The Great Gospel of John
Volume 3
Jesus' Precepts and Deeds through His Three Years of Teaching
Jesus near Caesarea Philippi
- Chapter 18 -
The recording of the speeches of the Lord.
1
(The Lord) "See to it, Mark, now that the dawn begins to color thee mountain peaks, that we get some breakfast; for we do not want to approach the five criminals with empty stomachs! They will be a problem for us until they are saved! But once they are saved they must have salt, bread and wine to strengthen them, for they will be very weak after the healing. But salt, bread and wine will give them the strength they need!"
2
Mark says, "Lord, it will all be done!" At this he immediately orders his wife and children to check the kitchen so that everything would be ready at the right time. Immediately his wife, the two sons and four daughters hurry into the kitchen and get busy; some of My disciples also offer their service to clean fish, which as fishermen they can do well.
3
Matthew and John are still reading over what they wrote down from My speech in the night, but make the casual discovery that despite their otherwise very industrious scribbling they have nonetheless left great gaps.
4
John asks Me if I could tell them the rest. But at My sign Raphael gets to it and fills in everything in a moment. And when the two go through their notes once again they cannot find any holes, and everything is in the best order.
5
Simon Judas also looks through the notes and finds that as far as he can remember there is nothing missing from all the speeches and teaching that happened in the night. The healing of the thirty is also mentioned in detail and the disciples are very joyful with this.
6
Cyrenius also mentions the desire to receive a copy if he made a good payment for the man who would write it down for him!
7
At this Judas Iscariot is at his side and offers Cyrenius his services.
8
But I forbid Judas such selfish dirt and say to Cyrenius, "Look at Raphael over there. Just give him some writing implements and he will be finished very soon!"
9
Cyrenius calls immediately for his servants, has them bring a large quantity of clean parchment rolls and gives them to Raphael, who hardly touches them and then says to Cyrenius, handing him back the rolls, "Your wish is already fulfilled; you can now compare the rolls with those of the two disciples and see if anything is missing!"
10
Cyrenius examines the rolls and finds them completely written and of course wonders because, in all his wisdom, he cannot understand such speed.
11
But now the thirty Pharisees and Levites look at the rolls and the certain speaker who is called Hebram says, "Yes, what I have now seen and read is word for word the same as what has been discussed here; but how it is possible for the angel to write down several rolls correctly and legibly in the same moment is none of our business, and I don't want to waste time thinking about it because I am already convinced that nothing will come of it. For us mortals will only understand the immortals when we become fully immortal ourselves, and we will only fully understand the performances of the spirits when we ourselves become pure spirits; but our fleshly selves will never be capable of this.
12
That"s why it is better not to think about such things! There are simply things and occurrences in the natural world which a mortal will never fully understand. And if he, the foolish person, begins to think about it, soon he will become crazy! It will surely be clear to the spirits in heaven, and it can become clearer to us with time, but if we wanted to achieve clear insight now, we would have to become confused! Thus I am glad to see wonders; but it doesn't occur to me to think about it any further. And if one seriously understood something of it, one could still not imitate it; and if one cannot, then insight is not at all useful!"
13
Cyrenius says, "You are probably right in a certain material way, but I am not concerned with imitating anything; instead that since there is an immortal spirit in me, I would like to see the spiritual things concerning my spirit with more than just tightly bound eyes, and it bothers me in every part of my being to learn such a little from out of the mouth of the wise man amongst us about the reason for this rapid writing by the angel! I want to see the mouth of a wise man moving, for our talk means nothing more than threshing empty straw. We say nothing intelligent, while a wise man"s mouth gives us something to think about."
14
Hebram says somewhat witty, "That is certain, but our surprise is due to the fact that in the end we understand the speech of the wise man just as little as the wonder itself without any enlightening speech of a wise man! For in order to understand wisdom, one must be more or less wise oneself. One cannot understand wisdom with pure understanding, no matter how healthy; one picks up a little, but not everything by all means. The Song of Solomon, who was a wise man, is more or less the easiest thing for human understanding. If you read it, you think that you understand it, but if you begin to consider it in depth, you soon arrive at the vexed conviction that you haven't understood anything at all! A little test should justify my conviction!"