Paris, April 25th 1866
(Summary of the communications given by Mrs. M.. & T. .. in sleepwalking state)
(see note 1)
The events rush rapidly, so we don't say anymore, as once: "It is approaching the times." Now, we say: "The times are arrived." Don’t suppose that our words refer to a new flood, nor a cataclysm, nor a general disruption. Partial convulsions of the globe are being produced at all times and they are still produced, because it’s a characteristic of its constitution, but they do not represent the signs of the times.
However, everything that is predicted in the Gospel2 must be accomplished, and it is, at this moment, as you will admit later. Don’t take, however, the announced signs but figures, which must be understood according to the spirit and not according to the letter. All Scriptures hide great truths under the veil of allegory, and the commentators misunderstood them because they attached to the letter. They missed the key to understand the true meaning. This key is in the scientific discoveries and in the laws of the invisible world, that Spiritism came to reveal. From now on, with the support of these new knowledges, what was obscure will become clear and intelligible.
Everything follows the natural order, and the immutable laws of God will not be subverted. You won’t see miracles, nor prodigies, nor anything supernatural, in the vulgar sense normally given to these words.
Don’t look at the sky to look for the warning signs, because you will not see them, and those who announce them will be fooling you. Look around you, among men. There you will find them.
Don’t you feel like a wind blowing on Earth and waving all spirits? The world is found in the expectation, as seized of a vague presage that the storm is coming.
Don’t believe, however, in the end of the material world. Earth has progressed since its transformation; it still has to progress and not to be destroyed. The Humanity, however, has reached at one of its periods of transformation, and Earth will rise in the hierarchy of the worlds.
So, what is been prepared is not the end of the material world, but the end of the moral world. It’s the old world, the world of prejudice, selfishness, prideness and fanaticism that collapses. Each day carries with it some debris. Everything from it will be over with the generation that is going out, and the new generation will raise the new building, that the following generations will complement and consolidate.
From the world of expiation, Earth will become, one day, a happy world and living in it will be a reward rather than be a punishment. The kingdom of good will succeed the kingdom of evil.
For men to be happy on Earth, it must be populated only by good spirits, incarnated and discarnated, that uniquely good desire. As this time has arrived, a large emigration is being accomplished at this moment among those who live in it. Those who do evil for evil, indifferent to good feelings, will be excluded from it, because they would again make disorder and confusion and would be an obstacle to progress. They will expiate their cold heart in inferior worlds, where they will bring the knowledges they got, having as a mission making them to advance. They will be replaced by better Spirits, which will make to prevail among them justice, peace, brotherhood.
Earth, we said, will not be transformed by a cataclysm that would destroy suddenly all of a generation. The current generation will disappear gradually, and the new one will succeed it in the same way, without changes in the natural order of things. Everything, therefore, externally, will happen as they used to, with an only difference, but capital. A portion of Spirits that actually incarnate on Earth, will not incarnate anymore. In every child that will be born, instead of a latecomer Spirit, prone to evil, will incarnate a better Spirit and prone to good. It’s regarded much less to a new generation of bodies rather than to a new generation of spirits. Thus, those who expect to see the transformation take place by supernatural and wonderful effects will be disappointed.
This epoch is a time of transition; elements of both generations are scrambled together. Placed in the intermediate point, you can see the departure of one and the arrival of the other, and each one can be recognized in the world by the characters of his own.
The two generations that succeed one another have ideas and points of view completely against each other. By the nature of the moral characters, but especially by the intuitive and innate characters, it becomes easy to distinguish to which of them belongs each individual.
Having to found the moral progress era, the new generation is distinguished by intelligence and reason, normally, precocious, together with innate sense of goodness and spiritualist beliefs, which is, without doubts, a sign of a certain degree of earlier progress. It will not be composed exclusively by eminently superior spirits, but of those who, having already made progresses, are prone to assimilate all progressive ideas and able to help the regenerative movement.
