The

Great Gospel

of

John

Volume 5

Jakob Lorber

- Chapter 1 -

The miraculous meal

1 Say I: "It is now already one hour past noon; therefore Mark, arrange for a meal! My Raphael will help you. After the meal we shall see what the day has in store for us. All of you take seats at the tables, and you, Raphael, remove the two heaps of brain from our table and only then help Mark!"

2 Raphael did so in the twinkling of an eye and then said to Mark, "Should I help you in a humanly way or my way? Tell me how you would rather have it! It would draw less attention, if I helped you in a humanly way; my way, however, we would save a lot of time, and that is something very precious! Thus I will do what you want me to do, and you will not have to lay out anything anywhere, as if anything would have been missed."

3 Mark says: "Yes, friend from the heavens, your way of putting the meals on the tables as fast as possible would certainly be very advantageous, because despite the assistance of Cyrenius' servants it takes a pretty long time until the meals for so many people are brought to the tables; there is a catch, however! There are not enough meals completely prepared! If your celestial skill can do something there, that would be the most appropriate place for it; otherwise it will probably still be another good half hour until everything will be ready to be laid on the tables!"

4 Raphael says very jovially to Mark, "That is what I mean as well: prepare as fast as possible, and just as fast put the seemly meals and beverages on the tables! I am telling you, where there is a will, there is a way! If you want to, it will only take me the shortest instant and all meals, prepared superbly, will be on the tables in front of the guests!"

5 Mark says: "That would be fine; but the people will regard it as heavenly magic and be understandably afraid of the food, and hardly dare to enjoy it "especially the blacks who are already so alert that nothing escapes them!"

6 Raphael says: "Oh, they will mind the least because they are already used to miracles! Also, it is already late and the Lord has in mind for after the meal something of great importance that only He knows; so it is obviously better if we do it with my spiritual speed, and no one will resent that. At the same time this is the last lunch the Lord will have here and it will not harm if it looks a bit miraculous! "Do you not agree?"

7 Mark says: "Absolutely! You, as a first spirit from the heavens, would know and understand better than I what is more appropriate and advantageous here! Thus act as you think is best!"

8 After Mark said this to Raphael, they both went to the kitchen where, as usual, Mark's wife, his daughters and sons, and several of Cyrenius' servants had their hands full; still, the meal for so many people was only half ready.

9 Mark said, "Oh, it will be another hour until everything is ready!"

10 His wife says: "Yes, my beloved husband, the two of us cannot work wonders and it cannot be rushed. That means one has to persevere patiently until everything is done!"

11 Mark says: "You know what, you and the daughters just stop the cooking, simmering and frying; Raphael, as a true fast cook, will finish it soon!"

12 The wife says: "That would be good because everyone is quite tired from all the work!"

13 With that all the cooks stepped back and Raphael said, "You may also go to your table now! Everything is already on the tables, and all the guests are already eating their meals. Come old Mark, and sit down at the table as my assistant, and eat from my kitchen, and assess if I can cook! Your wife, your children, and Cyrenius' cooks already have in front of the house their own table laden with the same meals and drinks."

14 They all leave the kitchen and when they see the hundreds of guests eating and drinking at the tables, Mark says very amazed by this occurrence, "How is this possible? You have not left my side for an instant and all the tables are abundantly full, as one can see! You could not have prepared any meal and still less have put it on the tables. I beg you to tell me just a little of how you accomplished this; truly I can understand anything more easily than your despairingly unfathomable speed, especially with actions that are bound to a certain timeframe order inevitable in this world! I beg you again to give me just a small hint of how you prepared the meals and from where you got them! Because nothing from the half prepared ones in my kitchen got on all these tables, as I just saw them there resting safely and awaiting their purpose!"

15 Raphael says: "You did not look closely enough; all your supplies are spent! Look if it is not so!"

16 Mark takes a quick look, and finds the kitchen and the pantry cleared out. He then comes out even more amazed and says: "Ah, friend, it is unbearable with you! Truly, I will not take a bite of anything for three days if you do not give me a hint on how you did that!"

17 Raphael says: "Let us go to the table; there, we shall exchange a few words on the matter!"

18 With that Mark and Raphael come to our table, where the atmosphere was already quite lively. Raphael immediately grabs a nice fish, puts it in front of Mark and coerces him to eat it. Mark urges him to explain the fast cooking and the equally fast serving, bur Raphael says very kindly, "Now, dear friend, eat and drink! After both of us have received the refreshment necessary to the body from the blessed food and the blessed drink, we will have a couple of words about my fast cooking and serving!"

19 Mark follows Raphael, and eats and drinks heartily.

- Chapter 2 -

How miracles are performed.

1 When the meal is over, after about an hour, Mark again says to Raphael with regard to the explanation, "Well, heavenly friend, will you tell me something?!"

2 Raphael says: "Yes, friend, I will explain it to you; but despite all explanations the matter will still remain a miraculous one as long as you are not baptized with the Holy Spirit from Heaven! When God's Spirit will have arisen completely in your soul and will be one with it, you will clearly understand all this without any explanation; now, however, even the most logical explanation will give you awfully little enlightenment! For even the most perfect soul will never grasp what is purely spiritual; only the spirit in it can grasp that and the soul eventually through its spirit! But because you want to get a hint, look around you, and tell me what you see!"

3 Mark looks around astonished and sees at every table a slew of boys that resemble Raphael a lot, who attend on the many guests and constantly provide them with everything; more boys even get fresh fish from the sea, hurry with them to the kitchen and right away with prepared ones to the tables because the moors are very hungry; furthermore, the good taste of the food appealed to them.

4 Raphael asked Mark, "Do you understand now how it is possible, and even easy, for me to accomplish so much, so fast, particularly if you bear in mind that a spirit, as the penetrating principle of the innermost part of beings and things, can most effectively and at the same time most successfully control and use all matter as it wants and likes, and nothing can stop it?! Besides, as an archangel, I have an uncountable number of assistants who depend on my will in every moment. As soon as I want something from the Lord that will immediately fills countless servants subordinate to me, who start working at once and easily accomplish a requested action so fast you can hardly imagine! I myself do not do anything of course; but through my archangelic will eons are destined for action as their innermost existential reason and a requested action is thus easily accomplished very fast, and that is that much more certain because a long time ago everything was designed and prepared for some action by the Lord and then by us; should it be necessary for you, it can then be transferred into the visible act already completed a while ago.

5 You saw how a donkey came into existence up on the mountain; and look, everything comes into existence like that, when our will inspires primordial spirits originating in our thoughts to a certain action organized one way or another and coerces them to act! My friend, that alone should serve you as the explanation you wanted from me! I cannot tell you more, using the very limited words of this world and language! Also, do not ask again because until you become a spirit in your soul yourself, you will not understand more of all this than you do now! Because no creature can ever penetrate by itself into the knowledge and cognition of a pure spirit! "Do you understand a little more now?"

6 Mark, however, was satisfied with this explanation and said, "Thank you for this very good explanation; now, taking everything I saw and heard, I understand to my fullest satisfaction how you, dearest heavenly friend, perform your miracles, and especially the fastest execution of the feats you requested. And now I can make the assertion that something rather natural occurs during every miracle, and it always comes down to a union of powers if any feat has to be accomplished either very fast or in a periodical arrangement. Yes, I can now find a certain small similarity between your spiritual miracles and the magic of the earthly mages and that lies in what you called providence and preparation!

7 You know, my heavenly friend, I am just saying it forthright as I am thinking it! It might be hard for you to perform such a difficult miracle all of a sudden without any preparation and providence, as it would be for a mage without any preparation and any previous agreements with other people to aid him. Of course, none of the other people should know anything about it since it would ruin the magic! I come to this surely hardly refutable conclusion: All things are possible for the Lord and for you, however never unforeseen, but rather prepared for ages maybe and thus spiritually set a long time ago to be carried out periodically! What is performed as visible feat now, has been spiritually destined and prepared a long time ago!

8 That is why a world like ours cannot come into such perfect existence with a pure almighty 'FIAT'! ['Let it be done!'], but with time, following long prior preparations after which this present world, as it exists now, had to come into existence as an inevitable result. For the same reason, it is practically impossible for anything to come into perfect and durable existence all of a sudden. Whatever comes into existence fast, decays equally fast. Lightning, for example, forms fast, and vanishes equally fast. An opposite effect is the fact that for something once in durable existence it is practically impossible to decay all of a sudden, but rather gradually as it came into being. Something that has not been destined and prepared cannot ever be carried out even through a dictum supported by the strongest will, be it a case of evolution or a case of decomposition and decay. Thus everything is to be regarded only as a temporary miracle, and every event is a necessary result of many gradual processes!

9 You see, my friend from the heavens, praise the Lord; it seems to me that I understood your explanation more profoundly than you imagined in the beginning! Yes, my dear Raphael, the old Romans aren't quite such fools as one might imagine! Well, what do you think now, my friend? Did I understand you, or not?"

- Chapter 3 -

The providence of God and man's free will.

1 Raphael says smiling, "You got a small part of it; but you are quite on the wrong track with your 'inevitable results' and our 'necessary providence' and 'lengthy preparations'. A few rough examples will convince you entirely of that! Look anywhere around you, assign a spot, and tell me on a whim what kind of fully developed and with ripe fruit laden tree or trees you would like to have! Or would you like different species? In short, just speak the word and they will come into enduring existence not destined and unprepared, and a millennium will not thoroughly erase the traces of their existence! So tell me what you want and you will at once see a miracle that has never been prepared and destined!"

2 Mark says: "Yes, yes, that would be fine, my friend, as long as you can fully convince me that my will and my desire are under my complete control! That might seem in the end a lot more difficult to accomplish than the different fruit trees on a random spot that I would ask for! You have seeded some strong doubt in me with regard to the fact that even you, almighty spirits, are capable of performing a pure miracle out of thin air, without any providence and preparation! I do not want to completely deny the matter, but judging by everything that ever was, is and will be on this earth, this is hard to accept, because godly omniscience raises its voice a little too loudly against it and one cannot oppose that with the possible empty claim that God deliberately exerted his universal knowledge for something unwillingly and unknowingly. But if God could not keep Himself completely ignorant for ages on the matter that at one time His angel Raphael will miraculously bring trees into existence according to a man's wishes, it will be difficult to prove that this miracle has not been destined and prepared ages ago! It most definitely was spiritually destined!"

3 Raphael says: "It does not matter, if it only has not been prepared up to materialization itself! In addition, man's will is free to such a degree that neither the Lord nor we would take any action to disturb it in the least through any providence and even less any preparation. Thus you can be completely assured that your free will is not predestined and even less prepared. Therefore, ask and you will see that the Lord, either Himself or through me, His servant, will without any preparation bring into lasting existence the fruit trees you freely requested!"

4 Mark contemplates this for a bit and says after a while, "My friend, do they necessarily have to be fruit trees? I could incidentally want something different! Could that also be miraculously brought into existence?

5 Raphael says: "Oh certainly, one or the other is all the same to us! Ask for what you want and it will be there!"

6 After this assurance Mark ponders a while longer whether something would occur to him with which he could drive the angel into a corner. But because nothing comes to his mind he says to Raphael, "Then make for me a better habitable and sturdier house that will be a prim inn for strangers and locals and a well fenced garden laden with all sorts of enjoyable fruit trees; the date tree should not be missing and a fresh wellspring should flow through the garden!"

7 The angel says: "But my friend, will that not be too much at once?"

8 Mark says: "Aha, my friend, were you caught of balance? Yes, yes, perhaps it cannot be done without any providence and preparation after all! But I do not want to force you to anything; whatever you can miraculously bring into existence do it, and ignore what I asked for!"

9 The angel says: "It will be done exactly as you asked for. In the name of the Lord, let everything that you asked of me, be here! Go and look at everything that is there and tell me afterwards if it is fine with you! If you have anything to object then do it, because things can still be changed! It will be too late tomorrow because we will certainly not be here any longer. Therefore, go and look at everything!"

- Chapter 4 -

Mark's new estate, a miracle by Raphael.

1 Mark looked around and was taken aback by the sight of everything that had come into existence in an instant. A beautiful brick house stood completed on the right, northeast of the old fisherman's house and reached with its southeast front closely to the sea. It had one floor with a comfortable hallway around the whole house, and on the ground level there was a spacious kitchen, a large pantry and eighteen chambers, among which five sitting-rooms and thirteen large rooms for all sorts of agricultural purposes, like various cereal chambers, meat chambers, chambers for fruits, vegetables, for legumes and root crops. One large chamber displayed a water tank build with white marble, which measured twenty square fathom and in all had a consistent depth of six feet; the water, however, was just four feet deep, which was enough for keeping noble fish.

2 This inner fish tank got its cleanest water from an entirely new, rich spring; the water got in from the bottom through small but numerous openings in a stone slab and got up to a determined level. A drainpipe ran from there to the sea, but it could be plugged from outside if one wanted to have the tank full of water. A beautiful, open work, two and a half feet tall handrail, also made of white marble went around the water tank; on one side, in case the water tank would be filled with water, there was a dainty drain that went through the wall of the house and ended in the sea not far from the deeper drainpipe. The walls and the floor were also covered in white marble, but the chamber's ceiling was made of the cleanest and hardest cedar wood without any knots and splints. This chamber was illuminated through five windows, which all had marble frames and each measured a height of five and a width of three feet. The windows had very clear crystal slabs and were designed to open and close, as was every other window of the house.

3 The main door was made of gold like gleaming ore; all the doors to the rooms, however, were made of the best cedar wood worked quite delicately and daintily and were properly equipped with good bolts and locks. The entire first floor was daintily paneled with cedar wood, and every room offered a wonderful view. At the same time, all the rooms on the ground floor, like the ones on the first floor, were comprehensively furnished and equipped with everything that a good inn might possibly require, and the cereal chamber was full of grains, and the pantry full of everything that is needed in a kitchen. In short, it was not only the demanded house solidly built and exactly according to Mark's idea, which he had had for a long time and was akin to a daydream, but it was also most richly stocked for years with all kinds of food supplies and other supplies.

4 Behind the house there were stables for all sorts of animals, and several huts for fishing equipment were built most tastefully and at the same time most properly and were richly equipped with everything necessary. Around all the new buildings stretched a tightly fenced garden of twenty yoke [eleven and a half hectare = almost 30 thousand of today's acres] formerly an abandoned sand steppe and now the most fertile soil, cultivated with all sorts of the best fruit trees. A few yoke were cultivated with the best grape vines, which were laden with the nicest and most juicy, already ripe grapes. Vegetables were not lacking either.

5 In the middle of the garden there was a health spa with a marble temple. It had two distinct pools: one for healing the ones suffering from gout with very warm spring water, and the second for healing lepers supplied by lukewarm sulfur and sodium wells that were led there from the core of the earth by Raphael's power according to My will. At the same time he saw a seaport bordered by square stone blocks and five big, perfectly built ships with sails and oars in the very spacious harbor that had an entrance, which, even though 33 feet wide [10.8 m], could be closed off completely with a iron chain by night. This harbor was exactly like Mark had often imagined, and he had to keep rubbing his eyes while inspecting everything that had miraculously appeared because he had the impression that he was sleeping and thus seeing these things in his dream.

6 When he finished the walkthrough, which lasted almost an hour, he came back almost dizzy and said fully amazed, "Is this all really true, or am I am seeing it all in some sort of blessed dream? No, no, it cannot be true! That is how I have repeatedly pictured an inn in my idle mind and have seen it several times in my daydreams "and you, friend from the heavens, have put me into an artificial sleep and I have viewed my own ideas in a dream once again!"

7 Raphael says: "You doubting Roman, you! If this was all a dream, it would not be still visible and you will not claim that you are still sleeping and dreaming, will you? Send your wife and your children to look at what is there, and then they will come and help you out of your dream!"

8 Mark says: looking at the new house again, "Oh, it is not a dream, it is resounding reality! "Will it, however, last?"

- Chapter 5 -

The children of the world and the children of the Lord.

1 Raphael speaks, "Did I not tell you that all this, that is, everything solidly built, will not be completely erased in a thousand years? Only the different fruit trees, the noble shrubs and the plants, as well as the ships will not last that long; but the stonework will last a very long time! Even after two thousand years, traces of it will still be visible; of course, no one will still believe in supernatural builders of this wall. Even in the present time, your nearest neighbors will say as soon as they see this that everything was built by the present Romans, since many strong hands can perform miracles as well! You, however, accept what the people say because, even though ten times ten times hundred thousand people live in a land after the current fashion, you will hardly find among all of them five thousand who after many discussions would reasonably believe you. But neither you nor we, heavenly spirits, have any need for blind belief. It does not even matter whether many or few believe; the Lord came into this world because of His few children and not because of secular people. And it will stay like this until the end of this world and its times!

2 Whenever the Lord will reveal Himself again in this world, either only through word, or at times even personally for moments, He will at all times do so only to His true children, who are from above! The world and its children will enjoy His presence very little or not at all! Eternity is long enough to bring them to some extremely inferior light.

3 Do not believe that this supreme light from the heavens will ever enter all the people in the world! Only the true children, in small numbers at all times, will be given plenty of it, and the children of the world will built from their scurrility temples and places of worship for false gods and fence them in with iron laws and foolish, blind rules, but will never be able to touch the few true children, of which the Lord will at all times most faithfully make sure. That is why no Jeremiah should intone his lamentations among secular people any longer! "But go to the Lord now and thank Him for such a great gift!"

4 Here comes Mark and wants to start thanking Me with pomp of the most chosen words.

5 I however say, "Save your tongue the trouble because I have already heard the gratitude of your heart and do not need the one of the tongue! Is every honest innkeeper not worth his reward? You are an honest innkeeper too and have assiduously hosted us for almost eight days now; we cannot ask this of you for nothing! This inn will be for you and your descendants a good source of sustenance! But you make sure that My name will stay strong in this place, that is, with your descendants because with the loss of My name from their hearts, they would also soon lose everything else! Whoever looses everything in this world, but keeps My name in spite of that, would not have lost anything, but would have gained everything; but whoever looses My name from his heart, has lost everything, even if he owns all the world's riches!"

- Chapter 6 -

The Lord's rules of conduct for Mark, the innkeeper.

1 (The Lord), "That is why before all be concerned about keeping My name in your heart! Whoever has that has everything; however, who does not have it, has been abandoned by everything!

2 Who loves Me truly and loves his neighbor as himself, carries My name truly and alive in his heart and with that a treasure that cannot be taken from him for eternity; truly loving God in everything one does, is being more than a master of all the treasures in not just this, but all the worlds for all infinity.

3 However, it is not enough to acknowledge Me in virtue of wisdom, but in virtue of true love in your heart.

4 All sorts of poor people will come to you; what you will do for them without any material compensation, you will have done for Me, and My love will recompense you.

5 If someone who is naked comes to you, dress him! Who comes to you without money, do not deny it to him, since he needs it in the world!

6 I wanted all people to live together as brothers without this corruptive means of exchange, but because as secular people they introduced it in this world long ago for a greater comfort of their trade and exchange, I will leave it at that- but only through My love will it bring benediction to people!

7 Do not put any value to it other than My love, and it will bring you My love and My blessing! If someone needs a penny, give him two, even three, and My love will on the other hand replace it ten and thirty times over!

8 In short, if you see somebody lacking something and you gladly help him for My love, you will be able to always count on my compensation which will never lag behind!

9 If, for example, an otherwise rich person, but who suffers from gout, comes to your bath, charge him fairly for board and lodging, but let the bath be free!

10 If, however, someone comes to the bath just for pleasure, charge him more than another one for the bath, board and lodging! If he wants to hear the truth from you, then tell it to him for free because he is poor in that regard!

11 If a worldly-wise man comes and wants to hear the truth from you, do not give it to him for free, but let him pay you a penny for every word; because for such a truth seeker truth only has value if it has cost him a lot!

12 If a poor man comes to you hungry, give him to eat and to drink and do not let him leave as a poor man; however, if someone comes who enjoys sitting at your table, he should pay for what the poor man next to him ate!

13 Support every need for free, and charge every mere pleasure! "Did you understand Me?"

14 Mark says: weeping with joy, "Yes, Lord!"

15 I say, "Then go and show everything to your loved ones!"

16 Mark went to his overly amazed family and made known what I said and they all went hastily to the new house, and of course went inside and inspected everything in detail. The wife and children got dizzy from so much blissfulness and delight and did not know up from down because of so much joy. All the ones sitting at the tables now asked Me if they may also go look at this remarkable marvel.

17 I said, "Dear friends! This creation will last and you will be able to look at it and admire it often enough; I, however, will not stay, except through the love in your hearts.

18 For that reason stay with Me, as long as I am still with you; I am more than any miracle that I could replicate countless times in an instant!"

19 All say, "Yes, yes, yes, oh Lord, we are staying, we are all staying with You, oh Lord, because You alone are more than all miracles of your power, wisdom, and kindness filling infinity.

- Chapter 7 -

On the Roman Pontifex Maximus. A criticism of the heathen priesthood in Rome.

1 Cyrenius says: "Lord, You are aware of my important and difficult governmental duty; but now I have the impression that there is nothing to it and that it all takes care of itself, even without me and my support! I now feel like the fifth wheel because I know that You, Lord, now manage all affairs for me, and there was never a better order in my government than right now, when You, oh Lord, look after me!

2 Oh, you lucky empire! Rome, my parental home, how much you can secretly delight in the fact that the Lord has turned His merciful eye on you and that he wants to draw to Himself children from between your old walls and castles and huts! Lord, my life is Yours: If You had been in Rome rather than here and had given the Romans such a sign, there would be no man left who would not pay You the highest divine veneration! But You know Your plan, and know Your ways, and that is why it is best as You arranged and destined it!"

3 My Jarah, who had been as quiet as a mouse so far, finally said, "Rest easy about Rome great governor! I can accept the actual Romans; but in Rome there are idol-priests who are all subordinate to a so-called PONTIFEX MAXIMUS! [Supreme Leader] They have the people fooled and have their conscience by the collar with their Hades and even Tartarus like punishments, with the latter supposedly lasting eternally in the most monstrous way! Woe to those who would dare to stir up such a hornet's nest! Truly, those would soon suffer miserably! I believe that your priests would be a thousand times worse than our temple priests, who still carry Moses and the prophets on their backs and their chests, even if mostly in memory. Yours do not even have anything in memory; all their doings and troubles are of the highest self-interest and uncontrollable desire to rule over everything.

4 Two priests subordinate to Rome, who stayed at our inn, told me once that the Pontifex maximus is such a high entity that even Zeus himself, who most certainly visits the P.m. once a year, bows to him three to seven times before he dares to speak a word to his highest representative on earth and give him in greatest awe some new laws for the mortal people of the world. Of course, Zeus does not quite honor the P.M. for his sake, but for the sake of the foolish, ignorant mortals who should understand from that what kind of ineffable and immeasurable Greatness and Majesty surrounds the highest god's highest representative on earth.

5 He is a master on earth over all emperors, kings, princes, generals and numerous other highest nobles. He also has all elements under his exclusive control. When he stomps his holy foot on the ground, it shakes in fear like the leaves on an aspen tree in an angry storm, and the mountains of the world start spewing fire and thus support the angered Pontifex maximus, so he can successfully take out his at all times just revenge in Zeus' name.

6 Good and bad years would depend on him alone. If he blesses the earth then there would be overabundant harvests in the whole world; if, however, he does not bless the earth, it will not look so good with the harvests in the world, - and if he wants to put a curse on the world, everything would be done with, and war, hunger, pestilence, and thousand other unheard-of pests would come over the world! All other gods, except for Zeus, have to obey him; in case of refusal he can ban them from earth for a hundred years "which, however, never happens and would never happen because all the gods are too deeply convinced of the ineffable Greatness of the Pontifex maximus.

7 Thus a Pontifex maximus has a triple authority: firstly, over all gods except Zeus, with whom he is of equal rank, of course; secondly, over the whole world and its elements; and finally thirdly, over all people, animals and trees, bushes and plants. In addition he rules over all planets and all stars, has the clouds, winds, lightning, thunder, rain, hail and snow in his hand, and the sea wavers constantly before his infinite power!

8 The two Roman priests told me a lot more about their Pontifex maximus in this way. I thought for a while that they were just joking, but I sadly convinced myself soon enough that the two fools took it very seriously. When I began to proclaim the only true God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob and His doings, they started to laugh at me and assured me that I was completely mistaken and wrong, as they had a thousand arguments to one that it was as they had told me.

9 I asked them if they knew, whether the Pontifex maximus was mortal or immortal. One of them answered a bit hastily and said that the P.m. is still mortal in this world, but that as soon as he dies, Zeus immediately takes him to the highest Elysium where he will dine at Zeus' table for a hundred years and through that finally become a real deity in the kingdom of gods. This story did not suit the other one at all because he immediately corrected, 'You have spoken nonsense once again! Since when has a P.m. been mortal?! What you said about him is valid only for us, lower priests, especially if we did not completely earn the P.m.'s. benevolence; the P.m. never dies and cannot die because Zeus bestowed immortality upon him! Look', he further said, 'I know the fourth already, and of all four, none ever died; nevertheless only one immortal, not four, sits on the throne, even though they are all completely immortal, since no P.m. can ever die, just as the highest throne in the world can never be lost!

10 I finally said once again, 'But this is impossible! How can four be one and one be four?! This sounds like nonsense to me! In short', I said, 'your Pontifex maximus has been marked as a fool by you, is otherwise as mortal a man as ours, and his power lies first of all in the emperor's weapons, in the great foolishness and blindness of the degenerate people, and finally in a type of poorest magic; it is easy to perform miracles before very foolish and spiritually blind people! Go with your fooleries and let me be! It is enough that you are so foolish! Why should I join you as well?'

11 The two got furious with me and with each other because of that and started to bitterly reproach each other, and fought each other out the door. I asked them through the window, as they tussled like a couple of dogs, if the Pontifex maximus had also decreed this through a new law from Zeus from the Elysium. Fortunately they did not hear me and proved the Pontifex maximus' immortality ever more to each other until finally some of our servants pulled them apart.

12 So now please tell me dear, great Cyrenius how would the Lord have come across in Rome in the face of such foolish zealotry? Without any fire and brimstone, certainly worse than badly! Oh, the dear Lord knew for ages where on earth at this time it would still be best and most suitable and that is why He stepped among His people exactly here and nowhere else in the world! See, this is my opinion; what is in contrast yours? What do you or the emperor in Rome think about the ominous Pontifex maximus?"

- Chapter 8 -

The religious conditions in Rome at the time of Jesus.

1 Cyrenius says: "My child, you are right; it is like that in Rome with the Pontifex maximus, only with the people of course, and nothing can be changed about it for the time being! But I can assure you that only the most common rabble, lacking any higher education still half believes in that; none of the better people still believes in that and that is why something can still be done with us Romans.

2 Because of the lowest people, the dissemination of these most purely divine truths will someday cause some unwelcome fight, but will also bring about confessors who according to true Roman tradition will happily employ possessions, blood, and life for this teaching. Because there is hardly any other nation on earth that fears death less than the Romans! Once a true Roman is taken in by something, he will dedicate his life to it at all times! No other nation does that, you can be sure of it!

3 Our priests are now a fifth wheel, and their festivals and sermons are just for the amusement of the people. No one cares about the traditions any more. Our all-encompassing jurisprudence takes care of that, which is an epitome from the best and wisest philosophers that have ever walked this earth as people.

4 The Pontifex maximus is preserved by the state only because of the common folk and his once free ministry has been greatly restricted. Yes, a few centuries ago, it hardly ever happened; the P.m. was then in a way a kind of god among people! He was always a very knowledgeable man, and had to be because otherwise he could not have easily reached such high function. He had to be versed in all of Egypt's mysteries and had to be fully acquainted with all oracles and their secrets. He also had to be a perfect mage on which he had to pass a most strict test in a most secret council before the oldest of Rome's patricians. If he possessed all the required characteristics the pontificate with all its rights, advantages, and disadvantages was bestowed upon him.

5 Now he could naturally dare a lot in front of the people, but had to secretly be respectful towards the patricians and also do what they requested. If they wanted war, he had to arrange his prophecies in such a way that the people saw in them the necessity of war according to the wills of the gods; but the true gods were still the patricians of the empire and with them the first and most educated citizens, artists, and poets, who started from the idea that one only had to give people's imagination a comprehensive yet exact direction in order to protect them from the most ignominious deviations.

6 Every person has an innate imagination. If it is neglected, it can turn the most noble person into a rapacious beast; if, however, his imagination is controlled and led to nobler forms under which it starts to move orderly, it will begin to create nobler forms itself, move into a more pure way of thinking and aspiring, and animate the will for the best of its inner creations.

7 Thus the entire doctrine of gods is nothing but an increasingly orderly figment of imagination, contrived for the control of the common human imagination, and as much as possible practically set to visible and effective work with all human means. For us, wise and informed patricians, arose the easily understandable obligation of appearing to be what we wanted the people to be.

8 It is still the same now as it was back then, with the distinction that now the proletariat is also privy to much of what only us patricians were privy to previously, and that is why it hardly believes in the whole pontificate any longer. The most believe in a higher god, but many do not believe in anything anymore, and a more educated part follows Plato, Socrates and very often Aristotle.

9 Those priests, who described the Pontifex maximus to you, are in part often really so foolish that they literally believe everything that has been hammered into them; however, often they are finely twisted halters, who make a terrible racket in front of the people as if they played with the gods at the Persian chess board every day! They actually do not believe anything but the words of Epicurus, which roughly sound like: EDE, BIBE, LUDE! POST MORTEM NULLA VOLUPTAS; MORS ENIM EST RERUM LINEA. [Eat, drink, and be merry! There is no pleasure after death because death is the end of all things.]

10 If you, my beloved, for your age wonderfully wise Jarah, want to judge us after the two priests, you would do us great injustice because we Romans are exactly as I have just described us. Everything else can only be the scorched account of a layman, who knows so little about Rome's nature as you had known, before what I have just revealed as one who also rules Rome. Since you now this know, you must judge and treat us Romans more leniently! "What do you think, is my request to you fair or not?"

- Chapter 9 -

The Lord's prediction on the destiny of Rome and Jerusalem.

1 Jarah says: "It goes without saying! If it is obviously as you have just openly revealed it to me, then I have no objections towards you. If you have a good will, its success cannot be fundamentally wrong, not even when it does not appear beneficial before the eyes of the world. I let myself be fooled by appearance certainly least of all; but I admit that by nature one can sooner attain a truthfully good will than the purest truth, which only then becomes a true and most effective beacon of life for the good will. According to what you said, you have generally always had the good will unchanged; individual blurs could change little or nothing of the whole.

2 Now you will receive, in addition to your good will, the purest light of the eternal truth, through which your originally good will must come over the right ways and true means to the certain attainment of the best results, and then obviously nothing but the best will be expected of you! Oh Lord, bless these simple words of mine, so that they become eternal truth!"

3 I say, "Yes, My thousand fold beloved Jarah, your beautiful and true words will be blessed!

4 Rome shall stay for a long time the best abode for My teachings and My special grace, and this great imperial city shall reach an age in this world, like very few Egyptian cities will reach, though not as undamaged as Rome. Its outer enemies shall hardly ever harm this city; if it gets damaged, it will only be because of time and its few internal enemies!

5 But unfortunately My teachings will subsequently pass into a type of idolization even in this ruling city; nevertheless My word and the best sense for the customs of life will be generally maintained within that.

6 In later times the spirit of My teaching will mostly disappear there. People will chew on the outer crust and regard it as the spiritual bread of life; but with the right means I will lead them back onto the right path again and again! Even if they will have committed much harlotry and adultery, I will make them pure again at the right time!

7 For the rest, however, it will stay a herald of love, humbleness and patience, which is why a lot will be condoned at all times, and the great of the world will rally to it and want to hear the words of their salvation from its mouth.

8 However, in general nothing will remain completely pure for a long time in this world, thus neither will My word; but in Rome it will still stay the most pure for the purpose of life and as a relic for history!

9 I assure you of that, My dearest friend Cyrenius, as a complete and true blessing of the most beautiful and true words of our most beloved Jarah!

10 One millennium after the other will show and tell you that these words of Mine regarding Rome's endurance and position will come true!

11 Jerusalem will be destroyed in a way so that henceforth one will not know where it once stood. Future people will build a small town with the same name there; but its form and location will be changed. And even this small town will have to endure much evil from foreign enemies and will in the future remain without any rank and importance, a nest of all sorts of rabble that will lead a puny existence from the moss of stones from our times.

12 Yes, I wanted to make this old city of God first in the world; however, it did not acknowledge Me, but treated me like a thief and murderer! That is why it will fall forever and will in the future not arise from the rubble of its welldeserved curse, which it prepared and spoke out itself! Are you, my thousand times most beloved Jarah, pleased with My blessing?"

13 Jarah says soothed to tears, "Oh Lord, my only love! Who would not be pleased with what you say, oh Lord, and especially with such a great, in the most distant times, deep reaching promise? My dear, noble Cyrenius also seems to be very pleased with it, and Cornelius, Faustus, and our Julius as well. However, it is a different matter whether the children from Jerusalem, of whom several are sitting at this table and more at the tables around us, will be so pleased with your promise regarding Jerusalem; their faces do not glow with the same exhilaration as the faces of the Romans."

14 After this very cogent remark several people from Jerusalem stood up and said, "One shall not wish the downfall of one's parental home, as long as it does not become a home for thieves and brigands; once it becomes that, it should not be spared! "The offspring has the right "without fear of committing a sin "to destroy it over the heads of the villains living inside and forever erase any trace of a former existence.

15 If, according to our best knowledge, Jerusalem is nothing but a mere robbers' and murderers' nest, why should we mourn that the Lord wants to give and will certainly give this nest its for a long time well deserved punishment?! The sad part is just that this most pardoned city of God has for the third time, despite all warnings, finally managed to be chastised most damagingly by God Himself! But His known forbearance and patience are a most certain proof of how much such a city has earned a most strict castigation and for that reason it is not to be lamented or mourned at all.

16 VOLENTI NON FIT INJURIA! [To the consenting, no injustice is done] Will anybody lament or mourn someone who wants to throw himself in a pit in bright sunlight? Not us! We never felt any pity for really dumb burros and oxen, especially when they want to shine as the wisest ones before the whole world; and they especially do not deserve any pity when their feigned wisdom, which in essence is just blatant folly, wants to assert itself as real through all sorts of wickedness and most cunning mischievousness.

17 It is appropriate that a sick soul deserves more pity than a sick man's fragile body. If, however, a knowledgeable and reliable doctor comes to a person with a sick body, who is still completely rational, and recognizes the sickness, and could and would help the sick person, but this one has the doctor thrown out the door by his servants instead of happily accepting his healing advise "who will have any pity of such a sick soul, we ask? Not us, and certainly no one else either! Such an animal-like person should fall under a most bitter and painful sickness and learn from his pains how foolish it was to throw out the skillful doctor!

18 Foolishness in itself deserves pity because a fool can't help that he was born a fool and remained that way; but there are people "as are most high priests, Pharisees and scribes "who are not fools, but constantly make themselves to fools, in order to more easily use poor mankind made ignorant by them to their foul, highly selfish ends! Such people do not have sick souls, but are very strong and healthy wolves in sheep's skins, and do not deserve any better than to be shot down by the sharpest arrows because any pity would be crass foolishness from any human heart.

19 Who in the whole world should feel sorry for the night to which the rising sun puts and end? Or what kind of fool will cry over the oppressive winter, a raging storm, a vanishing pestilence, and passed bad years? And we believe that it would be an even bigger foolishness to mourn that the Lord will soon grant us His greatest blessing. Yes, it is very sad that Jerusalem does not want to acknowledge and accept the brightest spiritual light because it means it has completely incorporated the Satan of the world! Where that, only fire and brimstone from the sky! Sodom and Gomorrah have been resting on the bottom of the Dead Sea for a long time; who would want to weep for the wicked ones? And thus Jerusalem will not be wailed!

20 And you, lovely Jarah, have erred a little in your judgment of us as well! You see, appearance is not always a reflection of the truth and deceives us every now and then! Do you not think that it is like that and it will stay like that forever? Are we right or not?"

21 Jarah says: "But Lord, my love, why does it always have to happen to me that I constantly misjudge people and am never capable of assessing them correctly? It is almost exasperating! Before I was admonished by Cyrenius, kindly of course, but admonished still, and now by a crowd of people! They are all right "only I am obviously not because they are right according to the truth, but I am not. Oh Lord, give me better discernment, so that I will not constantly err with my judgments!"

- Chapter 10 -

A gospel for the female gender.

1 Said I: "Easy, My dear daughter! You only have to hold yourself back more and not be impertinent towards experienced men! Then you have to never immediately pass a judgment according to appearance, but wait on what the worldly wise men will say about one or the other experience

2 Only if anybody possibly made a small mistake, is it time to delicately and kindly tell him how and where he took a shot in the dark, - but never earlier than that!

3 It would not be good if girls taught experienced men the truth; but if the men take an unwise side step from the right way, then it is the right time that a woman interferes and delicately and kindly says: "My friend, be careful because you are pursuing a wrong way! The matter is like this and that!' This will make the man happy, and he will gladly listen to the lovely, delicate and kind voice.

4 But being impertinent is not good and will only make the man cantankerous and sullen, and he will often not pay attention at all to the beautiful, kind voice of an ever so graceful woman.

5 See, this is also a gospel, but only for your gender! The woman who heeds it will always have good days on this earth, but the one who does not heed this gospel will only have herself to blame if she is not respected by men.

6 A proper woman is a symbol of the highest heavens "and an improper, headstrong woman, who wants to dominate, is a reflection of Satan, who is already in the worst, lowest and deepest hell.

7 A proper woman must never completely lose her temper with a man because the greatest patience and humbleness must prevail in the feminine nature. In it the man must find the real peace for his tempestuous temper and become kind and patient himself! However, if the woman started making a racket before the man, what should a man do as he is anyway always more tempestuous than calm?!

8 So never be pert, My otherwise beloved daughter, - else you would have the opportunity to get angry more often, when someone reprimanded you again! "Did you understand me?"

9 Jarah says: "Understood, - but now my heart feels heavy because I was foolish and impertinent. I had been quiet for several hours and it was good; but I had a longing to talk a little and it would have been better, if I had continued to be quiet. But from now on my tongue will be at rest, like no other in a woman's mouth!"

10 I say, "That, my dear daughter, is not strictly necessary, but you should be quiet, when you are not asked to speak! If, however, you are asked to speak and you are quiet, the man will regard that as really thick stubbornness, spite, and trickiness and will turn his heart from you.

11 Thus speak at the right time, and be quiet at the right time, but at all times with gentleness, love and devotion; that is a woman's most beautiful adornment and is a lovely life flame let most appropriate to enliven any man's heart and make him gentle and soft!

12 Maidens often have a lurid bad habit and it is called vanity, which is nothing but a quite healthy seed of pride. If a young girl lets it burgeon inside herself, she has already forfeited her heavenly femininity and has come very close to Satan's form. A vain young girl is hardly worth laughing at, but a proud and arrogant woman is carrion among people and for that reason everybody rightfully despises her deeply.

13 That is why, My daughter, never be even a little vain and even less proud and arrogant, and you will shine among many like a most beautiful star in the sky! "Did you grasp and understand everything?"

14 Jarah says: "Oh yes; but do not be upset with me because I was really foolish!"

15 I say, "Do not worry about that! "Mark is coming back with his family and we shall see what they will tell us!"

16 When Jarah leaves it well alone and starts to think about the vanity issue especially, Mark comes to Me once again with his entire family, and his wife and children start praising and commending Me beyond all measure.

17 I, however, bless them and tell them to rise from the ground, and say to the wife and children, "You and especially Mark, who will instruct you on everything afterwards, knows what this means and how you will be able to assure My benevolence forever, as well as My help whenever you will need something extraordinary.

18 But because you were the whole time so assiduously and intensively concerned with My and My disciples' material well-being, I have given you everything that you just saw as a return gift and have arranged everything so that it will serve you now and forever to your best advantage. But now let Raphael show you how everything is to be used because the knowledge to adequately make use of such an estate belongs to it as well!"

19 I then summon Raphael and tell him "Go with them and show them how to use everything properly; and show the two sons how to use the five sailboats and how they can use every kind of wind! Through that they shall become the first and best sailors on this entire sea, and all the ships on the great sea are soon to be adapted to their kind, which will be useful to the Romans." "Thereupon happened that which I instructed the angel to do.

20 I, however, also said to Cyrenius, "Let some of your most receptive servants go along, so that they too learn something for your worldly needs! Because I want all those who follow Me to be wise and competent in all things." - Thereupon, according to My advice Cyrenius ordered some of his servants to go along and also let the boy Josoe join them because he greatly liked navigation.

- Chapter 11 -

The Nubian's opinions on the miracle.

1 When this was in order as well, Oubratouvishar came to Me again and said, "You alone are almighty above almighty! Look, my brothers, sisters and I have now seen the salvation of all people who have an honest heart and a good will, who look to educate their heart and soul and not before it is time, their mind, which should actually be just a right arm of the heart. This is and will remain the only right way of true life and its salvation, which we blacks, like a clever man, all understand and accept.

2 But with all our maturity and knowledge this miracle bothers us a lot, and some guesses were made among us, so that some of us think that even a man made perfect through Your spirit could perform such a miracle. Others on the other hand reckon: Bringing about such things, will only ever be possible for God because it takes an almighty godly will, which no created spirit could ever have on its own because it is not infinite, but only a highly limited spirit.

3 Further they say and think that it could be noticed in the creatures of this world. The bigger they are, the more powerful and mighty is their demeanor, and the smaller they are, the less powerful they are. The story goes among our people that once there were giant elephants; compared to them the ones existing on earth now are only small monkeys. These animals were supposedly so powerful that they were easily able to uproot the strongest trees with their trunks. So, if the basic condition for power in the various creatures is that the bigger it is on this earth is, the more powerful it is, how much more of a difference should be noticed in the spirits! Therefore, what is possible for You as the eternal spirit, because You alone are of infinite greatness, is not possible for a finitely created spirit and thus it is also not possible for it to create such a house, a garden and such magnificent ships out of nothing!

4 I too, have a split opinion on this; I said to them, upholding the opinion of the first ones: creating in an instant something that people could also accomplish"even if with a lot of work and time "should be easier for God, than creating something that will always remain and must remain impossible for people.

5 People can in time build wonderfully magnificent and extremely big buildings; but all the people of the world cannot create even moss that would grow, bloom and carry seeds suitable for reproduction, let alone any fruit tree or an animal that can move freely, look for its food and procreate.

6 To create such things out of nothingness through the almighty will alone will hardly ever be possible for even the most perfect person because it takes more than the finite power of a human spirit limited both in time and space. But things that he has already, even though strenuously, created as finite, should be possible to be created in an instant by the perfect spirit of a person. The only question remaining is whether they would be permanent, or just momentary only to appear on an occasion when one would try, without any self-interest and just for the glorification of Your name, to give the spiritually blind true light!

7 Would You, oh Lord, give me the right answer to that? Am I right, or are the others? I would not have bothered you with this question if I had not noticed that You were given - by Your own will of course - a small respite. Thus, if Your holy will allowed You to give me an eternally valid answer to my question, it would be a great blessing for all of us, for which we will never be able to thank You enough."

- Chapter 12 -

On bossiness.

1 Say I: "Yes, My very dear friend, it will be very difficult for Me, to admit that you or your companions, who have a different opinion, are correct! Imagine a pole that sticks somewhat loosely in the ground; in order for it to firmly hold something, it has to be beaten firmly into the ground. Two somewhat unskilled carpenters still young in their profession come along and one of them, who considers himself more competent, says to his companion, 'Brother, our craftsmanship is equal, to be sure; nevertheless, give me the mallet so that I can strike the staff's head first because I am very good at hitting the nail right on the head!' "'Fine', says the other, 'let us see how capable you are to accurately hit the nail's head!' Thereupon, the first one takes the mallet and strikes hard. He hits the staff but only grazing it on the left side, which in no way made the staff more stable. His fellow laughs and says: 'Give me the mallet back; the staff will never stick in the ground firmer than before with such treatment of its head!' The one who did not hit the staff on its head says: 'Here, take the mallet and try your luck!' This one also strikes hard, however, does not hit the nail's head either, but grazes it on the right side. A quarrel starts between them about who had taken the best strike. It is understandable that they do not agree with each other easily; when two people start quarreling, the quarrel will not end until a stronger and more skillful person comes along and shows the two who are quarreling how to hit the nail right on its head. After that the two can also do it; but without the third person, the two would have just quarreled for a while about which strike had been better and whether the strike on the left was better than the one on the right.

2 You see, it is exactly the same with your dispute, and ultimately I must be the third one, who will put an end to your wisdom quarrel by hitting the nail on its head in front of you; otherwise on the way you could come to a bloody fight on whether the imperfect strike on the left was better than the equally imperfect strike on the right!

3 Thus neither you nor your companions have found the truth regarding the performed miracle and whether a spiritually perfect person could perform such a miracle, but have just grazed that truth left and right!

4 That I will hit the nail right on its head is certain; but before I take the certain strike for you, you must go to your companions and tell them that neither the left nor the right opining party is right, but that each has barely grazed the truth. First you must settle the fact that you do not know and understand anything in this matter. Only then come back and I will tell you what is true and right to know and think in this matter!"

5 Thereupon, the black leader goes to his companions and tells them everything. These, however, say quite smartly, "It is quite good that the Lord Himself has given us this advice because it is good not only for now but for all future times. How often did it happen among us that one judged a matter one way, a second another way and a third even more differently! Which of the three had the correct judgment consistent with the complete truth? Not one had hit the staff on its head, often probably barely grazed it! It had to be decided by a common council and by the majority of votes who was right in their assessment of a matter or action; and it certainly often happened that the majority of votes acknowledged as being right exactly the one who had struck farthest from the staff. How many unnecessary spats would have been hindered if we had received such wise advice from someone back then! But we did not have this holy advice and got into strife and discord only because each one of us wanted to be the wisest one.

6 But it had its good part because this constant squabble has increasingly awakened our thirst for the pure truth. Without it we surely would have never chosen you, Oubratouvishar, as our guide; but without you we would have never come to Memphis, and without Memphis less likely ever here where now we can hear the purest truth from the one who is the eternal source of all life, all existence and all things. Go and give our dearest gratitude for the godly, wisest advice given to all of us, advice that we want to honor and will honor most actively and truthfully in our actions from descendant to descendant. No strife about it among individual brothers!"

- Chapter 13 -

The possibility of accomplishing greater things than the Lord accomplishes.

1 The leader, accompanied by his servant, came to Me with this reply and wanted to literally tell Me what his companions had said to him.

2 I, however, said to him, "Friend, the One who examines the heart and kidneys of people does not need that! I already know everything your companions quite sagely entrusted you with, and you can now learn from My mouth what is completely right in your disputed matter. Look, listen and understand!

3 When a person in this world, or only in the afterlife, which will mostly be the case, will have received the highest spiritual perfection, he will be capable, merely through his free will, to do and create and maintain not only what I am doing now before your eyes and what is and happens in all spheres of creation, but much greater things! First of all, a perfect person is as My child one with Me in everything and not only in certain particularities and must be able to accomplish everything that I Myself can accomplish because my will has become his own.

4 Secondly, no ever so perfect person looses his own free will because of that, even if his will has become one with Mine, and that is why he can not only want everything of Me, but of himself as well, boundlessly free, and that will obviously be much above My will.

5 Now this may sound a little fabulous to you, nevertheless it is like that and it will remain like that forever. In order to understand this clearly I will make the matter a little more comprehensible by pointing your attention to a thing that is not completely strange to you since Memphis.

6 During your first time in Memphis you saw at the colonel, the wise Justus Platonicus, several types of mirrors that reflected your imagine on their highly smooth surface.

7 The colonel also showed you in the end a so-called magic mirror, in which you, completely amazed, saw yourself much bigger than you are in reality.

8 The colonel also showed you another characteristic of this mirror. He let the sun shine on it and then set on fire all sorts of flammable things in the extremely bright focal point, which incidentally lay a good half a man's length outside the surface curved towards the middle from all sides; that astonished you even more.

9 Now I ask you how that was possible. How is it that the sunray reflected by the so-called magic mirror had a stronger effect than the sun with its straight, unbroken rays? Still the ray from the magic mirror was no other than one from the same sun!

10 The mirror undoubtedly stayed completely cool during this process! So from where did the ray take such force, which by far exceeded the natural, free sunlight? You understand some things and will be able to give me some reason, at least insofar as the colonel was able to give you one!"

11 The leader says: "Oh Lord, You truly know about everything! Yes, it is true, the colonel in Memphis showed us such mirrors and also their diverse effects; but frankly I was the least pleased with his explanations. He seemed to be striking much off the side of Your staff, not even grazing it. In short, the more he tried to clear the matter for me, the more puzzling it got for him and me.

12 The only thing that seemed correct to me was that such a curved mirror has the property of concentrating the rays coming from the sun, and does so to a much denser and compacter degree than if many flat mirrors, which reflect the sun in its natural size, as it appears to our eyes, were arranged so that all rays would have to converge into a single point, which point would then be a lot brighter than a point of light from a single flat mirror. That would be an obvious concentration of sunrays, and experience shows that an increase in light results in an equal increase in heat. In the colonel's opinion something like that cannot ever be calculated exactly; nevertheless what he said is certain according to numerous, well tested experiments.

13 Oh Lord, that is all of any good that I heard from the colonel's mouth. My soul's capacity for comprehension is too meager for any further, better conclusion I should or could draw from that and I plead with You once again that You cast true, concentrated light into my lightless soul, otherwise it will be as dark in it, as my poor body's skin is dark and black all over!"

- Chapter 14 -

The working of miracles by the spiritual man who has committed himself to the will of God.

1 I say, "Fine then, and so hear Me! I am the sun of all suns and of all spiritual worlds and of all the kinds of beings to be found on them.

2 Just as this earthly sun infiltrates with its light and the warmth caused by it a celestial body and all beings living on it only in a certain measured order and by that visibly animates that entire celestial body, I infiltrate everything that was created by Me in an eternally strict and measured and by Me unchangeable order; that is why the earth cannot be and become more of an earth than it is, the date tree not more of a date tree, the lion not more of a lion, and like that up until men no creature can become more or less in its kind than how and what it already is.

3 Man alone can continuously become emotionally and spiritually more and more man because he received from Me the ineffaceable ability to internalize and keep for all eternity always more of My spiritual light by following My will made known to him.

4 Thus, if man lives properly, according to the law, but does not strive for something higher and can neither be used for something below his accepted nature and is therefore completely flawless in the eyes of the world, he is like a flat mirror that neither enlarges nor reduces the sun's image on its surface. That is why he will perceive everything naturally and with that achieve a completely normal progress in all things.

5 However, a man who because of a little light that he just snatched somewhere, so to say, makes a lot of fuss regarding one or the other thing among the lightless, as if he were the first inventor of original wisdom and considers all the others foolish, - such a man inflates like a ball whose surface is very polished and thereby provides a curved out mirror surface.

6 On such a surface you will indeed see the image of the sun, but very small, and you will no longer notice any of its warmth. Nothing will ever catch fire from this reflecting glimmer of light, even if it was easily flammable naphtha ether! That is what arrogance does to the soul when it prides itself on something that says very little. And the more such a soul grows in vanity, the rounder the mirror becomes and the smaller the image of the spiritual sun on such almost round mirror surfaces of perception and knowledge.

7 These two described kinds of man are not continuously becoming more man, but rather the latter one always less.

8 But now comes a third kind of man that sure enough has become somewhat rare! He is on the surface very pleasing, obliging, patient, kind, modest, and full of humility and love towards anyone who needs his services.

9 This kind is like our magic, inwardly curved mirror. When the light of life and knowledge falls from Me onto such a soul mirror, the light it will reflect onto earthly life will light up the soul and the own free will for everything good, loving, beautiful, truthful, and wise, and everything that falls under the focus of the very concentrated spiritual light will be most highly illuminated and quickly unfolded in its entire fate by the inner life's high level of warmth. And the man with such a soul mirror soon sees with the highest and most vivid clarity things that a normal man cannot ever dream of.

10 Such a man will continuously become more and more man; and the more and more he becomes man, the more perfect he will be. And when after a right time his life's mirror circumference or diameter has stretched more and more and has gained depth towards the life's center, the outwardly active focal point that has become much bigger and more impermeable to light will have a much greater effect than My sun light delimited exactly for all creatures. One should never expect exceedingly more of that light in a regular and natural way, and one cannot assume that the sun's natural light shining down on earth will ever melt a diamond, but that the concentrated light rays from a so-called magic mirror will.

11 It is the same with a perfect man of whom I said earlier that he would accomplish greater things than I would. I accomplish everything according to an order that has been exactly set for eternities. The earth must keep orbiting around the sun at a determined distance and it is generally under the same light angle.

12 Thus, I obviously cannot ever put this or another earth close to the sun with my will's power, just for knowledge or as a joke because such an experiment would turn this earth into white-blue smoke very fast.

13 But you people can concentrate the sun's dispersed light on a point with such mirrors and can experiment with that power on small parts of the earth and are by that, from a natural point of view, doing a lot more with the sun's light than I am, - how much more with My spiritual light from your soul's perfect concave mirror of humbleness!

14 Yes, My true children will achieve and accomplish in their smaller areas things that in relation to My deeds must obviously be greater because, in addition to the complete compliance to My will, they can also act according to their own free will, in which My light can be concentrated to ineffable potency; by that they can do in a small area with the most intensive power of My innermost will things, which even if I could, I am not allowed to do in order to preserve the entire creation.

15 In short, my true children will be able to play around properly with those powers of My heart and will, which I have never actually used in closest relation, as I would never, just as a joke, push the earth close to the sun to melt some mountain peaks with its ineffable heat, which would not be possible without immediately turning the whole world into the old ether. Thus, what I am not allowed to do on a big and even less on a small scale, My children can do with the magic mirrors in nature and then more so spiritually!

16 Do you now clearly understand what I have explained to you with regard to your questions, My dear friend? Are you satisfied or do you still have a doubt somewhere under your black skin?"

- Chapter 15 -

The Lord comforts the Nubians who are not called to the state of being a child of God.

1 The leader says: "Yes, Lord, all is clear to me, and my soul feels now as if it were home! But I notice that most of Your disciples do not seem to grasp this image of the three types of mirrors! I thank you dearly for Your elucidation, which completely corresponds to all my attitudes towards life; but as I said, it is bothersome to see that precisely those who seem to understand this the least, should understand it the most as appointees to childship.

2 I say, "That should be of little or no concern to you! As long as you understand it, what is your further concern? These will understand it, when it is time for them; they will be longer around Me, while you will leave for your land tomorrow!

3 A good tradition from time immemorial that all peoples have is that the guest should be taken care of before the children of the house. The children will not come off badly because of that! It was easy to make this matter understandable to you because you were already familiar with mirrors; but none of My true disciples and children has ever seen a mirror other than the one of a calm water surface. When I will want to explain this matter further, for comprehension's sake I will easily know how to get the necessary mirrors, just as I knew how to provide for Me the human brain and as I knew how to provide for old Mark this new house with all the fixtures.

4 That is why, do not worry about My true disciples and children; I Myself assure you that they will not come off badly. Strangers come and go, but the children stay in the house! "Did you understand this as well?"

5 The leader says: "Yes, I did, - but my soul is not merrier because of it; being called a 'stranger' sounded so distant coming from Your mouth! But we will not ever be able to change what you have once decided eternities ago, and are as strangers still fervently thankful for all these undeserved great blessings that you have granted us!"

6 The leader then gets tears in his eyes as does his servant, and Jarah says to Me very secretively, "Lord and Father of all people look, the two blacks are crying!"

7 I, however, say, "That does not matter, My dearest daughter because that is how they will become children of My children who will not be rejected from the house of the Grandfather!"

8 When the two blacks heard these words from My mouth, they sank to their knees before me and sobbed loudly, but for joy.

9 And after a while the leader called out loudly, "Oh, God full of justice, wisdom, love, power, and mercy, in my and the name of my people I thank you with the greatest repentance of my entire being that we can at least call ourselves children of your children!"

10 I say, "Be at peace, My friend! The one who I accept is no longer a stranger to Me! You see the earth, how it is full of higher and lower mountains. The highest are indeed the first and actual original sons of the earth and the lower ones developed only little by little from deposited sediments from the high ones, - and look, while the first and highest ones adorn their heads with eternal snow and ice, the lower descendants perpetually suckle the milk of love from the breast of the great mother!

11 I am telling you: who has love and acts according to love, is My child, My son, My daughter, My friend and My brother! But who does not have love and thus, does not act according to it, is a stranger and will be treated as one. However, when I name you My friend, you are no longer a stranger, but belong to My house through My word that you faithfully embraced in your heart. Go confidently and announce this to your brothers!"

12 The leader goes with his servant to his companions and tells them everything he has just heard from Me, and they all start to cheer for joy over such comforting news. We leave them now to their rightful jubilation. But Cyrenius, who did not clearly understand the explanation with the mirrors either, even though he had a very good notion about the different types of mirrors, asked Me if I would tell him some more on the matter. I, however, told him to have a little patience because we would have to deal with a somewhat plaintive looking deputation from Caesarea Philippi within a moment. And Cyrenius was content with that.

- Chapter 16 -

The deputation from Caesarea before Cyrenius.

1 As I had barely finished speaking, twelve men came around the old house; it was six Jews and six Greeks. The Caesareans, camping in a few huts, had received the news through their shepherds and fishermen that the Roman governor gave old fisherman Mark a large piece of land, which, as his full property, was surrounded by an insurmountable wall. The Caesareans, however, regarded all land far and wide around the city as communal property and now wanted to know from Cyrenius, with what right he could take from city property, since the city had always paid its tribute from that, both to the Romans and to Jerusalem. I, however, had already secretly given Cyrenius a hint in his heart, and he knew in advance what it would all be about, even before anybody from the deputation had opened their mouth and that is why he was sufficiently prepared in what he would reply to the highly unmistakably plaintive deputation.

2 After all curtsies had been made, a fine Greek by the name of Roklus approached Cyrenius, opened his mouth and spoke, "Most just, strict, and serene lord, lord, lord! We approach you with regard to the fact that through your munificence (generosity) the old warrior and now fisherman Mark was given, as enclosed property, an important part of our communal lands that are allocated to strong tribute. We have sadly learned this an hour ago from our shepherds who feel sad about the beautiful piece of land.

3 What other kind of misfortune hit us otherwise well-off Caesareans is shown by the ruins still steaming here and there. We are now in the full sense of the word the most miserable beggars in the world. Good for the ones who managed to save some of their belongings during the mighty fire! That was not possible for us poor fauns because the fire spread so fast, and we and still more of us had to be very thankful to the gods that we escaped with our lives. Some livestock are now our only possession and we became nomads once again; but how can we keep even this last possession if your munificence towards native Romans takes our best lands away from us, fences and gives them as full, untouchable property to the ones who have the luck to be in favor with you?!

4 Thus we want to pleadingly ask you if the now so very lucky Mark will have to give us compensation or not! Without any compensation this actual seizure would be in our most difficult situation something that the history of mankind will find hard to present anywhere and at any time. "Highest Lord, what should we paupers expect?"

5 Cyrenius says: "What are you saying and what do you want, you shameless half men?! This lot of land has belonged to this mountain and this fisherman's hut for five hundred years and was completely worthless because it was a pure sand and gravel steppe. However, twenty more acres of land belonged here; they were not enclosed and were thus left to the free use of the township. In addition, you have presented yourselves as complete paupers and beggars, who were bereft of all their belongings! What am I supposed to say to such wicked lies?! I know that your houses were destroyed by fire and know exactly how high your loss runs; but I also know about your large estates in Tyros and Sidon and know that you, Roklus, own so many treasures there that you are easily on par with me! And the eleven who came with you are the same!

6 You twelve have so many treasures and riches that you alone could rebuild the city destroyed by fire at least ten times over; nevertheless you come and complain to be poor and want to accuse me of injustice because old Mark, who is an honorable man in every fiber of his body, had his bare and rightful property separated from your own! Tell me what I should call you!

7 Go and look at the land behind the garden wall that is still Mark's property. There are well over twenty acres of land. I sell it to you for ten silver pennies. If you think it is worth it then put down the ten silver pennies and the land is yours! There is no worse soil in the entire world, except for Sahara in Africa because you will find nothing except for sand and gravel and here and there a vestigial thistle shrub!

8 You, however, are rich people, can bring soil from far away and cover this small desert and turn it into fertile land! You can also build an expensive aqueduct from far away in order to be able to properly water the cultivated land during the usually dry summers and you will thus have brought a quite tolerable piece of land into your possession! But you will not achieve anything with me with such unfounded claims and I will factually prove that according to your current most unjust petition only the most powerful is always right! "What do you want to do now?"

9 Roklus says: very intimidated by the energetic speech of the chief governor, "Lord, lord, lord! It is not us who claimed a right for ourselves; we are just representatives of those who in earnest lead a miserable existence in the destroyed city. We have already done a lot for them and the whole community, now entirely poor, has out of gratitude transferred the surrounding lands into our full possession and told us that these lands on the waterfront belong to the communal property as well!

10 If so, we thought, then it cannot be all the same to us if somebody appropriates a part of it, cultivates it and encloses the cultivated part with an insurmountable wall and that magically fast, - which of course could be possible for you war trained Romans, since in the field you know how to set up in a few moments a camp for a hundred thousand men!

11 Now since the matter is completely different, we step back from our claim and go home! The honest man can have the remaining twenty acres of land outside the wall enclosed as well and we hereby declare that he will never be disturbed in his free ownership neither by us nor by the township. But we do believe that because of his exclusive fishing rights he has to pay the traditional tithe to the city from now on!"

12 Cyrenius says: "Oh yes, but you must prove at what time the city has acquired this right by adverse possession! I do not know of any document in respect thereof, as I have not seen anything like that during my local, now thirty-five year long duty. Not until my rule was the previous spot raised to a city and that to honor my brother, who had ruled Rome for over twenty years. Thus I am very well acquainted with even the smallest circumstances of your city! I do not know anything about this city having the right to demand a fish tithe; but I do know that the city has been unlawfully demanding such a tithe and my Mark was constrained to always pay it to you, for which, if he was a bad man, he could demand a full refund, which, however, he will not do because he is too honest and too good of a man. But I can assure you that he will not pay such an unlawful tithe to you in the future!

13 Instead of now giving you any right, I am hereby letting you deputies of this city know that according to the power invested in me by the emperor I am making old Mark colonel over the city and its wide surroundings and give him all the power that I myself have and that subsequently he alone shall pronounce judgment on you and all your issues and all of you will have to pay the obligatory tribute to him! I am letting you know this verbally now, but he will absolutely lawfully identify himself before you with the writ, the staff, the sword and the golden scale of justice! An appeal to me will only be allowed in very special cases, but apart from that he will have to decide everything! "Are you satisfied with that?"

- Chapter 17 -

The wise legislation in Mathael's kingdom at the Pontus.

1 Roklus says: "Satisfied or not, - what can we do against your power? The powerless worms must be alright with everything; woe betide them because if they start to move a little in their insignificant dust they will immediately be spotted by blithe birds in the sky, get caught and be eaten! The weak one must obey the mighty if he wants to live, and so we will now have to obey the lord, lord Mark if we do not want to be eaten. But - to be honest - it is not at all pleasing that this old, gruff warrior will rule over all of us because he is the most ruthless man we have ever met. He is just, nobody can deny that and due to his vast experience he always has a sound and correct judgment; for the rest, however, he is the most unsociable man and there is no question of humanity with him! Well, well, congratulations to us that he became our authority! Truly, our children, our children's children and we will be able to talk about good times! Emigrating would be best, of course - but where to?"

2 Mathael stands up at this point and says: "Good, if you want to emigrate then immigrate to my kingdom, which lies beyond Asia minor on the vast Pontus [Black sea]! It is a large kingdom bordered by two large seas, in the west by the Pontus and in the east by MARE CASPIUM [the Caspian Sea]. There you will be able to live securely and very peacefully under my most strict laws. I only tell you that not even the appearance of an unjust activity may be found in my kingdom, and every lie is punished most fiercely and unrelentingly; but the completely just, truth loving, and selfless citizen shall have the best life under my iron scepter!

3 No one shall be tribute free; whoever has the strength for one or the other job shall work and earn something for themselves! Whoever earns something can also pay a tribute to the king, who always has to see about the wellbeing of the whole kingdom and thus must always be provided with many, large treasures in order to have an army that is strong enough to fight any bold enemy.

4 He, the mighty king, must support schools and jails and must build at the borders of the kingdom strong, insurmountable fortresses that an enemy will not easily surpass, - and a lot of money is needed for that.

5 You see from that how a king must strictly make sure that every person pays him the mandatory tribute; so, you can now immigrate to my kingdom if the duties that I will unrelentingly demand from any subject suit you! You have my permission; if Rome's yoke will be too heavy under old Mark's administration, you already know where you can emigrate!

6 In order to make all my laws generally known to you I am also telling you that no one is given an unrestricted acquisition right. Everyone is free to gather a fortune, but the number 'ten thousand pounds' may never be exceeded, not even under pain of death. Everything that anyone might gain above that, he would have to faithfully pay over to the common treasury; in a contrary case, which in my opinion is quickly discovered and proven, the violator of this highly beneficial law for the public weal of all my people will lose his entire fortune and also receive other fierce punishments.

7 In addition, no one is permitted to gain the allowed ten thousand pounds in too short a time because it is evident that such gaining in too short a time is not possible without all sorts of deceit and different violent extortions other than through a gift or inheritance or a possible trove.

8 In case of gifts, inheritances and findings of all sorts there is a very wise regulation in my kingdom that half of those is to be given to the treasury, from which first of all the underage children are raised and fed, as well as other poor people incapable of any work. In short, the decree in my kingdom is that no one in it shall be in need, but also no one shall have unnecessary surplus! One would have to be an extraordinary good, wise and just person to be allowed to own twenty thousand pounds, - but more than that no one in my entire kingdom, except for me and my most trusted magistrates and commanders!

9 If you are satisfied with this constitution of mine, pack your things and relocate to my kingdom!"

10 Roklus says: "Oh fine king of the Pontus and Mare Caspium, we wish you a lot of luck in your kingdom, but we will not make use of your offer! We are rather Roman slaves than the very first subjects in your kingdom. No, we can do without such a constitution! The moors there surely have a more humane one! Is there another king here who wants to make us such a wonderful offer?!

11 Your regime might be good if one gets used to it like the ox with its yoke; but now? Listen, we would sooner have ten cities burn over our heads and twenty Marks set to rule over us! Goodbye, wise king of the ice gray north!"

- Chapter 18 -

The legal dispute of Cyrenius and Roklus.

1 After that Roklus turns again to Cyrenius and says: "Lord, lord, lord, where is Mark, now our lord and master so that we can pay homage to him?"

2 Cyrenius says: "There is no need for that because homage full of empty words is of no use to him and he does not need other treasures, as he has more than enough of those.

3 The best homage to him will be to come to him with honest and open hearts at all times and bring forward your concerns; he will listen to you and set everything right! However, every lie discovered instantly by his perspicacity, he will punish fiercely and unrelentingly! Because it is the emperor's and also my serious wish to ban lies and deceit from the entire empire and only let pure truth paired with equally pure and unselfish love rule over all people far and wide that belong to Rome; only under the scepter of truth and love can people live truly happy. And who knows if it will not please me to introduce in the Roman Empire the very wise governance maxims of the northern king; I found them to be very wise and appropriate for the true, brotherly prosperity of the people of a great empire.

4 By means of such wise limitations truth and love must become second, true, and better nature of the people in a country! In my current opinion nothing abets lies, deceit, and selfishness more than unrestricted gaining. A wise restriction of this true father of lies, deceit, selfishness, pride, desire to rule, and mean remorselessness is truly priceless and I will soon send this opinion to the emperor for scrutiny. In the mean time I will introduce this Nordic way of governance at least in my sovereign governance area as soon as possible because it is truly as wise as if given by a god!"

5 Roklus says: "It is not quite unwise where it has been in place, even if just roughly, for many hundreds of years; but wanting to introducing it here in these lands leased to all sorts of noblemen will not be done so easily. A lot can be done with absolute power, but not quite everything because an emperor cannot annul overnight contracts he made with noblemen that are not completely powerless, but as a right given and set by him has to respect them until their stipulated (agreed upon) duration expires or the contracting party has not kept the stipulated obligations, either maliciously or due to ineptitude, which according to the type of the contract made annuls it either entirely or at least in part! Thus, as long as the emperor has leased the lands to certain noblemen and these have the right to make laws for the subjects on their lands, since they are paying a high enough price for it, the emperor must respect that set right. In a certain way we all live under Roman law if we commit a crime against the state, which is truly not the case with us; in all other respects we live under the laws of a particular lease holding nobleman, who during the stipulated lease period has to fully protect us from the despotic attacks of the emperor.

6 You know, high lord, lord, lord, we know our position very well and do not need any comment regarding it! We know our obligations towards Rome and towards our noblemen. Before claiming a right from you, we go to our nobleman. If he sends us to Rome, only then shall we come to you. That is why we think that for the time being it will not be so easy to introduce the Nordic king's wise governance norm in whole Palestine!"

7 Cyrenius says: now in a sort of excitement, "You are right that the stipulations of a contract have to be adhered to; but you have not thought about one thing, namely that in every land leasing contract the emperor has knowingly always reserved the right to unconditionally and immediately annul the contract if in his opinion he finds that necessary for the benefit of the regime. In such cases the leaseholder can only beseech a one-year compensation from the emperor, and from the moment of the announcement of this the regiment of the formerly leased land becomes subject to the emperor's will, and everyone has to comply with his laws. The leaseholder has the right, mercifully granted to him, to present the emperor with the notion that if he may keep his lease, he would renounce every right to make laws and would continue his governance according to the given imperial laws, whereupon the emperor declares the leasing contract as further valid if he so chooses; coercion is not possibly conceivable here, but the pure, freest mercy of the absolute ruler.

8 For Palestine even I have the same authority over every leaseholder and can instantly annul every lease! Therefore you are very mistaken if you think that the emperor will forgo any right and by that dig his own grave. Oh, every monarch is certainly wise enough not to give anyone in his empire a right that, if need be, he could not completely revoke the next moment just through his word!

9 An emperor can do anything he wants to do! He only cannot perform miracles and create a world; other than that he can achieve anything, abolish old laws and make new ones in return, - yes, he can even destroy the old gods along with their numerous temples and in return build a new and glorious temple for the one true God and no one will be allowed to say to him, 'Lord, lord, lord, what are you doing?!' And so he can proclaim the laws of the wise king in his whole empire as early as tomorrow. Who would want to and be able to oppose that, without being reached by the anger of the powerful emperor?!"

- Chapter 19 -

The actual intention of Roklus and his companions.

1 Roklus says: "I am not saying that the laws of the Nordic king are unwise, or even unjust and unkind; they would just be a little inconvenient for our sort! And I do not mean to dishonor Rome, you, and old Mark when I strongly maintain that I prefer Rome's current laws a lot more than the certainly not unwise ones of the Nordic king, whose kingdom, according to a legend, will last until the end of the world and thus become the greatest kingdom on earth. It is a separate question if it will be possible for him to proclaim his wise laws to all the people of his large kingdom! Good for him and his people if he succeeds! "But now allow me a completely harmless remark; if I have to be completely honest once, then I am gladly honest all the way and shun any concealment!

2 You, great lord, lord, lord, have just before made the remark that an emperor cannot perform any miracles and create a world, but to me at least, it does not seem to be so. According to our exact observation from a hill of the city, old Mark's new magnificent house, the high garden wall on which a hundred of the best masons had to fully work at least five years if one takes into account the hewing of the most beautiful blocks of granite and their transport here, and finally even the relocation of such a big garden fully cultivated, and in the end also, as I noticed just now, the construction of a very big and safe harbor and several new, big sail boats, all just appeared as if by a magic stroke, - yes, if that does not mean performing miracles, I renounce everything that is human in me and will become a crocodile!

3 And because I have already touched this small but sensitive matter without shipwrecking, I must openly admit in the name of my eleven companions that my previous, foolish request was only a maneuver to get to this secret and learn how something like this was possible! Because all this did not possibly come into existence in a natural way! And so, I tell you the truth that curiosity pulled us here, only now! We all thought unanimously when we saw all this appear in an instant: Either a god or a great, ancient Indian mage must be present because something like this cannot possibly be accomplished with natural human powers! We quickly decided to come here under any pretext in order to get behind the miracle and its master.

4 Our entire previously feigned legal matter is a pure nothing; an invalid trick in order to have any clue that marginally revolves around the performed miracle. And see, the trick was good because through it we got to the actual reason why we came here! Thus we imploringly ask you to shed some light on the matter, - no matter what it costs! We do not want to take anything away from good, worthy Mark, but commit ourselves to best cultivate the other, still fallow piece of land at our expense, even if we had to bring the soil from Europe! But just let us see behind this miraculous secret!"

5 Cyrenius says: "Yes, your situation looks completely different now and you will obviously be better off in this case than you would have been with your previous, highly unjust request, with which you would have truly come off badly with me!"

6 Roklus says quickly, "We all knew that quite well from a lot of experience! You have been our most just and at the same time kindest ruler for over thirty years now and we know you and all your weak sides. One has to bring you into a sort of fervor if one wants to find out something extraordinary from you and such was the case here; you will certainly forgive us because of the good cause!"

7 Cyrenius says: "But what were the grounds for your assumption that all this came into existence in a miraculous way? You have discovered it as finished today, but probably paid little or no attention to how my soldiers and warriors worked on it during the last seven days!"

8 Roklus says: "Lord, lord, lord, let us stop this! Ever since you have been staying here in the midst of significant armed forces, as was well known to us, we have not left our hill day and night in order to spy from far away on what you Romans might be doing. The wonderful morning drew us out even earlier today. Our gaze was, of course, constantly focused on this area. Up to an hour ago we did not see anything other than what was to be seen since we know this area; but as I said an hour ago house, garden, harbor, and ships came into existence here as if fallen from heaven! -And that is not a miracle?!

9 We saw the entire legion of moors, or however many there were, trek here three hours ago, and we also noticed how you came down the mountain this morning; we have very sharp eyes! Therefore this is a miracle of the most colossal kind and that is why we want to get a very small hint on how and by whom it was performed!"

10 Cyrenius says: "Well then, - if you know it better than I do, then stay with the miracle! The 'how' and 'by whom' you do not need to learn because that takes more than just rushing here and cunningly trying to look behind such a secret!

11 If a smart statesman would make public all his special secrets, he would make very short leaps with his politics and his subjects would soon lead him by the nose! A statesman has to rule his kingdom and his subjects mostly through politics because as individuals they are not able to recognize the public weal. On the other side the various estates also hardly lend themselves to that purpose and thus the poor that do not see or accept anything but their own interests would people would not be taken care of properly.

12 Thus a good regent must exhibit just power, knowledge in all things, and keen intelligence, - and only then is he a just lord, master, and leader of many thousands of thousands of blind people, who are not even capable to assess what a great benefactor they have as a just ruler! That a good ruler cannot for very wise reasons let his subjects look at his cards all the time and thus betray his good plan before its due time is very clear and understandable, and so it will be very clear and understandable to you why I cannot reveal more of this secret; you will understand that a regent has to be able to accomplish more than another person, otherwise he would be a very weak regent! What kind of respect would his subjects have for him if in case of distress he would not be a little almighty compared to them? Go and look closer at your miracle and only come back afterwards; maybe you will be more reasonable to talk to them! We are, however, done for now!"

- Chapter 20 -

Roklus visits the miraculous building.

1 Thereupon the twelve gladly hurry into the garden and look with the greatest amazement at everything it contains, and Mark himself leads them into the house where they peer at everything most astonished. But Mark tells them as little as Cyrenius did, despite all their polite questioning; through My spirit I had given Cyrenius what he had to say, as I had to Mathael before that, and thus the avenue was opened to convert to the truth of the spirit these notorious fogies, who after half an hour come back to us full of curiosity together with Mark.

2 When Mark came to My table with the twelve deputies and with Raphael, who had shown him the purpose of everything that was in the house, Raphael secretly said to him, "This time spare a great verbal praise to the Lord, who hears it from your heart anyway; it is now a matter of possibly converting to the Lord these twelve Caesareans, who actually do not have any belief, but are pure atheists from Epicure's fine school, who is one of the main founders of the beloved Essenian committee.

3 These are six Greeks and six Jews who hold the same views and secretly belong to the order of the beloved Essenians. In short, these are twelve fellows that will not be easy to bargain with. They are very rich and own immeasurable worldly treasures and for this reason they speak with the governor so lightly as if they were his equals.

4 It will be difficult to convert them! But if we will succeed to lead them to the truth - not so much through some remarkable miracles, but more through words - a lot will be won because every one of these twelve is a lord over more than a hundred thousand people.

5 The Lord may not be revealed to them for the time being. Cyrenius will remain the central point, and after him, if need be, it will be your turn; only if it goes well, will it be my turn and the Lord Himself only in the end! Just stay here now because this will turn into a major chase! But silence now!

6 Cyrenius asks Roklus, "Well, how did you like my miraculous construction? Could you do something similar?"

7 Roklus says: "Stop it with the miraculous construction as if coming from your hand! You are a powerful lord, lord, lord through the great number of your soldiers and their sharp swords; but you did not build the house, the garden, the harbor, and the large ships more than we did!"

8 You could have built them with many construction workers in 5-10 years; I accept that because the power of the sword and money is great in this world. One of your very famous poets, whom I have read, says about people, "Nothing is too high for the daring of mortals: we would storm heaven itself in our folly!' (Horace) And it is like that with man, this naked worm of the dust! If he is given means, power, and time he will soon start to move mountains, dry up seas and lakes, and give rivers a new course! All this together is therefore no miracle, but a completely natural action of people uniting their power towards one and the same goal.

9 But the house here, the garden and its luxuriant culture, its enclosing and protecting wall, which stands there as if cast and looks like it is made of one piece of marble, the big and high harbor wall which here and there may have a depth of 10-20 times head-high, and the five large flagships with lots of cordage! My otherwise wise and powerful ruler, foolhardy mankind does not conjure all this in a moment like the Persian magician's 'Wishing-table', as was the case here and is and will continue to be; this is no mirage resulting from empty and insubstantial air formations, but the most solid truth which anyone will sense, should they feel like running head first into these walls.

10 With all the hundreds of magicians I have seen, I have never seen that any of their works endured. Something happens that one does not know how and by what means and every time something comes into sight; but soon it vanishes like a bubble on the water and once it is gone no magician will bring it back into existence! I want to see the magician who could blow away these works just like that! I will wager my entire fortune without further ado that you would never succeed to blow away all this just with a dash!"

- Chapter 21 -

Roklus' creed of denying God.

1 (Roklus) "That's why my thoughts now are as follows: I have not been believing in any deity any more, but in a secret, purely spiritual power of nature that manifests itself everywhere very austere and at the same time still benign and that constantly works in a certain order according to its underlying laws and never pays attention to what the fleeting people do. It does not know good and evil because that is something that only bad people bring about among themselves. Great, holy nature does not know anything about it!

2 Being a slave is a great misfortune for man; but who made him a slave? Certainly not holy nature, but the incidentally stronger man has turned the weaker one into his pack animal because of a pure wish for his own idleness and at the same time a good and comfortable life and he did the same with animals. Who threw the hard and heavy yoke around the oxen's neck, who burdened the donkey, the camel and the bold horse, and who even built towers on the back of the patient elephant? Who invented the sword and who the chains, the dungeons, and even the most shameful cross on which you Romans pin and let die in the greatest of pains the most disobedient and wayward people who want to rule and murder as well? - All, all misery comes from people!

3 Everything is free in great nature; only man is, so to speak, a curse for himself and for all the other free creations of the great mistress nature. Idle people started at one time to build castles of air and invent inane gods that they imagined and thus created after their own image, having all the evil human passions. With these gods man thus established new nuisances for himself, which by themselves would certainly never harm man; but man built temples for these self invented gods that in reality never were and never will be, and anointed himself their representative, supplied with all sorts of means to force, scare, and pester and by that introduced, in addition to his control over weak mankind, the most merciless tyranny of the invisible beings invented by himself. The ones, who in reality never existed, now exist on and on for the torment of poor mankind, but more for the benefit of the powerful ones because they hold mankind in blind obedience a lot easier through their feigned powerful leverage than through the lone sword. And thus one can use pure reason as one wants because the strong and powerful man stands everywhere for everything that could ever happen and soon rules as a king, well supplied with swords and lances, and immediately after as an already almighty representative of the gods. Woe to the one who as an uninitiated man would dare to look behind Isis' veils woven by people! Oh my, oh my, oh my, - the gods would batter him nicely!

4 This was my free belief until now, but it received a miserable dig in the ribs from this apparition and I am now starting to very faintly believe in a higher divinity because I realize only too well that no man can accomplish such work with his known powers and will never accomplish. This can only be a work of a god, who can only be a kind of man, but a man whom great nature's powers obey easily and certainly at all times, as common warriors obey a proven insightful general about whom they know that he never lost a battle.

5 But I now want to meet this god man! You, great Cyrenius, are definitely not him because if this was possible for you, the great Roman Empire would have been long ago surrounded by a wall high as a mountain, which even an eagle would dread flying over. Great lord, lord, lord let us know some of it and we will go home quietly!'

6 Cyrenius says: "It would be all right if this could be common practice just like that; but it is not like you imagine! You could ask a ranger what time it is and if the sun shines, he will give you the hour of the day exactly and without decorum according to his staff stuck in the ground, for which you will have to pay him a stater; but it does not work quite like that here! Be patient and maybe something will still come out in the end; but it will cost more than a stater!"

7 Roklus says: "Well, for something like this we can put on the line a pound of gold and ten pounds of silver, even more!"

8 Cyrenius says: "Yes, if one could buy something like this for a lot of gold and silver, it would be something else entirely! But I can assure you most definitely that this cannot be acquired with all the treasures of the world! You must first be taught how it can be acquired and through some tests be purified from within! Steeped and formally reared in the greatest disbelief in a manlike god and in other personal, godlike beings, you now want to learn from me for whom it was possible to bring into being all this in a moment just through His almighty will, so that you can crudely laugh at all of us in your privacy! I say to that: Hold on my beloved ones, we will first see if you are capable of any belief! If no belief can find a way inside you, then the information asked of me cannot be given to you! If, however, you are capable of any belief, with its becoming alive you will be able to receive everything else! - Did you understand me?"

9 Roklus says: "Definitely understood because none of us is narrow-minded! But your request is impossible for us for the time being. We partly explained to you our reasons for it and if you care to hear them, we can and want to explain further!'

10 Cyrenius says: driven by the words I put in his mouth, "Do that and I will learn from it how much you have distanced yourself from the way of the truth! Let me hear your reasons and I will certainly be able to infer from them if you are capable of a true, spiritual development and if your wish can be granted to you! Because if you are no longer capable of any true, spiritually pure development, you may leave from here in peace and live according to the teachings of your Epicurus, who to me is one of the very last sages!

11 Yes, according to Epicurus one can best get by in this world as a man who is rich and physically fit as a fiddle; the principle: 'One should be honest and agreeable towards everyone for one's own sake - but always most honest towards oneself!' sounds fine in worldly ears, but a man's soul awakened by God's breath shudders before it because an Epicurean is still just a cunning egoist and only takes care of his own skin! Why should he care about all people? If he cannot take advantage of them, they can all be killed by lightning.

12 These are the main characteristics of an Epicurean! How much spirituality has room in such a stony soul is hopefully graspable for every blind man. Yes, Epicurus' teachings are best for gaining wealth in this world, especially if they are mottled with stoic cynicism as it is the case with you; but they are least suited for gaining spiritual wealth because they completely exclude the pure love for God and for the poor neighbor. So much to your self-illumination! And now let us hear your reasons for your quite Essenian atheism!"

- Chapter 22 -

Roklus proves his atheism.

1 Roklus says: "You are right, we are all that you just described a real Epicurean to be and are very well off on this earth! However, we have so many most convincing proofs for our atheism that one could fill the entire great sea with them. I will add some more to the ones I already gave you and hope that it will be enough and you will have to agree with us whether you want it or not! So kindly hear me out!

2 Look, everything that has any kind of existence always expresses itself at times in a way that is without exception perceivable by all mankind! If the existing entity is endowed with any kind of reason, that will soon and quite easily be visible in its works; but if an entity, a statue for example, is not endowed with any reason at all, none or only such works will be visible from it that the blindest coincidence has done or attached to the entity. Thus wherever there is even limited intelligence, it will soon express itself through proper works originating from the inner intelligence.

3 For example: The most simple moss acquires a proper form and develops its own organism through which it further secures blossoms, seeds and through them the ability to reproduce. A greater and more definite intelligence is a lot more visible and recognizable in superior plants after a certain level.

4 A definite inner intelligence only emerges in animals, which do things that, although limited in number and variation, surpass in many aspects the things done by man. Man's works prove his extremely comprehensive intelligence; but perfection originating from within is nowhere visible, something that can never be denied in the works of animals. Thus even an animal's works are more intimately connected with its being and its character, than it is the case with man, this god of the earth.

5 The works of man are actually just mimicry and consist of clumsy, merely external formations that lack any actual internal value. Man can imitate a form of beeswax cells out of all kinds of joinable materials; yes, he can even draw and paint them, - but what clumsiness prevails, except for the material the bee uses to build its cell! It seems that nature made a palpable joke with man! A most comprehensive intelligence lies within him and also the sense for true perfection, but no matter what he does, he will never ever reach it!

6 If we assume that all living beings have a soul and that the soul is the acting principle everywhere - whether more or less perfect is all the same here -, this assumption can then be raised to evident truth that is logically and correctly inferred backwards, from the effect to the cause or from the works to the power, which we will call the soul. From the degree of perfection and order of the soul one can consequently reason firstly its existence and secondly its competence. But if we find some chaotic mix jumbled wildly and disorderly without stir or motion, so without all traces of any life, we think and say: The completely unconscious death prevails, whose fulfillment is total annihilation - an event that can be observed in autumn in many trees and bushes, from which the previously so beautiful and most orderly foliage of the tree's soul falls down in the wildest disorder, dries up and through the winter is almost reduced to nothing.

7 Who is the sensitive one who can catch sight of even one working soul in the most total disorder?! Its flight and annihilation - yes, - but not a new and more perfected development! It is true that from the foliage the soil becomes richer and more receptive to the humidity in the air and through that more nourishing for the plants growing in it; but the fallen leaves will never rise again as one and the same because their souls practically no longer exist.

8 Thus one can justifiably establish the principle that: The more orderly and perfected a work is, the more perfect is the power that put it forth, which is called 'soul' or 'spirit'. From the products or works one can consequently reason the existence and competence of a soul or spirit.

9 Where do we find those works and that order in them that would imply with some probability a greatest, wisest and at the same time almighty, divine entity? The dogma of theists and theosophists [religious people and god-wise people] is known all too well. 'Look at the earth, its mountains, fields, seas, lakes and rivers, and all the countless creatures that live on it! All these indicate the existence of higher deities!' - or, as is the case with the blind Jews, only one god, which is by a hair more reasonable and at the same time more convenient than having so many invisible masters, since one will obviously make an enemy of one of these gods by paying homage and bringing sacrifices to another. I want to meet the one who at the same time gets on well with Juno and Venus, or with Mars and Janus, or with Apollo and Pluto!

10 The Jews are in this case again better off by a hair because they have Jehovah, who is a master over their Pluto, whom they call 'Satan'. But the Jews' Pluto is a most foolish scoundrel because instead of honoring and rewarding his servants he mistreats them viciously; because of that no honest Jew loses any sleep over deeply scorning his lord Pluto as much as possible, and to Jehovah he will appear more agreeable the more energetically he scorns the Jewish Pluto and acts against his will, which I do not want to advise any real Roman or Greek to do! Whoever did this, would be all the most malicious Pluto priests needed. That means offering as good sacrifices to Pluto as to Zeus, otherwise dear Pluto will breathe down some poor sinner's neck, and Zeus cannot by right do anything against Pluto; because SUUM CUIQUE [to each his own] stands paramount as a principle of fate, against which not even Zeus can pass judgment without exposing himself to the danger of coming into conflict with all the other gods."

- Chapter 23 -

Roklus' opinions on gods and priests.

1 (Roklus), "With a few small side leaps we now have two concepts about deities, which compel to laughter an only to some extent awakened human reason. The Egyptians, Greeks and Romans are teeming with great and small, good and evil gods; in the case of the Jews only one sits on the throne who is very serious and strictly just, but at the same time good and sometimes merciful. But the Jews, who he calls his people, may not make him angry because once he loses his patience all fun is over with him. In a moment he submerges the whole world under water for one year and then drains the water to god knows where and so millions are healed and have no more headaches! Or he lets lightning, fire and brimstone rain from the sky for a month over some small immoral tribe, and the tribe along with the vice disappears from the face of the earth! The one god of the Jews is also generous with pestilence and other evils; and once he starts swinging his staff over a tribe, there is no question of an early stop! In the case of the Jews all good and bad comes from one god, while for us Greeks many gods have to provide one or the other. Who is better off with their deities might be difficult to decide here.

2 But what gods are either in Heaven or in Orcus and Tartarus!? This all is a smoke screen! The idle and unwilling to work priests are the gods and the one god of the Jews is the high priest of Jerusalem! These people are well equipped with diverse experiences and sciences from which they wisely do not let anything go over to the blind made and henceforth with all force blind kept populace. The often very great experiences of many centuries and the most diverse arts and sciences are kept only in their malicious caste as forever inviolable, holy secrets. With that they loosely palter with people, who must bring them heavy sacrifices, so that they can more easily be deceived as much as possible and be mistreated in all aspects of life. I will give my entire fortune and even the last spark of my life to the one who can factually prove the opposite!

3 In primeval times there might have been here and there more honest and respectable people, who, endowed with an especially keen intellect from birth on and over time enriched by many diverse experiences, willingly and with love shared their spiritual achievements with their not so highly enlightened fellow men and in the end saw the blessings of their brothers accompanied by the best and most lasting successes. It must have been wonderful to live in a community in which no man hid any selfish secret from another man, and all were to their avail privy to everything that the most experienced one among them knew! But how long could such a fortunate situation last?

4 Such a first benefactor of his fellow men was certainly pampered by them and his successor not less than that. In some who loved idleness this also awakened envy and desire to be pampered by fellow men. They too sought to enrich themselves with all sorts of experiences, but started to keep them more and more secret in order to aggrandize themselves in front of their fellow men. Then someone, who was able to stride along for a longer period of time as silent as a fish but with a noble air and who was naturally pressingly questioned by many curious people why he always strolled along so silent and profound, said, 'If you knew, what I know, and had you seen, heard and learned what I have seen, heard and learned, you would be more silent and profound from inner amazement than I am!'

5 When still very simple people burning with curiosity and thirst for knowledge hear something like this from a cunning scoundrel and dawdler, they will give him no rest until he starts making up conditions under which he will disclose just a little of his infinite reserve. The conditions are gladly accepted and through that the smart scoundrel has propelled himself to a prophet and priest among his fellow men to whom he then starts to portray all sorts of mystic things, which neither he nor anybody else understands or can understand because they do not exist anywhere else besides in the quite fanciful brain of our scoundrel, who through his cunning deception silences all the real, old, honest, wise men, and does that mainly by attracting people and making them understand that he alone knows and understands more than ten thousand of their old, wise men.

6 But in order to gain full and lasting access to the people for his deceitful teachings, he may only add several magic pieces, and the poor, good people let themselves be nailed up most firmly with thousand sharp-eyed, sharp-eared and usually almighty gods by him, the heartless and unscrupulous scoundrel!

7 Woe to the fair-minded and well-meaning honest man, who with true knowledge and out of pure, altruistic love for the people said, 'Do not believe this false prophet because every word out of his mouth is a mountainous lie, from which are looking out only burning self-love and the most tyrannical imperiousness, which wants to put your limbs now still free in the heaviest chains as soon as possible! He will saddle you with unbearable laws under the title 'will of the gods' and for their transgression he will assign the heaviest punishments and even death by torture. Under the most powerful pressure of such a fake teacher you and your children will sigh and lament and call out for relief! But your calls will be in vain because it will be difficult to do anything against the power of the tyrant, who has neither a heart nor any humane brotherly love!'

8 No just and healthy human reason can have anything against such anti-indoctrination, which must have taken place often in the beginnings of peoples' subjugation! But the people let themselves be persuaded by several marvels and believed in one or even a multitude of gods and let themselves be most cruelly mistreated by them, that is by their most proud, arrogant, mercilessly power-hungry and selfish representatives, instead of starting to think for themselves and return to the old, all-natural human reason. If one knew this as well as my eleven companions and I do, it would be understandable why I am an atheist."

- Chapter 24 -

Roklus tries to substantiate his atheism as the true world view.

1 (Roklus), "If it is made more than plainly clear in this hardly refutable way, how all gods came to be and how their priests gradually became the actual mightiest masters over the life and death of their brothers, then you great lord, lord, lord will also understand how and why we became atheists! See, the few of us have found the way to the old, pure human reason and have returned to the great and holy mother nature, which is for us a visible and always in the most beautiful order, wonder-working deity, while all the rest of the deities revealing themselves through some person's mouth are nothing else but the imagination of a mad and lazy sluggard, who learned some magic skills from someone, or came up with them himself, in order to offer himself as a tool chosen by god to make his will known to the blind.

2 Nature never needed a representative, and it never crossed the sun's mind to choose a representative for itself from the numbers of miserable people; it works alone, gives light and warms up everything in an incommensurable way! In short, everything except for man is in order in the entire, great nature. Even man, this greatest and most perfect primate, leaves nothing to be desired with respect to his nature and his form.

3 But man, better said the speech-capable, upright walking, thus most perfect animal, also has reason and from it a free evolving intellect. Through it he can and should rule over all creatures subordinate to him. But such a privilege given to man by nature is not enough for him; he wants to trample all over his equals in his arrogance of being godlike! And that is the critical point when man oversteps his boundaries and makes himself a god. But because each one man, if he isn't deaf and dumb or completely insane, cannot in his flesh, as an equal with all other men, directly make himself a god - which he would certainly do if he would not fear being laughed at and even castigated by all people - he settles for merely being god's representative on earth; if that is begun cleverly enough and built on firm ground, it will endure for many centuries.

4 If, with the establishment of any right of representation of a god, one adds even a few evidently wise and civically useful decrees, all is won for a millennium with the inherently always naively good and gentle human race! Then, on a wise law one can foist on the superstitious ones thousands of the most absurd lies and stupidities and they will be accepted with the most reverent readiness by the good-willed, but very blind, poor mankind. There can be no talk of understanding, of course, because such divinatory mysteries like the phantasms of an old fox can never be understood. But it does not matter because people always like best to contemplate what is most inexplicable, most incomprehensible and most strange to them.

5 Whoever wants to bore people, should only state really good, familiar and easily conceivable truths and I stand for the fact that he will soon be all alone! If, however, he can lie really well and narrate from his imagination that, for example, in vast India he has seen mountain-high animals that have a hundred heads, and every head fully resembles another animal's head, and in the middle of the hundred most different animal head types towers on a long, thick neck the most gigantic human head, which speaks all languages of the world quite clearly, only with a voice similar to thunder, and even dictates to people laws on how they have to behave towards the rest of the entire great army of his animal heads. --! Yes, he can quite boldly explain to those people who are listening to him most attentively that on the big backs of these wondrous, tremendous animals are laid out the most beautiful cities and gardens, in which people and animals live and lead a pleasant life, if they exactly follow the laws of the human middle head on this most gigantic animal; if, however, they sin, they are immediately eaten by the tiger head of this animal! He can foist a lot more onto this certainly most absurd lie and everything will be firmly believed; woe to the one, who would want to say, ' Why are you listening to this liar?! I have been to India several times and have never either seen, even from afar, or heard talk about something similar!' It is all of no use! He is brought, as a slanderer of such a miraculous thing, to the silence beneficial to him, and the main liar, who has never seen India, claims the field. I experienced myself too many a time, how people much rather accept and even believe the most colossal foolishness, than the proven useful truth.

6 And is it a wonder that with such known characteristics of people we are now properly cured and embalmed with gods? And is it not a greater wonder how people like me can still exist among so many most foolish people? And are you surprised, great lord, lord, lord that the twelve of us very experienced Greeks and Jews must inevitably be atheists, due to the quite simple fact that, most obviously, there cannot be a god built after such a foolishly human fashion, who would ask from people the most ridiculous things; let us say he would ask in his honor even the buying of the temple's dung and dirt for the blessing of the fields, acres, gardens and meadows and another thousand worse absurdities, which the still wiser one-god of the Jews requires, - never mind the most foolish and most absurd things, sacrifices, traditions and customs that dishonor human dignity and that are asked and from time to time even strictly demanded by our Greek, well around ten thousand gods?

7 Woe, woe, woe to the one who dared to fillip even one of the most minor wooden divinities! He would, as a SACRILEGUS MALEDICTUS [damned temple desecrator], be handled most badly by god's representatives! The destruction of, or even an inflicted insult, to a lie carved in wood is still punished fiercely with the sword as a highest, inexcusable crime. But if thousands of these lazy swindlers trample every pure truth and the true honor of mankind, persecute these everywhere and suppress any emerging goodness with all power and with the cruelest means, it is completely alright and, - DICO - [I say] highly pleasing to the wise and omnipotent gods. Ah, true mankind is most obediently thankful for all gods and divinities! Can you, as a known truly wise lord and regent, blame me that I feel disgusted enough to throw up when anyone is attracted by a god even as little as possible?!

8 When I went for the third time to India as a merchant, I found quite a lot of intelligence and goodness, but in addition, also found such horrible foolishness that one could crucify oneself just to never again come into contact with such colossal divine fooleries. According to what I heard there from their theosophy, the highest god Lama, who is also called Delaih, confers on his highest representative, who is also immortal, the highest honor and appears to him and his senior priests once every year; this only happens on a high mountain peak! On the behest of the highest of all gods the representative then has to defecate on a most pure, white cloth, then dry the excrement and turn it into powder. This 'powder of god', as the Indians named it, is put grain by grain in wooden, very small boxes and is sent under lock and key for a great price to the heads of nations; these high heads have to most reverently consume this dirt gift from god after doing the required penance. These and a lot more of the most absurd fooleries are things of which everyone who travels there can convince themselves.

9 What should a levelheaded person of pure reason and healthy mind say when he hears from the highest Indian god about such real foulness through which he wants to be highly revered? Yes, one could fly off the handle at such colossal stupidity of the people, to which they maybe have been hanging on with life and limb for several thousands of years and they cannot be dissuaded by any reasonable concept!

10 Yes, let me once meet a decent god, and I will stop being an atheist; this miraculous thing that took place before my eyes could really tempt me to that and bring me to the belief that despite all the most foolish deities concocted by people there can still be a true deity complying with pure reason, which would be a great and most beautiful thought of man! If, however, the deity is in the end as false as it was the case until now with all deities known to me, it may perform another thousand such miracles before my eyes, and I will truly not honor it!

11 This is how I am, think and act! Thus you can entrust me with something, if you know something better and truer, and I will certainly accept it thankfully! - So how did Mark's new dwelling come into existence? Who called it into existence? "

- Chapter 25 -

Roklus' nature, illuminated by the Lord

1 Cyrenius becomes very meditative about everything he heard from Roklus and does not know at all what kind of answer he should give him. Therefore he turns to Me and says in a low voice, "Lord, the man is generally not wrong, and it seems to me that in spite of his atheism he must have quite a good heart for real mankind. If he could be brought to the true theism, he would be a golden pearl for Your purely divine cause with his enormous acumen and through his many-sided experiences. But because he has so many experiences and judgment as sharp as an eagle's sight, it is difficult, at least for me, to give him an answer from which one could expect the best success with him. How would it be if You handled him Yourself now? You could tell him with a few words more than I could. Lord, do this with this man because his views seem sound as a bell to me!"

2 I say, "You have judged the man quite right and that is how it is with him; none of you has so much naturally healthy, worldly experience like this Roklus and through him his eleven companions. But because in these times and often through his significant earthly treasures he came across nothing but cunning and deception and found divinity represented by the biggest and most wicked swindlers everywhere, one cannot be surprised that in the end he had to out of necessity throw the baby out with the bath water.

3 He searched for god quite assiduously and that is why he took all his big journeys. But the further he went, the more nonsense, folly and graspable deception he found. In the end he even let himself be initiated by the Essenians and took to it because they at least put their divination deception to the beneficial use of humanity and are very good and smart people who are open brothers to one another and do not want to have an advantage over their fellow men; this sect's tenet is, 'Know equally much, have equally much, be equally much, and do not reveal to any layman the secret of the high and thick walls, from which no misery shall originate for any person on earth, only possible salvation!'

4 On the whole that is certainly quite commendable, but there is a tremendous catch in faith in a god because it is a most agreed upon matter among them that, except for the secret forces of nature, there is no god and never can be one. And this is why it is difficult to get a real Essenian around to faith in a god. One must first give him many more opportunities to freely renounce everything and everyone to his heart's content. Only after he has revealed himself before you, will it be possible to do something very special with him. But he is not yet ready for it because there is still a lot in him that he has not revealed yet due to mistrust towards your Roman way of maintaining justice with the sword.

5 As long as a man does not dare to completely trust someone, he will never become a true friend to that someone. As long as he does not become a true, completely trusting friend to someone, he will not completely open up to that someone. If he does not completely open up to someone, the necessary, absolute renouncement will inevitably fall through. Therefore, you must strive to turn this Roklus into a completely trusting friend, and he will then tell you very strange things that will greatly amaze you!

6 But you must convert your highly judicial Roman countenance and virtue into those of a real friend before him, namely as open and sincere as possible, otherwise you will not get anywhere with him! If, however, you win him over, it will be easy to deal with him, and only then can I start saying more; but now with fully leaving his free will he would not even allow Me to speak, but say quite simply to Me, 'Friend, I only know the senior governor and have to deal only with him; I do not know you and thus do not know with how much I can entrust you! 'And for the time being I could not reply to that anything but, 'Friend, you have judged quite right and well! ' Therefore for the time being seek to win him over most and only then lead him to Me, and we will soon have the whole matter settled!"

7 Cyrenius says: "I will try it, but I suspect that my plan will not work quite to my desire!"

8 I say, "Approach it the right way and it will be alright!"

- Chapter 26 -

Cyrenius' friendly response to Roklus

The reasons for the decline of the priesthood

1 Hereupon Cyrenius turns to Roklus again and says: "Now listen, my friend, I have thoroughly thought about everything I heard from you and have deliberated back and forth; I have found your reasons quite true and convincing and cannot do otherwise but tell you that you are right in many aspects, but still not in all because, despite all your healthy views, your flaw is excessive zeal and you throw out the baby with the bath water; you base your judgments on the present and build a structure that does not have a solid base, stands on sand and can be easily destroyed by storms.

2 It is quite true that the priests, especially the high ones, are in most cases extremely power-hungry and are therefore, in most cases, heartless people and the minor priests must dance to their tune most times, especially the ones who have to hold office in the immediate vicinity of the great and high ones; but things are not so vacuous and a pure fraud, as you imagine and assume!

3 Think about the difference in language between now and the distant past! Thousand years ago one spoke in pictures and relevant parables. The entire language was true poetry, for which reason ancient people wrote everything in verses and generally talked like that with each other; the so-called wretched prose only appeared when people went over into the purely materialistic life of the flesh in a basically corrupted way.

4 Thus, the old prophets and seers may have described and showed to the people the true and right God, and the first people certainly understood them better than we understand them now; but by strictly abiding the known wisest commandments of God at that time the first descendants achieved great affluence. This soon made them wanton, sensualistic and mean. Soon enough such people had nothing more to do with figurative spiritual language and soon after they did not understand the language of the old prophets and seers at all.

5 People started to stick to the meaning of letters, which does not animate, but only kills, and in this manner they lost the light core of truth. Except for two among us, none of us, as we are here, knew anything about an inner, spiritual sense for the truth, and everything we heard from all the seers and oracles seemed to us, as it did to you, bare foolery. But the two, who are also among us, and especially one of them, have disabused us and showed us how downright terribly wrong we had misunderstood the old seers and prophets.

6 From such wrong insights had to finally stem completely wrong life-principles, and from those other myriads of fooleries; in the end the teachings about god could not have a better face than everything else man did and achieved.

7 But because mankind became quite bleary in it’s inner spiritual life-sphere and must have felt completely abandoned by the higher, Godly spiritual influences, selfishness started to grow, shielded itself, sensed all enemies and armed itself against their possible attack with outer weapons, like a man caught by night in the woods, who for fear of any hostile creatures, mobilizes everything possible in order to prepare a defense against his assumed enemies, wanting to encroach upon him.

8 Yes, many a man takes his fear so far that he completely annuls the possible existence of a creature friendly to him, shuts himself off from everyone, and is a perfect miser, who snatches up everything for his protection and does not allow anyone to come up next to him! He surrounds his house with high and thick walls, locks his treasures in iron coffins and on top of that often buries them underground, usually in a place that is hardly ever treaded by people.

9 In such a condition, man also often becomes power-greedy, surrounds himself with all sorts of might and seeks in the most relentless way to appropriate everything for fear of ever having to have too little.

10 Go and ask such a real miser who snatches up everything, as he himself cannot in a thousand years consume what he saved up. He will immediately regard you as his archenemy and will certainly not answer you or talk to you. Priests in particular are like that, especially in spiritual respect.

11 They are in possession of the old prophetic deliveries and read and follow them most of all; but by that in most cases they also get first into a dense forest full of darkness and doubts from which they cannot ever find their way out. But because they are already priests, before the people they must give the impression through some foolish pomp that they know and understand something; however, they do not know and understand anything, except - but that, only most secretly for themselves - that they totally do not know, understand and sense anything!

12 Therefore they spend their time on how to ever more effectively hide their complete ignorance from the people and how they can best fool them; that is not too difficult a task for the priests who have brought it so far with their thinking, that they do not know anything for themselves - which takes a lot in itself.

13 Through an approximation, some surely often enough come to a light of the right kind; but because of the once confused people, they cannot knock over the once built structure, which unfortunately is full of deception and lies. They must float with the current and at the most keep the better conviction very secretly to themselves.

14 Believe me for sure that there are among the priests of whatever theology men who know their completely false teachings all too well and who have knowledge of one, true god, whom they follow completely in their hearts; but they still cannot once and for all change anything in the old, wrong structure! They patiently leave it to the One who has the power to knock over the temples of deception at His convenience and when He thinks it appropriate. He will know best, why He allowed the building of all sorts of temples for false gods and idols and their fortification through walls and swords!

15 If you consider it carefully, it must begin to dawn on you a little that with all your sagacity and all your numerous experiences as a complete atheist all your mentioned reasons are not absolutely correct and you are still very far away from the pure, inner truth!

16 It is your turn again to justify yourself, as you like and can. We face each other as friends now and you are granted free speech without the slightest penalty! You can speak out on how you feel completely openly and I will not endeavor to bring you on the right path through word, advice and deed as a first authority-bearer of Rome or as a chief justice, but as a man and brother! If, however, you do not want that, you can at your freest will betake yourself from here and move on unhindered wherever you like and want! I will feel sorry to let you leave in your illusion; nevertheless, due to your wisdom - that I respect - you will never be coerced by me in the least. - So speak to me, your friend, completely openly and freely!"

- Chapter 27 -

The artificial sanctuary in the temple of Jerusalem

Abominable Indian penance

1 Roklus says: "Lord, lord, lord, your reply was very good and wise, and I have weighed and carefully considered it syllable by syllable! I found a lot of truth and good in it, and also that you are, hardly understandable for me, a perfectly real cosmopolitan, like there are unfortunately desperately few left, especially at your level.

2 The idea of only one, wisest, but at the same time most humane god would be beautiful and highly commendable; but where does such a deity exist other than in the beautiful concept of a poetically aroused human mind? If any divine reality was different, it would have to manifest itself through something special! But one can do whatever one wants, and seek and search with the greatest diligence in the world and with the most intensive alertness and sagacity, and that always with the best will in the world, and all will still be of no use!

3 A hooded man stands in the foreground everywhere one looks searchingly, as guards stand before the precious curtain in the temple in Jerusalem, so that no layman can ever step behind the mysterious curtain. With our gold, however, our we as gentiles looked behind such veils of Isis and found nothing other than what man's hands had made: a chest similar to a sarcophagus made of black and brown wood; in the middle of this chest was fastened an iron basin in which naphtha burned with a bright and high flame that supposedly represented the presence of the highest god!

4 I, however, ask how much blindness and foolishness is needed in order to believe something like this! Where is the god and not the man, who put all this together for the deception of his fellow-men, from whom he keeps all information about life and death, so that they continue to remain as foolish and blind as possible and work day and night with blood dripping hands, so that god's workshy representatives can really grow fat at the expense of the poor, foolish fauns. Why should such humanly divine highness care about the lives of millions? In order to not bring all furies upon themselves, these must be ready at any moment to put their life on the line in order to maintain the ineradicable pest that represents their god and that is actually their greatest curse!

5 Friend, if I may call you that, go to India and take a look at mankind there and your hair will stand on end! You will meet penitents there that your imagination could have never dreamt up! Here for criminals they have punishments imposed by the judges. Executioners carry out the punishments on the law-transgressors for no longer than one day in the worst case. There the lightest penance lasts at least one to two years and the sinner must carry it out on himself most exactly and without any mercy. The lightest punishment there is so gruesome that a Roman crucifixion is literally nothing compared to it. I will give you a few of the lightest examples and it will be completely enough for you!

6 I saw such a light penitent! He had three iron nails through his calves, yet still had to pull a significant burden around a tree. If his flesh became tired he took a whip with iron tips and dealt himself the most powerful strokes. His daily penitent's food was composed of seven figs and a pitcher of water. This penitent was carrying out his penance for the second year and was still alive.

7 Another light penitent I saw, was stuck full of spikes like a porcupine, with the only difference that in the porcupine's case the sharp tips are pointing outwards; in the penitent's case they were pointing inwards and were pushed at least two thumbs thick into the flesh. According to the directions of the most friendly penance prophet the penitent had to personally jab into his flesh these spikes, made either out of hard wood, bone or even out of iron; every day he had to push in one more for the whole two-year penance period, so that at the end of his hopeless penance period he has as many holy penance spikes stuck in his body and flesh, as there are days in two full years. If the penitent survived his penance, he then begins the voluntary after-penance for merit before the all-seeing eyes of the Lama; the first obligatory part of his penance was only to gain forgiveness for his sins from the Lama. Only through the after-penance can he earn merit before the Lama.

8 I asked the otherwise very friendly penance herald, what would be the after-penance for this penitent full of spikes. He said, 'It can be of two, even three kinds: he keeps the spikes stuck in his flesh until his dying day, which is associated with very many discomforts, especially during sleep; such penitents can only sleep on drifting sand or in water connected to tubes that are filled with air. Secondly they could pull the spikes out of their flesh, but not more than one a day and so they would have to deal with the pulling out for as long as initially with the jabbing in. Thirdly they could have their spikes all pulled out at the same time and take a remedy bath. This heals the wounds fast and the penitent is immediately afterwards a useful and fit for work person; for that, however, he either has to bring a strenuous sacrifice to the Lama, or be a slave for four years to a priest and cultivate his fields, meadows and gardens, whereby he has to feed himself by his own means. That he will not fare very well in doing so, is evident!'

9 This I was told by such a friendly penance pronouncement priest, whereupon I asked him what crime such a sinner must have committed, so that such a torture penance could be imposed on him. The penance herald said, 'Often no real crime is needed for that, but rather it all lies with the unfathomably wise arbitrariness of the eternal Lama! He reveals his holy will only to his highest priest on earth. This one then announces it to us lower priests and thereupon we instruct the people, who have to obey as blindly. Even if we are infinitely small and little before the Lama's highest priest, before the people we are still infinitely much and great and enforcing our will! A word from our mouth is immutable law because the people know that our and the Lama's word are one!'

10 I asked him if the Lama ever gives a reason, why he imposes such gruesome penance on a man. Again the priest said with the friendliest and meekest countenance in the world, 'Does the Lama ever say to a man how, when, and why, he afflicts him with a most painful illness? The Lama is highly wise, almighty and just. He does what he wants and never asks anyone for advice, and he loathes people's opinions! But who can oppose the will of the Lama, who is almighty? It would be the most awful of the awful and the most horrible of the horrible to make him angry! That is why, it is more beneficial for man to torture himself in this world where everything has an end, than to eternally burn in the Lama's most terrifying fire of wrath in the other world.'

11 Thereupon, I asked the friendly man, who could watch for years with the greatest and most pious composure, how hundreds of penitents torment and mortify their flesh most excruciatingly according to the Lama's will made known to them, why there is no young woman, even less a girl, as well as no priest at all among the penitents. One can only see older people, mostly moors, and very old, usually very ugly women! Thereon the pious priest said nothing else but, 'Dear knowledge hungry stranger, every explanation lies in 'The Lama wants it that way!' If one knows that, any further question is superfluous!'"

- Chapter 28 -

The state of affairs of the Indian priests

1 (Roklus), "This answer irked me, a Roman citizen, and I said to him, "Friend, would you have answered the same way if I had asked this question with a stern face at the head of ten times hundred thousand warriors and commanded you to release from their penance all these poor penitent fauns?' The pious man boggled a little, gave me a very inquiring look and seemed to ponder a lot, what he should answer to this question.

2 I, however, said to him with a very grave face, 'Yes, yes, look at me so that you can later on recognize me sooner and more easily at the head of a most mighty army, when I will attack and destroy the evil and strong castle of your most gruesome god and his high priest!' The previously friendly shepherd of souls braced himself, made a grim face, and said to me, 'You crazy mortal, you would sooner destroy the moon than the Lama's strongest castle! But where is your army?'

3 I said, 'I will not tell you! Only one cue is needed from me, and you evil man will find out soon enough where my army has positioned itself! I am telling you: If you do not tell me something entirely true about the Lama and about his high priest and about your association with him and the reason for this most shameful mistreatment of people, I will have you seized and tortured for twenty years with everything my imagination will give me, so that you may taste how these poor penitents must feel under such unheard-of agonies and tortures!'

4 The pious man saw that at best I am not to be joked with and began to come out with the truth, although visibly grudgingly and with the preliminary remark and plea that he could then leave with me because he would no longer be sure about his life; I consented to that, whereupon he began to everything:

5 'We have a script that supposedly originates from the patriarchs of this earth. Its makers are supposedly a certain Kienan, Jared and Henoch at the behest of the highest God, whose name only the high priest knows. There are long accounts from Nohai and Mihihal as well in the great book of books; but we do not know it’s content and can never take a look inside because it is forbidden under penalty of most excruciating death.

6 None of us lower priests has ever seen the Lama! One can count himself lucky and blessed if one gets to see the Lama's high priest once in one's lifetime. The Lama himself does not even come into question! The high priest knows about the living conditions of all his subjects and all his subordinate lords, whom he commands like a master commands his servants. They must obey him in everything he wants, otherwise it only takes a word to his people, who believe in him blindly and most firmly and expect all prosperity and adversity from him alone, and they will most gladly rise and kill all the lords because they would thereby gain the Lama's highest favor. The lords know this for a fact and in their own interest give the high priest all imaginable honors and yearly donate to him great sums of gold and silver; on top of that they enrich him with the nicest herds.

7 If he dictates a corporal penance to one or the other - penance from which not even a lord is excluded - the lords can resolve it either with gold and precious gems and pearls, or they can pleadingly come to ask for permission that someone else, if he is a very pious man and never had to do penance and if he wants to, may take on a penance for a lord, which will be valid for the lord; this, as well as the determination of the surrogacy tax, which is never too small on such occasions, is left to the pious man's free will. Such pious substitutes ask the penance heralds for advice in advance and can transform the most painful corporal penance dictated to a lord into any desired easier one, which the Lama's high priest will accept as valid for the lord, as long as the lord pays as the penance-substitute a high enough sum from which the respective substitute has to give two thirds to us priests.

8 An undisclosed norm to be honored with the imposition of penances is that penances should be imposed upon poor people very seldom and if they are imposed, then they are always of the easiest kind. Great and hard penances are usually imposed upon the rich and affluent who can redeem doing the penance either partially or completely as they desire. Rarely does someone redeem completely, with the exception of a lord, because such complete redemption would rob them of their entire fortune. The miser does the penance himself and rather suffers the greatest torture than give away his gold and silver. If the one to whom a penance was dictated has a very beautiful daughter or a very handsome and educated son, he can offer them as sacrifice to the high priest instead of the gold and silver, of course with a small dowry and well adorned and most richly dressed. The high priest and his countless servants can use the like to all sorts of duties because he owns, mostly in the mountains and high lands, an enormously large territory of such dimensions that a man would have to walk around for years in order to see all the lands that belong to the high priest as a gift from the Lama."

- Chapter 29 -

The residence of the Lama's high priest

1 (Roklus,) "The city where he resides has no name, is very big and firmly built for eternity. It stands surrounded by insurmountable mountains, itself on a high mountain that has stone walls over which no one should be able to climb, even if he could come close to the large mountain, which is utterly impossible, because the whole big mountain on which the nameless city is built, is surrounded in the vast high plateau by a triple circular wall that has no gates; one can only get over the walls by means of rope ladders lowered from above.

2 But if one successfully gets over the three huge walls that way, he then stands at the bleak rock walls of the mountain. Then one assiduously walks around the mountain a whole day and a half futilely looking for a possible way up, which is impossible to find because on the surface there is none. Only the guards of the third circular wall know the gate in a rock, to which one can only get by means of a lowered rope ladder. Once one is up on the rock spur, which is well twelve times head-high above ground, one has still not reached anything if the guards of this ledge, which has an area of good two acres, do not open the gate and lead one up on the mountain with a torch through a long, subterranean passageway.

3 Once one arrives at the top of the mountain after an intense hour on subterranean stairways, his eyes cannot get enough of the great natural glory it sees there. The upper area is several acres big and consists of the most luxuriant gardens. In the middle of the plateau there is a one to two acres big lake, which is not very deep, but has the cleanest and most tasty water and provides all the inhabitants of the big and most holy mountain city with its most essential elements.

4 One walks around for hours on the high mountain and notices no trace of a city. If one wants to enter this city, one has to first pass quite a stretched forest and again come to a circular wall of great circumference, through which one can pass through gates and drawbridges. Once one comes into the big city after many troubles and discomforts, there is such glory to be seen that no mortal can imagine. One can see everything there with the exception of the high priest's palace.

5 This is in the middle of the city on an even higher rock, which has a circumference of three thousand paces and towers thirty times head-high over the other buildings of the big city. One gets into this holiest palace only through subterranean stairs. How it looks in there I cannot tell you because first of all, I was never in there myself and no one gave me a description of it; with the exception of the high servants of the high priest no one is allowed to dare to even go near the entrance gate.

6 Apparently the high priest often times goes down in the city disguised, takes pleasure walks in the gardens and confers with the other priests as the only inhabitants of this city; but no one is allowed to recognize him or greet him as the high priest. Whichever of the priests did that, would expose him to very ominous trouble. Only four times a year is a day appointed when he shows himself in full regalia to the inhabitants of the city. Those are the greatest holidays. Three nights before and three nights after, the whole mountain lights up from countless lights so that all the surrounding mountains far and wide look like they are glowing, which always offers a terribly beautiful sight.

7 But one cannot get as easily as you probably imagine to this high plateau in the middle of which the described mountain with the holy city is situated; one has to first pass many mountains, valleys and gorges for days on end. In the end there is a strait like there cannot be another in the world! In order to finally get on the high plateau, one has to climb ladders, without which it would be impossible to come to the plateau. With all your might it is impossible to push forward because these natural fortresses cannot be captured by any earthly army neither through siege nor through whatever other means of force. You can cut the people off from their Lama's high priest for a while, - but to alienate them from him, never! His powerful lords are taking care of that and each one of them can double your army. Thus I do not advise you to make a mistake with great India, because you will fare awfully bad!' 55 Hereupon he was silent again and I had time to imagine my nicest part. I had found out that the Indian god is a man and understood very well how to consolidate himself and knew now, what I had wanted to know."

- Chapter 30 -

Roklus critizes the Indian and the Jewish religious teaching

1 (Roklus,) "Yes, I had spoken out earlier that man's idea of only one god, indwelled from immemorial times by the greatest intelligence, the clearest reason, the highest wisdom and the best and almightiest will, is to be counted as one of man's most beautiful and most worthy. But the concept of a perfect deity should also be a highly pure one, commensurate to the entity, whether it found a reality in spiritually transcendental background or not! But such a deity is professed under all sorts of most foolish and material concepts and is forced with such deceit and often gruesome violence on the other, still level-headed primitive man for worship and deep veneration!

2 If as an experienced thinker one bristles against it, it is said: There must be a god no matter what face he has; whether it is one worthy of a god, or a hideously foolish one, it has generally been all the same to the stone-blind man! But can it be all the same to educated, pure reason? I do not think so because pure reason is based on a mathematically correct, logical order and can never, under any constraints, imagine that a master, whose most artful and most organized works show how much knowledge and many dignified experiences he must have had in order to call into being such magnificent and most organized artificial works, would have been a lot dumber and more stupid than the dumbest fish in the water!

3 How, one says: could I have guessed that a deity, deeply venerated by millions of people, should be so dreadfully dumb? No, listen, great friend, it does not take that much! I am speaking openly now, as it is openly coming from my heart. If we go through the commandments of the deities known to us and examine their visual presentations visible only to us, we have enough! Nothing more needs to be said about it."

4 Cyrenius says here, "Well, you will hopefully have no objection towards the Mosaic law of the Jews?"

5 Roklus says: "This is admittedly the best of all commandments that I have come across as originating from gods. God's oneness and the laws, if not exhaustive, are as humane as possible and have a great resemblance with the ones of old Egypt; but he did not reproduce a wise law of the old Egyptians! It is very nice and laudable that Moses' deity gives a law to children, on how they should behave towards their parents; but the Egyptian's Isis had given quite a wise law to the parents on how they should behave towards their children, because children are people too and should have the full right to demand from their makers a certain something due to them; because they did not procreate themselves into this world and were not asked in advance if they would be all right with being put into this world under very often bitter conditions. In short, the small, weak firstlings have from Moses a law for the behavior towards their elders; but these do not have one with regard to the children and so they stand without any right before their parents, like slaves before their masters. Later and subsequent adjustments were given by Moses with regard to this; but there is nothing in the initial commandment that was supposedly given on the mountain by god."

- Chapter 31 -

Roklus praises godlessness and non-existence

1 (Roklus), "I have dealt a lot with the Jews and know their laws maybe better than some of them because it was important for me that I get to know them most closely. An old proverb says: 'Look and you shall find!' - but so far this proverb did not want to come true for me because I always found what I was not looking for. I have looked for the real and true deity and that with much diligence and with many sacrifices of funds, troubles and exertions of all kinds, and this always with a sober spirit and mind, - but I found nothing, nothing but human deception of all kinds and sorts, where there was no trace of a deity even the size of a mote. Everywhere I found at best, either the belief in patriarchal authority, but always shrouded in an entire jungle of mysticism, or worse the most frivolous superstition or at the worst the maddest belief due to politically menial coercion, under whose aegis (protection), even a spirit endowed by nature with the brightest abilities will not be able to, in the end, keep itself above the slime of the most blatant stupidity. He will become a hypocrite and a monster in his very own eyes because I don't know anything more horrid and abject for the high dignity of a man's spirit than having to accept, due to a law sanctioned by a powerful tyrant, that only the moon shines during the day and causes the day, and the sun at night; and whoever does not believe this, his eyes will be put out, nose and ears cut off, and the tongue pulled out from his mouth. This is the first degree of punishment for faithlessness.

2 If such a mutilated person still does not believe what is presented to him for believing, the nonbeliever is nailed completely naked through hands and feet on the roughest crossbar; thereupon his belly is slit open crisscross and ravenous dogs are let on it, which then tear out and eat up the nonbeliever's bowels and intestines from his still living body! Who cannot believe this, should travel to India and he will find not only this, but thousand fold worse, which the people must do to themselves. And if somebody, as a penitent, would refuse to torture himself most atrociously, woe, woe, woe to him - death is sworn to him with thousand oaths, of course, of the most gruesome and most hopeless kind! And, friend, behind it should be hidden some highly wise, extremely good, most just and almighty deity? If I became a tenfold fool, such a thing would still be impossible for me to accept!

3 Therefore stop with all the god talk! People do not ever need a God, but they need truly philanthropic philosophy and humanity founded on reasonable principles, and thereby they become completely perfect gods themselves. With pure reason and with their roused searching mind, the sharp seeing and sensitive people of the great creator nature will soon pick up many important secrets and achieve miraculous things, which none of us have ever dreamed of, and the people will live in trade and change enormously happy among themselves without the old, silly gods; physical death, behind which they will see and expect in their imagination neither an Elysium, nor less some most demented Tartar, will certainly cause them a lot less fear than now, when after discarding their body the real and most atrocious calamity expects them forever.

4 I did not exist for eternities; do I feel any sadness because I did not exist? Thus I will certainly feel even less of a bothersome sadness for this mad existence in the state of my renewed and absolute non-existence. I find absolute nonexistence to be the happiest state of a person who once existed; the feeling of existence, even in the happiest states, is on the whole worse, because with the happiest existence there is the fear of either easily falling into an unhappy existence, or of one day most obviously and most certainly losing the extremely happy state through death.

5 The perfect non-existence neither has to enjoy luck, nor to mourn its certain imminent loss beforehand. Hence, no death which nature gives will frighten a proper philosopher like me, however, a death by torture will! Is that why dear nature has not bred man from some material generated in her earth humus, so that he should allow to be tortured by his equals!? In short, I see in nature's works a lot of wisdom, although I do not find every action of raw natural force necessarily most wise and most suitable; but I will never raise a complaint about it."

