NEUOFFENBARUNG← Gifts of Heaven · Volume 1 · Contents
A dream (from December 29, 1840)
2nd January 1841.
Oh Lord! That the narrative may be accurate and fruitful, be of help to me poor weak servant; for even dreams are often nothing but empty foams, but such dreams may always be your own admission of grace, therefore they should not be lost, but to be helpful to us in the weak contemplation of our inner being and then serve our heart, so that we may glorify Your most holy name more and more through our growing love. Therefore, oh Lord, help me and do not deprive me of Your most holy living word. There is nothing in the height as in the depth that is not there according to your will. So surely also this dream, and so let your most holy will be done at all times. Amen.
[1] Now so tell and write as I will give it to you.
[2] Behold, I will therefore tell you your nightly vision, so that you will not need to appear as narrator in the first person and glorify yourself through Me, but that I would be glorified through you. Therefore understand well, when I say: I through you, but currently not you through Me; because no-one will be glorified by Me before I have been glorified through him. Because who will confess Me before the world, I will confess him only then before of My Father, because he then will see My infinite power and glory and will then himself be glorified in this My glory.
[3] And now write your dream. – Behold, this was your dream:
[4] You went with two who were well known to you and with three who were unknown to you, and with Ans. H. from a northwesterly situated ditch somewhat diagonally upward toward southeast, namely on the evening side of a conical roof of a small mountain, whose vertex was rather densely overgrown with young conifer trees and was surrounded by free, somewhat leanly overgrown meadow-ground by a messy and already strongly damaged rural paling fence. And this happened, by way of example, around the seventh hour in the evening, around the time of early autumn.
[5] As you and your known and unknown company followed your way along the edge of the forest, behold, you soon reached a point to the south with your comrades, where the rather narrow and very little frequented double path was suddenly palisaded with all kinds of poles, trees, and planks so much so that it seemed a bare impossibility to you and, by way of example, to all your comrades.
[6] Now your two first known comrades began to attack you somewhat shamefully with words, saying: Well, you half-prophet, you cloud and rainbow tamer and well-conditioned flying machine inventor, why do you now look at this barricade as amazed as a young cow at a new gate! What do you want to do now? Right, now the proverb becomes true, which is: There now stand the oxen on the mountain – under the leadership of a prophetic donkey!
[7] Upon which rather strong denigration you allowed yourself the following little remark and spoke: Friends, you have spoken right, may you always remain what you called yourselves. But as for the prophetic donkey, behold, I must already ask you for forgiveness and I do not dare to accept such a great honor; for you surely know the prophet for whom a donkey prophesied, and the donkey that carried the Lord on Palm Sunday – see, therefore I cannot accept such an award. If I were worthy before God to be such a donkey, oh friends, I would jump up with my great horseman out of oversized joy, and with my well-fed hooves I would probably work down your irrepressible horns from your ox-heads! And your comrade H. spoke to this your reply: Fiat, et pereat cornu bovis, et laus gloriaque maxima Domini nostri Jesu Christi orbem columque totum inhumat!(Translation: “This is how it should be done, let the flock of oxen perish, and let the greatest glory and honor of our Lord Jesus Christ ensoul the earth and the whole kingdom of heaven!”) Well, that I would call
to drive the nail into the board with humility with one stroke; but from where have you taken this so quickly?
[8] And when your comrade H. had spoken like this, behold, the three strangers came forward and said unanimously: Do you no longer know that you have been given the gift of free flight? But now is the time to shame the wicked; for see the furious bulls running up from the depths and then, united with these two comrades, want to scrabble with their horn-tips in your entrails. Therefore grab your comrade H. and lift yourself up quickly from here!
[9] And when you have heard this unambiguously, you immediately grabbed H. and rose up with him. But the two oxen with the angry bulls roared in vain for you, since you were freely sheltered in the height. And one of the oxen roared scornfully at you, saying: "Look, look, among the new prophets there are also cunning birds; when they realize that their beaks cannot stand up to the solidity of our horns, then they fly up and away out of pure prophetic power! It is a pity that we do not understand the language of poultry, what marvelous things these poor corn-peckers, worm- eaters and scavengers would have prophesied to us!
[10] Just look at the airy falcon, how he proudly looks at us from above, as if he had in mind to pick out the eyes of one or the other of us! But descend only, you bird of a prophet, we will certainly work down your wisdom! Oh, that we call a prophetic power, when such a one, at the sight of strong and courageous bulls, get himself out of the way like a hare with divine power – hahaha, that is a messenger of power from the Lord, who, instead of mastering these barricades, flies away only as a bird! Oh, dear, oh, dear!
[11] And when you had listened to such cunning insults for a while you thought of Me and asked Me that I should send you lightnings from heaven so that you then are able to destroy the wicked with this deadly fire. And behold, what voice did you hear from above? Was this not so: "Why do you call down fire? The fire that would destroy these wicked, behold, this fire would also take you and consume you with the wicked; for no creature can exist in the fire of God’s wrath. But if you want to be powerful and strong in My grace, then you must only bless where there is cursing against you. But if you have mighty wings for flight, why then a fire in which your pair of wings wants to become unfit to fly? Therefore bless and fly!" And behold, when you have heard such things unambiguously, only then did you fly away from there towards morning.
[12] And your comrade H. constantly asked you in the rapid flight where you were flying to. But you gave him no answer for a long time. But since he finally asked you why you did not give him an answer, you said: How can I answer you such a question? First ask your heart what kind of wind is blowing in it and where you want to go, and we will be there as soon as possible, since your love is tied to the still quite strong rope that is attached to the anchor of still quite manifold hopes of the world in the sea of worldly concerns.
