The Great Gospel of John
Volume 3
Jesus' Precepts and Deeds through His Three Years of Teaching
Jesus near Caesarea Philippi
- Chapter 180 -
The nature and destiny of angels.
The angel says, "No difference at all! Just let your spirit first achieve rebirth, and your thoughts will appear in everything which is established in God's order as a completely perfect, divine miracle!
2
Do not believe that it is I who acts in this way and does this, but instead it is the spirit of the Lord who acts, works and does everything, who actually makes and fills my innermost being; for we angels are basically nothing other than focus of the rays of the divine spirit! We are in a certain way the personified, powerfully active will of God; our word is the speech of His mouth and our beauty is a little reflection of His endless magnificence and always immeasurable majesty.
3
But if the Lord God is also infinite in His majesty of wisdom and power, He is nonetheless a limited person in the love of the Father here with and among you. And exactly this love, which makes Him a person before you, also makes us angels into people before you, otherwise we are only light and fire, darting through all the infinite space as great, creative thoughts, filled with the word, the power and the will from eternity to eternity!
4
But you people of the Earth are only now receiving the sprit, and even more so the own flame of love from the heart of God, as a consequence of which you will become true children of God, and as a result you are unspeakably preferred above us, and we will have to walk along your path in order to become equal to you.
5
As long as we all remain angels as we are now, we are nothing but the arms and fingers of the Lord and stir and move ourselves only to act when we are prompted to do so by the Lord, as you prompt your hands and fingers to act. Everything in us that you can see in me belongs to the Lord; nothing can be called our own -actually all we are is the Lord Himself.
6
But you have been called and designated to become in fullest independence what the Lord is Himself; for to you the Lord will say: "You must become perfect in everything, even as your Father in heaven is infinitely perfect!?
7
But if such a thing is said by the Lord to you people, you will only then fully see to what a great thing you have been called and designated to do, and what an endless difference there is then between you and us!
8
Now you are certainly embryos in the womb which cannot build any houses with the smallest strength of life that you have been given; but when you are reborn out of the true womb of the spirit, then you will also be able to act as the Lord acts!
9
I will tell you something else which the Lord will say to you Himself if you remain completely active in faith and all love for Him. Look, He will say this: I do great things before you, but you will do even greater things before the whole world!
10
Does the Lord say such things to us as well? Oh, certainly not, for we are the will and deed of the Lord, opposed to which the Lord will make such a prophecy to you as if testifying against Himself.
11
But the Lord's endless love, mercy and extremely great compassion will also determine a way for us angelic spirits, on which we will become fully equal to you.
12
The path which the Lord Himself now treads will become the path of all original spirits of all the heavens - but certainly not from one day to the next, but instead gradually in an evenly continuing unfolding of the never-ending eternity, in which we from God move up and down as if in an endlessly great circle without ever touching the outer edge of the circle. But even if something must be waited for a long time, it nonetheless happens in the end because it is kept faithfully and true in the great order of the Lord; whatever finds itself once within this will happen - it really does not depend on the When! Once it has happened, it is there, as if it had been there since eternity.
13
You, dear friend Philopold, had not been born a hundred years ago and therefore were not here as you are now here; but doesn't it seem to you as if you had always been here? Only the cold calculation of your reason shows to you that you were not always here; but your feeling and your most living perceptions show you the sheerest opposite.
14
Likewise your cold reason shows you that you will die one day and as what you are you will pass away from this Earth forever and eternity; but on the other hand ask your feeling and your perception and both of these will not know, and will not want to know, anything of an act of dying or passing away from this Earth.
15
Well, who is right and true - the cold reason or the warm feeling of life? I tell you: Both, the reason and the warm self-perceptive feeling of life! Reason, as the ordered mental library of the soul, will clearly pass away from the soul, as well as the soul itself. Along with the other parts of the body and its limbs, its material capacity to perceive and calculate must also have the perception of passing away within it; but it is different with the feeling of life and with the being-aware-of-oneself, which, because it comes spiritually from God, has never had a beginning and therefore can also never have an end!
16
For this reason it is also impossible for the soul even in its material form to think of itself as temporary and ending. And so the soul becomes lighter and lighter, and if it is fully one with the spirit of God living in it, then the feeling of life becomes so clear and powerful that the feeling of temporality in the cold calculation of reason loses every meaning and power.
17
The reason for this is that all the life-force of the spirit of the Lord in the soul also penetrates even the spiritual nerves of the body and takes away every feeling of passing away. This occurs because finally all the actual, ethereal bodily matter of life becomes immortal like the substance of life in the soul.
18
You, my dear Philopold, who are also from above, will now easily see that a spirit can expect everything and a time period, no matter how long, is actually nothing for it; for once the blessing will come to it according to the order of the Lord, and it is then questionable which part of eternity will be longer for it - the part which it has lived and acted or the part which is yet to be lived and acted?!
19
It is true that I am still what I am, and this make believe body is not by any means a conceived and born body, flesh and blood filled with a substantial soul; but it is nonetheless a more meaningful approach towards it, and the time of full realization of this mercy will not be too far off, and I will be what you are now!
20
Do not praise me therefore, because you have seen me do miracles; for because I am not yet a being, but my being is just the casual will of the Lord, only the Lord alone should be praised and revered for His miracles, which would have performed even without me endlessly greater things.
21
But it is He who gave the great and holy speech to Cornelius, which I wrote down for him; you already know him from Kane near Kis, and you will know him yet deeper. But now there will soon be something which He will say, pure words of all life."