- Chapter 32 -

Roklus' philosophy of nature

1 (Roklus), "The raw and yet most powerful forces of nature cannot work in another way than only extremely raw, and their thus created work is a necessary one; because their uproarious work brings to life the small forces, and these develop into something only when they are brought to life by the most powerful work of the great raw forces. Only by mutual pulling and pushing do the small forces become moldable and start developing the adopted forms, thus stepping into felt existence, which they maintain for as long as they are able to resist in their apartness another, more powerful force acting on them. If this one overpowers the small force, the small separate force is completely done with. The form disintegrates with it immediately and everything is once more engulfed by the great force, as such is shown rather appropriately by the picture of Cronos, who as genitor of the gods devours his children, which was certainly contrived by a wise man of primordial times. Time and the forces acting in it is just the named mythical god Cronos. Time produces everything; perpetually it generates laughing farmlands and at the same time dry stubble fields. Becoming and decaying, life and death, existence and nonexistence always stroll along simultaneously. No peace, no rest; a wave calls into existence a neighboring wave, - but between them soon walk along the furrow, the grave! What carries the mark of life also carries the mark of death on the other side.

2 However, all this is for the careful observer of things, as they come and go, a necessary result of the continual interaction of the different single forces and special forces in great nature. These awake each other continuously and destroy themselves once more struggling as they have struggling called themselves into existence. Everywhere I see a perpetual game of waves, and the often splendid shapes of the clouds floating in the air deliver quite palpable proof of what highly distinct forms the two-way acting forces squeeze into. Soon a lion appears, soon a dragon, soon a bird, a fish, a dog, very often even a human head, sometimes even a windswept whole person! But how long do these often rather nicely shaped forms last? For as long as a stronger force acting upon them does not first rob them of their nice form and finally even their existence!

3 Is it a lot different with our form and our existence? Not at all! How much does that change in man from birth on until his old age, if he reaches it! And where is the proud man who a thousand years ago planned to conquer the entire world? There where the snowflake lingers, which with its millions of siblings strived to turn the whole world into ice! Where is the hurricane, to which just yesterday the strongest cedars stood in the way and which threatened to put an end to their existence? A more powerful opposing force devoured it, like Cronos devoured his children! It survives very faintly only in our temporary memory; in reality, however, it has stopped raging for the whole eternity!

4 When I traveled through Persia, I witnessed an extremely strange natural phenomenon. It was a blazing hot day, so that our caravan had to look for protection from the scorching sunrays under big, shady trees. Roughly a few hours before sunset we noticed in the east a massive, coal-black cloud rise and start moving towards us. Our leaders predicted a mighty storm and advised us not to leave the forest before the storm will have sped pass. We did that, and in half an hour the storm was above us with lightning and thunder. It crashed and raged quite dreadfully in the trees, and some strong branches lost their existence, and the poor foliage of the trees suffered immensely. It started raining, but not too heavily; however, it got darker and darker. After a few moments of rain, among the ever more heavily falling raindrops fully developed toads started falling by the millions down on earth from the clouds. The ones who fell in water swam around quite well, while only a few of the ones that fell on the hard surface of the earth got away with their life for a few moments. The strange thing was that few moments after this odd storm, which lasted a good quarter of an hour, when the almost setting sun sent its hot rays on the surface of the earth again, our toads disappeared and nothing was left of them but a slimy mould, and that only here and there.

5 Now I ask, where did those countless many toads come from, and who created them? Who other than the natural forces which have met by chance in such a way that from their mutual striving, toads had to emerge! Those which got into water probably found food acceptable to them in their element, and many may have been saved; but the ones that fell on the scorching hot surface of the earth, met an element hostile to their nature and forces striving against them, and the result was the complete decomposition of their insufficiently solid existence for the shortness of their being. Nature always works blindly without some economical calculation, as one can clearly infer from many phenomena; it generates things of one kind or the other always in such an immense number from which in general hardly the hundredth part reaches a solid and durable existence. One should only look at a tree that gets its blossoms in the spring! Who would want to or could count thousand times thousand blossoms? However, if one walks around under the tree only eight days after the blossom period, one will find on the ground a large amount of already fallen blossoms together with the stems; thereupon the falling of the too numerous blossom onset continues until the full maturation of the ones remaining on the tree."

- Chapter 33 -

The God of the philosophers of nature

1 (Roklus), "If any extremely wise God was the creator of the tree and it’s fruit-buds, he would surely go about it more economically, because a wise economy belongs in the sphere of wisdom! But from the often extremely uneconomical initial beginning of things, it is more than clear that the things emerging from the raw natural forces in their mutual fight that repeats itself mostly in the same way, are put forth in an immense number, from which only as many reach completion, as to what extent the arguing forces did not silence each other; because with such silence the active cause of the becoming and maintaining ceases and inevitably with it the produced work itself. But insofar the once started fight maintains itself and lasts, its work will also survive with it, prosper and reach a certain maturity.

2 Would a deity, most clearly conscious of itself and all its actions, be able to act this way with all wisdom and with all of the most tenacious consistency? I say: No, this would have to be for it by a lot more impossible, than I could imagine a most wise ruler who would build cities and palaces with the biggest diligence and expense in order to afterwards destroy them, and would keep doing it on and on! Would there still be such a stupid person on earth to whom it would occur to call him wise?! However, the thinking and much-experienced person should call wise a god, who does the same thing to a much more complex degree, who calls into existence works of the highest internal organic perfection largely only to ruin and destroy them immediately after! No, someone who in the great narrowness of his knowledge and experiences can in his blindness imagine something like that, can do so; that is impossible for me!

3 Two plus two must be four for the wisest god, as well as for a person expert in numeracy. If, however, any existing god said, 'My dear man, two plus two is five, even seven for me!', I would say to such a god, 'Either you are a fool, or you like taking me for one; because with such numeracy skills it will be hard for you to create a whole world and maintain it! A blind person will become one of the most famous painters sooner than you will draw the worst mushroom out of the earth with your wisdom!' We Greeks had a painter called Apelles, who painted people and animals so realistically that nature, one could say, was outdone. Well, this famous painter certainly drew no line free of charge, but charged well for each one; but how many lines does this supposedly wisest god draw free of charge, for whom for special, wise reasons two and two can, or even must be seven!

4 Everything is often so beautiful and full of hope in spring! People are already looking forward to a good harvest to have their work and efforts rewarded. They thank in advance the invisible being which, according to the belief planted in them from childhood, they worship as the almighty god, or even as several gods. But just a few weeks before harvest the most immense storm comes and devastates the whole land to such a degree that the good people do not get from the hoped for harvest enough to hide behind a nail! This is an occurrence that certainly repeats itself on earth, as far as we know it, every year in the most different lands regularly, sometimes here and sometimes there.

5 The blind, superstitious people hurry like sheep to their incredibly greedy priests and ask them, what they did wrong before god or the gods that these struck so hard! Thus, when the people stand before the priests in such familiar way and these legislators, in god's stead, do not have anything to object against the lawful and thus by the gods demanded lifestyle, the priests put on a very good-natured and compassionate face and console the poor sheep as well as they can and like to, advise them with gentle words to be patient, and also explain to them as insistently as possible, that for their own sakes God put to the test of eternal life after the body's death their patience, the strength of their faith and the content submission to his will!

6 The mythical Job, whose story is a rather good one, is always held before the crying Jew on such occasions; and for the moors there are in their religious books a lot of such small anecdotes that beat down the sadness of poor people. The people then return home with these empty promises, completely consoled and in a certain way merry, and fully surrender to the hope for better times, and that God will not let them perish completely!"

- Chapter 34 -

Roklus compares the deeds of man with those of God

1 Here, I only ask what the secular courts would do to a person, who together with several accomplices, would make the bad joke to one night devastate as much as possible the blessed fields of just one small area? I think the Romans would crucify such a willful villain at least ten times, if they caught him, or after some possible medical findings they would banish him for life to an insane asylum. But one still worships a god and holds him for endlessly wise! Not bad, if one feels fortunate doing it! The gods' highest wisdom has the invincible prerogative in the entire creation to play the maddest pranks; it can rob at its discretion, murder and ruin, and it will not occur to anyone even to imagine that it had played a madly bad prank. The superstitious people dare to think only that the above mentioned devastation of the crops was not a good thing; had it been something good, the poor, good people would have certainly saved themselves the walk to the representatives of the gods.

2 What happens to a person who sets another's house on fire and thereby destroys not only the house, but also everything that was kept in it, and thus turns the other from a well-to-do citizen into a beggar? To my knowledge the murderer and incendiary belongs according to the law on the cross. If, however, the lord god Zeus throws the devastating flash into somebody's house and thereby lets everything be devastated by fire, it is unimaginably other than extremely good and very wise! Woe to the one who would not take it that way and firmly believe it; the Pontifex maximus would let him feel god Zeus' rage in a way compared to which the burning of a house would be regarded as an enormous blessing! I, however, am free to ask the question, and say: If the people representing god consider Zeus' house burning deed as wise and extremely good and just, why do they regard the same deed committed by a human so highly abject that they find it necessary to punish him for it with the most tormenting death?

3 I, of course, reason and say: True goodness and true wisdom, exhibited by whoever, must forever remain good and wise and therefore deserve no punishment! The smart people representing the gods on earth secretly know, like us good-natured Essenians, that there are no gods, but only a universal, primordial, raw natural force whose work is purely accidental and degenerates into inevitably nobler forms only in further processes and in the most different branch-offs. That is why god's representatives using their imagination allegorically personified the natural force as a god and presented it figuratively for adoration and worship to the other people, who never thought for themselves.

4 The god contrived in such a way would have to start stirring and that, of course, as miraculously as possible! Once the people had experienced the god through multiple miracles, they would soon have to put up with his severe laws. Woe to the violators of these laws! So that humankind, in its blind and foolish fear of the once undoubtedly accepted, miraculous god would not pass over into complete desperation after an easily committable sin, the smart representatives of god thought of means for reconciliation with the offended divinity, and invented for that purpose sacrifices and other painful kinds of penance, by which the sinner can again gain the amity of his offended god. And so, everywhere on this dear earth, there are, along with the civic state laws, laws coming from one or the other god. These laws are posed in such a way that even a person chaste and virtuous in everything will readily break at least ten times a day, by which he will have made himself a little unworthy of his god's mercy and liking. He must clean himself by prescribed means in the evening before sunset, otherwise he can immediately lapse into greater evil.

5 I cannot and do not want to call this bad because there is no harm, if people have a tender conscience, and certain ablutions and purifications of the body have never hurt anyone. But one may not impose them on me and people like me as orders of a god who does not exists! My companions and I know what we know, and nobody can accuse us that we have ever recruited followers for our purest knowledge. But we should be allowed, at least secretly, not to hold X for a U ?! We will never offend somebody because we are all people loving men; but we also ask to be left unscathed. Why do the priests of Jerusalem cull us Essenes on and on? They ought to be what they are, and we, what we are; before the forum of pure reason they are not by a hair more than us, - basically neither are we more than they. We do not curse them, but feel sorry for them only because of their crass blindness. However, who gives them the right to curse us, given that we have set for ourselves the difficult task never to judge and debase a person, but only to help everybody with words and deeds?!

6 If we perform false miracles - because there have never been true ones-, it is done so that we can more easily help blind and wanting to remain blind humanity because it can no longer be helped in a light, purely human way. This, however, should be understood by such priests who call themselves scribes and should nevertheless know how they are at it! They should join us and work with us, and in few years already it would look quite differently for humanity."

- Chapter 35 -

Roklus points at the heart as the seat of the true divinity

1 (Roklus,) "But these representatives of god in Jerusalem are first of all addlebrained like the night owls during daytime, at the same time voracious like the wolves, power-hungry and jealous like a red rooster, and still rough, cloddish and abhorrent like the wild boars! Who can live with such neighbors in peace and unity?! Who must in his just exasperation not testify against them under such versatile circumstances?! Such rejects before humankind must be confronted with the pure truth every now and then before all people; in well-meaning way those must be shown with what kind of most foul scoundrels they are dealing! Thereby we will not take away from humanity anything other than its old blindness!

2 The fact that this is not very agreeable to the old, in heart and soul petrified children of Abraham, is quite easily imaginable; but we are truly not responsible for it, and it would be high time to clean this old Augean stable! These guys label us as godless and call us blasphemers of the holy of holies. Where is their god whom we defamed and what is their holy of holies?! Their temple, the curtain in it, or the half-iron and half-wooden Ark of the Covenant with the naphtha flame, or anciently with a pillar of smoke, which was naturally a little more difficult to fabricate than the naphtha flame?! Or should the gigantic so-called cherubs represent the holy of holies, or the old manna in the ark, Aaron's staff, or the old oxen horn trombones from whose sound Jericho's walls collapsed, David's golden harp and his crown, or the whole so-called holy script, which the Pharisees may no longer read, but only worship?! In short, I would once like to see the Jews' god and his holy of holies somewhere else, or perceive it in something other than in such antique junk, in which nothing else is evident and discernible than an old, typically Egyptian ungainliness of human artist hands, which is much more distant from something purely divine than the blue of the sky from the earth! If, however, one defames something that is actually nothing but an old, most shameful lie, - what is wrong in that?!

3 Or should one become a eulogist for an old and rusted human deception in order to do a nice service to the Jewish divinity which, like the Roman Zeus, is a complete zero?! No, an honest Essenian will never do such a thing! We know another holy of holies, and that is an honest and worthy human heart! In it, is the place of true divinity! Every true and honest person should recognize this in himself, as well as in his fellow-men! If he does that, he respects his human dignity in his fellow-men as well; if, however, he does not do that, he gives himself a miserably bad mark and degrades himself beneath the most unreasoning animal. Yes, there can be a god; but man finds him only in the true life depth of his own heart, and this true god's name is 'love'! That is the only and true divinity; except for that, there is none other anywhere! Who really found this, has found the principle of life and will find with it something more, maybe even an eternal, not wasteful life!

4 One should collect in himself love through love and thus make it mightier and mightier! Through such concentrated vitality one will be able to maybe quite easily and certainly defy with success those other hostile forces and as a winner will be able to forever secure in the midst of thousand of hostile forces acting on him blindly his life continuity, even if not bodily, still in a certain way spiritually, which primarily is and must be a force; what we get to see once is no longer the working force, but only its work. If, however, we take a closer look at the works of the universal natural force, we will soon and easily find that some forces, as parts of the universal primordial force, must have consolidated themselves under some conditions discovered automatically, otherwise, by always being the same, they would not be able to always bring about the same effects. The same effects always presume the same causes. However, a force that manifests itself as being unchanged through the same, always unchanged effects must have in itself a full consciousness and a bright intelligence sufficient for its work, through which it provides itself at all costs with appropriate weapons, by means of which it can and will at all times arise triumphant from a fight with other, even more raw forces; if it could be defeated at all or be dissipated completely, that which it had produced through its work would certainly never ever appear. If we assume that the invisible force from whose work, for example, the fig results, could be dissipated by other forces, no fig would ever appear!

5 Through such observation we must recognize in the various effects, which are always of the same kind, a countless amount of forces as indestructibly consolidated, and also see how even we people continually regenerate according to our form and primordial nature. That is why we can also accept as certain that the force from which we have arisen has essentially consolidated itself forever as a remaining life principle. If this preserved itself, every human life can also consolidate itself and afterward survive spiritually forever and ever if it has truly found its life principle and cultivated it with the right means. I reckon that a life force, once self-conscious and thinking, once it properly found itself and fully recognizes itself and its surroundings, will never find it too difficult to invent means by which it can most definitely forever defy an overpowering, but only raw and blindly acting force, as such is also shown by the people in this world. Let loose all hurricanes and a million lightnings over the pyramids of Egypt! Will they be able to harm the person in their innermost catacombs? In short, even in this world the people show that they know quite well how to protect themselves from the rawest and most angrily acting forces. Who taught them this? Experience, their sharp reason and necessity!

6 If a generally very little educated person is able to do that, of how much more will he be capable as a consolidated spiritual life! Thus on a scientific field we have an established outlook on the continued existence of the human spirit after the loss of the body and do not need either a Zeus, just as little a Lama of the Indians or a Jehovah of the Jews; pure reason gives us the same in the purest and brightest light.

7 And thus, my great friend, I have clearly and precisely shown you the reasons for my current atheism and also that my reasons are certainly not made up out of thin air, but are solidly based on many experiences! However, I did not want to remove myself from theism for good! Show me other reasons, and I am a theist! How is it now with this miraculously emerged house for Mark and his family? Give me just a hint because now you know me quite completely!"

- Chapter 36 -

Roklus is referred to Raphael

1 Cyrenius was so amazed by Roklus' experiences and right assessment of occurrences - in the area of peoples' moral-political state of affairs, their diverse customs and life-styles, their religious cults, as well as in the still broader area of the natural phenomena of all kinds - that he did not know with what solid reason he could reply; all of Roklus' descriptions were based on the steady ground of experiences, against which, strictly speaking, nothing could be argued. Cyrenius was acquainted with priesthood only too well and knew on what kind of ground it carried on its old, darkness. Besides, he recognized in Roklus a good and extremely unselfish man, who only became an Essene in order to help the constantly and everywhere suffering people by every means that do not clash with humanity and true altruism towards all people blind through no fault of their own. In short, Cyrenius was constantly more and more taken in by Roklus.

2 All the other present guests could not have been amazed enough by this Essene's acumen and only regretted on and on that Roklus had still not made My acquaintance. Everyone was now most highly curious about what I will say to all that in the end. But for Me it was still not time to get involved in a kind of negotiation with Roklus because he was still hiding something in his heart which he had not brought up in this very open instance; but Cyrenius would no longer be a match to Roklus for a further pursuit.

3 Hence, I secretly summoned Raphael and also gave Cyrenius the sign to introduce Raphael to Roklus and to tell him that this young man will now further deal with him because he (Cyrenius) holds himself too weak and too inexperienced to put forth for Roklus' most sterling sagacity such counter-arguments that they would ruin the atheism of the sharp thinker; but this young man will be able to array for him, Roklus, the most founded counter arguments of which he can be completely assured.

4 Cyrenius then turned once more to Roklus and announced this to him.

5 But Roklus immediately said to Cyrenius, "Dearest, great friend, if you as a wise, old man of royal descent, who has been governing for so long, do not dare to reply to me with the great wealth of your many experiences and knowledge, what will this delicate young man, who apparently is not yet twenty years old, do with me? Or do you consider my reasons too weak and unsubstantial to give me a reply?"

6 Cyrenius says: "No, no, not at all. The situation is exactly as I have made it known to you! First try the young man and then judge! "

7 Roklus says: "Now then, let us see where he found the philosopher's stone!"

8 Thereupon Roklus turned to Raphael who was already standing beside him, "Now, reveal what you understand! If you can destroy my experiences or hit my mind with blindness, then you can find in me a weak reed which is easily bent to all sides by all kinds of winds; if, however, you leave me as I am, you will hardly succeed to reshape me from your experiences! You can hardly have seen more than Rome and everything you came across on the trip here! You certainly were never in Egypt, the land of the old wisdom, and have definitely not learned from experience how many kinds of faith in one or several gods and goddesses different people have, and you want to take on us twelve giants in matters of experience? Alright then, I have nothing against it; we will see how sharp your tongue is! Start out and disprove my purely atheistic reasons, and show me the God who gets along with a person's pure reason and a person's innermost life principle, which is evidently love! But do not come to us with a different god because he will be rejected from the start, since there can be no other and will never be another! If this is alright with him, he can begin to work on us! "

- Chapter 37 -

Raphael describes the nature of God

1 Raphael says: "Dear friend, you have worked yourself into a hollow fervor against me a little too early! First let me speak a few words with you, and then it will become apparent if I am a match for you!

2 Listen, you have given me in advance a formal interdiction to burden you with no other god than only one which your reason favors! And see, I myself truly know no other than the One whom you have found with your reason! The only difference between the two of us is that you wish for such a God that I have the highest honor to really know personally, and at the same time also have the high honor to be His constantly most willing servant.

3 This one true God is pure love and only through love is He the most complete wisdom and through this wisdom almighty.

4 This God is at the same time the highest order, truth, justice and all light and life Itself, and all beings and things on this earth - the earth itself with all its spirits and elements, the moon, the sun and all the countless many other stars, which are nothing other than just immense terrestrial bodies, some of them ineffably many times bigger than this earth, which is a sphere like you have always seen the moon and the sun as spheres, from which the latter, the sun, is a million times bigger than this earth-, all these are works of one and the same God, who in His primordial essence is constituted exactly as your truly refined reason imagines Him!

5 He has knowledge of all the bad and false perceptions about Him and also constantly awakens people who get a true perception of Him; however, they are usually never really understood by the sluggish and blind people in this world, and these remain with their old familiar follies.

6 You certainly thought that such a real God could impossibly look at and tolerate people's abominations for so long. For Him, as the almighty Master, it would have to be quite possible to knock on the head all the bad and false balderdash. In that you are basically not at all wrong.

7 I feel and think exactly the same way as you do, and that is why it is that much harder for me, because as a spiritual being, completely consolidated for a long time, I have the power through my will to transform into pure nothing for your senses all those mountains which tower there above the sea, in a moment if it came down to it; being able to do something and not being allowed to, is certainly more bitter than wanting to do something and not being able to do it!

8 That in spite of the possessed power, one may not lay about one no matter how badly one longs to, stems from the fact that for every person in this world it comes down to that - as you noted quite well towards the end of your discussion with Cyrenius - a proper person should find and consolidate himself as a concrete life-force, otherwise he will not be able to maintain himself for eternity as a free and independent being against the continual and hostile effect of the mighty forces! Even if you did not express yourself with my words, you still gave the same meaning.

9 You will realize now that with a person here on this earth where he has to consolidate his innermost life-principle, without any foreign, forced assistance, purely according to his knowledge and completely according to his most free will, one cannot lay about one with the heaviest beating. As long as people somewhere have found out for themselves such a life-order under which a moral as well as physical existence is conceivable, one lets them exist in it for as long as they do not go over into too great degeneracy. If, however, this happens with any people, the Master of the heavens and earth is always there and leads the degenerated people back to the right life order, as it is now the case with the Jewish people."

- Chapter 38 -

Purpose of the works of penance in India

1 (Raphael) "You were indeed in India and saw quite a lot of abuses, in particular the strong penances. Such a thing is for the pure rationalist an obvious folly, linked with at least an apparent cruel arbitrariness of the priest caste there. Only it is not exactly as it appears. These people live in a land, which has the greatest growth-ability for plants as well as for animals and people on earth. You can go into the woods in the mountains in this land and one can walk around for days to find just one small, dry sprig on an old tree; if you break off a twig from a tree and put it down completely loosely and openly even on sandy soil, you can come after one year, and you will find the twig certainly still quite green, very often even with roots driven in the earth.

2 So viability, especially in the highland regions, is very strong in plants as well as in animals. One can significantly wound an animal or even a person, and the wound will cause no great pains because the air covering it there is more beneficial than the most beneficial patch here. If somebody strikes you here with a cane or a rod, it will hurt for several days; there, you can get a thousand strikes with a rod, and you will hardly feel a strike until the next one. Try to put a nail in your flesh here and you will feel pain that will become intolerable! You will swell up; the most burning inflammation, even a deadly burn can appear, or the wound will start to fester and cause you unspeakable pains; not in the aforementioned regions of India! You can walk around for years with a nail in your flesh and you will notice almost no pain from it soon after putting it in because the air is so balmy beneficial there that an inflammation can almost never occur with wounds. If this does not occur, there can be no talk of pain; at least not an intolerable one.

3 At the same time, however, the people there are always very excited because they are animated by too many natural elements and would go over into degeneracy unequaled on earth especially in the sphere of the mating desire. The harsh penances keep them the most from that. Their flesh is in a certain way deadened by the harsh mortifications, and in addition they are persuaded by the engrained fear of the fire of hell, which the priests portray as lively as possible so that it starts burning them from the description; the Indian fears fire the most because this causes him the greatest pain his flesh is able to feel here already. Through the harsh penances which God the Lord allowed and tolerated for the Indians until now and for much longer, the soul of these people will be preserved in it’s human life form and then, in the eternal afterlife, will be able to go over into a higher perfect existence.

4 You will, of course, object to that and say, 'Let these people form in a scholarly way and they will certainly not go over into all sorts of fornication degeneracy!' "They will not, my most treasured friend, in spite of your pure reason! For people whose imagination is naturally too roused, science is a true poison for life! Let us assume that the imaginative and visionary Indians possessed the scholarship of Greece, Rome and Alexandria and the whole world would not be safe from them! Arts and sciences would only put in their hands all sorts of means to become one of the most dreadful and degenerated people on earth because they would soon bring to light things that would surpass by the highest degree everything done at one time by Babylon and Nineveh and entire Egypt, Athens and Rome. The mountains would have to give way to their wantonness, they would build cities which would immediately reach over entire most fertile lands and they would dam rivers and streams, so that immense lakes would form. In a nutshell, the Indians initiated in all sciences would become the most terrible people in the entire world, even if now they have such meek tempers and looks!"

- Chapter 39 -

The dangers of advanced scientific education

1 (Raphael) "Incidentally a people that have a big imagination are never educated academically too profoundly because the too powerful imagination and the fantasy originating from it always hinder that. It suits these people better to look at all kinds of silly pictures in their imagination, than to really think logically about one or the other appearance; by the way, the strict penances that you saw do not occur as often as you think and were told. A rich man frees himself, and the poor man will only be convened to it, if he really committed a significant offense against the existing laws. Thus, there still exists in India a patriarchal order against which one cannot just lay about one with lightning and fire from the skies. To be sure, there is a most stark mass of the greatest superstition, which should be steered; but because such superstition is for sure always the richest fruit with all those peoples who have a very active imagination, one cannot lay about one straight away with the most violent beatings!

2 It is still better to leave people in superstition, than to initiate them into all the sciences; superstition fastens the Indian on the ground, while science would all too soon give him eagle's wings to immediately spread out ruinously across the whole world. Yes, if it was possible to transfer all the Indian people with one blow into a state of purest knowledge without any effort on their part, they would be astonished for a while about how they could have allowed the great and absurd folly to rule over them for so long. However, they would soon afterwards flare up in rage and fury towards their priests and at the same time towards all other people's personalities so that these would all have to jump over the sharpest blades. They would carry out a purification from which the whole earth would very soon look blood-red. And what would have been won by it in the end? The ignorant part of the people would be, of course, massacred and from the academically awoken people would arise nothing but blood-thirsty tigers!

3 The fact that it would happen like that you proved as a purely reasonable person through your great anger towards all divinities and especially towards their so-called representatives. If you had my power! Oh, how fast you would put an end to all priesthood in the entire world! But what would happen hereafter with the other people who cling to their priests' neck and crop and let themselves be led in all directions like the lambs by their shepherds?! Would you be able to transfer them all into your pure reason through a dictum? I tell you: This would be a difficult task! If everyone knew equally much, everyone would also have to own equally much in material means, if one did not want to starve. Because if he went to his neighbor and offered him his services and said, 'I know this and that!', the neighbor would say, 'I know the same, have arranged everything accordingly for a long time and do not need anything from anybody! Everyone should provide for himself! '

4 If a father said to his children, 'Do and learn this and that!', the children would say, 'What should we still learn and do? We can do and know everything you can do and know, and act accordingly! What more do you require from us?'

5 If in your old age, when every person becomes weaker and frailer, you needed a servant and would say to the next best one who could do something for you, 'Look, I have become weak and need your help for which I want to pay you well and will do so; if I die, I want to appoint you as my heir!', - do you know what the addressed would say to the one in need of help? Listen, he would say exactly what you yourself would say to somebody, if he addressed you with regard to a constant physical service! You would say to him, 'Friend, I do not need to be somebody's menial and servant because I am as well-to-do myself as you are and do not need to go into service to earn my living by the sweat of my brow! Who needs it, can slave away for his neighbor; I will let it be!' "See, what I tell you now, was the case for many hundred years in old Egypt! All the people became wise, and everyone was rich."

- Chapter 40 -

Emergence of slavery

1 (Raphael) "What was the result of this? Look and listen: Nobody wanted to be his neighbor's servant any more, everyone worked and lived for himself in the end, and no one was to be had at any price for his neighbor's use. However, the people saw in the end that such a life is basically a quite severely wretched one. The oldest of the people saw this evil first because above all they had need for a service and held council on how they could be helped. A wisest among them said, 'The world is big; let us go out and check whether there are no people anywhere, who are poor and would gladly serve us for a good wage!' They went to Asia and soon found what they were searching for. However, the close small peoples of Asia soon noticed what went on with the very rich Egyptians, wandered about farther in the Asian lands and bought the servants in order to then sell them in Egypt more expensively. And see, that is how slavery and slave trade emerged, and they are commonplace almost everywhere nowadays. Can you praise such a fruit of the former, overly great general wisdom of the old Egyptians?

2 The actual old, wise Egyptians got clever through experience, but did not at any price initiate their servants into their deep wisdom; this would have soon easily turned their servants into rich people, who would not have enjoyed serving and working any more, and then the old, wise men would once more have had nobody, who would faithfully serve them and work for them as requested.

3 But have you seen slaves in India? Bought ones, that is? Certainly not! There are slaves of their own superstition which is bad, but not as bad as the slavery business! The sold and bought slaves are treated as pack animals and are kept away from any spiritual education for a long time. Their thing is: obeying blindly, enduring silently and suffering bestially, in the contrary case the arbitrary, greatest mistreatment accountable before no worldly court! Even the killing of a slave, if it is done by his master, is subject to no legal punishment! Only if your neighbor killed one of your slaves, would he be obligated to compensate you.

4 And see, this misery of humanity is and still remains a result of that era of Egypt in which humanity was generally wise to a high degree and very well-to-do and nobody had to suffer any punishment for a committed sin, because nobody really had even the smallest reason to sin against his neighbor, because everyone had so much of all that was needed to live, and did not need to go to his neighbor for anything for years! But when slavery emerged, laws were invented according to which a slave-owner could never sin against his slaves, no matter how cruel he was. What should penance be good for, where no sins can be committed?!"

- Chapter 41 -

The egotistical housekeeping of the ancient Egyptians and it’s poor state

1 (Raphael) "But later, when the lords of the land became rich to varying degrees through the slave's work, so that some became significantly richer than others, soon envy, quarrel and strife popped up, and then it was seen to be necessary to create civil laws that everyone had to obey; even the Var (Pharaoh = shepherd) was not excluded from this. Then they also soon began to cultivate the slaves so that they were taught concepts -naturally quite dubious ones - of the Divinity and so an allegorical personality for every single visible effect that came from God was given, which the slaves had to honour as a divinity. In this way the slaves that had become more powerful became tamer and gentler with time and bore their fate with greater patience; for they feared the invisible rulers very much, because they had come to a sort of conviction through the secret arts of the Egyptians that there were truly such gods and that they should not be joked about.

2 If, as we already said, the slaves had not become powerful "both through the increase in their number as well as through the annually renewed purchases - the ancient Egyptians would never have taught them to recognise any false gods and even less any more genuine gods; only the fear of the raw physical power and strength of the slaves forced the old, very wise Egyptians to teach the slaves some notions of the divinities.

3 But now just consider the situation of the old, wise Egyptians! They were wise and rich; whatever one had and understood, every other understood as well, the same also had riches and had no need at all to serve his neighbour for bread; each only worried about his wealth and his children. As long as the people were younger and stronger, such egotistical running of the household progressed well; but when the people became older and weaker and more fragile, the longing for reward awoke in them. But who was supposed to attend to them? You say: Their children! That would all be fine; but at that time Moses had not yet announced the Commandments of God to the people. According to their inherent laws, however, the children were nothing more than any other free person in relation to their parents. The children served and obeyed their parents only until they came of age. After this they became free and no longer had any responsibility towards their parents; for their pure common sense had created such a wise principle, according to which the children as works of their parents owed just as little as a house owes it’s builder anything, except that he may live there - but how he does it, is the foreman's and the builder's concern. If the house has been built well, one may live in it well and comfortably; but if the house was built badly and carelessly, it will serve as poor accommodation, for which not the house, but the foreman himself carries the blame.

4 Well, the parents would well have brought up their children so that they would then have served them their whole life long; but the children had also received the five senses through the education by their parents, often more practical than theoretical, and so they became wise egotists like their parents, and the parents were then forced to look around for external servants. These came and served; and the old wise men's pure common sense told them: If we want these people to remain our constant servants, they must not be allowed to learn even the least about our wisdom, otherwise they will become in the end like our children who also do not want to serve us because they have been let in on all our wisdom!

5 For a long time the slaves remained accordingly very foolish and received no other education except for what they had to do as servants and labourers. But the slaves multiplied very much and began to realise their power, which the old wise men secretly began to fear very much! Then the pure common sense of the wise men said: Quickly make people out of them, otherwise they will tear you to pieces like great herds of the most savage animals! Only then did they invent these familiar gods for the feared slaves and had all sorts of miracles carried out by the gods before the slaves. In this way the slaves were intimidated and then willingly served the old Egyptians as their own caste of people with doubled industriousness. Only then in this way did Egypt become extremely prosperous, attracted many foreigners, among whom there were also enviers and traitors, through whom great dilemmas were caused in the later times.

6 You see, those are sheer works of the human, pure common sense which seems to me to be the same as a person who begins to run up a high and steep mountain and can never give up once he has begun the run! You can easily imagine the consequences of this yourself."

- Chapter 42 -

The governmental order of the ancient Indians

1 (Raphael) "The Indians managed their affairs much more cleverly! The nation sticks to its superstition, in itself innocent, but nonetheless still believes in a very highest divine being and in it’s worldly representatives, who bear the most arduous concerns about the maintenance of the old stereotypical order, so that nothing new is added, but also so that nothing can be taken away from what the old books contain. And so in a thousand years the Indian will also be exactly what he is now and what he was several thousand years ago. The worst is his atonement and the fact that he has to make himself his own judge.

2 He can be strict against himself beyond all human comprehension, because no injustice happens to a person who freely desires something; but at the same time the good thing about the Indians is that there are no evil characters among them and no traitors. No-one sues his neighbour, and among the many million people there is no-one who takes joy in another's misfortune! But that is the reason why the Indians have become such an old nation in their ways and will become even older. In time, when some foreign people come to them and teach them another religion, other customs and other traditions, then they will become less calm and less satisfied, they will no longer judge themselves and will not do penance any longer; but they will judge and persecute the others and will place on them the heaviest penance. They will soon be like the Pharisees in Jerusalem, who also lay the most unbearable burden on their believers and judge everyone; but they will not tolerate any judge above themselves and touch no load or burden, not even with the tip of their little finger! Do you find that good or better than what you found among the most innocent Indians?"

- Chapter 43 -

The religious union of India and China

1 (Raphael) "You see, above India, on the other side of the highest mountains on this Earth, there is another very large empire which encompasses at least five times as many people as the Roman one. All those people have almost the same religion as the Indians. They live in the greatest peace and order, are very temperate, sober, frugal, hard-working, assiduous and full of the blindest obedience towards their teachers and leaders, and their emperor is their complete lord and ensures most vigilantly that a stranger can never penetrate anywhere into his great land. For this purpose his whole land, wherever it has flatter borders, is cut off from the neighbouring lands of the Earth by a most colossal wall, over which no hostile army might force it’s way. At the same time this wall is equipped with towers, inside of which a strong guard is on constant look-out, and which is strong enough to turn back most decidedly any foreign approach.

2 Only a messenger of the Brahma (Brau ma = is right) from upper India has the entitled right once a year to go over this wall into the land, because he, the bearer of praise, or likewise of rebuke, from the Lama, has to bring it directly to the emperor himself in a heavy, golden box. This messenger, in fact, comes with a great and shining entourage up to the wall at the designated time to the designated spot and begins to make a great noise down below. At this a basket is let down from the high wall. Only the messenger alone may get into the basket in which he is then lifted up; his entourage however must wait there until the messenger has come back again.

3 But the messenger is carried for the long distance of some twenty days' travel away from the wall in a palanquin, out of which he can see nothing but the sky. Only in the great imperial city, which has more inhabitants than the whole of Palestine, is his foot set freely on the ground and he is led to the emperor with all honour. There he hands over the golden box with its contents and lets the emperor know the desire of the great Lama, at which he is handsomely rewarded and released in mercy. Then his return journey immediately begins again, which always resembles the previous journey there to a T.

4 At such a journey of a messenger from God to the emperor and from the emperor back home again a large number of people always stream out onto the street along which the messenger of God, who of course does not get to see anyone except the trusted palanquin bearers while getting in and out, is being carried to the emperor with indescribably great ceremony.

5 If you ask the people why they never get to see the messenger of God, and even less to speak to him, the people, quite full of the highest humility, will answer you this: such a demand would be an unforgivable sin. It is already the mercy of the great God in highest abundance that they can see from far away the holy messenger of the great God being carried, through which everyone who sees a little receives so much blessing that it well suffices in abundance for another ten times a hundred thousand other people of the great empire, which they believe is situated exactly in the middle of the world. Well, that is taught to the innocent people, and they believe in it as firmly as rock.

6 Indeed, the messenger himself also knows about this belief; but he knows something else, namely that that he is not allowed to see the land and its on pain of death, in order not to possibly betray it in some way. For treason is the highest crime in this land, which is immediately punished in the most severe way, even for a hardly noticeable little thing. But the people of this empire are nonetheless very loyal, true and extremely obedient, despite all their foolishness. Can you be annoyed if the people are kept in their foolishness and tended by the leaders and are very happy, even if the emperor and his first servants secretly know something quite different? Or is that all not just like your order of the Essenes? Is God unwise and unjust then if He allows and tolerates all this, as long as the people remain full of patience and humility, and if He also tolerates you lascivious Essenes? Speak now, my friend, if you now have something to object!"

- Chapter 44 -

Roklus recounts the wizardries of an Indian magician

1 Roklus, whose eyes were constantly widening the longer he listened to the named youth, exclaimed in great excitement to Raphael: "But listen, boy! You are hardly sixteen, and yet you come to me with knowledge and experience that another honest man despite all diligence would hardly have achieved in sixty years. I do not mean to speak now about how you have seriously persuaded me to accept one true God, who looks just as my heart has long been wishing secretly, and I now have nothing to say against you, but instead simply to ask how and when you came into such knowledge and experience.

2 You know another empire beyond India about which I have hardly heard a drivel a few times, and then only in India; for an Indian told me such fantastical things about it very innocently that I could hardly hold back a laugh. Only now through your words I am coming into a more correct idea of this fabulous empire, whose inhabitants are supposed to possess the greatest culture in regard to industry, arts and crafts. Yes, you are certainly completely right and also seem to be most familiar with the magic of all nations; for otherwise you would have certainly never made any mention of a certain omnipotence which your possess!

3 Truly I now see, even if still somewhat dimly, that the godhead allows everything as it is now to be and happen on the Earth for truly highly wise reasons, since it can only be to do with the education of the soul, but not with the well-being of the bodies of man! But it's not about my full insight or non-insight into this affair now at all, nor are the old cedars of Lebanon falling over with one blow "but instead, which is of the highest interest to me, it is now all quite simply only about how you came to all this!

4 You do not need to tell me any longer now how old Mark's new palace-like house with a garden and the harbour and his very new ships came to be; for you stand before me quite obviously as the magical builder and have already betrayed yourself as such, probably intentionally, in order to test me and see whether I am not too foolish despite my inspired reason to understand the words you have thrown down.

5 The field of magic is an enormous and unlimited one, and even the greatest master is and remains nothing more than a school-boy-like beginner. We Essenes, just between us, certainly know this well, since we have indeed Persian and Egyptian magicians on our payroll who are capable of performing miracles at which the likes of us become quite dizzy, although I myself also am not quite a layperson; but apart from that, I have seen magicians in India who have performed things there, in comparison with which all our magic can be seen as the purest child's play! I would have given a thousand pounds of gold if the king of the magicians of Thebes had taught me only some of his unsurpassable conjuring tricks; but he could not be moved to do this for any price.

6 And so you may just as well be initiated in some secrets that I have never dreamt of, and you can use your invisible accomplices and natural spirits who serve you in any way you might want, and it is therefore an easy thing for you to create a whole mountain, and all the easier such a house and so on in one moment. For I saw the magician of Thebes that we mentioned earlier transform in an instant a wide landscape before us into a lake, out of which several islands rose and on whose surfaces several ships were floating. The lake could be seen for several moments; then the magician made a motion and the previous landscape could be seen again untouched.

7 Indeed, for this purpose he led us into a very dark closet and through a window he let us see the landscape, which was quite the same as it was outside the closet. Then he closed the window, made a few signs, then opened the window again, and there was no trace any longer of the previous natural landscape, but instead we saw the previously mentioned sea-landscape spread out near and far, and everything was as natural as anything can ever be. Only I noticed a certain pulling in the eyes, the reason for which being the great surprise.

8 The magician then said that he could conjure up another number of the most wonderful landscapes through the very same window "but such a thing would cost us much gold; therefore we let our further curiosity pass. I asked him whether he could also fix such a landscape so that it would remain. He confirmed this and then suddenly hid himself. When we came out again into the open air, there was no longer any trace of the sea landscape.

9 I ask how such a thing was possible, but I can answer the question myself, that this magician of Thebes was obviously much more familiar with the secret powers of nature. How else would it have been possible to conjure up a lake landscape through one and the same window that I had previously seen the real natural area very well and to make the previous real landscape disappear completely? He than made the lake landscape disappear again, of course, and the first natural landscape reappear; but he could also have let the lake landscape exist for ever "what he did not want, however, because the previous area had already been for a very long time one of the most fruitful, and such beautiful fields, meadows and gardens are obviously of greater use to humanity than a sea-like and incalculably wide lake with some islands and ships.

10 I would have willingly given him two hundred pounds of gold for this conjuring trick; but he did not want to hear or know anything about it. His house must have been quite full of all sorts of the most powerful natural spirits, without whose help the magician would never have been able to create the mentioned lake landscape!

11 And so then you too, young conjuror, have brought this into being, the sudden appearance of which actually enticed us here! It is a quite completely similar conjuring trick to that which I and these eleven companions saw in Thebes, the secret of whose creation I would pay much gold to know; but I know that that is of as little use to you as to that magician of Thebes. For you are still young and will earn much gold and other treasures through this.

12 You must certainly now see that I do not even want to entice the truth out of you; but only I would like to hear from your mouth how, where and when you came to such wisdom and to such magical skills! You have brought me and my companions to the acceptance of a true, highest divine being, and it will therefore not mislead you if you tell me at least how you have come to all this at such a young age!"

- Chapter 45 -

Roklus explains the wizardries of an Indian magician

1 Raphael says: "You are really a strange person! Your many experiences have made your head so crazy that you now do not know how to tell the difference between false and actual truth! If you had only asked the magician staying in Thebes to conjure up a sea landscape without a chamber and window, he would not have done that for you for a whole world full of gold, because such a thing would have been quite impossible for him; but in this familiar chamber he could have conjured up for you several other landscapes through this particular window!

2 This magician should only conjure up a solid house in the open nature equipped with everything and able to remain! But that, as we said, he would not do! Therefore that is a work of God - quite honestly - and the other is only the work of a man who is basically only an expert engineer of nature and not at all a so-called magician.

3 But if that is a work of God, then my wisdom is also the same! Everything that you find in me is from God! Therefore do not ask any more how, where and when I received all this!

4 People can certainly perform miracle-like deeds for the eyes of other people; but those are no miracles at all, but instead things that were brought forth quite naturally with very natural means, which only seem to the layman to be a miracle because he has no idea of either the means or of the ways to make use of them for a particular purpose. But if someone tells him the means and their use, however, with the corresponding success resulting from it, he will immediately be able to perform the same miracles as that same magician whom he previously considered to be a miracle-worker."

5 Roklus says: "Even the conjuring up of a landscape by the magician of Thebes?"

6 Raphael says: "In any case, but the means for this are somewhat difficult to receive; for that magician invented a means himself, and the method as well. He will certainly not reveal these, and so it is very difficult for you to achieve the same thing that he performs there and what gives him the reputation of a major magician.

7 But if you understood how to melt pure sand and to make out of it pure glass and finally to burnish and polish it as one burnishes and polishes jewels - a skill very well known to the Indians - you would soon see the miracle very clearly, and all the more clearly if you were also a sort of Apelles, for whom it was possible to paint the water with colours so deceptively that he even deceived the birds with it.

8 Your magician is a famous jeweller, can make glass out of sand, likewise burnish and polish it, and is also one of the best magicians in the whole of India, particularly at drawing and painting the area, of course to a very narrow extent. He constructed his own device, to allow his painted landscape to be seen through such a glass blown especially for the purpose, and thereby such an illusion of sight is caused as you have seen it yourself with your lake landscape.

9 That is now a very secret science which the Phoenicians, and through them also the Egyptians, discovered, and they, keeping it extraordinarily secret, used it for their most extraordinary conjuring tricks. In a few millennia all the nations will have the clearest insight into this; but then there will be no people any longer who, equipped with common sense, will consider such an event to be a miracle, and on top of that one of the most extraordinary sort."

- Chapter 46 -

Priesthood as an enemy of the light

1 (Raphael) "I tell you that there will come a time when the people will drive on iron roads as fast as a flying arrow and will speak from one end of the world to another in lightning speed, and will fly around in the air like birds, far over the seas and lands - and yet no-one will consider them to be magicians, and even less gods! Truly the ever-existent priesthood will constantly make every effort to prevent such a revelation coming to the people; but their efforts will also always be totally in vain!

2 The more they attempt to lead the people in night and all darkness, the more they will wake the always present spirits of light to their greater opposition, and there will always be a greater and more intensive light spread out among the people, until in the end the priesthood themselves will be forced to swallow the bitter pill of light and become apostles of the light; but much fighting will be needed for this.

3 It will come to pass that the magicians will be highly persecuted, and the seed of this persecution already exists in part among the Pharisees, who are not disposed towards the magicians, but also for the most part among you Essenes, who are now buying up the magical skills from all over the world. You now look at each miracle-worker with secretly very envious eyes, particularly when he performs some miracle that you have already collected and locked away inside your walls to deceive the people.

4 But it now pleases the Lord God to gradually allow not the priests, but quite inconspicuous people to make very extraordinary inventions, through which the people are placed at an extraordinary level of culture.

5 On the other hand the priesthood is certainly becoming overly loud and beginning to even agitate with fire and sword, but all that will be of no good to them; for the harder they begin to fight, the more nakedly they will lay their selfish and domineering evil desires before the eyes of the people and lose their every faith and trust.

6 For no-one will place any further trust in a person when one has noticed once already that he wanted to deceive somebody, yes, not even if he comes forward with a very real and true matter; for one fears then some covert bad intention hidden in the background and keeping evil watch in the background and therefore there will be not only a partial, but also an entire end to a priesthood which has exposed itself too much through its dire eagerness.

7 But the Lord God has determined such a thing for eternity through His order so that everything bad and false always destroys itself; and the more they begin to strive for autarchy, the sooner they will destroy themselves.

8 All the evil-doings of the people of this Earth resemble a slack machine which becomes all the more totally useless the more continually and actively it is used. The human body also becomes consumed and destroys itself all the faster, the more passionately it is made active in it’s avaricious strivings

9 Therefore there is never a reason for a true philosopher of life not to believe in a true god, because he sees all the priesthoods performing adverse things and committing things which make his common sense want to repent. For the Lord allows all that; firstly, so that the true common sense becomes all the more awake to true activity, and secondly, so that the terrible things destroy themselves all the faster and are totally annihilated.

10 In the day no-one looks for a light and no-one even pays attention to the true value of it; for the cloak of night does not depress him in any way. In the day one can easily go for a stroll, because one can avoid every ditch, every stone on the street and every precipice, since one can see all that from far off. But in the dark of night things are quite different; then one can only proceed with effort and highly carefully!

11 How welcome is only a small flame of light to the traveller, which illuminates several steps along the path ahead for him in need, and with what longing will the light-loving traveller in the desert wait for the coming morning!

12 And behold, it is just the same for the spiritual lovers of light in the middle of a spiritual night, which for the most part brought the priests' disdainful avarice and the desire to dominate the often very gullible people; but the darker it becomes, the more the lack of light is noticed and the higher the full value of the spiritual light is treasured.

13 People, once they have been completely fully eclipsed through their upbringing from the cradle onwards, certainly do not notice the spiritual lack of light and feel quite comfortable among the blind comforts of their priests, who constantly know how to tell them a large number of edifying stories about people who are long since dead, it is true, but nonetheless who once lived piously and faithfully according to the statutes of the priests, which do this with the freshest colouring possible. That calms the totally blind completely; they often weep in sheer emotion and are made to feel quite placid, which naturally never brings the priests any harm.

14 Such people, as I said, feel the pressure of their spiritual night as little as a person totally blind from birth has ever felt the pressure of the very darkest night; for him the sun neither rises nor sets! But the night depresses in quite a different way a person who had been used to walking in the continuing light of the eternal day of truth and then has to begin to howl like the best singer among the wolves if he wants to keep his skin safe!

15 Imagine the situation when a few seeing people are in a community in which everyone is blind! Now one of the seers will begin, however, to give a description of the great magnificence of light and of its most magnificent spectrum of colours. The blind would immediately order him to be silent and call him a cheeky and malevolent liar, while he would be more than tangibly convinced of the brightest truth! Tell me, or consider, how then the seeing people would gradually begin to feel depressed, and particularly if the seers possessed the best means to make most of the blind in the whole community see, if only they wanted to! How would you with your pure common sense feel?"

- Chapter 47 -

The fruits of the night and the fruits of the spiritual light

1 Roklus says: "That would be a very most desperate situation, and even more so for a seeing doctor! In that case it would be a thousand times better not to insist at all, than to live as a seer among the blind who are full of distrust, self-conceit and arrogance! But you are right, dear, very highly wise boy! That is how things are in the world, and not otherwise; therefore in my opinion it is better to leave the blind alone and to avoid every contact with them as much as possible. If they become devoid of every seeing leader in this way, then in the end they will sooner or later reach the edge of a precipice over which they will all inevitably perish. Their end is a truly sad but certain one, and no-one can save them from it!"

2 Raphael says: "Now you have judged very well, and behold, thus the Lord acts with the people according to His order! Whenever some human community or even a whole nation freely and willingly becomes hostile to the truth and the light from heaven, the Lord then allows such a nation to descend into the complete night of life. In this, one screaming foolishness soon occurs after the other and reveals in this way to all those who see just a little their own evil blindness and lies in every desire, striving and acting. Such an incurable nation must then finally come to the edge of a precipice which must consume them without any mercy or compassion. But those who see will spread out and begin to bless the surface of the Earth spiritually and physically with their light.

3 But the Lord certainly never allows a nation, as long as it has even a very slight shimmer of true light among it, to reach the edge of the precipice, because a warning notion of the destruction still lives in the shimmer.

4 But wherever a positive hatred has risen in a nation against the light of truth and the people and it’s priests begin to be hostile and persecute the seers in every possible way, as, I tell you, has long been the case among the Jews, then there is also an end to the Lord's patience, and such a nation can never more escape it’s downfall.

5 That is then the time when the Lord Himself comes to Earth from heaven and passes judgement on the evil and blind sinners, as is now the case on the Earth, and indeed in the most beautiful land of the Jews, the former people of God!

6 But the Lord will now gather the few faithful seeing people around Him and give them the fullest light from heaven; alongside this light, however, everything that is without light will not be able to exist, but instead it will be driven to the furthest edge of the inevitable precipice. Then no false wonder is of use to you any longer in front of the seers, but instead only one which emerges quite truthfully from the power of God which He has laid in the heart of every person who sees the truth.

7 For as the false and the blind faith, which is actually superstition, only too soon exposes itself through all sorts of lies and deceptions and through an ever-increasing lack of love, so a true, living faith arises through the fullest truth in all things without any holding back and through an ever-increasing love among the people and towards God and out of such truth and love in the strength of God and power that God has laid in the heart of every person who sees the truth.

8 What use to the people then are all their secret arts and knowledge, if even the seeing starlings in the end call forth from the roofs to the false prophet in front of the whole world: “You are a constantly self-seeking evil deceiver and perform your miracles before the blind! But you will never deceive the true, seeing children of God; for these possess something else in their hearts through the strength of God, which is the Spirit of eternal Love, and they see through your miserable deeds and your evil intention in the most exact way. Therefore pack up your old deceptive tools and become a seeing person in the true strength of God" - or we starlings will rob you of the little shimmer that you still possess!" Tell me, could you be angry at the starlings for this? Truly there is nothing more annoying for the deceiver than if one encounters him with the full light of truth; but he must recognise it nonetheless in the end at the mercy of someone else!

9 Look at the unmistakable miracle proceeding from the true strength of God! You are an Essene and in addition a leading magician of this order. You make the dead rise, you pull the moon out of the sky under the noses of the amazed spiritually blind, you make trees and grass and water, cliffs and walls speak. What would you then say if these starlings of people of all races and classes begin to explain to you quite loudly how you and your assistants, when your working hours call you into the cloister, wake the dead and make your trees, grass, water, cliffs and walls speak, and if they then brought forth a dead person to you and demanded that you brought him back to life? What would your pure common sense and your sharp understanding say to that?"

- Chapter 48 -

Roklus defends the Essene way of life and its false miracles

1 Roklus says: "I would have to let it happen without any opposition; for truth remains truth, whether it harms me or helps me! But I now know what you actually want to say to me by this, and that must have to consist of the fact that our order is something bad and finally our downfall will come to us soon, as soon as the pure light of God from heaven has enlightened those hearts of man. Friend, that is indeed a truth, to which cannot be objected "for if all the people or at least a large part of them are initiated in all our secrets from God, our work will certainly have reached an end for ever "but at least one will never be able to say of us that we did such a thing with even a spark of selfish, evil will, since in this highly troubled time nothing but only the earthly well-bring of the people lay in our hearts, and our cloister is actually nothing other than an institute for love and friendship. We chose no poor means for this!

2 Certainly one could say: every fraud is already poor means! But there I retort to any god: yes, fraud is certainly always poor means, if I combine it with even the smallest evil intention for whatever selfish reason! But if I see that a person cannot be healed in any other way than with an open fraud, and I then seize this one means out of pure love for the suffering brother and help the person unmistakably, then even the worst fraud is and remains no bad thing, but instead only a highly good and just means against which no god is in a position to object to me. I want to simply give you an example out of my Essene experience of life to back up what I said, and you will have to say I am correct, even if you were ten times a god.

3 A weeping man came to me whose dear, young and extremely good wife had become ill in a certain way, a sickness of which she could only be healed in all certainty through a one and only means well known to me. Every other medication would obviously have brought death and made the husband into the unhappiest person in the world. But the wife had such an antipathy against the known means that she wanted to die ten times over rather than to make use of this medication for her certain healing. All persuasion did not help, and the husband went from one depth of despair to another. But I, never embarrassed by a good suggestion in such situations, immediately said very seriously and decidedly to the wife in front of her husband: Oh be quite calm, I know a hundred other means that will heal such illnesses much faster and more certainly than this named one! But in this I had already lied through my teeth; for I truly knew no other for all the treasures of the Earth. This true cardinal lie was the first deception for the best of the patient.

4 The second and greater lie consisted necessarily of giving the known drug another name, mixing something ineffective into it and thereby changing the form, colour and to a certain extent the taste, and then placing it at their disposal for a steep price. Three pounds of gold changed the issue very powerfully. The wife took the medicine with great joy and after this she was not only completely saved within a few hours, but at the same time was fresh, cheerful and also completely healthy! I myself could hardly hold back the laughter at this good con, and to this day neither the wife nor the husband has learned even a syllable about my deception for the good of both of them!

5 Now I ask you whether this fraud was in itself good or bad? You are silent and can object to nothing! But I will reveal another example to you and then ask you for your judgement.

6 You see, a year ago it happened that the only thirteen-year-old daughter of a highly respectable and extremely wealthy couple died of an evil leprosy. I casually heard the news of it and hurried immediately to the house of great sadness. Father and mother were inconsolable at such a loss. I carefully examined the girl who was lying completely dead and found that she had a great similarity to a girl in our great people's shelter and care institute and thought to myself: This grieving couple can and should be helped!

7 I immediately called the father over and said to him: Grieve not! I am a true Essene and I tell you that I can bring this sleeper back to life through my Grand Arcanum in the monastery! Have her brought there with everything that she ever owned and describe to me most exactly her whole character, her sympathies and antipathies, in brief, about everything that has ever been around her, and I guarantee you that I will bring this now dead daughter of yours back into your arms at the most within two months!

8 That both the parents did not consider for long, goes without saying, since they already considered me incapable of any deception in advance. Therefore everything that had been the girl's from the cradle to her death had to be brought into the monastery. Since I had very often come into this house during my time of service and knew the girl very well, and since the previously mentioned foster girl resembled the dead girl very much and also possessed much ability, the exchange was very easily possible. After the time of a few months had passed, the foster girl was already quite the risen daughter of the parents waiting faithfully for her return.

9 I myself undertook the bringing of the risen into the parental home. When both the parents saw and recognised me well from afar, they ran towards me with hands raised in joy, and the pseudo-daughter did the same at my bidding and after my previous training in how she should behave. You should have been a witness of the joy of both the parents, and you would have cried with joy along with me!

10 Through this certainly highly fine, but nonetheless colossal fraud, three people became completely happy; the two grieving, father and mother, undoubtedly have their lost daughter again, and the otherwise highly poor girl has come to a couple of such benefactors as her heart could ever wish for. And what did I have from this? I tell you, as truly as I stand here: nothing but the pleasant knowledge that I have made three people very happy!

11 Now I ask you whether this fraud can also be called bad! Yes, I myself call every fraud bad which is undertaken by a person out of selfishness and disdainful profit-seeking against his innocent fellow man; but if I take comfort in a very fine deception when I have the fullest conviction that some very unhappy person cannot be healed in any other way, then even a very large fraud is something very good and cannot be characterised as bad by any reasonable and wise god, and one must be thankful in addition to the inventive human spirit who thought up the means in our order to make the suffering person happy and healthy!

12 Or did your God not also make use of an open deception of the old and blind Father Isaac according to your Scriptures, in order to give his people a better ancestor in Jacob than the first-born coarse Esau? I certainly agree with you in that every evil deception, if it has once reached the point of culmination, must destroy itself, but a deception for the good of humanity will surely never do this of itself "only through some wilful evil traitor, yes! But then the friend of truth who betrays the good fraud of ours is obviously a thousand times worse than the worst fraudster of the people of our order! Contradict me if you can! I am prepared to enter any battle with you in this respect."

- Chapter 49 -

The difference between the wisdom of life and deceit

1 Raphael says: "Dear friend, I must openly admit to you that it is truly somewhat difficult to speak with you; for you proceed from the basic principle that every means is sanctified only through the intention and the purpose, and I cannot possibly say to you anything other than that you are on the wrong path despite all your good will and all your sharpness of understanding, and that you have seen almost nothing of everything that I said to you despite all your common sense!

2 You see only the earthly advantages and the earthly happiness of man, because you still have no idea at all of the actual spiritual circumstances.

3 One can certainly make a person very happy in this world through all sorts of deceptions; but one has then done nothing good for his soul and his spirit, but instead in all seriousness only too often something very bad.

4 You have told me a few examples from your life, where I at first have nothing to refute; for the treatment of the patient was basically no fraud, but only an intelligent move in life.

5 A fraud before God is every hidden action and enticement of man, through which they necessarily must come to physical and moral harm. But if you only hide a speech, an enticement or an action only in order to help your brother in this way morally and physically, who very often is afflicted with all sorts of weaknesses, and whom one cannot help at all or without difficulty along the straight path, that is only a good and very recommendable common sense and no deception at all.

6 Whenever you combine a truly noble intention with an action, speech or enticement, then you have practised nothing but common sense, for which the wages from heaven will not be withheld. And your first example belongs in this category; for through such cleverness of yours you did not want to achieve anything other than what you recognised to be perfectly good and useful for the patient.

7 But your second example, although it also has a similar well-meaning character, is of quite another kind. In this way a false proof of the miraculous power of this monastery of yours has been delivered to the people for a long time to come, through which all the sources of gold of the whole Earth must open for this institute with the general blindness of the people and in not too long a time it must achieve fabulous wealth.

8 But what does earthly wealth do, and what does it always breed? It makes the people haughty and domineering and breeds hearts of stone, lovelessness and the most stinking arrogance and thereby contempt, hate and persecution of the fellow man.

9 You have already expressed yourself to Cyrenius about all the priesthoods and shown how they as representatives of a god torture the poor people often in the crassest idleness, but for that the layman is forced with spiritual and physical torture to live, work and die for them! You have illuminated such circumstances of life obediently and brought their shamefulness to light.

10 But I say to you quite openly that all the priesthoods that now exist all over stand on much purer legs than your monastery; for their basis was firm and purely divine truth from heaven and was distorted by the people so that you now cannot see anything other than lies and all sorts of deception. What can then become of your institute, which now in principle is built on nothing but sheer lies and deception?!

11 Do you really think that your successors will always keep very strictly to your present norms? Already in fifty years everything will have quite a different face! The deceptions and all sorts of magical arts will be extended and refined. You will also dare to bring old people back to life, whereby some will succeed more, some less.

12 You will place the most cruel and most merciless punishments on the betrayal of your secrets; yes, you will even declare as punishable any question about how one or other miracle could be possible! Your statement will be: You, people, are not to ask about anything; only undoubting faith is your task! If you need something, come and you will be helped for a decreed sacrifice! Everything else should never worry you!

13 But through this, curious souls will secretly become bitter, make investigations and get behind your secrets. That will fill them with secret anger and revenge of the most fearful type will be sworn on the sinners of your sanctuary and wherever possible will be carried out fully without exception."

- Chapter 50 -

The dangers of the false miracles of the Essenian order

1 (Raphael) "You were agitated on the penance of the Indians! In fifty years you will perform ten times worse; for if you have possibly brought things so far that the largest part of the people hangs on you firmly in their faith, which is very easy to achieve through your pseudo-miracles, then come what may, the people will soon make do with this without any contradiction. For in their foolishness they can consider you to be nothing but the slaves of the gods on this Earth, who are equipped with all sorts of secret, godly omnipotence, against which no earthly will and no earthly human strength may achieve anything.

2 Through such miracles you can reign in the people quite surely with full power. But once this has happened, you may say to one or the other person: You terrible sinner! Whatever bad things you have thought, wanted and even almost carried out, we, yes, we already see the evil thoughts and desires sprouting in your heart that you will think consciously only in the coming year and thereby you will draw the full curse and anger of the gods upon your bare head! We admonish you so that you beat out of yourself every terrible thought and wish for the future and that you lay the largest possible sacrifice at our feet in order to soften the gods, and besides that, that you chasten yourself daily until you are almost bleeding for a full three years with a rope over your naked back! Woe betides you for eternity if you do not perform this penance punctually!

3 The poor person who actually never had a bad thought, nor even less allowed an evil will to arise in him, will believe you all quite without contradiction that he is a great sinner most worthy of damnation and must give in to everything most willingly that you as all-powerful and all-knowing servants of the gods have given him as his burden. But I ask you for the judgement of your common sense, whether this final goal that you must all reach in the end is good and just, and whether the means are also sanctified through the final goal that is sure to follow!"

4 Roklus says: "Yes, but none of us ever had this intention, but instead only ever a useful one for the poor, suffering people "and so I still don't really see how my means that consisted in the false raising of the dead girl can be bad! For what you think we must achieve through this - and in the end all our efforts, even if quite secret, proceed from this to achieve such a thing - I cannot really imagine, despite all my common sense! For one must have some will for something bad if one wants to achieve it. To my knowledge it is quite the sheerest opposite for us all! From where is the worst of the worst supposed to come into our institute?"

5 Raphael says: "Friend, take the purest corn and scatter it on a very pure field, and when it grows you will still find weeds in a huge number among it! But if you and your companions scatter nothing but all sorts of seeds of weeds on the Earth, how do you hope to achieve wheat?

6 At all times and in all countries of the Earth the very purest truth was originally preached to the people from God through the mouth of the prophets who were filled with the Spirit of God. Look now at these truths after only a few thousand Earth years! What are they? For the most part weeds, human statutes, lies and mountain-sized deceptions of all sorts! But you have founded your institute on nothing but lies and still think that you will awake truth in the hearts of the people? Where is the world going?!

7 What use is it to you then to dig a great and deep hole in the earth on an open street and not have the remotest intention that a person would ever fall in?! But if then at night-time the people walk along the street, will they not fall into the depths of this hole and perish there just as well as if you had made the hole in the ground with the intention that the people should fall in and perish?!

8 Or if you come to a sick person whose illness you cannot diagnose despite all your great common sense, and you give him then a preparation which is poison for someone in his circumstances! He will die. Can the medication be called good even if you as a doctor had the best intention?!

9 Those who made a hole or a deep ditch in the street, since it is very boggy, without adding a bridge with good railings leading over it, also had a good intention, namely to drain the road; but their short-sightedness did not allow them enough foresight, with which they would unmistakeably see that such a hole or a ditch would have to be very dangerous to those who made their way along it at night.

10 The means of drying out the road was also a bad one, despite the best intention, because those well-meaning people had not reckoned on how the hole or the ditch must be obviously most dangerous to travellers by night. Ah, if only the road workers had filled the marsh with stones and wood and dried the road out in this way, or at least made a good and firm bridge over the ditch, then the means would have been as good as the intention. But because they only thought: Well, in the daytime every traveller will notice the hole or the ditch early enough and be able to avoid it "but at night no-one is supposed to travel! The means were also bad and cannot be justified despite a supposed well-meaning intention!

11 And likewise your false miracle institute for the healing of humanity is a deeply bad means because at it’s creation you did not consider which unspeakable disadvantages must grow out of this for humanity. What use to you is the false reawakening of the daughter of your friend if he learns through someone in whom he has complete faith that his own daughter was well buried and that he is sheltering a totally foreign child as his own supposedly newly risen daughter in his care? Do you really think that your friend will be satisfied with such a deception after that? Or can you not imagine that such a betrayal will throw a very strangely devastating light on your whole institute and destroy all the faith and trust in it?!

12 Consider both sides of the consequences of such a betrayal, and you will soon begin to understand whether such bad means, looked at seriously, can be seen as good and holy through an uncalculated totally blind good intention and through the achievement of such a simply seemingly good goal before the forum of the holy judges of the true and only just wisdom of God and His light-filled spirits!

13 Or is this not wanting to weaken or even destroy the true power of the Spirit of God, with which people are often filled on this Earth, partly out of a quite false ambition and partly out of envy and great jealousy and out of fear of the decrease or full destruction of income?! How must it feel for a very decided Essene if he looks at this clear miracle that was performed in broad daylight before the eyes of all the people, and then in the end must think in secret: behold, you will eternally be incapable of performing such a thing! How will the Essene perform a miracle in comparison to this?!"

- Chapter 51 -

The true and the false miracle workers

1 Roklus says: "For us thinkers there is certainly an endless distance to be discovered, but for the lay people a little something is good enough! As long as a miracle worker does not challenge us before the people through his inner spiritual power and then reveals all our natural magic, in my opinion we natural magicians can exist very well alongside the true magician and his inner spiritual power from God, and he alongside us, as long as jealousy does not plague him!"

2 Raphael says: "So, there is no other trouble in your guts?! Do you really think then that the true miracle-worker and the Spirit of God that lives inside him is looking for worldly honour and an earthly gain?! Is there no higher and more final destiny for man than the worldly, best possible bodily care and the personal honor in the face of this material Earth? Listen and perceive!

3 Every human has an immortal soul and in the soul an even more immortal spirit. But so that the soul, as a spirit which developed out of matter, can become fully one with the original Spirit of God, which is called Love, the soul must independently direct all it’s strivings towards firstly removing itself from matter and all it’s demands; however they may look, and directing all its desires, deeds and doings only towards the purely spiritual, and secondly to being prepared in the future to become one with the Spirit of the pure love of God which is dormant in it, in that God Himself in His fundamental being is the very purest love.

4 How does man become aware that his soul has become one with the true Spirit of God within? He learns this very easily within! If you feel no arrogance, no unnecessary greed, no desire for fame, no envy, no avarice and no self-love, but for that all the more love for your neighbour and for God alive and true in yourself and it gives you a true, deeply moving joy in your heart to have given all your possessions to poor and very needy brothers and sisters in affliction, yes, if you feel a positive pain in your heart when you cannot help a poor person, if everything and the whole earth with all its treasures are nothing to you, then your soul is already fully one with the spirit of God within, it has achieved the perfect eternal life, is wise and even when necessary capable of miracles through its sheer will!

5 But in order to prepare the human souls for this, the divine power of miracles from God has been given in a particularly high degree to some pious souls which have become one in themselves with God, so that they are witnesses for the weak and those of little faith of what people have been designated to be by God, how they have to live and how they should act, in order to bring such a goal in themselves to the fullest truth.

6 And a true miracle worker certainly performs no miracles in order to amaze the foolish and blind world or even to gain something to which only the material world assigns value, but instead in order to show his fellow man the true path in life, to give them courage and faith for the battle with the world in its evil passions, to show them the true reason, value and goal for life and in this way to bring them onto a very short path to where they are all called by God, namely to the true, eternal life and to it’s highest bliss.

7 Now ask yourself and your whole establishment whether you have ever been prompted by such motives when performing such fraudulent miracles. You are truly worldly-wise and not evil people through and through; however, you have become quite blind in the inner sphere of life through your hunt for the treasures of this world. The world and it’s bliss is everything to you! In order to achieve this end as completely as possible, it is above all necessary to achieve the greatest reputation possible through appropriate and certainly effective means. It cannot always be done with the sword in hand; but it is not exactly difficult to secure some god-like reputation through all sorts of magic, because all people by nature seek miracles much more than war. Then all that is needed is that some material use, if only supposed, appears with the help of such false miracles for the curious onlookers, and they are in the bag.

8 Your credo is therefore nothing other than the following, which I will tell for your own good: We people who have had a look at the whole world, have made the experience that man has and can have no life any longer after this earthly life. But because one must live on this world, one seeks to live at least as well as possible. In order to do that, one invents something through which one can make oneself indispensable and useful to the people seemingly with the least effort and strain in the world. Then the people will do all the heavy work for us, we will live very well, and the people that totally takes care of us will be of the opinion that they are doing God a pleasing duty through this, if they do everything upon everything for us! We present ourselves however to the people as a result of our ability to perform miracles as constant and indestructible representatives of the gods on Earth, and we will also live as gods. But only no traitors! If we can maintain ourselves for fifty years without any betrayal, princes as well as their people will crawl in the dust before us in sheer humility.

9 But in order to make things as effective as possible, we cannot shy away from any cost at the beginning in order to set everything up as it can only be imagined. Then we must constantly present ourselves before the people as the most loving and sympathetic men, enthusiastic about the gods, and we will be carried by the peoples on their hands! The old religious fathers were indeed very clever in that they created a people in the way that they could best use them; but we experienced Essenes want to set up a religion to which all the peoples along with their rulers will have to come in the end! Because, how things are almost everywhere, we know and will learn and know more in the future, and we will always improve our successful institute and enrich it to the highest degree with everything and everyone who can be serviceable to us, and so stand as fully indestructible against all our enemies for all time!

10 Now, if the true miracle-workers from the Spirit of God want to unite with you, your deceiving institute would certainly be something unconquerable, and you would soon have dominion over all the worldly treasures of this earth; but the true miracle-workers are as they were and will also remain, always the greatest enemies of all deception and all lies and will therefore never unite with you, but instead will reveal you everywhere and show to the people all deeds of your - from your point of view - so praise-worthy institute! Thereby your green-looking hopes will only too soon wilt and have no value any longer before anyone. Will you then still claim that your false miracle-institute can survive so comfortably and harmoniously alongside the true miracle-workers of God? Behold, I alone would indeed be capable of removing the power of your whole institute with one single miracle, so that in the future no man would seek any help at your door! Do you believe me, or do you not believe me?"

- Chapter 52 -

Roklus' doubts about the power of Raphael

1 Roklus says: "If you are as powerful in deed as you are with your words, such a thing could well be possible for you; but until now I have had the same experience with all people, that the most powerful wise men in words were always the weakest in deeds. I admit to you openly that I do not have any great fear of your somewhat grandiose power of deed! However, anything is possible, even if not always very likely!

2 Go to that couple and tell them that their newly-risen daughter is not the true one, but instead only a replacement because of her great resemblance, and you will see whether you find belief or not! Yes, they will indeed show you the door, but they will never believe you, even if it were possible for you to come to them with a second, even more similar copy. For the awakening of the real daughter can never succeed; for firstly it can hardly be known to you where she is buried, and secondly her body must already be very much nibbled by the worms.

3 In my opinion this would be the only means to make the parents think for at least a moment; in the most extreme situation the good couple would accept the truly awakened daughter as an adopted daughter because of the great similarity. Yet let us leave all this empty exchange of words and turn to something else!

4 Are you also from this company? What is actually the reason for you being here? Is the supreme governor, as was often the case before, giving open audiences to the people, accepting pleas and hears all sorts of complaints from the people and his representatives, or is he holding here a sort of court or a council of war? For I notice here people from all the ends and places of the Earth that is known to me. Even the darkest Moors, previously never seen by me to be so black, are richly represented here: Persians, Armenians, Tauri, Greeks, Romans and Egyptians are all to be found!

5 I would never have brought this question to light before the wise and old Cyrenius out of modesty and due respect; but because we have now exchanged words here with one another for almost two hours, I took courage and have now let my question be heard out loud! Tell me something about it, if you will, and also tell me something about how this house was actually created along with it’s garden, harbour and ships! I also remember well what you told me in this respect, but it cannot really be so with the pure Spirit of God in people! This power can indeed show the people the most appropriate means to perform such a deed; but without them nothing can be brought into being out of thin air! Go on, dear, wise, young friend, tell me decently what you know about it!"

6 Raphael says: "Be patient just a little longer; for we have not yet finished with the previous discussion, and why these people have gathered here I am not allowed to say before the correct time! You will later learn much more; but for now let us remain where we were: whether I am not in a position to deal your institute a very murderous blow, without finding somewhere a second copy of the falsely miraculous re-awakened daughter! You doubt it, and yet I could provide you with evidence in an instant that would make your hairs stand on end! What would you say then?"

- Chapter 53 -

Roklus justifies the formation of the Essenian order

1 Roklus, somewhat concerned, says: "Friend, no crime, however committed, makes my conscience fear! I have always lived very strictly according to the law; what should make my hairs stand on end? But if our institute is such an abomination in the eye of God that can never be seen by man, whose existence I certainly can no longer deny after everything that I have heard from you, then the all-knowing, all-seeing and all-powerful, highly wise God should then have some means through which He could very easily prevent the establishment of such institutes! We and our forefathers however have never felt either before or during the establishment of this institute any obstruction from any side; also the government, to whom the plan was openly presented, approved in all willingness the establishment of this institute, which seemed most useful to them and us agreed most faithfully to their silence for all time and also promised to protect and cover us with weapons when necessary. The people, for whose visible well-being the institute was created, also raised no objection. Therefore there was no contradiction from either side, neither from the divine nor from the governmental and civil, and it was therefore purely impossible to sin against anyone's will with the establishment of this institute, and we members of this institute can therefore step before the eyes of everyone and even of a god with quite calm conscience, and I truly do not know why you should make my hairs stand on end!

2 You are indeed in possession of a particular power, according to your words, in the end you are the one who performed this miracle, you can perhaps wake the dead simply through your words and will, as in our city the tale has come of a Nazarene who is able to do such a thing before the eyes of all the world, which I do not doubt very much; for the people are inwardly spirits of very different sizes, and there soon one invents either of himself or through an accident something which millions before him and millions with and after him have absolutely no idea, and he practices it and often puts half the great Earth in the greatest amazement. And our institute cannot be paid with any gold to find such an inventor and make every effort to win him over and to make his individual inventions into the common good for man!

3 We Essenes will never persecute a person of extraordinary qualities or lay obstacles in his path, but instead we give him all possible assistance and try to win him over for us, which has already succeeded many times. The whole institute as one man insists on no harm coming to him! You see, this is how we think, stand and act, without any regard to any reward either on this side or on the other! We do what we recognise to be good according to a general council, for it’s own sake! Before which judge should we then shiver?

4 Are you in the end that wonderful Nazarene himself? That is also good, and actually even better; for then we will get to know the man or the youth in the end ourselves, about whom we have heard already so many extremely extraordinary things! Only you seem to me a little too young for the Nazarene, who according to the description is supposed to be at least thirty years old! But that doesn't matter, you do not need to be the famous Nazarene at all; for you also possess a very active and ambitious spirit, you have been everywhere and have been able to gather all sorts of experiences. Why should you not have been able to also achieve skills of whose size I can have no idea? Oh, I am not in the least jealous of you! Nor do I deny that there could be also true miracles as well as our false one; for there must always have been true miracles before the false ones, otherwise the false ones could not easily have ever been invented by the people. But there is just one thing that I will not agree with you on, that we ever wanted to achieve anything recognisably evil with our false miracles.

5 Certainly, we did not know that through such deceptive miracles the moral sphere of the soul of a person must be totally destroyed, which is a great evil for the people; but we were atheists one and all and could have no other sphere of happiness before us except the earthly one, since we did not believe in a life after the death of the body, at least not in any self-aware one! But what distracts us from the existence of a divine being and had led us to the fullest atheism I have already presented to you in the most reasonable possible vivid way PER LONGUM ET LATUM and now believe that I am standing before you, even if you were God Himself, as purely as possible.

6 There is no secret ill point of conscience in my innards, and so I stand here quite courageously before you! I do not fear death, although I am truly no friend of pain and suffering. What could you use to make the hair stand on end of a man who can say about himself: SI TOTUS ILLABATUR ORBIS, IMPAVIDUM FERIENT RUINÆ! [Even if the whole world would collapse the intrepid will stand on the ruins.] Let's rather remain good friends and support each other in everything good and true, which must certainly make all the people pious in any case, and then as far as I can see we will not need to frighten each other! By the way, however, you may do as you will, the world will never become better in general than as it is now and always was!

7 But I would prefer now most of all to move away with my companions! For I have just noticed several Pharisees here, and "forgive me, friend! "I encounter them very unwillingly, because they are against all progress EX DIAMETRO. I will leave you to all the further explanations and efforts! I now know what I am made of and how I have to direct myself spiritually in order to achieve eternal life from God; I do not need anything more for the time being, and the further explanation of the miracle of this house I will leave to you as well, although I would have heard it very fundamentally! But the many Pharisees, even the leader from Caesarea Philippi here as well?! Oh, we will soon make ourselves disappear!"

8 Raphael says: "Oh, you can remain despite these people; for these are no more Pharisees than you are! Whoever walks here is a pure person except for one who is tolerated here because of the Scriptures. Thus you no longer have to fear the Pharisees present! Tell me something about it and I will give up frightening you! Do you want that?"

9 Roklus says: "Why not? I do not know much, it is true; but what I know has head, hands and feet and deserves all belief. Only I ask for a bit of patience for me to gather myself!"

- Chapter 54 -

Roklus' experiences with and opinions on the Nazarene

1 After a short pause Roklus says to Raphael, "Dearest, young, truly wise friend! I am now fully composed in order to tell you what I however have heard only recently from some traders from Nazareth and Capernaum, whom I have unconditionally truly given all faith as regards the facts, because they are people whom one can believe. But I do not know a single syllable more, of course, than what I have heard from these business partners of mine to be faithful and true - and so listen, if you will!

2 In the little town of Nazareth, situated on the upper Jordan, not in the area of the same name in the mountains, there lived a carpenter and had conceived a son with his second wife whom he named Jesus. This son was also a carpenter until his thirtieth year and always a quiet, great thinking but a man of few words. He was otherwise an extremely civilised man; one never heard him quarrelling and also never saw him pay homage either to any attractive Venus or just as little to the Bacchus.

3 A constant and most modest sobriety was the dominant character trait of his life. Besides this, he was always very humble and compassionate towards the poor and for his always excellent carpentry he demanded only a very small payment, which he always delivered highly conscientiously to his parents. But on the day that he became exactly thirty years old, he laid all his tools aside and no longer touched either an axe or a saw.

4 His brothers and his mother, still living, all perfectly honest people, asked him for the reason and he is supposed to have given them the following highly mysterious-sounding answer: ‘The time has come from which moment on I must fulfil the will of my Father in heaven, for which reason I came into this world!’

5 At this, he soon left the parental home, moved to the little desert not far from the outflow of the Jordan from the lake on which we find ourselves right now, took on disciples there and taught them to love God and one's neighbour and warned them about the old sourdough of the Pharisees, something which made the man very dear to me, although I have not had the luck to meet the man personally yet; for an enemy of the Pharisees is always our friend and can have any support from us.

6 With such a highly respectable teaching he combines a fabulous magical strength of will and performs miracles about which no mortal has ever dreamed. He is supposed to raise every dead back to life, for example, without any earthly means, simply through word and will; as unbelievable and fabulous as it might sound, it is nonetheless completely true! In brief, he goes from one place to another, teaches the people to recognize himself and God in a very intelligible way, and every step is accompanied by miracles of the most extraordinary type!

7 His somewhat already very numerous and constantly following disciples consider him to be a god, since a real God with all His miraculous characteristics would not possibly be in a position to do more. But let's leave that; for a god, as we imagine to ourselves in all sorts of shapes and forms, is in any case nothing but a most casual spawn of human fantasy with sheer accredited capabilities, which are nothing just as their even emptier bearers are, namely a poetic god!

8 But if things are so with the miracle man from Nazareth, which I do not doubt at all, then I do not see at all why one could not or should not consider him to be a god! I also think that this man, through his natural circumstances certainly more capable than any other on the whole earth, has found the center of his life of love through his zeal in life, and then has cared for this center most carefully, nourished it, strengthened it and formed it.

9 With this true life, that totally penetrates him as fully built on, he connects himself with the general power of life of nature, and his will must then not only direct his own life, but all organs in all of nature, because he unites the guidelines of all other parts of life in the being through his life and thereby can do whatever he likes with all beings to his heart's content.

10 I had already made the remark to you before as a full atheist how a person can reach becoming a real god and receiving eternal life only through the discovery of the principle of life in himself, perhaps several have already managed it throughout history, in the future even more may manage it; and since we have the man from Nazareth, who is no fable, and who is completely justified in my opinion! I also thought about him then when I made the remark to you. I would give a lot if I could find him somewhere! I would become his disciple myself and would, if everything with him is as I heard through some of my colleagues, even consider him to be a true God without any further thought, and love and worship him with all the strength in my life, and even if you held a thousand Jewish Jehovah's and a hundred thousand Egyptian Zeuses before me!

11 I say to you: All Jehovahs and all Zeuses, the Egyptian - Greek and Roman - and all Athmas and Lamas of the Indians are nothing compared to the single Nazarene, who is a true miracle-worker, and whom we Essenes do not fear, in that even several of us are among his disciples and informed us already several times in letters about how the man is, what he teaches and everything that he does! Yes, if the man were by any chance here, then I would not even ask you how this miracle house was created; for I would say to you then: Behold, that is a true work of God!

12 For a god it is possible to even create a new world here; for he must have the threads of the centre of life in him, with which he must have all beings and all elements of the whole of nature perfectly in his power. He must only want something very much, and it must form itself according to his very clearest and most perfect intelligence. Archimedes, a great wise man, who was familiar with many such powers, said: Give me a firm point above the Earth, and I will unhinge the world! That was indeed a cheeky, but nonetheless great word; but he would have had much to do with his screw-levers, to unhinge the whole Earth.

13 But the Nazarene needs no material lever, but instead a force of will, and the whole world along with us lies dissolved into atoms before us, that is, in as far as we can think of an existence for us after our dissolution!

14 The Nazarene has found a correct lever and needs no fixed point outside the Earth, but instead only his will, and all visible nature will stop existing! And behold, this Nazarene belongs in a way also to our institute, that is, the institute of the true, unselfish love for one's neighbor, and we have therefore no greater and even truer miracle-worker to fear, since we are convinced that there will certainly be no-one like him on this Earth.

15 Or would you perhaps like to take up with him, you who wanted to make my hairs stand on end? Behold, my dearest and otherwise very valuable young man, just be modest! You can indeed demand very much, but everything else by no means; but the Nazarene can do everything! You would have great difficulties tangling with him, my dear! But I will meet the Nazarene somewhere else myself and will introduce him to you; but then pay attention to how you stand before him! Well, do you then know this miracle-worker from Nazareth?"

16 Raphael says: "Well, should I not recognize him? I have been in his service for a very long time already!"

- Chapter 55 -

Raphael's miracle work requested by Roklus

1 Roklus says: laughing, "Oh, you great braggart! If you have never yet told an untruth, you have certainly done it just now! The young rascal allows me to describe very clearly the magnificent Nazarene and now says that he has already been in his service for some time. Not bad, not bad at all! Up until now he knew as well as nothing about him, and now he is even his servant! No, now I demand that you prove it to me, otherwise I will make your blonde locks stand on end! Have you understood me?! So now out with the proof!"

2 Raphael says: "Yes, my friend, you do not frighten me with this challenge of yours, and I will be in a position to do everything that you ever demand from me, as long as you demand something reasonable and conceivably possible; for I possess no power or strength for something foolish and impossible. Quickly set me the task of proving it to you, and I will set it just as quickly in motion!"

3 At this Roklus looked Raphael sharply in the face and said, "Well then, my dear young friend, I have lifted a five-pound heavy stone from the ground. It is brown granite which has no relationship to any metal known to me. Make it into gold, but of the same weight!"

4 Raphael says: "Short-sighted man, if gold is made out of this, the lump will become three times heavier! The weight can therefore not remain the same, if nothing about the form and the size can be changed! What do you want now to be changed?"

5 Roklus says: "Then let's leave the form and the shape, and we'll change the weight for the sake of the miracle!"

6 Raphael says: "Then hold onto the stone firmly so that a three times heavier lump of gold will not fall out of your hand; for the sudden increase in weight is always almost the same as if a ten pound heavier stone would fall out of the air onto your hands! You could very easily fall over with the whole lump of gold!"

7 Roklus says: "This misfortune will probably not happen to me!"

8 Roklus said this only from a type of doubt in the success of the proof. But at the same moment Raphael willed the stone to turn into gold. The stone also becomes complete gold in an instant and throws Roklus to the ground through the sudden increase in weight, and indeed in a very hefty way, so that Roklus hurt himself very much and could hardly catch enough breath to stand up again.

9 When he (Roklus) was on his feet again, he began to find fault with Raphael's good will and said, "Listen, you wonderful, willful boy, ten such lumps of gold are not worth having such pain happen to you for it’s sake! Could you not have said to me then: Now the metamorphosis will happen!? I hit my hands and head so strongly on the ground as if I had fallen from a high tree! My head still hurts very much! Oh, you willful miraculous boy, heal me now of my very strong headache for even greater proof of the truth of your statement!"

10 At this Raphael blew on Roklus and in an instant Roklus felt no sensation of pain any longer, and Raphael said to him, "Lift the lump of gold from the ground and examine it to see whether it is quite completely gold!"

11 Roklus did that, but also immediately called his eleven companions and said, "Look here and judge yourself!"

- Chapter 56 -

The speculations of the Essenes on the person of Raphael

1 Everyone came and said, "Friend, that is purest gold, and the whole lump must have a hardly estimably high value! And this indescribably most beautiful youth performed this simply through his will, so that out of the brown granite a just as large lump of gold was made? That cannot be done by any magician! That is therefore a pure miracle, only possible for a god - what we all considered to be a fable, it is true, but this fact tells us obviously something else. The most magnificent boy is a god and otherwise nothing more and nothing less! He must be worshipped by us and we must make sacrifices to him whatever we can, so that he will not be angry with us or even leave us!"

2 Roklus says: "He claims only to be a disciple and servant of the even more famous Nazarene in the foreground! You have also seen the force of my fall, which caused me a very strong headache, and with a gentle breath from the mouth of the boy it was literally blown away. Therefore the youth is according to his own statement only a disciple and servant of the Nazarene, indeed deserves all our respect, however no worship and no sacrifice! But since he is now undoubtedly that, let us now alone investigate the Nazarene; if we have him, we have everything!"

3 The companions say, "In the end is this boy actually the Nazarene himself?"

4 Roklus says: "No, no, he is not! Firstly his age is not right; thirty years "what are you thinking?! The boy is hardly sixteen! And secondly there is the boy's own admission! The willful boy is indeed somewhat naughty, but there is no trace of a lie with him, I guarantee you that. There is no trace of any lie with him; for I have got to know him well enough to judge this! Truly he is certainly a little naughty, which we will willingly overlook because of his youth, in addition he is such a good-looking boy, the like of which I have never seen in my life! One might even think that he is a most beautiful girl in boy's clothing; but he looks much too serious to me at times, and so I have to consider him to be something male, despite his very most female beauty. He is also much too wise to be a girl; for the beautiful girls are always somewhat foolish and may never ever reach the wisdom of a man. But there is a very curious wisdom hidden in him, with which ours cannot compete. But all that also proves that he is not the Nazarene himself, but instead a true servant of his. He will lead us to the Nazarene!"

5 At this Roklus turns to Raphael again and says: "Listen, you dearest, although a little willful servant of the Nazarene! Both of us are finished with one another, and I and my companions beseech you now only to show us where we can find and meet the very most famous Nazarene!"

6 Raphael says: "Yes, now I can and may tell you already somewhat long-windedly that the very most famous Nazarene is here among us! The correct person, you can find yourself out of the several hundred guests with your strength of intellect! Behold, if you did not have such sharp intellect, I would have shown you the person of the Nazarene myself; but your strength of understanding prevents me! Therefore go and seek correctly and you will indeed find the right person!"

7 Roklus says: "Only jesting - it doesn't matter; my understanding still cannot be despised! Whatever it may not and cannot find, my heart will find; for that also does not exactly belong to the last of this world. Do not worry about me, my young, highly wise friend, I will not search for long and soon I will find and have the right person!"

- Chapter 57 -

Roklus' speech on the importance of an educated mind

1 Here Raphael admonishes Roklus to first take care of the valuable lump of gold which he (Raphael) gave him (Roklus).

2 Roklus, somewhat incensed, says: "Friend, whenever I am in the grips of a search for the highest good of mankind, then I leave the most dangerous filth of this world be! Do you understand, you somewhat meddlesome young friend?! I can give you the fullest truthful assurance that I will not touch this pile of dung with my littlest finger ever again, and you can turn it back again into what it was before for your private pleasure!

3 Do you believe then that I thirst for gold because I am a Greek and an Essene? Oh, there you are powerfully wrong! Firstly, I possess at home a hundred times as much of this yellow dung of the earth as an earthly inheritance as this awkward lump here, and I can therefore well do without this new creation, and secondly my heart has never hung on such things; for if I had ever longed for the treasures of the earth, I would certainly never have reached my sharpness of understanding, which, if not capable of understanding the very highest itself, still is a good way towards it and also therefore alone of a thousand times greater value than a hundred thousand of such lumps of gold.

4 I indeed know now that man will never suffice in the investigation of the highest spiritual things of life with pure reason, even if this is very pure and sharp; but lacking the full light in the soul, man will reach the higher and deeper-laying truths of life with even greater difficulty! A well-formed reason of a person is in my opinion still a very competent piece of the way to the eternal and everlasting fullness of the truth of life from God, and is - seen from this standpoint - certainly also of a very great value, and it is therefore not just that you, young friend, speak so lightly of the sharpness of my understanding!

5 Behold, in the burnt-out city many people are still milling around, about whose sharpness of understanding you certainly would never complain; why do they not come here, these sheep and lambs, in order to search for the deeper truths of life? They all looked over here and could have also discovered this new miracle-house; but it matters nothing to them!

6 What can distract any interest in a person who is purely incapable of thinking? I say: Nothing at all, except that his hungry stomach will run feverishly after a bite to satisfy it! If you place meals before this ever-hungry human beast and perform the greatest miracles beside him "these uncomprehending people will eat and not pay the slightest attention to your miracles! And once they have filled their stomachs, they become lethargic and sleepy and will once again not pay any attention to your miracles! Such a thing only occurs to the formed understanding and he begins to think and to make all sorts of comparisons and never rests again until he has come to some explanation of the miracle!

7 But if things are undeniably so, why do you then make sharp remarks against my sharpness of intellect? You see, there you are despite all your miraculous powers purely on the most incorrect track in the world!

8 If I truly want to recognize a god, then I must, and indeed first of all, also think and only then feel! What should awake a better and more spiritual feeling in my heart however, if I stand there as an uncomprehending ox?! You direct me to seek and to find the divine Nazarene with only my sharpness of intellect; but I will do it, in order to show you that a correct understanding is also good for something! Short and sweet and superb, I owe you very many thanks, and I like you very much - for you have taught me to know a true god and have therefore given me an immeasurable treasure not outweighed by a whole mountain of gold; but what I don't like about you is that you still have somewhat to jeer at my intellect!

9 For even the highest wisdom of God must recognize approvingly in me that the reason is as necessary to a person for the sake of the recognition itself and mainly for the sake of the recognition of God which proceeds from this, as his eyes are necessary to him for seeing! I know indeed that a person can and will not understand endlessly many things with his even very awake reason of what the divine, highest wisdom has decided that was created and whatever is there and happens; but without a certain sharpness of understanding, which is capable of checking and differentiating, the person understands eternally nothing!

10 One says that only faith is the light for man! Oh, dear heaven, what is then faith without understanding? It is the wisdom of the cradle of immature children who long for the moon in the opinion that it is a round piece of honey-bread! And there are really adult people on this dear Earth, who consider the moon to be a loaf of bread swimming around in the air, which is eaten every month by birds of paradise, but then immediately begins to grow again! Yes, friend, tell me what use is it to you or me or a god with such a faith? Is it not better and more worthy of a human and divine spirit in a person to consider, and in time to find that the moon then must actually be something other than a loaf of bread for the birds of paradise?

11 My principle is: check everything and keep the good and the truth at least for the next while, until one has received from somewhere a better and stronger light on the matter. Indeed, even a shining little worm in a pitch-black night is better than no light at all; and thus the tiny light of the soul - called intellect - is then indeed better than a pitch black superstition which is devoid of all remote likelihood!

12 However I decide the case that I should believe a fullest truth that was told to me, without being able to convince me even in the slightest that that is really a truth, because intellect and the necessary experiences are lacking for this. But what is such a faith other than the blindest superstition? For what good can the truth in which I believe do me, if I do not understand it - yes, cannot convince me at all that it is a truth? What would gold be useful for if the human understanding could not differentiate between it and another common and worthless metal? If man believes something, then he must believe it with some understanding, otherwise lies and truth are all the same to him!

13 If you say to me: Far beyond that blue mountain is a city which is built of sheer very most valuable jewels, and the people who live within it are sheer giants! Then if I am blind and foolish enough I will believe your every word and will even justify it to myself; but if another then comes and says to me: listen, behind that blue mountain there is no city and even less some giant-like huge people! What will I do as an uncomprehending foolish obscurantist? I will stick to the first one, although it is a screaming lie, and will drive the truth of the second from me with cheeky condescension! But can that be of no importance to a highly wise god?

14 If the Nazarene is a god, full of the highest wisdom, which I no longer doubt, because I recognize it with my reason, then it would be almost foolish of him if he taught the people to recognize lies and falsehoods and to accept the light of truth and its goodness without any sharpness of understanding!

15 You see that you cannot assert yourself against me in this, not even with a thousand performed miracles; therefore do not make jokes in the future about my Intellect, but instead let it be what it is and just show me where the divine Nazarene is so that I can bend my knee before him as is seemly and also worship him!"

- Chapter 58 -

The influence of love on the mind

1 Raphael says: "But friend, you are getting a little annoyed about something that you are only accusing me of doing; how can you think of me that I am an opponent of the correct understanding of man?! If I say to you that you should now find the Nazarene here with your sharpness of understanding, I did not want to suggest with that that a very bright understanding is not satisfactory by a long shot, but instead above all the mind, love - the action of seeking and finding – Him, must take over, Who is the highest love Himself! Intellect must certainly not be lacking; but first of all must be love! Without that pure Intellect can do nothing in itself!

2 Everything does not depend on the person of the Nazarene, neither on the fact that you are making Him into a god in your enthusiasm for magic, but instead everything depends on what your heart says about it!

3 If you had the correct degree of warmth for it, you would have already recognized the Nazarene and would not need to ask me about Him; for love finds love soon and easily. But until now the cold, if even very sober intellect or reason was ruling in you, and so you still need to ask after Him who is so near! Do you think that I want to speak a word to the blind superstition that you Essenes are now cultivating the most? Oh, how crudely you are mistaken in me!

4 If I say that the pure worldly understanding is not enough, then I have as good as said that a much higher, purely spiritual recognition must come to the worldly reason in order to be able to recognize the very highest. But if I want to suggest that to you very tangibly, how can you as a clear thinker make the accusation that I am an opponent of reason and only see the true donkeys and oxen as capable of a higher recognition?! Don't you see how far off course your pure worldly common sense has shot?!

5 Behold, in all important civil living circumstances the people have invented very wise laws among themselves and also sanctioned them; but among them there are also some which have a very cruel face, like for example most of the penal laws.

6 Some individual has committed a crime against the law, mostly out of ignorance of such a law. The arm of the law seizes him and leads him before the strict chair of the judge who knows all laws. If this man then judges according to pure worldly reason, he will sentence the defendant to death according to the CODEX POENITENTIARUM without any mercy.

7 But if the judge has also a warm and loving heart besides his wakened worldly and legal understanding, he will make corresponding allowances in the cold worldly reason and say: The law, perhaps created so very carelessly more out of tyrannically domineering passion cannot find a full use here, can it?! For a provable full ignorance of some existing law must be taken into consideration here!

8 For if a person stands on the roof and sees another person lying on the ground below, jumps on him with a bad will in order to kill him or at least to cause him serious bodily harm, then such a person is to be punished with all severity for his terrible willfulness. But if a person falls from the roof simply out of lack of care, but fatally injures a person lying below on the ground or casually passing by, he is fully innocent of such a calamity, and it is the job of a judge to decide which circumstances was the reason, through which a person was made into an evil-doer!

9 If a foreigner, fully unaware of our writings, language and our laws, soon and easily breaks one of our laws right on entry into our lands, we should then arrest him and make him aware of our laws through an interpreter. Only if he breaks the laws that have been made known to him can he then be consequently punished for them. It is not right to say that ignorance of a law that once exists as sanctioned in a land should not be excused to anyone; for how should someone observe a law that he can prove he has never heard anything about?

10 Look and judge yourself now: Which of the two judges has judged rightly and truthfully - the first, who followed the letter of the law to a T with his cold reasoning, or the second, who in his heart as a person bore a just compassion for the sinner and thereby demanded the lack and foolishness of the law to be brought to light?"

11 Roklus says: "Obviously the second!"

12 Raphael says: "Good! But what raised the judge's insight and strength of understanding?"

13 Roklus says: "Obviously the love in his heart which woke him to the compassion for the sinner! He didn't want to damn the sinner, therefore he began to check everything all the more closely and thereby came to a number of circumstances which benefited the sinner."

14 Raphael says: "Well and correctly spoken! But what now follows from this for every man but that a mind, already very much awakened by all sorts of sciences and experiences, in all things, circumstances, and directions only then receives the right sharp eye when it is warmed by love in the heart and is also illuminated ever more brightly by the ever brighter blazing-up of the flame of love. Did I become an opponent to reason if I made you aware only through certain hints how your sharp intellect is very significantly lacking in actual sharpness and you should raise it with true love for Him Who you are now seeking and previously did not seek nearly as much as you have said just now?!"

- Chapter 59 -

Raphael reveals Roklus' innermost thoughts about the Lord

1 (Raphael) "It is certainly true that you have heard some things about the famous Nazarene that seem incredible to you, and you would have willingly had an encounter with Him if it could be without much effort; but you have not exactly sought and you thought to yourself: We have sent brothers after him in any case, and they will report to us what he teaches and does! But the many then left you entirely and became His disciples and have brought you no news about Him at all, and that made you fear now and then, and only through this you became more and more curious to get to know the Nazarene personally.

2 Friend, such pure curiosity alone is by no means love! For just admit it yourself, whether your love for the Nazarene does not more or less resemble how a defeated warrior submits himself to his conqueror in a most friendly way out of pure weakness that he has recognized in himself, so that he will perform no other tests of strength on him! You have actually a very particular fear of the Nazarene in secret and only act as if you so longingly desire to meet Him; but I see in your soul a very different wind blowing. And do you know what the wind, clothed in words, is saying? Listen, I will interpret it for you!

3 The wind says this: Oh, you very desperate Nazarene! He had to turn up right now, didn't he! The affairs of our fine institute were already going very well! Now the plunder must be brought to the Nazarene of all people, who - who can do it as much as he? - is now performing miracles in comparison with which all our works are pure ashes and through him will soon be suspected and worthless. He has come to us as a true louse in our furs, which will never be brought out again. But now we must make a good face at the most evil game. Everything will be done in order not to make him our enemy. For if he becomes our enemy, in an instant our whole institute will be done for. What afterwards! To where, and what shall we do? He is never to be defeated; therefore we must get down to business cleverly and yes, do not let anything unfriendly be noticed even from the furthest distance, but instead constantly act with the greatest caution and be as loving and serving to him as possible, and so he will certainly never lift a sword against us as a supposedly good person and will leave us unscathed!

4 Behold, friend, this and quite more is conveyed by your inner wind of life, against which you can hardly say anything except to declare that all I have said now to be a lie, which will not work however, because I would immediately come to you with documents written by your hand whose very obscene content would truly cause a great fuss here. And that would be something that would make your hairs stand on end! Would I be right now if I said to you that you should only try to seek the famous Nazarene with the sharp Intellect of yours? What do you say now to all that?"

5 Quite moved, Roklus says: "Yes, dear friend, if you can read my inner feelings, then every further conversation has ended and I must now bow down before you, boy, in all seriousness and beg you for forgiveness for everything that I have ever said against you!"

6 Raphael says: "You see, you had to get that out too, and now you are capable of being introduced to the Nazarene, and so now, follow me!"

7 Roklus says with very strongly embarrassed-sounding words, "Yes, friend, everything is very beautiful and eminent! Yes, yes, there is a - how can I say it? "Yes, yes, there is a great worth in it and a very inhumanly great honor, to be introduced to the most powerful and most eminent person on the whole Earth! Yes, yes, that's it! But if such a fully perfectly divine person possesses as well as all his unfathomable powers for miracles the particular ability to look through the likes of us and to tell the whole life story of a person like me before the whole world - do you know, then closer acquaintanceship with such a man of God is no longer something pleasant at all! And I would now rather run away from here than to remain here any longer! In addition it has become so very close to the evening and we all have some business to do at home for today - and you will therefore consider us excused if I now turn down your otherwise very valuable offer to me, that is, if it cannot exactly be that we become acquainted with the most famous of all most famous people. Naturally, if you see this to be something good and necessary for us and you demand it, then it goes without saying that we will certainly not oppose you as our spiritually greatest benefactor; but to be honest, it is really not very pleasant for me to be placed right under the nose of such an enormous human, great in power and wisdom - because one then begins to feel like the purest nothing beside him! One becomes a thousand times nothing, while the opponent only increases exponentially more and more with his uninvestigable all-in-all in such fullness of his. Such a feeling of nothingness pains me and hurts my heart; therefore I have no very particular joy now in being introduced to the famous Nazarene any longer."

8 Raphael says: "If you do not get to know Him, you will deny your soul’s eternal life! In addition you have already remarked very well yourself that you, in order to have everything, only need to have the Nazarene alone! The opportunity is now here, but only until tomorrow morning; His departure from here is decided for the earliest morning. No-one but He knows where to! Therefore you have to act now if you want to live forever!"

9 Roklus says: "Well, lead us to him then! He won't kill us in such circumstances, will he?!"

10 Raphael says: "He will give you all true life, yes, he will - but he will not bend a hair on your head for this present pseudo-life of yours! Therefore follow me as I have already previously made the offer!"

- Chapter 60 -

On the nature of love

1 Only now Roklus decided to follow Raphael to Me and to bravely take the thirty steps on. But since I was still sitting with Cyrenius at the table as earlier, and discussing with him some governmental measures and Raphael led Roklus in the direction towards Cyrenius, he (Roklus) said after they have taken some twenty steps, "Yes, now you are leading me to the supreme governor again with whom I previously decided everything?! Cyrenius, now only too well-known to me, cannot be the sought Nazarene?"

2 Raphael says: "Of course not; but the very modest-looking man who is sitting close on his right is! You know Him now and can now make your way to Him already!"

3 Roklus says: "That would be easy - only some ten steps more and I would stand right by him! But what should I say then, how should I address him?"

4 Raphael says: "But with your intellect, with your knowledge and experience you still find yourself in a whirlpool of confusion?! In the end this is becoming a little unclear even to me! Go over there and say: Lord and Master, here before You stands a person hungry and thirsty, satisfy his soul! And then you will immediately receive a suitable answer!"

5 Roklus did this with much inner fear, and I turned with a serious but friendly expression to him and said, "Friend, from Tyre and Sidon to Caesarea Philippi and from there to here is obviously nearer than from here to south-east Asia, where the Sihinites [Chinese] of the Orient have built a powerful wall far above India's highest mountains! You sought the truth there "and then again, not the truth; for even if you had found the truth there, nonetheless you would not have recognized the truth! But if you had recognized it, it would not have been pleasant for you; for if the truth is not united with love, it resembles the sunlight in the north. It illuminates the earth, but since it is light without warmth, it does not animate the ground and everything is paralyzed as if in death!

6 A judge seeks also the full truth according to the law. The criminal is forced into an admission of the full truth with all means, and witnesses are placed under the strictest oath. In the end the full truth comes out; but for whose benefit is that useful? That is also a truth without love, it is a light without warmth, and is aimed at killing! And behold, you also sought and for the most part found such a truth - certainly not for your inner revival, but instead for the death of your spirit, which is love in the heart of every man.

7 But because your spirit was oppressed by the mass of rigid and material truths as if to death, you had to necessarily lose every trace of existence of a god, since God is also only pure love in His primordial essence and can only be understood through love!

8 You knew indeed, guessing very dimly, that love is the basic element of all beings and things; but what love is, you did not know and nor could you know, because your feelings and the sense of your soul have never been touched by it.

9 Your knowledge of the essence of love resembled what you have from the essence of the stars. They shine, but their light creates no warmth, and you cannot possibly learn through your understanding whether their light comes from a fire as well.

10 But with the sun you feel it’s warmth and judge that the same must be a fire, and that must be an incalculably powerful one, because it is able to warm the Earth so very significantly from an incredibly great distance not quite unknown to you.

11 You claim the sheerest opposite about the moon, because you have never felt any warmth from this star. You did not claim anything at all about the other stars, since you have never felt anything else from their influence but their sparse light.

12 But because in your capacity to perceive you have received so little from the stars that seem so small to you, you have also never been challenged in any region of your life to consider what the stars might be, and whether their light is a fire or not, or whether they are bodies or simply are some heat-less and weightless points of light.

13 But in order to develop an idea of something, one must necessarily begin to think about the same. But in order to be able to think about an issue with a certain enthusiasm, it must be considered to be of some worth; the value however always depends on the love that one has for the issue."

- Chapter 61 -

The recognitional power of love

The inadequacy of mind and reason

1 (The Lord) "But love, again, is a result of the stimulation of the inner life which has been acted on by something.

2 The inner life is love, thus a fire possessing warmth. If this fire is acted upon by a thing which itself has fire within and is thus nourished, as the fire in the hearth is nourished by good firewood, it will begin to burn more vigorously, and there will be more stirred-up vital warmth for the inflammable substance. Thus, the flames will grow stronger and their light brighter, and the soul will soon obtain much light on a matter previously quite unknown to it. Thereby the love for the object will keep growing, and one will not give it up until it has become thoroughly familiar and one is fully aware of its worth and all it contains. But this happens only when the love for the object keeps getting greater and more intense.

3 However, if the life is not stimulated by something, it remains cool and is not in the least interested in the ever so memorable thing, just as the flame does not lick at the logs of wood which are too far removed.

4 Therefore, before man can think living thoughts of warmth about something, he must be stimulated by it. The cold truth, being a glimmer of the remote stars, can never arouse the inner life because it’s inner warmth is thereby not increased, but diminished.

5 Up till now you have only searched with the icy-cold intellect, the lever to your search being your equally cold reason which accepted nothing as truth unless it could somehow be perceived through one of the senses.

6 Thus, you were looking for God with the abacus held in your hand, trying to find the A but could not even find the basic lines of this significant letter. You were looking for plants on the snowy and icy expanses of the North but could not find anything whilst the brightness of the snow rendered you nearly blind.

7 By the snowy and icy expanses I mean here the cold, calculating intellect and the still colder, calculating reason which - since it is grossly material – is not capable of spiritual vision and therefore incapable of an inner spiritual contemplation.

8 Many a thing struck you as peculiar, as for instance the incessant repetition of the same forms in nature, which to you appears to be creative. You were thinking in terms of an exponentiated intelligent life force fully aware of itself, which is forever consolidating itself and, being able to penetrate and seize everything, again and again conjures up the same forms out of the crude forces. You used to regard the whole earth, the moon, the sun and the stars as a temple which was finally even inhabited by invisible magi. In India you found many a seeming confirmation of this belief, and for this reason you were amongst those mainly responsible for establishing your magic chamber at Essaea.

9 Since you did everything with the cold intellect, never allowing your heart's understanding to awaken, you did not find the ground of life, no matter how closely you approached it with your reason, and became again immersed in the cold and dead matter, trying to find salvation therein both for yourself and for all other people.

10 Things have been progressing for you successfully for quite some time, for you were - and still are - a head of this institute, which is quite apt to plunge the ignorant into the darkest superstition and the better and thinking part of mankind into the crassest and crudest materialism. To be sure, you have destroyed many a living heathenish temple without, however, building something better in it’s place. You had death within you and even greeted it as a welcome guest - for with you, non-existence counted for more than all life.

11 Why did things take such a turn with you? Because you have never had any love in your heart. You have never kindled the living fire within you into an ever so moderate flame. Never having activated the outer side of your heart, how could you possibly have stimulated the inner and innermost life-elements of the spiritual part of the heart, which soon would have made your heart beat with the flame of true life and illumined your consciousness to the point of clear self-recognition, which leads to the recognition of God.

- Chapter 62 -

Love and it’s light of cognition

1 (The Lord) "Now you may be able to see that man cannot grasp anything spiritual with his pure reason and his ever so clear and keen intellect. He cannot understand life and it’s basic ultimate goal; for reason and intellect are located in the brain and in the blood, which keeps the brain in a certain active tension and enables it to take in the impressions and images of the material outer world, compare their forms and effects and, finally, form thereof a chain of conclusions.

2 All these, however, are things and images of matter in which the senses of the brain can never discover anything spiritual. Since life must be something spiritual, it can only be understood in and through itself.

3 Therefore, there must be in man still other senses by which he can feel, behold and gradually understand also the spiritual life-element within him in all it’s depths, connections and relations.

4 And what are these inner senses? - Behold and listen! There is actually only one single sense, and this is called love and dwells in the heart. It is this sense which above all must be strengthened, developed and purified, and all that man does, wills, thinks and judges must be illuminated and filled with light by the hot, living light-flame out of the fire of pure love, so that all spirits will awaken in the morning of the day of life,  dawning within the human heart.

5 Once all the life-spirits are awakened in the thoughts, words, deeds and works, they will begin to stir so that the one who is full of the inner spiritual light will soon and easily become aware of them, because they will commence to manifest in many forms as soon as they begin to stir. All these forms are not incidental and empty but correspond to some visible spiritual activity from the sphere of the divine order.

6 However, man can never behold this with his intellect and his vain reason but only with the flaming eyes of his living spirit, which is love.

7 You may, therefore, accept the following as a sure criterion: What is within man, no external worldly intellect can ever fathom and behold. Only the spirit within man can do that. Thus, no-one can recognize God but the awakened and fully activated Spirit of God within the human heart which, like God Himself, is pure love and an everlasting Sabbath within the human heart.

8 Behold, you have never cultivated this noblest part of your heart or been aware of it’s value. This explains why you could become an avowed atheist and why, in spite of all your searching, you could never find a clue to the eternal, all-penetrating and all-preserving Deity Who has created everything.

9 But now it will not be so easy at all to recognize the Godhead in His true Being and ordinance right from its foundations, because your brain with all its images has already become too hardened. You would only have to spark a very powerful fire in your heart to totally give up your Essene-hood and to humble yourself in all the spheres and connections of your life and would have to become a completely new person; for all your former theories about life and attitudes towards life are fundamentally erroneous and false according to the inner and single truth, so that you will never reach even the forecourt of the innermost divine life with them!

10 Yet all is not lost with you, yes, you could even attain to great things; but in order to achieve that you must of your own free will and in full self-determination become a new man, and you must out of inner conviction help with all your might to put an end to the iniquities perpetrated by your institute, or you could not possibly ever attain to the true life of your inner spirit-man. The reason is because man's innermost life is the highest truth, into which you have to enter fully; but it cannot thrive if it is nourished through the activity of falsehood and deceit.

11 If the true, innermost life within you is to become a shining truth, every one of your steps must be accompanied by the highest and most profound truth in your thinking, volition, speech and action. If, however, this is not the case from Alpha to Omega, then - mark these words! - your own inner life is a sheer falsehood.

12 Now you have an approximate idea of what your pure reason and your keen intellect are really worth. You are free to choose between eternal life and eternal death. As far as I am concerned, I am Who I am! I can give you eternal life or leave you to everlasting death.

13 Of all that I have just told you not one iota will ever change. This earth and the visible firmament will cease to exist in this shape, form and nature - but these My words never in all eternity. Now do what you will! I shall be here for a short time yet."

- Chapter 63 -

Roklus and his companions confer with each other

1 Roklus and all his eleven companions begin to scratch behind their ears and do not know what they should say to Me now.

2 Roklus goes over and discusses with them in the following way, saying, "I thought this right from the start, when the boy directed me to the Nazarene, that he would insist above all on the annihilation of our institute for the well-being of the people; this seems to annoy the miracle-working Nazarene most of all! But nonetheless he will not drive us into a dead-end too easily with all his theosophical phrases!

3 There seems really to be, however, much truth in his words; but nevertheless he will not easily condemn our well-established institute! Yet I do not want to prescribe to you your actions; you can do what you like "for you are lords over your own affairs as much as I!"

4 Another one who had come over from Caesarea Philippi in the meantime, says: "Friend Roklus, I have listened to the whole negotiation from the beginning with the most careful attention and observed everything that happened here exactly, and I must now admit to you openly that you are very wrong in your claims, and your spiritual blindness makes me crazy! You speak openly in one way, and secretly you think something quite different! You idolize the famous Nazarene in front of the youth, but in yourself you consider him to be a magician of the oldest and most secret school in Egypt! Yet we know very well upon what all the magic and the sayings of almost all oracles known to us, stand!

5 Consider well whether you know a type of magic, with the means of which one can change in an instant a granite stone into the purest gold! This miracle alone makes all of ours turn pale in comparison. Ours, which are based on nothing other than on the very purest fraud! Here, however, look at this splendid new house, the garden with it’s wide boundary wall, the harbor with it’s ships, look at the number of the most magnificent fruit trees in the garden, the vines full of the most costly grapes! Four hours ago this place was yet a desert and I set foot on it as such, because I had something to do at the lake. Observe the desert now! What a luxury, what a blessing!

6 Can a man create that through some kind of magic, which is of course known through and through to us? I tell you: everything that we previously knew stops here; all our knowledge is lies and fraud, it is completely useless! If we want to exist alongside this man of God in the future, we must most obviously do what the Nazarene advised us in all friendliness!

7 True, I do not belong to your secret council and only joined you a few hours ago; but this I can say to you from my faithful observations, that we with our noble institute of lies and fraud have been found out! It would be the greatest madness here to offer any certain cheek to the God from Nazareth in such circumstances!

8 Moreover we all can see with the most open eyes of the world that all the great Roman dignitaries and authorities are His most intimate friends! He needs only to say to them: Get rid of this institute for Me! And we would be nailed for all eternity! But what would happen to us then?! I therefore am of the even very moderate opinion that we should accept and follow what the man of God from Nazareth has advised you in all friendliness!

9 In any case it is a very bad assumption of yours "I tell you this quite openly to your face and without any fear "that you wanted to question the man of God who is here and can be touched with our hands, as if he had only directed you in this way because he sees our institute as a hindering obstacle in his affairs! That is however more ridiculous than ridiculous! And our measly institute is supposed to be a thorn in his foot?!

10 I tell you and all the rest of you as well: as little as we are capable of hindering the moon in it’s rising, no matter how violently we shout and scream against it, just as little will our empty institute be an obstacle in the way of this all-powerful man of God! He does not even need to blow, but instead only needs to slightly want it, and all our things like buildings, walls, catacombs and all our magical equipment will become thin air! What will happen to us then? Therefore it is now high time to think about our betterment!

11 Therefore go to Him and say "but faithfully and truly "that you and we all firmly want what He advised you! For we cannot possibly lose anything at this trade-off, if we then direct our institute as it pleases him. Thereby he will become the lord and master of our institute, and we want to be and will be his very most faithful disciples. Don't you all agree with this?"

12 Most of them say, "Quite perfectly "if only He will accept us as His disciples!"

13 The good speaker, who was called Ruban, says: "He will do that, his extremely humanly friendly face tells me so! What do you think then, Roklus, do you still want to spread very foolish things?"

- Chapter 64 -

Ruban speaks in favor of the Lord in front of his companions

1 Roklus says: "Yes, yes, you are right, I have the same opinion! But what if He would only do something for us, on the condition that we should finally reveal all our obvious lies to the people and replace for them any earthly damage that we have caused through our magic fraud?! Which of you has the desire or love to bite the nut that I bite; I have for the meantime very little desire to allow myself to be positively ripped apart by the people! This is a very prickly issue!

2 But first I want to hear what He actually demands from us in this respect! And so I will then go to Him again and see and hear what demands He will place on us in this respect; for there can be no talk at all of our disclosure to the people!"

3 Ruban says: "He will surely not demand such a thing from us; for He knows better than all of us! Nothing is achieved in one fell swoop; one thing must follow the other in all of nature that is known to us! That we have sometimes made leaps with our deceptive means cannot be taken as evidence that He will also act this way with us! Therefore go over there and do openly what I have just advised you."

4 Roklus says: "Yes, but I am only doing it because I want to do it, not because all of you want it or because you, Ruban, advised me to do it!"

5 Ruban says: "It is all the same to me for what reasons you do anything, as long as you do the right thing! But do you know, first vice-director and leader of the external affairs of the institute, that is still your old, arrogant-sounding way of speaking and acting, that you say to the best advice that another person has given you: ‘Oh, I saw that myself long ago, considered it myself and will now do it because I also want to do it!’ Whether the divine Nazarene will be satisfied with that forever, I hardly know; for He seems to be a great enemy of even the slightest sign of arrogance! I have, you know, quite honestly, never gloated over my reason and with the particular sharpness of my understanding; but I have goodness in my mind, so that I quickly recognize in a person how he is in his way of sensing and thinking.

6 And so I also know the divine Nazarene very magnificently well, how He thinks and desires. He seems to prefer humility above all, without which we cannot truly think either about love or even less about full truth. But we are standing at a point where every glance, step, every word and every action towards our fellow man is a very greatest fraud and a very most cunning lie, and also must be so according to the rules of our order, because our motto is always that all the world should be defrauded and lied to because that is what they want.

7 But that is not the axiom of the divine Nazarene. For him it is certainly just: The most complete and purest truth and it’s justice at any cost, even for all the assets of the whole world! Therefore gather yourself; for you stand before a judge whose vision even reaches your innermost thoughts! Therefore gather yourself in all things, otherwise very much is lacking!"

8 Roklus says: "Yes, since you, my good brother Ruban, know things so well, then you go in my place to the Nazarene and decide everything with him as you see fit, and all the rest of us will have to accept that; for we cannot swim against such a powerful current! Go and do that, and I will even be very grateful to you for it!"

9 Ruban says: "Why not? If you all give me the authority to do it, I will very gladly do you this favor "yes, much more willingly than remaining any longer with a vulgar defrauder of the people!"

10 All twelve say, "Yes, we give you authority to do this, and whatever you decide with the Nazarene will be right by us too; for our Roklus is indeed a very most admirable director of our external affairs of lies and fraud and is a great politician; but the light-spheres of truth were never his thing, he would always move very clumsily in them. It is therefore better that you go in his place and decide everything very well and purposefully with the Nazarene!"

- Chapter 65 -

Ruban's address to the Lord

1 At this authority given to him, Ruban now moves over to Me and says: when he reaches Me, "Lord and Master full of the true power of God! Since Roklus has not dared to come to You for certainly not unknown reasons, as well as any of his eleven companions, they have given me the authority to decide everything in respect of our heavily illaudable institute with You the utmost true One. Then everything will certainly happen that You ever want, and we would even like to place the whole institute at Your disposal and all become Your disciples! Give us then a merciful word of Your holy will, and we will act strictly accordingly! But if You want to remove the institute completely, then speak about it; for we have all agreed that the institute should be totally destroyed if You demand it!"

2 I say, "You are an honest soul, therefore your house remained saved from the flames! But look, if I wanted to remove your institute, I could do just the same with it as with that significant cliff in the sea, upon which so many ships have been wrecked in the storm! Can you still see the cliff?"

3 Ruban says: "Lord, I see it and know it only too well; for I almost came into misfortune myself on it’s walls!"

4 I say, "It shall be destroyed and no longer bring danger to any sailors!"

5 In an instant the cliff, which in all had a solid content of over ten thousand cubic fathom, was dissolved into the bottom of the sea so that not only no trace was left of it, but also there was no turbidity to the water in it’s great place. Truly everyone noticed with very great amazement a strong wave in the space which was created naturally because the water around the previous great cliff rushed into the empty space and from then on formed a continuous mass of water.

6 When our Ruban saw this, he became full of fear and said with a trembling voice, "It is all just as I said to Roklus! This is where all magic ends and the bare truth comes in its place! Whatever You, oh Lord and Master, have done with the evil cliff, You could do just as well with the whole Earth, and all the more surely with our bad institute! Therefore I can now say nothing other than: Lord and Master, Your will be done! For You are no normal man, but the spirit of God lives in all fullness within You! Be merciful and very compassionate to all us poor sinners! You alone are all in all, and You alone can do everything, nothing is impossible for You!"

- Chapter 66 -

The Lord's advice and speech to the Essenes

1 (Ruban) "But what should we do with our institute of lies and fraud?"

2 I say, "Fill it with love and truth and believe in My name and follow My teachings! For if you seriously do this, you will no longer be able to be useful to the world with fraud and lies, but instead with all truth and genuine love; but all the tools of deception must be thrown away from you. But if there is some or other thing among it all which in the best way proves to be naturally useful - such as electrostatic generators and other similar machines, then do not make any false use of it, but instead make good use, according to the nature of things, and teach the people what it is and how the machine works in it’s nature, how it is built, and so you will be in a position to do truly much good with it!

3 But never pay attention to the judgment of the world; for the world is and remains terrible and evil, and lies, deception and arrogance are it’s main elements!

4 I tell you that you will be able to move mountains in My name and do even greater things than what I am doing now; but the thought should never rise in you that you have done something through your own strength and power; for that does not exist in this world! Only through the power of the Spirit of God will all these things which can be useful for man, be possible for you!

5 All power will be yours in a mind truly devoted to God, and for as long as someone does not become arrogant. But if someone takes honor and reward for their own use, he will lose the divinely spiritual characteristic in himself in that same moment!

6 Flee from nothing more than from the riches of this world and it’s worshippers; for no man is worse on this whole Earth than he who envies and longs for earthly treasures; for he curses in his actions the love and all the truth of the heart which comes from God.

7 If such people come to you, show them the door and show them that God's word and it’s power should never be thrown to the unruly pigs of the Earth as common food! Indeed you should not curse them for it and also not wish them harm, for all anger and all rage is the Spirit of God’s [to perform!] - but they will be punished enough through this if they are seriously sent away from your doors and your friendship!

8 If such people come to you in misfortune, do not listen to them; for help will not make their heart better - on the contrary: they will be even more careful afterwards and will act more cleverly for the sake of their sacks of gold; but they will laugh at you and mock you and declare your help to be empty wind bags and will call you lazy braggarts and deceivers! Let that be far from you; for God's power in you should only be of benefit in words and in actions to those who have made themselves worthy of it in all the humility of their hearts!

9 So that you know, however, everything that you should know and do in My name in the future, go to that youth; he will give you a book in which you will find everything necessary! But now Roklus should also come to Me; for I still have some things to discuss with him! Go over and tell him My will!"

10 Roklus made a very sour face indeed, when Ruban conveyed him the wish that I had expressed. But he moved all the same; he came to Me and bowed deeply before Me.

11 But I looked at him in a most friendly way and said to him in a questioning tone, "Well, My sharply judicious friend, what do you think of Me now? What does your sharp intellect find in Me and what does your heart feel? You did indeed admit to the boy earlier, when you were still seeking Me, that I am a true God, that you love Me even without all personal acquaintance and perceive the force of life in you ever more vividly, to bow your knee before Me and to seriously worship Me even as a true God!

12 Now you know Me personally and will also have no doubt that I am the famous Nazarene - as you said yourself - according to the fullest truth. But you have still not bent your knee before Me - which I would never have demanded of you - and your heart still seems to feel very little love for Me. Why have you, great friend of the truth, spoken so with the boy, if it is not true?"

- Chapter 67 -

Roklus tries to justify his untruthfulness before the Lord

1 Roklus says: "Most eminent of the most eminent! As long as I could not believe in any god, a story was decided which paid homage to all the rational world, and this story, which is actually not a story at all, but through which most of the world's history was made, is called politics, state cleverness. This demand that one does not immediately clearly lay out everything that one inwardly intends before a person that one does not know well. But one does not need at all to intend anything evil with someone with whom one is in some sort of connection, and it is therefore always advisable to remain in the background with the pure truth, because it has already been proven only too often after very many experiences that one has given the people more ruin with the naked truth than any salvation.

2 One must first get to know a person through and through from all his sides - which is no easy task or job - before one leads him to all truth; for otherwise one cannot know which side is his most accessible one for the truth! For no person is a particular friend of the light-filled truth, particularly as far as he himself is concerned. A darkness spread around him is much preferred, and that is also the reason why I kept a little behind the fence with my inner truth with the boy. But in addition it is the most well-known fact in the world that children are only led to truth through all sorts of lies, and that is also a cleverness of the parents; for if they began to tell the children the truth immediately, they would raise the little ones to nothing good or decent.

