NEUOFFENBARUNGDeutscher Text · Book contents
18 January 1844, evening
[Ste.01_018,01] ‘But if I cast out devils by the finger of God, then the kingdom of God has come to you!’
[Ste.01_018,02] This passage says precisely what I always say to you. What is the ‘finger of God’, what is the ‘devil’ and his expulsion, and what is the ‘kingdom of God’ that comes to you? What does the finger signify in general?
[Ste.01_018,03] The finger signifies action on a small scale, as the hand signifies action on a large scale. The ‘devil’ is the world, which is to leave people through a little action of love. The kingdom of God coming to you is the light of grace of love, and the gift of eternal life joined to it.
[Ste.01_018,04] So here the finger of God signifies My loving care in action in the particular things of your lives, and the gifts I give you come from My finger. For if I said, ‘I cast out your devils with My hand,’ it would mean, ‘I send a general judgement over you, as in the time of Noah!’ But I drive the world out of you only with My finger. So you receive only a light of grace and no judgement.
[Ste.01_018,05] ‘With My finger I drive the world out of you’ also means that I seek out those who are of a better spirit yet live in worldly distress. I touch them with My finger so that they may receive My inward light of grace.
[Ste.01_018,06] In this light of grace I show what you have to do, how easy and little it is, to attain eternal life and enter into the kingdom of God as it comes livingly to you in this light of grace. This too means that I ask of you only a little action, not an action of the hand but only that of a finger. It consists simply in loving Me more than the world and doing good to your brothers and sisters according to your strength.
[Ste.01_018,07] If I demanded a great action, you would have to do what the apostles once had to do: leave everything in the world and at last even taste death on the cross.
[Ste.01_018,08] So it is only with My finger that I drive the world out of you, and already it seems much to you! What would you say if I raised My hand? How much I spare you, and still what I ask seems much to you.
[Ste.01_018,09] I tell you, take no trouble whatever for the world's sake. It is not worth it! Why laboriously stuff your heads with all manner of learned worldly rubbish when I offer you the gold of life in abundance and wish to give it to you if you let the world go and lay hold of Me in your hearts?
[Ste.01_018,10] What would you say to a man who had a fruit tree in his garden? Its fruit was ripe. He could easily have reached it with a little stretch of his hand, and at the touch of a finger it would have been in his hand.
[Ste.01_018,11] But what did the foolish man do to reach this fruit more comfortably and show, in a way, how highly he valued it? He had a foundation dug, and from it had an altar with steps built of masonry beneath the fruit, so as to reach it comfortably. After some weeks the altar was finished, but meanwhile the fruit had rotted on the tree. At the end of his great, foolish trouble he received from the tree rotten, dead fruit in place of fresh, living fruit.
[Ste.01_018,12] Like this foolish man are all who seek the realm of truth in great learning, though it could be reached so easily and livingly by a slight lifting of the heart towards Me. Such learned people make and dig foundation upon foundation, then laboriously build costly stepped altars on them. When they are finished, for all their trouble and work they have reached only dead and rotten fruit, of no value to the world, and still less to the spirit. Not to the world, for it says, ‘Why such expense and trouble for so small a return?’ Still less to the spirit, for out of its sphere of life it says, ‘I can make no use of what is decaying and dead!’
[Ste.01_018,13] The fruit that was ripe before is the well-ordered spirit in a person. Why take so much trouble to set the ripe spirit free, when anyone can achieve this with very little effort, the effort of a finger? Why whole libraries in the head, when this alone suffices: ‘Love God above all and your neighbour as yourself!’
[Ste.01_018,14] I need no armed hosts to cast out devils, but only a finger, which is My wholly earnest will of love. Do likewise: be earnestly willing to love and act on the good counsel I give you. Then with the lightest effort you too will be free of all the world, and My kingdom will surely come to you alive! Amen.