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 131 -
Acting according to the teaching and God's promises. On ceremonial service.
1
(The Lord) "Therefore, you must above all take great care that your future disciples are not idle listeners and believers in the new teaching, but that they zealously practice what they receive as convincing truth of My teaching. Only when man begins to become aware that the promises contained in My teaching are being fulfilled, will this teaching become a full truth within him, so that he will say to himself: `Yes, this teaching is truly out of God, because ever since I have been living according to it, one after the other of its promises is beginning to become fulfilled in all fact and truth.'
2
If anyone has ever managed this, he has already won and with it My teaching also as an example for many others who are still being tested, but who have not been able to achieve the wanted any effect. They thus encouraged, will begin to put their hands to active work themselves, which will then begin to bear fruit for them, even if at the beginning very sparingly.
3
Therefore be crafty and clever in the spreading and carrying out of My teaching like the snakes and foxes, but at the same time always as gentle as a dove, whose often angry-sounding billing and cooing is nothing but concealed love, as the dove was already a symbol for love in the old days.
4
Now it depends mainly on you; how you will set it up, it will then continue to exist as this. If you only commit any small mistake at the first set up, then a few centuries later a whole mountain of sin against the correct order will have developed.
5
Therefore do not let yourself be misled by anything old fashioned venerable! Neither the Sabbath nor the new moon, nor the Scriptures nor the temple, nor the graves of the prophets, nor the places in which I Myself worked with you, nor the pure magic of My name, nor the temple, nor the houses of the patriarchs or certain hours of the day and similar external crazy things any longer shall lead you down any side track from the truth heard here!
6
For all that was until now only an exemplary correspondence of what now stands before you in the brightest light and as the purest and most unconcealed truth; it was only a great writing of signs, written over the wide face of the Earth, and a great letter of the Father in Heaven to His children on this Earth, but which now lies open and unsealed before you, and which you all have been able to read very well. But this letter now has neither value for the future, nor a determining meaning for life.
7
This is all now love for God and for one's neighbor, but not only in theory, but instead truly in deed, and for that it needs neither the Sabbath nor a new moon, nor a temple, nor another particular time or any embellished clothing, nor any long senseless prayers, nor any senseless sacrifices, no oxen, calves or goats for the slaughter and burning, but instead only love alone, which I have revealed to you now so many times already.
8
Thus you as the distributors of My teaching never ever become weak in whatever sort of old statute, not even in the choice of food; for whatever goes into the mouth with metes and bounds, never makes a person unclean, but instead a person is only made unclean by what comes out of the heart through the mouth to the harm of his neighbor! So with this teaching you will give the people the true blessing and the true salvation forever, which will remain just as pure in a thousand years and in another thousand years as I Myself now give and have given it to you!
9
If, however, you combine some ancient ceremony with this My teaching, begin to observe certain anniversaries and insignificant temple rules, all this will keep growing from year to year and in a few centuries become a true Augean stable that will, finally, have to be cleansed through a universal judgment."