The Great Gospel of John
Volume 9
Jesus' Precepts and Deeds through His Three Years of Teaching
The Lord in Cana
- Chapter 99 -
The Lord about Judas Iscariot.
Very friendly I said to the innkeeper: "How could you have said something wrong and therefore unjust since I have put the words in your mouth and in your heart? You have said to this disciple, completely in My Spirit and in My name, frankly and straightly the full truth in his face. It will be good for him if he will take them to heart for his life.
2
Oh, I know very well that he is learned in the Scripture, and I also know about all his knowledge and experience from other places in which he exceeds by far all My other disciples. But to what advantage is that to him, if he travels around with Me for almost 2 1/2 years, mostly to watch Me closely in everything I do, to see if he can find something which is not according to the Scripture? Because of that, his hidden pride, which he therefore did still not give up, and so also his selfishness and possible pursuit of profit is always nourished anew. That is why he stays as he is, and he does not allow anyone to rebuke him completely and truthfully to improve his life, because he always thinks within himself: 'What do you, poor and ignorant fishers want to teach me, while I am learned in the Scripture?'
3
But I say: in itself it is very good to be learned in the Scripture, but to Me, someone who knows only little of the Scripture but who lives and acts in faith according to it, is much more dear to Me than someone who is very learned in the Scripture, who only criticizes the Scripture, who hardly and finally does not believe in it at all, and therefore does not live and act according to the Scripture, but only according to the advice of his worldly reason.
4
Once a person has blown up himself by the vanity of his great knowledge, is as blind in the spirit as all those extremely wise Jews and Pharisees and scribes in Jerusalem. Even so much so that in bright daylight he cannot see the forest between the trees, thus who is still searching it, and while he is standing in the middle of it he asks: 'Yes, but where is that forest that I sought and wanted to see?'
5
And from a spiritual point of view, is it also not the same as with someone who asks in the middle of his life if he is really living, and out of what his life actually consists?
6
Fool, your skin and your flesh and the outer world that is equal to you will of course not be able to tell you, because all that is in itself no life, but only a result of life. Go into your inner being by faith, by love, by humility, meekness and true self-denial, and become through that an independent life with the life from God in you, then you will experience that you are truly alive and what life is.
7
Indeed, why do people not search for gold in dead rocks? But on a spot where they have discovered traces of that metal, they penetrate into the deep of the mountains and gather great treasures therein. If people do this without fear and restraint to win earthly treasures which are dead as such, and which also bring death to a lot of people, then why are they not doing this in and with themselves to win the gold of life that is hidden in them? They already have the clearest traces of the inner and true gold of life on their skin.
8
Once a person exists and lives, but who as an unripe fruit of life is still not aware why he exists and lives, should, in his works, stand in the light from God. By that he should strongly enlighten himself and warm himself in his heart, then by that he will come to an inner liberation and true ripeness of life. Therein he will clearly be aware how and why he exists and lives, and what and who the life in him is."