Chapter Eight
CHAPTER EIGHT
The Devil’s Prophecies
FURTHER, if they pretend also to prophesy, let no one heed. For often they tell us days beforehand of brothers who are coming to see us; and they do come. It is not from kindness to their hearers that they do this, but in order to induce these to trust them, and thereafter, having them in their power, to destroy them. Wherefore we must not listen to them, but even as they speak must repulse them; for we have no need of them. For what wonder is it if they whose bodies are of subtler nature than men’s, when they have seen some of the brethren beginning a journey, outrun them and announce them? So does a horseman bring word, outstripping those who go on foot. So here, too, we need not marvel at them. They foreknow naught of what has not yet happened; God alone knows all things before they come to birth. But these, like thieves, run ahead and bring word what they have seen. Even at this moment to how many do they make known our doings, how we are assembled and hold discourse against them, before any goes from us to give the news! This, too, a fleet-footed boy might do, outstripping a slower.
What I mean is this: If someone begins to travel from the Thebaid or any other place, they do not know if he will travel till he starts. But when they see him on the way, they run ahead and bring word before he comes; and so it is that after some days the traveler comes. Yet often enough their news is false, for the travelers turn back.
So, too, at times they chatter about the water of the river. Seeing great rains falling in the parts of Ethiopia, and knowing that from there comes the flooding of the river, they run ahead and tell it before the water reaches Egypt. Men could tell it too, if they could run as these. And as David’s scout (cf. 2 Kgs. 18:24), mounting a height, saw better who was coming than one who stayed below; and as even he who ran ahead told before the rest not things unborn, but things that had come to pass and were on the way; so these choose to hurry and bring news to others simply to deceive them. But if in the meantime Providence arrange aught concerning the waters or the travelers, as it can, then the demons have spoken falsely and they who heeded them are deceived.
It was thus that the Greek oracles arose and men were formerly deceived by the demons, but it is thus, too, that the deceit is ended henceforward. For the Lord came, who has made void the demons and all their wickedness. For of themselves they know nothing, but they see what knowledge others have, and like thieves take it and twist it. They are guessers rather than prophets. Therefore, if sometimes they foretell such things truly, even so no one need wonder at them. For physicians also who have experience of diseases, when they meet the same disease in others, can often tell beforehand, judging from experience. And again, seamen and farmers, looking at the state of the weather, from their experience prophesy that there will be a storm or fine weather. No one would say because of this that they prophesy by supernatural inspiration, but by experience and practice. Wherefore, if the demons too sometimes say these same things by conjecture, they are not to be admired or heeded on that account. For what profit is it to the hearers to learn from them days beforehand what is coming; or what manner of eagerness to know such things, even could one know them truly? For this makes not for virtue, neither is it any mark of goodness. For none of us is judged for that [which] he knows not, and none is blessed for that [which] he has learned and knows; but on these things each has to be judged—if he has held fast the Faith, and truly kept the Commandments.
Therefore, we must not make much of these things, nor live our life of hardship and toil for the sake of knowing the future, but in order to please God by living well. And we must pray, not in order to know the future, nor is that the reward we must ask for our hard life, but that Our Lord may be our fellow-worker in conquering the devil. But if ever we care to know the future, let us be pure in mind. For I am sure that, when a soul is pure on all sides and in her natural state, she becomes clear-sighted and can see more and further than the demons, having the Lord to show her, as was the soul of Eliseus when watching the doings of Giezi, and seeing the armies that stood by them. (Cf. 4 Kgs. 5:26; 6:17).