NEUOFFENBARUNGDeutscher Text · Book contents
11 January 1844, evening
[Ste.01_013,01] Write down what you have!
[Ste.01_013,02] ‘As the days of Noah were, so shall the coming of the Son of Man be.’
[Ste.01_013,03] You have set down the passage and again found the right one. But in this passage the matter lies so openly before your eyes, or this central sun stands so extraordinarily close, that it is truly strange if you do not see it yourselves at first sight. It is stranger still because you now have the time of Noah laid almost wholly bare before you.
[Ste.01_013,04] You know how in Noah's time too the peoples of the depths threw themselves into all sorts of literature and learning. A king of the depths whom you know was a great writer. Thousands followed his example, and soon the world of that time was flooded with countless books and writings.
[Ste.01_013,05] The more this literature took hold and the more people read and studied, the colder they grew in their hearts, while becoming more ingenious at inventing every conceivable kind of wickedness.
[Ste.01_013,06] They began to ensnare people through politics and soon shrank from no means, however outrageous, to attain some vain objective born of the lust for power. In the end they came to value people by their gold alone. Anyone who had none was made a slave, a veritable beast of burden. They carried these abominations so far that in the end My patience had to give way altogether, and only through a general judgement could I save the earth from destruction.
[Ste.01_013,07] That, as you fairly well know, was how things stood in Noah's time. How do they stand now?
[Ste.01_013,08] Some time ago, in the so-called ‘Twelve Hours’, I showed you how things stand. If I were to give you a fresh disclosure of the kind now, you would discover very considerable advances in worldly politics and cruelty. I tell you, very little is lacking before you come fully into the times of Noah, when in the end people even had to build glass houses, so that the men of the most cunning politics could always see without much trouble what their subjects were doing.
[Ste.01_013,09] But there is no need for glass houses. In your time secret politics too has gone so far that it leaves no means untried to attain its ends of domination. If you were initiated into the secrets of many a state, truly you would cry at the top of your voices, ‘Lord, strike at last! Things cannot be worse in the deepest hell than they are here!’
[Ste.01_013,10] But I will not initiate you into such secrets. If you cast even a little attention upon the fruits, you cannot fail to see with the greatest certainty whose spirit these prophets are children of, who bring forth such splendid fruits. And what is the ground of all this?
[Ste.01_013,11] Let us go to the kingdom surrounded by the sea. There you find libraries and periodicals in such abundance that their pages could cover Europe and Asia three times. Nowhere is so much read as in this kingdom. Yet nowhere will you readily find a greater callousness and hardening of hearts than in this very kingdom! With the greatest indifference in the world, some great man bursting with gold, widely read and learned, can watch a thousand poor, lamenting, hungry and homeless people starve to death before his palace without being moved in the least to give even one of the dying a piece of bread.
[Ste.01_013,12] Is that not a splendid fruit of wide reading and often deep mathematical and mechanical wisdom?
[Ste.01_013,13] Is it not splendid to be able to build working machines through such mathematical and mechanical wisdom, by which thousands of poor people at a stroke are deprived of their bread and left to starve?
[Ste.01_013,14] Is it not splendid to build railways, through which, first, a host of carters and other tradesmen lose their earnings and, second, so much of the farmer's land is destroyed by these magnificent roads that he is soon obliged to take up the beggar's staff? And what a further great benefit appears, thirdly: along such ways all luxury and the whole industry serving it can move all the faster, so that poor humanity may be ruined all the sooner in body and spirit, and the hearts of the rich may as quickly as possible grow as hard as the roads on which they converse with one another by trade, bills of exchange and deceit.
[Ste.01_013,15] Are these not splendid fruits of extensive reading and the learning that springs from it?
[Ste.01_013,16] Is a man not called clever if he can turn his understanding into money?
[Ste.01_013,17] But precisely because the understanding brings in so much money, love has gone quite out of circulation, and action according to it is scarcely known any longer. There are enough machines working out of the understanding. What need is there of human hands?
