The Great Gospel of John
Volume 3
Jesus' Precepts and Deeds through His Three Years of Teaching
Jesus near Caesarea Philippi
- Chapter 242 -
True spiritual life.
When Raphael had finished his speech through Me, the three were massively amazed, and Mathael said: "We understood these truly vivid holy words well and also for the first time completely what David wanted to say when he spoke in his divine Psalms: "Lift up your heads, o gates, and be lifted up, o ancient doors, that the king of glory may come in!? But the living fulfillment! Oh, where is this written then?! What is needed in order to carry that out in life!
2
One certainly gives a poor man something and one is then not sorry for the small change which one had given to a needy person; but reason much more than any feeling of love for one's neighbor drove this action! Oh God, how far is the person from the goal through his reason and through his cold judgment devoid of all love! Whoever gives something to a poor man with true love for a brother and neighbor and then also has a correct humble joy in having done one's best for the brothers and sisters in the name of Jehovah, and constantly has the desire in himself to do even more good and to make all his poor brothers and sisters as happy as possible through all friendliness, advice, word and friendly deed, yes, how immeasurably high stands the soul and spirit of such a person before the Lord God! But where do we still stand with our hard hearts and small gifts of reason?!
3
Oh friend from heaven! You have cleared things up for us with your question and answer! Now we know very clearly where we stand and what we are! Lord! Awake our hearts and light them in the true and living love for our neighbor, otherwise Your whole purely divine teaching of life is nothing but a vain, moral, aesthetic game of words without power or effect!
4
Now I see also my whole way of life until this point of time; it was basically a misguided one, and I could therefore never reach a goal!
5
Only now I begin to recognize the actual true path, and I now know what the prophecies and their fulfillment consists of. I now know what I am lacking and what will be lacking for those who will not see the prophesies fulfilled despite accepting the divine teaching, and how they will be brought to the correct path; but besides I also see that I will still have to do a lot for myself in order to come into the fullest order!
6
Truly we have a great advance in the area of faith, because the Lord Himself is walking among us here, teaching us through word and deed - so the whole of heaven also stands wide open to us, and God's angels are teaching us the wisdom of the heavens and the eternal order of life from God; but the formation of the heart is nonetheless left totally up to us alone! But we will manage it with the help of the Lord!
7
Knowledge is something else and so is feeling. One can achieve knowledge through the driest effort and worldly cleverness through experiences; but there is more to true feeling than just much learning and experience!
8
Much knowledge makes the human heart not feel and always desire correctly, and the experiences can make us clever in bad ways as well as good; only a correct feeling animates everything and organizes everything and gives peace and blessing. Therefore we should look above all at a person's heart at the initial formation of a person into a true person!
9
If the heart has not been worked over at the beginning, but instead only the reason, the heart will become hard and arrogant soon after the demands of the reason! But once the heart is arrogant, it then takes with difficulty a formation of feeling; then proper tests of fire must come, consisting of all sorts of misery and affliction, and the heart must feel all sorts of pressure so that it will become soft, gentle and feeling liked kneaded wax for the affliction and for the misery of crying fellow people!
10
We thank you and through you the Lord for this very most important teaching, through which I only now know very clearly what I will have to do for all the future, for myself as well as for all those who will receive the most magnificent and purest light from God through me."