The beginning of the end of the mystery

Preface

MY readers will marvel at the title I have given my book, and surely not without reason. The facts that are related in it are as much a marvel to the writer as to any one; but, though marvellous, they are nevertheless true. I have written nothing in the following pages but w r hat is in every sense true, having weighed well every word before using it, and should not have written it only from imperative duty, which I could not avoid. As no one can disprove what I have said, so between me and my Maker, to whom I must give an account for all, and also for the way in which I have discharged my duty, rests my responsibility. Had I been writing to suit my own purposes, I .should have omitted many things 1 have said, and veiled other parts in different language.

I have given this title to my little book because I believe it to be the exegesis and fulfilment of the prophecy of Rev. x. 7-11, — the closing of a period

* PEEFACE.

of nearly eighteen hundred years, in which God, though guiding and governing the affairs of this world, has not till now manifested Himself, nor has His voice been heard.

In the last eighteen hundred vears what wonders and changes have taken place! Christianity has triumphed and spread, and millions have been saved by faith in its teachings, through the merits of the blessed Redeemer. Many means have been used by Almighty God for the preservation of His Church. Nothing has been able to prevail against it; and though now vain philosophy is trying to do without God in the creation and preservation of the universe, and the ologies and isms of the day are attempting to disprove and cast unbelief and contempt on His word, and the need of the atonement, and the efficacy of Christ's blood; and when the Christian world is filled with anxiety at the tremendous strides that unbelief is making, and wondering what course God, in His mercy, will take to perpetuate His Church, and preserve His Holy Word, in the midst of these things God has again unveiled His holy presence, and once more spoken to man.

Part I. of my book treats of the creation, and is intended as an answer to the various theories that have been put forth by the believing and unbelieving world. In reference to this I have only to say, that,

PREFACE.

in preparing this discourse, when I had in view the scene of the praying Christian in the testimony of the rocks, on page 44, and having pictured to my mind's eye the rock by which the Christian knelt and gave thanks to God for the gift of His Word, my mind being directed, I say, to the place, God Himself struck over near the place a flash of the lightning of His love; and this was the language of the lightning, " God's love." In this, though, there was no intimation of the correctness of my conclusions in the discourse on the creation, but simply, as I conceive, His approval of my labor.

Part II. is my own experience and observation. Great care has been used by me not to overstate anything that has been written in this. As I said, every word has been w T ell weighed before using it. I expect to meet with many friends through life and with many enemies, and perhaps this may subject me to much persecution ; yet it cannot change the truth of the matter. Having passed the swelling flood, but without tasting its waters; standing as it were upon the shores of eternity, and speaking back to time, Christianity, as taught in God's Holy Word, the Personality of Father, Son and Holy Ghost, the Triune Majesty of Heaven, are not to me mere matters of belief, but of absolute Knowledge.

Part III. of my book is a discourse that treats of u PREFACE.

the satanic phenomenon called spiritism, in which the great enemy of man and his (Satan's) angels, also the archangels and angels of light and glory, are described by an eye-witness. Let him deny it only who can refute it. Sufficient has been said in the contents as to render it unnecessary in this preface to say more. I have this further to say: that, having in my boyhood been a Christian, and being destroyed in a marvellous manner, by having lost my goodness in a way that I could not help, God had mercy on me; and though I had left His service, and was doing much evil in spreading the literature and teaching the terrible delusions of spiritism, yet He would not let me be lost to Him. In my youth, when His worshipping child, He had given me the promise of eternal life, and that, though I would forsake Him, yet He would bring me back to Him ; and this promise He would now fulfil. He punished me severely for my sins, but blessed me with His love, visiting me witli His own right hand in His displeasure for my sins. O what terrors came over my poor soul! For joining the world, and denying and casting unbelief on that passage wherein Joshua commanded the sun to stand still, God visited me in person, and said, "The sun stood still." For joining and advocating the geological theories in contradiction to God's Holy Word, He caused me

PREFACE. (

to stand in the earth, and showed me the formation of the rocks. For my other sins He suspended me in space, and for my sins in spiritism He permitted Satan, the author of all spiritism, to take possession of my body; but, blessed be His Holy Name, though He punished me, He loved me, and I am to-day the great monument of redeeming love. May His love, kind reader, be with you.

