The Great Gospel of John
Volume 10
Jesus' Precepts and Deeds through His Three Years of Teaching
The Lord in Golan
- Chapter 81 -
The words of the neighbors about the power of the Galilean.
On this occasion, all the people, who by a malicious curiosity were driven to us from the city, had returned to the city.
2
When the environment was thus cleansed, I commanded the wind with a loud voice - so that those who were on the hill could well understand it - that it should carry the smoke of sulfur and pitch no more to us but away from us to the deserts of the Euphrates.
4
When the 2 neighbors of the innkeeper noticed this, they said to the innkeeper: "Now it is clear that this Man must be in very close contact with a true God and can make use of His supreme power whenever He wants. This is now completely true beyond the least of doubt. But how, where and by what can someone attain to such contact?
5
You Jews are right after all that you believe in only one God, because that one God will surely be the only true One who, by the power of His supreme wise will, created everything we can see with our eyes and observe with our other sense organs.
6
But how come that you Jews make so little effort to know more closely that only true God of yours, and arrange your actions according to His will that is known to you, so that also you can be in such contact with Him as this greatly to be honored Galilean has achieved and who is also a Jew?
7
If you know the ways to reach that invaluable goal - a treasure of all treasures - and you nevertheless do not make the effort to acquire it but pursue the perishable, dead treasures of this Earth, often even more than we blind gentiles, than you are very pitiful fools.
8
We do not want to count you among those series of Jews as we have in our city and whom we know very well. But also from you we know that also regarding your only true, one God you also were not without doubts. The best part of you was that you were no hypocrite as the others of your tribe.
9
But it is strange of the other Jews, and especially of their priests who act and preach as if it depends only on them what God is allowed to do. And still, as little as our priests, they also are not capable to achieve anything which looks like pure divine power.
10
This, friendly neighbor, is for us now all the more a mystery because this Galilean convinced us that He must be in a very close, intimate contact of power with the one, only true God, because otherwise the wind would not have obeyed Him as a soldier obeys his commander."
11
Now the innkeeper said: "Friends, you are completely right when you are surprised about the power of God and that you talk and ask without ceasing about our Jewish foolishness and blindness. But now that we talk with each other, the others keep silent, who can say more about this true subject than we, and this is also not wise. That is why we will talk another time about all those things and will now let the others speak and act."
12
The 2 neighbors agreed completely on the remark of the innkeeper and they asked nothing more, but waited until I would do or say something.
13
Now the captain said to Me: "Lord and Master, look, the people down there around the hill do not know what they should do now and what they should think of You. Would it not be time to send one of my men down to give them some explanation?"
14
I said: "Just leave that for the moment. I will first perform another sign, and then we will return to the inn. Then these people will also return to their families in the city and relate to them very zealously what they have heard and seen. Through that, they will really think, seek and guess among each other, and then it will be the time to gradually show them who the One was to whom the elements obey.
15
But now I want to make the very gloomy morning completely clear, and the nature spirits who are still active here and there, I will let them rest, for they really have been freed enough up to now."
16
On this, I commanded the vapors on the ground and the dense clouds in the air to disappear and to let the sun shine and glow.
18
But out of the cracks and ridges of the earth's surface that were formed at night, flames were still shooting up - although at a rather far distance from us - that, despite the clear morning, were not so pleasant to the surprised gentiles down the hill.
19
A little half hour later I commanded also these fire spirits to go entirely to rest, and they extinguished, and no flame could be seen anymore shooting out from the earth's surface, no matter in which direction the people were looking, not close by, neither in the distance. Also the wind was lying down, and as far as the eye could see, the earth's surface was completely cleaned up.