THE GREAT GOSPEL OF JOHN
VOLUME 5
Jesus' Precepts and Deeds through His Three Years of Teaching
Jesus in the region of Caesarea Philippi. (cont.) Gospel of Matthew, Chapter 16
- Chapter 148 -
The confession of the Pharisee.
Accordingly one of the Pharisees summoned up the courage and began to speak thus: "Very highest and mercilessly strict lord and ruler over all lands of Asia and the most part of Africa! Since nothing is left for us now than to admit the full truth, I must then admit openly in the name of all my companions that the letter was pure fiction, and that we persecuted the infamous prophet of Nazareth in the most decided way as our greatest enemy simply for the sake of professional jealousy. For he performs things that supersede everything that has gone before to the very greatest degree; in addition he teaches straight against the temple and its laws, which are not given by us.
2
On Mount Sinai about a thousand years ago Moses received commandments from the fiery hand of God, and afterwards another large number of state rules. Among the commandments the first is a very important one, saying 'You shall believe only in Me, your one and only true God, and honor and worship no other Gods before Me; for I alone am your God and Lord!' The prophet (of Nazareth) however states that he and no other is the true son of God and even a god himself, and refers back to the sayings of the prophets, which he applies arbitrarily for himself and his deeds.
3
If that is allowed to go unpunished, the divinely proven institute in Jerusalem will be totally at an end in a few years! What then? How will we who are called by God stand before the people and what will we live on, since we may never legally possess either field or vineyard according to God? On the one hand we have the Samaritans, the Sadducees and the half-heathens who have fallen away from us, but on the other hand the Essenes, who will soon have the people for themselves "and now the Galilean on top of it all! Surely that is finally a bit too much!
4
On Sinai, by thunder and lightning, Jehovah gave us laws through Moses and Aaron, sanctioned them and, truly, created an eternal union with us and obliged us most strictly to remain true to this covenant. He, the Almighty, promised us the greatest advantages in life if we remain faithful to the covenant and the Law, but also the greatest disadvantages if we casually break the covenant. However he also gave us the right to pursue our opponents with fire and sword, as Joshua in Jericho and later the great King David did with the Philistines, where even the children in their mothers' womb were not to be spared according to Jehovah's order.
5
But if now Jehovah wanted to annul the old covenant against His promises and reiterations, perhaps because of our sins and our tepidness and tolerance of our opponents and fully abandon us now, He would certainly do it in an easily possible grandiose way for Him, in which way He established the covenant with us about a thousand years ago, so that everyone would know certainly and undoubtedly what He is doing! But that has by no means happened here now; how then can a magician, whatever extraordinary things he performs, ever begin to agitate against us in the most shameful way as an ever existent statute of God?!
6
He may heal the sick as often as he wants, and should move mountains to amuse the people and perform other great things; but against the temple and its holy secrets he should not wage war! But he does such things more and more, undermines the faith and the trust of the people, now particularly amongst the Galileans, towards the temple, so that they often no longer want to pay us the tithes and on top of that they call us the greatest and finest deceivers of the people and the nation. If we are that, then Jehovah should accuse us through the mouth of a proper prophet, not through a Galilean magician, who pretends to be one of the greatest prophets, yes, even the son of the Highest, since it is written that a prophet can never arise from Galilee, which is too filled with heathens, and all the less a son of God coming from heaven!
7
But if we, firstly through God's Law and secondly through the most obvious pressure of circumstances, are forced to persecute a person who is highly dangerous to the old matter of God and wherever possible get rid of him with our own hands with all the divine rights and to remove him from the Earth, do we then do wrong if we unfortunately have to make use of some political means in these days in order to destroy the extremely dangerous subject?! I believe that you will no longer have any doubt of the full truth of this well-founded open admission of ours!"