The Earth... Training School for the Children of God ❤️ The Great Gospel of John thru Jakob Lorber

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THE GREAT GOSPEL OF JOHN Volume 5, Chapters 157 to 160

Revealed from the Lord thru the Inner Word to Jacob Lorber

Jesus elucidates…
– The Earth… Training School for God’s Children
– Education methods
– Worldly Activity
– Rebirth

Chapter 157 – The earth, a training school for children of God

157,1. Cyrenius however says to Me once again, “Lord, indeed I know now from Your own divine mouth why everything in the world is and happens the way it does, and I now know Your divinely wisest plans concerning the education of mankind in all times and all zones of the Earth; but at the same time I must nonetheless admit quite openly that, seen from a worldly viewpoint, this Pharisee basically has a lot going for him. There is truly from alpha to omega no world of love and truth, but instead a very terrible world full of hate and full of lies and falsehoods and injustice! But it could indeed be quite different! But things are so and will never be otherwise, and the Earth is damned to remain a house of misery, and its human children will constantly have to swelter on its surface! But it could surely be different!”

157,2. I say, “Yes, yes, it could indeed be different, as it is different on countless many other planets; but then exactly this Earth would not be chosen for the cultivation of those people who are designated and called to become My children!

157,3. Can true, powerful love ever become fully aware of itself among human beings who themselves are pure love? What object on which to practice patience, humility and meekness could be given to people filled with love from birth?

157,4. If I had endowed every man’s nature with the highest degree of perfection from birth, not requiring his own effort, what practice in life- and self development would be thinkable for him?

157,5. For what activity could such spirits finally be used? I tell you: The trees of the wood and the rocks of the mountains in the very most indispensable self-activity would be many times more preferred than a person quite perfected in every respect right from birth on!

157,6. Picture a man, fully developed physically and always enjoying a table richly laid with the most delicious foods and drinks so that he would never suffer from hunger or thirst. Moreover, he had a most magnificent living-room and besides the mental capacity to see, perceive, enjoy and communicate with everything and everyone in the minutest detail, both nearby and at a great distance, never encountering any difficulties whatsoever. Surely such a man would never leave his comfortable abode even for a moment.

157,7. I tell you: Such a man would be as little touched by My greatest miracles as by the snow that at Adam’s time clothed the mountains with the mantle of eternal innocence. Or do you think that My boundless, everlasting perfection of life would benefit Me and give Me bliss? Verily not!

157,8. My own greatest bliss is felt when I take part in the inner growth of My innumerable imperfect children and lies in their growing cognition and perfection and resulting activity. I always share their joy over a painfully achieved progress, and it is only when My boundless perfection is more and more imitated and becomes partly visible in them that it has its immense value. You know what I hereby wish to tell you?

157,9. Do you think I had ever created a world and on it a living being if it were not so? From eternity all this has been a deep inner need within Me, and without it no earth would ever have been created and populated with all sorts of beings.

157,10. Therefore, things must remain as they are. I did not come to bring the earth peace and a dead quiet, but I came to give it the sword, the battle and with them increased activity. For only when confronted with hate does love turn into true and living energy before which silent death must flee. Mankind becomes active and gradually patient, meek and resigned to My will through the difficulties besetting it. If falsehood with its bitter consequences did not exist, what value could truth have as such? Who puts a light on during the day and who appreciates a burning oil-lamp while the sun is shining?”

Chapter 158 – Affliction as a means of education

158,1. (The Lord:) “Everything that accordingly has been allowed once must exist as a driving force for the improvement of mankind. Every being, however, presupposes an activity, and this, the motive and the lever, which naturally must always fully correspond to the activity.

158,2. Thus everything which one describes as against moral laws, and so also as terrible and bad, is to be seen only as a permitted lever, and everything is pure and good to the pure. To the weak and impure everything is and must be different, because he still needs some levers of action.

158,3. When the children of Abraham rejoiced in a visible divine leadership, unlimited wisdom and thereby a very greatest earthly well-being in the days of Moses, Aaron, Joshua and also under the first judges, they became lethargic like the polyps and oysters at the bottom of the sea. I encouraged them through the mouths of the prophets to activity and vigilance and even summoned them; but their answer was: If we do something, we could commit a sin which would destroy all the good we have done; but if we do nothing, we cannot sin and then stand free of sins justified before You, oh Lord! Thus they philosophized themselves more and more into all kinds of lethargy. The consequence of it was increasing affliction and in time physical and finally also moral atony.

