THERE SHALL BE FALSE CHRISTS AND FALSE PROPHETS.

A tree is known by its fruit. — Mission of the prophets.

— Prodigies of the false prophets.

— Believe not every Spirit.

— INSTRUCTIONS FROM THE SPIRITS: The false prophets.

— Marks of the true prophet.

— The false prophets of erraticity.

— Jeremiah and the false prophets.

A tree is known by its fruit.

The tree that produces bad fruit is not good, and the tree that produces good fruit is not bad; — for each tree is known by its own fruit. Figs are not gathered from thorn bushes, nor clusters of grapes from brambles.

— The good man brings forth good things from the good treasure of his heart, and the evil man brings forth evil things from the evil treasure of his heart; for the mouth speaks of that with which the heart is full. (Saint Luke, chapter VI, vv. 43 to 45.)

Beware of the false prophets who come to you covered in sheep's clothing and who within are ravening wolves. — You shall know them by their fruits. Can grapes be gathered from thorn bushes, or figs from brambles? — Thus, every good tree produces good fruit and every bad tree produces bad fruit. — A good tree cannot produce bad fruit, and a bad tree cannot produce good fruit. — Every tree that does not produce good fruit shall be cut down and cast into the fire. — You shall know it, therefore, by its fruits. (Saint Matthew, chapter VII, vv. 15 to 20.)

Take heed that no one seduce you; — for many shall come in his name, saying: “I am the Christ”, and shall seduce many.

Many false prophets shall arise who shall seduce many people; — and because iniquity shall abound, the charity of many shall grow cold. — But he who perseveres unto the end shall be saved.

Then, if anyone says to you: The Christ is here or is there, do not believe it at all; — for false Christs and false prophets shall arise who shall perform great prodigies and astonishing things, to the point of seducing, were it possible, even the chosen ones. (Saint Matthew, chapter XXIV, vv. 4, 5, 11 to 13, 23 and 24; Saint Mark, chapter XIII, vv. 5, 6, 21 and 22.)

Mission of the prophets.

It is commonly attributed to the prophets the gift of divining the future, so that the words prophecy and prediction have become synonymous.

In the evangelical sense, the word prophet has a more extensive meaning. It is said of every envoy of God charged with the mission of instructing men and of revealing to them hidden things and the mysteries of spiritual life.

A man may therefore be a prophet without making predictions. Such was the idea of the Jews in the time of Jesus. Hence it came that, when they led him before the high priest Caiaphas, the scribes and the elders, gathered together, spat in his face, struck him with their fists and slapped him, saying: “Christ, prophesy for us and tell us who it was that struck you.”

Nevertheless, it happened that there were prophets who had foreknowledge of the future, whether by intuition or by providential revelation, in order to transmit warnings to men. The predicted events having come to pass, the gift of foretelling the future was regarded as one of the attributes of the quality of prophet. Prodigies of the false prophets.

“False Christs and false prophets shall arise, who shall perform great prodigies and astonishing things, to the point of seducing even the chosen ones.” These words give the true sense of the term prodigy.

In the theological acceptation, prodigies and miracles are exceptional phenomena, outside the laws of Nature.

These being exclusively the work of God, he can no doubt set them aside if it pleases him; simple good sense, however, says that it is not possible that he should have given to inferior and perverse beings a power equal to his own, nor, still less, the right to undo what he has done. Such a principle Jesus could not have sanctioned.

If, therefore, according to the sense attributed to those words, the Spirit of evil has the power to perform prodigies such that even the chosen ones let themselves be deceived, the result would be that, being able to do what God does, prodigies and miracles are not the exclusive privilege of the envoys of God and prove nothing, since nothing distinguishes the miracles of the saints from the miracles of the demon.

It then becomes necessary to seek a more rational sense for those words.

For the ignorant multitude, every phenomenon whose cause is unknown passes for supernatural, marvelous and miraculous; once the cause is found, it is recognized that the phenomenon, however extraordinary it may seem, is nothing more than the application of a law of Nature.

Thus, the circle of supernatural facts narrows as that of Science widens.

In all times, there have been men who exploited, for the benefit of their ambitions, of their interests and of their longing for domination, certain knowledge they possessed, in order to attain the prestige of a pseudo-superhuman power, or of a pretended divine mission. These are the false Christs and false prophets; the spread of enlightenment annihilates their credit, whence it results that their number diminishes in proportion as men become enlightened.

The fact of operating what certain persons consider prodigies does not, then, constitute a sign of a divine mission, since it may result from knowledge whose acquisition is within the reach of anyone, or from special organic faculties, which the most unworthy is no more inhibited from possessing than the most worthy.

The true prophet is recognized by more serious and exclusively moral marks. Believe not every Spirit.

My well-beloved, do not believe every Spirit; test whether the Spirits are of God, for many false prophets have arisen in the world. (Saint John, 1st epistle chapter IV, v. 1.)

