On the other day, in Cana, I tell John, who recorded the first sign at the wedding, that he should now also record this second sign at the same place. And John did so in a few words, in eight verses, as it stands written.
Matthew also asked Me whether he too should record this deed. But I say to him, ‘Leave it. When we come to Capernaum tomorrow and I again teach and perform signs there, you shall record those. But add to My Sermon on the Mount the healing of the leper at Sychar whom I healed when I came down from the mountain.’
Matthew says, ‘Lord, to my knowledge two lepers were healed by You at Sychar. Which one should I record?’
I say, ‘More than two were indeed healed, but the one whom I healed at the foot of the mountain is enough. I then instructed him to show himself to the priest Jonael, whose name you need not add, and to offer the gift that Moses had commanded as a testimony concerning them. For whoever does not believe Me because of one sign will not believe Me if I perform a hundred signs before him. So of the many signs, include only the one I have now indicated to you.’
Matthew says, ‘Ah yes, Lord, now I know which sign You mean! I did make a note of it, but have not yet fully set it down in writing. I will do that at once and begin a new chapter with it. For I have divided the Sermon on the Mount into three chapters, and this will now be the fourth.’
I say, ‘For now this division of yours is good. But after I have been lifted up from this earth into My heavenly, eternal kingdom, you will be obliged to write four preceding chapters. Therefore you may already number and arrange the three chapters of the Sermon on the Mount as V, VI and VII instead of I, II and III, and the new one accordingly as VIII.’
And Matthew immediately arranged his records in this way, and so today the Sermon on the Mount, although it was the first thing, appears only in the fifth, sixth and seventh chapters.
(Knowing this is also necessary for a better understanding of the two Gospels of John and Matthew, for both were written under My personal direction. Here the main concern is also that through this knowledge the two documents, which outwardly seem very dissimilar, should be brought under one roof and thus into proper harmony. Otherwise it almost always happened that even good students of Scripture considered the miraculous deeds that look similar in Matthew and John to be the same, yet still asked, ‘How can Matthew say this and John that, when the event appears to be entirely one and the same?’
From this arose many errors and, not infrequently, a complete falling away from My teaching as it stands written in the Gospels.
One could of course say here, ‘Yes, why, O Lord, did You let this happen for so many centuries and wish to give no one light on it?’ To this I say:
No century passed in which I did not choose and awaken men wherever My teaching was professed even to some extent, so that they might sufficiently explain the facts and the necessary interpretation of the Gospels to people. Those chosen have always done this and have also historically supplied in the documents what was lost partly through people’s negligence, partly through the rigid minds and, not infrequently, evil will of the various sectarian overseers and priests of the Gospel, or rather of My teaching. But only very few accepted it;
the churches that had developed systematically over time quite naturally rejected it and declared it heresy and devilish haunting, because it did not suit their business of seeking profit and power.
The scholars and artists, on the other hand, declared such manifestations to be fantasies and dreamy babblings of a poor fool who also wanted to amount to something without having acquired the necessary qualities through effort, diligence and thorough study.
But in the place where the chosen and awakened prophet lived and was known, he certainly counted for the least and could therefore accomplish little. For according to people’s generally held ideas, a prophet should really not live on the earth at all, should have no human form, should neither eat nor drink and should wear no clothes. Instead he should at least travel through the air in a fiery chariot like Elijah and, from the fiery chariot, proclaim to each person individually only what that person in his self-love likes to hear and what flatters him. That would be a proper prophet, on whom all eyes and ears would certainly be fixed, especially if on his flights through the air he also miraculously scattered gold and silver coins by the Metzen among the rich, but small copper coins among the proletarians, praising the great, rich and powerful while frequently chastising the poor devils—the proletarians—severely, especially if they dared to grumble against the rich, great and powerful. Of course such a prophet would not be a very pleasant appearance to the poor, and they would not praise him!
But if the prophet is a human being like anyone else, if he eats and drinks, even has a living room, and perhaps even practices some worldly trade, then his prophesying is already finished. He is declared either half-mad or a hypocrite, and in his homeland he will certainly accomplish least of all.
Thus throughout nearly two thousand years I have always supplied what was missing. But who accepted it? I say: always only very few, and these seldom with enough life. People did take knowledge and nota bene from it; but for someone to arrange his way of life accordingly and then become convinced for himself in spirit that this otherwise natural person had truly been chosen by Me to bring people fresh light from the heavens again in a world that had gradually grown dark—this they always left undone for all sorts of worthless reasons.
One has bought a pair of new oxen and must now train them to plow; naturally he has no time. Another has a new field to cultivate and therefore cannot come either. A third has taken a wife and consequently has no time or opportunity at all. A fourth has a large house to build and is at his wits’ end with worry; he cannot possibly have time! And so in the end everyone has his excuse, and a new light from the heavens once again burns in vain for a whole century in some hidden corner of the earth. And if in the next century I give another new light to illuminate the old documents, the same fate befalls it.
But if the experience of all ages compels one to admit this only too certainly, the question arises whether it is My fault if the same gaps should still be discoverable in the old documents today that vain intellectual investigators and brooding thinkers discovered a thousand years ago. From this, the many doubters and finally rejecters of My teaching, of My own fullest divinity and of its—the teaching’s—fullest divinity have always sprung like mushrooms from the earth.
But for that reason I now give a fullest light in this matter, so that in the end no one will be able to excuse himself as though, since the time of My bodily presence on earth, I had no longer concerned Myself either with the purity and completeness of My teaching or with the people who have accepted it.
When I soon come to earth again, I will undertake a severe sifting and accept no one who comes to Me with excuses of any kind. For everyone who seeks earnestly can and must find it. But the sick sheep and donkeys at the feeding trough shall receive a medicine after which they will certainly grow ravenous for food from the heavens. Then, however, as convalescents they will be fed very homeopathically for a long time. And now back to the Gospel!)