What motivates God to save?

Spirit Franchezzo sees the circling belt of the great earth plane, its magnetic currents like the ebb and flow of an ocean tide, bearing countless spirits.

He sees all the strange elemental astral forms—

Some grotesque, some hideous, some beautiful—

And the earthbound spirits tied by their gross pleasures—or their sinful lives, many using the organisms of living souls to gratify their degraded cravings.

These, and kindred mysteries, and waves of dark and awful beings, ten times more deadly than those dark spirits of the earth plane, sweep up from the dark spheres below and crowd and cluster thickly near the living—

And where they gather, they shut out the brightness of the spiritual sun whose rays shine down on the earth continually.

They shut out this light, with the dark mass of their own cruel thoughts, and where this cloud rests, there comes murder and robbery and cruelty and lust and death and sorrow—

The restraints of conscience have given way to greed and selfishness and pride and ambition and the light of truth is shut out with their dark bodies.

And many mourn for the dear ones they have loved and lost, weeping bitter tears because they cannot see them any longer, and all the while, those for whom they mourn stand beside them, seeking with all their power to show that they still live, still hover near unseen, and these sorrowing spirits cannot go to their bright spheres because those whom death has left behind to mourn tie them to the earth plane by the chains of their love—

And they hang about the earth’s atmosphere in helpless sorrow—

Their spiritual lamps growing dim.

A glorious dazzling light shines, and its rays dispel the clouds of darkness and sorrow, but the false ideas and the dust and dross of earth clogs their spirits and makes their eyes blind to the glorious light, which shines for them in vain.

There are some whose spiritual sight is partly unveiled, and whose ears are not quite deaf to the glorious strain of music from the celestial spheres, and they speak of the spirit world and its wondrous beauties.

They feel great thoughts, and hear the wondrous music, and try to give it expression.

They see lovely visions, and try to paint them, and their music and pictures all help to raise (wo)men’s souls nearer to God, for all that is highest and purest and best comes from the inspiration of the spirit world.

Yet with all this beauty of art and music and literature—

With all these aspirations—

There is still no way open to hold communion with the loved ones who have gone before them into the land of shades.

The perfect sight, which the spirit world seeks to give is clouded and imperfect and broken.

The walls of material life are pierced with many doors, and at each door, an angel stands to guard it.

(Hu)man is given the keys to these doors—

Doors that lead to a higher, purer knowledge of truth—

But the joys and gifts of earth allure, and he turns aside.

Others keep their doors partly open, but they suffer error and darkness to creep in, and light and truth is sullied and broken, as it passes through these darkened doorways.

As time passes on, the light ceases to shine, and gives place to the thick impure rays from dark deceitful spirits from the lower sphere—

And that door closes.

New doors open for (wo)men whose hearts are pure and unselfish and unsullied, and a flood of light pours through these doors that dazzles the eyes.

These doorways are thronged with beautiful, bright spirits, and others whose raiment is dark, but in whose souls there is a desire for good, and there is joy, for death’s dark curtain is drawn aside and there is news from those beyond the grave.

Great armies of spirits from all the higher spheres, their raiment of purest white and gold and silver helmets, glittering in the glorious spiritual light direct others in their work.

Who are these?

Were they ever mortal (wo)men?

Black thunder clouds gather dark, as night over the earth, and the conflict that surrounds it.

A rushing sound sweeps upwards from the dark spheres of hell and storm-tossed waves roll up against the sea of bright spirits—

Sweeping them back, and rolling over the earth, as though to blot out the light of truth—

To assail and overwhelm each door of light.

This war in the spirit world becomes a war amongst (wo)men—

Nation fighting against nation for supremacy.

It is as though, in the great thirst for wealth and greed for conquest, all must be engulfed—so universal is this war.

The seething masses of dark spirits attack those doors of light and strive to sweep away the faithful who stand within them.

A glittering and dazzling light grows until a vast host of radiant angels from the heavenly spheres—

This great ocean of light—

Sweeps down to earth, and surrounds it with a great belt of glorious light.

Rays of light, like spears, dart down and render the dark mass in a thousand places, and these dazzling rays flash like the swords of fire and cut through the dark wall of spirits on all sides, scattering them to the four winds of heaven.

Their leaders seek vainly to gather their forces together again—

Seek vainly to drive them on, but a stronger power hurls them back until they sink down, rolling back to those dark spheres from which they have come.

These bright angels hold these mighty forces of evil in check, not with the sword of destruction, but by the force of their mighty wills—

By the eternal power of good over evil.

They are the redeemed of the darkest spheres who have washed their sin-stained garments in the pools of repentance, and who have risen from the ashes of their dead selves to higher things, and whose earnest labours and acts of atonement have conquered their own evil.

These are the angels of the heavenly spheres of earth, once men who sympathise with all the struggles of sinful men.

They are a mighty host, ever strong to protect, and powerful to save.