Source: https://www.bertha-dudde.org/en/proclamation/0405

0405 Disadvantage of cultural development.... Worldly wisdom.... Forces of nature.... Charities....

May 8, 1938: Book 9

Out of such connection grows the greatest blessing for you, and therefore always begin your daily work with intimate prayer. The Savior of all the worlds is now again passing through the earth valley. His mission is to teach the world the true faith. But little has changed during this time. It is an extremely difficult beginning to put the belief in an afterlife into the hearts of people who deny everything supernatural in a truly sacrilegious way.... Today's cultural development has the large disadvantage that it produces innumerable worldly wisdoms and fights therefore from this perspective particularly against everything indicating a life outside of the earth.

And so the progress on earth is always a disadvantage for everything spiritual. The active striving and haste, which fills people day in and day out, leaves them little or no time for the development of the spirit.... for the work on their soul. They do not notice how fast their time is passing by, they follow their earthly activity unaffected that only now and then a thought turns to infinity.... And this is the most unhealthy foundation on which spiritual building can proceed. It is not only the excessively time-consuming earthly activity that hinders man, but rather the spiritual knowledge that such people believe to have and against which it is far more difficult to fight.

To open up a field of knowledge to a not so wise person is considerably easier.... but to want to convey spiritual knowledge to a person who is well versed in all knowledge, is far more hopeless.... The whole existence of this man depends in his opinion only on his earthly activity.... A thought of something higher, of an existence formed in any other form after his bodily death, is to him something that only requires a quiet smile of superior knowledge, and yet such a wise man on earth knows nothing.... His spiritual, soul-supporting activity shows gaps upon gaps....

That is why the Lord has now taken care and has chosen His servants with the ability to confront them with extraordinary proofs of His power and will. It will be a desperate struggle for these souls, who often do not want to take the trouble to seriously examine an apparent proof of the Divine work.... But forces of nature will also bring them enlightenment at the same time, so that they try to turn their thought-activity away from the earthly and to penetrate into infinity....

But what a struggle of the spirit-beings and the servants on earth has to engage in for these self-exalting earthly children.... The universe with all it's splendor, all phenomena around and above, are not enough to awaken even one small glimmer of light in these.... and the charitable institutions striven for in the world also deprive them of the last chance to cultivate a love-field for themselves, where the Divine Source of grace would be opened up to them through an activity in love and where they could then give food to the spirit within themselves out of love....

That is why an ever wider gap lies between the children on earth and the spirit-beings active around them because love is so little practiced and without love, the spirit remains in darkness and a development of the soul can only be achieved with difficulty. Because the assumption that an earthly child attains a perfect spiritual state through an apparently civilized life on earth, is wrong.... The soul must be redeemed from within, and this only love can bring about, and only where this is active, the still existing darkness of the spirit is to be banished, and also the light of recognition will still shine for these people, when they only make an effort to cultivate love.... Then also the grace of the Lord will meet them lovingly and let them safely find the way leading upwards into the heavenly kingdom....

Amen

Translated by Alida Pretorius