The Household of God
Volume 2
Rise and spiritual prime of the first world empire Hanoch
- Chapter 256 -
LAMECH DISCUSSES WITH THE DOUBTERS THE DIVINITY OF THE POOR MAN. THE DOUBTERS' ONE-SIDED CONCEPT OF GOD (17th February 1843)
Lamech noticed that these his former enemies who had languished in the prisons because of their attitude wanted something of him but that none of them dared approach him. So he asked them: "What are you looking for, what do you want, or did you lose something?"
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Finally, one of them plucked up courage and said: "Hear me, O severe king Lamech! We are all in a quandary, - not as concerns our body, but as concerns our understanding.
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"Behold, you stated before in your good speech that that poor man there is the true, sole God and Creator of heaven and earth, the same God and Creator of all things whom we came to know through your brothers and whom Farak once preached.
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"This we cannot see and comprehend and thus not believe. For Farak taught the people to know an infinite God, Who with His right hand comprises heaven and earth and with His left hand reaches to where there is no end to His Being.
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"Furthermore he taught: God is a Spirit and as such omnipresent like an eternal, infinite thought which no created being can behold because it is infinite.
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'The great teacher taught further: Because of His innate infiniteness God is also indescribably holy; therefore, nothing can draw near to Him and, since only He can behold Himself, He dwells in the forever inaccessible light.
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"If now you compare this teaching of Farak, which is worthy of a God, to that poor man who according to your earlier speech is supposed to be the very same most sublime God of Farak, how does He look?
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"Even we, your released prisoners, would look better as a God than this poor man there, who in himself seems to be quite an honest and wise man, to whom we do not take exception.
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"But either he or you, strict king, must be pitied. He, if he should really fancy to be almighty God, and you and all those with you if they should seriously believe all this.
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"So we should like to ask you - if it suits you -, to give us a more detailed explanation of it."
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When Lamech had heard this he descended from the throne, grasped the hand of the speaker, looked at him with a friendly mien and said to him:
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"Listen, brother and friend, your concepts of God according to Farak's teaching which I well remember are absolutely worthy of a God; for these concepts are purely spiritual and let the endlessly sublime Deity shine through everywhere.
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"However, if I asked you about your concept and said: Since God is doubtlessly exactly as Farak taught Him, how can the creation of finite, most insignificant beings be possibly ascribed to him? How the creation of a blowfly, a gnat or a leaf-mite?
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"How could the infinite God be concerned with such horribly finite, most insignificant trifles?
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"Indeed, is it not a shocking thought to assume that the infinitely sublime God of Farak formed us humans with such shortcomings, He, the infinite Creator, leaving such great gaps in His creation?
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"Why must night and day alternate on earth? Is not the night incompatible with the eternal light in God? While creating, was He short of the stuff for a second sun, which would have put an end to the night of the earth?
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"Between the earth and the firmament we behold a great empty space; why did the almighty God of Farak leave such an immense space of creation empty?
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"How can such an emptiness be compatible with the endless sublimity and omnipresence of God? How our excrement full of stench and many another thing?
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"I am now asking you and you give me a satisfying answer to it and I will then fully answer your question.
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"You are silent and at a great loss for an answer; but that poor man yonder has granted me to read in your heart, and this tells you: If it is undoubtedly so - which is clearly proven by the whole of creation -, there is either no God at all and everything is arbitrarily created by a thing come into being through some chance play of energy, or there is a God who is forever merely an onlooker watching the chance play of the forces.
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"Look, look, what fruits your knowledge of God bears you! I tell you: Go and prostrate yourself before the poor man and ask His grace and mercy and you will soon realize what God actually is.
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"I can tell you no more now, but only advise you as to what to do. Do this lest you perish! Become completely free in God! Amen."