NEUOFFENBARUNGThe term New Revelation is used on this website for spiritual writings that their recipients understood as revelations from God. This introduction groups the questions raised in the German collection and offers English reading alongside them.
How did the Gospels come to be written?
The German collection asks when Jesus wanted His teaching to be written down and whether He foresaw changes in how it would be transmitted and understood. These questions distinguish the events described in the Gospels, the written accounts, and the ways readers have interpreted them.
When did Jesus want His teaching to be written down?
Did Jesus foresee that His teaching would be altered and misinterpreted?
The German article groups the chapter into three parts: the fate of the teaching (§§1–3), false gospels and teachings (§§4–6), and the Holy Spirit’s role in preserving truth (§§7–9).
Did Jesus speak of later revelations?
These readings ask how teachings given to the disciples relate to the promise of the Comforter and to later claims of revelation.
Jesus’ New Revelation for the final age of our civilisation
By Helmut Betsch. The article presents the author’s religious views and his interpretation of the relationship between Lorber’s writings and scientific discoveries.
Through this revelation we accompany Jesus day by day through His life and teaching. It deals with this world and the next, the past and the future. For twenty-four years Jakob Lorber wrote down the pure Word from the mouth of God.
From 1840 onwards, Jesus, our Lord, dictated an extensive New Revelation in German to the Christian mystic and prophet of God Jakob Lorber (1800–1864, Graz). Here we truly encounter the pure, unadulterated Word of God. No interest group of any kind had the opportunity to distort it. Lorber, who saw himself as God’s scribe, received by spiritual means detailed information he could never have obtained by earthly, material means. He described discoveries of the modern age many years in advance, in ways that can be checked. He made predictions that came true exactly as stated. His revelation answers all the important questions of life. It agrees with the genuine findings of science. In this way God gave a powerful testimony to His prophet.
The author gives the following examples of predictions he considers to have been confirmed by science:
- 1840: Lorber predicts elementary particles with a lifetime of one million million millionth of a second. The article says that the eta meson and sigma-zero baryon, each with a lifetime of approximately 10−19 seconds, were discovered only after 1948. Reference given: Gifts of Heaven, Volume 1, page 83, paragraph 11.
- 1847: Lorber says that atoms, thought indivisible, can be divided and contain a microcosm or miniature universe. The article places the Rutherford–Bohr model of the atom in 1911. Reference given: Earth and Moon, Chapter 18, paragraphs 8–9.
- 1850: Lorber speaks of billions of galaxies beyond our Milky Way. The article attributes their discovery from 1948 onwards to the five-metre telescope at Mount Palomar. Reference given: From Hell to Heaven, Volume 2, Chapters 298 (§6) and 303 (§1, for the date).
- 1850: Lorber speaks of supergalaxies or clusters of galaxies, which the article also associates with the five-metre Palomar telescope after 1948. Reference given: From Hell to Heaven, Volume 2, Chapters 298 (§6) and 303 (§1, for the date).
In the revelation through Jakob Lorber lie treasures humanity has yet to discover. It answers great human questions: How did the material universe arise, how large is it and how is it organised? Are there people on other celestial bodies, and what are their surroundings and lives like? How did the Earth arise, and what is in its mysterious interior? Where did our self, the spirit-filled soul, originally come from? Why do we live on Earth for a time? Where do we go when we lay aside the body? Is there repeated incarnation on Earth? (According to Lorber, only in rare exceptions.) What is life like in the hereafter? What happens to children who die early? Will we see our loved ones again? How do body, soul and spirit relate to one another? Does an animal have a soul, and what happens to it when the body dies? How did the New Testament come about, and which Gospel is the most important?
The various works answer these questions with great clarity and vividness. The Household of God describes the original spiritual creation and the fall of the evil primordial spirits under Lucifer-Satan, a mighty spirit, which led to the formation of the material universe and thus of the Earth. Jesus also reveals there the early history of humanity. God created Adam and Eve perfect and taught them everything. After thirty years, during which more children were born, came the murder of a brother and the division of humanity into children of God and children of the world. Among the children of God, who lived simply in the mountains, arose humanity’s first church and its first Bible. The original Bible, lost in the Flood, was given to us again through Jakob Lorber in the three volumes of The Household of God. Among the children of the world, a secular civilisation arose.
