The Great Gospel of John
Volume 8
Jesus' Precepts and Deeds through His Three Years of Teaching
The Lord and His adversaries
- Chapter 87 -
The reasons of the temple servants for their attitude towards the Lord.
After some thinking, an elder said: "Highly ranked Romans and our rulers, you are very right that you are making us a reproach, which we have deserved already for a long time, for we Jews are already since very long at the purest Source and we do not want to drink from it. But who is to blame for that? Look, if someone has a treasure, then he does not value it so much as someone who does not have it and must acquire it with difficulty in one way or another if he wants to possess it. If we hear foreign prophets and wise men then we eagerly desire for their wisdom, but we do not pay attention to our own prophets and wise men, because we know them since their birth, and when they appear we say: 'From where did he have this wonderful active power?' Short and good: the people, and more precisely we, already old Jews, are lazy and have become indifferent regarding everything that appears to be new, no matter how remarkable it may be, because our easy-going life that we are used to shuns every special effort and work, and simply and solely for this reason we resist against everything that disturbs our rest and accustomed comfortable traditional way.
2
We ourselves can very well and clearly see our wrong attitude, but we still cannot free ourselves from a certain anger against the one who disturbs us. Who is to blame? Look, our old habit that was not disturbed since long. Now, the more intrusive such an appearance is, which disturbs our comfortable rest, the more unpleasant it works on us and stimulates our resistance.
3
You Romans are lords of a great and powerful kingdom and you feel very comfortable when there is peace in the whole kingdom, but when you receive information from one or the other part of the kingdom that a nation there has rebelled against you, then you also do not ask yourselves if maybe that nation could have rebelled against you with the greatest human right because of the too heavy burdens, but you send quickly a powerful army to it and chastise the rebellious nation without any mercy and without considering if the rebellion of the nation was just or unjust. And why are you doing that? Because the rebellious nation has only awakened you out of your comfortable rest. You know that nation and then you also ask in your assembly: 'But what has come into the mind of that little nation to rebel against us?' and then you say: 'Just wait, you little nation, you will pay dearly for your courage and madness.' Why do you, after all kinds of wise considerations, not say: 'That little nation has indeed rebelled against us, but let us send messengers of peace and judges of peace to them. They must examine the reason and also well discover if that nation had a clear evident and good right for it.' No, this you do not do, even if you came to hear that even a God had set Himself at the head of the nation that is pressed, and which has for this reason rebelled. But you send immediately an army and overtake that nation without any mercy. And if you are beaten a few times, only then Hell will brake out completely, even if you very well could see that this nation had the fullest right to rebel against you. In short, that nation had really disturbed your comfortable rest and therefore you use every means to chastise it, also, as said, if even a God from His goodness, wisdom and mercy would have set up the nation for a victorious rebellion against you.
4
Look, this is how man at certain occasions does not ask for truth and justice, but in his blind anger and rage he acts against the one who has disturbed him in his imagined right, although he in himself can also perceive - already since long in every respect, unjustly and for the sake of his comfortable rest - that his shield was only lie and deceit.
5
This is now also the case with most of the temple servants. In themselves they can indeed perceive that their attitude against the law of Moses and against the people is already since long incorrect and that the great Master from Nazareth is completely right, but He disturbs them in their earthly comfortable rest, and therefore they hate Him and for this reason they would like to bring Him to ruin, like someone lying in his sweet slumber tries to catch and destroy a fly which disturbs his comfortable rest.
6
You, highly ranked Roman, can then indeed ask: 'But do the temple servants have no more faith at all in a God and His word from the mouth of the prophets?' On this I can tell you from my personal experience of many years that in the whole of the land of the Jews, probably not one layman among the Jews can be found who has less faith than a temple servant, especially when he is already old. The young men believe sometimes more or less in an authority, but when they slowly realize that the first and old ones, the scribes and highly ranked persons have no more faith at all, they also loose all faith. They throw themselves secretly in the arms of the Greek philosophers, enjoy the temporary life as good as they can, and the old Jehovah and Moses and the prophets are for them nothing else than signposts that by means of the rules and ceremonies that are consecrated to them, have no other use except to gather great treasures by which they can continue to improve their good life.
7
This is how the temple servants have very well arranged it, and they did also know how to eliminate everything that was somehow bothering them. And that which they always have done, they still do and will always do as long as they exist.
8
These are, highly ranked Roman, very clearly the reasons why the temple servants have now also gone to war against this Nazarene, but we, who are now here, consider Him to be the promised Messiah according to the full truth. They say: 'Let us catch Him first and kill Him, then it will be evident if He is the promised Messiah, if there is a God, and if all prophets were no imposters of men.'
9
The fact that the whole temple reasons now like this, and also want to act this way, we really cannot help, and as long as we are holding an office in the temple we can do little or nothing against the fact that they are so absurdly aggressive. It is already a great deal if we now and then can bring a tempered influence. It is because you insisted that I now have spoken faithfully and truthfully, and, highly ranked Roman, you can now give your evaluation on it."