Message from Saul, published in The Gospel of God’s Love, on page 211.
“I know that I am looked upon, by many, as a sinner and violator of God’s laws. I did not strive to follow God’s laws, as I should have, and did many things contrary to his laws and consequently, I became in discord with God’s will. My knowledge of these laws was limited to the teachings of Moses and the prophets, as they were given to me by tradition and word of mouth. The books which are part of the Old Testament were not written in my time.
“The Old Testament contains many sayings which were written long after the times they purport to have occurred, and many things therein declared never had any existence except in the minds of men who, at much later periods, conceived that it might be wise to write these things. Many alleged incidents connected with my life never happened, they were merely fictions written by subsequent writers. We had very few writings in the form of manuscripts, we depended upon tradition and memory.
“The history of my life and doings was not written at the time it puports to have been written. I was a real person and a king, and some records of me and my people were actually written, but they were very few. As time went by, imagination and ingenuity added to them, in the way of tradition, and then finally those books as now contained in the Bible were compiled from these writings and traditions.
“The story of my experience with the so-called “Witch of Endor,” was not written at the time, but it’s a fact that I had visited her and had an experience somewhat similar to that related in the Bible. With me at the time of my visit were some of my followers; they saw and heard what took place and after my death they described the event to my countrymen. But there was no accurate history kept of the scene. People of those days had retentive memories, and for long years afterwards this incident of my life was handed down from generation to generation; some parts were written by certain scribes and other parts by other scribes.
“I merely write this to show you that you need not give credence to the supposed truth of many sayings of the Old Testament, for many of these accounts have no basis in fact.” Amen