What distinguishes, in the opposite, the latecomer spirits is, firstly, the revolt against God by the denial of Providence and any power above humanity; then the instinctive tendency to degrading passions, anti-fraternal feelings of pride, hate, jealousy, greed, at last, the predominance of attachment to all that is material.
It’s from these vices that Earth must be purged by the removal of those who refuse to mend their ways, because they are incompatible with the kingdom of brotherhood and the good men would always suffer in contact with such creatures. Being Earth free of them, the others will go ahead unhindered to the better future, which is reserved for them in this world, as a reward for their efforts and perseverance, while a more complete depuration doesn’t open the entrances of the superior worlds.
Regarding to this emigration of spirits, it should not be understood that all the latecomer spirits will be expelled from Earth and relegated to inferior worlds. Many will succumb to the empire of circumstances and example: the shell is worse than the substance. Once removed from the material influence and from the prejudices of the corporal world, most of them will understand the things in a very different way than they used to when alive, according to the numerous cases that you have observed. To help them, there will be the good Spirits that by them are interested and that make efforts to enlighten them and show them that the way they walked was wrong. By your prays and incitation, you can contribute very much for their improvement, because there is perpetual solidarity among the dead and the alive ones.
Those, consequently, will be permitted to come back, and they will feel happy, because this will be a reward for them. Who minds how they were or what they did before, if they are animated by better feelings? Far from being hostile to the society, they will be useful auxiliaries because they will belong to the new generation.
There will not be, therefore, definitive exclusion, with exception of the spirits substantially rebels, those who prideness and selfishness, rather than ignorance, made deafs to the voice of good and reason. But these same spirits, however, are not doomed to a perpetual inferiority, and a day will come when they will reject their past and open their eyes to the light.
So, pray for these cold hearted, in a way they can correct their route while there is still time, because it’s approaching the day of expiation.
Unfortunately, most of them, ignoring the voice of God, will persist in their blindness, and their resistance will mark, by the means of terrible fights, the end of the kingdom they belong to. In their bewilderment, they will run to their own loss; they will cause destructions that will lead to a huge quantity of flagellations and calamities in a way that, unwittingly, they will haste the advent of the renewal era.
And, as if the destruction were not working fast enough, suicides will multiply in unprecedented proportions, even among children. The madness will never have struck a so large number of men who, even before their death, will be scribbled from the number of who are alive. These are the real signs of the times and, all these things will be accomplished, by the enchainment of circumstances, as we have said, without having the most slight derogation of the laws of the nature.
However, through the dark cloud that envelops you, in which rumbles the storm, you can already see rising the first rays of the new era. The fraternity throws its foundations on all points of the globe and the folks reach out to each other; barbarism becomes familiar in contact with civilization; prejudices of races and sects, which caused huge bloodsheds, are being extinguished; fanaticism, intolerance are losing space, while freedom of conscience is being introduced in the customs and it’s becoming a right. Everywhere the ideas ferment; the evil is found and remedies tried to wipe it out, but many walk without a compass and get lost in utopias. The world is in an enormous work of gestation that already lasts a century; on this work, still confused, however, it can be felt that predominates a tendency toward determined purpose: unity and uniformity that predispose to the fraternization.
Here you also have signs of the times. But, while the others are those of the agony of the past, these are the first cries of the child that is being born, the precursors of the dawn that the new century will see raising, because then, the new generation will be in full power. Both the physiognomy of the nineteenth century is different from the eighteenth century to certain points of view, and the physiognomy of the twentieth century will differ from the nineteenth century to other points of view.
The innate faith will be a distinctive character of the new generation; not the exclusive and blind faith that divides the humanity, but reasoned faith that enlightens and strengthens, that joins and mixes the humanity in a common feeling of love to God and to the near. With the generation that is being extinguished, will disappear the last vestiges of disbelief and fanaticism, which are also against to the moral and social progress.
