I Appeal to You
... through Bertha Dudde  - 16.09.1949 

4740   Responsibility for accepting misguided teachings ....

It is very difficult for people to disassociate themselves from knowledge they were taught from an early age on and which they therefore do not want to renounce as misguided. They accepted this knowledge without thinking about it and since their education is not their fault they cannot, at first, be held responsible for accepting wrong doctrines. Nevertheless, as soon as they are able to use their intellect themselves it is their duty to scrutinise whether this spiritual knowledge is true. And they will have to be answerable as to whether they used their intellect as soon as they were able to do so. They should not accept all spiritual values as truth without scrutiny, neither will they be able to justify themselves on the basis that they have received this knowledge and are therefore innocent if they had endorsed it during their earthly life. They forget that they are responsible for their souls. They forget that I do not punish them but that they punish themselves, that is, that they remain in their state of imperfection, which can never result in their bliss .... but that I cannot release them from this state because their redemption requires their active free will which they, however, did not use correctly or they would have used their intellect to examine these spiritual doctrines. They remained passive. To a certain extent they allowed themselves to be imposed upon by something which they could just as well have rejected if they had wanted to.

The fact that people are answerable for their souls means that they have to recognise their guilt, that they have to realise that their wretched position was their own fault and justly identify and admit their own neglect, thus they cannot unburden themselves at the expense of those who instructed them wrongly. Indeed, these teachers, too, will one day have to be accountable according to their guilt, yet someone who accepts misguided teachings will not be exonerated from guilt, since I have given the human being intellect which he should use for the salvation of his soul first. Anyone who seriously wants the truth will make an effort and find it too. And every instruction offered to the person has to be reviewed if it claims to be true. Thus the human being is duty bound to compare the spiritual knowledge imparted to him with those teachings, and the right will shall also yield the right results. Yet the state of his soul after his death depends on the person’s attitude towards the truth conveyed to him by My will .... full of light or darkness .... For only truth gives light to the soul, whereas error keeps the soul in darkness in which it had languished at the beginning of its earthly course of life as a human being but which it could have escaped had it used its will correctly ....

Amen