The Great Gospel of John
Volume 4
Jesus' Precepts and Deeds through His Three Years of Teaching
Jesus near Caesarea Philippi (cont.)
- Chapter 156 -
The spiritual processes at the death of the widow and her daughter.
1
(Mathael:) "A few years have passed since the healing of the widow, without us hearing anything about our widow. Suddenly, one early morning, precisely on a Sabbat, a messenger from our widow appeared and requested the father to be on his way as soon as possible; since the known widow, together with her daughter, all of a sudden fell ill to such an extend, that nobody out of the circle of deeply saddened neighbours, dared to think about her recovery.
2
That we upon this news were soon on our dromedaries, despite the Sabbath, goes without saying, and that father did not forget to take along the right quantum of the strange medicine is also self-evident; since he quite naturally was of the opinion, that the widow fell into a relapse of her previous illness, as this was not too seldom the case with this kind of sickness, and every doctor knows that a relapse of an old illness is much more stubborn than the first-time appearance.
3
After a couple of hours we arrived at the familiar house. But already from a half hour walking distance I noticed that the whole, large dwelling was covered in a thick, blue smoke; and the closer we came to the well-known house, the more clearly I could see the already familiar beasts swimming inside the blue mist. 'Stop', I said to father when we were still about sixty steps away from the house, 'for the sake of our bodily safety we should not go one step closer, if we do not soon want to become a victim of death; since the evil blue mist with its extremely uncanny inhabitants is now wrapped around the whole house!'
4
My father, now completely puzzled, suddenly stopped. He send the messenger into the house of the two sick people, so that he could bring him news, in which state the two were. The messenger immediately hurried to the house and found both unconscious and in a full struggle with the relentless death.
5
When father heard this from the messenger, he said to him: 'Friend, I cannot perform miracles, and as such I have no other choice but to turn around, and the quicker the better! Since it is not advisable to come too close to both of these sick people!'
6
But the messenger asked us that we should stay for another hour; since one could not know for certain, if these two could not regain their conscience again.
7
Said the father: 'You of course not, but the more certain I know about it! Everything in this world does quite often have in a wide circle around itself certain signs, from which someone knowledgeable with great certainty can conclude, how a case or thing is made up; and the same is also here the case! I even can recognize it from the house that both of them will and can not live longer than one hour! Here every rescue attempt could be called futile!
8
All of you male servants of this house, look for rattle- and gras snakes, chop of their heads, clean them and cook them and drink the brew several times, otherwise you all will die within one year of total emaciation; since the odour of those two female beings, which you do not know about, is of such nature that every man, who especially now is getting too close to them and is captured by it, will at the most not longer than a year and half from now turn into a complete mummy!'
9
The messenger thanked for this advice and wanted to give valuable presents to my father; but the father did not accept anything and started to turn the dromedaries and the pack camel around, a work which is always not that easily accomplished with these animals, especially when they were exhausted and hungry. Father always was a little irritated with the turnaround of our carriers, but this time it was to both our advantage. Since if our animals had quickly submitted to our will, we both, especially I, would have missed out on one of the most memorable scenes.
10
In time the blue mist increased at least by half, raised soon above the whole big house like a giant ball and was filled not only by the two snake species, but with an exceedingly large amount of all kinds of nasty and among others also very gentle natured creatures. They flew around the giant ball like cranes when leaving the ground. However, the whole ball hang on only two weak looking strings or better straps. The one somewhat smaller half of the ball was somewhat lighter than the other half.
11
It seemed very odd to me that a quite strong early evening wind was not able to cause the slightest disturbance to the hanging balloon. While I looked at the appearance in amazement and reported everything to my father in the Roman tongue, I finally discovered increasingly more examples of greater animals like rats, mice, rabbits, chicken, doves, geese, lambs, goats, hares, roe deer, stags, gazelles and a great number of other animals, fully developed floating inside the large ball.
12
The father noted to me: 'Son, are you speaking the full truth? Since this story is getting a little out of hand!'
13
But I strongly confirmed to father that I only, as always, tell him what I clearly see before my eyes and not one word more and also not one word less. Father then was quiet and paid great attention to each of my words.
14
When I looked at this most bizarre picture of an once in a lifetime experienced appearance more intensely and with greater excitement, the two straps on which the great ball seemed to be connected, suddenly sheared, and now there were floating suddenly two large separated balls, about two man-heights above the house. The continuously increasing stronger wind did not move them at all; like build the two balloons floated above the large dwelling.
15
I did not saw any about the vermin animals in the separated balloons anymore, of which the one seemed a little smaller and was also more brighter than the larger one; the smaller one also contained a mixture of all kind of more gentle animals, while the bigger one also contained wolves, bears and a lot of foxes, which alongside the many gentle animals quite peacefully floated up and down. It was also strange that I could see everything as clearly as if it was illuminated by the midday son, despite it already being significantly dark dusk.