The Great Gospel of John
Volume 6
Jesus' Precepts and Deeds through His Three Years of Teaching
At the Sea of Galilee (John 6)
- Chapter 131 -
The Roman Captain finds his siblings.
Said the giant highly moved: "O you most divine elevated friend of the people! All ten of us were the children of a rich prince at the great Caspian Sea. We lived in peace and our nation was probably one of the happiest on earth. Then suddenly wild hordes came from the deep north and robbed, burned murdered everything they encountered. Then our father said to us: 'Children, here is no counter fight possible, but we have to flee otherwise we are lost!' The will of the father was holy to us and we fled to the mountains and escaped the wild hordes. We travelled over the mountains and finally reached this side of the high and wide mountains. Our father died five years ago and the Euphrat was his grave; since we could not give him any other grave.
2
All the time for ten years we have lived in underground caves along the river and of necessity have lived from herbs and - unfortunately - by some harmless robbery maintained ourselves wretchedly. The silver and gold and pearls and gemstones originated mainly from what we have taken with us from the royal treasure, although lately we did not despised to take from the abundance of other rich people. However, what we hid in our caves we have given to you, o Lord and Master, when we experienced the never defeatable power of your word and your will.
3
We asked you only for the mercy to allow us to follow you and to learn from you as most keen disciples, which surely will replace our great loss. And thus we can say: We have endured life's most terrible and bitter experiences and know life's wretched and bitter seriousness, and now anything can hit us as it wants to, we will not tremble before anything, and in the least before this what for the first time in our lives promises us a true light on the further ways of this our earthly life, with such infallible signs like no mortal eye has ever seen.
4
Yes, Lord, in us you will have scholars of the most uncompromising will and seriousness! O, just make soon known to us, what we should do and we will act accordingly with such steadfast courage which could only be found in those kind of people, who at all times are used to cold-bloodedly look death into the eyes!"
5
Said I: "Remain faithful to such your principle and you will profit endlessly more than you ever has lost!"
6
However, when the Captain heard such from the ten, tears came to his eyes and he said: "O brothers, all this the known God has wonderfully arranged! Can't you remember to have lost a brother once of hardly ten years of age? See, your father was also mine! I was caught when completely carefree picking flowers in a grove. All begging was in vain; the child thieves dragged me over the mountains and in Sidon I was sold as a slave to a Roman ship. In Rome I again was sold to a noble Roman as a slave; he however liked me and since he had no children he adopted me, gave me the full freedom and raised and educated me as a soldier. In time I became what I am now, of course more by my money than by merit and has been placed here a few years ago as a commandant.
7
Yes, I already want to state, that this now most wondrous Saviour in his divine clairvoyant soul secretly knew about all this and wisely arrange it, that we brothers find each other here. As such I had to come here as commandant, because you as my unfortunate brothers were staying - unfortunate sadly enough - in my proximity; because if you had been caught by my soldiers and brought to court before me, we, just like now, would not have recognized each other, and I apparently had to find ways and means to free you from all evils. And all this we have to thank the one, true, to us still unknown God, who most probably send us in this Saviour an Apostle, who had to free us from the dead gods and in their place show us the one, true God. - Is it not like that my dear, noble brothers?"
8
Said the big one: "Yes, most noble brother, it is precisely so! How much did we not cried about you and have searched for you in our whole big country and all the shores of the large lake were searched, - nevertheless, all in vain! Until this hour we did not hear anything from you. Only our only sister, who quite often had peculiar dreams, dreamt once, that she saw you in a great, beautiful city and also has spoken to you and that you specifically instructed her to tell us that we should not mourn so much abut you; since you are alive and are in good hands. O, what joy would it be for her now, if she would be still alive! But she will hardly be alive anymore; because during the attack and the great escape, she, the only one, and her mother were lost and most likely fell into the hands of the wild hordes. Only the great, to us still unknown God will know what has become of the two poor! Perhaps they still live somewhere in great misery?!"
9
Said I: "O no, My friends, the still unknown God to you has also provided for them! They also came unharmed over the mountains to the vicinity of Euphrat and came with the help of a returning trade caravan to Chotinodora. There your sister is now the good wife of the to you well-known toll collector Jored. He already had a few wives, but he also took this poor person as wife because of her beauty; she now is his favourite although she did not yet bore him a child. But he has children with the other wives, whom your sister loves as much as if they were her own. I stayed for three days in his house and his whole house has adopted My teaching; but I did not want to tell him anything about what still awaits him here. It will bring him even more joy if he shortly through you My Captain, will learn all this. Until now he knows nothing who his beloved wife is and from where she has come; because either his wife nor your already quite elderly mother, who live very quietly with him, have - out of fear of any betrayal - told anyone who and from where they are.
10
Therefore, if you go there, initially tell only Jored under four eyes and also tell him, how I have arranged everything! Then he and his son will have an exceedingly great joy about it and even bigger your sister and your mother. In short, if you go there shortly, you will see wonders over wonders, which took place during My stay there. - However, let this be now; because we still have to attend to entirely different and much more important matters here.
11
Above all let us now go out into the open and we will immediately find something, whereby I can bring you in even closer acquaintance with the still to you unknown God, and this is surely worth more than a thousand of such romantic life stories of people, of which there is no shortage on this earth.
12
All this I have long since provided for and knew about you and all your earthly life relations; but I also knew that My word will find a good earth with you and therefore came to you, to bring you all consolation. However, the very greatest consolation for you is, that in Me the kingdom of the still unknown God has come to you and with him the everlasting life of your souls!
13
For behold: To what use are all the treasures of this earth to a person, if soon he has to leave them for ever? Is it then not incalculable more clever for man, to gather such treasures which exist forever and assuring the soul for ever the most blissful and most delightful life, namely that a person already in this earthly life reaches the clearest and undoubted conviction, that with him the true, most perfect and freest life only has its fullest and truest beginning after death of the flesh?"
14
Said all, even the priests: "Yes, Lord, this would be of course the highest and best, what man on this earth could attain! However, there is a wall which until now nobody could break through, and the highly fatal veil of Isis, which until now no mortal has ever lifted. There existed here and there very wise people, who studied this matter to a certain degree, that some truth is stuck to it. But about the where, when and how there are still many thousand questions unanswered.
15
Said I: "If I would not be able to do this, no being in the whole of eternity would be able to do this, and without such My ability also no life in the whole, endless space would be conceivable; but because I am able to do all this, everything is and lives in endless space and improves by manifold existence-changes, from the mosquito to man and from the little sun dust particle to the sun. But now lets move outside and see by what we might be approached!"
16
Thereupon all got up and went with Me into the open.