PREDICTIONS OF THE GOSPEL.

No one is a prophet in his own land. — Death and passion of Jesus.

— Persecution of the apostles.

— Impenitent cities.

— Ruin of the Temple and of Jerusalem.

— Malediction upon the Pharisees. — My words shall not pass away.

— The cornerstone. — Parable of the murderous vine-growers. — One single flock and one single shepherd. — Advent of Elijah. — Announcement of the Consoler.

— Second advent of the Christ.

— Forerunning signs.

— Your sons and your daughters shall prophesy.

— Last judgment.

LAST JUDGMENT.

— Now, when the Son of man shall come in his majesty, accompanied by all the angels, he shall sit upon the throne of his glory; and, all the nations being gathered before him, he shall separate them one from another, as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats, and he shall set the sheep at his right hand and the goats at his left. Then shall the King say to those who are at his right hand:

Come, ye blessed of my Father, etc. (Saint Matthew, chapter XXV, vv. 31 to 46; The Gospel According to Spiritism, chapter XV.)

— Since good must reign upon the Earth, it is necessary that there be excluded from it the Spirits hardened in evil and capable of bringing disturbances upon it.

God permitted them to remain there for the time they needed in order to improve themselves; but, the moment having come when, through the moral progress of its inhabitants, the terrestrial globe must ascend in the hierarchy of worlds, it shall be forbidden, as a dwelling, to the incarnate and the disincarnate who have not profited from the teachings that both the one and the other were in a position to receive there.

They shall be exiled to inferior worlds, as were formerly those of the Adamic race to the Earth, better Spirits coming to replace them.

It is this separation, over which Jesus shall preside, that is figured by these words concerning the last judgment: “The good shall pass to my right and the wicked to my left.” (Chap. XI, no. 31 and following.)

— The doctrine of a last judgment, single and universal, putting an end forever to Humanity, is repugnant to reason, for it implies the inactivity of God during the eternity that preceded the creation of the Earth and during the eternity that shall follow its destruction.

What use would the Sun, the Moon, and the stars then have, which, according to Genesis, were made to illuminate the world? It is astonishing that so immense a work should have been produced for so short a time and for the benefit of beings devoted beforehand, for the most part, to eternal torments.

— Materially, the idea of a single judgment would be, to a certain extent, admissible for those who do not seek the reason of things, when it was believed that all of Humanity was concentrated upon the Earth and that all that the Universe contains had been made for its inhabitants: 2 it is, however, inadmissible, once it is known that there are thousands upon thousands of similar worlds, which perpetuate Humanities throughout eternity and among which the Earth is of the least considerable, a mere imperceptible point.

One sees, by this fact alone, that Jesus was right to declare to his disciples: “There are many things I cannot tell you, because you would not understand them,” given that the progress of the sciences was indispensable for a legitimate interpretation of some of his words.

Certainly the apostles, Saint Paul, and the first disciples would have established certain dogmas in a very different manner had they possessed the astronomical, geological, physical, chemical, physiological, and psychological knowledge that we possess today.

Thence it came that Jesus deferred the completion of his teachings and announced that all things were to be re-established.

— Morally, a definitive judgment without appeal cannot be reconciled with the infinite goodness of the Creator, whom Jesus continually presents to us as a good Father, who always leaves a path open for repentance and who is always ready to extend his arms to the prodigal son.

If Jesus understood the judgment in that sense, he would belie his own words.

Moreover, if the last judgment were to take men by surprise, in the midst of their ordinary labors, and the women with child, one might ask with what purpose God, who does nothing useless or unjust, would cause children to be born and would create new souls at that supreme moment, at the fatal term of Humanity; would it be to submit them to judgment as soon as they came forth from the maternal womb, before they had consciousness of themselves, when, to others, thousands of years were granted to acquaint themselves with what concerns their own individuality?

Toward which side, right or left, would those souls go, which are not yet either good or wicked and for which, nevertheless, all the paths of ulterior progress would from then on be found closed, seeing that Humanity would no longer exist? (Chap. II, no. 19.)

Let those who are content with such beliefs keep them; they are within their right and no one has anything to say to that; but let them not take it ill that not everyone shares them.

— The judgment, by the process of emigration, as was explained above (No. 63), is rational; 2 it is founded upon the most rigorous justice, since it eternally preserves for the Spirit its free will; 3 it constitutes a privilege for no one; to all his creatures, without any exception, God grants equal liberty of action to progress; 4 the very annihilation of a world, bringing about the destruction of the body, will cause no interruption to the progressive march of the Spirit.

Such are the consequences of the plurality of worlds and of the plurality of existences.

According to this interpretation, the qualification of last judgment is not exact, since Spirits pass through analogous siftings at each renewal of the worlds inhabited by them, until they attain a certain degree of perfection.

There is, therefore, no last judgment properly speaking, but general judgments at all the epochs of partial or total renewal of the population of worlds, by effect of which are wrought the great emigrations and immigrations of Spirits.