The Great Gospel of John
Volume 4
Jesus' Precepts and Deeds through His Three Years of Teaching
Jesus near Caesarea Philippi (cont.)
- Chapter 22 -
Raphael as a singer.
These words are of course also heard by our Zinka and he asks Ebahl who sits next to him: "Is this lovely boy really such a capital singer? Have you listened to him before?"
2
Says Ebahl: "He says it; I have heard him many times speaking, but never heard him singing before and I'm therefore also very curious about his single tone!"
3
Says Zinka: "From where is he and who is this girl?"
4
Ebahl answers: "The boy is staying in my home in Genezareth, and the girl is my lovely daughter. She is only fifteen years old, but has the whole script in her head and in her heart, - and also the boy and he is for the time being a teacher in my house. I know him thus very well! But that he is also such an extraordinary singer, up to this hour I didn't know one syllable about; I'm therefore now very curious about his single tone."
5
When Ebahl has said this, Raphael said: "Now listen and pay attention!"
6
After that many heard like from far away a very faint but such indescribable purest tone, that all became enraptured and Zinka exclaimed with great enthusiasm: "No, no earthly singer sings like that! Only a God can sing like that or at least an angel of God!"
7
But the tone became increasingly stronger, more full of life and mightier. In its peak strength like coming from thousand trombones, it sounded like a quad-sext-accord in Des-Moll, reaching from the small octave stroked in between with the repetition of the octave, decreased after that and in the end was lost again in a weakest A's (stroked in between) of a never heard purity.
8
From this single tone all were to such an extend enraptured, that their sensory life was in a way numbed so that they fell into a kind of unconsciousness. Upon a sign from Me the angel had to waken them again.
9
All woke up as from a most blissful dream, and Zinka, full of enthusiasm, stormed to Raphael, embraced him with all his strength and said: "Boy! You are not a mortal! You are either a God or an angel! Yes, with such a voice you must be able to wake up the dead and enliven all stones! No, no, no! Never ever did any mortal on the whole earth heard such an above heavenly sound! O you above heavenly boy! Who taught you to produce such sound from your throat?!
10
Oh, I'm completely gone! All my life fibres are still trembling from the indescribable beauty and purity of this single tone! It didn't seemed to me as if you produced the unheard most pure tone from your throat, but it rather gave me the impression as if all heavens opened and a harmony out of the mouth of God was poured over the dead earth!
11
O God, o God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, - You are not an empty articulated sound from a mouth! You are the only truth and the most pure, eternal harmony! Oh, this tone, this tone! Yes, this tone gave me everything lost, it gave me back my God, my holy Creator and Father; it was for my soul a purest gospel from the heavens! What perhaps thousands and again thousands of words could not have achieved, was caused by this single tone from the heavens; it perfected a person in me! My formerly stone heart is like wax in the sun and so tender feeling like a hanging dewdrop!
12
O Johannes whose death I had to announce with a most broken heart! If you had heard such tone in your last moments of your earthly life, verily, the death of your body would become a bright lighted gate to the heavens of God! But inside the dark dungeon, which held you, holy man of God, captive, only tones of wailing, suffering and grief could be heard!
13
O people, people, people! How evil and how dark it must look like inside your poor souls, which have not heard what I just heard, and could not feel, what I have just felt and will feel for the rest of my life! O you, great, holy Father in heaven, - if one day I have to part from this grieving and deathly world, for a few moments let me again listen to such a tone, and most blissful I shall leave this earth, and thereupon my soul shall praise your most holy name forever!"