R. H. LEONARD.

Beaumont, Sept. 3, 1883.

RECOMMENDATIONS.

Beaumont, Texas, September 18, 1883. Messrs. Whittet & Shepperson, Richmond, Va. :

Dear Sirs, — Mr. R. H. Leonard sends you a work of which he is the author. Its contents may strike you as eccentric and peculiar, but they are simply the outcome of his own bitter experience, as can be verified by this community. Having been raised under spiritualistic influence, and studied the matter carefully nearly all of my life, I am convinced that what might be called Mr. Leonard's "theories" are truly an expose of fallacies of spiritists, and I am inclined to believe that his work will do much good towards the obstruction of Satan's work in blinding the people through the so-called spiritualistic mystery.

. Mr. Leonard is a member of the Methodist Episcopal church here, and is regarded as a devoted Christian man. Very respectfully, etc.,

Beaumont, Texas, September 26, 1883. Messrs. Whittet & Shepperson, Richmond, Va. :

It is with pleasure that I recommend to you our esteemed friend and brother, Rev. R. H. Leonard, as being in every way worthy of your highest confidence. He is a remarkable man, with a most remarkable experience, but nevertheless a true man and a true Christian.

He was born in England nearly fifty years ago, and was reared a good, pious boy; but moved to Beaumont, Texas, when a youth about twenty years old, and has made this his

RECOMMENDATIONShome ever since. Here (Beaumont) he selected law as a profession, which he prosecuted with great energy and success. As a lawyer, he is respected both for his learning and his ability as a practitioner. He has a lucrative practice and no mean reputation. He feels the truth of the lines —

" God moves in a mysterious way His wonders to perform " —

has been verified in him.

I will now pass over his experience, as that subject is treated by himself in his book. He feels called by God topreach the gospel of Jesus Christ, and that he has undertaken to do. And this brings me to contemplate the man as a Christian and a preacher. That he has been converted is beyond a doubt. No one has ever doubted it here. If turning* from bad to good- — from a hater of religion to a lover — evidences a regenerated heart, he certainly has one. And if a long and bitter repentance is a sign of being " born again," he surely has been " born again." If loving God's sanctuary, constant attendance on public worship, delighting in prayermeetings, class-meetings, and love-feasts, and proclaiming God's wondrous love and mercy, and the miracles of His grace, and the great things God has done for his soul, — if all these things are the signs of a Christian, he is certainly a Christian. He is well informed in all the leading schools of theology, but he is a Methodist throughout. He preaches with acceptability. He being in my charge, I can safely say he is a man of purest motives.

To conclude : As a man, he is respected ; as a lawyer, he is honored ; as a Christian, he is beloved ; and as a preacher he bids fair to accomplish much good.

Yours truly,

J. T. Bbowning, Pastor Methodist Episcopal Church South, Beaumont, Texas.

CONTENTS,

Part First

The various creeds and philosophies. — The mechanical philosophy. — Nebular theory. — The Holy, Blessed, and Glorious Trinity. — The creation of the heaven and earth. — Heaven and where situated. — " The Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters." — "Let there be light." — The coal bed theory. — Theory of the rocks. — The flood. — Third day. — Fourth day. — When the morning stars sang together. — Fifth day. — Sixth day. — Man created in the image of God, 13

Part Second

Early experience. — Walton Common. — Shining host of heaven. — Destruction of my goodness. — God's mercy. — Spiritism and mediums,— Possession and suffering.— Grand Assize.— Voice of Almighty God.— God's love.— "Sealed in heaven." — "Worthy the Lamb." — Angel's visit. — The promise " Shall be." — Satanic possession. — The word of the

• Lord.— Blasphemies of Satan. — The Lord. — "The Lord's."

