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 197 -
The prehistory of man.
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 its 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 men 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 a type of all-knowledge unmistakably, and so in this respect you will satisfy my inquisitive intrusiveness."