The Future and the Preservation of the Lord’s Teaching in Purity – GEJ 5.120
(Mathael:) “I now believe with firm conviction that we will not have too much difficulty spreading this purely divine teaching of Yours, and we rulers and earthly authorities certainly will not; but an entirely different question, which seems extremely important to me, is how this teaching can be preserved for humanity in purity and without additions or omissions made by human beings. For there are now many of us who have received this new teaching not only for ourselves but also for our very many brothers and sisters, and who seek with all zeal to spread it. But perhaps even we will proclaim this truest and purest Gospel to people quite differently in certain respects, which lies in the very nature of the matter.
For one will have to speak differently with the Jew, differently with the Greek and Roman, and very differently with the Persian, Indian, Egyptian, and especially the Scythian, because each is imbued with entirely different preconceptions. This will obviously give rise to all kinds of mixtures and all kinds of colorings. And if, perhaps after a few centuries, people of the most varied nations compare with one another the teachings they received from us, which will obviously be written down by many, will they still look fairly similar? Or will the Jews not soon say: ‘We alone have the completely pure and true teaching!’? And the Greeks will reply: ‘No, we have the one true teaching just as it flowed from the mouth of the Lord!’ And will the Romans not claim the same, and the Armenians likewise? I hope that in essentials they will not all be too far apart; but in particulars, here and there, given the completely free will of human beings, very considerable variants, gaps, and folds might nevertheless arise!
If this could indeed be expected with some certainty, then in my admittedly insignificant opinion some provision ought surely to be made now, so that in the end this glorious teaching does not become a veritable chaos from which no one could easily make sense any longer. What, O Lord, would be Your opinion on this?”
I (Jesus Christ) say: “My dear friend, although your concern springs from your entirely honest and troubled heart, I must nevertheless point out to you that this foresight of yours is a little premature. That this teaching will not remain among all nations in later times as pure as it has now come to you from My mouth may already be assumed in advance as something quite certain.
Very soon after us a multitude of written gospels will also appear, each of which will claim to contain the pure truth, and none of which will look entirely like another written gospel claiming the same. Indeed, something much more adverse will happen: the prince of lies who bears witness against Me will also arise and will even perform great, though false, signs. Into the field where I have now sown the purest seed he will put the evil seed of all kinds of weeds in order to choke the noble wheat. But all this will in itself do no harm to My true and purest teaching; for the word I have spoken here to you will be spoken on and discussed further by you, and you yourselves will no longer use My words with exact literal precision, which will not be necessary at all. But the inner Spirit will nevertheless remain.
Whoever believes in Me and is baptized in My name with water and with Spirit will also receive My Spirit and will then walk in the light of the purest truth for time and eternity. In that person this teaching too will be found again in all its purity as though anew. But whoever does not attain such grace will never in any case grasp and comprehend the pure light of the eternal truth of My teaching, and it will make no difference what food he stuffs into his spiritual stomach.
Believe Me! And if someone possessed every word literally exactly as I spoke it, but had not received the Spirit in order through Him first to penetrate into the depths where light, power, and life reign in My words, My words would benefit him just as little as the long prayers of the Pharisees benefit anyone.
But if someone has the Spirit of My words within him, he no longer needs the letter. Whoever has the Spirit also has the teaching in purity. I, however, will remain in the Spirit with My always few but true confessors until the end of the times of this Earth. And so, friend Mathael, provision will already be made that My teaching will always be preserved in complete purity!”
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A Promise for Those Seeking Help – GEJ 5.169
Ebahl, Jarah’s father, comes to Me and says: “There is surely nothing left now about which one could ask You, for in these roughly seven days we have experienced truths and wondrous things in such abundance that, distributed over seven thousand years, a substantial share would fall to every year and humanity would have enough each year to marvel at and reflect upon. We have now become exceedingly rich in the most precious treasures of the Spirit; it depends only on actually bringing these treasures into life, for otherwise they are worthless for our souls, whose salvation is the one and only concern in this life. Here the only question is: Will we otherwise weak human beings always possess sufficient strength of will for this? What will we do when, with time, weaknesses of every kind come upon us, weaknesses that do not spare even one who often has the best will?”
