- 20 - them as spiritual limbs in the spiritual body of Christ, He was desirous that these severed limbs be reunited with His Son’s spiritual body. Romans 11: 23: ‘Those, namely, who do not remain in apostasy shall be grafted in again, for God is well able to graft them in again.’ However, this re-grafting of the limbs broken from the tree of life, this re-incorporation of the severed parts into the life-giving organism of Christ’s body, was possible only if freely desired by the apostate spirits. God had given them a free will. It was of their own free will that they had joined the rebels in the spirit battle, some as ringleaders, others as followers. When these followers, again subjected to trial in the sphere of paradise, had fallen a second time, it was again by their own free choice. So, by their own free choice they should have to raise themselves anew and return to the house of the Father. This did not seem possible. First, the return of Lucifer and his chief lieutenants had to be out of the question, for fallen pride turns into sullen spite that would rather remain unhappy than humble itself. The way of thinking of the rank and file, those spirits that had been deluded into joining the revolt, was still very different from that of their leaders, yet they saw no hope of being saved from the abyss. • Where no hope of salvation exists, the will to achieve it is absent, and where the will is lacking, no effort is made to prepare the way to salvation. Even if these spirits had possessed the will to escape, they would have faced an insurmountable obstacle in Lucifer’s control over them, which even God, because He had granted it, could not curtail. Wisdom 11: 26: ‘But God’s ways are wonderful, and His wisdom finds means to achieve every end. ‘But Thou sparest all: for all are Thine, Oh Lord, Thou friend of all life. For Thy immortal spirit is in everything.’ After the defection of the spirits, God therefore determined upon a plan by which He would recover those who had forsaken Him. God’s Plan of Salvation is the great secret imparted to Paul and to the other Apostles by spirits that Christ sent to them, but even the Apostles did not dare to reveal this plan in its entirety to the early Christian congregations. Most of the plan would have been incomprehensible to them. In their case, too, it had to be left to the spirits of God, speaking through mediums, to instruct these congregations little by little in the whole truth, much as I am instructing you at this moment. You too will find it difficult at first to grasp the full truth of God’s Plan of Salvation. Mortals cannot, as Paul repeatedly told the early Christians in his epistles, digest solid food, but must at first be fed with milk, as infants are fed. • The truth in its full grandeur and in its entirety is the solid spiritual food fit only for those who have acquired spiritual strength. A selection of truths that are easily understood is the ‘milk’ that is given to those who are still infants in the faith and its truths.
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy MjI1MzY3