The two peoples later intermingled. Their descendants were worldly-wise and inventive, and built a civilisation a thousand years of invention ahead of that of around 1840. Its centre was the vast city of Hanoch, larger than all Israel. They developed terrible weapons and fought one another. By blasting apart mountains they interfered with the organism of the Earth, and by their own fault brought on the Flood. The remains and treasures of Hanoch lie at the bottom of the Caspian Sea.
In the works on the hereafter, Jesus acquaints us with the spiritual world into which we shall all pass. The Second Coming of Christ describes what will shortly befall us and our civilisation, in the light of Matthew 24:36–42, if we continue to act as badly and godlessly as we have done. Healing and Health Care offers guidance on how to live and eat to reach old age in good health. In The Childhood of Jesus we share in the wondrous events of God’s becoming human at the birth of Jesus, and learn what we have long wanted to know about His childhood up to His twelfth year. The Way to Spiritual Rebirth, a collection of important passages, shows the shortest way to eternal bliss and gives guidance for inward reflection (meditation).
In The Great Gospel of John, Jesus Himself tells in detail, and in sequence, what He actually did and taught in the three years of His ministry, so that we feel we were there ourselves. We travel through Israel with Jesus, His disciples and often other followers, and gain a vivid impression of life at that time. In conversations with the most mature souls on Earth, whom Jesus drew to Himself, He answers humanity’s most important questions in terms they can understand. He explains spiritual and material creation and life in this world and the next so vividly, illustrating them with examples and living images, that His listeners were deeply moved. He also showed, for example, that animal-like humans existed millions of years before Adam and Eve.
The Great Gospel of John is the most beautiful, largest and most significant work of the revelation through Jakob Lorber, and the key to understanding the Bible more deeply. The texts of the biblical Gospels seem like sketches by comparison. In the light of John 21:25, only the most essential things could be recorded then, for only in our own time are people able to understand the complete teachings of Jesus. It is a wonderful work for all who love Jesus. Through this revelation we can come to know, understand and love God, our most loving heavenly Father, who visited our Earth in person in the man Jesus, to a depth and height previously unknown.
Although the revelation can bring new insights to every field of knowledge for the benefit of humanity, the teaching of Jesus stands at the centre. In The Great Gospel of John, Volume 4, Chapter 210, paragraph 2, Jesus gives the reason for His visit to Earth:
“I came into this world primarily to lead humanity, which had wholly degenerated and departed from all My original order, back through teaching, examples and deeds to the original state in which the first human beings were true masters of all other creatures.”
Lorber’s original manuscripts survive and are held at Lorber-Verlag in Bietigheim-Bissingen. As the book list shows, the revelation through Jakob Lorber comprises numerous works in many volumes, totalling about 10,000 printed pages. Just as the Old Testament contains many indications of the coming of the Saviour, Jesus, the New Testament contains, in the author’s reading, a particular indication of the revelation through Lorber:
“And I saw another angel fly in the midst of heaven, having the everlasting gospel to preach unto them that dwell on the earth, and to every nation, and kindred, and tongue, and people.” (Revelation 14:6, King James Version)
Did Jesus announce prophets to whom He would reveal His teaching and deeds again?
Is the New Revelation the fulfilment of Jesus’ promise of the Comforter?
- The Great Gospel of John, Volume 7, Chapter 54
- Gottfried Mayerhofer, The Promise of the Comforter (20 March 1872, English PDF)
How would prophets in the last days receive Jesus’ teaching again?
The German article also gives Matthew 20:1–16 alongside the parable of the workers in the vineyard.
- The Great Gospel of John, Volume 4, Chapter 112
- The Great Gospel of John, Volume 6, Chapter 176
- Matthew 20:1–16 (King James Version)
Did Jesus keep certain teachings from the public?
Did Jesus keep certain teachings from the public, entrusting them to the apostles, who in turn passed them on only to those who had been initiated? The New Revelation is concerned with more than announcing catastrophes that are soon to befall humanity. It is above all a message of salvation.