I say: “I will be the help, strength, and support of every earnest striving! In time of need I will abandon no one who has otherwise always walked faithfully and lovingly toward Me on My paths. But if through all kinds of enticements of the world he has strayed from My paths, then he must attribute it to himself if My help fails to reach him in the time of need, and that for as long as the fallen one does not turn to Me with complete earnestness, repentantly and full of faith. I will indeed remain forever the same faithful shepherd and go after the sheep that have become lost somewhere; but the sheep must begin to bleat somewhere and allow itself to be found according to its own inviolable free will.
Whoever is burdened with a load of life too great for his strength, let him come to Me in his heart, and I will strengthen and refresh him! For I give some a greater burden to carry precisely so that they may feel their weakness and then come to Me in their heart and ask Me for sufficient strength to bear their greater burden of life more easily; and I will strengthen them in every need of their life and give them a right light for walking the dark paths of the life of this world. But whoever feels this too-great burden yet does not come to Me in his heart must attribute it to himself if he collapses under the excessive load of earthly life.
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On Prayer and Worship of God – GEJ 6.123
The priestess of Minerva said: “O Lord, one could continue asking throughout an eternity; but what use would that be to us, since in our present state we could never comprehend Your answers anyway! But send us as soon as possible Your promised Spirit, who will lead us into all truth, and we will be more than fully satisfied with everything that has been granted to us by You up to now. Only one thing would still be worth mentioning, and it would be good if in this respect too we received from Your own mouth a proper instruction.
Look, in virtually all teachings about God the very commendable requirement is made of human beings that a divine being is to be worshiped by us! Now, for our false gods we had a whole legion of approved and unapproved prayers. The approved and therefore effective prayers had been composed by priests—naturally of the highest rank—and could be prayed only by the priests during a certain ceremony and only at a certain time of day, and belonged to the mysterious so-called worship of the gods. Under the strictest penalty, a layperson or uninitiated person could never pray such a prayer himself; instead he had to go to a priest and bring him a specific offering, fixed in advance for every case, so that the priest would then monotonously and entirely thoughtlessly mumble down for him in a temple one of these approved prayers with the prescribed ceremony. The unapproved and therefore ineffective prayers, however, could also be prayed by the layperson, for the sole purpose that he might practice contemplating the gods and thereby learn the effects of the priests’ approved holy prayers.
Now, that such things are an abomination before Your eyes and ears needs no one to explain or prove to me any further; but notwithstanding this, a human being should worship and invoke a true God all the more in certain chosen words more worthy of God than those in which he speaks and talks with his fellow human beings. And in this respect we would therefore like to receive from You Yourself a word to serve as our guide.”
I said: “My disciples have already given you the prayer I taught them, which every person can pray in his heart with equal effect; every other prayer merely with the lips is an abomination before Me.
In the Spirit I have been completely the same from eternity; I have never changed and will never change for all eternity in My being, acting, and willing. I have now been with you for three days and have taught you what each person for himself must know, believe, and do in order to attain the eternal life of the soul. Have I told you anything about particular prayers, or about some effective mysterious worship pleasing to Me alone, or about a certain feast day, such as perhaps the Sabbath of the Jews, which they call a day of the Lord Jehovah and on which the priests forbid people all work, while they themselves as priests commit the greatest and most shameful frauds on that very day of the Lord and still hold the wicked, conscienceless opinion that in this way they are rendering God a good service? No, you have heard nothing of all this from My mouth, and I tell you as the fullest truth:
Away with all prayers (Jesus means set prayers and prayer formulas here), away with all feast days, since every day is a true day of the Lord, and away with all priesthood! For every person who recognizes God, loves Him above all things, and does His will is a true and proper priest and thereby also a proper teacher if he gives his fellow human beings this very teaching that he has received from Me.
