The following texts are spirit messages received from the Rev. Arthur Chambers, who passed into the Greater World in 1918, and was one of the spirit-communicators permitted to utilise the deep trance mediumship of Miss Winfred Moyes, at a number of sittings of the Zodiac Circle and so deliver clear and concise communications from beyond the grave.
To explain further, the Zodiac Circle was primarily sitting for the transmission of the Zodiac Messages, but more often than not, at the end of the Address, certain spirits were permitted to speak using Miss Moyes' voice box, because firstly, it was considered helpful to all concerned; secondly, because the spirits had a link in some way with a sitter; and thirdly, to demonstrate the love of God and the correct use of the gifts He has permitted out of His deep love for humanity.
These communications then, are some of the communications of the spirit of Rev. Arthur Chambers a few years after he passed over, and were extracted from some of the sittings of the Zodiac Circle in the earlier years before the first Address by Zodiac through Miss Moyes was given outside of the private Circle.
Sunday, 3rd February, 1924
Extracted from: "CALL TO COME UP HIGHER"
Rev. Arthur Chambers Speaks Through the Deep Trance Mediumship of Miss Winifred Moyes
"...It seems a long time since I was among you in this way. It is rather difficult to explain because you have the idea that time does not exist for us, and following out this thought, you think also that waiting does not exist as well.
"I have heard you say, especially the younger ones, that: 'Time is no object to them - over there they don't understand time as we do'. No, we don't regard time as you do, but waiting is not easy, only to the very advanced.
"You know, Mrs. Moyes, it may sound strange to you, but those old days at the Mission Room, although vivid in my memory and among one of my most cherished possessions, seem far away from a waiting point of view. We wait and we wait and we wait, but waiting to us means prayer, and prayer faith, and faith justification. We know that in the end the time of waiting will be over, but it doesn't seem short except to those who have progressed a very long way indeed in the Spirit. Those who have watched and worked and waited since the time of Christ's betrayal have indeed learnt patience (this refers to Zodiac), but we who have come here so recently, we are leagues behind, and it seems sometimes that we shall never make good what was left undone during the earth stages.
"I have got on to this subject tonight because you, my old friend, have had to wait a very long spell indeed - to wait and to suffer, and on looking back and counting the years, you marvel now how you could have lived through them, and so do I, except for this: I see that you were one of those spoken of last Sunday in this room whom God had under His Hand, and that's the whole explanation of it all.
"In coming back through Winnie in this way, I find myself more changed each time, and you are finding me changed as well. The confidence is going, the joy of having contributed a grain to the knowledge of Truth has ceased to satisfy - the pains of growth are coming on in their full force, and you will find me changed still more. But do not confuse this with sadness or misgiving. It is only that I have shed now the garment of confidence in which I find there was more than a little of self-confidence, and instead of joy over being used by the Master, I feel that if only I had understood, indeed I might have been a bright tool which could have dug down through the earth of materialism and have brought up the gold which is hidden in us all. The next stage of self-revelation!
"When we first come over here - and with many for quite a long time - we are so engaged in counting our gifts, so overwhelmed with the generosity of them, so delighted with the discoveries and the wonders that lie on every side, that we can think of nothing else. You see, we are not put into a garden and told: 'Thus far must thou go and no farther'. There are no restrictions of that sort with those who have tried to love God. Even with those who have denied Him the only barriers are the hedges erected by their own misdeeds, and still more so by their doubts, their obstinacies and their inability to believe that anything lies beyond the fortress walls. But that comes from within. There are no walls except in the imagination - not in the physical world and not in the worlds of the Spirit - we only erect them.
"But let me get back. I said that when we come here much time is taken up with the exploration and the revelation of the bountiful love of God. We are amazed. With the majority humbleness is the first feeling, but the things are there and they are our own, and so the mere fact of the extensive nature of our treasure postpones for a little that self-revelation to which I have referred.
"Then we start to think, and then we start to grow, and then we start to struggle, and God knows what a struggle it is! We soon fall out of love with ourselves. Each step we take nearer to Christ brings such realisation of purity, perfection and love, that it seems that nothing will ever wash us clean or make us fit to enter His Presence.
"And yet Christ is no respecter of persons. If they would allow it He would gather unto Himself the lowest and the weakest and the frailest; they are His children and He spurns them not.