The Spiritist phenomena, far from vouching for the false Christs and the false prophets, as it pleases some persons to say, deal them a mortal blow.

Do not ask of Spiritism prodigies, nor miracles, for it formally declares that it operates none; 3 just as Physics, Chemistry, Astronomy, Geology revealed the laws of the material world, it reveals other unknown laws, those that govern the relations of the corporeal world with the spiritual world, laws that, as much as those others of Science, are laws of Nature; 4 by providing the explanation of a certain order of phenomena incomprehensible until the present, it destroys what still remained of the domain of the marvelous.

Whoever, therefore, felt tempted to exploit its phenomena for his own benefit, passing himself off as a messiah of God, would not succeed in abusing the credulity of others for long and would soon be unmasked.

Besides, as has already been said, such phenomena, by themselves, prove nothing: the mission is proved by moral effects, which it is not given to anyone to produce;

This is one of the results of the development of the Spiritist science; investigating the cause of certain phenomena, it lifts the veil from over many mysteries. Only those who prefer obscurity to light have an interest in combating it; but truth is like the Sun: it dissipates the densest fogs.

Spiritism reveals another, far more dangerous category of false Christs and false prophets, who are found, not among men, but among the disincarnate: that of the deceiving, hypocritical, proud and pseudo-wise Spirits, who passed from the Earth into erraticity and take venerated names so that, beneath the mask with which they cover themselves, they may facilitate the acceptance of the most singular and absurd ideas.

Before mediumistic relations were known, they acted in a less ostensible manner, through inspiration, through unconscious, audient or speaking mediumship.

Considerable is the number of those who, at various epochs, but above all in these latter times, have presented themselves as some of the ancient prophets, as the Christ, as Mary, his mother, and even as God.

Saint John warns men against them, saying: “My well-beloved, do not believe every Spirit; but test whether the Spirits are of God, for many false prophets have arisen in the world.”

Spiritism provides us the means of testing them, pointing out the marks by which the good Spirits are recognized, marks always moral, never material.

It is to the manner of distinguishing the good Spirits from the bad that these words of Jesus can principally be applied: “By the fruit is the quality of the tree recognized; a good tree cannot produce bad fruit, and a bad tree cannot produce good fruit.”

Spirits are judged by the quality of their works, as a tree by the quality of its fruits. INSTRUCTIONS FROM THE SPIRITS.

The false prophets.

If they say to you: “The Christ is here”, do not go; on the contrary, be on your guard, for numerous shall be the false prophets.

Do you not see that the leaves of the fig tree begin to whiten; do you not see its many shoots awaiting the season of flowering; and did the Christ not say to you: A tree is known by its fruit? If, then, the fruits are bitter, you already know that the tree is bad; if, however, they are sweet and wholesome, you will say: Nothing that is pure can come from a bad source.

It is thus, my brothers, that you must judge; it is the works that you must examine.

If those who say they are invested with divine power reveal signs of a mission of an elevated nature, that is, if they possess in the highest degree the Christian and eternal virtues: charity, love, indulgence, the goodness that reconciles hearts; if, in support of their words, they present their deeds, then you may say: These are truly envoys of God.

But distrust honeyed words, distrust the scribes and the Pharisees who pray in the public squares, clothed in long tunics. Distrust those who claim to have the monopoly of truth!

No, no, the Christ is not among those, for those whom he sends to propagate his holy doctrine and to regenerate his people will be, above all, following his example, gentle and humble of heart; 7 those who must, by the examples and counsels they lavish, save Humanity, which runs toward perdition and wanders along twisted paths, will be essentially modest and humble.

From everything that reveals an atom of pride, flee, as from a contagious leprosy, which corrupts everything it touches.

Remember that each creature bears upon its brow, but principally in its acts, the stamp of its greatness or of its decadence.

Go, therefore, my well-beloved children, walk without tergiversation, without hidden thoughts, along the blessed route you have taken. Go, go ever on, without fear; carefully cast aside everything that may hinder your march toward the eternal goal.

Travelers, only for a little while longer shall you be in the darkness and the sorrows of the trial, if you open your heart to this gentle doctrine that comes to reveal to you the eternal laws and to satisfy all the aspirations of your soul concerning the unknown. You can now give body to those light sylphs that you see passing in your dreams and that, ephemeral, only enchanted your spirit, without saying anything to your heart. Now, my beloved, death has disappeared, giving place to the radiant angel you know, the angel of the new encounter and of the reunion!

Now, you who have well performed the task that the Creator entrusts to his creatures, have nothing more to fear from his justice, for he is a father and always forgives the straying children who cry out for mercy.

Continue, therefore, advance unceasingly. Let your motto be that of progress, of continual progress in all things, until at last you reach the happy end of the journey, where all those who preceded you await you. — (LOUIS. Bordeaux, 1861.) Marks of the true prophet.