Whoever does My will, says the Lord now, truly prays and prays always without ceasing; and every day on which a person does a good deed for his fellow human being in My name is a true day of the Lord and the only one pleasing to Me.
But if someone does a good deed for his neighbor, let him do it in silence and not talk about himself because of it or boast of it before people! For whoever does so has already received his spiritual reward from Me in that he received worldly fame for his noble deed; but this never strengthens the soul, it only corrupts it, because it makes the soul vain and self-satisfied.
It is the same with asking Me for some grace. Whoever wants to obtain something from Me through his request should ask entirely in silence in his heart filled with love for Me, and what he has asked for will be given to him if it is compatible with the salvation of his soul’s life.
Likewise, two, three, or even more may unite entirely in silence and ask for themselves and for the whole community—but not in such a way that the community immediately learns of it—and I will certainly hear such requests. But if two, three, or more were to go and announce to the community that they would do this on this or that day, or at this or that time of day, so that the community might then look at them and praise them, and in the end even pay for such a pious work of petition, truly, such a prayer will never be heard and therefore will benefit neither the community nor those who prayed! For all this and things of this kind the pagans too have done and still do: in great dangers they moved in great crowds from one idol temple to another, carrying all sorts of foolish carvings, banners, vessels, and many other things, making a great howling, blowing horns, striking cymbals violently, and clattering their shields. They also undertook long pilgrimages to extraordinary and special miraculous images of idols, and when they arrived there they performed all kinds of foolish acts of penance and offered the idol great and often very considerable sacrifices; this of course greatly helped the idol priests, but never the foolish pilgrims. Thus such public prayers and petitions will never be heard by Me!
Whoever therefore wants a good request of his to be heard by Me should make a pilgrimage into his heart and present his request to Me there in complete silence with wholly natural and unadorned words, and I will hear him. But I add this as well: let no one come to Me with some pious-looking gesture or facial expression! For wherever those familiar hypocritically pious grimaces occur in a request to Me, no request will be heard either; for whoever does not come to Me as naturally as he is and does not ask in the right spirit of the fullest truth will not be heard. Only the one who truly loves Me, does My will, and comes to Me just as he is, without any pomp or compulsion, will always be heard by Me.
It is also an old custom, even among the Jews, that blind and foolish people put on special, finer and better clothes for their petitions and prayers because they think a person cannot do enough for the so-called greater honor of God. But such a fool does not consider that there are very many poor people who can barely cover the nakedness of their bodies for the most urgent necessity. How must the poor person feel when he sees the rich man thus adorned in a house of prayer and sees what honor this man gives God, while the poor person cannot do so and must think that with his prayer in his rags he can only offend his God!
Truly, I tell you: Whoever, dressed in certain better clothes, asks Me for something will never be heard—and still less any priest in his foolish, ornamented magic cloaks and robes!
There is also an old bad custom in prayers to God of using only some particular foreign language for them and considering this the most worthy for the worship of God. Wherever such nonsense continues in the future, the request will never be heard either.
Before Me a person should adorn himself only in the heart and speak the language that is his own, and speak the language of his heart, which I understand well, and I will hear his request!
I want all the old follies to disappear completely and people to become entirely new, truthful, pure human beings. And where they are so, I will always be in their midst; but the blind fools of the world shall henceforth be chastised by the fact that their requests are not heard!
God created the human being without clothing and created him in His image, and God was pleased with the human form because it was His image. But God also showed the human being how to make a garment so that he could protect his skin from the cold; yet God did not teach the first human beings to make clothes so that they would wear them as a proud adornment of their limbs. And still less did God teach human beings to make themselves ornamented clothing so that only in such clothing they might worship God worthily.
