NEUOFFENBARUNG[MEr.01_001,001] In the supposedly better and educated world, where the Christian religion in particular is widely practised in various denominational forms, morality is generally preached in whatever way best serves the political interests of those in power, whether in worldly or ecclesiastical affairs.
[MEr.01_001,002] The people are given a bleak idea of God. They are taught to fear Him beyond measure as the most unrelenting of all tyrants, instead of coming to know and love Him. The Godhead is preached to them merely as a scourge that may still take effect when all other scourges have proved useless.
[MEr.01_001,003] The Godhead could be made known to the people for their greatest comfort. Instead it is presented to them as something that has nothing to do but irrevocably condemn millions of such morally corrupt and disobedient children to an eternal sea of fire every minute.
[MEr.01_001,004] Look about you a little. See the countless prisons, filled to the brim with all manner of offenders against morality. Every minute their numbers swell. If all these prisons were gathered into one place, you would think that in a few years the entire population of the Earth would have to march in.
[MEr.01_001,005] Ask what happens to the people who go in there. Look a little to the east. There are crowds as pale as death, surrounded by armed men of all kinds and venomous judges. Further on you can see the instruments of killing with which these unfortunates are executed. There are burning pyres, gallows, scaffolds and many other instruments of killing. See, that is the last place of correction for such offenders against morality!
[MEr.01_001,006] Now you will ask what they have all done. Well, I say, among them are murderers, robbers, thieves, defectors and those who incite rebellion against the state. Many more have caused the state great harm through all manner of fraud. Among them are those who have seriously infringed one political or moral ordinance or another. See, the crimes of these unfortunates are thus laid bare, at least in so far as they can serve as an apparent reason for what is done to them.
[MEr.01_001,007] But let us ask a further question. What caused these people to become such criminals? If you were to ask someone else, you would surely get no other answer than that their upbringing was neglected, or, what amounts to the same thing, that their parents and forebears were already of the same disposition.
[MEr.01_001,008] But I ask again, why were these people so poorly brought up? Why was a whole generation neglected in its upbringing? You need not look far. The answer will press itself upon you. The main reason is the policy of those in power. They are more concerned than anything else to keep those beneath them as much in the dark as possible. They fear that if the people were better informed about Me and thus about their own purpose, their power and worldly revenues might soon come to an end.
[MEr.01_001,009] Oh, these fools! They need only look to My David, who was both king and prophet and, as such, a great teacher of his people. They would see at once that a people who know God and their own purpose are also full of obedience and goodwill.
[MEr.01_001,010] Thousands of such people can be governed more easily with a down feather than ten benighted fools who can conceive of Me only as a tyrant who might exist, or a being who first sucks the last drop of blood from a believer like a vampire, and finally grants that believer the blessedness of eternal life, kneeling and worshipping for ever on a bright cloud.
[MEr.01_001,011] See, is it any wonder that people try to free themselves as far as possible from such a malignant god? If they still retain any religion, it consists of sheer ceremony, and that only out of purely religious considerations.
[MEr.01_001,012] From the outset the only consequence was that those more addicted to worldly things eventually made themselves scarce, as you would say, leaving all religion and every kind of Christian doctrine about God behind.
[MEr.01_001,013] On the other hand, divisions arose in the Church and sects sprang up through men who saw, more or less clearly, the folly of preaching such a God. Inwardly they said, as it were, ‘Listen, we simply cannot get on with the Godhead as it is taught here. Let us take up the pure teaching itself, examine it more closely and see whether there is something better to be found in the Godhead.’
[MEr.01_001,014] On examining it, they did indeed find that I was no such tyrant. But they forgot that I am God all the same, and took My will too lightly. Others set Me so high above them, and reasoned in such a way, that they declared every action to which their nature inclined them to be right and wholly in accordance with My will. They mistakenly believed that whatever ran through their foolish minds was an expression of My will. And so the old folly gave way to a mass of absurdities and conflicting ideas about God which it is truly hardly worth listing for you.
[MEr.01_001,015] As I said above, all this was and is due in part to the use of morality for political ends, but chiefly to people's indolence and their fear of earnestly following the ways marked out for eternal life. For truly I tell you, whoever does not receive My kingdom as I have proclaimed it will not attain it, even if they unite every sect in themselves or belong to them all. For I alone am the way, the truth and the life.