The Great Gospel of John
Volume 1
Jesus' Precepts and Deeds through His Three Years of Teaching
On Mount Morgenkopf near Kis
- Chapter 174 -
A glorious sunrise. Tobias' fitting words. The Lord's life hints to him. Conduct for judges and law-givers. Dealing with criminals and the condemned.
When after about an hour, it, (the sunrise) took place with indescribable majesty and splendour, all were uplifted and moved to tears, singing Psalms to the glory of Him Who created all this so wondrously and gloriously.
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Said the old Tobias, after such solemn morning-hour, 'Oh Lord! This is a different temple to that in Jerusalem, which latter always is full of filth and obscenity! How often in my life have I sung Psalm after Psalm, yet my heart was as dry as ten year old straw and cold as an icicle! And how warmly it now beats towards my Creator! How often was I in the Temple, yet always glad to leave its stinking halls. Yet here I feel like spending eternity, and from the deepest love-warmth praise the great God Who created all the countless glorious things! You beloved Master, how can I thank you for such previously never-felt supremely holy elixir of life?!'
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Say I, 'He who ventures forth into the creation feeling and perceiving what he owes his Creator as warmly as you do, already has shown Me the best and most pleasing gratitude.
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Stay with such feelings and perceptions and do not close off your heart towards your poorer brethren even if they had once been your enemy, and you shall once merit a great grace from the heavens! When seeing all kinds of sinners, neither judge nor condemn them; for, understand Me well, it mostly is not them who sin but the spirit that drives them. You yourself are not able to say what spirit drives them. There are many who in their piousness can become haughty, wanting to then look down from their imagined virtue-heights upon sinners with contempt and revulsion, wherewith they then unconsciously turn into greater sinners than those whom they despise. There then comes a spirit who drives such people towards some sin and the proud virtue-hero discovers on himself that he is not a god for a long time yet, but just a very ordinary, weak human.
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Such person then becomes humble again and repents, something for which previously he as a virtue-hero deemed himself too exalted!
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And hence no one should hate a sinner for being a sinner, but all have done enough to just hate sin and detest it in deed! Only a hardened criminal, who had become one with his sin, you should not help! But when, as a result, he sinks into just extremity, for his betterment, then you should think of him and if he pleads with you then do not stop off your ear. And if you see a criminal led to his execution, you should not feel joy at such his miserable fate, even if he were to have committed the crime for which he is led out to death against your own house; for behold, it is not impossible for such a criminal to attain to beatitude in the other world!
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Each person's predominant trait should be love in all things! Justice which is not grounded in love is no justice before God; and if carried out by a judge therefore, then he is ten times a greater sinner before God than the one he sentenced, and God shall once judge him as mercilessly as he judged his neighbour.
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Hence judge and condemn no man, even if he were to have offended you ever so grieviously and you shall then not be judged and condemned; because with whatever measure you mete out, with the same you shall be rewarded in the other world. The strictly just by whatever law, but cold and loveless judge, shall find just as inexorable a judgment over himself, whilst henchmen and executioners shall never behold God's countenance.
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He who has caught a thief or murderer has done his part if he hands them over to a just court. But the judge should not forget that so long as the criminal still lives in the world, he is not a complete devil yet, but a maladjusted person led astray, on whom every possible reformation attempt should be made before he can be condemned to death as an incorrigible devil.
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But the right procedure for the execution is that the sentence not be carried out immediately, but that such a person should be tied to the stake by the hands and feet, publicly, five feet above ground for the whole day.
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If he pleads with genuine remorse that he shall better himself, then he is to be taken down from the stake and placed in an appropriate, love-righteous reformation centre, yet not freed until his betterment has shown itself unquestionably. But if the criminal strung up shows no sign of betterment the whole day, then he is a complete devil and hence, if still alive on the stake, after sunset is to be put to death and then burnt on the place of execution, together with the stake.
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Such I tell you for your future adherence, because you too were a judge and still are, among the Pharisees, having had to look after burial places for the dead and places of execution for the criminals.
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Blessed are they who shall act accordingly; their names shall shine in the eternal book of life.
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But now we shall move down to the huts; our Kisjonah has prepared a moderate morning meal and is awaiting us with his wife and daughters.