PSYCHO-SCIENTIFIC FRONTIERS Selected publications from a variety of subjects of psycho-scientific research. Editor: Rolf Linnemann (Certificated Engineer) * Steinweg 3b * 32108 Bad Salzuflen * Tel. (05222) 6558 Internet: https://www.psygrenz.com Translator’s email : evak30@optusnet.com.au E-Mail: RoLi@psygrenz.de Pastor Johannes Greber Communicating with God’s World of Spirit – its laws and its purpose Personal experiences of a Catholic priest Index 1.0 Personal experiences in the field of spiritual apparitions ......................................................................... 2 1.1 My first step towards making contact with the world of spirit ............................................................. 2 1.2 The decision ...................................................................................................................................................... 9 1.3 The confirmation of the truth ...................................................................................................................... 13 1. 3. 1 A walk through my Church with a medium .................................................................................... 22 1. 3. 2 A man of the cloth as a Spiritist ........................................................................................................ 28 1. 3. 3 Summoned before the Bishop .......................................................................................................... 29 1. 3. 4 Incredible - but true! ............................................................................................................................. 31 1. 3. 5 Literary evidence of the methodical falsification of the scripts of the first centuries ........ 33 1. 3. 6 Spiritual experiences in the United States ..................................................................................... 34 1. 3. 7 Egyptian Tombs .................................................................................................................................... 38
- 2 - 1.0 Personal experiences in the field of spiritual apparitions 1.1 My first step towards making contact with the world of spirit So, I contemplated this, trying to understand; but it was too difficult for my understanding until I made contact with God’s world of the spirit. Psalms 73; 16-17 It was during the later summer in 1923. I was a Catholic priest in a small rural community at that time. Besides, I also ran a relief society that was located in a neighbouring city. I went twice a week to the office of the relief society to deal with charitable work. A man visited me there one day and asked me: “What do you think of Spiritism?” Before I had a chance to answer, he told me about his experiences. He was meeting with a small circle of people for a kind of church service once a week. One prayed, read the Holy Scriptures and discussed what was being read. Amongst those present was also a young boy around 16 or 17 years old. He was from a simple family, had a moderate level of education and absolved an apprenticeship in a private company. He would suddenly collapse at these meetings as if he was dead to then be immediately straighten up in a jerky fashion as if moved by an invisible force, he would then sit there with closed eyes and confer wonderful lectures to those present. He would also answer questions that were put to him. He would however refuse to answer questions of a purely physical nature. At the end of his lectures, he would fall forward again but immediately regain consciousness. He apparently didn’t remember the slightest of what he had said and of what had happened. This youngster was fit and healthy. He told us that he suffered no discomforts, no headaches or any other indispositions after such an event. The man that approached me closed his report with the words: “I would now like to know what you think about this, but I would like to ask you to participate at one of these meeting yourself before you give me your judgment, so that you can personally convince yourself about these events. You will then have an opportunity to ask the young man some questions yourself.” I had listened to his narration with great attentiveness. What could my reply be? I knew and understood nothing about the so-called “Spiritism”. I might have read something here and there in newspapers. They had mainly been reports about the unmasking of mediums or other spiritistic trickeries. Ergo, certainly nothing positive. As a serious minded human being and as a priest into the bargain, I was asked to enter this field and expose myself to the danger of ridicule. I couldn’t do that. The thought did indeed provoke me, namely to investigate the strange processes just described to me from a purely scientific point of view, if only I could do so in my own study. But I wasn’t prepared to visit other families and to expose myself to gossip. I therefore openly admitted to this gentleman that I had no personal experience in regards to “Spiritism” and that I could therefore not express an opinion of what he had experienced. I also had great concerns about accepting his invitation to participate at the kind of meetings he had described to me. I told him that I had to take my “black frock” into consideration and that I couldn’t take the risk of being decried as a “Spiritist” by the public. My participation at these meeting would undoubtedly become common knowledge everywhere.
