The Great Gospel of John
Volume 8
Jesus' Precepts and Deeds through His Three Years of Teaching
The Lord and His adversaries
- Chapter 121 -
Visiting the old royal house.
The innkeeper said: "O Lord and Master, truly, too much benefit and a never deserved mercy are coming to my house, for until now I still have done little which deserves eternal life."
2
I said: "Friend, God does not consider the things which you yes or no did not do in the limitedness of your inner light and will, but God considers only what you will do in future times. But since God can see your serious will, you also can rejoice beforehand in His mercy and the real and true salvation. If I would not have known you much earlier than you have known Me, I would not have come in your house."
3
With this reassurance of Me the innkeeper was completely satisfied and he thanked Me with his household for such lessons and for all mercy which I had given to his house.
4
Upon this, he said to his household that they should open all rooms and areas of the second floor where we were, which then also happened immediately.
5
First we went to the right, entering the adjoining big hall that was full of riches and old memorials. In this hall there was a big marble plate in the southern wall on which there was written, with indelible paint the still very good readable psalm of David, translated from Hebrew, which sounds as follows (psalm 8): 'Lord, our Sovereign, how lovely is Your name in all countries where they thank You like in Heaven. From the mouth of young children and infants (the gentiles) You have prepared for Yourself a power because of Your enemies (the Pharisees and scribes), to destroy this enemy, this revengeful one. For I (David or the better Jewish people) will see Heaven, the work of Your fingers, the moon and the stars which You have prepared ('Heaven' means the teaching, 'fingers' that which is bodily to the Lord, 'the moon' the love of the Lord for men, and 'the stars' the endless many truths that come from love).
6
What is man that You think about him, and the child of man that You care for him? (By 'man' is here to be understood the whole human race, and by 'child' their weakness and blindness). You will let him be forsaken by God for some time, but then You will crown him with honor and luster. (See the time of the Babylonian harlotry. By 'him' is to be understood the Christian people without the inner godly light). You will make him lord over the work of Your hands. You have placed everything under his feet (here by 'him' is to be understood the Lord from the point of view of the pure teaching from the Heavens that will finally radiate through everything and control everything). Sheep and oxen all together, also the wild animals, the birds in the sky and the fishes in the sea, and that which lives in the sea (thereby all men and races of the Earth are to be understood. High and low, young and old, educated and uneducated, strong and weak, will happily rejoice in the live-giving light from the Heavens). Lord, how glorious is now Your name in all countries.'
7
When I thus read to them the psalm on the marble plate, all of them were very glad, and the innkeeper asked Me if I would like to give them in short the explanation of this psalm, for he had the impression that a wise and prophetic meaning was hidden behind it.
8
And I said to him: "You are right again, and I will also show you the hidden spirit of truth, but you will not understand it completely because David spoke and sang in it about the distant future."
9
Then I explained the hidden spirit of the psalm in the manner - only a bit more extensive - as it has now been put between brackets, briefly explained in a way that is easy to understand. The innkeeper was very satisfied and grateful with that, as well as all the others, for they noticed that it was completely according to what I had already predicted to them at other occasions in more understandable words about the destiny of My teaching and about the distant future.
10
Then the innkeeper brought us to a very antique closet that was very gracefully made of wood of cedar and ebony, opened it and said: "This closet contained the special scriptures and notes of the great and mighty king, but there is nothing left now. I am using it now for the preservation of all my treasures, which had to originate from that time."
11
Then he opened certain hidden compartments of this big closet and showed us a few catgut strings which David made himself, a stone sling and a couple of stones, then a spear, different writing shelves, which were seen and admired with great attention by the Romans.
12
However, the innkeeper asked Me: "Lord and Master, are these relics really genuine from the time of David?"
13
I said: "Friend, genuine or not genuine, this does not matter now, because these things have no value for the true man who strives for the spirit of the truths of life from God. However, what is valuable as an inheritance of the wise king of the Jews is the spirit in his writings and songs, and also what the chronicles of his deeds have preserved for men. Because once in the other life, man will only possess his blissful existence by that which he has made his own by his good deeds according to the will of God.
14
Apart from that, it does not harm a soul who is noble and pure by his good deeds if he feels joy over historical objects. Only, he should remember that an exaggerated veneration of such things can have no value for his inner life because they are as such dead objects.
15
Whoever would venerate such objects too much, would by that commit a kind of harmful idolatry and finally could easily fall into all kinds of superstition. And this would be equal to dark paganism, which - for the sake of the Kingdom of God that is now coming to all people - must be resisted in every respect, so that it would not take root in the new teaching, for it would pollute and spoil it. Then the inner meaning of the psalm that was explained to you would become true prematurely, because people would fall from one godlessness into another by all kinds of superstition.
16
Therefore, show these relics only to people who are not superstitious, but who consider them merely as historical things and who do not attribute a so-called healing magical power to it.
17
Look at the mountains and their stones. These are works of God's power and wisdom and for you already unspeakably old, and as such they certainly are more memorable than the works from the hands of a human being. But what sensible person would want to venerate these mountains or even worship them because of the fact that they are unmistakably works of God's almightiness and wisdom and are extremely old. They are and remain matter and it is their destination to be useful for the Earth.
18
Such old objects are thus also only useful to some extent because they partly can serve as proof for history, as far as they can be proven to be real, which is of course for all men who search for the pure truth of all things somewhat difficult to determine.
19
However, these things are real. But although I am giving you the assurance, the value of it has not increased. And so you know now also how you should look at these relics. So you can close the closet again and guide us to the other hall for the Romans."