View Related
Probably direct contact with the Spirit World within the Christian Church was lost around 1800 years ago when mediums in Christian home circles were gradually replaced by church officials and clerics with no mediumistic abilities. Hierarchy and fixed repetitive ritual did not leave room for the spontaneity of a home circle seance and so mediums who continued working had to do so in secret outside the church organisations, and often at the risk of their own lives.
So much so has direct contact with spirit been lost that by the Twentieth Century, many church dignitaries had become sceptical of survival. In his 1940 book 'News from the Next World,' the Anqlican priest and Spiritualist, Charles Tweedale, whose wife Madge was a medium, reviews statements from some of these orthodox officials.
For example, Dr. William Temple, Archbishop of York wrote in 1938, 'I am quite convinced that direct evidence of survival is not either attainable or desirable.....I do not in any way start with these ALLEGED appearances of Jesus after his death and proceed from them to construct a fabric of belief.'
That statement totally undermines the Christian faith. When he became Archbishop of Canterbury, he followed Cosmo Lang's precedent, and refused to publish the Church's own 1939 Report on Spiritualism which advocated belief in life after death, after reviewing all the evidence of psychical research.
The Dean of St. Paul's stated 'If survival of death were proved, it would only show that SOME persons survived death for SOME time.' - that means only a few of us ...what of the rest ? and no eternal life !
Winnington Ingram, Bishop of London, believed 'modern psychic messages are due to thought reading.'. Garnett, Bishop of Winchester, agreed. 'Telepathy and the Subconscious are the explanation.'.
Bishop Barnes of Birmingham in a radio broadcast in 1940 and orchestral conductor Colin Davis in a television interview just before his death in 2014 both stated that they did not know whether they would survive death or not. Dean Inge of St. Paul's looked for no future in time or place, and Professor Haldane said 'The evidence for revelation from without seems to be worthless.'
The Church's Commission reporting on Church of England Doctrine in February 1938 stated -
1. That it is allowable to regard angels as purely symbolical.
2. That miracles are legends which have grown up around the life of a religious teacher, and that Jesus did not use miracles to enforce belief in his teaching.
3. That the Communion of Saints has nothing to do with communication with the departed, and that the Saints departed cannot hear us.
4. That the accounts of the after death appearances of Jesus may be regarded symbolically and not as historical happenings.
In Bishop Gore's 'New Commentary of the Scriptures' he states that 'the miracles of the Old Testament are due to a Semitic habit of exaggeration, and that the manifestations of the Day of
Pentecost are due t 'psychological phenomena' producing some form of ecstasy or hysteria.'. Over to Freud !!!
Many of these points of view persist today in the church and the media, and mainstream science also rejects the evidence of survival and communication with the dead which the Early Church DID testify to. Not only are such things possible, they are now scientifically researched and proven beyond a shadow of a doubt. But with so much scepticism in high places, no wonder church attendance has declined.
Happily more and more people are meeting mediums like Theresa Caputo in the shopping mall. At least she provides immediate contact with the Spirit World to prove survival on the spot.
Richard Rowley
Post Article:
Submit Your Own Article