Formations of Satan.— Passage through Satan's body. — The woman and her child. — Triune Majesty of heaven. — Angels' flight and speed.— The Lord of Hosts (appearance of).— Colors.— Angels.— Archangels.— Eaphael.—" To die," "To die." — " I have borne you in My arms/' etc. — " I love him."

Contents

— "The advent." — Swedenborgiariism. — Prayers answered at once. — Satan punished. — " From the throne," — Vision of the Almighty and adoring angels. — Heaven uncovered, and hosts of the redeemed. — Call to the ministry. — God's goodness to me. — Victory in Grod's justice. — Verdict. — Satan the greatest of all created beings. — Formations, etc. — Revelations from Grod.— My Redeemer. — Spiritism. — Heaven. — Hell, etc., etc., 59

Part Third

The satauic phenomenon called spiritism, etc. — Various theories. — Idolatry. — Character of our Redeemer. — Who is Satan ? — Various theories concerning him. — What is he ? — The question fully answered. — A true description by an eye-witness. — Angels and archangels and the spirits of devils, by an eye- witness. — Theory of the haunted house. — Spiritism from its earliest ages up to the present time. — All its phases accounted for. — Many scenes in spiritism. — Conversations with Satan. — Extract from Adam Clark. --St. Augustine. — Prayer of St. Augustine, etc., etc., . . 101

THE BEGINNING OF THE END OE THE MYSTERY.

Part First. Theories Of The Creation

THE CREATION OF THE HEAVENS AND EARTH.—

"THE SPIKIT OF GOD MOVED UPON THE

FACE OF THE WATERS," Etc., Etc.

IT lias been observed by a learned writer, that the time is perhaps nearer than we anticipate when natural science and theology will unite in the conviction that the first chapter of Genesis stands alone among the traditions of mankind in the wonderful simplicity and grandeur of its words, and that the meaning of these words is always a meaning ahead of science, not because it anticipates the result of science, but because it is independent of them, and runs, as it were, round the outer margin of all possible discoveries. But again, this writer says that " Christians have been .accustomed to rest on the cosmogony and prophecy of the Bible." But we are now frankly told that these are valueless, and that even ministers of religion more or less sacrifice their sincerity in making them the basis of their teaching; and it must be confessed that this dereliction on the part of gospel ministers, this pandering and yielding to the so-called scientific world, and these concessions to the so-called scientific discoveries, have been the cause of more/ infidelity, more open hostility to the Bible, and the most fruitful source of the scoffer's fund, than any other; and so general has this belief become, that you will find men who scarcely have learned to read and write boldly to tell you that the Mosaic record, as to the six literal days of the creation, cannot be true, as, they say, the rocks demonstrate that the world must have been created millions of years ago, not willing to believe that those things that would have taken millions of years for their accomplishment by the ordinary course of nature, by the power of Omnipotence find their consummation in a moment of time.

Knowing as I do that the Bible is God's Holy Word, and therefore true; believing in the six literal days of creation ; believing that there is but one way as yet known to man by which all things might have had their beginning, and that man, with all his philosophy, has not been able to devise any other that will stand the test of science, all theories and dogmas to the contrary notwithstanding.

Believing also, as I do, that He who created the molecule could as easily have spoken to eternity, and a world, with its hardened crust and fiery core, rounded in form, flashing in beauty, blooming, blossoming, and fruiting like a paradise, would hnvc rushed into being, the fit abode of man, rejoicing in its appointed way, and singing like the morning star, with all that celestial host now sphered in radiant glory throughout the vast magnificence of heaven.