Spiritism is the way that leads to the renovation, because it destroys the two biggest obstacles that makes opposition to it: disbelief and fanaticism; because it brings a solid and enlightened faith; it develops all the feelings and all the ideas that correspond to the aspirations of the new generation, and this is why, in the hearts of its representatives, it will be innate and in state of intuition. The new era, therefore, will see it to grow and to prosper by the force of the things itself. It will become the basis of all faiths, the fulcrum of all institutions.
But, from this time to that, how many struggles to support against its two greatest enemies: disbelief and fanaticism that, such a bizarre thing, shake hands to slaughter it! It’s because both of them presage their future and, consequently, their ruin. This is the reason because they fear it; they already see it erecting, over the ruins of the old selfish world, the flag that must rally all people. In the divine maxim: Without charity there is no salvation, they read their own condemnation, because this maxim is the symbol of the new fraternal alliance proclaimed by Christ. It’s presented to them as the fatal words in the feast of Bel.shaz’zar3. However, they should bless this maxim, since it defends them from all reprisals from the part of those who persecute them. But this doesn’t happen: a blind force stimulates them to reject the only thing that is able to save them!
What will they be able against the ascendancy of the opinion that repudiates them? Spiritism will emerge triumphant from the fight, believe that, because it is in the laws of the nature, and, consequently, it is imperishable. Observe the multiplicity of ways that the idea spreads and penetrates everywhere; believe that these means are not incidental, but caused by the Providence. What, at first glance, would seem to harm it, is precisely what helps its propagation.
Soon, it will emerge champions, highly representatives, among the most considerable and the most accredited, which will support it, with the authority of their names and examples, and they will impose silence to the detractors, because no one will dare to treat them as crazy people. These men are studying it in silence, and will show up when the right moment comes. Until then, however, it is good to stand on the sidelines.
Soon, you will also see the arts approaching of it, as a productive mine, and translate the thoughts and horizons that it discovers, by the means of painting, music, poetry and literature. It was already told you that some day there will be the spiritist art, as there was the pagan art and the Christian art. It is a great truth, because the greatest geniuses will get inspiration on it. Soon, you will see the first drafts of the spiritist art, that later will occupy the place it deserves.
Spiritists, the future is yours and of all the people of heart and devoted. Don’t be scared with the obstacles because, no one could hinder the designs of Providence. Work without rest, and thank God that has chosen you for the vanguard of the new phalanx. It is a position of honor that you have requested yourselves, and it’s necessary to be worthy by your courage, your perseverance and your devotion. Blessed are those who will succumb in this fight against force; the shame, in the opposite, will wait, in the world of spirits, for those who will succumb by weakness or pusillanimity. The struggles, however, are needed to fortify the soul; the contact with evil makes us better appreciate the benefits of the good. Without the struggles, that stimulate the faculties, the Spirit would surrender to a carelessness that would be harmful to his progress. The struggles against the elements develop the physical strength and intelligence; struggles against evil develop the moral strengths.
Allan Kardec
Bibliography:
OEUVRES POSTHUMES – Previsions concernant le Spiritisme - Ma première initiation au Spiritisme - Régénération de l'humanité - Allan Kardec, Paris – 1890. Electronic version in French can be downloaded from:
www.opiniaoespirita.org/downloads/oeuvres_posthumes.pdf (839kB). Look for the page 252.
This same text was also published in the Spiritist Magazine, published in Paris, in October/1866, in the article Les temps sont arrivés. Electronic version in French can be downloaded from:
www.opiniaoespirita.org/downloads/revue_spirite_1866.pdf (1.34MB). Look for the page 305.
None of them was available in English until the time of this publication.
Notes from the Editor of this website (Opinião Espírita):
This is a non-professional translation made by Rafael Gasparini Moreira, with the help of Google Language Tools (French to English). We tried to do our best and we think this translation is faithful to the original, although some people could think it could be in a better English. English speakers are welcome to send suggestions to improve this translation. Contact us by the e-mail: opiniao@opiniaoespirita.org.
Read, between others, the chapter 24 of the Matthew's Gospel.
The feast of Bel.shaz’zar is an allusion of a history from the Bible in Daniel chapter 5.
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