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 225 -
Children of God (from above) and children of the world
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 unsanctified 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 sensual 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 sensual 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 the completion of the same 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 its 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 breeding, in which a soul left its 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 always 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 its 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 its animal crudeness and with time may rise to a higher level of life, from which it will then go ever more easily to an even higher level."