- 3 - This man did however not accept my objections, he replied: “We are dealing with a very important issue here and this is something that you, as a priest and as someone that occupies a public position, must be informed about. According to my opinion you have at least the duty to examine this and to form a judgment about this after a detailed and unbiased examination. You are probably asked questions about these things quite often during your lifetime. And where can us laymen ask for elucidation, if not from a spiritual leader we trust and we can expect to hear the full truth from? These things can no longer be hushed up. The number of spiritistic circles in Germany increase on a daily basis. One finds them in almost all larger towns. I am well aware that the Churches would like to dismiss Spiritism as a deception or the work of the devil. But that doesn’t solve the problem. Your fear that this might cause inconveniences for you is unfounded. Your participation at our meetings would not become publicly known. Because the few attendees are personalities that can keep quiet and they will avoid everything that could harm your reputation. You can therefore accept my invitation!” I couldn’t get around the truth of his argumentation. The man was right! Who else should do this, if we as clergymen, who should be and want to be teachers and leaders amongst the people, refuse to personally investigate such apparitions? Who could possibly have a greater interest in this than the priests of all confessions? Because if Spiritism should prove to be true, it would be of the most momentous importance to all religious communities. After hesitating for a while, I declared myself willing to participate at next Sunday’s meeting. My thoughts were constantly dealing with this situation during the days that followed. I was half sorry to have given my commitment. The inconveniences that could arise from this seemed to be getting bigger, the more I thought about it. I awaited Sunday with eager expectation. I drove into town after the end of the afternoon church service. I wanted to take care of a number of urgent affairs at the bureau of the relief society before going to the meeting. In my coat pocket was a slip of paper with the questions that I wanted to put to this young man that evening. They could only be answered with longer expositions. They were taken from my religious studies. I myself was incapable of answering them and I simply wanted to ascertain the kind of replies that young man would give. Arriving at the office of the relief society, I found a letter from the gentleman who had invited me to the meeting. He informed me that the meeting did no longer take place at his place as originally planned, but at the residence of another family, whose address he supplied. It had apparently been arranged like this. This unexpected change baffled me. I became suspicious. Were they going to play cat and mouse with me? The family where the meeting was going to take place was unknown to me, I also didn’t recognise their name. Should I expose myself to awkward embarrassment in front of a family that was absolutely foreign to me? The whole affair might just be a trap set for me. My decision was clear: “I will not go there!”
- 4 - So that they didn’t wait for me in vain, I sent a message via a messenger to this gentleman informing him that I would not come to the meeting. It wasn’t long before he appeared himself. He entreated me to go with him. He explained that the change in regards to the meeting had not been made by him, but that it came from a source they had to abide by. The reason might be found in the fact that the meeting could take place more inconspicuously at another residence than his own. So, I went with him. It was 7.30 pm when we arrived. I was cordially welcomed by the family. I noticed that they were delighted about my coming. As the meeting would not start till 8 pm, I had ample time to converse with the young man who was also already present. Through a number of questions, I tried to ascertain his scientific level of education. I soon found that he didn’t differ from other mediocre youngsters of his age. The meeting began at 8 pm. There were only a few of us. I was surprised that they had not organised a session in the dark, that everything was brightly lit. I had expected that such meetings always took place in the dark. One began with a short prayer that one of those present recited with great devotion. The participants actually gave an impression of seriousness and inner calm. The prayer had hardly ended when the young man collapsed forward with such a sudden jolt whilst loudly exhaling his breath, that it startled me. He would have fallen to the floor if the arm rest of the chair he was sitting on had not held him in place. It only lasted a few seconds before he was once again raised up in fits and starts as if controlled by an invisible hand, he then sat there with his eyes closed. I felt my heart beating faster in my tense expectation of the things that were to follow. “”Good day!” he began and immediately turned towards me with the question: “Why have you come here?” What astonished me was that he addressed me with the common “you”. (The German language distinguishes between “Du” for family and friends and “Sie” for strangers and people of standing.) A boy or any young man would never have addressed me like that under normal circumstances. – My answer was: “I have come here as a seeker of the truth. I heard about the things that take place here and I would like to test whether one is dealing here with the truth or with deception.” “Do you believe in God?” he asked me and then immediately adding: “Well, I know that you believe in God. But I would like to ask you a different question. Why do you believe in God?” This question caught me so off guard that I didn’t quite know what I should say. I also felt confused. This confusion made me answer the question so inadequately that I wasn’t happy at all with my answer. He quietly said: “I had expected a better answer from you.” These chiding words felt like a slap in the face to me. I had come to reveal the things that went on here as deceptions and the first few minutes saw me sitting here in embarrassment.