"Oh, if only I had words to tell, if only I could construct anything approaching the real, what a wonderful thing it would be, because it would bring to man acknowledgment of sin, conception of the Spirit, and comparison with what is and what must be - it would make even the most casual pause and wonder.
"It is my wish in coming in this way to get through, if I can, some of these thoughts of mine, and I want you in thinking of your old friend, to try and put him in a different atmosphere - a totally different spiritual environment, because that man upon earth and I are strangers and shall be, with God's help, for ever more. I look back and I marvel how in seeing, I saw not, and in hearing I heard not.
"I have told you what my work has brought to me, but with my larger understanding I feel from the bottom of my heart that those gifts are mine by fraud, and before I will touch them to count them as my own, am going back on the old paths and am going to finish the building I commenced - to put on to the few bricks I see here and there along the highroad of my life, the houses that should have stood. But it will take time, and as I said before, the waiting is not easy because the chance was mine and I let it slip.
"I have got my second chance but the anguish of the second chance I never understood. It is that second chance which comes to all, and with it the gift of self-revelation and the realisation of what might have been and what was not.
"Mrs. Moyes, in looking back over me and my career, your kind mind sees where the weakness lay, but I want you to help me by your thoughts in this way - I want you to know that without ceasing in effort and in prayer I am trying to make good that which was faulty, and by the grace of God, and through His loving kindness, I see that in time to come, it shall be made complete.
"Remember it all of you, and tell Kate that her brother is able to understand love now in a way impossible upon earth, and the companion of love is understanding, so she can count upon both without stint or limit or boundary. Ask her to pray for me - to pray that I may be enabled to carry out the work I have to do, and to pray that I may not find the waiting too long. Her prayers for me will help her too, as she must know by the teaching she has received.
"One thing more: You remember in the early days of these evenings, I told you that in the future all would be made clear. Tonight, this is the first step towards that clearness and it couldn't have commenced before, because I too had to have things made clear to me before I could go on.
"I am afraid I have left the impression of sadness upon you all, but there should be only gladness and congratulation, because this seeing-things-as-they-are means that I am one step nearer home, and these steps are only taken as the result of much preparation, communion with God, and holding on to His strength. Therefore, to me this evening will stand out separated from all that have been, inasmuch as now I see face to face that other self which belongs to God... Goodnight..."
Sunday, 6th April, 1924
Extracted from: "THE PHYSICAL WILL"
Rev. Arthur Chambers Speaks Through the Deep Trance Mediumship of Miss Winifred Moyes
"...Well, I could not stay away tonight. Knowing I could have come before it was hard work to keep in the background, because the thoughts of my friends drew and drew me again.
"Mrs. Moyes, I wish I could put into words - suitable words - something of what I want to say, but it is tremendously difficult. I didn't find it difficult to speak when I was in the body, for then we have the merciful dispensation of Providence of thinking that we know a little and that that little is worth giving to the public, and at the back of our minds we think it is for their benefit. I smile now to go back on the time when I imagined I was something of a spiritual benefactor in this way - smile, and yet there is that heartache underneath, that terrible heartache to think I was such a fool.
"But here we learn pretty soon not to go back over the past in the way of useless regret. We have got to set-to and make good, so far as we are able, that which was done in ignorance and often in the greatest blindness there could be.
"Do you remember how I took as the subject for a series of sermons, the designations, or rather, the descriptions of Christ in the New Testament? I took a certain amount of pride in those addresses, and I thank God that underneath that, was a deep and abiding love for the Saviour, and a thankfulness that He was there to be portrayed in the best language that it was man's privilege to use. It seemed to me then that all those different titles provided a very comprehensive way of expressing the Master. Even in the chronicles of the New Testament He was everything that the mind - the physical mind - could think of. He represented the mightiest in nature and in the world at large, without touching on His Godhead at all... I Am The Way, The Door, The Light, The Good Shepherd, The Bread Of Life, mounting higher and higher, until words failed to supply themselves to express the Crucified.
"I loved those portions, and I got together the sermons with real enthusiasm, and tried my best to pay homage to what He was and what He represented to man.
"And yet, as I listened the other night to my friend (Mr. Hetherington) who described to you what he saw on crossing over and how the Saviour of the World came to him, leaving His glory behind, and lifted him up from the black sea of despair and loneliness... when I listened to that, I realised how limited my imagination had been. That little incident should be written for ever on the hearts and minds - engraved upon them - of all those who wish to find Christ as He really is.