3 It is true that I showed myself to the boy as being different to how I am; but I caused him no harm in this way and could not cause him any, because I have never had a will for that, and therefore I believe that I have not committed anything bad. But if I have sinned thereby, then all parents sin against their children who even say with very firmly emphasize and with a definite seriousness that there are certain trees on the far-off and high mountains on which children bloom and grow like plums. There exist certain gatherers of the fruit and they carry them then to be sold all over the world. Sometimes these fruit also come to streams and rivers which spring up in those high mountains and float down to where they are caught.

4 That is as terrible a lie as one can imagine; but the parents have certainly the best will to protect their little ones from all indecent thoughts through such phrases taken right out of clean air and to lead them fresh and healthily in body and soul to a mature age, and that will hopefully not be anything incorrect?! And so I also am of the opinion that a lie, behind which there is no trace of a bad intention, but instead only often, according to our human power of recognition, the very best tendency, should rather be seen as a virtue rather than some sin!

5 And so our institute is basically full of lies and deceptions, it is true; but until now we have never had any evil or actual domineering intention, that is, as far as our recognition reached. But what can develop out of this in later times, we do not have the prophetic ability for and we can therefore accept no guarantee because our descendants will be just as much free people as we are now.

6 I even claim that in the beginning, all founders of a religion, in which all better civilization of one or other nation is destroyed, must have meant well and honestly with their people; but the later descendants, and particularly the uncalled, self-created priests, the laughably bad representatives of the gods on this Earth, began to explain the never correctly understood statutes wrongly, added new ones to their selfish and domineering good and sanctioned them sharply under the title of "God's will", "God's word", have tortured the poor humanity often in the most cruel way, as even now many examples can convince us only too tangibly!

7 If we only look at the very well-known stories from the temple in Jerusalem and at the same time the temple-stories from Rome and we have all the proof in abundance of where things went with Moses and then later with all the original wisdom of Egypt! And - I do not want to be an evil prophet - I even dare to claim before you that your purest and most divine teaching, whose main point the boy gave to my companions wonderfully quickly, and as much as I have heard magnificent things from them, in several centuries they will look very different!

8 Your disciples will become messengers and spreaders of your divine teaching. They will not be able to go everywhere; they will choose other disciples and will make them teachers and also spiritual representatives of your teaching, and there is the reason for the priesthood and for all the types of superstition, on which I could bet a thousand to one!

9 But if in time everything will be so everywhere, why should our institute be an exception? There are people everywhere. If a true god now stands at their head teaching and leading, they will remain in order; but if he places them on a necessary test of freedom, they will immediately begin again with a golden calf like the old Israelites in the desert when Moses headed up Sinai to receive the commandments of the most High!"

- Chapter 68 -

The priesthood as the strongest hindrance to the spreading of the Lord's teaching

1 (Roklus) "You, as a most perfect prophet totally filled with all the divine spirits and talented with all power and strength like no other person on the Earth, will certainly see that in advance! But who can get around it? It is simply so, was already always so and will also remain so, and we will not change things!

2 As long as the people have command of their body and their free will, they will remain in general what they are, and will direct themselves with all sorts of circumstances according to the climate. The further away from us, the worse, as I have experienced only too often on my many travels! The further I had distanced myself from this now single spiritual point of light, the blinder and more foolish I found the people, even when I was an atheist, and it would have surely seemed even more noticeable to me then if I had known what I know now.

3 It is indeed very true that there can be no darkness which a corresponding light could not immediately destroy. In nature it is certainly so. But whether the spiritual light can also drive away the spiritual night so suddenly, that is of course a very different question! In a certain respect my spiritual night certainly could not be called insignificant, and the boy scared it away with few words of light; alone he had found in me even a person who in some scientific spheres cannot be called the least, and who has made very many experiences in the world.

4 Imagine a nation sunk into the most absurd and darkest superstition! Several words of even very great brightness and even some very striking signs will hardly bring forth any effect of light! Such a people will then become darker, angry and will present themselves as a great enemy of it in the presence of light, at which it will then become extremely dark for such a brutish nation.

5 We do not need to look very far at all. If we direct our gaze just to the temple in Jerusalem and observe the internal and external Pharisee hood, we have the spiritual night before us, so that we must be highly amazed about them! But try to come to them with a correct inner spiritual light just approximately as the boy came to me earlier, and in a short time that person is a child of death!

6 What did these true slaves and servants of the darkest night not undertake against our institute! If we had not been firmly established in every respect, and if they had been able to get to us from all sides, we would have ceased to exist a long time ago! If someone like Moses and Aaron should rise up now and teach the truth as they taught in their day, they would immediately be seized and stoned, or one would give them the accursed water to drink as enemies, and quite certainly the genuine water; for they have namely two of them, one that brings about a certain and unavoidable death, and a false one that cannot harm anyone because it does not contain any poison.

7 When they then wish a sinner against the being of their temple well out of some secret reason, they give him the unreal accursed water to drink. But whoever contradicts them too powerfully, he can extinguish his thirst for all eternity at the next and best opportunity with the genuine accursed water. But that the Pharisees do that in Jerusalem as well as in other places is also a well-known fact among all people of just a little education, so that it no longer amazes almost anyone. But I ask how then a correct light of truth can light up such a pharisaic night?

8 But the way that things stand among and with the Pharisees is the same everywhere where there is any priesthood. If all people accept a true light because they soon and easily recognize its benevolence, the priesthood will nonetheless still turn against them with all means and powers and not accept it because out of sheer arrogance and domineeringness it is so foolish and blind that it is not at all capable of recognizing the benevolence of the pure light of truth.

9 But as long as the priesthood is tolerated by God as well as by world rulers, there is as good as nothing that can be done with all spiritual light! For these ever highly selfish and domineering people will always strive to make every higher light suspicious and to praise their own old dung as pure gold and suppress the people who are subordinate.

10 Therefore in this respect it is my even significant opinion that above all one must fully get rid of everything that has even a whiff of the priesthood about it, and so muck out the old Augean stables and then only allow the true sun of the spirit rise over all nations at the same time; otherwise every good seed will die out before it has been able to put even half-firm roots into the soil of life.

11 I recognize in you, most noble master, the full power of God, without which it would be fully impossible for you to perform works that can only be possible for a god, because all the most numerous special powers unite in him and have their eternal support, from which point alone they are capable of an effect. And because I have found that in you, it is also certain that I respect and love you very unrestrictedly, which you will see even more clearly with the eyes of your spirit in my heart and mind than that boy over there.

12 But I say this without any shyness that this effort of yours and your certainly great sacrifice is as good as in vain, and will bring few blessings to the people as long as the foot of just one priest still walks the face of the Earth! You would have to then suddenly transform all the people and also all the many priests on this Earth like that old cliff in the sea only with your omnipotence, then perhaps things could become very commendable on the Earth! It is only an eternal shame about your efforts and work! If you were still a carpenter with saw and axe, the Pharisees would leave you untouched; but now they will hate you despite all the divinity in you that I do not doubt, and will persecute you furiously and wrathfully on all your paths! They will even try to destroy the most magnificent seed that you now sow with all the means they have at their disposal.

13 For on the Earth hardly anyone knows the Pharisees better than I, who had the most to do with them, fighting them for the sake of our institute! They were indeed totally beaten by us and defeated and can do nothing more against us with all their anger; for our circular walls are stronger than those around their temple, and all the sick from far and wide seek their healing with us now, because we make the people healthy again with genuine cures, while the templars heal using empty sayings and mystical signs and all sorts of relics "from God knows where "but the sick feel no effect at all of any sort of improvement.

14 That is now my naked admission before you, oh Lord and Master; but you will now do what pleases you "only do not overthrow our institute before the temple in Jerusalem! That is now my most imploring plea to you; we would all prefer it if you became our head and leader according to you wisdom!"

- Chapter 69 -

The true way of life

1 I say, "You have My word and My teachings; do and act accordingly, then I will be your Master and leader!

2 You do not need My person inside the walls of your monastery at all, but instead only My word and My name - but not only dryly written and spoken with a cold and indifferent mouth, but instead indeed, full of faith and full of love for God and for one's neighbor - then I will be among you, and whatever you desire in My name, that will happen, and you will do even greater things than I.

3 Whatever I do, I do before your eyes, in order to give you a valid proof of Myself so that you people may recognize that I am just the same who proceeds through eternity from the Father, of whom all wise men and patriarchs prophesied.

4 You should and will be My witnesses before all creatures that are blind and deaf and will need for this purpose more than I Myself now before you, who are indeed sharp-sighted and sharp of hearing!

5 But your deceptive miracles must be totally driven out of your institute; for all deception is more or less a suggestion of Satan and can therefore never lead to anything that one could call truly good! But as long as one uses any deceptive means in a healing institute, no miraculous deed can be brought to success in My name!

6 But if you want to work in My name, I must also be totally in you in all fullness of truth through the love and through the most living faith.

7 If you are, then you can say to that mountain: rise and throw yourself into the sea! And it will happen according to your will! But pay attention, without Me you can do nothing!

8 But I will be with you forever and ever, as long as you trustingly keep My word, My love and the most living faith in Me and walk around without any falsehood in your soul! Tell Me whether you have understood Me now!"

9 Roklus says: "Not quite, honestly confessing before you; for I heard something about a suggestion by Satan! That is the same most evil spirit which according to Jewish teachings is supposed to be the constant invisible originator of all evil and destruction on the Earth. I have observed that so far as an allegory of the Jews and cannot be amazed enough now to hear this name from your mouth!

10 Truly, I consider you to be the wisest of all people and now believe firmly that there is a very wisest and allmighty God, by whom everything that the endless space encompasses was created, and that you now are a main bearer of the spirit of God; but that you come to me now with the old Jewish fable of Satan and in the end with all sorts of devils and also with the Jewish hell, that surprises me very much. Is then Satan seriously something, and what about some sort of devil or hell? I would truly like a closer explanation of this!"

- Chapter 70 -

The nature of Satan and of matter

1 Say I: "You will find an explanation of all that is still incomprehensible to you in the book handed to you by the youth through Ruban. Moreover, opposites such as spirit and matter, life and death, love and hate, truth and falsehood should serve you as a little hint that there must be a reason for their coming into existence, as otherwise they could never manifest perceptibly.

2 How could evil enter into man's thinking unless there was some reason for it’s coming into existence? You with your trained intellect should be able to perceive that for all this - such as truth and falsehood and other opposites - the supreme and most benevolent Deity cannot be blamed.

3 Or can you presume that God, being Himself the supreme and most profound truth, should have laid a deceitful tendency into man's heart which would make him sin against God's order and render him filthy in all his speech and actions? Oh, far from it! God did create man in His spiritual image, thus pure, truthful and good.

4 Since the future existence of the spiritual man implied the way through the flesh, he had to take the flesh from the earth's matter according to the decree of the supreme Spirit of God; and a counterweight is laid into the flesh for the probing of man's spirit, which is called temptation.

5 But this rests not only in the flesh of man, but in all matter; and, because matter is not what it appears to you to be, it is a lie and deception to man, who tries himself, and is therefore an illusory spirit that is there and is not. He is there because enticing matter is there for the flesh of man; but he is not there either, because matter is not what it seems to be.

6 Behold and understand this correctly. This spirit of deceit, which in itself is falsehood through and through, is the spirit of all the world of matter and precisely that which is called 'Satan' or 'the principal of all devils'. What is called `devils' are the specific evil spirits out of the universal evil spirit just shown you.

7 Therefore, a man who seizes with love all sorts of matter and becomes actively anchored in it, commits a sin against God's order which exposed him for a time to matter for the sole purpose that he combat it and, by using his completely free will, strengthen himself for immortality. And the consequence of sin is death, or the annihilation of all that man's soul has appropriated out of matter, because matter, as I have shown you, is not what it appears to be.

8 Therefore, if you love the world and it’s hustle and bustle and want to gain it’s treasures, you are like a fool who has been introduced to a well-adorned bride whom he does not want and for whom he does not long. He nevertheless throws himself with the ardor of a blind fanatic onto the shadow of the bride caressing it beyond measure. When the bride leaves the fool, surely her shadow will go with her. And what will remain for the fool? Evidently nothing.

9 How the fool will lament having lost what he loved so much! But he will then be told: 'Blind fool, why did you not seize the full truth instead of it’s shadow which was evidently nothing?' What else can the shadow be but a lack of light on that side of a dense form which is opposite to the light, because the light-ray cannot penetrate the firm and dense body.

10 What your shadow is to you while you are standing or walking in the light, which is all matter, together with it’s treasures, to the spirit. It is of necessity a delusion and in itself a falsehood, because it is not what it appears to be to the senses of the body.

11 This is the very judgment of falsehood and deceit, namely that it has to reveal itself before the eyes of the spirit as something transient and merely as an outer, corresponding shadowy image of an inner, profound truth, whereas in the blind worldly love of the soul it would prefer to remain in reality what it seems to be.

- Chapter 71 -

The afterlife fate of the soul that has become materialistic

1 (The Lord:) "If that is so, of what use is it to the soul to win for the physical man all material treasures of the earth and unite with the flesh and it’s base animal desires, whilst at the same time suffering damage in it’s spiritual sphere and losing the reality of true life? From where in the beyond will it then take something with which to form a true entity, since it has itself become a non-entity along with the nothingness of matter?

2 Yes, friend, to him who has, every gift is a gain, that he then always has even more! But it is a different matter with that which really is nothing and has nothing. How could one give anything to that which has first allowed itself to be caught and annihilated by falsehood?

3 Or can you pour liquid into a vessel which exists merely in your imagination and nowhere else, or - should there be a vessel - with so many holes on all sides that one could hardly count them? Will it retain even one drop?

4 Alas, if matter were for itself, then, as it is, a permanent and unchanging reality - which, however, is impossible - it would be, as it is, a truth, and he who conquered and possessed it would then be in possession of a truth; and if the soul were to pass over into matter, it would become a true and permanent reality!

5 However, since matter is merely a judgment of the spiritual, which can - and must - remain only until the spiritual primal element concentrates in the same, recognizes itself and, once it has gained sufficient strength, dissolves the matter surrounding it, turning it into the corresponding spiritual, then a worldly soul that has become all matter must in the end share the fate of matter.

6 When matter is dissolved, this also happens to the soul. It is dissolved, at least for the greatest part, into the substantial psycho-etheric primal-energy-atoms, and all that remains to the soul proper after the shedding of the flesh is one or the other archetype of an animal skeleton shape, without light and often without life, which bears not the slightest resemblance to a human being.

7 Such a soul is found then in a condition which the ancient patriarchs who were endowed with a spiritual vision called 'She oul a' (hell = thirst for life) a very true and correct description.

8 But accordingly the whole Earth and everything that you are ever capable of perceiving with your material senses is a true Sheoula. That is the death of the soul, which is - or rather, is destined - to become a spirit; for whoever has ceased to exist as that which he had been, is also completely dead as that which he had been.

9 A soul who for the above reasons has almost lost it’s human nature, so that, at the most, an animal skeleton is left of it, is dead after the shedding of the body. For you unthinkable eons will have to pass until such a soul buried in matter will again become a near-human being, and it will take much longer until such a soul becomes fully human.

10 You certainly think now that all these things must be possible for God in an instant. And I tell you that all things are indeed possible with God. If God wants puppets and robots, an instant will be sufficient to fill the whole visible space with them.

11 But all these beings cannot have their own and free will, nor their own existing, independent life. They will stir and move only according to the will of God that comes to them. Their eye will be the eye of God and their thoughts will be the thoughts of God. Such creatures will be just like the individual limbs of a body that cannot move or be active in themselves without your recognition and desire.

12 Is it not a totally different matter with your children, who have issued from your flesh and blood? They no longer depend on your will; they have a life, cognition and volition fully their own. To be sure, they will obey you and accept precepts and commandments from you, yet not according to your will but invariably according to their very own will, without which you could not teach them any more than you would teach some carved image or a stone.

13 And behold, beings endowed with free cognition and free will, who have to perfect themselves voluntarily so that they will forever be free beings retaining their self-determination, must be created by God in a manner that makes possible such an achievement.

14 God can only, so to speak, create the seed enclosed as in a husk and endowed with every possible viability; the future free development and cultivation of life must be left to the seed itself. It must begin to attract the life out of God, which surrounds it without, and form from it an independent life of it’s own.

15 And behold, it does not happen as quickly as you think, because the embryonic life cannot be as powerful and capable of actions as the most perfected life in God that has existed since eternity!

16 And because every still so corrupt soul always has the same destiny, so it cannot possibly be helped in another way in the beyond to its life's healing than it can help itself with the few means which are still at its disposal, and according to the eternal order of God, must also help itself.

17 I hope to have made it sufficiently clear to you what is actually meant by Satan, hell and eternal death, and you should hardly have to ask another question on this matter. However, if you should still be in doubt about something, do ask; for behold, the sun will soon be setting and we shall then have our evening meal!"

- Chapter 72 -

The explanation of the word SHE OU LA (hell)

About clairvoyance

1 Says Roklus: "Lord and Master, I have now seen that Your wisdom and exceedingly thorough insight into all things is of an unfathomable profundity, and I must here openly confess that unless You had, where Your Spirit is concerned, been deeply involved in all creation, You could not possibly, as a mere human being, have known and recognized this, - and many things for which previously I have had no explanation have now become clear, and even exceedingly clear, to me. Since You have been good enough to explain such extraordinary things to me, I beg You to throw a little more light on the expression `Sheoula' and on eternal death; for I am not quite certain about these as yet. That is, I understand the issue in a pinch, that is for sure; but if I would claim that I am quite at home in it, then I would be lying to myself! Explain to me therefore these two things that I have mentioned a little closer!"

2 I say, "Well then, listen! She', also 'shei' or 'shea', means 'it thirsts'; 'oul' or 'voul', the person who depends on himself, one could say 'an animal person' (ox); a: 'according to the consistency of what dictates the inner wisdom and cognition'.

3 The shape of the ancient Egyptian pyramids proves that this is the way the letter A has to be understood. The pyramids are large-scale copies of the brain pyramids and, as their name and their inner structure implies, used to serve the people as wisdom schools. For the meaning of ‘Pira mi dai’ is obviously: `Give me wisdom!' Their inner structure was such that it forced the man who was completely isolated from the outside world to contemplate his within, thus finding his innermost life-light. This is why it was always pitch-dark in the wide inner passages of such a pyramid, and not until man began to light up everything with his inner life-light, did it become light.

4 All this may sound strange to you, but it is nevertheless true. For as soon as the inner vision of man's heart is opened, there is no longer any night and darkness for him on earth. A downright proof, so to speak, is all the very sensitive people and those who are in an ecstasy. These are able to see with their eyes closed far more than a thousand people possessing the best, soundest and keenest eyes; for they see through the most solid matter, see easily through the whole earth, and they, the ecstatic (magnetic) people, can even penetrate the stars which are not beyond their reach.

5 The way by which people could achieve the blissful state of ecstasy - and that finally whenever they want it - was taught and very actively practiced in the interior of the pyramids.

6 Since the pyramids were serving that purpose, they were given the very appropriate and significant name of She' oul a. From this the ancient Hebrew derived his abbreviated Sheol, the Greek his schole, the Roman his Schola and the Persian as well as the Indian his Schehol.* (My footnote: Surely also the German his `Schule': [school] Jakob Lorber)

7 The ancient sages well knew from their ecstatic visions that the very material souls who loved the world and themselves beyond measure, after the shedding of their body, had to live in the beyond under very deplorable conditions, and they used to call this very lamentable state also She oul a, or hell.

8 It is certainly true that, compared to the state of life of a truly wise man living within the divine order, such a state can be called 'death'. Since this is an everlasting and necessarily immutable and permanent attribute of all that is called 'world' and 'matter,' it becomes quite clear why it has been named ‘eternal death'.

9 A soul that remains in such a condition, either here or in the beyond, obviously is in a state of eternal death from which it is exceedingly difficult to become free. For many a soul it may take an eon of time before it will achieve anything out of itself. Tell Me whether you now understand!"

10 Roklus says: "Yes, Lord and Master above all, now even that is truly fully clear to me; but now there is another little question, and this consists of this: how in fact a person can get to the ecstatic, all-seeing condition! If only I knew that, only the path there, I would give up everything thinkable in order to achieve such a certainly highest blissful condition myself from time to time! Lord and Master above all things, have the goodness and give me a few tips about this as well!"

11 I say, "The schools of Egypt have come and have not existed in this way for a long time, for in the time of Moses they began to be very meager.  Even then, people began to teach only external instruction, and Plato and Socrates were already the last to have any idea of the inner school of life.

12 I have taken on the flesh of this world so that I could give you a still better life-precept which will enable everyone to attain to the highest wisdom of life. This precept, in short, is: 'Love God with all your might above all and your neighbor as yourself.' Whoever does and practices this to the fullest is like I am; and for this reason he will be led into all wisdom and it’s power and might.

13 For in him who is full of love for God, God is present with His infinite and unlimited love and it’s most exalted light. Then the soul and it’s spirit revel in all the wisdom-light out of God, and the soul must behold and recognize everything the light of God sees and recognizes. And since God's eternal omnipotence consists in this very love which is so unlimited and infinite, everything the soul wills in this divine love with the will of the love of the Divine Spirit ruling within it, will happen forthwith. This is as clear and true as anything can be in this world.

14 However, it is by far not enough to know this and believe it ever so firmly; one must do it also under the most difficult circumstances of life and practice it at all times, for only through incessant, diligent practice does the disciple become a master."

- Chapter 73 -

How to love God above all

The true work of man that is pleasing to God

1 Says Roklus: "But Lord and Master, how can I achieve it to love with all my might God, the invisible, eternal Spirit, above all? For it seems to me that the heart of man is too small and incapable of loving beyond measure the infinite and eternal Spirit of God, Whom one cannot possibly imagine.

2 It is easy to love one's neighbor; but to love God Who is so infinite is certainly an extremely difficult matter for us insignificant people. What must one do if one wants to love God above all?"

3 Say I: "Nothing could be easier in the whole world. Let man contemplate the works of God, His goodness and wisdom, and conscientiously keep His commandments, let him love his poor neighbor as himself, and he will thereby love God above all.

4 However, if you are unable to form a concept of God touching your heart, look at Me, and you will have before you that eternally valid and lasting form which alone will portray to you your God and Creator. For God is also a Man, but the eternally Most Perfect One, both in and out of Himself. If you see Me, you see everything.  Did you also understand Me in this?"

5 Roklus says: "Lord and Master above all things, now I have everything, and I want to be Your servant! But now let me go in peace! For I am not worthy to stay longer with You."

6 Say I: "Whoever has the inner peace departs in peace wherever he may go. Now that you have gained the inner peace, you do go in peace if you leave. However, you can certainly stay with your companions for a while, and you will hear many a thing which will be of benefit to all of you.

7 It is indeed already late and the sun, which has lit up the earth during the day, has reached the edge of the mountains and will soon disappear, and we all can say that this day has been well spent. We have worked hard and in a few hours achieved more than mere human hands would have achieved in years. And let him who works also eat and strengthen his limbs. You also have worked and shall eat with us. Therefore, you may stay here and have evening meal with us."

8 Roklus says: "Lord and Master above all things! What have I done with my companions that could be called work? Speeches and opinions and exchanging experiences is all that we have done here, otherwise standing quite idly - and that will not be called work, will it?"

9 Say I: "Wherever and whenever a man has truly worked for the salvation of his soul, there and then he has performed the greatest work in a true and most unselfish manner. For a true activity serving the benefit and salvation of one's own soul totally precludes all other self-seeking activity anyway, because selfishness and self-love completely block the love for God and the neighbor.

10 Whoever cares materially for his body seeks the treasures of this world, burrows in matter and thus buries his soul in judgment and in death. Even if such a man had worked all day long in the field, using plough and hoe with such diligence that by evening he is drenched in his own sweat, in My eyes he was nevertheless an idler and a lazy servant for the field of the Kingdom of God.

11 For, whoever does not work in the right and proper spirit within God's order for the true goal set for him by God surely does not work for the temporal and eternal benefit of his neighbor either, and he does not deem it worth the effort to seek and more closely recognize God. A person who makes no effort to find and truly recognize God is even less inclined to exert himself for the benefit of his neighbor; and if he does something for him he does it only for his own sake, hoping that the neighbor might be able to return the favor several times over.

12 Yet you have now sought God and yourself - and found God and yourself; and behold, that was a correct activity of yours, and I tell you that you have now done more in these few hours than otherwise in all the rest of your life! And therefore you can now remain here as well, take a good rest and eat an evening meal with us!"

- Chapter 74 -

Questions on illnesses and their cure

1 Roklus says: "Lord and Master of all things! Every word from Your mouth is more than the purest gold, and every truth is greater than the other! Also none of Your words of light and life have fallen on infertile ground with me, and I now feel in me that certainly the most blessed fruit will grow out of them for the barns of true life; but since I now have the mercy to talk to You, I would like to have an explanation from You also in the respect of whether we in future should heal the sick from their illnesses through our natural healing medication or simply in the firmest trust possible in Your name? For the thought came to me just now that it would not always correspond to Your divine will to heal every sick person. For among them there are some to whom You divine love and wisdom allowed an illness or even some sickness of the soul to come for the improvement of their soul.

2 It is a well-known fact that often people who are physically very healthy are not the most ethically virtuous. Yes, people enjoying physical health are often mischievous, worldly-minded and sensual, while the sick, especially those who are chronically ill, usually linger on, patient, gentle and resigned to the will of God. They seldom complain, are full of humility, and their heart is devoid of envy. Might not the good disposition of their soul undergo a change if they were suddenly made whole?

3 Then there is another thing: certainly everyone is designated to die in the body at some time - and if this were not the case, people since the days of Adam would still live physically. But if we make everyone that comes our way that is sick, young or old, immediately fully healthy again, and ourselves at the same time, then gradually dying in this world would soon become something rare, particularly if through Your teaching wars should gradually cease to occur.

4 If we do not heal someone who has sought help from us, we will be scolded as hard and unsympathetic people; but if You do not even allow someone who has been healed many times by us to be healed for perhaps the tenth time again, despite our will and our efforts, either the power of Your name or our own trust in it will become suspicious and sketchy, and the faith of the people will suffer shipwreck! For we will not manage to get the people once living in matter to begin to despise this earthly life for the gain of a higher life in the great beyond, to do nothing anymore for themselves in the case of sickness.

5 Even the old man of a hundred years and over will grab the drug to extend his life even if he knew that the discarding of his fragile body could be done gracefully. We are taught in general by more than a thousand years of experience that the avarice of a person to live healthily and as long as possible on this mangy world, even in often very poor circumstances, is an insatiable one; and if the people know that more generally, alone through the power of Your name every evil can be healed, yes, that in emergencies even the dead can be brought back to life, then we will have to confront one siege from the people after another!

6 In my opinion it would be not superfluous at all for us and for whomever else to get a nearer instruction in this respect! Or have You somehow completely lifted the old death of the flesh from now on for those people who live fully in Your order, so that the people from now on will live on with already transfigured bodies, but the death of the flesh will remain only a part of the sinners against Your religion and against Your laws?

7 Lord and Master above all things! Behold, the beams of the sun that has set, still gild the evening sky very powerfully, and the sickle of the moon and the evening star positively compete to replace the mother of the day that has set. The sight of Your shining works is so super-magnificent, oh Lord; but even more magnificent is the feeling of the inner light that illuminates our dark corners of life from Your mouth! Since there is still time before the evening meal, explain to me what I am never able to explain myself!"

- Chapter 75 -

Pain, illness and death

1 Say I: "My friend, you are delving into something which neither you nor anyone else really needs to know because it is wholly My business, and this means as much as: It is the concern of the eternal Father in Heaven and therefore an order of which, as far as the flesh is concerned, even I Myself may not, cannot and shall not make an exception to.

2 Whatever the flesh has put on, it will also have to take off again, whether with or without pain, is quite irrelevant; for after the separation, all the pain of this world stops. For the air that the person's soul will breathe in the other world will be quite different to the air of this material world here. Wherever there is no longer any death, there is also no real pain, because the pain of the flesh is always only a consequence of a partial peeling away of the soul from the flesh.

3 But that does not mean to say that a soul in it’s pure condition is somehow without feeling or sensation - for without that, it would obviously be dead; but only in a world that corresponds to it’s nature it will not find anything that push, press, pinch and squeeze it, causing pain, and so it will also never perceive any pain.

4 Or is a completely healthy person insensitive in his flesh to feelings of pain because he has never had the misfortune to be ill and has never received a blow or a jab from another person?! Only the reason for the pain was lacking for him.

5 The reason why pain exist, which is always only felt by the soul but never by the flesh, is the pressure exerted by the flesh on some vital part of the soul, when the former has become too indolent and thus too heavy.

6 Therefore any illness can be healed temporarily, if one understands how to unburden the mass of flesh; but there is no longer any relief for the old age of the flesh, although a person living in good order will generally know little of any pain right into a very great age. His flesh will remain still very flexible and supple until the last hour, and the soul will gradually be able to remove itself from the flesh very gently in the actual best and true order. It will indeed not exactly wish to separate itself from the flesh even at a high earthly age, but if the very perceptible, blessed call comes from heaven: “Come out of your prison into the most free, eternal true life!” - it will not hesitate for a second to leave it’s fragile earthly house and to step out into the light of true eternal life.

7 Well, you will never be in a position to prevent this with your herbal concoctions and neither through the power of My will, because this cannot be the will of My Spirit. But with the power of My name you will only be able to perform those same true miracles according to My will which makes itself most clearly heard in your hearts and never against it. Therefore you must also make My will, which is the true will of God, above all your own, and it will then be impossible for you to fail in something that you want from Me and thereby through My eternal order.

8 There can therefore be no talk of anyone ever dying because of the holy power given to you in or through My name. Truly you should never withhold a healing from anyone, where my Spirit says to you in your heart: “Help this person!” - but if the Spirit says to you: “Leave him in the torture of his flesh, so that his soul will have enough of satisfying the desires of the flesh!” - then leave him and do not heal him from his fleshly evil "for he should tolerate it for the salvation of his soul!

9 And now see that your worry was somewhat in vain! Therefore go into my correct order and everything will then become clear to you! If you still have some objection, then speak, before our host emerges from the new kitchen with the meal!"

- Chapter 76 -

The freedom of the human will

1 Says Roklus: "Yes, Lord and Master over all things, if we only can perform as miracles everything that You alone want, and indeed everything in Your whole original and natural eternal order, then our own free will is purely nothing, and here and there with the very necessary miracles as the best and most effective proof of the power and strength of Your name, it will then begin to look very thin on the Earth!

2 The miracles of Your will happen every day regardless of whether we also want them or not, and our will is therefore always equal to a completely hollow nut against Yours. The sun, the moon and the stars rise and set without our will; and likewise the Earth becomes green and brings forth its fruit; and the clouds move, and the winds play with the waves of the sea; and it becomes summer and winter, and times pass and never come again, quite without our will! Whether we now want that or not is all the same! But how are things then with the very often necessary special miracles?"

3 I say, "Yes, dear Roklus, it is still a little difficult to get to grips with you, because too many worldly concerns still reign in your mind!

4 Behold, whoever sets his hands on the plough and looks backwards, is still not prepared for the Kingdom of God! Do you think then that God in His clearest thinking and wanting is somehow as uniform and monotonous as the rigid ice of the north?

5 Oh man, first of all recognize God and His almighty will properly, and you will then also recognize whether a man with a heart full of the Divine Spirit is really unable to will or do anything else but - in silent patience resigned to the eternal will of God - let one day after another pass while he happily watches the various herbs grow and flower and again wither away.

6 If that would have been God's aim with the people, He never would have needed to give them their own free will, all He had to do was to simply let them grow like the mushrooms of the Earth with the roots stuck in the soil, just like sea polyps, if in human form; these would then have been able to look on day and night to see how the stars rise and set according to the will of God at least the way it seems, and how beautifully the grass grows around them! A free, changeable movement would not be necessary at all for them for they would in any case not have a free will, and the unchanging and stereotypical will of God could let them go much better as statues rather than as any pious person devoted to God with his will!

7 For despite all his aesthetics it can still come into the sense of a person who still has his own will and free movement, to take a few steps across a beautiful grassy ground; and how inevitably must he then press the grass that has grown upright and standing into the ground according to the will and the eternal order of God and besides kill the life of a few grass mites before time! Do you then see the absurdity of your worry?

8 But now consider that a person for his physical nutrition does not only chew up with his teeth all sorts of magnificent fruits filled to brimming with fruit seeds and then consumes them as meals for his body without any mercy or compassion, but instead even attacks all sorts of animals, kills them and finally consumes their roasted flesh with a true avarice. Here and there he seeks great places where previously for many millennia the most beautiful grass, other healing herbs, bushes and trees have grown in the most beautiful and very most undisturbed order of God, and then builds dead houses and cities on this spot. Yes, friend, can that be just according to the order of God that you have thought of?

9 Or, if you shorten your nails, beard and hair that have grown too long with time, are you not acting against the order of God, according to whose stereotypical will nails, beard and hair grow again immediately and do not want to remain as short as you have decided yourselves with the scissors?

10 If God did not want at all some free-thinking and free-desiring being to act against the stereotype of His creating will and to make destructive attacks against the existing constantly unchangingly same order in big things as well as in small, would He have acted wisely to create beings that for the very sake of their existence are forced to make all sorts of destructive intrusions into the original order of creation, which is also a work of the same all-powerful and highly wise God?!

11 But if God, the Lord and Creator of all things and beings, allows the living beings - and namely the free-thinking people who are equipped with a free will - to destroy the forests, cut down the trees, build huts and houses out of it while burning the greatest part, trample His beautiful grass into the ground, mow it and feed it as hay to the cows, oxen, donkeys, sheep and goats and does not slap their hand for many other transgressions of His set order, how much less will He use His almighty will to put up opposition when it means developing man's little freedom of will into the greatest divine one.

12 Haven't you seen then how the boy, who is basically only a creation of God, turned the stone into gold before, against the stereotype of the divine will? Has anyone called him to account because he made such a violent attack on the basic order of God? On the contrary, only the divine will, united with that of the boy, brought him to do such a thing!

13 If you keep the easy commandments of God and truly love God above all, you will become obviously more united with the recognition and desires of God. You will become wiser and wiser and to the same degree also more powerful and insightful in desires. Your inner light from God will be raised to an all-seeing eye, with the means of which you will not only feel in the otherwise still dark life, but instead you will see the effective powers of life and through the possession of the freest will of God be able to decide them as well to be active in one way or another. But just in this way, that you recognize and see specially and individually the countless powers constantly coming from God, you can as a possessor of the divine will seize them and also organize them and bind them to some wise goal, and they will immediately be just as active as if God had determined them for some action Himself.

14 For all the powers that proceed from God through all of infinity are just like the countless arms of one and the same all-powerful God and can impossibly become and be active in any way other than alone through the stimulus of the divine will, because they are basically nothing but pure emissions of the divine will.

15 If a man then joins his tiny freedom of will with the infinitely great divine one, tell Me whether it is then thinkable to be a mute observer of the pure divine will, or whether the crudely free willed person will be possible to perform some things with such a freedom of will from God!"

- Chapter 77 -

On right and wrong enthusiasm

1 Roklus says: "Yes, Lord and Master over all beings and things, now, through this most merciful explanation of Yours, everything has indeed taken on a different light, and now some previously incomprehensible puzzles have been fully cleared up for me! Yes, I am now beginning to understand a little what a person actually is, and what he has to seek and achieve in the world and according to Your words can also achieve and must actually achieve! Yes, now it is then indeed a highly blessed easy task to keep Your commandments and to literally fulfill Your will; for now we see and can actually touch with our hands what we must receive necessarily from You! For if I see a place even still far away from me and I walk straight towards that place, I must certainly reach it in the end!

2 But I can now do nothing other than to thank You above all with all my strength of life for such effort of Yours with me and assure You that I am and will remain Your very most conscientious disciple. I also give You the fullest assurance that I will do everything in order to cleanse our institute from all the old slag and lies of the world, and in the future nothing more will be undertaken but alone what can correspond to Your teaching, oh Lord and Master!

3 Now I already feel a power that I have never felt before in me, to which - in the firm trust in You - all mountains bow and through which all the dead must rise up from their graves! What will follow then if my future life is entirely Your will, and to what power will our institute rise if all the members of it become one in sense and will?!

4 Therefore no hesitation any longer! Up, and all hands to action for this new work set by God! Whoever hesitates, commits a crudest sin against the salvation of the whole of humanity on the whole Earth!"

5 I say, "Your enthusiasm is now quite right, and you will also achieve what you are now planning; but this present enthusiasm of yours is still very similar to grass fire, which also immediately flares up in powerful flames, so that one thinks: if things continue so, in a few moments the whole Earth will burn! But in a few more moments the great grass fire ends, and afterwards one hardly notices where the great loose pile of grass had been burning!

6 True enthusiasm increases like light and warmth of the rising sun. If the light and the warmth of the sun appeared in the morning like the midday glare in Africa, it would be very destructive for all the plants and animals, which every good and experienced farmer can see already from the so-called glimpse of the sun.

7 But a glimpse of the sun is when the heavens are covered thickly with rain clouds during a storm and it is already raining; but suddenly, if the Earth and it’s fruit are already somewhat cooled down, the clouds tear as a result of gusts of air, and the light and warmth of the sun suddenly falls on the plants and the trees and on all sorts of tender animals, and behold, the damage caused by this is then greater than if it had hailed heavily for a whole hour! I only gave you this example in order to show you very practically how a certain often untimely enthusiasm spoils much more than it does good.

8 Therefore you should not want to now sweep out all the old and very fragile trees in your institute with one blow, but instead gradually with an honest enthusiasm as if unnoticed, and you will only then spread true blessing in your institute! But with one blow, my friend, it is not possible! In addition you need some discussions among yourselves and then successful directions for the new miracles in My name! And if then everyone, not only you alone, are led into this new light, then only can everything old be weeded out with the best of success.

9 If a very wise farmer notices that weeds are growing along with the pure wheat, he allows it to continue until the harvest. Only during the cutting does he allow the weeds to be separated from the wheat, and thereby the wheat remains healthy, and the weeds are dried and burned on the field, and the ground is fertilized with it. You see, I Myself call that wise and done according to the truth!

10 Believe Me that I would be finished with all of Jerusalem and it’s Pharisees just as quickly as with that cliff in the sea previously; but this enthusiasm would bear Me poor fruit! Thereby everyone who learned that I had carried out such devastation through My divine omnipotence, would indeed fall down before Me, but certainly not on the path of inner conviction, but instead on the path of self judgment. Out of fear and hesitation no-one would dare to move again; everyone would do everything that I demanded of him like a machine!

11 But would that then be a formation of free will as the main good of every human soul and a raising of the same to the highest potential of the divine, most free will, in which alone a very highest bliss in life exists or can exist?!"

- Chapter 78 -

The development of free will

The disadvantages of excessive zeal

1 (The Lord:) "All egoists and those craving power are living proof already on this earth that life's highest bliss consists in the very possession of unfettered freedom of will and it’s most successful actual effectiveness.

2 Many a man willingly parts with his possessions in order to gain some influence. Who would hate crown, throne and scepter, particularly if he can attain them himself?

3 What gives these three effective rulers such an immense value in men's eyes? The answer is quite obvious and to the point: Because the one sitting on the throne may - and can - make the freest and in the world most effective use of his will among millions of people.

4 But next to the one sitting on the throne, everyone appointed to some office by the ruler will be immensely happy because he can, even though only in the name of the ruler, play at being a lesser ruler and give a little more rein to his freedom-loving will. To be sure, he vigorously suppresses his own absolutely free will, substituting it with the ruler's will, even though in his own mind he often does not agree with the same; but all this he does so that he can also rule a little and make his will effective in some way. For, higher government officials in particular find now and again occasion to exercise their own free will, and this is for man sublime bliss already on this earth.

5 Yet, what can this be compared to that bliss which will, and must, result for all infinity and eternity from the merging of the human will, which is here always very limited, with the will of God?

6 You will understand that, before this can happen, the human will must be seriously developed - through the wisest guidance - in all stages of life, as otherwise it would certainly be exceedingly dangerous to endow man's free will with effective and absolute power.

7 In order to enable man's will to achieve this, one has to make sure that man will spontaneously enter the path of light, following it with all love and self-denial where the world is concerned, until he has reached the right goal through his own actions and full self-determination.

8 This can be achieved neither through an outer nor an inner compulsion, each of which is a judgment through which no human spirit can ever become free as far as his will is concerned; but as long as he cannot do that, there is not a chance of a uniting of his will with the freest will in God.

9 It is, therefore, first of all necessary to lead the people solely through the wisest instruction into the true cognition of self and of the only true Deity, and this with all possible kindness, patience and gentleness. Only stubborn, unmanageable characters, which are secretly possessed by a senseless, evil wantonness and a truly devilish malicious pleasure, must be routed through an external worldly judgment, but they must on no account be punished too soon through some miraculous act.

10 However, at the same time it must always be deeply considered that the one to be punished is also a human being who is to be guided to a proper use of his free will, and that possibly a cunning and revengeful demon may have gained control over his body, thus turning the otherwise perhaps quite harmless man into a veritable monster.

11 Therefore, any zeal carried to excess, even in the worthiest cause, must be restrained until that modest maturity has been reached which strives with all available means to set to work irresistibly and quietly and with loving care and wisdom, taking everything into account, that is, always considering the living subject it has to deal with, in all it’s circumstances and stages of development.

12 You surely must by now fully realize that your institute, as it is now, does not please Me at all. Yet, if it were based on a hundred even worse principles than it now is, it would be just as unwise to suspect and suddenly destroy it, as it would be now to annihilate Jerusalem in an instant, or the exceedingly evil and pagan Rome.

13 Therefore, do strive from now on to gradually abolish all that is false in your institute without using any force, and little by little the institute, together with the people adhering to it, will be bettered in the full sense of the truth. However, if you and your companions were to attempt now to turn the whole institute upside down, your many fellow members there would declare you insane and try in every possible way to prevent you from harming the institute, which they consider to be organized quite expediently. In this case you would never have the chance to remove, gently and unnoticed, all that is false from the institute and replace it with the fullest truth."

- Chapter 79 -

The Lord announces His last supper and His death by crucifixion*

1 (The Lord) "You see here the most eloquent example, namely, Me. You now know Me, My teaching and its true meaning for life. You also know My power, by means of which I could just as swiftly and easily annihilate this whole earth as I did a while ago that well-known ancient rock in the sea. But then I would have to tell Myself: 'If You wanted nothing else but a world full of children of Your heart and gave them their character and nature, it would have been better not to have called any earth into existence from the very beginning.' Yet, since the earth and the people are there, they must be maintained and guided with all love and patience according to the wisdom out of God, so that of all that this earth carries and contains, not one mote might be lost.

2 I even tell you: Of all the people on the whole earth, the worst and to Me most annoying men obviously are the Pharisees and doctors of the law in and around Jerusalem; but rather than judging them and having them nailed to the cross, I shall allow them to do the same thing to Me."

3 At this Roklus jumps up and says: "No, no, Lord and Master! That is taking patience much too far! For the sake of a handful of blackguards in Jerusalem - even if they all are dissolved into nothing "the Kingdom of God will suffer shipwreck neither on this Earth nor even less on the other side; therefore get rid of the black dragon's blood and You will remain!"

4 I say: "You are now speaking as you understand this matter! Yet after some three years, from now on, your own spirit will teach of other and better things; therefore let us leave that now and prepare ourselves for the evening meal! This table is being extended somewhat, and you, now with Ruban thirteen in number, will find a very good place and represent an image of the future evening meal which should have a corresponding similarity with My last on this Earth!"

5 Roklus says: "Lord and Master! You are suddenly becoming mystical and puzzling; why and wherefore that?"

6 I say, "Friends, I would have many more things to tell you; but you could not bear it yet! But when after that last supper the Holy Spirit enters your hearts, he will also lead you in all the fullness of the living truth and you will only then understand completely what I have just said to you now. But now Mark is coming already with the plates; therefore let's get ready for the cheerful evening meal! Your table is already prepared and laid."

7 With these words Roklus bows deeply before Me, then goes to his friends and companions and says: "There is now no talk of leaving, we must first partake of the evening meal which is being brought out right now, and indeed at the Lord's table over there! The Lord and Master wants things to be so, and there can be no refusal! Therefore now come quickly with me and take a seat with me at the free part of the table there where the lords have already been sitting for a long time!"

8 Ruban says: "Oh that will not be particularly good for us! We are nothings beside the great Lord of all lords of the Earth!"

9 Roklus says: "Let things happen as they will! The Lord and Master above all things wants it to be so, and we have nothing else to do except to obey, and that with the friendliest heart in the world! Therefore let's go, so that no-one needs to wait for us! But at the same time I seriously am very hungry and I am looking forward in my heart to a very rich and well-prepared meal! I also see whole jugs and beakers full of wine sitting with the meals on the table, and the blessed youth seems to particularly take care for our table; therefore just let us go there quickly!"

- Chapter 80 -

Raphael as a big eater

1 At this speech by Roklus all now head to the tables designated for them, bow three times before the high company, and Raphael immediately shows everyone his place and sits down in the end as the fourteenth of them at the new table. Roklus sees before him exactly the dish that was his favorite; it was roast lamb with a garnish consisting of the very best and perfectly ripe bitter oranges. He could not wonder enough how one could possibly have guessed his taste in cooking so exactly. But he soon composed himself and considered in whose company he now was, and that explained everything to him. Likewise every one of the thirteen guests got exactly what he named as his favorite dish and justifiably so; only Raphael had eight large and very well-prepared fish before him on a large plate, which he, as mentioned before, made short work of, which struck the thirteen very much.

2 And Roklus could not restrain from asking the mentioned youth in a very friendly way indeed, but nonetheless with great wonder, how it was possible for him to consume eight such great fish so swiftly and so quickly, and whether he could still eat anything more.

3 And Raphael answered laughing in just as friendly a way, "Oh, just give me ten times as much and I will be finished with them very easily and without any effort; but I am now very well and perfectly satisfied with these!"

4 Roklus says: "Your stomach must have been overfilled in your childhood, otherwise I could not possibly explain that! Can you perhaps also help me to consume my lamb? For look, I have had more than enough after even an eighth part!"

5 Raphael says: "Just pass it here, I will be finished with the seven eighths very easily!"

6 Roklus, who took only one leg of lamb to consume, gave everything else to Raphael, who was finished with the meat and bones in an instant.

7 Now this was a little too extraordinary for Roklus, and he said with a very dumbfounded face, "No, my otherwise very most blessed and very wisest boy, that is not at all possible with natural means! I did not want to say anything basically about the consummation of the meat; but that you were faster even than a wolf with the bones, which otherwise no human enjoys - you know, that is just beyond me, and you must now explain this thing more clearly for me!"

8 Raphael says: "Well, give me a stone, and you shall then see your miracle!"

9 Roklus quickly lifted a very sizeable stone from the ground and gave it to Raphael.

10 But he said, "Just look here and I will consume this stone as well like the very best piece of bread!"

11 At this Raphael took the stone, brought it to his mouth, and when the stone came into contact with Raphael's mouth, it disappeared from it’s earthly existence!

12 When Roklus and his companions saw this, they were terrified, and Roklus said, "No, young friend, it is not good to be a guest with you; for in the end you could even start on your fellow guests! Allow me the very sensitive remark, through which I do not want to tell you anything other than this: If you want to eat us too, do it rather very quickly, so that we do not have to wait very long in anxiety for our demise! No, I didn't want to say anything about the great size of the eight fish which Galilee's sea contains, nor anything about my seven eighths of lamb along with their bones, although just that - if you allow me - is a very terrible abnormality in eating; but the consummation of the stone of at least ten pounds weight is something which must capture us with fully justified terror! Where should this story lead us then? It is true, it concerns us little or not at all; but, although you can consume all the mountains of the Earth in the name of all the gods, we would nevertheless rather not be witnesses of your enormous gluttony! Understood, my dear young glutton?"

- Chapter 81 -

Raphael's person and nature as contrasted with earthly human beings

1 Raphael says: "My friend, you have to speak so because you do not know me; but if you knew me, you would find all that as natural as you find that you have only consumed hardly an eighth of the lamb despite your hunger!

2 I am just as much a person as you, and for the meantime I do not lack any sense or limb according to the body; but my body is quite a different one to yours; yours is still mortal, but mine is not! You as soul and spirit cannot move out of your body whenever you want, dissolve it and disappear into the blue into your spiritual element; but I can and may. I am actually purely spirit, despite this seeming body of mine; but you are still almost pure flesh and will still have a lot to do for yourself, before you begin to feel like a mature and free soul in your body.

3 If you have eaten something, it takes time for what has been eaten to become blood and flesh in your body, and you do not and will never know how such a metamorphosis happens inside you. You do not know the very smallest details of the organic make-up of your body; but for me however, every atom of my and also your body is so well-known very clearly that there can be nothing clearer in the whole world! For I must form and maintain this present body of mine from atom to atom, nerve to nerve, fiber to fiber and from limb to limb; but from the beginning you have not known what your body consists of, and who constantly forms it and maintains it.

4 Your body is conceived, born and grown without your recognition and without your will - mine was created according to my knowledge and desire! Your consciousness of existence is still asleep, and your knowledge, recognition and desire is a dream in your sleeping existence; but I find myself in the brightest and very most awake life of the most perfect eternal day of life. I know what I am saying and doing and know the true and deepest reason for it - and you do not even know how, through what and why all sorts of thoughts arise in you! And so then I also know why I, as long as I am walking among the mortals, can and must take a significantly greater meal than you and all your companions together. Yes, I cannot yet make the reason clear to you, because you would not understand it with your present knowledge; but later there will come a time in which you will understand very well that I have now thrown at you.

5 But that you suppose that I, because of my too great desire to eat, might in the end even attack you all like a hyena or like a wolf, which is a little petty of you! I think that my spiritual form and my visible wisdom should teach you something better! I can not only consume a stone in the way that I have now convinced you; I could also carry out the maneuver with whole mountains and planets, for which I have ample power! Only if I were unwise and had the strength that is my own, then I would act according to some blind passion, and you would certainly no longer be safe at my side in your existence and life! But the eternal wisdom of God, from which my whole being is actually formed, orders me above all to maintain all the things created through the strength and omnipotence of God, of which eternally no atom may get lost and nor can it get lost, because the all-seeing eye of God's will and being immediately penetrates and works through the whole eternal and endless space from the greatest to the smallest thing; and so your fear of my supposed desire to eat you is fully vain! Roklus, have you understood these words even a little?"

6 Roklus says: "There can never be any talk of actual understanding; but I can take this much, that we do not have anything to fear at your side, and that is very much for us for the moment! But where do you put such great masses? Do you have a type of ostrich stomach, which as far as I know digests even the hardest stones? Even the hardest metals are supposed to be a positive favorite meal for it! But let him be as he will - you are and remain an amazing being!

7 The Jews speak of certain original created messengers from heaven (angels), we Greeks and Romans have our genies and the so-called half-gods; perhaps you are such an angel in disguise or at least such a genie or half-god?! For me as a man of the Earth your whole appearance is too tender and subtle; for no chaste vestal virgin could compare to you as regards physical tenderness and beauty. You struck me earlier very much, and would not be mistaken if I secretly considered you to be a type of magical phantom! It always seemed to me that you were on the one hand something, but then on the other hand nothing other than a talking light-image of the very highest divine Being, which lends you form, content and the necessary wisdom and power only for a certain time. But if you are no longer necessary for him, then things are completely over for you! I thought, felt and perceived at least as much silently."

8 Raphael says: "Apart from my complete nothingness, you have come quite close to the truth about me. Only there is a great problem with the full nothingness with me; for behold, a long time ago, unthinkable to you, before a world ever began to float and shine in the most endless space, I was already a quite perfected servant of the very highest Spirit of God! I am still that and will remain so for eternity, if perhaps somewhat changed according to the measure of the Lord, according to whom now every perfect spirit strives and will strive. But that is why I will still always remain what I am, only to an even more perfect degree, for what reason I have now also entered this preschool of material life through the grace of the Lord. But for now I still remain who, how and what I am! Have you now understood me a little better?"

9 Roklus, raising his eyebrows, says: "Ah, well yes, as I thought! You are "as one says "only an AD INTERIM supposedly embodied spirit, and indeed from heaven, here, in order to serve the Lord of Magnificence for a while and to perform His will?! Yes, so, aha, aha, yes, that is certainly an enormous difference between us, and another earthly word cannot be spoken with you!"

10 Raphael asks quickly, "And why not then?"

11 Roklus says: now making a very serious face, "I suppose of your certainly unlimited wisdom that you will also see the reason even better than I without my little-saying explanation; but because you secretive spiritual beings always demand an explanation from us poor mortal humans, I must then tell you "whether you in any case already know in advance every word that I will pronounce! And so listen to me:

12 On this Earth there are certain relationships and situations which never compare laudably. A molehill for example beside the high Ararat is certainly a very laughably awkward relationship, a pig-sty beside the emperor's palace in Rome, a fly house beside an Egyptian pyramid, a flea beside an elephant, a drop of water beside the great ocean! But these mentioned relationships are much better than the relationship between us and you; also a nightly shining glow-worm beside the sun would look obviously much better and more comfortable! What is my speech before you? A very stupidest threshing of a perfectly empty straw; for what I am now saying you have already known since the beginning of eternity word for word! But I am not speaking here for your sake, but instead for my sake and for the sake of my companions, so that they will learn out loud how I now think in this position! Equals are suitable for equals: the average person for the average person and the high and powerful for the high and powerful.

13 The scales give us here the correct measure. A speck of sunlight has certainly also some weight, otherwise it would not fall to the Earth in time. But would even a true ox be moved to laughter if someone laid a speck of sunlight before his eyes on the scales against ten thousand pounds, in order to see how much lighter the sunlight is than the great weight of ten thousand pounds?! And so is it that you are as little suitable for our company as we are for yours.

14 You are according to the Jewish scriptures one of the greatest in heaven, and we stand on this Earth hardly at the edge of the cradle-life, and we are still missing a terrible amount before we achieve the spiritual maturity on this Earth! We ask you therefore to leave us, because we now must look on at your side as nothing! You can certainly not gain anything from us, and we, in comparison with what you are and are capable of, also gain as much as nothing!"

- Chapter 82 -

Raphael's performance of miracles

1 Raphael says: "It is not my will, but instead the will of the Lord that I am in your company, and we must obey that just as well as you and all created beings, whatever type and sort they may be. There is only a small difference in that we obey the will of the Lord not as blind people, but instead as the seeing, while all other creatures must obey the will of the Lord quite blindly.

2 But there is also the difference between you and me that I as a likewise spirit equipped with the freest will have made the will of the Lord just like my very own; but you have hardly yet realized that there is a Lord. There can hardly be any talk of recognizing His will; for you will only get to know this better through the scriptures that I have previously written down and given to you according to the will of the Lord.

3 If you have fully recognized the will of the Lord, accepted Him in your hearts and if you then are active alone according to this new will in yourself, there will then be no difference at all between you and me; on the contrary, you will be able to perform even greater things, because you have already made the path of the flesh, while such a thing is yet in store for me, if I want my present pure divine service to be exchanged with the divine childhood. I wanted now rather to be what you are; but it depends alone on the will of the Lord, how and when He wants it!

4 But I do not demand that, although I wish it to be so; for I am also happy for myself to the highest degree and can sing nothing but: ‘holy, holy, holy!’ to Him who has now become human with flesh in order to transform all the people of this Earth and all the inhabitants of heaven into His children "that is, if the inhabitants of heaven want such a thing and ask the Lord for it in their hearts! For even in heaven countless hearts beat for the Lord God full of the hottest love and also find the answering of their plea.

5 But remember this above all: the more of the recognized purely divine will you have accepted in your heart as diligent precepts of your life - in your heart, of course - the more wonderfully powerful will the effects of your will be from God!

6 The knowledge, recognition and praise of the recognized divine will is no good at all for you; for all that is an empty praise of all the great and wonderful events before your eyes. You recognize the good, beautiful and eminent and know it very well that it comes from the recognition and desire of the artist. But if we assume that you had the knowledge of it, but naturally not the will of the artist at all - would you be able to achieve something alone through the means of recognition? Or would you have indeed the will of the artist, but not his insight and skill achieved through effort and hard work, would you then be able to achieve something?

7 I tell you: the truest recognition, a firm will coming from God and a great skill in the use of it must be available! Then you can indeed say to one or another mountain: rise up and throw yourself into the sea, where it is the very deepest! And what you wanted will unmistakably happen!

8 But with the recognition and with the firm desire alone nothing or very little is achieved! The skill in the use of the will of God in the own heart one achieves however only through the power of pure love for God and thereby for one's neighbor; for such alone correct love creates in the soul the living faith and an unshakable very firmest trust, without which even the very most enlightened person can do nothing or very little.

- Chapter 83 -

Perfection of life and miraculous power through love of God and brother

True and false prophets

1 (Raphael) "Suppose you wanted to give the eyesight back to a blind person through the power of the divine will within you, but you might at the same time doubt a little in it’s success, then that is already greatly mistaken; for the blind man will not achieve sight in this way. But if you are moved in the love for God most powerfully, this highest fire of love and life will not only animate your soul most powerfully, but instead it will spread spiritually far above your sphere of form with an irresistible all-power and there it will work in a very concentrated way wherever your divine will has naturally seized something with all wisdom and intelligence. If then the blind man is seized by your Divine will and immediately placed in the focal point of the all-powerful love of God, of whom your soul is full, he must also stand there in an instant as perfectly seeing; for in the highest light and fire of love and life from God every death must give in, even that of an eye which has died to light, which naturally is as good as dead without light as the whole body without breath and pulse. Thereby then the awakening of a deceased person is made possible in an instant; for if the divine will which fills your heart and it’s wisdom are not against the reawakening of some dead person, you only need to place the dead person under the burning centre of your love for the Lord God and he will live again perfectly!

2 However you people also need a strong effort and constant practice; for one must make the heart highly flexible so that it can throw itself willingly into the highest measure of love for God at any instant. If it can do that, then the person is perfected as a person, and whatever he wants through God must happen!  If you then, so armed, want to create a world, it must then be according to your divine will and according to the power of divine love, whose measure places your heart into a highest fire of life and your external sphere of life into the highest, far-illuminating and effective light of life. Whatever then your wise recognition through God dictates to your will, will also immediately come to pass through the substance of your most powerful light of the love of life streaming out into the form previously well-thought out and recognized by you, and in a few instants you will have a whole world formed before you which you can then even fix and maintain if you are in the purest full possession of the divine will and the divine love.

3 But naturally you cannot already from the very beginning achieve full possession of the divine will inside you, if you have not accepted God into your heart through the pure, true love that eliminate everything else in all it’s fullness; for if God is not fully within you, He cannot fully desire through you.

4 But it is not as easy to love God above all else with all your life-powers than you think! First of all, you need a perfectly pure way of life according to Moses' commandments. Wherever this is destroyed through all sorts of disorganized mistakes in life (sin), all the powers that are essential for life necessarily suffer which thereby are materialized and thus made as good as dead.

5 A person crippled in life in such a way cannot possibly love God above all else through all his proper powers of life because such people often are more than two thirds dead. Such a person must then reanimate the defunct powers of life through often several years of the very most industrious self-denial of all his old passions and habits and so gradually cross over into the highest possible love for God, which is naturally no easy task for a person who has already become very worldly!

6 For if a quite healthy person makes a great effort while climbing a high mountain and things must seem very arduous to him, how much more then for a gouty person who hardly possesses the ability to drag himself forward on crutches on the flat land! But if a gouty person nonetheless seriously wanted very much to climb a high mountain, he would have to look around for a very healthy and strong leader above all, who could come to his aid; the gout sufferer would then certainly achieve the climb up the high mountain with much avail.

7 He would indeed come into great sweat, and the higher, the more so; but thereby he would free his old limbs of the gout and animate the dead parts again and so in the end he would climb the highest peaks of the mountain already fully healthily, certainly after a journey of many days and much effort. But what a fabulous resolution it then would be to head for the highest peak of Ararat. But this would still be easier than for a very worldly person to climb the spiritual mountain, where it is said: perfect humility and total self-denial!

8 Indeed you are raising your eyebrows and saying to yourself: well, well, with these prospects only very few people will achieve the peak of the true perfection of life on this earth, and the miracles will in future continue to have a hard time! Yes, yes, you are not totally wrong; but in these days there are highly capable life leaders at hand, with whose help it is not too difficult a task to be led and accompanied as a person with gout in his soul with effective support to the highest peak of life on the spiritual Ararat.

9 Now it is an easy thing for everyone who has only some good will, to work for all the perfection of life; for it so pleased the Lord not only to call very powerful leaders from the heavens to this Earth, in order to let the people be prepared, led and guided through them, but He Himself took on flesh and came to heal you gouty people and to show you His purest divine will, to teach you to love God above all else and your neighbor as yourself.

10 From now on there can no longer be any doubt for anyone to recognize the pure will of God and also to learn how one has to love God above all else, and how one can raise one's heart to such love. Now the paths are shown purely and whoever wants to walk along them cannot possibly get lost. But in the later years and centuries it will then become more difficult again to become friends with the purest will of the Lord; for besides the true prophets many false prophets will also rise up, they will do miracles in your old fashion and thereby teach very many quite false impressions of God and His purest will even with force. Then there will be a great sadness among the people of this Earth, and none will be able to serve the other as a suitable leader, because the one will say and teach: Look, here is the truth! And another will say: Look, here or there it is! But all who shout in that way, will not be truthful but false again and again.

11 Despite all this the Lord will still awake servants from time to time who will show the pure will of God to those who have a good will in the way that we are now showing you. Blessed are those who will live accordingly; for that way they will achieve what you can achieve now very easily! Only it will look a little sparse with regards to miracles; for the spirit of the Lord will teach His own to be careful with them in order not to incite a whole army of false prophets against them and then have to fight against hell with the sword.

12 The Lord will wake the true prophets of truth always in complete silence and they will never make a noise or any perceptible sound like quite still water in the world; but those who make sounds and a noise, the spirit of the truth and the word will not be in them.

13 The genuine prophets awakened by God, will also be in a position in all silence to perform miracles; but the world will not notice anything of that, but only sometimes the true friends of God for their own tranquil comfort only.

14 Now miracles happen for the sake of the obdurate Jews and heathens, so that in the end no-one can say that there were no signs from heaven at the revelation of this very new teaching. In those later days however the people will ask more for the full truth and not so much for the miraculous signs of evidence, about which the wise men will say that they cannot be persuaded that black is white so that they and the truth remain truth even without the miraculous signs.

15 You must now take from what I have said that I am not to be feared despite all my great eating, and that between us there is actually not such a great difference as you imagined before, but instead that we stand more or less on the same step, yes, that you as already a person in the flesh have quite a significant step-up on me! Tell me now whether I am still behaving beside you as an elephant in the company of a flea! Should I still, to spite you, leave you, or should I remain as a teacher among you?"

- Chapter 84 -

The meaning of being a child of God on this earth

1 Roklus, who had now become quite extraordinarily fond of Raphael again, says: "Oh, remain, remain! For now you can eat up a whole world before us, our love for you will be no less and our fear of you will be no greater; for now we know who you are and what we have in you.

2 But now something else! Indeed I know that you will already know in any case what I am going to say to you; but my companions do not know it, and for their sakes alone I will say the things out loud so that they will learn what I want from you! Tell me whether it would not be very doable for you if you became a member of our institute, at least as long as we have not achieved that perfection in life which would give us that level that we need so badly for the true salvation of humanity!"

3 Raphael says: "For now that cannot be since I have other responsibilities towards the Lord and the people in other places! But in some emergency I will always be among you as if called. In any case you have the calling from the Lord to work in His name - and that alone is more powerful than countless myriads of such as I! Remain in this name, which is called: Jesus = the power of God, and mountains will give way before you and storms and hurricanes will be silent, assuming that your behavior in life is such that you are worthy of this name! For this is the truest name of God in His love from eternity, before which everything bows in heaven, on Earth and under the Earth!

4 I do not mean here under the ground of this material Earth, which in general is a sphere like any other planet, and under that, exactly under us, there are lands, mountains, seas and lakes like here; neither do I mean the inner of the Earth, which is a great animal-like organism for the development of necessary natural life for a whole planet; but instead with the expression 'under the Earth', I am describing the moral condition of all instinctively reasoning people on the countless other planets, on which there are also people; but they have only a very limited designation compared to the people of this Earth.

5 They also belong to the whole endlessly great creation and at the same time they represent the links of a chain but you are the pivots designed to be the children of God, and to bear with God and with us the whole endless creation of God from the smallest to the greatest! And therefore I place you on or above this Earth similar to us up-until-now inhabitants of God's heaven!

6 If you now understand that as well, you have to pay all the more attention to the name of the Most High of eternity, from which you can very well see that God is your Father and you are His children; and if you were not, would He have come down to you from heaven and bring you up Himself according to His eternal greatest intentions which He saw and planned from the beginning of eternity for you, His children?!

7 But therefore you should now all rejoice above all measure that He as the Father of eternity has come to you Himself in order to make you exactly what He called you and determined you to be from the beginning of eternity!

8 But if you are undeniably His children and He has come to you without being called by you unworthy people, He will from now on certainly and more surely come to you whenever you call to Him in the full love of your hearts and say: 'Abba, dear Father, come, we need You!' You have received the calling however from the mouth and heart of the Father Himself, and I therefore do not need to make another. For this will remain true for eternity, and you can therefore very easily do without me for your institute; for wherever the Lord Himself is working, His heavenly messengers are very well dispensable.

9 But by the way, if you want to have me sometimes among you as a friend, you only need to call me and I will immediately be with you, if you remain in the love and order of the Lord. But if you ever leave the order of the Father for some dirty, earthly concerns, then naturally I will not come to you with a thousand calls, and even the all-powerful name of the Father will prove to be empty and ineffective. If you still have something on your heart, bring it forth, and advice shall be given to you!"

- Chapter 85 -

Transitions in the realm of the nature spirits

1 In that moment as Raphael is giving Roklus and his companions further permission to ask more if they had still anything on their hearts, suddenly a strong wind rises from the direction of the sea testing its power particularly on the luxurious tents standing near to the sea belonging to Ouran who was still remaining among us. The screeches of a lot of cranes can also be heard who are flying around in the air lost and in great confusion.

2 The new ships in the harbor begin to creak quite violently; for the wind becomes ever stronger and stronger despite the otherwise fair weather, so that Cyrenius says to Me: "Lord, the storm is increasing from minute to minute, and if it would continue like this we will certainly also be forced to change our location! The cranes in their chaotic flight do not mean anything cheerful either! The animals must have been very startled by something, otherwise they would never have left their nightly resting places! No, no, soon it will no longer be bearable! The wind is becoming more and more powerful and also quite perceptibly cold for our senses! Should we then head to the chambers of the new house?"

3 I say, "As long as I am with you, you do not need to fear either wind, nor it’s coolness nor any screeching animal! There is a number of unfermented nature-spirits in the air, just as on the Earth and in the water; these have their periods and times to be active in their own way, so that they are capable of coming into a newer and higher sphere of activity.

4 Such transition periods of the natural spirits then always look somewhat stormy; that is all just as necessary for the maintenance and reproduction of everything, as breathing is extremely necessary for you for the maintenance of your physical natural life. If you have moved fast and have thereby brought the spirits of your flesh and blood into a higher excitement, then these unite and enter a higher level of being thereby; but the lower levels of activity become empty of workers in a way, and if they are not very soon replaced by new workers, you would immediately sink down  unconscious and lose the whole life of the body by intense activity and also just as fast reproducing condition of inactivity of the lower levels of nature.

5 You see, through the light and heat of the day countless myriads of natural spirits released from matter cross over from the world of plants and animals into a higher level of being, and at very high daily temperatures, often more than can be made free from the crude matter of the nature-spirits of the lowest level! And you will immediately notice how everything becomes so lethargic, so lacking in life and the plant world becomes faded and often quite arid. The reason for this lies in the fact that many more of the natural spirits of life have crossed over to a higher level of life than what was  possible to take an active possession from the lower parts.

6 Things happen approximately as in a big river which is nothing but a flowing collection of water from many thousand tiny sources. If you could make the five hundred thousand sources of the Euphrates ebb away, you would have fully emptied and dried out it’s bed in a short time. One cog truly drives the other, and only in the perfected human all the natural spirits of life who have risen from below have achieved their final destination - that is as far as the human soul and spirit is concerned; but the flesh is and remains for a long time yet matter and in the end decays into all sorts of forms of life, which finally rise again to the point where their goal has been set.

7 If you now consider that a little bit - and take it to heart - this quite heftily blowing wind will not surprise you at all, nor even the screeching of the cranes, who as birds are on a higher level of intelligence and perceive first of all when too little of the principal natural spirits of life from below, rise up into them.

8 The very significant heat of the day has raised many nature-spirits to higher levels, and from below a significant and perceptible lack has entered in general, and indeed just in this part of the Earth. On the other hand in the north east of the Earth, myriads of nature spirits from the lowest levels have been released from matter through the course of today, yesterday and the day before. At the place where they originated and became free they cannot expect accommodation so they move or pour into those regions which are devoid of them. The migratory birds, and namely the cranes, possess in this respect an extraordinary feeling and extremely sensitive life, they perceive as the first among all the animals both the overabundance as well as the lack of the named lowest natural spirits - they become restless, fly up and each one seeks in the air layers in which it finds an overabundance of what was missing, which it acquires through an industrious breathing in and conveys the message through screeches that it has found what was lacking; this screeching of the cranes is accordingly a sign of comfort, but certainly also of discomfort.

9 This wind is now blowing from the north and is filled through and through with those first and lowest natural spirits who have already come here in significantly reduced number, which the pharmacists call oxygen. It’s coolness is therefore not harmful to anyone for the time being, because it animates, strengthens and physically refreshes our limbs that have become very limp. This wind however will last for about an hour and will then calm down, and you will all be very cheerful and alert and the wine and the bread will taste good to you."

- Chapter 86 -

About the nature of the diamond and the ruby

1 Cyrenius was perfectly satisfied with this explanation and asked Me then concerning the Moors who had gone from our sight an hour ago, and who he had not seen at any table taking supper.

2 I said, "Equipped with everything necessary, they left here already more than an hour ago and will now be already a good three hours' journey away! I let this happen for the sake of the Essenes, because they above all are so addicted to miracles and would have immediately ordered some of them into their institute, whereby the good that I plan for this institute could have been significantly foiled. In the place of one or the other Negro, with whom at least the very rambling Roklus would quickly have united, I placed Raphael, who certainly knows how to occupy that worldly heated man and also to immediately occupy him for his best and for the best of the familiar institute and for the best of the suffering humanity."

3 Cyrenius says: "Oh, I am very sorry for Oubratouvishar; for that was truly a paragon of human nature wisdom! I would just like to be there and see Justus Platonicus when Oubratouvishar meets him in Memphis and tells him surely exactly everything that he has experienced here!"

4 I say, "Well, then you would hear everything that has happened here in the several hours of the Negros being here and what was said being told correctly and exactly like two peas in a pod! For this type of person firstly has a very good memory, and secondly - which is a very main point - they know no lies and have no secret agenda; therefore neither will they withhold anything from the leader of Memphis. In any case you still have a most beautiful and valuable souvenir from them, namely the great diamond that has an invaluable worth for this world.

5 But since I have already mentioned the stone, I must also tell you something about the particular character of this stone. Because the stone has an extremely mirror-like surface, immediately a type of electromagnetic fire develops on it’s surface, or to make it more comprehensible for you: a number of natural spirits of the noblest type play on it’s extremely flat surface. They force themselves on in large numbers and surround it on all sides and create through their constant activity a particular brilliance of its facets, which then gives this stone in the eyes of people a particular value.

6 But the Urim (Ruby), which is also a type of diamond, also has an almost equal value; only the diamond is a bundle of an eon of spirits of wisdom without deception which are difficult to separate, the reason for it’s extreme hardness - while the Urim is a bundle of love-nature-spirits, therefore it is red, has somewhat less hardness and a great number of natural spirits of love constantly gather around it’s surface, particularly when it is very well and very finely polished, giving this stone a very particular shine, which is not seldom visible even in a pitch black night, like a dull glow, even to the fleshly eye.

7 If you now hang the two types of stone mentioned above on your chest, you thereby mechanically put a lot of nature-loving and nature-wisdom spirits into close connection with your outer spiritual sphere; These spirits are stimulated by the scent of your soul, become very active and thereby produce a greater light in your soul, in which light of the nature spirits special intelligences then also produce a mirror-like reflection in the soul, whereby the soul must momentarily pass over into a higher and deeper knowledge and in this way becomes clairvoyant, compared to it's normal state on this earth.

8 For this reason then even Moses ordered the high priest through his brother Aaron to wear the Thummim and Urim plaques on his chest, and indeed at the time of his rule, whenever he was in a position to prophesy something.

9 But from now on instead of the mentioned plaques the true love for God and his wisdom will work the same and in a much higher and more living measure; but despite all that, I have told you the particular character of both these mentioned noble jewels only for the sake of your knowledge."

- Chapter 87 -

On the gold and gemstone jewelry of the rulers.

1 (The Lord) "Such a characteristic and effect could also be achieved with other bodies, if they could be brought to an extraordinary smoothness; but since such a thing is certainly not possible with the other bodies because of their too little hardness, only Thummim and Urim can be used for this. The old Egyptians knew very well about this and used both these stones also for this purpose. Therefore the old wise men and Pharaohs always wore such stones on their breast and in a golden ring around their heads.

2 Whoever in those days wore such stones was always considered by the people to be a patriarch and a wise man. In those days a piece of regal jewelry therefore had a genuine and true reason. But in these days it is nothing more than a vain display of earthly wealth, arrogance, and therefore also the love of splendor, selfishness and domineeringness which are damnable above all else. The emperors, kings and princes and generals are indeed still decorated with these old insignias of wisdom; but where is the old, true reason?! Therefore that which was once a main virtue for the elders has now become a main vice!

3 So in the old days even ruling was a main virtue; for firstly there were never too many truly wise and experienced people in a country, and he who took on the burden of leading the whole people always had a sour standing and always had to be the leader and advisor of thousands!

4 No-one tore their hair out to gain such a position. The people, convinced by the need for such a wise leader, built him the most magnificent home and decorated the rooms with all sorts of jewels, with gold, pearls and valuable shells, and covered the leader with everything that he could ever have needed for a pleasant life, and every word was law for the people. Then the great reputation of the leader was built on this for the present days - yet with a great difference:

5 In those days the ruler did not need any weapons; his word was already all-in-all. Whatever he advised, and whatever he wanted to have, was put to work with united strength, and everything with great love and joy. Whoever found some treasure or otherwise created something particularly artistic, brought it to the leader of the people. For there was the wise custom among the ancient people to judge thus: Whatever serves to raise the leader's wisdom must be given to him, for the leader's wisdom is the order and happiness of the people!

6 But now all that has gone to the grave and instead of the old virtue now a true sin of sins has come to humanity. Where are the patriarchs? Oh, Babel, you great whore of the world, you have infected the Earth! But now I have come in order to release humanity from the old inherited evil, to lay a curse on all the treasures of the Earth and to bless the hearts that have a good will.

7 From now on My word will be the first jewel to the people and true and purest gold My teachings and a true, living palace and a temple in every human heart, which will be filled with the pure love for God and from it to the neighbor, and he will be a true king in My kingdom, he whose heart is filled the most with love!

8 Therefore: No clinking metal and no shining diamond will serve you any more as the crown of life, but instead My word and action according to the word! For from now on no matter shall have any value for your hearts, but instead alone My word and the free, self-motivated action according to My word.

9 Emperors and kings may well decorate themselves with the old jewelry, but if they want to be wise and powerful, they must nonetheless place no value on them, but instead only on My word! Those who do not do that will soon be surrounded by many enemies!

10 But whoever lays already value on jewels and on gold, should lay it on the particular characteristics founded in their nature, which are a true reality, but never on the imagined value which is a lie!

11 If a prince let his home be tiled with shiny and well-polished gold through and through in order to enter into a prophetic state of vision through the influence of the purer natural spirits, who constantly gather in greater numbers on the gold, which comes from the light, and namely on it’s bright shining surface, in which he could foresee some things in his difficult business of leading the people, which otherwise no spy - no matter how clever - could find out, then he would act well; for the pure gold has certainly such an effect quite decidedly, and the value of this metal lies also one and alone in this.

12 But certainly such a set-up would then have to be established on a pure and insightful recognition, but never on pure hearsay, that is, fully superstitious; for man has received understanding from God so that he might check everything before and recognize well the true reason, and only then keep the good and useful with always best intention for the individual as well as in general. Whoever does that, acts correctly in My order and will not stray on the path of any of his deeds down any side-tracks.

13 But if someone, simply through hearsay and blind faith, which is actually superstition, makes such a set-up and would even feel some effects of it, but does not know where it comes from, which effect they have in a natural way, how far this extends and where it has it’s necessary limits, such a person, who may possess very easily the sensitivity for such subtle influences thanks to his first basic education in life, will easily see his foolish, material fantasies and imagination of all sorts and types as effects of naturally spiritual impressions and thereby become a terrible false prophet and cause much damage, particularly if he has the reins of force in his hands as a powerful prince; and then even a thousand of the most dubious sidetracks are possible."

- Chapter 88 -

Faith and reason

1 (The Lord) "A true disciple of My teaching shall never accept anything rashly without first examining it carefully. Only after he has gained a deep insight and inner conviction of the whole shall he accept as living truth what is good and true and then, with prudence and wisdom, act accordingly. He will then certainly achieve those results which can justly be considered as blessed from the heavens.

2 I am the Lord and Master of eternity and you now completely recognize Me as such. Since you are now totally convinced in your hearts about Who I am, I could say to you this or that, crooked or straight, white or black, and you would believe Me. This would surely be a so-called faith on authority. But who among you can say that I demand, or have ever demanded, such a faith of anyone? Yes, I do demand faith, yet not one that is blind or dead, but one that is fully alive. I am teaching you truths which until now have never been heard of. However, I do not say at the same time: 'Do you believe that?', but: 'Do you understand that?' And whenever you say: `Lord, I still cannot understand one or the other thing,' I explain the matter by every possible means until you have grasped it all thoroughly, and only then take a step further.

3 By giving such an explanation in the first place I could indeed make My precept readily understandable for all. But I also know what and how much each of you can bear at one time. Therefore, I do not teach you more than you can bear and allow time for the seed to sprout and put down roots; and I make it a rule not to teach you anything new until the one has been thoroughly understood. I give you time to examine what was lectured on and demonstrated.

4 I Myself tell you: 'Examine everything and hold on to what is good and thus true.' If I do this Myself, how much more you should do it since you, unlike I, are unable to read people's thoughts.

5 Do not ever demand a blind faith of anyone but always show him why this must be so. If he is unable to grasp it with his intellect, spare no pains to guide him step by step with love and patience until he can comprehend your good precept thoroughly, for no ignorant person shall be your disciple in My name. Since I give you a shining light and life, you shall not be apostles of darkness and death.

6 He who seeks shall find; he who asks shall receive a true answer; and he who knocks at the closed door, to him let it be opened wide!

7 Nothing could be more useless than half an answer to a question. It is by far better to give no answer at all. And nothing could be more impractical than half an explanation on a matter of vital importance that should be thoroughly understood.

8 Therefore, whoever wants to be a teacher must thoroughly understand down to it’s roots and primordial depths what he intends to teach his brother. Otherwise it may be said that one blind man is leading another, and when they come to a ditch, both the leader and the one who is led will fall in.

- Chapter 89 -

The dangers of gold

1 (The Lord) "You now know the true value of gold and jewels; if you use them in the way and manner that I have now shown you, you will stand completely in My order like a patriarch of the old days!

2 The patriarchs of the old days knew gold also and used it genuinely and justly; but those who began to use it according to the imagined value, came very quickly into a great misfortune. For the imagined value of the gold, the pearls and the jewels caused thieves and highwaymen to emerge and one king became the enemy of another, as soon as he had learned that his neighbor had stored up too much of the yellow metal.

3 Thus only the foolishness of humanity caused mutual persecution! From it in the end come all thinkable vices that there are: envy, avarice, greed, pride, arrogance, domineeringness, gluttony, crapulence, fornication and all sorts of whoring - and in the end manslaughter, murder and all the cruelties that people spread among one another. And what is the main reason for this? Most of all the complete wrong knowledge of gold and the many jewels and pearls! The people have begun to distinguish between themselves according to the measure of possession of gold! The stronger gathered much and the weaker went empty-handed. Whoever is now rich in gold had on the one hand soon a significant portion of interested friends, and the poor person became seen just as quickly as at least half a thief, whom one cannot trust and therefore is despised! What wonder if he becomes a real thief at such an opinion?!

4 But I do not want to follow this annoying issue any longer, since you, My friend Cyrenius, can imagine everything else very easily yourself! But I do add this: If you want to be free one day from all sorts of enemies, thieves, robbers and murderers, value gold and all the jewels according to their characteristic value, and you will thereby reduce the number of your enemies quite significantly; for through your wisdom many will then become wise themselves and recognize God's order in all things! And if they do this, they will become also noble and good people whom you will not have to fear.

5 But if you, or at least your descendants, begin to assign to gold, silver and jewels again the imagined value, you will once again enter the old relationship of hostility in which you are now. I tell you: In certain just circumstances everything is good on the Earth and brings blessings through the true use for body, soul and spirit - and for the pure everything is pure and for him who has become a light himself there can no longer be any night; but through a foolish, consorted and thus counter-ordered use in the end even the best must become bad and instead of blessings and salvation bring curses and mischief!

6 You know that water possesses the most diverse and very best characteristics and is the very most indispensable element for the physical life of a person, animals and plants; but if a person wanted to build a house in the depths of the sea in order to live there with the fish, he will quickly find death for his body in such a house. Like fire is water a most necessary element for life; but whoever throws himself into the fire in the opinion that he can there achieve a greater mass of life, will soon as ashes no longer possess any spark of natural life!

7 And so it is with all things across the board! Yes, even the most poisonous plants and animals have their great blessing for this Earth, for they suck in the evil poisonous things from the air; their nature is set up in a way that the poison which exists in the quite unfermented spirits of natural life can bring them no damage to their natural life."

- Chapter 90 -

Man's primary duty: to become a perfect image of God

1 (The Lord) "Therefore leave these things untouched in their useful areas for the Earth; strive above all to become perfect people - yes, become as perfect as your Father is perfect, and then every poison of the plants and the animals will not be able to touch you!

2 Become what you are called to be, yet again that which the original fathers were, whom all the creatures obeyed; become through the observance of My teaching lords of the creations of your Father in His order, in which respect the Moors gave you a small proof, and in related circumstances there will be no enmity any longer, either among you nor between you and the creatures placed beneath you! But if you step out of this order, you will have to let the old curse and strife come upon you again.

3 In these days indeed will My kingdom need much force on this Earth, and those who do not take it with force will not take it into their possession at all. Later it will be easier however; but without a certain fight, at least with oneself, My kingdom on Earth cannot be won. For if this present life on Earth is just a battle, how much more then the true, spiritual life on the other side, particularly if it should express itself as desired citizen on this earth. But the battle will nonetheless be an easy one for everyone who truly loves God! For this should be said to each of My true friends, that My yoke is gentle and My burden is light!

4 I see hat you and all of you have understood everything very well and say to you therefore also now that you are already equipped with everything that you need for the spreading of My word and My will. According to the prophecy of the prophet Isaiah here everything has now been fulfilled in the past days, and so a day's work has been completed here.

5 Whoever recognizes all that and observes it faithfully will unmistakably reach perfection in life and will never feel death, neither perceive anything of that sort; for whoever has already woken the eternal life of the spirit in the body will perceive in the decay of the flesh nothing but freedom, blessing him above all in the highest clear consciousness of his perfect being fully and most correctly, and his field of vision will be endlessly expanded.

6 But the unfinished ones will face something else in the decisive moment! They will firstly have to bear great pains in their body, which naturally increase until that moment which is called the moment of separation. Besides these unavoidable pains of the flesh however also fear, terror and in the end also a sort of despair will come forth in the soul and torment the soul even more than the burning pains of the body. And if the soul becomes free of the flesh it will on the other side often take many years - according to the earth-time reckoning - to only reach some sort of human consciousness; but there will be no talk of a full spiritualization perhaps in eons of earth-years.

7 Therefore you will do great good things for your brothers, if you take the same effort and patience with them as I Myself have now taken with you.

8 Good to you and your brothers if you in the end will also be able to say to your brother: Brother, I have completed my work with you, act now accordingly and perfect yourself according to the order of God shown to you, the Lord of all life and existence in eternity!"

- Chapter 91 -

There is a time for everything

1 (The Lord) "But I have given you a full extra day of My time for your salvation, and My great love for you decided this for Me.

2 Be aware of it and bear it in mind and do the same if a brother says to you: Enlightened messenger of the Lord, stay a little with me; for my heart finds a powerful comfort and a great, blessed strengthening in your presence! Then you should remain, even if it was much longer than the time scheduled for you by the spirit! For truly I say to you: such a voluntary work of love for one's neighbor will be highly considered by Me!

3 It goes without saying that one can only do that for a friend one, two, three times; but if he still asks you to stay longer, comfort him with the assurance of returning again soon and encourage him to be most assiduously active according to this teaching of Mine which is given now to all of you, bless him then in My name and move on according to the call of the spirit which now lives in you from Me as a living word and leads you and guides you to eternal life!"

4 Cyrenius says: "Lord, how is it then now? You said last night that You will leave this place after this day! Is that to be accepted as determined completely unchangeable? Would it not be possible then for You, oh Lord, to give us one more day?"

5 I say: "Solomon, the wise man, once said: Everything has it’s time!, and so I also have My good and exactly allocated time and will therefore not be able to fulfill your request this time; for behold, in the great land of the Jews there are very many cities, places and villages which are all inhabited by people! Most of them still know nothing about Me, but are also My little children and have already been waiting for a long time for the arrival of the Father from heaven and will also have an immense joy when He is recognized by them as now by you. But you shall not fail completely, My dear friend, in your request! And because you are already so fond of Me, I will spend this night and another three hours of the next morning among you, since My heart is also very blissful among you; but I cannot remain one moment more than that three hours! For as they say: Everything on this world has it’s time and it’s order!"

6 Cyrenius says: "But You are indeed a Lord of time and can even stop it or even destroy it altogether!"

7 I say: "You are right there and have spoken well! But at the same time it must be noted that because I am a Lord of time and have distributed and determined the time and in a certain respect I am actually time Myself, because it is nothing other than My own highly unchangeable order, against which it is almost simply impossible for Me to act; for if I Myself attack My own order, you would soon see very little of all those creatures whose existence is determined in My eternally unchanging order.

8 Just take My guidance away for a moment and immediately all that has been determined goes under! Or imagine a firm fortress on a cliff of the firmest rock! You say, this fortress has been built as if for eternity. But if I would allow the powerful cliff to be softened to butter, would the firm fortress then still remain?! Or if you steered a good and solid ship over the sea; would your ship and even the best wind be any good to you if I let the water drain away to the bottom?! That such a thing would be possible for Me you will not doubt! And therefore it is decided that with the guidance what has been determined falls into the brook as well.

9 I control time everywhere and am the eternal judgment in it; but in the holy sphere of love there is actually no time any longer, and I can still give something more to love alone. But it still remains exactly as I have said now! But now have Mark bring us more wine so that we can bear the cool of the night more easily; for we will also remain this night out in the open!"

- Chapter 92 -

The Pharisees' offense and anger over the joyful meal of the Lord

1 Mark had heard only half of My demand for wine from a distance, but he already hurried away, just like a real innkeeper into the cellar and with both his sons immediately brought several jugs full of the very best vine juice. Our beakers were filled to the brim; everyone drank to the well-being of the prosperity of the new religion from heaven and could not praise, vaunt and bless the quality of the wine enough.

2 That Roklus and his companions, who were also sitting at our table - even if at the newly-added parts standing at right angles - were also provided with same wine, as well as gradually all the other guests, goes without saying; we all enthusiastically reached for the beakers and the good bread was also not spared.

3 But this was also noticed by the table of Pharisees, which stood next to ours, at which the fifty Pharisees with their spokesman Floran and their leader Stahar from Caesarea Philippi were sitting, that I helped Myself to the wine very well just as to the bread.

4 And Stahar quite loudly made the remark to Floran, saying: "Just look over there how this prophet, supposedly filled with the spirit of God, is actually a drunkard and a positive glutton! He also seems to be no enemy of the female gender; for the certain, very charming maiden is still sitting so close to his body as the two ears on his head! If we consider on the other hand our moral statutes coming from Moses, everything that makes a man impure! If he is really filled by the spirit of the Almighty, he cannot possibly contradict the same spirit with his deeds, that Moses was filled with!? Hm, hm, that makes me think a lot!

5 His teaching and deeds obviously prove that he has been given a higher capability than ever a man was given, and whoever lives according to his religion cannot get lost before God; but whoever drinks and eats as he does, will hardly enter Paradise one day according to the day of judgment of which David prophesied! For it is written: Whores and drunkards will not enter the Kingdom of God! What do you think, my ever highly respected Floran?"

6 Floran says: shrugging his shoulders: "The present positive drinking bout also seems a little strange to me! The whole thing now seems so strange that I am beginning to smell something of a sort of well-hidden devilishness! It seems to not correspond to quite purely divine things! Hm, hm, look there, he has just filled his beaker again! Ah, ah, that is seriously somewhat more than strange! And now the piece of the bread after the drink! Well, well, we will see when he will be quite drunk, what kind of teaching he will then give to his disciples!"

7 Stahar says: "Your comment, particularly about the smell of devilishness, seemed very appropriate to me, and this whole comedy seems very strange to me now! We have indeed all allowed ourselves to be turned into his disciples; but under such circumstances it would be very much in order, in my opinion, to free ourselves from such an honor again with all our energy, for all that now seems to be a well-calculated illusion of Satan! Daniel says indeed very clearly and articulately that in time a powerful opponent of God will rise up among the people and will perform such signs through which even the chosen angels of God could be enticed away if God allowed such a thing! Is this now finally the described opponent of God!? Friends, if so, then it would be very much in order to be up and away as quickly as possible, otherwise the living Satan will catch us with neck and crop perhaps in the next hour already!"

8 With such speeches and illustrations the table of fifty Pharisees had been talking since the moment that I emptied the first beaker of wine. But Roklus and his companions noticed this, who in any case had had their fill of the Pharisees.

- Chapter 93 -

Roklus' stern lecture to the Pharisees

1 Roklus, who had fully convinced himself of My divinity, could not lend a patient ear to this terrible talk any longer; he stood up, equipped with quite significant courage from the wine, and said loudly, "In such a most rare company on Earth where God, angels and we, His intelligent beings, camp together as brothers, pigs should have no table and no place! Indeed the pigs are surely also the creatures of God, only they do not belong to the company of man! What sort of stupid, very craziest gossip! If any hungry pigs begin to grunt, there is certainly far more wisdom in it than in such a speech! Short and sweet, the most foolish, most disgusting and also most domineering and most evil was, is and remains a Pharisee, particularly such a leader and a very most miserable scribe of the Jews!

2 These monsters scent the devil everywhere! They find and even teach that the devils constantly hunt all the human souls like hounds on this Earth in a secret hunt and every person is definitely of the devil and lost if he does not carry consecrated amulets from the temple with them and does not renew them at least twice a year; but they do not notice at all that they themselves are the very worst devils of this world! They should therefore not be surprised at all if they feel some devilish stench in their nostrils among themselves; for that would be all the more of the devil, to be a true, ingrained devil himself, and not to feel from time to time that one is really a devil!

3 You disciple (Raphael), you got rid of a stone earlier - would it not be possible for you to finish off the fifty mangy pigs as well?! Think about it, what these lads dared to say out loud! He, the only Creator of wine and bread, is now sinning because He Himself is drinking wine and because a certainly very most innocent little angel of a girl is sitting at His side! Ah, allow me, who has recognized the Lord, as long as I am here, this cannot be here at all! They must be gotten rid of! They have heard and seen so much "and now they are saying out loud: It could be that this is all an illusion of Satan! My friend from heaven, I am only of this Earth; but I cannot put up with this for the price of my life, that such pigs should sully the Holiest of all holiness so shamefully with their dirtiest and most stinking drivel! Away with them!"

4 Only now the fifty became aware of Roklus' outburst, and the leader Stahar rose and asked Roklus with a serious face, "Friend Roklus, are your words directed at us by any chance?"

5 Roklus says: "Who else then? You are the black brood of Satan and can therefore bear no light! How can you dare to sully the Lord and Master of eternity, who has already delivered you so much of the most extraordinary proof with word and deed, so shamefully with your old very most disgusting drivel?! Do you not fear then that even the surface of the Earth will take revenge on you?! Who can He be who calls to the cliff in the sea: Disappear and become nothing! - and the mountain disappears in the same moment?! Can a devil - according to your description - ever preach humility and the highest love for God and the neighbor?! Oh, you enormous oxen and donkeys at the same time, how terribly barren and confused must it be in your brains that you do not see that a devil, if it is according to your ideas, must be the very most powerless and therefore the very most pitiful being according to all measure in comparison with the Lord God, the further it is distanced from the full order of God!

6 But if as a consequence of the wisest and truest word of the Lord all power and strength exists only in the love for the Lord God, what power and strength has then your Beelzebub, who is full of the most bitter hate against God, in his ignominious character? But if even we people are weak and powerless beings through a lack of correct and true recognition of God, and surely also only through a lack of true and all-exclusive love for Him, how much more then your devils, who should know God very well, but hate Him above all measure comprehensible to us! Now - if it is possible that a being, recognizing God fully, nonetheless hates Him above everything - truly in order to understand that and to digest it, the pig's stomach of a Pharisee is needed! Such a stomach indeed does not take in any pig's flesh; but the reason seems quite naturally to lie in the fact that one pig does not eat the other!

7 I now love the Lord God more than everything in the world, where I have only recognized Him a little and feel how my love for the Almighty is constantly growing with my constantly increasing awareness, and I feel it most livingly in me how my willpower is also becoming effectively stronger. As I now stand here, I will take on a thousand legions of Pharisaic devils alone! All together they will not move me a hair from this spot - and you fellows claim that this Holy of the Holiest of God is performing His works with the help of your imagined devils!? Oh, you devilish pack of scoundrels, I will scatter your all-powerful devils! It is just right that you fellows finally got in my way!"

- Chapter 94 -

Raphael explains the terms "Satan" and "Devil" to Roklus

1 Raphael says: "My dearest friend Roklus, temper yourself; for these were indeed rock solid Pharisees, but they have now become our disciples and will see their mistake! And as far as the devil is concerned, you have too little knowledge to speak truly and validly about their influence on man. When you have a closer knowledge of that, you will also be able to speak about it!

2 You see, that which one calls 'Satan' and 'the devil' is the world with all it’s enticing splendor. Certainly all matter that exists in the world is also only a work of God and there is something divine hidden in it; but besides it there are also lies, deception and enticement in it, from which grow envy, avarice, hatred, arrogance, persecution and all the other sorts of burdens which come from this without number or measure.

3 And see, this very falsehood, lie and deceit, is spiritually taken to be 'Satan’, and all the individual vices that necessarily result from it are precisely that which is called 'devil’; And every soul which is devoted to any one of the innumerable vices as being well-founded is a devil in person and an active expression of one or the other evil and wickedness, and in such a soul it is an impulse which is difficult to extinguish, only to do evil immediately in the manner in which it has founded it's life in the time of it's carnal existence.

4 But since every soul also lives on after the death of the body and maintains itself in the region of this Earth, it is not seldom that a soul afflicted with such vices after it’s physical death enter the outer life-sphere of a still incarnated human who is naturally inclined towards the same vices. Since the soul hopes to find the necessary food within this man's outer life-sphere, it’s aim is to arouse evil in him too. But the propensity to vice can usually be traced back to a poor and neglected upbringing.

5 Such souls often even overpower the flesh of the person and thereby torture a sometimes weak soul. The Lord permits this, however, in order to improve such a leak in the soul; for thereby the tormented soul only then receives a true and living dislike against a reprobate weakness of the flesh and finally apply all diligence to become strong where it was once weak, for which the Lord's mercy comes to help at the right time.

6 You see, that is reasonably correct and true - which a Jew certainly should actually understand under the expression 'Satan' and 'devil'; but because he does not understand it, he considers by 'Satan' and 'devil' a spiritually personified evil willpower, which finds great pleasure in turning the people off the path of walking in the order of God.

7 Alone, these contorted souls have no counter-divine intentions; for firstly they do not recognize God at the furthest distance, and secondly they are too blind, foolish and dumb to be able to form any sort of intention. For apart from themselves they do not recognize any need at all and act only out of pure selfishness. They draw towards themselves only what their selfishness desires and are highly distrustful among one another; therefore a joint power is never conceivable among them, and you are quite right in that their power is null and void.

8 Yes, this does not apply to people who have once completely entered into the love and will of the Lord; but for people who are still half here and half there, or if you put their spiritual and their material in the balance and do not notice an inclination to any side, then regarding any soul-passion of a demon stuck in the same passion, the substance on the material side of the moral balance already gives a quite noticeable overweight, and the soul then inclines itself with greater difficulty from the material into the spiritual.

9 But if the soul remains in matter, then gradually ever more like-minded demons hang onto the material life-scales, the advantage becomes ever more noticeable, the material therefore becomes ever heavier and the spiritual naturally minor. And see, then the 'devils' of the Jews or the 'demons' of the Greeks in the end can cause great damage to a soul in the time of its formation, without having had the actual will to harm it!"

- Chapter 95 -

Roklus' objections

1 Roklus says: "How can an intelligent being harm someone without wanting to?! A demon must indeed have at least as much pride and self-confidence that he will know what he wants; but because he knows that, he is punishable for the evil will! And the permission of such secret whisperings by the terrible demons into an innocent human soul I do not quite find in the best order; but if they are allowed out of some secret reason of wisdom, then the poor soul can have no guilt if it is spoilt by the master devils!

2 But if the devils have neither intelligence nor thus even less any free will, they cannot harm the soul "and if they harm it then neither the soul that was harmed, nor a devil who is void of intelligence and will has any guilt; that would fall alone to him who allowed such a thing! I judge things thus quite freely as I see them and am not at all ashamed to say such a thing here openly!

3 But if the devils, as one says: have even a very sharp intelligence "which in fact can be assumed, because they immediately get wind of a poor soul where it is weak in the material sphere - then they also have a will to harm it; in this case the soul remains once again guilt-free, and only the devil and he who allowed it bear the guilt alone once again!

4 Let me have weapons and show me the enemy, and I will then quite certainly prevent such a chap from coming close to my body! But if I do not know the enemy, who can inflict a most significant damage to me by enticing me secretly and invisibly to the most hideous vices, and therefore must also carry the guilt along with it’s most evil consequences - well, then thank you for such a life!

5 Then that means to place a weak person naked among a pack of hungry wolves, hyenas, lions, tigers and panthers. If he lets himself be torn apart and eaten up by them, then he also bears the guilt and must therefore be damned by the judge because he as a fully defenseless, weak being firstly had to let himself be carried away by armed, strong-nerved myrmidons out into the wilderness, and secondly because he then has been torn apart and eaten by the wild beasts!

6 How does your heavenly wisdom like for example such a justice?! Friend, if things with the demons or devils are so, and the poor, suffering human soul remains alone the bearer of guilt and the consequences with or without the intelligence and will of the devils spoiling it - then there is no wise and loving God, but instead perhaps only such a magically blind all-powerful being; that is, a type of fate which always has it’s greatest joy in all sorts of animal fights and furious bullfights, just like the high Romans, and against whom a person can only sin if he himself has assiduous wisdom through the appropriate means!

7 I say to you truly: If your words unmistakably have reality, then the Pharisees are right! But I have heard the Lord Himself speaking about such things and can say, basing myself on that, that you, beautiful messenger of God's heaven, have somewhat fallen by the wayside this time; and I remain standing by the fact that I alone will beat the previously mentioned number of Pharisaic devils totally out of the field alone with my present love for the Lord!"

- Chapter 96 -

The demons and their influence

1 Raphael says: smiling gently, "Behold, my friend, you also have now got three full beakers of wine in your head, that is, the spirit of it, and therefore you have become even more critical in your reason than before! For your part you are quite right when you claim that the demons are in no position to carry out violence on a person who fully lives in the love for God, no matter how great a number they are; for there can be no talk of a communal power among them, since each one of them is in the greatest selfishness and self-love and it cannot occur to anyone to support his neighbor in anything out of fear that the neighbor could secretly and totally in disguise again gain an advantage which would certainly then bring him a vain regret.

2 If they go out in a certain way to rob together, none betray to the other his highly secret intention and if they come upon a place of robbing together as if by accident, then there is often the bitterest battle among them. For the first to throw himself on the booty is an enemy of everyone who throws himself on the booty beside him and seeks to displace him. A third uses this opportunity with joy at the other's misfortune and steals for himself; and then if a fourth begins beside him to steal for himself, then these two also come to blows, and a fifth then calmly steals for himself. If a sixth then comes up, immediately a new battle begins, and a seventh has then the chance to steal until an eighth comes close. All then fight and none allow the place of stealing and the booty already gained to be taken from them.

3 You see that certainly no devil helps another in anything; but through their highly selfish congestion they nonetheless increase the weight of the general booty, and then it is approximately as if you laid two quite equally large weights in the dishes of the scales, which mutually give no advantage. You however spread on one weight only a highly insignificant drop of honey, and immediately the sweet smell will attract thousands of bees; they will sit on the weight and immediately affect the advantage quite without intending to.

4 Can you blame God for lack of wisdom if He has given the bee the smell and desire for honey and the honey itself the aromatic and attractive sweetness?! Or is the Lord unwise if He has formed His creatures to be not only highly purposeful, but instead also highly beautiful, each after his own kind?! Is it somehow unwise of Him to have given the virgin that highly attractive and alluring form so that she must have the very highest value before the senses of the brusque men in this world, to leave father and mother and attach himself most joyfully to his tender and dear wife?!

5 But as can be seen already in the external world, that a being attracts the other into something, all the more so is the case in the world of the spirits; and if this was not so, how could an Earth, a moon, a sun exist, and how the other planets in the immeasurable space of creation?! One atom has sympathy with it’s neighbor; both attract each other. Whatever they both do, then countless eons also do, they attract everything which is just the same, and in the end out of this is created a world, as the Lord in the past night has shown all His disciples very tangibly and you will also find fully written in the great book that has been given to you all.

6 But if so, then is it unwise of the Lord, if He allows in the very greatest emergency the most unrestricted freedom of will and recognition for every soul and besides also naturally the respective consequences?! Or would you praise God to be most wise if someone wanted to travel from here to Jerusalem and therefore set his feet into motion, but despite all his will and despite the best knowledge of the route did not get to Jerusalem, because God did not want somebody's wish and ability to succeed, but instead the person would go not to Jerusalem, where he had important business to do, but to Damascus, where he had nothing to do at all?! Tell me whether you would find such a divine decision to be wise! Or do you find it inconsistent, if bees, wasps, hornets and all sorts of flies positively cover you by day and eat you up, if you go out into the open air smeared with honey?!

7 But if now your soul spreads some sinful smell of passion in the sphere of external life and the souls which have been freed from the flesh but which still stand in a similar smell of love, smell such things in your external sphere of life in a certain way, finally fall upon you and satisfy themselves on your superfluity, without actually knowing what they are doing, but instead purely only in order to gather around you in greater numbers, because they find the desired nourishment in your sphere, then that is certainly not unwise of the Creator, who respects nothing as much for eternity as the unrestricted freedom of every soul. Indeed, every soul has enough means in his hands to get rid of the uninvited guests as often and whenever he wants!

8 If you do not want to be bothered by stinging insects in the open air, then wash and clean yourself from the foolish smearing of honey and you will have rest; and if you want to keep your outer life-sphere free of demons that weaken and torment your soul, all you have to do is make the well-known order of the Lord your rule of conduct. I guarantee that no demon will then get close to your life-sphere.

9 Believe me when I tell you that demons will not attract, tempt and seduce you unless you attract them through some wicked inclination for which you yourself are responsible. However, once you have attracted them, you have only to blame yourself, if through their pressure that very same passion becomes even more ingrained in the soul without you actually wishing it."

- Chapter 97 -

The free will of man

The assistance of divine grace

1 (Raphael) "Let me tell you, every man who turns to evil and away from the divine order does so at first spontaneously. In most cases, the fault lies in a wrong upbringing. This encourages him to indulge in evil passions which, in turn, lead to all sorts of real transgressions. Through these he also throws himself wide open to all unknown evil influences and can thus be - and remain - depraved down to the foundation of his inner life - but always only if he wants to.

2 If he is willing to reform, the Lord does not prevent him from doing so; for as soon as someone in distress feels the slightest inner desire for help, he is soon given it. However, if he is quite comfortable and contented in his evil ways and never, be it silently or openly, expresses a desire for betterment, he is not given the extra help for his will.

3 To be sure, the good is whispered to the sensory organ of his heart, called 'conscience,' and from time to time he is quite severely reprimanded by us. If he heeds the admonitions at least to some degree, he can no longer become lost or depraved. In this case, the secret help keeps coming from above, giving the soul insight and strength so that it can extricate itself more and more from the entanglement. And it is then only a matter of good will and progress will be made - at least to a point where the man, ready for a higher revelation, is seized by the Spirit of God Himself and from then on guided in the true light of life.

4 Yet if man, in his gross delusion and worldly-sensual enjoyment, does not in the least heed the gentle and soft admonitions coming from us and manifesting in the heart, but acts as if he were lord over the whole world - well, surely, nobody else can be blamed for the incorrigible state of his soul but this very soul itself.

5 Believe me and remember well what I am saying to you now! There are no so-called original devils in the whole natural and spiritual world, but instead only those who previously have lived on this world as incurably bad and bothering people and already not only enticed other people to all sorts of burdens and disgracefulness as the quite actual devils incarnate, but instead also forced them with all the means of force at their disposal - whereby they spread an even greater damnation in themselves, which they will find difficult to ever fully get out of. You may now think as you may, can and will, it will not be possible for you to lay a blame on the Lord in the least.

6 However, you can well imagine that in the beyond the Lord, in accordance with the established order, will allow all sorts of things through which a depraved soul can be healed. For the Lord has not created any soul for perdition, but for the highest possible perfection of life. Yet bear in mind also that not a single soul in the whole endless space of creation can attain perfection of life through some sudden, implicit act of mercy, but only through it’s very own volition. The Lord puts many an aid at man's disposal; but man has to recognize them as such, seize them with his own will and use them quite voluntarily.

7 Yes, when a man then spontaneously exclaims in his heart: 'Lord, I am too weak to avail myself of the means which You gave me; help me by lending me Your arm!' - ah, then man has himself asked for the help from above of his own will, recognizing and perceiving the inadequacy of his own strength. Then the Lord can act immediately with all the necessary might and power and promptly help a weak soul.

8 In this case, man's will, as well as his cognition and trust, must be accompanied throughout by the fullest determination. Otherwise that order would prevail, according to which each soul had to help itself by use of the available means; for every outside interference with the intrinsic element of the free will would obviously and necessarily lead to a dissolution of the soul's essence. If, according to the eternal, necessary order of the Lord, the soul has to develop independently, it must develop and perfect itself with the means available, just as every man on earth must himself search for his body's nourishment and must recognize and enjoy it in order to sustain his physical life.

9 No god and no angel will come to Earth saying to everyone: look, eat this and that if you are hungry!, but instead the hunger comes and the person tastes with his palate the fruit growing everywhere and those that taste good to him he will seize and quiet his hunger with them very comfortably. If he is thirsty, he hurries to a fresh spring and if he is cold he will soon sew together a cover out of all sorts of fine material that does not itch and scratch his skin and thus protect his skin from the coldness of the air. And if he wants to be protected from the rain and wild animals, he will soon complete a hut; for all sorts of means have been given to him for this. Wherever he only turns, he finds immediately many gifts which he easily recognizes as such and can then use just as easily with the powers given to him for this."

- Chapter 98 -

The self-determination of the soul

1 (Raphael) "If the Lord lets man care for his own physical needs so that the soul can practice self-recognition and act independently, how much more this is necessary for the soul itself.

2 Even the souls of animals have an instinct of their own implanted, according to which they act, each in its own way. It would be wrong to assume that these creatures, that are seemingly without speech and reason, perform their actions like machines activated by an extrinsic force. If this were the case, even the best domestic animal could not be trained to perform the simplest task and would certainly not obey the call of man.

3 Since every animal has an individual soul possessing a separate vital force, by means of which the animal soul spontaneously activates its physical organism, an animal can be trained in different ways. A being that is animated merely from without has no memory nor is it capable of discernment. It lives mechanically and, where its aspirations are concerned, is limited and under judgment, so much so that any improvement through some kind of instruction is out of the question. That would also have to be done in a mechanical way from without.

4 You may tell a tree for a thousand years to stand in such and such a way and produce better fruit, - but it will all be of no avail. You must put knife and saw into action, cut off wild branches, carefully split the stems and insert into them fresh branches of a better kind and then connect these well with the wild split stems. The in this way mechanically grafted tree will then in the course of time produce better fruit.

5 Yet you can train an animal even through words or through a special way of handling, and it will serve you as and when required and fully comply with your will. This gives you unmistakable proof that animals also have a kind of free will, without which they could no more obey and serve you than a stone or a tree.

6 If already animals evidently possess an individual soul endowed with some cognition and freedom of will that has to act independently according to it’s own nature, to what higher degree, and how much more exclusively, this must be the case with a human soul. There can be for the present no question of any external, alien influences, either good or, even less, bad.

7 Besides, the soul is endowed with everything it needs for it’s initial progress in life. Once it has, through its own willpower and through the spontaneous love for God, moved into a mightier life-light, it will soon become aware of what it still lacks. It will then endeavor of it’s own free will to attain to this and, well recognizing the ways and means, strive for and grasp them, enriching itself with the treasures of the higher, more spiritual and more perfected life.

8 What the soul acquires on this road, which is a true road according to God's order, is and remains completely it’s own, and neither time nor eternity can tear it away from the soul. However, that which the soul could not itself have acquired through it’s volition and cognition, such as the external, physical body and with it some outer, worldly advantages, cannot remain with it but will be taken away just as it was given.

9 If that is how things are and what daily experience teaches man, there can be no question of evil, demonic influences affecting and determining the soul; for everything depends on the volition and cognition and, finally, the love of the soul. As you desire, understand and love, thus it comes to you - not conceivably otherwise.

10 If you desire, understand and love what is right according to God's order, you will in this way at all times attain to reality. However, if you desire, understand and love contrary to such order, which alone offers reality and substance, you are like a man who wants to harvest on a field where no grain was ever sown; and you have finally only to blame yourself if your life's harvest has come to nothing. Tell me now, whether you are in order!"

- Chapter 99 -

Floran admonishes the Pharisees for their loveless criticism of the Lord

1 Roklus says: "That is certain; for you have presented everything so tangibly clearly to me so that I have never heard anything in my whole life more clearly! But now I am annoyed even more about those Pharisees over there who are becoming again the old ordinary Pharisees, the more often they see the Lord take the beaker into His hand and the more comfortably the Lord discusses with Cyrenius and Cornelius! Don't you see and hear how everything is becoming an abomination for these black fellows now whatever the Lord only does or says?! Yet they have seen all these signs from Him, are now eating at His table and worship and praise Him with the tongue of snakes! Yes, what do you say to that then?"

2 Raphael says: "Just take it easy; for believe me, nothing escapes the Lord! He Himself will reprimand them very properly at the right time, and a reprimand coming from the Lord is always particularly bitter for those who deserve it. Look, Cyrenius and Cornelius and Julius and Faustus have also noticed what you noticed, and I noticed it a long time ago! But the will of the Lord has secretly warned me to keep patience, and so I am also acting as if I had not noticed what the fifty are doing among one another. But they will now soon reach the place where they will be opposed! Therefore just be perfectly calm for a very short time!"

3 Roklus became silent and waited to see what would come. But the fifty Pharisees did not wait, but instead they continued their deliberation.

4 Floran, their familiar spokesman, did not agree however with the very obscene opinions of the leader and said: "The eating and drinking of the Master does not give me any proof against His divinity! His whole behavior seems more like a silent question of whether we will not waver in our faith if we notice this or that about Him.

5 If He is the Messiah Jehovah Zebaoth, sung about by David so magnificently, then He can do whatever He wants and it will always be done rightly; for how should we poor powerless mortal people try to enjoin the rules of behavior on Him - since it depends only on Him that we exist and live "He who made heaven and earth and created, set up and gave to all animals and people their limbs and various organs of life! There you, Stahar, and all of you are completely on the very filthiest and even life-threatening path!

6 What business of ours is it if He drinks more wine or eats more bread?! He is the Creator of both! Truly, that does not mislead me in the least; on the contrary I am quite glad that He, as the very highest and very wisest, moves in our human ways!

7 I must openly admit that it is most extremely unwise of you all to act thus in the presence of the highest lords of the world, as if their salvation depends on your benevolence! What and who are we then? Nothing but poor, crawling earthworms before the power of such a person who commands the elements - and these obey His will!

8 The wine has heated your tempers and fogged up your reason; therefore you are now bringing such judgments to light which I would like to call typical, because of their super foolishness. What do you hope to achieve with it? Or can you prove through Moses that every now and then somewhat richer drinking of wine is forbidden? Can you claim that Noah sinned when he took a little too much of the juice of the grape? Yes, the son sinned and was made worthy of the curse for making fun of his father; but the son that covered the father’s shame was full of blessing!

9 Therefore I say to you all: whatever the Lord does is always and eternally done rightly! And even if He took several skins of wine here, that should not concern us; and if a thousand virgins lay around Him, whatever status and reputation they might have, that should not concern us in the least; for He is their Creator and guardian just as He is of us! What business can that then be of ours if He nears His own created works and heals what is shameful and sick in them?! Be for Jehovah's sake fair and gratefully modest in your judgments!"

- Chapter 100 -

The blessing of the Roman reign for the Jewish people

1 Stahar says: "As it seems to me then, you believe firmly in his divinity?!"

2 Floran answers, "What should mislead me then?! Did God not make great signs in the days of Moses?! But if a person here, equipped with the highest wisdom, does such never-heard-of things that are possible only for the divine omnipotence "what should then hold me back from regarding such a person as being fully filled by the true Spirit of God and considering him directly to be the only true God?! My opinion, my acceptance and my faith founded on these things stand firmer than the unthinkably old pyramids of Egypt!

3 But I now do not only believe that things are so and not otherwise, but I am also convinced in my innermost fibers of life, and nothing can make me waver any longer in such a most living conviction of mine, and you, fickle Stahar, least of all!

4 In this respect I can even call out like the Roman heroes with the best conscience in the world: SI TOTUS ILLABATUR ORBIS, IMPAVIDUM FERIENT RUINÆ! [Even if the whole world crumbles the intrepid will dominate the ruins . editor.] For I know what I see and what I believe, and I am therefore no wind vane and no reed in a pond full of mud and swamp. But I have indeed become a marble cliff in the sea on whose hard forehead hurricanes and huge waves must surely crash!"

5 Stahar says: "Even the divine judgments of the temple in Jerusalem?"

6 Floran says: "Whoever has this Lord and Master and the rulers of Rome as their shield, has no fear of the so-called divine judgments that God never set in place. Truly, no fear, no matter how little, could befall me at Jerusalem's greatest threats - even all the thunderous curses of the high priest went in one ear and out the other, leaving no trace! For whoever walks during the day, does not need to fear the terrors of the night, in my opinion, and so I also have no fear of the temple in Jerusalem!

7 If you compare this teaching which is as bright as the sun with the statutes of the temple, which I know only too well, you will recognize at the very first glance that the highest spiritual day rules this teaching, and the highest spiritual night the temple. Yes, those who still belong to the night will still have a lot to fear, namely the death of their souls; but at most the death of the body awaits me, which is actually no death at all!

8 But the eternal life of my soul cannot be robbed of me by anyone; for I see and feel it already most livingly in myself and I also perceive the eternally incalculable advantages of such life. But if I therefore do not feel the slightest fear of the secession of the body, how should I then feel any fear of the so-called divine judgments of the temple?! Therefore I say and remain most actively firm in this matter: Whoever walks in the day, does not need to fear the terrors of the night!"

9 Stahar says with a meaningful, very temple-like dark face: "Why and how can you name the place night where the Scriptures and the word of God is taught to the people?!"

10 Floran says: "The Scriptures, which we both as - let's say - scribes understand as little as one who never got to see them, and the supposed word of God put together out of sheer base human interest, I know only too well. Therefore do not mention a single syllable more of that to me! What miracles have we then achieved through the supposed almighty word of God? What else have we got to prove with a good conscience other than simply that we have filled our sacks and money boxes with the free-willed, taxed sacrifices forced through violence and have striven to press every spark of better light in the most arduous way with all means, among which even the worst cannot be found to be too bad?

11 Is it not an outrageous disgrace that we, as the old people of God, have had to allow the heathens to prescribe to us wise laws and state rules? And if these had not come to lead us to some more humane and better administration of justice, our nation would now find itself in such a disorder that there could be no more pitiful one even among the wildest animals.

12 What was our law then before the Romans? Nothing but the blindest arbitrariness of every person who had acquired any kind of power of his own in whatever manner!

13 Take a rich man, he proposed something just yesterday; but today he regrets it because in his opinion the offer he had submitted was not of real advantage for him. He became angry about it, firstly punished his advisor, then everyone who had observed the law of the previous day; for they should have gone and thrown themselves in the dust before the law-giver and made him aware of the fact that the law given was laid down more to their benefit than to his! But whoever had said to the powerful one: Listen, you powerful and most wise ruler, the law you gave should not be followed! And if it is followed, then you and all your subordinates will perish thereby; for this law stems from a treacherous and malicious advisor who certainly has been bribed to do this by one of your jealous neighbors! What happened then? He who had drawn the attention of the ruler to such a lacking or mistake in the law was taken to the most severe punishment because of shameless audacity; the evil advisor was also punished, and those who were known to have observed the bad law were also held accountable, and that often even before a new law had been announced. How do you like such a legal system?

14 But before the Romans the great land of the Jews had a number of such small rulers, each of whom was a veritable tyrant to his small crowd languishing in the greatest physical and spiritual affliction, and he terrorized them on a daily basis according to his mood and according to his willfulness that was responsible to no-one else at all. Were the Romans then not true messengers from heaven when they came with great power and drove out all the hundreds of most unscrupulous small rulers?! Then they gave reasonable and constant laws, under which everyone was the lord of his own goods; he paid his moderate taxes and could then go after his trade unrestricted, however he pleased - it goes without saying - on the path of legality.

15 We know that the temple was no friend of the Romans, nor is it today, and the reason is also not unknown to us; for the powerful Romans also demanded from the temple their tribute, while previously the small tyrants paid tribute to the temple, so that their priests kept the people in darkness and always preached to them the very most unconditional obedience.

16 Oh, when have we ever heard the Jews preach of an unconditional obedience towards the rule of Rome? The people are indeed told that the Romans are a whip in the hand of God which one must allow to happen; but the hundred most terrible tyrants who tortured the poor nation worse than the devil were no whip of God, but instead sheer angels of examination sent by God. Whoever opposed them was immediately declared an adversary of Jehovah and damned.

17 Oh, those were certainly happy times for the temple, from which the Lord may protect the poor humanity forever in the future! The divine laws of the temple are a small, but still an adequately evil remainder, of which I now have no fear at all "all praise to the Lord alone!; for I am now the Lord's and Rome's, and that is enough to be allowed to never quake at the threats of the temple! Are you satisfied with this explanation?"

- Chapter 101 -

Roklus and Floran in conversation about Stahar

1 Stahar pulls a gloomy face at this and then says no further word; for Floran's words have indeed secretly made the fellow think in a somewhat better way.

2 But Roklus, who had listened to this exchange with the most interested attention, rose and straightaway hurried over to Floran, tapped him on the shoulder and said: "I praise you! You are just the man for me! I will accept you into our institute, which now stands under the true protection of God and under the protection of Rome. What you have now said was given to you by the Lord; it was as if spoken from out of my soul! Ah, such words are a balm for my soul, which only wants good for the people! I only do not understand how Stahar, who as far as I know is not altogether stupid, can allow any doubt to sprout up in his chest at the such extraordinary deeds that he has seen and the teachings of the Lord he has heard and understood?!

3 For me, who has now spent several hours here, what has been seen and heard so far is much too much - and Stahar has seen and heard so much, and yet it still occurred to him to accuse the Lord of all infinity of devilry! Whether wine or not, I have also enjoyed the wine and perceive very clearly in myself that my courage has also become significantly greater; but my convictions that have been formed do not waver and neither would they waver even if my limbs began to waver a little. But with the old know-it-all Stahar the old Roman saying: IN VINO VERITAS! may well be put to use; for wine has the strange effect that it often airs the dark veils of politics among the people and loosens the tongue of a person despite himself. And on such occasions one often learns some things which, for very well-calculated, selfish reasons, would otherwise be taken to the grave with a person.

4 Previously Stahar, despite his diamond-hard Pharisee-hood, had certainly been very much driven into a corner. He regarded himself with his contradictions as being lost and finally gave in because he could not find any open hole into which he could escape; but deep in his very innermost being he remained still the old diamond-hard Pharisee. Now, however, he had committed the great foolishness of enjoying a little too much of the noble grape juice, and he fetched the old, arch-Pharisee out of his innermost hiding place and made him speak for himself. Once the scent of wine has subsided in the fellow, he will certainly very much regret that he has betrayed himself so beautifully.

5 It was not for nothing that people wrote poetry about the female Bacchantes, so that quite often they prophesied to the people future things and events and great value was placed on their statements. The wine also had a wondrous effect on them. It is also said about David, the great king of the Jews, that he wrote and sang many of his Psalms himself under the influence of wine.

6 If the wine accordingly has such a particular effect, it can be quite certainly accepted that the old leader of the Pharisees has now revealed himself yet again, for our general best and despite his previous feigned total conversion, to be the same and unchanging genuine Pharisee, a type of person for whom even the wildest beasts of the forest have their due respect, not to mention a poor sinner standing under their yoke! Am I right or not?"

7 Floran says: "Yes, dearest friend, in a certain respect you are quite right; but yet there is another point which can be taken into consideration! Look, if you want to bend a young tree which has grown crookedly, your efforts will soon be blessed with success; but if you try the same with an old, crooked tree, you will firstly have to put all sorts of powerful machines to use in order to make the older tree straight, which has already grown very stiff, and secondly you have to have no lack of patience! You will only be able to exert a very small pressure from day to day, and for as long as it takes for the tree to become straight; but if you wanted to straighten it with all your strength all at once, you would break the tree and thereby kill it, which would certainly not be any blessed success for your great efforts. The love and wisdom of the Lord in this affair also seems to observe this principle.

8 Our Stahar will now be brought to a position where he in his ancient Jewish enthusiasm for Jehovah will feel very annoyed. How many things his superstition considers a sin, which according to common sense can never be a sin, neither before man, nor even less before God! According to his morals, a richer enjoyment of wine or speaking to a virgin, who according to his ideas could not yet be fully mature, also belong in this category! Well, if he is quite sober, obviously he passes over these trivialities; but he has downed several beakers of wine himself, and the natural spirits of the wine have found in his innards such very old, hardened remains of the old, totally blind Pharisee-hood, animated them and brought them into a certain up-rising. On it’s own, it is basically hardly worth wasting a word over this whole event!

9 But in any case I have already told the fellow my well-founded opinion quite coherently, and he is now thinking about it in his doze. Tomorrow he will certainly be quite a different person - and if it were not as I have just said to you, the Lord Himself would already have said something to him; but the Lord, knowing well what is going on in this issue, seems to take no notice, however little, of it at all. But if He and the high heads of Rome have fully ignored the whole thing, we can also both be fully assured that there was nothing more to this event than what I have just described to you. But beyond that I must thank you from the bottom of my heart for your very friendly proposition, and indeed with the, for me very encouraging assurance, that I will make a very unconditional use of the same.

10 For there cannot be anything more blessed on this Earth for an honest person than to live and to work in a true community of people whose motto is 'love and truth', where the human value of a person is mutually recognized as the holiest pledge of our being and fully as that which he is through God, and where all members recognize the Lord most actively as if with one heart, and love Him and give Him alone all honor and also say as if with one mouth: The Lord alone is all in all, and we, however, are all brothers among one another, of whom none imagines himself to be even in the slightest higher or more preferred than his neighbor; and should there be any differences in the community, these should only consist of one striving to be a greater friend to the other, in order to be of use to all people in the fullest truth with united strength!

11 Yes, friend Roklus, that is the truest and very real, heavenly calling for man on this Earth; to help all those oppressed and those suffering physically and mentally, wherever any help is somehow still possible! And that is also the extremely clearly pronounced loving will of the Lord; whoever follows it faithfully will certainly never end up empty-handed! Don't you fully share my opinion?"

- Chapter 102 -

Roklus shines a light on Pharisaism

1 Roklus says: "All my life, my heart, my feelings, my constant thoughts and strivings and all my will have always done so - and now all the more so since I have recognized the Lord and accepted all His being into my heart and into my desires forever and ever! I am now a significantly fairer person to talk and judge as far as old Stahar is concerned, for it is easy for a person who walks in the light to talk about the night. There are indeed also shadows in the daytime; but it is very much brighter under any tree than by night, however bright. But as in nature, it is the same in the spirit! Since for whomever it dawns in the heart and the soul, he can well become annoyed about the night of his fellow man; for his darkest thoughts are still a bright light compared to the night of brightest thoughts of heaven of a genuine Pharisee.

2 For do you know, among us Greeks there has long been the saying about a person who speaks or performs some great foolishness: He is indeed more foolish than a Jewish Pharisee! However I do not mean to say at all that most, or even all of the Pharisees are foolish; but very many of their great number are so in any case. But I do not exactly want to say so much about their foolishness; but that most of the Pharisees are extremely evil and irreconcilably revenge-seeking people, that is a decided truth, which finds an only too undeniable confirmation through a countless row of the saddest and most bitter experiences. And for this reason alone I am actually a most decided enemy of these people; for there can be no community or trading and exchanging with them - there is nothing, nothing more!

