Source: https://www.bertha-dudde.org/en/proclamation/4957

4957 Love for the world - disease.... No-one can serve two masters....

August 27, 1950: Book 56

The love for the world is a creeping disease which will definitely lead to spiritual death. And thus you can appreciate that your Father in heaven will quite often have to resort to painful means in order to rescue you from this death, in order to enable your spiritual recovery, in order to make you relinquish the world and its pleasures and attain eternal life.... It would be misguided compassion were I to shy away from such means only to prevent you from suffering during your earthly life; it would be misguided love which would not be a blessing but only a disaster for your soul. My wisdom, however, looks ahead and My love tries to help you. The fact that you have to relinquish the world in order to attain Me is inevitable, and if you do not sacrifice it voluntarily I will have to take what is dear to your heart. And this is why you so often have to suffer on earth, even if your way of life is not blatantly evil. Yet you are still permeated by wrong love, by love for matter, by the kind of love which first has to be redirected if it is to make you happy. And as long as you don't eliminate this love from your hearts I cannot enter them, for where I stay all earthly longing must have been overcome.

And again I must say: No-one can serve two masters.... I Am not content with shared love, however, My adversary, the prince of the World, will not allow that you do not give him the sole right over your soul either. And thus the human being has no choice but to make a decision.... for Me or for him. But as long as he desires the world his decision is for him, who pulls him down into ruin. He will indeed give you plenty during your earthly life, but after your death you will be utterly poverty-stricken in the beyond, and torment and darkness will be your fate.... My gifts, however, are less enticing on earth for they consist of spiritual possessions which have little attraction for you humans during your earthly life, but after your death they represent an immeasurable wealth which makes you blissfully happy and turns you into children of the kingdom of light forever. I offer incomparably more than My adversary, yet his gifts dazzle you and make you hanker after them. But remember life after death.... remember the hour of your passing away is not known to you, that it can be very soon and that you then will lose whatever earthly goods you possess. Then you will have to fear the hour of death.... Yet you will yearn for it if you have gathered spiritual treasures, if you renounce earthly goods in order to exchange them for gifts offered by Me. Then you will long for the hour of death, for you know that when you leave the earth it will be the hour of entering eternal life. Earthly life will seem like a fleeting moment to you, and yet it is decisive for the whole of eternity. And therefore you should understand it when I afflict humanity with all kinds of calamities and take everything away that seems desirable to them. It is not cruelty but love and wisdom, which indeed realises and understands why you humans are in danger and wants to rescue you from it.

Anyone who must suffer should know himself loved by Me, but anyone who receives the possessions of life in abundance is already subject to My adversary, for I know his will and do not compel him to change it. Yet even these people will be approached by Me through their fellow human beings who shall touch their hearts so that they will change their nature into love. Then even they will still be redeemed with certainty. But if their hearts are hardened their good living standard will noticeably continue to get better, for the 'master of the world' will give to them in abundance, because they sold their soul for the sake of earthly possessions and their spiritual death will be assured to them....

Amen

Translated by Heidi Hanna