And so we must point out that it is because man has a spirit that he can have intercourse with fallen spirits. We believe that this explains the whole system of spiritism (spiritualism) and that the supposed departed with whom spiritualists communicate are none other than these "spiritual hosts" impersonating the departed, whom they knew in lifetime. Leaving the many phases of this thing in its outworkings and issues at the end of the age, let us note the terrible nemesis in wrecked minds and bodies; haunted, driven, distraught, reason-bereft souls; crowded asylums, prisons, suicides, moral and spiritual wrecks, etc.; all because that which was given to man specifically for union, communion and cooperation with God, namely the spirit of man, has been used as the medium and instrument for this demon invasion and control of his life. The tremendous warnings and terrible judgments associated with all kinds of spiritism - necromancy, witches, "familiar spirits," etc. - are because of the spirit complicity, dalliance, consorting with fallen spirits whose purpose is always to capture men and women through their spirits. This they will do even by adopting the guise of an angel of light, and talking religion. Strange, isn't it? that fifty years ago men threw off the belief in the supernatural in the Scriptures, and today they and their school so strongly embrace spiritism. Surely this is the "working of error" sent that they who received not the truth for the love of it "should believe a lie: that they all might be judged" (2 Thess. 2:11-12).
It was the spiritual background of their life which led to the destruction of the Egyptians, Cannanites, etc., and this was spiritism in different forms. But it was their being joined to demons that involved them.
The Deepest Reality In the Child of God
Now, to return for a moment to the thing that is deeper in the true child of God than all else. We have devoted a whole book to this matter in "The Battle For Life," but our present purpose would lack something vital if we omitted the particular point. We must always seek to realize that what has taken place in the new birth, that is, the renewing of our spirit and the imparting to it of eternal life, with the Holy Spirit and sonship, is far deeper than all surrounding conditions and circumstances; and far deeper than our physical or our soulical life. Unless we hold on to that we have no ground of victory. It is possible for a child of God to pass into great soul-darkness, mental darkness, even to lose the reason and have to go to a mental home; yes, and for things worse than that in the outer life; and yet for the real relationship with the Lord to be unbroken. These extreme conditions may be no part of a Divine plan, but it is true that a part of God's ways with His children in their education is to cut off their sense-life at times. When this happens they have nothing to prove that they are His children: that is, nothing in all the realm of their own human consciousness. What is left is God, His Word and the fact that they have put their trust in Him. The real battle of faith is joined here. Not what we are, but what He is! Not what we feel, but His facts.
"He cannot fail, for He is God.
He cannot fail, He's pledged His word.
He cannot fail, He'll see me through;
'Tis God with Whom I have to do."
It may please God to risk being misunderstood and, to our way of thinking, seem to contradict Himself. The education of "sons" is important above all in this one respect, that they are to represent the reversing of the unbelief, and disobedience thereby, which led to man's spirit-separation from God. That spirit-union has to be established without the help of the soul, so that the soul will once more be put back into that place from which it so forbiddenly asserted itself.
This is the forming of Christ fully in us - that is, in our spirit.
~T. Austin-Sparks~
(continued with # 29)
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