NEUOFFENBARUNGDeutscher Text · Book contents
20 December 1843, evening
Biblical texts and their hidden meaning, received through the Inner Word by Jakob Lorber.
[Ste.01_001,01] My dear children! In these concluding reminders I wish to give you a most important and useful rule. Without it, you can derive no benefit from reading even the best of spiritual books. You may read Holy Scripture and this New Word through a thousand times in succession, yet without this rule you will always remain where you were.
[Ste.01_001,02] By reading so often you have certainly packed your memory full. But ask your spirit what it has gained from this, and its dull reply will be as follows:
[Ste.01_001,03] ‘I am surrounded by all sorts of building materials in utter disorder. Beams and stones lie piled upon one another like mountains, yet out of all these building materials not even a poor little hut has been built in which I might dwell freely. You keep piling up the materials. Nothing but precious stones and the finest cedarwood lie before me in ungainly heaps, and I cannot put them in order. Whenever I have made a start here and there at bringing a little order, you bring along another enormous load. I am bound to grow weary of my work, and in the end I shudder at the sheer quantity of material there is to sort, wondering sadly when all of it will finally be put together into a dwelling.’
[Ste.01_001,04] See, that is a very thorough answer from the spirit, and everyone who has read widely must find it most plainly within himself.
[Ste.01_001,05] If someone has read through a few thousand books in his lifetime, what chaos he has in his memory in the end! If all goes well, with all his extensive reading he will scarcely manage more than to realise at last that he knows nothing.
[Ste.01_001,06] And what is this admission? It is the same sorrowful lament of the spirit, which is saying that amid this immense quantity of building materials it has received not even the poorest of huts in which to dwell freely.
[Ste.01_001,07] There are people who know the Old and New Testaments by heart, word for word. Ask them about the inner meaning of a single verse, however, and they will know as much as those who cannot recite one verse and often scarcely know that Holy Scripture exists. What good is this splendid material to them?
[Ste.01_001,08] The spirit dwells only in what is spiritual. If not even a poor hut can be built for it from these materials in the inner spirit of truth, where shall it dwell? Where shall it keep its accounts, and from what point shall it begin to put the materials in order?
[Ste.01_001,09] Is it not better to have fewer materials and build a small, decent dwelling for the spirit at once? Then the spirit has a secure and open place from which to make its next plans and can use new materials as they arrive in accordance with those plans.
[Ste.01_001,10] What will a field look like, even if its soil is the best, when you sow a thousand kinds of seed on it all at once, mixed together in the greatest disorder? The seeds will indeed come up, but to what benefit for the sower? Truly, the yield of this field will scarcely be fit for poor fodder for cattle. The stronger plants will choke the weaker, weeds will proliferate, and here and there a scant few grains of wheat will appear, badly stunted and blighted.
[Ste.01_001,11] From this it follows that wherever there is to be any benefit for you, order must be established. Without it you grow thorns and thistles, cabbages and turnips all together, and this can never benefit you.
[Ste.01_001,12] But what does this order consist in?
[Ste.01_001,13] If you have clean wheat, sow it in a clean and good field, and you will gather a clean and good harvest.
[Ste.01_001,14] Whoever has a good building site and the materials for it should not wait to begin building his house until he has gathered a superfluous heap of materials. In the end he will have filled the entire site with that great heap.
[Ste.01_001,15] Then when the builder comes and asks, ‘Friend, where do you want the house built?’, what will he reply? Surely, ‘There, friend, where the great pile of building materials lies!’
[Ste.01_001,16] And the builder will say, ‘Why did you have these materials heaped up on the site before we drew up the plan and dug the foundations? If you want the house in this spot now, you must first move all these materials aside and clear the site completely. Only then shall I come, measure the ground, draw up the plan and have the foundations dug accordingly. At the end I shall examine the materials to see whether they are all fit for building your house.’
[Ste.01_001,17] See, from this likeness you can already gather quite clearly how little wide reading benefits anyone who does not proceed with it in the true order.
[Ste.01_001,18] What does this true order consist in? Quite simply, as each new load or delivery of materials comes in, everyone at once begins putting it together into a dwelling and reaches for a second load only when he has worked through the first. In this way he will make rapid progress in his building and always have enough clear space around it to stack a sufficient supply of fresh materials in good order.
[Ste.01_001,19] To put it plainly and in words everyone can understand, this order consists in everyone acting at once on what they have read and arranging their life accordingly. Then their reading will benefit them. Otherwise it will harm them. Let everyone be a doer of the Word as well as a hearer!
[Ste.01_001,20] More reminders to follow!