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 67 -
Roklus tries to justify his untruthfulness before the Lord.
Roklus says, "Most eminent of the most eminent! As long as I could not believe in any god, a story was decided which paid homage to all the rational world, and this story, which is actually not a story at all, but through which most of the world's history was made, is called politics, state cleverness. These demand that one does not immediately clearly lay out everything that one inwardly intends before a person that one does not know well. But one does not need at all to intend anything evil with someone with whom one is in some sort of connection, and it is therefore always advisable to remain in the background with the pure truth, because it has already been proven only too often after very many experiences that one has given the people more ruin with the naked truth than any salvation.
2
One must first get to know a person through and through from all his sides "which is no easy task or job "before one leads him to all truth; for otherwise one cannot know which side is his most accessible for the truth! For no person is a particular friend of the light-filled truth, particularly as far as he himself is concerned. A darkness spread around him is much preferred, and that is also the reason why I kept a little behind the fence with my inner truth with the boy. But in addition it is the most well-known fact in the world that children are only led to truth through all sorts of lies, and that is also a cleverness of the parents; for if they began to tell the children the truth immediately, they would raise the little ones to nothing good or decent.
3
It is true that I showed myself to the boy as being different to how I am; but I caused him no harm in this way and could not cause him any, because I have never had a will for that, and therefore I believe that I have not committed anything bad. But if I have sinned thereby, then all parents sin against their children who even say very firmly emphasizing with a definite seriousness that there are certain trees on the far-off and high mountains on which children bloom and grow like plums. There exist certain gatherers of the fruit and they carry them then to be sold all over the world. Sometimes these fruit also come to streams and rivers which spring up in those high mountains and float down to where they are caught.
4
That is as terrible a lie as one can imagine; but the parents have certainly the best will to protect their little ones from all indecent thoughts through such phrases taken right out of clean air and to lead them fresh and healthily in body and soul to a mature age, and that will hopefully not be anything incorrect?! And so I also am of the opinion that a lie, behind which there is no trace of a bad intention, but instead only often, according to our human power of recognition, the very best tendency, should rather be seen as a virtue rather than some sin!
5
And so our institute is basically full of lies and deceptions, it is true; but until now we have never had any evil or actual domineering intention, that is, as far as our recognition reached. But what can develop out of this in later times, we do not have the prophetic ability and we can therefore accept no guarantee because our descendents will be just as much free people as we are now.
6
I even claim that in the beginning, all founders of a religion, in which all better civilization of one or other nation is destroyed, must have meant well and honestly for their people; but the later descendents, and particularly the uncalled, self-created priests, the laughably bad representatives of the gods on this Earth, began to explain the never correctly understood statutes wrongly, added new ones to their selfish and domineering good and sanctioned them sharply under the title of "God's will", "God's word", have tortured the poor humanity often in the cruelest way, as even now many examples can convince us only too tangibly!
7
If we only look at the very well-known stories from the temple in Jerusalem and at the same time the temple stories from Rome and we have all the proof in abundance of where things went with Moses and then later with all the original wisdom of Egypt! And "I do not want to be an evil prophet "I even dare to claim before you that your purest and most divine teaching, whose main point the boy gave to my companions wonderfully quickly, and as much as I have heard magnificent things from them, in several centuries they will have a very different face!
8
Your disciples will become messengers and spreaders of your divine teaching. They will not be able to go everywhere; they will choose other disciples and will make them teachers and also spiritual representatives of your teaching, and there is the reason for the priesthood and for all the types of superstition, on which I could bet a thousand to one!
9
But if in time everything will be so everywhere, why should our institute be an exception? There are people everywhere. If a true god now stands at their head teaching and leading they will remain in order; but if he places them on a necessary test of freedom, they will immediately begin again with a golden calf like the old Israelites in the desert when Moses headed up Sinai to receive the commandments of the very highest!"