An address given by the Christ messenger Zodiac through the deep trance mediumship of Miss Winifred Moyes.
(Note: This message was edited for a more general readership)
"You all know that you must pass through the change called death; you have heard from one and another a little about life in the next stage; you have been delighted when mothers and fathers, those who had hard lives, have come back to you and have told you that they have a lovely Home and that it will be there waiting for you when your time comes to join them.
"They do not mean that you will not have your own Home but it is always pleasant to feel that when we go into a far country there is someone there who loves us, waiting to say: 'Welcome Home, my dear! I have waited for you such a long time but now separation is over for evermore and we are together again!'
"But in thinking of a New Existence, it is wise perhaps to be a little more searching because it is a very interesting subject. If you were going to another land while still in the body you would want to get what information you could about the climate, about the scenery, about the people and living conditions.
"Well, is it not more important still, to know a little about that great life which you will enter for certain? Sometimes plans on Earth fall through, sometimes a change is made and the traveller goes to another place. But in regard to the transition you have a New Existence in another world.
"I know that there are some here who would say to me: 'My idea of the Spirit World is to be with those I love, to feel that they have not changed towards me. I am not looking for anything very important or anything very special; where they are there my happiness lies!'
"How wise you are not to set your mind upon any particular thing that you wish to find in the Spirit World, but more upon those persons you want to be there. Because there is this point to be considered: On Earth you are surrounded by material things. They have their place; with some people as you know they have too big a place, they seem to be of all importance and such as these are not concerned about any other state nor do they build up those conditions here which will help them in the Hereafter.
"So when they pass through the change called death - and they cannot escape it, very often it comes when least expected - they are aghast, it seems to them they have awakened in a strange world where all those things which mattered most are absent. Dear-children, they were not as the wise virgins, they did not prepare for the bridegroom; and so instead of finding light and beauty and love and power in the next world, as God intended, they are lonely people, solitary people, and sometimes very frightened over the change in their conditions.
"But I want you here with your life of service and kindness of heart, your compassion over the sick, to prepare your mind for certain changes. Those things so familiar around you will be reproduced but in a different guise. As you know with Nature, it passes through different stages. Consider the tiny seed buried in the ground. In due season a little shoot is shown piercing the earth. That again is a very early stage; you do not have to be content with that.
"You want maturity, you want blossoms, or if it is in regard to fruit, you want results for your labour and you are entitled to them.
"So this tiny simile will show you that everything in life changes in its appearance. There are as it were changing moulds. What resemblance does the tiny seed bear to the plant in its full maturity? It is very difficult to find a connecting link. The seed holds the germ of life but in order to express itself according to the law of Nature it must change and change again.
"So let us think in regard to the next body. Of course that will be changed. Some may say: 'Well, how shall I recognise my loved ones?' Personality persists. Many realise that the body has changed considerably from the time when they were young. Think of the babe, think of the little boy or girl, think of the youth or maiden, think of the mature man and woman.
"You see, just the same as in the seed, so there have been many, many changes. Often you feel those changes as they come are not to your advantage; the body becomes troublesome or heavy or out of repair. The things you took as a matter of course seem to be failing you one by one as age comes along, and a man and woman feels very weary of it all. What a wonderful change for them to cast off the old and to put on the new! No longer is the body an encumbrance; it is something that bears signs of beauty.
"But this could not be unless during the Earth stage you had faced discipline. Yes, you have had your troubles and in degree you have fought through them. So you see there is one thing on which you can count and that is on having a very pleasant body to use and look upon.
"The sufferer might say: 'That to me would represent something of heaven! I am tired of illness, tired of weariness, tired of pain and of growing old.' But, dear children, it is only for a little while. Have courage, let not your heart fail you because the road seems over long; the milestones are passing quickly, you are climbing rapidly, and the time will come when the 'door' will be opened and the dimness of the Earth will be no more and you will be received into the brightness of the Spirit.
