Revelations implies an idea of mysticism and marvelous, in its liturgic sense. Materialism rejects it naturally since it supposes the idea of intervention of extra human powers and intelligences. Leaving aside the absolute denial, many people today ask the following questions: There was or there wasn’t a revelation? Is the revelation necessary? By bring the finished truth to mankind, wouldn’t the revelation preclude them from using their own skills, since it spares them the work of research? These objections arise from the false idea that is made of revelation. To begin with, let us take if from its simplest meaning, and follow it to its highest point.
Reveal is to bring about something that is unknown; it is to teach someone something that she doesn’t know. From this point of view, there is a continuous revelation to us, as a way of speaking. What is the role of the teacher to the students, if not that of a revealer? She teaches them what they do not know, what they would not have time or possibility of finding by themselves, for science is the collective work of the centuries, and from a multitude of people, each one bringing their contingent of observations, of which those that came after them take advantage. Teaching is therefore a revelation of certain scientific and moral truths, physical or metaphysical, made by persons that know them to others that ignore them, and without which they would have always ignored. Would it be more logical to leave it up to them to find such truths? Wait for them to invent mechanics so that they can utilize the steam? Could we say that we block the exercise of their skills by revealing to them what others found? Isn’t that the opposite, that by standing on the previous discoveries they arrive at new ones? By teaching the largest possible number of people the largest possible sum of known truths is, consequently, provoking the activity of intelligence, instead of muffling it and precluding progress. Men would remain stationary without it.
But the teacher only teaches what she learned; she is a revealer of second order. The genius teaches what he found himself; he is the primitive revealer. He was the one that brought the light, that gradually vulgarized. Where would humanity be without the revelations of the geniuses that appear from time to time?
But what are the geniuses? Why are they geniuses? Where do they come from? What becomes of them? Let us observe that, in their majority, they bring transcendent skills from birth, innate knowledge that a little work is enough to develop.
They are really part of humanity because they are born, live and die as we do. What is the origin of such knowledge that could not have been acquired in life? One may say, like the materialists, that by chance they have brain material in larger quantity and of better quality. In this case they would not have more merit than a legume that is larger and more tasteful than another. Will others say, with certain spiritualists, that God gave them a soul that is more favorable than that of common people? An also illogical supposition because it would accuse God of partiality.
The only rational solution to this problem is in the pre-existence of the soul, and in the plurality of the existences. The genius is a Spirit that lived longer, that consequently acquired more and progressed more than those that are less advanced. By incarnating, he brings what he acquired and since he acquired much more than the others, without the need of learning, that is what is called genius. But what he knows is still the result of previous work, and not the result of a privilege. Before being born he was, therefore, a more advanced Spirit; reincarnates so that others may take advantage of what he knows, or to acquire more knowledge.
Men progress by themselves, incontestably, and by the efforts of their intelligence; but left to their own strengths such a progress is very slow, if not helped by more advanced people, as the pupil is by the teachers. All peoples have had the geniuses, that have come at all times to give them an impulse and move them from the inertia.
As the solicitude of God is admitted towards His creatures, why wouldn’t we admit that capable Spirits, for their energy and superiority of their knowledge, would help humanity advance, incarnating by the will of God, aiming at supporting progress in a given direction? That they were assigned with a mission, like the ambassador is assigned by his sovereign? Such is the role of the great geniuses. What is it that they come to do, other than teach mankind truths that are ignored, and that would remain unknown for long periods, providing men with a trampoline with which they can rise more rapidly? Those geniuses, that appear throughout the centuries, like shining stars, leaving behind a long and shiny wake upon humanity, are missionaries, or messiahs if you will. If they only taught what men already know their presence would be completely useless. The new things that they teach, be it in the physical or moral world, are
revelations.
