After these words, many who have come to this place during the conversation with Simon Peter press toward Me and demand signs from Me. They say, ‘If you can perform signs before the blind, who have no knowledge and no understanding and therefore cannot judge anything, then perform them before us as well! If the signs are genuine, we too will believe in you; but if they are blind and bad, we shall also know what remains for us to do about it, for we are versed in all things!’
I say, ‘Very well, if you are versed in all things, then why do you need signs? If you are so wise that you claim to be versed in all things like God, you will surely recognize anyway whether I teach the truth or not! Why, then, the signs? But here, in the course of nearly two and a half days, a multitude of signs of the most extraordinary kind have already taken place, and here stand hundreds of fully valid witnesses to their genuineness. If these do not satisfy you, new ones will not satisfy your malicious hearts either! Therefore leave here of your own accord if you do not wish to be removed by force!’
Those answered in this way shout, ‘Who will, who can, and who may remove us from here by force? Are we not the masters of this place, since we live, trade, work and rule here as citizens of Rome? We can indeed remove and drive you out in an instant; but you, simple-minded Galilean, cannot remove us from here as you please! And by virtue of our full authority we now command you to leave this city before midnight, for we are tired of your roaming about among us!’
I say, ‘O you blind fools! How long do you still wish to live in your full authority? It would cost Me only a thought, and in an instant you and your full authority would be dust! Therefore return to your dwellings, or the ground on which you stand will swallow you!’
At that moment the earth splits open immediately before their feet, and smoke and fire burst upward from the fissure. When the abusers see this, they howl, ‘Woe to us! We are lost, for we have sinned against Elijah!’ With this howling they hurry away, and the fissure closes. But we go calmly into Joram’s house.
When we all come into the rooms of Irhael and Joram’s house, everything is ready for the evening meal. I bless it, and all sit down at the tables, now about a thousand in number altogether. Everyone eats and drinks, praises the excellent taste of the food and wine, and is joyful and cheerful. Only the colonel, who had accompanied us here from the previously mentioned place with his recovered wife and some subordinate commanders, was gloomy and ate and drank little. Jonael was sitting beside him and asked the reason for his gloomy mood.
The colonel sighed deeply and said, ‘Noble, wise friend! How can one be cheerful when one finds nearly all humanity a thousand times too bad even for the lowest Tartarus, if there were such a place? If two ravenously hungry wolves find a bone and fall into a furious struggle over possessing it to still their hunger, that is understandable! For first, they are wolves, animals without reason, machines animated by nature, driven by the pressing need of their nature to satisfy themselves; and second, they are therefore in themselves not responsible for their actions at all, like a swollen stream that devastates everything near it with its great and heavy mass of water. But here we have human beings who say of themselves that in a way they possess every degree of education and wisdom, yet in their hearts they are worse than all wolves, tigers, hyenas, lions and bears! They demand every conceivable consideration for themselves while refusing to observe the slightest toward their fellow human beings. Tell me, friend, are these human beings too? Do they deserve any mercy at all? No, I say, and a thousand times no! Oh, just wait, you uncouth people! I shall light a light for you that will make your hearing and sight fail forever!’
Jonael says, ‘But what do you intend to do? If you put every last one of them to the sword, you will gather enemies elsewhere. They will denounce you in Rome, and you may gain a bad reputation there; the end of it will be that you are banished somewhere to the land of the Scythians! Therefore leave vengeance to the Lord alone and be assured that He will take the precisely right measure for this people.
‘Read the history of my people, and it will show you in the smallest detail how at all times the Lord has punished every sin the people committed with the greatest severity and often almost inexorably. And I tell you: the Lord of heaven and earth is still, without change, the same as He was from eternity. He is long-suffering, full of the greatest patience, and never leaves the people entirely without teachers and signs from above. But woe to the people if the Lord’s patience ever runs short! Once He swings the great rod of discipline, He does not relent until all the limbs of the people are beaten to pieces and their bones become crumbly like a light, thin mush!
‘What you would do here with much dangerous effort the Lord can accomplish with the faintest thought. But as long as the Lord Himself wishes to bear with such people, we too will not lay our hands on them!
‘You saw how easy it was for the Lord to make the earth burst before the evildoers and then make smoke and fire rise from the gaping chasm! It would have been just as easy for Him to turn these abusers into dust and ashes. But He was content merely to frighten them and put them to flight.
‘If that is enough for the Lord, let it be enough for us too! For He alone always knows how to choose the right measure. But if the Lord is visibly in good spirits among us and shows that He takes some joy in us few, why should we be gloomy and sad? Be joyful and cheerful, rejoice in God’s grace, and leave everything else entirely to Him!’