- 5 - In a soft voice he said: “We will return to the question that you so unsatisfactorily answered later. It is now your turn to ask me questions. I will answer them to the degree that I am allowed to. You have written down a series of question that you want to put to me. Take the slip of paper with the questions that you have on you out of your pocket!” Those present looked at me with astonishment, because nobody knew about this slip of paper. My first question was: “Why is it that Christendom no longer seems to have an influence at all on today’s mankind?” He started to answer without a moment’s hesitation or contemplation. He dealt with the interposed questions and rendered objections of those present with astonishing simplicity and clarity. According to my stenographic notations he gave the following explanations: “The documents handed down to you no longer contain Christ’s doctrine in its entirety and in its original purity and clarity. A lot of important segments have been omitted from what you call the New Testament. Well, whole chapters have been removed from it. What you now have are mutilated transcripts. You no longer have the originals and this makes it impossible to discover the mutilations of the original text. Those that have done this were punished by God.” One of those present then asked who had been responsible for making mistakes with the Holy Scriptures? “It is not your affair to know this” was his short reply. “It suffices for you to know that it happened and that the culprits were punished by God. Of what use would it be to you to know their names! You would only use knowing the culprits to sit in judgement over them. And you know that you should not judge your fellow men. God judges! That’s suffices. A letter from the apostle Paul to all Christian communities had also been destroyed. He comprehensibly explained all the passages from his earlier letters that gave cause to misunderstandings therein. These clarifications did however not fit with many of the false doctrines that had crept into Christendom later.” I interrupted him here with the question of when the first of the divergent doctrines had entered Christendom. He answered: “To a lesser extent already in the first century of the Christian calendar. You know that quite a few differences of opinions had arisen within the Christian communities when the apostles were still around. A lot of incorrect human opinions and human statutes crept in that didn’t coincide with Christ’s doctrine. • A lot of weight would be lifted from your shoulders if you had the complete and unadulterated texts from Christ’s doctrine, a weight that has been imposed on you in the name of religion and Christendom. A lot of the doctrines that one expects you to believe, especially those that seem impossible in your opinion, would fall by the wayside, because they would be recognised as incorrect and you could then breathe easy as God’s children. Millions of people do feel that a lot of the things that Christendom teaches these days cannot be correct. Habit makes them publicly retain them, but they do not have an inner effect. The vital belief in them is lacking. A lot of you do not even externally maintain the present day Christendom. Instead of only discarding what’s incorrect, they simply reject all of Christendom and their faith in God, because they think that everything hangs together. And this is bad. • But the time will come when Christ’s doctrine will be given back to mankind in its full purity and truth. You do not have to know at the present how this will come about.
- 6 - • But the things that have been preserved from the documents of the New Testament have undergone a few changes at numerous places. The transcribers changed words and parts of sentences and omitted a word here and there and replaced them with other words thus distorting the meaning of a sentence, all according to what suited them. They tried to created a source of evidence in the Bible that fitted their opinions at that time and this made them grasp for the means of falsification. They were not always aware of the gravity of their incorrectness. They rather thought that they did religion a service. This is how the populace was led astray. A lot pf people feel deep inside that they are not on the correct path, even though they do not have the opportunity to gain clarity about it. The inescapable result from this is that a Christendom uprooted like this can no longer have a fruitful effect. Because every doubt about the truth hems its effect.” I asked with trepidation: “May I ask you to quote a passage from the New Testament where a distorting change or omission produced a falsification?” “He replied that: This is indeed not a suitable point in time where I want to deal with individual falsifications. I will do so later on when I will explain the Bible to you in regards to this. I will however grant your wish and I will quote two passages to you; one passage where one word was replaced through another and one passage where one word was omitted. You know the exclamation made by the apostle Thomas according to your present day Bible: ‘My Lord and my God!’ (John 20; 28). The reality is that he used an expression that the apostles always used when talking to Christ, namely ‘My Lord and my master!’. The word ‘master’ was later falsified with the word ‘God’. I will tell you at a later opportunity why this has happened. One passage where one word was omitted and subsequently changed the whole meaning will be of special interest to you. You are a Catholic priest and you believe that you have the power to forgive sins. What passage from the Bible do you use as evidence that priests have been endowed with such a power?” I quoted the passage: “If you forgive people’s sins, they are forgiven” (John 20; 23). He corrected me by quoting the passage literally: “When you forgive the sins of others, they will be forgiven them” and he continued: “The word that you translate as ‘them’ is also the word ‘self’ in Greek. The original text included the word ‘you’ in front of the word ‘self’. So that what you translate these days as ‘them’, is in reality ‘yourself’. The original text literally went: • ‘When you forgive the sins of others, they will also be forgiven yourself. You can see the distortion of meaning the omission of the word ‘you’ created. Christ said nothing else but what he said on numerous other occasions, namely: You should forgive the mistakes and the sins your fellow men commit against you from your heart, so that you gain forgiveness for your sins from God. ‘Forgive us our sins the way we forgive the sins of those that trespass against us.’ To forgive is the most difficult thing in your life. This is why you receive God’s special help. Christ also said at this particular point: ‘Receive a Holy Spirit!’ When you forgive others their sins, they will also be forgiven for you. But when you hold onto the them, namely in your heart, your own sins will also be held onto, namely by God. – Did you understand this?” I answered quite oppressed and contemplative with a gentle “yes” and immediately added: “Does this mean according to your opinion, that as a priest, there is no value in me accepting the confession of sin from others if I cannot give them absolution? That I would have to abandon the whole thing.” “You don’t have to do this” he replied. “As the Christians that belong to your Church hold the opinion that they have to confess their sins to a priest in order to gain absolution from them, you can hear their
- 7 - confessions as described by your office. To reveal your sins to another person is indeed not something evil or forbidden by God. • But you must not believe that you can forgive the sins of the penitents on behalf of God! It can only be your task to remove the sinful conviction from the hearts of the confessors through indoctrination, admonition, encouragement and promoting their inner fortitude, so that they go on their way changed and ready to prove through their action that they are changed human beings. • A habitual confessing and hoping for absolution is not only useless, but also a desecration of the idea of the conciliation with God. These interposed questions made me deviate from my theme. I will now continue with it. Even though a lot of things have been intentionally omitted from Christ’s doctrine that have reached you in the form of transcripts of old documents, whilst others have been changed through falsifications. Such a lot of correct things remain that people can get closer to their God through compliance with what is correct amongst them. People can unfortunately not distinguish between what is right and what is wrong. According to Christ’s own words, the basis of his doctrine is: • ‘Love God above everything else and your neighbour as you do yourself!’ Those that abide by this have fulfilled the whole Christian doctrine. All other truths are just supplementations to this basic truth and helping guidelines in the accomplishment of the life of the individual. And now we come to the last, but not least important reason why Christendom seems to no longer have an influence on mankind these days. • The people do not observe that their spiritual teachers practically comply with what Christ taught and with what they preach. This applies to all priests of all Christian denominations. There are exceptions. But they are proportionally a rarity. Where are the clergymen that can stand next to Christ without having to blush? How many of them share the burden of sorrow, destituteness and adversity of their brothers and sisters? Are the members of their community not their brothers and sisters? Do they serve them according to Christ’s instructions or is it more a case of domination and exploitation? Do they do something for nothing? Do not some of them even ask for payment for their prayers? And what about the rest of their moral conduct? But I will not talk about this now. I would like to talk about this point with you alone.” With these words he turned to me and continued: “You want to travel to your relatives tomorrow. This journey is not urgent. Remain here till tomorrow and come back at 7.30 pm in the evening. We will then talk to one another alone. Therefore, tell this young man when he come to, the one I use to talk through, that he should also be here at 7.30 pm tomorrow evening.” He brought things to a close by praying in a foreign language and by raising his hands in blessing and the words: “May you be blessed in the name of God! – Good day!”
- 8 - The youngster fell forward after this salutation, the way he had done at the start of the meeting and he opened his eyes and looked around in surprise. He could not understand why it was already so late. He knew nothing about what had taken place. He said that he felt as if he had slept very well for quite some time. He said that he felt refreshed and well. When I ask him to return tomorrow evening at 7.30 pm, he explained to me that this was not possible. They had to complete an urgent job tomorrow and it would probably be closer to 9 pm, before he would be at home. This had already been arranged by his master the day before. I decided to postpone my trip in spite of this and to return at the time specified to me the following evening. When I returned to me residence after the meeting, I felt as if I was awakening from a heavy dream. The Moon flooded the roofs with its silvery glow and the stars looked so peaceful into the clear night. But the flames of my thoughts danced mountain-high within me. I could feel these flames flickering near the joists that supported my previous building of faith. Who was telling the truth? The religion I was a priest of or the VOICE coming through this juvenile? Or might it be the juvenile himself who made all of this up in order to act out a comedy before us? The juvenile of his own accord? – No, that was impossible. To believe this was more impossible for me than all the world’s religious tenets. I had read things about “clairvoyance”, “subconscious” and “thought transference” here and there. But this didn’t help me in the case in front of me. I should therefore investigate this further. This business was too important to me to simply push aside. There was no “turning back” for me. I had to have complete clarity. The next meeting might already take me one step further.
