- 7 - Not only the Apostles received their teachings from God’s spirits, but also the ‘mediums’, who were to be found in every community. As you already know, they were called ‘prophets’.. Paul writes that the mysteries of Christ ‘have now been revealed to his holy apostles and “prophets” by a spirit of God.’ (Ephesians 3: 5) It was through these mediums as the instruments of the good spirits that the faithful could at any time ascertain whether a doctrine was true and how it was to be understood. Hence Paul writes to the Philippians: Philippians 3: 15: ‘If you hold a different opinion on any point, God will enlighten you on that point also.’ They could inquire of God at their religious gatherings, and were answered by His spirits speaking through the mediums. “Speaking of the earlier prophets as well as of those who preached the gospel in his own day, Peter says that they ‘preached the gospel by the power of a holy spirit sent from heaven’ (I Peter 1: 12), to which he adds in another epistle: ‘... II Peter 1: 21: ‘For no prophecy ever came about by the human will; it is only by God's command that people have spoken as instruments of a holy spirit’. • The word ‘prophecy’, which occurs so often in the Bible, does not mean, as you believe, the prediction of an event to come, but all speech by a spirit of God through a human medium. In the Old Testament God exhorted mankind to seek the truth from Him: ‘Ask me!’ – and He gave it to them through His spirit messengers. • By his own confession, Christ, as a mortal, received the truth from spirits of God. He promises his Apostles that they too shall learn the whole truth from spirits of truth. The Apostles testify that this promise of Christ's was fulfilled, and that they received their teachings from God’s spirits. And whence does today’s Christianity draw the truth? Can the ministers of the various Christian denominations say of themselves that a spirit of God is speaking through them? Can they testify, as did Paul, that what they preach is not the word of men, that they neither received it from men, nor was it taught to them, but that it was imparted to them through a revelation from Jesus Christ? They cannot! They are in the employ of their churches. • As whose respective creeds they studied under human instruction at schools, seminaries and universities. What they absorbed there was human wisdom, professorial wisdom, with all of its errors, and that is what they preach to their congregations. Of spirits as messengers from God and as heralds of the truth they know nothing. In their eyes it is, to use one of Paul’s terms, foolishness to expect any further teachings from a spirit of God today. They believe that no further teachings are needed in this day and age. In their opinion, such teachings may have been necessary in the days when men were supposedly much more ignorant than they are in your enlightened age.
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