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 130 -
Teaching hints of the Lord for the spreading of the gospel.
1
(The Lord) "We do not want at all to announce loudly in advance and claim: Things will be exactly so!, for if the great work should succeed, even I may not cast a sharp glance into the second future, so that between Me and the people created by Me not even the least shall come that would be able to have any influence on the freest will of the people.
2
We have therefore nothing to do on our part except to simply teach the people the full arrival of the kingdom of God, of the pure love and truth, if needed with the small addition of some miracle which however has to be done only as a good deed and never as some punishment or even angry revenge. And not even that when we have to tolerate the greatest adversity by the blind and thus also very ungrateful people. Whoever of you does that would create only evil instead of good, and I would be forced to take away all My mercy from him and to look at him in the end with angry eyes.
3
This teaching of Mine is thus to be given quite without any external and even less through an inner compulsion to the people and nations in the whole world, and the miracles are only to be performed when the people firstly have a living faith, convincing the whole heart and not plagued by any external doubt and possess otherwise much experience and much knowledge in various things.
4
No miracles are to be performed before very gullible and superstitious people, because they would rob them of every spark of their already weak free will! And then this new religion of Mine from heaven would be no more useful than their old superstition; for they would begin to give the words from heaven some particular, divinely magical effect, allow it to happen to them and very passively act in all things and places and leave all action according to the religion to a very pious and good man.
5
Yes, in the end they would become just as lethargic as there are many of the prosperous Jews nowadays who are even too lethargic to pray to God themselves, but instead they pay the Pharisees and also other people so that they would pray for them, since they themselves have too little time and it would also be far too inconvenient for them to mumble out the many, many prayers, long as a piece of string, themselves.
6
But once it would get to such a pitiful point with this religion of Mine, then a general judgment as in the days of Noah which leads everything back to the old state of truth cannot be far away.
7
Therefore teach all the people the purest truth and forget all mystical and magical elements, otherwise everything will have been in vain! For if a person comes out of the activity of his free will and transforms into a type of pious lethargy, he will stop being a human being. Instead he will stand under the dignity of an animal and rather resemble a deaf and wild shrub, which simply vegetates fruitlessly under the external influence of the light of the sun and its warmth as a wild shoot and is capable of almost no necessary independent activity any longer.
8
With such people love also then grows cool and the poor neighbor in the end becomes an annoying fly to them which bothers them in their worldly sleep of comfort. And concerning the love for God they then pay all sorts of sacrifices and prayers. Oh tell Me, what is the future then for such people in the kingdom of God in their hearts?! I do not say that this state will necessarily happen to My religion as well, as has now happened to the Pharisees and Jews; but it may appear, and not in the too far future if you as the bearers of this religion do not go to work fully cleverly enough.
9
For I do not turn you into shackled, but totally free messengers of the announcement of the kingdom of God on Earth. You should well receive the direction from Me at all times what should be done and said "but never with compulsion, since you are above all My dear and now fully first little children!
10
I will force My will according to My wisdom upon neither you nor anyone else, but instead only announce it to you through word and counsel; you must then make it yours yourself through your will and through deeds, and indeed through all sorts of self denial in the various matters of this world.
11
For you now know indeed that all the world and its multiple matter not there for the sake of the spirit nor the spirit for the sake of matter; and so it would be more than highly foolish of you all if you, as people who have more than half transformed your being into the spirit, were to decide for matter. But you will not make a full decision for the spirit either coerced by Me; for every coercion is and remains the highly personal thing of every man, because his eternal life depends on this alone.
12
Knowledge and the yet so doubtless faith alone does not help anyone, but instead only acting accordingly! Therefore you all should above all warn the people who will get to know in the future the truth through you from Me to be active; for without this the promises held in the teaching could be as little fulfilled as a person will certainly never come to Damascus "even if the way there is very well-known to him and he also has the very firmest and most convinced faith that the familiar path leads almost directly to Damascus "if he never wants to take a step along the same, or if he plans often to undertake the journey in truth, but, basically hindered by all sorts of small affairs, nonetheless never gets round to setting foot on the path to Damascus."