Therefore dress according to your station, but simply, and place no other value on coat and cloak than that they cover the body; whatever goes beyond that is already of evil and bears no good fruit.
And so in this respect too you now know what is to be done, and I think, since it has already grown close to midnight, that we could retire to rest!”
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The Prediction of the Great Judgment of the Present Time – GEJ 6.174
(The Lord:) “As it will go with the judgment of Jerusalem, so it will also go with a future great world judgment when I bring the great harlot of Babylon to a complete end. It will be a judgment as in the time of Noah and as in the time of Sodom and Gomorrah.
Then great signs will also occur on the Earth, on the sea, and in the sky, and I will awaken servants who will prophesy from My Word and repeatedly announce the coming judgment. But human pride will not listen to them, and even if it listens to them, it will not believe their words but will laugh at them as fools. But that very thing will be the surest sign that the great judgment will certainly and most assuredly arrive, consuming by fire all doers of evil.
In that same time some young men will also receive visions and some maidens will prophesy about the things that are to come. Blessed are those who thereby improve and truly turn back!
But this will be as easy to recognize as one recognizes from a fig tree that spring is near when its shoots become full of sap and begin to break open.
Then there will be great wars here and there among the peoples, and one people will march against another; there will also be great scarcity, and all kinds of pestilence-like diseases will arise such as have never before existed among human beings. Great earthquakes will also precede them, so that people may thereby be admonished to repentance and active love. Blessed are those who heed this!
But very many will not heed it and will attribute all this to the blind forces of nature, and the prophets will be called deceivers, and many will be cast into prison for My name’s sake and, under threat of severe punishment, forbidden to speak in My name and proclaim a coming judgment. Whoever does not act according to the will of the great harlot of Babylon will suffer great hardship.
But all this must happen beforehand, close to seven hundred years before the judgment, so that in the end no one can say he was not sufficiently admonished. Yet from now on not a full two thousand years will pass before the great judgment takes place on the Earth; and that will then be an evident Last Judgment and at the same time also the final judgment on this Earth.
Only from then on will paradise be established on Earth, and a wolf and a lamb will dwell peacefully in one stable and eat together from one dish.
As the judgment draws near, the sign of the Son of Man will also be seen in heaven; that is, the heaven within the human being will recognize Me as the sole Lord of heaven and Earth, and the human soul will praise and greatly extol Me.
But that is not yet the completion of the human being. Yet when I then appear luminous and bright in the clouds of the heavens with all the powers of heaven, amid a sound like many trumpets of war and judgment, in the living Word before all people in the true heaven that is in the hearts of human beings, then the judgment of the world has arrived.
The righteous human being will then enter into My glory, and the doers of evil will be consumed by the fire of My righteous wrath and enter the realm of their evil works, which is prepared for all incorrigible devils. For whoever voluntarily chooses hell for himself, let him then also be cursed in it, just as it is cursed in itself. But as the good will remain eternally good, so evil too will remain eternally evil in itself and be the eternal, judged foundation that will have to serve Me eternally as a footstool.
I Myself, from My primordial divine personality, will judge no one; rather, all this will be done by My Word that I have spoken to you. For once I have ascended into My Kingdom, I will never again return to this Earth in the flesh, but only in the Spirit, in the Word, and it will be as it was in the beginning, when it was said: In the beginning was the Word, the Word was with God, and God was the Word. But the Word became flesh and dwelt among human beings. He, that is, I, came to My own, and My own did not recognize Me; for the world and its flesh had made them all blind and deaf.
I am now with you in the flesh as a human being; but for that reason I cannot impart to you all the power of My Spirit. But later, when I am no longer among you in the flesh as now but only in the Spirit, I will also be able to impart to you all the power and might of My Spirit, which of course I Myself have been from eternity. Yet in the Spirit and His power I will remain with you until the end of the time during which this Earth will still exist, and until it has brought the last judged spirit to maturity. With this Earth the cradle of the children of God will then also be extinguished forever. From then on everything will be ordered spiritually.
