- 72 - It is not in man’s power to say whether a fellowman has merited God’s love or incurred His hatred. It is monstrous human presumption to claim that one can infallibly say whether this or that person is with God, for along with true saintliness there is also a false saintliness (sanctimoniousness), and often the two cannot be told apart. As for the alleged miracles God is said to have performed through the Saints, many of these can be relegated to the realm of fable. Other happenings in the lives of these Saints that may appear miraculous to you are simply the result of the fact that they had various mediumistic gifts and through them stood in communication with the spirit world, but whether it was the good or the evil spirits that manifested themselves is something you have no means of knowing at this late date. The Egyptian sorcerers of the time of Moses, and the magician Simon of Samaria, whom his contemporaries called ‘the great power of God’, performed more so-called miracles than any Saint of the Catholic Church. Nevertheless, they worked them under the spell of Evil disguised as Good. • God is not interested in revealing to you by means of miracles whether or not a person is a Saint, for he desires no veneration of Saints or of their relics, no pilgrimages to the tombs of Saints or to any other shrines. All these things are nothing but glorified idolatry. Why did Satan want the body of Moses? Because he wanted to deliver it to the people of Israel as an object of veneration of the same sort that you pay to the remains of your ‘Saints’.. Why did Michael contend with Satan for the body of Moses? For the same reason that you should not revere Saints and their relics and hold pilgrimages today, namely, because the people of Israel would have diverted a large part of their worship from God to the body of Moses, and would have made this the object of a cult similar to that which you render today to the remains of your saints. You may say that you are worshipping God through the saints, but that is a mere pretext. In reality, Catholics put a great part of the faith they should be placing in God in the Saints and in their images, statues and relics. If God had wanted that, He could just as well have allowed the Israelites to have the body of Moses. The early days of the Christian era had no veneration of saints and also no veneration of Mary, to which, as you know yourself, more attention is given by your Church than to the veneration of God. The ‘Hail Mary’ is recited far more often than the ‘Lord’s Prayer’. Think of your rosary, which is recited in place of prayer on every possible occasion. • Christ and his Apostles and the early Christians worshipped God only; they recognized no worship of spirits of the kingdom of God. Even in their time there were mortals who died as great ‘Saints’ according to all human standards. Among them were John the Baptist, whom Christ called the greatest of all ever to be born of woman; Stephen, who died a martyr’s death; and the Apostle James, to mention only a few of those whose death took place in Biblical times. However, it never occurred to the Apostles even to mention these men as Saints, much less to make them the objects of divine worship, as is the case today. Mary is also never mentioned by the Apostles. • The whole practice of veneration of Saints is a human invention of a much later date. The Apostle Paul censures those who take pleasure in worshipping ‘angels’, meaning by ‘angels’ all spirits residing with God, or what you designate as ‘Saints’. No holy spirit created by God
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