- 9 - 1.2 The decision I have chosen to be obedient; I have paid attention to your judgment. Psalms 119; 30 After a rather restless night I tried to get rid of my tormenting thoughts by strenuously working at the office of the relief society the following day. That evening, just before 7.30 pm, I was once again at the residence where the meeting had taken place the day before. To my great surprise I found that the young man was already there. He told me that his employer had approached him at 4 pm to inform him that he had changed his mind and that the work he had intended to finish by working overtime today, could be completed the next morning. I was alone with the youngster. When the clock chimed 7.30 pm, he fell into the same, to me inexplicable state as the day before, greeted me with the salutation of “Good day!” and shaking my hand said: “I am pleased that you decided to stay here, because I have a lot of things to tell you. But I will have to deal with the last point of last night’s lecture to begin with. I told you then that I was going to talk about it when the two of us were alone.” He now started to paint a picture of the moral conduct of a large section of the clergy. I listened in a devasted and emotionally moved state. He then said to me with great friendliness: “You can talk to me completely openly and confidingly, because I know that things have been higgledy-piggledy inside of you since yesterday and I know that you have lost your way.” With a voice shaking with emotions, I replied: “You are right. My thoughts are in chaos. I don’t know what to make of all of this. I beg of you teach me everything and above everything else, please tell me who you are and how it is possible that you can talk through this young man.” “You are correct when you ask me who I am. Because you should always test the spirit that talk to you to see whether they come from God, so that you do not fall prey to evil spirits that can physically and mentally ruin you, because they do tell you lies instead of the truth thereby leading your life’s journey towards an abyss. • I swear to you in the name of God that I am one of God’s good spirits and one of His higher ones at that. But keep my name to yourself!” He now mentioned his name. “I was the one that led you here. I will teach you as my commission from God and you in turn, will teach your fellow men!” I didn’t know I felt and what was happening to me. He continued: “I will now begin to teach you about what is happening here. – You probably think that what you perceive here is something completely new and unheard of. But this is as old as mankind. The world of the spirit has entertained contact with human beings from the first days of their creation to the present. The positive world of spirits as well as the negative world of spirits. You have often enough read the old documents that you call the Old Testament to know that God talked to people. God spoke to Adam, to Cain, Abraham, Isaac, Moses and many more. How do you imagine this? God is a spirit after all. But
- 10 - a spirit does not have a physical mouth and physical vocal cords so that he could speak the way people do. So how did God speak to people?” My short answer was: “I don’t know”. “And how do you explain the appearance of three men in front of Abraham? He knew that they were not human beings, but messengers from God. But he gave them something to eat and he negotiated with them about the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah. How do you explain these happenings?” I had no reply to this. I had probably read this a hundred times and also told the children at school about it. But I had never heard anything about how the interactions between the spirits and human beings the Bible mentions took place and came about and I had actually never thought about it either. He continued with giving me an examination about these things. But I wasn’t able to give him one correct answer. “You know that you have various means of sending messages to those that are distant from you. You write letters, you telephone or send telegrams and now you even use the aether waves of radio communication. – The world of the spirit, separated from your physical world, also has its various means to get in contact with you in a manner perceptible to you. • But people do not contemplate these things these days You read about everything, but it remains dormant reading. Take the bodacious story of Moses! You find there that the ‘Angel from God’ talked from a burning bush; that God gave Moses instruction about what he had to do day after day; that the ‘Angel from God’ moved ahead of the Israelites in a pillar of cloud and talked from it; that Moses asked God questions as often as he wanted to and that God answers him. But the people could also ask God questions. It went to the tent of revelation Joshua, Moses’s servant, had to constantly attend to and therefore was not allowed to leave. – Well, think about this for a moment, why did young Joshua have to always remain in the tent? Might this have something to do with questioning God?” The answer shot with lightning speed through my mind and I hastily said: “The situation in Joshua’s case was probably the same as with this young person here. Did the world of spirit used Joshua the way you use the body of this youngster to talk to me?” He said: “You have recognised this correctly. You must however remember that God only talked on the rarest occasions when the Bible states: ‘God spoke!’ Because: • God usually talks through his spirit messengers. But you mustn’t think that the world of spirit always uses a human being when it wants to talk to you. There are many means at the disposal of spirits to making themselves understandable to you. You will also find that God talked through the ‘pillar of cloud’. The interaction between individual people and the spirits was in lots of cases facilitated through the gift of ‘clairvoyance’ and ‘clairaudience’. God talking to Adam and Eve, and to others at later times, was accomplished via the path of clairaudience. And there was another means, one the Israelites often utilised in order to question God. It was the ‘breastplate’ that was worn over the high priest’s garment, it therefore also went by the name of ‘Oracle Shield’. I will inform you in greater detail about the process taking place with this form of questioning God later on.