3 Ah, it is easy to talk to and good to trade with the Samaritans, although they also live according to the teachings of Moses! Nor is it fully impossible with the Sadducees; but nothing at all can be started with the arch-Jews, as the Pharisees call themselves! They only respect you when you let yourself be talked round by them in the very most extraordinary way. Give everything that you have to the Pharisees and then die of hunger before their fat doors, and so you will then be a true child of God and named as a holy and highly respected person by the Pharisees! Woe to them where they notice even a little intelligence - he will always be watched with contemptuous glances and will never gain any reputation among those jealous people, unless he brings them a great sacrifice and then allows himself with his sharp brains to be used for the lowest purposes for the good of the Pharisees!

4 But what sort of idea does all that taken together give the investigator of light and truth about the arch-Jews, who carry the title of authority 'Pharisee'? No other than that which I once heard myself quite unnoticed by two very well-fed Pharisees strolling together and with my very own ears! I will name them A and B simply for the sake of differentiating between them in speech.

5 A said to B in a rough voice somewhat coated with mucus, "Listen, the foolish fable about Moses, who never existed, is not bad at all! There is surely no trace of truth in it, and Jehovah is an empty, poetic thought, and everything that is commanded in our Scriptures is a work of man, just as he is a work of nature, which creates and then immediately destroys again!

6 God and gods, however, are only the people who possess enough strength and energy to make themselves such. Only the beginning is difficult; once the thing has been fully formed and developed after many years, everything is then simply child's play. With a few false miracles the whole world can be convinced. Then one only has to build soon some temples that are as large as mountains and decorate them outside and particularly on the inside with all sorts of mystical rubbish and teach the blind humanity to recognize an all-powerful god that exists somewhere, whose servants and performers of his will naturally only the priests may be!

7 One must also, in order to be more respected, burden the people with all sorts of difficult or even impossibly observable laws, as if from God, with the severest penalty and punish the transgressors constantly without consideration! Thereby the obedience, fear and weakness of the people is created and maintained; and if one has once achieved that, then one can easily be lord of all everywhere.

8 But thereby one must nonetheless constantly turn one's greatest attention to ensuring that the people never come to any further enlightenment than simply in as far as the person can only say as much in an emergency as he understands our words. Only one step further beyond that and immediately questioners will be found who will begin to inquire after all sorts of things! But if the people begin to ask, this proves that they have also already begun to think; but priests and a thinking people controlled by them morally can never go along with one another!

9 The people must not possess much more spirit than a trained ox or an obedient donkey; go beyond these limitations "and the reputation of the priests immediately resembles a deserted ship! The nation must never receive even a glimpse of our inner knowledge; for if that ever becomes the case, at that our actual existence will soon be over!

10 Therefore particularly in these times, when all sorts of damnable enlighteners of the people are beginning to emerge, we must above all ensure that they are removed from the face of the Earth! Although one swallow by no means brings the full summer, it is nonetheless an indication that several will soon follow it. On it’s own, the swallows can come, as many as they want, at most they can be dangerous to the sparrows; but the enlighteners are becoming dangerous to us - therefore down to each of everyone immediately!

11 That was the praise-worthy speech of A, and B, a small, chubby fellow, agreed with A entirely; only he shrugged his shoulders at the same time and confirmed: This will now be very difficult because of the very enlightened Romans, through whom our Jews have already been unbelievably ruined for us! And as if that wasn't enough, a true Satan had to put the extremely annoying Essenes on our trail, and in addition they stand under the protection of Rome! If we do not begin to worm our way back among the people once more through the very cleverest and very polished deceptions, things will soon be over for us!

12 We must now equip ourselves with all sorts of miracle-making, because in this manner even an already enlightened person can be talked round in the very easiest way; but the miracles must be quite exquisite and quite new and not easily have ever existed before, otherwise we will be cornered and the accursed magicians, flocking to Jerusalem from all sides, will make us look suspicious and in the end even ridiculous - particularly now, when as if that wasn't enough even the Essenes are performing miracles before our eyes, so that it is a crying shame, and where also in Galilee a new, most extraordinary miracle-worker has appeared and somehow straightaway challenges us to battle with all energy and wants to destroy us at any price! But he must also be destroyed by us at any price, just as the familiar Baptist in the Jordan must also be destroyed; for he has already caused us incalculable damage! In short, such enlighteners must be destroyed, otherwise our old deceptions of the people will come to light in the most naked way and we and our well-being will have reached our eternal end. What do you think about that?

13 A said once again: I am quite in agreement with you, if the too half-hearted and yet also extremely greedy representatives of the temple would like to sacrifice a part of their uncountable treasures! But they think: We have ours; let happen what may, we will exist with our treasures very well everywhere! As long as the cow gives milk, we will milk her; once she gives no milk any longer, we would prefer to slaughter her ourselves and finally make a very tasty roast from her flesh! They have allowed things to go too far, and now it will be difficult to temper the people enough so that they believe us alone.

14 Yes, if we had the Romans on our side, it would be an easy thing; but out of several politicians we have only Herod more or less for us! Nothing can be said to Pilate; for he has the greatest Roman pride and does not allow anyone from even the high Jewish caste to come before him except in the very most serious Roman legal issues - and even then a Jew always draws the shorter straw against a Roman!

15 Both were continuing the discussion along these lines, while I walked behind them for some time, and it must be about three weeks since I heard such praise-worthy talk quite by accident, and indeed in the vicinity of Bethlehem, where I had things to do. And this conversation strengthened me even more in my atheism; for from this I took that even those who I assumed had the greatest faith in a god also had no spark of faith at all in a higher divine being. I found there my opinion completely confirmed, that I had long come to, that several divine religions are nothing but a very most insipid and most malevolent deception."

- Chapter 103 -

Roklus gets upset about Stahar's spiritual blindness

1 (Roklus) "It was only here that I got to know once again a true God in a perfect, best and wisest person, and He alone is this and apart from Him there is no other; for in Him alone I find all those characteristics united which according to the judgment of common sense a God must have, otherwise He cannot possibly be a God. I recognized that and now recognize it as a Gentile and as a former atheist most actively perfectly in me "and this old, strict Jewish servant of God may not recognize such a thing! But why does he not recognize it? Because he has neither sought the truth nor even less the true God!

2 I have travelled almost half the Earth in order to find the truth and a possible true God; but all my great sacrifices were in vain! I gave up all further search and threw myself into the arms of worldly wisdom and soon found satisfaction in it with my heroic spirit and so much of an inner, nonetheless very valuable light from the writings of Socrates, Plato and Aristotle that I began to perceive thereby that only through inner love and wisdom can a person form a transcendental life which will not be as easily destructible in the future as the life of thoroughly decaying flesh.

3 Here out of the mouth of the Lord of all life I heard the same teaching, now illuminated through and through with the clearest light of life! The Lord Himself came to me, I, who had long searched in vain, and gave me here in the nearest vicinity of my own homeland everything that I had sought so long in vain in all the world with many sacrifices and much effort.

4 But if I have been able to find the eternal and most living truth so quickly here and recognized it as such, why then not the old Jewish servant of God? Because he, as I have experienced only too clearly not only from the conversation of both the Pharisees strolling together, but also among that of a thousand others, has never sought the truth either for himself nor even less for anyone else!

5 Because of his selfish and domineering intentions he was always only the greatest enemy of all truth and enlightenment of a people, but he has come here now and immediately found himself in a true ocean of truths of the highest and very most profound type. His skin could not possibly resist it; but his spirit has now awakened a little out of the old lethargy by the scent of wine and showed us all now clearly and distinctly that he is still a die-hard Pharisee in himself!

6 He is certainly a crooked old tree, which is more difficult to straighten than a young one; but with him even a slow straightening undertaken with all caution will certainly be a task fully in vain! I do not want to deny to you, my dear friend Floran, that in the end even this crooked old trunk will be straight! But he will have to keep away from the wine in the future, otherwise nothing satisfactory will come into being with the straightening of his arch-Jewish trunk!"

- Chapter 104 -

Stahar's confession and experiences of life

1 Now Stahar rises and says somewhat morosely to Roklus, "You have in general judged the present Pharisee-hood not unjustly; but as far as your judgment concerns me, you have made a very significant mistake! For I have obviously sought the truth of life secretly just as well as you did and have also only found it here in abundance, and to no-one was it more welcome than me "and perhaps also no-one had such a great joy in it than I myself! For me it was and is an invaluable jewel which I would not like to exchange in the future for all the world!

2 I was and am still very blissful in such light of life; but a little cloud came over my mind when I saw the Lord seizing the beaker so very actively. Why? You already know that, and Floran has quite blown away the little black cloud with his wind of life and he has done a very good deed in me, for which he will not go unrewarded; but you, friend Roklus, have judged me quite inconsiderately and also basically a little wrongly!

3 But so that you see that I do not belong now and have never belonged entirely to those Pharisees, like the few that you have just described, I want to prove it to you in that I will firstly forgive with all my heart the very false judgment of me that you made and secondly I will give you the friendly request to accept me as well as Floran into your institute!

4 At this opportunity I will then also make you familiar with the fact that I have often led even the chair in the council in Jerusalem against your institute and the institute has much to thank me for! For according to the old saying that many hounds are death to the hare, even the institute would have been destroyed, if all the means had been set into motion by us; but my surely very appropriate objection finally succeeded in tolerating your institute in our vicinity. For I made the templars understand that the institute is more conducive than obstructive to the temple's cause, in that many who have long ago lost all faith in the temple will direct their eyes once again to the old pinnacles of the temple through the miracles of your institute, from which they still know very well from the Scriptures and oral traditions what extraordinary things have happened in and outside the temple.

5 It was also I who advised the temple not to go into battle against the miracles of your institute, because the temple would thereby become suspicious of its own. And see, my advice is still very much respected by the temple today, and you cannot claim that something more considerable would have been undertaken against you by the temple! If I however have acted against you as being an arch-Jew, I will not behave against you as your member, and even less so after we have all found the greatest truth of life here and one and the same Lord and Master of eternity! If my plea is pleasing to you then confirm it, and I and all my not insignificant treasures will be yours in the name of the Lord!"

6 Here Roklus extended his hand to Stahar, quite moved, and said, "Be a thousand times welcome to me, brother Stahar! You shall lead the institute at my side!"

7 Stahar says: "Yes, what is there in my strength, I will also unmistakably do; but as you will notice very well yourself, my strength is no longer much to talk about "for at around seventy one can no longer turn over a house! Indeed I am still very spry and feel very youthful, particularly on beautiful, cheerful days; but the youthful ability of an old man acts approximately the same as the endurance of the charm of a beautiful and warm day in late autumn. For a few hours it leaves nothing else to be desired; but immediately afterward an eerie, cold wind rises and there is an end to the charm of the day!

8 It is the same with me. Today I feel as powerful as a young lion, and tomorrow I can immediately stand as miserable and weak as if vampires had drawn every drop of blood from me! And therefore you must not promise yourself too much from my help.

9 But my many experiences shall be your possessions along with my earthly treasures! You will be able to use them for a long time more, since you are only in your fifties, which can be called a true youthful age in comparison with mine. But there is truly no lack of all sorts of experiences in me, and perhaps I will be for you a greater and more valuable treasure for life with my many and very important experiences than with my much gold, jewels and pearls!

10 I too was in the beginning an arduous seeker of truth. I have also travelled through many countries and cities and sought truth and people and must openly admit that my search was not quite without success. I often experienced pretty clear moments in myself. But as in this world things often happen to people, it also happened to me. Today one is quite clear, but tomorrow all sorts of foolish, earthly worries set in and darken the human mind totally, and then no gathering of oneself in the spirit is of any use.

11 The world storms our mind without any mercy or consideration and often destroys every trace of a higher and inner light of life. And if one observes oneself after such multi-faceted worldly storms, then in the heart it looks like the great sand desert of the African Sahara; every higher life lies as if dead, and if one begins to shake it again and to erect it, then it seems as if one wanted to begin to lay fields, gardens and pastures on a barren steppe!

12 Yes, it certainly does not exactly belong among the realms of impossible things in the world, to turn into a fertile land a sandy steppe; but there much work and patience is needed! One must first dig good wells, then fetch foreign and good soil from far away and cover the sand with it far and wide and deep enough; then one must make water channels from the well in all directions and arduously irrigate the soil lying on the sand, and in this way a previous sandy steppe would certainly soon be transformed into an Eden. But who would have the right time and desire and the means demanded for such a job?

13 And, friend, it is just the same with a person who has become a true sandy steppe in life through the various storms of life! There is not actually a lack of possibility to become a full person of the light; but where does the person have the strength, the patience and the necessary means for this, particularly if he lives almost entirely by himself?! Yes, here at this extraordinary event which has never before existed, indeed a sandy steppe, no matter how barren, can easily become a blooming Eden physically and spiritually! That is the omnipotence of the Lord, which can turn water into the best wine and stones into the tastiest bread!

14 I however have worked on myself industriously for fifty years and until now I have achieved nothing; but now I have not worked at all and nor did I want to hear anything more about any work, and right now in my lazy condition the Lord has given me more than I ever sought! My old sandy steppe of life has now become a luxurious garden of life; but I have not done anything to help it, but instead the Lord did it voluntarily! But as it is now the case here with me and the forty-nine companions, it was the same with many others, of whom you yourself are no exception!

15 I have often convinced myself that people rarely find exactly what they often seek the most ardently, and then only in the very rarest case when they are actually seeking it. If a person has lost something on the path and turns around and seeks with all industriousness the lost item, he will certainly find everything else before he finds exactly what he has lost. A very different person, who later takes the same path, easily finds quite casually the lost item of the previous person who is quite unknown to him. Why did someone find the lost item who had never sought it, and why not he who had lost it and then immediately sought it with all industriousness? The Gentiles are almost right in this, when they called such events 'twists of fate'!"

- Chapter 105 -

The unfathomable ways of destiny

Stahar's reasons for the doubts he expressed to the Lord

1 (Stahar) "Like a young man is looking for a bride. He knocks here and there, and finds nothing but rejections upon rejections. He therefore becomes very angry and says: No, now I've had enough! I will remain single and will run my household myself, as well as it might go! But as he now abstains with a very serious will from all courting of any bride, suddenly things take on quite a different face! Now brides arrive in their dozens, ten for each finger, if only he could take care of them all! Yes, why then now, and why not before, when he was looking for a bride?

2 A third man goes fishing, just in a time of affliction, because he needs some fish for the market. He tries everything for a whole night, best equipped with every trick and other skillful tactics for fishing, and his net remains empty. In the morning he very sheepishly gives up all fishing most cheerfully, but nonetheless casts his nets one more time for the sake of a joke, and indeed with the fullest conviction that he will not catch even one fish. And behold, the cast nets begin to tear from the sheer amount of fish of the most beautiful sort and noblest species that have been caught! Yes, why then now so many all of a sudden - and before, nothing the whole night through?

3 In the same way for several centuries the people languished under the yoke of the deepest darkness of the most varied superstitions. Millions sought the truest light of life. But what did they find? Just what we have found until now, namely - nothing! What was left in the end for you and me and for many thousand others? Nothing but to remain dutifully with what we had in a political sense, and with what we had made our own through all sorts of experiences! Now however, at the wane of our earthly life, we have sought nothing more, and behold, as if by a stroke of magic the gates of the old divine light have opened, and we now breathe in the streams of light! Why now then, and why not earlier? You see, that is how things are in the world, and how the Lord obviously wants it! But why it must be exactly so and cannot be otherwise, only the Lord alone knows!

4 There below at the table of the Lord are His main disciples. Who are they then? I know them all! They are fishermen, among them hardly any are capable of reading and writing - otherwise honest and hard-working people! Certainly none of them, just like us, had ever sought a higher and deeper truth in life - and behold, they have received a light before us all who have sought all our life long! Believe me, our names will disappear like the light of a falling star and like that of lightning; but their light and their names will shine until the end of all time and throughout all eternity! Who is now in a better position, one who otherwise lived and acted as a very honest man on the Earth, or one who devoted his whole life to the investigation of inner, deeper truths of life?

5 The rules of the house of the Lord are and remain an unsolvable puzzle to mortal man. But what else can the powerless man do than to take things as they come with all patience; for nothing can be decided or changed by us! Or can we now or ever previously do anything about the fact that we have now as casually as ever possible reached the very most colossal, most intensive light of life? We sought long enough with every lantern to find at least a concept of a true God, so that we could have accepted with full and convincing insight that there must be a God who controls and rules over everything. But in vain!

6 What we sought slid ever more deeply into vain nothingness, and soon we stood without a god on the whole Earth according to the full truth. You became an Essene and as such a magician in OPTIMA FORMA. I on the other hand remained on the outside a staunch Pharisee and as such performed positive miracles of seeming piety before the blind nation. And so we both lived for a considerable time quite harmless.

7 We have often made the trip here to the old fisherman Mark with pleasure. But did we ever perceive even the very slightest warning of the fact that the greatest light of life would one day rise over us both here, that we would get to know exactly here the only true God, of whom we could not even get even the very slightest understanding despite all our searching, not only with our understanding, but instead - INCREDIBILE DICTU - even completely personally, and in such a way that leaves no doubt at all behind itself? You see, that is how all things come from God! Whenever one actually is no longer searching for anything, then often one finds a thousand times more than one had sought!

8 You were previously upset, when I let out certain statements which drew the most doubtless divinity of the Lord into question. Secretly I liked your seriousness, and if my faked doubt had been serious, believe me, I would even have countered you with something! But I secretly had a great joy in you; for I thought to myself: If you knew why I actually raised such a doubt, you would have had to rejoice in your heart! I only wondered that you have overlooked the cheerful indifference of the Lord, and that you understood much too little of the words that Raphael directed to you in their true depth. Therefore I say to you now once again that the many experiences I have made have a great value! Friend, whoever has seen Albion's (England's) coast has certainly experienced quite a bit!

9 Just choose twenty reliable and most decent friends, and you may count upon it that among them is a lurking a traitor who can become a rogue at the first opportunity! I stand here at the head of forty nine, can you accept with certainty that there is not one among them who has two faces?! But SAPIENTI PAUCA! (the wise man needs little), - I hope you understand; for one does not need to speak too loudly about this! I therefore rose from the table in order to be able to exchange a few words more freely with you at some distance from my table. My Floran, yes, you can build houses on him; but there are then another forty eight, for whom it is very necessary to assure oneself fully of their inner opinion before one begins to form a new field with them!

10 You were a perfect atheist and I no less! But several among the forty nine were always too foolish for that; they believed in the temple's tangible deceptions. They can therefore only be superstitious, blind and foolish fanatics! And believe me that such people are always more dangerous to us true people than a whole pride of lions! Therefore a fine cunning is certainly needed here. But look, my seeming revolt towards the Lord was of good effect! Most of them disagreed with me and agree with wise Floran; only a few may now be among them who would agree more with me than with Floran. But even they think that I possibly went a little too far! And now, dear friend Roklus, judge according to rights and dues, firstly whether I have acted correctly and secondly whether I am worthy of your friendship, just like Floran!"

- Chapter 106 -

The angels' limited comprehension of the thinking of the Lord

1 Roklus says: "My very most valued Stahar, so many words were really not needed; for I immediately understood you in any case, and I am of the active opinion and fullest hope that we both, serving one and the same purpose, will surely bring the most blessed success into being. The Lord will not leave us without His help, and so we are going towards a certainly most beautiful future which will be fulfilled on the other side in the most glorious way, even if never fully here on Earth. But now let us return to our places again! The somewhat nasty wind is dying down, and nonetheless the heavens remain fully clear with their countless stars. If I am not mistaken, the Lord looks as if he is about to do something else or to give us a new lesson - and that means we must be all eyes and ears!"

2 Stahar also notices this and says: "Yes, yes, you are right, something is happening, and as I have noticed, His nearest company does not know what is going on! Cyrenius is asking Him secretly what He is planning, it is true; but this time the Lord does not seem to want to come out with the correct answer! Yes, yes, my dearest Cyrenius, a god is still a little more than a Caesar of Rome!"

3 Roklus says: "You still dislike the Romans somewhat, it seems to me! But that does not matter; for here and there they have certainly exaggerated their role and played at being the lords of the world! But now to our places!"

4 Both now head to their tables. When Stahar takes his place again, immediately several ask him what he had discussed with the Greek; Stahar however waves aside such womanish curiosity and says nothing for the time being.

5 But Raphael occupies himself a little with Roklus and says: "Well, is it easier for you now?"

6 Roklus says: "Certainly; for now I know on the path of personal experience where I stand with old Stahar, and I am quite exceptionally glad to have found my opinion confirmed most completely even with Stahar, so that almost no priests, of whatever religion he may be, believes himself what he makes other people believe with fire and sword! For Stahar was also a full atheist as I was, and only became a true believer in God here along with me. But now no further word about it! You, friend from heaven, do you not notice that the Lord is planning something? Either there will be a deed or He will say something!"

7 Raphael says: "Certainly; for the Lord never rests and constantly has an infinite number of plans! Why should He suddenly now intend somewhat less than otherwise is always the case?!"

8 Roklus says: "My heavenly friend, I know that as well as you; but it is now only a matter of whether He is now planning something quite special!"

9 Raphael says: "Well yes, you will soon see what will happen. The Lord does not always reveal to us what He desires to do, although we are the personified expression of His original desire. We as the emission of His divine life, desire and being are the closest to Him and are basically nothing but that expression of divine will and divine power, but not in His personal essence, but instead existing and working outside it. We are approximately the same around God as light flowing from the sun, which animates, forms, creates, matures and perfects everything everywhere, wherever it goes.

10 If you hold up a mirror to the sun, you will see the image of the sun exactly in the mirror, and the beam of light streaming to you from the image of the sun will warm you just as much as the direct beam from the sun itself, and if you catch the sunbeam with an Alexandrian mirror, which is also called a concave mirror, the beam thrown back again will express a much greater light and warmth than that of the light flowing directly from the sun. And that is what we archangels are spiritually; each spiritually perfected person will be the same to an even greater degree.

11 But despite all that, as nonetheless no mirror, not even an Alexandrian one, can depict everything that is and occurs in the whole inner sun, neither can I see within me what the Lord thinks Himself and decides. At the right time His intention will then begin to shine out, and I and all those like me will immediately fully absorb it into our being and carry it into all infinity; therefore we also carry the name 'supreme messengers', because we are the bearers and executers of the divine will. And look, my very most treasured friend Roklus, just now the Lord is deciding something; but I do not know what it is, because the Lord is still keeping it firmly to Himself and not letting anything transpire!

12 Oh, there is still endlessly much within the Lord that we do not know and will also never know with our drive to investigate! But whenever He wants it, then we will become aware of it and subsequently fully active. By the way, you have only to pay attention! Something hearty will happen; but what, that will be shown soon!"

13 Roklus understood Raphael's words and wondered at his familiarity with the Alexandrian mirror, of which he had seen and tested a few on his journeys to Egypt and had also acquired one for the institute.

- Chapter 107 -

The Lord's prediction for the future: The Migration Period

1 Now towards the middle of the very bright starry night a great silence reigned. All eyes and ears were directed towards Me in the greatest anticipation; for everyone expected some teaching or some deed from Me. But I left them for a time in this anticipation which was so highly beneficial for their souls.

2 After a period of perhaps a good half hour I stood up quickly and said with a loud voice: "My children and friends and brothers! I see that you are all waiting in a very tense expectation to see whether I will do or say something. But truly I say to you that I have nothing further to say or to do this time among you; for after being among you for seven days, I have almost exhausted everything that is necessary for you for now in order to fully accept My kingdom into your hearts. But your great anticipation forces Me to say and do something else before you, although My fleshly limbs have also become a little tired. But what will the Love of loves not do?! And so lend an attentive ear, and open wide your eyes!

3 Tomorrow we will separate for a long time, and I will hardly visit this area again for a year or set My foot upon it; but since I have won such a great victory here and therefore have set up an enduring monument in this bath-house and in the new harbor which will not easily ever be totally destroyed - except at the time when the faith in Me will disappear and with it love also - I will also do something more. But certainly when faith and love are no more among the people, barbarian hordes will invade these lands and will destroy all monuments of this great age, which since Moses until Me, has poured forth upon this land.

4 It would certainly be easy to prevent that; but it will nonetheless not be avoided. This bath-house will certainly still exist and the harbor too and will not be destroyed at the time when Jerusalem will fall; but nonetheless it will hardly become five hundred years old. For I say to you, it will begin in Jerusalem; but the people will not heed the warning which will be given to Jerusalem, and will fall into all sorts of deceitfulness, worldliness, evil, pride, lies, selfishness, domineeringness, harlotry and adultery. Then a nation shall arise from the Far East and shall stream across this land like a big Egyptian locust plague and shall destroy everything: people, cattle and all cities, towns, villages and individual dwellings. And it will subjugate the nations of the earth far and wide in Asia, Africa and Europe until such time when a greater and more universal judgment will come over all the non believers.

5 However, all those who will remain with Me in faith and love shall be free from this judgment. For I shall gird Myself with the sword on their behalf and lead them into battle; and every enemy will have to flee before My sword. The sword will be called 'Immanuel' (the Lord God is with us), and it’s edge will be the truth and its great weight the Love out of God, the Father of His faithful children. Whoever wants to do battle, let him do it with the sharpness of truth out of God and with the weight of love out of the heart of the Father from eternity. Once he is equipped with this weapon, he will conquer every enemy of My name and, therefore, every enemy of life and truth."

- Chapter 108 -

The age of technology

1 (The Lord) "But in the end there will come a time when the people will achieve a great knowledge and skill in all things and will build all sorts of machines which will perform all human tasks just like living, thinking people and animals; but through this many people will become unemployed, and the stomachs of the poor, jobless people will go hungry. Then the misery of man will increase to an unbelievably high level.  Then people will be awakened by Me once again, and they will announce the truth of My name for more than two hundred years. Things will be well for those who then turn towards it, although their number will be only small!

2 However, once the number of the pure and good will have dwindled as in the time of Noah, the earth will again be visited with a general judgment in which neither people nor animals or plants will be spared. No longer will their lethal, fire-spitting weapons be of any use to the proud people, nor their fortifications and metal roads on which they will move along with the speed of an arrow. For an enemy from the air will arrive and destroy all those who have always done evil. This will truly be a time of shopkeepers and moneychangers.

3 What I did only recently in the temple at Jerusalem to the money-changers and pigeon-sellers, I shall do on a large scale all over the earth and destroy all the selling and money-changing stalls through the enemy whom I shall send to the earth from the vast expanses of the air like a flash of lightning and with a great thunderous noise. Truly, against that one all the armies of the earth will fight in vain. However, the great, invincible enemy will not harm My few friends but will spare them for a new plant nursery which will produce new and better people.

4 Do understand this well! But do by no means think that I want it thus and that therefore all this is predestined. Nothing could be further from Me and from you! Yet it will be as it was before the time of Noah. The people will keep putting their worldly knowledge and acquired skills to increasingly evil use and, of their own free will, bring upon themselves and, finally, upon the whole earth, all kinds of judgment out of the depths of My creation. But then I will say along with you, My noble Romans: VOLENTI NON FIT INIURIA!

5 Yes, the people shall act with measure and purpose, build their earthly lives in comfort and shall spare their hands from hard work, in order to gain all the more time for the development and ennoblement of their hearts and souls, and shall all immediately be full of joy in My name throughout all their lives; but among them there shall be no suffering or grieving people, except a willful sinner against every well-established order in My name!

6 But if along with the naturally increasing skill of the people their selfishness, greed and power grab also increase and thus the darkening of the human minds, then naturally bad consequences can also not be avoided! For if you quickly put one foot after the other again and again, the result of this fast procedure cannot be avoided. But whoever hesitates with his foot cannot complain if even a snail overtakes him. Falling from a great height obviously brings death to the body; but if someone knows this from experience and jumps nonetheless from a great height into the depths - what is that called?

7 Behold, that is blind wantonness, and the terrible consequence of this is not My will, but instead the unchanging law of My eternal order, which cannot be lifted either in a particular place or even less in general! Or do you think that I should therefore take the destructive heat from the fire so that an idiot who throws himself into the fire should suffer no harm?! Or should I take away from the water what makes it water and that a person can drown in it either through lack of care or by being pushed by someone or through own intent?!"

- Chapter 109 -

About the self-judgment of man

1 (The Lord) "Look at the mountains full of forests and shrubs. Behold, these absorb a suitable number of all the nature-spirits (electricity, magnetic fluid) compatible with them. Go and deforest all the mountains and you will soon become aware of the most dire consequences. Thereby great masses of free, very crude nature-spirits will begin to more and more fill the atmosphere above the whole earth. Since these do not find a suitable abode and sphere of activity, they will begin to cluster in great masses and, driven by their hunger and thirst (assimilative instinct), cause the worst, all-devastating storms and ruin entire countries to such an extent that in a hundred, often a thousand years nothing will be growing there but here and there a moss plant. Thus there are to this very day on the wide world places extending for many leagues which are as bare of vegetation as the desolate, barren limestone on the shores of the Dead Sea in Lower Palestine into which the river Jordan is flowing.

2 Well, is that perhaps My will? Oh no! Where people must have freedom of will and freedom of action so that they can become human beings also in spirit, I Myself do not interfere - no matter how foolishly they may act. All I do is allowing them to reach, unhindered, that which they have so eagerly striven for as if their life's happiness depended on it. It does not make any difference to Me whether the consequences are good or bad. What they create they get. Although I know what will happen afterwards, I can - and must - not intervene with My omnipotence; for if I do that, man ceases to be a man. He is then nothing else but an animated machine and can be of no value forever, either for himself or for Me. For he resembles a writer who is not capable of writing any syllable himself, but if he should write nonetheless, a scribe must guide his hand from A to Z; and if he has written an essay in this way, he nonetheless does not understand it. And even if he has written a hundred thousand letters in this way, he is nonetheless just as little a writer himself as the stylus with which he wrote. Just as little the man of this Earth would be a man if the free will was not left thoroughly untouched and likewise his acting.

3 The will can surely be directed through all sorts of doctrines and laws; but neither a doctrine nor any law can prevent the free will from carrying out what it wants to do. If the will of man wants to adopt a doctrine and a law as the guideline for his actions, he will in any case direct himself accordingly without any inner compulsion; but if he doesn't want this, no power of the world and the heavens can force him - and also should not! For, as I said: Without free will man is no longer a man, but instead purely an animated machine, like the machines that the people will invent with time, which will perform the same artificial tasks that now hardly any person is in a position to do. But such a machine will nonetheless not be a human being, neither according to the form nor even less to the inner freely-working reality; for it has no free will and can therefore never perform any independent action. Whatever the human will has laid in it, it will perform, and never anything else.

4 But man can, out of himself, do whatever he likes, and no-one can prevent him from doing it. Thus, man can do what he likes with the earth that carries and nourishes his body; and only the consequences will teach him whether his will was good or evil.

5 Therefore every human being has reason and as a consequence of that, intellect. He can become enlightened through doctrine, worldly laws and every kind of experience and then choose spontaneously what is good, right and true and determine his course of action accordingly. With all this he suffers no coercion, since he himself chooses freely what he has recognized as good, right and true.

6 But we can experience only too tangibly day by day from hundreds of cases that people nonetheless very often spurn all they have recognized as good, just and true mostly out of temporal interests, and act to the contrary. And from this proceeds the fact that the freedom of human will cannot be endangered or restricted by anything. And so it is very possible that as time goes by, people will be able to invent great things and also affect the nature of the Earth, so that in the end it will have to be quite considerably damaged. The consequences of this will certainly not be anything pleasant and will seem to be a certain punishment for the wrongly used will, but it is not wanted by Me at all, but instead brought forth through the will of man.

7 If the people want another Deluge, they only have to dig up the mountains and they will open the floodgates of the underground waters! If they want to see the whole Earth in flames, they only have to destroy all the forests, and the nature-spirits (electricity) will multiply so much that the Earth will suddenly be clothed in an ocean of fire and lightning! Would it then be Me who want to destroy the Earth through the fire?! Therefore teach the people to be wise, otherwise they themselves will bring the curse of judgment upon themselves! But I know that it will happen, and nonetheless I cannot and may not act against it through My omnipotence, but only through My teaching - do you understand that?"

- Chapter 110 -

The future affliction of the earth

The secure feeling of the children of God

1 Cyrenius says: "We would certainly have understood it; but this understanding has little of comfort for the people of this Earth! What use then is the best teaching, if the people can fall away from it again over  time and then contribute to the destruction of the whole Earth! Yes, if we had, as Your witnesses, at least a thousand years of life and our youngest disciples would then have just as long, that would be enough to keep the teaching pure; but if You Yourself firstly, according to Your rather clear warning, are leaving this Earth bodily and secondly the signs will become rarer - yes, then I do not know who will bear the blame for this if the Earth is totally and utterly destroyed through the pure foolishness of the people! What use is it if they survive a few thousand years from now on, but then nonetheless will obviously be annihilated?!"

2 I say: "Friend, in that time also you will not continue to live so grossly material as you live, think and speak now, but you will as a spirit, with your much brighter consciousness, stronger and more power, live on for ever and will be eye- and ear-witnesses of all that is and will be necessarily admitted by Me; but everything will be right, and you will be able to do a lot of things yourself to contribute to the chastisement of the people and will often be with Me and millions of other spirits, to give the earth a new institution and shape!  But I will then always give you patience and admonish you to love.

3 And when on the Earth things begin to become so crazily confused, you in My kingdom will have great joy and say: Well, finally the Lord is allowing the crying injustice of the people on the material Earth to feel His rod! Just think about it, that I have never let there be a lack of people filled with My Spirit, not even among the greatest heathens! Not even fifty years ever passed by - and once again men stood there who showed the people the right path! Now I have come Myself as a man onto this Earth which is appointed for a great destiny; after Me, men will immediately be sent to the children of the world until the end of the world and will constantly convert many to the true light.

4 Not a single iota will be lost of this teaching now given to you. Yet this will be of little importance to mankind in general which, as long as there is - and must be - matter, will be in constant conflict with the pure spiritual element. However, let nobody be in fear because of it; for there will always be many who are called, but only few elect among them.

5 Those who will follow the chosen ones, for them the Earth will always have a safe place; but those who are too deaf and blind in their hearts will be always sifted from time to time like the tares from the pure wheat.

6 The Earth will therefore exist as it existed after Noah, and will bear My brighter children. Only the too greatly prevalent filth will be removed from it and come to another institute of purification, of which there is truly no lack in My eternally great kingdom and also of which eternally there will never be a lack. But such beings will never be My children; because for that it is required to recognize Me correctly and love Me above all.

7 For now I am not speaking as the miracle physician Jesus of Nazareth, but instead as He who has been dwelling within Me from eternity - as the Father full of love and mercy I speak to you and as the only God who says: I am the Alpha and the Omega, the eternal beginning and the endless, eternal final destination of the whole infinity; there is no other God besides Me!"

- Chapter 111 -

The end of earthly matter

1 (The Lord) "Therefore I tell you all: Whoever will seek, find and recognize Me, and then love Me above all else, and his neighbor as himself with all patience and with all his strength, either here or at least then on the other side, will be My child, that is, My son and My daughter! But whoever will not seek Me, nor find or recognize Me, and therefore will not love Me and will also show a full lack of love towards his fellow man, will never achieve My childhood in all eternity! For My children must be perfect, just as I as their true Father Myself am perfect!

2 But the children of the world, who later are quite likely going to be purified, will remain inhabitants of those worlds and communities for which they are suitable and in which they will be purified. Yet they will never be free to enter the eternal Father's house in the centre of the innermost heaven as are My true children who, together with Me, will be judging the whole of infinity forevermore.

3 But this Earth will bear many people after the predicted last, great purification, just as it does now; but these future people will be very much better than the present ones and will at all times have My living word.

4 But when the Earth once, after a for you unthinkable number of years, will have released all its prisoners, it will be transformed in the sea of light of the sun into a spiritual Earth. For the lowest husk and shell which previously accommodated the living spirits and souls is like pumice; although it is no longer an actual life-element, it is still a heavy and broken organic matter harboring the lowest kind of judged spirits inside itself.

5 What is one supposed to do with the substrate, if all intelligent life has freed itself from it? Should it float around fully dead in the endless space as a definite burnt-out lump of pumice, devoid of all further purpose? Or should it or could it nonetheless be something in the spheres of the living and perfected spirits of the most varied types? Yes, it should be something; for nothing can exist anywhere in the endless space, which is also My kingdom and My eternal house, as fully dead and purposeless! But in order to speak of a purpose, one must indeed unmistakably speak of a spiritual one, lasting eternally, since there can never be a materially eternal purpose anywhere.

6 All matter, as something limited spatially and temporally, can only have a temporal purpose. But if such a thing has fully carried out it’s purpose in a certain period, and if a higher goal in life has been achieved with it as the means, and if it, the matter, as a former vessel, useful and suitable for a certain purpose, has become fragile, loose, full of holes and thereby fully useless for any further similar purpose - what else should happen then with the lump of pumice?

7 Look at a bucket by a well! What becomes of it after it has served for many years to draw water? Can it as fully fragile and punctured still be used to draw water? No; therefore it will be taken off and burnt and thereby will fully disintegrate into smoke, air and some ash, which however is likewise disintegrated with time by the humidity of the air into a simple form of air and only then can be serviceable in the disintegrated state of the air as a good basis for the real spiritual being. And even if it is no longer one and the same water pail, nonetheless a highly tender and subtle shell globe structure can be created from it, which can be a carrier of the living water from Me."

- Chapter 112 -

The future transformation of the material worlds into

spiritual children of God and creatures of God

1 (The Lord) "That which through men's reasoning happens - or is sure to happen - to the old water-bucket, will also happen in the distant future to the earth as well as to all other worlds, even the primordial central suns. They will become completely spiritual worlds carrying and harboring the blessed spirits.

2 But such worlds will then not only be inhabited externally, but instead much more internally in all their inner temples of life corresponding similarly to their previous organic, material forms.

3 Only then will humans as perfected spirits learn thoroughly about the inner nature of the worlds that once carried them; and there will be no end to their joy and wonderment over their exceedingly wonderful and complex inner organic structure from the smallest to the largest organs.

4 The small planets that have no light of their own, such as this earth, it’s moon, the so-called Venus, Mercury, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn, and still other similar planets belonging to this sun, including the many comets – which will later also become planets carrying human beings, partly through an actual union with a planet already carrying humans, and partly in their own right as matured planets - all these will disintegrate in the sun, after - by your concepts - eons of time.

5 The sun and it’s many companions will dissolve in it’s central sun. These central suns, which can be of an enormous age and for which one eon (decillion times decillion) of earth years is what for this earth is one year, will dissolve in the central suns of the sun-regions (galaxies), which suns, in their over-all proportions - to express it in the Arabic way - are, of course, million million [= trillion or 1012] times larger again. These sun-region central suns again will dissolve in the central suns of the super-sun-regions, which suns are again in the same proportion larger. These central suns of the super-sun-regions will finally be dissolved in the one primordial central sun whose physical dimensions, by your standards, are truly immeasurable.

6 But where, then, will these find their final disintegration? In the fire of My will, and out of this final disintegration, all the planets will then revert, though spiritually, to their previous order and service and then spiritually continue to exist in all their splendor and greatness and delight.

7 Of course, you must not imagine all this to happen tomorrow, or the day after tomorrow; but picture in your mind's eye all the grains of sand on the earth and imagine that each is one earth year, and the resulting years would hardly be sufficient to account for the duration of the material Earth. It is impossible to imagine the much longer existence of the sun and, much less, that of one of the central suns of the first order, the central suns of the second order, let alone the - for you immeasurable duration - of the central suns of the super-sun-regions, or even of a primordial central sun - and this all the less because the suns will keep bringing forth new worlds, the central suns new planetary suns and the primordial central suns whole legions of suns of every kind.

8 But despite such incalculable lengths of time for you of the great worlds, it’s time will one day nonetheless be over and then once again a period of creation will have taken it’s course and be completed. After that a new period of creation will begin in an endlessly remote region of space of creation. And you will be taking an active part in this, as well as in countless others following it - but only as My true children.

9 For whoever does not achieve the childhood of God on the path that is shown, will remain, live and act and walk on his spiritual earth as an indeed complete, sensible and ever-blessed creature and will even visit other neighboring spiritual worlds - yes, he will be able to travel across the whole surface of the globe! - but in all eternity he will go no further, and the need to achieve something higher in an active, living way will not burn in him.

10 But My children will always be with Me and will think, feel, want and act along with Me as if with one heart! That will be the endlessly great difference between My true children and the creatures blessed with common sense and understanding. Therefore make sure that you will one day be found to be suitable and worthy to be My children!"

- Chapter 113 -

The people of the star-worlds and being a child of God

1 (The Lord) "I tell you, there are countless shell globes in the - for you - unfathomable space. Every shell globe which, by your standards, is endless since it carries eon times eons of suns and solar universes, is certainly inhabited by countless numbers of human beings. These are either still in their physical body or are already purely spiritual and are, in their own way, usually endowed with a very bright reason and a subtly calculating intellect, often attaining an acuteness which would put you to shame.

2 Sometimes, these human beings have dream-like notions that somewhere there are children of the supreme, everlasting Spirit, and they quite often secretly wish to become My children at any price, but in most cases this is not possible at all. For everything must remain and exist in it’s own order, just as is the case with man; the various parts and organs of his knee-joint cannot be transformed into the precious eyes of his head, or the toes of his feet into ears. All parts of the body must remain what they are; and no matter how much the hands may wish also to see, it is of no avail, - soundly and happily they remain blind hands which, nevertheless, receive a more than adequate light through the precious eyes in the head.

3 There is thus no need for the earth to be a sun to light up its otherwise dark surface, for it does receive sufficient light from the one sun. All parts of man's body, including the eyes and the heart, must be nourished in their own way through the food he eats. But only the purest particles, namely, those which are most closely related to the light, are chosen as food for the eyes. The soul-particles most closely related to love and life assimilate with the vital substance of the heart, and the increasingly coarser particles are passed as suitable nourishment to the various constituent parts of the body. It would cause dire consequences for the eye if it were to be entered by particles only suitable as nourishment for a bone.

4 And so it would also be a very bad move in the general great order of Creation if I allowed the created human beings of other worlds to become the very closest children to My heart. Yes, now and then such an admission is possible; but then great purifications and far-reaching provisions and preparations are needed! Those who are most likely to become the recipients of such grace are either souls from this sun or the primary archangels, whose duty it is to rule over whole shell globes and guide and maintain them in the best order, under judgment. But no matter how immensely great they are in every respect, they must here be content to be small, just like I am, and humble themselves in all things.

5 Even from the central sun of this system, to which this sun also belongs, can souls be transferred onto this Earth to achieve My childhood, as well as from the central sun of our galaxy and that of our super galaxy. But only from the area of the same super galaxy to which this Earth belongs, can other souls come here - not so easily from the universal primordial central sun, because the souls of it’s necessarily gigantic human beings have far too much substance to be contained in the small body of a man of this Earth.

6 In some regions of that immense solar world, there are human beings who are so large that their head alone is at least a thousand times larger than this whole earth. However, the weakest among My children is, nevertheless, by virtue of My Spirit within the heart of it’s soul endlessly mightier than myriads of those gigantic people from the primordial central sun.

7 Therefore, bear in mind what it means to be a child of the Supreme God, and what an enormous, non judged and inviolable free-will-test is necessary so that the soul can unite with My Spirit within you - the only way in which you can fully become My children."

- Chapter 114 -

The great man of creation and the earth

1 (The Lord) "Certainly it can now be asked with good reason how then precisely this small Earth and its small people came to this honor and mercy, since in the endless space of creation there is an uncountable number of the greatest and most magnificent worlds of light, which would be much more suitable to bear God's children, to feed them and to equip them in the best way with everything that is demanded. The world-sized people of the primordial central sun would be more respectable as children of God than the worms of the dust of this small Earth! According to it’s outer appearance this question would certainly be nothing or at least not much to refute; but at the inner state of things of life it would even be a type of impossibility.

2 The organism of every human has it’s life-nerve close to the center of the heart, a tiny clump, from which all the rest of the bodily organism is animated. The parts of this little cardiac nerve have such a set-up to attract the life-ether from the blood and from the air that is breathed in, so that it firstly remains extremely active for life and then secondly communicates this life activity to the whole organism and thereby animates the whole body in the appropriate way.

3 If I would like to cut off your foot or your hand, you would continue to live, as you can see in many old soldiers, whose hands, feet, ears and noses were cut off in battle, and who nonetheless still continue to live, even only as a cripple; but the slightest injury to the heart, in which the small main nerve of life is situated, entails immediate physical death.

4 What applies to the arrangement within the human body and that of the warm-blooded animals applies likewise to the arrangement within the immense space of creation. Taken collectively, the innumerable shell globes represent a gigantic, by your standards infinitely great, man. Within this man, our own shell globe signifies the heart, and this very earth represents the exceedingly minute vital nerve of the whole great man, which is situated not in the centre, but more to the left side of the heart.

5 Indeed in the center of the heart there is also a very important nerve system, but it is not the main center of life. It is only a workshop for the intake and maintenance of the nourishment of life from the blood and from the air. From there only the main nerve of life takes it in and fructifies or blesses it, so that it is now a life-giving substance - that is, for the present natural life-span of the soul which could not come into any union at all with the organism of the body without this nerve.

6 Therefore, the vital nerve in question, situated somewhere in the left side of the heart, is a very unpretentious, minute wart, similar to the tiny sensory warts on the lower ball of either small toe. Covered only by the epidermis, these sensory warts are the main sensory conductors of the feet, - but who takes notice of them or knows that this is what they are?

7 If someone physically had the misfortune to lose the little toes of his feet, he would find it difficult to walk - much more difficult than if he had lost his big toes. Who can then stand up and ask: But why have You, oh Lord, laid then the highest efficacy on the smallest thing in Your immeasurable creation?

8 But then I would ask in return and say: Why is it that the foundation stone often is a thousand times smaller with you people than the whole house which has it’s main support on exactly that stone? Why are there then so many lies, but in the kingdom of truth there is actually only one basic truth? Why is the oak such a great tree, and the seed in it’s fruit, in which are contained countless many oaks of the most enormous size, is as small as a tiniest grain of sand?

9 My dear little children and now friends, there are many other things in the great creation whose purpose and composition might seem somewhat strange to you if you knew everything in creation. If I now wanted you to make you aware of only a few such eccentricities, you would put your hands above your head and say: No, Lord that cannot possibly be; for it contradicts too much the pure common sense to a certain degree! In short, you all cannot understand it now; and in order to list even a very small part of them, we would need more millennia than there is sand in the oceans!

10 But when you will receive My spirit, once I have gone home again, this will then lead you of itself in all truth and you will then no longer need to ask and say: Lord, why this, and why that? The blindfolding will be taken away from your eyes and you will then see in the brightest light what you now hardly imagine at all. Therefore be satisfied for the meantime with what you have now heard! This is only a seed laid in your heart, whose fruit you will harvest then as ripe when the sun of My spirit has risen in you.

11 Have you understood even a little of what I have just said to you? Be open in your heart and admit it; for from now on I will remain another seven full hours among you! Speak now and say where someone is still in the dark, and I will lead him to the light, if not into the fullest light of the spiritual life!"

- Chapter 115 -

Nature and content of a shell globe

1 Our Mathael finally says one more time: "Lord, those are truly like strong Scythian villages which exist almost as little as not at all, and what one just can not understand! You can certainly speak well of Your endlessly great creation; but we, who do not even really know how great our Earth is, and what form it has, cannot listen to what You have informed us so well or so understandably.

2 I indeed understood some things in my very vivid imagination, but only as if guessing at something great in a fleeting dream. Yet very many of my companions consider that to be a type of incomprehensible drivel, out of which no natural, no matter how healthy person can ever make head or tail of. For in order to be able to understand such things only a little more clearly, we must be very thoroughly familiar with counting and old Egyptian astronomy and be perfectly competent in their great counting system! But since we are lacking the scientific elements almost entirely, such present grandiose explanation of Yours cannot be clear to us in any case.

3 It is indeed true that You have really spoiled us a little earlier with glimpses of Your great creation; but at least for me there were still a few questions to ask. Now You have announced in more detail namely the material part of Your creation; but that is not of much particular use to us. For it is indeed clear and easy to accept that we cannot possibly fully understand such things, since we are lacking in all the basic elements of comprehension.

4 In order to understand all this only a little better, we would have to likewise have knowledge of one of the named shell globes and the various forms of the suns and central suns dominant in it. If that were the case, we could then imagine the whole countless many other shell globes and central sun systems, areas and space a little more clearly; but there is a snag even with the single shell globe, not to mention the many others, of which certainly each has quite a different set-up and a very different purpose.

5 How are things then actually with the planetary suns and further with the central suns of the solar system, the solar area, space and finally even the primordial central sun, of which the very famous Ptolemy and Julius Caesar, who was also somewhat of an astronomer, never dreamed?"

6 I say, "My dear Mathael, I notice that you are becoming a bit annoyed, partly because I have now shown you things that you either do not understand at all or understand very little, and partly at yourself, since you, who otherwise have a great erudition in very many things and various very respectable experiences and insight, cannot quite understand very well what I have now said. But look, all that is not quite right of you; for man does not become wise alone from what he hears and immediately fully understands, but instead mostly from what he hears and does not understand!

7 Whatever someone already understands, no-one will ever think over again or investigate it; for what one has already, one no longer seeks to gain or to achieve with effort and rests very comfortably on what one already has in hand. But whatever one has not found as yet - particularly if it is of great value - one certainly seeks with great zeal until one gets at least some of it.

8 You see, if I would want to make you lazy thinkers in the end, it would be an easy thing for Me to place a shell globe in the air before your eyes, and you would understand the whole system of a shell globe that we have just been speaking about as easily as that two staters and another two staters certainly make four staters! Since I want to keep you active in your thinking, I showed you something by way of explanation that will rouse you from your sleep."

9 But I have already told you something about this before, which you certainly have not understood very clearly for the very same reason, and so I could now say this to you without counting on the fact that you will fully understand it, but instead that you will think it over many times at good opportunities, particularly on clear starry nights.

10 But in order to make the thinking just a little easier, I will make you aware of similar events on this Earth. Look at your military institutes and you already more or less have the set-up of a shell globe with it’s central and original suns! There stands a leader of only ten to thirty soldiers - there stands another, even greater leader, who has more than ten leaders of the first order under his command. The first leader resembles a planetary sun, and the ten to thirty very common soldiers represent the planets which circle a sun. The second, higher leader of the ten above-mentioned crews resembles a first central sun of the solar area system around which a number of planetary suns move at varying distances with their often many planets. These planetary suns moving around a great central sun make up a sun region which you have to remember for now in order to be able to understand the following more clearly.

11 Now we will move on to an army leader of the third class! This once again has some ten leaders of the second class under him and has to direct them and as well to lead them. The commands of this third leader, whom we will name 'captain', are only given to the subordinated cohort leaders, and they then command the smaller crew leaders, and only they then command the individual soldiers. We have just spoken about one solar area, and it goes without saying, that there will be several other solar areas which in their turn must have a general, even greater leading body.

12 Let's call the military team under a captain a squadron and imagine now ten to twenty squadrons once again under a higher ruler, who for example is a colonel and usually has command over a legion which mostly consists of ten to twenty squadrons! Such a legion is then already a very considerable force and makes up a very powerful part of a whole army. We can now suitably compare a legion with a sun universe. But as several legions stand in their turn under the orders of a commander, so then the sun universes also stand under an even greater and more powerful central sun, which we, in order to distinguish between it and the previous ones, will call the 'central sun of the sun universes'.

13 But now all the many armies stand under a single monarch, and likewise the numerous sun universes under the general main central primary sun, which naturally must be of a most colossal size, in order to attract to it all the many sun universes as do the planetary suns their individual planets along with their moons, and to allow them to circle them in wide paths of distances immeasurable for you. Such a true sun monarchy I call with good reason a shell globe.

14 It is a globe due to its fully round form - but all the planets in it are shells (husks) because they all contain a judged spiritual life, and because in the end this carrier (globe) is itself a universal shell, since in it eons upon eons of suns appear to maintain a certain order as totally enclosed. Tell Me, Mathael, whether you have understood Me now more clearly than before!"

- Chapter 116 -

The imperfection of human insight

The consolation in divine love

1 Mathael says: "I thank You, oh Lord, for this additional explanation; for through it alone I have now received a more or less clear comprehension of a shell globe, and I am quite satisfied with it for now. As far as the countless other similar neighbors in the far space of creation are concerned, they now do not bother me in the least; for I have the opinion that a human spirit will have fully enough with himself for all eternity of eternities.

2 I will now consider only this small Earth of ours. How long would a person have to work in order to only travel it from point to point across the whole surface over land and water?! I hardly believe that one would manage it in five to six thousand years, in order to be able to say: ‘Now there is no longer any point on the whole wide Earth which my foot has not stood on!’ If one would calculate the time of serious investigation and at the same time took into account the hours of rest and pleasure necessarily entailed, which truly cannot be left out at the constantly highly edifying observance of Your great miracles, of the heavenly attractively beautiful areas and landscapes here and there, and since one would willingly spend years in a very charming area very often - yes, one would need several thousand years for this Earth alone!

3 But how long would one remain with this Earth alone, if it was possible for one to see all the countless many inner chambers of this Earth?! Oh, then an entire million of years would surely not be enough, particularly if one could set oneself in a place to observe in the inner great workshops of nature and it’s spirits, as they principally will exist to their whole development and then transform again into completely different things and forms!

4 Yes, if one took that also into account, then one would have to deal already alone with this Earth -counting in the Arabian way - much over a thousand million Earth years, naturally as a person limited through time and space in order to be able to then say with a clear conscience: The Earth is very best known to me now from point to point in it’s being and in all it’s most various ways from organ to organ!

5 After the Earth the moon would then have to be observed above all. This would once again take some hundred thousand Earth-years in order to become familiar with it totally. Only then the other and often very much greater planets would be in line to be examined and investigated, for which a person would not be able to finish, because they are quite foreign and certainly more miraculous planets than this Earth, due to their great wonder in the end before a huge number of millennia.

6 Only then one would deal with the great sun with all its countless and greatest wonderfully magnificent regions of light! I think that one would stay there then for an eternity and certainly receive again and again something new to see and to investigate. If one then accepts that its people are somewhat highly beautiful, wise and friendly people - yes, yes, then there would no longer be any talk of proceeding! The whole, great Arabic counting system would truly no longer have any numbers with which one could express the time that one would need for the investigation and testing of the great sun!

7 Well, then one would only be finished with a small planetary sun! Eons of eons of suns would still remain and among them also the extremely great central suns. Let us stop! Only to become fully familiar with this one shell globe we would need entire eternities! Who would like to and could think of the investigation of a second shell globe?! I have therefore more than enough for eternity with this one and leave the countless many others certainly very willingly to the other higher spirits to investigate! I at least am becoming dizzy when I think of just one!

8 Oh Lord, Your love is the greatest comfort for me, and I find my way in it; but the size of Your power and wisdom consumes me like the monstrous rage of a whale consumes the tiniest worm which was there and now is no longer! In Your greatness You, oh Lord, are a most terrifying sea of fire; but in Your love You are honey! Therefore I remain with Your love; the greatness of Your power and wisdom however is at least as good as non-existent for me. For I do not understand it and will never ever understand it; but I understand love, and it strengthens my heart quite blissfully and makes my life pleasant.

9 I now understand very many and great things; but who will understand them again after me?! But since I see that all these many great things that You, oh Lord, have explained to us must be fully incomprehensible for a thousand times a thousand and once again a thousand times a thousand people, I do not even have a right joy in it, that I now understand such extremely great things very well and have insight, but that I cannot make it understandable to anyone after me, because humanity in general stands at too low a level of spiritual development!

10 I am certainly guessing that it is not exactly impossible to make the people for the most part recognize You only by Your exterior manifestation that You are a God who has created everything and now maintains everything, and that they will then start to love, fear and worship You; but to make You more descriptive to their crippled concepts seems to me as good as purely impossible.

11 For wherever one wants to build something, one must indeed have some firm ground; for on a loose sandy ground or even on a swamp one cannot build a strong fortress. Therefore I will in future, both for me as well as for my people, only remain alone with love; whatever this will give me and disclose to me shall be taken in into the area of my wisdom forever! Am I not right?"

- Chapter 117 -

The realization of Jesus' divinity as a prerequisite to the true love of God

1 I say, "Certainly - for whoever is in My love is in everything that comes from Me! But from My love alone you will probably have difficulty recognizing Me of what I am! For look, you can love your wife very much and very powerfully as well and vice versa your wife can love you too; but for that neither you nor your wife will be a God!

2 If you only love Me as a pure, even if very good and rational person, and likewise I you, we can walk together for eons of years and you will just as little recognize and greet Me as a God as I you, who are certainly no God, but instead only a creature of God.

3 But if you want to recognize Me as what I am before you, I must let you recognize Me through word, speech and deed. But if you have truly recognized Me through this and learned to see through My power and wisdom that I am obviously more than a purely good and rational person, only then will your heart sink humbly into the dust before Me and then in such correct humility burn very actively in all love towards Me; and you will then truly and faithfully find the most living reason to love Me, your God and Creator, above all else. But what goes for you also goes for everybody else.

4 Whoever does not recognize Me as God cannot truly love Me as a God above all! But would you ever have been able to recognize Me as God if you had only ever observed purely human deeds and actions and speech from Me? Certainly not! And would your love for Me have become so powerful if you had not discovered something divine in Me?! But through the fact that I would have seized you simply with all love and affection as a bridegroom his bride, you would have not been able to learn that the Spirit of the very highest God lives and works in thought, word and deed in Me, but instead only My wisdom and My power have announced that to you, and therefore it is not quite right if you call My great wisdom and power a most frightening sea of fire and if you are of the opinion that people should never have anything to do with it. Quite the opposite!

5 The people should seek with all voracity My kingdom in everything and above all. And as they are on the way to becoming My children they should always begin to become more and more at home in their Father's great house in every sphere and relationship. Thereby they will then grow in true love full of humility, and they will thereby have an ever greater joy filled with all love in their Father, and the Father also in them.

6 If the people will do and live a true life in and through My wisdom, love and power, then they will also be totally what they should actually be. They will become as My children just as perfect as I Myself am perfect, and will then no longer see My divine wisdom, power and greatness as a terrifying sea of fire. I think that that will now also be clear to you!

7 Yet I also say to you all that for the meantime you should not teach the peoples everything that I have now shown you. Teach them to recognize God above all, to have a living trust in Him and to love Him above all else! Everything else the Spirit Itself will reveal to them as occasion demands."

- Chapter 118 -

Golden rules for the spreading of the gospel

1 (The Lord) "It is true humanity now lies buried in the deepest night and sleeps the sleep of the dead; all their knowledge is a vain dream, and no-one knows how to advise the other. There is truly a large number of teachers and leaders of all sorts - but of what use are they?! For they are all just as blind as their followers; if they come to a ditch, leader and followers fall in, and no-one finds the way out of the destructive ditch.

2 But that is not the reason why people do not like to entrust themselves to a right leader! What can be more desirable to a blind man than a seeing guide, and then all the more so if the guide can say to the blind man with a good and really true conscience: Friend, it is true that you are still blind; but if you follow me loyally and faithfully, you shall soon be able to see yourself! And if then the blind man sadly walks with the seeing guide and in a short time his eyes begin to perceive a not insignificant shimmer of daylight - how will his heart begin to swell up in all joy!

3 Oh, I tell you, it is not as difficult at all as you think to become a correct guide to a blind man who truly needs the light! This business only becomes difficult when the blind man who is to be led, is possessed by a madness which causes ghost light, so that he thinks himself to be a guide. Such blind people are our Pharisees and scribes; nor are the various priests of the heathens left out. But what can be done here? A short example should describe this relationship, and what is to be done, in more detail!

4 A general went into battle with his army against a very annoying, evil neighboring prince, who had equipped and strengthened his kingdom with many fortresses and strong castles very well and filled them all with warriors and all sorts of weapons of war. When the general began to near the borders of the enemy lands with his army, his subordinate commanders and leaders said to him: Lord, we will all achieve nothing or only very little there; for the enemy has fortified himself very thoroughly, armed to the teeth, and we will not achieve anything against him with all our great army and will be destroyed to the last man in his land! Therefore it would indeed be more sensible to completely give up this campaign and wait for a more opportune time!

5 At this, the great general answered: With him the time will never be more advantageous, and all the many warnings have always fallen on his deaf ears and on his heart. So it is necessary to show him with an armed hand that he is not alone the person who can take all the goods of the Earth into his own possession. He has indeed built a large number of fortresses and castles in his land and armed them to the teeth; yet they do not concern us at all! We will penetrate into the land where there are no fortresses or castles, turn his people who are highly unsatisfied with him with little effort to support us, give them light and wise laws, and he shall then see what use all his fortresses and castles are to him. But if he attacks us, we, who are armed in the best way from head to the little toe and know very well how to use a sword, lance, arrow or spear, will annihilate him down to the last warrior with our great superiority and through our courage and through our acknowledged great skill in using weapons!

6 When the subordinate commanders learned of such a wise plan of attack from their general, they did not only understand the very praise-worthy insight that things would certainly go the best for them, but instead also gained the courage for war and the full conviction of certain success of their war plan. They came to the border of their enemy's lands, where there were no fortresses or castles, and thus penetrated into the land without a blow of the sword. The people streamed out towards them en masse with white flags and greeted them as their saviors of their lives.

7 When the warriors of the tyrant saw this from their castles, how all the people constantly began more and more to gather around the foreign army, they began to consult very seriously about what was now to be done. The tyrant ordered them to sacrifice everything in order to drive the enemy out of the land; but his generals said to him: It is too late! What use are our fortresses and castles?! The enemy has taken over all the people and therefore already has an enormous power. Our battle against them would be like one man against a thousand. We have been totally vanquished, and our fortresses and castles are of no use to us any longer; for the strongest castle is the people, and this is in the hands of the enemy. Therefore there is nothing left for us to do than to surrender quite respectfully! The tyrant certainly wrinkled his nose horribly; but what could he do?! In the end he had to follow the advice of his generals.

8 You see, you all also do the same thing as clever spreaders of My religion! Let the temples stand and the many priests' houses; only concentrate on the people! Once they are on your side, which requires little effort, then the old idol-temples will soon lose all their attraction and collapse of their own accord. And their servants will cross over to you, by their own initiative and driven by need, and accept the new teaching and begin to act and work with it.

9 And you, Mathael, will also hopefully have become clever enough from this to be able to see that the spread of this teaching of Mine is not really as difficult if one only begin to spread it cleverly enough; but if one takes on the task somewhat ungracefully, then the effect will resemble the method! Have you, and all of you, understood and comprehended that now?"

- Chapter 119 -

The difference between a true and a false guide

1 Mathael says: "Yes, Lord and my God, now everything is very clear, as clear as it is that one must believe in a God before one can love him! But the faith must not be blind, but instead it must be full of light, that means that one must see who and what a God is. One must have a clear and sensible comprehension of His wisdom, power and greatness and endurance, in order to then be able to go over into full love for the accepted God.

2 This is certainly not easy for a person who has been captured by all sorts of mistakes through and through; but if one has a true light oneself, then one can also shed a true light soon on those in need of light. It is of course quite another thing to learn something from someone who understands this thing that he teaches in the very best way from the deepest foundation, than from someone who appears to be and has overheard some things about the issue, but in the end basically understands as teacher as little of the subject as his disciple.

3 The teacher with deep knowledge will make the subject easier to understand with little effort using all sorts of suitable and well-corresponding images and comparisons, while the pseudo-teacher, in order to appear all the more wise, only makes every effort to clothe the subject that is to be taught in such dark and mysterious phrases that the disciple is then a good ten times more confused after the lesson than he was before.

4 I imagine things like this: The true expert teacher meets his disciple like someone who, with a great, closed lantern in the darkest night, wants to proceed in the desert deliberately in a night in order not to have to suffer the great torture of heat in the day. The traveler then asks the leader immediately with the closed lantern: How will we manage in the desert without a light? Our camels and pack-horses will become perplexed in such darkness and will not be moved a step further!

5 But then the correct leader says: Do not worry about it! You see, there is a light in this lantern which is still closed, which, as soon as I open the door of the lantern, immediately will spread a rising sun over the whole desert! None of our beasts of burden will be perplexed!

6 And so the journey is begun with the best trust. At the beginning of the journey the leader opens up only a very small window of his miraculous lantern and immediately so much light comes out that already all the stumbling blocks could be avoided very well on the way. Then the traveler thinks: Yes, with such a light it is good to travel, and the desert will present us with no problems!

7 But how surprised will the traveler be when the guide opens all the little windows of the great lantern and a veritable sunlight spreads out in an instant over the whole desert, so that even the wild and vicious animals that wait here and there for a good prey properly flee and the peaceful birds of the sky wake up and begin to sing their cheerful little songs, as if in seriousness the sun itself had risen! That would be the light of the true guide!

8 But now comes the pseudo-guide with a true night-light in the hand and says to the one who want to travel: Come and let us move through the desert! The man wanting to travel says: Will we be able to make it in the pitch-dark night with this light of yours? And the guide speaks with a mystical pathos: Friend, indeed my little lamp seems to shine out only a very weak shimmer; but it is a magical light with which one can manage extremely well even in a much darker night!

9 The journey begins. The camels become all the more perplexed by the moment and do not want to go on; for with such enlightenment their eyes only become all the more hazy, so that they then cannot see anything more. They lie down and cannot be moved on at any price.

10 Then the traveler speaks: But I knew right from the start that it would not be possible to cross even the smallest desert with such a little light! What shall we do now? We are really on a miserable path now! The guide, who is secretly very puzzled, says once again very gravely: The animals are tired and have sensed wild beasts even at a great distance - and will go no further to our benefit! The traveler says: But what if the wild animals smell us out and pay us a much undesired visit in such a night? Then the secretly much more worried guide reassures the worried traveler: Oh in such a night we are safe from this; for it has never been experienced that ever a traveler in such a night was bothered by wild animals! Luckily, particularly at the beginning of the desert, no such animal comes into sight. And so guide and traveler wait for the coming of day and comfort one another until then as well as they can.

11 Likewise it seems to me is the spiritual leadership, which is undertaken by a pseudo-guide. In the desert and in the night of this earthly life, where teacher and student see nothing at the same time, even the teacher who appears to be wise comforts his student by saying that one day all the secret things will be revealed on the other side. But at the same time the 'wise' teacher fears the death of his body much more than his inexperienced student; for the student has at least a blind dream-like faith, while his wise-seeming teacher lost it a long time ago."

- Chapter 120 -

The future of the Lord's teaching and maintaining its purity

1 (Mathael) "I now believe with a firm conviction that we will not have to make too great an effort to spread this purely divine doctrine of Yours, and we rulers and earthly authorities certainly not; but there is quite another question which seems to me to be highly important, and that is how this religion can be maintained purely for humanity and without any additions or removals made by the people. For there are now many of us who have kept this new religion not only for us, but instead also for our very many brothers and sisters and seek to spread it with all enthusiasm! But already we will announce perhaps in some parts this truest and purest gospel in different ways to the people, which already lies in the nature of things.

2 For one will have to talk very differently to the Jews, differently to the Greeks and Romans and with the Persians, Indians, Egyptians and even with the Scythians, because each one is animated with quite different basic knowledge. Obviously all sorts of confusion will happen thereby and also all sorts of shades will appear. If then after a couple of centuries the people of the most different nations compare among one another the religion that they have received from us, which will obviously be recorded in writing by many - will they look similar at all?! Or will the Jews not soon say: We alone have the totally pure and true religion!? And the Greeks will reply: No, we have the only true religion, as it came from the mouth of the Lord! And will the Romans not claim the same thing, and again the Armenians too?! I would like to hope that they will not be too far from each other in the basics; but in particulars some powerful variants, rifts and folds will appear here and there due to the perfectly free will of the people!

3 If that were to be expected with some certainty, according to my freely non-authoritative opinion some precaution would have to be made, so that in the end this magnificent teaching will not become a complete chaos, of which no-one would be able to make out head nor tail. What is Your opinion, oh Lord?"

4 I say: "My dear friend, although your concern comes from your very honestly worried heart, I must nonetheless make the comment that this precaution is a little too early! You can accept in advance as quite certain that this teaching will not remain as pure as it has now come to you from My mouth among all the nations in later days.

5 Even very soon after us a large number of written gospels will come into being, of which each will claim to contain the pure truth and of which each will not resemble at all the next written gospel, claiming the same thing. Yes, something much more adverse will happen: The prince of lies who works against Me will also come and will even do great, although false signs! He will place the terrible seeds of all sorts of weeds in the field in which I have sown only the purest seeds, in order to strangle the noble wheat.

6 But all that will not make any entry into My true and purest teaching; for that word that has been spoken to you here by Me will not be passed on and discussed by you either, and you yourselves will not serve My words to the letter, which is also not necessary at all anymore. But the inner spirit will nonetheless remain.

7 Whoever will believe in Me and be baptized in My name in water and in the spirit will receive My Spirit as well and then walk in the light of the purest truth for all time and eternally. With this then also this teaching will be found again as if anew in all its purity. But whoever does not penetrate to such a mercy will in any case never see or understand the pure light of the eternal truth of My teachings and it will be all the same to him no matter what he stuffs his spiritual stomach full with.

8 Believe Me! And if someone possessed every word literally just as I have said it, but had not received the spirit for this, in order to then penetrate into the depths through it, where light, power and life walk in My words, My words would be of as little use to him as the long prayers of the Pharisees to anyone!

9 But if someone has absorbed the spirit of My words, he does not need the letter any longer. But whoever has the spirit, also has the pure teachings. But I will remain in the spirit with My ever only few, yet true believers until the end of time for this Earth. And so, friend Mathael, it has already been provided for that My teaching will be maintained ever very purely!"

- Chapter 121 -

Without being a doer of the Word – one is no knower of the Word!

1 (The Lord) "Whatever is necessary for the normal person to know and to believe is in any case recorded - look over there - at My bidding by My two scribes (Matthew and John. - J. Lorber). He who will accept it and act accordingly will press onward to receive My Spirit. Having that, he needs nothing further.

2 But if after what he has learned, he remains lukewarm and unwilling to act accordingly, he will indeed have the letter as it is recorded by My two scribes, and as it was recorded by Raphael for you and some others; but he will never reach the spirit that rests hidden deeply within the letter.

3 It will not benefit anyone merely to exclaim, full of faith: 'Lord, Lord!', for such followers will always stand before Me as beings who do not know Me and whom I do not recognize.

4 I tell you for all eternity as a truth from God: Unless a man becomes fully active according to My teaching, but instead is merely a hearer who occasionally admires and praises it, he will not receive My Spirit, and My whole teaching is of little or no benefit to him. For when he has shed his body and become a naked soul, he will know as little of Me and My teaching as if he had never heard a syllable about it on the earth, which is quite a natural phenomenon.

5 If, for example, someone has heard even many things spoken about the great imperial city of Rome, also knows the way there and also has the means and the opportunity to travel there in order to see the great city at leisure and to get to know everything in it - yes, he is even often encouraged to undertake such a journey many times by his friends who have already been in Rome! Alone, he firstly never has the right time to do it, then he is too lazy and shies away from the possible difficulties of the journey that could occur and in the end he says: Ah, why should I go to Rome then? My friends have in any case already described this great city to me in such detail that I can see it already in my imagination as well as if I had already been in Rome myself many times!

6 Our man imagines this very well. But if we allow him today to present a very faithful picture of the city of Rome however without a title of what it is and represents - and our man who pretends to know the city of Rome entirely will look at the image just as an ox looks at a very new unfamiliar gate! And if we let him guess for years, he will nonetheless never be able to say with full and convincing certainty that this is a well-done image of the city of Rome!

7 But I say in addition: Let us allow this person to really come to Rome quite accidentally "but alone, and so that no-one in Rome would actually tell him that he was in Rome, but instead in another very different city - in the end he would believe it himself and thereby not see the whole forest for the trees!

8 Accordingly it is not necessary at all that the person creates some knowledge of anything through hearsay or through reading of all sorts of descriptions. All this knowledge remains mute and without any value for life, if it is not brought into some connection with the life of the soul through some activity.

9 If that person, if he has heard very many strange things about the city of Rome, then sets out on his journey and then also really travels there and has a look at everything there, he will then have the full truth most deeply stamped into his soul and will never be able to imagine Rome in any other way than how he saw this city himself.

10 But if he had never seen Rome himself, his imagination of the form of the city of Rome would also have differed in the greatest way in it’s new and changed account; one fantastical image would have replaced the other, and that would continue until he in the end would no longer be in a position to imagine any even somewhat durable idea of the city.

11 But once he has, as we said, seen Rome himself, hundreds of gossipers may come to him and make very new and strange descriptions of the form of the city of Rome, and he will only laugh at them and only become annoyed at times at the presumptuousness some dawdlers and idle strollers who want to gain some fame, and would most gleefully show them the door; for in him now lives the true image of Rome in actuality and cannot be replaced by any other, simply created imagination.

12 But how can this be possible now? Because through his effort and work he has filled his living soul and not only simply his brain with the full truth! He has accordingly accepted the true spirit of things into his soul; the faithful image now lives in him and cannot be killed or destroyed any longer by any false image, because it has become a true image of life.

13 But like this parable very clearly shows the difference between the deceptive appearance and the full truth in every aspect and respect, from which everyone can also see very easily and thoroughly that even a very correct description of Rome nonetheless leaves the actual conviction far behind because the image called forth through this is still only an imagined one and can be very easily driven out by another, differently justified one, because it has not become any living image in the soul - likewise and exactly so are things with My teaching."

- Chapter 122 -

The importance of Christianity in action

1 (The Lord) "You may record for all time of time word by word with iron symbols so that no iota is lost, and you can also preach it and read it out to all peoples, and all peoples should call out at the top of their voices: Ah, look there, that is a very superb lesson and is worthy of God's mouth!, but if nonetheless no-one will put their hand into action and become active fully according to their principles and demands - then is this so purely preserved religion of Mine of any use to anyone? I tell you: it is of no use at all! Or what use is some medicine to someone who is sick if he does not take it and use it according to the directions of the well-experienced doctor?!

2 (The Lord): "But someone who, knowing only little of My teaching, immediately acts accordingly will obviously derive a greater and more vital benefit from it than the other who, while talking reverently of Me and My teaching, can never decide to act accordingly. The former will act according to what little he has heard and thereby enliven it in his soul, and the little grain of seed will soon be followed by a great harvest out of the living spirit, which no evil power will be able to destroy. However, the latter who praises and faithfully preserves My teaching will, plagued by spiritual hunger, occupy himself also with every other teaching; but in spite of this, he will die of spiritual hunger. Will his soul recognize Me in the beyond if here it has not adopted the true spirit of My words in the fullness of truth by its actions?

3 Presuming all a person knew of My teaching were that he should love God above all and his fellowman as himself, and he thought quite seriously by himself: 'Look, this is a good precept: There must exist a supreme Deity Who, to judge by all that It has created, lives and moves as very good and exceedingly wise. It therefore behooves us to respect, esteem, and honor and love this exceedingly good, wise and almighty Being more than anything else in the world. My fellowman is a man just as I am and was put into the world with the same rights by the Creator. Therefore, he must not be disparaged - on the contrary, reason tells me to do for him what I do for myself because by disparaging him I disparage also myself, for I am also only a man. I recognize this as a highest principle of life which, for the time being, I intend to apply with all strictness to myself.'

4 This the man puts into action. Moreover, he tries to influence those around him, partly through his own example and partly through his very simple and unpretentious precept, thus turning his household into a good example of true and devout human beings. And what, briefly, is the result of this most laudable attitude? The people live in peace. No one tries to assume superiority over another. The wise endeavors with earnest patience and love to elevate the unwise to his own level; and he draws his attention to all the wonders in creation known to him and is happy when he has been able to give strength to the weaker person.

5 But because such a thing actually happens in reality, it is absorbed into the life of the soul. Thereby the soul obviously becomes more and more active and gains in vitality."

- Chapter 123 -

Wisdom as the effect of practiced love

1 (The Lord:) "The more activity there is in the soul, the lighter it becomes within it; for fire is the primary element of the life of the soul. The mightier this element sets to work, the more light it spreads in and out of itself. Therefore, the more fire there is in the life of the soul, the more life-light it develops. With this inner life-light, the soul then begins more and more to penetrate and understand the innermost secrets of life.

2 This deeper insight and understanding lend new courage to the soul so that it will love and adore God even more, and this love is already the first spark of the Divine Spirit within the soul. It grows and increases mightily, and soon the soul unites completely with the Spirit of God and is then led through the Spirit of God into all truth and wisdom.

3 Let us presume a man had attained to all this wisdom in the way I have been preaching and demonstrating to you continually for days. Tell Me, was this because that man had received all the words I had spoken to you exactly and unchanged to the jot? Oh no! He had learned of nothing else but the two commandments of love; only the exact, painstaking, actual compliance with it gave him everything else.

4 There are some among you who, although I have demonstrated the matter very clearly, are asking in their mind: `Well, how can the soul attain to such wisdom by complying with the two commandments?' And I tell you: Because the soul has been so organized from the beginning!

5 How does a grape ripen and become full of sweetness and spirit - seeing that it is only a simple, natural plant? This is accomplished by the light and the warmth of the sun. Through the light and through the warmth the nature spirits in the vine become increasingly more active. As they become more and more active and there is more friction between them, they become increasingly more fiery and shining in themselves. And this constant increase in their brightness and luminescence brings about an obvious increase in their mutual specific intelligence; the brighter their intelligence becomes, the more they recognize each other as belonging to one and the same order and, seizing each other, begin to organize themselves and unite. Once this has been fully accomplished, the grape has become ripe and edible.

6 Once the juice has been gathered and well stored in a recipient, it’s well-ordered natural spirits now will no longer tolerate any foreign element which contains in itself natural spirits of a very different order, which would disturb the accepted good order of the settled natural spirits of the grape juice. As soon as something foreign which belongs to another order enters the young wine, it brews and ferments until the foreign body has been thrown out or has fully been assimilated into it’s order. Once that has happened, only then the inner light and the inner warmth of the spirit awakes from the good order of all the natural spirits of the grape juice which has become pure, and through the previously yet very impure young wine, a spiritually stronger and purer wine has matured.

7 So all this is an effect of the sun, that is, its light and its warmth. And likewise it is the same with a person and his soul! If he can put his soul into an ever greater activity through the observance of a law of the highest divine order, it will become brighter and warmer in all the areas of his life. It will then recognize itself ever brighter and more purely and likewise the divine power that flows into it ever more and more and also pulls it into an ever higher life.

8 But if it recognizes this power, it also recognizes God, from whom this power comes. But if it must necessarily recognize this, it must also love God ever more and more. With this love it then expels everything that is foreign out of it’s ever purer and more perfect order of life and becomes ever more one with the order of the Divine Spirit in it; as this is certainly so, it is a foregone conclusion that a soul thus permeated by the Divine Spirit must gain in strength and power and infallibly become a true child of the Most High.

9 When such a soul then finally leaves the body and reaches the great Beyond endowed with the most perfected consciousness, it will certainly also immediately recognize God, since it has already become fully one with Him here and brought Him to the fullest and clearest consciousness in itself, and this is for the tangible reason that the eternally certainly very clearest consciousness of the Spirit of God has become in a certain way the brightest and most united consciousness of the soul."

- Chapter 124 -

Knowing it all without implementing it in life

1 (The Lord) "But if that is all so and cannot ever be otherwise, how petty your concerns seem about keeping pure a word that has been given to you! Only very little of that is necessary for a person, only a smallest mustard grain; if he plants it in the earth of life of his heart and then takes care of it arduously and actively, a tree will grow from it, under whose branches even the birds of the sky will make their home.

2 Have the Pharisees not kept the books of Moses and the Prophets in their purity to a jot?! But what use is this to them? They are still ravening wolves walking about in sheep's clothing and seeking to ravage the peaceful pastures of the lambs.

3 I tell you all: Everything external, even if pure in itself, kills; only the spirit is alive and quickens everything it permeates. You will therefore summarize My teaching very briefly and easily, in as far as it is necessary for mankind. Whoever will act accordingly will, proportionately to his activity, awaken the spirit out of God within him. This will enliven the soul in the light and fire of all truth, and the soul will be guided into all truth and wisdom out of God and will clearly, in and by itself, experience what I have shown you, and inexpressibly more.

4 Just consider now that I wanted to most wonderfully reveal My whole creation very analytically from the greatest thing to the smallest, so that I would call many thousands of My angels and order them to write down everything in the way that is possible for them, at lightning speed! Firstly we would need so much of the white parchment that truly there would not be enough space on the whole planet; but secondly, if all the endlessly many skins had been covered in tiny writing, tell Me, how far would you come with reading all these scripts to the end! I now hope that you are beginning to see your foolishness a little!

5 Go to Memphis, to Thebes, to Karnak and to Alexandria! Everywhere you will find libraries, all the most genuine and correct; but I guarantee you that nobody is capable of reading everything through even in five hundred years! You would truly need the age of Methuselah in order to scan all the scriptures and signs just once! And what is the benefit after making such most amazing effort? You would finally quite purely forget what had been read from day to day, yes, in the end, if you were really confused, from hour to hour and from minute to minute and not gain the smallest advantage for his life.

6 Now do you remember what sort of very different path I want to show you with this teaching of Mine, so that in the shortest time, if one only truly wants it, one can reach all wisdom of heaven?!

7 I am this way, and the truth and the life. Whoever has truly accepted Me into his soul with love, but not only simply in faith according to the words he has heard, but instead perfectly in activity, to him I will always come in spirit and will reveal Myself to him and will illuminate him like a bright rising sun illuminates the previously dark fields of the Earth.

8 With one inner spiritual glance he will grasp in its depth more than he could have done through reading in a million years, provided a man could live that long.

9 You yourselves have now heard and seen some things for several days, which I have performed constantly teaching and acting among you, whereby your souls were awakened, and in your hearts love, faith and full trust have entered; however, if you were to leave it at that, your souls would truly gain very little and your cognition and knowledge would remain at their present level.

10 You must from now on become independent according to My teaching, then your soul will become more alive and full of light. Only then will My Spirit take up residence in your souls and will lead you into all wisdom.

11 The new school of true life also consists of this and the only true recognition of God and of oneself, and therefore My teaching is called a true gospel, because it teaches man to go on the only correct and true path to achieving true, eternal life and to achieve the only true love and wisdom from God.

12 The precepts are indeed few and, written in a book, can be read in a few hours by anyone who can read. However, the most eager reading alone will benefit a person only insofar as he will have acquainted himself with the external aspect of My teaching - which, of course, must be done first of all.

13 For this action is like the necessary first step on a journey; for if I should travel from here to Damascus, but never take the first step, then it goes without saying that I cannot take the second step and the many future ones even less so, which should bring Me to Damascus. But if I take the first step even very firmly and then the second, third and fourth, that is no use to Me at all if I then stop and find it too much effort to continue the steps until I have reached Damascus.

14 I have now shown you all very most clearly what you have to do, in order to truly reach eternal life and all it’s righteousness. Therefore act accordingly and My promise will come to fulfillment in you all; for of all the things revealed to you so far, what I have just now told and revealed to you is indeed the greatest and is of the highest importance for your life."

15 I have shown you and revealed to you very many miracles of My creation, and you have learned extremely much from Me; but you now know only that which you have heard and what you have seen. Nevertheless you do not know anything further. But with the present revelation I have shown you very exactly and tangibly clearly what you and everyone have to do in order to reach the unlimited self-view of all the miracles of the endless great creation of God, which then cannot pass away, but will last for eternity."

- Chapter 125 -

The need for introspection

1 (The Lord) "So then do act accordingly; make every effort and check everything to see whether you have forgotten something, so that in the end you will not have to say: Look here, I have now done everything for a full ten or twenty years that the new teaching directed me to do, yet I am still in the same spot and feel within me no special enlightenment or a so-called eternal life! What is still lacking?

2 That is why I tell you: Check very carefully to see whether some strong thoughts of worldly advantage have not assailed your heart, whether temporal arrogance, a certain too extreme thriftiness - a younger sister of avarice - ambition, sense of judgment, bossiness, salaciousness and the like have not captured your heart and thereby also your soul! As long as that is the case for one or another, he will not attain to the promise, that is, to its complete fulfillment for him.

3 Look at the cider and the pure wine in a keg or a skin, full of spirit. As long as the cider contains coarse and foreign particles, it will ferment and not achieve any purity; but as soon as these are eliminated, it becomes more and more quiet in the keg and the cider clears and becomes pure wine, full of spirit.

4 Many a person is not far from attaining to the Kingdom of God within his soul, yet if he does not examine himself to see whether something material still clings to his soul, he will not succeed. On closer self-searching he may find that he is still very touchy and easily hurt by something trifle.

5 Someone says: 'Well, is a man not meant to have a sense of honor at all?' Oh yes, say I, man can indeed have a sense of honor, but it must be of the noblest kind. If a man who is still weak in his spirit offends you, do not be angry but go and tell him: 'Friend, there is nothing with which you can offend me, for I love you and all people. I bless those who curse me, and to those who do evil to me I do good to the best of my ability. But it is not decent for one man to offend another; therefore, leave that be in future for the sake of your own salvation. With your increasing tendency to offend, you could one day run into one who would really take offense and cause you great trouble; for that you would then only have to blame yourself.'

6 If you speak thus with someone who has offended you, without the least grudge in your hearts, you have then completely justified the noble and divine sense of honor in your heart. But if you do not notice even a tiny type of small grudge in yourself and are bitter and unfriendly to people, that is another consequence of a small arrogance hidden in your soul, which alone is sufficient enough to prevent the union of your souls with My spirit of light in you.

7 Or the same poor man several times demands considerable alms from you. You have it indeed, and could give the poor man a thousand times over what you have already given him; but his particular brazenness embitters you and you show him the door and tell him not to accost you so often expecting alms whenever he asks for it

8 Well, look, that is indeed a very reasonable speech for a man of the world, and such a small reprimand does the beggar some good; but he who meets the poor in this way is nowhere near mature enough to enter My kingdom, where I allow My sun to rise and set every day on good and evil people and for the good of all creatures.

9 The same beam that illuminates the golden palace of the kings and purifies, matures and greatly sweetens the noblest of all juices in the vine, also shines on puddles and cloacae and is not annoyed by the croaking of frogs and the chirping of the grasshoppers. Such restraint reveals some stinginess. Such stinginess and great restraint are not far removed from avarice and cloud the living cider of the soul. As long as this continues to happen, the soul is not turned into a pure wine of life, full of spirit.

10 But he who has the means and enjoys giving, not reproaching the poor because he has several times given him a small handout, is in this respect well able to enter My Kingdom, provided he is not aware of some other minor fault within his soul.

11 Therefore, I tell you: Do always examine yourselves carefully in everything and advance to that level of life on which you will clearly and actively become aware that you are rid of all worldly dross."

- Chapter 126 -

Brotherly love as a regulator of thrift

1 (The Lord) Yes, another of you says secretly, it would all be fine with the self-examination; but from where can we get the ever correct measure of pure feeling and knowledge? The person grows from the cradle into the traditional feelings and finds all actions right which are in harmony with such feelings; yes, if he acted against them he would think to have committed a sin.

2 Let us assume a people consider thrift to be a recommended and praised main custom which says: Whoever saves in youth and maturity, must not suffer want in old age, and whoever does not work or save shall also not eat!

3 My dear friends! These basic principles, praiseworthy in themselves, are very well known to Me. They can and should exist and be maintained wherever a nation lives in communities, but only ever in the noblest sense. But in order for it to exist among human society only in such a sense and never be downplayed or exaggerated, a durable and very reliable regulator must be placed at their side. But what is to be the regulator? Nothing and none other than alone the true and pure neighborly love, whose wise first principle must be to do, from the heart, to the fellowman all that one would reasonably and wisely wish the other to do to oneself.

4 Whoever considers this principle will soon become aware that this principle like no other will encourage all other people to a certain industriousness and also to the true and noble thrift; for if it is unpleasant for me that another one is lazy alongside my activity, I should not be lazy by his side!

5 If everyone does this out of true, noble neighborly love, there will soon be very few in a community whom one can call 'poor'. Apart from the lame, the infirm, the blind, the deaf and leprous, there will be few others who will be a burden to a community; but these should indeed then be cared for courteously with the friendliest heart.

6 Then a community will have one or even several teachers who do not have time to earn their living with the work of their hands. These should then be cared for by the community, so that they will not need to spend their time determined for the teaching of your children and yourselves with work in the fields! That is also an act of particular love for one's neighbor, which is high on the list. For he who provides you most actively with spiritual and thereby the truest treasures of life, you should not allow him to suffer want in his physical sphere.

7 But whoever has such grace from Me and has been called to be a teacher of the people in My name, should consider that he has received grace from Me for free and therefore should not allow himself to be paid a reward for spreading it to others! A genuine teacher will pass on what he has received for free from Me also free of charge. But those who it was shared with should then out of true love for Me indeed take the teacher that I have sent to them with all love of their own initiative and not allow him to be in need in any way; for it goes of course without saying that what they do to a messenger from Me will be seen as if they had done it onto Me Myself!

8 But what they do, they should always do with great joy, so that the heart of the teacher will not become sad about the hardness of the hearts of the community members, and he should see with a joyful heart how My word from his mouth immediately begins to bear the noblest fruit of the true, inner life.

9 You now see that the true, noble and - let's say - sensible love for one's neighbor is the very most reliable goal to keep in sight for this earthly life, in order to investigate whether and how pure it is in the soul. Therefore use it above all, and you will soon reap the most blessed fruits for the barns of eternal life in the light of My Spirit within you! What do you think now, Mathael, as regards the pure maintenance of this teaching of Mine that you have now received? Is it to be kept pure by all people until the end of time, or not?"

10 Mathael says: quite moved by the truth of My words: "Lord, just a short rest and I will thank You also with my tongue for this too greatly important revelation and guide to all of my thoughts! Yes, this praise must be spoken out loud! But now my heart is still too moved and contrite, therefore just allow my soul a little rest, oh Lord, You eternally most wise!"

- Chapter 127 -

Love as the truest praise of God

The Lord's parables of the earth and of cultivation

1 After a while our Mathael had gathered himself again and wanted to begin to declare to Me a very great dithyrambic praise.

2 But I said to him: "Friend, what you want to say here openly I have known for a long time from Alpha to Omega; therefore, you may well leave that be!  I am not in favor of such profuse eulogies. The eulogy most pleasing to Me is that you love Me truly in the living depth of your heart.

3 Once you are with your people, you can praise Me in great exaltation and I shall reward you with many gifts of grace for the heart, the soul and the spirit. But this is unnecessary here before Me, all the more so because all those present recognize Me, too, and, like you, do honor to Me.

4 Believe Me: Since Noah nothing greater, more exalted and more worthy of God has been written and sung on earth than David's Psalms and the Song of Solomon. But this did not make David and Solomon dearer to Me. In the end, Solomon even lost My grace completely through his own fault, and it was not the Psalms that made David the man after God's heart but the fact that he recognized My will and of himself acted accordingly. But because he did that, his psalms also received a value before Me. So you see what it is that alone has value before Me. Do it, and you will honor and please Me most and your soul will truly benefit.

5 But now My Roklus must come over here, for I see that he still has something on his heart and would like a closer explanation of it, which I will also give him. Roklus, come closer to Me, for I have some things to discuss with you!"

6 When Roklus heard this call, he hurried quickly to Me and said: "Lord and Master, here stands before You Your last and most useless servant at Your service! Command, oh Lord, and I will immediately act accordingly most exactly! For I have heard Your previous words most exactly, I have checked them in the fire of life in my heart and found in them everything true to nature that You, oh Lord, have taught and most faithfully and clearly shown. Knowledge and realization must certainly be the first thing - but then immediately comes action; for all knowledge and realization has no value at all without action! I am now so completely convinced of this that all the wise men of the whole Earth could not bring me even a hair's breadth closer to another opinion. Therefore simply command, oh Lord, and I will hurry to put my hands to work!"

7 "Yes, yes," I say: "Indeed we have a great task before us, and there are yet few workers! The harvest could be great, the seeds have become ripe; but there are only few reapers and harvesters. Therefore it is high time to put hands to work, so that the wheat will be brought into My barns, before the storms come and beat down and destroy the noble seeds of life and the birds then come and satisfy their ravenousness with them.

8 Truly some cedars still stand in Lebanon, under whose branches Samuel once prayed. In those days these trees were still saplings full of power and luxuriance, and the raging storms tried in vain to cool their fury on them. Yet old age makes the sinews of his bleached life fragile and decayed! Therefore the old cedars of Lebanon indeed still have some power here and there in their branches and mock some storms with their healthy limbs; but more than two thirds of the branches have already fallen off, and those that still exist - hardly a third - are only half healthy and offer only the apes a needed shelter and a weak protection from the storms that are indigenous to Lebanon. Now you have an over-ripe seed to harvest and as an insightful forester, Lebanon to be replanted anew with young cedars; but how can it be organized so as to be ready for the time of the great tempests? Do you understand Me well, My friend?"

9 Roklus opens his eyes wide and says: "Lord, I have well understood that You this time have spoken purely in the Greek manner; but not a syllable of the actual meaning of Your words! Where then, oh Lord, do You have a field on Earth which is now full of ripe and harvestable wheat? Tell me where it is and tomorrow already a thousand reapers and harvesters will very most actively cavort around to that place, and the coming storms will then have to rage over the dry stubble!

10 But what business of ours now is Lebanon, already very poor in cedars? Those who possess it should see how it should be reforested and the many apes can then jump around happily on the thick and still very strong branches and twigs of the old cedars of protection and seed of Samuel, David and Solomon! I think that it would be much better to busy ourselves with the true culture of man as far as possible and leave Lebanon in peace. In any case, I will take upon myself the field owned or just leased by You somewhere near Nazareth and tomorrow evening there will be no stalk standing any longer to be vulnerable to a coming storm on the open field! Therefore just command, oh Lord, and in a few hours I will immediately and easily put six thousand hands into action."

- Chapter 128 -

The spiritual meaning of the two parables

1 I say, "My friend, look, the birds have their nests and the foxes have their holes; but I, the son of man, do not even have a stone on this Earth on which I could lay My head by world law - not to mention an earthly field sown with wheat which would need a reaper!

2 The 'field' that I mean is this world, and the ripe 'wheat' on it are the people, and the 'reapers' should be those that I call My disciples. They should go out into all the world and convert the people and bring everyone to the right path who walk along side roads and false tracks and who seek a safe asylum with thrice bound eyes, but cannot find one.

3 They are 'ripe' because in them the pursuit of a higher goal has become awake and living. Everyone seeks the living rest, crowned with all blessing - but on misleading paths - and reach thereby despite their seeking nothing in the end but the death of the body; beyond that there is only the deepest night for everyone.

4 As long as man does not feel such a need in himself, but instead continues to live quite like an animal unconcerned by his sphere of life, whatever it may become, and eats like a polyp on the bottom of the sea, there is no maturity yet for a higher revelation; but people, as there are now very many, even among the heathens, on almost a third of the inhabited Earth, who seek all sorts of things, avidly long also for the possession of a dreamed-up bliss, often buried in all sorts of passion, are ripe 'seed' for a higher vision, for the truth - that is, for My kingdom - and many reapers are needed, teachers from My school, equipped with all love, patience, meekness, wisdom and power.

5 And behold, there are now only few of these; apart from you there are no others, except for the Moors who were here and have fetched the necessary light for their tribe and will also do good works with it in their country! Therefore you few should from now on not fold your arms, but instead work without rest or relaxation, so that the number of reapers of My seed on the great field of life will ever grow more! That is what I wanted to say to you when I spoke of My field, of the ripe fruit and of the too small number of reapers for it.

6 But as far as the old 'Lebanon' with its cedars is concerned, it represents the scriptures of Moses until these days. It still exists, but its images have become old and decayed like the previously so magnificent cedars, from which the old temple in Jerusalem was made, at least on the inside, and from whose wood the wonderful Ark of the Covenant was made much earlier.

7 The 'cedars' represent the words and the laws in the Scriptures. Once, when the cedars in Lebanon were still young and strong, they were of great use to the people, and a judge called Samuel was truly able to pray under their branches. But the earthly profit-seeking people almost entirely deforested beautiful Lebanon, and only too soon in the place of the old and fully healthy cedars grew all sorts of wild shrubs, and even the old, remaining cedars with their many brittle branches now only serve the monkeys rather than the people as protection and profit - but that naturally just accidentally; for the monkeys cannot recognize the value of a cedar and neither treasure nor put them to good use.

8 And this is what is happening to the ancient Scriptures and the Prophets. One venerates the old book on an altar and prays hair-raisingly foolishly and blindly to it like a divinity and is not concerned at all about the content, and even less and even rarer about acting accordingly. There such a person (a Pharisee) totally resembles the monkey, who jumps around quite cheerfully on the thickest branches and he who wants to drive it away, it beats fiercely and wants to force it to flee. For the monkey always remains a monkey and uses the precious tree for a purpose other than that ordained by nature.

9 And thus the Scriptures are no longer anything more to the people than a fragile cedar to the monkeys, and the whole of Lebanon is now wildly overgrown with all sorts of wild and often poisonous shrubs. These resemble the destructive and extremely bad human statutes, which have taken the place of the Commandments of God, and further resemble the fine and tasteful varnished graves of the Prophets, which are inwardly full of death, decay and nauseous smells, while the living word of the Prophets recorded in books remains unobserved in the sphere in which it should really be observed. It is worshipped as a sanctuary and the hands of those who touch the book of the Prophets unworthily are rubbed raw; but that the word of the prophets is taken to heart and then acted upon - oh, there is no trace of that to be perceived anywhere! What are the so-called Holy Scriptures then? Nothing but Lebanon, overgrown with wild shrubs, now a home to the monkeys and no longer for people enthusiastic for God!

10 In time the teaching that I now give may well suffer the same fate. Men will idolize and worship it as a holy relic and lightheartedly and superficially forget the inner meaning and spirit of this My teaching. They will obey the laws of men and say: `What else do we need?'

11 But then that great distress will come, which the prophet Daniel predicted when he stood on the holy place, saying: But in those days there will be great distress among the people, such as has not been since the very beginning of the world! I now think that you will understand My previous two images very well!"

- Chapter 129 -

The spiritual maturity of the reapers of the Lord

1 Says Roklus: "Yes, Lord, now I understand it precisely, but with a feeling of sadness. However, with regard to the laborers of whom there are too few at present, I am sure, oh Lord, that You have quite a few more Raphaels on hand. These could approach the people and convert them, just as Raphael radically converted me, and within a few hours the whole matter would be settled all over the earth. I did not suffer any detriment from this kind of instruction, therefore, nobody else will suffer any either."

2 Say I: "Indeed, My friend, from now on this will happen quite frequently, but only to people of your knowledge and experience and of your very sober sense of justice. Only, there are not many such people on this earth. The purest and best on earth are all here without exception; for I wanted them all to gather around Me from far and near.

3 Long ago, I had planned and arranged their circumstances in such a way that they would arrive here at this time in order to be instructed by Me and My angels. Like you, they have all had the teaching LINEA RECTA from the heavens. They also have all, just like you, received the teaching LINEA RECTA from heaven. But they are all here now!

4 For all others this highest and spiritually most necessary method of instruction would not be suitable at all and would obviously harm them more than do them good, because they would have to believe what was taught here on the strength of the many miracles being worked. Then their free cognition and the free will would either forever or at least for a very long time be lost. This concern is not necessary with you all, because you have a very well-founded knowledge and a great deal of experience in many things.

5 Tell Me whether only one miracle has ever brought you into confusion in a certain way! You casually supposed with your own miracle-working that there can be no extra-natural miracle in the whole world; but there are people who through their talents and capabilities have heard some of the secret powers of nature, then put it into practice themselves and thus had to drive the other human sheep necessarily into the greatest amazement, because they can have no idea at all from afar how a miracle that has happened can occur with quite natural powers.

6 For someone like you no miracle is binding; for he will only too soon begin to investigate quite secretly and say: CUR, QUOMODO, QUANDO, QUIBUS AUXILIIS? [Why, how, when, which help] as was also the case with you. The sudden creation of the very new house, garden, harbor and the five ships did not particularly amaze you; for in India you got to know a magician who conjured up whole landscapes for you in an instant. Why should there not be someone here then who should create a garden along with a house and the harbor along with the ships in an instant?!

7 Raphael had a job with you, in order to teach you of possible better things; but you were nonetheless not fully satisfied with it, but instead you immediately began to investigate further, and the spiritual reason had to be completely revealed to you, how such a deed may be conceivably possible on the pure spiritual path of will. Such a thing - down to the innermost reason - was then shown to you and to all who are present here, and you were certainly satisfied with it; for otherwise you would not have made the comment after almost every explanation and said: That is now tangibly true to me! And what you emphasized was also clear to you; for you would never have been satisfied with a lack of clarity or with a mystery! And behold, just like you, so quite a lot of others here; all were not satisfied to see only the surface of the sea, but instead they wanted to also experience what it hides in it’s profound depth!

8 And that is thus correct, for only such people who already are of a highly alert and bright intelligence can take in such a deeper revelation of life and understand it and nonetheless still remain free in their cognition and demand, and I can only use such people then as the true reapers on the great field of My human seed. But just count them yourself and you will truly not find too many of them for the great Earth!

9 If I then say that the harvest is ripe and great, but there are only very few reapers, you will now hopefully see the reason for it very easily. I have kept nothing back from you capable ones and have shown you all and revealed the whole infinity and eternity in it’s main characteristics, as far and as deeply as was ever possible for your not very sharply understandable notions, and have also shown you tangibly clearly everything that My Spirit will reveal to you then.

10 But, as I said, I could only show all this to you and nobody else on all dear Earth, because they do not - and will not for a long time to come - possess the necessary non-judgmental ability because they on the one hand are still steeped in all sorts of superstition and on the other hand are too deeply involved in their selfish and dirty profit-seeking. Therefore, they are not interested in any spiritual phenomena and consider them as unnecessary to life and as something troublesome and obstructive to their freedom.

11 Would you want to send an angel Raphael to them?! I tell you, as far as such extraordinary phenomena are concerned, these people, firstly, have no capacity for them; secondly, lack any sense of understanding and, thirdly, would suffer damage rather than benefit through them."

12 Superstitious and gullible people would certainly believe it all too quickly, but would make idols of Me and Raphael and in the end even of you as My friends, build temples and then honor and worship us like their gods. The actual people of the southern world however would drive us away then as traitors and work-shy sloths, and if we began to treat them with the divine power and strength, they would nonetheless not listen to us, but instead seek to kill us and drive us out as very dangerous enemies to human society according to their understanding, as will happen to Me Myself in the end.

13 You can now easily see from that how many of the suitable harvesters we count now on the dear great Earth! What else is there left to do then but put our hands to work and work hard, as long as the cheerful light of day allows us; for once night has fully arrived, no one will easily be able to work in it. We are already all here together and will today yet put out hands to the great work soon after the rising of the sun one and all."

- Chapter 130 -

Teaching hints of the Lord for the spreading of the gospel

1 (The Lord) "We do not want at all to announce loudly in advance and claim: Things will be exactly so!, for if the great work should succeed, even I may not cast a sharp glance into the future, so that between Me and the people created by Me not even the least shall come that would be able to have any influence on the freest will of the people.

2 We have therefore nothing to do on our part except to simply teach the people the full arrival of the kingdom of God, of the pure love and truth, if needed with the small addition of some miracle which however has to be done only as a good deed and never as some punishment or even angry revenge. And not even that when we have to tolerate the greatest adversity by the blind and thus also very ungrateful people. Whoever of you does that would create only evil instead of good, and I would be forced to take away all My mercy from him and to look at him in the end with angry eyes.

3 This teaching of Mine is thus to be given quite without any external and even less through an inner compulsion to the people and nations in the whole world, and the miracles are only to be performed when the people firstly have a living faith, convincing the whole heart and not plagued by any external doubt and possess otherwise much experience and much knowledge in various things.

4 No miracles are to be performed before very gullible and superstitious people, because that would rob them of every spark of their already weak free will! And then this new religion of Mine from heaven would be no more useful than their old superstition; for they would begin to give the words from heaven some particular, divinely magical effect, allow it to happen to them and very passively act in all things and places and leave all action according to the religion to a very pious and good man.

5 Yes, in the end they would become just as lethargic as there are many of the prosperous Jews nowadays who are even too lethargic to pray to God themselves, but instead they pay the Pharisees and also other people so that they would pray for them, since they themselves have too little time and it would also be far too inconvenient for them to mumble out the many, many prayers, as long as a piece of string, themselves.

6 But once it would get to such a pitiful point with this religion of Mine, then a general judgment as in the days of Noah which leads everything back to the old state of truth cannot be far away.

7 Therefore teach all the people the purest truth and forget all mystical and magical elements, otherwise everything will have been in vain! For if a person comes out of the activity of his free will and transforms into a type of pious lethargy, he will stop being a human being. Instead he will stand under the dignity of an animal and rather resemble a deaf and wild shrub, which simply vegetates fruitlessly under the external influence of the light of the sun and it’s warmth as a wild shoot and is capable of almost no necessary independent activity any longer.

8 With such people love also then grows cool and the poor neighbor in the end becomes an annoying fly to them which bothers them in their worldly sleep of comfort. And concerning the love for God they then pay all sorts of sacrifices and prayers. Oh tell Me, what is the future then for such people in the kingdom of God in their hearts?! I do not say that this state will necessarily happen to My religion as well, as has now happened to the Pharisees and Jews; but it may happen - and not in the too far future - if you as the bearers of this religion do not go to work fully cleverly enough.

9 For I do not turn you into shackled, but totally free messengers of the announcement of the kingdom of God on Earth. You should well receive the direction from Me at all times what should be done and said "but never with compulsion, since you are above all My dear and now fully first little children!

10 I will force My will according to My wisdom upon neither you nor anyone else, but instead only announce it to you through word and counsel; you must then make it yours yourself through your will and through deeds, and indeed through all sorts of self-denial in the various matters of this world.

11 For you now know indeed that all the world and it’s variety of matter not there for the sake of the spirit nor the spirit for the sake of matter; and so it would be more than highly foolish of you all if you, as people who have more than half transformed your being into the spirit, were to decide for matter. But you will not make a full decision for the spirit either coerced by Me; for every coercion is and remains the highly personal thing of every man, because his eternal life depends on this alone.

12 Knowledge and the yet so doubtless faith alone does not help anyone, but instead only acting accordingly! Therefore you all should above all warn the people who will get to know in the future the truth through you from Me to be active; for without this the promises held in the teaching could be as little fulfilled as a person will certainly never come to Damascus - even if the way there is very well-known to him and he also has the very firmest and most convinced faith that the familiar path leads almost directly to Damascus - if he never wants to take a step on it, or if he plans often to undertake the journey in truth, but, basically hindered by all sorts of small affairs, nonetheless never gets round to setting foot on the path to Damascus."

- Chapter 131 -

Acting according to the teaching and God's promises

On ceremonial service

1 (The Lord) "Therefore, you must above all take great care that your future disciples are not idle listeners and believers in the new teaching, but that they zealously practice what they receive as convincing truth of My teaching. Only when man begins to become aware that the promises contained in My teaching are being fulfilled, will this teaching become a full truth within him, so that he will say to himself: `Yes, this teaching is truly out of God, because ever since I have been living according to it, one after the other of it’s promises is beginning to become fulfilled in all fact and truth.'

2 If anyone has ever managed this, he has already won and with it My teaching also as an example for many others who are still being tested, but who have not been able to achieve any effect yet. They, thus encouraged, will begin to put their hands to active work themselves, which will then begin to bear fruit for them, even if at the beginning very sparingly.

3 Therefore be crafty and clever in the spreading and carrying out of My teaching like the snakes and foxes, but at the same time always as gentle as a dove, whose often angry-sounding billing and cooing is nothing but concealed love, as the dove was already a symbol for love in the old days.

4 Now it depends mainly on you; how you will set it up, it will then continue to exist as this. If you only commit any small mistake at the first set up, then a few centuries later a whole mountain of sin against the correct order will have developed.

5 Therefore do not let yourself be misled by anything traditionally venerable! Neither the Sabbath nor the new moon, nor the Scriptures nor the temple, nor the graves of the prophets, nor the places in which I Myself worked with you, nor the pure magic of My name or of the temple, nor the houses of the patriarchs or certain hours of the day and similar external crazy things any longer shall lead you down any side track from the truth heard here!

6 For all that was until now only an exemplary correspondence of what now stands before you in the brightest light and as the purest and most unconcealed truth; it was only a great writing of signs, written over the wide face of the Earth, and a great letter of the Father in Heaven to His children on this Earth, but which now lies open and unsealed before you, and which you all have been able to read very well. But this letter now has neither value for the future, nor a determining meaning for life.

7 This is all now love for God and for one's neighbor, but not only in theory, but instead truly in deed, and for that it needs neither the Sabbath nor a new moon, nor any temple, nor another particular time or any embellished clothing, nor any long senseless prayers, nor any senseless sacrifices, no oxen, calves or goats for the slaughter and burning, but instead only love alone, which I have revealed to you now so many times already.

8 Thus you as the distributors of My teaching should never ever become weak in whatever sort of old statute, not even in the choice of food; for whatever goes into the mouth with metes and bounds, never makes a person unclean, but instead a person is only made unclean by what comes out of the heart through the mouth to the harm of his neighbor! So with this teaching you will give the people the true blessing and the true salvation forever, which will remain just as pure in a thousand years and in another thousand years as I Myself now give and have given it to you!

9 If, however, you combine some ancient ceremony with this My teaching, begin to observe certain anniversaries and insignificant temple rules, all this will keep growing from year to year and in a few centuries become a true Augean stable that will, finally, have to be cleansed through a universal judgment."

- Chapter 132 -

The salvation from the yoke of ceremonial service and the law

1 (The Lord:) "With this I give you a divine life precept which is as far removed from any ceremony as one celestial pole is from another. There is then no need for a Sabbath, a temple, a prayer-house, any fasting, a staff and coat of Aaron, a two-horned head-dress, an ark of the covenant, a sensor, a blessed and, still less, a cursed water. With this teaching man as he is, is all in all and needs nothing but himself.

2 In the ancient, rudimentary teachings man was only partly depicted materially as, more and more ennobling himself, he developed into a true spiritual man and it was therefore necessary to portray him in all sorts of spiritually corresponding forms, vessels and ceremonial rituals.

3 In this My new teaching man is completely at one in and with himself, as if in one point. In the same way I Myself am here united with all My former primordial and infinite Deity in one point before you and tell you that from now on you need no longer look for the Kingdom of God and it’s righteousness in the temple at Jerusalem or on Mount Gerizim nor worship God there, but such divine service may be held wherever there is a human being!

4 The heart of man will be the living temple of the true, one and only God and the active love will be the only true service to God, and the love for God will be His one and only true worship!

5 But since neither a true love for God without active love for one's neighbor, nor this without true love for God is conceivable, both loves are basically only one love and thus one and the same true worship of God. Whoever has that within has everything, all the law and all the prophets united in his own heart and no longer has need of anything more.

6 I hereby abolish all old forms, as well as the law of Moses; however, not in the sense that they should no longer be observed - far from it - but only insofar as they had previously been an external coercion to act in a certain manner, followed by earthly punishment in case of non-compliance. In this way the law was a judge breathing down everyone's neck, and a permanent judgment from which no-one could escape. But a human being weighed down by the burden of the law obviously is under permanent judgment; and he who is under judgment is spiritually dead and cursed by the inner, divine freedom of life.

7 Not until the law becomes his own and is subject to the freedom of his own freest will, is man rid of all judgment and curse and death. I came into this world mainly to free all people from the yoke of the law, the judgment, the curse and death. Therefore, from now on I take away all externals, let you truly come into your own and thereby make you true children of God and lords over all the law and judgment.

8 If you, as well as your disciples, abide by this rule unchangingly, no judgment will ever come over you because you are above the judgment; but as soon as you allow in one or the other matter to have an ancient, external law added and adhere to some ancient, external ceremony, you will again submit to a judgment, and death will touch you in the same measure as you have submitted to an old ceremonious law!"

- Chapter 133 -

The relationship of the children of God with the political laws of the state

1 At this Roklus says: "But, Lord, what about the compliance with the political laws of the state? Surely one has to observe them, regardless of how much one has become one's own master!? Or can these laws be dealt with in the same manner as those of the great prophet Moses?"

2 Say I: "But, friend, how can one call rules of state laws? By ‘law’ is meant only the proclaimed will of God; your rules of state are nothing but the very changeable will of a man and can never deal with anything but the most external and material conditions of physical life. If they are good, you will approve of them and accept them with your free will; once you have done that, you have already mastered the rules of state and can no longer come under judgment because of them. But if they are bad, you have the liberty to free yourself of them and to move to where there are wiser laws or to make the legislator aware in the very gentlest way of the shortcomings of some laws and give him correct and good advice. If he accepts the advice, you will well be able to remain; but if he in his domineering arrogance does not accept your advice, then move on! For the Earth is large and has many lands and peoples and kingdoms and kings and princes."

3 Once you are pure in your inside, then everything will also be clean; for to the clean all things are clean because he can see the reason for everything, which is to say: For the seer everything during the day is illuminated, and even the night is not lightless for a sharp seer, while to the blind everything is dark and the day has no advantage over the night for him.

4 Therefore whoever is once in the full order within, is also a lord over all disorder that can occur anywhere in the world in one way or another. But because he is a lord and in himself cannot slide into any disorder any longer, he may and can basically exist well in every political society, however it may be created and organized; for he sees clearly where he has to go.

5 I Myself am now on this Earth and subject Myself, according to My external personality, to the order prescribed by the emperor of Rome and never contradict it, not even for appearance's sake! Do I thus lose order in My innermost divine being? Oh not at all - I am who I am, unchanged, and My advice will also be accepted by those who bear the power of the ruler in their hands, and I am therefore a master and lord over them, and no one asks Me and says: Lord, why do you do that?

6 Believe Me that someone who has truly become lord over himself can also easily become lord over a whole nation; and no-one will say to him: Friend, how can you do such a thing? For the people will make him into it themselves, in that they will hurry to him in droves and will seek advice. But what is a wise advisor but a wise legislator? Whoever gives these laws, however, will also be a lord over those who have received the laws from him! Or are Ouran, Mathael, My noble friend Cyrenius here, Cornelius, Faustus and Julius not rulers and commanders and have nonetheless accepted laws from Me and call Me their Lord? Why did they do that then? Because they have gotten to know very brightly the truth and it’s power and strength in Me more than enough! But what I now say and do, that and many other greater things you will also do in the near future and will thus have to bring forth quite the same effects on the whole dear Earth.

7 Certainly a decided courage is needed for this, which does not fear the death of the body; but how should he fear something that carries eternal life in the highest clarity and quite perfectly has become a lord of life in itself and must know very well that firstly those who may well kill the body are not able to do any more damage to the soul and it’s eternal spirit of life, and that secondly the soul makes a never pronounceable gain through losing the heavy body for ever, which all the treasures of this earth would never be able to take away!

8 But whoever sees such a thing in oneself in life's highest and deepest basic clarity, well, will he perhaps have fear of physical death?! And even if he still did, he would resemble obviously a fool who laments that he has been freed from his straitjacket and instead is clothed with the robe of the highest and most liberal freedom and clarity of eternal life! But that is not thinkable, therefore the necessary courage will also most certainly not be lacking for you at the right time.

9 Therefore, do strive above all to become perfect masters over your own self and you will also be masters over all the laws and all judgment and not subject to the curse of some foolish worldly law.

10 What you become yourself, however, make sure that all those who will learn from you the innermost order of life will become as well - then they will become your true friends and brothers and will give no other laws anymore because they like you will see that the innermost law of life replaces all the others and makes them fully useless!"

- Chapter 134 -

Basics of raising children

1 Roklus says: "Lord, that is all the very purest gold, and all this allows the truth to be now seized with ones hands! Thus this religion must remain as pure as a diamond in all eternity of eternities and will also remain so in the planting of my institute, for which I and my companions will take much care!

2 But now I still have a small problem; if I may know what I have to do in that respect, then everything will be in the diamond hardest and purest order, as I now cannot imagine otherwise! It is the up-bringing of children in your religion! Should one then also avoid as far as possible every pictorial imagination of something that is to be taught to them?"

3 I say, "Always, for pictorial representations get stuck nowhere as firmly as in the minds of children and are then later very difficult to be totally removed from them!

4 Teach them firstly only to read, write and arithmetic mechanically; then reveal to them the form of the Earth and show them at the same time the true reason everywhere, in as far as this is appropriate for them and in as far as they are capable of understanding it! Enrich them with all sorts of useful knowledge and allow them to make their own small experiences, and enthuse them with everything that is good and true.

5 And believe Me that the children understand the good and the true much earlier than all the often senseless and wide-spread teasing, from which they should then themselves decipher some profound truths, which tires them and in the end must make them inactive! You will see always and recognize all that is to be done in the brightest light when My Spirit within you leads you into all truth! If any of you still has any questions, then ask; for the coming day of My onward journey draws near, and Mark is beginning to take care of the morning meal!"

6 Roklus says: "Lord and Master of eternity! I now know, speaking quite as honestly now as I ever can, may, or will, truly of nothing more which could be put together as a question for You; for now everything is clear to me because the way has become clear to me. Certainly I could ask for countless other things that are still an impenetrable riddle for me; but I now know from Your prophecy that that will all become clear to me, and so any further questioning would be a truly empty threshing of straw!

7 The greatest thing is now that the way that we have to take is fully clear to us, in order to reach the long desired rule over ourselves. If we have this, then we have everything; but if we do not have this, then even that partial knowledge is of little or no use to us. I for my part really do not know what else I could still ask! But I do not want to say or advise someone else that he should not now ask anything more!

8 But I thank you, oh Lord, for this extremely great light, which You have now mercifully allowed to shine upon me; to You from now on be all my love and all honor! I now will step back to my companions with Your best permission and will discuss with them very much how we will now regenerate our institute in Your name. For all the present things must be thrown out and Your word brought in effectively!"

9 At this Roklus wanted to go; but I said to him: "Remain a while; for I have a few other things to discuss with you!"

- Chapter 135 -

The embarrassment of the institute of the Essenes

1 Roklus says: "Oh Lord, there is perhaps no other who would rather remain beside You than I! Whatever it may be, everything that comes from You is always the highest bliss and blessing to my heart! I am burning with curiosity to learn something more from You, for example about the renewal of our institute!"

2 I say "Yes friend, you have guessed well! There are still some things which would create some considerations for you in your work, and thus could become strife in your council; therefore it would be good if I inform you Myself of some hints about it!

3 Above all I give you the present assurance that My servant Raphael will come to you at times and be of help to you with advice and action. For the other times he has in any case already his very determined directions and knows what he has to do during the time of My stay on this Earth, and where he has to stay at certain times. This assurance I give to you, however, is valid only for the most extreme case which could happen in your institute in the time of regeneration.

4 But what you have to do yourself, I will now tell you in very short hints. You still have your extremely smartly created institute for waking the dead, as it was and still is; at present there are one hundred and seven children there between the ages of three and fourteen, among them over half are girls. You are now in a great embarrassment, since you have hardly twenty similarities in all your institutes for human reproduction and now envoys with painted pictures have been sent out to all the world so that at any cost similar children would be bought. But these envoys are doing poor business; for if they find somewhere a similarity, it is not sold to them for any price, and they cannot use something that is not similar, of course. What do you say to that kettle of fish?"

5 Here Roklus scratches behind his ears quite seriously and says: "Yes, Lord, if so "which is very easily understandable "then the institute is in a big snare! It was certainly a big mistake, and indeed against my will to accept so many dead children at once; but our first director, namely in the sphere of the reanimation of children, gave me the assurance that it would go very well. However, the story looked only too soon quite differently! Hardly twenty similarities, and the others?! We may seek them with the lantern with which the cynics once sought the people in brightest daylight!

6 Our director certainly sent well-endowed envoys in all directions; but if things really are like that, we with our whole institute have been quite written off and must suffer the greatest embarrassment at the mocking laughter of the envious and most jealous Pharisees, the more so as some children of the Pharisees are supposed to be among these as far as I know, with whom the jealous ones have certainly planned to test us!

7 Oh dear, it is certainly a very bad situation, and can be very obstructive to me in my now very firmly made intention to act simply only in Your name! What can be reasonably done there? Just the reason is silent in me! You, oh Lord, certainly could help us out of embarrassment, if it was in Your holy will, and if you could do it, since at least we with the institute never knowingly and with intent ever had some actual evil motive!

8 Our lack of knowledge - through no fault of our own however - You, as a most loving God, Lord and Master, cannot lay on us as a burden? And if Your eternally immeasurable wisdom should find guilty spots on us about which we truly can do nothing, then Your even less measurable love is certainly endlessly more powerful enough, to sweep it away! I and all my main companions now place all our hopes on You and trust most firmly that You will help us this time out of the very greatest embarrassment, for which however we make You the most glowing promise that it will be our concern at all times to preserve Your holy word for all time as purely as we have now heard from You with the greatest gratitude of our hearts!"

9 I say, "But why do you call then that such a great embarrassment, since you have received faithfully enough My most possible assurance of help in the most tangible way?! For what I promise to someone, I also keep all the more certainly than the daily sunrise and always illuminates half the earth, whether the surface of the Earth is cheerful or dulled with clouds and mist! Until when should then the one hundred and seven children return to the homes of their parents alive again?"

10 Roklus says: "Lord, what should I, what can I answer You except: Oh Lord, all things are known only too well to You and therefore certainly also our foolishness!"

11 I say, "Certainly, you have given Me a good answer! You have truly committed a great foolishness in that you have set a much too short deadline for the fake reanimations! You have been well encouraged by several happy attempts and have naturally had to make the experience that for your institute a shortest possible period of reanimation is not only the least expensive, but also certainly the most recommended, because the whole thing increases the miracle effect - of course, only in appearance!

12 If you had enough of the similar children, things would be carried out otherwise according to your manner; but because exactly the main element is lacking for this purpose, it is well understandable that you have fallen into the most enormous embarrassment. I could certainly help you out of the great embarrassment this time; but then I would have to obviously help a lie, and look, that would not be right at all, however very dear you all are to Me now! Things must then happen quite otherwise!"

- Chapter 136 -

Prohibiton of the fraudulent Essenian resurrection of the dead

1 (The Lord) "Look there at the left side of Cornelius, who is now dozing a little, the boy; his name is Josoe! He lay in the grave for over a year, and his bones were without flesh. He lay not far from Nazareth in a crypt, and I gave him life again, and no-one sees in him that he had lain quite rotted away in the grave!

2 What I was able to do for him, I could very well also do for your hundred and seven children, and indeed now on the spot and in the fastest moment! But it would not serve you much at all; for thereby the children would come before the announced deadline back into the houses of their parents. Therefore the deadlines must be kept exactly, so that now no new lies are created in this affair. But then My servant shall come to you and call the real children back to an earthly life, of course somewhat against My order, and indeed in the presence of their parents who will be called there for this purpose, so that they may also recognize in their great blindness as if by a great push that the kingdom of God is now near.

3 But what you have to say at that occasion I will lay in your mouth, wherever I will be physically; but then I make you for now and for the future very seriously aware that you, and no-one from your institute should ever accept any other deceased children for resurrection, not even for all the treasures of the world.

4 For whenever I let a child die, that certainly has it’s highest important reason, and it would be against My will and against My order to awake such children back to earth. Now, as far as these present hundred and seven children are concerned, I have foreseen this, and it therefore does not happen against My will and in the wider sense neither is it against My order; but in the future such a thing must happen only very rarely, if you or someone else is encouraged to do so directly by My Spirit.

5 You may heal the sick once, twice, even three times, as many times as you want; but there is to be no more waking from the dead for those who have died in the flesh! For you thereby make the souls that have become free from the flesh into a much worse monster than the worst murderers and street robbers among the people who still have to live out their time on this world.

6 In this world it is considered the greatest misfortune if someone is killed. But it is considered a thousand times greater misfortune in the beyond for an already free soul to be forced back into it’s mortal, stinking and clumsy body! Therefore you would be doing no-one a favor if you called him back to this earthly life.

7 There are indeed terrible souls there which one could actually call devils. On the other side it is certainly ten thousand times worse for them than it is for a beggar on this earth, however poor and persecuted; but among all the many whose number can be accepted very well as up to ten thousand million now according to the Arabian way of counting, there is none who might walk the path of the flesh one more time. But if the unlucky ones never want to return to this Earth again, how much less those who are happy on the other side! Therefore let this be told to you, and no longer raise any more dead! Have you now understood that too?"

8 Roklus says: "Yes, Lord, I understand that very well, and I can therefore never be grateful enough to You eternally for the extraordinary remedy to our great embarrassment; but in any case we have never given up actually with the true business of reanimation, since our reanimations were actually basically nothing other than very secret deceptions for the good of the grieving humanity only, that is, in as much as we previously could think with our limited understanding about the best for man! We had basically extremely little profit from this, since the maintenance of the human farms and it’s purchase, that is by human children, was always extremely costly.

9 At our reanimations the people in the great other-world have quite certainly suffered no disruption and so I think that, considering the small deception, we have performed very little of anything disturbingly terrible for the kingdom of the soul; for the souls of the dead were never forced by us to return to this fleshly world!"

10 I say: "That is indeed true; but nonetheless such a manipulation of yours has caused some disturbance for the spirit-world all the same. For the dead child has become very well a citizen of the spirit-world. But now with time also his parents have died to this world and the false child as well; they soon met again on the other side as usual under suitable circumstances.

11 Now, what must the surprised parents have thought in the other world about the method of reanimation if they met the true and also the false child that they had considered to be the genuine child in this world irrevocably obviously only too soon? Just think a little bit about it!

12 For everything kept so hidden on this world down to the smallest detail will be revealed there. Whatever someone has done here - no matter how secretly and hidden - will nonetheless be shouted from the roof-tops, as they say, and that highly loudly before the eyes and ears of millions! Now just think as a false re-animator about yourself in the sphere of such a disclosure! How do you think to cope and deal with things there then?

13 If people with their highly limited sense of truth in this world recognize, judge, sentence and finally even punish quite well such indecency when actually the inner strength of truth is mostly lacking, how much more there where the truth being one of the most invincible powers, is always the lord above all existing ones!

