The Great Gospel of John
Volume 10
Jesus' Precepts and Deeds through His Three Years of Teaching
The Lord in Aphek
- Chapter 95 -
The Lord explains the development process of the priest.
I said: "You also studied the Scriptures of the Jews, and this already in Rome, and also 5 years later when under the emperor August you were sent as a priest of Zeus, Mars, Minerva and Mercury to Thebes in Upper Egypt, where you also let yourself be initiated in the old mysteries.
2
Beginning with Moses you especially concentrated yourself on the 4 great prophets. But since you still could not understand them despite your reading and thinking, again 5 years later, when as a priest for the people and the soldiers you were transferred to this place, you secretly went to a Jewish scribe and asked for clarification about that which was dark to you. But since that scribe was not able to give this to you, you gave up the Scripture of the Jews, just as you gave up your own scriptures much earlier.
3
But you still kept the Scripture of the Jews in your memory, and so the deeds of Moses, Aaron, Joshua, Elijah and the other prophets must have shown you that it was only with the help of the one, only true God of the Jews that those men could accomplish such things and deeds which did not ever happen with any other people on the whole Earth.
4
Now if you see Me also work like this, I certainly am also working through and with God. Are you Romans not saying yourselves that without divine inspiration no great wise man can exist? Then I also will certainly very strongly be inspired by the one, only true God of the Jews."
5
The priest said: "Yes, yes, You could be right in this, and You are certainly more deeply initiated in the mysteries of your Scriptures than that scribe who pretended to be wise, of whom I tried to receive a true light and whom I finally left as being the wisest of the two of us.
7
Therefore, how do You, who are a complete stranger to me, know what I have done in Rome, then in Thebes and finally here in Asia?"
8
I said: "Look, also that I can do with the help of the one, only true God of the Jews, who is almighty and also all-knowing from eternity, without beginning and without end."
9
The priest said: "I will not dispute that, and You surely will be completely right this time as You were right before. But still, it is strange that your one - and according to You the only true - God only seldom lets Himself be found or even be used by a Jew like You now.
10
I honestly confess that I only have very little faith and trust, neither in the one or in the other deity, because the more one will search them with the greatest possible zeal, the more he is withdrawn from it, and it is truly more useful and sensible for a human being to never try to lift the veil of Isis than to throw himself into the darkest abyss of all imaginable doubts by such useless effort. It is better to remain blind and dumb like the apes than to search after some deity who probably existed or still exists nowhere else except in the fantasy of men who want to rule over other people.
11
You may have found Your deity, but how and where? That You will keep for Yourself, just like the elders have kept it for themselves, and they then enveloped their doctrine of one god or several gods in such deep darkness that no sun could ever illuminate them anymore.
12
For I also am a human being, and I fervently longed since my youth to only one time come close to a deity. But why, up to now - while I am already close to 70 years - did still no deity come to me to grant me some special power? And why also not to those Jews that I know, except to You, wonderful Friend? That is why, Friend, I attach little importance to all the gods. The rest You can make up for Yourself."