Fifty Years a Medium – Chapter 13, 1/13 by Estelle Roberts
CHAPTER THIRTEEN,
WAR
In October 1938, Red Cloud made one of his rare predictions and it was wrong. He said there would be no war. I have been many times asked how Red Cloud could have been thus in error, and have never had difficulty in giving what seems to me a satisfactory reply. Indeed, the answer is to be found in Red Cloud’s own teaching.
Always he has taught that there is no such thing as destiny, that nothing in this life is preordained. It therefore follows that any prophecy that is dependent on the actions of men for its fulfilment must be an expression of probability rather than certainty. It could not be otherwise in a world in which events are shaped and re-shaped by man with each day that passes.
Man has complete freedom of will and action. It is how he uses these freedoms that determines the course of his life, of the community in which he lives and, ultimately, the course of nations. Neither man nor spirit can say with certainty that on a given date certain things will come to pass,
because the future is dependant on man, and the exercising of his free will is always an unknown factor. Ninety-nine times out of a hundred he will always react to a given set of circumstances in the same way. The hundredth time, for some reason, or even no reason, he will depart from it.
It is because he teaches these principles that Red Cloud will rarely commit himself to predicting future events. Explaining this to us he once said he could gaze upon the future, with all its diversity of possibilities laid out like a landscape at his feet. He likened the prospect to being seated on a hilltop whence he could look down into the valley below. Winding along the floor of the valley is a road leading to a village.
At intervals along the road, hidden from the wayfarer but visible to Red Cloud from all his all- seeing perch, are many turnings. Looking down, Red Cloud can see that if the wayfarer keeps steadfastly along the road, he must eventually reach the village. But if, pausing at one of the side turnings, he is enticed by the distractions it offers to leave the main road, he will arrive at an entirely different destination.
The decision whether or not the wayfarer turns aside rests with the man alone. There is no unseen force acting on him, compelling him to conform to a pre-destined pattern. Sloth, greed, lust for power, any one of a score of temptations, may determine the direction he takes.
The decision is his and nobody, not even the man himself, can say in advance which way he will go for certain. The prophet, therefore, can base his forecast only on probabilities, on a knowledge of the facts and a careful weighing of them.
It was this that Red Cloud did in October, 1938. He could see the direction in which mankind was heading. He could see the temptations and the dangers. Yet he believed man would keep to the path that would steer clear of war. The choice of direction was man’s and he chose ill. Eleven months later Europe was plunged into a chaos of man’s making; one which was soon to encompass the whole world.