I say, ‘Friend, you are still very shortsighted if you interpret and understand My teaching in this way! Jonael has already told you that either a struggle against an evil enemy at a divine command, or unavoidable self-defense, is ordered by Me in such a way that people killed in such struggles, or rather their souls, are immediately placed under a severe judgment and can exert no evil influence back upon either their just victors or the ground of the earth. But if this is an unchangeable truth from which you can clearly see how this matter stands in the ground of the ground, how can you oppose My teaching with such doubtful propositions?
‘Who told you that real criminals, who are often worse than all wild beasts of the forest, should not be caught and brought into some secure custody? On the contrary, true love of neighbor commands you to do this. For just as you would surely kill a hyena with a sharp weapon if you came upon it attacking a person, you will surely also spring to an honest person’s aid if he is attacked by a murderous robber on the open road or in a house!
‘But since such human hyenas, if they gather in great numbers, can become dangerous not only to individual travelers but in the end to whole settlements, it is even an indispensable duty of the governing authority to hunt down such dangerous people and place them in strong cages.
‘But the death penalty should then be imposed only on those in whom every means remains fruitless over a period of ten years in bringing about any true reform of life. If the criminal promises reform on the scaffold, he should be granted an additional year. But if even then no reform has occurred, the killing should be carried out; for then nothing more is to be expected of such a person’s reform on earth, and it is better to remove him from this earth.
‘But if the lawfully governing authority, with the community’s consent, wishes to commute such a criminal’s well-deserved death penalty to lifelong confinement in a cage and continue the attempts at reform, it is free to do so, and I shall not one day call it to account for that.
‘Such enemies of those who will live according to My teaching have no power to act back after their bodily death. Such power belongs only to those spirits who, as human beings striving toward what was better in this world, were killed most cruelly by tyrannical rulers who were exceedingly proud, selfish and hungry for domination, and therefore also entirely illegitimate!
‘If judges devoid of every nobler feeling create enemies for themselves through such utterly unjust judgments, these enemies will then, as spirits, take revenge upon the unjust judges. For only these are permitted by Me to recollect the past, but never spirits that are truly evil from the ground up. I think you will now be clear about your doubts!’
The colonel says, ‘Yes, now Scylla and Charybdis have both been cleared away; in that respect everything is now in order for me.
‘But how Your truly holy teaching will make its way by a path as free of obstacles as possible through the night in which humanity now lies buried is still as unclear to me as before! By a purely miraculous path it would, according to Your own statement, be of little use to people, because in this way it would make mere machines out of people who are meant to become and be free. But by an entirely natural path it will cost much blood and require an exceedingly long time! Indeed, although I possess no prophetic gift, I would almost assert with certainty that, knowing humanity as I do over a fairly wide area of Asia, Africa and Europe, even in two thousand years from now far less than half the people of the earth will bask in the light of this teaching of Yours! Am I right or not?’
I say, ‘At bottom you are by no means wrong there. But in general it does not matter as much as you think. For what is at issue here is not so much the most universal acceptance of My teaching on this earth, but rather the bridge finally established through My present descent and through My word and teaching between this material world and that spiritual world whose eternal fields lie beyond the grave!
‘Whoever accepts My teaching on this side in full earnest will cross this bridge while still in the body. But whoever accepts My teaching on earth either lukewarmly, incompletely or not at all will arrive in that world in great night, and it will be very difficult for him to find this bridge!
‘But people who may never be in a position to learn anything of My teaching while still on this side will be given guides in the beyond who will lead them to this bridge. If the spirits who still know nothing of My teaching follow the guide, they too will cross this bridge into true eternal life. But if they stubbornly remain with their own teaching, then from their conduct according to that teaching they will be judged merely as creatures and will not attain the state of being children of God! Look, that is how the matter stands. Think about it and tell Me how it pleases you. But soon, for look, My time in this place is drawing to its end.’
After a while the colonel says, ‘Lord, now everything is clear and evident to me. And should any doubt come to me in time, well, You have raised up a man here for us who can instruct us all about everything! Therefore may Your name be highly praised above everything at all times and extolled beyond measure by me and all of us! Only receive one more request from me graciously: when You now leave us, may You soon return to us again! For my chief concern here shall be that when You return, You find hearts worthier of You than was the case this time!’