The Great Gospel of John
Volume 9
Jesus' Precepts and Deeds through His Three Years of Teaching
The Lord in Jericho
- Chapter 18 -
The religion of the 3 robbers.
Yes, we poor seeking men are forced to a blind belief by various powers with fire, sword and with the cross, but the tyrants can do unpunished whatever they want because they stand above the law. But I am asking pure human intellect if this would also be right in case of the existence of a truly extremely good, wise, all-knowing and almighty God, for whom all men should be equal, since they are His work and not their own work. If they are now more degenerated than before, can they be blamed? Or can anyone be blamed if he is put out of the body of his mother into this world blind and deaf, and must then live a miserable life?
2
Oh, oh, friends, for a thinker there are certainly 1.000 times more reasons to doubt the existence of a God than to believe in it. But with this we still do not want to claim definitely and with full conviction that every belief in a God is an empty deceit that was invented by the fantasy of men, which they have presented to the credulous, intellectually blind people as the full truth by all kinds of magic in order to make them more easier servile to themselves.
3
Once the great majority of people was convinced, it was useless for the few more clearly thinking men to resist against that massive national deceit that was set up, but in order not to be tortured in the most cruel manner as a transgressor of the once determined truth, everyone had to dance and jump according to the tune that was continuously sung to them with a terrible threatening face and threatening voice by the so-called religious teachers. And if someone had the nerve to ask further questions to such a religious teacher about the Being of God, then he certainly would receive an answer that would awake the dead, as is nowadays doubtlessly the case with all priestly castes, with the gentiles as well as with the Jews.
4
And if someone would secretly search and seek on his own for the existence of a God, then he would found the same as we did, only the mute same working forces of the great nature, and then he would give up, being convinced that all his trouble was useless.
5
Since until now, also we had the honor to experience this ourselves, we also cannot be blamed on this point by an intelligent human being when under these circumstances we cannot believe in a God, nor in a continuous life of the human soul after the death of the body. What we believe is that in fact nothing can perish in the great nature but can only change its form. But if our present human form will also have in its other, undoubtedly very divided form, thoughts and a conscience of its own, that is another question.
6
In short, we have sufficiently explained our reasons why we doubt the existence of a God and why we as men only want to seek and also found from now on the true Heaven in the truth and its resulting good. In this explanation we have now faithfully and truthfully shown to you that we do not hide anything, and so we ask you again, mayor of this city, to free us from our fetters."
7
Then the innkeeper ordered his servants to loosen the fetters of the 3, which also happened immediately. Then the innkeeper let the 3 to be brought to another room to give them food and drink, and give them also clean clothes, because their clothing were already in a pitiful state.