Distrust the false prophets. This recommendation is useful in all times, but above all in the moments of transition in which, as in the present one, a transformation of Humanity is being wrought, because then a multitude of the ambitious and the intriguing set themselves up as reformers and messiahs.

It is against these impostors that one must be on guard, it being the duty of every honest man to unmask them. You will ask, no doubt, how to recognize them. Here is what marks them out:

Only to a skilled general, capable of directing it, is the command of an army entrusted. Do you think God is less prudent than men? Be assured that he entrusts important missions only to those whom he knows capable of fulfilling them, for great missions are heavy burdens that would crush the man lacking the strength to carry them.

In all things, the master must always know more than the disciple; to make Humanity advance morally and intellectually, men superior in intelligence and in morality are needed. For this reason, for these missions there are always chosen Spirits already advanced, who have made their trials in other existences, since, were they not superior to the milieu in which they must act, their action would prove null.

This being so, you will conclude that the true missionary of God must justify, by his superiority, by his virtues, by the greatness, by the result and by the moralizing influence of his works, the mission of which he says himself the bearer.

Draw also this other consequence: if, by his character, by his virtues, by his intelligence, he shows himself below the role with which he presents himself, or the personage under whose name he places himself, he is nothing more than a low-grade play-actor, who does not even know how to imitate the model he has chosen.

Another consideration: the true missionaries of God are unaware of themselves, for the most part; they perform the mission to which they were called by the force of the genius they possess, seconded by the hidden power that inspires and directs them in spite of themselves, but without premeditated design.

In a word: the true prophets reveal themselves by their acts, they are divined, whereas the false prophets give themselves out, of their own accord, as envoys of God. The first is humble and modest; the second, proud and full of himself, speaks with haughtiness and, like all liars, always seems fearful that he may not be given credit.

There have been some of these impostors, claiming to pass for apostles of the Christ, others for the Christ himself, and, to the shame of Humanity, they have found persons credulous enough to believe in their vile deeds. Yet a very simple reflection would be enough to open the eyes of the most blind, namely, that if the Christ were to reincarnate on the Earth, he would come with all his power and all his virtues, unless it were admitted, which would be absurd, that he had degenerated; 10 now, just as, if you take from God a single one of his attributes, you no longer have God, if you take a single one of his virtues from the Christ, you no longer have him.

Do those who give themselves out as being the Christ possess all his virtues? That is the question. Observe them, scrutinize their ideas and their acts and you will recognize that, above all, they lack the distinctive qualities of the Christ: humility and charity, while they have in excess those the Christ did not have: cupidity and pride.

Note, moreover, that at this moment there are, in various countries, many pretended Christs, as there are many pretended Elijahs, many Saint Johns or Saint Peters, and that it is by no means possible that all should be true. Hold it as certain that they are merely creatures who exploit the credulity of others and find it convenient to live at the expense of those who lend them their ears.

Distrust, then, the false prophets, especially in an epoch of renewal, such as the present, because many impostors will say they are envoys of God. They seek to satisfy their vanity on the Earth; but a terrible justice awaits them, you may be certain. — (ERASTUS. Paris, 1862.)

The false prophets of erraticity.

The false prophets are not found solely among the incarnate; there are also, and in much greater number, among the proud Spirits who, feigning love and charity, sow disunion and retard the work of emancipation of Humanity, 2 hurling at it crosswise their absurd systems, after having made their mediums accept them; and, the better to fascinate those whom they wish to deceive, to give more weight to their theories, they appropriate without scruple names that men pronounce only with great respect.

It is they who spread the ferment of antagonisms among the groups, who impel them to isolate themselves from one another and to look upon each other with prejudice.

This alone would suffice to unmask them, for, proceeding thus, they are the first to give the most formal denial to their pretensions. Blind, therefore, are the men who let themselves fall into so gross a deception.

But there are many other means by which they may be recognized. Spirits of the category in which they say they find themselves must be not only very good, but also eminently rational. Well then: pass their systems through the sieve of reason and good sense and see what will remain.

Agree with me, then, that every time a Spirit indicates, as a remedy for the ills of Humanity or as a means of achieving its transformation, utopian and impracticable things, puerile and ridiculous measures; when he formulates a system that the most rudimentary notions of Science contradict, he can be none other than an ignorant and lying Spirit.

On the other hand, believe that, if individuals do not always appreciate the truth, it is always appreciated by the good sense of the masses, this constituting one more criterion.

If two principles contradict each other, you will find the measure of the intrinsic value of both by verifying which of the two meets with more echoes and sympathies.

It would indeed be illogical to admit that a doctrine whose number of adherents progressively diminishes is more true than another that sees its own in continual increase.