"Oh, make no mistake any of you; cast aside your preconceived Ideas of a conventional God; they don't fit in in any particular. Lifeless, heartless, heedless in comparison - that is the image of God that you have got in your midst. Give your Creator His due, don't judge Him by your own warped standards... I did it, I did it myself. Get out of your narrow rut of personal thinking. God is not like us, but we are told to try and be more like Him. That's where the mistake comes in. We erect our ideals from the few and miserable bricks in our own minds, but the Saviour stands outside. Yet, if we wish to love and honour Him, well, He takes that poor ideal and, passing His Hand over all its puniness, makes it a connecting link between us and the real.
"I wish I could say just one sentence which would give you a larger vision of Christ; even as He was upon earth; during those days when He stood bereft of His Godhead. And not only that, but shackled in every way conceivable - shackled with the accumulated sorrows and temptations of the world, hemmed in by these for the love of mankind - and yet only man Himself. I choose this physical side of our Lord because it was always that side which brought Him so closely to me as a man myself. It was on the plane of sympathy that I could grasp something of what He was and something of what I was expected to be...
"It is useless to attempt any description of Christ as God, and yet the 'One so kind' who lifted up one of His brethren out of his distress - that 'One so kind' brings Him back again into your midst, close to your personal selves, undivided by the gulf - the spiritual gulf - that lies in between.
"It is not easy in speaking on a matter so sacred, to have any feeling but the worst sense of dissatisfaction at what one has said, and yet there is that within me that urges me on; that makes it impossible for me to do anything but try again and again to get man to alter his conception of the Father; to try and realise for himself just a little of what that Fatherhood represents; to throw off for ever those binding, torturous, blasphemous ideas of judgment and punishment and vengeance unto the third and fourth generation... To realise that in thinking of God, only one thing is possible, and that is to think of Love, and then to magnify that Love, and to do so again and again so long as physical life lasts, right on through Eternity itself; and then to realise that you reach only the outer fringe, for it is unthinkable, ungraspable by anyone either in your world or in ours. You cannot understand the Love of God; we cannot understand it, but it is there in all its grandeur, its magnitude, and illimitable power.
"God does not judge those who fail to understand what it means - He does not judge, but it strikes that which is All-Feeling, and so I entreat you here and outside, to not only give God credit for infinite love, but also in so thinking, to give back that which is His due - the love of your hearts - all He asks in return for so great a gift... the love of our poor hearts, poor because they are so limited, but even so, the Father asks it from us and suffers when it is withheld.
"Tell Kate I cannot speak about personal matters tonight. My mind is swamped by the incomprehensible breadth and depth and height of God, as He reveals Himself to me. It is so vast, so overwhelming that she, and you, should know that to be gathered under His protection, includes everything now and for ever more, and that words only detract, because you cannot express that which is Divine... Goodnight..."
Sunday, 15th March, 1925
Extracted from: "CHRIST THE JUDGED"
Rev. Arthur Chambers Speaks Through the Deep Trance Mediumship of Miss Winifred Moyes
"...It is Chambers, Mrs. Moyes. I haven't been for a long time, but I have been busy, although not quite in the way you think. I've come tonight just to say a few words, because not only do I like to be with you but there are two others here who I'd like to remember me in this way (Mr. Goddard and Mr. Hall).
"It is a bit difficult to start at first... The one you call 'Zodiac' - well, I mustn't say anything, but I can't quite get a grip over the conditions he has left behind.
"Mrs. Moyes, there is one thing I'd like to clear up in the beginning, and that is in regard to the different mediums I use. It seems to you - and I can understand it - that I should have chosen the better part if I had kept to those who love me and those I tried to teach. Well, I can imagine that it is hard for anyone who is on earth to get inside another's feelings; but it is impossible - once you have passed out and seen - to stop working, working, working! Yet you should know that although we may go hither and thither, our heart and our love is not changed because of this.
"But what I have come to speak about tonight, is the attitude of my colleagues in the Church.
"It is a sore point with some of those who are working for the spreading of this Truth... I don't mean you, but in looking round I see that so many have that heart-sick feeling, the feeling that the boat is loaded and anchored on the mud because those who have the power to release the stream - the free stream - and to float the boat, are withholding their hand...
"You must remember that I speak with a certain amount of feeling over this. I suffered in a curious way when I was attempting to ram this Truth home myself. Do you know, I suppose I hardly went to one Church where the Vicar didn't say: 'Go gently with your theories, Chambers, go gently!' - and it was with that ringing in my mind that I got up to preach.