During His earthly lifetime, Jesus could tell the people of His day relatively little about the mysteries of creation and related matters. His apostles, by contrast, were given deep insights, though these were often difficult for them to understand. For that reason, some things were also told to them in a veiled way. Jesus had also placed them under a discipline of secrecy. Certain knowledge could be passed on to their successors only under the seal of confidentiality.
In the first centuries, this was still known in leading circles of the Church, as the literature of that time makes clear. The biblical scholar Origen, writing around AD 250, speaks of a hidden teaching, the higher disciplina arcani. The deepest matters, he says, were entrusted only to priests and teachers. [Hom. V. 1 in num. p. 39 f 22–39, as cited in the German text.]
The New Revelation records several occasions on which Jesus instructed His disciples to keep particular teachings confidential:
“You need only proclaim extraordinary things to those who will succeed you in your office.”
The Great Gospel of John, Volume 8, Chapter 77, paragraph 17
“I tell you all that for the present you should refrain from teaching the peoples everything I have now told you.”
The Great Gospel of John, Volume 5, Chapter 117, paragraph 7
“John and Matthew asked Me whether they should write all this down. I told them, ‘You may do so for yourselves. There is no need to write it down for the people, for they are still two thousand years too young to grasp it.’”
The Great Gospel of John, Volume 2, Chapter 218, paragraph 14
German source for this article
How should spiritual teachings be shared?
The collection asks how a teaching can meet listeners at their stage of understanding, whom these writings address, and how Jesus expected His words to be received.
Why should a teaching be suited to the maturity of its listeners?
For whom are Jesus’ new revelations and explanations of the Bible intended?
How did Jesus expect people to receive His teaching?
Have the Gospel teachings been changed?
One group of texts examines claims that the teaching was altered as it was handed down. The collection presents these as questions about the transmission and interpretation of the words attributed to Jesus.
Who distorted Jesus’ teachings, and why?
How do the Bible and the New Revelation relate?
The German collection compares the Gospel accounts with the later writings. For an English example of how Jakob Lorber’s texts interpret biblical passages, see Explanations of Scripture.
How do Jesus’ new revelations differ from the written Gospels?
Did Jesus keep certain teachings from the public?
The German article also cites the parables of the mustard seed and the leaven in Matthew 13:31–33.
- The Great Gospel of John, Volume 2, Chapter 218
- The Great Gospel of John, Volume 5, Chapter 117
- The Great Gospel of John, Volume 8, Chapter 77
- Matthew 13:31–33 (King James Version)
Why did Jesus teach His disciples less than He reveals through the New Revelation?
Why do interpretations of the Bible differ?
The collection also asks why the same Gospel words can give rise to different readings. One English starting point is A Good Rule for Reading the Old and New Word to Advantage.
Why does Jesus allow different interpretations of the Gospels?
Further reading
To whom is the new Word of God addressed? A look at society today
“You shall be as God” is the aim of our whole present civilisation and education, and the prince of this world has twisted the meaning of those words. The great majority still put their faith in this anti-Christian spirit. In such an age, only a few can still understand the word and example of Jesus of Nazareth, who alone among human beings may be called great.
Seen spiritually, there is authority in serving and becoming a servant, greatness in becoming a child and giving up one’s claims to independence, and the preservation of life (the feeling heart) in the loss of life (the coldly calculating intellect). There is birth in the feeling of love through the death of self-centredness and calculation, victory in defeat, and enjoyment in renunciation. Our “enlightened” age thinks itself far above all these things and has lost all understanding of them.
The world has its “great men and women”. It burns incense to them, builds monuments to them, celebrates festivals in their honour, and dances around its idols with song and music. Let it keep what is its own. It will pass away with its desires and with all it has loved, praised and idolised. All its glory, its art and science, sinks into the dust. Yet it does not know Him who will stand as the Last above the dust, and it has no understanding of His Word, which endures for ever.
Nor do we any longer address ourselves to the churches. They are no longer substantially different from the world and survive only by merging with it ever more closely. Human wisdom alone can still carry weight in them. Skills and knowledge that are entirely independent of living faith, true reverence for God and a Christian life qualify people to occupy their teaching chairs and open the way to all their offices and honours. Dead knowledge has taken the place of divine illumination. They will grant the Spirit of God a voice only on condition that He submit to the articles of faith once laid down. The Word that is like a hammer shattering rocks may not break their stony orthodoxy. The Spirit who created the worlds is expected to serve as fuel serves in machines, so that every denomination and party can turn out its own product. The vineyard workers have divided the vineyard among themselves, and its Lord is to have no more say in it.
