NEUOFFENBARUNGDeutscher Text · Book contents
22 December 1843, evening
[Ste.01_003,01] In the New Testament you read a parable to this effect, of a wise builder and of a foolish one. One built his house on a rock and the other on loose sand. A gale came and a downpour fell. The house on the rock withstood both, but the house on the sand was ruined.
[Ste.01_003,02] Whoever looks at this parable even from afar must see two central suns at a single glance.
[Ste.01_003,03] Who is the wise builder like? Surely the person who first made his footing quite firm through the two commandments you know. When the storms and the mighty rains come, they can do the builder no harm. They even strengthen his house on the rock. The winds thoroughly dry out the walls and make them thirsty for moisture. Then the rain comes, soaks into the dry walls, and dissolves particles here and there at the joints. These become adhesive, and as this happens again and again the masonry is bound ever more firmly together.
[Ste.01_003,04] You can find natural examples of this truth in any old ruined castle, which often defies the centuries. If such a ruin is to be pulled down, fresh stone is easier to break than such masonry. The reason is the rain, which by its dissolving power turns certain parts of the stone into a sticky, lime-like mass and in time binds the whole of the masonry together.
[Ste.01_003,05] And see, so it is with a person awakened through the laws of love! He is a building upon a rock. The winds that come and strike the building, making it dry and thirsty, are the noble desires to know the Author of all things ever more fully, so as to grow in love for Him through such knowledge. The downpour that follows is the works the thirsty person is given to read. He drinks them in eagerly and afterwards always perceives how, through their influence, the still empty and unconnected clefts within him are gradually filled and made into a stronghold. The more rain falls upon this building, the stronger it becomes after each downpour.
[Ste.01_003,06] How different is the effect of the winds and downpours on the building erected in the low ground upon loose sand! When the winds come and strike the insecure building and shake it, and then the waters come that the downpour has caused, the building is finished. The winds batter the often already cracked walls, whose cracks and fissures are due to the poor foundation. When the water comes, it readily brings the whole building down and washes it into some nearby river of ruin.
[Ste.01_003,07] I think this too should be as clear as a central sun! A person who has no notion of spiritual preparation must plainly come to ruin if he lets the spiritual winds and the spiritual downpour sweep over him in the belief that they will make a firm building of him, a steadfast person wise in spirit.
[Ste.01_003,08] Put the Bible into the hands of a person who is wholly, or at least half, of the world, and say to him, ‘Friend, read it diligently and you will find what you lack: the hidden treasure you are always asking about, made of gold, silver and precious stones, which is a perfect life for your soul.’ On this advice your friend will at once get hold of a Bible and read it with great attention.
[Ste.01_003,09] But the more eagerly and attentively he reads this work, the more outward contradictions he will encounter. Soon he will say to his friend, ‘Friend, I have now read the book you recommended at least six or seven times, but the more often and attentively I read it, the more contradictions and nonsense I come across. What am I to make of all this gaudy trumpery and these mysterious prophecies that seem to have as much to do with one another as Chimborazo in America has to do with the Himalayas in Asia?
[Ste.01_003,10] These mountains certainly stand on one and the same earth. That is plain. So too, similar prophecies stand in one and the same book. That is plain too. Yet how such prophetic passages are meaningfully connected, or how Chimborazo might be connected through the very centre of the earth with the Himalayas in Asia, is something an earthly naturalist will scarcely manage to determine while he still fears fire and finds the great waters of the sea too powerful a means to quench his moderate thirst.
[Ste.01_003,11] I can tell you, my dear friend and brother, that the first time I read this book it honestly seemed to me to have some hidden, wise meaning. Yet the more often I read it again with a critical eye, the more convinced I became that the whole book is an exceedingly rich treasury of the grossest nonsense. Apart from a few old maxims of practical wisdom, one piece of nonsense jostles the next. Once you set aside the few sayings, which themselves are surely not pure gold, the mystical form of this book makes it altogether fit to provide centuries of nourishment for human folly.’
[Ste.01_003,12] From this reasoning you can gather well enough what effect the winds and the downpour from the Bible had upon our worldly building on sand. Once such a person has been destroyed in this way, let whoever will gather him together again. I and all My angels find such a task one of the hardest of all. It is easier to bring in ten thousand people from all the lanes and streets to the great banquet of life than one such person who went about reading the Bible as though he were buying an ox.
[Ste.01_003,13] What holds for reading the Bible holds just as much for reading all the expositions of its inner, spiritual meaning. For then everyone will say, ‘If that is what it means, why is it not written that way?’
[Ste.01_003,14] Even if you show him the reason for its figurative form as clearly as you can, he will merely laugh in your face and say, ‘It is easy to prophesy after the event! Any nonsense can be turned and kneaded like dough and made into whatever one wishes. Chaos is the ground of all things. In time anything can be fashioned from it. But why not give a prophecy as the event actually takes place? The reason is that you cannot know it in advance. So you offer some mystical nonsense out of which any deed that occurs in the future can be fashioned.’
[Ste.01_003,15] That is the final judgement, which no power of central suns can readily enlighten and overturn. I think this too will be clear. Even so, we shall bring together several more central suns. So next time there will be another central sun!