- 11 - This contact with spirits didn’t only take place in the Old Testament, but to an equally extended degree in the New Testament. All gospels, and particularly the Act of the Apostles contain a great number of reports of declarations by spirits. – Christ himself solidly promised everyone that had faith that he would send God’s spirits to them. • The processes that took place during the worship services of the early Christians, something you cannot explain these days, were nothing but a coming and going by the world of spirit. The world of spirit talked through one of the assembled in a foreign language, through another in the native tongue of those present, it gave a third person the power to heal the sick and it gave others other gifts, all according to the suitability of individuals to utilise these gifts and to act as instruments in the hands of the world of spirit. This was something common place in those days and it was taken for granted. • These interactions with spirits didn’t simply stop after the early Christian era, as the ‘Churches’ want to make you believe. It is meant to and should continue at all times. Because it is the only way you can acquire the truth. Whether people can or cannot make contact with God’s spirits depends entirely on individuals. There were times during the Old Covenant when interactions with the positive world of spirit almost completely ceased. This were the times of alienation from God. Large sections of the population have these days also abandoned God and fallen prey to evil in spite of the numerous places of worship that you are building. If today’s population would inwardly approach God the way things were during the times of the Old Covenant and the early Christians, all the seemingly wonderful things that were reported to you from those days would happen again. Because God is the same God, then and now. He loves his creatures just as much now as then and he doesn’t acknowledge a person’s personal standing. Enough of these general instructions for today. You will be more accurately informed about the details of the interactions between spirits and human beings during the course of time, if you are willing to be instructed and willing to accept the task that is intended for you. You are not being forced. You have your free will. You can accept what’s on offer and bear witness to the truth – or you can reject it and continue on your chosen path. If you are prepared to accept this task, you must also be prepared to make great terrestrial sacrifices. You will suffer persecution on behalf of what is right and true. But you will find peace. - If you do however reject God’s gift offered to you, you will bear the responsibility for your action. It is your decision. One way or another. • You should not blindly accept everything; you should test to see whether it is the truth or whether evil plays you for a fool. • You shouldn’t be satisfied with the things that you hear from me. You should gather experiences within this field of knowledge through your own experiences, independent of what you encounter here. This is why I want to finally ask you: Select a number of people from your county parish that are not yet familiar with such things. Conduct meetings once or twice a week at a convenient time to pray and to explain the scriptures, as it was custom with the early Christians. You then have to accurately observe everything that will take place on these occasions. This will give you the opportunity to compare your experiences there with what you see and hear here. Also arrange things so that you can be here with this circle every Sunday evening at 8 pm, so that I can continue with my indoctrinations.” “I am happy” I said, “to come here on Sundays as often as it is possible for me to do so. But I cannot make up my mind about selecting a number of people for such meetings from amongst the simple farmers up there in my parish. This would cause an enormous sensation in our small village whose consequences could not be foreseen. Besides, I would not have a clue about whom I could select.” “Once you have decided to do this, everything else would simply fall in place” he replied to my objections. “You don’t have to do this. Everything is subject to your own free will to decide. But I do suggest that you do this.” – “I will now bring this to a close.”
- 12 - Raising the hands to bless, like the day before, he spoke the words: “May God watch over you! May God give you the strength to fulfil his will! Amen. – Good day!” The young man once again collapsed forwards and regained his consciousness within a few moments. He knew nothing about anything that had taken place. I had to relinquish all attempts to find a natural explanation as inadequate. They did not suffice to even make a small portion of what I experienced comprehensible. Something that affected me the most, I would like to say, captured me inside with an irresistible force, was the quiet clarity and convincing consistency of what I had heard for the first time. Only the truth could have such an effect. Even if I had tried, I would not have been able to extract myself from its effect. • A lot of things in the Bible that had been beyond my understanding were now clear to me. I was actually only at the beginning. A complete lecture about all the coherences had been promised to me. All I had to do was to accept the offer. Even more! I should not be satisfied with what I heard here. In order to be sure, I was supposed to draw from another source, one that was independent from this source. I was asked to simply congregate with simple, inexperienced people from the land, people that had no inkling of “Spiritism”, and this in a kind of church service according to the example of the early Christians, far from all outside influences – in my own parish. Should I really risk this? What would people say? I noticed how a feeling of fear of people started to well up in me. – Wouldn’t my own parishioners have to think that I am mentally deranged if I undertook something like this? – What if the ecumenical authority caught wind of it, would it cost me my position? A severe battle raged within me. Which way should I decide? I sensed that I had to make a decision now. Never in my life have I prayed to God with such ardency as in those days. I finally decided to abide by the given instructions by making the greatest personal sacrifices, even if it meant the loss of my position and my economical existence. The decision had been made! An inner calmness followed after and I looked towards the things that were ahead of me with great confidence.
