(Talk at the gathering of brothers and sisters)
In chapter 86 of The Spiritual Sun, Volume 2, through Jakob Lorber, the Apostle John explains the commandment, ‘You shall not bear false witness—you shall not lie.’
Thus John speaks:
‘But in the innermost of all, the matter is this: Love is equivalent to the light of truth beheld in the innermost directly from God, and wisdom is equivalent to the light radiating out from God through all infinite eternal spaces.
But if someone has love yet does not apply it, and instead merely grasps, with his outer light and with his will guided by this light, the rays going outward ever more and more into infinity, he therefore becomes ever weaker, yet because of his excursion in every direction becomes spiritually ever more puffed up and also ever less receptive to the inward light of love and truth from God.
If this is the case, such a person becomes ever more unlike God and thereby, with every atom of his being, bears fundamentally false witness concerning the divine essence whose perfect likeness he ought to be.
Whoever therefore hears the divine word but does not follow it, and instead follows only what dazzles his outer eyes and thereby excites his sensual will, bears false witness with every step he takes, with every word he speaks, with every movement of the hand he makes. Even if he wished to speak the purest divine truth, the pure word of the Gospel, he nevertheless lies and bears false witness concerning the Lord, because he does not act according to the word and according to the truth.
Thus if someone prays and professes his devotion to God, but does not live according to the word of the Lord, he is a liar to the extent that he is warm and alive; for his prayer is then merely an outward formula whose inward value is wholly lost because the inner divine light is not used to illuminate and enliven the inward content of this outward form.
It is exactly as if someone were to gaze upon a star with the greatest rapture. But what use are all this rapture and contemplation if he cannot behold the star in its full nearness as a wondrous world? He is like a hungry person standing before a locked bread cupboard. No matter how longingly and reverently he may look at this bread cupboard, will he thereby be satisfied? Certainly not. For as long as he cannot bite into the inside of the bread and take it into his stomach, all contemplation, reverence, and rapture before the bread cupboard will do him no good.
But how can one open within oneself the bread cupboard of true likeness to God and satisfy oneself from it? Surely in no other way than by making use within oneself of that innermost means and thus directing oneself according to the truth heard from God: by taking from the outwardly perceived forms for active use only that which, and insofar as, one has found it with the innermost light to be fully in accord with correspondence and therefore divinely true. As soon as this is not the case, everything a person does and undertakes is false witness concerning the inner divine truth and thus the barest lie toward every fellow human being.
Accordingly, everyone should direct himself according to this inner truth and act in accordance with it. In this way he will more and more actively connect his thoughts with this inner light and thereby attain unity within himself and thus divine likeness, in which it will then become eternally impossible for him to become a liar.’
So far John.
What does this mean for us now, in this time when lies rule this Earth as never before? Yes, this world has become one single great lie, which fundamentally it always was, for it is not what it pretends to be, since matter is not alive but dead. Now, then, the world of lies opens itself, unfolds its black garment, and wraps the Earth in it.
We find ourselves in this world of lies, and this weighs heavily on us who stand in the light of grace of truth. But why does the conduct of falsehood and lying burden us so greatly that we often no longer know how to help ourselves, because it presses us down and sometimes brings us to doubt, and some even to despair, over the unspeakable brazenness and wickedness of the antichristian machinations?
This brings us to the point of this exposition. Our own falsehood, in which we do not live what we have recognized and recognize as good and true, correlates with the lie of the world, or relates to it. What does this mean? We feel and see in the world the false witness that we bear in our own spiritual sphere. The individual robbery of love and truth, the distortion of God’s perfect truth and goodness into our imperfect human nature, touches us painfully from outside through the instrument of antichristianism.
What then happens to us in relation to the lie of the world when we enter ever more into God’s will of love, when we increasingly recognize and live what is true and good in Jesus Christ? The external lie of the world can no longer attach itself; it finds no point of contact—we begin to look at the world with God’s eyes. Worry and fear, the recurring burden of falsehood and lies, give way to the inner freedom of the spirit, which perceives satanic activity detached from every worldly bond. Since we no longer rob God of His love and truth and drag them into the mire of our self-righteousness and rebelliousness, He can give us free and pure love—and thus Himself.
How do we then look at the world? We see through lies and falsehood; we see the greater whole in view of Jesus Christ’s work of redemption; we see human blindness and wickedness with the eyes of love and mercy. And we see the abyss between God and humanity and recognize in it the necessity of tribulation and distress, which lead humanity back into its divine destiny, for there is no other possibility of salvation. We see the death that now and soon will pass over this Earth as never before in the consciousness of eternal life, whereby it loses its terror. We see the Apocalypse now taking place and the Last Judgment, with the necessary separation of spirits, with the eyes and heart of God.
Our understanding and perspective in spiritual life in general, and especially in this final phase of the end time, is therefore shaped not by the word we have read or by imagined wisdom and love, but solely by our daily and living entrance into the divine will—only in this way do we become truly free from the burden of this time.
So if we observe the 8th Commandment, the Father leads us into His world; only there will we remain unharmed and meaningfully endure and survive the coming time. Yet fundamentally each of the Ten Commandments leads us into this freedom when we view and obey them in the light of truth—the Ten Commandments are contained in Jesus’ two commandments, which in turn are fundamentally one commandment, for they cannot be separated from one another.
And so, with and in every word of God, one can go back—or inward—to the source of the word, to the primal Word, from which infinitely many branches stretch into infinity. It is important and necessary to go from within outward and see as the perfect spirits also do, for otherwise one loses oneself in the labyrinth of wisdom. Thus, in love for God, enter His heart, live there, and from there look at life. Then the wisdom of love arises and humbly nestles against the heart and tells the soul of itself in a language the world does not know.
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