Communicating with God’s World of Spirit – its laws and its purpose | Pastor Johannes Greber

- 126 - agreeable tidings to their employers, they sometimes did not hesitate to conceal unpleasant truths from them and to utter falsehoods instead. By doing so they became ‘lying prophets’, thus severing their connection with the good spirit world and becoming instruments of Evil, even though for the sake of appearances they invoked the name of God when engaged in their mediumistic work. Especially those mediums who were in the service of worldly masters were prone to yield to this temptation, as shown by the story of King Ahab. (I Kings 22) There you read of 400 mediums who conspired to tell the king nothing but agreeable news, a conspiracy that sprang from their own evil leanings. They thus cut themselves off from the spirits of truth, knowingly making themselves the instruments of lying spirits. Naturally they feared that their falsehood would be exposed if the king consulted a medium of the good spirit world, and therefore, when Ahab summoned into his presence Micaiah, a medium in the service of the good spirit world, the other mediums sent a messenger to intercept Micaiah with instructions to persuade him to enter into the plot. Micaiah, however, warned Ahab of impending disaster, as the spirit of God had told him, whereupon one of the lying prophets present stepped forward and struck Micaiah on the cheek, saying: ‘What? Did perhaps a spirit of the Lord leave me to speak through you?’ Here you have an example of an utterly corrupt prophethood, which did not scruple to resort to falsehood and deceit for the sake of riches and worldly honours, and which, nevertheless, gave the impression of being an instrument of God. Its mediumistic utterances are inspired by lying spirits, a fact of which those prophets were well aware and which in their evil leanings they did their utmost to conceal. Mediumship of this character, especially under the patronage of kings estranged from God, was bound to be disastrous also to the whole nation, as soon as it ranged itself openly on the side of undisguised idolatry. ‘Prophets of Baal’ was the name by which they were then known, and they became exceedingly numerous. At times there were scarcely any good mediums left. Thus, it is said of the time of the High Priest Eli: I Samuel 3: 1: ‘At the time when young Samuel served the Lord under Eli’s supervision revelations from the Lord were rare in Israel.’ On Mount Carmel the prophet Elijah stood as the only ‘prophet of God’ compared with 450 prophets of Baal and 400 prophets of Asherah. (I Kings 18: 22) The fact that the mediums of old allowed themselves to be swayed by worldly advantages to misuse their gifts can be gathered from the words spoken by God through the prophet Micah: Micah 3: 5: ‘Thus, the Lord spoke against the prophets who lead my people astray, who predict good fortune when they get food to eat, but preach holy war on any who refuse to feed them.’ Micah 3: 11: ‘Their prophets are divining for money, and all the while calling upon the Lord.’ You must not think that the people of those days accepted out of hand and as genuine all phenomena evoked by mediums. They too realized that they might be deceived and were just as suspicious of mediums as you are today. In order to guard against being tricked by sleight of hand performances, they were in the habit of binding the mediums. That is why the private mediums, who lived by their

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