But I have already told and shown you many times how things will be on this Earth. Therefore wait patiently for the certain redemption that will not fail to come, and do not wish for a world judgment too hastily before its time! For when it comes, it will still have come too soon for you yourselves and even more so for those who are judged; for in judgment love and mercy are far away, and each soul will be handed over to its own self-help so that it may bitterly experience how utterly useless the vain, temporal help of mere worldly people was to it. And now tell Me whether you have understood all this well!”
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Human Independence and Freedom of Will – GEJ 6.225
Jesus Christ: If, by virtue of My omnipotence, I wanted no human being ever to commit a sin, then no human being would ever sin again; for he could not venture or move even a line beyond My will, just as no one can shape his body differently from the way it has been shaped by the will of God, nor prolong his bodily life as he pleases, because all this depends on the almighty will of God. If God did not allow a human being ever to commit a sin, who then would have, all by himself, the merit for a human being’s completely sinless life, when God’s omnipotence alone guided him just as it guides the growth of trees and all other fruits and guides and leads the worlds through infinity? Surely no one other than God alone, because the human being would then be nothing but a puppet in God’s hands! This would also be much more convenient for God, just as it is more convenient for Him to create the most varied animals with their manifold and strangest characteristics and then to guide them and let each act according to its kind.
But the human beings of this Earth are destined to become free and completely independent children of God, and so they must also be guided in such a way that their necessarily freest will experiences not the slightest compulsion from the more powerful side of a spirit, but is guided solely through revelation and teaching and through external laws to seize for itself, with its free will, the true and good that is taught to it and to act accordingly from its own self-determination.
Look, God’s respect for the free will of the human beings of this Earth goes so far that He does not even always look at what one or several human beings think, want, and do. Only when they have strayed too far from God does God look at them again and awaken seers, teachers, and prophets once more, so that they may again proclaim to the people the will of God and His purposes for them. If people heed this, things then go quite well again; but if they do not heed it, and mock and persecute the seers, teachers, and prophets awakened by God for them, then God must necessarily allow an external punitive judgment to come upon the people, and often upon an entire nation. But even such a judgment never proceeds directly from the almighty will of God; rather, such a judgment always comes from the blind and malicious perversity of human beings.
The mighty Hanochites were warned for more than a hundred years not to destroy entire mountains and dig them completely down to the ground for the sake of gold and precious stones, or to make their wars easier to conduct, because by doing so they would open the great subterranean water gates and all would be drowned. But nothing helped; they did what they wanted, dug even deeper into the mountains, and opened the water gates. Look, God did not make this happen directly through His omnipotence, but only allowed what necessarily had to follow from people no longer wanting to listen to His timely admonitions!
God could indeed have bound the people through His omnipotence so that they could no longer continue destroying the mountains! Yes, that would have been very easy for God; but then the people would have ceased to be human beings, and afterward in the realm of spirits they could no longer have been placed again upon the footing of free humanity. God preferred to allow an entire human race to perish in the flesh through its stubborn will rather than let its soul lose in the slightest anything concerning its free will and full independence.
Likewise, a tribe was warned several times by the king of Salem not to inhabit the region of Sodom and Gomorrah because beneath it were many deposits of sulfur and, in part, bitumen. It was also shown clearly and understandably to the people how impure nature spirits continually escape from such deposits and incite fleshly human beings to lust; for just as spirits of lust are at home in wine and drive the flesh when a person has consumed too much of it, so they are also in sulfur and bitumen. The people were also told that earthquakes, mountain fires, and many evil storms frequently occur in such a region and often cause much and great damage, after which famine and pestilence easily arise; but all such good counsel, even from the mouth of Jehovah, was of no use. Because the region was otherwise very lush and fertile, the people settled there nevertheless, and before two hundred years had passed, ten more cities had already been built there besides Sodom and Gomorrah. The people became wholly sensual and practiced all kinds of indescribable sexual excess and the most horrible fornication even with animals.
