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 4 -
Mark's new estate, a miracle by Raphael.
Mark looked around and was taken aback by the sight of everything that had come into existence in an instant. A beautiful brick house stood completed on the right, northeast of the old fisherman's house and reached with its southeast front closely to the sea. It had one floor with a comfortable hallway around the whole house, and on the ground level there was a spacious kitchen, a large pantry and eighteen chambers, among which five sitting-rooms and thirteen large rooms for all sorts of agricultural purposes, like various cereal chambers, meat chambers, chambers for fruits, vegetables, for legumes and root crops. One large chamber displayed a water tank build with white marble, which measured twenty square fathom and in all had a consistent depth of six feet; the water, however, was just four feet deep, which was enough for keeping noble fish.
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This inner fish tank got its cleanest water from an entirely new, rich spring; the water got in from the bottom through small but numerous openings in a stone slab and got up to a determined level. A drainpipe ran from there to the sea, but it could be plugged from outside if one wanted to have the tank full of water. A beautiful, open work, two and a half feet tall handrail, also made of white marble went around the water tank; on one side, in case the water tank would be filled with water, there was a dainty drain that went through the wall of the house and ended in the sea not far from the deeper drainpipe. The walls and the floor were also covered in white marble, but the chamber's ceiling was made of the cleanest and hardest cedar wood without any knots and splints. This chamber was illuminated through five windows, which all had marble frames and each measured a height of five and a width of three feet. The windows had very clear crystal slabs and were designed to open and close, as was every other window of the house.
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The main door was made of gold like gleaming ore; all the doors to the rooms, however, were made of the best cedar wood worked quite delicately and daintily and were properly equipped with good bolts and locks. The entire first floor was daintily paneled with cedar wood, and every room offered a wonderful view. At the same time, all the rooms on the ground floor, like the ones on the first floor, were comprehensively furnished and equipped with everything that a good inn might possibly require, and the cereal chamber was full of grains, and the pantry full of everything that is needed in a kitchen. In short, it was not only the demanded house solidly built and exactly according to Mark's idea, which he had had for a long time and was akin to a daydream, but it was also most richly stocked for years with all kinds of food supplies and other supplies.
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Behind the house there were stables for all sorts of animals, and several huts for fishing equipment were built most tastefully and at the same time most properly and were richly equipped with everything necessary. Around all the new buildings stretched a tightly fenced garden of twenty yoke [eleven and a half hectare = almost 30 thousand of today's acres] formerly an abandoned sand steppe and now the most fertile soil, cultivated with all sorts of the best fruit trees. A few yoke were cultivated with the best grape vines, which were laden with the nicest and most juicy, already ripe grapes. Vegetables were not lacking either.
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In the middle of the garden there was a health spa with a marble temple. It had two distinct pools: one for healing the ones suffering from gout with very warm spring water, and the second for healing lepers supplied by lukewarm sulfur and sodium wells that were led there from the core of the earth by Raphael's power according to My will. At the same time he saw a seaport bordered by square stone blocks and five big, perfectly built ships with sails and oars in the very spacious harbor that had an entrance, which, even though 33 feet wide [10.8 m], could be closed off completely with a iron chain by night. This harbor was exactly like Mark had often imagined, and he had to keep rubbing his eyes while inspecting everything that had miraculously appeared because he had the impression that he was sleeping and thus seeing these things in his dream.
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When he finished the walkthrough, which lasted almost an hour, he came back almost dizzy and said fully amazed, "Is this all really true, or am I am seeing it all in some sort of blessed dream? No, no, it cannot be true! That is how I have repeatedly pictured an inn in my idle mind and have seen it several times in my daydreams "and you, friend from the heavens, have put me into an artificial sleep and I have viewed my own ideas in a dream once again!"
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Raphael says, "You doubting Roman, you! If this was all a dream, it would not be still visible and you will not claim that you are still sleeping and dreaming, will you? Send your wife and your children to look at what is there, and then they will come and help you out of your dream!"
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Mark says, looking at the new house again, "Oh, it is not a dream, it is resounding reality! "Will it, however, last?"