- 13 - 1.3 The confirmation of the truth But you have had the Holy Spirit poured out on you by Christ and so all of you know the truth. 1. John 2:20 Without taking the threatening consequences into consideration, I decided to select a number of people from my own parish, in order to organise the kind of meetings with them that I had attended to in a neighbouring town. But I didn’t know whom to select. Wasn’t I told that everything would fall into place once I was ready to do it? And this is how it happened. I didn’t have to go looking for these people, they were led to me in a most peculiar fashion without me lifting a finger. There was an ill woman in my parish who was partially paralysed. I visited her a number of times during the week. One of her sisters was married in my parish and she had for children aged 20 to 28 years of age: Three sons and one daughter. I sat in conversation with the ill woman one evening. A son of her sister came by to ask whether his mother was here. He was told that his mother had been here, but that she had gone way again to deal with some busines or other and that she would return in a few minutes. The son sat himself down to wait for his mother. It wasn’t long before the mother returned and the other two sons arrived almost at the same time wanting to collect their brother. They had arranged with comrades to meet that evening at a specific family’s place. The daughter also entered the room a few minutes later. She was a nurse and she wanted to ask me whether a vigil for a patient was necessary. So, there we were seven people assembled together. One of the sons suddenly mentioned my sermon from last Sunday. I had cited a chapter from the Bible that was completely unknown to them. I explained these specific passages from the Holy Scriptures to those sitting around me in detail. They all listened with the greatest mindfulness. When I had finished my explanations, one of the sons said that he would be happy if he had an opportunity to receive elucidations about many things from the Bible more often. I volunteered that I would be more than pleased to assemble here at their ill aunt’s place in order to answer the questions they would present to me. This is how the early Christians had assembled at their homes to discuss religious subject together. Those present joyfully agreed with my suggestion and we immediately set a time and date for these meetings. We had already gathered together for a number of evenings where nothing extraordinary had happened. We began our “meetings” with a prayer. We then devoted a few minutes to silent inner contemplation whilst holding hands. Recitals from the Holy Scripture followed by discussions and explanations about what had been read ensued, as well as answering the questions put by those present. We also contemplated how we could bring help to the needy in our proximity or those further afield. The utter seriousness of how the three brothers in particular dealt with the situation surprised me. Something curious not only caught my attention, but also their mother’s attention: The facial expressions of the three young men changed to become nobler and more beautiful. Even strangers noticed this. One of the three also admitted that he didn’t actually know what was happening inside of him. When he was working out in the fields, an INNER VOICE constantly reminded him to laud and to praise God. Such thoughts had never entered his mind before. And when he allowed his irascible temperament to end up in a flash of anger, he found that it immediately affected his mind to such a degree that he had to interrupt his work and ask God for forgiveness for the trespass he
- 14 - had committed. Only then could he continue to work with a cheerful mind. He had made this mistake a dozen times a day in the past without feeling weighted down inside before. This was exactly the same as I had experienced from the day onwards after having participated at my first meeting in the neighbouring town. Mistakes and negligence’s that I had not noticed before, suddenly burned like fire in my soul. I had explained a passage from the Bible during our fourth meeting. My interpretation was the same as the one that all Christian Bible interpreters give these days. I didn’t know any other explanation. My explanation had not quite finished when an agitation took hold of one of the young men that I couldn’t explain. He looked at me with strangely glittering eyes and I noticed that he tried to fend off something inside of himself. He suddenly turned to me whilst a shudder went through his limbs and he said: “I can’t help myself, but I have to tell you that your explanation is incorrect. I am forced to give the correct interpretation.” He now spoke the sentences that were given to him inside of himself as an interpretation of the passage from the Bible. They were so clear and lucid that neither myself nor the other participants could possibly doubt their correctness. We had not yet recovered from our astonishment when the same young man explained: “ I must write”. “What are you going to write?” I asked. “I don’t know, but an irresistible power is forcing me to do so. – Give me paper and pencil!” We placed both things in front of him He immediately began to write at great speed and filled a whole sheet of folio. One letter was attached to the next and words and sentences were not separated from one another. The signature at the bottom of the writing was one word: “Celsior”. This document contained an indoctrination that was important to us. The young man asked me for the meaning of the word “Celsior”. I explained to him that it was a Latin word and that is virtually meant: “The Higher one” or “a Higher one”. I now wanted to know from the young man what sensations he had during what he just experienced. His answer was that he couldn’t find the right words to express this. He had been under the influence of a force that was so great that he could not resist it. He had fought with all his might against having to tell me that my interpretation of the Bible had been incorrect, because he himself had been convinced that my explanation was correct. But he had been forced to speak and then to write after. He had felt as if his owns thoughts had been taken from him and replaced with other thoughts. He had also been aware that he was writing. • He also said that he had been aware of the content of every sentence, but only whilst he pronounced it or wrote it down. Once a sentence had come to an end, his memory of it also ceased, because the following sentence fully occupied his mind and he was forced to either express it in words or to write it down as it was given.
