The Great Gospel of John
Volume 9
Jesus' Precepts and Deeds through His Three Years of Teaching
The Lord in Galilee
- Chapter 83 -
About the tree of life and the tree of knowledge.
I said: "Firstly the truth will remain one and the same truth, even without signs, and whoever will live and act accordingly will become deeply inside aware that My teaching is divine and not a human word.
2
Secondly, those who will transmit My teaching about the Kingdom of God in man to others and who will not only be teachers but who they themselves will also do My will that is clearly contained in My teaching, will also be capable to perform signs in My name, and even greater signs than I am performing Myself.
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But as mere teachers and not as men who apply My teaching themselves, they will not be able to perform signs because the power to perform signs does not come from the reason but from the living faith and the firm will to act. Because the reason of the brains is a dead worldly light of man that can never penetrate into the most inner regions of life of the spirit and its power. And the living faith in the heart is the true light of life of the soul that awakens the spirit in him and takes care that it will penetrate into the whole person. And once man is permeated of the Spirit, then he is also permeated of its all-capable power. And whatever the living Spirit wants, which forms then one being with the soul, happens, and the will is then already an accomplished work.
4
Therefore it is also stated in the Scripture that God put 2 trees in the garden of life: a tree of life and a tree of knowledge, and said to man: 'If you will only eat the fruits of the tree of life, you will live, but if you also will eat the fruits of the tree of knowledge before it will be blessed by Me for you, then death will come over you and you will die.'
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But man - since he had a completely free will - let himself be seduced by the snake of his lust, and ate of the tree of knowledge even before it was blessed by the ripeness of the faith in the heart of man. That means: he searched and tried to grasp the Spirit of God, and so also the Spirit of life, with his natural reason. The result of it was that by that he only withdrew himself more and more from God instead of drawing more and more close to Him. And that was already death, that means the spiritual death of man, and the whole man became powerless and lost the authority over all things in the natural world and was forced to work for and to acquire his feeding bread with the help of the weak glowing of his brains' reason in the sweat of his face, physically and even more so spiritually.
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And look, until now, men withdrew so far away from God, and thus also from the true inner life, that they now believe almost no more in a God, and thus also not in a continuance of life of the soul after the body has fallen away. And those who still believe mechanically in a God, or through a blind superstition in many gods - just like the heathens - imagine God or the gods to be so endlessly far away from them, that finally it seems impossible to them that a human being could ever come close to the God of whom they believe that He is so endlessly far away from him.
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And now that God Himself has physically come to men in all the fullness of His eternal might and power, and with all His love and wisdom, they do not see that, and in their great blindness and foolishness they consider this as impossible, while nevertheless with God all things are possible. And because He reveals Himself now with a physical mouth and not with lightning and thunder, they consider God Himself now as a blasphemer and a malicious agitator of the people against God and against the kings of the world who consider themselves to be gods and who also let themselves be honored as such by men.
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And look, all this is the result of the fact that all men preferred to eat the dead fruit of the tree of knowledge instead of the living and life-giving fruit of the tree of life."