NEUOFFENBARUNGDeutscher Text · Book contents
19 February 1844, evening
[Ste.01_033,01] ‘Behold, the hour is coming and has already come when you will scatter, each to his own place, and leave Me alone! And I am not alone, for the Father is with Me.’
[Ste.01_033,02] This text speaks of what is now plain everywhere before your eyes, and what was already there after My ascension. It is therefore among the easiest of these texts, for its meaning is so plain everywhere that you could grasp it with hands and feet at once.
[Ste.01_033,03] There is only one thing to observe here, the difference between the words found here and there, ‘The time is coming …’ and ‘The hour is coming …’. By ‘time’ is meant a point yet some way off, which will come at an unspecified ‘when’. ‘Hour’, however, signifies that what is spoken of will come to pass immediately.
[Ste.01_033,04] Here and there in this text, too, you may find ‘time’ in place of ‘hour’. This is wrong. It must read ‘The hour is coming …’, because what was foretold came to pass immediately after this prophetic utterance.
[Ste.01_033,05] What is meant by this scattering, then? Is it that My disciples and apostles would go their separate ways, each to a different place? Oh no! That was their very purpose, and I called them to go out into every land and preach the Gospel to every creature.
[Ste.01_033,06] Would it not have been absurd of Me to make an ill prophecy out of their very calling? For then the appointed bearers of My Word would have had to stay together in a heap continually to avoid doing wrong, like many an order in your own time. As a body such orders do as little good for humanity as a heap of meteorites on the sea floor. When someone sees them plunge into the sea, they too suggest great and terrible effects. But once they reach the quiet bottom of the sea they lie there to no effect, serving at most as a foothold for a few voracious polyps.
[Ste.01_033,07] There is not the slightest trace in this prediction, then, of people scattering bodily from place to place. The text itself already bears witness to this, for it says, ‘Even if you leave Me, I shall still not be alone, for the Father is in Me.’
[Ste.01_033,08] Judge for yourselves. Can anyone leave Me bodily by changing their place? Where would they go to be farther from Me or nearer to Me? Would they be farther from Me in South America or in northern Asia? For Me, the Omnipresent One, I think it surely comes to much the same thing. Thus, as I have already said, there is no question here of people scattering bodily from place to place.
[Ste.01_033,09] What sort of scattering is meant here, then? Look at the sects that exist before your eyes today and were already present in small beginnings among the apostles during My lifetime. This is why I made the prediction. When you look at the disputes between My two foremost apostles, it must become all the clearer to you what was meant by this scattering. As noted at the outset, you will be able to grasp with hands and feet what kind of scattering I foretold to My apostles and disciples.
[Ste.01_033,10] Within a few centuries of My ascension the scattering was already so great that nobody quite knew any more who was cook and who was waiter. They had to resort to grand councils, yet after the council they remained as scattered as before it.
[Ste.01_033,11] I surely need not show you how matters stand now, for wherever you look you will discover the scattering.
[Ste.01_033,12] It says, ‘Each to his own place.’ This means, ‘Every sect considers itself the best and purest.’ But am I alone because of this? Oh no! The Father is in Me, which is to say, the first love.
[Ste.01_033,13] I recognise those who are Mine by love, not by sect! Whoever loves Me and keeps My Word has the Father's love within, as I have the Father within Me, and is one with Me as I am one with the Father. Therefore I am not alone. For as the Father is in Me, so I am in each one, and each one who loves and follows Me is thus in Me.
[Ste.01_033,14] Sect makes no difference here. Cursed be anyone who gives one sect preference over another chiefly for worldly reasons! For in no sect is there truth and life. Everything is directed towards coerced belief and towards belief won by persuasion, which is not a whit better. Where, then, is there room for the free human being?
[Ste.01_033,15] When did I ever compel anyone to believe? I left everyone free. Anyone for whom My works and their own inner conviction were insufficient was compelled by no other means, for I gave My teaching solely to be put into practice, rather than merely to be believed.
[Ste.01_033,16] I did not say, ‘Whoever believes Me, out of their loins shall flow streams of living water!’ Rather I said, ‘Whoever acts according to My Word will learn whether My teaching is from God or from human beings!’
[Ste.01_033,17] What good, after all, would a demand for belief have done? I could surely foresee that one and the same light illuminates the things on which it falls as differently as the things themselves differ.
[Ste.01_033,18] So it is with the light of faith! As it falls upon a human disposition of a different colour, so it must illuminate it. It is surely the greatest folly to demand that one and the same light should shine back pure white from all those hearts of a thousand colours.
[Ste.01_033,19] The effect of light must differ, but the effect of love remains the same, just as warmth in itself has only one effect. It warms red in the same way as blue, and everything can be made to glow. The colour of the true, living glow of love is eternally one and the same, and glowing gold is indistinguishable from a glowing piece of iron.
[Ste.01_033,20] See, this is the meaning of this text! So do not scatter, but remain in love, and you will live! Amen.