- 39 - It was at gatherings of this sort that ‘Baal’s mediums’ were developed. True enough, the people of those times knew that this was communication with spirits, but all who engaged in this low form of spiritism were interested only in experiencing and learning things through this channel that would satisfy their worldly undertakings and ambitions. Their fate in the Beyond was far from their thoughts, as far as it is from those of most people of the present age. Hence it was quite natural that they were not at all interested in seeing to it that the mediums were developed with a view to preparing them for lofty and Divine purposes. The Bible gives no detailed description of the medium schools conducted by the idolatrous priests because the development of ‘Baal’s mediums’ took place at the general gatherings held to pay homage to the idols. No special form of development is required to serve evil ends. This comes about by itself, for ‘Man is inclined to evil from the days of his youth.’ But to attain what is good and pleasing to God requires great effort and hard struggles, and for this, special preparation is imperative. Hence, such preparation was necessary for those mediums who had resolved to become instruments of the Divine will only. They were educated at the ‘prophet schools’, as related in the Bible, under the guidance and spiritual leadership of men of God, like Samuel, Elijah and Elisha. In the days when great and God-gifted men stood at the head of such ‘medium schools’, as in the times of Samuel, Elijah and Elisha, many applicants sought admission, for the God-fearing families considered it a special gift from God if one of their children had been given mediumistic powers and these could be developed under the leadership of these men. In the times of Elijah and Elisha there was a medium school in every large town, as in Ramah, Gilgal, Bethel, Jericho and others. The student prophets under Elisha were so numerous that their places of assembly could no longer hold them, and so it came to pass that one day they said to him: II Kings 6: 1-2: ‘This room where we sit before you for instruction is, as you can see for yourself, too small for us. Let us therefore go to the Jordan, and each of us get a log, to build a dwelling place for ourselves there.’ And he answered: ‘Yes, go!’ In the days to which the New Testament refers there were no special medium schools among the Christians. They were not needed because the assemblies for Divine worship were held in such a manner that they took the place in every respect of the functions of the earlier medium schools. The worshippers joined hands when they offered prayer, to signify that they were ‘all of one heart and one soul’, that they were united by love into one community, and that they were addressing their prayer to God as a single unit, all of them as members of one spiritual body, inspired by one spirit, cherishing one hope, bound together by one common faith, praying to the one God. For the psychically gifted members of the community this custom of joining hands was of great importance, since in this way the odic power of all those present was collected into a single odic current. The spirits of God could use this current both for the purpose of manifesting themselves through the already developed mediums as well as for developing those in the process of becoming mediums. The steps in the development of mediums were perfectly familiar to the early Christians from their days of heathenism, so that they were well aware of what they were about. As heathens they had been in the habit of communicating with evil spirits, and the natural laws governing such communication were well known to them. They also knew that heathen idol worship was nothing
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