Various Forms of Spiritualism
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mortals to themselves, to a power which they possessed. He was ever
directing their minds to God, the Creator of the universe, as the source
of their strength and wisdom....
The teachers of Spiritualism come in a pleasing, bewitching man-
ner to deceive you, and if you listen to their fables you are beguiled by
the enemy of righteousness, and will surely lose your reward. When
once the fascinating influence of the arch-deceiver overcomes you,
you are poisoned, and its deadly influence adulterates and destroys
your faith in Christ’s being the Son of God, and you cease to rely
on the merits of His blood. Those deceived by this philosophy are
beguiled of their reward through the deceptions of Satan. They rely
upon their own merits, exercise voluntary humility, are even willing to
make sacrifices, and debase themselves, and yield their minds to the
belief of supreme nonsense, receiving the most absurd ideas through
those whom they believe to be their dead friends. Satan has so blinded
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their eyes and perverted their judgment that they perceive not the evil;
and they follow out the instructions purporting to be from their dead
friends, now angels in a higher sphere.—
Testimonies For The Church
1:297, 298
(1862).
Christian Science, Oriental and Healing Cults—There are
many who shrink with horror from the thought of consulting spirit
mediums, but who are attracted by more pleasing forms of spiritism,
such as the Emmanuel movement. Still others are led astray by the
teachings of Christian Science, and by the mysticism of theosophy and
other Oriental religions.
The apostles of nearly all forms of spiritism claim to have the
power to cure the diseased. They attribute their power to electricity,
magnetism, the so-called “sympathetic remedies,” or to latent forces
within the mind of man. And there are not a few, even in this Christian
age, who go to these healers, instead of trusting in the power of the
living God and the skill of well-qualified Christian physicians.
The mother, watching by the sickbed of her child, exclaims, “I can
do no more! Is there no physician who has power to restore my child!”
She is told of the wonderful cures performed by some clairvoyant or
magnetic healer, and she trusts her dear one to his charge, placing it
as verily in the hand of Satan as if he were standing by her side. In
many instances the future life of the child is controlled by a satanic