The Great Gospel of John
Volume 3
Jesus' Precepts and Deeds through His Three Years of Teaching
Jesus near Caesarea Philippi
- Chapter 63 -
Hebram's speech points out Risa's error.
Hebram says, "Friend, many times already I have heard the matter presented in the way you have now quite sensibly presented it; but it does not apply here, for over there is sitting more than a usual magician who is well-versed in all Persian and Egyptian conjuring!
2
Just think about Mathael"s speech and the deeds, teachings and speeches of the great Master himself, and it must be clear to you that you are on the wrong track despite all your seemingly very healthy reason!
3
I also know a little about magic and know the various methods of Persian and Egyptian magic; but to carry out everything that has already been carried out here, and all the teachings that we have already heard here, point clearly to a higher origin than we are capable of imagining at present.
4
That disciple over there with the twelve transformed a stone into dust on the table before our very eyes, put the dust back together into the previous stone and finally made it vanish. And as he then made bread out of the stone, then the fish which we can still see, and in the end produced a complete donkey in OPTIMA FORMA, friend, those are appearances of quite another sort to those few empty and meaningless little miracles by a few Persian magicians whom we saw in Damascus! Whoever there could only count a little more than "one plus one" was easily in a position to grab the deception with his hands and make an explanation in OPTIMA FORMA; but who can create another explanation to that which Mathael gave us about the sole power and strength of the basic life in and from God?!
5
Therefore you are acting very wrongly here if you put what is here into the familiar category of tiresome deception, as you are very wrongly doing right now, when you put Moses and all the other prophets into the same category; for Mathael has shown us amply what is hiding behind the great liberator of our nation from the hard yoke of the Egyptians.
6
Moses was such an extraordinary spiritual leading light before God and before people that until these times the Earth has nothing greater to show. But here, friend, He sits in human form, before who"s most holy countenance the great Moses hid his face; thus it is extremely unwise of you to speak about Him as if about an ordinary person!
7
Count the guests who are fed here three times a day with the best and most noble fish which have no bones, with bread, wine and all sorts of fruit, with honey, milk, cheese and butter! But at the same time consider that our host is basically a poorer person rather than rich! His ground is three yokes large, has only a few fields and these are, as we can see, very stony. The fishery is still the best; but what can it do for so many guests? We must be about four hundred men in all now, and everyone is completely satisfied. Add to this the many beasts of burden of the Romans and Greeks, and none suffer any need. But if you go into the larder of out host, you will find it stuffed full of all sorts of fruits and with a mass of the very best bread, and the deep cellar in the cliff is so full of wine that we would never finish it in a year even if we tried hard! But if you then ask the truly honest and truth-loving host how he came to all this, he will answer you with nothing more than: Only through wonder upon wonder on the part of the great Savior of Nazareth!
8
But if this is so, who can dare to claim that this is all a deception which the powerful people of the Earth have cooked up in order to thereby deceive the blind and foolish crowd and to make them more submissive and eligible to pay dues?! I tell you: There is more here than the understanding of the wise men of the Earth will ever comprehend; here God"s power prevails, as it already prevailed now and then on the Earth and will still prevail in the future! If even your healthy reason does not understand that, it is nonetheless just as I have told you now; but go there and assure yourself of everything, and then say whether we are dealing with natural things!"
9
Risa says, "Yes, yes, if it is so, then certainly I am obliged to retract many of my claims, and I do not want to deny Moses and the other prophets their divine value; but this one thing remains true, that in the end no teaching in its purity, even if it was of a very divine origin, lasts even a few centuries!
10
Moses was still on the mountain and heard there the orders of Jehovah, and the people in the valley danced around a golden calf; but what a quite different face Moses" teaching received when King Saul stepped into the place of the judges, and how different again everything began to look under David, and how it changed under Solomon and his followers?!
11
Constantly something pure and divine fell by the wayside and was replaced by worldly human statutes, so that effectively only the names have come down to us, otherwise the whole of Moses has almost totally disappeared; only what gives the temple servants a certain divine halo has been kept. They have kept the penitential function in order to be able to torture the poor people from a certain divinely authorized bossiness; but the actual divinity has been eradicated long ago; no one cares for grey and hairy penitential robes for the sake of the Ten Commandments of God any more. Adultery among people who are very rich is still accepted because such people must buy themselves off from getting stoned with a lot of money. They then only receive a so called accursed water to drink which does not make their stomachs burst; for such sinners can still be well used many times for the many needs of the temple! But if the high servants of the temple commit adultery, no-one pays any attention; only if a poor devil commits adultery at some point, he will then certainly be stoned quite pertinently.
12
But now we read with what an unheard-of effort of divine power and strength the Ten Commandments were given by God to the people under thunder and lightning which makes the ends of the Earth quake, and how such a divine seriousness of fear was repeated many times throughout several centuries. How often has the nation been warned by God according to the Scriptures of the great and lesser prophets! However, what use was all that for this time? We know how things now stand, and I don't need to tell you anymore! Truly, if there is any sort of hell, it cannot look any worse!
13
But if his supposedly pure divine revelations only bring such fruits to sorry show, as we now see it among the Pharisees; I then ask every man with a healthy brain whether it will be difficult in the end to give up all beliefs in whatever natural divine revelation and providence!?
14
What you have said here about the great Savior is all correct and true, and his teaching may also be crowned with better success than all the religions until now; but I would like to be a witness after only half a century with my present consciousness and see what a face then this new religion will have in general, assuming that its actual observance is obeyed like all the previous ones by the free will of the people!
15
Only one leader at the head in the beginning, and in a thousand years it will seethe with such leaders who will not forget their stomachs during reading of this pure religion! Tell me whether I am so much on the wrong path with my opinion as you just said!"