14 Look, among the small birds of prey there is one whose name derives from his song and therefore is called the cuckoo! Breeding is instinctively built into this bird. Therefore he lays his eggs wherever he may and can, in the nests of various other birds and does not even spare the nests of the starlings! If this poorer little birds now see that instead of their equals only cuckoos appear, even they as unreasoning animals make very puzzled eyes and begin to keep further and further away from the nest and if they hear any cuckoo crying they fly at him in flocks upon flocks and track and tease it in every way possible.

15 Now, if even these reasonless animals equipped only with an instinctive intelligence take revenge on a deceiver, how much more is that certainly to be expected among the reasoning people, and how much more again among the spirits, before whom no deception can take place again, since their insight and recognition has become quite clear!"

- Chapter 137 -

The principles of the reformed Essenian institute

1 (The Lord) "From this you can see that over there everything will be revealed and also must be revealed, otherwise the countless and various unions of spirits could not possibly exist. And now it begs the question what sort of a face a person will put on there who here among the people stood in a great reputation because of his wonderful deeds and for whom on the other side it will immediately be shown only too clearly that all his miracles were quite common fraud in themselves; and even if the fraud was well-meant, he still had to be paid and sold to the blind customer as the genuine goods - and often for a very great amount of money!

2 And behold, that and nothing else was then also your method of reanimation until now, particularly of the children! Your monthly public reanimations in the known underground catacomb-like arches are an already too deep combination of fraud to even mention; for there you have people employed who every month once have to pretend to be dead in certain coffins and at your familiar command in the presence of several blind believing watchers to stand up from the coffin and then immediately to walk so that they cannot be questioned by any of the often many spectators and wonderers about your health and your names and place of living.

3 Do you know, this bird-like fraud is too mean to spend any more words on; but since many have been induced through this to hand over their dead dear child for reanimation, it nonetheless comes into consideration and is very suitable to become very awkward for you on the other side.

4 But as we said, everything that has happened to you so far, I want and will take upon My own shoulders and make everything good again for you all; but for the future neither the one nor the other, which has even the very slightest trait or smell of fraud, may occur in your institute for any price in the world, if you want Me, acting as if with My own hands, to remain with it in the spirit until the end of this world.

5 The most perfect love and truth should reign in it and no other fraud however small should ever occur, then this institute will remain for all time; and if it should ever have jealous and dark persecutors from time to time they will nonetheless not be able to do harm to it!

6 To be sure, it will not last much longer in this country than this My teaching will - for this land will be devastated by heathens of the most ignorant kind; but in future times the headquarters of all those who believe and trust in My name will be in Europe. There you will be organized in various branches; with some rulers you will be popular and held in high esteem, by others you will only be tolerated. Only some who are very benighted will drive you across the borders of their kingdoms. Those doing so will be sure to be beset by one or the other trouble of which they will not rid themselves so easily. But also the kingdoms in which you will only be tolerated will not thrive too well.

7 This is My gift and blessing to you, that you will always be true master-builders; and where you are accepted lovingly and with honor, that kingdom will have a good and lasting foundation. I do not wish to make of you physicians in the future, but masons who shall erect everywhere from the hardest precious stones the walls of a new, heavenly Jerusalem and many of the most magnificent residences in this city, which has now begun and will be continued to be built in all eternity after the initial wall has been erected.

8 Since you are now My masons and free builders and I want My city built from the hardest precious stones, all of you - and you, My friend Roklus - will easily understand why I cannot use any common limestone, sandstone or bricks. By these I mean all sorts of fraud and deception, which cannot last forever. Only the purest and most flawless truth is that diamond stone which can offer all eternity the constant and ever same defiance.

9 You will often be tempted to hide your real thoughts instead of showing your true feelings. Yet do not yield to the temptation or deceive anyone with your eyes, but let everything you say and do be the fullest truth, and you will always be sure of My grace, power and wisdom.

10 Do not ever make anyone a promise which later on you might not be able to fulfill or for certain reasons might not want to fulfill, for verily, I tell you: Nothing appears to be more bitter and more painful to man than a promise made to him which later is not kept! For, had he not been promised anything, he would not have relied on it but have taken a different course of action, by which he would have gained some help or advantage. Having firmly relied on the promise which was only made but not kept, he now finds himself in desperate straits and sadly disappointed because he fell between two stools on the sand, and curses those who have plunged him into the greatest misery through their false promises.

11 Therefore, you must keep whatever promise you may have made to another, even at the cost of your earthly life, otherwise I could not be a permanent member of your institute. Remember well Who He is Who gives you this commandment! He is forever a Lord over all life and death. Even if I punished nothing else while on this earth, yet I would punish a person who makes promises to another without keeping them, usually for some selfish reason.

12 By refusing the promised reward to the one who has done you a service you commit a greater sin than by stealing from someone. If he performed his service halfhearted and poorly, you can of course remind him and tell him that next time he cannot expect such a compensation unless he will perform his service with the proper diligence; but, no matter how poor his performance may be, you must keep your word so that he may see that the spirit of full truth is alive and working within you.

13 For this reason I help you awaken your 107 dead children in the fullest sense of the truth. In this way you need not face as liars making false promises those whose dead loved ones you promised to bring back to life. But in future do pull yourselves together, completely and in earnest, for whatever you would do to contravene My easy-to-follow advice would inexorably bear you very poor fruit."

14 Does all that seem somehow too difficult to you because you start to make a very thoughtful face? Tell Me now simply quite loudly and openly if you have anything to object to Me! Now we are still together personally and can air some things which in the future will be clearly somewhat more difficult, since we may not meet again personally so soon! Speak now and I will hear you!"

- Chapter 138 -

Roklus' attempt to justify white lies

1 Roklus says: "Everything that You, oh Lord, have now said, is only too true, and nothing can be said against it! But since You are so strictly against anything which bears even the very slightest semblance of fraud in it even when a person could be in the fullest seriousness physically and spiritually helped through it, this obviously makes me very reflective now, since for me the principle maintained through a thousand experiences stands firm, that now very many people can be helped in no other way than only on the way of a subtle fraud - but which I call certainly no fraud, but pure cleverness of state.

2 Speaking honestly, oh Lord, after the experiences I have made on this Earth, some people cannot be helped in any other way than only through a well-meant little deceit! The children must however be deceived in the beginning always, otherwise one would not be able to do anything with them at all; and what good would one do them then, if one immediately present the purest truth in their face?!  I have indeed laid things before You at another opportunity quite clearly and distinctly as a person, so that it was never about ever following a person to his disadvantage, but instead always only to his spiritual advantage in some way! And I only did that because I saw too clearly in advance that this or that person was not to be gotten around at all in any other way. If that now counts as a sin before You "yes, Lord, then it will truly be highly difficult to be a person!

3 For example: I go somewhere and, as a heathen, meet on the way a totally blind arch-Jew, whose super-zealous temple fanaticism predicts immediately a whole legion of the most terrible devils in everybody. If a heathen touches him with his knowledge, he is immediately unclean for a whole year, and in such an imagined position of his, the unhappiest person, because he cannot and may not take part in any of the many advantages of the temple. If I tell him that I am a heathen - if he asks me who I am - he would then rather allow all ordeals happen to him than to be led by me over a highly dangerous part of the mountain path. But if I tell him very firmly that I am also a Jew from Jerusalem, he will extend his hand in joy and then allow himself most gratefully to be led over the highly dangerous path. Once I have brought the poor blind man there where there is no longer any danger for him and the smell of his now very close homeland already attracts him and he can no longer go wrong, then I take my leave and go on with a happy mood. The blind Jew then learns no syllable more from me his whole life long, and no one will easily be able to say to him that that person who once led him over a very dangerous way was a heathen.

4 Now tell me about a reasonable and honestly well-meaning person, whether then the certainly highly harmless lie was not cleverer and better than if I had said the truth to the poor person, namely that I am a heathen! Then I tell You and anyone a thousand times over in your face that only an icteric and fully brain-sick idiot from the most dubious league of Pharisees can explain such a necessary lie as a sin - but an only somewhat reasonable person never and a God certainly all the less! For so highly and widely different can the present and after-world views on life certainly not be, that one as purely spiritual, what all pure reason on this Earth must recognize as good and fair, must see to be the complete opposite! For if on the other side something is black and dark for the pure spirit which here always a well-meaning soul sees as white and bright, there either this or that other-worldly life belongs to a madhouse.

5 Lord, You know my whole life from the cradle onwards and will hardly find a moment in my whole life when I have meant harm with someone or wanted to do even the slightest harm to someone! A thousand times I will be cursed by Your all-powerful divine mouth, if that is provable for me! But if I was nonetheless a sinner in that I had to take my casual flight from politics particularly among spiritually weak people in order to be able to do something good to them according to the call of my heart and according to my human recognition, then I must openly admit that it is very unpleasant for me then to be a human being; so, oh Lord, turn me according to Your omnipotence only into a donkey and You shall have my thanks for it!

6 My certainly only humanly reasonable opinion is this: Every person does according to his best knowledge, recognition and conscience what seems to him to be best, is peaceful and conciliatory and does good for the poor suffering humanity according to his strength, and so his action must also be seen as correct and good and correct even by a God and recognized, and no god can demand more from the person as unmistakably His creation and work than what and which capabilities He Himself has laid in him! Or is it possible that a highly wise God can demand more from His work than what and how much He has laid in it? I believe that this would be pretty difficult and would have approximately the same face as if someone in all seriousness wanted to pour ten buckets of water out of a very small barrel or skin that hardly holds one bucket-full. I therefore ask You, oh Lord and Master, to express Yourself more clearly in this respect; for thus as I believe to have understood You previously, no even little reasonable human existence on this Earth is thinkable according to Your teaching!

7 Yes, the truth, the holy, must be for the people; they must get to know the house and its order and justice most exactly in which they live and actually should live for ever according to Your promise. But the naked, if even still so pure truth, seems to me at least indeed very beneficial, but otherwise extremely bitter medicine which everyone who is only a little bit sensitive gums spits out again immediately as soon as they have only touched it. But what does one do? One surrounds the bitter medicine with something sweet and pleasant, and the patient will then easily swallow it and without getting a fever in their stomach, when they will soon begin their healing effect! And that, I believe, should also be the same with the spreaders of the truth! We should especially initially never give it to them in any other way than hidden and reveal it little by little! Then in my opinion the best effect will never be lacking. But if you give it immediately quite uncovered and naked, you will very often and most of all cause more damage than any true good.

8 I do not want to say any word for the extenuation of our natural miracles and am myself of the perfectly convinced opinion that we have risked too far; but I can always add with my best conscience that we ourselves have never harmed anyone with this, but instead, according to our well-considered knowledge normally doubly done good. Firstly we have often dried the tears of very sad parents with it, which certainly is and cannot be something bad, and secondly we have provided the children of very terribly poor parents in the best way for their whole lifetime on Earth and set them on a point so that they received in the houses of rich people the better traditions according to the present world order also a better education, while they otherwise would have been in the greatest poverty without any education grown to human-like animals, as in this time there is truly no lack of examples. No angel rises from the lit heavens and takes such poor half-animal-like people and teaches them; and if we obviously do something to better and educate people according to our best knowledge, recognition and conscience in a possible way and method, we run the risk of sinning before God and being declared as a fraudster of the people before Him!

9 Lord and Master, You can easily teach and speak, for Your will is the director of the whole of eternity! But we weak people, we nothings in comparison with You, feel only always the pressure, but seldom or never relief, and have on top of this the very sharpest expectation of that day on the other side.

10 Lord and Master, truly, Your teaching has quite straightened me up, and I was full of the most blessed expectations; but now I have been quite thrashed down and do not know how to help myself because You demand things from me for whose fulfillment I with my common sense do not know what to do and I cannot act against my common sense!"

11 At this Roklus became still and said nothing.

- Chapter 139 -

The rightful use of common sense and prudence

1 At this Cyrenius asks Me, "Yes, what is that then all about now? Roklus was until now already like a true foundation stone for the holy city that should be built anew, and now all of a sudden he seems to have turned around, despite the fact that You have promised him all help!"

2 I say, "That he is and remains, despite the fact that he hasn't quite understood Me! But I saw that still in him and put him in the position to get it out of him. But things will now immediately take a very different face, as you will immediately convince yourselves!"

3 At this I turned with much friendliness to Roklus and said, "But, My dear friend, if you understand things almost completely wrong, no god can help you then, as long as you oppose your own understanding from before to a more recent higher insight! The best, however, is that you claim exactly that very seriously which I actually want to have from you! If I Myself have recommended to you before the cleverness of the snakes and foxes, how could I now forbid it to you?!

4 I showed yesterday in sufficient detail how the children should be treated and instructed; and although you were not present all the time, you have it nonetheless in your hands written by My fast scribe! There is certainly nothing else which could confuse you in some issue about which, as far as just any education is concerned, someone could say: Look there, that is incomprehensible! Or: It does not apply for this or that person!

5 Thus also, if you want to heal a sick person with natural medicine and even could, but the patient often has a decided aversion against a medicine and will not take it for any price in the world, but you are completely convinced that only this medicine will provide the patient only with certain and fast healing. In this case it goes without saying that you then could take such a medication without any further ado and mix it with something else so that the patient will not recognize it and push it away from himself to his great disadvantage.

6 But further as far as the teaching of this divine teaching of Mine for life is concerned, there I will add to you all: Be externally everything with everyone what they are in order to make them trust you and to win them over for My kingdom! Be Jews with the Jews, heathens with the heathens, laugh with those who laugh, and cry with those who cry, be weak and full of patience with the weak, and show the strong one that you are also strong, so that the awareness of his strength will not blow him up and make him arrogant! Well, that will satisfy you, My dear friend, in order to know what God's very highest wisdom, as the creator of your pure common sense, wants to have from you!

7 Believe Me, My wisdom is never against the quite healthy, sober and non-judgmental common sense of a person! For this must judge what is perfectly correct!

8 A truth, however veiled it may be, is and remains in itself nonetheless forever a truth and will as such be revealed one day. Friend, a truth, if it demands necessity somehow, you can cover and clothe however you may and can; it all depends on the mental capacity of the person to whom the truth is preached. Children are satisfied with milk and honey and with very soft bread, while a man can already be given a firmer fare. Then everything is in the best order, if only there is inner truth; very little attention is paid to the necessary cover, or none at all. That would truly be highly unwise and against all better reason, if some person needed My help and I knew well that he is honest, but nonetheless would not look at him because he wears a Persian tunic! To hide a truth in necessity is not a sin; but an open lie and a most obvious fraud placed in the clothes of truth is a sin and is frowned upon by Me for eternity!

9 If you now observe your previous reanimations from the dead - despite your good will, they were a great, but very well-hidden lie, since in this way there was no trace of a reawakening from the dead, and likewise other numbers from your institute. You have learned from the Egyptians and Arabs to calculate when a solar or a lunar eclipse can appear; alone that remained a secret to the people. But you then said to the people: Because you, people, do not want to hear our voice, the leader - who you are now! - beg the gods to darken the sun or the moon on that day! The people immediately fell into a great fear, prayed and sacrificed crazily, and you gave them in the end only the comfort that the threat would go in any case forward, yet one would try to make it as harmless as possible. Do you see, that was then a very sheerest lie, clothed in an honest dress of the fullest truth!"

- Chapter 140 -

Concealed truths and concealed lies

False prophets and their miracles

1 (The Lord) "But just imagine now a sudden revelation! What would the people, for example, have done with you if I Myself suddenly had given them a little light about this - and then they had seen the true reason of a solar or lunar eclipse just as clearly as you? The effect of this you can easily imagine.

2 But if you have ever brought someone onto the right path through this truth, however concealed, and he receives then also a light and now sees that only the fullest truth, even if very concealed, has placed him on the path of the true life - what indeed will such a person do to you for all those good things? I believe that you as a person full of bright common sense will now see the difference between a concealed truth and a concealed lie.

3 What I showed you as an action or speech which should never take place in your institute is a concealed lie; but never a concealed truth from any very wise reasons.

4 If the lie also has a good consequence and the truth at least a seeming terrible one, that means, what the people call terrible with their worldly understanding, the truth is nonetheless to be preferred over a lie; for the final effect of the lie is always remaining a bad one and the final effect of the truth will be a good one.

5 According to outer appearance the difference between a concealed lie and a concealed truth is certainly not easily noticeable, just as a genuine miracle can only be distinguished with difficulty or not at all by a pure, little experienced worldly understanding from the false one, because a genuine miracle for the worldly understanding cannot be checked at all and the magicians and the false prophets let their miracles be checked by the people just as little as you let yours be checked. But exactly for that reason there should never be any room left for any lie among you, no matter how small, or any deception no matter how small, so that on the Earth there is an institute for ever in which alone only the truth reigns and there would be an enduring measuring stick of the world, in order to recognize the true gold of all truth from the false gold well and easily!

6 If that is not mastered, then in a few years after Me there will already be a surprising number of false prophets and miracle-workers who will transform this teaching of Mine entirely. They, the false ones, will indeed also use My name; but their teaching will not resemble Mine in the least, and their miracles will be of a recognisably deceptive type to you and make very many into firm converts of the false prophets.

7 Therefore I warn you in advance about this! Therefore do not listen to those who will run around shouting: Look, here or there is the anointed of God - that is the truth! Truly I tell you all: Those who speak so and shout so and even do signs in My name are nothing but pure false prophets! They do not listen and turn their backs! And if they come to you, threaten them, and if they do not want to give in, threaten them in My name, and perform a true sign before their eyes; otherwise however keep away as much as possible from miracle-working which certainly entices and captures the eye and ear of the foolish people, but which hardens the heart at the cost of the miracle mostly into a unfeeling stone! The truth must witness and speak for itself and needs no further sign any longer.

8 The only true sign of a miracle however consists of self-experience, which everyone will have and in exactly that, the truth has truly made itself free in all it’s thoughts, desires and deeds and opens it’s inner eye to see all things and relationships, as they are in truth and not as they have been put together in the destroyed brain of some worldly wise man who wants to be seen as respected as he desires. And now tell Me, My Roklus, whether things are now clearer than before!"

9 Roklus says: "Yes, Lord and Master, now everything is so fully clear and enlighteningly bright as nothing in my life has ever been clearer! I have always thought and even actively felt that a God cannot do anything in comparison with pure human common sense, which would be an obvious and tangible contradiction. But now every word of Yours corresponds so well to reason like the light of the sun for the creation of the day on the Earth. I am now quite in the clear, and our institute shall remain so until the end of all time!"

10 I say, "Well very good then, and so now go over there and tell that also to your companions! "Now something else will happen, then the morning meal and then My departure from here for some time!"

- Chapter 141 -

Humility and brotherly love

Roklus and his companions are embarrassed

1 Roklus now made a very deep bow and hurried to his companions who in the meantime had discussed all sorts of important house rules of their institute, but who had exactly the idea which I gave Roklus in My teachings as to the direction in his life.

2 Roklus was quite surprised when he heard everything from his companions which he wanted to tell them as something quite new and highly important - and that command he had heard from Me in order to show how I as the Lord have entrusted him with the maintenance of the so highly important position with quite particular orders. As head of the institute he wanted to show his subordinates a little that he had discussed with Me Myself very many and extraordinary matters and he now wanted to convey all this to them.

3 But the companions said: "This effort you can already spare yourself with good reason; for we have been taught about everything and have actually even more than you, despite the fact that you have dealt with the Lord Himself! Yes, look here! Look, a hearty number of pages, all fully written! You can find everything in them, written faithfully, that the Lord has said to you. But you are pulling, as it seems to us, not the most pleased face about this; what's wrong with you?"

4 Roklus says: "Ah, I have nothing at all against or about this; but if the Lord Himself has demanded that I discuss this with you all and arrange what He entrusted me with, because of the total restitution of the whole institute, and you now are better informed than I am, I guess I have to ponder a bit what the dear Lord wanted to achieve with me through this small and certainly harmless teasing!"

5 Raphael, who was cavorting around among the companions, says: "Friend, I will immediately explain that to you; just listen to me briefly! You see, those are indeed your closest civil servants in your institute! The Lord Himself could not give you any other title according to the fullest truth but that which you have received by state and are entitled to have, since your great financial means must give you the right to it. But the Lord wants all people to embrace each other as brothers and only recognize Him alone as the truest Lord and Master.

6 But since you are now already a lord of your institute, it was also quite in order that the Lord Himself gave you the directions about what you should do in the future and which arrangements you should make. But it was likewise just as much in order that the Lord through me allowed your companions into everything at the same time - firstly, in order to save you the unnecessary effort of the teaching, and secondly in order to suppress the certain prophetic feeling of highness which could easily become a little arrogant, and thirdly in order to make the recommended discussion with these companions of yours as easy and effective as ever possible.

7 For by saying to you: 'So go and tell your companions too!', The Lord did not make a kind of invitation to you that they should first learn from you what you have heard and learned from the Lord but that you only have to tell them that you yourself have correctly learned and fully understood what changes are to be made in the institute. Surely there is nothing of it that you, when you are alone in the matter, are supposed to instruct your companions first !? And you do not need to look carefully at all if you yourself have taken the Lord's commission in a very crooked manner!  Do you understand me now, or do you still have any doubts?"

8 Roklus says: "Yes, now I am also quite in order again and I am now thinking about this point no longer at all; but something quite different now bothers my mind! We will easily bring everything into a very good order - only with the removal of the people's belief in that we have the solar and lunar eclipses in our power, will be a little difficult for us! For these will always occur, and we will no longer be able or be allowed to say to someone: Look, because you and your people do not do and will not believe strictly and accurately what we have ordered you to do, the gods will darken the sun or the moon in this or that period! How will we help ourselves in this embarrassment? Everything else is good - only there I cannot find the way out! What do you all think then in this one respect, and what about you, my friend, Raphael?"

9 Raphael says: "Just discuss this firstly among one another; my advice will then always come still at the right time, if all else fails!"

10 Says one of the companions: "Yes, that is a very ticklish point! We will not be able to get along well with the people! Since a considerable number of years the people are now used to this, and if the undertaking after an observed darkening of the moon or even the sun comes to us and they ask us very seriously about the reason, why we had hidden the darkening by the gods from them and not shown it - what true answer will we then give to such questions so that we are not too violently harmed before the faces of those who ask?"

11 A third says: "With a little in-house lie we could save ourselves from the puddle; without it I cannot think of any honest way out. But this will not be our only snag, but instead there will be many others, and no less so with the eclipses! We are now sitting positively in the wash! We will encounter the difficulties if we begin to shake and improve the old structure! Like an army of grasshoppers from Arabia the unconquerable, countless obstacles will bar our way on all sides and we will then no longer know where to go! To leave this place and settle somewhere very far from here would be the best advice!"

12 Roklus says: "Yes, yes, that would all be fine; but what can we do about these possessions and facilities of ours which one cannot leave to our opponents' free discovery just like that?! Truly, your advice would be very expensive for me in particular! We now have the Lord God for ourselves, who only will save us most certainly from every further fully unnecessary embarrassment - of which I am perfectly sure! Truly we will have some things to overcome; but - as it seems to me now - we will certainly pass a very important school through this from which we will only then create the practical insight about all the things that one must get rid of out of our lives on Earth and how to achieve the true, innermost life from God in us.

13 Therefore we will remain here nonetheless! But for the sake of all the other matters I have no fear at all; for there I will say to anyone: From now on the awakenings will be dropped for all time! Why? The answer: God does not want it any longer, because the people cannot live accordingly to be worthy of such a particular mercy!

14 But those who live according to God's will, will also have the insight about why God has allowed one child or other to die and will allow themselves to be led by His spirit in the future. No-one will be able to say anything against that!"

- Chapter 142 -

Roklus' suggestions for reforming the Essenian institute

1 (Roklus) "As far as the other scientific games are concerned, they can remain; for we have in any case never made any other use of them than to provide a very innocent entertainment from time to time for the guests. We can also destroy them however, and no-one can have anything against it. But above all the artificial full moon must be removed; for firstly it is too clumsy and is no longer suitable for the optical deception of the most foolish people. The speaking trees, bushes, statues, columns, springs and rivers will be destroyed and in their place something better will be placed. The electrical things however can remain, likewise the various concave mirrors; since these things belong to the field of science, and one can heal various diseases with their help. Also our pharmaceutical arts and the art of making, sculpting and flattening glass also belong to this.

2 In short, what still exists among us as some purely, truthful scientific matter can remain, and everything else will end! And when it ends, we are therefore not accountable to anyone; for the institute is our possession, with which we can dispose as we wish through the irrefutable right through the laws of Rome. If we want to do something for the people, we can do it, because we want to ourselves, since we do not stand in the service or fold of anyone. We are people and lords for ourselves and as Romans and subordinates ourselves, we have the legal protection just as well as any Roman for us; in addition we also possess so much treasure and fortune that we could not use up even in a thousand years living like Croesus. I then even see in purely worldly respect not at all before whom we should be ashamed! We have no further secrets now before the Lord! But He would be the only one before whom we would have to be ashamed; but with Him we have evened out the issue. If He is now good to us, since He certainly knew in advance that we will set His will into fulfillment until the end of time as purely as we have kept it until now, He will also remain good to us not only until the end of time, but instead also eternally in the other world.

3 Look and consider how highly stupid it would be for every one of us if we wanted to lead a blind man astray if he stumbled over a stone on the path that is unfamiliar to him and fell to the ground and injured himself. Ah, if he could see, one could certainly say to him: Friend, what are the two eyes in your head for? But one cannot make such a criticism to a blind man; for he does not have the illumination of life, and for him no sun goes up or down. If we were also spiritually blind, and no one could grab us under the arms and lead us onto the correct path! But if we often fell on the path which we did not see, who can call us to a humiliating account?! Did we know then what we know now? From whom should we have learned it? But now we know, we will also act accordingly, just as we have acted until now according to what we knew.

4 It is now not an issue at all of whether we got away with our honor at the new transformation of the institute for our own sakes or not, but instead it is only a matter to not appear before the eyes of the world as suspicious of fraud, because in the future we want to and will work for the well-being of the people on the field of truth, and for that we need a good trust and a certain good honor from the part of the people that we are to teach and lead, which we must not give away at any price if our efforts should bear good fruit.

5 Therefore everything is already in a very good order, and we can get rid of everything and it will not be anything remarkable. Only the lunar and solar eclipses alone will catch us a little, at least in the beginning, because these will certainly continue to exist! Then soon a number of all sorts of people will come and they will say: Why do you allow such horrors to happen to us?! Are we sinners before you and the gods, why do you not warn us at all so that we can atone and bring you and the gods our sacrifices?! What sort of an answer will we give them then?

6 Look, there is the actual hook and spear! Well, without a necessary lie it will be very difficult to pull ourselves out of the trap with the purest divine truth! But a necessary lie should never more pass over our lips according to the will of the Lord! What can we do then?! Oh, you very desperate story! As is said, my oxen once stand firm on the mountain and may not pull the plough further up the steep cliff!"

7 One of the company says: "Well, then ask now the Lord and Master over all things! He will certainly give you the right advice in this respect! We can turn it over in our heads for years and will never bring forth something wise from it! But now we are at the source and can receive the best advice. Would we not be fools, if we did not want to find out in such an important opportunity by the very wisest lord of all things what should be done in order to not do damage to the good of the kingdom of God before the blind world humanity?!"

8 Roklus says: "You are indeed completely right, and I can of course do that for the good of the spread of His divine teaching; but we must indeed only then also consider very respectably well first that our seeking in His divine love and wisdom is not in itself already a too great foolishness, with which we then should not come to Him consequently, in that we would thereby either lay our still too great foolishness or a much too small reverence for His undeniable divinity in full view!"

9 Yet another from the company says: "Yes, yes, you think very correctly and fairly; but do you know, that does us all no good! When someone calls for help from the water, few will pay attention and be careful to see whether he fell in through an unhappy event or through his own, willing foolishness - but instead he who begins to swallow water truly no longer thinks about what actually brought him into the water, but instead 'help, help!' is his cry of fear. Whether he can be helped or not, that is then certainly a different matter and depends casually on the cleverness of the person to whom the unfortunate man has called for help. That is my opinion!"

10 Roklus says: "You have quite hit the nail on the head! Therefore I will also ask the Master of all Masters now! I will hurry to Him and will present to Him our need!"

- Chapter 143 -

The Lord's advice to Roklus

1 At this Roklus now heads hurriedly over to Me once again and brings his familiar somewhat awkward affair to Me very openly.

2 And I say to him: "Well, well, as I see, you are already beginning to see a little how any sort of fraud sooner or later must spread certain embarrassment to a person in any case! Therefore I say to you all: Only the fullest truth at any cost; for this lasts the longest and never spreads any particular embarrassment to anyone!

3 It can of course be and it even is so that from such people who only eke out their lives and reputations with fraud very much hate and fear the truth and therefore also persecute it with fire and sword! But what good is all this evil activity to the persecutor of all such truth?! Only too soon the truth breaks through and it’s enemies lie ashamed and despised by everyone and shunned in a puddle, from which there will not easily be a resurrection! Well, your affair is a little foolish and cannot so easily be set aside so that a world exam could be spared you totally! But there is nonetheless a means to pass this with the necessary honor.

4 You made the nation wise to the fact that the gods had given you the power to rule over the solar and lunar eclipses. But now tell the people that the gods have stopped existing and ruling and that the one, true, great God, to whom all the heathens have also built a temple under the name 'to the unknown, great God' has now come into this world Himself, even physically, and has taken such power from you and will from now on rule and direct everything Himself and entrust no-one any longer with the leading of the planets and worlds!

5 At this the people will certainly raise their eyebrows, and some will think that you have kept your position badly and have sinned. Again others will think that they sacrificed too little. Still others, a little more clearly thinking, will say: They are giving their position back to the great, unknown God very easily; for they had only made it their own in order to keep the blind people all the more easily in check - and the gods who are supposed to have given them such power were the rulers of Rome! But now a truthful man has probably risen secretly who has threatened them and so they are now laying the divine position easily into the lap of the great, only true God, which they in truth have never possessed as entrusted by God. But since they now are already so honest and admit this openly, so it is to be expected that they will admit even more things openly, which will be very good, since we will get behind some truth thereby. The wind which drove them to this must obviously be a good one! Thus the clearer-thinking will think and at the same time secretly laugh behind their hands.

6 The Pharisees will also rejoice quite secretly and say to the people: See, Jehovah Himself must have done this to these most annoying heathens through a powerful prophet; he has forced them to become traitors of themselves to the people!

7 But then say: 'Here for once the Pharisees have spoken the truth! This powerful prophet however is no other than the prophet of Nazareth who is already very well known to you! Jesus is His name, and on Earth He is a son of the very well-known carpenter Joseph - who was only his adoptive father, however - born to Mary, the virgin, likewise well-known far and wide, from the house of Joachim and Anna in Jerusalem! And it is the same man who at Passover of this year drove all the disdainful money-changers and sellers from the temple with whips in the hand. But this prophet is obviously more than a prophet! John, the Baptist in the desert known to them all, bore a correct witness of Him which will also be very familiar to them.

8 'And this messenger of God certainly took away from you the power you made yourselves over the sun, moon and stars, but in return entrusted you with a much more important and greater position in truth. And this high position consists of this, that you all should now announce to the people in all seriousness and in all truth and say that the kingdom of God is near now and that everyone who believes in the name Jesus shall have true, eternal life!'

9 If you will speak thus, you will stop up the mouths of the Pharisees very appropriately who were until now indeed your greatest enemies, and they will wisely avoid wasting another word over your received power over the solar and lunar eclipses, and all the more so since they will know well that you from now on stand under the protection of Rome!

10 Now I have hopefully made this clear enough to you, and you will also see that you will not have anything further to fear! But since you now have the advice and the insight, now go over there and announce it also to your friends and companions! Or do you have something else in the background that still bothers you?"

11 Roklus says: "No, Lord and Master of eternity, now nothing more bothers me, and my heart is full of cheer! For now I am quite safe with my institute, and the black robes shall rejoice over the weather that we will make for them!"

12 I say: "Very good; but now go over and announce it to your friends and brothers, so that they also will have part in your joy! But it will nonetheless cost you all much effort and work, of which you can be fully assured. But where there is no battle, there is also no victory, and where there is no victory, there is also no joy in victory which all people value as the highest thing! Therefore above all courage and endurance, and the victory will not get lost along the way! For this I stand here as of course most certainly the most believable witness and the very most certain guarantor! Or do you not consider that to be satisfactory?"

13 Roklus says: "Who should that not satisfy who know You as I know You? I tell You here nothing but my very innermost thanks and now immediately go to my companions and will bring them up to date with this truest gospel."

14 With this he bows and hurries cheerfully to his companions, whom in the meantime the curiosity about the good or bad way of information had already very much begun to trouble.

- Chapter 144 -

The future relationship between the Essenes and the priesthood

1 When Roklus informs his companions of what he has heard from Me, they are highly joyful about it, and the previous speaker says: "You see, my friend, how good it was that I gave you this impulse to seek advice about it from the Lord Himself, since He is still here! Now we know where we are at, and what we have to do and do not need any white lie - but instead we step forward with the most naked truth and will make everyone who calls us to question be silent with only a few words! Oh, that is great and holy advice! Yes, yes, whoever the Lord helps, is truly helped, and thereby he is helped truly also for all times!"

2 The still present Raphael says: "Yes, you are indeed totally and fully correct there! You have been greatly helped with this advice; but nonetheless with time there will be no end of all sorts of troubles and temptations in your institute, and you will then at all times - remember this well! - count very many friends, but at the same time also always a thousand times as many enemies who will persecute you constantly for being against them, and also because the Lord Himself has been persecuted on this Earth by the blind and evil people.

3 For all professional magicians and all the priests, of whichever confession, hate Him, and most of all however the templars of Jerusalem. But since exactly the priesthood was always the very most comfortable caste of people on this Earth and was so advantageously positioned, they will indeed never be completely gotten rid of; and not much time will pass before even fractions of this now newest teaching of God will be picked up by all sorts of rogues and idlers, and a priesthood will rise out of them, against which even the temple caste is hardly a shadow play.

4 And in comparison with this priesthood you will always have a hard stand. They will of course never do anything to you or harm; but they will persecute you in all ways and places, just as now the Pharisees persecute the Lord in all ways and means. Alone, that will be a true sign to you that you are fully the Lord's and that you keep His word pure in writing and in deed; and for that reason you will have much to rejoice about all the time at such a witness.

5 But you will not ever fear your persecutors, because you will always live under the visible protection of the Lord; but your opponents will fear you extremely and will persecute you exactly for this reason. All their persecutions however will do them as little good as it does the templars when they persecute the Lord now with all their strength, as you will soon experience here a little test of. The Lord has announced to you, my Roklus, already in advance that something else would happen before the morning meal! But what - listen!

6 The wicked ones have learned through an evil refugee from Caesarea Philippi that the prophet from Nazareth is staying here performing His 'mischief', and also that the supreme governor is staying here at His favor. Therefore they have hastily put together a very astute plan in order to capture the Lord, in that they want to make Him seem to Cyrenius an agitator of the people with actual reasons and make Him hateful. The plan has been satanically well laid out so that you will be quite amazed at it.

7 They will fare badly here, namely with Cyrenius; but this event here will bring about a great stir, apart from the fact that such an undertaking here will be immediately talked round most cheerfully. You will play a little part yourselves, but not to your disadvantage, but instead only to the advantage of the good cause. Therefore just be very attentive to everything; just another little quarter of an hour, and things will kick off! But in the meantime we want to keep very calm; Cyrenius himself still has no idea of this, because that is the Lord's will! But the story will therefore be all the more striking. Therefore quiet now!"

8 Everything now became calm without any disruption, to which the imminent sunrise contributed a lot; but mainly everyone there was expecting something special and therefore listened with a certain anxious curiosity to hear what would happen.

- Chapter 145 -

The Pharisees accuse the Lord before Cyrenius of being a public incendiary

1 But soon the sons of Mark discovered a ship still hesitating at some distance, as if the captain did not know whether he was in the right spot or not, the natural cause of which was that very many things had changed very radically on the shores of the Sea of Galilee since yesterday. The impressive rock in the sea, as a main beacon, no longer existed; a strong rock and a huge tree on the snake hill had, as we know, been removed from existence by the Moors. In addition there was the gorgeous new house, the garden and the beautiful harbor with the five new, flagged ships - and so the sailor who should have steered the ship towards Caesarea Philippi did not know where he actually was. He therefore tacked for some time up and down in order to gain some insight into where he might be.

2 But a stiff east wind began to blow and drove the ship straight towards our harbor with irresistible force. In a few moments the sharp-sighted sons of old Mark could already make out very well that the ship was carrying Romans and a few Pharisees on board. They came immediately to Cyrenius and made this known to him. When Cyrenius heard this, he immediately commanded Julius to perform a strict inspection of the ship which gradually and ever faster approached the harbor. When Julius heard this, in an instant he was down at the harbor like an arrow with fifty armed men ready for the ship, which did not need much waiting any longer.

3 When those in the ship became aware of the Romans, they immediately raised a white flag as a sign that they were not enemies, and that one could let them disembark at the harbor without a problem. But Julius, when he saw two arch Pharisees among the Romans who were not unknown to him, immediately sent a messenger to Me and to Cyrenius with the question of what should be done with the new arrivals. Land or water? The people seemed very suspicious to him. It seemed as if also the Romans were only disguised Pharisees or even Herodians.

4 And Cyrenius' answer came very briefly, "Whoever it is, land!"

5 At this command the arrivals were set on land and Julius quickly asked for the usual token of passage which had been prepared by Pilate in Jerusalem according to the legal ordinance. When this short act of legitimization was done, a Roman asked Julius whether the high governor was still staying in this area. A thunderous 'yes!' was the awesome answer on the part of the already quite angered Julius at the pert question.

6 At this a centurion who was with the ship stepped up to Julius very seriously and asked him, "What gives you the right to answer us in such a tone?"

7 Julius, even more seriously than before, says: "If I did not have the best reasons for it, I would have answered you in another tone of voice! But your oriental, stupid face tells me that you are no Roman, but instead something quite different! Therefore my answer should amaze you too much!"

8 The centurion says: "What am I then, if not a Roman?"

9 Julius says: "We will talk about that soon enough! Now you are in my power and have to obey my orders most strictly! My name is Julius, the strictest commander of Rome in this area, and I am a close relative of the high supreme governor Cyrenius! I had to say that to you because you are no Roman; for if you were even in the least a Roman, you would have recognized me already from far off!

10 You see, this is how we Romans tend to catch the sly foxes! But now only forwards, better things are yet to come! I'm sure the area, now a little cultivated, seemed somewhat unfamiliar to you - otherwise you would have honored us with an unexpected visit an hour ago? But that doesn't matter, you have now arrived at the right place despite the unfamiliarity of this area!

11 You see how I know everything in advance! Yes, in Julius' area one does not arrive quite as unannounced as one supposes! Indeed it embarrasses you a little that your whole appearance has been betrayed to me; but perhaps that does not matter so particularly much for such sly-heads as you, which will naturally be shown very soon! Therefore forward to the high governor!"

12 But here the centurion, visibly very embarrassed, says: "What do you know about us?! Who could have betrayed to you something that is not true?"

13 Julius says: "Now no further word! The high governor is over there! Therefore onwards with you false Romans - there the next step!"

14 The centurion with his some eight subordinate soldiers and two very ordinary, well-fed and very tough to the core high-ranking Pharisees then headed towards Cyrenius and gave him there a letter signed by Herod. In this letter there was nothing further than that a very extensive conspiracy against all the Romans had been discovered in all Coelo-Syria and in a great part of Galilee and Samaria. At the head of the same the infamous prophet Jesus of Nazareth was supposed to be the main agitator, who was performing all sorts of incomprehensible miracles for the common people in a secret union with the ever highly secretly active Essenes for the dazzlement of the people and thereby giving a type of divinely prophetic coating and even was supposed to have the most accursed cheek to proffer himself to the people as a true son of God.

15 (Herod): 'Further it has been said truly and faithfully by several people bearing identical witness from various districts that this most bedeviled agitator of the people has even befriended the very highest Roman servants of the state, along with his already very substantial horde of so-called disciples. But the secret reputation declares that the reprobate is simply doing this in order to kill them all on a certain day, after which he will then raise himself to king of all Jews. But after such a thing was revealed to me through the advice of the high gods I make you obliged to this and hope that you will know how to order your own and how to act! In deepest reverence, Herod, now in Jerusalem.'

16 For the sake of space the whole letter with all it’s many flatteries is not repeated here, which is also truly unnecessary; but the main sense is fully presented.

- Chapter 146 -

The unmasking of the false accusers

1 When Cyrenius had read through this letter very attentively with the most serious face, he turned with a sympathetically friendly look to Me and said: "But Lord, is that even possible to make You suspicious to me in such a very most shameful way?! What do You say to this? For You certainly know what it contains!"

2 I say, "Call Raphael and Roklus; for it would not be right for Me to talk to these messengers of the Prince of lies!"

3 Immediately Cyrenius called Raphael and Roklus, of whom the messengers of Herod seemed to know the latter only too well; for they quickly turned their faces away from him.

4 When Raphael came to Cyrenius, he [Raphael] also handed him a scroll and said, "There you have the duplicate of the letter supposedly written by Herod; read it and recognize from it that I and through me also Roklus were informed before about this genuine Pharisaic shamefulness! After the signature of Herod, which he however never got to see, nor did he know anything of this most shameful plan, there is a small comment which will explain to you the whole content, and which you must also read therefore. But once you have read everything, give it then to the messengers and let them read it too! Further things will happen of themselves."

5 Cyrenius took this scroll into his hands and read it through quickly, also the comment, at which he could not wonder enough, since it contained exactly what he had immediately thought himself. When he had read all this, he gave this scroll likewise to the false centurion and said: "Now you too read this out to your companions!"

6 With a visible embarrassment the centurion took this scroll from Raphael and read it with an ever falling face, and having read the comment even a positive fever befell him, and all the messengers began to change color very significantly, which naturally did not escape the sharp look of Cyrenius and all those present. When the false centurion had read the scroll through entirely - and indeed so loud that what was read could be heard also by his companions - he gave Raphael's scroll back to Cyrenius again with a deep bow, but said no word; for he, like his companions, had been enormously affected by this event, and their deception now stood before a cliff-wall on which there was not even the most miserable path to cross.

7 After a short while of the most total silence Cyrenius broke it and asked the centurion: "So, Herod supposedly advises me to offer up everything in order to capture the prophet, and that I should have His head, as well as the heads of all His disciples, struck from His body without a second thought?"

8 At this question there was no answer.

9 Then Cyrenius became annoyed and said: "An answer! - or you shall pay for this outrage in an exemplary way! From whom does this letter come, who wrote it, who had the cheek to come to me with such a colossal lie, and what a shameful intention is hidden there in the background?"

10 At this very energetic question almost all the messengers lost consciousness; for they knew that they were dealing with the most merciless Roman supreme governor. Everyone began to shake with fever as if seized by a panicked fear, and there was no sign of an answer.

11 Then Julius said: "High ruler, how would it be then if we paid these messengers immediately with the reward specified by the law - for cheap betrayal - and then brought them to Sidon in the strongest custody until the time when the revolution will break loose according to their suggested deadline, on which day then the whole reward for betrayal will be paid, either on the cross or on the block? We can see from an hour's journey away that these Romans are nothing but a heap of the very worst Pharisees, who can be bought with gold for every ignominy!"

12 Cyrenius says: "You are quite right; but since we are not the only lords here and someone else here has a comment to make, we will wait for this with the greatest calm possible!"

- Chapter 147 -

The argument with the Pharisees

1 Here Roklus stepped up and said: "High ruler, allow me to say something to these fiends and pixies in their ears; for my institute has also been very terribly attacked in this letter, which I as a representative cannot possibly allow to happen! I must ask them how and when the evil prophet from Nazareth, so rumored and most reprobate by them, learned the magical arts from us with which he now captivates and misleads the people! By God, if they do not make this colossal slander good again for me on this spot, I will lay hands on them myself and wring their necks, as the Lord God certainly will help me!"

2 At this one of the two Pharisees steps forward and says: "What can we do then about the fact that the whole issue seems to be only an evil fabrication?! We did not write it and even less create it! Just look at these people who sent us; we, as only the messengers, certainly do not owe anyone an account! We simply expect a true answer which we have to bring back to those who sent us here. That, I believe, should be the long and the short of it!"

3 Roklus, urged on by Raphael, says: "Fine; but what should then happen if we can prove to you tangibly that only you yourselves are the creators of your evil letter, and that you, if this is possible for you, have to keep the reward of a thousand pounds of gold AD PERSONAM from the great gold chest of the temple?"

4 The Pharisee says: screaming: "Who can accuse us of such shamefulness? The letter has been signed by Herod!"

5 At this Roklus calls Zinka and says: "Like no other in the world you know your ruler's handwriting. Tell us, is that his signature?"

6 Zinka looks at the letter and says: "Not in the slightest! For Herod can actually not write, but instead in a pinch only read Greek. He has a type of seal to sign his name which he presses on the documents; therefore this signature must have been falsified! You have my oath on whatever you wish!"

7 Then Roklus says: "Well, you wise man of God and very truest Pharisee in the name of Moses and Aaron, how do you feel now? I'm sure you would now prefer to be sitting at home with a fat meal than here among such glorious patrons! Yes, yes, there is no other way: If a person is not satisfied with what the Lord God has provided him, he must then give in to fate and it’s pitfalls!

8 Yes, yes, you do not like the wicked prophet from Nazareth at all, because He threatens to make you a very strong impression through His holiest teaching of truth! That is the crux of the matter! But things have now become so and will never be otherwise, even if it ever pleased Him to show you all through a favor to allow you to kill Him, at least PRO FORMA, for He, as life itself from eternity, can impossibly ever be killed. I have now spoken; now it is your turn! What do you say now to all that?"

9 The Pharisee now stood there as if turned to stone, and none of the messengers dared any longer to utter even a syllable.

10 After a few moments Cyrenius, who secretly received a wink from Me, called both the arch Pharisees to him in the very craftiest way and said to them: "Calm yourselves now! The storm has passed; do not beat yourselves against our initial very smooth Roman seriousness! Now the second phase of discussion is coming, in which I do not want to hear any fiction with false signatures from you, but instead the pure, full truth. Only through the truth can you be freed from my otherwise merciless power - otherwise prison, the cross and the axe are unmistakably your fate, as certain as I am the supreme governor of all Asiatic provinces of Rome.

11 But if you speak the truth, whatever it may be, and whatever sense it may have, you may count upon my Roman fullest word of honor, that I will let you go quite freely and unhindered. Now choose what you will! If you want to persist with this lie, you have now heard from my mouth what unmistakably awaits you; for here in Asia I am a completely unlimited ruler in the name of the emperor, and two hundred and sixty thousand warriors wait every hour for my orders. If that was previously unknown to you, so know it now how things stand. Who will call me to account if I simply have all the Jews executed by the sword at my whim?! I have no lack of power and force! Where can one instigate a conspiracy in all of Asia that I would not hear about within fourteen days?! But then the most terrible pains to the rebels!

12 If even a little mutiny was still spread secretly according to your statements, I would truly know about it, and my many informers would immediately have much to do about it. Therefore your denouncement here to me is a terrible lie, just like Herod's signature, through which you would have used me, if I had been blind, for quite other purposes. Alone, you hopefully now have a very appropriate conviction of the fact that such things do not go down well with me and will never. Therefore now out with the truth, so that I will see very clearly on what ground I stand with you! But only note well: Look, as purely as the sun is now rising over the mountains on the other side of the sea, just as purely the truth must be that you now tell me - and then I will also keep my word to you! Speak now!"

13 Here both the Pharisees, as well as the false Romans, who also were half Pharisees and half Herodians, pulled very terribly desperate faces; for nothing seems less desirable to a person than accusing himself and openly admitting his very worst evil intentions. And so it was now with the Pharisees. But what were they going to do? Cyrenius' lack of mercy, as well as his strictest justice was well known, and there was nothing else left to do obviously than to admit the full truth.

- Chapter 148 -

The confession of the Pharisee

1 Accordingly one of the Pharisees summoned up the courage and began to speak thus: "Very highest and mercilessly strict lord and ruler over all lands of Asia and the most part of Africa! Since nothing is left for us now than to admit the full truth, I must then admit openly in the name of all my companions that the letter was pure fiction, and that we persecuted the infamous prophet of Nazareth in the most decided way as our greatest enemy simply for the sake of professional jealousy. For he performs things that supersede everything that has gone before to the very greatest degree; in addition he teaches straight against the temple and it’s laws, which are not given by us.

2 On Mount Sinai about a thousand years ago Moses received commandments from the fiery hand of God, and afterwards another large number of state rules. Among the commandments the first is a very important one, saying: 'You shall believe only in Me, your one and only true God, and honor and worship no other Gods before Me; for I alone am your God and Lord!' The prophet (of Nazareth) however states that he and no other is the true son of God and even a God himself, and refers back to the sayings of the prophets, which he applies arbitrarily for himself and his deeds.

3 If that is allowed to go unpunished, the divinely proven institute in Jerusalem will be totally at an end in a few years! What then? How will we who are called by God stand before the people and what will we live on, since we may never legally possess either field or vineyard according to God? On the one hand we have the Samaritans, the Sadducees and the half-heathens who have fallen away from us, but on the other hand the Essenes, who will soon have the people for themselves - and now the Galilean on top of it all! Surely that is finally a bit too much!

4 On Sinai, by thunder and lightning, Jehovah gave us laws through Moses and Aaron, sanctioned them and, truly, created an eternal union with us and obliged us most strictly to remain true to this covenant. He, the Almighty, promised us the greatest advantages in life if we remain faithful to the covenant and the law, but also the greatest disadvantages if we casually break the covenant. However he also gave us the right to pursue our opponents with fire and sword, as Joshua in Jericho and later the great King David did with the Philistines, where even the children in their mothers' womb were not to be spared according to Jehovah's order.

5 But if now Jehovah wanted to annul the old covenant against His promises and reiterations, perhaps because of our sins and our tepidness and tolerance of our opponents and fully abandon us now, He would certainly do it in an easily possible grandiose way for Him, in which way He established the covenant with us about a thousand years ago, so that everyone would know certainly and undoubtedly what He is doing! But that has by no means happened here now; how then can a magician, whatever extraordinary things he performs, ever begin to agitate against us in the most shameful way as an ever existent statute of God?!

6 He may heal the sick as often as he wants, and should may mountains to amuse the people and perform other great things; but against the temple and its holy secrets he should not wage war! But he does such things more and more, undermines the faith and the trust of the people, now particularly among the Galileans, towards the temple, so that they often no longer want to pay us the tithes and on top of that they call us the greatest and finest deceivers of the people and the nation. If we are that, then Jehovah should accuse us through the mouth of a proper prophet, not through a Galilean magician, who pretends to be one of the greatest prophets, yes, even the son of the Highest, since it is written that a prophet can never arise from Galilee, which is too filled with heathens, and all the less a son of God coming from heaven!

7 But if we, firstly through God's Law and secondly through the most obvious pressure of circumstances, are forced to persecute a person who is highly dangerous to the old matter of God and wherever possible get rid of him with our own hands with all the divine rights and to remove him from the Earth, do we then do wrong if we unfortunately have to make use of some political means in these days in order to destroy the extremely dangerous subject?! I believe that you will no longer have any doubt of the full truth of this well-founded open admission of ours!"

- Chapter 149 -

Cyrenius' testimony for the Lord

1 Cyrenius says: "Indeed not at all; for this time you have spoken the fullest truth which otherwise does not easily come from the mouth of a Pharisee and you have made my soul very cheerful again! But in any case I must make the remark at the issue which concerns your so dangerous prophet or even the son of God, that He must have a much defamed reputation. Secondly I must openly admit to you that I know the most highly memorable one very well and can give you the open assurance that He is a highly inoffensive man who makes every effort only to be of use to His fellow man and even His very worst enemies too, who you obviously are, despite the fact that all your great fraudulence, of which neither Moses nor Aaron ever dreamed, are only too well known to Him.

2 Oh, He is entirely a Jew, but only in the purest and genuinely Mosaic sense! But where is Moses and where are you with your new human statutes? He is thus against the non-Moses in you, but not against you yourselves! Already a great number of the most shocking complaints have come to my attention from the people against your disdainful actions and fraudulence, that I have really planned a number of times to put a stop to your game once and for all by force. Only He has kept me from doing this! If He, who is aware of my highest and fullest friendship, were your enemy, He would have certainly only taken great joy in this, if He could have cleaned you quite off the face of the Earth through my hands in the shortest time; but quite the opposite!

3 He regrets your great blindness that you however have laid on yourselves. He would only like to lead you back to the truth and to the one true God, from whom you have turned away through your countless worldly desires, and to renew the covenant with you again; but He does not want to destroy you at all. But if that is His very most active wish and will, how is He then your enemy? If you had His means in your hands, how often would you have killed Him already! Does He do anything similar to you, where indeed a thousand of the very most powerful means stand at His disposal every hour of the day?! As it is in my power and strength, I have set Him an extremely difficult exam, which He has passed in the most glorious way.

4 I have found in Him that person whom I - let's say - thirty years ago hidden from the cruelest persecution by the old Herod, and He is just the same who thirty years ago, when my brother Augustus introduced the national census and count in the whole wide Roman Empire and thereby also in the Jewish lands, was born in Bethlehem in a sheep's stall to the young wife of the carpenter Joseph among all sorts of miraculous events, recognized by the wise men of the East through a great comet that led them there and greeted and gifted as a future king of the Jews, even then sung about as a very particular event for the people of this Earth by the amazed shepherds, whom you must remember at least a little!

5 If nothing should have come to your ears about it, although you must already be sixty years old, here stands my brother Cornelius, who in those days also ran the Roman centre of census in Bethlehem, as an even very alive witness before you and beside whom I myself, who also already found the highly unexpected opportunity to perceive and to experience the witnesses of divinity in the hardly fourteen day old child, which did not allow me any moment in doubt among the greatest and most respectful amazement that the child most obviously was more than some human child, however perfect.

6 When I now in the older years of my life found the child of those days then as a man full of spirit and divine miraculous power, I soon and easily found that He has come from the mentioned child, and it will hopefully not be difficult to understand that I then was forced to bow before Him my old head in the very deepest respect and love, and that through my very own feeling.

7 And you persecute this man so hastily and want to destroy and annihilate Him totally?! Oh, you very most senseless and blindest idiots! Did Moses then not prophesy about His coming and after Him almost all the great and small prophets who were slain by your fathers in their very most miserable foolishness with stones as you now want to slay this man?! You persecute Him, who alone can and wants to help you all, now even with all cunning, call Him an abomination, place the worst curse on Him and want in addition to kill Him?!

8 You have not recognized the area that you sought because the greatly feared cliff has disappeared and this whole, previously extremely desert bay has been changed into a true Eden. But who did that? I and all those present here are witnesses that no human hand was active even with a finger. He was and is among us and performed such miracles simply through His will!

9 Here at my side stands a boy; his name is Josoe. He lay almost two years in the grave, and nothing but the decaying bones were left of him. And nonetheless it was an easy task for the man whom you persecute so bitterly and so stubbornly to form him again through a simple word and to reanimate him, as he now stands before you!

10 Here at the table sit my two daughters, who were robbed from me by some terrible slave traders. While crossing the sea they fell into the water during a storm and drifted, surrounded by monsters, perfectly dead on the wide surface of the sea. During a fishing expedition the day before yesterday, in which we all took part, they were discovered and brought here. The word of your enemy - to Him alone be all my honor! - gave them life again as you can now see!

11 Now I ask you whether a magician would also be capable of performing this, or whether these signs are not already greater in themselves than those which were carried out in the desert in the days of Moses! What I say to you all is as strictly true as I am called Cyrenius, and such things can be supported even more by many thousand witnesses, and you call the doer of such works in a certain way an abomination, you persecute Him and even want to kill Him?! What a hardly comprehensible degree of the very blindest foolishness indeed is needed to do this!"

- Chapter 150 -

The stupidity and blindness of the Pharisees

1 The Pharisee says: "Very highest and most strictly correct ruler! We are scribes and have studied the chronicles; therefore I believe that we cannot then be supposed to be all that stupid!"

2 Cyrenius says: "Look, even this remark of yours was as foolish as possible and just as foolish were your ways and means to catch the holy man of Nazareth! For you could indeed well have thought with even just an ounce of understanding that we Romans would distinguish between a Jew disguised in even very poorly-made Roman clothing and a real Roman and would understand only too quickly that a very refined mean trick is hidden behind it all! Thus you could well have thought also that I would recognize certainly Herod's signature only too well! Thus you could also have well imagined that you would be seen through and recognized by me on the spot in your vicious intention, and that therefore your undertaking was a highly foolish and risky one, which could have killed even your little bit of fleshly life, which is your greatest sanctum! I tell you all: Truly a child comforted by mother’s wit could tell you with certainty what will happen to your undertaking! But now it's enough to make you obey! You highly wise scribes have not been capable of seeing that in advance!

3 But do you know the reason for this? I will tell you: The indulging splurger, whose stomach has never felt emptiness, cannot possibly imagine the sensation of a hungry stomach; it never even enters the head of a deaf person how a person feels hearing the harmony of a perfectly pitched Aeolian lyre; thus neither can a completely blind person form any comprehension of the impression of seeing and looking and it seems to his feelings that all people are blind. And likewise and actually even worse is it for a spiritually blind and truly foolish person! He not only considers all people to be as foolish as he is himself, but instead, to be even much more foolish; for he does not consider himself to be foolish at all, but only to be very wise. He cannot understand at all how B could possibly be just as comprehending and wise as he, A, feels. And there actually lies the reason why such highly imagined foolish people seize things so foolishly during some undertaking as you have just brought only too tangibly clearly to light before me here.

4 But because you are so foolish, you cannot possibly understand either the unspeakably great signs of these times, as you, despite all your so highly praised knowledge as scribes, have no idea at all, what Moses and all the other seers of these recent times have prophesied and namely about the Messiah of the Jews and His kingdom on Earth. This, just like the present undertaking of yours is therefore only the consequence of your too great and crude spiritual blindness; for with some spiritual light you would have to then realize, for the sake of your Jehovah, that nothing can ever eternally be done with success on your part against a power such as ours, and even less against a man filled with the most all-powerful spirit of God, who only needs to desire it very slightly and the whole Earth will disappear out of existence in an instant!

5 Truly I say to you: Five times a hundred thousand such people as you I would not fear with a hundred thousand experienced warriors; but what good would a thousand times as many warriors do me against the all-powerful will of such a man? One thought from him and they will no longer exist! And you with your deception and state wisdom want to catch such a man of God and even kill him "and that is without having any valid reason for it? Tell me now very honestly whether you do not yet see your very great and crude foolishness and now can grasp at it with your hands!"

6 The Pharisee says: "If I am allowed to speak openly to you, I also wanted to say some things to you which perhaps might open your eyes a little, highest ruler, in this affair; but one cannot speak to you and argue such as we wise men of the temple tend to do among ourselves! But if I were allowed to speak to you without punishment quite honestly then perhaps you would also begin to raise your eyebrows!"

7 Cyrenius, almost with a sort of concealed smile, says: "Truly, I allow you to speak quite freely; no punishment shall follow your words!"

- Chapter 151 -

The temple morals of the Pharisee

The miracles of Moses in view of the Pharisees

1 At this the Pharisee made a positive attempt, stood very straight and began to speak in the following way: "Highest ruler! You know much, and your understanding shines like a purest diamond in the sunlight; but I also know some things, even if I do not always show it and actually may not show it according to our tradition! But wherever there is a need, it shall become clear! If a person belongs to an institution on this dear Earth and unfortunately through birth, tradition, law and through the earthly pressure of the situation is forced to swear himself to his flag for the sake of his dear stomach, then thereby one is as good as dead spiritually on this Earth. In the beginning certainly not completely; but gradually all the more!

2 For if one is forced again and again before the eyes of the people without any distinction with all means of earthly force to make a U into an X, then all thinking stops! One must begin to positively curse oneself for every clearer thought and say: Go away you pure light of heaven! If I am damned to be a devil, then I will be a devil! Whether crafty or foolish, it truly matters no longer any more! If I must be an X instead of a U, then I'll be it; I cannot possibly change such old circumstances!

3 In time the person gets very used to his devilry and thinks: because you have already been born a fool, and were brought up as such, then remain just as you are! If your stomach is satisfied, all the body is satisfied. Eat and drink and enjoy life as long as and however it may be enjoyed! If the last day comes then, the last hour, then all shackles are released and all laws will end forever for him who has returned to his nothingness!

4 Lies and truth then stretch out their hands to one another in the very friendliest way, where full nothingness of existence has it’s home. In such safest and fully truest prospects it is indeed very much the same in which dunce-cap one has spent his life on this Earth. But as long as one lives, one should nonetheless strive for the sake of the own earthly well-being to avoid everything most carefully that can make the little bit of life bitter and unpleasant; everything else is myth and chimera. But whoever looks at life as something higher only deceives himself.

5 But I do not advance this opinion as an issue with its foundations in nature, but instead only as a consequence that almost every person who firmly belongs to some caste of worldly idiots must reach this opinion and finally fully get used to it, because he cannot think, speak or act differently to how the stereotypical laws of the caste dictate to him. I can be convinced very clearly one or a thousand times that things are so with the Nazarene just as your high mouth has made known to me; but what good is it to me? As long as I am a sworn-in member of the caste, there is certainly nothing left for me to do but to scream from the bottom of my lungs with them: Down with him! For he is a danger to our institute and limits our essential income!

6 Certainly I may think very secretly to myself: The whole caste wants it and has made you into it’s tool through your lot. And if I then withdraw and act blindly according to the prescription received, above which or below which I cannot and may not undertake anything according to my private opinion! Further I think however even more secretly: If there is seriously something in the person who is persecuted, he will make short work of us and we as the conquered will hardly ever get to see our holy chambers again; but if there is nothing to him besides a new big-talk as has happened to us a thousand times before, then he will be well gotten rid of, if one only can get hold of him! For what does he aim to achieve? Nothing but the foundation of a new and perhaps even worse caste!

7 Oh, at the beginning everything looks so very divine! If we look at the life of Abraham and his first descendants! One sees the divinity very often visibly walking with them and leading them along the path of the righteous - nota bene, we were certainly not there! But at the time of Moses, how did the children of Abraham look like! Moses was again one who must have studied very obediently and thoroughly the old wise men of Egypt! He was indoctrinated in all the weaknesses of the Egyptian court, had probably received the thirst to become ruler of this kingdom himself and cleared the legitimate princes of the Pharaoh out of the way to this end.

8 The first plan failed. He fled and thought up a different plan in order to agitate his blood-related people sunken below the animal kingdom with secret propagandists against the lust-weakened Pharaoh. When he learned that his people stood there at the ready he came himself armed with great magical power, and began to dictate to the king. But to his people who perhaps still had some idea of the previous divine circumstances of the old patriarchs, he presented himself as a messenger of Jehovah, performed very easily understandable, incomprehensible miracles for the people and so the people followed him like a flock of sheep the bellwether.

9 He indeed knew a lot about the character of the sea, that it rises and falls again twice daily. He spied out the possible crossing point long in advance. The whole bay is hardly too moderate hours walk wide. At the time of the sea's lowest point there is a more than an hour's journey wide, firm rock ground always perfectly free of water for a good three hours in the middle of the bay and serves the traveler, when the sea is not moved by any storm, as a best crossing bridge. With rapid steps one can even cross it in a good hour and then find oneself in the shortest way immediately in the Arabian desert, which one would otherwise hardly reach in 4-6 days by land, since the sea spreads for several hours wide on the other side of this ledge and is fairly deep.

10 Moses calculated this very cleverly, since he, like no-one else from the Pharaoh's court, possessed a very solid knowledge of the territory. He led his masses at a fast pace over the ledge into the Arabian desert and the very most jagged mountainous areas in which, apart from his adopted parents perhaps, certainly no-one else possessed. Therefore this area and its other natural miraculous characteristics, which our prophet certainly knew how to use, were indeed familiar to him.

11 But now let's leave that and look a little at the Israelites crossing the sea, and we see them complete the journey as if on the wings of the wind just as Pharaoh, now burning with anger and rage, order his army to storm after the Israelites along the same path. If the Pharaoh had come earlier, our good Moses would certainly not have escaped with his skin intact; but his laggardness and the clearing away of various obstacles kept his army back. Moses got a significant head start and happily escaped his enemies following him. Now when Pharaoh, chasing after Moses had hardly reached the middle of the aforementioned ledge, the sea began as usual to rise very rapidly and to drive it’s waves over the Pharaoh's army, and it is easily comprehensible that they then found its certain demise in the flood."

- Chapter 152 -

Further explanations of Old Testament miracles

1 At this Cyrenius interrupted the narrator and said to him: "By no means are you as foolish as I believed in the beginning; but because you seem to understand things so very well in their nature, I would like then to learn from you how you will explain to me the familiar appearance out of the Ark of the covenant, and indeed it’s daily pillar of smoke and nightly pillar of fire. How then did this appear in your very natural and miracle-less way?"

2 The Pharisee says with a very easy spirit; "High ruler! Just take a short look into the old art of warfare - and the famous and so much idolized Ark of the Covenant is explained! The box itself was a well-constructed instrument to create electricity to the greatest degree according to the ancient Egyptian type. Behind the highly complicated box there were iron carts to make smoke. They were filled with all sorts of strongly smoking and mostly also very stinking things, like feathers, the hairs of all sorts of animals and also people, spread these smoking ingredients with sulphur, pitch and saltpeter and ignited then this mechanism. This gave out a thick and powerful smoke which in a very short time, particularly with a fast pull of the cart, concealed the path like a thick fog and prevented the vision of the following enemy over the turns and positions of the pursued army, but at the same time, too unbearably adversely for the camels, horses and elephants, brought these animals of war to a turn-around and to the retreat, which was certainly no desirable thing for the following enemy. It can indeed be imagined that behind a fleeing army often several of the now described carts were drawn. That is now in the true imagery the so miraculous and even super-holy Ark of the Covenant of Moses, and I can also say to you, very highest ruler, with a clear conscience: SAPIENTI PAUCA!" [the wise man needs little].

3 Cyrenius says: "Fine, let's leave that then! How do you explain, however, the falling in of the walls of the old, great city of Jericho? The Ark of the Covenant was carried around the walls of the city, accompanied by the powerful-sounding trupets in the way that was already normal among the ancient Egyptians in the temples and I believe that the walls collapsed like porridge at the third circle. How was that possible then? The noise of a million trombones would certainly never have been able to do that! Explain that to me too then in your natural ways!"

4 The Pharisee says with a pretty loud laugh: "Well, that will certainly be tangibly clear! We are told about that ancient Egyptians with the greatest certainty that they destroyed and burnt the ships of the enemy by means of the correct use of electricity. Here we see the certain Ark travel several times around Jericho's walls - and Joshua will surely have known in truth why he did that! He must have been familiar with the treatment and effect of the Ark! I say once again to you: Sapienti pauca!"

5 Cyrenius says: "Yes, this is worth hearing; but if the Ark was nothing but a pure machine of electricity, it must then be just the same today!? Why does it not have the same effect today?

6 The Pharisee says: "Well, will the reason be very much more understandable? If we take a house that is about a thousand years old, or a ship, or a rock; it will also have a very different appearance at such an age! Even stones often weather away very noticeably in a thousand years - how much more then an old piece of wood and the less noble metals, such as copper and iron; a thousand years can even be seen very well in gold!

7 We are still in possession of the old, artistic Ark of the Covenant, which has become so fragile however over time that it possesses just as much of the original effective set up as the healthy teeth an old man's mouth has lost. In addition the Babylonians understood very well how to plunder the temple along with the Ark. But we do not understand how the ark was once set up. Of course we had an identical one built; but it cannot possibly have the effect of the old one, because it is totally lacking and must lack the necessary inner features because in these times no-one among us understands any longer how to set it up. I believe, highest ruler, that I have expressed myself about this as clearly as possible!"

8 Cyrenius says: "Yes, if everything is then so based on a fine, pious deception, how can you then remain with your very healthy opinion and insight a well-conditioned member of such an institute of deceit?"

9 The Pharisee says: "That is exactly the heart of Satan! Because one has become a member of the caste as a blind person! As a seeing person one would hardly have professed to this! But once one is there and sees that the whole world is a madhouse, well, then one is forced to go along with it for the sake of the dear stomach, just as for the sake of a healthy skin! A desertion is still always punished by our caste for indeed wise reasons by the by no means pleasant death by stoning! I think to have answered comprehensibly and quite understandably."

- Chapter 153 -

The Pharisee's philosophy of nature

1 Cyrenius says: "From all this that you have now told and expressed, emerges clearly however that you as a pious servant of God have never believed in a god; but how can one be even a strict servant of a being that does not exist at all for you?"

2 The Pharisee says: "Well, that can also be very easily explained for the previously mentioned extremely cogent reasons that are valid for all time! What can a child do, however enlightened he may be, against the power and physical strength of his parents and often super-foolish teachers? He has to obey them! I'll give you this situation: You Romans have made us submissive with your irresistible power. Which of us could offer their resistance against your power? You should have, however, instead of your very wise and just laws, for example, given us the most foolish of them to be observed most strictly. Could we weaklings do anything else but observe them just as exactly as we observe these present wise ones? The eternal power works with irresistible power and one must follow it’s orders. On this earth everything is of course only a sham and no real existence.

3 We seek the truth, we seek God. But where and what is the truth and where and who is God?! Every nation recognizes and has a different deity and accordingly determines the statutes that are presented to the same people as a holy truth. Are they therefore also a truth for us? We laugh about them and cannot understand at all how a nation can possibly believe such illogical, very most foolish things! But if we go to that nation and inquire about the judgment on our faith, if they know something about it, they will not understand either how we can believe and keep ours! There is something good for the maintenance of the general order everywhere - but by no means any truth and even less a divinity truly present anywhere!

4 Over there the sun is a truth and the effective divinity for itself and also for us, although we must satisfy ourselves simply only with it’s shine, thus there is also here on this Earth thoroughly more of a shine than any true existence. Or does the sunshine not affect everything here? Everything that exists came from the shine of the sunlight and it’s wonderful warmth, and as long as it exists, it exists and lives through the shine of the truly all-powerful sun; for it will always shine on one half from the one side, while the other half has the shade.

5 Thus in the sky the real sunlight is resplendent in great majesty as the perfect truth. The Earth and everything on it is a work of it’s light or the shine, thus already more shine than being. Behind the seemingly existence of the whole earth and of all the things, there is the shadow as a complete lie; and it is exactly this shade that all travelers seek and love the most and the sleep among the general shadow of the earth that we tend to call 'night', is and remains after the work and effort of the day the greatest, most strengthening and most pleasant revitalization of life!

6 And therefore it also seems to me that the people can exist under the rule of the possibly purest truth just as little, taken morally, as their physical being can without sleep. Therefore what sleep is to the body is a well-conditioned lie to the whole moral person. And then it certainly does not depend on whatever sort of form a lie is supposed to have! If it only gives the moral person a certain feeling and very refreshing rest of hope and a half-illuminated and easily acceptable confidence, then the lie is good, and the purest truth can go to her begging for it’s bread.

7 For as long as people have been living on this Earth this has been so; now it is also that way and will also so until a possible end of all time. The people will continue to seek the truth but at the same time eat from the dish of lies and live. There will always be wise men too among the very many foolish people who will hold out a light of truth to the people. But the brighter they illuminate the people always only on one side the more certain and pronounced the shade will be perceived behind the people who have been illuminated most brightly from the front as a constant consequence of the light!

8 But as the light also always affects the shade, in just the same way the purest truth also always affects the most complete lie. For without truth there would be no lie and without a lie there would not easily be a truth. But every truth hides at least the capability in it to create a lie, just as the light creates a shadow. Every person should ask himself which of the two is the better for the people, but faithfully and openly without concealing anything! A just judge sentences liars and deceivers according to the law and lives from his position; but where is he who can make things generally understandable for me, that the law itself is a truth? It is an accepted and sanctioned statute, here one way, but different in another place! Where is the truth there where one lie punishes the other? I say again here: Sapienti pauca!"

9 With this Cyrenius had had enough for the meantime, and let the Pharisee retreat and said to Me, "No, did You hear that? Such a thing has never happened to me! Roklus also understood how to speak in his purely intelligent sphere; but I still remained his master in my innards. But this Pharisee has now fenced me in so much that I cannot say anything at all to him in return! I have always imagined the Pharisees to be very much more foolish; but he has proven to me that they are not foolish at all! But what should be done with him now?"

- Chapter 154 -

Cyrenius' reference to the miracles of the Lord

1 I say: "Just let him explain My miracles now and you will be persuaded that he will know how to explain them in just as naturally a way as those of Moses! Only then will we show him what a great mistake he is making. Call him back and do that; for that is a crafty one!"

2 Cyrenius hurried to do what I had suggested and the company of Pharisees came before the Supreme Governor bent low in respect and the speaker for the Pharisees asked, bowing most deeply, what they should have to face now according to his high advice.

3 Cyrenius says: "Nothing other than to pursue the issue of the divinity, human faith, the prophets and the miracles that often occurred in your ever more enlightening way; for I must have clarity one way or another!

4 Previously you truly made the story of Moses and the old miracles very comprehensible, and I can now sooner think the events according to your explanation to be true than according to any other. Naturally that must remain strictly between us for the sake of the people! But look, despite your explanation a heavy concern and responsibility oppresses me! What I have truly seen with my own eyes and heard in the most miraculous way in the world, for thus there are witnesses here from almost every part of the world. Heathens and Jews, Essenes, the Scythian king Ouran with his entourage, even there is no lack of Persians - sheer authorities of the first rank in this world as wisdom is represented these days.

5 Observe this magnificent bathhouse and it’s inner, super-luxurious and invaluable decoration, the garden with the wide-reaching protective surrounding walls! Look at the magnificent fruits in the garden of all the noblest types and species! Everything beams with lushness and many fruits already stand there completely ripe. Further observe the magnificent sources of water that could not easily exist better! Then turn your eyes to the sea! Observe the harbor and it’s extremely firm protective wall which reaches down to the deep depths of the sea, and the five magnificent ships, the chain! Then look to that place where once the great cliff that was often very dangerous to the ships once stood! Look, there is no longer any trace of it down to the deepest depths!

6 Look over there, far over the sea to the area of Genezareth! Didn't a terribly high cliff stand there only a few, or at most four, weeks ago which stretched it’s vertical walls deep into the water and whose crown had certainly never been stood upon by any mortal? Millennia passed over it’s stubborn forehead and the tooth of ages could do nothing against its granite masses. But before the previously mentioned period of about four weeks, exactly this prophet of Nazareth who is persecuted by you came there and alongside the many other miracles he performed he also reformed that mountain cliff gently so that it can now be climbed from all sides without any danger even by children with the greatest ease.

7 Who did not know the highly unhealthy fever area of Genezareth? Everything suffered from the life-consuming fever; particularly the foreigners, who often had to spend years ailing there in order to reach enough health again through getting used to the climate in order to travel on again. Even our soldiers of the greatest health and firmest sort often became fatally ill there and filled the hospitals. The prophet of Nazareth went there, blessed the area, and now it is one of the healthiest in all Galilee, and all the sick became healthy again in an instant.

8 Well, those are facts which happened before our eyes, and truly no-one can blame us if we were gullible people to whom any con-man from Egypt, India or Persia could pass off his miracles as true. That is where all reason ends. I will admit that everything concerning Moses can be explained in a very natural way; for firstly they bear instead quite strongly the stamp of naturalness - looked at in your light - and secondly, we have no other witnesses besides the books that are supposed to come from his hand and which are difficult to understand, who could give us any better information. The Greek scribes know little or nothing about it.

9 But let him be as he wants now; let's leave what is long in the past and occupy ourselves now with this extremely greatest wonderfully shining present! How might you then explain to me these new miracles? Truly I want to reward you more than kingly and decorate you if you can help me out of my dreams in a similar way, and I promise you even my most active support for the persecution and destruction of this notorious prophet!"

- Chapter 155 -

The instruction of the Pharisees through a wine miracle

1 The Pharisee says: "When was this Nazarene here and how long did he stay here and has he been here once before?"

2 Behind Cyrenius was old Mark as well and took up the word saying: "This divine man has never before been in this area; he came here only about eight days ago with His handful of disciples and brought nothing but His all-powerful will alone, and His disciples were constantly like lambs around Him.

3 But the first miracle was that He ordered me to fill all my quite many wine-skins with water, which I then had my children do immediately. And behold, hardly were the skins filled and the water, like that which the sea contains, was already transformed into the very tastiest wine! Here, there is still a full beaker of exactly this wonderful wine! Taste it and then give us your judgment!"

4 The Pharisee took the beaker, drained the wine almost to the bottom of the beaker and said, "Truly a better wine has never passed over my tongue! However, is your statement, old warrior, also very reliably true?"

5 Mark says: "Whoever knows me will know that my tongue has never been dirtied by a lie. But whoever still asks, his faith is not strong. But in order to bring things a little closer to you and to give your colorful natural condition a shove, I beg you to go down to the sea with this very empty jug and fill it yourself with water, and I stand for it that the prophet who still remains among us simply through His will immediately will transform the water into wine! Or should it occur to you that somehow the jug has already been prepared for this purpose, then take one of your jugs and go down to the sea, scoop up the water there at any place you like, and as soon as it is in the jug it will also become wine, as you have now tasted it in an instant! If I am lying, this new house along with the garden and all my other great treasures shall fully become your possessions!"

6 Here the Pharisee took a golden beaker out of his rucksack and said: "I will see. If the sea water in this should become wine, then this valuable beaker will belong to you!"

7 With these words the Pharisee hurried along with his companions out to the sea and scooped up water, and the water in the beaker always became wine."

8 When all the companions had also convinced themselves of this great and most wonderful miracle, they hurried, very highly amazed, back to old Mark and the Pharisee said: "Here, take the beaker; for you have won the bet! Yes, reason truly falls by the wayside with me! What should I now say to it? It cannot be possible with natural things! It is very strange: Not only was the taste, but also the spirit of the wine there to a rich degree, so that we all would almost have become intoxicated! Here can truly be nothing other active than the will of the Nazarene, and it serves us as proof that seriously also his other miracles were brought about in the same way!

9 If one has the ever-lasting nature of events on this Earth and has never got to see a miracle in one's whole life before one's face - except for the Persian con artists and those written, which are however always clothed in a great mysticism - so finally even what one now in the end has really and undoubtedly experienced oneself, becomes positively unbelievable.

10 But what use is all this if one cannot see the reason for it? Yes, highest ruler, at these events, which without a doubt occur thus, all natural explanations end! For that is truly a miracle! This can just as little ever be naturally explained as the creation of the world from some original nothing for our comprehension and perceptions. The whole creation is therefore nothing other than a fixed will of the divine original power and the original being of all beings."

- Chapter 156 -

The Pharisee's doubt concerning the existence of God

1 Cyrenius now says again, "Very well, I have now been quite satisfied with you for the moment, and we have thus to remain with that; but there is now another question, and this consists of this: Since these works here are now unmistakably quite certainly the very purest miracles and Moses and the many other seers and prophets have written exactly about this man in advance and have described him in such a very detailed way that it is not possible to accept that they could ever have had another opinion, it seems to me that their respective earlier actions might still be of a miraculous nature! That many a natural thing was also used in this process, cannot be denied; but most of it overall was certainly a great miracle, which - like these miracles here - was likewise effected only by the almighty will of God, Who revealed Himself through man as God's Spirit.  That is my opinion. What is yours?"

2 The Pharisee says: "Well yes, if things are like that, then as far as I know there is not much that can be said against this high opinion of yours; only one thing is hard to understand: why would then God - if there is one - always allow humanity to deteriorate to such an extent over a period of time before once more awakening a seer or a prophet who has to restore some sight to benighted mankind before himself falling victim to the uncontrolled passions of degenerate men. God grants the prophet indeed unmistakable miraculous powers, which I no longer can doubt; but in the end the prophet usually nonetheless suffers the raw physical strength of people. Almost all prophets known to me were put to a violent earthly death in the end. Why did the all-powerful Spirit of God not protect them?

3 But I do not want to make an accusation against the Godhead and say: It was not clever to let a person filled by the spirit of God pass away earthly through the raw, most material power of man! But his awakening was a much impaired one thereby in the face of the ever-selfish humanity. For it is obviously highly strange to see how a person, who previously was capable of moving whole mountains through his pure will, is in a short time bound by man, thrown into a prison and a few days or weeks later killed often in the very most terrible way. This discourages the followers and admirers of the prophets so that very often they return to their former ignorance, which at least guarantees them security during their earthly life.

4 How long ago was it then that a certain John performed all sorts of truly great signs in the desert on the Jordan as proof of his divine spirit?! Herod had him captured and soon after beheaded most gleefully and most disdainfully in prison quite secretly. He truly already had a lot of disciples, and many thousands were baptized by him in the Jordan as a sign of their acceptance of his truly quite pure teaching; for he had turned almost all Galilee and Judea into his foray on the Jordan. But then when his many supporters learned what had happened to their master, they became full of fear and worry and anxiety that they had accepted the baptism through water by John; for they were afraid of having to suddenly share the sad fate of their master. This one thing I find seriously somewhat inconsistent with my reason, which until now has never been nailed up, and there seems to be little cleverness and a much too little good will for the well-being of the people according to our understanding.

5 This is quite thinkable under the invisible rule of some blind fate of the pagans, but hardly under the reign of an all-wise, benevolent, just and omnipotent God. That was also mainly the reason why I turned away entirely from the belief in a God. A true prophet should have a never-conquerable ability to defend himself until his end, against which all powers and strengths of the Earth should never be able to do anything - then the true, divine element would be recognized for all time and also kept; but most seers and prophets have a terrible earthly end and thus make suspicious everything divine that they have previously sown. Moses was never allowed to set foot in the Promised Land, and the Archangel Michael had to fight Satan for three full days and in the end leave without victory. Yes, why then? Why must then the evil principle on this Earth almost always carry off the victory over the good principle?

6 We say - and justly so - :All humanity, or the moral world, is in disorder and is evil. But if we just look for the reason we will find it more or less in what I have just presented! We people can do whatever we want, but we will neither improve ourselves nor the others; for the powers of the world constantly hold us in check and everywhere it is said: Only up to this point - but then not an inch further! We may neither investigate nor ponder. The iron law will force all heads under the same hat. Whoever dares to move is lost to the world; but has he been won for another world? Well, we have much less convincing certainty of that than of what will happen to mankind in a hundred years after us!

7 Only true seers and prophets alone could get rid of this evil. The people would thereby always have the invincible power and strength of God before their very eyes to keep the true faith and thereby be normal, good people. But indeed here and there from time to time, when the people have already sunk below the animal kingdom, a prophet is awakened who preaches wise lessons for a time and presents a fully valid proof of the divinity of his mission to the people through all sorts of amazing miraculous powers; but how long does that last?

8 As the people who long for God and truth flock towards him in great numbers, the old oracle and completely materially-egoistic caste of priests become grimly jealous because they fear betrayal of their false ways and a violent belittlement of their reputation and their great income, and begin to persecute the prophet. For a certain time they cannot do anything against him, because he forces them back to the dust with his divine power.

9 But some years later, when he has already opened the eyes of many thousands, the divine power withdraws from him and he becomes the prey of the most common human revenge! Then his converts stand there full of fear, and do not know one end of the stick from the other. Worry, fear, terror and doubt seize the disciples if they are not very many in number, but if they already form a positive army, then there is usually a very cruelest war of religion and opinion, which has no end until one party has completely destroyed the other.

10 But now I ask and say: If one as an experienced and reasonably thinking person observes such goings-on soberly, can one thereby reach a living faith in a God? Or must one not rather think: 'Look, sheer works of man!'?! God, however, is eternally far and not near according to the words of the Scriptures! Am I right or not?"

11 Cyrenius says: "In the way that you tend to think, you might have a point - but only simply in the this-worldly human and social respect. But we are now in the very wisest plans of God with the humanity of this Earth already a little more deeply familiar and know the great divine ‘Why’! I can say nothing to you other than that your opinion is a very basically false one. But I hope that you will yet think differently. But now go with your companions, and come back when you are called! First look at the miracles, think about them, and it will become clear to you how foolish and bold your persecution of the great Master of Nazareth was!"

12 The Pharisees bowed deeply and moved back towards Mark's new house in order to look at it. At a sign from Me, Mark accompanies them into the new miracle-house himself, into the garden and then down to the sea, in order to show and explain everything to them.

- Chapter 157 -

The earth, a training school for children of God

1 Cyrenius however says to Me once again: "Lord, indeed I know now from Your own divine mouth why everything in the world is and happens the way it does, and I now know Your divinely wisest plans concerning the education of mankind in all times and all zones of the Earth; but at the same time I must nonetheless admit quite openly that, seen from a worldly viewpoint, this Pharisee basically has a lot going for him. There is truly from alpha to omega no world of love and truth, but instead a very terrible world full of hate and full of lies and falsehoods and injustice! But it could indeed be quite different! But things are so and will never be otherwise, and the Earth is damned to remain a house of misery, and it’s human children will constantly have to swelter on its surface! But it could surely be different!"

2 I say: "Yes, yes, it could indeed be different, as it is different on countless many other planets; but then exactly this Earth would not be chosen for the cultivation of those people who are designated and called to become My children!

3 Can true, powerful love ever become fully aware of itself among human beings who themselves are pure love? What object on which to practice patience, humility and meekness could be given to people filled with love from birth?

4 If I had endowed every man's nature with the highest degree of perfection from birth, not requiring his own effort, what practice in life and self development would be thinkable for him?

5 For what activity could such spirits finally be used? I tell you: The trees of the wood and the rocks of the mountains in the very most indispensable self-activity would be many times more preferred than a person quite perfected in every respect right from birth on!

6 Picture a man, fully developed physically and always enjoying a table richly laid with the most delicious foods and drinks so that he would never suffer from hunger or thirst. Moreover, he had a most magnificent living-room and besides the spiritual capacity to see, perceive, enjoy and communicate with everything and everyone in the minutest detail, both nearby and at a great distance, never encountering any difficulties whatsoever. Surely such a man would never leave his comfortable abode even for a moment.

7 I tell you: Such a man would be as little touched by My greatest miracles as by the snow that at Adam's time clothed the mountains with the mantle of eternal innocence. Or do you think that My boundless, everlasting perfection of life would benefit Me and give Me bliss? Verily not!

8 My own greatest bliss is felt when I take part in the inner growth of My innumerable imperfect children and lies in their growing cognition and perfection and resulting activity. I always share their joy over a painfully achieved progress, and it is only when My boundless perfection is more and more imitated and becomes partly visible in them that it has its immense value. You know what I hereby wish to tell you?

9 Do you think I had ever created a world and on it a living being if it were not so? From eternity all this has been a deep inner need within Me, and without it no earth would ever have been created and populated with all sorts of beings.

10 Therefore, things must remain as they are. I did not come to bring the earth peace and a dead quiet, but I came to give it the sword, the battle and with them increased activity. For only when confronted with hate does love turn into true and living energy before which silent death must flee. Mankind becomes active and gradually patient, meek and resigned to My will through the difficulties besetting it. If falsehood with its bitter consequences did not exist, what value could truth have as such? Who puts a light on during the day and who appreciates a burning oil-lamp while the sun is shining?"

- Chapter 158 -

Affliction as a means of education

1 (The Lord:) "Everything that accordingly has been allowed once must exist as a driving force for the improvement of mankind. Every being, however, presupposes an activity, and this, the motive and the lever, which naturally must always fully correspond to the activity.

2 Thus everything which one describes as against moral laws, and so also as terrible and bad, is to be seen only as a permitted lever, and everything is pure and good to the pure. To the weak and impure everything is and must be different, because he still needs some levers of action

3 When the children of Abraham rejoiced in a visible divine leadership, unlimited wisdom and thereby a very greatest earthly well-being in the days of Moses, Aaron, Joshua and also under the first judges, they became lethargic like the polyps and oysters at the bottom of the sea. I encouraged them through the mouths of the prophets to activity and vigilance and even summoned them; but their answer was: If we do something, we could commit a sin which would destroy all the good we have done; but if we do nothing, we cannot sin and then stand free of sins justified before You, oh Lord! Thus they philosophized themselves more and more into all kinds of lethargy. The consequence of it was increasing affliction and in time physical and finally also moral weakness.

4 In such circumstances they then turned back to Me and praised Me for being active in the correct ordinance of life. For a time things went fairly well again and progressed well; but when the blessed well-being set in again as a fruit of activity, the old lethargy began again from the beginning. They were rich in everything and wanted to shine and demanded an earthly king as the representative of physical wealth and well-being.

5 A king was given to them and anointed. But as the contract between king and nation did not stay on the right track, the evil that the nation demanded and received was again nothing more than a painful lever for the people to a newer and higher necessary activity.

6 When the king soon fell into lethargy along with the people, it was immediately necessary to waken external, very threatening enemies in the form of the crude and powerful Philistines. Then war and all sorts of the same accompanying afflictions penetrated the land of My people, woke it, made it active and therefore strong.

7 In great affliction and need they found their way back to Me and increased in mercy, wisdom and wealth to a hardly conceivable degree. This, however, caused an important exhaustion of the previous activity in the days of Solomon's rule, and the kingdom literally collapsed under the first descendants of Solomon. And so this nation had constantly to be forced through all sorts of misery and affliction to keep them active.

8 It is now once again generally way below the animal kingdom, particularly in respect to the class of the priests and teachers. But for that reason I came Myself in the flesh in order to prepare the greatest embarrassment and confusion for the most lethargic part of the people; and they therefore seek to catch me and kill Me, because they fear losing their rotten bread through My most active actions and stimuli. But their effort is of course in vain.

9 The seed of fullest laziness has already set roots in them that are too strong. Therefore the feeling of lethargy must first be taken from them and they must scatter themselves to the four winds and lead a nomadic life or enter the new covenant of life and activity just established by Me, in which no-one will be allowed to let his hands lie inactive in his lap in order to be able to live.

10 Whoever will not do that will hunger and thirst and have to take up the most worthless and dirtiest job of begging, and people will call to them with hard hearts: Whoever does not work shall not eat! For every worker is worth his reward.

11 Oh, then everyone will strive to be as active as possible! If however someone nonetheless becomes lethargic and lazy, he will begin to show carry the rod of punishment immediately as an example for many others.

12 And I tell you: Every nation that becomes lazy and effiminate, just like every person individually, will get to carry the constant rod of punishment on his back and for ever lose his name from the Book of Life and also his greatness, power and reputation! That will make the people more and more perplexed and drive them on to all sorts of orderly deeds, which will be good. Have you understood this well now?"

- Chapter 159 -

The right and wrong kind of worldly activity

1 Cyrenius says: "Yes indeed, Lord and Master of eternity; but there is another question, and that consists of this: If people become so very active and hard-working in the most varied branches of life, which has a thousand needs, then it is also clear that they will go across to pure worldly materialism too much from the spiritual path of life, and then there will no longer be any talk of rebirth of the spirit.

2 But at the same time I have the teaching from Your mouth, according to which one should not worry about the progress of earthly life in the way of the Gentiles, but instead one should seek above all the kingdom of God and his righteousness "everything else will then already come of itself.

3 How does this teaching correspond to this new lesson of Yours, according to which one should constantly keep oneself busy? Behold, Lord, this I cannot quite manage! It would therefore be good if You, oh Lord, would make this a little more understandable for me."

4 Say I: "We still have an hour and a half left and I can indeed answer this question for you. But pay good attention to what I will tell you in a parable!

5 Behold, two people went to a master of an extremely useful and beautiful art! A did this in order to learn the art, in order to earn his living through it in time. He learned studiously and paid attention to everything that was necessary to make the art one's own, and finally was extremely glad when he received a certificate from the master which said that he had now fully learned the art and was now a master himself. There were indeed still some secrets of the art, of which he knew nothing. In itself that did not bother him any longer; for he now had the proof, with which he could and must earn his living without any great effort.

6 But the reason which drove B to the master was quite different and therefore had to have quite different consequences. The bread was not important to B, which he never thought about, but instead the art, for the art's sake. All his striving was only in order to become most deeply familiar with all the secrets of the art to be learned.

7 But the master, since he saw that not the bread, but purely the full knowledge of the divine art was the issue with this pupil, took great joy himself in this pupil, made every effort with him with every effort and introduced him most deeply to all the secrets possible in this art. And the consequence was that B afterwards created such unsurpassable art as a perfected master that the reputation and praise even reached the ears of the king and the king then called the artist to show him his art. But the artist did not do that for the sake of expected reward, but instead in order to make certain to provide a very great joy for the king.

8 When the king then got to see the great work of art and was convinced of the high purpose of thereof, he said: What do you want me to do for you, great master? Demand a reward from me and it shall be given to you along with the fact that you may stay from now on a favorite at my court and practice your art here!

9 And the artist spoke, deeply moved by the king's mercy: Highest lord and wisest ruler and commander! Your mercy and your pleasure in this art of mine are already the highest reward! For I learned this art with all my strength right into my soul, not for gain, not even for the sake of daily bread, but instead purely out of the pure love for the art, and for that very reason I now have the highest joy already and the highest reward that it has now found such an excellent recognition before the eyes of the wisest king.

10 What do you think the now even more overjoyed king did with the artist? Behold, he said: Only now I see that you are quite a perfect artist of your field! For if you had learned this so magnificent art for the sake of reward and bread you would never have produced such perfection. For whoever learns something in order to help his existence, thinks only about his existence and is soon satisfied with the shallow and little learning and at the same time only reckons on how he could cover his lack of knowledge with a false veil so that the people would not notice his weakness and would nonetheless consider him to be a great master. But in the future that will be of little use to him; for his bad and poor works will be his very traitors.

11 But you, who learned the art for it’s own sake, had only calculated how you could enter all their great and deep secrets. You were concerned about the fullest truth of the art, and for that reason you became a rare, true artist, whom I can use. And since you did not worry about bread and reward until this day, so you shall receive from me a true, best and most enduring bread and reward! For I as king have always positions for true artists and for true educated and wise people and the bread and reward that go with it in abundance! There you now have the tangible explanation of your objection."

- Chapter 160 -

The egotistic striver for reincarnation

1 (The Lord) "The exclusive striving for the kingdom of God requires the greatest activity. If a true disciple has made this entirely his own, even that king who will also truly reward the true service, and so it remains true through all the good spheres of human life, will also find that - wherever and in whatever a person does what is good and true for it’s own sake and strives after the true perfection - the just recognition and reward will and must come to him of it’s own accord.

2 There is, for example, a person for whom it is important to achieve through this teaching of Mine the rebirth of the spirit - which truly is not withheld from anyone - who has truly striven after it with all eagerness and just love. This model person knows that the love for God and for one's neighbor is the one and only way to this. He now keeps all the commandments of God strictly, loves God in his heart as much as he possibly can, shows to all only goodness according to his good strength and supports the poor richly, and wherever he sees a true wise man of God, he hurries over to him, supports him richly and makes him his friend.

3 He does that for years; but the promised and demanded rebirth, hoped for daily all the more, nonetheless does not come. He indeed notices here and there light moments, but they are only flashes, whose light will not take form. Then the eager applicant of many years for the spiritual rebirth speaks: Now however I am beginning to consider the whole issue of the rebirth of the spirit to be a sheer fable! I have now spent twenty full years until this hour doing everything that the doctrine demanded of me, and nonetheless I am at the same point where I began to live accordingly and to strive! Thus perceptible truth cannot be achieved; therefore it is the very most intelligent thing to continue to live as a proper person in the world again and withdraw from all the deceptive spiritual connections!

4 Now here comes the main question: Well, why then could this very honestly striving person not achieve the rebirth of the spirit? Exactly because he had done all that good only in order to achieve it!

5 Whoever loves God and his fellow man for any other motive than God for the sake of God and the neighbor for the sake of the neighbor will not come to full rebirth, because this is a most direct union between God and man.

6 Through such a motive the person always places a partition wall between himself and God, which, however thin, nonetheless does not let the spiritual light through, and therefore cannot fully become one with the Spirit of God. But as long as this union does not happen, there can be no talk of a full rebirth.

7 I tell you: Every type of any self-interest must be cleared out of the soul, and the person must stand perfectly free, and only then can he achieve the highest thing! And now tell Me whether this issue is now clear to you!"

8 Cyrenius says: "Yes, now I am quite in order, seeing very clearly also this issue! Yes, there is truly an enormous difference between doing one and the same thing! But when one knows this, one can already fully act correctly if one only has the firm will for it, and that can truly not be lacking for a person who has recognized the bright and only true reason and the path on which he has to walk. But much time and effort is needed until someone has realized this; for even if someone believes that he has understood the whole matter, one discovers only too soon that something, even the very most important thing, is lacking. But now I believe that not very much more shall lack in me! If something nonetheless is lacking, then I hope that Your love, oh Lord, will provide me with that at the right time.

9 But now, as I can see, our Pharisees are already coming back, and their main leader is caught up in deep discussion with Mark. I am very curious myself to see which effect the deeper insight into these miracles of Yours has made!"

- Chapter 161 -

The impression of the miracle works of the Lord on the Pharisees

1 Say I: "An extraordinary one quite certainly, but they find it impossible that such a thing could have been brought about in an instant simply through a force of will similar to that of God. They are now discussing whether nevertheless some very secret natural means have been used.

2 And the main leader is therefore saying to the already somewhat annoyed Mark: 'Well, we were not present, and all those present can very easily conspire to pull the very thickest wool over our eyes! We know very well how the Essenes bring about their greatest miracles, but against the once defeated superstition or faith of the people we can do nothing any longer. A thousand confirmed accomplices could bring about the greatest miracles and defeat ten times a thousand times a thousand people. You could have spent ten years creating this miracle, observed by no-one but yourselves, in this hidden and isolated corner of the Earth! When it was ready, you then invited foreigners and said then in the agreed way that this building had been created by this or that miracle-worker in an instant, and likewise the garden and the harbor. And at the first witness of thousands the foreigner must begin to believe the miracle whether he wants to or not. A miracle must happen before our eyes - only then will we also believe in it!'

3 Look, that is what the sly fox of a Pharisee is now saying! I said that to you now so that you can hold out to him word for word immediately when he arrives exactly what he said to Mark at least three hundred steps' distance from us, and that will make him and his colleagues terribly shocked, because it as an obvious miracle will act against his claim like the sharpest sword. He will still demand another miracle, it is true; but no other shall be given to him than this, that we will reveal to him some of his very secret affairs here, which will affect him very much. Therefore be ready, I will not speak, but instead everything will be given to you and you will be allowed to speak and act! And now keep yourself at the ready; for he will now be here immediately!"

4 Cyrenius now readies himself fully with much eagerness and rejoices that he can deal with the Pharisee so thoroughly.

5 The Pharisees now draw closer to Cyrenius with a great respectful air and the leader, bowing deeply, says: "High ruler! We have taken a look at everything and could not be enough amazed at it all; for there splendor is so closely connected to the most practical usability that one must almost say right away: That has not been made by human hands, but instead it has been created! Unfortunately humanity has no example from any time period that such a thing has ever happened on the known Earth. Moreover, in this day and age, people are too far advanced in the art of building to not be expected to produce such a true work of architectural art. Since the wonderland of Egypt is said to be known to the Greeks and Romans because of many of its works of architecture down as far as Nubia, it is therefore a not too extraordinary miracle if they also brought about such a thing with their united efforts. For whether everything that is to be seen was really created in an instant or over a period of time is still a question to be asked and listened to. For many well-experienced people can bring about very much and say with a powerfully armed hand: This and that came like this or that! And the little, powerless and weak people must then believe it, because a too loud contradiction would unmistakably provide them with very significant trouble.

6 Let's look at the fine Essenes! There is really nothing anymore that they would not be capable of doing. One only has to say that all that is no miracle, but instead has been brought about in the most natural way, and one will soon receive feedback which will truly give you no joy! But certainly I do not want to say with this that it is also the same case here, although it has a very significant similarity with those miracles of the Essenes. Be that as it may; you have recommended this work to us to be observed as a purest miracle, and we believe it because the unbelief could cost us incredibly dearly. If you, high ruler, ordered us to believe in Zeus and his miraculous divine deeds, we would also immediately fully believe in it externally, whether also inwardly, that is then certainly quite a different question. Forgive me, high ruler, this very honest speech of mine!"

- Chapter 162 -

Cyrenius reveals the Pharisees' opinions on the miracle works of the Lord

1 Cyrenius, seeming a little unwilling, says: "If you had spoken quite honestly, you should have spoken to me just as you spoke there by the sea to old Mark and with your colleagues! Indeed you could not quite hide your insides from me, and some things slipped out of your inner thoughts; but you still think quite differently within and you have also spoken quite differently to Mark and to your colleagues.

2 It will certainly be very unpleasant for you if I now recite what you said, and even more, what you actually thought, but may the issue be very unpleasant for you, you will now have to hear it all the same from out of my mouth! And so listen to me with your dear companions!

3 When you were marveling at the ships and the construction of the harbor down at the sea and old, honest Mark asked you what you would say now to all that, you shrugged your shoulders in thought and said: ‘Either very much, or in another respect very little can be said about it. Very much, if this in the end is no miracle despite all the high claims and statements of witnesses, but instead a very natural work; and of course very little or even nothing at all if all this is nonetheless seriously supposed to be a miracle! That I and all my companions cannot accept this as a miracle despite all the high assurances however, every thinking person can see tangibly that we ourselves were not witnesses of it and have not seen or even less set foot in this area for a good ten years. What all could have happened in this isolated corner since that time through the cleverness of Rome! Through spies it is known that we are making a movement in this country to investigate everything that is undertaken against us, and also in order to find out the people who are in the most active movement against us. It was certainly known that we are at the sea of Galilee, sailors were sent out after us and brought us here, where a main camp of the Romans has been set up.

4 It will hopefully be very easily understandable that this was very surprising to us, if one notices that the Romans do not understand a joke in any way and nothing serious can be undertaken with them. We have noticed for a considerable time now that the Romans only barely halfway tolerate us for the sake of the people, but in secret give the Essenes every advantage, who naturally take the greatest pleasure in digging us a hole on all sides. We know the blind fooling around of the Essenes and know about their fraudulent miracles; but we are not allowed to stir and must allow things to happen to us which are directly against our religious institutions, like for example the national census, personal taxation and the introduction of customs and tolls. And although it is said in their Code that the children of Israel were free in the land, there is nonetheless no consideration of this, and the children of Abraham are caught before the toll booths just as much as the foreigners.

5 Even we priests must pay the toll stater, we who were declared free from all taxes by Moses and even have the right to take a tenth from the children of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, since we are never allowed to have any property! Well, whoever should not find the most decided antipathy of the Romans against us must truly be beaten with the seven-fold blindness! Since we have no joy any longer in the grand rule of Rome and no power to shake off this very most oppressive burden, in the end nothing is left for us except to move like the trodden worms and to seek as far as is possible to save ourselves from the clearly signed enemies of our institute and wherever possible to bring them to silence.

6 The Nazarene in question, obviously a very eminent scholar of the Essenes, is only too well known to us as a main opponent of our college and a decided enemy of the temple - in addition the son of a builder. He has already made totally renegade a number of colleagues who were exposed here and there in Galilee, partly through the power of his speech, and even more so through his miracles in disguise - not to mention the people who are supposed to run after him in droves. Accordingly a reasonable person will not be amazed if we finally take a stand and begin to strive to put such misery to best use for us.

7 They have even set traps for us here through violence or through guile in order to separate us from the affairs of the temple, and have shown us an instantaneous miracle for this purpose, for whose establishment however one could very well have spent several years in secret, and they seek to topple us with this now. Since we however are also people of some experience that will seriously be somewhat difficult! Before the blind people it is easy to perform miracles - but very difficult before a sharp-sighted Pharisee! We know what we are, and what the world is, and how they know how to act to their advantage with the means of all sorts of means, and say therefore: This bathhouse along with the extremely magnificently constructed garden and this harbor gives the lords of Rome as Non-plus-ultra-Architects high honor in any case, even without being seen as an instantaneous miracle!"

- Chapter 163 -

The materialistic faith of the Pharisees' leader

1 (Cyrenius) "Here Mark tried to dissuade you through his most decent claims from your vague idea, but you said to him, smiling very friendly, tapping him at the same time on the shoulder: Yes, yes, dear friend, I do not hold it against you that you speak like that; for firstly you are yourself a very refined Roman, and secondly there is a certain compulsion there, against which it would be very unwise to speak and to act! Therefore just you stick to what gives you a clear advantage. We however, we will remain with what will give us a sure advantage and will only become fully untrue to it if different greater and permanent advantages are offered to us! We are not hell-bent on our issue which has already slipped into all sorts of bad reputation. But if on the other side greater advantages - as I said - are offered as permanent, then we could just as well, like already many of our colleagues have acted disloyally to the temple as we know, turn our backs on the old, decayed institute, and if need be, like many others also worship the carpenter of Nazareth as a god!

2 But for that we would truly need no miracles, but instead only real earthly advantages, and we are then to be had and used for everything, and all the more so since we as worldly experienced people know only too well and too clearly from countless experiences what one has to think basically about every religion. Miracles are an old means to persuade the inexperienced children of the Earth. Why should they lose value in this time when there is an extremely large number of blind people, particularly if they are driven along a finer way than in antiquity, and even more particularly if the highest rulers take part in it too, certainly not without the very most secretive reasons?! For the firmest observed divine religion is always of more value to the regents than ten thousand of the greatest fortress prisons and twenty thousand legions of the bravest warriors.

3 The well-constructed divine religions animate the blind people to activity, through which a state and it’s regent can become very rich and powerful, while the many slaves and the sharp swords of all people who meet them must make them inactive. Thus a person living in a state union must convert to a divine religion for clever political reasons - if he is no idiot and enemy of himself - so in the end it is indeed indifferent whether one worships a Jehovah, a Zeus or even the carpenter from Nazareth as God; for the better laws in any case are given by the ruler under the title: God's commandments! They in themselves can do then what they want, and in need can put themselves above all the beautiful divine commandments.

4 If I with my confession can make an advantageous exchange, then I will change, like every one of us, immediately; but should something be taken away from us in the still casually advantageous sphere in which we are now without compensation - ah, then we will know how to take up arms with all the means that stand at our disposal! For this is a matter of being or not being.

5 If we are of no particular use any longer with our establishment to the government, they will punish us correspondingly, and we will no longer look at the whole temple junk! It will then bother us little what the emperor will do with the temple. For the Essenes, he would be of very good use. They could easily transform it with their new, Indian miracles into a ten times greater money-maker! We in any case do not know any longer how to do that and are suspected by the Essenes of all sorts of the most despicable deception. But wherever a theocratic institute has once been suspected through and through by another party in it’s mysteries, the feeding cancer has already set in on it’s walls, no matter how firm, which, even if very slowly, nonetheless will and must certainly destroy and annihilate it.

6 Such an institute resembles a person who is a magician. Some other envious magician only needs to show up and whisper into the ears of some brighter heads: 'The deceiving magician carries out his skills like this or that!' but then also show them practically that his suspicion is a valid one. The betrayed magician can soon take to his heels, before things get around everyone in general, otherwise things can go badly for him! Luck to him if he has some powerful person as his protector! Without him in a few days he will be done with all his magic and can begin to go begging if he is lucky. He will naturally defend himself as long as possible - but he will never save himself from going to the dogs!

7 For what has once been suspected never finds itself in a green spot again, which is also quite natural; for a magician can bring about his deeds only with natural means, in which type they however then also must necessarily appear to be fully worthless and are too bad for the very greatest fool to take pleasure in them, and naturally even less so a wise person. But he for whom the effective reason is not familiar, neither can be, must see it as a pure miracle and wonder and pay; for he must admit himself that according to his comprehension it cannot occur with natural means. But if he is then informed by someone more knowledgeable that his amazing miracle which he had paid for so expensively as something extraordinary, nonetheless was brought about in the most natural way, then the previous magician has stopped being a miracle-worker for him, and now stands as a very common deceiver before his previous admirers. Can he even wash himself clean again before the previous adorer? I say: No and never! It is the end of him for all time!

8 And since a theosophical and theocratic institute is basically nothing other than a well-conditioned magic, surrounded by all sorts of mystic, but in themselves meaningless ceremony and a legion of all sorts of wise sayings, lessons and laws, then the same certain fate also stands before him unavoidably, which a somewhat ineffective magician has to cope with every day. But from this, my old friend Mark, you will easy see the pure reason from which for my person every well-established religion is all the same, if I espy the better advantages for life in it; but if they do not step obviously into the foreground, as seems to be the case here, then no-one can hold it against me if I defend my institute with every power and cleverness for as long as my good existence allows me. The reason in the face of the very most powerful Romans will hopefully not be difficult for you to understand why the defense must remain only within the limits of modest possibility. I also now think that you will not want to burden me with this story seriously any longer as a pure miracle?!

9 Ah, but can you offer me decided advantages if I believe you and very much flatter you, then you can say to me: ‘Look, that Nazarene has called not only all this, but also this sea with all it’s fish in the very beginning simply through his will, and above all this Earth created two years ago!’ - and I will believe you! What I thereby want to say to you, you will also have understood very well without any further discussion."

- Chapter 164 -

The religious philosophy of the Pharisee

1 (Cyrenius) "Then Mark said to you: 'Friend, I see from this long speech of yours that you are of an already extremely hardened heart and it will be difficult to advise you and to help you! For if a person can no longer give a real faith to the greatest authorities of truth and considers and declares everything on the Earth to be a deception, then everything has stopped in him which could serve him along his path of life towards a better light! Tell me, or think to yourself, what use would it be to us if we put you in a better light? We have treasures of the most colossal type in an indescribable number; of gold, silver and the most valuable jewels there is no lack; also our chambers are full of corn and the cellars are full of the noblest grape juice, as you have already tasted in a wonderful way - of which you now no longer seem to want to know anything! So we have nothing at all to gain from you, and speak as ourselves - being through and through astonished witnesses - impossibly anything but the purest truth!  Why then will you not believe us?

2 You see, only the very most despicable selfishness holds you and your companions back, for the sake of which you even allowed yourselves to be used for the greatest human abominations according to your words: 'We can be used for any constant greater advantage in life!' So even for murder and robbery? No, I have to say: Truly, your open admission is not bad at all and quite suitable for making the greatest honor for even a worst devil! And such people are teachers and educators of the nation! Well, then it will be indeed easily comprehensible for every even somewhat more humane thinker why we truth-seeking and truth-loving Romans always must become more and more averse and hostile regarding your institute. What should happen to humanity which stands under you all in a short time with such a method of instruction? Yes, yes, friend, it is high time to set some quite appropriate boundaries for your terrible business - otherwise very soon all the Jewish lands will sink into the mud of death!

3 At this very cogent remark by old, honest Mark you said nothing for a while - but in yourself you thought: Damn! Now I have burnt my fingers! That's it with the measly truth! As long as one lies through ones' teeth, one gets through the world quite well; but only one true word mixed in among an otherwise very well-placed lie - and the hyenas already sit in wait! What can I do now to get rid of the Romans' severity? I will now take on another shade just like a chameleon, and there will be a devilish affair if I cannot bring the old Roman fox to a better conviction of us, otherwise this foolish talk could bring us into the greatest embarrassment! He will now be lied to by me left and right with the most honest face in the world, and I bet that he will greet us as his newly-won friends in the friendliest way! But there is just one question - how to start a conversation with him again?! It should not be too hard; for he also seems to be thinking how he could somehow win us and transform us for his affair with even more cogent proof!

4 You see, those were your thoughts in the harbor, and indeed on one of the five great and new ships! Soon you gathered courage and said to Mark: You seem to be angry about my previous comment! You see, I wanted to be dishonest and as sly as a fox; then I obviously would not have spoken quite so openly with you and nor would I have shown you what I actually think and how I actually am in my innards! For we Pharisees know very well how to turn coats in the wind; but since you meant it honestly with us nonetheless as we noticed - and despite your somewhat limited realization from your childhood, then it would truly be too despicable if I had shown myself before you in a God knows what sort of a pious and believing mask! Would it then have been a hard thing for us to supposedly believe everything exactly that you told us about the Nazarene? You see, you would have been satisfied with that and would have led us then before Cyrenius as fully converted people! On its own, one honesty demands another; I spoke therefore quite directly and there was not a jot which I held back from my inner thoughts and judgments.

5 To believe things as they are supposed to have happened here, without personally being a witness of them, is indeed something extremely difficult for a person of an awakened common sense, especially since this would stand alone as something that has never existed before, that one would have to throw all the better experiences that one has made purely into the sea. For until now there has never been anything similar on the whole known Earth which was created by a man throughout all time, and we know the familiar miracles and conjuring, and also how they were carried out. There were people everywhere who excelled among many hundred thousands of their fellow man through their acumen. They recognized more deeply the powers of the great nature, made use of them and alongside were respected and formally worshipped as people of a higher sort, as prophets or half-gods. Such a genius also soon had certainly a number of knowledge-thirsty disciples around him who made every effort to walk in the footsteps of their spiritually rich master. In his day those were only disciples, later necessarily teachers and later masters themselves, who along with their disciples showed the original master a great honor also according to his present earthly demise, and all the more so since the teachings and works of the original master prove themselves to be ever more benevolent to the people. With time the later masters became priests who made their original master at least into a half-god.

6 We Jews made such original and arch-masters into prophets. The Egyptians, Greeks and Romans made their half-gods and with time ascribed supernatural miracles to the certainly very most honorable original masters in order to present them more easily and comfortably to the blind masses of people and to get sacrifices. They then often exist for many centuries until again some even greater genius slipped out of the lap of an enlightened mother and revealed the lost actions and deeds of a priesthood in such a way before the eyes of a long-deceived nation so that they immediately had to achieve the indubitable opinion that they were deceived left and right and that their priests and at the same time their servants of God were the very worst daylight robbers and deceivers of the people. They either hardly knew anything more about the original purity of the true teaching of their original master or even that which they still know about it they withhold for very wise reasons of state from the poor comfort-less and knowledge-thirsty people, and thus fed them with every possible refuse instead of gold and pearls.

7 Yes, if such a new great master does open the eyes of the people with little effort, who in any case have become already extremely distrustful of their priests, the old priests are as good as done and can only hold on for a while through all sorts of political attempts to seize power; but in the minds of the people they are as good as fully dead. That now threatens us a lot. The great master has already stepped into the, for us, sad reality, and thousands are turning their backs on us forever. You will surely understand that we cannot be indifferent to what the storm was created over, and also that we must be prepared to save what can still be saved. And thus it would truly be somewhat strange of you, otherwise such an eminent man, if you wanted to become angry at us about this, if we have exchanged some very unveiled words with you, since it was quite our free choice to try to deceive you as much as possible!'"

- Chapter 165 -

Mark's speech on faith and disbelief

1 (Cyrenius) "At this Mark said, on the way here: 'There is no talk of being angry; but nor can it please me either about you if you all want to prove to me quite dryly that I am only taking pleasure out of pulling the wool over your eyes with these miraculous things in order to cause your downfall. I am no liar and no deceiver, but instead - more than you ever were - a greatest friend of the most faithful truth. What could I possibly gain from pulling the wool over your eyes?! I indeed knew in advance that you would find it difficult to believe, despite the fact that things behave according to the very strictest truth; for I know some virtues of the Pharisees, and among them also their total unbelief in all things divine.

2 How should faith occur among people of the very crudest material kind, whose inner eye of the soul has been suffering for a long time already from the very worst lightlessness?! Yet faith is the eye of the soul, through which the soul admits the spiritual images. The soul begins only gradually to evaluate their worth and purpose within its spirit, just as the physical eye first admits the images of the outer world without being capable of judging the value and purpose of that which it has seen. This often occurs long afterwards through the awakened divine spirit within the heart of the soul. A stone-blind man whose eyes have turned into the densest, darkest matter does not receive any images from the outer world. He has nothing to present to his soul for evaluation and cannot judge the value and purpose of colors. He knows nothing of shadow and light and even less of the form of things.

3 Whoever cannot believe has a blind soul, which he has blinded through his many sins! And that is now, as has been for a long time, the case with all the Pharisees. Therefore, they can only believe what they are capable of grasping with their hands, just as a physically blind man can only come to an anyway poor comprehension of an object by touching it.

4 From what I have told you it should be clear to you how I could know in advance that you, in the blindness of your souls, would hardly accept what you were to see and hear about this. But I thought to myself that the blind would give a seeing leader more trust, because they are very much in need of a leader. But you call yourselves as very blind people seers and consider me - if not exactly blind, nonetheless, which is much worse, to be bad. And that is exactly what does not please me about you at all and shows that your heart must be a very bad one and you yourselves must be the greatest deceivers because you cannot place any trust however artificial even in the very most honorable person at all.

5 You will hopefully see that one cannot possibly be very particularly good to such people; for such people misuse the goodness of those who are often good to them somewhat unconsciously, excessively. But now let's go back to the supreme governor and discuss with him what you have seen and heard!

6 There you said to Mark: 'Oh friend, that will go badly for us! He will demand the firmest belief from us; and yet it is truly impossible to believe that all this that we have now seen is simply the work of an instant through the pure will of the Nazarene, and yet here and there we have perceived the clear traces of a chisel on the sculpted stones! That is something enormous, if we are to be forced to believe such a thing as a matter of life and death!'

7 At this Mark said: 'Here no one is forced to anything! But I believe that you will believe it through another sign freely of your own accord! We are now once again among the eminent company. Now go over to Cyrenius then, he wants to discuss further things with you!'"

- Chapter 166 -

The Pharisees' conversion

1 (Cyrenius) "Well, my friend, can you deny to me that you spoke thus beforehand to old Mark word for word and also thought thus in yourself, but then under necessity spoke quite differently?! What is now your word and your opinion?"

2 Here the Pharisee stands as if turned to stone facing Cyrenius and does not know a single syllable to answer him with.

3 But Mark is standing behind him and says to him: "Well, you highly wise philosopher of nature, wouldn't you like to explain this miracle to me in a very natural way? I would truly be very curious to hear from you, which secret ploy the clever Romans may have used in order to even empower themselves with your most secret thoughts!"

4 After a short while the Pharisee finally says: "Yes, that truly cannot happen in a natural way! I did not want to speak about those things that I said to Mark openly at the harbor - for someone might indeed have very sharp hearing, to hear our conversation from further away - but even to hear what I thought to myself in the deepest secret, that rises far over the horizon of all human knowledge, however deep! That is a miracle; but where one miracle of the highest type is possible, then there is also the possibility of everything else, and I am now beginning to seriously believe that this magnificent house was created in a miraculous way! I cannot say anything more for the moment. But if all that happened and happens through the power of the famous Nazarene, then he must obviously be a higher being, a God in all seriousness, whom all the spirits of the air, the Earth, the water and the fire obey most subserviently, and no human power can ever contradict him.

5 But we Pharisees are done and will soon have nothing more to do than to lie down in our graves and then pass away like an animal! What should we do with all our old stuff for deception, when such present truths begin to topple the mountains upon us from all sides? We will be chased and persecuted like the beasts of the forest and will be destroyed in the slime of our night and darkness! It came thus, and we can do nothing about the fact that night and day constantly replace one another. As the day consumes the night, likewise the night then consumes the day, and soon after a long night only a very short and cold day follows - and soon again vice versa. The summer follows the winter, and then the winter follows again; everything on the dear Earth is subject to constant change. Whoever laughs today can grieve, cry and moan tomorrow!

6 That is how things go and it will never be otherwise on this Earth. If a man has had for a long time something magnificent, good and eminent, in the end it will be as indifferent to him as one can ever be about something that one has always had in abundance. But if one finally loses the long-possessed property, only then one knows what one had, and learns to appreciate it’s value.

7 We people are foolish and still do not understand how and why everything happens and exists, and therefore we are never fully satisfied with anything, not with good things - and even less with the bad things! The grave seems to me a true harbor of happiness; in it nothing changes any longer, and it’s inhabitants do not feel any need any longer and so the comfort remains for us worms of the Earth after all the thousands of losses that also we will become soon very satisfied inhabitants of the grave, and those who pass our graves will say: Here they are resting in peace!

8 Yes, as I see, feel and believe, here there is a great light never seen before, but likewise the great night, which follows such a light, will not stay away! Happy are they who on this day will be able to bathe in the sun; but all the more woe to those who will be overtaken by the night following this day! They will raise a great cry for light, they will wake the spirits of night with it and be badly treated. I have now spoken, and your rulers have of course the right to sentence me according to your will!"

9 Cyrenius says: "I have found nothing in your speech that could be brought before a judge. The fact that you spoke for all your house is a very understandable thing; but here you came, even if with some effort, nonetheless to a better conviction and stopped being an enemy and persecutor of Him whom you would willingly have destroyed previously. And I did not want anything more from you and your companions, and thus you may move on again from here in peace! But if you want more, then you have only to say so and it shall all be granted to you!"

10 The Pharisee says: "What should we do now? We have had to lay an oath into the hands of the high priest at home in the temple saying not to move or return home before we have made the Nazarene fully harmless. Well, that has now become impossible many times over! Firstly you powerful Romans, as we have all heard only too clearly, are his friends, against whom we cannot and will not undertake anything; secondly He himself is so undefeatable in all things and in all His paths according to everything that shows His power here, so that no power on Earth could touch Him; and thirdly we have all become His friends ourselves through the innermost bottom of life because of His so incomparably high and unique characteristics, so that there can be no talk among us any longer of further persecuting his person.

11 But what can we do now? Most of all we would like to be His disciples, so that we would also get to see the day whose morning redness we saw here in it’s fullness and could walk the track in His path! Well, that will hardly be allowed for us! But we also may not return directly home! What can we do then? We must nonetheless immediately at least remain outward persecutors of this man if we want to provide for our stomach and skin, Whom we would rather carry around on our hands! Here good advice, even if very expensive, is greatly in need!"

12 Says Cyrenius: "If you mean that seriously, which I now hardly doubt any longer, then advice will soon be given. Whether you can now become His disciples, that is obviously alone His affair and not mine. But since you, as I have heard from your speech, are otherwise very clever and experienced people, then I myself can make use of you and use your service, and all the more so since you also speak the Greek and Roman languages. I however have written His teachings in a book from which you can learn all His will! There will once again be a time in which you will be able to make His acquaintance more closely, and indeed in more worthy clothes than these. He does not love the tunic of the Pharisees because it has been anointed with the bad and foul oil for the practice of deception. Thus is my active advice. If you want to accept it, so tell me and you shall be helped!"

13 The leader said to his companions: "You have all heard it as well as I! If you are satisfied with this extremely friendly offer, so make yourselves heard, since every one of you has a perfectly free will! I personally have nothing to say against it."

14 They all say: "We neither; only, if it is appropriate, we would first like to get to know the eminent Nazarene personally!"

15 Cyrenius says: "Not this time; but if you become more knowledgeable in His teaching, then yes! But for now my servant will take over; follow him and he will bring you safely to Sidon, where you will receive other clothes and a position suitable to your knowledge! Go and follow him!"

16 With these words a servant of Cyrenius - of whom he had many - came up to them, gave them a good opportunity and immediately left with them to Sidon.

- Chapter 167 -

The Lord's parting hour at Mark's house

1 Once this issue had been solved as quickly as possible, Cyrenius asks Me whether he has acted completely according to My will as he perceived it within himself.

2 I say: "Yes, quite completely! They were however by far not mature enough to see Me and speak to Me! But whenever they become mature, My Raphael will advise you, as well as Josoe.

3 But now the hour of My departure from here is drawing near. But do not ask where I will go! Everyone should turn from here to his daily task again and take care of his house, so that if I return to you again soon, I will find everything in order! I will spend only another small hour among you all, in order to bless you through and through; but then I must go to many other hard-pressed children of this world, in order to bring them just comfort and help.

4 But do not try to find out where I am, but instead live in the spirit of My teaching, and My person will not remain far from you! Whoever still wants to know something should come and ask!"

5 At this Cyrenius asks: "Lord, may no one escort You to the next place, wherever it may be?"

6 I say: "This time no-one, apart from My twelve, not even Raphael, who will remain until My ascension alternately with you and alternately with My dear Jarah! Yet you may not reveal him to the world in any way; for that would cause his immediate loss! Which of you still has some issue? He may come forward and investigate!"

7 Mark brings his wife and his children and says: "Oh Lord, bless them all if You judge them worthy of it!"

8 And I said: "They have long been full of My blessing, and you also! Indeed I will come again to you once more soon, since you desire it so much. From now on however you will receive many guests! For those who will bathe in your spas will be healed from even the most evil gout; and those who drink there from the bubbling spring in your garden will be freed from every sort of fever. The leprous should nonetheless bath outside the garden wall in the sea, where the bath water flows out into the sea and they will be freed from their leprosy.

9 Therefore many will come and seek the healing of their flesh here and also find it. With your children alone you will not be able to serve them all. Therefore you will have to employ service assistants. With this My dear friend Cyrenius will initially help you. Later you will have subservient helpers in abundance, for all the unemployed and poor will know how to find you. Whoever comes and seeks work, give it to him according to his strength; but this gospel of Mine should be preached to everyone so that free people are made from out of these serving slaves.

10 If I visit you again soon, you will hardly find time to speak to Me; but that will not matter. For acting according to My words is more important than all the speaking and preaching.

11 "For he who merely benevolently listens to My living word, this gospel now spoken to you, without acting accordingly, has no benefit from it but remains the same old worldly fool who will never get onto a green branch of life, let alone a tree of life.

12 Whoever has much, as you now do, should give much, and whoever has little should give little, so that he who has nothing may also have something!

13 However, if you see a miser among your servants or among your guests, drive them both out, for the miserly man is a consuming cancer among other better people and contaminates the hearts of men with wrath and anger. Where is the man who would not be angry with a miser for the sake of what is good? He will despise and rebuke him, but his heart will not be bettered while in this mood. Therefore, do drive any miser far from you and have nothing to do with him until he has fully defeated his evil passion."

- Chapter 168 -

About greed and thrift

1 (The Lord) "All vices which have ever been committed by people on this Earth have taken their origin from the greed of individual people. Greed is the father of all sins that can ever be thought of. For at first one hoards up a great fortune, and every bad and wicked means; fraud, theft and robbery are entirely to be included in this category. Once one is rich, one becomes arrogant and domineering, begins to barricade and secure himself, orders servants and slaves to drive away anyone who approaches the house of a great and high-positioned greedy man, without being invited. The rich man then soon buys up a great piece of land, becomes the legal ruler of it, often acquires via blackmail every property from his subordinates and treats them like a genuine tyrant.

