Spirit Teachings - William Stainton Moses

The books you name were all added and arranged from existing sources

by Ezra's authority, save and except those which were afterwards added— those called by the names of Haggai, Zechariah, and Malachi. Haggai was concerned in the compilation of the book of Ezra, and he and Malachi finally completed the Old Testament by the addition of the later books.

They, with Zechariah, were much in communion, having been the privileged attendants of Daniel when he saw his great vision and received his commission from Gabriel, the Archangel of God, the Chief of the Ministering Angels, and from Michael the Archangel, the Chief of the Hosts of the Lord against the adversaries. Of a surety Daniel the seer was a highly-favored recipient of Divine inspiration. The great God be thanked for His mercy, and for the manifestation of His power.

Is that the vision recorded in Daniel x. ?

That by the banks of the Hiddekel.

The same. Then selections only were chosen from the utterances of the prophets?

Only selections, and they chiefly for some hidden meaning, which does not lie on the surface. As the open vision was about to cease, selections were made from the records of the past, and the canon was closed until the days when the voice of spirit-teaching should sound again amongst men.

You speak of Daniel as a great seer or medium. Do you know if the gift was common?

He was a very favored recipient of spirit power. Such became more rare as the spiritual age was about to close. But men cultivated the power more then. They valued more and knew more of spirit power and teaching.

Vast masses of trance addresses, visions, and the like, such as those preserved in the Old Testament, must have been lost?

Assuredly. There was no need to preserve them. And many that were preserved are now excluded from your Bible.

[A few days later (November 16th, 1873) I asked that the promised communication about the idea of God might be given.]

We have already spoken in passing of the conception of Deity in your Bible. We desire now to draw out more clearly this fact, that the growth of the idea of God was a gradual one: that the God of Abraham was an inferior conception to the God of Job: that the cardinal truth which we have 194