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 69 -
In the tomb.
Thus we soon arrived there, entered the synagogue and went into the burial-vault where Sarah had been lying for more than four days and where the swathers and shrouds in which Sarah's corpse had been wrapped were still lying. But in the same vault was also another corpse placed there by friends of Jairus. It belonged to a boy of twelve who had died of a serious illness already a year and a half ago. This one was lying in a coffin of cedar wood and was already fully decomposed except the bones.
2
At the sight of this coffin tears came to the eyes of Jairus and he said tearfully: "What a bad thing the world is! It allows the most tender flowers to sprout from its ground, and what is their lot? They have to die and pass away. The fragrant scent of the rose soon becomes on offensive smell and the tender, innocent lily spreads a nauseous stench in its decay; the sky-blue of the hyacinths turns a deathly yellowish grey and the carnation lies like thousands of its beautifully fragrant sisters.
3
This boy was - one could say - an angel. He was pious from the cradle and by his tenth year he already understood The Scripture and kept the commandments like a God-fearing adult Jew. In short, his truly childlike pious way of life and his astonishing mental abilities showed the best promise. But then he contracted a bad illness which no physician could control, and thus in this boy died everything one could hav expected him to soon realise.
4
Here one really must ask why the Lord God who is full of love and mercy allows this to happen to people who trust and rely on Him. Thousands of poor children live homeless and without eduction and God does not call them away from this earth, whereas children of parents who can afford to give them a God-pleasing education usually have to die. Why is this?
5
If it pleases God to put only savages on this earth who can hardly utter five words, then God does the right thing in promptly removing from the earth every child that shows better spirit and letting only the idiots live beside the apes. But if God wished to have on this earth spiritually awakened, pious, God recognising and loving people, I think God should pay more attention to the life of such children than has been the regrettable case until now."
6
Say I: "My drear friend, Jairus, you speak as you understand it from a human viewpoint, but God acts according to how He in His divine way understands and must understand it from eternity or you and all that is would not have an existence. But you nevertheless do an injustice to God with your grumbling.
7
For if God had taken from the world all the children who already in their childhood had given evidence of intelligence and talents, all of you who are now here with Me would already have decayed in the earth. But since you are still here at a considerable age your blaming God is unjustified. For also all of you revealed in your childhood particularly much intelligence, you were children of very wealthy parents and God still allowed you to live while He outside among the heathens took many thousands of poor children from this earth through dysentery and other bad illnesses which caused their poor parents quite as much grief as the parents of this boy are still living and have adopted for this boy three other poor children. These three children are now quite worthy successors of the one child who in time, because of his great talents, would have been pampered and spoilt too much by his parents who loved him more than God, and in the end he would have become nothing but a conceited, proud and self-willed poor wretch with whom no high priest could have achieved anything.
8
God, however, saw that in advance, removed him at the right time from this world and in the beyond gave him to the angels for a better education so that he might have a better chance to sooner reach the destination set for him by God as for every human.
9
In addition to this, God had planned for a time to come when for you few God's name shall be glorified. And behold, that is the reason why God let this boy die already a year and a half ago so that he would be properly decomposed when the Lord God will once more restore him to life. Therefore lift the coffin out and open it."