2 Once the greedy man is quite extraordinarily rich, he throws himself into the arms of every possible sensual luxury of life, seduces girls, whores and commits adultery and other shameful actions without any moderation or measure. And because he is the first in his land, he leads astray soon a whole nation through his poor example; for they say: The lord must of course know better than we. If he does it, we can do it too! And so in the end in such a land everyone begins to steal, rob, murder and sleep around, and there is no longer any trace of recognition of God!

3 Go to those lands and those rich men of the Earth and look in their chronicles and you will find how most of all these rulers initially were highly greedy and avaricious - and profit-seeking normal trading people who over time bought with their treasures lands and people and then made use of them through all means of violence, even transformed the often very good traditions and religions of the people who had become subservient to them in such a way that there is hardly a trace of the old purity left to be found.

4 Therefore you, Mark, have to pay attention above all that in this healing institute of yours which will be very much visited by people in the near future no greed should slip in! Yes, from this place even an exaggerated thriftiness should remain frowned upon; for that is usually the germ of greed!

5 Let everyone have what he needs for life; nobody shall have more in your household. Take into safe custody the personal presents which will often be given to your servants by the guests and give them later back with interest to the servants, but not until they have become old and too weak for serving. And when they die, the savings shall go to their children and grandchildren.

6 Naturally, this advice is meant chiefly for you, but later also for all your descendants. Also, if there is a spendthrift among your servants, admonish him to exercise proper thrift. Deprive him of your favor for a while and show him that a spendthrift is often very selfish and gradually becomes a burden to his brothers instead of helping his poorer brothers with his just savings in times of poverty.

7 Whoever saves only for himself and, in a wider sense, for his own family, does not save according to My order. I commend the one who saves so that he can help his poor brothers in times of poverty and bless his savings so that he will never suffer want.

8 I do not say that no-one should save for his children and his household, for this is the first duty of parents. But the poor who are strangers must not be forgotten, for I let My sun shine in the same measure also on those who are not My children.

9 Whoever does as I do, will be as I am and will one day also be where I shall be forever. And who is stingy with his brothers, with him I shall also be stingy and very thrifty.

10 From now on, do heed this precept in your household, and My blessing will never be taken from it. Now whoever still has a request, let him come forward and ask!"

- Chapter 169 -

A promise for people seeking help

The Lord's farewell from the house of Mark

1 Ebahl, Jarah's father came up to Me and says: "There is indeed nothing else which we could ask You about; for we have experienced the truths and the miracles here in the last seven days in such a number that, divided across seven thousand years, a hearty part would come each year and then humanity would get enough to be amazed about and to think about in every year. We have now become extremely rich in the very most valuable treasures of the spirit; there is only the matter of actually bringing these treasures into life - for otherwise they are worthless for our souls, whose salvation is the one and only issue in this life. Here there is only one question: Will we otherwise only weak people always possess the sufficient strength of will for this? What will we do if in time weaknesses of all sorts come upon us which cannot spare even those of often the best will?"

2 Say I: "I will be the help, strength and support of every earnest aspiration! In time of need I will never leave anyone who has always walked along My path loving Me and faithfully believing. But if he has turned away from My path through all sorts of enticements from the world, then he only has himself to blame if My help in the time of need does not appear, and that will happen until the fallen one turns back to Me full of seriousness and regret and in full belief!

3 I will indeed remain one and the same true Shepherd who goes after the lost sheep. But the sheep must somehow begin to bleat and allow itself to be found according to it’s own and inviolable free will.

4 He who is bowed down under a burden of life too heavy for his strength, shall turn to Me in his heart, and I will strengthen and revive him. For this is the reason why I give some person a greater burden to carry, so that he might feel his weakness and then turn to Me in his heart to ask for sufficient strength to carry his greater burden of life. And I shall strengthen him in all his distress and give him a proper light so that he can walk the dark roads of this earthly life. But he who does not turn to Me in his heart although he does feel the excessive load, only has to blame himself if he succumbs to the enormous burden of his earthly life.

5 There you have the answer to your question, My friend Ebahl! If anyone else has a problem, come forward and ask!"

6 Shabbi, the speaker of the twenty Persians who were still present, comes to Me in the deepest respect and says: "Permit, oh Lord, another little word!"

7 I say, "Speak, Shabbi! That is why I said to everyone, come forward and ask!"

8 Says Shabbi: "It is quite certain that You, oh Lord, will help anyone who asks for Your help. But what about those people who, through no fault of their own, know nothing about You, either at present or for a long time to come and who, whilst living in the greatest darkness of life, have to bear unspeakable burdens in this life? To whom shall they turn so that they might be helped and strengthened in their indescribable distress?"

9 Say I: "There is not a spot on this earth which is not lit up by the light of the sun. Likewise, there is no human being who does not at least have some notion about an almighty Deity. Let him supplicate, ask and hope according to his belief, and he will find help. But there are so many people now who have no faith at all. They help themselves and ease their life's burden as far as possible at the expense of others. In truth, they do not require our help. Whoever wants to belong to Satan one day, let him be, for if what a person wants comes to pass, he is not done an injustice. In any case just think back to what I said about the multiple conditions of life of all people on the whole Earth, and for all times, and you will then find everything clearly illuminated!

10 Now My time among you has come to an end. You may stay longer together here in My name, yet I must leave with My disciples. Let no-one of you ask Me where we are going. For at the moment even I. as a mere Son of Man, do not know it. Only the Father within Me knows, and this is what He says: 'Rise now and go. On the road I shall reveal your destination to you.'  Peace and My love be with you."

11 Then I said to Marcus: "Untie the great new ship. I shall board it with My disciples. And you, My disciples, rise and follow Me. We do not need a skipper, yet the ship will return by itself, unharmed, without a helmsman, to the harbor at the right time."

12 Everyone began to cry when I went onto the ship with the apostles. But I strengthened their troubled hearts, quickly sailed out onto the open sea and soon disappeared from their view. But they remained the whole day and the whole night together and discussed Me, My teaching and deeds. Only on the next morning did they go on to their places, and Cyrenius made arrangements to lead all the converted Pharisees to their new designations. Several wanted to come after Me; but Raphael held them back and said that I would in any case soon come back to Kis, Genezareth and also here. Then they all became quiet and praised God that He had granted them such mercy. In a few days already a large number of guests came from Tyre and Sidon in order to see the miracles and to enjoy the healing springs, and Mark immediately took in a large number of servants.

- Chapter 170 -

Peter's blind enthusiasm and concern for the Lord

1 But once we were already far out on the sea, I said once again to the disciples, "Wherever we may now end up, be silent and do not reveal Me as Jesus, the Christ!" (Matt. 16:20)

2 And Peter came to Me and asked Me whether I did not yet know where the ship would bring us; for he was at the rudder and dearly wanted to know where he should be steering.

3 But I said, "Let it go wherever it will; the Father knows already where we will have to go this time! We are still on the path of learning, and our journey goes to the other great bay where the city of Caesarea Philippi is at our backs and there we will be able to afford ourselves some rest. But in a few years we will travel up to Jerusalem on this ship and then there will be something quite different to deal with. But now we are coming to a place quite near to the previously-mentioned city, where, despite our stay of many days on the opposite side of this particular city, nonetheless no man has heard anything about us. Even the great fire of the city was not able to trouble the inhabitants of this place. But it had to be so, so that you all will experience yet another type of revelation at this opportunity."

4 But Peter came to Me and said: "Lord, what will happen in Jerusalem, in the place of great perdition? For nothing good or happy for man has ever come from that place, and an honest man has never found anything comforting in this city. Above all, arrogance and persecution are always quite at home there. Therefore I think that it would have been better if You, oh Lord, had chastised Jerusalem like this little town, which has certainly long deserved this punishment. About eight months ago we were in any case in Jerusalem and convinced ourselves that nothing at all can be done with its inhabitants except for a few people who were single swallows, however, and that does not signal the arrival of summer. Therefore my opinion would be this: we should not make a great fuss about that proud city of abominations, in which John was recently beheaded, and avoid it for all time. For such a city is eternally unworthy that You should walk in it with Your holy feet. That is of course only my humble opinion; let me know Yours as well!"

5 From this time on I began to speak more seriously with My disciples about the fact that I would have to go to Jerusalem according to My Father's will and would suffer very much there from the elders, the high priests and scribes, would be killed by them, but that on the third day I would raise from the dead again (Matt. 16:21). I would then stand there as a victor over all death and over all enemies of life for eternity, as I had already mentioned on Mark's mountain.

6 At this, Peter became quite alarmed and, drawing Me aside, said in a commanding, admonishing tone: "Lord, this must never happen to You! You are obliged both to us and all people to protect Yourself." (Matt. 16:22)

7 But I turned around quickly and said in a very most serious tone: "Away with you, Satan; you are a stumbling-block to Me. You think as worldly men think, not as God thinks." (Matt. 16:23)

8 Here Peter was very powerfully shocked, fell down before Me, begged for forgiveness and added, sobbing: "Lord, when we were sailing on this sea to the place where we have now just spent several days, You said to me on account of my faith: 'Simon Juda, you are Peter the rock. And on this rock I will build My church, and the powers of death shall never conquer it. I will give you the keys of the Kingdom of Heaven. Whatsoever you shall bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and what you shall loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven.' These, oh Lord, were the holy words from Your most holy mouth, literally directed to me, a poor sinner. Yet I have never prided myself because of it but have always regarded myself as the least among us all, - and now You call me prince of darkness because I, driven by my great love for You, gave You a warning as a man. Lord, do have grace and mercy upon the poor fisherman Peter, who was the first to throw his net into the sea and leave his wife and children to follow You!"

- Chapter 171 -

The nature of Satan and matter

Gospel of Matthew 16:24-28

1 Here I turned again to Peter in the friendliest way and said: "I have not disparaged you in the least if I have shown you in the sharp speech your human side! Everything that is human in this world in a person "his flesh and its various needs from pure earthly considerations - is under judgment, therefore hell and Satan, who is the epitome of all judgment, death, night and falsehood, for the whole so-called life of matter is merely a phantom-life and of no value at all.

2 He who sinks back into some aspect of matter is also Satan, insofar as he seeks his salvation in matter and its phantom-life.

3 If anyone wishes to break free of Satan in his flesh, let him deny himself and take up this cross that I already carry in spirit and follow Me! (Matt. 16:24) For I say to you: Whoever wishes to save his (earthly) life will lose it (spiritually); but whoever loses his (earthly) life for My sake shall find it (spiritually) ! (Matt. 16:25)

4 For what will a man gain by winning the whole world with all it’s treasures while at the same time he loses his soul? Or what can a man give that will free his soul from the bonds of matter, judgment and death? (Matt. 16:26)

5 For indeed it will come to pass that I, now the Son of Man, shall at some future time return in the glory of the Father with all the angels, whose power you know. But then, as now, He will only be able to help and reward every man according to his own works. Whoever will be found dead will remain dead until such time when all those who have remained in the graves of judgment will be raised, too. Even then, every man's judge will be forever his love, will and conscience. (Matt. 16:27)

6 But those who live according to My words and do deeds of true self-denial and inner free love will never see or feel death. Verily, to My great joy and yours I can say to you that there are some of those who are standing here who shall not taste or feel death and shall be witnesses of everything until they see the Son of Man coming in His kingdom with whom they will reign forever! But for that, much love for God and for one's fellow man is required." (Matt. 16:28)

7 Truly, if there is any father or mother here who only care about looking after their children well in this world, and do not pay attention to the higher value of the life of the soul of their children, have dug themselves and their children a grave for eternal death; for whatever is of the world is also of Satan, thus of judgment and the death of matter!

8 Truly all matter is determined to be awakened through the power of an other-worldly pure spirit to be resurrected from the long judgment; but then matter must transform according to its well-engrained free intelligence into the correct form and wisdom of it’s other-worldly spirit, which is a light from God. If this does not happen to the matter, the other-worldly spirit returns to it’s Source and the matter that should have been awakened for ever falls back once again into it’s old judgment and will have to wait there until once again an other-worldly spirit awakens it to a new test life.

9 But because things are that way and not otherwise, nor can they be, I came Myself from above to you people of this Earth and am now showing you all the full truth of all forms in life and it’s good or bad conditions. And you, My Peter, will hopefully now be clear about why I have just said to you: 'Away with you, Satan!' Now forward into the great bay!"

- Chapter 172 -

The Lord with His disciples in the fishing village near Caesarea

1 A good two hours' journey below Mark's present bath-house was the great bay which the fishermen also called the 'White Lake'; we steered into it. It was the shallowest part of the sea and was therefore somewhat difficult to navigate with a larger ship because one needed to know the deeper passages of water very well in order not to remain stuck on a sandbank. But our ship nonetheless entered the bay completely and did not hit ground anywhere, at which even the twelve apostles began to wonder very much, since no one controlled either the oars or the rudder. The ship was thus led by an invisible power and recognized as being led very well by all the apostles, who were well acquainted with ships.

2 We came already before midday to the site of our new designation and turned there to a poor fisherman, who accepted all of us gladly. The place had no name of it’s own, it was simply called 'Fisherman's village near Caesarea'. Soon a large number of the poor fishermen and women came to us and asked us what we were actually looking for here, and what we wanted to do in this extremely poor place.

3 But I calmed them down and said: "You will learn that soon enough! But first of all tell Me whether we thirteen can spend several days here in complete peace!"

4 And our host said: "As far as I am concerned, without any objection! Only I must first tell you all, dear friends, that I have indeed a good will, but no means to give you even a basic accommodation; for since the burning of Caesarea things have been going very pitifully bad for me! The daily small sale of our fish has naturally entirely stopped, and otherwise there is no other earning for us poor inhabitants of this little village. Thus we are completely and entirely reduced to begging, have nothing to eat but our fish, and therefore can offer nothing to prepare and eat other than fish, as we have. But the preparation is extremely simple for us. The fish are simply cooked and consumed without salt or bread and without any other herbs. For to be honest, we have become most obvious beggars more than even the burnt-out Caesareans through the fire in Caesarea and do not even have enough money to be able to buy salt! Ah, now things are very miserably bad for us; if you want to suffer hunger for a few days along with me and my people, then you are heartily welcome to me!

5 But now be so good as to tell me what drove you then into this bay that is almost never visited by strangers and which is very difficult to navigate for large ships! Certainly not a storm; for in this corner, surrounded on all sides by high mountains, even that cannot enter. Or are you being persecuted, seeking asylum here until some certain danger has passed? Actually, that is all the same to me! If I can provide some service for you, then it would only give me a very particular joy. My questions are indeed somewhat presumptuous, but you dear friends must forgive me! I am curious in my nature and wants to know who I am sheltering. Your great, almost completely new ship that quite certainly cost around a hundred silver pennies shows me more than enough that you are not poor. For us it is obviously a great, surprising rarity if some strangers come to us by mistake; and whenever such luck was granted us, then there was certainly always some objection with the visitors to this very most pathetic and isolated area. Would you therefore immediately tell me, as the head of this little village of beggars, what I would like to learn most faithfully from you above all, but only quite according to the truth!"

6 I say, "Well then, if the curiosity is plaguing you so much, then know that we are Galileans just like you, and once again, that we have not been followed by anyone here at all, but instead we came here freely, firstly in order to visit this very peculiar area, to climb one of these high mountains and, as decently as possible, to help you in your very well-known great affliction! "If you are satisfied now, then speak!"

7 The representative says: "Quite completely; for no-one would call into question whether you are Galileans or not, and thus one can give your statement full faith, which one naturally cannot do for the Greeks and Romans, because they almost always speak differently to the way they think, which we call 'lying'. Rest here under the shade of this only tree of mine for the moment and I will go into my hut and see how I can put together a considerable midday meal!"

- Chapter 173 -

The stoicism of the inhabitants of the little fishing village

1 The host hurries into his hut with his wife and his already grown children, but soon comes back full of joy and thanks and says in the most joyful tone: "Which of you did that for me secretly then? My larder is so superbly filled that we all have enough to eat for a full year! Yes, now you may stay here a year long, and we will never get to the end of our great provisions! Wherever I and my family must only have had our eyes, that no-one noticed how you filled my rooms with so many meals?! Yes, now we will not eat any fish simply cooked in unsalted water, since we have salt in a great amount! But now to the good work!"

2 When the people of this little village returned to their huts because it was midday, I said to the twelve: "What do you think about the people here?"

3 Peter says: "Yes, what should we actually think of them?! They seem to be very honest people; they cannot do anything about the fact that they are poor. Fishing and a stony ground has never made anyone rich, which I can truly prove from many years of experience. And such fishermen are these people too; they have perhaps the worst bay of the whole sea. Their huts indeed stand on rocks; but on such earth and ground grows often not even a little blade of grass. How then should they become rich?

4 Thus they must remain honest; for in this area there is neither anything to either steal nor even less someone to rob. And if a thief and a robber takes the opportunity, these people must then remain honest for the rest of their lives; for among these people the old saying: 'Opportunity makes the robber' can never be used here "That is my opinion about these people who are certainly no scribes, and among whom there is certainly no Pharisee."

5 I say: "Your judgment is quite right for this world; but behind the present status of a person there is, as you now have learned and experienced already many times, a soul and in the end a purely spiritual side. How about that side of the people, do you think?"

6 Peter shrugs his shoulders and says: "Lord, making a final judgment about this on my own will be somewhat difficult! Yet in as far as they are highly simple and necessarily very honest people, they must at least be very fruitful ground for spiritual sowing! For as it is an easier thing to make a fitting tunic for a well-built body than for a crippled and hobbled one, so also such simple and naturally pure souls are certainly more malleable for spiritual clothing than the highly crippled and fossilized souls of the Pharisees and scribes. I believe that if one presented something about the kingdom of God to these people at a good opportunity, they would soon be in the pure. "Well, that is once again my very simple opinion; even if no impressive words appear in it, nonetheless the nail may more or less have been hit on the head with this!"

7 I say, "Very well judged; therefore we will also test them afterwards and see how suitable they are for something higher! But I will not appear here as a teacher, but instead all of you will do that as missionaries and even disciples of the wise man of Nazareth. Only when they have heard you and have accepted the word about the arrival of the kingdom of God on Earth you may then point Me out and say that I am exactly that person about whom you have preached.

8 And so we will perform a great deed here on this smallest and most unsightly place in the whole Earth! But you must not see the work as too easy from the beginning. For as simple as these people may seem to be, they are nonetheless complicated and very confused within!

9 They think themselves to be wise men of the world and are stuck over the ears in so-called stoicism, which is the hardest of all to conquer. I have therefore led you here in order to give you the opportunity to test yourselves now also with such people, since you have learned very much of the true inner wisdom with old Mark.

10 But I am telling you all in advance that you will have to gather yourselves very much! For it is never harder to effectively give a law to those who do not have the very slightest fear of even the greatest adversities of life, yes, even of the most painful death of the body, and considers any great blessing of life to be nothing at all. And those are exactly such Gentiles who do not care about anything, but do not consider anything of any virtue than alone to simply make their needs as small as possible, and who simply live and do something because the nature that is all in all for them, once called them to life.

11 We never dealt with people like these before! Therefore you should collect yourselves! Few words "but none should be brought before them without a firm basis! The best thing about them is that they are very curious cats despite all their stoicism and consider the knowledge of a person in itself to be something. "But now our host is already coming along with his household and is bringing fish and bread in a basket. We will thus take our midday meal here in the shade of this tree."

12 Here the fisherman, his wife and his children come to us and set the food basket down before us.

13 Setting the basket on the ground, the fisherman says: "Here, my unknown friends, is the requested midday meal! We do not have any tables, benches and chairs, plates or several other things useful for eating, and our needs, which are very small, can also be satisfied very well without them. But at the same, time our means were always small enough that we never could have created anything unnecessary. We eat only when we are hungry, and then a basket and our hands are sufficient; everything else goes without saying! I wish you to enjoy this simple midday meal."

- Chapter 174 -

The miracle-working faith

1 I say to the fisherman: "Aziona, you have a new jug in your house; have it filled with water and bring it here!"

2 Aziona raises his eyebrows high as I speak to him like this, and says: very amazed: "You could certainly have learnt my name somewhere - but how do you know then that I possess a new jug, which is truly my greatest wealth? Not even my neighbors know that, and you, as a complete stranger, know it? Ah, permit me, that is now something out of a fairy tale! Did perhaps my children reveal my jug to you in secret? There is nothing special about the jug itself - it is of stone, as there are countless many among us in this land; but it means enormously much that you know that there is a new jug being kept safe in my residence!"

3 I say, "Nor is there anything special about it, since one can find out such a thing! But it matters more that you go and fulfill My demand for a thirsty person!"

4 Now Aziona goes quickly and brings the jug full of fresh water. The jug however was one of the great sort and contained a good quarter bucket of water, so that one had to lift it in order to bring it to one's mouth. When the filled jug stood before us on a stone plate, I blessed the water and it became wine.

5 I drank from it, passed it then to the disciples, and when they had drunk, I also passed the jug to Aziona and said: "Drink from this too, so that you will perceive the goodness of the water that you have brought to us in your new jug!"

6 Aziona says: "Should it be bad and foul?! I have swirled out the jug three times, and my rock spring delivers the purest and best water in the whole area! But nonetheless I will taste it to see whether it has perhaps taken on the taste of the new jug!" He tastes it, takes a number of strong draughts, and then says quite amazed: "Yes, but what sort of witchcraft is that then?! That is no water, that is the very best wine, as I have never had a better one pass over my tongue! Tell me how you have done this! No, making water into wine, ah, that has never been done! You are truly no Galileans, but instead either Egyptians or Persians; for among all the Jews there has never been such a magician who was able to turn water into the best wine. Oh do tell me how such a thing is possible! I will be your slave for twenty years for that!"

7 John, whom I gave a sign to speak, says: "My friend, all you need is a very firm faith and will. He who has such a faith and never doubts in the least can say to that high mountain there: 'Rise and plunge into the sea!', and what he believed and said will happen. Here you have the whole true explanation and instruction which tell you by what means such things can be accomplished. It is impossible to give a different one because there is none other."

8 Here Aziona raises his eyebrows even more and says: "Friend, I do not know at all what faith is - how could I then believe in something?! What do you call faith then?"

9 Says John: "When, in dealing with a very truthful man who tells us many a thing of which we have never heard and learned before, we accept his statement as true, never doubting any of his words, we then believe the very truthful man. Since what we believe is certainly the full truth, we put it into practice and this, then, is the activated, marvelous faith to which nothing that comes within the sphere of this truth is impossible; and this has to be put into practice at all times.  Do you now know what faith means?"

10 Aziona says: "Well yes, now I know it well - but how can I know that the man who presents something for me to believe is also in all seriousness a most truthful man? Simply to believe that he is, because he looks more or less so, would be foolish and would reveal a punishable gullibility, which in my opinion would be a lot worse than no faith at all! How does one therefore look at a person in order to realize that the man whom one should and would believe is a most perfect truthful person and that one can believe without any doubt everything that comes out of his mouth?"

11 John says: "For that everyone of only some better volition has enough reason and common sense in order to make an appropriate test with this man; for only an idiot can buy a cat in a sack! You ask me for the means of testing - and you use it yourself on me! I have long in advance been convinced that you will not buy any cat in a sack!"

12 Aziona says: "Yes, yes, friend! That is all very true and very fine, and a person truly has nothing but his intellect, with which he tests his surroundings; but where is the measuring stick with which I previously could recognize my reason as being good and sharp enough to test my surroundings?"

13 John says: "There we have hit the most contentious point! Whoever thinks that he possesses a clearest intelligence is most of all wrong in everything; but whoever sees that his intelligence is still somewhat lacking will soon learn through practice that he will be able to judge with great severity everything that is and happens around him!

14 An imagined high intelligence resembles a mountain top which juts very flauntingly in it’s dizzying heights and the higher it juts into the vain air, the more often it is surrounded by all sorts of clouds and mists. The small point of a needle with which one keeps clothing together is almost nothing as far as size and appearance is concerned; but it penetrates through everything, and one could pin together so many mats that the whole mountain peak would be deeply covered by them. "A garment will certainly never be able to be pinned together by the great and proud mountain tops!

15 This comparison is indeed somewhat extreme; but it nonetheless describes the relationship of an intellect which thinks itself to be high and wise above everything and that of a humble one, which seems quite unassuming in the eyes of the highly wise and prudent humanity. But while the high intellect stares far into the air and is surrounded equally thickly by mists of it’s purest view, the humble intellect performs immediately good things and becomes brighter and finer after every task and more serviceable for the future. Among you, as it seems to me, intellect seems to have a great resemblance with the highest mountain peaks, which are only very seldom free of clouds, and therefore it should be somewhat difficult for you to test the full truth of this exactly, of which you should accept one truth as the full and undoubted truth! Of which opinion are you?"

- Chapter 175 -

The stoic world-view of the fisherman Aziona

1 Says Aziona: "Well, that would then depend on whether it was fully dependent on my will or not! Certainly we do not easily accept something if we have not seen some striking effects of it beforehand. Now, there is by no means a lack of visible effects for the reasons that I have given; my food larder is full of edibles, and now here the wine from the purest water! That would be, as one says: very prettily tangible proof of it! But now it only depends on knowing clearly whether you then do not possess some very secret specifics, through the addition of even a very small amount of which all pure water must become wine! It will probably not be the case here; but one cannot totally resist such a thought at the observance of this pure miracle; but as long as one cannot do that, the total certainty is just as much nothing as the effect of this full faith well described by you! And therefore I see in advance only too well that all we inhabitants of this place will never be able to create the taste of wine in even a drop of water!

2 We are indeed situated here as miserably as possible - our food consists only of goat milk, fish and water; for nothing else is available in this complete desert - but we are satisfied with this in our very purest natural condition. This does not exclude the experiences which we have made many times in other places. We went far and wide across all the world; for we were singers and magicians, and I learned the art of apothecary in Athens, to prepare certain secret specifics, with which one was able to perform a number of miracles for the many lay people.

3 Short and sweet, I am, as simple as I may appear here now, equipped with a large amount of all sorts of knowledge and experiences! I know the herbs of life of the king snake and know the miracle stone of Bezoar. I know Asia down as far as India, I know Europe, I was in Spain, in the land of the Gauls and was also in Britannia, I know the traditions and tongues of these lands, I came back again to Greece and got to know there wise men from the school of the great wise man Diogenes and said then: ‘Oh, what a great fool man is! He roams through lands and great kingdoms for the sake of foolish money; Diogenes, the greatest wise man, was happy in his barrel, because he had seen, understood and proved the full nothingness of the world, it’s treasures and the fullest worthlessness of the passing earthly life very clearly like no other!’

4 I then left Athens ten years ago with my company and moved into this desert away from the entire world. Here we built these huts for ourselves in which we now live very satisfactorily. The small herd of goats that we took with us and the fish that are richly available here, with the abundance of which we undertook a small trade with the city Caesarea simply for the sake of salt, feed us.

5 But since this city fell prey to the flames a few days ago, naturally this trade also reached its end, and to our great joy in the last four days we all have now made the experience that one can also live without salt, because one has been damned already by some invisible power of nature to live.

6 For I and all of us consider life to be a punishment for those small natures which are separated from the great general nature, which we as animated beings represent. The thinking, self-aware being must feel all the stimuli of life in order to then in the end have to be separated from them through certain death all the more painfully. Therefore the main idea of the true wise man is this: Learn over time to despise completely the most worthless things, and observe death as the conciliation with the great nature and consider it as the greatest bliss for every living being! If a person has become great and competent, he also has achieved the only true and greatest happiness in life. He then lives quite satisfied and longs quite through and through for death, which is the greatest friend of every living being.

7 We have a great joy in everyone for whom we can do a service with our smallest means; but we also pity out of good and deeply true reasons every person who makes every effort to achieve something in the world. Why should we plague ourselves and care for something which exists only from today to tomorrow? But whoever wants to make us believe something else, we will simply show them the graves of the dead, from which no being has ever come forth revived! Whatever one was, one becomes it again, namely earth for the food of the lucky plants, which are there and do not feel that they are, and do not think that they will pass away. Oh, how great and holy is nothingness in comparison with clearly conscious life!

8 You seem to be a very best-ordered artist society and try to achieve a so-called earthly happiness! We who are quite happy can only pity you if you wish to seek true happiness in life in some other field than alone in that in which it is to be lastingly found. Stay here and build yourselves small huts to live in just like ours! Be satisfied in this void meaningless life which signifies nothing with the least possible, and you will only then gradually see and know how very right and true what I have just said to you, is!

9 And you, main speaker, will also understand that this real knowledge of mine is of very much more value than your firm, undoubting full faith! What good is it for you if you with your full faith replace also whole rows of mountains, but in the end must still die and cross into the never-ending destruction? We are all nothing but a game of the great nature between Earth, moon and sun! Between these three laws are casually built, and their consequences immediately animate the face of the Earth. The blind weakly-animated certainly do not see that, but we, who have been penetrated by many beams of the sun, have recognized that and can announce with the best conscience in the world to anyone what life is and what one has to expect from it!"

10 At this, Aziona was silent.

‘

- Chapter 176 -

John reveals the life of Aziona

1 But John said: "I am amazed at your eloquence and at your opinion of life, which is partly truly not to be thrown out; but in the respect that you think this life has no value at all and is simply a game of great nature - truly you are very wrong in that! Have you never heard of a God then, who created heavens and Earth and everything that there is through His own power? One can easily see a certain order in everything that there is. The purposefulness of the parts of an animal and even more so those of a person! How well designed are eye and ear!

2 Can you really accept with even some higher thinking that all that was done by only very dead and lifeless laws alone?! Oh, despite all the great wisdom you think you have, you are still very pathetic, and it is very easily comprehensible to me why you find this earthly life so very despicable and worthless! You have indeed travelled many lands with your companions with some considerable difficulties, you have seen and experienced much - but yet you have never concerned yourself with the best part of life!

3 At the beginning you sacrificed yourself only for the material salvation of life. But things would not make you happy, as it sometimes happens in the world; for you were not a very particularly excellent magician and also possessed too little of that external worldly cleverness, through which alone one can convince the world very well from beginning to end. You therefore could not achieve your life of happiness on Earth you dreamed about previously so often, with the help of your art, which, as I said, was not so developed, despite your far journeys. But I will also tell you the very simple reason so that you will learn how one can bring out the innermost and most hidden things of a person through firm faith.

4 You see, you were very well aware in your heart that you were only a pure botcher in all your skills and your knowledge and that you were not able to dare to produce your worthless skills in any large city in the face of very educated, well-experienced and enlightened people, and yet you would have been able to gather rich earthly treasures only in large cities! Therefore you always had to seek out a very foolish nation which could be more easily wrapped around your little finger. From time to time you even found such a nation; but since a foolish nation is also always a poor one, there could never be a profit for you there.

5 At this you became mad when you came to Illyria and did very poor business. A Greek came to you in the village of Ragizan, recommended you Athens and promised you golden mountains there. But this Greek was a common skipper, and he was only concerned about getting passengers for Greece for his empty boats. Whether you would gain anything in Athens or not was all the same to him. In short, you joined the Greek heading to Athens and after a boring three-week journey you arrived safe and sound in Athens, where you were most gleefully booed by the old, classical art-city right at the first performance.

6 That angered you and your company very much, and you began to walk among the Greeks as a wise man based on your experiences, and soon found many listeners who willingly paid you pennies for your stories; for no-one likes to listen to the stories of a traveler more eagerly than these travel-loving Greeks. After you had spent some time thus with the Greeks, you made the acquaintance of a sort of wise man according to the teachings of a certain Diogenes. You liked them because despite their visible poverty they were very cheerful and positive. It seemed strange to you that people who were stuck in the greatest poverty, gave wise speeches and could always be so cheerful and satisfied, being so highly moderated in their eating and drinking. You began to inquire more and more after the reason, and it was shown to you.

7 Once you and your companions had been indoctrinated in such a teaching of the satisfaction in life, you soon decided to return home here from where you had started out, and to settle somewhere in the vicinity of the city Caesarea in an abandoned area and to found there an indeed poor, but as happy as possible human colony. And as you came here approximately ten years ago and settled down here, so you have remained.

8 As Jews by birth you have abandoned the teachings of your fathers, which you certainly never seriously practiced because you opposed the actions of the Pharisees, left it and accepted that of the Gentiles who seemed wiser to you. But in this way you became completely godless and have set the power of great nature in God's place. With this you think you have found the philosopher's stone?! But I say to you and can say with the best conscience in the world that you all have only distanced yourself from it more and more!

9 If you are a true wise man, then tell me everything that I have done from my youth onwards, what I have learnt, what I was, and what I am now actually! But I have described to you very briefly, yet obviously without a single false syllable, what happened to you from your birth on in this world and if time would allow it, I would have been able to describe your life in the minutest detail! But now judge yourself which of us is the wiser one, I with my undoubted full faith, or you with your complete lack of faith!"

- Chapter 177 -

The true, living faith

1 Here Aziona stared at the friendly John and said: "Listen, you my otherwise highly treasured friend! What I have now heard from your mouth is more than my filled larder and much more than the wine produced from pure water; for what you have shown me is literally true from alpha to omega! You have never seen me before or spoken to me and you know the circumstances of my life and that of all my companions as exactly as if you had been through everything with us! That is a lot - and something which begins to make me very perplexed. The fact that your colleague, who was the speaker at first, knew my name did not strike me as strange at all, since all Caesarea knows where you could have gotten your information from; but my experiences in life have never been passed on to anyone by any of us, and therefore you cannot have heard them from anyone - and you know every detail, yes, even about the thoughts, decisions and inner intentions I had in those days, often never shared with anyone from our group! Friend, that is something that cannot be explained in any natural way!

2 Truly there were supposed to be wise men in Egypt once who could foretell through the lines of the hand and the forehead of a person what he had done and what he had to expect; there were also certain temple-sleepers who foretold in a type of sleep-ecstasy some things which had existed or which would someday happen and exist. But with what mystical images were all these oracle-things demanded into the light of day! New wise men were again needed who explained such highly incomprehensible speeches of the oracles to the lay people mostly in a humorous and very smart way, after which often very pompous and elaborate explanations those inquiring knew what he either did not desire to know at all, or what he had already known for a long time. But things for you went on quite straightforward without any temple-sleep, without any viewing of my hands and without any mystical babble! Yes, I will put up with such a prophecy! But now the halting questioner comes and says: How, how is such a thing possible? Except for an all-seeing and all-feeling divine power that is completely unthinkable! Should such a thing seriously be achieved alone through full faith?"

3 Says John: "Yes, friend, but it does matter very much what one believes. If you firmly believed somebody who told you a lie, such a faith however undoubting, would have no effect because a house can only be built on a truly firm ground."

4 Says Aziona: "This is quite correct; but by what criterion am I to determine whether something that has been claimed to be true is the full truth?"

5 Says John: "We have already been talking about this subject. However, to give you an extra hint, I tell you that God, the Lord of the heavens and the earth, endowed the heart of every human being who strives for the truth with a feeling that recognizes and grasps the truth more readily than any intellect, however trained it may be.

6 This feeling encompasses also the love for truth, and this love recognizes the truth, soon permeates it with it’s vital warmth and thus quickens it. As soon as faith, as a truth permeated by love, becomes activated, it begins to stir, move and, finally, act spontaneously. Only such confident action is a guarantee for the complete success of that which is believed without doubt, however, not within the physical brain but within the heart.

7 In the brain there are only the soul's sight, hearing, smell and taste. From these no life emanates, since they are themselves merely effects produced by life.

8 If then a faith is to be effective, it must be one with life itself, and not, like the eyes and ears, the nose and the palate, as a mere effect of life, stand alone without a deeper association than only that of necessary external use. But, if your faith in truth has once become one with your life, it has already eliminated every doubt from itself, and it may then only want to, and it will happen what such a faith in life wants.

- Chapter 178 -

The path to the true faith

1 (John) "Genuine, true faith in a person who begins to believe, resembles young wine which is put into a wine skin. It soon begins to ferment, if it is the genuine grape juice. Through this fermentation it rids itself of all particles that are not completely wine. Once it has rid itself of all the foreign particles, it will be a pure and strong wine that, so to speak life itself, animates whenever it is enjoyed. However, if you fill the skins with a different fluid, there will be either no fermentation or, at the most, a smelly decomposition that will affect and destroy also the skin.

2 Man's heart however, is like the wine skin; it keeps growing stronger and more alive through the truth, but is forced through falsehood and deceit to finally pass into complete death, since it is also the core of life.

3 If in your heart you believe that there is a God, you will love Him because in the heart everything is permeated by love. And if you love God, God's highest power has entered into your heart and, thus, into your life.

4 Yet God's power is not somehow limited but pervades the whole everlasting infinity. If in unison with this divine power you are stimulated within your life's ground, the divine power within you is stimulated simultaneously and whatever this wills, will happen without fail.

5 To be sure, outwardly I am a man just like you; but in my heart I no longer stand alone, for through my great love for God, His power now dwells within my heart and has become one with my love. This is why I, aided by the power of God, could see and perceive all that had happened to you and your company on your travels. This is all there is to it.

6 Firstly, you must recognize God. For this purpose you possess an orderly intellect. But the intellect alone is not enough. What you understand you must promptly admit into your heart or into your life, thereby quickening it, and you will then surely be on the right road. - Have you now really understood me?"

7 Says Aziona: "I have indeed understood you. But what must be done if the heart is already filled with every kind of filth, that is, falsehood and deceit? How can this be cast out beforehand?"

8 Says John: "Just accept the truth. It will do it’s part without your help. Do you worry when gazing into the darkness at midnight whether or not it will yield to the dawn of the coming day? Who will do away with it? I tell you: Do not concern yourself about it. Wait until the sun of day appears; it will swiftly deal with the ever so dense darkness. In the same manner as God works in the great universe, He works within the human heart through His sun of grace and life. "Do you understand that?"

9 Says Aziona: "Yes, I understand it now; but now let me go to some of my neighbors, so that I can tell them openly what I have learned here!"

10 At this our Aziona took his leave and hurried to his neighbors, called loudly and quickly everyone together and told then in minute detail everything that he had now learned, seen and heard.

- Chapter 179 -

Hiram's dream

1 These people were highly amazed of this and one said: "Strange, I do not think much of dreams "but my dream that came to me last night seems to be confirmed as very true with this highly strange encounter!"

2 Aziona immediately asks him in his hasty way: "Well now, just tell us quickly everything that you dreamed! But do not skip anything; for everything could be of great importance!"

3 The neighbor says: "Just a little patience, my friend Aziona; for first one must gather the dream in a more ordered fashion from all the corners of one's mind, because one cannot ever come before you with an awkward story. But now I have it more or less together, and so do listen very patiently.

4 I was standing on the banks of our bay which is almost impassable for every larger ship. There in the morning I saw a great glow rising, shining brighter than the midday sun. I looked with my eyes up and down and here and there, yet nothing showed itself except something similar to the sun, from which the great glow could have come!

5 I observed this great glow with an ever greater desire and discovered soon a great ship, which was steering directly into this bay. This ship however was shining so brightly that I soon realized that the previous great shining light could only come from this ship. I also soon noticed people in this ship of light, among whom particularly one shone more than the midday sun. But also the others, except for one, were shining brightly, but nonetheless as if they were like the white sun clouds illuminated by the one. The ship approached our colony quickly. A great fear seized me because of the ever stronger light, so that I sought to hide in my hut hurriedly. But there I woke up and saw that it was only a dream.

6 Although I think nothing of dreams, however, like every one of us, nonetheless this strange dream of light has preoccupied me until now and I said often to myself: No that is no usual, empty dream! It will come to fulfillment in some very corresponding way! And behold, there it is right in front of us!

7 But now let's just go over; for I am burning with curiosity to see the ship and whether it has a positive resemblance with the one I saw in my dream! I also saw the people up close so clearly that I could remember their features very well. It would be truly highly peculiar if the ship and also the people that I saw on the ship in my dream had a similarity to your wonderful guests! Just let us go to them over there immediately so that they do not sail off on us!"

8 At this immediately the whole neighborhood stood up and hurried towards us.

9 When they stood before us then, the dreamer cried out loudly, "Yes, yes, brother Aziona, that is exactly the same ship and those are exactly the same people, only without all the shining light!"

10 Here I Myself called him by name and said: "Hiram, what do you then think now about your dream? And you, Aziona?"

11 Hiram said: "Yes, you dear, wonderful friends! I cannot say anything else about it except that it has quite perfectly come into fulfillment with you, as far as form is concerned! Only the light is not visible now; but perhaps we will all get to see it again if this bright sunny day is clothed by the starry coat of night!"

12 Aziona says: "But I think that no external light is needed, because these dear friends are so brimmingly full of the incomprehensible inner light of the wisdom of life! And I would even like to think that you, friend Hiram, have seen in your truly strange dream only the spiritual light of these men! However these dear men and unknown friends will soon give you the correct understanding!"

- Chapter 180 -

The soul's sight during the dream

1 At this John says: "You see, friend Aziona, how things are beginning to clear up for you spiritually? For you have given your friend and neighbor Hiram a very perfectly correct explanation about the shining of his dream; for things are completely and exactly so! In a dream only the soul looks spiritually with it’s spiritual eyes and can therefore see only the spiritual - and so you have only been able to see us spiritually in advance, that is, not you, Aziona, but Hiram."

2 Aziona says: "But Hiram did not only see the light alone, but instead also the matter of the shapes as they are here! With which eyes did he see these?"

3 John says: "When we arrived today about three hours ago, you and another number of your neighbors were present; only Hiram was not there. When midday came, everyone hurried into their huts for the sake of a scant midday meal; only you remained to look after us. If Hiram had been among those who had received us here with you, you would have seen earlier how at times one can also see and perceive material forms with the spiritual eyes of the soul. But now that must be shown to you little by little; for it now depends on the old saying that Rome was not built in a day."

4 Aziona asks: "Yes, dear, wisest friend, but why would I have seen that earlier if Hiram had also been present at your arrival?"

5 John says: "Yes, you know, all that has it’s own very wisest ways! Hiram would have immediately recognized us as those whom he had seen in his dream of light, and then our conversation would certainly have immediately gone into another direction, and we would then obviously have gotten to talk about this point earlier. But now we have only come upon it later, and so for quite natural reasons, you can also only get behind this secret only later!"

6 Aziona says: "Yes, that is certainly something quite natural; for everything in the world is so! The later one begins a task that demands a particular time period, the later one is finished with it!"

7 John says: "But there is another reason here that you cannot see so quickly yet; but with time however you will then see it clearly, only you have to above all acquire a little more patience! For only with patience can one finally conquer the whole world inside and outside of one's being."

8 Aziona says: "Patience is truly not my weak point - for there was always a great lack of it; but if it must be so, then I can also be patient!"

9 John says: "You actually wanted to say that patience is not your strong side, but really only a very weak side for you, which soon and easily gives way - isn't that true, my friend Aziona?"

10 Aziona says: "You don't need to seek appropriate knowledge of the language among us; for we speak only according to the speech customs, and that is, as far as meaning is concerned, almost everywhere somewhat different. But because you have just spoken to us about strong and weak strings, I would almost like to think that you are also musicians and singers!"

11 John says laughing: "Yes, yes, you may not be incorrect; for music and songs have always been represented the strongest among the Jews of all the people of the Earth since all time, although we are actually neither musicians nor singers, as now appear very often among us in Galilee. Also I meant with the expression 'weak and strong side' not the strings of a musical instrument, but only the moral side of the human mind; but despite all that we are nonetheless also musicians and singers, but only quite deeply spiritually! Do you understand that?"

12 N.B. Here for the understanding of speakers of other languages it must be remarked that in the old Hebrew language the strings of a musical instrument and the sides of a person's character sounded very similar; for string was Strana, also Strauna, and 'side' was also called Strana, also Stran or Stranu, and therefore it is easy to understand why Aziona began to consider us to be musicians and singers. (Comment by J. Lorber)

- Chapter 181 -

Hiram's stoic, naturalistic world view

1 At this Aziona says: "Truly, no, that I do not understand at all! How should I understand it then?"

2 John says: "Since you are a Jew, you will have heard at least once about the Psalms of David, about the Song of Songs of Solomon and about the songs of lamentations of Jeremiah?"

3 Aziona says: "Oh, yes, certainly, although I have heard little of them and understood even less!"

4 John says: "You see, that is spiritual music and spiritual song, because it was given to the mentioned singers by the Spirit of God! Now, do you understand these things better already?"

5 Aziona says: "Well yes, it obviously is becoming a little less foggy; but I do not need to begin to praise any clear insight by a long shot! How do you Hiram, understand these things then?"

6 Says Hiram: "Just like you! There is indeed a type of spiritual breeze blowing here; but if this dear and wonderful friend should begin to sing to us the Song of Songs of Solomon, then I would go. For you can chase me like a chamois over all the mountain tops with that song; it is a true quintessence of human foolishness as the pharmacists would say, apart from the fact that Solomon is supposed to basically have been one of the wisest Jewish kings.

7 I do not really want to say anything about the Psalms of David or about the Lamentations of Jeremiah; for there are supposed to be many very good and eminent things in them and all sorts of pretty dark kept prophesies about a Messiah of the Jews who is supposed to come one day, somehow in the style of the Greek Iliad. But that is all very beautiful poetry, behind which however not even my present-day, beautiful dream of light, which came into fulfillment here, is hidden! The poor mortal people comfort themselves as well as they can, always with sheer good things; but where is the effective reality there? It remains eternally by the wayside, and every person with all his most beautiful hopes cannot finally find the fulfillment in the cool earth down below! That is and remains the eternal and equal truth, everything else is scattered into old void nothingness!

8 It is true, Aziona said to me previously some very remarkable things, behind which indeed some secret truth is hidden, unknown to us; but since Moses, Socrates and Plato, the dear Earth has already borne some extremely wise men, whom one could very well have considered to be gods. They were certainly there, and all the powers of nature listened to their signs! On their own, they nonetheless became older and weaker and more fragile, and at the end of their days it was nonetheless shown that they were also only mortal and temporal people, and they passed over into the very same nothingness like those human trivialities just like us, to whom it never occurred to want to be something in the world. Therefore everything is in vain in this world full of death!

9 It is said quite generally that there is an otherworldly soul realm somewhere; but where is that?  Who has ever seen a soul and who has ever seen it's future country of residence?  Yes, there are poems and sagas everywhere in abundance about it!  We are many here - that is, for this most forsaken place on earth; but there is not one among us who could say with certainty that he himself has ever seen a soul or felt it only quite vividly!  Which, however, not everyone who, as a human being, should also have a right to know in his life - but mostly only the various priesthoods and other individuals very similar to them.  Now, hopefully, it is not difficult for a man who is truly only to a certain extent impartially bright-thinking to guess on what ground and to what pious people such legends, poems and even teachings have come into being! Blessed are those whom such airy words can give any comfort and reassurance!  We, dear friends, have brightly recognized and grasped something better, namely, the age-old truth, always the same in it's deepest depth, and in it we find our greatest consolation and, at the same time, our greatest reassurance, to return again as soon as possible to the eternally age-old nothingness; for in nothingness after all lies the greatest and most blessed rest.

10 That we now are here, live, think and feel, is already such a unique incomprehensible game of nature. The winds play with the waves on the sea, and these bluster, whistle and boom as if they wanted to instantly consume the whole Earth along with its mountains; on their own, the winds soon die down, and all the power of the waves, however wild, goes away. Clouds also build up, quite terribly heavy with storms. One should believe that this will bring the end to the Earth; but only too soon the storm blows itself out and after it follows the old calm. And so the great games of nature change. Everything passes away and comes again, only the great nature remains always the same. Sun, moon, stars and this Earth are always the same, and the events and their games also.

11 You see, dear and very respectable friends, you may do whatever you want and can and likewise speak, write and teach all sorts of wise things, it is all in vain! Only what I have said in my surely chaste and most unselfish poverty, is and remains true. For daily experience teaches this to the people, and this as the most ancient teacher of all creation recognizes no exceptions at all, since all creation is as unique as these two eyes are my own as long as I live. All other wise men and prophets had created their wisdom and their knowledge from their ancestors and wanted to contradict the old experience; but that is all purely in vain and good for nothing! Down below they have long since been undone, and nothing has remained of them but their vainly wise teaching and some of their great deeds. Only weak spirits who hang on tightly to this life of nothingness can find some pleasure, yes, at the same time even an empty comfort from such confusion of the brain.

12 That now is my opinion in life. If perhaps you have a better one, then let it out, and I would gladly see whether you are capable of saying something more true! Yet I know already in advance that you all cannot come to me with anything more true or appropriate, because there is not and cannot be anywhere anything of the sort."

13 Peter secretly says to Me: "Lord, look, he speaks a little like a Hebrew! Truly, if I had not already had such extraordinary experiences with You, he would be the first who could make me quite weak!"

14 I say: "Oh, just wait, that is not yet the core by any means; even more will come! That is why I told you all in advance that you have to gather yourselves very much in order to bring these people to another conviction and, which is the main issue, to bring to life through love. John, just continue!"

15 At this John says under his breath: "Lord, put the words in my mouth; for before You have allowed me to speak alone for some moments, and I was immediately - who knows where! Indeed I did not say anything unsuitable, but in short I noticed that I did not remain on track!"

16 I said: "My dear John, do not worry about that! Everything that you said was quite in the best order, for everything had to come exactly thus. Therefore just continue very courageously and we will have another of the most beautiful victories to rejoice in!"

17 That encouraged John and he immediately began to speak again, and indeed with even more spirit and courage than before.

- Chapter 182 -

The creative power of the human soul in the dream

1 Thus John began and said: "My friend Hiram! You had this night something you called a dream of light and claimed to have seen all of us along with the ship arriving here, and your present admission stated without being demanded that we were the same whom you had seen in your dream of light. Now explain to me according to your wisdom, which in it’s own way is not at all to be despised, how that was possible! For if we only have bodies alone and no souls which in the end could love on without a body, how could we possibly as souls of those awake and active souls in your dream have been able to show ourselves in this bodily sleep of yours, while these bodies of ours at that time were still very secure in the upper vicinity of Caesarea?"

2 Hiram says: "Yes, quite well! But if those were seriously your souls which, free from their body, had already swarmed into this bay of ours in advance, then I would like to know as well whether your ship also has a soul! You see, my friend, then we are back to the same old somewhat contentious point at which my friend Aziona already wanted to have an explanation, but was instructed by you to patience. But now I am very curious to hear how you will answer this strongly prickly question!"

3 At this John takes the jug and says: "Friend, you are thirsty, I see it in your face! Take this and drink, and only then will we talk further!"

4 Hiram says: "Is this perhaps an Indian magical drink, from which one becomes intoxicated and then enters all the foolishness of mankind?"

5 John says: "Aziona is standing next to you; ask him whether this is a magic drink from India!"

6 Aziona immediately says: "Just take a drink, you will immediately feel better for it!"

7 Hiram says: "It is your responsibility, brother!" Then Hiram took the jug and took a few very powerful and generous draughts from it, since he was also a very powerful and strong man. When he had quenched his thirst, he said, very amazed, to Aziona, "Ah, just look there! From which spring did you take this magnificent water then?"

8 Aziona says: "I already told you that in your hut! That is the same water that was changed into wine by these miraculous friends from my spring which is already very well known to you!"

9 Hiram says: "Well truly, I would also like to know this art; for such a drink could really spice up this passing life for the likes of us a little from time to time. Truly, that is the very best wine that has ever flowed over my lips. Such a wine could be drunk for a thousand years without the person ever getting tired of it! Come on, let me take another few draughts!"

10 Aziona gave Hiram the jug and he took more very great draughts, next he thanked John and then said, "That, dear friend, truly went down very well; whether it will go so well for you however with the proof of the soul for the ship is another question!"

11 John says: "Dear friend, much more easily! But first you must know that every already spiritually perfected soul more closely united with the Spirit of God is also a little bit omnipotent, and therefore it is a very easy thing to create a ship in a moment and to show it to a foreign soul if needs be as a product of it’s creating power also as if existing in nature. And behold, that was the case in the previous night, and so you as a soul were able to see also a ship carrying us without our ship needing to have any sort of soul. You saw us thus clothed as we now are to be seen here before you in nature; our clothes would therefore also need to have a soul! But these are only a somewhat temporal, created product of the soul standing in close connection with the Spirit of God.

12 Thus you obviously saw us as we are with the spiritual eye of your soul in your dream, and we knew well that you, as the most staunch of your faith, would have to see us, and we also wanted this, in order to have something in advance through which your eyes could be opened a little; for if we had never been in the world or ever anywhere at all - truly, you would never have gotten to see us in a dream no matter how clear! But because we are and we exist, and indeed according to the spirit in God since eternity, this was also a very easy thing to awake your soul for this already long-awaited purpose for some moments in this dream night of yours, so that it could see what will come in the great light in advance. Can you also call that a game of the great nature?"

13 Hiram says: "Dear friend, you must not hold it against me if I speak in my usual way just as I think! You see, from your very first words I already knew that you were in your own fashion a great wise man and a master of speech! It is an easy thing for your talent of speech to make a bear out of a wolf, as the saying was and is among us.

14 I have told you my dream that I really had very truly and openly, and you have now an easy task to do with it whatever you wish. Do you know, to make a prophet afterwards is truly not such a great art; for one can as a good speaker use all the circumstances very finely and thus, as they say, create an idea off the bat from the air, which in it’s own way does not leave anything to be desired. Frivolous, shallow-thinking people equipped with little experience would get stuck there and caught; yet the very cold, calm common sense devoid of all passion and fear of a very experienced person needs more than just an excellent speech by a young and certainly also very eminent, talented person.

15 To be honest, what you have said to me about my dream is not at all to be rejected, and it is very much worth the effort to consider it more deeply; but I will contradict you with something from my many experiences and knowledge. If you can explain it to me in a satisfactory way and means, then we will be able to soon deal with one another!"

16 John said: "Wait, friend, in order to convince you some more of the inner spiritual life-force of the soul in the human body, I will now tell you in minute detail, taking it from out of your soul, what you just wanted to tell me as a contradiction to the claim I made to you and as an, in your opinion, hard-to-crack explanation of your vision! For every untrue word you can quite cheekily give me a slap around the ears!"

17 Hiram says: Then tell us! Truly, I would be highly curious, however without the slap around the ears that you suggest for incorrectness; for all such justifications and chastisements are foreign to us and have never been ours, except in cases of the most urgent defense! Tell me therefore with a very good and cheerful mood what you know about my secret experiences and adventures!"

- Chapter 183 -

Hiram's magical experiences

1 John says: "Well, so hear me patiently! You see, you as a bit of a magician yourself, like all your companions, undertook a journey a few years ago, before you had become acquainted with the pharmacist Aziona in Greece. You went to Egypt with a sorceress called Klia, at which opportunity you found only a very weak reward because of the too great shallowness of the magical arts of you and your helper!

2 In Alexandria even the urchins imitated your tricks - and among them also even better and more successful ones! Thus you did very little there and moved on to Kahiro. When you arrived there, you wanted to perform; all they said to you was: ‘Let's see everything that you can do!’ And you gave some samples of your art. They pitied you and said: ‘Dear people, there you have some farthings for the journey! Do not let yourself be seen in cities; but perhaps in some small towns you might perhaps earn your supper.’

3 Then you moved on to Carnac, where you also did nothing, likewise in Elephantine, and you even dared to go as far as Memphis. But there you were fully buried! If a Roman governor there had not saved you from your affliction, things would have gone very badly for you. However, the kind-hearted Roman governor gave you accommodation for three months for the sake of the beautiful Klia and introduced you there to a very wealthy Persian society of magicians, so that you could or should learn something from them.

4 Well, this society of magicians, however, did not want to make a deal with you unless you would remain as their immediate slave for a full ten years alongside the significant fee of education! Then you calculated the deal thus: ‘Ten years their slave plus the great fee of a hundred pounds?! If I am their slave for nine years, in the tenth they can beat me to death as a slave, so that their secret is not betrayed in Greece, and then my hundred pounds would disappear along with me! The magicians would have eaten the hundred pounds - and me, the crocodiles of the Nile! No, I won't do that to myself!’

5 That was thus your good and firm decision very secretly in yourself. But to the magicians you said: 'My highly wise artists, when I have seen occasionally almost all your greatest and most secret pieces as a guest, then I will perhaps enter into an even more advantageous contract with you!' Here the magicians were taken in by you and brought you their greatest and boldest performances to view at their shows, which happened twice a week.

6 I will not mention the many other pieces that do not belong to our issue, for the sake of valuable time, but instead just those which actually brought you out of all composure. And these consisted of this: An active, roundabout thirty year old Arab came forward and announced with very serious and respect-demanding words that he would empower a virgin simply with the power of his will and through the laying on of his bare hands so that she would guess even the thoughts and a number of secret things from anyone on demand. Also she would tell everyone's age, and if anyone wanted, also his future happy or unhappy fate exactly and without any mistake.

7 That was true thunder and lightning for you. The virgin was now brought forward and set on a reclining couch. The magician laid his hands on her, at which she fell asleep. Soon after the virgin went into a sort of ecstasy and began to speak to the magician, at which he said: 'Whoever now desires to find out something, may come forward, but only up to three people at once. With the comment that people whom she points at are to leave should also immediately follow her signal, because otherwise something unpleasant could happen to them! If someone should come with a not very pure conscience, he should not come near the virgin, but instead ask the question to me through an intermediary, and the answer will then come quite secretly through me! The condition of the virgin will last one and a half hours!'

8 At this revelation several people came and asked the strangest questions, and each received their wonderful answer. You also asked your age and your future fate. And what the virgin said to you has happened exactly to the point until now. And whatever has not yet happened, seems as if it has to be fulfilled in you now and for the future! Tell me whether things have not happened exactly so with you!"

9 Quite incredibly astounded, Hiram says: "No, that is more than too much, and more than a thousand of those bewitched virgins; for I even told you, friend Aziona, very little and actually almost nothing about this, and otherwise even less anyone else! How can you possibly know that in the most exact way! No, no! Listen, you are a highly strange person for me! I feel truly quite terribly uncomfortable in your strange presence!"

10 John says: "Hey, just leave that be; for we are not here to ever cause you the least harm, but instead only to make you as happy as possible, particularly spiritually! For without being first spiritually happy, no earthly happiness is of any good to you! Should I now tell you the dream-making of the aforementioned magician in Memphis, which dumbfounded you most of all, and which magical art you first wanted to blame on us with your light dream?"

11 Hiram says: "Oh dear friend, just leave all of that be! Although I indeed have no idea of how that magician was able to allow his sleeper to dream certain dreams, nonetheless I have been already convinced in advance that all that is exactly known to you and that you could bring the same thing into being in a thousand times more successful way, if you only wanted it. For like your eyes - or heavens knows which of your senses - read in me the most hidden things as if from an open book, that is and will remain a riddle to me until the grave!"

12 John says: "Not so, my friend! It does not at all depend on the fact that I wanted to explain to you the Egyptian dream-making somehow for your knowledge, so that you could later earn your better bread as a particular magician - for there you only have to go to the Essenes, they will do the same to you and perhaps also show you! - ; but it is my intention to show you the great difference how we could truly spiritually appear to you in a bright dream, and how that magician, who later joined the Essenes and still is among them, made the dreams for that particular sleeper."

13 Hiram and also the endlessly attentive Aziona say: "Well, we would truly be more curious about that than about our death! We beg you most seriously to explain it in a comprehensible way!"

14 John says: "Well then, good, so listen to me! You see, how we have called forth your dream from us and our arrival in you, I have explained that as very faithfully and truly as truly and faithfully my present tale of your Egyptian journey of arts with the blessed Klia, who allowed you then to travel home to Greece alone, because things were better for her in Memphis! I do not need to repeat it to you any more since you otherwise possessed a good memory then as now. It is only a matter of how the magician made the dreams for his sleeper!

15 You see, the whole society of magicians was very large! There were very few open performers, but there were very many of the guests who agreed with them, who however were never allowed to move into a great city at the same time as the main magicians. They only came gradually, partly as traders, partly as other travelers and partly as curious people who had already heard the strangest things about the great, wonderful artists, who were supposed to be performing in this city, and wanted to see them here. Those were the so-called people's noise-makers who nonetheless lived all very well from one and the same industry, because they always carried away thousands of pounds from a big city.

16 Well, these secret members of the society of magicians were only very honest spectators of the great productions, but they knew exactly when, at a certain sign, they should allow themselves to be used to deceive the greater public. Among them were also several who had to perform their secret service at the dream-making. Each had long known what he would dream, if he stepped forward at the demand of the magician as if randomly from among the onlookers and very solemnly and loudly claimed that he would bet a thousand pounds that the magician, despite his magical seriousness, would not make any dream for him.

17 The bet was usually accepted, and the blusterer ascended the tribune and had to take a sleeping draught for the sake of appearances, at which certainly not a drop of opium was found in it. In short, the man soon entered a deep sleep on the reclining couch, from which he was no longer to be awakened with all noise. Once our man was sleeping very deeply - but of course, only seemingly so - the magician stepped forward with a great awe-inspiring pathos and said to the people: Is there no one among the many spectators who would desire to know what this sleeper, who wants to crush under his feet my skills, will dream?

18 Soon out of the number of the many initiated persons, presently one person would step up, perhaps in the form of a gold-strutting, rich merchant from Rome or from Persepolis, or in the form of another always very respected guest, and said: Let me try whether he will dream what I think to myself and want him to dream about me!

19 At this the magician spoke with all suaveness: "Highly respected lord guest and visitor to this great performance of ours, now have the goodness and share very secretly your thoughts with the other highly-respected guests as evidence, but not with me; for I will suck them up out of the air with this magic wand and immediately then have them appear in a bright dream to this sleeper!

20 Then all that naturally happened under the very tensest attention from all sides. The magician stuck then his magic wand into his mouth and did as if he was seriously sucking something out of the air. Finally he placed the wand on his head and touched with the other end of the wand the head of the sleeper for just a few moments.

21 Then the sleeper, in order to make things even more striking, was awoken by a powerful blast of a trumpet, rubbed his eyes for a while, as if he didn't quite know where he was now. But he nonetheless soon came fully to himself again and was asked with all suaveness whether he knew what he had dreamed; for there was a bet of a thousand pounds which he would clearly lose if he had only dreamed what the magician wanted him to dream. But if he had had another dream, the thousand pounds would be paid to him in an instant by the magician. But he was strictly reminded to tell only the purest truth, otherwise the miraculous virgin would be called and he would be punished before thousands for his lies.

22 Then the sleeper began to tell his dream, seemingly somewhat embarrassed, and when he came to the end, all the guests confirmed loudly that that was exactly the same dream that they had heard earlier before the magician had sucked it out of the air with his wand and then had the sleeper dream it.

23 At this the sleeper pretended to be very humbled by the power of the magician and the magician generally played the benevolent one and gave the willful and inexperienced wagerer the thousand pounds back again with the remark that he would not be treated so considerately the next time at such a cheeky stand, which naturally then incited even more well-disposed applause among the spectators.

24 There you have now the whole story about the Egyptian dream-making! How do you like the trick now and what difference do you find between it and our dream-making?"

25 Hiram says: "But Memphis happened exactly as you have now told very long-windedly! Oh my, that is an infamous deception! Oh, oh, no that is too foolish that I did not understand it immediately then! Well, the story with the fortune-telling virgin will indeed also be based on quite the same way!"

26 John says: "Yes, quite in the same way - up to what she had told you in advance; but there was a very invisible magician hiding behind her, who had long directed his all-seeing eye to you! Have you now understood me somewhat better?"

- Chapter 184 -

The pre-existence and post-existence of the human soul

1 Hiram says: "My endlessly respected friend, to understand you I need truly more than the eminent and very limited common sense of a cynic! You all are putting beautiful fleas in our ears with your strange, never expected appearance and I am almost beginning to perceive that there must obviously be a higher being in humans than just what we as humans imagine with much limitation. And now it seems to me as if I must almost think that this higher being in a human must have both a pre- as well as a post-body existence; for behold, when I was in Egypt, you can hardly have been in the world!

2 But your inner spirit must nonetheless have existed a long time in advance, so that it as an invisible witness of all my reasons perhaps unknown to me could closer attend my activities up close. In this way alone I can sense a little your all-knowledge and all-insight in all my circumstances of life! Certainly you also knew the circumstances of Aziona's life just as well as mine. However, that does not make a large difference; for you as a still pure original spirit have certainly turned your all-seeing spiritual eyes onto him, just as onto me! A pre-existence of your inner spirit therefore cannot easily be denied, neither your physical co-existence; but how are things with the post-existence? All gates and doors seemed to have been closed until now!"

3 John says: "Much less than for the pre-existence! There is something about this, but not as individual and free as for the post-existence. For in order for the spiritual being to avoid remaining continuously bound to and within the original spirit of the eternal and endless divinity, the divinity itself has placed matter between itself and the spirit that should become human. The aim is that the original divine human spirit, if it wants to achieve a god-like independence, creates for itself from the more etheric and spiritual elements a being similar to itself, animates it with a substantial, but nonetheless also spiritually intelligent soul and then educates it without being noticed in the greatest possible freedom of will. And if this soul has thus greatly increased in all good awareness and the resulting activity, so that it has become similar to it’s original divine Spirit - mainly through the true recognition of the only true eternal God, in love towards Him as well as towards his neighbors - and at the same time full of humility, patience and modesty, then an inseparable union of the soul with the original eternal Spirit for takes place for all eternity.

4 But because of that then, the following happens: The soul originating from matter then becomes spirit itself; but the spirit then becomes soul in the soul and is thus an eternally free, independent and very god-like free self-active being, equipped with all those characteristics which are of the original eternal divinity.

5 It then very easily goes without saying that the body has nothing more to do nor can it without any further explanations! For the food which a person consumes daily makes up a temporary part of nourishment for the human body, from which the already solid body, and through it then also the soul, takes it’s substantial and specific nourishment and replenishment. But if the temporarily fed body has done what it must, the soul is then removed from the more solid body, which is still closely connected to the soul, as unusable for the future. If it remains as a very coarsely material part of the body in the more solid and already more related body with the soul, it would obviously lead to the unavoidable death of the more solid body.

6 But once the soul has been properly developed in the body, that is, in it’s formal nature as well as in free, whatever kind of knowledge, love, will and action, two cases now occur: Either the soul is already completely ripe for it’s divine spirit - that means it is already completely spiritual - or the soul is already developed as a spiritual being and, so to speak, consistent; but the inner, spiritual element is still very much in question, and it shows according to it's large and necessarily completely free determination of a much stronger inclination to go completely over into matter than to swing freely over into it's spiritual element; so it is released from the body in both cases.

7 In the first and of course happiest case the divine human spirit with already reached its purpose and then certainly needs for ever no more material means, because once he has, it has already perfectly achieved it's eternal purpose.  Or the all-seeing and all-sensing spirit realizes that it's soul, formed from matter, begins to tilt back to the element from which it was originally taken, then it's primordial spirit tears it away, even if under the greatest pain, out of the body and only then forms it beyond, thus in the realm of the souls, in it's own right, but always as unnoticed as possible; for every unfree and directed education of a soul would be worse than none at all.

8 But this remark has to be mentioned here and stressed that an education of the soul only in the beyond takes a much longer time and nonetheless never can reach that very highest level as opposed to a formation of the soul that happened on this side, still in the body; for in that way also the more noble part of the body is healed as well, and almost all the flesh achieves with the soul and with it - with the spirit united with it - a type of enlightenment and simultaneous resurrection and then forms for eternity a being fully united with the soul and spirit. But only very few people ever achieve that on Earth - but very many shortly after the death of the body. And behold, you have now got the post-existence of every person before you, as the straightest line of exactly the deepest truth!

9 If this is still somewhat foreign and difficult to understand, you can easily ask me new questions. Therefore you now have to speak again or even friend Aziona. Think and speak and I will give you another correct answer!"

- Chapter 185 -

Hiram's reservations about the eternal continued existence of man

1 Hiram, as the more talented speaker, says: "Dearest friend, there is still no talk among us of a clear insight in what you have just said - but we believe you as a result of your overly great wisdom; for whoever has knowledge and insight which penetrate everything in all possible events on this Earth and even can read the most secret thoughts of man as if from an open book, must also have been well-versed most deeply and truthfully in all possible spheres and ways of life, of which not the slightest doubt can possibly remain any longer.

2 We now believe what you have said as firmly as rock. Indeed the purely spiritual pre-existence and the present-worldly material existence of soul-development and -test according to your presentation does not allow any further questions any longer, because things can only be thought of thus and impossibly in any other way and likewise exist - for the designated and ever same effects must indeed also have the same causes; that is now decided among us! - but as far as the post-existence is concerned, there is indeed still a number of extremely important questions, whose basic answer must then be a little bit more difficult for you.

3 You see, I cannot imagine above all the reason for even an - as you have said - eternal existence after shedding the body! What should we do then throughout the never-ending eternity? What a terrible boredom will finally have to join, even in the enjoyment of the highest, indescribable bliss! And worst of all is a highly perfected spirit, who naturally will have nothing more to learn! For him a monotony in life will have to set in which we cannot imagine at all.

4 I would allow myself to remain ten thousand years of life under very favorable circumstances in life for my own sake, but physically on this Earth; for no-one will learn everything and be able to say: Now there is nothing on the whole Earth anymore which is not fully familiar to me! But now I place a highly perfect spirit on this Earth, only equipped with your highly wonderful omniscience! With one sharp glance he will get to know all your secrets of all the future and the past! What happens afterwards, if he has to remain strictly on this Earth? He could gloat over the foolishness of man and spend his time using his power to chase peoples to and fro - otherwise he would have to become bored beyond imagination!

5 With my common sense I do not see the actual and above all blissful reason for an eternal after-life. In the end even the question of space begins to worry us very much. If for example on this Earth people are created for a hundred thousand times a hundred thousand years like now and everything that is sea does not become land, where - where then should all the people have space and find their food? And what space will all the eternally existing spirits need? For within any space the spirits must also live, because no existence is conceivable outside the space that is supposed to be infinite according to Plato.

6 Therefore it is in my opinion much more logical and appropriate for pure common sense to accept only a temporary after-life than an eternal one, which cannot be brought to any sort of beneficial relationship either with the feelings of life or with space. And at least if we observe things in the right light, the final annihilation of a temporally animated being still has the greatest advantage over any existence however profitable, and an inner feeling always tells me: Despite all even the highest human wisdom, the physical death is and remains nonetheless the last line of all things! What do you say to that now, noble and most wonderful friend?"

- Chapter 186 -

Infinity, eternity and bliss

1 John says: "Yes, my dear friends, that certainly only depends from which standpoint one sees life, quite particularly the spiritual life. That one also has a correct realization of one's self, through which a correct and true perception of God and His countless many miracles and creations, which still have to show you things in the area of matter, with whose incredibly amazing observance you will never be finished within eons of years, not to mention then the purely spiritual creations, of which one can say: Until now it has never entered human sense to feel even in the slightest part what God has prepared as blessings for those who truly recognize Him and then love Him above all else and also their neighbor out of love for Him wherever possible, with advice and deed. How can there ever be talk of boredom, where the most perfect possible spirit only begins to see that he is standing only at the beginning of the revelation of the most countless miracles of eternal power and wisdom and the highest love of God the Lord and Father of eternity? Oh, what thoughts take possession of your great limitation in every deeper cognition of life!

2 Just look at the sun, which gives the Earth the day! What do you know about this magnificent star? Nothing! Yes, you do not even know about its organization and its relationship to this Earth! You think and believe only what you can perceive with your senses; but things are quite different. Not this Earth stands as if in an eternal centre, and the sun does not and never cannot go around it, although it seems so, but instead the sun is the centre for this with the moon and the planets that you are familiar with, and this Earth along with it’s moon, as well as all the other planets move at various distances around the sun. The almost 25-hour orbit of the Earth around its polar axis creates the daily rising and setting of the sun.

3 Certainly you may not believe that because of the limitation of your insight, but future peoples, to whom God will give the correct light, will see that very clearly.

4 You can now believe me since you know that I can have a deepest founded knowledge of all truth. But since we now have touched upon the sun, so I tell you that it is a thousand times a thousand times bigger than this Earth. What miracles you never dreamed of cover it’s wide expanses! What a number of the most wonderful creatures of God walk there in the greatest harmony on its extremely wide spread out realms of light and rejoice in their blessed being! Their beauty is already of such extent that you can observe and be amazed at a human form from there here on Earth for an eternity without ever having enough of looking at it! What I say to you is entirely and highest truth and not in the least any sort of exaggeration.

5 But if a life of ten thousand years on this scanty Earth according to your admission in bearably good circumstances of life would not be unpleasant, I would like to then hear from you the number of years which you would like to live out very decently on the sun!

6 But that is not the only sun in the endless space of creation, but instead there are countless many and among them many of such an immeasurable size that even this enormously great sun for your understanding would be compared to that giant sun hardly like a snowflake in comparison with the size of this Earth.

7 But if things are so in the kingdom of material creation, how much more than in the endless kingdom of the spiritual creations of the Lord God and Father of eternity! And you want to speak about boredom in the eternal after-life of a person who has completely become a perfect spirit?!

8 And if you will have observed the ever greater miracles of God for eon times eons of Earth years as a pure, independent and free spirit in the certainly very most heavenly society of the pure spirits related to you, you will for endlessly long not even stand at the beginning! If you really gather the courage, you must indeed receive an ever-increasing joy in life and no revulsion before the same! Speak again now you, how does this suit you?"

- Chapter 187 -

Three objections against the continuation of life after death

1 Hiram says: "I am amazed at your knowledge of things. No school of the world nor your imagination gave you this! It almost seems to be because you have developed it here before us so easily and as something very familiar to you since an unthinkably long time; for truly, such a thing cannot be made up from thin air! Now we are telling you that we understand and comprehend of it all indeed basically as much as nothing, but we believe it completely because you tell us so, who have laid for us now in the short time of our being together indeed the very most enormous elements of your all-knowledge and your most incorruptible truthfulness in the simplest and clearest way in the world.

2 But nevertheless I have another three important questions to ask you as far as the after-life is concerned. If you can give us also a satisfactory solution, we will then give up all our cynical wisdom for your sake and then ask you to teach us a better one. But the questions are very short and simply these:

3 What sort of spirits are these that place their souls which are to be formed in the bodies of deaf-mutes and completely disabled from birth and the retarded? What spiritual development can a human soul expect in such bodies according to our basic principles of reason? That is the first question.

4 What about the souls of children who die long before they actually are capable of their existence, at which there can be no talk at all of any spiritual development? From which other-worldly perfectly pure spirits from God do these come from? You see, friend that is the second very important question!

5 And the third question is this: What about those souls which have indeed reached some world-education and intelligence on the Earth in their flesh, but then intentionally and very arbitrarily become entirely true abominations to the better human society? Why did the wise spirits certainly from God like you who placed them into existence allow that, and why did they not care more for them who were called into being by them and try to become one with them? Or is that something for the pure spirit whose level of education contains a soul in this world and in it’s body?

6 You see, friend, there are still some contradictions to your previous speech which we even with the best will, cannot bring under one hat! For either the action of such a union in life - a highly serious one, on which the good or evil then the whole eternity depends - and the powerful other-worldly spirit can not be indifferent to whether his soul, developed either through his power and intelligence from God or out of matter, will become a true abomination even to him as a perfected spiritual being - or this previously-mentioned action is no highly and even holy serious one, but instead only a game of whims. Then we are right above all your wisdom no matter how undeniably high, if we claim that in the great natural world everything is only a vain game of forces, and we are living only as temporal jokes of great nature, and the end comes with death for ever, unconcerned, which makes somewhere immortal perfect spirits which never worry about all of nature!

7 For if for example some other-worldly spirit wants to call me into existence through God, but then no longer wants to look after me at all, he is then of no use at all, and if I as a soul should form myself entirely for him, without him helping in any noticeable way, then I can do without such a lazy spirit for all eternity! Well, friend, how is it going there with your good and wise answer?"

8 Peter secretly says to Me: "Lord, now I am already at the end of my wisdom too! I am now very worried about how John will get out of that one!"

9 I say, "Do not worry! Through Me and with Me everything is possible!"

- Chapter 188 -

The necessary diversity of beings and conditions on earth

1 At this John began to speak again and said: "My dear friends, if your insight was only half as developed, things would have been done with few words; but as it is indeed several will be needed. But so that you understand, I must first give to you all a very new revelation. And as the first calls forth and gives rise to the other, and before you thought about coming to me with the three critical questions, I already knew about it and in my previous true image that I gave to you, I built the material creation. Oh, you certainly do not come to me ever with a question which I had not known already long in advance! But if I have known already long in advance about the question to come, as well as your travel stories, you can also easily imagine that a final answer will not be too difficult for me either. What do you think about that, Hiram?"

2 Hiram says: "Oh yes, that sounds just like you! But I did not ask you the three questions in order to try your most deeply-tested wisdom even further; but because one already gives rise to the other, I would like to hear from you in this most serious issue then also a final conclusion which certainly no one but you would be capable of giving me, without coming too close to the certainly also most cogent wisdom of your companions. Do me the goodness and speak - we want to listen to you with the most attentive anticipation!"

3 John says: "Well then, listen! There are differences in whatever you see on Earth. What would you say if on this Earth all the creatures looked just as similar as for example the sparrows on the roof, so that one could not tell male from female?"

4 Hiram says: "That would be something unbearably boring!"

5 John says: "Good! Thus it would also be unbearably boring if all people possessed exactly the same form, the same strength, the same age, the same voice and language and the very same instinctive common sense!"

6 Hiram says: "Ah that would be something very terrible!"

7 John says further: "Would the Earth be cheerful and enjoyable to look at either completely without mountains or without any such kind of differentiation, and if on the Earth there was only one type of tree and only one type of grass, and if there was no sea, but only sheer little, shallow and exactly the same ponds, no greater deep lakes, no great rivers and currents, but instead only sheer straight-sided square little clouds in the sky, which continually moved on very slowly only in one and the same direction?! Would it be pleasant if you saw in the firmament instead of the various constellations either only suns or only moons without any change of the day with the calm night?!"

8 Hiram says: "I beg you, friend, come to an end soon with all this; for even the thought of it drives a man of our sort to desperation! For only the greatest variation in everything can give life a pleasure!"

9 Even Aziona says: "Brother Hiram, can't you feel yet where all this is going and how you have already been caught?"

10 Hiram says: "I am indeed beginning to feel a bit of something of a light breeze! But let's leave the most noble and wisest friend continue for our own good quite undisturbed!"

11 Now John continues to speak on and says: "Good friends, if already on earth the greatest possible uniformity in all things must fill you with the most horrible boredom, and only the most magnificent and diverse varieties and changes give you pleasure - how can you imagine spirits of infinitely greater perfection, as principal life-intelligences, to live on forever in the greatest monotony, one resembling another to a hair, throughout all of everlasting infinity? Oh look, what a shallow and lopsided view you have of God and His unending spirit-realm.

12 There, as here, countless differences must exist, otherwise no being, once it has reached greater perfection, could feel bliss and rapture at the wonders created by God. Likewise, there are countless differences among you people on earth so that you can serve one another wherever necessary. What does it matter whether or not a spirit fully completes in the beyond the work he has begun here? Eternity lasts long enough for him to make up for the things that he here only seemingly neglected to do.

13 In addition - mark this well! - this Earth in particular is specially chosen and designated by God, so that exactly on it, because of the only possible achievement of the childhood of God here, among the most varied types of people and characters which appear on it there is such a great difference, which after this Earth however in the whole infinity cannot be found to such a great degree on any of the countless many other planets.

14 But since it is only possible here to attain to the true and sole sonship of God - a fact which is well-known in it’s profundity to all the primordial spirits in the whole of infinity - you can well imagine that many spirits bring souls from other globes to this earth, so that also a soul from another world can be purified in the matter of this earth. Well, many succeed at their first attempt, but very many fail. If the alien soul incarnated in the flesh of this earth cannot endure the heavy pressure of this matter right from it’s entrance, it is immediately taken back by its spirit to the place from which it came.

15 Many souls, particularly those from other worlds, cannot stand the sight of this very poor world, which is the least beautiful of all. They are those whose senses are usually poorly developed. They usually hold out for quite some time, imitating the true people of this earth in a few things. However, after such a usually short, but to them deeply significant life, they return, usually after several decades, to their homeland, of course unrecognized by the people of this earth - often successful in their great endeavor, and achieve with certainty what they attempted at the first time.

16 Some such foreign souls often travel through even very many other worlds, until they then risk coming to this Earth, led by their spirits. Many are from solar worlds. Among them there are soon some very complete; but some often receive a great anger at everything that happens only on this Earth. From these come the very evil individuals for this Earth, who rob, murder and steal whatever comes their way. Also they usually have no love for the people of this Earth and seek only to harm them in every possible way. Such only rarely escape here the just punishment for their crimes against the Earth’s laws of order. Quite often they return to their old homeland, where things are not too good for them either, for their spirit often begins to discipline them in a terribly severe and painful manner, and the prouder, more hardened and selfish-stubborn a soul is, the longer will such a process last.

17 Yes, Sometimes the same thing happens to citizens of this earth who are enticed by the strangers to perpetrate many an evil deed. It is these souls, of whom unfortunately there are many, that are called 'devils'. These will later be tormented by their spirits out of God who will then be their guides until their complete betterment takes place. And look, this accounts for the great diversity on this earth and the peculiar conditions prevailing among the people of this earth. I think that you, who can obviously think more keenly than other ordinary people of this earth, should now be completely in the clear regarding your questions. Or is there still anything else?"

- Chapter 189 -

A question about the Messiah

1 Says Hiram: "This is now quite all right, and we have no longer any objections, for now we believe you, who alone will surely know and clearly enough comprehend it, since we know nothing about the countless strange worlds and even less about their mysterious inhabitants, who they are, what they look like and what their nature is like. But I mean to say one more thing, namely, that at least some of the better people of this earth ought to be informed from above while they are still in the flesh, so that they will be prepared to deal with such people."

2 Says John: "Listen, the people of this earth has always been informed about these and similar things through all kinds of metaphors. There are several such references in the Song of Solomon. Yet the people, or rather their souls, have merged too deeply with worldly matter and have thus turned their backs on their spirit out of God, wherefore they are no longer able to comprehend and understand any of the highest and purely spiritual things. We came into this world precisely for this reason, to rehabilitate the souls that became depraved through their own fault and to show them the proper roads to their spiritual and eternal salvation."

3 In the future after us everything will be revealed by the holy spirit of God to thousands of people a thousand times brighter than I could now reveal it to you all. But if then the spirit of God will come upon you all, he will lead you in all depths of his divine wisdom, and only then will you see also perfectly clearly what you now have begun very weakly to believe. Until then believe and investigate in the Scriptures and also in the whole of nature; they will say to you that it is so and not otherwise! But you will only see the full reason later, as I said. "Do you now have anything to object to?"

4 Says Hiram: "No, my most noble and wise friend! Now there is no doubt at all among us about these things any longer! But since we now have talked about some subjects towards the wane of this most beautiful day, I would like to ask you about something else. I am indeed only a pure Greek, but nonetheless I have acquired some things through my time from Judaism which amused me a lot, namely their claim of a Messiah who will be nothing less than the highest divinity Himself. He will of course make them all immortal in an instant and reside in Jerusalem as their eternal, unconquerable king and from there rule the whole world and at the same time naturally the whole eternal infinity as well.

5 They laugh at us for our mythical religion of the gods now almost in every place and declare it to be the very sheerest old nonsense; but what should one say then to the Jews about their Messiah? By heaven! Such unlimited foolishness and confusion of the human spirit has truly never crossed my path in the entire world that I have travelled! Tell me what sort of an empty joke is behind it all! That is indeed a truly most terrible bragging by the particularly very distinguished Jews mainly against us Greeks and Romans, and they rejoice already that their Zeus will drive us out of their lands with an enormous flaming sword, at every well-struck blow of which at least a hundred thousand of the most destructive bolts of lightning will spring forth over all the Gentiles! Well, that is a little bit too much! "What do you say then as a Jew yourself to this old, foolish Jewish joke?"

6 John says: "This issue is also not quite as senseless as you as a pure Greek might think; and perhaps it is closer to you than you could ever think! But of course in the way that you have heard it from the mouth of the Jews it is obviously a very most colossal ridiculousness, behind which not even a spark of an even seeming truth resides! But what the Jews in the highly foolish way expect in vain and afterwards will expect until the end of the world, has already appeared a long time ago hidden in front of their blind eyes and deaf ears - but not to drive out the Gentiles who have long been bothersome to the Jews, but instead quite the reverse: The Jews will be driven out of the land and the Gentiles will be given the word of God forever! Yet we will begin a significant conversation on this topic later; but now we want to begin to sort out an evening meal and accommodation! For we will remain here tomorrow as well and then another few days, and then much will be discussed."

7 Both say, quite overjoyed at this assurance: "We will immediately look after everything as far and well as possible!"

8 With this both leave very cheerfully, and I praised the disciple for his untiring perseverance and for his truly very great patience.

- Chapter 190 -

John is afraid of Hiram's sagacity

1 While both these fishermen with their wives and children prepared the evening meal for us, finally Judas Iscariot, who had become very subdued, asked once again, who would send the ship back to old Mark if we no longer needed it.

2 I say: "Worry about something better than such worldly trivialities; for He who built this ship for Mark in a miraculous way will know how He has to bring it back to him! Why can you still not see something spiritual, but instead certainly always worry only about something worldly! What do you profit from the world, or what would you profit if you won the whole world, but suffered the greatest harm to your soul? What can you give then to save your spoiled soul?!

3 Just look at these poor fishermen! They are the soberest and otherwise the friendliest people, expect no reward for their life after the death of their body, and nonetheless the entire world with it’s temporary treasures is an abomination to them, and they have therefore retreated from the whole world to this most deserted and void corner of the Earth. Now for the first time they have heard about something more highly spiritual, and already they are full of satisfaction - and a good half of them are Gentiles; but you are a genuine Jew and belong along with Me to the seed of Judah, and nonetheless the spiritual makes little or often no impression at all on you! Tell Me now quite openly why you actually walk with Me from place to place!"

4 Somewhat embarrassed, Judas says: "Well, yes, now everything has failed once again, because I made myself heard because of the ship! I did not have any bad or dishonest opinion about it! Forgive me, if I have made a mistake by it!"

5 I say: "Yes, yes, a lot still has to be forgiven you! Make sure that in the end the world does not become your master!"

6 At this Thomas wanted to whisper a few more words into Judas Iscariot's ear; but I looked at Thomas and he remained silent in all patience.

7 But then John, My favorite, stepped up to Me and said: "Lord, are we now more or less in order with these people? For if they should come to us somehow even worse, then I would like to ask You that You Yourself would brave them; for I become crestfallen among them as if my heart wanted to possibly not understand something correctly and fast enough coming from You and then easily say something as if it was Yours, with which I would then be in a fine pickle with these sharp-seers! For they pay attention to every word and to every similar accompanying gesture like a sly fox on his prey! Only one incorrect little word and away with them!

8 Philopold in Kane near Kis was also almost a similar man; but nonetheless it was significantly easier to talk with them. But with these people it is much more difficult because they truly possess much experience and in addition such a sharpness of understanding as has never happened to me before! Mathael was also an extraordinary spirit; but with this Hiram here, he would have had a fine task! Thus I ask You, oh Lord, once again, that at a somewhat sharper start You Yourself would take it up with him!"

9 I say: "My dear John that will no longer be necessary! Hiram will indeed bring forward some objections concerning the Messiah, which will make you a little embarrassed; but both of us will also soon bring him onto the right path. But just you go now into the hut and make fire for them; for they have now been making an effort since they left us to start a fire by rubbing stones and wood, but cannot produce anything!"

10 John headed for the hut and said: "Dear friends, it seems to me that today you will not have any success making fire; for I have already observed the hut for a while, but have not been able to discover any fire, and my friend said to me: Go over and give the good, worried people a fire! And so I am here now to help you make a fire!"

11 Hiram and Aziona said: "There you are extremely welcome to us then; for our better stones give no fire and the kindling has become somewhat wet in the hut, and so we have now trouble with making fire. Also the neighbours has it no better!"

12 John said: "Just lay the wood on the stove and the fire will then immediately be created!"

13 They laid the wood on the stove and Aziona said: "Well, dear friend, the wood is already on the stove! I am truly curious to see in which new way you will now make the fire!"

- Chapter 191 -

John's fire-miracle

1 John says: "Look, like this!"

2 John simply spoke and said: "This wood burn here on the stove and in the other huts!" - and in an instant the fire in the huts burned brightly.

3 At this both clapped their hands over their heads in amazement and said; "No, that can only be possible for a God! We have indeed seen fire created already by the magicians with the means of rubbing their hands, but simply through the word - never! You must have had some secret powder with which you sprinkled the wood in genuine magician's speed - which however neither I nor anyone else noticed - and the powder must have then soon caught fire in contact with the wood; the ancient Egyptians are supposed to have had such a powder. Otherwise that is a purest, very most incomprehensible miracle!"

4 John said: "Things would naturally be best explained with that certain powder; but I took the liberty to remove this affliction in all your huts as you will immediately convince yourselves - and so the certain Egyptian fire powder may now go it’s own way!"

5 Hardly had John said this, when the neighbors hurried up partly with fear and partly with joy and hastily told what had happened in their huts.

6 Alone Aziona calmed them down and said: "Just return to your huts quite calmly and comforted; for we already know what you have encountered!"

7 At this the bringers of the news hurried home and prepared themselves for their meager meal.

8 But now also Hiram said: "Yes, my dear and wonderful friends, now I will head home too for a short time, in order to consume my certainly already cooked fish without salt or other spices; but then I will immediately be back at your service!"

9 Said John: "Remain here and be our guest along with Aziona's household!"

10 Hiram said: "Noblest friend that would really be more than much too much from your goodness to me which is constantly more and more incomprehensible! But I must care for your accommodation for the night as well, and so it is necessary that I go home for a little and prepare at least for one of you a comfortable camp for the night, because of the limitation of space!"

11 John says: "Neither is that necessary, for our ship, on which we can all sleep very well, has been already set up for that; but perhaps we will remain the whole night in the open air under the trees on the beautiful grass as is usual, and so you no longer have to worry about anything."

12 Hiram said: "Yes, if so, then certainly I will remain here without further ado! There is only one unpleasant thing about this area, particularly at night; that is the great abundance of all sorts of evil gnats and other flying insects; then there are here also a great number of vipers, who at night come out of their holes into the open air and often bother us very much. There are certainly here also a great number of storks and cranes, which fly to this area in hordes and catch their very rich meal; but nonetheless the vermin increases so significantly that every evening there is enough to satisfy a good ten times as many storks and cranes. For this reason spending the night in the open air is nonetheless not a very pleasant thing. I would be for preferring to spend the night on the ship, where one does not need to worry about the insects, nor the gnats and even less the vipers in the rooms!"

13 John says: "Do not be concerned about all that; for neither the one nor the other should bother you all today, or ever again!"

14 With this John left the hut and came back to us and wanted to tell Me everything that had now happened.

15 But I praised him and said: "Everything was in the best order for these people from Me! But I will now tell you something else!"

- Chapter 192 -

The wonderful supper

1 (The Lord) "We will have a formal war to fight today towards midnight! For a second deputation from Jerusalem - since the one under Zinka has not been heard from - was sent out yesterday from Jerusalem; from whom, you can easily imagine! They come by ship and some fishermen who knew you informed them that we entered this bay today around noon. They will indeed tonight have difficulty finding their way into this bay, but in the end with the help of a couple of well-paid fishermen familiar with this place, they will nonetheless arrive here. There are also two arch-Pharisees among them and a main shield-bearer of Herod. But in the meantime do not tell these fishermen anything about it, because we would thus give them very unnecessary fear, because they still do not fully know us and very secretly still consider us to be magicians of the most extraordinary type!

2 "But these pursuers will not get off so lightly as those under Zinka! They pursue Me with a rage and zeal of their own and, therefore, their enterprise shall cost them very dearly. For, erring human beings under coercion must be treated in a way different from veritable devils. Today you shall see in Me a merciless judge, in whom at that moment no love shall live! But now be very quiet about this; for our hosts are now bringing the very well-prepared evening meal!"

3 When Aziona arrives with his food basket, he says: "Dear, divine friends! Everything would already be alright; but no table, no benches and no light! "And yet it has already become quite dark!"

4 I say: "All that does not matter! Listen, magicians such as we, are never embarrassed! We only need to say: Table, bench and light, come here! And behold, it is all already there for our necessary comfort!"

5 Instantly a large, covered, long table stood there surrounded by good benches, and on the table stood a large Naphtha lamp with bright sun-white light, so that the whole area around about was illuminated as bright as day. Aziona and Hiram almost let the food basket fall in shock and amazement, but soon took control of themselves and sat down, still somewhat cautiously, around the wonderful table.

6 Hiram soon looked at Me and then at John again with amazed, but still very keen eyes, as if he was asking himself: Now I would like to know which of them is the first and actual master of the company! And finally he said out loud, "Truly, if that also belongs to the kingdom of magic, then that alone would be rewarded with ten thousand pounds of the purest gold in Alexandria!"

7 At this Judas Iscariot could no longer hold his tongue and said quite loudly: "Oh if only I could do that, - I would not remain an hour longer in this foolishly praised land where one is constantly persecuted all the time!"

8 Here Jacob gave him a sign and reminded him of My previous admonition. So he became silent and said no further word.

9 Aziona however called all his people from the huts and showed them the new miracle, and his wife called out: "Man, those are no magicians, they must be gods; for such a thing is something unheard-of!"

10 Aziona said: "You may well indeed be very right; only the question is whether the high gods of Olympus would be happy with our fish!"

11 The wife, who was a Greek from Athens and thus still a very firm Gentile, said: "Oh, man, such a thing I have heard often from the high gods! For the gods love only in their high heavens the very highest splendor; on the Earth however they always turn to the plainest and simplest person and content themselves with the very simplest food. Yes, yes, my dear husband, thus it is quite certainly and surely!"

12 Aziona says: "Well, well, it must be so; but now it's all better again! Now just go into the huts again and put everything into the best order!"

- Chapter 193 -

The approaching ship with the bailiffs

1 With this cue the woman headed with the many children into the hut again and began to praise the great Zeus at her work with the children for such an extremely great mercy, but nonetheless made the remark to the children that from the land in which the gods appeared nothing good was to be expected, but instead sheer bad things like war, hunger, disease and great floods.

2 But the children said: "But these gods look very friendly! We will ask them tomorrow not to impose too terrible an evil on the Earth!"

3 The mother said: "Just be calm and silent now! The fathers will soon sort that out with them; for we do not understand enough about it."

4 Then it became silent in the huts and we consumed our evening meal with Aziona and Hiram, which both of them very much enjoyed, quite particularly, however, the wine and the bread, both of which Hiram could not praise enough. When the fish had been consumed, Aziona got rid of the basket, came back to us, and we remained sitting there with bread and wine at the table and no-one felt in the least bit sleepy. Until one hour before midnight we spent the time with all sorts of rather unimportant tales.

5 Only after this time have passed, Hiram rose, stared out over the bay for a while, and then said with a certain trepidation, "My friends, it seems weird to me, as if we are threatened by a great danger! I see a ship heavily manned with warriors and pursuers steering into the bay! Truly, they have nothing good in mind! You, friend, who have created this light so orderly, extinguish it so that they will lose direction and in the night drive up upon a sandbank! Tomorrow we will then ask them what they want here, and should they become a good prize for us, we will let them pay us a visit in friendly intention."

6 Said I: "Let's just leave the light to shine! Soon you shall see miracles of our power! But first they must come to us entirely; only then will we show them what according to your saying the gods can perform!"

7 With this Hiram was satisfied; but Aziona said: "Look, dear friends, I asked you whether you were being followed by some enemies! But you said: Not at all! If you had only told us something about it "truly, we would have soon soured their arrival in this bay in such a way that they would have had enough to think about for thirty years!"

8 I said: "I knew indeed what would happen without our fault; however, if I had told you immediately, you would have lost your necessary rest. You would have made a very great effort to block up the entrance into this bay - and what for? I have the highest power in abundance for more than a hundred thousand such enemy ships! What would be the use of such preparations? The prize along with the ship belongs in any case to you, and that will not be insignificant! They are carrying great sums of bribes and other money for their good provisions and another amount of other earthly valuables which will come very handy to you in your great poverty. I have foreseen everything very secretly in Myself and have therefore most of all for that reason not said anything to you all about it.

9 If you had taken the ship as prize through your trickery and force, which also could very easily have been possible, you would have very soon received a ten times greater, more hostile visit from Jerusalem and you all would have been treated as murderers. But you do not have to fear that in the least; for I Myself will be with you in the spirit, if not in the person, always protect you and not let anything evil happen to you.

10 But now the truly miserable furious people are indeed approaching and will now straightaway come on land along with the two fishermen who betrayed us; pay attention to what will happen to them!"

11 Aziona said: "Let us hope they do not carry arrows with them!"

12 I said: "Oh no, they have only a few spears, lances, swords and chains with them; but now quiet, My dears!"

- Chapter 194 -

The court over the bloodhounds

1 At that moment we heard rough voices laughing mockingly and calling, "Hurrah! Hahahaha, the funny birds are sitting all together with Greek illuminations, and we have got them finally in our power!"

2 Immediately the two arch-Pharisees stepped up to our table with the castellan of Herod and several pursuers with very fierce faces and said, "If you do not want to be brought to Jerusalem in heavy chains, follow us willingly! At the slightest resistance you will immediately be bound and shackled with the heaviest chains!"

3 But I said: "Is there then no mercy and consideration at all possible among you all at least until tomorrow? For whether you leave with us quite innocent ones today or tomorrow, in order to cool your revenge, will be all the same!"

4 The castellan and both the Pharisees scream: "No, it must be quite without any mercy! Just get up, and move!"

5 I now said with a powerful and most serious voice: "Well then! Since there is no spark of compassion in you and you have become true arch-devils, all compassion for you in My heart has also been quite exhausted! Let things be for you according to your hearts, minds and nameless most evil deeds!"

6 With these words of Mine they all suddenly became stiff and seized by the most unbearable pains, began to cry and beg and promise to do everything that I might ever demand of them - but only for Me to free them from such an unbearable torture! They wanted rather to die a thousand deaths than to bear such most unbearable pain a moment longer!

7 But I said: "I asked you for mercy and compassion only until tomorrow and found none; therefore you shall now find no mercy or compassion with Me! The only mercy that I will grant you consists of this: that the savage beasts of these mountains will put an end to your most evil life and do to you what you have already done to many innocent people! Yes, even the little children were not spared from your indescribable and unheard-of cruelty!

8 You were as then still young wretches the most zealous in the Bethlehemite infanticide, because already then you thought to kill Me among them. But Jehovah's eternal Spirit, which always filled Me with all power and strength, knew how to prevent that. After that event however you have practiced countless other unheard-of cruelties to the poor humanity, for which human reason has not yet found a name; therefore I Myself have wanted thus for you as devils in human form to come here in order to receive your well-deserved reward!"

9 At this they howled even more and begged for mercy and promised the most complete improvement of their evil life. Only this one time I wanted to let their mercy be replaced by justice. But at the same time their cries of pain became ever worse, so that Aziona and Hiram and even some of My disciples began to beg for them.

10 I said: "Believe Me, as soon as I release them for even ten moments from their most perfectly deserved torture, they will immediately fall upon us like the angriest tigers and want to strip the flesh from our bones! Oh, I know best of all how one has to deal with angels, people and genuine devils! Truly, for these arch-devils who have smuggled their way in among My human children there is no compassion any longer in My heart!"

11 But the villains howled even more and begged for mercy.

12 But I said: "Those who will put an end your pains will be here in an instant, and your black souls shall inhabit the dragons of the hottest deserts of Africa for ten thousand times a thousand years, buried in the glowing sands, Amen!"

13 Now from all sides there came a powerful roar from the mountains, so that all the poor inhabitants of this place began to be very scared.

14 But I comforted them and said to Aziona: "Both the fishermen should now be freed from their pain; but you take them captive and lead them into the hut!"

15 Aziona did this. When both of those who had been lead astray by money had been taken into custody, and Aziona came back to our table, immediately a whole herd of tigers and big bears sprang onto the now already terribly howling furious ones, grabbed them with their teeth and jumped away hastily into the mountains as if they had only sparrows in their claws. And soon all the howling stopped; for the beasts, which I had already driven down even from the Ganges for this purpose, had soon finished their meal and then headed back quickly to their homeland.

16 But I now said to each of them: "Never let a word pass anyone's lips about this; for such a thing would be very bad for him! Both the fishermen however will find favor only tomorrow, and will not commit any other betrayal in this world."

17 Only now Hiram summoned up the courage to speak again and said now to Me: "Only now I know which of you is the lord, and I must admit that I consider you to be obviously a truest god! You are indeed goodness itself; but your anger is certainly the most terrifying thing in the whole world and under all the stars! What very miserable wretches must they have been that you would not and could not have the very least compassion with them!"

- Chapter 195 -

The bailiffs' life story

1 I said: "I tell you: These days there is nothing more miserable on the whole Earth! I tell you: There is now on the whole Earth many - appallingly many - extremely bad and evil people, who unfortunately have become bad mostly through their upbringing from their birth. However there has truly never been a lack of the best education for these, and they were instructed in all good teaching. But already in their childhood years they knew how to disguise themselves through all sorts of hypocrisy, so that they were preferred everywhere and received distinctions wherever possible. This way they came even in their early years to very respected positions, but began soon with often the coarsest abuses of the power of their positions to oppress the people too badly and thus became more and more dead-hearted and unscrupulous. But their guile helped them on everywhere, and so they came - namely the three main leaders as schoolmates - to very high positions and were in the right place to give their true satanic greed the crudest free rein possible, and everything that their arch-evil mind gave them was set into action at any cost.

2 How many girls and boys of eight to twelve years did they rape to death, even with utmost torture, and their flesh subsequently thrown to the many dogs they had! And if the doleful parents dared to investigate even remotely what had happened to their children, they had to be ready in advance that their last hour would soon have run out. And their bloodhounds and sworn-in servants did not behave any better, but instead wherever possible even more cruelly. If you think about all that and another thousand even worse cases, you will be capable of understanding very well My anger here.

3 But they knew also very well that no-one could betray them to the Romans as easily as I, because they had already heard many a thing about Me. Thus they also always sent the bloodhounds off to investigate My person, but always without success; therefore they now wanted to carry out the desired job themselves. But then My Spirit said within Me: Just up to here, and no further! And so they have now received their long-deserved reward here quite in full.

4 Collect their weapons and chains; for you will be able to utilize them as useful household instruments and for catching fish in the winter! There under that cliff wall in the forest you will find their torn clothes, because they were eaten there by the animals, also gnawed bones. But only go there after one month, until the ants also have done their job! You will find also a number of earthly riches which in time and at a good occasion can be sold well to Greek traders; but for the meantime, take it easy!

5 The ship contains five hundred pounds of gold, silver and a number of other valuables - that all belongs to you along with the ship; but be just and unselfish with the distribution, and take only according to your need! The ship is as good as stranded here, stands without a captain and belongs entirely to you according to Roman maritime law - PRIMO OCCUPANTI IUS! Are you satisfied with that?"

6 Aziona and Hiram say: "Lord and Master in all power, wisdom and strength of the perfect Spirit of a most high divinity! Who could not be satisfied with that?! And all the more so because we now see that this is truly only a gift from above!"

- Chapter 196 -

Judas' greed for money

The advantages of sleeping on resting chairs

1 (Aziona and Hiram) "We both are now already quite in order to believe that you above all are a half-god, and this young man (John) also; the others indeed have not let anything be noticed of their divine characteristics, but there will certainly be such a thing, because they belong to the two of you! Only the one there with a somewhat gloomy manner still has a strongly human appearance and will be among you all only a somewhat better person, because we previously have noticed, when the enemy ship approached our harbor, how much he, being very concerned, tried to very anxiously hide his money pouch under his undercoat; for gods do not need this earthly rubbish!"

2 Here some of the disciples almost began to laugh, and Thomas clapped Judas Iscariot pretty firmly on the shoulders and said: "Good shot, shepherd! Your arrows go straight along the line! That was a blow at the right time! I would have willingly rebuked your ogling with the ship and with that cliff wall over there very loudly; but I thought to myself: Such a thing will perhaps be done by someone else! And correct, I was not deceived in my truly most longing expectation! Look, you could easily have been carried away by a passing bear behind the cliff. If you casually had not been eaten up with the others by some genuine Indian sweet tooth, tomorrow morning you could have made all those valuables over there your own! But now things look a little ominous!

3 Well, because you have only brought your mite at the approaching danger into the dry under the undercoat, so you are in any case to be praised as a good landlord and economist! But you know, a secret collection, like you tried in Kis - you know in the great courtyard there(!) - and with Mark in the tents of Ouran, will not work here! Yes, this time there is truly no hope for you, poor chap! In your place I would have turned my back on this company long ago!"

4 At this Judas Iscariot actually doesn't know what he can say in return and so he puts everything away calmly; for he has received a great fear of Me at My merciless punishment of the presecutors. But he soon laid himself down on the grass and began to sleep.

5 At this Hiram said: "Yes, yes, now I have seen the man very well! He is the same that I saw in my light dream known well to you quite darkly and without any light; you, Lord and Master, however, were the most shining! But tell me now, you heavenly friends, have you then according to our human beings no sleep and no tiredness? We would now like to look around for all sorts of matting that we have and other equipment for rest!"

6 I say, "Oh, leave that all be! We are now resting very well at this table and on these benches now even equipped with good backs. I will even tell you as in a physical and medical respect, that people could prolong their earthly life span by a good third if they used good couches and easy chairs like the ones you see here, instead of lying flat in their beds, for the blood circulation varies too much between day and night when a person lies flat. This variation invites already at an early age all kinds of obstructions and changes in the alimentary canal. However, if people slept on chairs, they would remain well for many years.

7 Abraham, Isaac and Jacob slept only in certain arm- and resting-chairs and never used any beds; they were very moderate in everything and lived to a ripe old age, retaining the full vigor of the soul. Yet in later times, when people no longer observed these rules, their life span was reduced by more than half.

8 Those who suffer most from the harmful effect of lying flat are the pregnant women. Firstly, the infants become stunted and weakened already in the womb; secondly, the difficult and often very malformed births are due to the flat position at night.  Let Me tell you this for your physical health! Whoever will turn towards it will feel the physical good consequences of it.

9 Besides, in summertime you shall sleep outdoors whenever possible rather than in the rooms and stuffy huts, and you will soon feel the good consequences. Only in wintertime can you use the moderately warm, yet always clean and dry rooms. Therefore, he who lives according to the original order and is moderate in food and drink will have little to bother with physicians and pharmacies."

10 Hiram and Aziona say: "Oh you true, divine Lord and Master of life, we owe you also for this a truly never-ending thanks, and we will put your extremely wise advice into action according to our power and insight!"

11 "I would like to add here personally," says Hiram, "The Master of all life must know best what actually is of best use and avail in life! But as once the very first people must have lived on this earth, the question is how they lived in a natural way!"

- Chapter 197 -

The early history of man

1 I say: "Yes, My dear friends of much experience and insight, a for you understandable answer will be difficult for us. For firstly this Earth is already a terribly old planet for your concept of time; there is no comprehensible number for you by which one can count the many years of it’s existence.

2 Yet people of the kind the earth is now carrying, have actually been in existence for only a little over 4000 years. The then living first people were people like you, but because of their way of behavior they split up into two classes, that of the children of God whose hearts recognized God and remained faithful to Him, and that of the children of the world who more and more forgot God and, like most people nowadays, only served the world in everything. They built cities and all kinds of temples for their idols but, as now, their god was mammon. They lived in the same way people live now. Therefore, their life span was short, just as it is now.

3 It was a totally different matter with the children of God. They lived only in the mountains, led a very simple and natural life and very rarely visited the plains. There were no cities, hamlets, villages or timber dwellings, but only neat expanses of lawn surrounded by living trees. Towards the trees they made a kind of embankment and, wherever necessary, covered the side facing the trees thickly with moss. This inner circular mound served as a comfortable resting bench during the day and as a bed during the night.

4 Their food consisted mainly in good ripe fruits and in all kinds of tasty roots and milk. As time went by they learnt, taught through inner revelation, to manufacture the necessary utensils from iron and other metals. So they carried on agriculture, made flour and managed to prepare a very good bread and many other things, but all very simple, - they were only concerned with the expediency of everything - and thus for nearly 2000 years they lived very simply and reached a ripe old age.

5 Only when, gradually, they let themselves be beguiled by the splendor and great beauty of the children of the world were they punished in that they were often subjugated by the children of the world and virtually made their slaves - save a very small number, who up to the time of Noah and ever after remained faithful to God - but because of it they changed in everything. They became physically smaller and weaker and seldom reached a life span of 100 years, whereas before they had often lived to almost 1000 years.

6 However, as is commonly known, all the first people of the earth who had become completely worldly were at the time of Noah through their own fault drowned by the tremendous Deluge, for the flood rose above the greatest part of the then populated earth, so much so that the mighty waves produced by the storms and gales sometimes slapped several yards high over almost the highest peaks. Therefore, all life was wiped out save Noah and his small family and, likewise, all the animals except those that Noah sheltered in his ark. But, as you know, with Noah there began a totally new epoch of the earth. [Dealt with in greater detail in the Lorber work 'The Household of God.' Ed.]

7 Thus you now have a very briefly summarized, but faithful image of the original people of this Earth and may see from that more vividly that the advice I gave to you is a very good and correct one."

8 Hiram says: "But you alone extremely wise and most powerful Master of life and Lord of all people! If the Earth is so terribly old already, what existed before the actual human race like us on this Earth? For it could not have orbited the giant sun void and empty for half an eternity until your first humans four thousand years ago! Or was it until then really just void and empty? It is indeed very improper of me, to ask such a thing of you; but I see that in you and this young man there is truly unmistakably a type of all-knowledge, and so in this respect you will satisfy my inquisitive intrusiveness."

- Chapter 198 -

The prehistory of the creatures of the earth

1 I said: "Oh, you only ask, there should never be a lack of answers with us, and that always of those which alone hold within themselves the most constant and indestructible outer and inner truth of life!  Therefore pay only very close attention to My answer to your question!

2 You see, as on countless other worlds similar to this earth, there had here existed prior to the first true humans, beings that in their outer form bore a considerable resemblance to the present-day human beings. And there have been many epochs on this earth, in the course of which an earlier generation completely vanished and was always gradually replaced by another that was superior in some respect.

3 A very long time ago, before such races replaced one another usually every 7,000 years but definitely every 14,000 years, the Earth became only animated by all sorts of plant life on the waterless parts and only after that all sorts of great and small warm-blooded animals gradually emerged. The kingdom of water animals and afterwards the amphibians however was already before the greatest vegetation of the dry lands extremely strongly and powerfully represented, just as the kingdom of all sorts of flying insects like the fly and thousands of their sort, and with them almost the same original types of birds, which of course now no longer exist, although the fly as the first living creature and as the beginning of all flying animals, is the same till today on the planet and will remain so in the future.

4 When the Earth became ever more humus-rich and through frequent inner, greatest outbreaks of fire, through which the hardened underwater ground was broken up forcibly in many thousand places into long and outstretched ranges of mountains and also so formed through other powerful storms of the air and in the waters, so that both as a consequence of the greater and drier spaces, as their more solid ability to bring forth vegetation already more perfect beings equipped with more intelligence could find their subsistence. Only then the created people were called into individual existence through the wisest, eternal and almighty Spirit of God.

5 From then on they changed, as has already been shown, during for you all incomprehensibly long times of the Earth, and always one more perfect race replaced the previous, less perfect one.

6 You see, over this dry point, which certainly stands raised more than twenty man's height over the sea level of this small lake, the sea has stood many thousand times a thousand times higher. It certainly was dry again with an often greatly changed form just as now. And before 6000 years will pass by from now, it will find itself under the sea again and then in a time of again about 9 to10,000 years find itself dry again like now. That change will constantly happen on earth until the earth, or rather it’s matter, will have completely been transformed into life."

7 Hiram says: "Oh Lord and only Master of all life and existence! How will things stand for the people who will certainly also still exist then at another flood? They will all then be miserably drowned again!"

8 I say: "Oh not at all; for such periodic floods of the sea occur always very slowly and quite unnoticed, so that all the people can find sufficient time to escape the sea to the southern parts of the Earth, in which the sea through it’s retreat will liberate extremely large dry areas of land, because in such periods it will flow more towards the north again. And like that it will be again at it’s retreat to the south.

9 Thus people have nothing at all to fear any more, and My spirit will lead them then so that they will take the right precautions a long time in advance. Have you understood that now a little?"

10 Hiram says: "Yes, it indeed seems to me as if I have understood it; but in order to reach a very clear insight into these never-before imagined and even less heard-of wonderful circumstances, which lie somewhere in the most enormous great nature of the great world and it’s order, there more than my infinitely limited understanding is needed! I cannot possibly understand it in it’s basics; but I believe you at you word; for you are wise enough to know all this very exactly, since your spirit, as Aziona told me today, is supposed to be quite one in power, in sight and in highly most perfect realization with the spirit of the very highest divinity, which I do not see how that is possible - but I believe it, because you now have given us such extremely powerful evidence of this. Perhaps a time will still come for us when we will see things better than now; but for now we must only believe."

- Chapter 199 -

The diversity of the worlds

1 Here Aziona says: "But tell me, you incomprehensible wise man, is there in the endless universe of creation then other such worlds, on which, let's say, people have the same job just like us in everything?"

2 Say I: "Friend, just look at your body with a correct attentiveness and you will notice a number of different limbs and parts! Can these only have one designation? Can the brain and the stomach have one and the same designation, or the eye and the ear, the hands and the feet, or the nose and the mouth? Look, the human body is put together from so countless many smallest parts in the very most artistic way, even the two very next and most similar parts, forming one and the same organ, do not have the very same character and designation!

3 For example, firmly side by side sit two individual nerves. Both receive the same food and are animated by the same fluid of life, and their job is to hold two hairs standing firmly side by side onto the head and to make them grow. Well, these two most insignificant nerves should also be fully similar to one another in designation as the same cause of exact effects! But I say: Oh not at all! These two nerves are just as little similar to each other in designation as a man and a woman, and therefore also their inner organism is a thoroughly different one.

4 But you now think and say to yourself: Yes, then two male and two female nerves must indeed be fully similar to one another! And I say to you: Not at all as absolute as you imagine! For if that were the case, all the hairs would have to grow on one and the same place on the head, or a very similar next male nerve-organization would, only one millimeter away standing over a differently created main place, not bring any other hair to grow. Indeed, it can even happen that the necessary and naturally conditioned urge to assimilate becomes stronger in the nerves of the hair roots than is normal. But what will be the result? You will soon and easily be able to count your hair on your head!

5 Such a phenomenon in the human body is certainly an involuntary one; but it still stems mostly as a hypothesis from the disorderly strivings of a sensual and material soul. The assimilation instinct is necessary for the reproduction and maintenance of natural life, but in it's strength above or below the degree prescribed in nature itself, it causes it's death.

6 Let's suppose there was not the very slightest appeal to assimilation between the male and female genders, as among the animals, then the reproduction of the natural life would certainly have an end. You will both see the reason very well. The complete lack of this attraction would accordingly be also the obvious death for all natural life. But likewise an assimilation appeal and really drive which crosses all limits equals obvious death of natural life and with it also very easily the life of the soul.

7 For example, the eye has the desire for assimilation with light. If this is not kept within correct limits and a person begins to look directly into the sun, the eye soon dies and thus becomes blind through such a powerful overstimulation. And so it is with all human senses.

8 But the mutual appeal for assimilation can be kept in it’s saving limits only if the free soul is given laws according to which it can direct the way of its natural life with sure steps. Naturally such laws can only be given as fully effective and bringing blessings by Him who created heaven, spirits, sun, stars, the moon, this Earth and everything that is in it, on it and over it, breathes and live. And from the side of the Creator this has also happened at all times; but there was always only a few who have seriously observed such laws in everything. Those however who lived according to such statutes have always also harvested the true temporal and eternal blessings of it; the lethargic, the despisers and the unbelievers however have experienced the opposite in themselves as well as in their peers.

9 From everything that has been said, however, it emerges for your main question that in the whole endless universe of creation there is no other planet which has exactly the same and - I say - very highest designation and inner and outer set-up needed to reach the same as just this Earth."

- Chapter 200 -

The difference between the people of this earth and those of the other worlds

1 (The Lord) "To be sure, you will find everywhere animals that resemble those on earth, likewise people, - but nowhere in such a variety and diversity, for everywhere there are fewer species, both in the kingdom of plants and in that of animals, and the people do not live according to a free order but are more under judgment and act instinctively rather than according to some free cognition won spontaneously and based on experience.

2 On the vast, great solar worlds everything that is found on the planets revolving around them is fundamentally represented in the corresponding solar zones or regions. Also, there is much wisdom among their various people capable of speech. But there too, language and wisdom, which is often extremely important, is only instinctive and given rather than free and acquired only through the effort of free, personal activity. [More on this subject in the Lorber work `The Natural Sun`. Ed.]

3 But therefore there is no such thing there as merit, just as it is on this earth no merit for the bee to build the artful honeycomb out of the substance it has gathered from the flowers and then prepared. For surely the bee must appear to every thinker as a tool of an otherworldly spiritual intelligence rather than some independent, freely acting being. Almost the same thing applies to the human beings on all other earth-globes, even though their external forms often are incomparably more beautiful and noble than those of the people on this earth.

4 But indeed all the other human beings inhabiting the various celestial globes are yet far more advanced than the instinctive the animals of this earth; for there is within them a certain tiny life-sphere, within which they have a kind of free cognition so that they are able to recognize a Supreme Deity, Whom they worship in their own way. Of course, the manner of worship on these very diverse earths and worlds varies very much.

5 Nearly all the animals of this earth also have more or less a tiny trace of a freedom-sphere within their souls, wherefore they can be tamed and taught to perform certain tasks, but this cannot be compared to the small sphere of free cognition in the human beings of other worlds.  Now I think My answer to your main question should satisfy you. Do you two now understand these things?"

- Chapter 201 -

A view into Saturn

1 Says Hiram: "Now everything are already in the best order, since we now believe every word that you say, oh great, most eminent wise man. But since absolutely everything already seems to be possible for you, it shouldn't be impossible then for you to allow us to take a closer look at such a totally different earthly world - but for both of us at the same time, so that we can give a valid testimonial to others afterwards!"

2 Say I: "Oh, there is nothing easier! But with your physical eyes alone it would indeed be impossible. I will thus unite the eye of your spirit, your soul and your body for a short time, and up there in the sky you will see quite a large and moderately bright star - it is the so-called planet Saturn. If you now turn your eyes to it, you will see it quickly becoming larger and larger, and that will continue until you find yourselves as if being on it completely! Then you may tell one another what you have seen! Now do this!"

3 At this both of them began to focus at the star and quickly it becomes larger and larger. Soon they see even it’s double ring and several of it’s moons. Soon the moons become as large as the moon of the Earth and quickly even larger; but the planet itself already stands in an awe-inspiring size and majesty before their eyes. Their loud amazement is already beginning to exceed all limits; for while they look at all this ever more perfectly, they express loudly with their mouths everything that they see.

4 They are now very close to the first, but actually most distant moon of this planet, and Hiram calls out loudly: "Ah, that is a huge, but unfortunately very barren earth! There are indeed people and animals and plants there; but everything is as if very atrophied, and it looks as if these people have only little intelligence - and they are not at all good-looking. The animals are also very poorly represented and look very strange. The plant world looks also very monotone and severely atrophied. No, we don't like it there at all!

5 Ah, another world is coming towards us! Oh, that one is even worse! There's a third, it's also nothing - that would be the right world for wise Diogenes! We have seen it! Hey, there is a fourth and it looks no better! Just move on! Here comes a fifth already, there everything is very small; but the inhabited part nevertheless looks better than with the previous ones. The children are jumping around very cheerfully just like apes! There is no house to be seen anywhere. The animal kingdom seems to be represented very simply and very sparsely there as well, and likewise the dear plant world! But here comes a sixth and even smaller world, and even a seventh! Oh. These are terribly ugly!

6 But now, oh, all lightning, hail and thunder! Now an enormous world is coming towards us! Oh, it has no end at all! (N.B.: It is the outer ring.) Ah, it seems to go on in the straightest line eternally with no end! Oh, it looks quite magnificent there! Extremely long mountain ranges seem to go on forever, and a number of lakes and rivers are visible, and people and plants have more similarity to ours. But there seems to be no trace of a noticeable culture there. The people, who look very strange, seem to know no cheerfulness and are tremendously huge. But there are no houses, nor even less any towns.

7 Aha, now a second such large world is coming towards us yet again! That is just as if one extremely large world was stuck inside another! But otherwise there is not much difference between this and the previous great earth - and here, here comes a third already, almost the very same! Well, well, how many earths are hidden then inside one another?! But here the somewhat smaller people seem indeed to be very phantom-like, and everything is very barren - and almost no culture at all! No, we would not like to live on this world either!

8 But here comes once again a sort of little world towards us! Well, well, in close proximity now it nonetheless looks quite acceptable; but there is nothing of any creature to be discovered! But oh, all the elements! Now here an earth is coming towards us for which one must have all respect!"

9 At this the observation bound with every possible exclamation of amazement lasted almost half an hour, and I called the two back again to their natural state and left them the fullest memory of what they had seen in their souls and even in their brain, and then asked them how they had liked Saturn.

- Chapter 202 -

The question on the Messiah

1 And Hiram answered, "Oh Lord full of omnipotence and wisdom! That was something indescribable!! Truly, the last and really innermost, immense earth was a world full of the most splendid wonders. Everything was of such a colossal size that we felt in comparison with the people there - who, by the way, were very good-looking - like mice compared to an elephant. Everything there, particularly halfway up the mountains, was on this scale, but below in the valleys things resembled more the conditions on our earth. It would require a hundred years and even more to describe everything we have seen there.

2 Now we can thoroughly understand that the sole destiny of the earth is to carry true children in the image of the Supreme God, and we also understand that you must be completely filled with such a Supreme Spirit out of God. Otherwise you could not reveal that star Saturn so magnificently and bring it close to us for inspection. Indeed, Lord and Master, He Who created such things must be great, mighty and wise beyond our comprehension. Surely it would mean far more to us to know Him better than to retain the wonderful vision we just had and gaze at all the countless stars at close range."

3 We will now accordingly beg you and also this young man from the bottom of our hearts to teach us to know the actual creator of the whole spiritual and material world so truly so that we can form a very proper understanding of Him, and so that we - as, according to your words, the most perfect people and thus as positive children of His - also know what we have to do for Him in order to be as worthy as possible of what we are already through His will and what we should be even more. For we are serious people and have a will that is difficult to bend; but what we once accept and advocate, is then also advocated by stone-hard people and no changelings."

4 I said: "Now see, we have now come to the actual point for the sake of which alone we came to visit you, and through us you shall get to know the Creator of all the countless miracles not only more closely, but as completely as possible, as well as His will, which is easy to fulfill. This is so because every person only becomes a true child of the very highest and only true God, equipped with all gifts of wisdom and power, through the perfect fulfillment of the recognised divine will. But we have already mentioned the supposed coming Messiah of the Jews! But I would like to hear from you now a very true opinion about this issue of the Jews! Thus speak without any shyness!"

5 Hiram thought for a few minutes and then said: "Yes, yes, Lord and Master in all things and events, we have mentioned this briefly earlier today! I have read in the Jewish books almost everything covering this; in itself, everything sounded so strange and was so full of all sorts of mystical, incomprehensible images that I, at least, could not learn anything! I asked very intelligent Jews about it at the best opportunity and convinced myself only too soon that they did not know any more about it than I, and so I must say to you out of my previous common sense only what partly I and partly also other very clear-thinking people have concluded about it.

6 Well, at least until now, every people on the Earth has been more or less, barring some higher revelations, the self-creator of their religion, their traditions and habits and their positive hopes and will probably remain so for the most part! And that also seems to be the case with the Jews.

7 In a larger nation things go worryingly or even badly for more or less nine tenths of people, and only one tenth can say: It is just about bearable until death! What is left then but to somehow animate the faith of a poor nation and to comfort them through all sorts of hopes sprung from the innate human poetry, either with an Elysium on the other side or with a wonderful Messiah (savior) quite identical to a first divinity. In addition, generation to generation goes naturally to the grave in such hope full of blessed expectation and then rests quite calmly without faith or hope in the friendly, cool Mother Earth. I for my part do not criticize the issue at all; but things are not the way that people imagine it, despite all my sincerity!"

- Chapter 203 -

Hiram's notion of the Messiah

1 (Hiram) "Yes, indeed, a true Messiah of the nations would consist in a pure teaching through which the people could recognize themselves in their whole inner being and only thereby God as the most wise, mighty and loving Cause of all existence, and strive above all to keep such knowledge alive for their descendants! But it is the chronic cancerous evil of the world that no teaching, however pure, can survive in it’s purity for even 500 years, and this because it is only too soon perverted through the many false and impure precepts. Besides, with every new teaching, no matter how pure and true, only too soon certain elders and superiors arise who form a caste of priests. These no longer lay their hands on a plough or spade, but the only thing they do is teach, whereby they gain more and more power and, thus, lead a carefree and good life. Well, the examples of all nations now known to us show us how such a privileged caste then handles the pure religion, and it would be a shame to waste even one more word about it! And so I am of the certainly not authoritative opinion in comparison with your wisdom that a person such as you are, or even like this young man here, could actually be the correct Messiah of the people, because you all possess the correct true-to-life wisdom and the power that comes from it more than abundantly.

2 But for that end certain great provisions would have to be made! Firstly a sifting of all people who are basically corrupted, then secondly a total obliteration of all present temples, schools, prayer houses, priests and teachers! Not a trace of the presently existent cultural state should ever remain! Only people like you and here and there some others should still remain and above all carry the greatest responsibility for the pure maintenance and transmission - let's say - of your teaching, which sets everything else of this Earth to one side according to our examples. So all people could truly be helped in time by such a true Messianic movement. But all other types of improvement and patching up, are and remains in general a fruitless effort for the good of humanity.

