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 216 -
On the miraculous power of the Word. Teaching is better than working signs.
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 movement.
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 no 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 about! 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 test of such a power living in your words which are heavy 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 test 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 very actually 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 its 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!"