The Great Gospel of John
Volume 1
Jesus' Precepts and Deeds through His Three Years of Teaching
Second day in Sychar
- Chapter 76 -
Peter's commendable talk and request (the Lord's prayer). The Lord's instructions on national policy for keeping order and peace. 'You shall achieve everything with love'. Force awakens the devils - for evil. Peter's humane suggestions for the spreading of Truth. The Lord discusses the work of guardian angels, and the nature of miscreants.
Says Simon Peter, 'Lord! Who would want to leave You, or not serve You?! You alone have Words of life such as never came from human mouth before! We will do anything You ask us, only don't ask us to leave You! But have patience with our great weakness, and strengthen us with grace from the Father in heaven, which also strengthened You Yourself, to where you stand there fully at One with Your Father in heaven, teaching and acting!
2
We intend doing as You taught us on the Mount, always asking the Father in Your name and saying: 'Father in heaven! Thy kingdom come, and Thy alone holy will be done! And as we forgive those who trespassed against us, so also forgive us our weaknesses and sins!'
3
Say I, 'Simon! Verily, this language is more pleasing to Me than your previous one of defending the law and its sanction! Of what benefit to a nation or kingdom a peace and order through strictest enforcement?! It will do for a little while indeed, but when it gets too much for the oppressed devils, they shall burst forth and trample both law and lawgiver with dreadful scorn. Because whoever has to be kept and led by force still is a devil; only he who lets himself be led with love, gentleness and patience is like unto an angel of God, and worthy of being a child of the most High!
4
With love you achieve everything whereas through force the evil is woken from his sleep! What good can then come over earth from the awakening of the devils?!
5
It is therefore endlessly better that love and gentleness should grow and remain wakeful among mankind at all times and therewith compel the devils to sleep, so that you would not harm the earth, rather than to awaken the devils through the roaring din of power, that they then ruin the earth with everything on it. Tell Me how you can, or want to object to that!'
6
Says Simon Peter, 'Lord, here there can be no objection, because this is all clear and understandable! But how many people living on earth know anything about this holy truth?! Lord, behold, here there are legions of angels from the heavens, send these out to all the people of the earth, to proclaim such truth! If this could happen then I think it would soon get brighter and better on the sinful ground of the earth!'
7
Say I, 'Here you think the way you understand it, but I must be of a different opinion here! Behold, there always are a thousand times more angels among mankind than you see here, acting upon the inner feelings and senses of men, so that man is not consciously coerced thereby and can without harm to his free will accept such thought, desires and drives as his own, and follow them! But what happens?!
8
Men's secret thoughts indeed are good, they have good desires and make praiseworthy resolutions; but when it comes to action, they look to the world and its goods and the deceptive needs of their flesh, and do and act with commensurate badness and selfishness!
9
Let Me bring thousands of sheer miscreants before you and ask them whether they don't know that they are doing evil, - and they shall all tell you that they know that! But if you ask them why they do evil then many shall tell you, 'Because it gives us pleasure!', and others shall say, 'We would do good indeed, but since others do evil we do it too!' And still others shall say, 'We recognise the good indeed but are not able to carry it out, for our nature resists it, and we have to hate him who offends us!'
10
Behold, such answers and more you shall meet with, and from that you are certain to see only too quickly that even the most notorious miscreants are not without the knowledge of the good and true, yet still do the evil!
11
Yet if men do evil from their innermost convictions, what can you expect from a recognition reaching them from without?! Of a truth, there shall henceforth be given to men cognition of the good and true from the heavens, and for that they shall kill Me and you and others who will teach them to do good and abandon and avoid evil!'
12
Says Simon, 'Lord, if so then the whole world may as well become of the devil! What is there to a human world which does not want to recognise and accept good?'
13
Say I, 'Whoever speaks in the heat of the moment like yourself is still far from My kingdom! But after I shall have ascended, you shall speak differently! - But now evening has come, and so let us step inside and fortify our tired limbs!'