Regarding it as the great central truth, that "in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, and all that in them is," and upon which all true philosophy must converge, and will for ever harmonize; * having considered the importance of this subject, — the Creation, — both in its scientific and religious points of view, yet not without considering how some might think it the height of presumption on my part (one unknown to the scientific world) to presume an address upon a subject so vast, and upon which the greatest minds, having engaged all their energies, do find that, as a physical subject, it is unapproachable in its grandeur and magnitude, and too vast for the finite grasp of one, and of all men; yet, nevertheless, I think it my duty, notwithstanding these objections, to forward the truth, and still think it my duty to address you upon the subject of the creation (orthodox), being innocent, I trust, of any vain presumption, wishing you to understand that I do not sit in the* seat of the scornful, and all theories not in accordance with God's Holy Word 1 reject as unworthy the consideration of any man, and utterly worthless in every point of view, both morally and scientifically. Should I find an answer to any of the infidel questions, though accurate in every and all my premises, deductions, and inferences, I do not say that this is so and so, and this must be so, and this is the reason why the Almighty did so,

* First delivered for the benefit of the Episcopal Church.

believing, as 1 said before, that there are many ways in His infinite wisdom in which the world might have had its beginning, yet there is but one way in which all things had their beginning. The outline of this divine formula is given in the word of God, written by His servant Moses, and contained in the first and second chapters of the Book of Genesis.

Being one of those who reverently investigate the phenomena of nature, never looking upward and asking why God made things thus and so, but with the greatest reverence, seeing His wisdom and goodness in all, fully believing in the divine inspiration of the Scriptures, and that in the end all will be understood and consummated, and that then it will be that "All Thy works shall praise Thee, O Lord, and Thy saints shall bless Thee." Feeling an abhorrence to the atheistic views of the materialists and the mechancial philosophies, a deep seated antagonism to the Nebular theory, which is now being taken by many as the basis or standpoint in the presentation of all astronomical and geological data, I say by many, for I find that in the school books a Nebular system is advanced, in which the sun is made and set in the heavens before "the world was created, but whose rays could not thereafter penetrate through the mists arising from a cooling world, in antagonism to the record of the fourth day's creation, when the sun, moon, and stars were created.

But at the same time this Christian author, kindly looking towards God, the Author of all things, Christian like, desiring and looking forward to that day when science and religion, reconciling their differ ences, shall clasp hands in friendship, ascribing to ' our great Author, and laying their united achievements on the altar of His love. This will be so, this union had, when science, divested of all its infidel tendencies, and in strict accord with God's Holy Word, shall shine a science truly, and when religion can look down upon it without fear of contamination. While some are deploring the separation of what they call science and religion, I deplore man's infidelity; for science, true science, and religion, I am persuaded, will ever pleasantly dwell together in the same person ; but the hypotheses that are advanced contrary to God's Holy Word can never be received as science by the Christian mind, and will, upon investigation, be found to be as baseless and as visionary as the puerile thought that this world is built and sustained upon the back of an elephant.

"A review T of the history of the sciences, the one. atheistic and the other religious, it has been said, present to us three distinct chronological stages. The first is called a healthful separation and progress, marked b} T ascertained facts and truths. The second, a stage of mutual avoidance, filled with various hypotheses and dogmas. The third, a stage of open rupture, issuing in antagonistic speculations and creeds. Science, so-called, without religion, floundering among Nebulae and the spontaneous growth of worlds out of this Nebulae, by what is termed evolution, by means of its own laws, from an indefinite antiquity of Eons of ages past ; this is called the materialistic and Nebular system of creation ; the first formulated by Democritus, two thousand years ago, whose creed, or the elements of whose system, are as follows :

First, From nothing comes nothing ; nothing that exists can be destroyed ; all changes are due to the combination and separation of molecules.

Second, Nothing happens by chance ; every occurrence has its source from which it follows by necessity.

Third, The only existing things are the atoms and empty space ; all else is mere opinion.

Fourth, The atoms are infinite in number, and infinitely various in form; they strike together, and the lateral motions which thus arise are the beginnings of worlds.

Fifth, The variety of all things depends upon the variety of their atoms, in number, size and aggregation.

Sixth, The soul consists of tine, smooth, round atoms, like those of lire ; these are the most mobile of all ; they impenetrate the whole body, and in their motions the phenomena of life arise.

