The Great Gospel of John
Volume 9
Jesus' Precepts and Deeds through His Three Years of Teaching
The Lord in Jesaira
- Chapter 137 -
Contemplation in the evening.
When they came to us, we were still outside, where we spoke about different things with one another.
2
The skipper was the first who walked to Me, bowed deeply and said: "O Lord and Master, forgive me my great blindness, that I did not recognize You immediately when I wanted to turn around and when You mercifully called me to come ashore. And forgive me also that I came with my companions already this evening and not tomorrow, early in the morning as You told me. And moreover, please do not mind that we poor fishermen have followed the urge of our heart and have taken the liberty to bring along for You only a small offering from the great blessing that You have visibly given to us with the abundant catch of fishes. See, here are the most valuable fishes of this lake."
3
I said: "Although I am much more pleased with your hearts than with the fishes that you have brought here for Me as an offering, but where the heart is united with the offering, the offering is also pleasing to Me. Let us therefore eat these fishes together tonight. Give them to the innkeeper, and he will know how they have to be prepared."
4
Then the innkeeper called immediately a few of his servants and let the fishes be brought to the kitchen, about which the woman of the innkeeper was extremely surprised. Those 36 fishes were also very welcome to her because she did not have such big and noble fishes in her tanks. Also Mary, who was also working in the kitchen, was very joyful at this completely unexpected gift.
5
Now we also left the lawn and went to a beautiful, spacious terrace that was located on a little hill at the lake, and from where there was really a splendid view over the lake and also over the surrounding landscape.
6
Although it was now already quite late in the evening, but this did not matter because since the moon was already for 3/4 in full light and because there was still some light from the late twilight, the peaceful view could still be called very beautiful. And they all praised the good idea of the innkeeper to let such a beautiful, spacious terrace be built on our little hill.
7
On this terrace, they all looked at the nature for a while that became more and more quiet, and the skipper made the following very good remark about this: "If with man - when he has come into the years of his life about which he says that he does not like them - the evening of his soul would look like this natural evening, then he certainly would be pleased about it. But this is almost never the case, because man spends his old age in all kinds of sorrow, worries, weaknesses, sicknesses and in an ever increasing fear for the certain death of his body. And against this fear, his weak faith and his still weaker hope in a continuance of life of the soul somewhere in the beyond - which is up to now still not really known - gives him very little certainty. Or man, who can afford it because of his wealth, throws himself especially on his old age with all lust into all kinds of worldly pleasures in order to chase away the fear and fright for death that is troublesome above all to him. And when sicknesses, against which no healing herb can achieve anything, will take him into their grip, and he can very clearly see his coming end, than it storms all the more in his soul. And so the evening of the soul of an old person can be very seldom compared - and in our time almost not at all - with this truly more than beautiful natural evening. O dear Lord and Master, please tell us if it will always be like that with man forever."
8
I said: "In order to give man a quiet evening of the soul, I Myself as Lord over life and death have come into this world. The one who believes in Me and always lives and acts according to My teaching, and who thus seeks God's Kingdom in himself, where he undoubtedly will certainly find it, his soul will have a much more quiet and more splendid evening of life than we can see and feel this natural evening before us now.
9
Why is the evening of the soul with men often so extremely stormy and miserable? Because men have separated themselves almost completely from God, the original Source of all existence and life and of all light and all truth. And instead of that, they have turned with all their senses and strivings towards the world and its matter that is kept in judgment and death.
10
If men will just like you turn away completely from the world and return to Me again in full faith and in all love, they will find in Me the quiet and blissful evening of the soul. But without that, the evening of the soul with men in the future will become still more stormy and terrible than anyone has ever experienced and felt until now. Because from now on, men will not be able to say anymore: 'Who has ever seen God and spoken with Him, and who can guarantee to us the full truth of what is written in the Scripture', because I Myself as the Lord am speaking now to men, well recognizable and visible to everyone, and I am showing them the truth of life, which is the fundamental truth of all truth. He who has accepted this in himself, will really have no fear for the death of his body, for he will not see nor feel death, even if he has to die physically 100 times."
11
The really wise skipper said: "O dear Lord and Master, we thank You from the deepest bottom of our life for this lesson that greatly comforts our hearts. In You we do believe, in You we do hope, and we want to and will also love You above all. But now that I am still talking, please allow me mercifully, o Lord and Master, to bother You with still another question."
12
I said: "Friend, I surely know what you still want to ask Me, but for the sake of the others, ask your question to Me anyway, but aloud, openly and freely, so that they also will be able to hear and understand what it is about."