If God employs revealers to the scientific truths, with even stronger reason may employ them to the moral truths, that form one of the essential elements of progress. These are the philosophers whose ideas travel through the centuries. In the special meaning of religious faith, the revealers are more generally called prophets or messiahs. Every religion has had their revealers, and although they have all been far from knowing the whole truth, they had a providential meaning because they were appropriate to the time and the environment in which they lived, to the particular condition of the people to whom they spoke and were relatively superior. Despite the mistake of their doctrines, they still shook the minds and for that very reason, sowed the germs of progress that should, one day, expand under the light of Christianity. It is therefore wrong to cast anathema upon them, in the name of an Orthodoxy, for a day will come when all beliefs, so much different in their form, but that rest on a common and fundamental principle – God and the immortality of the soul – will melt in a great and vast unity, when reason triumphs against prejudices.
Unfortunately, and in all times, religions have been instruments of domination. The role of prophet tempted secondary ambitions, giving rise to a multitude of pretense revealers or messiahs, that from the favor of prestige of such name, exploited credulity to satisfy their own pride, greed or laziness, finding it easier to live on the expenses of their victims.
The Christian religion has not been spared of such parasites. In this respect we call your serious attention to Chapter XXI of the Gospel According to Spiritism: “There will be false Christs and false prophets”. The symbolic language of Jesus favored singularly the most contradictory interpretations; each one struggling to distort their meaning, believing to have found the sanction to their personal points of view, many times even to the justification of doctrines most contrary to the spirit of charity and justice, that is its foundation. Such abuse will disappear by the force of things and under the empire of reason. This is not what we have to discuss here. We only point out the two great revelations that are the cornerstones of Christianity: that of Moses and Jesus, because they had a decisive influence onto humanity. Islamism may be considered a derivative of Moses and Christianity. To value the religion that he wanted founded, Mohamed needed the support of a supposed divine revelation.
Are there direct revelations of God to men? This is a question that we dare not answer affirmatively nor negatively, in absolute terms. It is not strictly impossible, but there is no certain proof. What cannot be doubted is that Spirits closer to God by their perfection penetrate God’s thoughts and can transmit them. As for the incarnate revealers, according to their hierarchical order and degree of personal knowledge, they can collect instructions from their own knowledge or receive them from more elevated Spirits, even from direct messengers of God. These may sometimes have been thought as God since they speak in the name of God.
Such kind of communications have nothing of strange to whoever know the Spiritist phenomena, and the way the relationships between the incarnate and discarnate take place. The instructions may be transmitted by several means: by pure and simple inspiration, by the hearing of the word, by the vision of instructor Spirits, in the visions and apparitions, be it in dreams or in the wake state, as there are many examples in the Bible, in the Gospels and in the sacred books of all peoples. Therefore, it is strictly accurate to say that most of the revealers are inspired, clairvoyant or clairaudient mediums. It does not follow from this that every medium is a revealer, and even less direct intermediaries to God and the messengers.
It is only the pure Spirits that receive the word of God with the mission of transmitting it. But now it is known that the Spirits are far from being all perfect, and that there are those that take a false appearance. This is what led St. John say: “
Dear friends, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God”. (1 John IV, 1).
It is therefore possible to have true and serious revelations, as there are apocryphal and false ones. The essential character of the Divine revelation is that of the
eternal truth. Every revelation stained with mistakes or subjected to changes cannot emanate from God, since God cannot consciously deceive or be mistaken. That is how the law of the Decalogue
[2] has all the characters of its origin, whereas the other laws of Moses, essentially transient, sometimes in contradiction with the laws of the Mount Sinai, are the political and personal works of the Hebrew legislator. As the costumes of the people softened the application of these laws faded away whilst the Decalogue stood up as the lighthouse of humanity. Jesus Christ turned it into the foundation of his edifice, while abolishing the other laws. If they were the works of God, Jesus would have avoided touching them. Jesus and Moses are the two great revealers that changed the face of the world, and that is the proof of their Divine mission. A purely human law would not have such a power.
