The Great Gospel of John
Volume 9
Jesus' Precepts and Deeds through His Three Years of Teaching
The Lord in Jericho
- Chapter 22 -
About the destiny of men.
I said: "Listen, Nojed, and also your brothers Hiponias and Rasan. I am not a Samaritan as you mean and understand it, and yet, I also am a Samaritan, just like I also am not a Jew, and yet, I still am a Jew, and I also am not a gentile, and yet, I still am a gentile, otherwise I could not associate in a kind way with the gentiles. In short, I am everything with everything and in everything, because where the truth, love and its goodness are completely working together, there I also am with everyone on the whole Earth, and I am cursing no one who strives for the truth and its goodness.
2
However, the one who, out of love for the world and self-love, turns his back on the truth and all its goodness, and thus inevitably sins against the truth and its goodness - which is the eternal pure love in God - sins also against God's order and against its unshakable justice, and he curses himself.
3
But if he realizes his great evil, returns to the truth and begins to search that truth and its goodness and also begins to act accordingly, then the curse goes away from him in the same measure as he makes the truth in full earnest the guideline of his life. Then God will take him by the arm and lighten more and more his heart and mind and will strengthen his will, with the gentiles as well as with the Jews. And so I am, from God's Spirit that lives in Me, everything in everything, in the gentiles as well as in the Jews.
4
You also take Me for a real prophet, and I say to you that I also am one, and yet, again I am not, because a prophet had to do what God's Spirit commanded him to do. But I Myself am Lord and servant, I prescribe the right ways for Myself, and no one can hold Me accountable and say: 'Why are You doing that?' For I Myself am from and in Myself the truth, the way and the life, and he who will act according to My teaching and will believe that I Myself am the truth, the way and the life, and thus an entirely independent, completely free Lord, will also just as I, possess eternal life in himself.
5
For if men of this Earth want to become children of God, they must try in every way to be as perfect as the eternal and holy Father in Heaven who is in Himself the eternal truth, the eternal love and power, and all the endless good, righteous and wonderful that results from it. Therefore, it is also written in the Scripture: 'God created man after His likeness, He made him after His image and blew His breath into him, so that he would become a living, free soul.'
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In this manner, men of this Earth are not simply and solely creatures of Jehovah's almightiness, but children of His Spirit, and consequently of His love, and thus - as it is also written - gods themselves.
7
And if they are - and their completely free will that is not limited by anything clearly proves this to them - then they also are completely free lords and judges over themselves. But they only become perfect and lords who are completely equal to God, by making God's will, that is faithfully revealed to them, as their own will by acting according to it, in which they also are completely free.
8
That is why God works only very seldom visibly among the people because already since the very beginning He has given them out of Himself the capability to slowly raise themselves, out of their own power, up to the highest level of life that is equal to God.
9
Thus, the one who, as soon as he uses his mind, begins to search for the truth and its goodness and will also act immediately according to what he has found, is already walking on the right way, and God will lighten that way for him more and more and lead him to his glory. But the one who, also by his own will, becomes lazy and who will attach himself to this world and its enticements - which are only present for the outer and perishable sense organs of the material or physical man for the test of his free will - will judge himself out of his free will and will make himself equal to death and judgment, and is consequently himself also as good as judged and dead.
10
And this death is then what you have rejected as the concept 'Hell' as punishment for the soul because of his sins, because you never more want to avoid sin out of fear for such punishment, neither do you want to hope for a Heaven as reward for living according to the known truth. And I fully agree with you, for that kind of Hell does really not exist anywhere, as less as that kind of Heaven. And yet, Hell and Heaven exist, but not outside of man, but inside of him, according to how he judges himself in the manner that I have shown you just now."