They were warned again in the time of Nahor and again in the time of Terah, and were advised to leave the evil region; yet no one heeded it. Terah’s sons were Abraham, Nahor—who therefore bore the same name as his grandfather—and Haran, who fathered Lot. Haran himself went there and preached at God’s command, but accomplished nothing either. Lot, his son, did the same for several years, staying alternately now in one city and now in another, and nearly became a victim of the spirit of lust himself.
Then visible angels came, who had previously visited Abraham, and Jehovah was in their midst and faithfully told Abraham what would happen to Sodom and the other cities. And the two angels, in the form of two strong young men, were sent there to save Lot. The people would not listen to the young men at all but wanted to practice the most unnatural sexual excess with them. Then Lot escaped at the warning of the two young men. Only his wife became a victim of her lingering curiosity; in body she became a pillar of salt, according to the prediction of the young men. For they said: “We must now flee quickly and not even take time to look back; for the subterranean fire is spreading rapidly, and its vapors breaking out everywhere quickly suffocate all natural life and rapidly transform everything into stony salt!” But Lot’s wife nevertheless stood still for a few moments, was overtaken by the vapors, and thereby became a victim.
Look, here again it was not actually God’s almighty will that caused the complete destruction of the evil region; for by its nature this immature place would have suffered the same thing that later befell it under Abraham. But that so many people perished was no one’s fault except the disobedience of their free will.
God could of course have drawn these people out through His almighty will and transferred them to another, healthy land; but that would clearly have happened against their will. Yet because this is what God respects above all and must respect, He preferred to allow all these people to perish in the body rather than destroy even one atom of the freedom of will of their souls. For even for God this is the greatest masterpiece of His love, wisdom, and power: to create human beings who become completely like Him in everything.
But in order to bring this about, the human being must be born almost without power in the greatest abandonment of this world and gradually receive his instruction from the outermost world. Once he has gathered some knowledge and skills in this way, only then do the good and bad spirits surrounding him act upon him quite imperceptibly—the good upon his disposition and the bad upon his physical nature—so that the soul may always be preserved in the most perfect free balance.
If a human being has voluntarily listened to good external teachings and admonitions against many temptations of his senses and has ordered his life accordingly, then the quiet influence of the good spirits also becomes ever more powerful, though no human being feels or is permitted to feel it otherwise than as his own free work. But once the influence of the good from the heavens has been strengthened by the human being’s own will to such a degree that the soul has passed wholly into it, the true divine Spirit of love awakens in it, permeates the soul completely, and only then has the soul entered the first stage of its perfection; it is then already indestructibly free and, even while still in the flesh, can receive visions and revelations from spirits and even from the highest angels.
And so it often happens that such people have visions, speak with souls in the beyond, allow themselves to be instructed by them as if in person, and can also give faithful and true reports of this to other people who are still entirely natural. Whoever believes them certainly does well—only he must not immediately demand to experience the same himself; for that cannot happen before he has attained the spiritual maturity of soul described above.
But every person should first faithfully order himself according to the good teachings received and then pay attention to his disposition, but also to the evil passions often slumbering in his flesh, which reveal themselves only too clearly in laziness, aversion to work, lust, self-love, obstinacy, pride, envy, greed, and lust for domination. He should confront these latter through the power of love for God and through love of neighbor, through patience, humility, and gentleness; then it will not be very long before he reaches the point where the good spirits reveal themselves to him more perceptibly and visibly.
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On the Workers in the Vineyard. Purpose, Nature, and Effect of Revelations – GEJ 6.176-177
I said to Lazarus and also to the other disciples, since they too shared Lazarus’s somewhat heated opinion: “Pay attention, I will give you a picture here; it shall give you the answer to Lazarus’s question!
