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 176 -
John reveals the life of Aziona.
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 the 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 the 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 belief.
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 usual coaster, 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 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 religion 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 further and further!
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 belief, or you with your full unbelief!"