GENESIS THE MIRACLES AND THE PREDICTIONS ACCORDING TO SPIRITISM

35. “If you love me, you will obey what I command. And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Counselor to be with you forever. The Spirit of truth. The world cannot accept him, because it neither sees him nor knows him. But you know him, for he lives with you and will be in you. But the Counselor, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you all things and will remind you of everything I have said to you. (John, 14: 15 to 17 and 26) (“The Gospel According to Spiritism,” chap. 6)

36. But I tell you the truth: It is for your good that I am going away. Unless I go away, the Counselor will not come to you; but if I go, I will send him to you. When he comes, he will convict the world of guilt in regard to sin and righteousness and judgment: in regard to sin, because men do not believe in me; In regard to righteousness, because I am going to the Father, where you can see me no longer; And in regard to judgment, because the prince of this world now stands condemned. “I have much more to say to you, more than you can now bear. But when he, the Spirit of truth, comes, he will guide you into all truth. He will not speak on his own; he will speak only what he hears, and he will tell you what is yet to come. He will bring glory to me by taking from what is mine and making it known to you. (John, 16: 7 to 14)

37. This prediction, without doubt, is one of the most important, in a religious point of view, because it verifies in the most conclusive manner that Jesus has not said all that he had to say, because that he would not have been comprehended even by his apostles, since it is to them he addresses his words. If he had given secret instructions to them, they would have mentioned it in the Gospels. Since he has not told everything he knew to his apostles, their successors have known no more than themselves of it. They themselves have been able to misconstrue the sense of his words, to give a false impression of his ideas, often veiled under the form of parables. The religions founded upon the Gospels can then not be said to be in possession of all the truth, since the completion of them has been postponed to a subsequent time. Their principle of immutability is a protestation against even the words of Jesus.


He announces, under the name of “Consoler” and “Spirit of Truth,” he who must teach all things and make them recall that which he has said; then his teaching was not complete. Moreover, he predicted that they will have forgotten that which he has said, and that they will have altered the nature of it, since the Spirit of Truth must make them recall it, and in concert with Elias reestablish all things; that is to say, according to the true idea of Jesus.

38. When ought this new revelator to come? It is very evident, that, if at the epoch where Jesus spoke, men were not in a state to comprehend the things which remained for him to say, in a few years they could not acquire the necessary light. For intelligence in regard to certain parts of the Gospel, with the exception of its moral precepts, a knowledge which progress in the sciences alone could give was necessary, which must be a work of time and of many generations. If, then, the new Messiah had come shortly after Christ, he would not have found the ground prepared for him, and he would not have accomplished more than Christ. Now, from the time of Christ to our day, no one great revelation has been produced which might have completed the knowledge of the Gospel, and which might have elucidated the obscure parts of it, – a certain indication that the Messenger had not yet appeared.

39. Who must this Messenger have been? By Jesus saying: “And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Consoler,” indicates clearly that it is not himself; otherwise he would have said: “I will return to complete that which I have taught you.” Then he adds: “to be with you forever.” The latter would not grasp the idea of an incarnated being who can live eternally with us, and still less be in us, but is comprehended very well of a doctrine which, when it has been assimilated, can be eternally in us. The Consoler is, then, in the thought of Jesus, the personification of a sovereignly consoling doctrine, of whose inspirer will be the Spirit of Truth.

40. Spiritism realizes, as has been demonstrated (chap. I, n° 30), all the conditions of the Consoler promised by Jesus. It is not an individual doctrine – a human conception. No one can tell the creator of it. It is the product of the collective teachings of the spirits, at which presides the Spirit of Truth. It suppresses nothing of the Gospel; it completes and elucidates it. By the aid of the new laws that it reveals, joined to that of science, it enables us to comprehend that which was unintelligible to admit, the possibility of that which incredulity regarded as inadmissible. It has had its prophets and harbingers, who have predicted its coming. By its moralizing power it is preparing for the reign of goodness upon the Earth.

The doctrine of Moses, incomplete, has remained circumscribed to the Jewish people. That of Jesus, more complete, has been spread all over the Earth by Christianity, but has not converted the whole world. Spiritism, more complete, still having roots over all the Earth, will convert all. *


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* All philosophical and religious doctrines bear the name of the individual founder. They say, the Mosaic, Christianity, Mohammedanism, Buddhism, etc. The word Spiritism, to the contrary, recalls no personality; it encloses a general idea, which indicates at the same time the character and multiple source of the doctrine.

41. Christ’s saying to the apostles: “But the Consoler, will teach you all things and will remind you of everything I have said to you,” proclaimed by that the necessity of reincarnation. How could these men profit, then, by the more complete teaching which must be given subsequently? How would they be more apt to comprehend it if they were not to live again? Jesus would have said an inconsistent thing if the future men were, according to the common doctrine, to be a new men, of souls which arose from nothingness to birth. Admit, to the contrary, that the apostles and the men of their time have lived since, that they still live again today, the promise of Jesus is found justified. Their intelligence, which must have been developed by contact with social progress, can bear now that which it could not then. Without reincarnation the promise of Jesus would have been an illusory one.

42. If they say that this promise was realized on the day of Pentecost by the descent of the Holy Spirit one would reply that the Holy Spirit has been able to inspire them, that he has opened their intelligence, developed in them medianimic aptitudes which were to facilitate their mission; but as nothing more, other than Jesus had taught them, has been given to them, one can find no trace of a special teaching. The Holy Spirit has, then, not realized that which Jesus announced as the Consoler; otherwise the apostles would have elucidated, while living, all which has remained obscure in the Gospels to this day, and the contradictory interpretation of which has given rise to innumerable sects, which have been divided, in regard to Christianity, since the first century.