Monday 11 November 2024
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If the messages truly came from God Vassula Ryden would not dare to alter them

One of the main objections that Vassula Ryden’s critics make to the idea that the True Life in God messages come from God is that they are altered after they are received. If the messages truly came from God, they argue,

(1) they would not need alteration;

(2) Vassula Ryden would not dare to alter them.

The response to (1) is that God is not writing the messages. God is giving his messages to Vassula Ryden and she is writing them down. As a result, it is perfectly natural that they might need alteration after they were initially written so as to better capture the message being communicated to Vassula Ryden by God. For example, Vassula’s fiercest critics often instance a message received by Vassula Ryden on October 10, 1987.

The message – they claim, on the basis of photocopies of the relevant message that Vassula Ryden distributed before the messages were ever published in book form – originally read, «I will bend their knees and they will worship and honour My Mother.» . The messages has now been altered to read, «I will bend their knees and they will venerate and honour My Mother’. This shows – they claim – that the True Life in God messages do not come from God because God would never, ever say that people should worship the Virgin Mary, as only God should be worshipped. But someone like Vassula Ryden – whose English was not great in 1987, and whose theological knowledge was very limited – could have easily fallen into using the word worship to express the idea that we should venerate. Indeed, she may have had no choice: she may not have actually been aware of the word ‘venerate’, or its meaning, at the time she was trying to express what God was giving her to understand on
October 10, 1987. ‘Worship’ may have been the only word available to her in her vocabulary at the time to express that idea.

The response to (2) is that God Himself told Vassula she could alter the messages whenever and wherever she thought were deficient in articulating what He wanted them to say. In an unpublished message of October 12, 1986, God told Vassula: «Every word that you feel is not right and that bothers you, feel free to correct it. I, God, give you that feeling» As the last sentence shows, the fact that Vassula makes alterations to the messages, God is not involved and Vassula is making up her own mind what the message ‘should’ say. After all, the True Life in God messages tell us that «without Me, you are unable even to wink your eyes» (December 27, 1988). So whenever Vassula realises that the way she had written down a message is deficient and could be improved, she is realising this with God’s help – so any alterations she does make are inspired by God, just as the message she is altering was originally taken down under God’s inspiration.

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