Thus investing inanimate matter with the attributes of motion, life, power, and intelligence ; thus denying and ignoring our great Creator's agency in the creation and government of all tilings, and who, standing behind immensity, gives form, life, power, motion, and intelligence to all, directing, maintaining, and sustaining, by the word of His power, the worlds, as well as the molecule. Thus denying, I say, His being, and many blaspheming His Holy Name, denying the existence of angel and of spirit, denying the resurrection of the body to ljfe, the rewards of virtue, and the punishment of vice.

Analogous to this, in some particulars, is the Laplace theory of a universal fire mist, condensing and eddying into a central igneous body like the sun, breaking into rotating rings, and cooling into spheres and worlds.

On the other hand, the religious world, taking the Holy Bible as true, present the dogma of immediate creation, or the instantaneous starting forth of the heavens and earth, and all that in them are, at the fiat of our great Jehovah ; while some of the Christian world have conceived that the word " days," mentioned in Genesis as the creative days, means vast periods of time, measured by millions of years ; others, again, believing in the six literal days of creation, have taken shelter at times from the storm of so-called scientific men, who pretend that they dofind in the geologic structure of the earth such data as disproves the six literal days of creation. With all who do not believe in the six literal days of creation I beg to differ, and to present my reasons therefor.

Believing, first, that when God says that on the fourth day He created the sun, moon, and stars, and appointed the sun to rule the day; that they were created on that day, and that that day meant the time as now, between morning and evening; and that the words had a retrospective application to the division of time called day and night, mentioned at the end of the first day's creation ; or in other words, the sun and moon were made to rule the divisions of time made on the first day, and called day and

night I also suggest that the words, M Lot them be for signs, and for seasons, and for days, and tor, ■■s." have some reference to the meaning of the rd day, I also look at the Lord's repeated admonition to the Jews to observe the Sabbath and to keep it holy, declaring the punishment of death to those that violated its sat Riling it a covenant,

xt Him, the Lord, and the children of Israel: "tor in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, and on the seventh day lie rested, and was df and also in the fourth commandment, tching and commanding them to keep it holy for the sar. - that in six days the Lord

made heaven and earth. . md all that in them

sled the seventh day, wlu the Lord

blessed the seventh day, and hallowed it." Which words I do interpret to mean, that when God says He :he heavens ami i.and all things

therein, in six rs, He. in effect, says that He .toil all things contained in heaven and earth, heaven ami earth also, within those six days; and thus we find r. strei gth in the rendition that "in the beginning" means once npon a time. Or at the beginning of the time. Relieving also that I do - Jieitude on the part of our Creator, that Id believe in His holy sabbaths, and in the \ literal nd whilst I thus be-

D, I do reverently pause to consid* hen

looking upon the heavens, and its immensity, the

lis hands. 1 do admire: when He ri the world with tempest 1 do tremble; so when my - I do reverentially listen, and when

He commands, I trust I do obey. You will join witii me, my friends, in saying, whatever may be your religious belief, that when the Almighty speaks it is proper for man to attend.

Some time in the year 1874, Professor Tyndal, who is claimed to be a great light in science, a great meteor indeed upon the horizon of intellectuality, in what is called his Belfast address, after wandering through the mazes of materialism, or such parts as suited his judgment, presents the following as his conclusion, and as a confession of his faith. He says: "Abandoning all disguise, the confession I feel bound to make before you is, that I prolong the vision backward across the boundary of experiential evidence, and discern in that matter, which we in our ignorance, and notwithstanding our professed reverence for its Creator, have hitherto covered with opprobrium, the promise and potency of every form and quality of life;" and again, showing what are or may be his opinions, propounds the following questions: "Did Kant, Laplace, and William Herschel, quit their legitimate spheres when they prolonged the intellectual vision beyond the boundary of experience and propounded the Nebular theory P

Before we consider this last question, let us return to the "promise and potency to give form and quality to life, to be found in matter," in which I beg leave to borrow the words and wisdom of others.