3 Yes, here and there greater and smaller societies will indeed be formed which will accept, understand and also keep your teaching pure for a time; but soon either powerful worldly brutes, as we saw here a few hours ago, will fall upon it and spoil it, or the societies will set up new teachers and protectors of this teaching, out of which in time quite the same priests will develop, as we can now observe in many thousands everywhere.

4 But above all, for the fruitful acceptance of your teaching a total turning away of the human mind from all material and worldly advantages, whatever that may be, is necessary. The people should never want to raise themselves above the plough, spade, axe and saw for the preparation of the most necessary needs of life and should lay no value on anything but alone on the purely spiritual, inner formation of life; then it could work. But where is that now possible with the present worldly culture of the people?! Who would abandon the countless material worldly interests?

5 Yet if your ever so divinely true and pure teaching is sown into this old, worldly quagmire, I wonder what masses of weeds will crop up among it’s noble young shoots. Truly, if we could have a country of our own, far from all other people and inaccessible to them, with us the teaching would be safely preserved in its purity for the longest time, but I doubt if it will fare so well in the rest of the world.

6 This, as mentioned before, is my opinion about the Messiah, whom the Jews are expecting in vain, in their own way. I may have made a big mistake there; but since, according to your word, every man can reach the perfection of his life only through his own activity - that is, through the cultivation and proper conduct of his heart and inner life, he needs no other Messiah but one just like you, namely, a true teacher who is knowledgeable and thereby most wise in all spheres of life. Everything else is a poetic chimera and stands alone without any trace of truth just like a rose bush full of buds and thorns, whose fruit is as good as none at all, because it gives the people no nutrition and is little or not at all suitable for anything else. What is your opinion then of this view of mine?"

- Chapter 204 -

The Messiah and salvation

1 I say: "I am quite in agreement with your opinion regarding the main issue, but cannot wholly accept it when you attack the way in which such a teaching is founded, spread and preserved, although in a certain respect your view also has something going for it.

2 As regards the sifting of man and all their worldly works of culture, such a sifting at Noah's time visited most parts of the then inhabited earth with small exceptions as Moses described it, though in metaphors. But a truly wise man familiar with the science of correspondences can easily discover from them the historical facts.

3 But how was humanity, although descending only from the extremely pious and wise Noah, after only a few hundred years?

4 Already at the time of Abraham, Sodom and Gomorrah, with the other ten cities, were, on account of their great depravity, destroyed by fire and brimstone from above, including all the people and livestock, so much so that no trace was left of them. Where once these cities stood you now have the Dead Sea, in which to this hour no animal can survive, and even the birds avoid crossing it.

5 At the time of Moses, the depraved Egypt was sifted for years through the well-known seven plagues so that two thirds of the people and livestock perished and the Israelites, who were the best workmen of that kingdom and had initially migrated there as the brothers of Joseph a few hundred years earlier out of poverty and who were suffering great suppression and persecution under the cruel Pharaoh, were led out of the country, so that the whole kingdom sank into the greatest poverty and anarchy. But it gradually recovered and became rich and mighty, and when it became too mighty it was again punished through war, famine and pestilence. Look at it now, and you will find it to be like the rest of the world.

6 From these few true facts presented here you will comprehend that a sifting of sinful mankind does not have by far such a beneficial effect as you imagine, for the moral deterioration of a human being, or a whole generation of men, is not so much due to a fundamentally evil volition on the part of men as you think, but rather to the vital susceptibility of the soul, that is, to the indolence to move earnestly along the recognized paths of light.

7 But because the soul likes rest and inactivity so very much, it seeks helpers and servants who work for it or at least help it. Thereby it soon becomes wealthy, rich and mighty and begins to rule for it’s own benefit, gives laws and passes all sorts of decrees which bring it some advantage. And behold, in this way it usually turns into a wispy soul that is not inclined to activity. This is the reason why the moral condition of whole nations has deteriorated, so much so that the nations more and more abandon the spiritual for the material.

8 Thus the lethargy or the ever-increasing desire for idleness is and remains the root of all evil, and this characteristic of the human soul is that most evil spirit which the Scriptures call 'Satan'. Therein consists the original sin from which all men suffer and from which no one can free them except a true Messiah who comes from the heavens of the fullest life and it’s highest activity.

9 All the sages living in the known parts of the world already have seen and recognized that there is an original sin among the people of this earth, but they have not been able to figure out of what it consists and how it can be fought. And exactly this will be the task of the Messiah, to redeem forever through precept and deed the people from this evil, which outcome is the death of the soul.

10 But man's redemption will be true and effective for him only if he follows the given directions strictly and faithfully - otherwise after the arrival of the Messiah, he will be exactly the same sinful man he was prior. For the Messiah from the heavens will redeem from his original sin only the one who lives in every respect exactly according to His teaching. No-one should hope for any particular magical and wonderful effect from Him as regards the salvation from the mentioned hereditary evil!

11 To be sure, the Messiah will work great miracles to testify that it is He, but the miracles themselves will benefit men's souls only insofar as they will awaken the faith and activate the soul into putting the given teaching into practice.

12 Therefore, the Messiah is like a wealthy and good landlord and innkeeper who prepares a great feast and sends his servants to all the hamlets, roads, streets and lanes and kindly invites all to come and take part in the great feast. Poor and rich, small and great, weak and strong, insignificant and mighty alike, they all will hear the voice of the messenger inviting them. Those who come will have their hunger satisfied, but those who do not want to come shall not be forced. Whether or not they come will make no difference to the innkeeper; yet only those following the invitation will receive the blessing of the great feast.

13 The great feast will be the very teaching of the Messiah. Whoever listens to it and acts accordingly will be a true participant in the great feast and receive the blessing in it’s fullness. However, for him who listens to the precept without fully putting it into practice, it will be like a well-laid table is for someone who does not eat of all the good food, and so it will be all the same whether or not he comes to the feast, although he is invited. Well, there you have the Messiah as He is, will be and shall remain.  What do you think now of such a true Messiah?"

- Chapter 205 -

The explanation of the term "Messiah"

1 Says Hiram: "Well yes, this is exactly what I am talking about. Mankind must be taught the fundamentals of truth and then be encouraged to practice them strictly according to the precept. In this way it will be easily redeemed from the unfortunately greatest arch-evil, called 'indolence', and thereby also from all the other lesser evils of body and soul resulting from it.

2 Since You know the arch-evil from it’s roots, You would be an ideal Messiah to do this. Well, I may be mistaken in this, but on the other hand I am of the opinion that no Messiah will be able to give mankind a different precept from the one You are giving, You Who truly knows all things, matters and circumstances of all men and creatures, and to Whom also all the forces of nature and all the spirits and gods of all regions are faithfully and obediently subject. For us here, speaking most honestly, You and the young man there are a fully true Messiah; as far as the other numerous people of the Earth are concerned, they affect us even less than nothing. If You are not enough for them, they may bring one over from India, Persia or Egypt!

3 But as far as the teaching of Yours as a true maxim for life for the people of flesh and soul of this Earth is concerned, I believe that I have figured out its basic elements! Love for God, respectively You, and from this the true, most unselfish love for one's neighbor, is and remains eternally the foundation stone on which the whole system of life seems to rest. To this rule there must be no exception, in whichever sphere of affliction a person might need genuine help. If one stops steadfastly for this reason and then becomes active with all strength, it must unmistakably happen that one is released at least from the main hereditary evil in the shortest time! Am I right or not?"

4 Say I: "I knew indeed that you would find your way; for a truly wise man is always a true Messiah for the unwise natural man, that is, he is a mediator (Mesziaz) between pure human reason and divine-spiritual wisdom and, thus, only reason can gain entrance into divine wisdom and become at one with it through the Mesziaz.

5 The wiser the intermediary is, the better success he will certainly achieve among his followers. And if the follower then walks steadfastly along the path of inner spiritual light, he will also remain in the light and make the life of light his own, which death cannot follow, because the life of the spiritual light is the eternal, unchanging and indestructable truth, which must also eternally remain as what it is; for two and two will always give a total of four in all eternity.

6 The way it goes with this truth which is just an example, it goes with all divinely spiritual truths from heaven. They are and remain eternally, and they themselves are alone the actual true life, because they would not be truths without life. So a soul, once it has entered such truths entirely, can never taste death, and as light and truth itself also has completely embraced the life inside itself, and that is of course a result of a genuine mediator.

7 Therefore, My dear Hiram, you are quite right in assuming that I am a true mediator and redeemer. But it says in Scripture that the promised mediator will be a Son of the Supreme God. According to this, no mere son of the earth, however wise, could be a true, great mediator between the fallen men of the earth and the Supreme Spirit of God. He would surely have to be in full possession of a divine nature and divine attributes and, where necessary, display these openly. - What is your opinion to this?"

- Chapter 206 -

Hiram's testimony of the Lord

1 Says Hiram: "Well, is this not the case with You? He who, like You, is effectively endowed with all the divine attributes does not lack the divine nature either, and who has this, is also a true Son of the Most High. And the Most High must be immensely pleased with such a Son and, because of this joy, be completely at one with Him.

2 For God as a purest and most all-powerful spirit, filled with the deepest wisdom, can indeed only take His joy in what is to the highest degree as similar to Him as possible, and not in the smell of the burning flesh of oxen, calves and sheep. But You are extremely similar to Him and in the spirit even as good as He Himself! What else would be needed to be as a temporal fellow son of the Earth also at the same time a perfected son of God?! With You, Lord and Master, that is already quite unmistakably the case, and so You can also be the intermediary between all nations and God, quite aside from the fact that You have visited us in this hidden corner of the Earth, as if we were the only people on the Earth whom You have completely seriously decided to raise to Your Spirit.

3 This, Lord and Master, is my opinion of the Messiah, in general as well as in particular and with regard to Your person, and both I and Aziona are in complete agreement on this point.

4 I, a Gentile from birth, know only as much about the Jewish religion as I have found out partly from Aziona and partly from other Jews. Especially at this time the Jews talk most of a Messiah, because the Roman pressure does not please them, and will continue to please them less and less, and it is therefore understandable that they themselves introduce all sorts of ridiculous and whimsical pictures of Him to the world. But for the sake of the Romans no Messiah needs to come to the Jews at all; for the Romans are in some respect a type of small Messiah for the Jews themselves, namely for the poor, from whom - without Roman protection - the temple would long ago have sucked out the last drop of blood.

5 But exactly because of the too cheeky Jews of the temple who tread on everything that is higher, purer and true with the dirtiest of feet and because of the Jewish people who have been eclipsed and addled by them, a Messiah of Your sort is now necessary to the highest degree and a true savior from heaven for the poor. I have now spoken, Lord and Master, if You would now give us a few words once again!"

6 Say I: "Yes, I must confess openly that I will not have much more to say to you all here; for you both now understand everything from such a correct position, that there is little or nothing more that can be said about it! Truly, I have not found such correct understanding in all Israel! I am therefore also in all truth what you both have recognized Me to be. But now you alone have recognized the salvation of your lives; but there are many of you in this area. How will you teach them this? You must not do it suddenly, but instead just little by little, because otherwise their freedom of will would suffer great harm; but there is still the question of how you will start."

7 Aziona says: "This issue will certainly be a little problematic; for the others are even greater cynics than we are! But everything looks better in the morning, and we will surely manage. I believe that it is also somewhat easier to deal with intelligent people in the subject of faith than simply with gullible ones who indeed accept something to be true very quickly, but afterwards are not at all in a position to judge what they have accepted. But these people here never buy a pig in a poke, but instead they look at the wares from all sides in the light; and if they can make a good judgment, they then accept a genuine and good object at any price. And so we believe that we will also manage with our members and companions very easily and well.

8 And now in the east it is already beginning to dawn, and soon it will become very active in the bay - for one must head out to fish here before the sunrise if one wants to catch anything; fishing by day does not reward a lot of effort and work. The neighbors are already beginning to stir, in order to gather together the fishing tackle. We both will also have to get started soon, so that we will have a fresh breakfast. Since we have captured from You so many most magnificent things for our souls in this night, our first duty now is to ensure that you all may find proper hospitality here, not only as a consequence of your wonderful generosity, but also as a consequence of our heightened activity."

9 Say I: "Just leave that be! It will be seen to that you all have enough fish! If you now want to do something, then collect the lances, spears, swords and chains lying around here and put them into safe-keeping; then clear the ship as well, and take it’s treasures! Then immediately you will be able to use the ship very well for a great fishing industry. But bring the two fishermen who are staying here, so that they will receive instruction as to how they will have to always behave in the future!"

- Chapter 207 -

The collection and salvage of flotsam

The curiosity of the villagers

1 At this Hiram and Aziona went into the hut and straightaway brought the two fishermen to the Lord. Then they woke their families in the neighboring huts and busied themselves with the work commanded. Their wives and children could indeed not stop being amazed at such rich gifts and were full of questions and thoughts.

2 But Aziona and Hiram said: "Now we are only supposed to work. Only afterwards the necessary explanation will follow!"

3 At this they cleared up cheerfully, and the work soon reached it’s end. Immediately several pieces of fishing tackle were brought onto the ship, and the already somewhat grown-up children of Aziona and Hiram immediately began to fish and in a short time they had caught a large amount of the noblest and largest fish, so that they soon completely filled their containers in the water.

4 But in the meantime I had also laid My opinion most firmly on the hearts of the two fishermen, so that they then wrote very seriously into their hearts that they would never again in their whole lives, for all the treasures of the world, commit even the slightest betrayal of anyone. I assigned them an old, but still perfectly useable fishing boat of Aziona's and ordered them to make themselves scarce and not to tell anyone from where they came, and where the big ship had remained. For those whose property it was, were no longer, and those to whom it now belonged, possessed it as a legal property along with everything that it carried.

5 At this they both thanked Me, promised to keep everything most holy their whole lives long, then boarded the boat and hurried away as fast as possible. But they had several hours to go before they reached their home, where they were badly received, because they had not brought any payment home at all; for both had bad wives and had to then fish most arduously for a whole week in order to make up for what they had missed. Indeed they were pestered with all sorts of questions such as: where they had been and what they had done - but they remained as silent as fish in water and gave no one any account.

6 Hiram and Aziona however came, after they had put everything away, and thanked Me from the bottom of their hearts for the great and rich flotsam and asked Me about the breakfast.

7 But I said: "What you have, fish that are fresh and caught this morning, bring them here, then bread and some wine! But make enough that also your better neighbors can take part, which you may invite them to do! At the breakfast we will then discuss and explain several extremely great and important things. I will give you good introduction as to the business of converting your neighbors and make your task much easier. Now you may go and order your things! But I will now rest for an hour with My disciples."

8 At this, both of them went away, arranged everything in the kitchen and then went themselves to the neighbors, who were partly still occupied with the fishing, and gave them the invitation to the morning meal. The neighbors were very amazed and at the same time very cheerfully touched at such an invitation, but they also mentioned their amazement at such an unusually large catch of fish of theirs, which freed them of all further work for a whole month, and they had now won time to improve their housing a little.

9 Aziona, however, said: "Such a thing will be even easier since in this night, while you all were resting well and good, we received in our possession as a good prize a number of necessary tools!"

10 The neighbors asked what had happened in this night; for they had heard in their huts even in their sleep a strong howling and crying. It had also seemed to them as if it had been almost as bright as day the whole night long. Indeed, some of them had gone out of their huts to see what was happening - but they had not been able to make out what it was over the small mounds and heaps of rubble that lay between the huts. They had behaved very calmly, partly only guarded their huts, wives and children and also thought in all the usual cynical rest of the mind: Well, the day that is soon to come will bring us the necessary explanation!

11 At this Hiram said: "Yes, it will indeed! Oh brothers, that was a night last night! I have never experienced and nor will I probably ever experience one like that again! But now nothing more about it; at the breakfast at the tables of Aziona, some things will become clear to you! But for now gather yourselves; for the morning meal will not let us wait long!"

12 At this another asked: "But since yesterday some strangers, namely Jews and Greeks, came to Aziona by ship! What sort of people are they? Are they still here, or have they already left again? Did these people make that row in the night?"

13 Hiram says: "Just leave all that be! These strangers are our all-round luck; they are people of the noblest and most perfect sort and will remain today and probably another number of days with us and will take the morning meal with us today. They are extremely wise and wonderfully powerful in will. In short, they are mostly what one otherwise says in the truest sense about the most perfect gods, namely that they are highly wise and that all laws of nature must definitely bow under the power of will. There you have a description of the strangers in all briefness! You do not need to have any fear of them however; for they are extremely good and cheerful people, who cause only all the best for a person and never anything bad! And now see that you get ready!"

- Chapter 208 -

The preparations for the morning meal

1 When the neighbors had heard that from Hiram, they immediately collected themselves and came over to us with Aziona and Hiram.

2 When they found us still sleeping in front of Aziona's hut, however, one of them said, "Ah, they are still asleep; that means we can pop home again and tell our family members what they have to do for the whole day!"

3 Aziona says: "Oh, forget that! The people will know already what they have to do; for my strangers will sort it out as they sorted it out yesterday evening as well, so that fire came to the hearths everywhere to boil the fish and salt in every house in abundance."

4 "What?" says one neighbor, "The strangers did that?! Ah, they must indeed be very extraordinary magicians! They have certainly got to know about us in our affliction somewhere on our journeys, inquired about us among the Romans somewhere in the vicinity of Caesarea Philippi and came to visit us and perhaps to help us out a little!"

5 Aziona says: "Indeed they know all about our doings and existence; but they have never seen us personally in any way on our journeys or visited us anywhere, and they are everything other than magicians, which I also considered them to be in the beginning. But what they and particularly their Master are, you will learn sufficiently in the course of this day. In short, the Master in particular is something that has never been seen before, since people have been thinking on this Earth and since they have written down their deeds on the brazen tablets of great world events! For now that is enough; just think about it! But I want to have a look in the kitchen to see how things are going with the morning meal."

6 Aziona goes into the hut and finds his people hurrying around very busily with the fetching and preparation, and on the hearth it is burning very actively, and all the grills, spits and pots and pans are stuffed full with fish, from which the bones had been removed in the oriental way. There is also no lack of fragrant herbs, with which the fish are made tastier. Aziona also looks into the larder, to see how the required bread is doing. He finds everything full, and several large jugs and other valuable containers, booty from the ship, are full of the best wine.

7 And Aziona calls out loud very delighted: "To You alone all praise and all honor, oh Lord; for all that is Your unique goodness and power!"

8 But his wife heard this, and she asked him what sort of lord he meant; for until now she had thought that they were quite free people without a master.

9 Aziona, however, said: "You are a woman, therefore foolish, and you understand nothing, except how to prepare fish very well! Who provided us with all this then? Behold, He who did this is also our Lord and our greatest benefactor! And now do not ask any further, but instead do your business well!"

10 Then his wife was immediately as silent as a mouse; for she knew that there was not much to be said or done with her husband in such situations. But nonetheless the word 'Lord' would no longer leave her heart, and she thought about it very much to herself.

- Chapter 209 -

Aziona and Hiram in conversation with their neighbors

1 Aziona, however, came back to the neighbors, who in the meantime had mostly lain down on the grass already. Hiram asked him whether the meal would soon be ready, and whether one should do something to the sleepers so that they would wake up and begin the morning meal.

2 Aziona says: "I believe that this will be completely unnecessary with these people; for their spirit, awake above all, certainly never sleeps and knows about everything that is there and that happens, and so it will certainly also not pass him by if the meal is fully prepared!"

3 Hiram says: "Yes, yes, you are right; they are more awake in sleep than we are even when we are as awake as in the day! Let's just wait here until they wake up; we have enough time for that indeed!"

4 Another neighbor says: "Do you think, Hiram, that these people now hear and see everything in their sleep that is happening around them?"

5 Hiram says: "Not only what is and happens here, but also what is and happens now in the whole world, yes, even in the whole of infinity, what has happened for eternities and what will happen for eternities to come!"

6 The neighbor says: "Friend Hiram, hasn't the heat of the sun had too great an influence on your brain? These words of yours are indeed of such a confused sort that we all are beginning to seriously feel sorry for you. Who of all mortal men can ever reach an understanding of the infinity of space, who can understand the eternal flow of time? These people are certainly as ordinary as we are - and especially in sleep! Yes, they may be very wise and powerful in will; but the full realization of the infinity of space, the essence of eternal time, powers, light and life are understood by no limited wise man on this Earth, and so neither by these strangers!

7 But whether in earnest such a divine being exists which is fully in the clear about this concept, that is a great question which until now certainly no mortal wise man has ever answered to the satisfaction of other people, so that they could say: 'Now we have at least a vague idea about it!'

8 Yes, dear Hiram, much has been spoken about this concept in the high school in Athens, which I also attended, but always without even the least satisfactory result! What came from the many discussions and speeches in the end? This would be the greatest crowning triumph of a wisest man, if he accepted that he knows nothing and even as the wisest man he does not stand on the lowest step of that temple in which the great goddess of wisdom keeps her treasures under strong lock and key!

9 Yes, my dearest friend, it is somewhat difficult to talk to me about this point! But let's leave it for now; the strangers are beginning to stir, and they should not find us discussing the concepts of impossibility as they awake!"

10 Hiram says: "You are now truly the firmest old Greek and you think that my brain has been damaged by the sun; but there you are powerfully wrong! In two hours you will hopefully judge and speak otherwise! For you will begin to gain a better understanding of everything that is hidden behind these people only after you have spent some time with them yourself. I am indeed no weathervane, and our leader Aziona just as little; but we have both now become quite different people and have thrown the old Diogenes overboard. The same thing will certainly be the case with you also, and with all the others. But now the Master and His disciples are rising, and we must immediately ask Him whether He already wants the morning meal."

11 I say, "Wait a little until the sun has appeared above the horizon, then set out the morning meal!"

12 At this the disciples also begin to stir and to rise from the grass and from the benches. Some of them go straight down to the sea and wash; but I do not do that, and Aziona hurries to Me and asks Me whether I need water for washing.

13 But I say to him: "Friend, all this water came from Me; how should I take it in order to wash? But so that no-one is annoyed, bring Me a jug full of water from the spring!"

14 Aziona now hurries and looks for an empty jug, but he cannot find one; for all the jugs and other containers are filled to the brim with the best wine!

15 He comes back again very embarrassed and says: "Oh Lord, forgive me! There is not a single container in the whole hut which is not filled to the top with wine!"

16 I say: "Well, then bring Me a container filled with wine and I will wash Myself with wine for once!"

17 Aziona was quickly back with a jug of wine, and I washed Myself with it.

18 But at this the wonderful smell of wine reached the noses of the guests and some of them said: "Well, that means living more magnificently than a patrician of Rome! For it is still not yet known to us that anyone has ever bathed in such a tasty wine, although otherwise in other pleasant-smelling oils and waters!"

19 But when I gave Aziona back the jar into his hands, it was just as full as it had been before, although it had had the appearance when I was washing as if I had used every drop of it. Aziona immediately showed it to his neighbor, and he became silent from sheer amazement.

- Chapter 210 -

Epiphan, the philosopher

1 One of them, who had previously exchanged words with Hiram about the expressions 'infinity', 'eternity' and so on and who was called Epiphan, now said to Hiram: "Well, that would be a genuine little Persian trick that he has succeeded with very well! But there is just one thing that I do not understand, and that is this: Where did Aziona get the delicious wine and the valuable jar?"

2 Hiram says: "Yes, my friend Epiphan, I tell you, those are sheer miracles of will of the One who has just washed Himself with wine! Didn't you hear what He said to Aziona in answer when he asked Him whether He needed water?"

3 Epiphan says: "Yes, I heard it; but it had entirely the character of an Indo-Persian magician! For they also understand how to pretend to be the creator of fire, water and this and that thing with the greatest, most powerful phrases to the laymen, and then stride forward in a nimbus that even Zeus would hardly create if he existed and walked on the Earth. Well, you saw it yourself in Memphis, with what terrible pathos the magicians there made their predictions! In the end they had even nailed our reason almost three quarters, and we ourselves had already almost begun to worship them. Whoever knows how to produce something extraordinary, can speak with a clear conscience; and for him that will be no less the case! What is striking here now, however, is the wine, as I have just remarked. Where did Aziona get it from?"

4 Hiram says: "I wanted to say that to you earlier; but you got there before me. Look, this man here, who said to Aziona: All the waters of the Earth and also of the heavens are from Me; how should I use it to wash?, created the wine simply through His will from the water, and now even out of the air; for He had emptied this container before entirely! And now, what do you say to that?"

5 Epiphan says: "Yes, if that is so, it is indeed very much! Indeed certain Indian magicians are supposed to have an extraordinary power in their will and glances, so that they can bewitch the wildest animals in an instant to such an extent that they must stand still on one spot as if lifeless and allow whatever such a magician wants to be done to them; they are also supposed to be able to command the winds, clouds and lightning effectively! That has thus been seen before. Well, whether they can also make the best wine from water or air, I truly do not know; only one knows as much about the old magicians indeed that they were able to turn water into blood and rain into sheer frogs and snakes. In itself, that requires indeed a strong faith; for we have never seen such a thing. But this one we have seen ourselves, so we can likewise think: If that is possible, then the other can also have been possible. We will not judge this any further. Aziona is coming already with the morning meal, and we are already quite hungry, and so we will put the further discussions off until later!"

6 Then everyone was called to the meal. Everyone gather around the extended table and begins at My command to tuck in actively and to eat. The fish are soon eaten up and next bread and wine are served.

7 When the neighbors, who were still uninformed, taste the extremely tasty bread and the likewise excellent wine, they really become alert, and Epiphan says with an investigative manner: “Well, now I am beginning to believe myself that we are dealing with no ordinary and natural magic; for such a thing has never been heard of by man, as far as I with my rather extensive knowledge can tell! Ah, the wine is indeed endlessly good!"

8 I say: "It is just right that you used the expression 'endless'! For you already accused Hiram of having a sun-burnt brain, because he began to speak to you about the fact that the power of My will is an eternally effective one, working through the whole infinity of space and all eternity of time, and how all power, all light and all life is united in Me, and how then also everything that fills the endless space spiritually and naturally came forth only from Me. What do now think about it? What do you understand under the expressions: infinity, eternity, space, time, power, light and life?

9 For do you know, dear friend, if someone says to someone else that he has a sun-burnt brain if he occupies himself with such great and ambiguous expressions in relation to an extraordinary person, then one must have even better expressions about it; for only then can one say to one's neighbor that he is crazy, if one has better insight into the issue oneself. Therefore tell Me now what you think about the previously-mentioned expressions!"

10 Epiphan becomes somewhat embarrassed at this question of Mine, but nonetheless he soon controls himself and says: "Yes, good master, to give someone clear words about it should be indeed one of the greatest impossibilities for every mortal man; for here it indeed literally truly depends on the fact that no-one can give another what he does not possess himself!

11 How can the limited, small man ever understand the endless space? He may penetrate in all directions the depths of eternal space very much with his train of thought, but nonetheless he remains always on the same spot in comparison with the unlimited entirety of space, which is nonetheless as much as nothing in comparison with the entirety of the eternally endless space; and likewise a person can never measure time forwards or backwards because he is also just as limited in his future, being and past as in space.

12 It is an old matter of experience that one can say something about a limited space and about a measured, limited time; for the limited can understand something similar indeed, but never anything which is dissimilar to the highest degree. And it is almost the same with the comprehension of the expressions power, light and life. Indeed man possesses a power, a light and a life; but beyond that, no wise man has ever been able to give a clear and exhaustively comprehensive definition about it until now, and thus neither can I since I am indeed everything but a wise man. You, good master, have asked me, and I have answered you. If you can give us a fully satisfactory solution about these expressions, however, we would be very grateful to you for it."

- Chapter 211 -

Man as an immortal being

1 I say: "Well then, I will try to do that, and so pay good attention to this! Your claim consists of saying that namely he who is limited in himself cannot understand the unlimited; and yet I say to you that every man, just like the eternal space around him, hides infinity and eternity in himself, and indeed in every fiber of his material body, not to mention in his soul and quite particularly in his spirit.

2 Just think about the infinite divisibility of every part of your body, however small! Where is the end of it?! Then think about the infinite reproduction capabilities of man, animals and plants! Where does this end?

3 Have you ever discovered the borderline up to which an enlightened soul can lift it’s thoughts? But if the soul has already an endless area of thought, what do we want to say then about the eternal divine Spirit in it, which is in itself power, light and the very life?

4 I tell you: It is this Spirit that works and regulates everything in man. Yet the soul is, as it were, only a substantial body, just as the physical body is a vessel of the soul until such time when it has achieved some solidity within it. Once this has happened, it passes more and more into the spirit and, therefore, into actual life, which in and by itself is a true energy and a true light and evermore out of itself creates space, forms, time and the duration of the forms within it, animates them and gives them independence. And as they come forth out of the infinity and eternity of the fullness of true life, they grasp of it also the infinite and eternal for all times of times and eternities of eternities for and in themselves.

5 Therefore, no-one can say and maintain that he, as man, is a limited being. There is contained in his minutest parts still something of the infinite and eternal, and for this reason he can grasp the infinite and eternal.

6 Whoever believes that he lives only for a very limited time is badly mistaken. No part of man is mortal, although of necessity changeable, just as all earthly matter is and must be changeable, since it is destined for the sake of the purity of life to pass into pure life, which is no longer changeable.

7 Therefore, even if the many different components and parts of matter and, thus, of the human body are transformed, they do not cease to be but continue to exist forever in a more spiritualized and, therefore, more noble form and kind. Or who of you can say that he died when only a child because now, as an old man, he has not retained anything of his original child-like form?

8 There you have a grain of wheat. Place it in the earth! It will decay and quite unmistakably pass away as what it is now; but you will see a stalk growing out of the decay and on the top of the same an ear will form, topped with a hundred grains. But which of you now sees such power in this grain, which however must be in it, since otherwise an ear with a hundred grains of the same type could never come forth from this only one grain?

9 But we have 100 grains now which we want to place in the earth! From them we will receive 100 ears, each with 100 grains, thus 10,000 grains in total. And behold, the 10,000 grains, the 100 stalks and ears must also already be available spiritually in the one grain, just as this grain itself must be available in that one grain that first fell to a fertile field of this Earth out of the hand of God, since otherwise indeed no reproduction could possibly be thought of. You all have proof once again how even infinity and eternity are at home in such a grain.

10 You all will think and say to yourselves: Yes, that is indeed the case with a grain which is sown again as a seed into the soil; but what happens with that which is ground to flour and then eaten as bread by people or even by animals? I tell you all: Truly, it's fate is even better; for it goes into a more perfect life, in which it as an integral part of a higher life then just as well and even more can multiply into countless ideas and living forms of expression and only the very material husk is cast out as excrement, where it then also becomes a more noble fruit humus of the Earth, from which the spirit of the sprout forms various grains of seed and attracts immortality. But whatever happens with the straw and framework of the plants also happens in a much nobler way with the fleshly body of a person.

11 And so you do not find anything perishable and limited in man but only a variability towards a certain spiritual goal, and it is, therefore, quite possible for man to grasp the infinite and eternal, time, space, energy, light and life, because all this is contained within him."

12 But certainly it depends above all on the education, which is a light of the soul. If this is lacking, as is now the case among most people, then everything is also lacking, and the human soul sees and understands even less of what is in it without such spiritual light than a blind man in the night understands what is around him and approaches him.

13 And now tell Me, Epiphan, how you have understood and accepted this opinion of Mine! Only afterwards will I tell you whether I penetrate with My spirit indeed the endless space and eternity. Now speak quite freely and without shyness!"

- Chapter 212 -

Epiphan's doubts and questions

1 Epiphan said: "Good master, this explanation of yours seems to me to be like lightning in the night! For a moment the path and the area is lit up indeed, but if one wants to go further, then one sees nothing at all. But it is becoming somewhat lighter for me nonetheless, and I take from your words that you are a very competent expert in nature and a great anthropologist.

2 According to your opinion, man hides infinity in himself of course, and thus also eternity; but whether he also can understand infinity and eternity himself, the substantial power, the light and the life, even with the best instruction, is another really very significant question. I do not want to talk about the impossibility of that, however, as if such a thing should be quite unattainable for a very enlightened human spirit - for the talents of man are various, and one person understands something very easily which remains locked away forever for another despite years of effort, thinking and striving - but anyone who has been around even just a little over the old limits of common human animalistic life on the Earth, will agree with me that it is no easy thing to get to grips with these expressions.

3 Man can understand and temporally learn much; but to shed a clear light on such expressions, for whose full explanation an eternity must be necessary, that I would indeed like to call into a certainly not unfounded question nonetheless. Man only learns one thing after the other and needs time for this. If he learns much, he will also need a lot of time for this, and should he learn endlessly much, he will also need endlessly much time for this. The human life, however, is only a short one, and thus it will obviously need to have a very clear path in order to learn endlessly much.

4 You have indeed said something about an original divine Spirit, which is stuck in the soul as the soul is in the body, and that this Spirit as the Creator of man in infinity and eternity is quite at home as identical with such expressions and penetrating everything with it’s light and with it’s eternal life. Well, that sounds indeed very wise and also very mystical - something which however was always known to all the theosophists, wise men, priests and magicians, but which has nothing to do with the issue, by the way - but where and how can a person connect with such a spirit of his that is well and clearly known to him and generally effective, so that he stands there as a perfected spirit man of God, sees and understands everything most clearly and is a true lord and master of all nature with the power of his original will? That, dear master, is quite a different question!

5 Whoever can answer me this question purely, truly and equally effective for life, for him I will have great respect. But he may not come to me with the certain mystical flowery words and phrases; for from this nobody has ever learned something very good and very true, and the whole of humanity has for that reason never come any further or higher, but instead only ever deeper in its spiritual intelligence. Thus everyone who wants to teach his fellow man something higher should speak clearly and understandably, otherwise he would do better to be silent. Whoever is a magician and can perform miraculous things should do that for the pleasure of the lay humanity with just as great a mystical secrecy; for there it is in the best place and does not harm anyone. But if the magician wants to form pupils in his art who should achieve over time the same that he performs, then the secrecy should be put aside and the very purest and unrestricted truth should step into it’s place.

6 Why did Plato and Socrates find so few practicing followers? Because they were mystics, they certainly did not understand each other and thus even less so were ever understood by anyone else! Diogenes and Epicure spoke clearly and understandably according to their understanding and therefore found also a great number of practical disciples, and that for a religion which gives the people here on this Earth almost no pleasures at all and makes them cease totally after the bodily death.

7 Epicure was rich and recommended the good living for the duration of life because after death everything was over. Diogenes wanted to be more generally useful with his religion, because he saw very well that Epicure's teaching can only satisfy the rich, but must make the poor only even unhappier. He therefore taught the greatest possible privation and restraint of human needs, and his supporters were and still are the much stronger, because every person could get to grips with his clearly presented principles indeed without any mysticism.

8 Aristotle was much admired for his powerful and clever manner of speech and was a great philosopher. But his disciples have never grown too large in number, and even the few were constant investigators and specialists of deduction and their theories of possibility often went as far as to be laughable; for whatever seemed to them to be logically possible any way, could also be physically possible in certain circumstances. Truly, a very useful teaching for magicians, and the Essenes have long been occupied with it, although they are Epicurists and also partly cynics for themselves and for their own household!

9 But where is the great truth of life hidden, which shows some moments in the course from which one at least might ask the question and say: Should that all seriously be a game of whim of the tiresome coincidence? Should the cause be indeed more foolish as a produced and ordering principle than his works, or can a fully blind power form a being that is aware of itself and thinks maturely?

10 The mystics present an all-powerful and highly wise God - and millions ask: Who is He, and what does He look like? But to this question there never follows a plausible answer. Yet people soon make use of poetry, and at once the Earth is swarming with great and small gods, and the idle people shy of thinking believe in it, and such a belief is almost a double death to man; for it makes him physically and morally lazy, idle, inactive and thus dead.

11 But whoever is a true wise man, he may step forward with the grain of truth into the open daylight of people and show them clearly the original foundations and the purpose of his being, and he will set an eternal monument in the hearts of millions of people for all times of time; for a true person will constantly welcome the pure truth to the highest degree.

12 You, dear friend, as it seems, want to be a true teacher of the truth, and there also seems to be no lack of capabilities for this; therefore answer me these questions which as far as I know no person has ever answered clearly, brightly and truly enough, and you will give our hearts an extremely great encouragement! But do not come to us with a half truth; for there is in any case already no lack of them among us!"

- Chapter 213 -

The necessity of the true, clear faith

1 I say: "My dear Epiphan, if I had not given Aziona and Hiram already the clearest and brightest answers and teaching, I would gladly follow your very justified demand immediately; but as I have already done that, and both of them know exactly where they are in relation to Me, they will tell you already in just as an illuminating way as I told them, and then you will only need to live accordingly and your spirit itself will then reveal everything that you have to necessarily know on the correct path.

2 "You must not completely reject faith, for without it you would find it far more difficult to reach the goal.

3 But there are, of course, two kinds of faith. The true faith, full of light, is held by one who trusts in a truthful and widely experienced man without harboring any doubts and accepts what he says as a full truth, even when he does not immediately grasp it in it’s full depth and clarity.

4 For behold, whoever wants to study higher mathematics must in the beginning of his studies accept everything. Only after he comprehends the true value of the numbers and units does he gradually come to understand clearly one proof after another. And look, the same applies here.

5 If a very truthful man tells you something he has personally experienced, you may at first only believe what you have heard, but then promptly become active according to such a belief in the manner shown, and you will then through your own activity and experience gain the light that you would never have seen as a result of an ever so logical verbal discussion.

6 Somebody could go to the trouble of patiently describing to you the city of Rome in great detail, but you would never be able to form a true and clear picture in your mind of that great metropolis. However, you fully believed what the story-teller told you and were filled with a mighty longing to see Rome personally and looked diligently and eagerly for a chance to visit it. Soon you had your chance and came to Rome. And now you marveled at the city and found it exactly as it had been described to you - but how different the real Rome looked from the city you had pictured in your imagination!

7 Was the fact that you had believed in the true description of Rome of advantage or disadvantage to you when later you really saw Rome? Obviously, only of a tremendous advantage. For one thing, you would never have entertained the idea of visiting Rome save for the description given you beforehand. Then, supposing you had entered the great city without knowing anything about it, you would have walked around like one blind, would hardly have dared to ask anyone about this or that, but would out of sheer fear and boredom have tried to leave this metropolis as soon as possible. However, had you not believed at all in the faithful description, well, it would anyway have been as good as none, and half a belief is not much better than none at all, for it does not prompt anyone to a true and lively action.

8 Thus you see that one must, at least in the beginning, not be without faith when listening to a new precept. To be sure, man can examine the precepts and what gives rise to them, but he must first accept them as truths of high value on the strength of the authority and truthfulness of the teacher, even without at once comprehending them in their depth; for the comprehension occurs only when the condition imposed by the precept itself has been fulfilled. Only if this does not occur could he say with a shrug of his shoulders: 'Either the precept was a fabrication, or the conditions imposed have not yet been completely fulfilled by me.' Then it is high time to discuss the matter thoroughly with the master and to find out whether the faithful observation of the principles of the new teaching has also failed to produce a hoped-for result for everybody else.

9 However, if it did work for somebody else but not for you, the fault obviously would only be with you. You would then without delay have to make up for many a failure and omission in order to achieve what your fellowman did. But if no-one had achieved anything by observing ever so strictly the duties imposed by the new teaching, well, then it would be time to turn your back on such a false teaching."

- Chapter 214 -

Gullible faith and superstition

1 (The Lord) "There is, unfortunately, beside the true, necessary faith also a gullibility, as a result of which certain indolent, non-thinking people hold anything another tells them jokingly or, more often, out of sheer selfishness, to be the pure truth. Well, there is now a by far greater number of people of this kind of faith on earth.

2 You really cannot do much with such gullible people, for they hardly care whether or not they achieve anything through their faith. They merely believe, now and again marveling about it unconcernedly, and carry out what a teaching imposes on them, but without any inner benefit to their life. It does not matter to them that they never achieve anything through it, except from time to time boredom. They are too indolent and neither know nor have any determination. Therefore, they can be likened to those ephemerides that only buzz about pro forma in the sunlight of the day so that the swallows find it all the easier to catch and eat them.

3 Superstition and gullibility are anyway alike, the only difference being that superstition always arises from gullibility and actually is a result of it.

4 The incalculably dire consequences of superstition are unfortunately only too visible and perceptible all over the earth; all the millions of pagan temples were built by superstition, and this often under great and heavy sacrifices."

5 But now the time has come that it should be destroyed, and thus there is a big work here; but still there is a great lack of competent and brave workers. I therefore have a large field before Me which is to be prepared, and I am hiring workers. You all would be already very good people for this business, if you were familiar with the correct path with good insight; but it goes without saying that you yourselves must be fully indoctrinated in My new teaching for life beforehand. But once that has happened, then you would be very suitable for use thanks to your various experiences in life. But that the reward here and particularly in the next life will be no small one, of that you can all be most perfectly sure in advance. What do you say now, My friend Epiphan, to this suggestion of Mine, which was certainly quite unexpected for you all?"

6 Epiphan says: "Hm, why not? Once I have been thoroughly and convincingly penetrated by a truth myself, then I will be a teacher even without reward, only for the sake of the truth and have no fear of having to starve to death for it. For although the people in these days are indeed very spoiled and live in the greatest self-centeredness, they are nonetheless not against a good new teaching; if only a correct teacher comes to them, they still take him in, listen to his teachings, and when they begin to sense only some higher and truthful things in it, then they soon leave aside their egotism and become nice and generous.

7 In this respect a small degree of gullibility among the people is not bad either; for without that it would often be difficult to give the people a teacher. But only the correct teacher should then strive above all to not let his disciples sit and be stuck in unfounded gullibility, but instead work with them and lead them until they have penetrated the brightest light of his teaching right to the foundations. If he has caused this through his hard work, then he has given something truly good to the people and can count upon it that they will not be ungrateful towards him.

8 How many benevolent deeds do very false teachers enjoy among the gullible people, since they pretend that they understand something, and in this way they soon find a number of listeners who admire them and positively compete to make themselves noticed by the teacher with all sorts of presents! How much more will they do that to a teacher who can show and explain to them the greatest secrets and conditions of life thoroughly and with good insight theoretically and of course, wherever necessary, also practically! I am already here and can be found at any time for this; but of course I must know myself beforehand most thoroughly what this whole story is about. Well, I am not hard of hearing, nor am I hard of understanding; whatever Aziona and Hiram understand, I and all my neighbors will also understand. But naturally - we are never sold a pig in a poke, and we never deal in the dark of the night! Well, friend and master, what is the actual essence then of your business and, let's say, new religion?"

- Chapter 215 -

The mission of the Lord.

Epiphan's doubts concerning the people's understanding of the teaching of the Lord

1 Say I: "In order to show you the issue with a few words, I say to you: "My task and teaching consist simply in showing man where he really came from and what he is, and in pointing out his destiny which will be fulfilled in accordance with the fullest and most evident truth.

2 Already the Greeks, that is, the sages, said: 'The most difficult, important and highest knowledge is the greatest possible degree of self-knowledge.' And behold, exactly this is My concern, for without this cognition, it is impossible to recognize a Supreme Deity as the cause of all coming into existence, being and permanency.

3 But whoever does not recognize this and does not direct his life, his senses and striving towards this one true purpose in life, in order to recognize himself and a Supreme Deity as the Eternal First Cause of all existence and growing, is as good as lost.

4 For, just as a thing devoid of an inner, incessantly growing and more and more consolidating and permanent consistency soon disintegrates and as that which it formerly was, ceases to exist - so also a man who is not fully at one with and within himself, as well as with God.

5 Man can achieve this only by fully recognizing himself and, consequently, God as his first cause and then, in accordance with such knowledge, becoming active in his whole life- sphere.

6 Once a man has reached this maturity and consistency within himself, he has also become a master over all the forces emanating from God and, through these, spiritually and materially also a lord over all creatures and is then in and for himself no longer destructible through any force and, thus, has gained life eternal.

7 And behold, that is now the summary of My whole new teaching, which however in the fundamental basics, is actually the very oldest teaching since the beginning of man on this Earth! It has only been lost through the idleness of humanity and is now given as if new again by Me as the lost original Eden (Ye den = it is day) to the people who have a good will. Tell Me now, Epiphan, whether you have understood Me correctly and what is your opinion about this!"

8 Epiphan says: "Yes, I have understood it in any case and must also openly admit in addition that such a recognition would be possibly accepted generally as the very most desirable and highest thing among the people that a mortal could ever achieve on this Earth, and the instructive path there could be extremely well and clearly known to you and to your companions! But only I remember at this opportunity an old Roman saying which truly is very wise and bears various investigation and comparison very well. And the saying goes thus: QUOD LICET IOVI, NON LICET BOVI! - PROPHETA, POETA ET CANTORES NASCUNTUR - RHETOR FIT! What is permitted to Jupiter is not necessarily allowed to an ox - One is born to be a prophet, poet and singer - one is made to be an orator!

9 The wisest of the ancient Egyptians and Greeks certainly used all diligence for the recognition of themselves and a divine original being; but how far did they get? Only as far as they saw that reaching such a necessarily comprehensive recognition is a very purest impossibility for the limited people, and the saying: Quod licet Iovi, non licet bovi! found there its fullest validation!

10 Well, in any case there may be some exceptions with You which I have heard from Your other words and particularly seen from Your deeds; but whether also the usual person of for example my sort will be able to form any lasting concept, that is another question! For some, certainly rare people, the so-called geniuses, often possess even strange capabilities in very many and varied directions. The one is already in the cradle a seer and a prophet, the second is a singer of an extraordinary type, the third is an artist, the fourth a mathematician and a magician almost in the mother's womb. One has an extremely strong memory, another a pair of such sharp eyes that he can make out and if necessary even recognize a person several hours away.

11 And so there are very many among the people of great talents; but all that which is only of a genius can never eternally be learned very thoroughly so that it could then be reproduced by a disciple to any perfection, as the great master possessed in himself. Such a thing is and remains nonetheless constantly just an almost worthless incompetence.

12 And so I am also then of the almost decisive opinion that we will understand you indeed at least halfway in such a new teaching of yours, whatever you say to us, but we will never manage to achieve a thorough practical representation. Yet now, you are in any case a rarest master of your business and will indeed know what sort of people you have before you; but we will then see what we are capable of understanding and doing! We are indeed very sympathetic towards pure science, although we can also easily do without it, since our previous view of life - as our local condition shows - is more than satisfactory for the minimum of the needs demanded for the maintenance of life; but - as we said - for that reason we are no enemies of pure science.

13 Hiram and Aziona indeed gave me the most sincere news about you that I had to believe because I know both of them as extremely truthful people. But now it only depends on the conviction of all the theoretical and practical paths; if I have these, then you should have no bad or lazy spreader of your new teaching in me! I have now spoken and now you should speak!"

- Chapter 216 -

On the miraculous power of the Word

Teaching is better than working signs

1 I say: "Dear Epiphan, I indeed told you that both your brothers will give you a good, true explanation of this; but since you are in full seriousness a very rare open spirit, I Myself will give you at least a good introduction to this, so that then Hiram and Aziona will be able to build on it easily.

2 You see with your sharp eyes that I am only a very modest and simple person just like all the others and like you. I eat, drink, wear clothes in the manner of the Galileans and speak with the same words that you speak with. In this you can find no difference between Me and you; but if you speak and fill your words also with the very firmest will, they will nonetheless remain only words, after which if necessary and after some efforts an action will follow, but certainly only with the very meager effects. And behold, that is tremendously different for Me! If I fill one of My words or even one of My thoughts, which are actually only a word of the Spirit, with My will, then at this word the most perfect deed must follow without the slightest manipulation.

3 And what I am capable of doing through My word, each one of My true disciples must be capable of doing out of himself because his innermost being is guided by the same spirit as My Innermost Being.

4 And look, that is something in My new teaching that has never been seen in such fullness and completion since the beginning of the world among man! Look here, I have no tools with Me and no secret ointments and medicines, in My tunic and coat you will find no pocket, and the same also with My disciples - yes, we do not have and we do not even carry any staffs and go forth quite barefoot!

5 Word and will is therefore our entire possessions, and nonetheless we have everything and suffer no affliction - except if we want to bear it ourselves voluntarily for the sake of softening the hard human hearts. Well, why can then I do everything with My word and will, and why can you not then also?"

6 Epiphan says: "Yes, there it will be very difficult for me to give you a correct answer! I have indeed heard the same thing about you from Hiram and Aziona and have also enjoyed the wine that you created from the water, which truly left nothing to be desired. Well, if that is capable of being performed simply with the word filled with will without any other secret means, and if such "how" is also taught by you, then one must certainly indeed have the highest respect for you, for your teaching and for your words! For as far as my somewhat extended knowledge goes, such a thing has never happened before.

7 I could indeed say to you now: Friend and Master, give me now a little sample of such a power living in your words which are laden with will! But such a thing has at least for me no need at all, because I always prefer to let myself be taught through clear, wise and powerful words than through signs. But if you want to give me an extra little test once again, then it will not harm me, nor my neighbors. Yet just see that as only a desire and by no means as any sort of demand!"

8 I say: "Teaching is better than signs; for signs coerce, while teaching leads and awakens the power demanded in itself, and that is then the truest and fullest possession of man, which he himself has received through his own activity. But of course, people such as you have already long ago set yourselves above all issues of forced faith and its measured limits, even the greatest signs no longer have any forcing power, because they do not receive any force to compel observers like you for as long as they have not been accepted by your theory of life in respect of the "how" as clearly enlightening and very visible. And so I can already perform a little sample without any harm for yours and your neighbor's mind.

9 But My signs, which I perform to confirm the truth of My new teaching, should always be set up to give man besides the great moral use also the physical, and so I believe for you all and at the same time in you all, that it would be of great use to you in the future if you, as now My very respected new disciples, would not find yourselves so completely and totally in a very barren desert, but instead if this area was immediately turned into a very fertile one. Do you all agree with this?"

10 Epiphan says: "Oh Master, if that were possible for you, you would truly have performed a highly praise-worthy sign! But truly, if that were possible for you, then you would indeed be obviously more than all the greatest wise men and Jewish prophets of the world, yes, then you would be quite seriously a god, and your new teaching would have to be the fullest truth! For a man should just look once at this true Dabuora (desert of pitch and naphtha)! Nothing but bare cliffs, reaching up to the clouds; only the foot of this genuine mountain of pitch is covered here and there with sparing shrubs. Only a few sources spring forth out of it’s innards into daylight, and there under the sharpest cliffs a meager cedar wood vegetates as a true sanctuary of this pitch mountain; everything else far and near is naked and bare like the surface of the water!

11 Well, that shall now be transformed into a fruitful area of the Earth through your powerful word of will?! Such a thing is indeed a little difficult to believe in advance; but you said in the introduction to your teaching, which, although it sounds very puzzling, nonetheless must be true in this respect, because you are a man who firstly thinks too purely to make fun of people such as us, and who secondly has already performed some extraordinary things here. I entreat you therefore, if it seriously costs you nothing more than one single word of Your will!"

- Chapter 217 -

The miraculous transformation of the scenery

Free will and being merged into the will of God

1 I say, "Then pay attention, and I will tell you nothing further than this: “I will it so!” And now just look, My very dear Epiphan, at this area and tell Me how you like it!"

2 Epiphan along with Aziona and Hiram and all the others present here, beat their chests and become quite silent with amazement, and Epiphan observes the now very magnificent area with wide eyes - the mountains covered with forests and the shore area which had an extent of almost a thousand acres [thousand morgen = 0.25 "0.36 hectares] and was covered with nothing but only sparse grass as pasture for a few goats and sheep and now lay there in the most fruitful opulence - and then again at Me with a searching look.

3 Only after a good while of amazement does he (Epiphan) open his mouth again and says: "Yes, in order to be able to perform such a thing in one instant, one must already be more than a god! For a god, as I know from the various religions of the Egyptians, Greeks, Romans, Jews and even Persians and Indians, takes his time and performs his miracles quite calmly and seems to make use of a number of great means and apparatus. There must be a sun, a moon, several planets, a countless number of other stars. These help him in certain circumstances, places and situations to perform miracles on this Earth, where however apart from a bolt of lightning from the clouds, everything happens very pretty slowly.

4 But you have performed something in an instant here that a god, as I know several from the books and scriptures, certainly even with all the industriousness of man would have taken another couple of hundred boring years of time to do. From this I make the undeceiving conclusion that you must obviously be more god than all the other gods of whom I have heard and read about very much! Lord and Master of all masters of the Earth! How, how, and once again how is that possible for You? And should that also be possible for the likes of us in time, if one has become completely familiarized with Your new teaching?"

5 I say: "Yes, My dear friend Epiphan, otherwise I would not have said it to you! But how that is possible, however, I have already said to you and even shown it clearly - and I tell you this as well, that My true disciples will do and perform even greater things in time on this Earth than what I have done and performed. But of course it always remains to all My true disciples to recognize and to know that they will only be able to perform all such things if they become fully one in their spirit with My Spirit and so at every opportunity seek advice in their spirit with My Spirit, whether such a thing is necessary in order to achieve some good purpose. For if someone, even living exactly in My teaching, feels prompted to save his life himself, demanded by some powerful person, to have to perform a sign to confirm his highest mission, I would say to him in the spirit: ‘Do not do it; for it is not My will now!’ So then the disciple will also want what I want; but if he should nevertheless try to perform a sign, he will not be able to, since My will was not one with his.

6 Only with Me, that is, in constant union with My Spirit and will, will you all be able to perform everything, but without it nothing; for I am the Lord and will remain so eternally. And look, that is also part of My teaching! Have you understood Me?"

7 Epiphan says: "Yes indeed, Lord and Master of all masters! But I find there something which according to my judgment does not go so well with the actual fullest freedom of the human spirit. For if for example I can only perform a sign when You also want to perform such a thing, then my will is indeed eternally more dependent, more bound to Yours and thus not free."

8 I say: "Oh, there you are very much mistaken. On the contrary! The more closely a human spirit is united with My Spirit, the freer it is in spirit and will, since I Myself contain the greatest and most unlimited freedom. A man curtails himself in his freedom only insofar as he does not unite with Me. Yet he who is completely at one with Me, is capable of doing all that I do, for nowhere outside of Me is there an unlimited might and unlimited power of action.

9 No-one who is fully at one with Me is deprived of even one atom of independence. Can you think of a greater and happier advantage to your life than to be together with Me, that is, with My Spirit, almighty and active like I am, and yet at the same time completely independent?  Tell Me now how you like this."

10 Says Epiphan: "Greatest Lord and Master! I know far too little about such a new and unheard-of way of life; therefore, as everybody can easily see, I cannot possibly grasp it clearly or form a definite opinion about it. Yet as far as I can reconcile Your words with my own concept, such a life would certainly be of great advantage. For surely it means the supreme perfection of life to share an almighty Divine Spirit's omnipotence and possess at the same time the fullest independence of life, and all this may well be true because You told me and all of us so.

11 But we will not worry ourselves about the 'how'; for that would be a vain task, since as the newest disciples of Your teaching we are lacking far too much the necessary understanding. In addition we are all now too astonished and too agitated by the too unheard-of great master miracle in order to be able to reach any calm judgment. Therefore, oh Lord and divine Master, let us now rest a little and collect ourselves inwardly, so that we then can give you a better answer in a greatest calm of mind to You, oh Lord and Master, than we have just given You now!"

- Chapter 218 -

Importance of peace of mind

1 I say: "Yes, yes, you have spoken quite correctly and perfectly well; Peace, the true, inner peace of mind is for every man the most necessary spiritual element, without which he is unable to grasp anything that is of an inner nature and great in a spiritual sense, and so I gladly grant you your wish.

2 Yet such a quietness, in which the body and its limbs are deprived of action, is not a repose but rather consists in a great inner activity of the soul that is striving to become more and more at one with its spirit which it has begun to perceive. Happy you as everybody else, if you have a longing for such a quietness. Only after regularly practicing such inner rest or rather soul-activity once a day, will you begin to feel what a great, true benefit you have gained for your life.

3 But now you may all retire to your huts, which are now improved somewhat along with this previously desert land and take a look at everything that has happened for your good. Then come back again towards evening!

4 I, however, will occupy Myself with what has been set out for Me by My Father who lives in heaven and is fully one with and in Me. But whoever wants to spend the day here with Me can do that indeed; for there is no obligation that someone should leave this place, but instead only whoever wants to, and the one as well as the other will be of great use to him. And now do whatever your will desires!"

5 At this everyone except Hiram and Epiphan rise and hurry full of curiosity into their huts to find out everything that has happened in their houses and everything that has changed. And when they reach their home, they cannot be amazed enough and wonder at the very note-worthy houses, which now take the places of their previous, most miserable huts, and at the many fruit trees, vineyards, fields and pastures, and they praise God the Father, of whom I gave them the information that He has given a person of the Earth such a power.

6 Epiphan, however, controls himself and says: "Oh Lord and Master of all masters! But I prefer nonetheless to remain here; I too, will have obtained what the others have been given through Your goodness and divine power, a benevolence for which we all and our children's children will never be in a position to thank You enough and to worship and praise You.

7 But as immeasurably great this benevolence of Yours shown to us is, it is nonetheless in no way comparable to what has become part of our souls through Your teaching. For only through that have we, as previously quite wild human animals, become actual real people. You have just shown us the correct life and taught us to know it’s value.

8 Before we had only love for death, but now we have a true and great love for life, which is capable of an extremely great perfection in all directions, while death remains death eternally and never can permit any gradual perfection. And exactly for that reason do I now prefer to remain with You, oh Lord and Master, so that I miss out on nothing that Your - let's say - most truly holy mouth will announce further."

9 I say: "What the others did is good; but what you are doing is better. For every word that comes from My mouth is light, truth and life; if you seal My words in your hearts and act accordingly, you will receive with the words heard already also the true, eternal life.

10 But if someone hears My words but then does not do and act accordingly, he will not gain life through My word but only judgment and death. This is not My will but only God's eternal order; yet then I cannot help him because he is meant to help himself.

11 For if food is given to a starving man and he does not eat it, but only observes it, then the giver is not to blame if the hungry man dies of starvation, but obviously the starving man himself because he did not want to eat any food. And it is just the same with he to whom I give My word as the truest bread from heaven but who simply hears it and does not want to become active accordingly. Therefore no-one should be only a listener, but instead an actor of My word, and he will be most truly filled with the bread from heaven in his soul and will never see, feel and taste death in the future, since he has become himself quite life from God. Do you understand that?"

- Chapter 219 -

Epiphan's courage

1 Epiphan says: "Oh, this is the very most complete truth and is quite clear to me without any further explanation! Let's assume I or somebody else wanted to build a new home. He therefore seeks advice from an expert, so that he would explain to him with words and images how he as a builder should build his house. The builder however does not act according to the valuable advice of the expert, and because it seems too tiresome and too time-consuming to him, he assembles blocks and beams without fastening anything, then settles into his new dwelling and lives without suspecting any danger for a short period of time. But then when a great storm comes at night and beats against the house's flimsy walls and these immediately collapse and crush the owner and builder. What has this man then gained since he did not want to direct himself according to the advice of the knowledgeable expert?!

2 And so, I believe, it is quite the same case between You and us blind and ignorant people. You are obviously that builder who has built the world, the whole of space and also the people as it is, spiritually and materially in a certain way and thus also must know best what is good for them, and what he as a reasonable, thinking, self-judging and self-determining being has to do and to leave alone. And if You showed him, the person, now through words and deeds that You are undeniably Him whom he has to thank for his existence, and further showed him what he has to do in order to achieve what You have created him for, then the blind and foolish person can only blame himself if he forfeits eternal life for himself out of some void, material reasons and receives death for it. And so I think that every person who has once been taught by You Yourself and has recognized You as He who You are, cannot possibly neglect to live and to act most exactly with all love and joy as You have commanded him.

3 Well may some hurdles and difficulties crop up for the follower of Your teaching among the now very wicked, totally blind and to an unlimited degree selfish, proud and power hungry human world, since there are very many more terrible human spirits than good ones; but if one already knows what one has in Your teaching and what one has to expect through the observance of it, then the mountains may set themselves against him and all the storms may rage against him, and one will still be able to stand up to them all with the most constant courage in the world. For a hiker attacked by enemies often defends himself with the courage of a lion in order not to lose this short and in any case quickly passing life, which truly in any case has not much value if it is lost - why then not defend oneself with a true courage of a thousand lions against enemies who threaten to take away eternal life through this life from the wandering people?! I believe that I am quite of the right opinion in this aspect.

4 Yes, people who cling to this vain world, seek their whole salvation in the dung of this earth and have not been penetrated by Your teaching like I have and do not see the value of their life and may not, will not and cannot understand it, will certainly lose all courage in danger and soon sink back into the old dung again; but people such as us will not allow themselves to be driven so easily into a dead end.

5 I tell You, oh Lord and Master: Whoever has no fear of the death of the body, emperors and kings will have difficulty making laws for him! Now let the whole Earth go to ruin, and I will not fear the certain downfall of my body; for I know indeed now from Your words that my soul will not be destroyed with Your life-Spirit in it! With this confidence enemies may then come from wherever and however many they want, and they will truly present me, Aziona and Hiram no shock; their veto will remain unheard and their threat unnoticed. And now tell us, oh Lord and Master of life, whether I am right or not!"

6 I say: "You are perfectly right, and all the more so because you also would behave so in an emergency, just like all of you in this place. But since we now are together in trust and have indeed got to know each other, it certainly is very important for Me that you all will not waver at all sorts of events and trials, I must now make you all familiar with some other things. And so listen to Me!"

- Chapter 220 -

The purpose of the crucifixion of the Lord

1 (The Lord) "I am, as far as My body is concerned, a mortal man like you, with the result that I, too, shall shed this body, namely, on the cross at Jerusalem as a witness against the evil Jews, high priests and Pharisees, and for their judgment. For this alone will break their power for all time, and the prince of spiritual darkness who now rules mankind will be weakened and no longer able to seduce and ruin the people to the same extent as up till now.

2 But the prince is called 'Satan', that is lie, deception, pride, greed, self-love, envy, hate, lust for power and murder and all sorts of prostitution.

3 The highest arrogance can only be destroyed through the deepest humility, and thus it is necessary that such will be done to Me. But do not be frightened when you hear this, for I shall not stay in the grave and decay, but rise on the third day and return to you, exactly as I am now with you. Only this will be the greatest and truest testimony in your soul to My divine mission and will greatly strengthen your faith. I have told you this in advance so that you will not take offense at Me and abandon My teaching when this event will happen.  How do you, My dear Epiphan, like this?"

4 Epiphan says: "Lord and Master, You are wiser and more powerful than all the wise and mighty of the whole Earth! If you allow such a thing to come over you, then you must surely have a good reason for it, which we are not able to see through now; however, the greatest and most unheard-of humiliation and chastisement for some of the most depraved and evil people at Jerusalem and in the whole Jewish land generally would obviously be their inability to completely kill the man they hate most even at the most despicable cross, so that after three days he would be back, exactly the same as he was before! I can already understand this quite well and clearly. Yet it seems to me as if Your wisdom and power could well decree otherwise.

5 Presuming the priests and others in authority at Jerusalem saw You work a sign like the one You just worked here, do You not think they would have to be blinded by all the furies of Tartarus not to recognize You as What and Who You are? Their hatred against You must immediately be transformed into the greatest reverence and the most ardent love for You, and it goes without saying that You then need not let Yourself be nailed to the degrading cross which is meant only for the worst criminals."

6 Say I: "Yes, if it were so, then you would be right; but unfortunately, it is not so, but immensely different! Believe Me: This nest of adders and brood of snakes of the Templers of Jerusalem know exactly what I am teaching and what I perform; but that only increases their hate and they become only more and more bitter towards Me from hour to hour, a fact which Aziona and Hiram can vouch for with a faithful account of the events before midnight last night. They are all totally rotten, blind and deaf in their hearts, and at the same time full of the greatest and most limitless pride and full of greed and the greatest lust for power. And behold, no gospel is to be preached to such creatures nor a sign worked before their eyes! For My teaching and My signs destroy their ancient reputation and vast incomes, and this is the reason why the Templars do not want them and are My most implacable enemies.

7 I would certainly have the power to destroy them instantaneously on the whole earth as has happened once before, decreed by My Father's Spirit that is dwelling within Me, at the time of Noah and, later, at the time of Abraham when Sodom and Gomorrah and their ten neighboring cities were wiped out, but what good did it achieve?

8 Today the vast Dead Sea still bears witness to that judgment and the Scriptures point their finger to it. Yet who takes heed and sees it as a just warning? If you now mention it to a true Pharisee, you are in danger of being derided, severely reprimanded, and even impressively threatened with a heavy penalty. In such a case there is nothing one can do but what I foretold you. This will be a most severe judgment for those obstinate ones and for My followers the culmination point of My love and, likewise, My resurrection will be a resurrection for all those who are of My intention and will."

- Chapter 221 -

Epiphan's suggestions to avoid the death of the Lord

1 (The Lord) "Oh friend, I tell you this: If it were possible to push the cup of suffering aside, it would also immediately happen; but such a thing is unfortunately impossible, and thus let's leave it now! You now know that this will happen and also why, and nothing else is necessary indeed. But when I have risen again, only then will I Myself baptize you all with the Holy Spirit out of Me, and it will then lead you all in all wisdom and power, and you will then, if you remain in My teaching, be able to do everything as My true children that I can now do. And now tell Me again how you like this proposal and this promise!"

2 Epiphan says: "According to what we and all good people have to expect from Your words, it of course pleases me very well; but what You, oh Lord and Master, have to expect from the incorrigible foolishness and evil according to Your words, that does not please me at all! But if it is not possible in any other way once and for all, then let it happen all the same according to Your will!

3 It is now only too clear to me that You will not die in Your true, inner being; for who should awaken You from the death of the body apart from You Yourself with the power of God that is in You?! This is thus indestructible; what is the importance then of the death of a body which You can awake again whenever You want?! But this great suffering connected obviously with the killing of Your body is nonetheless not very pleasant for me!"

4 But You are the Lord, full of the highest wisdom, power and love, and You know best what to advise and how to help, and so everything will happen all the same only according to Your highest advice and will, as it is also Your will that we people on this Earth have to bear often a burning hot summer and an ice-cold winter, which is not something pleasant and at the end of this earthly life often a very painful, bitter death, and we cannot change anything about it, since that is Your will. And so I believe that it is also Your will even less as far as Your very highest being is concerned, to change anything about us weak worms of the Earth! And so let it be and happen as You want!

5 But what the likes of us could do nonetheless to prevent You suffering as You have just told me in advance, would be that - for example I, Aziona and Hiram - could go to Jerusalem to the Templars and would as eloquent Gentiles teach the obscurants to know better about You with very chosen words, and they would certainly set aside their anger towards You; and if this happened, You could in this way indeed push aside the mentioned cup of suffering."

6 I say: "Yes, My friend, there is nothing else for Me to do but to alone accept your good will for the work; for you see, as little as you are capable of bending an old cedar, just as little will such a great Pharisee or even a high priest accept any teaching from you! But what he will do, I can tell you quite exactly:

7 He would listen to you obligingly and with the most kind face and greatest friendliness encourage you to tell him every minute detail about Me. He would even oppose you by raising minor objections and seeming doubts - but only for the purpose of making you more talkative, and as soon as he would see that this was all the information obtainable, he would present a different face to you. At a secret sign masked men in great number would appear and grab you, and you would hardly ever see the light of day again. Such a high priest would then, combined with Herod, promptly dispatch a whole army, promise great rewards for My capture and on My account persecute the whole Jewish population all over Galilee, wherever I had been received with My disciples.

8 You see, that would truly not be what we all could see as desirable! That you can see, and it is thus better so: one effectively for all, than all for one without effect! Do you now see that?"

9 Epiphan says: "Yes, Lord, now everything is very clear to me! But now the food is prepared and we want to break off from this and then fill the time with something else!"

10 I say, "Yes, that is good too; but go over and wake My disciples from sleep!"

- Chapter 222 -

The disciples' amazement about the changed scenery

About fasting

1 The disciples, since they had slept too little the evening before, had lain down after the morning meal under the shady trees, had fallen deeply asleep and thus knew nothing about the exchange between Me and Epiphan. But he now went at My command and woke them from their sleep.

2 But when they became active, they opened their eyes wide and asked one another very amazed where they were now; for the area looked so very different after its transformation from the previous desert that they could not understand it at all. Previously Aziona's hut had been built rather in a do-it-yourself way, partly from shapeless stones and partly from mud and reeds, and now in it’s place stand a remarkable house, surrounded by fruit trees and a beautiful garden; and a very good stable for the domestic animals and a great barn for grain were set up very well not far from the house. In addition the previously very barren mountains were now thickly wooded, and the likewise just as barren banks of the lake were transformed into rank farmland, and thus it was understandable that My disciples could not understand.

3 Peter, James and John asked after Me, and Epiphan said that I had gone into the house to order the midday meal. Again they asked the one who awakened them where they were now, and he said, "On the same spot, which however through the power of the One has now indeed received a very different appearance!"

4 But the disciples did not really believe Epiphan and thought much more that the Lord had placed them in a very foreign area through the air like He did on the mountain of Kisjonah. Only when I Myself joined them and informed them that things were just as their friend Epiphan had said to them, did they believe that it was so, and began to be amazed at the power and strength of God in Me.

5 But I said to them: "Why are you so amazed then at this sign now? Did I not do the same thing for Mark?! But the only thing to be amazed about here would be actually how you were able to fall asleep so well in the middle of My discussions with this Greek here! But the flesh, the blood indeed also needs rest, and so now wake up so that none of you will fall into some temptation!

6 But now it has already become midday, the meals are on the table, and so we will then go and give our bodies an appropriate strengthening, so that no one can say to us that someone has suffered need with Me. There are indeed some in Jerusalem who have and observe strict days of fasting in the opinion that they will reach the kingdom of heaven in that way; but they will be very wrong, since they expect a kingdom after the death of the body which is truly not anywhere to be found.

7 But I do not want to say that you should therefore be wasters, squanderers and drunkards; but instead you should always be sober and moderate in everything and love one another, and so the world will take from this that you are truly My disciples! And now let's go to the table!"

- Chapter 223 -

Ships of hostile scouts in sight

The storm as defense

1 The table was well laid with the best fish, with bread and wine and all sorts of tasty fruits.  I sat at the table with the twelve and Hiram and Epiphan. Aziona served us, but after the meal nonetheless took a place at the table. When we were sitting thus together, our glances directed out over the beautiful surface of the water, the sharp-sighted Epiphan noticed several ships tacked the great bay. They wanted to enter the great bay; but since they could not recognize the area any more after its immense transformation as that which was previously familiar to them, they sailed up and down and only sent out a scout boat into the bay.

2 But these ships were a sort of back-up of what here had been taken as good beach booty in the previous night by the fishermen at My command. These back-up ships had indeed sailed around all night already and also this good half day, but nowhere could they find any further trace. They were therefore of the opinion that this ship had somehow got lost in this bay that was difficult to cross and perhaps even had suffered some damage. But this bay no longer looked like the previous one, and so the back-up sailors did not know where they were, and thus sent out a small scouting boat into the bay.

3 When I explained this to the three, Aziona said, "Well, if they find that great ship here, then we will have to flee, otherwise we are all lost!"

4 I say: "Take it easy; this scouting boat will soon turn around! I will send a wind that will certainly speed up the boat's retreat."

5 In an instant a great storm picked up and drove the scout boat along with the several back-up ships out onto the open water as swift as an arrow.

6 But Aziona said: "Lord, look, now they have indeed gone out of sight; but they will come back again as soon as the wind dies down! Oh, these people are like the bad weather and stubborn like an evil disease! They never leave their intention and their goal, and if it is not these - who can hardly leave off from their search - then very soon others will come and pursue the same goal; and if they find the ship here, then it will be bad for us, for against the strength of the mighty, there is no law! I would like to rather destroy and annihilate the whole ship of sinners than to be in constant fear with it’s possession!"

7 I say: "But if I tell you that you need to have no fear of this at all, then you can indeed be calm! These people who were to be seen now will never come back, nor even less a second or third back-up; for in these times the Sea of Galilee is widely known to be very stormy and except by some fishermen it is little sailed, since one cannot trust the storms - and in several months, this whole event will be as good as completely forgotten!

8 For if it is certainly reported to Jerusalem that the searchers for Me had an accident somewhere on the sea, so that nothing more could be found of them despite all searching, in the temple the certain designated temple servants of male and female gender would wait for three hours simply ceremonially, and afterwards, no-one in the temple would think anymore about the missing, but instead one would find others for the same purpose, give them full authority, money and the necessary weapons and send them off under all sorts of strictest commands, and these would then move out and mostly return home again in vain, or more often not at all, like those who visited us yesterday. And so you now have the whole matter revealed and can keep without any fear what I give you, safe and secure."

9 Epiphan now says: "Friend Aziona, under such circumstances I would not shy away from even taking possession of all of Rome, if this Lord and Master would say to me: Go and say, The Lord gave me the whole city and I am thus moving in so that from now on everything that stands, lives and grows here is my fullest property! And behold, no person in the world could argue such a right given to me by the Lord, and everyone would have to bow under the omnipotence of the divine will!

10 And the same thing is the case here! What earthly power will try to start a fight with this divine power? For before they would lay hand to the handle of the sword to fight, they would already be destroyed! Yes, if the Lord and Master will allow it, that His enemies should lay hand on Him, they will indeed even be able to kill Him in the body; but as long as He Himself has not spoken the unknown secret 'FIAT!' in Himself, no one will dare to touch even the hem of His garment - and he who dares will suffer the same fate that yesterday's criminals did! Thus for those who walk with this true man of God as true friends through all the greatest dangers of the world, highest security is already assured.

11 Look at this most magnificent area of ours! Hardly an hour ago it was a most inhospitable, bleak desert, a true picture of death - like we were in our previous soul condition, which He also transformed through His word into a living one - and now the unknown wonderful power of His word itself drives out of the hard stone, which it, first crushed and transformed into a good, rich soil, the most luxurious plant life.

12 If at His breath the stones bow and all countless natural spirits must become active, if at His same breath the nations of the Earth bow - what should we now worry as certainly His friends with fear in our souls as if in all seriousness something evil could happen to us under His protection?! I hope that you, considering this, will become free of all vain fear."

13 Aziona says: "Friend, you have now spoken very well and correctly, and I was previously, as also now, certainly of your opinion with my whole life; but man remains still always a man, particularly when some danger begins to draw near to him! One forgets very often the most important things in a sort of confusion of the soul, does not think with the inner, peaceful composition of the soul, but instead goes head over heels and thus enters such a fear that one no longer even thinks about the best weapons of protection that one most obviously has within oneself.

14 And that is how it was going for me just then when I learned the meaning of the scout boat which was coming into this bay out of the mouth of our God and our Lord and Master. But now I am once again in all order, to which your words contributed very much."

- Chapter 224 -

Aziona's question regarding the life of the soul after death

1 (Aziona) "But since we are now sitting so comfortably together with bread and wine, I would like to then hear from Your mouth, oh Lord, how things are with the life of the soul after the passing of the body!

2 According to the legends of almost all so-called gods, there is always a twofold state - as with us, say, pagans - an Elysium, where good and worthy souls live on forever in an indescribable bliss, and then a Tartarus, where the bad and evil souls are also tormented forever with all kinds of unheard-of plagues and tortures.

3 The Jews have their heaven and their hell, all of which is in a certain way quite the same thing as among the Gentiles their Elysium and the Tartarus. Likewise in certain forms, names and derivations the Indians have a double omnipotent being, a good and an evil one. So all the gods of Elysium are good and those of Tartarus are evil.

4 And among the Jews there is a highest good and wisest Jehovah and myriads of likewise good spirits at his service who are called 'angels' and are prepared to provide humanity with the best protection; in direct opposition to the good, all-powerful Jehovah and his angels; however then there is also an almost no less powerful Satan, also called 'Leviathan', and at his side a countless number of the very evilest spirits which are called 'devils'.

5 It is true that the good Jehovah always makes an effort to make the people good and to draw them to Him. But this is not of much use; for Satan knows even better how to catch the souls for himself, and constantly drives them away from the good Jehovah in hordes upon hordes. Indeed the good Jehovah threatens Satan with all sorts of punishment and judgment; but at this Satan always laughs and does nonetheless whatever he wants. Now, Lord, what should we think about such fables? Oh Lord, give us the correct revelation about this!"

6 Epiphan says again before Me: "Just look at our director, Aziona! He is truly even more intelligent than we all! We have now already asked many things, and this most important point of life has occurred only to him! Yes, Lord and Master, such things I have read many times already myself in all sorts of scriptures and have also always thought for my good part myself! Either the otherwise in many respects wise old men have everything that they knew written down in a language of images which is incomprehensible for us, or they have simply created fables and spoken nonsense just like children and idiots purely according to their highly uncultivated imagination.

7 I as a very simple person of limited understanding, equipped with a - as one says - humanly good heart, can indeed with reason only imagine a continuing life of the soul on the other side, because it had begun to live either casually good or more certainly badly, only in that way that it finds itself for ever after in a progression at least up to a certain, possibly highest degree of completion. Further, that there are only wise and correspondingly purposeful corrections out of varied causes and reasons for a - here already badly begun and certainly even more badly ended - life on the other side, so that also a soul which has performed a bad life here, would achieve, if even later, a better cognition of itself and of a true, highest divine being and also it’s true state of life and duties.

8 But then to suffer eternal punishments in a most indescribable hardship and very most inhumane severity there for a short, unfortunately badly carried out life, and that purely for no other purpose except for an all-powerful god eternally cooling his never ending revenge at the expense of a most powerless being - no, I cannot allow to dream nonetheless of a god like You, oh Lord - at least for us You are obviously one - also in a very most evil heat of fever which already borders on the strongest craziness!

9 A lion is certainly a very evil beast, just like a hyena, a tiger, a wolf or a bear; but nonetheless they can be tamed and then often become guards of the people and thus useful creatures. But if beasts of the mentioned type can be trained to do something useful, why not a soul turned bad often without own fault?! Thus, dearest Lord and Master, tell us how it look then with the strange things and circumstances about which Aziona asked You very wisely!"

- Chapter 225 -

Children of God (from above) and children of the world

1 Say I: "Look, My dears! What the heathen books say about it is only a highly mutilated echo of what was revealed to the original people of this Earth brightly and clearly through the same Spirit who now lives in Me.

2 Only the Scriptures of the Jews contains the full truth, but not unveiled but clothed in corresponding images, and indeed for the very wise reasons so that the holiness of the truth kept inside is not polluted and defiled by the actual dirty children of this Earth.

3 For there are two kinds of people on this earth, most of whom are entirely of this earth on account of the systematic gradual progress of the soul through the various kingdoms of nature, and they can be called 'children of the world'.

4 However, a much smaller number of people of this earth are of the earth only where their bodies are concerned, but their souls are either from various stellar worlds or, sometimes, they are even pure angel spirits from the spirit-heavens, and they can be called 'children of God'.

5 It is these who are capable of grasping the secrets of the Kingdom of God and of passing them on to the children of the earth through teaching, so that also they can become children of God and citizens of His Kingdom.

6 Well, these actual worldly people, once they have grown out of the mud of this Earth, are naturally still very much of a sensual nature, since their souls have never gone through any sort of human preparatory schooling of a free, self-determining life. They can therefore only be led in the beginning through purely sensoric images to the realization of a very highest and eternal spirit of God.

7 And you see, for the sake of most of the people of this Earth the revelations about the kingdom of the spirits are clothed in sheer somewhat sensoric images, which can only be revealed by the children of God from time to time more and more, according to the ability of the children of the world to understand - but never too much at one time, but instead only as much as they are capable of bearing and digesting in their spiritual stomachs. But from what has been said, you can all now draw some conclusions.

8 The life of a person's soul after the shedding of the body is, as is very easy to understand, a continuing progression, since it’s completion cannot possibly be the work of one instant, and that is for the reason that the soul is a being limited spatially as well as temporally and in a way forced into the certain beautiful human form like it’s previous material body, and therefore according to space and time as well as to the very most unlimited power of the Spirit of God and His works can only gradually take in and understand infinity and eternity.

9 Now it comes down to the standpoint of inner morality, in which a soul left it’s body. If this has followed any existing good laws, the otherworldly condition of the soul will certainly be such that it can immediately set out for a higher level of perfection of the free life and always and ever progress to a higher level.

10 But if the soul has had to leave the body either out of a lack of education or in the worst case for a lack of any good will at otherwise good familiarity with the existing laws, without previously having turned even a little towards the true and better in the physical life and it’s circumstances, well, then it will be very easy to understand for any even somewhat clear-thinking person, that such a very weak, miserable soul will have to be placed on the other side into such a certainly not enviable position in which it will be purified and healed according to the highest love and wisdom of God from it’s animal crudeness and with time may rise to a higher level of life, from which it will then go with increasing ease, to an even higher level."

- Chapter 226 -

The life of worldly people in the afterlife

1 (The Lord) "Now there are, however, people on this Earth who as children of extremely rich parents have enjoyed every possible upbringing and education. But when they became older and achieved great posts and high positions of honor, the devil of arrogance rode into their hearts. They began to rule, to hate their fellow man, to deceive and to oppress and give in only to the desires of their senses. Their heaven, for which they strove with all greed, was called external well-being in all softness, splendor and luxury. Whatever would not serve them was often persecuted in the most terrible way and destroyed without any mercy.

2 But now the time and the hour is coming in which such human souls will have to leave their so beloved body according to the ordinance of the all-mighty God. What now?

3 You see, this type of souls have then made themselves punishable, which every only somewhat correctly thinking person must admit! And nonetheless they will not be condemned by Me, but instead placed exactly in such a condition and in such a life that is just the same as the one they had on Earth, only with the difference that far and wide, their neighbors have, are and want quite the same as those who have just arrived. And then it is not long at all before the very bitterest war ensues; for each considers himself to be the highest and most powerful, wants to rule over everyone and considers everyone who does not want to follow his orders and laws to be a punishable insurgent.

4 If only one, two or even three think and feel thus, but the others were humbler and more obedient spirits, then there would be a sort of monarchy in the kingdom of the spirits, where one orders and millions obey him. But it is not so there; for there everyone wants to be a monarch and rule over his just as domineering neighbors quite tyrannically. And such terrible passion then bears an almost inextinguishable mutual hate, a constant argument, conflict, persecution and a positive war, at which indeed no-one can be killed - but the mutual unlimited hate and anger transforms itself like a furious destructive fire, which burns out of the fighters, with which fire they then torment and fight each other.

5 Now it all depends, if such an evil club should ever achieve a sort of rest again, that a powerful spirit from the heavens will be sent out to them and creates rest through an even more powerful fire which spreads well tangible, indescribable pain, partly only for a moment, but partly also lasting for a longer time. If such souls have achieved a complete rest through this, then more and more their foolish passions are muted, the fire that torments them is extinguished and the angel spirit then teaches them about their great blindness, stubbornness and foolishness.

6 If one or the other unhappy and certainly miserable soul turns towards this, it will immediately cross over into a better condition; but - if as the result of its inner, secret arrogance - it does not want to, well, then it remains the same old fool and will receive just the same again to tackle at the earliest opportunity. And one can then say with the Romans: VOLENTI NON FIT INIURIA -even if such almost incorrigible souls were to torment themselves like this for eons of Earth-years!

7 I believe that you all must be now quite informed about what you actually asked Me; but despite all of this I want to and I will nonetheless add something else for you "so listen to Me further!"

- Chapter 227 -

The voidness of a power without resistance

1 (The Lord) "If someone were here of such a giant strength that he could uproot the strongest oaks and cedars with his bare hands, but had no resistance, but instead only mud and water around his trees to be uprooted, would he indeed be capable of uprooting a tree that had stuck it’s roots firmly into the firm soil a few fathoms deeper? I say: No; for as soon as he tried to rip the tree out of the Earth with his powerful arms, he would sink into the depths of the water and mud and thus not be able to achieve anything with all his great strength.

2 If a giant thus wants to present the great muscular strength of his hands to be effective, his feet must also have a very firm ground as a necessary support, which certainly every one of you will see very clearly. But here I will present another exemplary case which is very possible for Me and even more enlightening for you.

3 Let's assume that here before us there are a few hundred very strong warriors, one hundred on one side and one hundred on the other. As soon as they begin to attack each other, I lift them high into the air with My inner power and let them be scattered by a powerful wind in all areas and directions. The question: How will these begin and continue their fight again without any firm footing? Will one be able to move forward even one step in the air even with the most powerful feet or be able to make a very powerful blow with the hand and at the same time keep his upright position?

4 I see that you all are now beginning to consider a little how such a thing could be possible. But it is within My power to show this practically to one of you, and if you only tell Me which of you wants to undertake indeed such a test! Do you, Epiphan, want to convince yourself of the truth of My statement at a man's height above the Earth?"

5 Epiphan says: "Oh yes, Lord and Master; for in Your care nothing evil can possibly happen to me! I am therefore decided."

6 I say, "Well, good, lift yourself a man's height from the face of the Earth into the open air, and then tell the others how you find it!"

7 Epiphan now found himself floating freely in the air, and indeed quite calmly in an upright position, and I now said to him: "Now make several movements, and pretend that you wanted to go somewhere or defend yourself against an enemy, and tell us what you feel and how you like it!"

8 Epiphan tried this, but naturally immediately lost the comfortable, upright position, and the more he worked with his hands and feet, the more he came into all sorts of highly uncomfortable positions. In the end he turned around in the air like a floating leaf, and an only quite gentle breath of air began to push him away, and indeed according to My will towards Aziona's house, against whose walls he found a firm support, changed his uncomfortable position into the comfortable upright one again and then, holding on to the exterior of the wall, sort of pushed himself down to the ground again.

9 When Epiphan had reached the ground again with his feet, he, praising Me, was extraordinarily glad, came quickly to us at the table and said: "Oh Lord, everything that You want - but only no more such desperate proves! I should indeed have told you all from the air what I sensed and felt! Yes, I could have told that in the upright position indeed, which was accompanied by a quite pleasant feeling, how I felt actually quite pleasant and very kindly; but when I began to move according to Your order and had to leave behind all positions because I was not capable of changing them, then it was the end of speech. I would have in any case - if I had not been ashamed - been able to begin a terrified scream of help, but there was no chance of any comprehensible words at all! Seized by a thousandfold dizziness and feeling more powerless than a fly - speak, he who may; for me that was the very greatest impossibility!

10 Lifted from the firm ground into the air just the height of a man, and one is in an instant a being devoid of all strength and power! The lightest breath of air which can hardly move a little leaf on a tree carries you away without any possible resistance, and that mostly in a very uncomfortable position. No, as I said, everything - but only no more tests! But the phrase from Your mouth, oh Lord, has now been confirmed as a shining truth, that namely the greatest power without a firm foothold, which I see as a necessary opposing force, is as good as no power at all. That is now my vivid and truest conviction.

11 Your previous explanation of what Orcus, Tartarus or hell consist of is now more or less clear; but I still cannot do anything with Satan and his assistants, the so-called devils! Since You, oh Lord and Master, have already explained one thing so well in the fullest and fairest truth, explain to us this as well, if it is Your holy will!"

- Chapter 228 -

The counterpole of God

1 I say: "That is why I gave you all the examples, so that you would be able to understand more easily the following explanation of Satan and his angels; and so listen to Me now further!

2 You now see very well that after the experience you have just had, the very strongest giant without a very firm opposing support, which we will call a counter-power or a counter-pole, is not able to do anything. But the same relationship extends also, even if going into the endless greatness, to the very highest divine being!

3 If the eternal, very freest, wisest and all-powerful Spirit of God had not given Himself from the very beginning of eternity a counter-pole, it would never have been possible for Him as a pure positive God to call suns, worlds and all the countless many beings on them into existence.

4 But what does this counter-pole look like and what does it consist of? Is it a very foreign thing to the positive, free pole of divine life and power, or in a certain respect just the same? Is it a lord of itself, or does it depend in all its parts only from the positive pole of divine power?

5 You see, I will answer these very important questions as fully as possible, and you will then see immediately who the so-called Satan, and who his devils actually are! And so now pay attention!

6 If a person for example wants to present something, he begins to think, and a number of fleeting images storm through his mind as individual thoughts. If the thinker gives himself longer time with the examination of his inner spiritual images, which one calls 'thoughts' and also begins to hold on to them more and more, he soon and easily becomes aware that some better thoughts have been attracted and in a way have already joined into an idea of light. The soul then contains such an idea as a defined image strongly in it’s memory centre, and one could call that a basic idea.

7 But now the train of thought goes forth, just like the water of a current, and under the many thoughts flowing above, something more appropriate comes again, is immediately attracted by the basic idea and unites itself with it, whereby the basic idea then already becomes brighter and more definitely defined.

8 This happens for a time until - besides the basic idea - several following side ideas have formed harmonious with the first and thus already represent the comprehension of some concrete issue or action to be undertaken and it’s consequences.

9 Once the thinker has come to such a completely defined, clear expression, he finds pleasure in it and seizes and penetrates it immediately with his love's fire of life. The love wakes the thinker's will and the ability to act, and then the inner comprehension is lifted to a material realization.

10 Now the previous, purely spiritual expression no longer stands alone as a spiritual image in it’s full clarity in the sensorial of the soul, but instead also as a likewise created firm symmetry of the inner spiritual image in the material nature and is set up for the use of him who had previously thought it.

11 The individual thoughts and ideas, from which a fully concrete expression was built then, are still totally of a spiritual form and make up with the spirit one and the same pole, and we will call it the main pole of life.

12 The concrete total expression, consisting of many different thoughts and ideas "if also as a pure, spiritual image in the soul - is, because it has already a certain fixed existence, no longer obedient to the main pole, but instead to the counter-pole, because in a certain way it exists as an excluded whole in all it’s parts in comparison with the soul and can be set out through further activity, quite as a material thing and thus as a definite and fixed thing, can no longer belong to the sphere of life of the spirit and the soul. Now listen to Me just a little longer!"

- Chapter 229 -

The two poles of existence

1 (The Lord) "You, Epiphan, indeed thought to yourself that also an idea put together out of several individual thoughts can already be a comprehensible image and thus also can belong to the counter-pole. Yes, even an individual thought existing for and in itself quite defined! There you are quite right; if so, then the fixed thought is however and likewise such an idea, no longer any idea, but instead already an individual expression existing for itself, because it stands in comparison with the soul as a well-formed image or as an already ordered action and thus makes up the counter-pole of the pole of life.

2 In the first (positive) pole there is life, activity and freedom, in the second (negative) pole there is death, lethargy and judgment; and behold, this is what hell, Satan and the devils consist of - thus a corresponding description of what I have now described as the counter-pole!

3 You see, the whole creation and everything that you can ever perceive with your senses are fixed thoughts, ideas and expressions of God - also you people in your sensual body; and in as far as the soul is connected to the body with it’s nerves and blood-ether, it is also responsible for judgment and thus for death, from which however it can free itself and become quite one with it’s spirit from God in that it strives through it’s free will for the purely spiritual according to the laws of God, whereby it has transformed into the free, eternal life as self-active and independent from it’s old death.

4 But now make note of something very important! Perception and love determine the whole person to any good or also bad activity. If the realization is a spiritual one leading to God, the love will also tend towards the spiritual and thus to God and also become active, and this activity is a good one and it’s consequences are the blessings from the heaven of life.

5 But if a person from the cradle is enriched with nothing other in his recognition than only what serves love, his love will also turn completely to matter and soon head over heels become active in order to collect even more material treasures and through them to spread all the more unpleasantness for the body. At this moment the soul then completely transforms into matter, as the counter-pole of the freest divine Spirit, and forms thus with the counter-pole, as caught by the same, the counter-pole, The necessary consequence of this is judgment in and through itself, the curse of life into death and in a certain way the eternal death itself. And who is guilty then - but the person himself who has done this out of his perception, love, desire and action himself!

6 Remember this! Wherever you speak to people, investigate there whether they know something about the soul in themselves and about the eternal life of it! If they begin to shrug their shoulders and in a certain way only say with pity: Yes, we have heard speak of it many times indeed; but daily experience teaches us that there is very little or no syllable at all of truth in it - whatever is above is nothing but a hollow entertainment of certain work-shy hungering! Then you can come to the certain conclusion that the souls of such people have been as good as completely consumed and are found now one and all in judgment.

7 It will cost much to release them again from their judgment and their counter-pole prison - already very difficult on this side and on the other side even more difficult, although not quite impossible. But for that a very long decline into their own judgment and death will be necessary, until all the same a little spiritual of the soul has quite consumed the own often global matter in itself and finally is forced by hunger to feel a great longing for a spiritual food. That will happen, but only after a length of time which is unthinkable for you all."

- Chapter 230 -

The path to salvation

1 (The Lord) "You see from this that even God, if He had not given Himself out of Himself the counter-pole which is endlessly great for your comprehension, would not have been able to call forth from Himself and set up any creation as materially existent, because the great counter-pole is creation itself. This must be so established, firmly, as good as dead and constant, if it should correspond to the purpose set by the Creator. And because it is what it is and how, it is also good in God's eyes. It is only evil in man's eyes in it’s effect, because these have the designation in the soul and in part also in the flesh, as a being woken from death for eternity with the pure, positive spirit from God to unite with God, without thereby ever giving up it’s most absolute freedom and independence.

2 Now indeed the most important of all life’s questions comes forth of its own accord and asks: What does man therefore have to do and observe in order to protect his soul from the return to the old judgment of matter, which is dead?

3 He should observe exactly the Ten Commandments given to the people through Moses, which however consist very briefly of one believing firstly in a true God, loving Him above all with all the forces of life, but loving his brothers and sisters like himself and in emergency even more!

4 In these in reality only two commandments, lies however the whole Mosaic law, as well as all the prophets who have taught nothing other than only the same with many words for the sake of greater understanding.

5 Whoever does that will certainly keep his heart and thus also his soul safe from every arrogance, every hardness, from anger, hate, selfishness, envy, greed, avarice, domineeringness and worldly wellbeing and love for the world and thus enter easily the pole of life of the divine Spirit; for love for God fills the whole person with the spirit of divine love, and the love for one's neighbor embodies and strengthens the same in the soul, whereby it then becomes necessarily identical with God Himself through the Spirit of God's love in it.

6 But if it is identical to God, it will also be identical with the positive pole of life in God that has now been made known to you all and will reign with Him over all matter, from which it will never possibly be able to be caught and consumed.

7 Whoever follows this will also reap what has now been shown to you most clearly and eternally keep it in constant increase. Now tell Me, My dear Epiphan, how you have understood and taken this in!"

- Chapter 231 -

The question on the salvation of the ignorant

1 Says Epiphan: "Great Lord and Master! Great was Your previous miracle for our physical best "but even greater is Your wisdom in this teaching given to us; for it proves to us Your divinity with incomparably greater intensively. You showed us indeed unmistakably with the miracle that You must be filled with the strength and power of God, otherwise such a deed would have been impossible for You; but with this lesson You have shown us that You are directly the One whose thoughts and ideas form the certain established firm counter-pole!

2 I and surely also Aziona and Hiram have now understood very well what You, oh Lord, have said to us about our certainly very important question, and we now see how things occur and actually cannot occur otherwise. But exactly this point draws another important question for the whole humanity of this Earth.

3 Look, great Lord and Master! We now know what man has to do in order not to be consumed by Your counter-pole in the soul, which certainly is a highly sad fate for everyone who could not save himself from it. We know through Your mercy and extremely great goodness the correct path and will very certainly and surely walk along it. But what will happen with all the other people who inhabit this great Earth? They know nothing about what You have now revealed to us! How countless many people have walked the earth before us and what a countless number will walk it after us!

4 Those who were before us have certainly known nothing about this teaching and lived according to their material desires. What can their other-worldly fate be other than the sad capture from the side of Your counter-pole? Who will - whoever can - free himself from it, and when? What do the many people tell in general, who, because they originally were more spiritual, have also more easily turned towards the purely spiritual and thus after the casual laying aside of this material body have gone over to Your main pole very easily and unhindered? If I count up all those according to the books in which the pious and purely spiritual great people are described, I hardly reach the sum of a hundred thousand! But what is that is comparison with the number of those who have been consumed by the counter-pole for an unthinkably long time? There I ask nonetheless every only somewhat reasonable and comprehending person whether it would not be better never to have been born?

5 Likewise it will be with those who perhaps still will see the light of the world for half an eternity after us. They will indeed also receive some very confused expressions of this teaching of Yours; but who will teach them more clearly as You have taught us? But if such an extraordinary teaching is not given in the clearest light, it will also be accepted with difficulty by someone with a living eagerness for the direction of action, and matter will carry off the greatest victory constantly as previously.

6 Your present greatest teaching to us is indeed extremely great and holy; but this gap is unavoidably there, which I would like to have filled through Your gracious answer to this question of mine which is certainly very important for my mind! If it is Your good and holy will, give us the correct explanation for this as well!"

- Chapter 232 -

Guidance in the afterlife and reincarnation

1 I say: "If things with the foreign nations and peoples were as you depicted in your question, then it would truly look very sad for the salvation of the soul of the people on Earth; but it does look a bit different, and thus every person is given the opportunity, regardless of faith, to turn more to the spiritual than to the material. If that is the case, a soul can already on the other side no longer be attracted quite as much by the material pole, but instead it remains with it’s ever perfectly free will in a sort of equilibrium, in which it belongs neither to one pole nor to the other. I am describing this condition of the soul as a middle kingdom, in which the souls of the already perfected spirits are directed and most of all led to the better pole.

2 Certainly the issue of a complete turn-around goes quite slowly; but that does not matter, because there can never be any talk of a complete loss of a soul in any case. And if it should be consumed totally for the sake of a too great stubbornness by the full counter-pole - which certainly would be very bad - it will then have to let it fall again after a revolution of time, either on this Earth or also on another, of which there are countless many in endless space, to go through a test of fleshly life once again, without knowing and only guessing that it has already been through a test of the fleshly life once before. Nor would it help them to have such knowledge, because it would fall immediately again into it’s original evil as necessarily sensual and thus a second test of life would be purely in vain and scattered. In order to see that more easily, I will give you all an example:

3 About two thousand years ago there was a highly domineering and cruel king who out of sheer desire for murder had thousands of people executed in the cruelest way and also had given in to all other possible tortures. Where his soul went after the death of the body is easy to guess!

4 But as I have shown you before, such a soul cannot go anywhere else but to it’s own kind. What will happen to it after a short time there, where it’s society is just the same as himself and in time even worse, because through a certain time period their anger and their rage constantly increases, any of you can easily imagine that; for everything has it’s limits still with the material souls, only arrogance and domineeringness do not, which some kings have shown only too clearly in antiquity during their lifetimes, since they presented themselves to their people as a god and demanded from them that they worship him as the only true god and honored him with all sorts of sacrifices that he demanded in the highest way. The familiar story of the former king Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon shows that only too clearly.

5 But that happens there to a much greater degree. Every such soul offers itself to the others immediately as the very highest and most powerful god, takes on immediately a terribly commanding position and straightaway demands everything from the other souls who think and act the same way.

6 Indeed you cannot imagine with what rage the other similar souls, who have battled among one another for a long time for the same reason, fall upon the confident soul and put it to the most terrible tests; but such an extremely foolish soul even accepts all the imaginable torments and tortures for a time, because it is of the blind opinion that it will be recognized and accepted by the others as a god and ruler above all after having withstood all the true tests of hell.

7 But since in the passing of time they then begin to see that they were only ridiculed, they burn with anger and rage towards their torturers, and then there is a battle and again fire to the highest degree, and these souls almost dissolve themselves in such a fire of anger - yes, they would in the end quite destroy themselves, if such a thing was possible!

8 But such a permitted storm, however terribly it rages, always has it’s good side, in that it destroys a great part of the most harmful matter in such souls and thereby makes the soul somewhat purer. After many similar storms here and there the soul becomes more sober and seeks to get away from such a tumultuous society and seeks a way out; and then it is usually allowed to go to a better society, or it is engendered back into flesh.

9 And now we are back to our example king, whose soul has made such a journey that I have just described to you in detail. The soul of a previous king of antiquity, who did his terrible deeds in furthest Asia, which has returned to this world, now comes to quite a different part of the world in the usual fleshly manner in a child's body, naturally born to some poor woman. Then such a soul is a child again and knows not the least about it’s previous condition, and it would be highly wrong if it had even the slightest memory of that.

10 The child, once again of the male gender, now grows in poverty to a man and becomes a very honest and competent worker in any domestic or agricultural work after poor upbringing and other education, recognizes God and prays to Him and thanks Him for his daily bread. In the end he finds a true desire to serve other people for a paltry reward and to be useful. In the end our worker becomes old, weak, miserable and ill, and dies like all people on Earth.

11 What happens now with his soul? It comes once again to the very good, working and active souls and has it’s joy to stand low and to serve everyone according to need. Such a good direction of the mind causes the soon awakening of it’s spirit from God, which is it’s other-worldly alter ego (second self).

12 If that is the certain case, the full union with him will not be waited for long. Once this has happened, the full consciousness comes back to such a soul and with it the clear memory of all it’s previous states, and it praises God's wisdom, power and love, which even in the most pitiful circumstances has led him back to the true eternal life.

13 But from this you can now see clearly enough how God is able to lead every soul that seems to you quite base, back to true life and light on His path that is not investigable for any mortal."

- Chapter 233 -

The dissolution and emergence of the material creations

1 (The Lord) "God, as the purest love in Himself, cannot do otherwise than to love His thoughts and ideas, even if they make up His counter-pole as creatures. And so even a stone cannot eternally remain a stone, and in an unthinkable number of years for you even this Earth, as all the countless other stars, become very old and soft like an old dress. And then everything will be transformed into independent spiritual things that are related to God, but for that new material creations will come forth and will, each in his own way, be led and developed.

2 But certainly an extremely long time of more than eons of eons of earth years will be needed for this. However it is not to be understood that one day these present creations will suddenly rise up and be called into a very new being, but instead that happens only partly, as in a virgin forest indeed the old trees die, rot and in the end completely become water, air and ether, thus become another, spiritual being, but in it’s place a number of other trees always cover the ground again. But as the Spirit of God works in the small things, likewise he works in the big things, if one can call God 'big' at all.

3 Now I have shown you all everything clearly, without having used parables at all, as the old wise men did. But I have only shown it to you because you possess the necessary ability to understand; you do not need to pass it on to the rest of the world’s humanity however, except only that they should believe in My name and keep the commandments of God, since they are truly commandments of love. Everything else will in any case be revealed to the converted people by their own awakened spirit which is from God, according to the need of the soul. The children should only be satisfied with milk; once they have become manly and strong, then they will be able to digest firmer food too.

4 Now think about all of this in your hearts, and should anything still be somewhat unclear to you, I will remain another five days as your guest, and you can ask Me or also one of My disciples about it, and light shall be given you! But I will not give you any other teaching from now on, since I have in any case already shown and taught you everything; but as your friend I will remain, as I have said, another five days or so with you, and from time to time show you some earthly good and useful things. Now let us go however to see all the new buildings and orchards, fields, pastures and animals!"

5 Everyone thanked Me from the bottom of their hearts for this teaching, rose and went with Me to the neighbors. When these three new disciples had convinced themselves of everything that had happened there, they could not be amazed enough and taught their neighbors about Me and about the high and holy purpose of My arrival and the neighbors now believed quite without any objection their words and were full of joy at it.

6 I Myself, however, taught them about the use of the many things and objects that they now had, and thereby made them into very competent farmers, which they were not before. It goes without saying that everyone had a great joy in this. In this way these remaining five days were spent in this place.

- Chapter 234 -

The transfiguration of the Lord on Mount Tabor (Matt 17:1,2)

1 On the sixth, but actually on the seventh day I said to the disciples, "We have now worked honestly for six days and have reaped a good harvest even in this desert. But now it is time to move on again; for in other places there is still a number of fields and deserts lying fallow which we will cultivate, bless and make fruitful.

2 But before we move on from here, you few should stay here a time until I and Peter, John and Jacob return to you from this high mountain, at the foot of which we are now standing, and which I will climb now with these three!"

3 But those who were to remain asked Me why they were not allowed to also climb the mountain.

4 And I said: "Because I wish it to be so!"

5 Then they became silent and no one dared to ask Me about anything further.

6 Only Aziona commented quietly to himself: "The highest mountain is that one just before us, but it is immensely difficult to climb because of it’s steep rock faces"

7 I said: "Believe Me that no mountain is too steep for Me, and none is too high! In a few hours we will come back again and so keep a midday meal ready!"

8 At this I took the three mentioned disciples with Me and we set off on our way. (Matt. 17:1) On one side the mountain was easy to climb, and we reached the highest peak in a few hours; but the mountain could only be climbed by usual mountain climbers in twelve or thirteen hours because of its height, and thus this climb of ours was a sort of miracle.

9 Now we were on the highest summit, from which one can see almost all of Galilee, Judaea and Palestine, also a part of the real, great sea. When the three disciples, in rapture over the most glorious view, became downright transfigured, thanking Me from the bottom of their hearts for the immense pleasure, I also was transfigured, so much so that My face shone like the sun and My garments turned white, like fresh snow lit up by the sun (Matt. 17:2). And the three disciples were so full of amazement that they could hardly speak.

10 After a while Peter gathered himself first and said, "Lord, are we now in heaven or simply only in paradise? It seems to me as if I can hear very quiet whispering angel voices around me!"

11 I said: "Neither in heaven nor in paradise specifically, but instead quite simply and naturally on the Earth! But since we have both heaven as well as paradise in us through the power of the word of God, inasmuch as it includes what is true and good, we are indeed also in heaven and at the same time in paradise. This is exactly what transfigures your heart, and while you were transfigured in your heart before Me, I also became transfigured externally before your eyes so that you might become aware of being at the same time in paradise and in heaven, since your heart is full of the truth of faith and, issuing from this, the goodness of love. For, what true heaven and true paradise mean is that you believe in Me and do what I teach you and, finally, that you love Me truly with all your heart, thereby carrying the true Kingdom of God within you, which is nowhere else to be found. Once you have it within, it is also present throughout all infinity, and no matter where you may be, either here on this earth or on the moon or on one of the many stars, which are nothing but celestial globes, you are surrounded by your blissful brothers, although you are not able to see them with your physical eyes on account of your body."

- Chapter 235 -

The Lord in conversation with Moses and Elijah

1 Said Peter: "Lord, I believe it says somewhere in Scripture: 'The souls of the dead will rest in the bowels of the earth till doomsday, when they will be called forth from their long sleep by the mighty trumpets of the angels. Then the righteous will rise to life eternal in the Kingdom of God, but the wicked will be cast forever into hell and will henceforth be tormented by the devils."'

2 I say: "I have already explained to you how the speech of the prophets is to be understood and all the same things so many times that it would now be extremely superfluous to give you any further explanations. But in order to heal you actually from your highly false opinion, I will now open your inner eye of the soul and you will then see for yourself how this rest of the souls of long deceased fathers looks like and what sort of face the bosom of the Earth has!"

3 At this I said loudly: "Epheta!" That means: Open up!

4 And behold, two prophets appeared, Moses and Elijah, and spoke clearly to Me about what would happen to Me in a few years, and whether such a thing could not be changed. (Matt. 17:3) But I insisted that I could not possibly do anything other than only what the Father, Who is in Me and lives in Me, wants.

5 Then both the prophets bowed deeply and said as if with one voice: "Oh Lord, Your will is alone holy and may it happen always and eternally as with us in heaven, so also among all people and spirits on Earth! We both were in our earthly lifetimes great and respected for Your name's sake; yet we wanted rather now to be with You on Earth, like these three and the others also who are not here, although they now and for a long time will be despised and persecuted for Your name's sake!"

6 I said to Elijah, "You were also with Me on the Earth recently - did Herod's work on your flesh please you?"

7 Elijah said: "Not on Earth, but it pleased me all the more so here, and I would like despite all the great blessing that is now mine for eternity, to walk the path of the flesh another hundred times for Your sake, no matter how miserable and thorny it is."

8 At this point, the disciples were overcome by sleep, so much so that they sank to the ground and for a short time were fast asleep.

9 But I spoke with the two prophets and said to Elijah: "At the end of times of this Earth you will indeed be sent once again in the flesh to the people of this Earth, but no longer with a veiled inner spiritual vision, but unveiled and even brighter than on the two previous occasions when you came under the name 'Sehel' and later 'Elijah', and the brother Moisez (Moses) will lead you, but purely in spirit; for his flesh will remain until the end of time the property of the Earth.

10 But then all flesh of this Earth will be transformed into the spiritual; you will however never need it as I gave you a new body for eternity anyway. Watch well over the children of Israel until I return soon when My greatest work will have been completed! Then I will also give you a firm chair in My new kingdom. For behold, the time is now here that I once showed you on Earth, when I will create everything anew: first My spiritual worlds, and later the same thing will happen to matter, until it has reached the correct level of full purification! But now let us wake the three again from their sleep!"

- Chapter 236 -

The three disciples conversing with beings of the beyond.

The Spirit of God in man as a guide to all truth

1 At this the three woke up again, rose from the ground and beheld Me, Moses and Elijah, without the shining light. This was very pleasant for them, since they had been extremely powerfully blinded by the previous too strong light. They told how they had spoken with many prophets from ancient times about all the states of the future life, just as if being and acting on Earth, and many secret matters had been explained to them.

2 Moses and Elijah however taught them further about the numerous states of the great beyond.

3 Then the three became so delighted and happy that Peter called out loudly to Me: "Lord, it is good for us to be here! If You wish, I will make three shelters here, one for You and one for Moses and one for Elijah!" (Matt. 17:4)

4 And while he was still speaking about the building of the shelters, a thick, bright cloud suddenly overshadowed them, so that they could not see or make out anything for a moment.

5 And behold, a Voice spoke from the cloud: "Behold, this is My beloved Son, on Whom My favor rests - you should listen to Him." (Matt. 17:5)

6 The three heard this like the powerful roll of great thunder, and were terrified and fell on their faces. (Matt. 17:6)

7 But I immediately came to them, touched them and said to them, "Stand up, and do not be afraid!" (Matt. 17:7)

8 As they lifted up their eyes from the ground, they saw no one but Me alone and began to wonder greatly at everything that they had seen and that had happened. (Matt. 17:8) But the three now wanted to ask Me about some other things, and namely about the meaning of everything that they had seen in their dream.

9 But I said: "All that will be revealed to you by your spirit which is actually My spirit within you - in your soul, so that it will be fully alive within you; for if I explain it to you now, you will accept the explained facts in your knowledge and then believe that it is so because I have explained it to you so. But then you are not in the full truth by a long shot, and that is because what is explained is not your possession, but instead only His who has explained it to you out of His living treasure; but when your spirit reveals it in your soul, then the revelation is your possession and you are then in the full truth.

10 But the Spirit which I call your spirit, is really My Spirit in you all and knows about all things and conditions just like I Myself. It can lead you into all wisdom. But now it is not yet awake in you and effective, that means that it is indeed in itself awake and effective, but it’s awareness and effect is still something foreign to you and not your possession, because your soul is not yet pure enough to fully become one with My Spirit.

11 But when I shall have ascended up into My heavens after the suffering that I have already told you about, then I will pour out the holy spirit of all truth over your souls and unite it with them. This spirit, which then will be fully one with you for eternity, will also then lead you in all truth and wisdom.

12 But before My ascension that I told you about do not tell anyone about what you saw here, same as nothing about what I did at Caesarea Philippi and down here with the fishermen! And now let us head down again from the mountain to the village of our fishermen!"

13 And we set off on the way back, and on the way I also warned the three not to tell even the other brothers anything about what they had seen until the designated time, that is, until after My rising and ascension. (Matt. 17:9)

- Chapter 237 -

The incarnations of John the Baptist

1 But Peter came up to Me as we were still on the way down the mountain and asked Me what that should mean, if the scribes said that Elijah must come before the arrival of the Messiah and restore all things and thus prepare the way for the Lord. (Matt. 17:10)

2 At this I said to Peter: "The scribes are right, and you too with this question of yours! Elijah is indeed coming first and will restore everything (Matt. 17:11), yet I say to you all: Elijah already came, but they did not recognize him, just as little as they now recognize Me and did to him whatever they wished. So also the Son of Man is going to suffer at their hands, as I have told you already many times. (Matt. 17:12) I say unto you: This whole corrupt kind will not move before they have reached the goal of their revenge and through it then also their judgment!

3 John, in whom Elijah's spirit lived, did signs, taught and baptized and prepared thus the people for Me. What happened to him for this?

4 I Myself teach only the purest religion of life and perform signs which have never been seen before on this Earth and will never be seen again in such size and extent; therefore they have all the more anger and rage at Me and will do to Me with the permission from above what I have already pointed out to you.

5 Of course, the old question again and again arises in your hearts as to why I Myself allow the people to do such a thing to Me. But you have been instructed often enough on this topic, and so let us go down to our people in the valley!"

6 When I had finished this speech, the three saw only then that John the Baptist was actually Elijah. (Matt. 17:13)

7 But as we were still going down into the valley, Peter asked Me another time and said: "Lord, but there is something strange about Elijah! He was really seriously on this Earth three times and always "let's say "in the flesh?

8 The first two times as Sehel and later as Elijah, he did not die, but instead only ascended into heaven with the highly surely very transfigured body, although he was born into the world of a woman just like the last time; this last time however he had to really be disembodied. What happened then to his previous two bodies, and what will happen to them now? In Your kingdom of heaven, when everything has been completed, will he go around with three bodies? For it is said that on the final day even the bodies will arise and be reunited with their souls! How should we understand that?"

9 I said: "What the resurrection of the flesh and what Judgment Day means, I have given more than sufficient information on these at Caesarea Philippi and down there in the village. Did you not pay attention to My speeches? Shall I repeat for you the same thing again and again? You know something about it, but out of context, and what must be blamed for this is your still very strong Jewish faith which makes you still take everything literally in your old, queer fantasy despite My numerous explanations.

10 Do adopt the right viewpoint and become sensible in this My truly purest light, and you will no longer ask about such things that should have been clear to you before anyone else!

11 Is not the day on which a child is born into the world it’s youngest day? [Translator's Note: Doomsday or Judgment Day in German = Jüngster Tag, or Jüngstes Gericht (youngest day, youngest judgment). Youngest in the sense of latest. ] Or, is not even each day of your life your youngest day and your birthday, which was once your youngest day, now your oldest?

12 The flesh of which your body now consists will decay, transform into worms and plants and into their souls, and quite different beings will come from this which then will no longer have anything to do with your soul and with your spirit. Understand this! According to what has been explained to you, the youngest day [Judgment Day] for your soul will obviously be the one on which you will be taken out of your body."

- Chapter 238 -

The resurrection of the flesh

1 "By the resurrection of the flesh do understand the charitable works of true neighborly love. These will be the flesh of the soul and will rise, simultaneously with the soul, on the soul's youngest day in the spirit-world upon the true trumpet call of this My teaching as a superior ether-body, destined for eternal life. Even if you had a hundred times carried a body on the earth, you will have only one body in the beyond, namely, the one we have discussed.  Do you now understand this?"

2 Peter said: "Yes, Lord and Master, it is now clearer to me than ever! But I can still remember a text by a prophet which said something like this: “You will meet your God one day in your flesh, therefore keep it pure and do not make it unclean by all sorts of sins! You will never see the face of God in a sinful body!” That is approximately how the text goes, and it is hard for human reason to interpret it differently. How, then, is this to be understood in its true sense?"

3 I said: "Just like the previous one! 'You will never see God in your body' means as much as : In your good works according to the well-known will of God, you will see your God, because it is only the works which the soul performs with it’s body, which has simply been given to it as a tool, which give a soul either honor before God or also the opposite. Pure works give purity, unclean works impurity. Pure thinking in compliance with pure knowledge and otherwise chaste and clean behavior alone without works of neighborly love are by far not sufficient to provide the soul with a spirit-body and, therefore, with a contemplation of God.

4 For he whose soul is still so blind that he fails to understand that it is not just knowledge but chiefly the works done in compliance with pure knowledge and faith that give true permanency to the soul, is still in a pitiful condition and like a man who is quite capable of building a house but cannot decide to set to work, although he has great quantities of the best building materials on hand. Say, will he ever own a house in which he can find shelter from the uncontrollable forces of the raging elements when the winter-storms come?

5 What use to you in a storm are all the best-founded knowledge and understanding about what well-built walls of a house can offer as resistance to a storm, as a result of which those living in the house are fully secure from it’s power, if you do not own a house and on your travels across the harsh desert of your life you cannot reach any other one anymore?

6 Yes, My dears, knowledge and faith - however pure - has no firm walls which can protect you in times of storm; but the works of true love for one's neighbor can indeed. They are the true, enduring body of the soul, it’s house, it’s land and it’s true world. Remember this well, not alone for your own sakes, but also above all for the sake of those to whom you will preach the gospel after Me! If they will ever know and believe the word of salvation, admonish them to do the true works of neighborly love that I so often bid you to do.

7 For truly I tell you: If someone says he loves God but does not heed the misery of his poor brother, he will not ever behold God in his flesh! For the Pharisees and doctors of the law also say that they serve God in the fullest measure and sense and that they continually reconcile sinful mankind with God through their prayers and sacrifices. On the other hand, they rob the people, and neighborly love is far from them. Of what benefit is this? It benefits neither the Pharisees nor the people.

8 For one thing, God has never needed any human service, much less any burnt offerings of slaughtered animals. However, God looks kindly on the sacrifice offered Him in good works of love by true neighborly love and always gives His blessing in such a case.  Do you now understand, Peter, what it means to 'see God in your flesh'?"

9 Peter says: "Yes, Lord, now I am perfectly in the clear; for You, oh Lord, have now shown it to us so clearly that we have seized it already with our hands and feet. We thank You for it! But now we are back at the place again - yet instead of midday it will already be closer to evening!"

10 I say: "That does not matter at all! We will take some bread and wine and then head on our way immediately! Therefore let's go the little path only very quickly!"

- Chapter 239 -

The blessing of moderation

The preparation of the meat of impure animals

1 We doubled our pace and soon reached Aziona's house, where the other disciples were waiting for us and Aziona, Hiram and Epiphan already were keeping a good meal ready for us, consisting of fish, bread and wine.

2 Here Peter took Me aside and said: "Lord, on the road You mentioned only bread and wine, and now there is also fish. May we eat fish too?"

3 But I rebuked him for such petty scruples smacking of temple Jews and said: "Eat what you are served and it will harm neither your body nor your soul, but let everyone guard against excesses, including all of you.

4 What is more than moderation is evil for man. Excessive eating causes diseases of the stomach - but excessive drinking not only creates stomach- and chest ailments but also lewdness and unchastity of every imaginable kind.

5 Be moderate and sober in everything and you will have a healthy and cheerful soul in an always healthy body. Whoever prepares food for himself and others, let him prepare it fresh and wholesome so that it will not harm him. Bear this well in mind, along with all the other things."

6 But Peter still asked and said: "Lord, do the often very respected heathens not sin when they eat the flesh of unclean animals? For it is forbidden for us Jews, and whoever eats it would commit a great sin against the Law of Moses."

7 I said: "In emergency even you as a strict Jew can also eat the flesh of any animal, and it will serve you well; for all nourishment that a person is forced to take in need, is purified by Me - only he must observe an even greater moderation!

8 The flesh of pigs is good, but the slaughtered animal must bleed out and then be pickled for seven days in salt, vinegar and thyme and have a weight placed on top. It is then to be taken out of the brine, well dried with a linen cloth and hung for seven weeks in the smoke of good wood and herbs until it is completely dry and hard. Who then wants to eat it shall boil it at first in half water, half wine with the addition of thyme and parsley and will thus have a good and healthful food on his table. However, these animals must always be slaughtered in wintertime.

9 In the same way as the pigs also the other unclean animals must be handled if their flesh, eaten in moderation, is not to be harmful to man. What applies to the land animals also applies to the various species of birds of the air and the various animals in the great oceans.

10 And now, Peter, you will know what you may eat and how, so that you do not sin against your stomach and also not against your soul! But now let us take this meal quickly and immediately after move on!"

11 We sat down at the table and took the meal.

12 But Aziona came and said, "Lord and Master, wouldn't You rather move on tomorrow morning than now in the evening?! It is hours from here to any place known to me, and the night will catch You up before You reach any place!"

13 But I said: "Remain with Me and in My teaching in your hearts, and I will also be here with you in your time on Earth and eternally after! But now I must go away from here; for not far from here many people are waiting for Me. Thus I must hurry and help them. But I will visit you in the winter again for a few days just like now; for I will spend the winter not far from here, in Kis near to Cana. But now release our ship for Me from it’s post, and I will then straightaway head away from here with My disciples!"

14 After this, everything that I had ordered happened quickly. I boarded the ship and quickly set out over the water and left with a good wind. We sailed around the northern foot of the mountain and soon came into a small bay, which lay opposite the place where we had just spent several days, over the mountain that we had climbed.

15 On the shores of the bay lay a village where a lot of people lived and came together; for it was a trading place where one brought the best salt to market, also the purest mountain oil, wood, crockery and all sorts of other domestic implements. And therefore this place was a very wealthy one and always frequently visited by many people from all regions and places, and at the same time it was also the place where My disciples had come when I had sent them out for a short time before Me a few moons ago so that the people should prepare for Me, and from where I had called them then to Me in a miraculous way on the mountain near Kis; and so I was already well-known there in a certain way, and even My disciples who had spent several days there on that occasion.

- Chapter 240 -

The healing of a possessed boy

Gospel of Matthew 17:14-21

1 We alighted, fastened our ship and stepped onto the land while it was still day. But on this day there was a great fair and many people were present.

2 When we came to the people, we were recognized immediately by many people, and one came, fell at My feet (Matt 17:14) and said, "Lord have mercy on my son, he has great suffering; for he is a lunatic, as the doctors say, and has great torment in it, so that he often falls into the fire and into the water! (Matt 17:15) When Your disciples were here not so long ago and healed many very ill people by the laying on of their hands, I brought my son to them also; but they could not help him." (Matt 17:16)

3 Then I said to those of My disciples whose faith had not yet become a rock and who a few moons ago had worked in My name: "Oh you unbelieving and amiss kind! How long shall I stay with you and how long shall I put up with you? Bring the boy here to Me!" (Matt 17:17)

4 Then the father of the sick boy rose, hurried into his house and brought him to Me straightaway. When the boy was with Me, he made a terribly distorted face; for the terrible spirit by which the boy was possessed, tore him a few times before Me and forced out of the very contorted mouth of the boy several terrible curses and obscenities, which are not necessary to be repeated here. But I rebuked the terrible spirit very much and commanded it to leave the boy's body instantly and to go down to hell. Then the evil visibly flew out of the boy and the boy was immediately fully cured. (Matt 17:18)

5 But the terrible spirit had the form of a great black, fluffy cat and asked Me, saying: "You, son of the very highest, free me from hell and punish me in some other way!"

6 But I said: "Rise from here to the bare gorges of the moon where you were before and purge your many abominations that you performed eighty years ago when you were still on Earth in the flesh!"

7 Then the terrible spirit took the form of an ape with great bat-like wings and immediately flew up and away like an arrow. The people were amazed, and many were terrified at such a sight.

8 But I calmed them and said: "Do not be afraid; for I have been given all power in heaven as well as on Earth, and this spirit which tortured this boy for seven years will never again come close to this Earth!"

9 But then the father of the now fully healthy boy asked Me: "Lord, why did this have to happen to my son, who has never sinned in any seeming way, just as my whole house has always kept strictly to the Law? And yet it was the very most innocent of all who had to be so miserably tortured for such a long time! Such a thing can only happen with God's permission! But why does God allow such a thing?"

10 I answered and said: "God tests those whom He loves in particular, and if the tested passes the test well, then he has found his salvation for eternity!

11 But the soul of your boy is from one of those great worlds, countless many of which fill the endlessly great space over and under this Earth. It needed this for it’s salvation as well as the test of the flesh, through which it already received the power in the youth which many a soul does not achieve even if it had to bear the pressure of it’s heavy flesh for a hundred years.

12 Believe Me, the people do not know it, and nor can they know, why such a thing is and happens; but God knows about absolutely everything!

13 But eighty years ago this terrible spirit was a very usurious pig trader and had an important trading business, became very rich and in the end as a Jew even ran a slave trade, where he made use of great cruelty. Finally he died a miserable death, and his fate was to reach the kingdom of the devils as a devil himself.

14 And because it suited him there very badly, he began to go into himself and thought in his innards: Why did I have to become a devil then? My bad, gluttonous body was guilty. Let me go back again into the good, sober flesh of an innocent boy and I will become an angel in it! And if the boy's flesh should feel even the slightest desire for gluttony, then it shall immediately be chastised by me!

15 And behold, since this was a very serious decision of the indeed very terrible soul, it was practically granted to him. The success of it however is a good one for the boy, and the previously very terrible soul has now a better direction and taken on even something more human. Anything further will be done by the highly barren and inhospitable abysses of the moon!"

16 At this the man asked me further and said: "Is the moon a world as well? And how did my son become a lunatic then? For besides the possession he must have been that, because the full moon had a great influence on his suffering."

17 I said: "You will not understand, or only with difficulty, that the moon is also a type of Earth and world, although it is so; but My disciples understand it, and the later descendants will understand and see it only too well. But that your boy always had such a great fear of the full moon was not dependent on his nature, but instead in that of the spirit plaguing him, which originally came from that very scanty and highly inhospitable world. Anything further you do not need to know."

18 When many standing around also heard this, they said: "That is an extraordinary person! He performs miracles like a great prophet, but immediately afterwards he begins to speak nonsense and speaks like a madman!"

19 But the man went up to them and said very seriously: "He is certainly not crazy "but we are, because we are not capable of understanding his wisdom!"

20 Then there was a short heated exchange among them, which the healed boy brought to an end with a few very cogent words.

21 At this My disciples came up to Me and asked, saying: "Lord, now tell us why we could not drive out this spirit; for we drove out many others in Your name?" (Matt 17:19)

22 I said, "Firstly because you have so little faith! For I tell you all: Truly, if you have firm, undoubting faith as small as a mustard seed, you can say to this high mountain: Move from here to there over the sea! And it will immediately lift itself up, and nothing will be impossible for you! (Matt 17:20) But this kind [of spirit] does not go out except by prayer and fasting. (Matt 17:21)

23 When you were here, the boy had not yet reached the highest degree of fasting and prayer, as his possessor demanded. But now that has happened and the most believing of you would have been able to drive it out, although the spirit would certainly have proved to be very stubborn. But now it was better thus. Now it is already becoming evening, the sun is sinking there under the horizon, and so we will go to the house of the man whose son I have healed!"