- 15 - He was not able to concern himself with letters, spelling, commas or full stops. At the end of a Bible interpretation or its memorandum, he no longer knew anything of its content, so that it would be impossible for him to repeat the spoken words or what had been written down. We were still in the process of discussing the incidence when one of his brothers told us that he could no longer participate at these gatherings, because he could no longer hold his head still. It was twisted this way and that way against his will. He tried to fight against it, but without success. The moving back and forth of his head had also been noticed by me. His mother had also noticed it. She looked at me with questioning eyes. I appeased her and the young man by saying to them that there was no need to be afraid. Because what we endeavoured to do could not be evil. We might not understand what went on here, but everything would undoubtedly become clear after a while. Similar occurrences had also taken place during the congregations of the early Christians. To give them an example I read 1 Corinthians, Chapter 14 to them and explained things as best as I could in those days. Image 1 and 2: The mediums fo Johannes Greber. Left: The former voice medium Heinrich Gasberfrom Oberlahnstein, born 1897. Right: the former writing medium Carl Gasper from Kell, born 1899. Both photos taken by Josef Martens in July 1960. (All images from “Johannes Greber, sein Leben und sein Werk”, Verlag Martin Weber, Schutterwald) The events that had taken place this evening were as new to me as to all the other participants. My meeting with the young man in the neighbouring town only showed me how a spirit talked through a completely uncomnscious person. That a spirit could utilise a person as an instrument while that person was fully conscious, ergo talk and write through it, was something I was not aware of. What was happening to the young man whose head was moved back and forth was also completely unclear to me. I was therefore pleased that I was able to gain clarity aboput these things at the next meeting in town. There I was told: “Do not be concerned if you don’t gain full clarity in all points straight away. The whole thing is simply too new to you and you lack the correct concepts for some of it. But everything will gradually become comprehensible to you. – It is a similar situation with your human inventions and discoveries. The discovered truth is first regarded as impossible and the discoverer branded mentally abnormal. The same
- 16 - discovery will be generally accepted as something matter of course only years later. – Who could form a concept of today’s planes, the telephone or telegraphy, not to mention the radio? If somebody had mentioned in those days that a time will come when one will fly through the air, talk to people in distant places and hear a concert, performed hundreds of hours away, in one’s own living room, he or she would not have been taken seriously. And your pundits in particular would have been the ones to express their view against such possibilities. You are being told, and you experiences this yourself, that the world of spirit can make contact with human beings the moment the required prerequisites are fulfilled. The masses at large do not believe this and thinks that it is impossible, exactly the way it thought that a lot of things were impossible in the past that are a reality today. Your pundits do also not want to admit that the world of spirit can interfere in your life in a way that is perceptible to your senses. But thousands of events occur in your time just the same, things that these pundits can ascertain to be irrefutable facts, ergo facts that can only be explained as encroachments by the world of spirit. • Your pundits do however look for other causes for these events and they expect you to believe the most unreasonable and most unbelievable they come up with in order to explain these facts ‘mundanely’, so that they are not forced into accepting a world of spirit and a hereafter. Some of them do this because they deny the reality of a life after death. The others because, being scientists, they do not yet have the courage to promote the idea of interference by spirits, even though they are personally convinced about it. They fear that their scientific standing could suffer. • But the time will come when your sciences will have to confess that the world of spirit, the good and the evil, does physically and perceptibly interfere in your life and your fate in manifold ways. You must therefore not be surprised if people think that you are not normal when you tell them that you talked to a spirit. What certainly astonished me is the fact that your religious communities reject the idea of interference from the world of spirit and its interaction with today’s human beings, or that if they accept the idea, that they assert that only the world of evil spirits makes itself known these days. Such an opinion is completely absurd. Because if no spirits can come to you nowadays, it would have been equally impossible for them to come in the past. One must then relegate all biblical reports of contact with spirits to the realm of legends. Or if only evil spirits make themselves known these days, evil spirits must have done the same in the past. This would make all religions that base themselves on the Old and the New Testament collapse within themselves. Do they not assert that they received their religious truths and laws from spirits? • But if good spirits came to visit people in the past we have no reason to think that they no longer come these days. It is the same God that sent good spirits in the past and sends them also now. The way he wanted to guide mankind along the right path them, he tries to do this now. Or do you think that you do not require indoctrinations and guidance from God spirits these days? Might you actually believe that you are better and smarter people than those from the past, that you are in possession of the whole truth? What you have experienced in your parish is a confirmation of what you hear from me. You will experience lots more. Do not worry about the young man who can no longer hold his head still. His is worked upon and you will see with your own eyes how the various ‘mediums’ are apprenticed. • The word ‘medium’ means ‘instrument’! “Mediums’ are therefore people that are utilised by the world of spirit as instruments to make the contact to the world of man possible. Animals can also be mediums. But we will disregard them for now. When people are prepared to serve the world of spirit as instruments, they require training and this is carried out through the world of spirit. Depending on the differences between individuals, and above
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