The Great Gospel of John
Volume 8
Jesus' Precepts and Deeds through His Three Years of Teaching
The Lord and His adversaries
- Chapter 69 -
Marcus asks about the history of the Earth.
When we were sitting very quietly and cheerfully together, the Roman Marcus, who we already came to know as a deep thinker, said: "Lord and Master, do You allow me, now that we have the opportunity for it, to ask You still another question? There is still something bothering me, and I gladly would like to receive some explanation about this, more than what You have given us on the Mount of Olives."
2
I said: "You just can always speak and ask as you wish, for within you lives a soul of light. Although I know what you still want to ask, but for the sake of the others I like you to speak and ask, so that also they will know what it is all about, for it is always a big mistake with people when only a few perceive in themselves what they are lacking. If people would notice and feel this, then they also would search for it with great diligence and zeal and try to find it, and they also would find many things. But because they are lazy and do not know and feel what they are lacking, they are also not searching what is lacking and do not find it. However, the one who searches will find, to the one who asks will be given and for the one who knocks will be opened up. Thus, just say about which you still want to have a clearer light than what was given to you on the Mount of Olives."
3
Now our Roman Marcus said: "Look, Lord and Master, You Yourself have explicitly said that man cannot love God completely above all if he will not try to know Him - as far as this is possible to him - and then, after that I thought about it for a long time, I discovered that I am still lacking a lot.
4
Look, in Illyria and also in our faraway regions I possess several mines and from these I attain all kinds of metals, like gold, silver, lead and a great quantity of iron of which we can make very good use.
5
But by digging into such a mine in the mountains I have already found very rare and remarkable things, and this was very deep under the usual surface of the Earth. These were bones and skeletons of gigantic animals that one time lived on the Earth. When did they live on the Earth and how could they end up so deep under - let us say - such high mountains? So also, they have even found bones and skeletons in Egypt and Spain that had great resemblance with those of a man - only they certainly were 4 to 5 times as big and strong as those of a man now. And so I also have found many remarkable things of which I do not find it necessary here to name more in detail.
6
Although, on the mountain You have told us briefly that before Adam there was a kind of people that existed for a long time who still had little free will, but who lived just like the animals more instinctively and also acted according to that instinct. Only about 4.000 years ago, according to the Scripture of the Jews, appears the first man, Adam, with a complete free will and with an equally free reason, and giving from himself wise laws and regulations to his descendants.
7
I would like to ask now an important question, and that is: was this Earth during the time of Adam here and there still inhabited by those earlier men, and does that generation continue to exist, perhaps somewhere on certain places on the Earth up to our time, and will they perhaps still continue to exist for a longer time? And how did those remains of bones of the prehistoric animals end up even under the foundations of the mountains, just like the gigantic remains of the pre-Adamites?
8
Lord, please give me still some further explanation about this, for what we, searching Romans, have discovered until now, that - and certainly still more than that - will be discovered by our descendants.
9
The books of Moses that are known to us do not give us an answer at all about the conditions of life on Earth before Adam. Moses begins immediately with the extremely mysterious story of creation, which however is in no way connected with what we are discovering now on the Earth - it only brings forward great contradictions.
10
If You will not give us a higher light about this now, it will cause great confusion, namely with the later descendants, and Your teaching will be hit by great divisions. For Your teaching is based on that of Moses. When he however, is obscure in this respect, then Your light cannot come to full clarity. Therefore, give us also in this respect still a clearer explanation. We please ask You for this."