The Household of God
Volume 1
The early history of mankind
- Chapter 170 -
A SACRIFICIAL GOSPEL
Thereupon Enoch rose with the deepest love and a heart filled with gratitude and asked the high Abedam:
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"Lord, and our most loving Father Who is holy, super-holy, would it be Your most holy will if we made a sacrifice to You here on the height in the same way as our sacrifice was handled yesterday on the plain? O Abba, let me know Your holy will."
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And Abedam answered: "Enoch, how can you ask Me this when you know so very well wherein the only sacrifice which pleases Me consists!
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"Wherever I first receive the inner offering of a remorseful, contrite and love-filled heart, any sacrifice is hallowed, be it made in the way of Abel, Seth and Enos or as yesterday on the plain.
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"However, I notice in the hearts of all of you a vacant spot. This spot you have consecrated to the sacrifice to God, but because of its emptiness you do not understand to whom you make a sacrifice and why. So do comprehend this: The Father does not want any sacrifice except that of the heart. And the Father is also the sole, eternal, super-holy and mighty God; to Him alone a sacrifice is due as the pure love is to the Father.
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"The sacrifice consumes, destroys and kills every offering in the fire burning on the altar. Behold, this is man's testimony before God, saying that he has recognized God either openly or just vaguely feeling it in his heart what God is like and what He does.
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"But if someone should stick only to the offering, not bound by the love for the Father, the offering similar to God would seize him, consume, destroy and kill him because he has not first moistened himself with the water of life which is the pure love for the Father.
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"I tell you that he who in his heart sacrifices to the Father has made a pleasing sacrifice to God too; whereas he who makes a sacrifice on the altar only to God assuming thereby to please the Father as well labors under a great misapprehension. For truly, the Father is not pleased by a burnt offering, but solely by a living offering of the heart.
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"Or should the living Father out of whom all life originated be pleased with a dead burnt sacrifice or one that consumes, destroys and finally even kills every offering?
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"But if - as already said - first a living 0ffering of love for the Father is made from the heart, then the burnt sacrifice shall find favor, too, whereby man makes known what he has found in his heart, namely, that the Father is holy, holy, holy and is Almighty God from eternity. Without this offering every burnt sacrifice is an abomination before Me.
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"Look back to Cain and Abel. Cain sacrificed without love, but Abel with love. Whose sacrifice rose upwards and whose was driven back towards the earth?
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"As Cain's offering was an abomination to the Father, what was its consequence? - The sacrifice took hold of Cain and made him his brother's murderer.
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"Thus the purely blind sacrifice will one day take hold of many and they will act as Cain did and kill countless brothers spiritually and bodily.
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"If you want to make a sacrifice, make it a right one as I have sufficiently explained to you.
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"But today it shall be performed in the same way as it was done yesterday on the plain. And you shall no longer ignite the sacrifice on the altar in the evening, but before noon so that the children who live far from here can reach their homes by evening.
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"Henceforth all the small children shall not be taken to the sacrifice, but it is sufficient if from each hut two men and one woman turn up. But it shall not be made a duty to anyone to come to the sacrifice, for only the love for the Father will hallow people and not the sacrifice as such.
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"Whoever is prompted to come by his love for the Father, through him the sacrifice is hallowed and it will edify him in spirit. But through him who is not driven here by love but coerced by the taskmaster of some law and his heart is therefore in opposition, the sacrifice will be desecrated and it will destroy him and his heart will wither. And what he will then be offering Me will be like his withered heart, a work without life, a dead offering.
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"What I have now explained shall remain valid.
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"And now, beloved Enoch, you may set about your work. You others shall now go outside and tell the many waiting there who have come from all the regions what is involved in the sacrifice. But do not mention Me that I am personally present here.
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"Only you, Jared, Abedam and also Adam, follow Me to the hut of Jared until the time of the sacrifice. Seth's children shall follow us with Eve.
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"And so let all be done properly in and through love alone! Amen."