The Great Gospel of John
Volume 10
Jesus' Precepts and Deeds through His Three Years of Teaching
The Lord in Aphek
- Chapter 99 -
The priest justifies his worldly life.
The priest said: "Truly, superhuman wise Master, I understood You well and realize now still better than before that You must be helped by a really existing, living God, for otherwise it would be absolutely impossible for You to be so accurately informed about the relationships during my youth while no human being in the whole of Rome ever knew about these things, and certainly not now.
2
In everything that You said about me You were completely right, and I can say: not You, as a human being like me, but a God has spoken now through You.
3
But think about all our human circumstances, and moreover about the relationships within the state that bind us with iron compelling chains that we, as the now existing priests, did certainly not make.
4
Every human being who unconsciously and unintentionally comes into this world, and who already immediately after his birth has to be fed in order to keep his very mortal life and become a strong person according to the strict laws of nature, is - seen from a rational point of view - a very poor being.
5
Once you grow up and come to a point where you can distinguish between day and night and red from green, the elders are zealous to give you an education which no child can determine for himself.
6
After much learning you finally become an educated man and you have to choose a profession by which you can provide in your livelihood for your whole life. But you want to live not a bad life in the world but as good as possible because you just have to live, and so you choose, according to your capabilities, logically for a profession in which you can live more freely and better under the powerful chains of the state. And that was for me the profession of priest. I became a priest, no matter if that for which I stood was based on the lie and the cheating of the people or on the truth. In short, I had to be what I am still now in accordance with the laws of the state.
7
Already since childhood the world and the best possible personal care were the first of which one had to be concerned. Besides, soon all kinds of other needs awakened in me, and having the means for it to also satisfy these needs - of course always in accordance with the laws of the state - you also satisfy them as much as possible. And no deity appeared from Heaven or from the Earth who would have said: 'Just listen, priest, you live and act entirely against My will and My order. Live in the future like this and like that, or else I will chastise you in a terrible way.'
8
Under such circumstances you become filled in your heart and mind with only material, impure and non-spiritual love while on the other hand you are not urged by anything purely spiritual or divine, and outwardly you stayed at least as you could stay and finally also had to stay in accordance with the laws of the state. Although, especially at an older age, you gradually begin to ask yourself: yes, but is there actually one spark of truth in what you stand for and what you practice. All I teach and do is clearly and obviously lie and deceit. Is there no fundamental truth anymore on the whole Earth?'
9
I investigated, searched and investigated and searched continuously almost until now - and I found nothing. How could I ever come to meet a true deity with the purest love while it never wanted to reveal itself to me in one way or another? What does not exist, you also cannot love, whether it is a God or another object that becomes valuable by the imagination of men.
10
And look now, very wise Master, can I help it that I finally still had to love that which was reachable to me in order to live a pleasant life, because to love the images of your own fantasy means, according to the natural pure reason, that you are a fool.
11
So if I had to love the one, only true and living God above all for already a long time and had to despise and flee the pleasures of the world that are present for everyone's senses, then such God should have revealed Himself to me, or else my fantasy should have created one with great lively fervor. But neither the one nor the other happened, and so it was obvious that I could not exchange the world and its treasures and goods that feed and delight mankind and enjoy that for which I was born and educated, for a being that did not exist at all for me and did not exist anywhere.
12
But no matter how, my heart is still filled with worldly things. If today, at this moment, a one, only true deity would reveal Himself to me and tell me what to do, my old world will be cast out of me at once.
13
If only once that pearl of Rome would have made a true promise to me, telling me that she would be mine if I would do or leave this or that, then I would have been the man for whom no sacrifice would be too hard. But since such did not happen, I stayed with what was easier for me to reach.
14
I see and know very well that all the people that I came to know already since time immemorial are living in great misery and confusion, and finally they also often die in full despair, but what is the use of all that seeing and knowing if no one comes to show them the full truth?
15
Look, wise Master, You are really right in everything You told me, but also I am not wrong according to human reasoning. Can those poor people help it that they are born in all blindness in this world and that it was imposed on them to be educated among great lies and deceit? Am I right or not?"