The Great Gospel of John
Volume 8
Jesus' Precepts and Deeds through His Three Years of Teaching
The Lord and His adversaries
- Chapter 43 -
Forgiveness of sins.
I said: "Precisely for this reason you have to proclaim the truth to the people. Whoever will accept it, will be free and blessed. However, those who will not accept it will therefore continuously remain in their sins and in the judgment and the spiritual death thereof.
2
I do not compel you to teach these truths of life to all people in a very short time, so that they also should live completely according to it. For the time being I only have given this to you in order to understand the secret of God's Kingdom, and not also in this time to all the terrible blind people. Later however, you will meet a great number of people who will join you with all diligence and who will work together with you for the sake of the truths that I have proclaimed to you.
3
However, concerning the confession of guilt before the priests as such that was mentioned by you, as they are now they are wicked and thus completely objectionable because they do not improve the people but they only make the people to persist in their sins until their end. But I am not against it when a weak person, whose soul is sick, will voluntarily and honestly confess his weaknesses and faults to someone with a healthy soul who is stronger than him, because the healthy person who is strong of light can then out of true neighborly love easily convey to him the real way by which the soul of the weak fellowman can become stronger and healthy. Because in this way, a person can be a real savior of souls. However, I am not making a law of it, but with this I am only giving you a good advice. And whatever I am doing, do likewise and convey the truth to everyone.
4
The confession of sins alone will not purify a person from his sins, no more than when a physically sick person will be made healthy when he tells the doctor about his disease and how he has caught it, even if he does it in all sincerity. But he should listen to the advice of the doctor who is wise and has much knowledge, and then also follow the advice faithfully and avoid everything in the future that was the cause of his disease.
5
So it is also good when in a community every brother knows the other, his strong as well as his weak points, so that, concerning the soul, and also physically, one can and want to support the other according to the full truth. However, the one who does not want to tell anything because he thinks that with his confession he might offend anyone should not be provoked by anybody to confess his weaknesses.
6
But if anyone among you is wise, and his spirit reveals to him the weaknesses of the weak and fearful brother, then the wise one should give him privately a good advice and assist him by word and deed to help him out of his hidden need. Then his reward will not be kept away from him.
7
However, let everyone have his free will and force no one, for now you know that every moral compulsion is completely contrary to My eternal order. What I am not doing, you also should not do.
8
And now we have spoken the right words about the sincere confession of weaknesses and secret sins. Everything that is above or below that is against My order and is evil.
9
But you should not treat the weak brother who trustingly has been sincere to a stronger one among you, with a threatening face as from a judge, but always openly tell the truth to him with all love and friendliness, and also convey to him the means by which he easily and safely can be healed. Then he will not be discouraged and will be a grateful student of the free truth. But when you will approach him with all kinds of sermons of penance, you will not only accomplish little or nothing with him but will make him more miserable than he ever was before.
10
Unfortunately, in later times it will however happen that confessions of guilt before the false prophets will be more practiced than they have ever been among the Pharisees and arch-Jews, and this will lead to the fall and the judgment of the false prophets who work in My name. Because those will tell the people - as the heathens are doing - that God has given the authority only to them to forgive all sinners their sins or to hold them accountable for them. In this way, in return of big offerings, they will declare their blind favorite ones to be blessed and holy for all the Heavens.
11
When that will happen, the time will soon be near wherein the great judgment over the new paganism will take place. Therefore, be careful with the open confessions, so that they would not too easily imitate you with an even more wicked mentality than it is the case now with the Pharisees and arch-Jews.
12
I also have told you once - and more precisely to My old disciples - that you can forgive those who have sinned against you, and that to those to whom you have forgiven their sins here on Earth must and will also be forgiven in Heaven. However, if you, because of an unmistakable incorrigibility, would have a good reason to hold them accountable for the sins that they have committed against you, then they also will be accountable for them in Heaven.
13
We already have seen before that you have only the right to hold sinners accountable for the sins that they have committed against you when you have forgiven them already 7 times 77 times before.
14
If you as My nearest disciples are only receiving the right from Me to hold accountable for or to forgive on the mentioned manner the sins of those who have sinned against you, then it is clear that no priest can ever have the right from God to forgive or to hold them accountable for the sins who have been committed against them.
15
Of the one for instance who has sinned against Caiphas, Caiphas can also forgive the sins or, dependent on how the case looks like, hold them accountable for it. However, the one who has sinned against Herod, he has nothing to do with Caiphas, nor he with him, but only with Herod. The one however who sins against the temple, should see how he could put matters straight with the temple.
16
But by this I do not mean of course the temple as it is now, but as it was during former times, for now also I would be a sinner against the temple, just like all of you are, and therefore we also do not have to make a confession of guilt to the temple. Because now, we are the supreme true temple of God, and the one down there has become a den of murderers. For this reason, the harvest of its evil fruits that it has sowed on its fields will begin soon. Then one will not harvest grapes or figs from its thorns and thistles.
17
However, how the situation is now with the temple - mind you, in the name of Jehovah - so will once - and even much worse - the situation be in My name with the new paganism. But the harvest of its fruits will turn out to be much worse than the harvest of that temple down there.
18
It will certainly not be your fault concerning the new paganism, just as it is also not the fault of the prophets when the temple down there has become now the way it never should have been. But all guilt will be from the side of the people whose comfortable laziness did not allow them to walk independently on the ways of the truth, but instead they preferred to let others - namely the so-called priests - walk on the ways of the dirty sacrifices that were given to them, who however are also not walking on the ways of the truth but only on the ways of deceit and lie. There, one completely blind person will lead the other, just as long as the two will come to a pit and then both will fall into it.
19
Now that you have heard this from My mouth, you should also understand it according to the full truth, and let yourselves never be tempted by the laziness of the highly ranked ones. For he who does not want to work, will also not eat of the meal of life."
20
The scribe said: "Well now, that was extremely clearly spoken by You, and the truth of that which You have spoken is very plain. If Moses and the prophets had also spoken so clearly to the people as You, o Lord and Master, have now spoken to us, then the whole Jewry would look quite different than how it looks like now in this evil time. When Your teaching will be known among the people, it certainly will forever bear quite different fruits, for from our side this teaching will really be conveyed to the other people as little differently as the stars at the sky are unchangeably coming up and are going down. We only ask You, o Lord and Master, never to leave us with Your mercy and help, as well as those who will guide and steer Your people after us."