"Now that is one thing. The next thing I want to draw your attention to is this: you must remember that when you have shed the body and the physical mind, in due course your ideas will have changed; the things that seemed very important to you when upon the Earth plane will then appear rather trivial, 'second-rate' or 'third-rate' - according to your own language - and you will look back and you will say: 'Fancy worrying over losing that; fancy wanting to have anything which had such a short life! I had Nature, I had the flowers and the trees, I had my friends. These were the things that mattered; the material things are of the Earth, Earthy.'
"You see how you change in your ideas; the things you desired once, you have now fallen out of love with - you want something better, nearer to the spirit's desire, something that has a longer life. So I remind you in regard to your lives, you will get accustomed to changing moulds, the changing appearance of things.
"Those articles you so prized, which you would not have lost for anything - well, they have gone, and in their place there is something which no longer is a substitute, but something that is real. You do not like substitutes; you are tired of them, you know that they represent an inferior article. Well, when the Earth life is over you can lay aside the thought of substitutes for you then have the real thing.
"But God will not hurry you, there is no Spirit Power on the other side to change you abruptly; you will grow in grace like the tiny seed piercing its way through the earthly soil stretching out to a wider area altogether.
"I want you to think of this in regard to your talents. You may say to me: 'I don't think I have many.' You cannot judge, you are only looking at things from a physical standpoint; we judge from what is in your heart and mind, what you want to do and what you are denied doing because of circumstances.
"You see, dear children, what a wonderful vista lies before you? When in the Spirit World, you will find that you possess gifts you never dreamed were your own. Why is this? Because the real you, in taking on the physical body, chose a restricted life in the sense that there should be limited gifts.
"How was that? It was built up by suffering, by patience, by hoping when the dark clouds of physical life seemed to close them in; it was built up by resisting seen and unseen enemies. So they thanked God with grateful hearts. Some may say: 'Oh, I have always wanted to sing or to be able to paint pictures, or to bring into being something that would demonstrate my idea of beauty.' You may have tried and the result was so poor that you dropped the idea altogether and became resigned to a certain amount of limitation.
"But can those thoughts ever die? No! dear-children, you shall see them in an enhanced form, and by not having during this stage, you take up those gifts in a wider expression of the gift, in the happy Home which is then your own.
"I have only one warning to give and that is: Do not allow the circumstances of Earthly life to tarnish your ideals or to kill your good ideas; remember that they are laid aside, as it were, in storage.
"The conditions of the Earth world were not suitable for their fruition; but they are only laid aside as the bulbs are laid aside, and as they were during the war for years and years, buried deep down in the earth so that the enemy should not find them. But they are yours. And however deep the burial had to be through circumstances, they are there, and the life is teeming within them only waiting for the opportunity to express itself.
"That is the way character is being built up - the testing stages, the failures, and the individual struggling on still. And the time will come, dear children, when you will fail no more; for what is not possible in this stage, then - with the shedding of the physical body - will be possible; and your character will be according to your heart's desire: free from the tarnishing influences of the Earth world, free in its spiritual guise and beautiful to look upon and ready for use.
"So you see your New Existence is full of interest. The little ones who pass over certainly will be older when you join them; but every night in the sleep state you meet them, so there will be nothing strange then.
"The poor tired mother, who wearily laid her head upon the pillow and asked God to take her, well, she will be changed in guise, too; she will be in maturity in its best sense, full of energy, full of love, because during the Earth stage she tried to do her little best. And what is possible for her, naturally is possible for you.
"And in regard to your idea of beauty, you will find certain changes will take place there as well. The things you prize here will not seem to fit in with God's World; they were only substitutes; but you will find the real thing there, and those things will grow nearer and nearer to beauty as you gain experience; and as you grow in spirit, so changes will take place in that Home which seems to you as you pass over almost perfect.