158,4. In such circumstances they then turned back to Me and praised Me for being active in the correct ordinance of life. For a time things went fairly well again and progressed well; but when the blessed well-being set in again as a fruit of activity, the old lethargy began again from the beginning. They were rich in everything and wanted to shine and demanded an earthly king as the representative of physical wealth and well-being.

158,5. A king was given to them and anointed. But as the contract between king and nation did not remain undone, the evil that the nation demanded and received was again nothing more than a painful lever for the people to a newer and higher necessary activity.

158,6. When the king soon fell into lethargy along with the people, it was immediately necessary to waken external, very threatening enemies in the form the crude and powerful Philistines. Then war and all sorts of the same accompanying afflictions penetrated the land of My people, woke it, made it active and therefore strong.

158,7. In great affliction and need they found their way back to Me and increased in mercy, wisdom and wealth to a hardly conceivable degree. This, however, caused an important exhaustion of the previous activity in the days of Solomon’s rule, and the kingdom literally collapsed under the first descendents of Solomon. And so this nation had constantly to be forced through all sorts of misery and affliction to keep them active.

158,8. It is now once again generally way below the animal kingdom, particularly in respect of the class of the priests and teachers. But for that reason I came Myself in the flesh in order to prepare the greatest embarrassment and confusion for the most lethargic part of the people; and they therefore seek to catch me and to kill Me, because they fear losing their bread for the lazy through My most active actions and stimuli. But their effort is of course in vain.

158,9. The seed of fullest laziness has already set roots in them that are too strong. Therefore the feeling of lethargy must be first taken from them and they must scatter themselves to the four winds and lead a nomadic life or enter the new covenant of life and activity just established by Me, in which no-one will be allowed to let his hands lie inactive in his lap in order to be able to live.

158,10. Whoever will not do that will hunger and thirst and have to take up the most worthless and dirtiest job of begging, and people will call to them with hard hearts: Whoever does not work shall not eat! For every worker is worth his reward.

158,11. Oh, then everyone will strive to be as active as possible! If however someone nonetheless becomes lethargic and lazy, he will begin to show wearing the rod immediately as an example for many others.

158,12. And I tell you: Every nation that becomes lazy and namby-pamby, just like every person individually, will get to carry the constant rod on his back and for ever lose his name from the Book of Life and also his greatness, power and reputation! That will make the people more and more perplexed and drive them on to all sorts of orderly deeds, which will be good. Have you understood this well now?”

Chapter 159 – The right and wrong kind of worldly activity

159,1. Cyrenius says, “Yes indeed, Lord and Master of eternity; but there is another question, and that consists of this: If people become so very active and hard-working in the most varied branches of life, which has a thousand needs, then it is also clear that they will go across to pure worldly materialism too much from the spiritual path of life, and then there will no longer be any talk of rebirth of the spirit.

159,2. But at the same time I have the teaching from Your mouth, according to which one should not worry about the progress of earthly life in the way of the Gentiles, but instead one should seek above all the kingdom of God and his righteousness – everything else will then already come of itself.

159,3. How does this teaching correspond to this new lesson of Yours, according to which one should constantly keep oneself busy? Behold, Lord, this I cannot quite manage! It would therefore be good if You, oh Lord, would make this a little more understandable for me.”

159,4. Say I: “We still have an hour and a half left and I can indeed answer this question for you. But pay good attention to what I will tell you in a parable!

159,5. Behold, two people went to a master of an extremely useful and beautiful art! A did this in order to learn the art, in order to earn his living through it in time. He learned studiously and paid attention to everything that was necessary to make the art one’s own, and finally was extremely glad when he received a certificate from the master which said that he had now fully learnt the art and was now a master himself. There were indeed still some secrets of the art, of which he knew nothing. In itself that did not bother him any longer; for he now had the proof, with which he could and must earn his living without any great effort.

159,6. But the reason which drove B to the master was quite different and therefore had to have quite different consequences. The bread was not important to B, which he never thought about, but instead the art, for art’s sake. All his striving was only in order to become most deeply familiar with all the secrets of the art to be learnt.

