two.
You must not believe, Mr. Priest, that these observations are the result of neglect to the sacred scriptures. No, on the contrary, we perhaps pay more tribute to them than you. By considering the allegorical form, we seek the spirit of the text that vivifies; we then find great truths in them and through that we lead the unbelievers to believe and respect them whereas by adhering to the letter that kills you make them say absurd things and the number of skeptical increase.
[1] Exodus 3:6 (TN)