There was a lord who hired workers for his vineyard. They came in the morning, and the lord agreed with them on one coin as a day’s wage. Around midday he went to where he found some people still standing idle and said: “Why are you standing here idle? Go into my vineyard, and I will give you what is right!” And they went and worked. But toward evening the owner of the vineyard saw a great many workers still standing idle. He went to them and said: “Why have you stood here idle all day?” And they answered: “Lord, no one has hired us!” Then the lord said to them: “Well, then you too go into my vineyard and work this one last hour of the day, and I will also give you what is right!” Then they went and worked diligently during the final hour of the day.
In the evening, however, the lord first called the workers who had worked from the morning onward and gave each the agreed coin. Then he called those who had worked only half a day and gave each of them a coin as well. After that he called those who had worked only one hour and likewise gave each a coin.
Then those who had worked all day said: “Lord, how can you give those who worked only one hour the same as us, who bore the burden and heat of the whole day?” The lord said: “What is it to you if I am good and merciful? Am I therefore unjust if of my own goodwill I give the last as much as you? Did I not agree with you on one coin? You yourselves asked for no more! And if I now give you what you asked for, what more do you want from me? Am I not master of my own property, with which I may do as I please?” After that the first workers could say nothing more and were satisfied with their day’s wage.
And I also tell all of you that My Father, who is in Me, will do the same with you, and then the first will also be the last and the last the first.
But the vineyard is the actual human beings of this Earth as vines that are to be cultivated. These are under no contract with Me, but are there to be cultivated so that they may bring God the Lord good fruit.
All the prophets, however, like you now, are not from this Earth according to the soul, but are workers hired from above and previously made a firm contract with Me concerning the attainment of the childship of God, which is possible only on this Earth.
All the great prophets from the beginning until now, including you, who received a great revelation, are the workers first hired in the Lord’s vineyard.
The lesser prophets, who have only half the service to perform—namely the maintenance of the great revelation once given—are those who will come after you in My name, themselves having certain small revelations and prophesying from them, but not possessing that strength and power which I will give you. These will have the same reward as you because their faith will have to be stronger; for because they do not see all that you now see and experience, their freer faith will also be counted to them as a higher merit of life. But if they then receive the same reward as you, remember that it was harder for them to believe what is now happening for the salvation of all creation, since unlike you they were not witnesses of all this.
Finally, in a very late time, shortly before a great judgment, seers will again be awakened and permitted who will have the short but difficult labor of purifying the teaching that has become very impure, so that it may be preserved and not rejected by more brightly thinking humanity as an old priestly fraud. These third workers in My vineyard will not work through great miracles, but solely through the pure word and through writing, without receiving any other conspicuous revelation than that of the inner living Word in the feeling and thoughts of their heart; and they will be full of clear and rational faith and will therefore, without miraculous works, raise up the withered human vines of My vineyard and will receive from Me the same reward that you will receive as workers of the whole day; for it will be very much harder for them to believe firmly and without doubt what happened here more than a thousand years before them.
Thus, even though the great revelations stand quite far apart from one another, God nevertheless always provides that newly awakened seers come among human beings at once whenever the teachings of the great revelation begin somewhere to become impure, and this in such a way that no person’s free will suffers any compulsion. For it is precisely for this reason that the great revelations are always separated widely from one another in time, so that human beings can move all the more freely with their free will.
When in the end the world has again diverted human beings far too much from their spiritual path, then of course nothing remains but to proceed to a great revelation, which always has a judgment behind it because it is itself a burdensome judgment for human beings. For as long as you do not set fire to dead wood, it will not burn; but the fire ignites it. And see, what fire is to wood, a great revelation is to human beings. Do you now understand this?”
Lazarus said: “Yes, I understand well what You meant by this; but I still have a thought at the back of my mind that I do not quite know what to make of. Are all those human beings to whom a great revelation comes directly therefore to be regarded and considered as being under judgment? And are only those to expect the blessing of the great revelation who have merely an indirect, that is, purely faith-based share in it?
