The Great Gospel of John
Volume 6
Jesus' Precepts and Deeds through His Three Years of Teaching
At the Sea of Galilee (John 6)
- Chapter 152 -
The diversity of creatures and its purpose.
After this My speech, all became cheerful and we were invited by Martha to lunch. We ate and drank very light-hearted and were in a very cheerful mood and Lazarus told Me what he had to endure from the clerics during My absence and how he, despite all his patience, was to such an extend annoyed that he became substantially ill afterwards.
2
In particular he told us by saying: "Lord, on earth does not exist an insect of such tiresome obtrusiveness! You just can't get rid of them, irrespective of what you do! If you threaten them with the laws of Rome, they try for several days like creeping snakes to prove to me, that they alone have the fullest right and that no worldly law has anything to do with them and that they are the only lawgivers of the world. Every person, without exception, has to expect from them only, all well-being and woe.
3
During such their arguments I really became furious and nearly assaulted these dreadful backstabbers and forbade them to ever come into my house again. But to no avail. Today I chased ten away, - tomorrow there will be another twelve and begin so innocently and smoothly with the same subject for which I forbade their predecessors my house, and behave in such a way as if between me and them never anything happened!
4
To great expenses in this month I was forced to guard all my entry roads to my house with Roman guards, namely with the sharpest instructions that no cleric be allowed access to my house. Now, for some time externally I had some rest but certainly not internally; since these most impertinent temple goblins send all kind of threatening letters to me and bothered me then in this manner, because they were not allowed to do it personally. If You, o Lord, could just free me from this plague, I would be very blessed already in this world!
5
Now, for these three days it is unlikely that someone from the temple will come to me, why I also let the guards go for this time; however, after the three feast days I will have to let them come back, otherwise I will have no peace because of those tiresome temple wasps. I know it quite well that Your great wondrous healing half a year ago and my well-known friendliness towards You, are the actual main reason why the clerics are pursuing me like that. However, if I put it as a reason to them, they do not accept it and say to me that the only reason is, that I do not want to hand over to them at least eight to ten of my servants. I said to the clerics: 'Then negotiate this with the servants! You can have all of them if they want to go to you!' But then they said: 'This you say in vain to our faces; secretly you discourage your servants and therefore they do not come to us! You therefore will have a hard account before God!' In this manner it continues and therefore I have taken Roman guards! What further will become of it, You will know!"
6
Said I: "Leave it at that; you also will not need any guards in future. I will place a guard for you who will accomplish more than army legions of Romans and the Greeks! Tomorrow we will let the feast and its madness pass unvisited; however, the day after tomorrow, when the feast is at its heights, I again will go into the temple and will hold a mirror of their mortal sins in front of them, so that they will be ashamed in front of the people and have to hide to avoid their stone throws. Therefore let us be peaceful and cheerful now; since now we are safe from their visits!"
7
Said Peter here: "O Lord, if You would act here as at the Euphrates, the obscurantist would soon be of a different opinion about You!"
8
Said I: "You speak as you understand this matter; however within a few years you also will speak completely differently! See, look at the great diversity of flowers on the field, the great diversity of plants, trees, their fruit, then the great variety of the animals in the water, on earth and in the air, also the very different minerals and also the very different stars in the sky! Can you give Me the reason of all this diversity and variety? Does not your highly simple reason say to you: For that even God could not have a particular wise reason, but He did this out of a sort of divine mood because He Himself must have found it somehow pleasing to decorate His earth as colourful as possible and also populate it equally colourful chaotically. Why does a figtree look totally different from an apple tree or pear tree? Why does the two types of fruit do not have the same form and not the same taste?
9
Behold, when God did not have the great purpose, to develop His people creatures on this earth to become His children, He could have populated the earth for them as very meagre with only a few types of fruit and only with a few tame domestic animals, just as He has done on countless many other world bodies, because on those the created people do not have the same high destination! However, so that man on this earth has an exceedingly great superior opportunity to exercise themselves to observe and to think and thereby get to know the fullest freedom of his will, God has furnished for him this earth as his life's schoolhouse so exceptionally diverse, so that man from his cradle up to his grave has enough to think about, can make all kinds of observations and comparisons and can choose something appealing to him as good and something else as not appealing to him he can discard as bad.
10
In this way the countless many species of animals are active in the most diverse manner and can be heard through all kinds of voices and can be seen with many kinds of behaviours, and man has an exceedingly great opportunity to learn all kinds of useful activities from them and to improve on them and transfer it into something big and coherent. In this way birds, some flies, beetles, crickets and even frogs were the first singing teachers of early nature man and the whelks taught people to build ships and drive around with sails.
11
However, just as God for the sake of the people has created such extraordinary diversity of all kinds in all kingdoms of nature, He also created man himself in such extraordinary and never ending classifiable diversity with regard to form and character, that one among thousand times thousand people not easily find two who resemble each other as one eye the other. God arranged this with the reason, that people in everything and many things differ from another and because of that, approach each other with even more love. And that they should serve each other with more love, they are also well equipped with highly different abilities.
12
What is said about individual people, applies also to individual societies and to whole nations. Because it is so - what thousandfold experiences are teaching us -, it must also be taken into account that not all people can be awakened and be taught and awakened for light and life in the same manner. What is applicable for individual people, is also applicable to whole societies and to whole nations.