NEUOFFENBARUNGDeutscher Text · Book contents
15 January 1844, evening
[Ste.01_016,01] Write down the central sun as usual!
[Ste.01_016,02] ‘Jesus says, “Lift the stone away!” Martha, the sister of the dead man, says to Him, “Lord, he already smells, for he has lain there four days!”’
[Ste.01_016,03] If you always choose such easy passages, whose meaning is plain enough to grasp with the hands at first sight, I cannot always dictate ten full pages about them. In its very first words this passage already contains everything I have been making so plainly known to you throughout this supplement.
[Ste.01_016,04] To you too I say: lift the death-stone of the world away from the tomb of your love! In plain words, do not seek to attain life by enriching your understanding in all sorts of ways with the learning of the world. Lift away this stone, so that when I come to your tomb, My living voice may enter it unhindered and awaken from death your fettered and bound Lazarus, who is your spirit, bound and gagged with so many bonds of the world!
[Ste.01_016,05] Here too ‘Martha’ comes to Me, reason troubled by the world, and says, ‘Lord, he has been in the tomb four days already and already smells foul!’ Yet to show the glory of God I will awaken to new life even one who has lain decaying in the tomb for four days, if only the stone is rolled away.
[Ste.01_016,06] Just as Martha speaks, so too, as already noted, a person's foolish reason speaks: ‘Yes, what are we to do? As boys, then as young men, then as men and even as old men, we occupied ourselves continually with the world. Our spirit has therefore lain these four days of life in the tomb of the world, bound with its bonds, and smells foul from all the sins we committed in those four days!
[Ste.01_016,07] Will the Lord have mercy enough to awaken us to life in an openly miraculous way? How can we expect such a thing of the Most Holy One, against whose commandments we have sinned so often? By sin we have brought our spirit to such a death that we no longer even know whether we have a spirit or what it is, or even know for certain whether there is a living soul in our body.
[Ste.01_016,08] And even if we have a living spirit and a living soul, surely the spirit and the soul are buried too deep in the mass of our flesh and too tightly bound with its bonds for us ever to expect the Lord, who is holy above all, to stoop so low as to awaken this Lazarus in us again by the almighty power of His voice and then lead him to his eternal destiny. Besides, we cannot so readily free ourselves from the world altogether as to expect such a thing from the Lord.’
[Ste.01_016,09] But in reply I say: I do not call out, ‘Withdraw entirely from all dealings with the world necessary to your temporal existence!’ For I Myself did no such thing when I was in the world. I worked in the world Myself and did it many good services with My own hands. So I never say to you, ‘Have absolutely nothing to do with the world!’ But this I say to you:
[Ste.01_016,10] Lift the stone, yes, the heavy stone, away from your Lazarus's tomb, and you will at once perceive the glory of God within you! The tomb only needs to be opened. Then those who are in the tombs will hear My voice and be awakened!
[Ste.01_016,11] But as long as you do not lift the stone from the tomb, you are too much prisoners of death. I may cry like a night watchman, yet your Lazarus cannot hear Me. The voice of love does not pass through the stone, since the stone is in itself the true symbol of all lovelessness. Only the voice of My wrath can shatter and destroy a stone. But My love does not put a stone before its mouth in place of a trumpet.
[Ste.01_016,12] Such a stone is the reasoning of your worldly, learned understanding. It is solid and heavy and takes great exertion to lift away from the tomb. Even so, it must go, or My awakening voice will not reach the dead Lazarus within you.
[Ste.01_016,13] The stone does keep the nostrils of the world from receiving the foul smell of the decaying Lazarus in you. But I say, blessed is the one for whom the stone is rolled from the tomb and whose worldly nostrils are then touched by that foul smell! Where this does not happen, where after the stone is lifted a person does not shudder in his worldliness and in true repentance at the state of his Lazarus, My awakening call will not reach the decaying Lazarus in the tomb, awaken him and then have the bonds of death loosed from him.
[Ste.01_016,14] I think it is scarcely possible to speak more clearly about this. You have thus received a light more than powerful enough to illuminate this most important matter fully.
[Ste.01_016,15] It now depends entirely on you to act upon it. If you do, you will also receive the living conviction that this revelation comes from My own mouth and not from the mouth of a human being. But if you only read it like another worldly book, then to you it will be only a worldly book, as though it were a human work!
[Ste.01_016,16] With these words I close this great gift of Mine to you. If, however, you would like still more such lights as a further supplement, I leave that to your love and your desire. I will always be the friendly giver. Amen.