Wishing that the truth reach all, God does not confine it within a narrow circle: he makes it arise at different points, so that everywhere light may be beside the darkness.

Repel without indulgence all those Spirits who present themselves as exclusive counselors, preaching separation and isolation.

They are almost always vain and mediocre Spirits, who seek to impose themselves on weak and credulous men, lavishing on them exaggerated praises, in order to fascinate them and to have them dominated.

They are, generally, Spirits thirsting for power and who, public despots or despots in the home when alive, still want victims to tyrannize after having died.

In general, distrust the communications that bear a character of mysticism and of singularity, or that prescribe extravagant ceremonies and acts. There is always, in these cases, legitimate ground for suspicion.

Be assured, likewise, that when a truth is to be revealed to men, it is, so to speak, communicated instantaneously to all the serious groups, which have at their disposal mediums likewise serious, and not to such or such, to the exclusion of the others.

No medium is perfect if he is obsessed; and there is manifest obsession when a medium is apt to receive communications only from a determined Spirit, however high this one may seek to place himself.

Consequently, every medium and every group that consider it their privilege to receive the communications they obtain and that, on the other hand, submit to practices that tend toward superstition, are undoubtedly in the grip of a well-characterized obsession, 18 above all when the dominating Spirit struts about with a name that all, incarnate and disincarnate, must honor and respect and not permit to be invoked at every turn.

It is incontestable that, by submitting to the sieve of reason and of logic all the data and all the communications of the Spirits, it becomes easy to reject absurdity and error.

A medium may be fascinated, and a group deceived; but the severe verification that the other groups carry out, the acquired science, the high moral authority of the directors of groups, the communications that the principal mediums receive, with a stamp of logic and of authenticity from the best Spirits, will rapidly bring to justice these lying and cunning dictations, emanating from a throng of mystifying or bad Spirits. — (ERASTUS, disciple of Saint Paul. Paris, 1862.)

(See, in the Introduction, paragraph II. Universal control of the teaching of the Spirits. — The Mediums' Book, chapter XXIII: On obsession.)

Jeremiah and the false prophets.

This is what the Lord of Hosts says: Do not listen to the words of the prophets who prophesy to you and who deceive you. They publish the visions of their own hearts and not what they have learned from the mouth of the Lord. They say to those who blaspheme me: The Lord has said it, you shall have peace; and to all those who walk in the corruption of their hearts: No evil shall befall you. But which of them has been present at the counsel of God? Which is he who has seen it and listened to what he said? I did not send these prophets; they ran of their own accord, I did not speak to them at all; they prophesied out of their own heads. I have heard what those prophets said who prophesied lies in my name, saying: I have dreamed, I have dreamed. How long shall this imagination be in the heart of those who prophesy lies and whose prophecies are nothing but the seductions of their own heart? If, then, this people, or a prophet, or a priest questions you and says: What is the burden of the Lord? you shall say to them: you yourselves are the burden and I will cast you far away from me, says the Lord. (Jeremiah, chapter XXIII, vv. 16 to 18, 21, 25, 26 and 33.)

It is of this passage of the prophet Jeremiah that I wish to treat with you, my friends. Speaking through his mouth, God says: “It is the vision of their own heart that makes them speak.”

These words clearly indicate that, even at that epoch, charlatans and the overexcited abused the gift of prophecy and exploited it.

They abused, consequently, the simple and almost blind faith of the people, predicting, for money, good and agreeable things.

This kind of fraud was very widespread in the Jewish nation, and it is easy to understand that the poor people, in their ignorance, had no possibility of distinguishing the good from the bad, being always more or less deceived by the pseudo-prophets, who were nothing but impostors or fanatics.

There is nothing more significant than these words: “I did not send these prophets and they ran of their own accord; I did not speak to them and they prophesied.”

Further on, he says: “I have heard these prophets who prophesied lies in my name, saying: I have dreamed, I have dreamed.” He thus indicated one of the means they employed to exploit the confidence of which they were the object. The multitude, ever credulous, did not think of contesting the veracity of the dreams, or of the visions; they found that quite natural and constantly invited them to speak.

After the words of the prophet, listen to the wise counsels of the apostle Saint John, when he says: “Do not believe every Spirit; test whether the Spirits are of God”, because, among the invisible ones, there are also those who take pleasure in deceiving, if the occasion presents itself to them.

The deceived are, evidently, the mediums who do not take enough precautions.

There is found there, beyond all doubt, one of the greatest reefs against which many disastrously run aground, especially if they are novices in Spiritism. This is for them a proof that only with much prudence can they triumph.

Learn, then, before all, to distinguish the good and the bad Spirits, so that, in your turn, you do not become false prophets. (LUOZ, Protector Spirit. Karlsruhe, 1861.) [1] See, on the manner of distinguishing the Spirits: The Mediums' Book, 2nd Part, chapter XXIV and following.