397. 8134. ....[Jer. 10:] verse 5. Therefore, people, "be not afraid," because they can do nothing that they are not allowed to do for the sake of mankind's punishments and temptations. For while they are being allowed to punish or tempt, they think that power to be their own, and to come from their own planning, because they are allowed to act in this way. But really, when one is allowed to learn of their attempts, and their plans, even their thoughts, as I have been granted by the Divine mercy of God the Messiah to learn, one really cannot help laughing at how they think that everything is due to themselves, and even convince themselves of it, and cannot bear to be told that they are dead, and can achieve nothing whatsoever with all their imagined foresight - even when they are shown clearly that they cannot say, much less do, anything whatever from themselves. This has also very often been granted me to show them vividly, but after some indignation, they at once forget the experience and return to that ridiculous imagination that they know and can do, some of them, everything. These words that I am now writing are also now in their midst, and they are becoming very indignant. But whenever it pleases God the Messiah, the ability to speak, to think, to act, is taken from them so obviously that it cannot possibly be denied. And after a while they are given permission, and then, to the extent of that permission, they become enraged. It is evil spirits I am speaking of. [Prudence; Spirit]