- 32 - transgressions during its preceding stay on earth. God is just, and every sin must be atoned for, but He is also charitable, and never punishes His creatures as severely as they deserve. The spirit communications from which you learned what you know of those 13 spheres came through mediums of the most widely varied types. This was done to provide you with evidence for the truth of these communications, for had you received the accounts of all the spheres through one and the same medium, you might have thought that they proceeded from his subconscious. • As you know, your modern science is always ready to resort to the word ‘subconscious’ when asked to explain anything in this field that it cannot account for on purely human grounds, but that it is unwilling to attribute to the working of spirits. The creation of the 13 spirit spheres was the last act in God’s Plan of Salvation, and before it could be effected, a far more difficult problem had to be solved. What good were stages of progress from the deepest sphere of hell to the highest earthly one – the human stage – and what good were 13 spirit spheres planned for the further ascent to the height of God, as long as Lucifer refused to release any of the spirits that had sided with him and insisted on exercising his sovereignty over them, a right which God had conceded? Who, indeed, could force Satan to waive his rights, at least over those who contritely longed to return to God? True, God Himself could have done so, but His sense of justice had conceded those rights to Lucifer, and that same sense of justice now kept Him from diminishing them. “Only a spirit willing to enter the realm of the Prince of Darkness and to expose itself to the rigors of his tyrannical rule would have the right to do battle with him. The same right applies when a people that is oppressed and harassed by its rulers rises against its tormentors in an effort to shake off their yoke. But it had to be a spirit that would not, by deserting God, become subject to Lucifer, and thus fall irretrievably into his clutches. It had to be a celestial spirit that, in assuming human shape, would enter Satan’s dominion in body only. • For everything that is embodied in matter is exposed to the influence of the Powers of Evil. That is why evil has so great a hold over all earthly creatures, even over those that are not evil minded. The most righteous of men daily experience the power of evil and often stumble under its influence. Thus, the undertaking would be a great risk for the celestial spirit that attempted it. After its human birth, it would be a human being, like all other humans. It would remember nothing of its previous existence as a spirit of heaven. It would be ignorant of its own identity as well as of the mission for which it had been incarnated, and would be tempted by the Evil One to sin, like all other humans. Moreover, God would not provide any greater spiritual aid than He gave to others, for this would have offended His sense of justice. This celestial-spirit-become-human would have to earn whatever special Divine aid might be needed for solving its task by repelling all advances of Evil. In the measure in which it withstood the great temptations to sin, it would receive more and more assistance from God. This is true for all humans.
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