A new and important revelation takes place in the present days. It is the one that shows us the possibility of communication with the beings of the spiritual world. This knowledge is not new, no doubt, but up until now it remained in the state of dead letter, that is, without benefit to humanity. The ignorance of the laws that rule those relationships had it muffled under superstition; man was incapable of extracting any healthy deduction from that; it was reserved to our times to disentangle it from its ridiculous accessories, understand its reach and extract from it the light that should illuminate the path to the future.
Since the Spirits are nothing else but the souls of men, by communicating with them
we are not beyond humanity, a paramount circumstance to consider. The men of genius, that were the light beam of humanity, therefore, came from the world of the Spirits and returned there after leaving Earth. Considering that the Spirits may communicate with men, those geniuses may give them instructions in the spiritual form, as they did in their corporeal form; can instruct us after their death, as they did when alive; they are invisible, instead of visible, and that is the whole difference. Their experience and knowledge must not be reduced, and if their word had authority as men, they must not have less for being in the world of the Spirits.
But it is not only superior Spirits that manifest, as Spirits of every order do, and that was necessary to initiate us in the true character of the world of the Spirits, showing it to us in all its facets. Thus, the relationships between the visible and the invisible worlds are more intimate, and the connection is more evident; we see more clearly where we came from and where we are going to. Such is the essential objective of those manifestations. All Spirits, irrespective of the degree that they may have achieved, teach us, therefore, something, but since they are more or less enlightened, it is up to us to discern the good from the bad in their teachings, and make the best of the opportunity. They can all, whoever they are, teach or reveal things to us, things that we ignore and that we would not know without them.
The great incarnate Spirits are powerful individualities, no doubt, but whose action is restricted, and necessarily slow to propagate. If one among them, even if Elijah or Moses, had come in our time to reveal to men the state of the spiritual world, who would have proved the truthfulness of their assertions, in this time of skepticism? Wouldn’t them been looked at as a dreamer or a utopist? And admitting that they were with the absolute truth, centuries would have passed before their ideas would be accepted by the masses. God in His wisdom did not want it to be so. God wished the teaching to be given by the Spirits themselves, and not the incarnate, so as to convince about their existence, and having that taking place around the world, be it to propagate faster or to give a proof of truth in the coincidence of the teachings, so that each person would find the means of convincing oneself. Such are the objective and character of the modern revelation. The Spirits do not come to spare man from the work, the study, and researches; they do not bring any finished science; they leave men to their own strengths in whatever they can find by themselves. This is what the Spiritists know perfectly well today. Experience demonstrated long ago the mistake that attributed all the knowledge and wisdom to the Spirits, and that it would be enough to address the first Spirit that showed up to get to know everything. The Spirits come out of the corporeal humanity and constitute one of its faces; as there are the superior and the vulgar on Earth, many of them know less, scientifically, and philosophically, than certain men. They say what they know, not more, not less. As with men, the most advanced ones can teach us more things, and give us wiser advices than the delayed ones. By asking the Spirits for advice, therefore, is not reaching out to supernatural forces, but asking our fellow human beings, the very ones to whom one would have asked when alive, the parents, the friends, or those individuals that are more enlightened than us. That is what is necessary to persuade and what is ignored by those that, by not having studied Spiritism, make a false idea about the nature of the world of the Spirits and the revelations from beyond the grave. What is, then, the utility of those manifestations, or of this revelation, if you like, if the Spirits don’t know more than we do, or if they do not tell us everything they know? To begin with, as we said, they abstain from giving us what we can obtain by our own work; second, there are things that they are not allowed to reveal, because that is not fit to our level of advancement.
Now, leaving that apart, the conditions of their new existence extend the circle of their perceptions; they see what they did not when on Earth; freed from the hindrances of matter and the worries of the corporeal life, they judge things from a more elevated point of view, and for that very reason, more correctly; their perspicuity embraces a broader horizon; they understand their mistakes, rectify their ideas and disentangle from human prejudices. That is what characterize their superiority above corporeal humanity and because their advices can be, relatively to their degree of advancement, more judicious and more disinterested than those of the incarnate. Their current environment allows them, additionally, to initiate us in things of the future life, things that we ignore and cannot learn in this world where we are.
