THE GREAT GOSPEL OF JOHN
VOLUME 5
Jesus' Precepts and Deeds through His Three Years of Teaching
The Lord in the house of Simon Peter. Gospel of Matthew, Chapter 18
- Chapter 251 -
A locust infestation.
But Peter gathered himself quickly and asked Me about the reason for such a deception, and I said to him, "Go out to the sea and you will soon become aware of the reason!"
2
Peter did what I had ordered him, and he saw, as far as his eyes could see, the surface of the water completely covered with grasshoppers. Even our ship, which lay in Peter's harbor, was quite full of these insects. Peter was horrified at this sight, hurried back to Me into the room, and asked Me whether these myriads of grasshoppers which now covered the sea had been the cause of his mistaking the time.
3
And I answered and said, "Of course! When they flew over from Egypt, they darkened the sun so much like a thick cloud that you here in the room obviously had to think that it had already become evening. But I saw in Me the cause of the evening that had come too early and made you aware of it "and that is now already everything that I have to say to you about it!"
4
Peter was satisfied with this and went out again to look at the great spectacle of nature.
5
Andrew and Philip however were quite interested in nature and asked Me how then such huge grasshoppers could exist, where actually then their place of origin was, and what they were good for.
6
Said I: "Dear friends, it is quite commendable to look around in nature - for it is a great book, written by the almighty hand of God, and serves every honest seeker as irrefutable proof of the love, wisdom and power of the heavenly Father. Yet if a seeker is too fanatical in the course of his concentrated search, he can easily be led astray, so much so that he completely forsakes God and, finally, comes to the conclusion that all being and all coming into existence are merely the work of the blind and mute forces of nature.
7
And behold, it is exactly such phenomena that above all can lead genuine naturalists completely away from God, for they perceive in nature an immense capacity for reproduction, without design and purpose, that could well dispense with some wise God. To be sure, they will never by way of material research be able to perceive an inner cause for such phenomena because their souls are so deeply immersed in matter as to render them incapable of ever touching and seizing God's Spirit of light and love.
8
But whoever has touched and fully seized the spirit of God in his soul will then be taught by his own spirit how and why such events come into existence - and then only such a spiritually awakened person should research the things of nature and, unveiled, show them to his ignorant and dependent brothers so that they will become all the keener to awaken their own spirit within their soul.
9
But in order to get back to our grasshoppers, they indeed appear all over the warmer parts of the Earth, but mostly at certain times in Egypt and in south Asia. That is the strongest production of spirits of natural life because of the substance of the climate, or they develop there most often and frequently because the material ground of the Earth, the heat of the sun, its strong light, the constantly powerful dew and another number of other conditions influence so strongly that constantly a large number of previously even more bound Earth spirits become free, soon join with the spirits of the air, then cocoon themselves in a certain way in a light matter and further in the pupae then clothe themselves with a body and transform into animalistic Earth life.
10
In this way in the very warm lands of the Earth the grasshoppers often exist, and indeed very often, although they can also be hatched from their own eggs.
11
I say to you all: Everything, trees and plants and animals of the Earth are determined to release the directed spirits from hard matter, and that goes from level to level up to man. What then happens with man, you already know, and so I have nothing more to explain about the natural phenomenon lying before us "but now call Peter in to Me; for I will announce something to him and to you all!"
12
Andrew and Philip immediately do what I had ordered them and Peter, hardly entering the room, immediately asked what it was that I was willing to tell them.