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 50 -
The dangers of the false miracles of the Essenian order.
1
(Raphael) "You were agitated on the penance of the Indians! In fifty years you will perform ten times worse; for if you have possibly brought things so far that the largest part of the people hangs on you firmly in their faith, which is very easy to achieve through your pseudo-miracles, then come what may, the people will soon make do with this without any contradiction. For in their foolishness they can consider you to be nothing but the slaves of the gods on this Earth, who are equipped with all sorts of secret, godly omnipotence, against which no earthly will and no earthly human strength may achieve anything.
2
Through such miracles you can reign in the people quite surely with full power. But once this has happened, you may say to one or the other person: You terrible sinner! Whatever bad things you have thought, wanted and even almost carried out, we, yes, we already see the evil thoughts and desires sprouting in your heart that you will think consciously only in the coming year and thereby you will draw the full curse and anger of the gods upon your bare head! We admonish you so that you beat out of yourself every terrible thought and wish for the future and that you lay the largest possible sacrifice at our feet in order to soften the gods, and besides that, that you chasten yourself daily until you are almost bleeding for a full three years with a rope over your naked back! Woe betides you for eternity if you do not perform this penance punctually!
3
The poor person who actually never had a bad thought, nor even less allowed an evil will to arise in him, will believe you all quite without contradiction that he is a great sinner most worthy of damnation and must give in to everything most willingly that you as all-powerful and all-knowing servants of the gods have given him as his burden. But I ask you for the judgement of your common sense, whether this final goal that you must all reach in the end is good and just, and whether the means are also sanctified through the final goal that is sure to follow!"
4
Roklus says, "Yes, but none of us ever had this intention, but instead only ever a useful one for the poor, suffering people "and so I still don't really see how my means that consisted in the false raising of the dead girl can be bad! For what you think we must achieve through this - and in the end all our efforts, even if quite secret, proceed from this to achieve such a thing "I cannot really imagine, despite all my common sense! For one must have some will for something bad if one wants to achieve it. To my knowledge it is quite the sheerest opposite for us all! From where is the worst of the worst supposed to come into our institute?"
5
Raphael says, "Friend, take the purest corn and scatter it on a very pure field, and when it grows you will still find weeds in a huge number among it! But if you and your companions scatter nothing but all sorts of seeds of weeds on the Earth, how do you hope to achieve wheat?
6
At all times and in all countries of the Earth the very purest truth was originally preached to the people from God through the mouth of the prophets who were filled with the spirit of God. Look now at these truths after only a few thousand Earth years! What are they? For the most part weeds, human statutes, lies and mountain-sized deceptions of all sorts! But you have founded your institute on nothing but lies and still think that you will awake truth in the hearts of the people? Where is the world going?!
7
What use is it to you then to dig a great and deep hole in the earth on an open street and not have the remotest intention that a person would ever fall in?! But if then at night-time the people walk along the street, will they not fall into the depths of this hole and perish there just as well as if you had made the hole in the ground with the intention that the people should fall in and perish?!
8
Or if you come to a sick person, whose illness you cannot diagnose despite all your great common sense, and you give him then a preparation which is poison for someone in his circumstances! He will die. Can the medication be called good even if you as a doctor had the best intention?!
9
Those who made a hole or a deep ditch in the street, since it is very boggy, without adding a bridge with good railings leading over it, also had a good intention, namely to drain the road; but their short-sightedness did not allow them enough foresight, with which they would unmistakeably see that such a hole or a ditch would have to be very dangerous to those who made their way along it at night.
10
The means of drying out the road was also a bad one, despite the best intention, because those well-meaning people had not reckoned on how the hole or the ditch must be obviously most dangerous to travellers by night. Ah, if only the road workers had filled the marsh with stones and wood and dried the road out in this way, or at least made a good and firm bridge over the ditch, then the means would have been as good as the intention. But because they only thought: Well, in the daytime every traveller will notice the hole or the ditch early enough and be able to avoid it "but at night no-one is supposed to travel! The means were also bad and cannot be justified despite a supposed well-meaning intention!
11
And likewise your false miracle institute for the healing of humanity is a deeply bad means because at its creation you did not reckon on which unspeakable disadvantages must grow out of this for humanity. What use to you is the false reawakening of the daughter of your friend if he learns through someone in whom he has complete faith that his own daughter was well buried and that he is sheltering a totally foreign child as his own supposedly newly risen daughter in his care? Do you really think that your friend will be satisfied with such a deception after that? Or can you not imagine that such a betrayal will throw a very strangely devastating light on your whole institute and destroy all the faith and trust in it?!
12
Consider both sides of the consequences of such a betrayal, and you will soon begin to understand whether such bad means, looked at seriously, can be seen as good and holy through an uncalculated totally blind good intention and through the achievement of such a simply seemingly good goal before the forum of the holy judges of the true and only just wisdom of God and His light-filled spirits!
13
Or is this not wanting to weaken or even destroy the true power of the spirit of God, with which people are often filled on this Earth, partly out of a quite false ambition and partly out of envy and great jealousy and out of fear of the decrease in money making or even full destruction of the same?! How must it feel for a very decided Essene if he looks at this clear miracle that was performed in broad daylight before the eyes of all the people, and then in the end must think in secret: behold, you will eternally be incapable of performing such a thing! How will the Essene perform a miracle in comparison to this?!"