Gifts of Heaven · Volume 1 · Chapter 1

Jakob Lorber’s appointment as ‘God’s scribe’

15th March 1840

[1] Jakob Lorber had already reached the age of forty without having achieved a firm position in life with his good education in teaching and music. Then he unexpectedly received an invitation from Trieste to take over a second position as chapel master under quite acceptable conditions.

[2] He responded and made all preparations for departure. But his life was suddenly to take a completely different direction.

[3] On March 15, 1840, at 6 o'clock in the morning – as he told his friends afterwards – he had just finished his morning prayer and was about to leave his bed, when he heard a voice clearly sounding in his chest, in the place of the heart, which called out to him: "Get up, take your pen and write!” He immediately obeyed this mysterious call and wrote down word for word what was said to him inwardly.

[4] This was the entrance to the work "The household of God". And the first sentences of it read:

[5] "Whoever wants to speak to Me, come to Me, and I will put the answer in his heart.

[6] But only the pure whose heart is full of humility shall hear the sound of My voice.

[7] And whoever prefers Me to all the world, loves Me as a delicate bride loves her bridegroom – with him I will walk arm in arm; he will always see Me as one brother sees another brother and as I saw him from eternity before he was."

[8] After this event, Lorber immediately rejected the employment offered to him and served this mysterious whispering from the same hour for a series of 24 years until his death.

[9] Jakob Lorber eagerly wrote the three-volume work "The Household of God" until it’s completion on 7th September 1844 – In it the history of creation as well as the history of primeval mankind from Adam to the Flood was described and in this context, on the basis of a profound, spiritual explanation of the world, the eternal teaching of love for God and neighbor was revealed, which at the great time of the ages, the heavenly Father Himself proclaimed to mankind in the person of Jesus Christ.

[10] In addition to this fundamental work, further words were addressed to him and his friends by Jakob Lorber during the same period of time, as follows.