February 25th, 1916
Received by:James Padgett.
Washington D.C.
I am here, your father.
I have been listening to your grandmother's message and was interested in observing the way in which you received it, for it is a deep and important communication of truth that is not generally known to mortals. We in the lower spheres, of course, do not know these truths so extensively as do the spirits of the Celestial Spheres, but I have heard the Master discourse on the subject of God, and what your grandmother wrote you is, in short, what he has explained to us, but of course, in a way that we could better and to a greater extent comprehend the truth than can you.
There is one thing that I have observed in the case of these, who are called scientists and who believe only the material, and also in the case of those who claim to be infidels, when they come into spirit life, and that is, that very soon they realize that there is or must be a God, and that their God of nature, or their man-made God, does not supply the word, if I may thus express it, which they find to exist here. They, of course, do not get a conception of the nature of God in the beginning, but they know very soon after they come over that there is a God other and different from what they conceived Him to be when they had any conception of Him on earth and when they denied that there was any God, and they soon realize the absolute necessity for there being one. And when they had made man his own God, they see many spirits of men in such conditions of darkness and suffering and helplessness that they readily realize that man is not God.
So I say the first truth that enters their mind and souls when they become spirits is that there is a God, although they do not know His nature and attributes.
So you see there is only one little veil of flesh between the vaunted mind of mortals that proclaim there is no God but nature or no God at all, and the mind conscious of its weakness and littleness as it exists in the spirit world.
But I must stop writing on this subject or you will think that I am going to write you a lecture, which I don't intend to do now.
With all my love, I am your loving father,
John H. Padgett.