159,7. But the master, since he saw that not the bread, but purely the full knowledge of the divine art was the issue with this pupil, took great joy himself in this pupil, took him with every effort and introduced him most deeply to all the secrets possible in this art. And the consequence was that B afterwards created such unsurpassable art as a perfected master that the reputation and praise even reached the ears of the king and the king then called the artist to show him his art. But the artist did not do that for the sake of expected reward, but instead in order to make certain to provide a very great joy for the king.

159,8. When the king then got to see the great work of art and was convinced of the high purpose of the same, he said: What do you want me to do for you, great master? Demand a reward from me and it shall be given to you along with the fact that you may stay from now on a favorite at my court and practice your art here!

159,9. And the artist spoke, deeply moved by the king’s mercy: Highest lord and wisest ruler and commander! Your mercy and your pleasure in this art of mine are already the highest reward! For I learnt this art with all my strength right into my soul, not for gain, not even for the sake of daily bread, but instead purely out of the pure love for the art, and for that very reason I now have the highest joy already and the highest reward that it has now found such an excellent recognition before the eyes of the wisest king.

159,10. What do you think the now even more overjoyed king did with the artist? Behold, he said: Only now I see that you are quite a perfect artist of your field! For if you had learnt this so magnificent art for the sake of reward and bread you would never have produced such perfection. For whoever learns something in order to help his existence, thinks only about his existence and is soon satisfied with the shallow and little learning and at the same time only reckons on how he could cover his lack of knowledge with a false veil so that the people would not notice his weakness and would nonetheless consider him to be a great master. But in the future that will be of little use to him; for his bad and poor works will be his very traitors.

159,11. But you, who learnt the art for its own sake, had only calculated how you could enter all their great and deep secrets. You were concerned about the fullest truth of the art, and for that reason you became a rare, true artist, whom I can use. And since you did not worry about bread and reward until this day, so you shall receive from me a true, best and most enduring bread and reward! For I as king have always positions for true artists and for true educated and wise people and the bread and reward that go with it in abundance! – There you now have the tangible explanation of your objection.“

Chapter 160 – The egotistic striver for rebirth

160,1. (The Lord) “The exclusive striving for the kingdom of God requires the greatest activity. If a true disciple has made this entirely his own, even that king who will also truly reward the true service, and so it remains true through all the good spheres of human life, will also find that – wherever and in whatever a person does what is good and true for its own sake and strives after the true perfection – the just recognition and reward will and must come to him of its own accord.

160,2. There is, for example, a person for whom it is important to achieve through this teaching of Mine the rebirth of the spirit – which truly is not withheld from anyone – who has truly striven after it with all eagerness and just love. This model person knows that the love for God and for one’s neighbor is the one and only way to this. He now keeps all the commandments of God strictly, loves God in his heart as much as he possibly can, shows to all only goodness according to his good strength and supports the poor richly, and wherever he sees a true wise man of God, he hurries over to him, supports him richly and makes him his friend.

160,3. He does that for years; but the promised and demanded rebirth, hoped for daily all the more, nonetheless does not come. He indeed notices here and there light moments, but they are only flashes, whose light will not take form. Then the eager applicant of many years for the spiritual rebirth speaks: Now however I am beginning to consider the whole issue of the rebirth of the spirit to be a sheer fable! I have now spent twenty full years until this hour doing everything that the doctrine demanded of me, and nonetheless I am at the same point where I began to live accordingly and to strive! Thus perceptible truth cannot be achieved; therefore it is the very most intelligent thing to continue to live as a proper person in the world again and withdraw from all the deceptive spiritual connections!

160,4. Now here comes the main question: Well, why then could this very honestly striving person not achieve the rebirth of the spirit? – Exactly because he had done all that good only in order to achieve it!

160,5. Whoever loves God and his fellow man for any other motive than God for the sake of God and the neighbor for the sake of the neighbor will not come to full rebirth, because this is a most direct union between God and man.

160,6. Through such a motive the person always places a partition wall between himself and God, which, however thin, nonetheless does not let the spiritual light through, and therefore cannot fully become one with the spirit of God. But as long as this union does not happen, there can be no talk of a full rebirth.

160,7. I tell you: Every type of any self-use must be cleared out of the soul, and the person must stand perfectly free, and only then can he achieve the highest thing!” …