Sadly, the meaning of true Christianity has been lost in the midst of Christendom, so that few will have any idea what it means to become nothing in the divine sense. The whole world strives to become something, or even a great deal. Everyone would rise above the next person. Everyone wants to rule and no one to obey. So each sees an enemy in the other, and from this come strife and general discontent. No one is willing any longer to submit to God’s rule either. At no time has the human effort to make itself independent of God been more apparent than now.
All the more, then, must it appear something great to those who have yet to sell themselves to the spirit of the age or yield helplessly to its current, when a living example shows them that the apparent contradictions named above truly can be united in life. There is a descent that leads to the heights of perfection in God, and a nothingness that is filled with the divine All. A person in whom this aim has been fully attained must appear in our spiritless, misguided, God-estranged and turbulent age like a rock in a breaking sea, a beacon set up to warn and save.
We are plainly living through a significant transition in human history. A mighty new current is sweeping across the earth, a flood like the one that in ancient times swept away everything that stood. Old bulwarks that for thousands of years seemed the pillars of order are falling one after another, and the spirit of our age rushes over them. Palaces and cathedrals, altars and thrones that seemed built for eternity totter and collapse because their foundations have been undermined. Ideas that stood for centuries as unshakeable truths before which everything bowed dissolve like shapes in the mist, and no one can keep them standing. All the barriers raised against the new spirit prove increasingly powerless. People look to the Church in vain to hold it back. Her strength is broken, her arm is stiff, and she draws near her end. Her watchmen sit anxiously at her bedside, trying to revive her. It is also plain that God Himself no longer wills the old order. Otherwise He would prevent its collapse.
But if it is in God’s plan for this flood to bury all that exists, would He have failed to build an ark to preserve His seed, which must not perish? What is to take the place of the old order that has been rejected? Are the powers that bring about the overthrow also the forces that build the new order God wills? Is what people seek to erect on the ruins of the old order the Kingdom of God? Did God send the first flood so that the Tower of Babel might be built? What is the kingdom God intends? Can its beginnings be seen anywhere?
We are all to be roused to look within. This is where our heavenly Father wishes to begin and create a new work. A true Kingdom of God can arise and endure only where true people of God have been formed. The living Word of God, which makes all things new, is to guide us towards this inner transformation. It seeks to show the way to the true, living temple of God, where God is worshipped in spirit and in truth.
Here and there are still souls who would be receptive to essential truth if it came to meet them in its simplicity and purity, stripped of the glitter of human additions. Such people will find the food of life in it. The fundamental truths of living, inward Christianity will shine out to them: testimony to the truth confirmed by the manifold experiences of the one who bears it, words full of spirit and life in place of the empty ringing of the words of today’s scribes. It is to such souls that the new Word of God is addressed.
Many people are weary of lifeless, insipid words learned at school and repeated as a trade. They long for living testimony to Christian truth, testimony drawn from the source of inner life and proven in the fire of experience. They love truth for truth’s sake. They let what they recognise guide them into practice and seek to grow in understanding through practice. They still confess in word and deed what they have recognised as true when it costs them their worldly advantage, honour and peace, and when mockery and contempt await them. Truth does not reveal its inner glory to anyone unwilling to suffer for it. Whoever will not let it permeate and transform their very being will be driven back again and again from reality to mere appearance.
The Lord:
“You may count yourselves fortunate, for My love means everything: protection and help, strength and grace, consolation and encouragement in fearful distress, and finally the assurance of eternal bliss. A child who receives My words of love can never again sink back into darkness, because the light has already become too powerful within that child to allow them to stray. I speak to you. You cannot grasp the depth of this word, for you will never comprehend that the highest and most perfect Spirit of infinity bends down to His creatures, makes Himself known to them and continually seeks their love. Yet love itself is only a partial concept to you. Love is so infinitely deep, such a holy fire, that it would seize everything and fuse it with itself. This exceedingly great love is always turned towards you and seeks to express itself, for it desires to be returned.”
Bertha Dudde, message no. 5196.