Up until now man had only hypothesized about the future, and that is why the beliefs were divided into so many and so divergent systems, from the nihilism to the fantastic descriptions of hell and paradise. Today, it is the eyewitnesses, the actors of life beyond the grave themselves that come to tell us about it, and they are the only ones that could do that. Thus, those manifestations served to allow us to get to know the invisible world that is around us, and that we did not suspect. This knowledge alone would have a fundamental importance, supposing that the Spirits were incapable of teaching us anything else. A simple comparison allows to understand the situation better.
A ship loaded with immigrants departs to a long trip; it carries men of every condition, relatives, and friends of those left behind. There is word that the ship sank; not a single trace was left; no news about its fate; all travelers are believed dead and all families begin mourning. Yet, the whole ship, without the loss of a single man, got to an unknown, abundant, and fertile land, where everybody is happy, under a clement sky. But they are ignored. Lo and behold, one day another ship harbors that port and finds the castaway safe and well. The happy news spreads with the speed of light. Everybody says: “Our friends are not lost then?” They thank God. They cannot see them but correspond. They exchange demonstrations of affection, and joyfulness succeeds sadness.
Such is the image of the earthly life and life beyond the grave, before and after the modern revelation. The latter, similarly to the ship, brings us the good news of the survival of the loved ones, and the certainty of finding them one day; there is no more doubt about their fate and ours; dismay fades away before hope.
But other results come to fecund this revelation. God, by judging humanity mature to penetrate the mystery of its destiny, and cold-bloodedly contemplate new wonders, allowed the veil that separated the visible from the invisible world to be lifted. The fact of manifestations has nothing of extra human; it is the spiritual humanity that comes to talk to the corporeal humanity, saying:
“We exist, therefore the void does not exist; observe what we are and see what you are going to be; future belongs to you, as it belongs to us. You were walking in darkness; we came to illuminate your path and clear the way to you; you were wandering about, we showed you the objective. Earthly life was everything to you because you did not see anything beyond; by showing you the spiritual life, we came to tell you: Earthly life is nothing. Your sight ended at the tomb; we show you a splendid horizon beyond. You did not know what you suffered on Earth; now you see the justice of God in your suffering. Good did not have apparent fruits for the future; from now on it will have an objective and will be a necessity. Fraternity was just a beautiful theory; now it is founded on a law of nature. Under the empire of belief that everything ends with life, the immensity is empty, egotism rules among you, and your motto is: “every person for oneself”; with the certainty of the future, the infinite space is infinitely inhabited, emptiness and solitude are not anywhere, solidarity connects all creatures from before and beyond the grave; it is the kingdom of charity, with the maxim: “All for one, one for all”. Finally, at the end of life you used to say an eternal good-bye to the loved ones; now you say: “So long!”.
Such are, in summary, the results of the new revelation. It came to fulfill the void dug by incredulity; cheer up the courage abated by the doubt or by the perspective of the nothingness, giving all things a reason for their existence. Doesn’t such result have importance, considering that the Spirits do not come to solve the problems of science, nor give knowledge to the ignorant or means of enrichment to the lazy one, without work? However, the fruits that man will harvest are not for a future life only; they will be collected on Earth, by the transformation that such new beliefs must necessarily operate upon the character, the tastes, the tendencies, and consequently, upon the costumes and social relationships of every man. By ending the kingdom of egotism, pride and disbelief, they prepare the kingdom of good that the is kingdom of God.
The revelation, therefore, has the objective of allowing man the acquisition of certain truths that he was unable to acquire on his own, and that is aiming at the progress. Those truths are limited, in general, to fundamental principles, destined to guide man in the path of research, and not that of carrying him by the hand; these are guidelines that show the objective. It is up to mankind to study them and deduce their applications. Far from freeing man from the work, these are new elements provided to his activity.
[1] See Genesis – Miracles and Predictions According to Spiritism, Chap. I
[2] Ten Commandments (T.N.)