- Chapter 241 -

The Lord's sojourn in Jesaira and stop at Peter's fishing lodge near Capernaum

1 But the man heard this and became extremely glad that I had decided to take up accommodation with him. The man prepared an evening meal and was very friendly to us, likewise his whole house as well. Only he advised us not to go to Jerusalem; for he had recently been there for business and had heard only too clearly what an intransigent hate the Pharisees had particularly towards Me.

2 But I said: "Friend, I know their most secret thoughts! And what they want to do to Me and even will do, I know very well. But even if they kill Me, nonetheless it will not help them at all; for after three days I will defeat death and rise again and be with My people again until the end of the world! But now nothing more about it, but instead give us a good bed for the night, and we will lie down to rest, since our limbs have become very tired!"

3 The host did that immediately and we lay down to rest. The night was quickly slept through, and we were already on our feet before dawn. And our host already busied his whole house and had them provide a morning meal for us. When that had been taken, the disciples asked Me what else was to be done.

4 And I said: "Now we will travel on; for here there is not much to do!"

5 Then the host asked, saying: "I would have been of the opinion that there is a lot to be done here; for on this place there are a great number of people!"

6 I said: "That is true indeed; but they are mostly sheer traders, and they have either little or no meaning at all for us. Thus we want to go somewhere else where there are not so many traders and money changers."

7 At this I rose with My disciples and we boarded our ship and quickly sailed away. Towards the middle of the day we came along the bank to our old Jesaira after our journey which was somewhat slower this time. When the people here saw us, they ran towards us in crowds and begged Me to heal their sick.

8 But I said: "I did not come only to heal your sick, but instead much more in order to tell you that the kingdom of God is near to you, as I told you not so long ago; but you did not pay attention to it then, because you knew Me from Nazareth, and only now are you thinking anything of it! And so I will not remain with you and nor will I heal your sick! Go to your doctors; they will no doubt come to terms with your sick!"

9 At this some of them became sullen, but others remained and continued to ask Me to heal their sick.

10 But I said: "It will be well for those of you who believe that I am the promised Messiah, who lays his hands on the sick in My name, and it should go better with him, whatever evil he has been beset with!"

11 Then many shouted, "We believe, we believe!"

12 At this they left the bank hastily and hurried to their sick, of whom several had already become fresh and healthy. But those who did not really believe in their hearts laid their hands on their sick in vain and ran back to the bank again in order to seek advice from Me about what was lacking, why they could not succeed to do what their neighbors had done. But I was no longer in that place, but already quite far away, and indeed almost at the place where Peter had his fisherman's hut, not far from Capernaum.

13 We remained there for a few days and rested from our efforts a little and helped Peter's family to fish. Here we also left the ship and then made the journey to Galilee by foot and visited a number of places, villages and areas. I and the disciples announced the gospel, found a good reception from many, but also many opponents. For on this journey I performed few miracles, for there was too little faith for it. But in general, northern Galilee was too much peppered with Greeks and Romans and always travelled through by a number of conjurors and magicians who did their business there, since miracles did not mean much there and were not treated with much respect. It was therefore better to only sow here the good seed, allow it to grow and then, a year later, give it further care.

- Chapter 242 -

The Lord talks about His imminent suffering

1 When we had come to the end of our journey through northern Galilee, the disciples asked Me and said: "Lord, we have now moved around upper Galilee for a few moons from place to place and almost from house to house, and have preached Your teaching, and many have accepted it with much love and faith and have thus converted from paganism to Judaism. We are now almost finished with Galilee; what should or will we do now? Should we move to Judea, Iturea, Trachonitis or to Palestine, which are so hostile to You and to us?"

2 I said: "If you teach the people My word, your speech is good and wise; but when you say such things and the most foolish things of the world to Me, then you are just like quite ordinary people and think and speak like they do! When My time of My suffering predicted already many times to you all comes, it will be there without fail; but as long as it is not, we can go to Jerusalem and Bethlehem a hundred times and no-one will lay a hand on us! Have you understood Me?"

3 Peter said: "Yes, Lord; for You have now spoken again very clearly! But now tell us for once very exactly what Your suffering will consist of!"

4 I said: I told you all already at the old Roman, Mark, and again among the poor fishermen and also even earlier, when we went to Caesarea, what will happen to Me in a few years from now in Jerusalem. Why do you ask then again? Yes, you have a great fear of it, and so you ask for the sake of your fear; but so that your soul get used to it, I will tell you all once again:

5 In that future time it will happen that I, but only as a son of man, am going to be delivered into the hands of man. (Matt. 17:22) They will indeed kill in Me what is of the son of man; but on the third day the killed son of man will - let's say - rise again with skin and hair and go forth from the grave more alive than now as an eternal victor over death and hell, and you will have Me again in your midst as now. (Matt. 17:23) But no hair on your heads will be harmed! Understand once and for all how things will be!"

6 Everyone said: "Yes, Lord, from now on we understand it and see also more or less, and it seems to us as if we heard words saying in us: One must first even have a mortal body if one can open the eyes of the very mortal, blind and evil people to life in the fullest way."

7 And I said in addition: "Amen, so is it; for whoever is not spiritually alive through and through himself, cannot secure the full eternal life of another one! But I came to this world in order to do that in word and deed, and so this must also happen. For also My body is now still as mortal as yours; but it will become immortal, and henceforth I shall be able to fully secure eternal life in it’s fullness for you. Have you understood that now?"

8 Now the disciples understood better and became calmer.

- Chapter 243 -

Peter and the tax collector

1 With other conversations of the same type, through which the disciples came out of their worry, we came into the area of Capernaum. And there was a toll booth; this stood near to the Sea of Galilee and demanded from everyone the road toll.

2 Therefore the tax-collector, to whom we were very well-known, went to Peter and said: "Does your teacher not pay the tribute money?" (Matt. 17:24)

3 And Peter answered: "Oh yes, if anyone demands it of Him; but firstly we are no foreigners who alone have to pay the tax according to the law, and secondly none of us, including the Master, has any money. You know that there on the sea, hardly two hundred steps from here, is my house. We are now going there and will certainly spend some days there, and I will bring you over the tribute money straightaway."

4 Then the tax-collector spoke: "There is no hurry with it; except for your master, who is no citizen of Capernaum, the rest of you are free, because you are locals."

5 At this decision we then went home to Peter's house, and when we were there, I asked the disciples and said: "What do you think now, Simon Peter? From whom do the kings of the Earth collect customs or toll tax? From their sons or, as I well know, only from strangers?" (Matt. 17:25)

6 Peter said: "As I have just dealt with the tax-collector at the customs house - only from strangers!"

7 Then I said further: "Thus we as children are free! (Matt. 17:26) But so that we will not annoy these greedy people, and since you according to the affirmation of your family members possess not a penny of money in the house, take a strong hook, go down to the sea and throw the hook, and the first fish that you catch, take it in; and when you open it’s mouth, you will find a stater in it (two-drachma coin)! Take it, bring it here and give it to the tax-collector for Me and you!" (Matt. 17:27)

8 Peter now immediately did as I had ordered. And behold, a seven-pound salmon caught the hook, brought the stater - and us a good meal; for this type of fish are the best and healthiest of a lake. When Peter returned from the customs house, he said that the tax-collector refused to accept the whole stater, but only wanted to accept half. However, he, Peter, had reassured him that all twelve of them had travelled as far as the Master alone. The tax-collector found that well-reckoned and finally accepted the whole stater.

9 But I said: "Well, just have the fish prepared, and we'll let the tax-collector be who he is!"

10 But Jacob asked Me how the stater had got into the fish's mouth.

11 And I said, "The Romans from Capernaum occupied themselves by throwing drachmas into the water for their ship's boys who could swim, and these then fetched them out again. But our salmon snapped this one up and chewed it for a time. But since the metal would not be chewed nor swallowed, it remained stuck in the fish's mouth and Peter caught exactly the same hungry salmon all the easier because it was very hungry. The miracle for man is only that I knew about it. But now see that we are served wine and bread and in addition the fish!"

12 Everyone hurried there now to fetch what had been demanded. The wine of course had to be manufactured in the familiar, miraculous way. Very soon everything was ready and we sat down at the table.

- Chapter 244 -

On the greatest in heaven

About annoyances

1 But as we were eating and drinking and in the end were filled with good things, which lasted almost an hour, several disciples rose from their seats, came up to Me and asked Me: "Lord, You have now told us a lot about the actual form of the kingdom of heaven, and how there are various levels of eternal bliss, of which some close to God and others further and once again some stand in a way the furthest from the Sun of Grace. We found that quite right and according to all reason; for there must also be differences in heaven, both in form as well as in the various levels of bliss and the blessed. We however would like to hear from You now who will be the first in Your heavens and who, as one says: will be the greatest according to God." (Matt. 18:1)

2 But in Simon Peter's house there were several children of the neighbors; I called one of them to Me and made him stand right away in the midst of the inquiring disciples (Matt. 18:2) and said to them: "Truly, unless you are converted from such worldly arrogant thoughts and become just as humble as these children, then even you yourselves, although you are now My disciples, will not enter the kingdom of heaven! (Matt. 18:3)

3 Whoever then humbles himself like this child and feels no trace of any arrogance in himself, he is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven; for only true humility of a pure heart alone determines the degree of blessing in heaven. (Matt. 18:4)

4 But who ever receives one such child in My name, receives Me! (Matt. 18:5) But whoever causes one of these little ones who believe in Me to stumble, it is better for him that a heavy millstone be hung around his neck and that he be drowned in the depth of the sea. (Matt. 18:6) Truly I say to you: Woe to the world because of it.s stumbling blocks; for those who cause the stumbling blocks will find the most merciless judge!"

5 At this a disciple turned to Me and said: "Lord, at this speech of Yours and according to its meaning, the kingdom of heaven will look very empty; for where on Earth lives the man who, without wanting to, has not annoyed one or another child? And I suggest the case that such a child would never be annoyed by anyone. Nonetheless in his adult age he will be very instinctively annoyed by his own awakened drive and partly through the necessary knowledge of the Laws of Moses. Nonetheless tell us clearly what You wanted to say to us with such a speech, which is very hard!"

6 I spoke further and said: "Do not be foolish in your thoughts! Which only somewhat wise person will count it as sin against you if you, without knowing and wanting it, have annoyed someone?! Indeed certain stumbling blocks must come into the world, but they are permitted from above; But I only say now: Woe to him through whom it comes evilly and intentionally!" (Matt. 18:7)

7 Here another disciple took up the word again and said: "But what will happen then if my own nature annoys me? Who will be held responsible? Obviously he who gave me such an irritable nature will be guilty!"

8 At this somewhat too free and quite cheeky question on the part of the somewhat excited disciple, I also became somewhat excited then and said: "If your hand or your foot causes you to stumble, cut it off and throw it from you; it is better for you to enter the kingdom of heaven crippled or lame than having two hands or two feet, to be cast into the eternal fire!" (Matt. 18:8) And if your eye causes you to stumble, pluck it out and throw it from you; for it is better to enter the kingdom of heaven with one eye than, having two eyes, be cast into the hell of fire!" (Matt. 18:9)

9 At this Peter, who did not really like this lesson, rose and said: "But Lord, do You no longer remember the words that You said among the poor fishermen about the essence of hell, about judgment and about the eternal punishments of the lost souls? Yes, those were lessons which every healthy human reason must greet with the highest joy! But what You have now taught in a sort of excitement wipes away everything previous, and the old hell with it’s eternal punishments and its Satans and devils and fires stands again as before in the fully unchanged form before us, and we also have a most angry God before us again! I knew that we would come back to the old things and the Indians with their terrible atoning mutilations have thus the only true and correct religion for life!

10 You see, I present the example that exactly this left hand of mine annoys me! So that it cannot possibly further annoy me, I take an axe at Your command and cut the annoying hand off, which would obviously give me death without a fast help from a doctor. But I present the valuable case that I am healed and then go on very cheerfully. But it happens that the right hand begins to annoy me then. According to this lesson of Yours, I should cut it off too for the sake of the kingdom of heaven, which is however completely impossible now. So it now begs the question what I have to do in this case in order not to lose the kingdom of heaven!

11 My dear Lord and Master! With this teaching it will not be as You have now said! But whether there is another meaning behind it, that is a question which would be very difficult for any man, however wise, to answer. Before he thus accepts it naked as true and legally serious as You have just said, he will take his time and certainly remain with his old religion. I myself, as valuable as Your kingdom of heaven is and can be, indeed want to earn it through all possible self-denial, but never through cutting of my hands and feet and plucking out my eyes! Instead of that one would rather take his whole life, and then one is quite safe from all stumbling blocks!"

- Chapter 245 -

The explanation of the parables of the annoyances

1 With these words of Peter's, all the other apostles except John, agreed. But this one however took up the word and said: "But, dear brothers, how can you all now get so worked up about this as if the Lord had given us quite a new teaching! Do you not remember then the words of the Lord on the mountain in Samaria! Then the Lord spoke about the stumbling blocks almost the same way and also gave us the correct light on it. Then you all understood everything in the right way; how then not now?"

2 Said Peter: "It now indeed seems to me as if there has already been a mention of it; but about how it is to be taken and understood, I know just like surely the other brothers no syllable more, and it would be very desirable that this would be explained to us one more time."

3 Said I: "Such words were even written down like just now these words which I have now said about the disadvantages of stumbling blocks are to be written down so that you do not forget them again so easily.

4 But what does a human hand correspond to? The action, whether it is good or bad, is an action which is represented in the correct correspondence through the word and image 'hand'; but the firm will is the axe, with which alone you can separate your bad activity from yourself for ever. But how can you now be so foolish and think that I commanded physical mutilation?

5 I spoke commandingly also about a foot that annoys you. Who indeed will ever be able to really cut off their own foot? And how foolish would I Myself be to order such a cruel mutilation of one’s own body so that the soul would be saved from hell!

6 But just as the body must have feet in order to proceed and to be able to be active in the right place, so the soul must have love and desire for something so that it will become active in it and for the purpose of it’s comfort, however characterized.

7 If now love and desire of the soul are not according to My teaching, which is clear to be seen, then it is bad and annoys your whole body, and if you take the sharp axe of will again and cut off such love and desire and change and act then alone with good love and desire, you will then very easily enter the kingdom of heaven on these new feet of the soul!

8 It is therefore basically to be understood in this way: Every person on this world has of necessity a twofold love and a desire issuing from it. One is - and must be so - material, since without it no-one would till the soil or take a wife. For man on this earth to do this, he must have a material love and outward desire motivating and carrying him to such an action. If such a love and desire for the material world becomes too mighty, it offends the whole man and makes the soul languish because the soul is pushed too deeply into matter. It is then high time for man to take courage and, with a firm will, free himself completely of such a love and desire and strive with all his might only for that which is purely of the spirit. If this is the case, it is in itself sufficient to gain the Kingdom of God, although he should, on account of the proper order of things, do both for the sake of neighborly love.

9 There are now already, and in the future there will be even more who will completely turn away from the world and it’s work and alone strive for that which is of the spirit. I do not say that they will thereby one day be completely justified. But, as I said, they are still much better off than to be, as offended material men, sucked in by the opposite pole of life about which I spoke at the fisher Aziona's, which means as much as to go, or be thrown, into hell.

10 By the tearing out and casting away of the eye is to be understood the worldly intellect of man. It is an eye of the soul, with which the soul beholds and judges the things of the world and compares them with the things of the spirit. Whenever the eye turns too much to the world and completely away from that which is of the spirit, hardly remembering God, the soul is badly offended, since thereby it also passes totally into matter. It is then high time to renounce the mere worldly wisdom and, for the sake of heaven, think purely of that which is of God, the spirit and the soul.

11 Whoever does that will also stand there justified and behold the countenance of God. But such blessed spirits of those who have raised their worldly wisdom through words and deeds to a divine level, will yield significantly to them.

12 I now think that you all will have indeed understood this now, and if I in future should come back to this topic again, do not ask Me any longer about the meaning of such parables which I am giving you thus clothed, because they are purely placed there for the soul, which now is clothed for every person on this Earth with the flesh from every fleshly eye! For it is one thing about a teaching concerning the whole man, and another about a teaching which is concerned only with the soul. Do you understand all this now?"

- Chapter 246 -

The children as role models for the disciples

God and man in the Lord

1 Now Peter say: "Yes, Lord and Master, now we are quite perfectly in the clear about this; but therefore I ask You for the future to immediately give us the explanation at other similar lessons so that we do not have to become annoyed at our own lack of understanding!"

2 Say I: "I will do that where it is necessary; but where I want to strengthen your own ability to think and make your soul more active, then I will not reveal the images immediately. For whoever wants to be a correct teacher must give his lessons so that his disciples always have much to think about and to seek, otherwise he makes them into lazy and idle researchers of all sorts of truths.

3 "I also say unto you all: The Master who teaches must always be a wise man and must understand himself indeed from the deepest foundations what he is teaching. But the disciples should, as long as they are disciples, from now on be like these little ones here, who accept and follow a lesson given to them even if they have by no means seen the inner meaning of it; the correct insight will come to them in their more mature years."

4 But at this some of the disciples were still thinking to themselves silently that it would take a very long time before they would be wise and understanding themselves, if they should now behave as foolish and ignorantly as the foolish, uncomprehending and inexperienced scruffy children, among whom none had ever yet learned in any school the alpha and even less the omega!

5 But I said, "See that you do not despise one of these little ones! For I say to you that their angels in heaven continually behold the face of My Father who is in heaven!" (Matt. 18:10)

6 Says Peter: "Have we no longer any angels in heaven, who also at all times look on the face of Your Heavenly Father? Also, You have said that Your Father dwells in You and is fully at one with You, and then again You transfer Him to the endlessly remote heaven. Well, this is something we again cannot fathom. How are we to understand that? Does Your Father take turns between dwelling in You and dwelling in the heavens? And how come that You are sometimes the Father Himself and at other times only His Son? - Kindly give us a little more enlightenment than we had before on this point."

7 Said I: "You certainly also have your guardian angels in heaven and would not be My disciples without them. But the little ones have them, too, and for this reason you shall not look down upon them, for they are fully your equals. I told you this because I know you do not like children.

8 If you cannot love these tender, dear and angel-pure little children, how will you then love your neighbor and how will you love your God?

9 If you want to educate human beings after My heart, you must already begin with the children, for truly I tell you: The instruction in the cradle is worth more than all the learned institutes of the world. Whoever wants to form children into human beings must love them and be patient with them. Such a child is by nature poorer than a hundred beggars; for it is poor in spirit, poor in physical strength and poor in possessions.

10 Therefore, I tell you and through you all the people to whom this gospel will be preached once again: Whoever receives such a child in My name receives Me. Once he has thus, full of love, received Me, he has also received the Father in Heaven and his household will be richly blessed. For such children are themselves a genuine and true blessing of God in the house where they live and where they are cared for, nurtured and formed into true human beings. And it does not matter of what gender they are, male or female, in their youth they are like the angels of heaven.

11 Now that you, Peter, ask about My Father in Heaven and why I sometimes say that He is in heaven and at other times that He is in Me and one with Me, all I need is patience with your memory, otherwise I could in the end be angry with you.

12 What heaven is and where it is I have only recently shown and explained to you all, and in particular to you, in every detail and the clearest light, up on the mountain. Moreover, I have spoken almost too much and too often on the indivisible and inseparable relationship between Me and My Father, and behold, now again you know nothing about it!

13 Is not the Father the eternal love within Me? But where it is and lives, is that not heaven and the true kingdom of God?

14 Am I, as a man, not the Son of that same love that dwells in Me and that has created from eternity all there is and fills infinity? And since this eternal and almighty love of God is within Me, am I not, then, completely at one with it?  Now say whether you still cannot understand this."

15 Peter says: "Yes, I now quite certainly see it better than I saw it previously. But nonetheless there are still some things in it which, to be honest, are still not fully clear to me! And what is still not so clear to me, consists of the fact that I still do not see why You said once about Yourself that You are the Son of man, another time the Son of God and once again Jehovah Himself! If You will give me another little light about this, then You will do good to us all; for I believe that none of us has the correct insight in this yet!"

16 Say I: "I have also quite clearly explained this to you at occasions when I spoke about My impending suffering; but if such a thing is not explained at least ten times so that you can touch it with your hands and feet, you do not understand it! I will tell you then one more time:

17 Neither Jehovah in Me, nor I as the soul of His eternal Son, but only in the flesh as the Son of man will be killed in Jerusalem, but on the third day will rise again as fully transfigured and then for eternity be one with Him who is in Me and reveals everything in Me that I as a son of man have to do and to say, and whom you still do not fully know although He has been speaking and working among you for a good time already. And now, Simon Judah, you speak again!"

- Chapter 247 -

The mystery of Calvary

1 Says Simon Judah: Yes, Lord and Master, there is still many a word coming from Your mouth that should be discussed as it is not quite comprehensible in the fullness of it’s light to even the soundest human reason. And there in the background, grinning like a monster, is the strict and indisputable necessity of the suffering in store for the Son of Man, and I dare to maintain firmly that no ever so healthy and excellent man's reason will be able to quite clearly see this necessity.

2 No matter how necessary such an act may be for the accomplishment of a principal goal set by You eternities ago, all this is of little or no avail and has no calming and illuminating effect on human reason, which will at all times raise the question: 'Why did the Almighty have to be to such an extent ill-treated by His created beings in order to give them eternal life and bliss? Were not His purest teaching and His miracles, which are only possible to God, sufficient? If all that does not better people, how can His suffering and death be expected to better them?'

3 I, as one of Your staunchest followers, do quite frankly declare: Your suffering will become a stumbling block for many good people, so much so that they will become wavering in their faith. Therefore, I am asking You already now to give us a proper light so that we can at the right time give those who ask us a proper enlightenment and, thus, set their minds at rest."

4 Said I: "You are here probing into a rather good and just matter which you, as a mere man, will never be able to comprehend completely and properly, even if I now give you the right explanation. Only after My resurrection, when you will be reborn in the spirit, will you be able to find the answer to the great 'why' in all purity and clarity.

5 I, as the sole supporter of all being and life, must now also redeem that which, eternities ago, had fallen to judgment and death through the firmness of My will and must, through the very judgment and the death of this My flesh and blood, penetrate into the old judgment and death. Thus I can, for the sake of the material side of things which as such has matured, loosen and undo the fetters of My own divine will so that henceforth all created beings will be able to pass from eternal death into a free and independent life.

6 And it is exactly for this that the Son of Man has come into the world to look for what was practically lost from eternity, to redeem it and render it suitable for eternal bliss (Matt. 18:11)

7 What do you think - suppose a man has a hundred sheep. If one of them strays somewhere in the woods, does he not leave the other ninety-nine on the hillside and go in search of the one that strayed? (Matt. 18:12) And if he should find it, truly I tell you this: Will he not be more delighted over that sheep than over the ninety-nine that never strayed? (Matt. 18:13).

8 And see, the same thing applies also to God, although He has through His almighty will created everything contained in infinite space out of the eternal fullness of His everlasting, innumerable thoughts, ideas and concepts that He put, as it were, outside of Himself through the firmness of His will. If everything had to stay forever as it is now, in rigid judgment and death, it would be like the lost sheep that could no longer be found anywhere. And what pleasure and joy would a forever dead, material creation give to God?

9 This is mainly why I now came into this world, clothed in matter, namely, to look for this lost sheep and lead it to it’s blissful destination.

10 God's Spirit and will are now being appeased and, as it were, made pliable and loosened up in this My body, thus in matter. Once this has been accomplished, this My matter must, in the greatest degradation and humiliation possible, be detached and then broken and the Spirit of God that dwells within Me and is at one with My soul must awaken and enliven this broken matter, purified through the fire of His love, and it will then rise as a conqueror over all judgment and death.

11 I have told you in advance that at present you will not yet clearly understand how and why this must - and will -happen. But you can conclude from this that such an act, however abhorrent it may look to a mere human eye, is yet necessary if all creation is to be led back in the proper course of time to a free, independent, pure life in God.

12 Now that I have unveiled this sufficiently for you to understand, you will inwardly see - since you now understand who the little ones really are - that it is the Father's will that not even the least and most insignificant of them should ever be lost (Matt. 18:14).

13 And I therefore presented these children to you all and showed you in a well-ordered correspondence to the will of Him who lives in Me and is a Lord for eternity over all creation in the whole infinity. And since I now have spoken such to you and we have time and leisure in abundance, you may speak again and show where you are still lacking. Peter, is there something else?"

14 The disciple said: "Oh Lord and Master, there is indeed something! But I must digest this a little bit more; for if I now come with something new, what I have just heard would leave me right away, and You would have given the great light in vain."

15 At this there was a short pause in the speaking and the disciples thought very hard about what I had just said to them.

- Chapter 248 -

About forgiveness

1 But outside Peter's house a loud disagreement started up between some fishermen returning home, and Peter thought that we should go out in order to calm the bad argument.

2 I said: "Yes, you do that then, it is a good deed to settle quarrels among people so that their anger subsides, which is an offspring of hell and for years contaminates the heart and darkens the soul."

3 At this Peter went out and asked the two who were still arguing outside his house what the matter was about, which brought them into such a bad argument.

4 Then one of them, who was somewhat calmer, said that the servant of a citizen from the town, who had no fishing right and was standing there in their midst, had fished with rods on one of the best fishing spots, made a very rich catch and, as they as the authorized fishermen had caught him there, chastised him and taken away his catch according to their rights, he had set himself against them and had begun to prove with the crudest expressions that he also had the full rights and could fish wherever he wanted. However he had no license and was only claiming the right, which they could not and would not tolerate.

5 When Peter heard this, he said: "The man is indeed a thief; but nonetheless let him go now. If he dares to be cheeky again, only then give him over to the judges; for you know yourselves that we should forgive our enemies seven times according to the Law!"

6 Then the fishermen, who were holding the fish thief firmly, said, "We have forgiven him his cheek seven times already; but the Law does not speak of forgiving eight times, and we therefore now want to place him before a judge."

7 Peter said: "You indeed have the full right to do that; but for my sake do the better thing here and forgive him also this last time, although it is already the eighth time! But if you catch him a ninth time at his cheek, then you can exercise your good right on him!"

8 At these words they let the thief go, after he had promised them never again to commit the crime, and thus the bad quarrel was calmed, and the arguers returned to their houses calmly.

9 When Peter came back into the room to us, he said: "Lord and Master, the argument is indeed calmed, since I have persuaded my neighbors to overlook the fisher-thief's cheek for an eighth time; but legally this eighth time would indeed have been to hand him over to the court. It would be also very good, oh Lord, if You would explain somewhat more clearly the Laws of Moses in this earthly legal area, particularly in these days when also the laws of Rome have begun to reach into the Jewish lifestyle very strongly and one no longer really knows whether one should hold more to the laws of Moses or of Rome. In some respects the Roman law is obviously more humane than Moses', which can no longer be used literally in many cases as a state law. What would now be correct according to Your greatest love and wisdom?"

10 Said I: "I know that the things are now so and it is difficult for a judge to decide between the two laws and also difficult to determine how and when one person has sinned against another, because for example what the one law calls good what according to the other law is a sin.

11 In order to give you all and through you for all people an instruction, according to which everyone can direct himself, remember this and also write it down:

12 If any brother of yours sins against you, go and reprove him in private; if he listens to you, you have won your brother. (Matt. 18:15) But if he does not listen to you, take one or two more with you, so that by the mouth of two or three witnesses of the community, every fact may be confirmed. (Matt. 18:16) And if he refuses to listen to them, tell it to the community; and if he refuses to listen even to the community, let him be declared a Gentile and a tax-gatherer by you, by the witnesses and by the community. (Matt. 18:17)

13 And let that be enough for you and for everyone; anything else is from evil and creates anew even greater evil. This determination is taken from My divine order and is valid not only here but also for the great beyond. For truly I say to you, whatever you shall bind on Earth shall be bound in heaven; and whatever you loosen on Earth, shall be loosed in heaven. (Matt. 18:18)

14 Again I say to you, so that you shall cope better with all argument and all discomfort, that if two of you agree on Earth about anything that they may ask the Father in My name, it shall be granted them by My Father who is in heaven, and thus on Earth. (Matt. 18:19)

15 Therefore If someone has sinned against you, forgive him wholeheartedly and ask the Father in My name to set the sinner's heart right, and this will happen in proportion to your faith and your forgiveness towards the one who has sinned against you.

16 Again I say to you: where two or three have gathered in My name concerning a matter which is good and within My order, there I am in their midst in the spirit and will heed whatever they ask of Me. (Matt. 18:20)

17 And I believe that you and everyone will very easily come to terms with such a designation now given to you by Me in all possible critical conditions of life and also in the middle of thousands of often so contradictory world laws!"

18 Then Peter came and said to Me: "Lord, that is all now good and true, and it goes without saying that we will certainly most actively observe such designations of Yours and also will lay them on the hearts of other people for true observance; but there is now one critical point, and that consists of this: How often shall my brother sin against me and I forgive him? Up to seven times, according to the Law of Moses?" (Matt. 18:21)

19 I said to him: "If it should happen according to a number, then Moses' number of seven is too little, but it should happen instead seventy times seven! (Matt. 18:22) For this mainly is the Kingdom of Heaven, that there be the same love, harmony and spirit of forgiveness among people as prevail among My angels in heaven, some of whom you have already met."

- Chapter 249 -

The parable of the wicked servant. Gospel of Matthew 18:23-35

1 (The Lord) "But in order to represent to you the kingdom of heaven in its most correct relationships even more visibly, I will describe it to you in a corresponding parable. For this reason the kingdom of heaven may be compared to a certain king who wished to settle accounts with his servants. (Matt. 18:23) And when he had begun to settle them, there was brought to him one who owed him ten thousand talents. (Matt. 18:24) But since this slave and servant of the king did not have the means to repay, his lord commanded the lazy servant to be sold, along with his wife and children and all that he had, and repayment to be made of what the slave and servant owed him. (Matt. 18:25)

2 Since the servant saw that he now was sold along with all that was his as a slave, he fell on his face before the still present king and prayed to him fully by saying in tears: Oh, you great, most powerful king and lord, have just a little patience with me! Prevent the sale, let me free for just a little time, and I will strive with everything possible to repay to you the whole debt! (Matt. 18:26) When the king heard that, he heart was softened. He felt compassion and released him and forgave him the debt. (Matt. 18:27)

3 But soon after, this servant went out into the city of the king, where he had some things to do and to order here and there. And behold, it happened that he met one of his fellow servants, who recently owed him only a hundred denarii! But when the fellow servant saw him, he asked him for just a short forbearance, and he would pay back the debt. But our servant so highly spared by the king did not listen to him, but instead grabbed him with all anger, choked him and shouted: Pay back what you owe me immediately; for I have waited long enough for you, and my patience is now fully at an end! (Matt. 18:28)

4 So his fellow servant fell down and entreated him with tears: Have just a little patience with me and I will pay you everything! (Matt. 18:29) But the servant and serf of the king did not want to know anything more about any patience, but instead had the poor fellow servant seized by the executioners and thrown into prison until the whole debt had been paid out of his confiscated income. (Matt. 18:30)

5 But when the other fellow servants learned this and saw, they became very grieved and full of anger about such an uncompassionate servant of the king, went over and brought everything that had happened before his ears. (Matt. 18:31)

6 When the king heard this, he immediately demanded the uncompassionate servant to come before him and spoke to him with an angry face: Listen, you wicked servant! Did I not forgive you all that debt because you entreated me? (Matt. 18:32) Should you not also have had mercy on your fellow slave, even as I had mercy on you? (Matt. 18:33)

7 Then the servant became mute with fear and terror, since he saw how good and just the king was, and that he abused the king’s mercy and love to strictly chastise the transgression. At this the king became very angry and handed the uncompassionate man over to the just as uncompassionate torturers until he should repay all that was owed him. (Matt. 18:34)

8 And behold, likewise My heavenly Father shall do to you too, if each of you does not forgive fully from his heart his brother's sins and mistakes. (Matt. 18:35) And that is what the actual kingdom of heaven consists of in great and in small detail, that there among the blessed ones there is nowhere any enmity or envy or even hate, but instead it must be the greatest harmony, the greatest agreement and the greatest mutual love.

9 Therefore it is not necessary that any protective law court exists on this world, which has the right to determine between the offender and the offended, but instead your only valid protective law court from Me is your good and peaceful heart, and you will come clear very well and with the least expense and judgmental legal fees with this law, and the sinner against you will become rather your friend of truth, than if he had been forced to it by a sentence - and now tell Me whether you have understood all that so correctly from it’s foundations!"

- Chapter 250 -

The necessity of worldly courts.

The origin of crime and it’s prevention.

1 Peter says: "Lord and Master! Certainly, and it is indeed the very best now; but even if we observe everything most exactly, as well as very many other people who will receive this teaching from us, then it still very much begs the question whether the worldly courts will therefore no longer endure.

2 You see, if someone has sinned against me in some way, I will then quite certainly forgive him even seventy times seven times, if my offender should seriously let it come to that; but if he as a terrible, gloating person who has not had enough and drives his insults over the great number of seventy times seven times - what then with such a person? I am now of the opinion that it should then be high time to hand such a criminal over to worldly judgment, just like our compassionate king in the end, since his great patience brought no fruit, then indeed handed over the uncompassionate servant to the torturers. What do You, Lord, say to this opinion of mine?"

3 I say: "My dear Peter, then I do not say much at all, because in any case I already gave you quite openly the full directives for such an incorrigible case right after the fishermen's argument in front of your house and each of you then certainly understood what is to be done and decided!

4 It goes without saying that there must be in this world powerful and great worldly courts of justice that deal with great and hardened criminals offending against the rights of men, otherwise no one's life would in the end be safe any longer. However, as far as the minor offenses are concerned that not seldom occur among you men, these shall be settled before the tribunal of the compassionate and forgiving heart, so that the minor offenses committed by people against each other do not grow into great and serious crimes, for truly I tell you: Robbery, manslaughter and murder are, after all, nothing but the consequences of minor offenses initially committed by people against each other merely out of trivial considerations of worldly self-interest and self-conceit.  A little parable shall explain this to you more clearly:

5 A rich and respected father has a very beautiful and dear daughter, with whom a young, but poor, although very well educated man was head over heels in love, and all the more so since the dear daughter had already given him to understand a number of times through all sorts of friendly winks and signs that she was inclined towards him in her heart. Well, this otherwise honest and decent young man finally gathers the courage and goes with a very natural good intention to the father of the beautiful daughter and demands that she would be given to him as his wife. But the father, extremely proud and hard because of his great wealth, allows the honest, poor applicant for his daughters' hand be shown the door by his servants and chased out of the court by his hounds.

6 This improper reception of the poor man now filled his heart with anger, rage and revenge, and the more he now thought about the purest impossibility of becoming the son-in-law of the rich man, the more also grew the thought of revenge, to humiliate the hard and proud man in the way that would hurt him the most. And when the terrible thought became fully mature, the plan, decision and will and deed were already there, and the young man became the murderer of the rich man.

7 He would certainly not have turned into that, had he been treated like a human being by the rich man. The rich man in his proud arrogance did not even think he was doing much by turning the poor suitor out in the described manner. However, it was too much to take for the one thrown out and so he turned into a criminal and murderer who - for fear of worldly justice - hid in the dense forests from where he terrorized the population.

8 And now see from this small example that only the hardness of man most of all makes their poorer fellow men into criminals. Take therefore care about this everywhere towards those who have sinned against you in some way, what I have commanded and shown to you clearly, and great criminals will be seldom on the Earth, and the good people will then reign over the poor of the Earth. Did all of you understand and comprehend this well?"

9 Now everyone confirmed that they had understood this lesson very well. The disciples, who according to their own statement had now understood this lesson well, still thought nonetheless about some things which were contained in it, and John and Mark wrote down the main issue, and Jacob and Thomas also wrote it down for themselves, but more the explanations. They were busy with this for about two hours.

10 And when all the most necessary had been written down, Peter said: "Now this lesson can never again be lost, and thus much has been won with this! But it is now becoming evening, and I will have to begin to arrange things so that we get an evening meal."

11 Said I: "But who told you then that it is now already becoming evening? Look out at the height of the sun! I tell you, if we now rise and sail with a good wind along the whole length of the sea, we will certainly still come to the border of the Jewish lands on the other side of the Jordan before the sunset!"

12 At this Peter looked at the height of the sun and began to wonder greatly at how he could have been so seriously mistaken with the judgment of time; for the sun had still a good three hours before its setting.

- Chapter 251 -

A locust infestation.

1 But Peter gathered himself quickly and asked Me about the reason for such a deception, and I said to him: "Go out to the sea and you will soon become aware of the reason!"

2 Peter did what I had ordered him, and he saw, as far as his eyes could see, the surface of the water completely covered with grasshoppers. Even our ship, which lay in Peter's harbor, was properly covered of these insects. Peter was horrified at this sight, hurried back to Me into the room, and asked Me whether these myriads of grasshoppers which now covered the sea had been the cause of his mistaking the time.

3 And I answered and said: "Of course! When they flew over from Egypt, they darkened the sun so much like a thick cloud that you here in the room obviously had to think that it had already become evening. But I saw in Me the cause of the evening that had come too early and made you aware of it - and that is now already everything that I have to say to you about it!"

4 Peter was satisfied with this and went out again to look at the great spectacle of nature.

5 Andrew and Philip however were quite interested in nature and asked Me how then such huge grasshoppers could exist, where actually then their place of origin was, and what they were good for.

6 Said I: "Dear friends, it is quite commendable to look around in nature - for it is a great book, written by the almighty hand of God, and serves every honest seeker as irrefutable proof of the love, wisdom and power of the heavenly Father. Yet if a seeker is too fanatical in the course of his concentrated search, he can easily be led astray, so much so that he completely forsakes God and, finally comes to the conclusion that all being and all coming into existence are merely the work of the blind and mute forces of nature.

7 And behold, it is exactly such phenomena that above all can lead genuine naturalists completely away from God, for they perceive in nature an immense capacity for reproduction, without design and purpose, that could well dispense with some wise God. To be sure, they will never by way of material research be able to perceive an inner cause for such phenomena because their souls are so deeply immersed in matter as to render them incapable of ever touching and seizing God's Spirit of light and love.

8 But whoever has touched and fully seized the Spirit of God in his soul will then be taught by his own spirit how and why such events come into existence - and then only such a spiritually awakened person should research the things of nature and, unveiled, show them to his ignorant and dependent brothers so that they will become all the keener to awaken their own spirit within their soul.

9 But in order to get back to our grasshoppers, they indeed appear all over the warmer parts of the Earth, but mostly at certain times in Egypt and southern Asia. That is the strongest production of spirits of natural life because of the substance of the climate, or they develop there most often and frequently because the material ground of the Earth, the heat of the sun, it’s strong light, the constantly powerful dew and another number of other conditions that has such a strong influence, that constantly a large number of previously even more bound Earth-spirits become free, soon join with the spirits of the air, then cocoon themselves in a certain way in a light matter and further in the pupae then clothe themselves with a body and transform into animalistic Earth life.

10 In this way in the very warm lands of the Earth the grasshoppers often exist, and indeed very often, although they can also be hatched from their own eggs.

11 I say to you all: Everything, trees and plants and animals of the Earth are determined to release the judged spirits from hard matter, and that goes from level to level up to man. What then happens with man, you already know, and so I have nothing more to explain about the natural phenomenon lying before us - but now call Peter in to Me; for I will announce something to him and to you all!"

12 Andrew and Philip immediately do what I had ordered them and Peter, hardly entering the room, immediately asked what it was that I wanted to tell them.

- Chapter 252 -

The passage of the Lord and His followers to the opposite lakeshore.

1 And I said: "All of you get ready for a journey; I want and must today leave here, and indeed completely from Galilee to the land which lies beyond the Jordan and borders on the Jewish lands! (Matt. 19:1) We have not been there yet, and there is a large number there of very curious people, and we will there make a good business even today."

2 Peter said: "Lord, we have to travel there by ship which is full of that grasshopper vermin; in order to clean it, two hard-working people would need half a day for such a task!"

3 I said: "There you have spoken truly, two workers would need to work even a whole day; but I will be faster done with such a task! Let us now just go out onto the sea, and the ship will already be cleaned!"

4 And when we came down to our ships on the lake, behold, it was quite clean, and there was no trace of a grasshopper to be found anywhere!

5 When the disciples saw this, they were very amazed about it, and Peter said: "You are truly a greatest master in all things; even the grasshoppers have to bend to obey Your will! Should we now immediately board the ship and sail away, or should we first consume an afternoon meal with some wine, since the journey is quite far?"

6 I said: "What need do we have of all of that? Until now we have never suffered hunger wherever we were, and so we will also neither have to suffer hunger nor thirst in the land where we will now go to. In your house you have in any case arranged everything, and so let us board the ship! Stretch out the sailcloth, then release the ship from the block, and someone sit at the rudder by himself! I will have a good wind come and we will soon be at the right place where I want to go."

7 But Peter still asked Me whether he should not take a couple of his deck hands with him to the far harbor on the other side for the sake of the care and maintenance of the ship.

8 And I said: "Yes, do that; for we will not come back here again so soon!"

9 Then Peter called two of his deck hands. They brought the ship immediately into order; the wind also began to pick up and we sailed away almost with the speed of an arrow.

10 When we had thus surfed across the far surface of the water with the true speed of a storm and this was only moved by very small waves despite the strong and powerful wind, this occurred to the two boys of Peter's and they asked him after the cause. For as very experienced old fishermen and sailors they had never experienced such a thing.

11 But Peter said to them: "How can you now ask such a thing! Have you then already forgotten all the things that the great master of Nazareth as our Messiah can do?!"

12 Then the boys said: "We already knew that he performs great miracles; but we didn't know that even the wind and the sea obey him! He must truly be a great prophet, as great as Moses and as great as Elijah!"

13 And Peter said: "Endlessly more than Moses and Elijah! But now do not ask any further, but instead pay attention to the ship; at the correct time you will all gain more experience about the divinity of the Lord! We are now soon coming to the delta of the Jordan, and there it is necessary to pay attention so that we do not go out into the current, from which it is difficult to get out without a good counter-wind."

14 At this both of them cheerfully grabbed the oars and we proceed as fast as an arrow we were across the somewhat dangerous part and had soon reached the bank after barely an hour's journey.

15 There was a village where we stepped onto the bank, and the village was inhabited mostly by fishermen, mainly consisting of Jews, but around a third was also inhabited by Greeks, who were trading all sorts of things. When we came to the bank and set feet on the same, there were many people there, since several Pharisees from Jerusalem were present and collecting their tithe in this place. That the people ran up to us and some of the better ones among the many people also soon asked who we were, what we would do here, and whether we would like to buy some things, goes without saying.

16 But Peter took courage and said to the curious ones, "Let us first find accommodation, then you will learn soon enough who we actually are, and what we want in this place!"

- Chapter 253 -

The healing of the blind-born youth and other sick people.

1 Hardly had Peter said this, when immediately a respected innkeeper came to him and said: "Turn to my house; for I have indeed the largest accommodation in the whole village and I am not an expensive host, although I am a Greek! You are Jews to all appearances, but that does not matter at all; for several Pharisees from Jerusalem have also been living here for a number of days already who are collecting the tithe from the Jews."

2 Peter said: "That is not really very pleasant for us! In any case it depends purely on our Master; whatever He wants will happen!"

3 The host said: "Who of you is then the Master, that I can go to him and talk to him myself?"

4 Peter pointed to Me and said: "This is He!"

5 Then the innkeeper came up to Me with a deep bow and said: "Do you want to take up accommodation with your people with me? My house is large and very spacious and has many chambers; in addition I am one of the very cheapest innkeepers in the whole, not insignificant village."

6 I said: "You are indeed - but we have nothing to pay you with; therefore we will prefer to spend this night on our ship! In addition you have sick people in the house and also a doctor who cannot help your sick, although you have had him come from Jerusalem and he costs you much money. And look, as one says: it is not good to take accommodation in a house which is beset with all sorts of evil diseases!"

7 When the host heard this from Me, he was positively shocked and asked Me very amazed how I could know that as a stranger in this place.

8 I said: "I could tell you many other things too which would disconcert you even more; but now nothing further about it!"

9 Here the innkeeper became very embarrassed and began to beg Me to nonetheless stay with him for the sun had already reached the horizon and the evening was waiting at the door.

10 At this I said: "Then go and bring Me your blind son and we will see if I will be able to heal him!"

11 At this the innkeeper quickly left the bank, hurried home and brought the fourteen-year old totally blind son, placed him before Me and said: "Here, dear friend, is my blind son! He was born as blind as he now stands before you. All doctors and conjurors have already tried their craft on him; but everything was completely in vain! Now, as you have already noticed, a real miracle doctor from Jerusalem is with me in the house; but he can also do as much as the previous ones! Now it depends on you, dear friend! Truly, if you heal him, half my fortune belongs to you!"

12 Then I said: "If you can believe that I can make this blind son of yours see, then he will see!"

13 And the innkeeper looked at Me steadily and said: "Yes, friend, I can believe you! There is something so definite in your eyes that they tell me: Through your mouth has never come a false word! And so I believe now firmly that you will heal my son."

14 I said: "The other doctors have their ointments and the magicians have their magic wands - but I have neither an ointment nor even less any magic wand; My will is everything and so I now will that your son shall immediately see!"

15 When I had said such a thing, the blind instantly became perfectly seeing and cried out loudly in joy, since he now saw the people, the sea, the area and everything that was there.

16 But the innkeeper came right up to Me and said: "Oh, you great and truest savior, how should I now thank you enough for such truest mercy from you? For truly, whoever can do what you can, can only spread mercy; for what use are a thousand mercies and benevolent deeds to a blind man on the part of the great authorities of this Earth if they cannot give him the light for the eyes with all their other power and goodness!? But you have given him the light for the eyes with some inner power which is quite incomprehensible for me and thereby shown me and my dearest son an unspeakably great mercy. But as reward for that, what I previously promised you is much too little! Oh, just say what I now owe you, and I will fulfill your desire with all love and joy!"

17 I said: "Today give us accommodation, do good to the poor and thus make good again what you have often done badly to them!"

18 The innkeeper promised to observe and to do everything most strictly and asked Me most fervently to follow him into his house. And I and the disciples and also Peter’s two deck hands went now with the innkeeper, and all the people who had been witness to the healing of the blind boy followed us on foot.

19 But on the way many of the people cried out: "Oh, you truest savior, heal our sick too, of whom we have many! For behold, whoever becomes sick among us never again becomes healthy; he is deteriorating in health very slowly to the grave! This is the very evil character of this otherwise beautiful area. Oh, you dear savior, show us poor people also such a mercy of healing, as you have shown to the blind son of the innkeeper! Your will be done!"

20 And I said: "Now good then, thus let it be according to your desires and faith! But now go to your sick and convince yourselves whether there is any sick person left in your houses and camps!" (Matt. 19:2)

21 At these words of Mine all but few who had no sick, hurried away to find out at home whether their sick had truly been healed. When they arrived at their houses, already almost evening, they found no sick, but instead everyone, whatever sickness and illness they had had, were so healed as if they had never suffered from any sickness.

22 The sick however did not know what had happened, that they all at once had become healthy, and immediately asked after the cause of such an unheard-of event. Then their family told them about Me, and how I had made the blind son of the rich innkeeper see on the bank of the sea, and how now also surely all other sick of the innkeeper had been made healthy.

23 When the healed had heard this, they hurried out of the houses and came in front of the innkeeper's house. Then they demanded in request to see Me and to give Me their thanks.

24 Then I went among them and said to them, "Go home now and sin no more; for if you fall back again to your sinful ways, you will thereby also fall back into your old sickness! Keep the commandments that Moses gave you and you will remain far from all evil."

25 At this I let them all go and our innkeeper, who was now extremely cheerful and joyful, since all his other sick had also been healed, did not know at all what he should do for us for the benevolence we had shown him.

- Chapter 254 -

The Lord and His followers in the house of the Greek innkeeper.

Truth liberates.

1 But since the innkeeper was a Greek and also even a Gentile, but yet he knew very well that the Jews were not allowed to eat everything that the Greeks as Gentiles ate, then he asked Me, saying: "Oh, you great Lord and Master, what do you and what do these disciples of yours tend to eat in the evening? Although I am a Gentile, I know nonetheless from my own personal experiences that the Jews do not eat many things that we tend to eat, and so I am asking you then what I can serve you all dear men, with. For now you are quite lords in this house and I am only your most obedient servant, and thus if you will only command me mercifully and I will do my best to satisfy every wish of yours in the greatest hurry in the most assiduous way!"

2 Said I: "Give us some bread and wine and a good place for the night with it. We need nothing more."

3 Then the innkeeper became almost sad, because I had not demanded something further and better. But nonetheless he went out into his larder and brought us bread and wine himself, and in a generous quantity. We took our places at a large table and the innkeeper and his children took place at the same table, ate and drank with us, and when the wine had loosened his tongue a little, he began to tell us some things from his experiences, and thus the miracles of the Essenes and those of the Pharisees also came to his conversation, just like also the ten commandments of Moses.

4 Then the innkeeper thought that these commandments were indeed very good - but they would not be observed, and least of all by the Jewish priests who indeed were supposed to lead their fellow believers at all times with a good example. Since I was such a great and certainly highly wise savior, I should be able to give him a correct explanation of it. But mainly I should give him good advice about whether he should, after repeated challenges by Pharisees, convert to Judaism or remain with the Greek faith. He basically liked the religion of the Jews better than his own, which was actually only a poetic fantasy image, behind which only very little truth existed.

5 At this I answered him, saying: "Remain in appearance what you are, but inwardly be a true Jew, which you can be all the more easily because you are not obliged in any way to any priest! You will see very well that the Pharisees would rather have you as one of theirs because of your great wealth than to have you as a stranger! Therefore remain as you are, and seek the truth and the reason of life and existence! For only the truth will make you free and with it you will stand high above all the priesthood and over everything that the world calls wisdom. Have you understood Me now well?"

6 The innkeeper said: "I have understood you; only there is one other particular question to ask, namely: What is the truth? Yes, the pure truth would make the people indeed very certainly free "but where is it, who can show it to me, who can give it?"

7 I said: "I and every one of My disciples can do that - but I Myself most certainly of all; for I Myself am the truth and the life, as He who lives in Me is the same throughout eternity!"

8 The innkeeper said: "Lord and Master, I do not understand that! How should I take that?"

9 I said: "Here around Me sit My disciples, ask them about it, they will explain it to you; for it is better to have people speak about you than to speak about yourself! I Myself however will go out in the meantime and strengthen Myself in the cool evening air."

10 At this I rose and went out into the open air quite alone. But the disciples taught the innkeeper now about the most important things that concerned Me. And when the innkeeper came to the conclusion of who and what I am, he immediately came out to Me in the open air and thanked Me along with his children most fervently for the great mercy shown to him. The children did the same. I blessed them all, and we then headed to our rest; for it had already become quite late in the night.

- Chapter 255 -

The prohibition of divorce.

1 When we had risen from our beds in the morning, well-rested and strengthened, and gone out into the open air, our innkeeper was already up and about, and both of Peter's servants were also already on the ship to sail away immediately. But we called them to wait for breakfast, which our innkeeper immediately had brought. Then they sailed away, since we would not need the ship for a long time.

2 Then we also went to breakfast at our host's invitation. We had hardly finished it when other people came to see and to speak to Me, the miracle man, as they said. But among them were Jews and Greeks, and they told one another everything that I had performed through My pure will.

3 But, as already mentioned, since Pharisees were also staying in this very house, they also soon learned everything that had happened yesterday evening, and soon worked out that I must be the son of the carpenter from Nazareth already known to them. They then came into our room and began to test Me with all sorts of questions, which I constantly answered in the certainly most competent way and in that way closed their mouths.

4 But there were living here several people who were unhappy with their wives. These sought divorce through the present Pharisees.

5 Then one of the Pharisees asked Me: "Listen, you wonderful and all-wise Master! Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife for any cause at all?" (Matt. 19:3)

6 Then I looked at him firmly and said: "Why are you asking Me about this now? Have you not read in the Scriptures that He who created man in the beginning made them so that they were only one male and one female?! (Matt. 19:4)

7 And when the first human couple stood before Him who had made them, and He saw well that the man liked his beautiful wife very much, this One - whom you have never yet known - said: For this cause a man shall leave his father and mother and shall cleave to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh! (Matt. 19:5) If things are then according to the word of God, consequently they are no longer two, but one flesh. What therefore God has joined together, let no man separate!" (Matt. 19:6)

8 Then the Pharisees spoke: "If you are such an expert in the Scriptures, you will then know well that the very same Moses who described the creation of man as good as fully left behind a formal certificate of divorce and commanded that one can divorce oneself from one's wife for a well-founded reason." (Matt. 19:7)

9 To this I answered: "Moses indeed gave you a certificate of divorce, according to which you can divorce yourselves from your wives; but he only did such because of the hardness of your hearts. From the very beginning of humanity on this Earth, it has not been this way, but instead as I have just told you all. (Matt. 19:8)

10 But further I say to you: Whoever divorces his wife, even because of immorality, and marries another, commits adultery. (Matt. 19:9) But you already know what sort of sin adultery is, and I do not need to give you any further enlightenment about it."

11 At this the Pharisees left Me without a further word.

- Chapter 256 -

Exceptional cases in marital matters.

1 But in their place My disciples came to Me and said: "Lord, if the relationship of a man with his wife is so, then it is truly like this, it is better not to marry!" (Matt. 19:10) For now and then there are wives who are true devils towards their husbands, and so we think that it would not be so unsuitable for Your ordinance to divorce oneself from such a wife and find another for the sake of the household. For if a man keeps an evil, adulterous wife, there is an eternal argument and disagreement in that house and many evil words, which must create a constant evil annoyance in the house itself and among the neighbors. But if the man divorces himself from such a wife, complete peace will soon reign in the house. And in this case we also believe that the certificate of divorce of Moses finds complete justification before all better human common sense."

2 At this I said to the somewhat embarrassed disciples: "Not all people accept the word (which was spoken to the Pharisees), but instead only those to whom it is given to understand (Matt. 19:11), and until now you have not yet understood it, although it has been given to you to understand; but you should nonetheless understand it, and you will!

3 Firstly I direct you all back to what I have already said many times about this issue, and in an exhaustive manner.

4 But secondly it goes without saying that I would never have informed you of a certificate of divorce through Moses if in certain cases the necessity was not visible to Me, which can be well justified. But don't you know then what a destructive abuse the Pharisees of these days and for a long time have been making with divorces?! They themselves secretly plant all sorts of dissatisfaction in an otherwise good marriage and finally bring things so far that the couple have to divorce. Well, the divorce is performed by the Pharisees and costs a lot of money, and that is exactly the reason why divorces occur so frequently these days, and why I have placed the original Law of God before the eyes of the Pharisees in this respect. They know My power, and so they went away with a secret anger.

5 But thirdly I say to you all something else and pay attention to it and even write it down! Behold, there are among the people of both genders some who were born eunuchs from their mother's womb, eunuchs, but only male ones, who were made eunuchs by men for whatever reason, and there are also very many who made themselves eunuchs for the sake of the kingdom of heaven! Whoever is able to understand that, let him understand it. (Matt. 19:12)

6 In short, these people are no longer suitable for marriage, and such a marriage performed with these eunuchs is fully unlawful and can be dissolved completely without any further thought, and the person who is not a eunuch can marry again without committing adultery.

7 But if someone's wife is barren, he should do in the correct sense what the old fathers did so that they bore a seed, and he will not be called before any judgment for this. I now believe that you will finally have understood this."

8 Said Peter: "Except for one thing; when someone has a wife who despite all warnings and loving chastisement nonetheless is adulterous out of inborn pure randiness and is totally incorrigible, should one then not divorce such a wife? Or what is the correct thing one should do according to Your will?"

9 I said: "You can certainly divorce such a wife who is obviously an adulteress - but you may not take another wife while she is still alive! For you cannot know whether the wife in the future will not repent and return to your house full of regret and you then will have an improved, faithful wife. But if you have married another one in the meantime and the previous wife then came back to you improved and full of regret, you would not be able to accept her because of the new wife, and behold, that would be something very bad for you and even worse for both of your wives; for you could not show compassion to the older one and could not divorce the younger one, and yet you should be compassionate as the Father in heaven is compassionate. But if you cannot practice compassion, what are you then and what will you do in order to remain in My plan? But if you have a strong desire and much nature, then look back to the old fathers; but in your heart be faithful to God and protect yourself from desire and lust and adultery! For whores and adulterers will never enter the kingdom of heaven. Have you now understood that well?"

10 Peter said: "Yes, Lord, now I am also quite in the clear!"

- Chapter 257 -

The Lord blesses the children.

1 But now the innkeeper immediately came up to Me and said: "Lord, does that also apply to us Gentiles?"

2 I said: "Of course! For there is only one God and Lord; He wants to bring up all people equally, and I therefore came into this world to open the door to light and life also for you Gentiles. And the time will come and it is actually already there when the light will be taken from the Jews and given to the Gentiles."

3 Then the innkeeper spoke: "Very good, Lord and Master, it is good that I now know that; I will ensure that my companions remain in Your teaching and act accordingly. For I already guess whom I am dealing with! You are a God and no man; for no man has ever performed Your deeds, and the words which You have spoken, have never flowed out of the mouth of a man. Such a thing is possible only for a god!

4 But now I have another plea for You, who has now become a true God for me. Behold, we have a large number of children in this area, and I believe that if You would bless them in Your truly all-powerful way, that that would be of a great moral use in future in their maturity! Lord and - let's say - my God, have I placed a decent demand on You?"

5 I said, "Well, go and let the little ones come to Me!"

6 At this the innkeeper sent his many servants out in a hurry to the whole area to announce to everyone that they should bring their little ones, where the wonderful Savior would bless and strengthen them.

7 Soon afterwards a number of little children were brought to Me, so that I could lay hands on them and say the prayer of blessing over them.

8 Since the children pushed their way forward to Me, because some more active ones wanted to be the first with Me, the disciples rebuked them for their impolite pushing and chastised their spoiled attitude. (Matt. 19:13) Then the little ones became shy and no longer dared to come near Me.

9 But I rebuked the disciples and said to them: "Let the little children alone; for the kingdom of heaven is theirs!" (Matt. 19:14)

10 Then I encouraged the little ones to come to Me without fear or shyness. Then the little ones took courage again and hurried to Me. And I laid My hands on all of them and blessed them.

11 When this action had been done, everyone went home again after giving thanks. (Matt. 19:15)

12 Then the innkeeper came to Me again and said: "Lord and my God! Would You show my house the great mercy and stay here for some days or weeks and months?"

13 I said: "As long as you remain in the teaching that you have heard from My disciples, He, whom you called a God in Me, will remain with you; but if you leave this new religion in belief and in action, this God of yours will also leave you. But I, as also a man in the flesh, must now soon depart from here; for living with Pharisees under one roof would not be particularly good - neither for the one side nor for the other.

14 I have now shown your house and this whole area a great benevolence without being asked! Remember this day, and if any affliction should ever press you all again, call Me only full of faith in your hearts and you will be helped!"

15 Then we rose quickly and departed from this place.

- Chapter 258 -

The wealthy youth.

1 When we were a short hour's journey from the place where we had been, a young man from the very same place came to us along the path. He had also been a witness the evening before of My deeds and teaching and had been even a very competent scribe for his young age, but not by profession. When he saw and recognized Me, he stopped Me and asked Me to allow him to ask Me a question.

2 I did that and he spoke: "Good Master, what good thing shall I do that I may obtain eternal life, of which your disciples told so many wonderful and certainly very true things yesterday at the Greek innkeeper Rauris' [house], and achieve it on a shorter path than the one that your disciples described?" (Matt. 19:16)

3 But I looked at him seriously and said to him: "Why are you calling Me, who as far as you know am only a man, as a scribe yourself, good? Do you not know that apart from God no-one is good? But if you want to enter into eternal life, then keep the commandments!" (Matt. 19:17)

4 Then the man asked further and said: "Which commandments then?" But he asked this question because he thought that I had some very new and fully unknown commandments.

5 But I said to him: "Those which Moses gave: You shall not commit murder, you shall not commit adultery, you shall not steal, you shall not bear false witness! (Matt. 19:18) Honor you father and mother, and you shall love your neighbor as yourself!" (Matt. 19:19)

6 Then the young man asked: "But who should or can I see as my neighbor?"

7 At this I told him the familiar comparison of the compassionate Samaritan, and he now understood who was to be seen as his neighbor.

8 But when he had heard such things from Me and also accepted them, he then said: "If it is so, then I give you the fullest assurance that I have kept these things since my childhood! What am I still lacking?" (Matt. 19:20)

9 And I answered him: "If you want to be complete, go and sell all your earthly possessions and give to the poor, and you shall have treasure in heaven; and come, follow Me; become My disciple and learn from Me the secrets of the kingdom of heaven! (Matt. 19:21)

10 But when the young man had heard such a thing from Me, he became grieved, because he had many and great goods, turned his back to Me and went on his way. (Matt. 19:22)

11 The disciples were surprised and they said: "But that is very strange! The man seemed to be very sure that the Spirit of God was speaking from You; but for the sake of the vain treasures of the world, he preferred to turn his back on the all-powerful Spirit of God than to obey His command! Strange, extremely strange! What will happen to such a person one day?"

12 I said: "It is hard for a rich man like this to enter the kingdom of heaven! (Matt. 19:23) Pay attention to what else I will say to you all! Truly, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God!" (Matt. 19:24)

13 And when the disciples heard such a thing from Me, they were very astonished and said: "Oh dear - if it is so, then who can enter the kingdom of heaven and be saved?!" (Matt. 19:25)

14 But I looked at the very embarrassed disciples in friendship and gave them comfort by saying, "With man such a thing would indeed be impossible; but with God all things are possible!

15 But I have already spoken at length about this issue with the fisherman Aziona, how it is possible that the souls of even more terrible people can become saved on God's secret path, and so it would be quite unnecessary here to say another word about it. You will still know something about it, I hope?"

- Chapter 259 -

The disciples' question regarding the heavenly reward.

1 Peter said: "Oh yes, that is still very much in my memory and certainly in that of all of us! But I will take the liberty here in the name of all of us to ask You what will be for us one day who have left everything and followed You faithfully?" (Matt. 19:27)

2 At this I answered and said: "Truly, I tell you all who have followed Me: In your full rebirth, when I have risen and sit on the throne of My eternal magnificence, you will sit on the twelve chairs beside Me and like Me and judge the twelve tribes of Israel (Matt. 19:28), which means as much as that you will once be just as active as Me in My heavens with Me for the eternal good of all people of this Earth and also the other worlds. And you will watch over, guide and lead these people here and on the other side as invisible guardian spirits for the people of the Earth! For the true kingdom of heaven and it’s growing bliss consist only in a constantly growing, true loving activity.

3 And I also say to you all: Whoever leaves his house, brothers or sisters, or father or mother, or his wife, his children, or also his fields, or gardens and pastures and herds for My name's sake, will receive everything in My kingdom a hundredfold and thereby inherit true, eternal life. (Matt. 19:29)

4 But remember this also: Those who are now the first will very easily be the last there, and those who are the last here, will also easily be the first there!" (Matt. 19:30)

5 The disciples did not understand that, and Peter asked: "What should that mean, what did You mean to say by that? For what You say has it’s reality for all eternity, and we want to know everything quite exactly and understand what comes from Your mouth! This seems to refer to us, and it would not be very good if we should be the last in another kingdom because we were the first here!"

6 I said: "My dear Simon Judah, not for that reason; but if one of you were to think himself better because I had chosen him first, he would thereby fall into arrogance, with which he could never be the first in the kingdom of heaven. Suppose there would be one whom I had woken and chosen after more than a thousand years, he would certainly be the last according to choosing; but if he was humble to a great degree, so that he always considered himself the least worthy for such mercy, but nonetheless was faithful and enduring in his job, although he had no proof of the full genuineness of what was given to him, but instead had to proceed with faith only - would such a called person not be one of the first in the kingdom of heaven?

7 But I would not have made this remark to you all if you had not asked about the reward for what you believe you are now doing for Me! That, Simon Judah, was not very noble of you and you all, since I have only shown you the greatest benevolence spiritually and physically by the mere fact that I chose you all, so that you have now began to inquire after a reward as well! Have I then done something incorrect to you if I gave you a small nudging?"

8 Peter said: "Oh by no means, Lord and Master; as I now see it, that nudge was far too light in comparison with our great foolishness! "But there is something else to be asked and that is this: Where are we heading now?!"

9 I said: "We will visit a very hidden place and take our rest in that place; for we have worked very industriously until now. But industrious work also needs it’s rest; therefore let us just stride forwards with courage and we will soon reach the hidden place! There you will truly see My angels going up and down; thus just stride on courageously!"

- Chapter 260 -

The Lord and His followers visit a village in the mountains.

1 After a few hours' journey we reached the hidden settlement which, like many others, had no name. The Jews as well as the Greeks often did not name their settlements so that they could not be found so easily by the Romans and the tetrarchs because of taxation; for once such a village was found, described and given a name, it was also eligible to pay tribute.

2 But besides this, there was another reason for the so frequent occurrence of no-name small villages, and that was this: Among the Romans it was usual, because of the faster and easier colonization and cultivation of the infertile and barren areas, that a new colony along with it’s newly-built village would remain untaxed for twenty, thirty, forty up to fifty years, according to how long one or another village needed for it’s full cultivation. Well, the Jews and Greeks, who never were particular friends of taxes, knew very well how to exploit this humane Roman law for their own good, no-one will have any doubt in that. Therefore they gave a newly-built village no name and if they were ever asked by any Roman commissar, the village was only ten years old, even if it had already more than a half a century behind it. Then the village inspected by the commissar received a number, but no name; and only beginning from this point in time was the new village taxable after the end of the legal period and it received a name.

3 And thus this small place which we had just reached was nameless and hence still tax-free village. This situation often suited us very well; since the inhabitants of such a new or even better untaxed village were much friendlier and accessible. And so it was once again the case here. We arrived just as the sun was going down on the day before the Sabbath in this truly very hidden village.

4 But the village lay in a high mountain valley which was very fruitful and particularly suitable for raising cattle; but that was only on one side, and even there very inaccessible. People who easily become dizzy, would hardly dare to head over these steep paths. The valley itself lay according to the present measures over four thousand feet above sea level, which is certainly not saying much in Asia, because there were and still are inhabited villages at much higher altitudes.

5 When we thus arrived in this village, immediately several inhabitants saw us and quickly called their eldest and chief, so that he should come and check us out, why we had come there. The chief, an already grey haired Jew, was immediately at hand, looked at us and then asked us what we wanted there, and what had forced us to climb to this village so cut off from the entire world.

6 But I said to him: "Peace be with you and with this whole, truly not insignificant village. The kingdom of God has come close, which you plain and simple people will learn to see well enough during My rest that I will take with you! But for now I ask you whether we cannot have shelter with you for a short time?"

7 The chief spoke: "You are no evil people - that I worked out at the first glance; but you are some adventurers, yet that does not matter, and so you can indeed find shelter under my roof. But you must tell me very much about what is happening in the world; for I have not gotten away from this place for almost twenty years into the wicked world, and thus know as little as nothing about it! Also the inhabitants of this village go only from time to time to the next little village or area of Nahim for salt, which we do not have here. But we have not been in Jerusalem for almost twenty years, although we are strict Jews. For there was nothing then but lies, deception, domineeringness and the very worst arrogance from the temple down through all the layers of society. How do things look there now?

8 I as a genuine Jew moved here for that reason out of true love for God with some others who were like-minded, and we gave God, the only Lord, an indeed free, but as pure as possible, faithfully devoted community, and He has blessed us very richly for it.

9 You are also Jews and will trust your great part of salvation for the soul in the temple in Jerusalem? But you were never scribes and servants of the temple and can therefore have no idea of what terrible cheek, disgusting to ever better human mind, takes place there with the holy rights of man inside the holy walls! That made me and several of my friends indignant! We searched and found this valley in which we immediately found the necessary nourishment.

10 With time we built here these very cozy houses and now we live very comfortably and peacefully together and always give God alone the honor. I ask you only one thing - that you do not betray us to anyone on your return to the world! Otherwise you are our very welcome guests. Now let us go to my house which is certainly more pleasing to the Lord God than Solomon's temple in Jerusalem. In the house over a good meal, we will discuss some things and you shall get to know us well then!"

- Chapter 261 -

In the house of the village head.

The miracle wine.

1 We now went into a quite cute and spacious mountain valley cabin and were immediately served with bread, salt and fresh milk. The chief excused himself for not being able to offer us any wine; but he had many skins of forest berry juice, which tasted as delicious as any wine. If we wanted to try it, he would with great pleasure have a few jugs full set out.

2 I said: "Do that; we want to try your forest wine! If we like it, then we will ask you for a few more jugs."

3 Then the host went to his cellar and brought us a few jugs full of the forest berry juice, which tasted just like wine, since in principle it was actually wine; for the little grape, now also called blackcurrant, also belongs to the various types of vine, whose fruit is approximately the smallest type of grape. Short and sweet, we drank this forest wine very willingly, mixed with some water, and the host had great joy in seeing that his wine pleased us so much.

4 When both jugs were empty, the host wanted to go and fill them immediately; but I now said to the already very talkative forest wine producer: "Listen, just you leave that and fill the jugs instead of with very fresh water, and I will immediately turn the water into the very best wine!"

5 Then the host raised his eyebrows and said: "Well, I am truly very curious about this trick!"

6 Both the large jugs were immediately placed on the table, filled with water, and the host said, "Now what you demanded is already on the table, and you, friend, show us what you can do!"

7 And I said to him: "Take one or other jug into your hand and try the contents!"

8 The host tried the contents and was so surprised about it that he immediately called his whole household together and let everyone taste. All claimed that they had never had such an extremely good wine pass over their lips. But now everyone wanted to know how it was possible to make such a heavenly good wine out of the purest water.

9 But the host said to the many enquirers: "Yes, my dears, ask him there in the center! It is the greatest riddle for me myself! Such a thing has never happened since human thought began and is quite unheard-of!"

10 At this the host turned to Me and said: "Master of Masters in your wonderful art that is incomprehensible to me! Give us a very small hint as to how and in what manner such a thing was possible for you! And can You do several other such tricks?"

11 I said: "Dear friend, I can give you no answer to your first question for now; but tomorrow you will work it out for yourself! But to the second question, I can tell you this: that actually nothing is impossible for Me and I could perform countless miracles for you simply through the power and strength of My will alone! Do you agree with this?"

12 The host said: "You speak highly of yourself, since you are only a man! Do you not think that only God alone is all-powerful?! If all things were possible for you, you would be God Himself, or you would have to do such things with the help of Beelzebub, who is the highest of all devils, for which you seem to me to have a far too honest, pious and open face, about which one can say: Look, that is a true image of God!

13 But I do not want to speak as if with authority and I think back to the times when I was in Jerusalem and also in the other cities, particularly in Damascus, where I got to know an Indian magician, who also announced about himself with the greatest exaggeration that nothing was impossible for him. He seriously performed great things, the possibility of which was just as little visible to me as the way you now turned the water into the best wine. But among all magicians and artists, the exaggeration of their nonetheless wonderful capabilities to us lay people, is such a usual thing that one willingly gives it to them, because they are basically extraordinary people. But I would like to see something more from you this evening, Master of Masters!"

14 Said I: "Behold, every man judges according to his understanding, and thus you also, and it would not be fair of Me to contradict you in any way! If you achieve any deeper insight, then you will judge otherwise; therefore nothing further now! You have asked Me for another so-called trick today, and I will do it. But so that you do not think that I can only do what I know to do, tell Me what I should do for you!"

- Chapter 262 -

The healing of the host's crippled daughter.

1 The host said: "If nothing is impossible for you, then you must also be able to make a very sick person healthy?!"

2 I said: "Oh yes, do you have one?"

3 The host said: "Yes, unfortunately - one of my dearest daughters - but she will be difficult to help! She is now twenty years old and was a cheerful and active child. A year ago she went to Nahim with this oldest and strongest son of mine for salt. On the way home she slipped where it is steepest and fell more than the depth of five men onto a cliff that juts out and with such a fall she broke her arms and legs. For more than three quarters of a year she suffered the greatest pain; in time the pain indeed grew less, but nonetheless she shrank to such a cripple that she will never be able to leave her bed again. Master of Masters, if you can heal this daughter of mine, then I would like to begin to believe that almost nothing more is impossible for you!"

4 I said: "Bring her here!"

5 The host said to the strong brothers of the sick sister: "Go to her room and bring her here together with her bed!"

6 Then the brothers hurried and brought the poor and truly very sick sister and set her before Me.

7 I looked at the poor patient and said to her: "Daughter, would you like to be as healthy again as you were a year ago?"

8 The cripple speaks with a weak voice: "Oh yes that would be a great benevolent act for me; but no healer can heal me any longer - such a thing is possible only alone for God the almighty!"

9 I said: "If you think and believe such a thing, then stand up and walk and give God the glory!"

10 In an instant the girl became as healthy as if nothing had ever been wrong.

11 When the host and everyone that was in the house saw this, they began to make very respectful faces, and everyone became almost speechless in amazement, and only after a while did the host say with a wondering voice: "No, that is no longer in the realm of what even a very ingeniously talented person on this Earth could learn, but instead it is an extremely rare gift and mercy from God, and we must therefore bring God, the only Lord, our general and highest praise, that He gave a man on Earth once again such a purely divine power, strength and force for the multiple salvation of man as only the great prophets ages ago possessed!

12 But now I understand already this first greeting of our dear, wonderful guest: ‘Peace be with you!’ And: ‘The kingdom of God has come near to you!’ Listen, my entire household that is a rare favorite of God, a new, great prophet! We must honor him highly for God's sake and must listen to him!"

13 At this the host turned to Me and said: "You, eminent friend and master of all Masters, I have no words with which it would be possible for me to express in any way my feeling of thanks towards God and towards you, His truest, great prophet! Oh, forgive me if at the beginning of our acquaintance I expressed myself somewhat inappropriately towards you! But as you have decided to stay with us for some time, I will strive with all my strength to show you and your disciples the greatest possible thanks.

14 Oh, you have given me my dearest child again and thereby more than if you had given me all the riches of the world! Therefore you deserve from me the highest gratefulness after God!"

15 Said I: "Be calm now, Barnabe, and see that your daughter Elisa gets something to eat; for she is now fully healthy and must now also eat and drink something so that she becomes fully strong again!"

16 This happened, and the healed girl rose from her bed, dressed herself as quickly as possible, then hurried to Me, grabbed My hand hastily and pressed it to her beautiful mouth with tears of thanks and then said, sobbing with thanks and great, blessed joy, "Oh, you truly all-powerful friend and Master! Since everything is possible for you, it will also not be impossible for you to look into my heart; there you will find thanks written with the glowing letters of love, which I will owe you forever!"

17 Said I: "Remain with such love, and it will bring you many blessings! But now sit down at our table, eat and drink and be of a cheerful spirit! But if you go again to Nahim, you must not skip about like a gazelle, but instead proceed very modestly along the somewhat dangerous path, and you will have no other physical harm to suffer! Only remember that, My otherwise very most beloved daughter Elisa! Now sit down, be quiet and eat and drink!"

- Chapter 263 -

Barnabe remembers the twelve-year-old Jesus in the temple.

1 At this Elisa went to her father, who pressed her to his heart with many tears of thanks, then showed her a place between him and his wife and gave her to eat and drink of everything that there was; but she particularly liked My wine made from water.

2 When the daughter now ate and drank so healthily, the host asked Me with all respect: "Lord and Master of all Masters! It is indeed very foolish of me to ask you how you can know that I am called Barnabe, and that this daughter of mine is called Elisa; for if such things are possible for you, given by God, why should it not then be just as easily possible for you to know how I and all the others as well are called by name? But I just thought to myself that you might have seen and recognized me from Jerusalem on some occasion. And if that was an easily possible case, then it would be of doubled interest to me!"

3 Said I: "Tell Me, what has brought you to this thought!"

4 The host said: "Forgive me now in advance, if I should express myself somehow unworthily - for I have now enjoyed some wine, and it has perhaps loosened my tongue somewhat; but I will nonetheless pull myself together as much as I can so that my tongue will not cause me any too great shame!

5 Behold, about twenty years ago I was still a Levite in Jerusalem and actually a future Pharisee (VARIZAR = shepherd, also shepherd director). There one day - as never before or after - it happened that at the usual test of the twelve year-old boys, a boy called Jesus from Nazareth in Galilee was brought before us. This boy knew then already more than all the templars together and was actually the main reason why I soon left the temple for all time.

6 But in addition I must admit openly here that you, Master of Masters, have a very extraordinary similarity to that truest miracle youth namely in the face. But I do not want to claim at all with this that you as a man now have grown from that youth, which would not exactly be something impossible; but only I wanted to mention with that that it is highly strange how much great spirits often look alike in their faces if they follow one and the same tendency.

7 For three days that extraordinary boy at the temple kept proving to us in every detail that he was himself the promised Messiah. Then for various reasons I decided to leave the temple in exchange for this solitude. I never returned to it nor did I go anywhere else; therefore, I do not know what may have become of that boy. At the time I was his enemy; yet it did not take long before I could see the truth in that boy's assertions more and more clearly, whereas the temple kept becoming more disagreeable and offensive to me every day.

8 Indeed, the words of that boy were my salvation from the truly hellish temple. And now I want you to tell me what might have become of that boy. What incensed me most against the old die-hard templars was the fact that they promised a reward to the one who would kill him at some good opportunity. This did not happen while I was with the temple. However, since I have been here for almost twenty years, who knows what the temple might have perpetrated later on against that boy. You, Master of masters, surely know all that, and so I am asking you to enlighten me on this."

9 I say: "See, exactly for that reason I have now come to you; for I Myself am that boy who then pressed hard against the elders, the Pharisees and doctors of the law in the temple! And because you now know that, it will also now become clearer to you why I said to you right after My arrival: ‘Peace be with you and your house! The kingdom of God has come close!’ But only tomorrow morning will we have a further discussion about it! But today have a good bed prepared for us so that we can shake off our tiredness and tomorrow stand strong for action again!"

10 At this, the host Barnabe ordered his servants to prepare us a good bed immediately and they did what they were commanded.

11 When we stood up from the table, the healed daughter came up to Me once again and thanked Me most heartfelt for the healing of her suffering, and also the host, his wife and his other children did the same; for the beautiful and cheerful Elisa was very dear to them all and they were so overjoyed that they now had their Elisa very fresh and healthy again before them. I gave them all My blessing and then quickly headed with My disciples to rest.

- Chapter 264 -

The observance of the Sabbath.

1 When we woke up in the early morning, we already found the whole house buzzing with activity. On the hearth was already burning a cheerful fire, around which several pots were standing, in which all sorts of aromatic dishes were cooking for us and for the people of the house. There were also fish, and indeed the best and most beautiful mountain trout. The healed daughter was the most active at the hearth and bustled about very much to prepare a good breakfast for us as soon as possible. When she caught sight of Me, she positively threw herself towards Me with a hasty passion and thanked Me once again for her healing.

2 But I said to her, how could she work like this today, on a Sabbath?

3 To this Elisa answered and said: "Lord and Master, there is no law in the Scriptures that forbids the people to serve God on a Sabbath!"

4 I said: "Very well - on the Sabbath one should indeed serve God alone very well; but you are now serving with all energy only Me and My disciples! Are we gods then?!"

5 The assiduous daughter said: "Oh Lord, Your disciples are indeed only people like us; but You are God through and through, which I now see only too clearly! And if I and everyone in the house serve You through our activity, then we certainly do not desecrate the Sabbath!"

6 Said I: "But tell Me, My very dearest Elisa, who told you that I was a God! For look, if I were a God, and Jehovah in heaven is also a very truest God, then there would obviously be two Gods; but in the Scriptures it says very expressly: I alone am your God and Lord; therefore you shall have no other and foreign gods besides Me! Well, how do they go together then, if I am also a God?"

7 Elisa said while busily preparing the fish: "Oh Lord, they go together very well!"

8 Said I: "Yes, but how so?"

9 She said: "Because You and the Father in heaven are not two, but quite perfectly one and heaven is always and eternally only where You are, oh Lord!"

10 Said I: "But who told you that, and who taught you in this?"

11 She said: "First of all, You Yourself, oh Lord! 'Peace be with you and with your house!' and 'The kingdom of God has come close to you!' Those are words which can only come from a divine mouth! And then came Your miracles, which apart from God no-one can perform! Then yesterday, when You, oh Lord, laid down to rest, I spoke for a long time about that twelve-year old Jesus in the temple with my father, and looked through all the texts in Isaiah that refer to You, and then it turned out more brightly than the sun that You are none other than the promised Messiah and can be none but Jehovah Zebaoth Himself in Your spirit! You see, oh Lord, those are my reasons to consider You what You obviously are!"

12 Said I: "Well, you are right, as is your earthly father; but you must not disclose Me to your neighbors before the right time! And since you have recognized Me and are serving only Me today on the Sabbath with your hard work, then work; but see that none of your neighbors are annoyed by it!"

13 Elisa said: "Oh, do not worry about that! We are all far beyond that point. We indeed do not perform any hard, slavish tasks on a Sabbath; but wherever there is need, we also do that on any Sabbath. We now are no longer under the hypocrisy of the temple and it’s selfish laws, from which any rich person can buy himself free for a certain time, but instead our law is the truth and it’s goodness and this forbids no-one to do the most necessary for his house on a Sabbath.

14 But if the idle going and hanging around was something necessary for the achievement of eternal life, then You, oh Lord, would certainly give all the people a good example, since You would not let any sun, moon or stars go up and down on the Sabbath, which would certainly be within Your powers. Thus neither would any wind blow, no clouds or fog would form, no river flow, no sea move, and even the animals would have to instinctively observe the full Sabbath as an example for us people! But if one observes the whole great creation only somewhat keenly, one sees only too soon that You are just as active on the Sabbath as on any other working day, and since we are already God's children according to the Scriptures, we certainly are not doing anything wrong by imitating in all things our good, holy and dear Father!"

15 I said: "Truly, I had not sought such cleverness in you as a person! Therefore remain as you are and be a good example for everyone of how the Father in heaven always provides all people with the best example!"

- Chapter 265 -

The testimony of the cured Elisa for the Lord.

The transformation of the gateways to the mountain village.

1 After this I went out into the open with Barnabe and some of My disciples, and Barnabe showed us his possessions. We moved through the whole village, which consisted of some twenty houses, and looked very cute and everywhere very clean.

2 But when the inhabitants caught sight of us, they became afraid, as if we were commissars who would now demand taxes and perhaps even some punishments from them. Then I secretly entrusted Barnabe with the reason of their vain fear, and he called several to him and gave them the fullest assurance that their fear was a completely empty one, and that on the contrary, this place was to be wished only the greatest happiness, that I had visited it and, as the very first and best Savior, had healed his daughter - who could not be healed by anyone else in the whole world - so completely in an instant, that she was now a hundred times healthier, more lively and fresher than she had ever been before.

3 When they heard such a thing from their chief, their fear disappeared, and they were all highly amazed at it; only several women said: "We cannot believe that until we have seen Elisa ourselves; for only an angel of God from heaven could have helped her - it would be impossible for a person, even if he were the very first healer in the world himself!"

4 But while the women were still saying such things among one another, Elisa also came after us quite hurriedly and invited us to breakfast. When the women saw Elisa, they were positively shocked and hardly believed their eyes; but finally they also went over to her and asked her how this had then happened.

5 But Elisa said, pointing at Me: "There stands the divinely eminent Savior; ask Him! I know and feel that I am now quite fully healthy, and you can see it too; but about everything else, and how it was possible, I do not know."

6 Then we turned around again and went back to Barnabe's house, where a rich breakfast was waiting for us. It goes without saying that both the men as well as the women and children followed us there; but they remained there the whole day, and the disciples taught them about Me and about My mission from heaven down to Earth, and they all believed now in My name.

7 After we had taken breakfast, however, our host led Me to the always very dangerous place where his daughter had had her fall, and asked Me whether I with My omnipotence could not and would not help to make this path just a little easier to pass.

8 I said: "You now know already that nothing is impossible for Me; but for now let us leave this place - for it is for your protection! If this spot did not exist, you would have been discovered long ago. Therefore I also think that you should leave this place as it is, and if I do something for you all, I will make this place even less passable, and indeed so that in the future no cat would be in a position to cross it. On the other hand, however, I will show you another path which already exists, but which you have all not yet discovered."

9 When Barnabe heard this from Me, he asked Me to do this, and I said: "Well then, so be it!"

10 Then a great mass of rock detached itself down below, and thereby an overhang wall a hundred men's height high, was created hanging above, over which no person would ever be able to climb. But there where we stood, a sort of parapet was created, over which one could look but not so easily cross, which would in any case have been a vain effort, connected to great danger. With this gift our host was now satisfied and quite full of amazement.

11 But he asked Me also immediately about the more convenient and less dangerous path, and I said: "We will only look for that in the afternoon! It is indeed a little further, to come down to Nahim, but it is much more convenient to walk, and you can drive all your domestic animals up and down on it without any problem, and that is indeed a significant advantage for you."

- Chapter 266 -

Spiritual vision.

1 (The Lord) "For behold, I want it so that those who walk according to the commandments of Moses should not remain that withered in their earthly possessions either.

2 And so I came here to you all firstly to announce to you all that the kingdom of God and thus all of heaven has come down to you on this Earth in and through Me, which now a large number of previously most staunch Gentiles already recognize and admit openly, so that is fulfilled what Daniel prophesied: 'Even in the graves will His voice be heard!' For it is the Gentiles who were buried in the grave of night, judgment and death from their birth.

3 But secondly, I want to also place you and your children and your children's children earthly in such a situation that your physical needs should not suffer any affliction. Indeed I do not want you to wallow in great abundance, but you should not suffer any too great affliction as has often been the case with you before.

4 And the third reason for My coming here is already known to you, since I planned to take a few days' rest in this quiet area with My disciples. And now, since we have come to the end of this necessary affair, we will now head home again and see everything that has happened there!"

5 On the way the host said: "Lord and Master! Would it not be pleasant for You if we went over this small peak and thus home on a small diversion? For from this height one truly enjoys an extremely magnificent view; one sees from there even as far as Jerusalem, also a part of the Sea of Galilee, and at very good weather, one can even see the great Greek Sea! If You, oh Lord, would like, I would like to show You now this true blissful place of mine!"

6 I said: "I am completely with you; for I am also a friend of mountains and very far views, and so let us climb this small hill!"

7 Then we climbed the small peak and it was very exhilarating to be on top, and Barnabe became almost untiring in his praise of the beautiful region.

8 But I admonished him and said: "It is undeniable that the area, seen from this height, is very exhilarating to look at - that is the whole image; but just take a close-up look now at every individual thing that you see here in general, and you will soon have enough of the beauty of this area!

9 Only that which is of the soul and the spirit is truly and everlastingly beautiful. Since you are now enjoying only this scenery and it’s fragrant opalescence, you still derive more pleasure from matter and it’s forms than from the spiritual presented to you by the rigid forms, as in a large script. Ah, when one day you are able to behold, read and understand all these forms with the inner eyes of the spirit, you will also be able to exclaim, like David: 'Oh Lord, how great and glorious are all Your works! He who takes notice of them, delights in them!'

10 Behold, to truly take notice of the works of God means to see them with the eyes of the spirit, whereby the soul gains true cognition. Only this gives man a true joy that is no longer perishable, but is always and forever the property of the soul. And if you then want to see also the spirit-world, you will initially behold it spiritually only by first recognizing the forms solely of this world, and then more and more by your comprehension of the various activities, aspirations and correlations of these forms which give you already so much pleasure even without your better and deeper comprehension of them.

11 Spiritual vision at first is merely a recognition of the outer and inner correspondences. If one keeps practicing with a heart that is pure and as free from sin as possible, is full of pure love for God and, therefore, for the fellowman, this cognition and comprehension passes into a clear vision, proving to the seer that he is at one within and has reached the true rebirth of his spirit and the resurrection of the soul from the material grave of its flesh. - Do you understand Me well?"

12 Sais the host: Oh Lord and truly my God! If I understood that in it’s true depth, I would obviously be one of the happiest men on this earth. But I am far behind in my understanding, although I have got a vague idea of what You meant to tell me. My Elisa, who is a kind of visionary, would undoubtedly have grasped and understood Your explanation better than I do. Yet I, too, have understood something. But it takes some doing to find in the external forms the inner, completely spiritual correspondences and understand them in their numerous ramifications. Lord, could You not make this a little clearer for me through some suitable metaphor?"

13 Say I: "Oh yes, certainly, and so listen!"

- Chapter 267 -

The correspondences between matter and mind.

1 (The Lord) When you and your friendly neighbors arrived in this region, you found nothing but stones and wood. You immediately set to work gathering what was best and most suitable. You then withdrew within yourselves and began to ponder on what rules of architecture to apply in the construction of a hut or even a house out of the gathered material.

2 When you pondered even more deeply, you saw images. From these you soon designed a plan and began to build one and the other house according to this plan, and soon there were some very nice houses in your mountain valley. If you had not found any useful building material, you could never, with your inner intellect, have mentally designed a plan suiting the material. However, since you did find it, you soon also visualized a dwelling that fitted it and then combined the material so that it represented something completely different from that which you had originally found.

3 Although that is only a material image, it is nonetheless a beginning, in order to teach a person the first expressions of the relationship between the very raw material and what a spirit can make from it. If a person has deserved and understood this, then it goes further and deeper very easily, and so then it happens that he who seeks, finds; whoever asks, is given to, and whoever knocks, to him it is opened.

4 Behold, the more spiritually formed the people are somewhere, the more ordered, more artistic is their work and production. Why is it so? Because their souls already stand in a closer conjunction with their spirits. The nearer and deeper however the soul joins it’s spirit which comes from God, the higher it rises in the ordinance of all recognition and consciousness and constantly finds more and more correspondence between matter and spirit. And then it is also easy to see that a person who has come the furthest in the art of the correspondence between matter and spirit, must make matter as well the most serviceable and profitable for himself. But most of all, that will be the very most blessed case on the other side only for perfected souls reborn in the spirit, where nothing will be impossible to them any longer. Now tell Me whether you have now understood Me somewhat better!"

5 The host says: "Yes, my Lord and God in Yourself, no I am already beginning to see a trace of light! The old peoples, for example the Egyptians, must have been very familiar with the knowledge of correspondence, since their works even now show an order at which almost no person in our times can only guess."

6 I say: - In any case - for only the spiritual awakening shows ever more order to the soul and teaches it to know how to investigate the relationships between the matter and other matter, and between matter and substance, between substance and soul and between soul and spirit; and the spirit penetrates everything in the end, and everything must serve it in the highest and deepest possible order. Do you understand that?"

7 Says our host: "Yes, now I understand that ever better and in time I will hopefully understand it even better still! But now another question! Look, I know the Scriptures indeed; I often read in them about the angels of God who are supposed to be the purest spirits! Are those the spirits who are supposed to unite with our souls in order to make them fully godlike?"

8 I said: "To a very small extent sometimes yes, if My order designates them for it for some very particular reason; but such a thing happens extremely seldom. But what happens many times and will happen even more often in the future, is that also very many angels will go through the path of the flesh as well, as I Myself as the highest Spirit am now going through it, so that they can then become true children of God.

9 But there they will choose a correct soul that has never been in the flesh for themselves and put it into the flesh of a pure mother, and they will then care for the incubation and for the correct formation according to their light and according to their power, so that such a soul is strengthened for the eternal union with them.

10 Well, you will certainly not understand that yet; but there will come a time when you will understand even such secret things of heaven. But now we can go up to your house; for behold, a small mishap has occurred for one of your neighbors, and we must go and make things good again!"

11 That suited our host very well and we went and were soon on that spot.

- Chapter 268 -

The healing of the man who was bitten by a venomous snake.

The miracle wine.

1 But when we were in front of the unfortunate neighbor, his wife and children came out and asked us for help.

2 But I said: "Just go inside to him; for I have already helped him!"

3 Then the wife and children hurried in to their father who already came towards them quite healthily. He had made his way barefoot through some bush land beforehand and had been bitten by an evil adder, immediately swelled up very much and was in danger of losing his life. But I came and healed him.

4 But when he came out to thank Me, I said: "A second time do not forget your shoes if you have something to do in the shrubs! But from now on no such adders shall crawl in this area! Amen."

5 Then we went home, where the midday meal was waiting for us along with the disciples. The midday meal was this time very richly prepared, only the wine looked somewhat sparse; therefore the host asked Me whether he should bring out the forest fruit juice again.

6 But I said to him: "Do today just like last night, and we will also have no lack of wine!"

7 Then he had the several great jugs filled with water and I willed it - and it became wine.

8 But since this time some neighbors had been invited to Barnabe's table and were taking the midday meal with us, a neighbor remarked on this, saying, "I believe that the forest wine, which is very good and powerful with you, would be better for such rare guests than pure water!"

9 The host said: "But, dear neighbor, I know that as well as any of you; but I also know that you all have been discussing with the disciples since the morning, certainly also who this Master of all masters is actually, and that nothing is impossible for Him! And so you must all have learned how He not only here yesterday evening but also in several other places in Galilee has changed the water into the very best wine simply through His blessed will and then the astonished guests got always the very best wine to drink. At least to me one of the disciples trusted yesterday secretly how their Lord and Master has often done the same thing before, and I now know about it. Did the disciples not tell you anything about it?"

10 The neighbor who was somewhat worried about the wine said: "Yes, the disciples have indeed told us several things about it; but exactly because we know only too well who this Lord and Master is, so we as sinners did not dare to speak to the holy Jehovah about it; but we are now already completely convinced of it, that the water brought - let's say - has been transformed into the best wine. Therefore this time consider that my somewhat too precocious concern about the forest wine was meant well!"

11 The innkeeper said- "Everything is good again; eat and drink now according to your hunger and thirst!"

12 Then we ate and drank very cheerfully and at this meal much was spoken about various good things, as had been the case in other places as well at such occasions.

13 But when we sat at the table for about two hours, a somewhat more distant neighbor came, who had not yet learned anything about My presence, with a very desperate expression into the house of the representative and said: "Barnabe, Barnabe, we are as good as lost! How it happened I do not know; but it is actually true: Our only and most necessary path to Nahim no longer exists! We come to a type of walled parapet; over it we see a great drop which frightens everyone! Only a bird can get across it, but it is no longer possible for a person! But I do not know any other way, since this range has nothing but extremely steep cliffs in all directions. What will we do now if we need salt? My advice has run out and yours will too; what then? Who could have done that to us?"

14 The innkeeper said: "Do not be so worried about it! If you also have not found a better way, there are nonetheless other people here who know a much more comfortable path, and we will also walk along it in future. For you see here foreign guests with me; they are very wonderful people, they know already about a better path and will show it to us. But we will from now on not have to travel too often since the Master, this great Master of all Masters of the world, will show us in these mountains of ours an even better salt than what is in Nahim. But now sit down here and eat and drink with us!"

15 The neighbor did not need to be told twice, immediately sat down at the table and ate and drank with us and could not wonder enough at the good wine; he asked the innkeeper where he got the wine from.

16 But the innkeeper said: "Look over there! The Master of masters, who is sitting there with us at the table, and He, as you can see, has also healed my daughter Elisa simply through His all-powerful word in an instant, as you see her sitting here at my side, has also created this now most magnificent wine from water and will certainly make sure in the same way that we will have our own salt. Tell me now whether you are still worried about it, because this true Lord and Master has purely - through His all-powerful word - closed the always very dangerous path for all time and at the same time opened for us a hidden and comfortable one, on which we can even lead our necessary domestic animals up and down without danger! Do you agree with this?"

17 The far neighbor said: "Yes, if that is so, as I now do not doubt in the least, then it is certainly very good for us; for I was in a great fear for a long time that the people of Nahim would in the end destroy us and reveal us to the Romans or the Jerusalem Jews, which would not give us any luck. But we can still enjoy the blessings of this rare mountain valley, without having to give the rude extravagant people a tribute of it. But now I would like to learn something more about this extraordinary miracle worker! Be so good and tell me something!"

18 The innkeeper said: "Just leave that be! This divine Master will spend a longer time in our midst with His disciples and then there will be enough time to be able to make His closer acquaintance!"

- Chapter 269 -

About the right path and the right salt.

1 Said I: "Listen! After we have now strengthened our limbs with food and drink, let us now stand up from the table and we will go and see where the new path down to Nahim is! I will also show you all the salt reserve of this mountain, since you all have nothing against doing good on the Sabbath, which is very great, since you, Barnabe, have already made mention of it. But go, all of you who are here; for what I will show and give you as a gift here, should be a general good for everyone who lives in this valley!"

2 At this we rose and went a considerable distance up and into the valley. There we came to a steep cliff which had a large crevice about a good man's height from the ground, in which one could easily climb over by quickly removing some fallen stones. We were then soon in the very spacious crevice, behind which a great, grotto-like cave opened up.

3 And I now said to those who had come along: "Look, through this cave you can go very comfortably and fully without danger! Only towards the end the cave will become a little bit narrower, but it is nonetheless wide enough to be able to let an ox go through it. In the middle of the cave path it will certainly be somewhat darker than here; but so much light nonetheless comes in that every one of you will be able to notice the places where he should put his foot."

4 We now wandered through the cave without any adversity, and when we were at the end of it and came out into the open air, we saw a very easy and fully safe slope, overgrown with sparse grass and moss, to the plateau, which indeed looked very wild, but which was actually very good, because it would only be crossed very seldom by some hikers and therefore our inhabitants of the high village could come down into the deep valley all the more unnoticed.

5 When Barnabe and all who were with him saw this, they fell on their knees before Me and said: "We thank You, oh Lord, from all the depths of our hearts; for You have shown us an unspeakably great benevolence in that You have shown us this new and safe path and You have released us from the greatest torture which the previous terrible path caused us!"

6 I told them to rise and said to them: "As I have now shown you all here a new, safe and also more comfortable path to walk, thus I also show you all a single true, good and safe path to eternal life!

7 This path I show you with only a very few words, and these are: Be good and gentle in your hearts! Love God above all and each his neighbor as himself; for the whole Law and all the prophets consist of this! Then believe that I am He who was promised by God and prophesied about by the prophets, and you will have opened the gate and the path to the kingdom of God which has now come to you, just as another path was opened and shown from this valley into the depths of the Earth!

8 It goes without saying that all the Laws of Moses are bound together in the two commandments of love; for whoever loves God above all else, will certainly avoid everything that is sinful and no longer sin against the one or other commandment of God, and whoever loves his neighbor as himself, will not wish him any ill and even less do anything evil to him.

9 But that you will take these words of Mine to heart and then act accordingly is the true salt of life, and I will then now also show you and also give you a natural salt. Therefore let us leave now this place, return to your valley, and we will find there in a corner of this valley quite unknown to you all, yet a very pure and good salt! And so let us walk over there!"

10 They all thanked Me with true fervor and we set off on our return journey.

- Chapter 270 -

The salt rock.

The wonderful and blessed evening meal.

1 When we stood once again in the valley in front of the crevice in the wall, everyone laid signs from there to the nearest houses, so that they would be able to find this way again for future times. We now went to the far-off neighbor in quite the opposite direction, who had his house on a very high hill and was about half an hour walk from the other houses.

2 Having arrived there, I said to the owner of the house, "Behold: exactly in the direction where the sun will soon go down, you can see at a short distance from here a white cliff of a significant size; behold, that is pure salt, and you can all use it without any previous purification! You must only put a little less into your meals; for this salt is more powerful than that of Nahim, although Nahim's salt - certainly taken already from very deep down - is from this dome. Whoever of you wants to go there should go, and bring some over to us!"

3 The owner of the house immediately offered to hurry over there, since it needed hardly a quarter of an hour to get there with swift feet. He took a shovel and a bin with him, easily freed several pieces from the wall, fills the bin with it and immediately brought it over to us. Everyone tried the salt and found it extremely excellent. Then I was thanked once again. I blessed this high-lying house and we all then set off on our return journey; the far neighbor also came with us and even took his wife and some grown-up children with him.

4 When we arrived back at Barnabe's house again, the whole community was already waiting for us and loudly expressed their desire for the luck to see Me again and have Me among them.

5 And the neighbor whom I had healed in the morning from the bite of an adder called out loudly, "Hosanna in the highest to Him who has come to us! This is now the true, new Jerusalem, of which a prophet prophesied; the old and bad one however will soon perish!"

6 Everyone copied this speech, and indeed with such enthusiasm and power of voice that it reverberated from the many wide and high cliff walls in a thousand echoes. The inhabitants, for whom such a game of nature was still foreign, thought that I must therefore be a highest spiritual person, because now even the spirits of the air and the mountains had joined in with their praise.

7 Yet I Myself explained to them such a phenomenon, and they accepted My explanation gratefully, but tested their powerful voices once more and received the same effect even without the hosanna.

8 And they all believed then and said: "You are alone the true one; for the templars would already have stoned us now if we had not believed that this very truly was spirits of the mountain and air!"

9 But I said to the host that he should now see to it that all these many guests, about two hundred in number, should be cared for with a meal.

10 But the host said: "Lord, what and how much I have, shall be brought out and given out; only I fear that it will hardly be enough for everyone!"

11 But I said, "So go inside and have a look!"

12 And the host went inside and looked and found all his larders full of bread, wine, milk, honey and fresh fish and another large number of the finest flour for bread rolls and other dishes.

13 Then he came back again, beat himself on the breast and said: "Oh, that is now more than ever! I know exactly what was in my larders before; they were only filled sparingly for my household, and now they beam with the highest abundance! That was You again, oh Lord! Yes, now a thousand can be cooked for, not only for two hundred! But where to find so many cooks? The dear neighbors must certainly today put their hands to work; for my people would not be finished before morning!"

14 When the wives and children of the neighbor heard this, they hurried into the large kitchen and got to work, and so a great meal was ready in an hour.

15 The meal was indeed ready now; but then a very different problem arose. The host now had far too few tables and benches, and his rooms were also too small for two hundred guests. To be brief, everything was too small for such an event. Therefore he came up to Me and asked Me for advice as to what he should do.

16 I said: "Yes, My friend Barnabe, in natural ways there would not be much that can be done! If it were not so cool here on this height, then we could sit down here in the open air; but the evenings now become very cold and dark, and so in the open air it is no longer wise. Many peaceful sheep indeed have place in a sheepfold; but since you are lacking tables and benches, things are nevertheless somewhat difficult. Also the lighting will be somewhat sparse in your house! I know all that. But nonetheless we will find enough means through which we can all be very well accommodated. Look in your house to see how the tables and benches are, and then come and tell Me!"

17 Then the host went into the house, looked at everything and came back full of amazement. I asked him how it all looked.

18 And Barnabe answered again full of amazement: "Oh Lord, You All-merciful, only now I see very clearly that nothing is impossible for You! The rooms have been extended backwards by more than half, and there are tables and benches in abundance, and also there is no lack of the most beautiful lights. The meals already stand ready on all the tables and are waiting for us, and so I, a poor sinner, think that we should now go into the rooms and take the wonderful evening meal!"

19 I said: "Yes, we shall do that now, and so follow Me everyone; for I have made a good harvest in you all!"

20 At this I went forwards and everyone followed Me. In a few moments everyone was sitting in the best order at the tables.

21 But before anyone put a bite into their mouths, the host rose and spoke: "Listen to me, all my dear neighbors! This meal is a true meal from God in paradise, which was lost through the fault of man. The great, holy God and Lord has brought it Himself. He sits, oh wonder of wonders, now physically in our midst and has prepared this true paradise meal for us Himself! This meal is therefore a highest blessed and holy one. But we are sinful people - and would now like to enjoy this meal as unworthy. Let us therefore all ask the Lord to forgive us our sins and then to consider us a little more worthy to enjoy this holy meal with Him! Rise and say with me: Oh Lord, You wonderful One! Forgive us our sins, so that we will be more worthy to sit with you at table!"

22 At this I said: "I am a doctor and I come to heal the sick. But a sinner is also sick, and so you were also sick in soul and body. And I therefore sought you out and healed you fully, and you are therefore now no longer sinners; therefore sit down at the table very cheered, and eat and drink as your heart desires! Your words, My Barnabe, have given Me great joy, and you shall all have even more than now the magnificence of God! And now eat!"

23 At this they all sat, thanked Me and began to eat and to drink with a true heart's desire; and I and the disciples did the same. During the eating and drinking however little was spoken; only at the end of the meal all the neighboring guests rose, laid their hands on their chests and thanked Me loudly for this heavenly good meal. But when they had come to the end of their thanks, they wanted to go home; but I insisted that they should stay a little longer and discuss a little the events of this Sabbath that had just passed.

- Chapter 271 -

About modesty, gentleness and humility.

The golden middle path.

1 Then one said from out of their midst: "Oh Master and Lord! Behold, if one in his mind is full of a thousand thoughts about You, about Your deeds and about Your teaching and one cannot reach clear rest by a long shot, then speaking is difficult, because one does not know at all where one should begin and where one should end! But in addition comes the fact that You Yourself are present here, who also surely knows each of our thoughts before it has ever occurred to us us and is felt by us. What can we then say in Your personal presence and what can we discuss? Yes, if You want to say something else here, then we would indeed like to hear You, as long as You would like to speak; but with our speech, it would look very poor!"

2 I said: "Listen! Modesty is a good virtue, and one can only recommend it highly to man; but to be too modest is often unwise, because one only helps ones neighbor through a too great modesty to the overestimation of his capabilities - however good - and gradually even to arrogance, which is not good, but on the contrary it is very bad. For Me that can indeed never be the case, but among others very easily.

3 You see, the often too great modesty of the otherwise very honest people towards those who oppose them with particular talents and capabilities, and who therefore have too great amazement and honor made out of them kings and in the end the very most arrogant tyrants, as well as also the very most arrogant priesthood! Therefore you should also constantly find the golden middle in virtues such as humility, gentleness and modesty - otherwise you, even if you were free now, would form such people yourselves in time among you who would treat you all then with all harshness and you would then sigh under their pressure.

4 I know indeed that My deeds and My words have taken away your courage to say anything in front of Me; but it is not so much that, as that you believe in your hearts that I am the One who from God, through the mouth of the prophets, was promised firstly to the Jews and through them to all the people of the Earth.

5 If you believe that very actively and observe My teaching in deed and My easy commandments, you will also take in My Spirit and through the same do even greater things than what I have just done before you; for if you are children of one and the same Father in heaven, you are also heirs of His perfection, to which you have been called. You can then also act and so as these disciples of Mine now do and can act, when it is necessary. If you now know this, then you can also speak before Me without fear and shyness like these disciples of Mine.

6 For if such a thing was never possible, I would have certainly had no disciples with Me, who should also be as perfect as the Father in heaven is perfect and in Me; for as a servant I certainly do not need any person, since I Myself can serve all people and I do at all times. But if I wanted to have beings who served Me, then I would only have to desire - and in an instant, countless hosts of the most powerful angels would be at My disposal and would obey My signals. But from that you can draw the very non-deceptive conclusion that I only have taken disciples to Me so that they should learn everything from Me that I can do Myself, and that I have come to you for quite the same reason. Tell Me now whether you still do not dare to speak before Me now!"

- Chapter 272 -

The prophets' language of correspondences.

1 The far neighbor said: "Oh Lord, we now trust ourselves to speak if we only knew what about! But in addition comes the fact, easily understandable in itself, that we all are now much too full of thoughts about what we have heard, seen and learned today. But if I may ask something simply for myself, then that would be that You would tell us all - or simply me alone - what will happen to me one day after the certain death of this body.

2 Will the pure soul keep its consciousness, or will it only awake again to consciousness after the resurrection of the flesh announced by the prophets? On the day of judgment this general resurrection should happen; but when this day will come, is to the highest degree undetermined. At this moment of horror, the just are supposed to then receive their eternal reward before God in heaven and the sinners, their eternal punishment in hell.

3 Well, those are truly teachings that my mind and also my reason can never fully become friends with! How is that in truth to be understood, or will that happen literally?

4 Truly, if all that will happen literally, then things look very bleak for humanity, and under such circumstances, it would be a thousand times better if one had never been born and never become a person! How many thousand times a thousand people know nothing about our teaching, are deep Gentiles, and their innocent fate will then be eternal punishment in the most terrible fire of hell!

5 Truly, if I observe God's wisdom, love and goodness correctly, such a final sentence for the people seems to me almost impossible! Oh Lord, You will certainly be able to give us a better explanation of this! But if things are so, then we people are the most unhappy creatures on the whole Earth!"

6 Said I: "Yes, My dears, this issue is difficult to explain to you with few words for the moment; but I have explained all this to My disciples in the smallest detail, and they will explain it also to you.

7 What the prophets wrote about it in their inner inspiration, they wrote down in parables which are pure correspondences of the naked truths hidden in them. Whoever understands the ancient science of correspondences will soon clearly see what the metaphors of the prophets mean.

8 Since you have never heard of correspondences, you know only the crude, natural meaning of the Scriptures. There is, however, always in the metaphors of prophetic scripture a threefold meaning: First, the material-spiritual, second, the pure spiritual and, third, the pure heavenly meaning coming from the heart of God.

9 The first influences the moral life of man in the sense that he, as a natural man, thinks and acts in accordance with a right upbringing, meaning, that he does not remain grounded in matter, but turns away from it and uses it only as a means through which he can penetrate more and more deeply and clearly into the pure spiritual. A man who has been instructed in these things and acts accordingly, will soon find the correspondence between matter and Spirit. Having done this, he will enter from the spiritual into the heavenly or, rather, into the pure spiritual. From there it is easy to enter into the pure divine, heavenly. Only then will he see in their full clarity and fundamental meaning, the revelations contained in the prophetic books.

10 But whoever considers the purely material images in the Scriptures to be everything, proves that he himself is still purely matter, which is judged and must be, and that he keeps your judgment in his consciousness and in his feelings for all his earthly life and floats in the constant fear and terror of falling into that purely material state after the passing away of the body even with his soul, in which the Scriptures presents and describes in pictures the state of matter.

11 But I say this to you and to all of you that in the beyond, everything is different from the way the metaphors of Scripture depict and describe things.

12 The words of Scripture are like the shell of an egg, inside which three things are hidden, namely the white and the yolk and in the middle of the yolk the reddish life coil, which carries the germ of life.

13 But this shell must be everywhere in the material world, wherever anything is, so that the innermost Divine can never be defiled anywhere and by anyone. But because everywhere in all natural is hidden the spiritual, heavenly and divine - which obviously proves the all-presence of the divine will, so there is also a relationship between everything that is in the world, in the spiritual kingdom, in heaven and finally even in God Himself.

14 But My disciples, who now have knowledge about very much, will show you all during My longer stay in your midst the details of this and also at some opportunities show that they are My disciples - except for one, who until now has still not understood very much because of his still worldly greedy heart. But the other eleven and the scribe Matthew have already become very competent, divinely wise men, and you will learn and experience very much from them; just listen to them!"

15 At this Peter said: "Lord, Your divine witness indeed goes far beyond the witness of this world; but only we are not worthy of this at all!"

16 Said I: "In the world there is no dignity among the people, except for that they are in the image of God, and this is the reason why each man has to love and respect his fellowman. And if someone hears and believes My word and acts accordingly, he is worthy of My proper testimony, for whoever testifies to Me, to him I shall testify before My Father in the Heaven of all life. However, if I give a testimony to someone also before the world, it is not for the purpose of praising him before the world, but I merely indicate that the truth out of God is in him. In this way you may well bear My testimony."

- Chapter 273 -

Judas Iscariot's greed for money.

1 Then the disciples thanked Me all except for one, who was secretly rebuked by Thomas because of it.

2 But the one (Judas Iscariot) said: "I thank Him in silence for everything that I have received; but you have received more than I according to His witness - therefore it is also quite right that you all thank the Lord for the more that you have received. You can already perform all sorts of miracles; I cannot manage even one, even if I still believe that it should be possible for me - and you are capable of almost everything! What I thus have not yet received, for that I cannot thank, but instead only ask for it. I have indeed very often prayed about it in silence, but until now except for food, drink and teaching, I have received nothing and have therefore only that to thank for - but the gift of performing miracles, certainly not! Understand me if you will!"

3 Indeed he had said such things more silently, but he was heard very well by Me and by the other disciples.

4 And I said to him: "You, Judas Iscariot, are quite right, that you do not thank Me for what you have not received fully like the other disciples. But when I sent you out before Me a few moons ago to prepare the people in Galilee for Me, then I gave you the power to perform miracles just like the others; but as a money-loving person you began to set up a positive business with it, and allowed yourself to be paid highly and dearly for the miracles you performed. Thereby in a few weeks, you had received a great sum of gold and silver, on which your heart hung very much. But because your heart only hung so much on the greatest filth of the Earth and on the gift of miracles only for the sake of the filth - because this was the actual case with you, then for wise and good reasons such a gift has been taken away from you again, but not the teaching. Therefore you can also indeed give instruction about the arrival of the kingdom of God on Earth to the people, if you desire; but if you do not, you can also let it be! But I think that if you are not against eating and drinking, you should also not be against working a little for yourself and for Me!"

5 Judas Iscariot said quite taken aback: "Ah, I do that willingly in any case, but the brothers do not always allow me - I dislike quarreling, and so I will be quiet again and say nothing!"

6 Said I: "Yes, there you are right again - except that the brothers do not try to prevent you from continuing your sermon until you begin towards the end of it, to show mean intentions. Let that go in the future, and you will be able to preach unhindered. Why should you beg for alms from the listeners, when none of you has ever suffered want for one day while with Me? Therefore, do My bidding and you will act properly in everything and no one will ever interfere with your actions!  Have you understood Me well?"

7 Judas Iscariot said: "Yes, Lord and Master, I will make an effort to satisfy Your will! But now let me go out into the open air; for I have a real urge to go outdoors!"

8 At this he rose quickly and went out into the open. But he did this only because he felt found out and ashamed.

9 The host asked Me how it could be that the disciple who had gone out was not yet as perfect as the others.

10 I said: "Dear friend, that comes from his occasional egoism! He is a potter by profession and made a lot of money with it at the markets. But when he heard about Me, then he came to Me, listened to My words and saw My deeds. Then he asked to become My disciple. I allowed him this, and so he became My disciple. But he is still what he was - a merchant, and he considers money to be an indispensable thing for our earthly life; therefore he would like to only perform miracles forever and actually only for himself and be paid for it like the magicians. But since that can and may never go together with My miracles, he lost through his own fault the capability he already possessed and is thus now constantly somewhat dissatisfied with everything secretly in himself. But otherwise he knows about everything and is a good speaker, and when he teaches anyone about Me and My mission from heaven, his words always have a good effect, and therefore he is one chosen apostle of My original seventy two disciples. Now you know completely who he is and what you have to expect from him."

11 The host says: "Ah, then he is still very much to be respected, and I will discuss with him very often! But now I would indeed like to know what happened to the other sixty disciples! Could they not understand with sense and will in order to follow You, like these twelve, on all the ways and paths, in order to hear and to see very much which would certainly have been of the greatest use for them?"

12 I said: "They have heard and seen as much that they know exactly what they have to do in order to achieve eternal life, and they do not need anything further for now. They did not want to follow Me always and everywhere because of their household situations, and so I released them for the meantime; but they will come again and follow Me on all paths and ways - for they have accepted My word, live and act now accordingly, and so they now have a great desire to come to Me again. They are mainly Galileans like I and these twelve disciples of Mine. Now you know also the fullest truth; but if you would like to know something else, then ask!"

- Chapter 274 -

About the Essenes and their miracles.

1 The host said: "I would like indeed to ask You about something else; but You must not become angry with me about it!"

2 I said: "Ask whatever you want!"

3 The host said: "Well very good then! You see, when I was still a Levite in the temple, it once happened on a mission for the sake of owed tithes that I came across several Essenes! These were very friendly and told me with the greatest assurance of truth that in their temple, bigger than the one in Jerusalem, the greatest miracles were being performed.

4 All the sick were being healed, even the dead were being brought back to life. They had even the elements and forces of all nature in their full control, and sun, moon and all the stars had to obey their will, and so man seems in and among them to be a true lord of nature, the way that once the original father Adam was, before he sinned. Even the trees, the grass, the stones, the water, the air and all creatures must speak with them and give them witness of the fullest truth, and if I could not believe such things, I should only go with them and convince myself of all that personally.

5 Well, my business serving the temple had no particular hurry; for what one cannot perform in one week, one can also bring about in the third week quite comfortably without any problem. I had time for this and followed the very friendly invitation of both the Essenes. We came with the help of three quick-footed camels, which they both had with them, soon to the very place, because my business of collecting the tithes was in any case not far from the Essene's place.

6 I was introduced by the two to their leader, an extremely friendly man, who received me with much kindness and left nothing to be desired for me. His hospitality truly left nothing to be desired! I stayed there for eight days and convinced myself of everything that the two had said before, even in the fullest truth. I thought about it often and would willingly have joined them; but I was not accepted because of my young age, which truly made me very sorry.

7 Well, I would like to learn from You what You say about this institute. For their miracles are quite similar to Yours, so that I secretly was always of the opinion that You are perhaps also an Essene. For they also said to me that the Messiah of the world would come from among them. Clear this up for me more!"

8 I said: "Do not let yourself be impressed by the Essenes; for their words are lies and their deeds are deception and their friendship is the purest hypocrisy! Among them, the end justifies the means through which it is achieved; even if this is in itself so miserable and bad, it is made good and holy if only a good purpose is achieved for the people. They naturally do much earthly good for the people only for money; but the good is not good, because it is the purest fraud.

9 For if a person got to the bottom of this in this life, which in this enlightened time is nothing impossible, he would then be doubly unhappy - once because he had been tricked in the worst way for much money, and secondly that he had to be silent about it so that an even worse evil would not befall him.

10 For these so praised Essenes, sought by all the parts of the world, have a large number of spies everywhere, who go around in many countries under all sorts of human characters. Through these the main leaders and representatives of the great institute experience everything that is and happens somewhat special anywhere. And so it is not advisable at all to stand against them anywhere, because they would certainly find this out soon and take revenge on their opponents.

11 So Barnabe, be quite satisfied; My disciples will tell you further about this. There is even one among My disciples who not long ago was a main Essene; he will describe to you their miracles the best, and you will then be very amazed at your previous blindness.

12 But for now we will go out into the open air a little and cheer ourselves somewhat at the sight of the very star-filled sky today!"

13 That suited everyone, and we rose from the benches and tables and were soon out in the open air.

- Chapter 275 -

A view into the starry sky.

1 Everyone was amazed at the splendor of the sky, and the host asked Me what these countless many great and small stars were. And I explained it to them in the way that I had already explained at other similar moments; yes, here I did even more.

2 After I had explained all the most necessary information for about two hours and thereby secretly the desire became active in their minds to convince themselves even deeper and clearer about the truth of what had been said, as far as possible, then I put them all, without them being able to guess what had happened to them, into the awakened purely spiritual state, and they now looked with illuminated glances in the highest degree towards the stars and could observe one after the other as if they were quite nearby.

3 Suddenly there was a greatest cheering, which grew ever more violent, since I had left the company for a longer time in such spiritual awakening; but I called them all back again to the natural state, and none of them understood what had happened to them, that he had been able to see such unheard-of things in the stars.

4 But I said to them: "Do not be too amazed by this! I have only opened your inner spiritual eye through My power of will, and so you were then also in a position to see these distant worlds as if you had been quite close; for any spatial distance is as good as none for the spirit. But now think about it at home, and tomorrow we will discuss it some more! But for now head home to rest, and the Sabbath-rest and -celebration is thereby ended!"

5 At this they all thanked Me and then headed to their houses. Only the far neighbor remained with us through the short night. I also headed to rest with My disciples, and thus another Sabbath was brought to an end with sheer good deeds.

6 The night passed quickly, and early in the morning, most of the neighbors along with their wives and children were already assembled before the house of Barnabe, and the whole of Barnabe's house was already full of activity in order to prepare a good breakfast.

7 I soon came with My disciples out into the open air to those waiting, and Barnabe brought Me a very magnificent morning greeting, as well as to My disciples at the same time. Then they all did the same to the neighbors present here and rejoiced highly that they had Me in their midst, and they could still not wonder enough at yesterday's view of the starry heaven.

8 One, who had been placed in spirit on the surface of a distant planet, namely on Uranus, asked Me whether these many and very strong people that he had seen there very clearly, were already a type of blessed people. He at least had considered them to be so; only that had surprised him somewhat, that he had seen them working much more actively than even the most industrious people on the Earth. He had also seen many and very big buildings, and many which were just in the process of being built with great zeal. Now he wondered whether in the kingdom of heaven the blessed people also had to build their houses like the people here on this Earth.

9 Then I said to him: "Partly as well. But the people you saw in that world are far from being spirits and can therefore not be blessed, but they are for that world just as material as your material men are here in this world. However, there is a difference, namely, that only you earth-people are called to become children of God, whereas - generally speaking - all men on all the countless myriads of celestial globes do not have this calling, although they are not totally excluded from it. Yet there it takes far more to achieve it than on this earth which has been destined for it since the beginning.

10 Indeed there was a very large Earth, which received light from this sun. It had the same destiny, but it’s people had known no limits, and it happened thus that a very great judgment came over them, as has already happened once to this Earth. That Earth was totally destroyed and obliterated, and with it all the people who had become extremely proud and full of vice.

11 You can learn more about it from these disciples of Mine. Yet if you remain faithful to My teaching and active in it, your spirit - once it unites with your soul - will gradually reveal this to you as a whole and will lead you into the most wonderful truths."

12 Then everyone wondered again at My omniscience and thanked Me and praised and honored Me, that I had honored them with My visit.

13 But now Elisa, who at the preparation of the breakfast had taken part the most actively came very cheerfully, and invited us to breakfast. But the neighbors excused themselves, since they had already taken one at home.

14 But Barnabe said: "Now everything is the same! It has been prepared for everyone, just like yesterday's evening meal, and they should only make themselves quite comfortable at the tables!"

15 Then everyone went into the house again and the breakfast was taken cheerfully. After the meal that was taken, the disciples received much to do; for the neighbors began to ask them about the Essenes, and one word followed the other. And the asking and explaining lasted until evening, and no midday meal was taken, apart from some bread and wine. At this opportunity, some disciples also performed some tests of their miraculous powers, at which the neighbors were highly amazed and became even keener to stick to the teaching heard even more exactly.

16 But I was constantly busy with our Barnabe, at which opportunity he also made mention of the two miracles that I had performed as a twelve-year old boy in the temple, and that these two miracles had indeed an enormous effect on him, but nonetheless he had remained with the opinion that I was from the school of the Essenes, about which he now saw the clearest opposite and recognized Me fully as what I then had presented Myself as in the temple. In short, the whole community along with Barnabe was now totally won over, and we now had very great need to talk about various things, and so the evening also soon came, at which of course there was no lack of evening meal.

- Chapter 276 -

The Lord's farewell from the mountain village.

1 The next day we went to the distant neighbor and spent the whole day there, as well as also the whole night. Here it came to pass that I, visible to all, allowed Myself to be served by the angels of heaven and also the other guests. Then there was already no end to the amazement and the inhabitants felt as if they were in heaven. They also had discussions with the pure spirits of heaven and praised their great wisdom and their great power; for in that night there were many miracles performed, and indeed to the benefit of these very upright mountain dwellers.

2 Among the many miracles there was also that the distant neighbor received a totally new and very purposeful house and also other things in abundance and food and wines of the best sort. Also a large number of useful animals were given to the many inhabitants and their gardens were laid out in the best way, also their many houses were set up very well and equipped with farm buildings, each according to his own need. There is no further mention needed that these people positively exuded sheer wonder and gratitude at this.

3 In the morning this night scene ended and all the neighbors turned back to their houses at My side, overjoyed, extremely encouraged and filled with the highest gratitude, and everyone observed their much improved houses and gardens and fields filled with the most blessed wonder. But at all this they still could not tear themselves away from Me, and I soon had to be their guest in one house and then in another along with the disciples, where there was always much spoken about all sorts of world-situations.

4 And so these poorest people were doubly helped, namely physically and morally. But when after the time had passed, I began to speak about the fact that I would travel on from there very soon and go to Jerusalem for a feast, they all became very sad and Barnabe asked Me how it could then be possible for Me to go to that highly demoralized, godless city.

5 Then I said: "Friend, where there are the most sick, there a doctor is also the most needed!"

6 But I remained there several days more at much pleading and taught them about many good and useful things like I did My disciples, who did not agree much that I should go to Jerusalem for this autumn celebration.

7 But I said to them: "It is the will of the Father, and so it can never be otherwise!"

8 When they heard such, they agreed and had nothing more to say.

9 It was on the eve of the Sabbath when we headed on our way. For we wanted to arrive in Jerusalem on the Sabbath when the feast began, and so we had to already leave our resting place of many weeks on the pre-Sabbath in order to be in Jerusalem in the morning; for it was a good day's journey there.

10 After breakfast I blessed the village and it’s inhabitants and, accompanied by everyone, I headed through the new way which before no one had walked. At the exit of the grotto, I sent the accompanying villagers back and reminded them once again to have full faith in Me and love for God. I also told them that they should never sway in their faith, for then I would come back to them transformed in a few years and share with them the power of My Spirit. They all thanked Me for it and implored Me not to forget them when far from here.

11 But I said: "My dear friends! I cannot forget anything; that happens only to men. Whoever does not forget Me, I also will not forget them eternally. Therefore remain faithful to Me, as long as you live in the flesh, and I will also give you, as I have assured you all many times and even shown you, the never-ending eternal life in My kingdom. Amen!"

12 At this, I quickly began the journey, where the companions watched us for a good hour and sent their greetings and good wishes after us.

13 They then headed back, full of the best intentions and the best will; but at the same time they decided that they had now been provided for with all things and no longer had the need to go to Nahim for salt, and to block up this entrance and exit so that they could never be found again by anyone. And what they decided to do, they carried out exactly with unified power on this Sabbath eve and were thus cut off entirely from the entire world and led a strict life exactly according to My teaching.