I Appeal to You
... through Bertha Dudde  - 18.09.1944 

3260   Early death .... God’s mercy .... Old age ....

God’s will determines in which degree of maturity a human being is called from his earthly life into the spiritual realm. This is also an apparent injustice which could further the opinion that God selects certain people to become blessed while others have to suffer being distant from God. And yet this attitude is totally wrong .... because divine love and wisdom always knows the human will and therefore cuts a life short when higher development on earth is doubtful.

During the state of constraint before embodiment as a human being there is only progressive development until the spiritual substance’s degree of maturity is ready for this last embodiment. But now the human free will makes its own decisions and development can continue, remain static or even regress; and again it depends on whether the human being as such has already improved his initial degree of maturity and is in danger of coming to a standstill or whether he has remained on the same level as at the beginning of his embodiment and is in danger of regressing. In that case it is always due to God’s mercy that the human being is recalled when he has arrived at the highest level of his development on earth, i.e. when God’s love protects him from regressing or from failing to advance his soul during a longer lifetime .... because his guilt will increase the longer he uses his embodiment’s time of grace without making proper use of it.

The human being can advance during his younger years and then stop, his development up till now comes to a halt, and then God will recall him and give him further opportunities to mature in the beyond .... But the human being can also change his will in later years and his yet inadequate development can experience a sudden improvement and thus he can attain a higher degree of maturity even though for a long time he had ignored his soul until then. In that case God will give him a long life, because God knows the human being’s will since eternity and shapes his life accordingly .... For every human being’s destiny is considered by God’s love and wisdom and does not depend on God’s arbitrary use of power ....

God would not withhold the opportunity to mature on earth from any human being if he is willing to use it. But people pay little attention to His mercy and are unwilling to accept the relevant information. And because God knows since eternity which humans are particularly resentful to Him, because He knows when a person has reached the highest degree of development on earth, the duration of his earthly life has also been established since eternity and varies, depending on what divine wisdom deems best and most successful. God will never cut short an earthly life if the human being could still achieve higher maturity because God’s love is forever concerned that the human being should attain highest possible maturity on earth; He would never withhold an opportunity from a human being which would result in complete maturity. But He knows since eternity the human will’s every inclination and protects the soul from complete desertion, i.e. from certain regression if He would not end that earthly life.

For that reason anyone who constantly strives will reach old age while, at the same time, old age is proof of steady higher development even if this is not evident to other people. A long earthly life is always a mercy but even a short life is evidence of God’s love, which is forever active although it is not always recognised by the human being ....

Amen