Source: https://www.bertha-dudde.org/en/proclamation/6923

6923 Free will.... strokes of fate....

September 19, 1957: Book 74

Whichever path you take on earth, everything will fatefully approach you which shall help you to mature your souls. You can indeed shape your earthly life of your own free will and thus believe that you have determined your earthly path yourselves. But you will not be able to avert what affects you fatefully, and I Myself take over this control of destiny, always in accordance with your situation in life created by free will. For you can certainly create the external circumstances for yourselves, but they are not all too decisive in influencing your spiritual development. Yet through My will you will again and again be placed in situations where you can make the decision of will which determines your soul's fate.... These are mostly experiences which you yourselves do not desire and would not create for yourselves if it were within your power.... in which you are not directly involved. Indirectly, however, you have caused such events yourselves because I deem them necessary due to your spiritual low, which, however, you have caused yourselves. And so it is these fateful interventions which make you doubt a person's 'free will'. If they are somehow prevented from carrying out their plans, they believe that they have been deprived of their free will through fateful interventions.... But 'will' is not to be confused with 'possibility of execution'. Man can direct the will according to his discretion, even if it is impossible for him to put it into action. And the will should therefore be stimulated to express itself in a certain direction.... which is precisely what fateful life situations are supposed to help with. The course of earthly life is not as important as the influence such a life situation gains on the soul.... how the soul feels impressed by it and which path it takes.... For at the end of earthly life it is completely irrelevant what earthly successes the human being has achieved through apparently his own effort of will.... But if the soul can book a success for itself, then it is truly only a blessing if it has been achieved through severe strokes of fate. And thus the human being can shape his own life of his own free will, but he will not be able to prevent My will from intervening where it is necessary for the sake of his soul. Thus I apply My will without, however, curtailing the human being's own will, for this is and remains free, and although his hands are sometimes tied so that he does not succeed in carrying out what he wants, he nevertheless cannot be forced to will otherwise, and this will alone is decisive. The will alone is evaluated. It is the will which earns the soul progress or relapse. And so that the will becomes active in the spiritual sense I Myself so often intervene in people's fates.... well recognizing what blessing this can mean for the human being's soul. Your will and thinking will not be forced, neither from My side nor from My adversary's side, but it will be made easy for you by Me to direct your will and thinking correctly by touching you in such a way that a limit is set for your own strength but which you can cross if you take the path to Me.... This alone is My purpose through all kinds of strokes of fate, that you turn to Me of your own free will for My support, that you thereby acknowledge Me, that your earthly existence is not lived in vain, that you reach your aim....

Amen

Translated by Doris Boekers