The Great Gospel of John
Volume 3
Jesus' Precepts and Deeds through His Three Years of Teaching
Jesus near Caesarea Philippi
- Chapter 174 -
The natural sun.
1
(Jarah:) You see, the sun is also, just like our Earth, an inhabitable and also fully inhabited planet; only it is a thousand times a thousand times larger than this Earth of ours, which, as you see, is not small either. But the light that is emitted by that great world is not the inhabited ground of the sun, but instead only the air surrounding it entirely, whose smoothest surface, constantly rubbing firmly against the surrounding ether in all directions, firstly creates an uncountable amount of the strongest flashes of light all at one time, and secondly takes in the light from eons of suns onto this such an enormous reflective surface and then sends it out again in all directions.
2
The Earth, as well as many other earths, which we call planets, is illuminated and heated through such a light by this sun of ours. However the heat does not come to the Earth along with the light from the sun, but instead it is created on the spot by the light.
3
The light truly comes from far away, but the heat is only created here, and namely through the fact that the certain natural spirits in the air, in the water and in the Earth are put into great motion through the light. And exactly this activity creates what we feel as heat, and at an even higher activity by the previously mentioned spirits, as heat, and we call them thus. But as the light can always be increased more and more into infinity, likewise the warmth and the heat can be increased.
4
But, you will ask, who can exist on the sun then? For because the light must be the strongest there, the heat must also be no less! It is not so. Hardly a thousandth of a thousandth part of all the strength of the sun's light can penetrate to the inside of the actual body of the sun, and therefore it is not much brighter and warmer on the surface of the sun than here on our Earth, and God's creations can therefore exist and live there just like on this Earth. Only there can be no night there, because everything on the sun finds itself in its own indestructible light.
5
The inhabitants of the sun therefore know nothing about night - but they can still see the stars and all the planets circling the sun along with our Earth very well during their eternal day. This makes the extremely pure air, reaching 1200 hours out in all directions around the sun, which is truly dulled from time to time by many and very dense clouds, but which also has very cloudless periods and areas where the outer worlds can be very well seen and observed, much better than that of any other planet.
6
The sun rotates around its own axis, but not within almost twenty-five hours like this Earth of ours, but instead within twenty-nine days. The inhabitants of the sun can therefore see the whole sky during this period, particularly the inhabitants of the middle belt, which according to my feeling must be the wisest and most beautiful people of the sun. The inhabitants of the other belts correspond more to the various planets.
7
But as far as the inner construction of the enormously large body of the sun is concerned, my feeling tells me that even more planets are hidden inside the other like in a hollow ball and could be separated from each other by distances of two, three and four thousand hours, which is not to be taken as something concrete, because these internal suns often stretch out very far, to shrink back to the normal state then another time. The hollow spaces are either filled with water or with all sorts of air.
8
But why things must be like this, I cannot tell you; for only the Lord and Master of eternity sitting beside me now knows about it. If you want to learn more, you must turn to this One and Only!"
9
Cornelius says, "I thank you, my dearest, very friendliest little child, for the message that you have just given me, which even I with my reason accept in full belief from the alpha to the omega; for I cannot find anything contradictory there. But how far must the sun be from our Earth since it appears so small to us despite being such an enormously large world?"
10
Jarah says, "There is no measure for that on this Earth; the Egyptians however had such a thing, and the later descendents - but in Europe and not in Asia - will invent this measuring stick again. But I can nonetheless tell you that an arrow which was shot from the Earth with all force towards the sun would have to travel almost a full twenty Earth years in the least in order to reach the sun!
11
Now you can work it out yourself. Measure the time that a flying arrow needs to travel a thousand human paces; you will find that the arrow at all speed nonetheless needs two instants of time to carry itself across a thousand human paces. But an hour needs 1800 of such double moments; and a day has 24 hours, and a year consists of 365 days, which is well-known to you. If you now know that and can count just a little, you will soon see how far the sun is from the Earth! I cannot tell you anymore; for even if I knew it too, I would not have the yardstick and the appropriate number! Imagine 40 times 1000 times 1000 hours of journey, and you have the distance of the Earth from the sun more or less accurately!"
12
Cornelius opens his eyes wide and says, "No, I would never have expected that from such a girl; she counts with the greatest numbers in the world like one of us with the small numbers on our fingers! She is far above any Euclides, the greatest mathematician! No, I have never seen such a thing before! Lord, tell me now whether I should accept all this! It seems to me at least that the girl has hit the nail on the head!"