The Great Gospel of John
Volume 8
Jesus' Precepts and Deeds through His Three Years of Teaching
The Lord and His adversaries
- Chapter 200 -
Instructing the teachers.
And look, this is now how the One to whom all power in Heaven and on Earth has been given out of Himself since eternity, has spoken to you and to all of you who are present here, and therefore you also can believe that I will do everything I have promised. So you should not worry about anything else except passing on My teaching to the nations as purely as you have heard it from me.
2
I have given you the teaching and the power to do wonders in My name for free, and so you also should give all that for free to the nations. However, if the people will love you for the sake of My name and want to serve you with all kindness, then you also may except this kindness, as it is permitted by Moses, for whoever serves love by love, serving in this way God's true altar, may also live by the altar.
3
If someone out of true love will do something good to a called teacher, helper or prophet, I will also accept that as if he had done it for Me, and he will receive the reward of a prophet. For even those who - in their innocence and in the blindness of which they are not guilty - will bring offerings to the false teachers and prophets, will be richly compensated by Me, for they believe that they are pleasing God by that. So also I will compensate all the more richer those people who out of true and pure love for Me have done something good to those who I have sent to them and who I have awakened for them.
4
Therefore, in the future you can also say to those who have found comfort and help with you, asking you what kind of offering they should bring you for that, according to their old manners and customs: 'We have done this out of God's love which has given us such a mighty grace for free. However, if you also have the love of God in you, which you have come to know through us, then do what this love will command you to do, for we have many poor people around us who need your love. But for what we have done for you in the name of the Lord there is no charge as before, but from now on until the end of times we will do that for free, because also we have received this invaluable grace from God for free for the salvation of every person who believes in the God whom we are proclaiming, who will keep His commandments, love Him above all and his neighbor as himself.'
5
So when people are out of love voluntarily doing for you or giving you one or the other thing, then you can also accept it without objection in all love and kindness. But from the poor you should not accept anything, even under this condition, but you should moreover support them in all love and kindness, so that they will be aware of God's eternal love and kindness.
6
Now I have revealed, namely to you Essenes, how all things should be and also will be in the future and what My true disciples should do and can expect, and so we can leave this hill and go down to the inn where the morning meal is already prepared. Only after that we will start with the work for which reason you have asked Me in the fullest faith to come to you.
7
However, what I have told you here, keep that to yourselves for the time being, since I have entrusted this to you on this lonely hill without any strangers to witness. However, to those who will step in your footprints you should inform them completely. For if someone does not know how he should carry out his profession and is not informed of what his profession consists, then how will he be able to carry it out? That is why everyone who wants to carry out My profession on Earth among the people must be very well acquainted with it and be entirely convinced about everything, otherwise he is and will remain a dead and blind teacher.
8
Because a teacher who truly and actively will teach in My name, needs more than the knowledge to read the Scripture and then to read it aloud to other people. I say to you: the letter is dead - and also the one who only reads it while he himself does not understand it and will thus also not act accordingly - so that he can awaken in the spirit and come to life. Only the spirit makes alive and gives the right understanding and active power.
9
As you are now instructed by God, every true teacher must in the whole future be instructed by God before he can assume a godly profession, for if a person, of no matter what kind of profession, wants to become a good worker at the same level of a master, he surely must learn it first from a master of that profession. However, in this profession, which consists of the most important and most holy for every human being, I alone am the Master. Thus, whoever wants to teach this to the people with the best result must first learn it from Me.
10
That is why I said to you that those who will step in your footprints and will continue the profession that I have entrusted to you now, must be well instructed in all the things that I have now entrusted to you. For the other people it is however sufficient that they actively believe in Me, love Me above all and the fellowman as themselves. Because this covers all of Moses, the law and all prophets, and the result of it is eternal life, and in the opposite case eternal death out of which a soul will hardly awaken to life."
11
Now the chief said: "O Lord and Master, we all have heard, understood and also taken deeply at heart Your very important words of life. Only one thing at least is not completely clear to me. What it is that we should do and observe during the profession that You have entrusted to us, that we have now well heard and learned from You, the only true Master, but how will those who later will assume our profession be able to do that, since You surely will not always be personally among us, as this is now fortunately the case for us?"
12
I said, while we were already going down the hill: "By far you still have not yet learned everything from Me what you will need in order to perform completely well the profession that I have entrusted to you, and nevertheless you will soon learn from Me all the rest without My personal presence. For even if I will not be present bodily as a person as I am now, I still will be present in the spirit of My love, wisdom, might and power. And that Spirit will always teach you whatever you should do and speak. It will put the words that you should speak in your heart and in your mouth.
13
And as you will be instructed in this manner by My Spirit in all wisdom from God, also your true successors will be instructed in everything without My bodily presence. For truly I say to you: where I am speaking and working now, so also it is only My Spirit that speaks and works, which is God as the Father in eternity, and not My bodily person that first has to be dissolved to enter entirely into the glory of the Father.
14
And if you know this now, you will now also understand how someone for the sake of eternal life always can and will be instructed by Me, even without this bodily personality of Mine."