"You will be evolving fast, and as you evolve so your ideas will change and change again. You will always strive for something better, something nearer to the Christ ideal, and your Home will ever have the door ajar, as it were, to welcome in the wayfarers. And as you try to stem the tears, or to give cheer to the broken-hearted, to restore the faith of those who have turned from God, so then that desire of yours will be increased a hundred-fold, and, later on, a thousand-fold, and the opportunity will be there to do that which you will desire to do with all your being.
" - 'Behold, I make all things new!' - That statement does not mean that annihilation of the things that were. No! God makes all things new; they shed their material guise, they get rid of the sordid influences of the Earth, rid of all the base thoughts. 'Behold, I make all things new!'
"And those words for you mean that the old things have passed away. The new things in all their beauty and power await you, and as you grow ready so, as I have said, they shall change and change again, shedding that which held the remembrances of the Earth until they are akin to the Spirit, and that word 'Spirit' expresses unlimited love and joy and light and health for evermore.
"Now I would come amongst you, for I know there are many here who would like to shed the old and to take on the new, and at times it appears to them that they have to wait and wait and the body, instead of improving, seems to grow worse. Remember all those over the generations who have been through the same tests.
"They asked God in prayer to help them, and it seemed to them that no answer came to their entreaty. You are only one of millions, dear children, but when those past generations found themselves in their new Home, how glad they were, how thankful they were that God had not answered their prayers, for they came into that new life with a wonderful equipment.
"God knows what the real you wants so much better than the physical mind can instruct, for now you see through a glass darkly. But the time will come when you will face reality and you will know then that the purpose of the Earth life was to gain experience, and if you have not gained experience, then the purpose will be wasted.
"Dear-children, sometimes those in the flesh rail against fate or ask themselves and others what God is doing to allow such misery to take place. But God is on the side of the spirit within mankind, and He is working out His purpose so that all things shall be made new, new in a lovely guise, and these new things are for you.
"So then let not sorrow hold your heart; remember your New Existence in another world. How gladly you will look to this side and that, and what you will see will far surpass your highest hopes. You will say within: 'I was but a child, I did not understand; but now I do understand, and because I understand I am satisfied!'
"As you know, during the Earthly stage very few people are ever satisfied. It is wonderful to think that when the Earth-life is over we can be satisfied, and that means that the old restlessness has gone for evermore; it means that although we take on other experiences we find the strength within to master them, we are not mastered by them, and that makes all the difference.
"Once you become conquerors, then the so-called 'blows' which fall upon you, they merely touch the surface; the heart and the mind and the soul are in God's keeping.
"So you see, dear children, your New Existence is going to fulfil your highest hopes; yes, and what is more, you will have renewed energy. Then all the obstacles, the disappointments and the heartaches on the Earth-plane, will be seen as stepping-stones to better things. How happily you will climb, and at last you have what you want. Your New Existence in another world has justified all the sorrows of the past, and the pilgrim spirit, then released within you, knows no fear for evermore.
"So little ones, all members of the flock of Jesus Christ, I bless you! What is the blessing? I bless you with renewed hope, with a greater courage, with a hardened determination to see the battle through. Then the future can be glorious to behold.
"We shall meet in that other state and once again the bands of workers from the different churches upon the Earth-plane will celebrate their anniversary - the anniversary of a friendship which nothing of the Earth has had the power to destroy. What a wonderful promise lies in that one sentence!
"So I bless you all, and love pours from my being to each and everyone, for I know your conditions, I know the difficulties that surround many - the difficulties of temperament. So I appeal to one and all while the time on Earth is yet their own, to give out still more love to their fellow workers for the sake of the sweet by-and-by. When they enter their New Existence in another world, they shall see what the sacrifice of personal feeling has built up for them in opportunity and in power.
"Farewell! The Cross is on the brows of you all. Allow it to remain, for you are missionaries in Spirit, and it is sign and symbol to those who have lost their way that in you they have a friend. Farewell."
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