The Great Gospel of John
Volume 9
Jesus' Precepts and Deeds through His Three Years of Teaching
The Lord in Jericho
- Chapter 23 -
About the necessity and purpose of temptations.
If this world would not be provided with all imaginable enticements, and would only be for men as a desert is for wild animals, then his free will, that is equal to God, his reason and his mind were given to him in vain. Because how could his love be awakened, and, after it is awakened, what must it desire and want, and what could purify his reason and awaken his mind and bring it to life?
2
Thus the almost endless great diversity, good and bad, noble and not noble, exists only for the sake of man, so that he can see, come to know, investigate, choose and efficiently use everything. So from that, he can also conclude that a very wise, good and almighty Creator has created and arranged all that, and when man, out of himself, begins to reason like that, then the Creator never fails to reveal Himself more closely to thinking man, as this was undeniably the case at all times of mankind.
3
But of course, if men go too much astray and become entangled in the enticements of the world and think that they only exist to provide themselves, as sensible and thinking human beings, of all imaginable pleasures from the world that is richly equipped with all kinds of things, and if they do not discover the real purpose why they have been put into the world and who put them into the world, then there can be no question of a real, higher revelation of God and His will of love. That can only take place when men begin to think due to all kinds of need and misery, at least up to the point that they will ask: 'Why actually did we have to come into this miserable world, and why must we actually let ourselves be tormented and tortured unto our certain death, which is the miserable ending of our despair?' - as you also, Nojed, were babbling in the same philosophical manner.
4
Then the moment has come on which God will again reveal Himself to men, first by the mouth of awakened men, and by other signs, but also by all sorts of judgment over those people who became rich and mighty, proud and loveless and very arrogant through all kinds of lies and deceptions and the suppression of the poor and the weak - people who do not think anymore about any God themselves and still less have any faith in their heart, but who only throw themselves into all the pleasures of the world, run over the poor and who do not even consider them anymore to have the value of a human being but only of a simple animal.
5
Once the measure among men on the world will be full, a great judgment will come, and together with that, also a great, direct revelation from God to men who in their heart will still believe in God and who have thus also kept the love for Him and their fellowman.
6
Then those who deny God and the proud deceivers and suppressors will be wiped off the surface of the Earth, and those who believe and the poor will be raised up and be enlightened from the Heavens, as this is the case now, and as it will be the case again later in about 2.000 years. The time, in which this can, and also certainly will take place, is as easy to recognize as can be seen in the late winter when spring draws near and you look at the trees and see how their buds are swelling more and more and become more juicy and how the juice, just like the tears of men, will drop down from their branches and twigs on the soil, and in a certain way are begging for deliverance from the need of the winter in which so many trees were pining away.
7
So once the heart of the poor people will become brighter by the light of the truth from God, and will swell, and when moreover by the merciless and limitless suppression the soil will become humid because of their tears, then the great spiritual spring has come very close.
8
If you 3, and also you My already older friends, will look at that closely, then you soon and without difficulty will discover what kind of time this is, and what kind of citizen I actually am."