Then the bearers of the revelation would nevertheless be at a great disadvantage, precisely because from their origin onward they were better and purer human beings so that they could be capable of receiving and rightly understanding a high and great revelation. For the actual purely worldly people would never have understood the great revelation on their own, since they cannot even understand the smallest revelation but stand before it like chickens when they see a bolt of lightning flash from a cloud.”
I said: “Who says that the bearers of a great revelation are to be regarded as under judgment? I will surely know whom I must choose as a principal bearer of a great revelation so that it does not harm him himself!
Moses was certainly the bearer of a very great revelation; but under him there were many who had only an indirect share in the revelation and in the end were nevertheless much firmer in faith than Moses himself, who did not trust within himself the promise that I would give the Israelites the Promised Land where milk and honey flow. But because Moses did not fully trust such a promise, he was permitted to see the Promised Land from a high mountain, but not to enter it himself.
But this proves more than sufficiently that no bearer of any revelation was ever bound by it for himself, and from now on still less will ever be bound, but for himself always remains completely free in faith and action, through which alone he also becomes blessed; for someone does not become blessed because he is the bearer of a revelation, but only if he trusts the revelation itself and lives according to it.
The same is true with all of you. Through My deeds you are now certainly more compelled to believe that I am the Christ and that My words are God’s words than those will be compelled to believe it who will receive the Gospel from you merely by word of mouth; but in return doubts about Me will come upon you yourselves in great measure, and through them you will have the opportunity to strengthen yourselves in faith. For when the shepherd has been struck, the sheep will flee and be greatly scattered; but at the right time I will gather them again and strengthen them in faith.
Thus no bearer of any true revelation is under judgment. For first, such a human being is always from above, and for that reason alone no revelation can impose any special compulsion on him, because his soul has already undergone a trial run of life in the flesh on another Earth and is therefore certainly much more solid and compact than a soul of this Earth that has only just gathered itself together; and second, greater trials of faith are also imposed upon such a prophetic soul than upon an earthly soul that is often only too credulous. An earthly soul has enough with the word and scarcely needs a sign. But souls that are from above need more, for they are slow to believe and therefore also need stronger and greater proofs until they become full of faith and, from that faith, full of action.
Yes, if I were now to go, for example, to Persia, India, Athens, or even Rome and work such signs there as I have already worked among you, no person there would ever dare to do anything other than what I had commanded. Such purely earthly souls would obviously be held captive to the highest degree, and the testing of their free will would then be entirely over for a long time. But My signs do not harm you in the least because you are by no means credulous; for before you can be moved to firm faith, much must already have been worked before your eyes, and even then you are still full of all kinds of doubts and ask now about one thing and then another. But whoever does that before Me does not have a compelled faith, but a free one; for he demands to understand fully what he believes, and what he does not see and understand, he does not believe either.
The best proof of this is that I have to explain and clarify in the same breath what you hear from Me. You know who I am and could also believe Me without the constant special explanations of what I teach you. But you do not, and you have already shown Me several times that you often did not believe even Me concerning a very hidden teaching, and you said to My face that this was a hard teaching; and it has not yet been seven days since you all left Me, also because of teachings you did not understand.
From this, however, it follows that your souls are stronger than the souls of the actual children of this world. Yet people such as you now are will always exist on this Earth, and I will awaken them and give them, as I give you, the inner Word of the Spirit from Me, and they will instruct the actual children of this Earth, whereby their will will be kept completely free. But the teachers must not therefore imagine that precisely as teachers and wise ones they stand higher before Me than the children of this Earth; for with Me it will always be said and remain valid: Let these little ones come to Me and do not hinder them! For whoever does not become like these little children will not enter My Kingdom; for it belongs to them and was made for their sake. But whoever is wise and therefore a teacher, and at the same time humble and gentle with all his heart, will one day also be there where I will be a true Father among My children from eternity to eternity!”
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