Chapter 25 — The Boy Jesus Rebukes the Temple Officials

DTT.01_025,01 I said, “I am here to make it known to you that I have come to do the works of Him who sent Me. You admit that you do not know Him, but I know Him well, for He dwells in Me in His fullness.

DTT.01_025,02 “Moses wished to see Him and was shown only His back. Yet even that blinded him for three days, and afterwards his face shone so brightly that he had to veil it when he went before the people. Their eyes could never have borne that radiance.

DTT.01_025,03 “You can now look Me full in the face without being blinded by unbearable light. Why? Because this flesh conceals Him who dwells in Me. And yet there is more here than there was then. You do not notice it because the threefold veil of Moses hangs before your eyes, and will hang there a long time, so that you may fail to recognise the One who has come to you from the highest heavens.

DTT.01_025,04 “It is easy for you to talk to the judge, for he can lend his ear only to your well-phrased words. Speaking to Me is harder, because I hear the secret thoughts of your hearts, which sound quite different from the words of your mouths. That is why you are so repugnant to Me. Outwardly you wash yourselves clean, while inwardly your souls are full of filth.

DTT.01_025,05 “When the judge, in whose heart there is no deceit, called on you to draw the people’s attention to Me and refresh them by the fulfilment of their hope, why did you look for all kinds of empty excuses for saying it could not be done?

DTT.01_025,06 “I tell you plainly: it is you, and not the people, who do not want it. You yourselves are My worst opponents. But it does not matter. First, My time has not yet come, and second, you have profaned this Temple too much for Me ever to make My dwelling in it. Truly, I shall never add to your prestige!

DTT.01_025,07 “You complained that Moses forbade you to make a carved image of God. But you think nothing of making yourselves gods before the people and teaching them that God does nothing without you and answers no petitions except those from your own mouths. Tell Me, did Moses command you to do that too?

DTT.01_025,08 “Yes, you are to lead the people along the paths that lead to heaven, for that is God’s will, and Moses and his brother Aaron commanded it. Yet you do the very opposite. You regard your office, God, the people and the Temple as nothing more than a fat milch cow that you pretend God has given you alone the right to milk.

DTT.01_025,09 “I tell you plainly that God, whom you deny with every breath and every beat of your pulse, never gave you this right. He has never answered your dead, mechanical prayers. He does not answer them now and never will.

DTT.01_025,10 “If God answered your wild bawling and raven-like croaking, surely I would know something of it! For what the Father knows, the Son knows too. In other words, what My love knows, My understanding knows as well. Neither My love nor My understanding knows of your prayers ever having been answered.

DTT.01_025,11 “Yet you say, ‘If you pray to God for something yourself, it does you no good. If you bring us an offering and we pray for you, our prayer will do you some good. We priests alone may pray to any effect. The people may only bring offerings, and so join in prayer by their abundant offerings.’

DTT.01_025,12 “In this way you bleed the people twice over. First, you take a tenth of all produce and all firstborn domestic animals, and demand a hefty ransom for firstborn children. Second, you harangue the people continually for offerings and promise them long and unceasing prayers in return, which you never perform.

DTT.01_025,13 “For you say among yourselves, ‘Whether we pray or not, it will do the person who brought the offering no good anyway. If anything helps them, it is only the offering they brought us in good faith.’ So you fail to do even what you have been paid for.

DTT.01_025,14 “To what shall I compare you? You are always against God and are just like ravening wolves that go about in sheepskins, so the sheep will not flee and the wolves can catch and tear them with their sharp teeth without any trouble. But as your work is now, so will your reward be hereafter in the realm of souls. I tell you this, and you may be sure that My promise to you will not go unfulfilled!”