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 9 -
The Lord depicts the nature of heaven and hell in parables.
Say I: "So pay attention, because it matters to Me that you go home seeing!
2
Behold, two persons are living in a house. One is satisfied with everything that he with the sweat of his brow draws from the soil with God's blessing. Happy and serene, he enjoys the meagre yield of his hard work, and it is his greatest joy to share his laboriously gained supplies with his still poorer brothers. When a hungry one comes to him, it gives him pleasure to feed him. He never asks him with a vexed heart about the cause of his poverty and does not forbid him to return if he should be hungry again.
3
He does not grumble at the order of earthly governments and when he has to pay taxes, he says always as Job did: "Lord, You gave it to me, it is all Yours! What You have given, You can take away again at any time. Your always alone holy will be done."
4
In short, nothing can disturb this man in his serenity as well as in his love and trust in God and therefrom in his love for his earthly brothers. Anger, envy, strife, hate and pride are for him alien notions.
5
His brother, however, is the most discontented person. He does not believe in a God and says: "God is an empty concept by which people denote the top grade of earthly heroes. Only a very stupid man can be happy in poverty just as the animals that have no reason or intelligence are happy as long as they are barely provided with what their dumb and dull instinct demands. A man, however, who with his intellect has raised himself high above the animal, can no longer be satisfied with the low fare of pigs, must not burrow in the earth with his own hands destined for something better - which befits only animals and slaves - but one must reach for the sword, strive to become a mighty general and enter through triumphal arches the great cities of the world which one has conquered. The ground must tremble under the hoofs of the charger which, decorated with gold and gems, proudly carries the mighty commander-in-chief of the troops.
6
A man with such a disposition then deplores his scanty existence, in his heart curses poverty and thinks of ways and means how to acquire great treasures and riches in order to realise his tyrannical ideas with their help.
7
He has only contempt for his contented brother and loathes every even poorer man. He shows not even a trace of mercy which he regards as a ridiculous attribute of cowardly slaves and society-apes. Only generosity befits man - but that as rarely as possible. When a poor man comes to him, he lets fly abuse at him and says: "Go away, you lazy beast, you greedy monster with the ragged mask of a man! Work, you animal, if you want a feed! Go to that miserable brother of my body but never of my sublime spirit. He being himself a common beast of burden works for the likes of him and is as merciful as a society-ape. I am just generous and shall on this occasion still grant you your most miserable life."
8
Behold, these two brothers, children of one father and one mother, live together in one house. The first is an angel, the other almost a complete devil. To the first the scantiest hut is heaven, to the other the very same hut the truest hell full of bitter torment. Do you now see how heaven and hell can be together in one spot?
9
But of course you will be thinking, 'so what? Let the domineering one ascend the throne, and he shall be quite capable of protecting peoples and vanquishing enemies!" O yes, this could be so indeed! But where is the yardstick which shall prescribe to him the extent to which he can follow up his dictatorial plans? What shall he do with people who will not bow down low to him? Behold, these he shall have tortured in the most excruciating manner, and a human life will be to him no more than a trodden blade of grass! But what is such a person? Behold, that is a Satan!
10
There indeed have to be rulers as well as commanders, but understand this - they must be chosen and called to it by God and in future be descendants of long-anointed kings. These are then called; but let all those beware who would leave their poor hut hurrying to wrest the scepter to themselves by all sorts of means! Verily, for such it would be better to have never been born!
11
I shall give you another picture of God's Kingdom of Heaven: It is exactly like a good soil in which the most noble grapes grow and ripen next to briers and thistles, and yet they both grow in one and the same good soil. The difference lies solely in the application. The grapevine converts it to something good, the briers and thistles to something bad, useless and not enjoyable for any human.
12
Thus heaven also flows into the devil as it does into God's angels; but each of the two makes different use of it.
13
Heaven is also like a fruit tree which bears good sweet fruit. Now various people come under its richly blessed branches who want to enjoy such fruit. Some of them are moderate and gratefully enjoy only as much as is good for them, where as others who like the taste of the fruit begrudge it to others and do not want to leave anything on the tree but eat it all until the last apple has been consumed, so that the contented may not later find some more. But they fall ill and have to die while the contented ones feel refreshed through the moderate consumption of the fruit. And yet both parties had fruit from the same tree.
14
Thus heaven is also like a good wine which invigorates the moderate, but destroys and kills the immoderate, and so one and the same wine becomes heaven for one and real hell for the other, -and yet it is drawn from one and the same skin.
15
Tell Me, friend, whether you now comprehend what is heaven and what is hell?"