The Great Gospel of John
Volume 2
Jesus' Precepts and Deeds through His Three Years of Teaching
First journey of the Lord: Kis - landing place at Sibarah - Nazareth
- Chapter 10 -
The Commandment of Order.
Says Faustus, "Lord, now the light is dawning within me. In all infinity there is but One God, One power and One law of eternal order. For him who adopts this law everything and everywhere is heaven, but the one who out of his own freedom wants to resist this law finds hell and torment everywhere."
2
Say I, "Indeed, so it is. Fire is an exceedingly useful element; he who uses it procures incalculable advantage. It would be too long-winded to enumerate all the advantages accruing to mankind from the proper, wise and expedient use of fire. If however someone were to use fire most unwisely and constantly only for fun and so recklessly as to light it upon the roofs of dwellings or in dense forest, there the same fire shall destroy and ruin everything!
3
When it is frosty in winter, then everyone goes to the fireplace and gladly warms himself at the crackling fire filling the fireplace with the heating flames; but such as would fall in the fire it would kill and consume.
4
But I tell you something else: In order to become truly God's children men of this world must be led through water and fire. Heaven in its primal essence is water and fire. What has no affinity with water is killed by it, and what is not itself fire cannot exist in the fire."
5
Says Faustus, "Lord, this again I cannot understand! How is one to take this? How can one become water and fire at one and the same time? For water and fire are notoriously mutually hostile elements: one destroy and annihilates the other. If the fire is a mighty one, and one pours water over it, then the water is quickly converted to steam and air; if however the water is mightier than the fire then the latter is extinguished as soon as flooded. If then in order to be like heaven, one has to be simultaneously water and fire then one would in the end dissolve anyway!? What prospects then for life's everlasting duration?"
6
Say I, "Oh, quite good ones! Both in proper proportion whereupon the one constantly produces and sustains the other! For behold, if there were not any fire in and around the earth there would not be water either; and if there were not any water in and around the earth, there would not be any fire, - for one perpetually produces the other."
7
Asks Faustus, "Why? How come?"
8
Say I, "Take all the fire, from which comes all heat, away from the earth, and the entire earth shall turn into a diamond-hard lump of ice upon which no life could subsist; then remove all water from the earth, and it shall only too soon turn to paltry dust. Because fire shall not maintain itself without water that is so essential for new creations upon earth; where however no sequential or new creations continue to take place, there death and decay have set in.
9
Behold a tree that has lost its fluids and you shall become aware of how the tree shall shortly rot and therewith disintegrate. Do you understand this now?"
10
Says Faustus, "Yes, Lord, now we all understand that too, and recognise that You are filled with divine spirit, and that You are Yourself the Creator of all things. For what man can fathom by himself how the entire creation functions and by what laws it endures? This can be clear and familiar in all depth to Him Who carries the spirit within Him, - through Whom all things were made and now continue to exist. - I can do no more than thank You from a heart filled with deepest love for You, for all the great spiritual and also material favours bestowed upon me here! For what else can I poor, weak and sinful man do for the Lord of infinity?"
11
Say I, "You are right. But for the time being keep what you know and what you have seen and found out here to yourself, not making Me known before time, and do not forget the poor in your earthly fortune now! For whatever you have done for the poor in My name, that have you done for Me, and you shall be rewarded in heaven. But now that we have finished everything in Kis that needed doing and settling, we intend to get ready for our journey to Nazareth."