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 231 -
The question on the salvation of the ignorant.
Says Epiphan: "Great Lord and Master! Great was Your previous miracle for our physical best "but even greater is Your wisdom in this teaching given to us; for it proves to us Your divinity an incomparable amount more intensively. You showed us indeed unmistakably with the miracle that You must be filled with the strength and power of God, otherwise such a deed would have been impossible for You; but with this lesson You have shown us that You are directly the One whose thoughts and ideas form the certain established firm counter-pole!
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I and surely also Aziona and Hiram have now understood very well what You, oh Lord, have said to us about our certainly very important question, and we now see how things occur and actually cannot occur otherwise. But exactly this point draws another important question for the whole humanity of this Earth.
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Look, great Lord and Master! We now know what man has to do in order not to be consumed by Your counter-pole in the soul, which certainly is a highly sad fate for everyone who could not save himself from it. We know through Your mercy and extremely great goodness the correct path and will very certainly and surely walk along it. But what will happen with all the other people who inhabit this great Earth? They know nothing about what You have now revealed to us! How countless many people have walked the earth before us and what a countless number will walk it after us!
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Those who were before us have certainly known nothing about this teaching and lived according to their material desires. What can their other-worldly fate be other than the sad capture from the side of Your counter-pole? Who will, whoever can free himself from it, and when? What do the many people tell in general, who, because they originally were more spiritual, have also more easily turned towards the purely spiritual and thus after the casual laying aside of this material body have gone over to Your main pole very easily and unhindered? If I count up all those according to the books in which the pious and purely spiritual great people are described, I hardly reach the sum of a hundred thousand! But what is that is comparison with the number of those who have been consumed by the counter-pole for an unthinkably long time? There I ask nonetheless every only somewhat reasonable and comprehending person whether it would not be better never to have been born?
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Likewise it will be with those who perhaps still will see the light of the world for half an eternity after us. They will indeed also receive some very confused expressions of this teaching of Yours; but who will teach them more clearly as You have taught us? But if such an extraordinary teaching is not given in the clearest light, it will also be accepted with difficulty by someone with a living eagerness for the direction of action, and matter will carry off the greatest victory constantly as previously.
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Your present greatest teaching to us is indeed extremely great and holy; but this gap is unavoidably there, which I would like to have filled through Your benign answer to this question of mine which is certainly very important for my mind! If it is Your good and holy will, give us the correct explication for it as well!"