The Great Gospel of John
Volume 2
Jesus' Precepts and Deeds through His Three Years of Teaching
First journey of the Lord: Kis - landing place at Sibarah - Nazareth
- Chapter 84 -
Chiwar's testimony about Jesus and John.
After which the speaker Chiwar says: "What for such foolish grind for us initiates? Was not I a servant in the Temple from my eleventh to my twenty-fifth years, knowing only too well how things stand there? Had I been bent on maliciousness, what betrayal could not I have wrought already. But I thought to myself: The blind folk still is attached to the Temple - as hitherto!
2
Why should I take away the people's faith, on which in my opinion it still places its unlimited hopes and on account of whom we priests still have it so good in a worldly sense? If we should now tune our strings too tightly then they shall snap and our song shall be done for, after which we can start looking for fishing nets and begin to fish where the sea is bottomless.
3
How shall we counter the power of our daily more numerous enemies? Do you think that the Temple is then going to protect us? Don't entertain such hopes, because a great many Jews already dwell in Rome in stately mansions studded with great treasures scooped up in the Temple illegally! These shall be as little our advocates as the present Templers who like swallows are holding their wings extended already to take at the first opportunity a journey over the great sea to Italy in Europe, not intending a return to Asia.
4
Our cherished advice therefore should be to firstly carry out our priestly office with as much dignity and composure as possible, and secondly to well heed the Roman "In medio beati" (The middle way is the right one), otherwise we might have to in a few years transfer to fishing!
5
Besides all that, two men in this time make their appearance whose eternally imponderable might would suffice to in a few years win the entire earth for themselves with their doctrine. Firstly John, who is no longer among us mortals, whose doctrine nearly half of Juda and Galilee converted to and still is doing so even more stubbornly now than it was in his life-time. Herod obviously in his lecherousness could take the head of the manifest prophet, but can he also be able to do that to his spirit and the spirit of his godly teaching? I shall never believe so, because only through persecution does every good doctrine become great and invincible!
6
John indeed has been physically moved out of the way, but in his place stepped the renowned Jesus, compared to whom John is what a molehill is to the mighty Mount Ararat! His superhumanly gentle and measurelessly benevolent, most liberal appearance and demeanour; his profoundest wisdom in every phrase of his speeches to whose purely divine, and easy to grasp truth no man of any intellect of even pea size unctuousness disputes its heavenly descent for even a moment; and finally his deeds, of which every man must say this is possible only to God!
7
What will we or can we undertake against him? We can indeed make a nuisance of ourselves against such extraordinary manifestations, but by no means for our benefit but only our greatest harm.
8
Hence what we need here is our most clever behaviour and to never look to the present but only the future, or we shall be finished overnight!"
9
Says the Chief: "What you are saying is that one should not have this Jesus apprehended, but nicely hearken until he will have fully destroyed us?"
10
Says Chiwar: "Apprehend Him if you can! What have we already undertaken against him, but to what avail? I say unto you: to nothing other than his enriching himself by a couple of thousand disciples, the number by which we are impoverished, and that we nearly managed to be skipped over by the sharp swords of the Romans who regard him for an actual God!
11
Besides that and something not experienced on earth before, he always keeps two angels in his company who with all their apparent tenderness and boyish impotence possess a power and strength of which our exceedingly abbreviated wisdom has never dreamt yet. And upon this one you want to lay your hands to attack him? I beseech you, be whatever you will but not insane! You are paralysed before you can take one step of evil intent against him. Or do you think he doesn't know what we are doing here? I say you are mistaken sky high. All these here are witnesses of how a few days ago he knew every smallest detail of what we said and quietly decided at midnight.
12
It is one thing to be told about a great storm at sea but quite another to have withstood it! I tell you just attend to your office quietly and without fuss, and no unpleasantness shall assail you from any direction. If however you proceed tyrannically then we guarantee that not only your Capernaum but also all of Jerusalem shall be toppled into a heap! Going about it cleverly we may yet keep Jerusalem going for another fifty years at best also bring about its crash in a few weeks by our untimely foolishness?
13
The choice is yours to do as you please; it is only a cat's bound for us over to the Romans. They are our friends, praise God, but for you the path may become a quite extended one. Mankind's cleverness always manages to present the hollow nut as full. What are you expecting to fix out from the greedy Temple, which has been a completely hollow nut for a long time? Is it not much more clever to stick to the mergent that contains something? I say to you openly that all the mightiest Roman lords now let themselves be led by Jesus like lambs. If he has them and his truly godly doctrine on his side then what are we to undertake against him? Just the merest intention to seize him, and you are as good as grabbed yourself, and no man shall do a thing for your release. But if you behave intelligently then the Romans shall be your friends too, and your existence shall be a good one, like that of Jairus! But go and do as you will and the results will show whether our advice was friendly or otherwise!"
14
Chiwar's talk did not miss its mark and the Chief settled down and began to see that Chiwar as well as Roban were completely right, promising to faithfully follow their advice. And so the first storm in the Synagogue came to a happy end.