The Great Gospel of John
Volume 3
Jesus' Precepts and Deeds through His Three Years of Teaching
Jesus near Caesarea Philippi
- Chapter 244 -
The free will of an angel.
Murel says, "Yes, yes, that would be splendid, good and beautiful if one only knew to what! How would it be then if the dear friend from the heavens told us something about the Morning star? For if we become teachers of the living work of God, we can never know too much about everything possible! For we will have to deal with all sorts of spirits who will ask about all sorts of things. We will not be in a position to give them a satisfactory illumination, so they will flee, mock and despise us; but if we can give them a satisfactory answer about everything, then they will also listen to us in other things and accept our gospel! What would you, Philopold, give someone as an answer if he asked you what the Morning star is then?"
2
Philopold says, "Friend! Then I would point out to him that he will experience everything from himself and from his inner perceptions, if he directs his life according to the religion of salvation from heaven; but if he does not do that, then all my explanations would be of no use at all because he could not become convinced of all this. Blind faith is no good for anyone, for one day it is here, the next a stronger faith takes over, and he believes the stronger one by its word, certainly with no more use for his life than the one that he believed us the day before.
3
Man must therefore be led so that he perceives the being of the near and the distant things in himself, becomes aware of it and then looks at them from the living light of such an inner consciousness. If he has managed that which is no impossibility, he then no longer needs our teaching!
4
In my opinion we are doing enough if we show the people the fully correct and clear way in life, everything else will then come of its own accord, as also our heavenly friend has marvelously shown that one only needs to lay the right fruit in a field, and it will bear and ripen then of its own accord. But for us and our strengthening the heavenly messenger can open our eyes just as well for the sight of the Morning star as he once opened the eyes of old Tobias through the gall of a fish; for he seems to me to be the same Raphael that once led the young Tobias!"
5
Mathael says, "But you could very well be perfectly right! The names are the same and the wisdom likewise, and if our heavenly friend is a true eye-doctor and can illuminate the Morning star for us in a little more detail, if he wants to and may! As everything for him depends very strictly on the will of the Lord; he himself has no will of his own, even if we have a perfectly own and most free will."
6
Raphael now remarks, "You have spoken very well, but my will is not quite as unfree as you understand it! I am also a receptacle and not just a purest beam of divine will. I feel very well what I want, and then what the Lord wants.
7
But I perceive the Lord's will more easily, distinctly and quickly than you people, and I instantly and completely surrender my will to the will of the Lord. Therefore, I can just as well be regarded as a pure emanation of the divine will; but I have nevertheless a wholly free will and could, just like a man, act contrary to the Lord's will. Yet this cannot possibly happen because I possess such a high degree of wisdom so as to be able, as a spontaneous light out of the divine primal light, to recognize only too well the eternal, immutable justice of the divine will as the greatest value of life of all men, angels and worlds. So I quite spontaneously fulfill only the well-recognized divine will, at all times wholly surrendering my own to the divine will.
8
If you, therefore, want me to unveil the morning star, which is called 'Venus' by the heathens, I can indeed do this out of my will, provided the Lord's will is not opposed to it; but if that should be the case, I would indeed not give you enlightenment. Therefore, what I say I speak of my own cognition and wisdom which can certainly be none other than the divine because I am always penetrated only by the divine will which prompts me to action and speech. If you, therefore, wish to know the morning star as it is in its nature and reality, I shall do you the favor and show it to you." - Say all three: -Do that, sweetest friend from the heavens!"