"Mrs Moyes, you won't misunderstand, I know, when I say that there were hundreds who came in from outlying villages, trudging weary miles in order to hear my message of hope - to be assured that their 'dead' still cared for them, still thought of them, and that they had not lost them so long as physical life remained.
"Don't think I am judging others but you do see the position in which I was placed. With this Truth burning in my heart and mind, with the longing to tell them and to comfort them, and to bid them to tell others, so that bar was thrown across the free stream of my thoughts - 'Go gently!'
"I have been listening to a lot of talk just lately, I have been to the Congress and I have stood by one and the other. I have followed the discussions - the ins and the outs and the outs and the ins - and then I watched the shaking of hands and the departure of each one to his own home and parish...
"But I want you to know this: That these men thought they had done a good day's work - and because they thought so and wanted to do the right thing, so that is stored up for them. But as those in the Spirit see things - well, it nearly broke our hearts. All the words, the words, the words! - and the starved Spirit of the world crying in vain for bread. I said, Mrs. Moyes, 'for bread' - the bread of Life-Everlasting!
"And then I come back to myself - I always come back to myself: 'Why didn't I do more - why didn't I do more!' - and in that cry you have the tragedy of my life...
"They too, when the vision comes, when they see with the eyes of the spirit - they too will be tortured, even as I have been tortured; and all the Love, the power, and the beauties over here, cannot take away this agony of self-reproach...
"I yielded not to others to this extent: I spoke, as you know, of the Truth. But the shadows, using the thoughts and the speech of those I admired and respected, were for ever pointing out imaginary dangers - pointing out that it was not wise, that there were unbalanced people and they might suffer!
"And I was influenced - thinking I was 'guided', being very much on my own, and feeling that perhaps God might regard me as exceeding my duty; for, after all, who was I to get up and try and teach the world!...
"You can see the methods the shadows use - the subtlety, the accursed subtlety of it all!
"You can't do much more than you are doing; and you can't force people into the safe path which will take away half of the compunction later on - you can't do it - but you can try; and that's my little message tonight. And when you are free yourself, you will be able to look back and see that because the Light had managed to creep into your minds, so you spoke of that Light to others; that because you had been taught something of the things which are of God, so, in turn, you tried to show others where beauty and holiness and peace and freedom lay waiting for them.
"For you who are here tonight, I have one word and that is this: You have been given a chance - not to escape the wrath of God because that never existed, nor the purgatory built up by the cruelty in the physical minds of men - but to escape, in some measure, the agony of facing Love, Love and perfect forgiveness, knowing that you have not even done your best to deserve either one or the other.
"Mrs. Moyes, don't be sad! I'm not sad really, although I suffer, it is true, But these few words will tell you why it is that I go on and on, why it is that I lose no opportunity - that I must speak and speak again, trying to do something of that which I wanted to do when I was on earth, but was held back by the shadows.
"I have told you before, that if I had my physical life over again, I'd go out into the public market places, into the busy street, at the cross roads, and whether I was howled down or not, I would tell the people something of what lies before them; tell them not only that their loved ones are all around them, but that they are torturing those loved ones by their evil ways - torturing those who have passed out of physical existence - because where love is, those who remain behind cannot think or act evilly, without striking the ones linked to them, who see and who know.
"One more word: Ralph, tell my colleagues that I came tonight, that my happiness, so far as gifts and conditions are concerned - that that happiness is as complete as anyone could imagine - but tell them also my point of view...
"God help us all to be strong, and, when we have seen the Light, never to drop our eyes again. That is all.
"I am not sending a message specially to Kate or to Nellie, except to remind them of the past and - what I said before - the work which lies in front; work with mind and spirit, by prayer and by suffering - the work which lies in front! That is holding me fast - to make good, to build stronger, to keep closer to my Saviour, Christ, who has led me through and is teaching me how to grow... Goodnight..."
Saturday, 25th July, 1925
Extracted from: "DIVINE JUSTICE"
Rev. Arthur Chambers Speaks Through the Deep Trance Mediumship of Miss Winifred Moyes
"Good evening, Mrs. Moyes. There are one or two things I want to talk about, and I want to send a word to Nellie (Mrs. H.A.C.) to help her on... As a matter of fact, there are so many topics which arise in my mind, that it's a little difficult to choose the ones which will help you most...