[Ste.01_013,18] For human hands, through their work, might actually awaken in one great businessman or another love for his workers. To avoid exposing oneself to this danger, one should be diligent in putting up machines. They work much faster and never lay claim to the owner's heart. At most, when something happens to break, they lay claim now and then to the understanding, which may have the damaged part repaired by inviting bids and taking the lowest offer.
[Ste.01_013,19] Tell Me, do things not go just so among you, to the very letter?
[Ste.01_013,20] Begging is forbidden, but building machines is rewarded with bonuses. What, then, is to become of the poor? Oh, provision is made for them too! There are plenty of poorhouses and overseers of the poor. Collections are taken, and plays and balls are held. The poor are so well provided for that those in the poorhouses become half prisoners, while those still free receive a sum each month so astonishing that they could at best eat half their fill on one day. I need not tell you how much a poor person gets from the poor fund. You surely know yourselves.
[Ste.01_013,21] Put human need alongside such an allowance and the prohibition on begging. You will see how ‘splendidly’ those fortunate enough to receive a share from any such fund are provided for. But what remains for those who have not yet been heard by the overseers of the poor?
[Ste.01_013,22] See what splendid fruits these are of literature, wide reading and the great cultivation of the understanding!
[Ste.01_013,23] Would it not be better to read and learn less, and to learn what the duty of a human being is, and indeed of a Christian?
[Ste.01_013,24] Would it not be better, as I said, to act fully on this little but useful knowledge and thereby fulfil the true duty of a human being, than to read and write throughout one's whole life and utterly forget to act according to My Word?
[Ste.01_013,25] I said, ‘Be doers of the Word, not idle hearers!’ Where, then, are these doers now? Are they the manufacturers of machines and luxuries? The railway directors and entrepreneurs? The adventurers of industry or the owners of sugar plantations in America? Or the clergy greedy for money, gold and power? Truly, I am surely endowed with exceedingly sharp, far-seeing eyes, yet I have to create high-powered telescopes for Myself to seek out the doers of My Word on earth. Even at a magnification of a million million million times I still fare badly. The number looks so small that I cannot really make out whether it is a thousand, a hundred, ten or even a zero.
[Ste.01_013,26] So I now have a much larger telescope in the making! You will surely understand what I mean by this, since you yourselves are working on it a little. The whole disc of a central sun is to serve as the objective lens. Through it I will look closely at the number of doers of My Word. Should a full ten appear for the whole earth, I will defer My judgement for another thousand years. But if the number is below ten, I shall limit My patience before a great general judgement to the number of doers of My Word, one year for each doer.
[Ste.01_013,27] People will of course say, ‘Lord, there are still very many charitable people!’ But I answer, ‘Yes, there are very many who are a hundred-thousandth, a ten-thousandth or a thousandth of a doer of My Word, and even a hundredth. But if I add them together, they scarcely make one!’
[Ste.01_013,28] How so? What is a man who owns hundreds of thousands and gives the poor at most a ten-thousandth of his fortune each year, although he knows the word I spoke to the rich young man? Is he any more than a ten-thousandth of a doer of My Word? Truly, I do not ask after such people. They will not show up in My telescope either, only the whole ones!
[Ste.01_013,29] In Noah's time I set up such a telescope too. As I found no more than eight who were doers of My Word, I let the judgement come. I doubt whether in the present survey I shall reach Noah's number, because politics and industry have now reached a far greater height than in Noah's time. As for the cruelty to be found everywhere, Hanoch is not a hair ahead! Just take up the ‘Twelve Hours’ and compare!
[Ste.01_013,30] Thus it is now as it was in Noah's time, a ripe fruit of literature and wide reading. From this it is clear that human salvation never depends on much reading and much hearing, but on acting according to the law of love!
[Ste.01_013,31] I think this too should be clear. Yet another central sun will follow, to increase the size of the objective lens of My telescope!