NEUOFFENBARUNGDeutscher Text · Book contents
27 December 1843, evening
[Ste.01_004,01] Will it be difficult to summon another central sun here? No, not in the least! We have only to set down the first suitable passage from the book of the New Testament, and there before you is a new central sun with the same primal light and the same power and effect of that light. For example: ‘I am the way, the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through Me.’
[Ste.01_004,02] See, here we have a central sun at once! Anyone who can behold its light within himself will surely see by that light that reading alone does practically nothing towards gaining eternal life.
[Ste.01_004,03] The Father is the eternal love within Me, just as I in all My divine being have been wholly within it from eternity. For I and the Father are One, or I and My eternal love are One. Just as love dwells living in its wisdom eternally, so wisdom too dwells eternally in the love from which it proceeds.
[Ste.01_004,04] The Father, or love, is the ground of all life. Whoever does not return to this living wellspring of all life remains dead and can receive life nowhere else.
[Ste.01_004,05] But where is the door to the Father? And who is this door? Is it the many books and writings a person reads, or am I the door?
[Ste.01_004,06] The better disposed will readily agree here and say, ‘Yes, truly, if one examines Christ’s teaching closely, it is hard to hold any other view than that only by following this teaching can one attain eternal life for spirit and soul. In this respect what Christ said of Himself is quite true: He alone is the way, the truth and at the same time life itself!’
[Ste.01_004,07] Yet I tell you truly: there are thousands upon thousands who make such a confession on the strength of their sound understanding. And still I say they are dead. They have found neither the way nor the truth, neither the door nor the life.
[Ste.01_004,08] Someone will say here, ‘That sounds harsh and merciless! How can the highest love of God speak like that? What more can people do than gain full insight, by diligent study, into the great truth and divinity of the great Teacher? What higher thing can they do than strive to recognise clearly the true, supreme, holy dignity of the divine Word, and actually recognise it through their diligence?’
[Ste.01_004,09] But I say: from one side this is indeed true. It is surely better to do this than to reject everything and then indulge in worldly pride. Yet Scripture also says, ‘At that time many will say to Me, “Lord, Lord!”’ And thereupon it says that I will tell them, ‘Depart from Me, for I have never known you!’
[Ste.01_004,10] That is the ground of the passage in the New Testament you surely know. The cry ‘Lord, Lord!’ shows that Christ is indeed recognised as the way, the truth and the life. But what use is this knowledge if no one will walk the way or lay hold of the truth in deed so as to come through it to life?
[Ste.01_004,11] I am certainly no actor who would content Himself with empty applause alone. My cause is full of eternal earnestness, and therefore I require earnest action as well. Mere applause will not suffice!
[Ste.01_004,12] What face would a wealthy bridegroom make if several brides applauded him and praised and glorified him, but when he went to take the hand of one or another, she ran away and inwardly reviled him into the bargain for such audacity?
[Ste.01_004,13] Tell Me, will the bridegroom take any of these foolish brides for his wife? Truly, he will go out and look for a prostitute and say to her, ‘I know you to be a prostitute. But I tell you, leave that life and I will take you for my wife.’
[Ste.01_004,14] And the prostitute, moved by her true, newly awakened love, will leave it and become a dearly loved wife to the bridegroom. She will be like Magdalene, who once was last among all the women of Israel. But when the true Bridegroom called her, she became the first among all the women who celebrated the great resurrection to eternal life with the Bridegroom Himself!
[Ste.01_004,15] Truly, reading books was not her concern. But when she recognised the true one, she at once left her worldly ways, took to Him whom she had recognised with a strong, indestructible love, and for her great love offered Him all that she had in this world.
[Ste.01_004,16] See, for such a bride I was the way, the truth and the life in actual, living deed!
[Ste.01_004,17] There were many others at that time who had also recognised Me as such but wanted to know nothing of putting it into practice. So to them too belongs the passage, ‘Thus the first shall be last and the last first!’
[Ste.01_004,18] But are the way, the truth and the life really so hard? Is it not said, ‘My yoke is gentle and My burden light’? Yes, truly, that is how it is! The whole way, the truth and the life, the gentle yoke and the light burden, are contained in the two commandments of love.
[Ste.01_004,19] Is it so hard to love Him who is eternal Love itself, and is it hard to love your own brother? Truly, nothing is easier! Only take the world, that old plague of the spirit, out of your breast. Then you will discover how sweet and easy it is to love eternal Love and to love your brother.
[Ste.01_004,20] It is hard indeed to love eternal Love and your brother when your heart is full of the world, of worldly calculations, money, speculation and hellish arithmetic that can work out to a hair what percentage a penny must yield in a year at usury.
[Ste.01_004,21] Truly, where the heart is full of this art, crying ‘Lord, Lord!’ will help little. The way, the truth and the life will turn out so narrow and thorny that it will scarcely ever be possible to walk it.
[Ste.01_004,22] What good does it do to read thousands and thousands of books, however full of truth? Will they awaken to life someone who takes care every day to stuff his heart ever fuller of all the rubbish of the world?
[Ste.01_004,23] Tell Me, could any of you beget children with a statue? Or would a painted seed, however skilfully painted, come up if you put it into the ground? Surely neither could happen! Only what is living can beget living things with what is living. So too, only in a living heart can the living Word bear fruit again.
[Ste.01_004,24] For the spiritually dead, however, even the living Word is only a painted seed. A person may scatter countless such grains within himself, but never obtain any fruit. Because he does not give life to the Word, the Word does not become alive in him.
[Ste.01_004,25] Whoever hears only a little and acts accordingly is a doer of the Word and truly seeks the kingdom of God, and all the rest will be given to him besides. I think this too is clear. More central suns will follow!