"Mrs. Moyes, I've been working fairly hard since I came here last; I've been looking round, exploring the minds, and going through the thoughts, of some of the many who are now interested in this communion - I mean interested so far as the physical mind is concerned.
"There is curiosity, there is a host of conjecture, there are many influences at work which all tinge man's opinions on this great subject. It seems to me that for the most part, the majority - those who have not yet heard the call of the Spirit - that these are influenced very much by fear.
"Yes, fear in a variety of expressions: Fear of putting their weight on the wrong side; fear as to what their friends may think; and the far greater fear that they may be thought 'cranks'. And then there is that very subtle fear which is entirely of the body - the fear of touching that which is beyond physical explanation.
"Fear is a great enemy, and as I have watched and worked and tried my best to influence such as these, I found that it was not an easy thing to circumvent; I found that if you kill it at one point it springs up in another; and I found that the personal fear of damage or injury to the physical mind and body is the last to give. 'Self-preservation' some would call it, and it is true in a way they've never considered - the preservation of self. I've had that rammed on my consciousness again and again - the preservation of the lesser self, which the evil fosters and feeds...
"You see, Mrs. Moyes, it's no use fencing the obstacles in the path. It is no use saying that these do not exist - they are there, but what I want to drive home is that without these obstacles this Movement would die of dry rot. The vitality in it is astounding, the enthusiasm is an enthusiasm which grows and grows; the people who are working for it are dead keen, and I would to God that these bright, earnest souls were in the Church, in the congregations, bringing their enthusiasm to vitalise the lukewarm feelings of the others.
"You see, precious material is few and far between when it is a question of giving and of working. Thousands and thousands are content to take. They go to church Sunday after Sunday - and their collection once given they think their duty is done.
"Yet, on the other hand, I see this too so plainly, that here and there, where there are those with 'a message' to deliver - those earnest, God-gifted souls - there you do get the enthusiasm, there you get the crowd, there you get the desire to give as well as to take...
"It's an extraordinary thing to me how it is that this fact is overlooked again and again. In the chapels you see it in an amazing way. There, the people come, giving and giving, and glad to do it because there is one who can talk to them of God in the language they understand... I never sneered at the chapels and I thank God for it: I always realised that somehow or other they had got the knack of drawing the people, by their hearts; and once you've got the heart of anyone, then the service comes as a matter of course.
"You know, Mrs. Moyes, that the 'mission' side appealed to me enormously, and I like to think of the little churches - of the Spirit - springing up all over the place, kept together by the work and the self-sacrifice of the few. Ostracised by the Church and State, but nevertheless flourishing, gaining fresh members - and, mark you this - those members are the real thing; there is something within them that's being called, and the spirit is striving to answer its God...
"It may interest you to know that one of the first ones who sought me out after I passed over was John Bunyan. I wondered why he came to me, but it's all so natural over here - he just sauntered up, as it were, and said: 'I'm John Bunyan and I'd like to have a talk with you', and we sat down and we chatted, just as though we had been friends on earth.
"I said to him what a terrible time he must have gone through, but he laughed in such a joyous way and said: 'I think I made the people of my day very uncomfortable, and people don't like to be made uncomfortable, and so they put me away and tried to forget me!' And he went on: 'You made people uncomfortable too; you made them think of what they wanted to ignore. They couldn't put you in prison so they tried to laugh you out of court!'
"He said we'd got things in common; but, Mrs. Moyes, I felt a boy at school! I said to him: 'Your marvellous thoughts used to puzzle me, and I wondered how they came'; and he said: 'Don't you see how I muddled the story in bringing it back? I was taught it word by word, and to impress it on my mind, I was taken every inch that Christian trod, but I bungled it after all'...
"They didn't think he bungled it - not in his way - but they thought he was a dangerous character and he'd got to be suppressed; but the book lives on. That's my point, and I want Nellie to let it sink home, I want her to think of the opposition of that time and today, and if we can't all rise to being John Bunyans, yet we can hold up our little taper of Light; and because here and there all over the civilised world there are those little flickering lights showing, so in time to come, there will be a linking up, in the sense that the Light will be sufficient to overwhelm the darkness...
"Our own loved pilgrim - he is a fine soul, and one day he will come and speak to you direct. He is here tonight, and he asks me to add this one word: 'Don't forget that the giant of despair was the last big test before the Summerland was reached!'..."
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