THE GREAT GOSPEL OF JOHN
VOLUME 5
Jesus' Precepts and Deeds through His Three Years of Teaching
Jesus in the region of Caesarea Philippi. (cont.) Gospel of Matthew, Chapter 16
- Chapter 121 -
Without a doer of the Word - no knower of the Word!
1
(The Lord) "Whatever it 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 learnt 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 successful 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 its 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."