The Great Gospel of John
Volume 10
Jesus' Precepts and Deeds through His Three Years of Teaching
The Lord in two additional towns
- Chapter 161 -
The spreading of the Lord's teaching in Babylon.
A few years later, the apostle Matthew and his companion were very well accommodated by this king during their trip to India, and he stayed a whole year with him.
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And when he wanted to travel further to India with his companion, the king gave him a safe escort up to the borders of his kingdom. And so this apostle was among the first witnesses of Me to this king, and he wanted to convert people among the gentiles who were mostly servants of Baal in that city, which was still called Babylon at that time, although the old Babylon was located quite far away from this city and was like a great garbage dump.
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But the king advised him against it and said: "It is sufficient for me and my royal household to know and realize what we should believe and what this faith is all about. I and my son will take care of the rest, for I would not like you to be the prey of the limitless anger of my priests. Once they gradually will become extinct and when I will have arranged to no more replace them, it will be easier to deal with the people."
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The 2 apostles were satisfied with the king's remark and they did no more consider to spread My teaching among the people of this king.
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But 7 years later came Peter with his son Marcus to this king. He was likewise very well received and he also made suggestions to the king to at least make My teaching gradually known to the city.
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The king, who loved Peter and also Marcus, dissuaded Peter from doing this since he well knew by which spirit his priests of Baal were inspired, and especially to Peter he said: "Look, we live here in a country where especially further to the east up to the great river Ganges, it swarms with all kinds of wild and devouring animals, and not less all kinds of poisonous weeds. However, where God the Lord let such animals and poisonous plants live in large numbers, the soil and especially also the air is filled with evil spirits and devils, and they run around like hungry and roaring lions, tigers, panthers and hyenas and try to find some human being to devour.
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The previous mentioned animals are fierce and very malicious, and they only can be hunted with great danger, but my priests of Baal are even a thousand times more malicious, because each one of them has at least a thousand devils in him, and apart from me with my extreme severity and my soldiers who are mostly Jews, Greeks and Romans, no one else can go against them without problems, while I as king myself am only a vassal of Rome - which both of you will know - since the Roman kingdom reaches up to the Ganges after which the Indian kingdom starts of which still none of us knows the limits."
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Although Peter liked the advice of the king but he nevertheless felt secretly the urge to discuss with some inhabitants of this city about My teaching and My Kingdom. The priests soon heard about this, and through their messengers they proposed to him to make known this blissful teaching also to them.
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For a long time, Peter did not want to be seduced by that, especially since his son and helper Marcus was seriously warning him against it and always said: 'Let the king do the work for our case, we will not act against the will of the Lord if we follow the advice of the king here.'
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Nevertheless, after a couple of years, Peter went outside the city, as it were to walk, and there he met several beggars and sick people. He gave some money to the poor and he healed the sick ones by the power of My Spirit that lived in him.
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On this miracle, also several priests of Baal came among them. They recognized Peter and asked him very fervently to go with them a little further into the land.
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And he gave in to their many insistent requests and faithful assurances because they told him that in a near village lived a big number of sick people who could not be healed by any doctor. If he also would heal them, they and all the other priests would accept his teaching and destroy their temples with their own hands.
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After these words, Peter went with the priests and came after 1 hour indeed with them to a village with a great number of feverish sick people and possessed ones whom he all healed and where he even awakened a dead person to life.
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And the healed ones glorified Peter and said: "This man must be sent by the true God, otherwise it would not be possible for him to, only by his word, do for us which all our gods were never able to do."
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This made the priests, who escorted Peter, extremely angry. They urged him kindly, but only outwardly, to still go with them and visit another small village which could be reached by going through a forest of myrtles and roses. In that forest they grabbed Peter, ripped off his clothes, beat him to death and hung him with his feet at a barren myrtle tree to which they attached a crossbeam at the bottom and attached his hands to it with ropes. They let him hang there and went then back to the city along another way.
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But because the king had the feeling that Peter stayed away too long, he ordered to search for him everywhere, inside and outside the city, and he only succeeded the second day to find Peter in the myrtle forest, dead and severely brutalized.
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The healed ones told him also how the priests of the city brought him very kindly to them, how he miraculously healed them and that he moreover awakened a dead person to life. They also added that he then went with the priests further inside the country.
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This made the king very sad. He let Peter be buried with royal honor in the royal tomb and let also the myrtle tree be placed into the tomb.
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But the more than 2.000 priests in the city fared very badly. The king did not spare one of them, let them all be killed by his soldiers and let them then bring on more than 400 chariots far away to a desert where he let them be thrown out of the chariots to serve as feed for the many wild animals there.
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Then the disciple Marcus, with the help of the king and our 2 known managers, converted the people of almost the whole city to My teaching, and it did not last 1 year before the whole city, and soon after that, also almost the whole country, was blissfully converted to My teaching.
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On this occasion I informed you, My youngest disciples, where and how this first apostle for this world came to his end. Thus not in Rome, even less in Jerusalem, but in the new city of Babylon which later received the Saracen name of Baghdad.
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However I did not tell this to the disciples who were staying with our innkeeper in the city that you know, but only to you in this time. And now we can again take our former place, still sitting at the table of the innkeeper.