" What am I then, and from whence? I nothing know. But that I am, and therefore do conclude that some one eternal must be ;

Or else from whence, from shapelessncss, these forms so glorious ?

From repose, profound, these boundless flights ? Has matter done it all ? Has matter judgment and genius ? Is it deeply learned in mathematics, and framed such laws As Milton, merely to guess at, made immortal ? If so, how each atom now at me laughs, Who thinks a man superior to a clod ; What art to frame, what council to conduct, With greater far than human skill ;" "But if this be so, then whence this paradox, That I, its crowning glory, feel such limitations? Why I so finite and so feeble, while it so great ? Is a part greater than the whole? is each Separate atom of my body greater by itself Than when in union blended ? If this be so, then what contradiction, What sport, what jest to make me. And if thus, then,

Let her who is the beginning and womb of all, Great nature, take and forcing wide apart Those blind beginnings that have made me man ; Dash them anew together, at her will, Through all her cycles."

Whilst some are looking into the inferior types of animal life, some to the egg, the molecule, the appetences, the internal moulds, and into the entombed dynasties of the past for the origin of human life; some tracing and unfolding human speech into its elementary phonetic and rudimentary types, as it were, ere civilization had begun, and whilst in the philosophy of some there is but one continued cosmic growth, from nebula to planet, and from planet to nebula, from cosmos to chaos, and from chaos to cosmos, we can all agree that, " let science do her utmost, let her climb step by step the rounds of the ladder of knowledge, there is still one step higher to which she has not yet attained — the great First Cause has not jet been reached'';" "and let science, if she can, resolve the whole course of nature into one continuous process of correlative forces" — their investiture is from on high — content am I to know that there is a world not so far away as some have supposed, as real and substantial, more beauteous, richly diversified and adorned, possessing principalities, thrones, and dominions, having seas, rivers, and cities, with millions of happy living beings, not subject to the laws that govern this universe, and into which the philosophy of man has never entered, and that the true philosophy will ultimately blend and unite science and religion, and in all and through all will be seen, felt, and ultimately understood the sure presence, work, and logic of one Almighty Mind ever running through the whole creation, ever flushing with life all living creatures; and should it not be an idle dream, but find its realization in the future, that science may ultimately carry its torch to the very verge of the knowable, until it be quenched in the great sea of the unknowable, and science has no more light to shed ; thought then poised on the wings of knowledge that science has afforded, God acknowledged in all, philosophy by religion led, now on the verge of time, now bordering on eternity, now piercing that spiritual realm beyond that faith has peopled, by God's love redeemed, ever back from its echoing shores the glad answer is returned, the vast ocean of knowledge, the vast ocean of love is beyond.

The Christian believes in the creation as revealed in holy Scripture ; others believe in the atomic theories, and the evolution of worlds therefrom; some believe that, through the refinement of man's intellectual nature, man may ultimately penetrate the veil and commune with our Maker ; some believe in a continued and ascending line of creation from man to the powers and principalities, to the angel and the archangel and the grand hierarchies of heaven, from earth to heaven, and from heaven to the heaven of heavens, and onward to the throne of our great and glorious Lord God.

While others again are denying the Being of God, some acknowledging Him, but denying our Redeemer and His Divine nature, and so*me His personality, some denying the being and personality of the Holy Spirit, grateful am I to know (eschewing the word " belief" from my vocabulary,) that there is a Holy Spirit, distinct in His personality from the Father Almighty and the Son — a beloved Saviour, distinct in His personality from the Father and the Holy Spirit — and that, distinct in His personality, there is one whom we call God the Father Almighty, undefinable, incomprehensible, eternal, and unapproachable, who only hath immortality dwelling in the light, whom, says the apostle, no man hath seen nor can see, and upon whom, it is believed, no created eye of man or angel could ever look, until He shall so subdue the unendurable majesty of His presence that man may penetrate the glory to the blest abode.