THE GREAT GOSPEL OF JOHN
VOLUME 5
Jesus' Precepts and Deeds through His Three Years of Teaching
Jesus in the region of Caesarea Philippi. (cont.) Gospel of Matthew, Chapter 16
- Chapter 103 -
Roklus gets upset about Stahar's spiritual blindness.
1
(Roklus) "It was only here that I got to know once again a true God in a perfect, best and wisest person, and He alone is this and apart from Him there is no other; for in Him alone I find all those characteristics united which according to the judgment of common sense a god must have, otherwise He cannot possibly be a god. I recognized that and now recognize it as a Gentile and as a former atheist most actively perfectly in me "and this old, strict Jewish servant of God may not recognize such a thing! But why does he not recognize it? Because he has neither sought the truth nor even less the true God!
2
I have travelled almost half the Earth in order to find the truth and a possible true God; but all my great sacrifices were in vain! I gave up all further search and threw myself into the arms of worldly wisdom and soon found satisfaction in it with my heroic spirit and so much of an inner, nonetheless very valuable light from the writings of Socrates, Plato and Aristotle that I began to perceive thereby that only through inner love and wisdom can a person form a transcendental life which will not be as easily destructible in the future as the life of thoroughly decaying flesh.
3
Here out of the mouth of the Lord of all life I heard the same teaching, now illuminated through and through with the clearest light of life! The Lord Himself came to me, I, who had long searched in vain, and gave me here in the nearest vicinity of my own homeland everything that I had sought so long in vain in all the world with many sacrifices and much effort.
4
But if I have been able to find the eternal and most living truth so quickly here and recognized it as such, why then not the old Jewish servant of God? Because he, as I have experienced only too clearly not only from the conversation of both the Pharisees strolling together, but also among that of a thousand others, has never sought the truth either for himself nor even less for anyone else!
5
Because of his selfish and domineering intentions he was always only the greatest enemy of all truth and enlightenment of a people, but he has come here now and immediately found himself in a true ocean of truths of the highest and very most profound type. His skin could not possibly resist it; but his spirit has now awakened a little out of the old lethargy by the scent of wine and showed us all now clearly and distinctly that he is still a die-hard Pharisee in himself!
6
He is certainly a crooked old tree, which is more difficult to straighten than a young one; but with him even a slow straightening undertaken with all caution will certainly be a task fully in vain! I do not want to deny to you, my dear friend Floran, that in the end even this crooked old trunk will be straight! But he will have to keep away from the wine in the future, otherwise nothing satisfactory will come into being with the straightening of his arch-Jewish trunk!"