[13] But he replied: Listen! But how can or should I leave my wife and children? But he replied: Shouldn't I worry about them now that I don't know how they are doing? This concern is indeed my greatest duty, and God himself has imposed it on me. Who can blame me afterwards if I pursue my fatherly duties? Therefore know that I want to those close to me! If you are a true friend to me, bring me there quickly, for surely my wife, my Pauline, and all my dear children await me with great concern and longing!
[14] Hereupon you said then: Now behold, friend, what use would it have been to you if I had also faithfully indicated to you, in answer to your repeated questions, the plan of my way, sharply marked from above, to the great place of all human destiny, but you would then have become too heavy for me through your newly awakened love and care for yours, that I would no longer have been able to keep you on the height, whereby afterwards I would have been compelled either to let you fall or to fall by yourself. But therefore, since you now made yourself known in your principal
love, you are now also lighter, and my flight will immediately take you to the place where the magnetic needle of your heart points!
[15] See friend, the love for God in you is still a love through your own. It is only a grateful feeling, to which, however, also many worries still cling, since such a love first goes out from your heart to the heart of your own – and from there only gratefully to the heart of God. See, there the love is then burdened with all kinds of worries and things and matters and then, as it were, reversed; because there your love becomes positively polar in and to and through your own and thus gratefully nourishes the pole of your love in God, which is necessarily opposed to it. But just look quite carefully whether this love is also completely in accordance with the divine order?
[16] You ask me now of course in your heart, yes, how should the right love therefore be? See, to this I answer you: But the right, free, carefree love is just the opposite of such love because it first passes from the heart of man into God, since it is purified by the gentle fire of grace, and from there, in clear consciousness and full of the highest trust, it first returns to the world and to wife and all the children self-powerfully, carefree and free.
[17] Behold, since thereby everything in such love is put in the hands of God, thus the so loving man forms then, united with God, the positive pole and everything of the natural world, the negative. But you know that the negative pole is a necessary one and only the positive pole is free. But if someone wants to strengthen the positive through the negative, see, which power will come out of it? It will be just as if someone wants to add plus 2 and minus 2 together, where nothing will show up in the end. And it is even more annoying, however, when through such perverse love the infinite potency of God must appear negatively, that it is saturated by a miserable plus; because only then a ratio comes out, which is much more praiseworthy than the sum, if someone wants to add plus 1 and minus infinity, where then the sum was: 1, less than infinitely times nothing. But if the positive pole is infinitely strong in and through God, see, there it is just as if one strengthens the positive pole with the power related to it. So he does not need to take care of the negative pole, but it is nourished without care at that moment in the unchangeable conditions – depending on the nourishment of the positive pole.
[18] Behold, this I had to show you, my friendly comrade, first, so that you might become lighter in this, and I with my pair of wings can bring you more easily back into your house to your own ones.”
[19] Now see, when you had finished speaking such things, only then did you fly further southeast again, namely, down to the foot of a mountain neighboring the former mountain, on the southwestern slope of which, then, was the house of your comrade H. When you had arrived there, you wanted to fly on immediately. But your comrade H. asked you for so long, and also his wife and some of his children, that you would stay with them, and so you returned with them into the house.
[20] But when you had now completely entered the rooms, someone came to visit the wife of H. right away. But she immediately left the aforementioned entrance hall with the visitor for a short time. Comrade H., however, lay down to rest a little in a room next door and asked you to have a charitable conversation with his children in the meantime. Having heard this, you right away sat down at a table, as if you wanted to rest a little yourself.
[21] Your peace and quiet did not last too long, for the daughter Wilhelmine came, sat down next to you at the table and made curious attempts to start an inquiring conversation with you. But you kept yourself deaf and dumb and seemed to pay no attention to the girl, whereat she then in a somewhat annoying tone – which is also quite peculiar to her on such occasions – asked you somewhat sharply: But tell me just once what I have done so badly that you would not appreciate me either for a look or an answer! Because I cannot put it together, how an otherwise so pious or at least one wanting to be considered pious man could be so annoyingly proud! That I learn to dance now, is something like that, since you know that we only have to do this out of kindness for the aunt, without our heart
and life being so attached to it as you might think. And if you are even so angry with me because of that, I really don't know what to think of you! Before, you always assured me that I would be dear to you. But now you don't even look at me any more, as if I would have become God knows how bad by this kindness to my aunt. I know well what the cause is and I am telling you straight to your face: It is nothing but an annoying jealousy with you, through which you silently want to accuse me of infidelity, taking revenge, as if I had already been, God knows how much in love with you, which I had not even thought of in my dreams until now. Phoo, shame on you!
[22] And since the last phrase made you a little angry, you got up and wanted to leave. But when the rather impudent speaker noticed this, she took you by the hand and, pleading and crying, did not let you go, saying: I beg you for God's sake, forgive me if I have said something unjust to you, and forgive my hasty naughtiness! I can already see that I was wrong. Stay here! What would father and mother say if you, leaving me now, walked away!
[23] And you opened your mouth, finally started talking and said something annoying at first: ‘Well, that's quite a nice conversation for the good service I have done to my friend by the grace of the Lord. The tender little daughter takes the blissful liberty to clean me over a courier boot and to make me shine in such a strange way, that on the other hand the insinuations on the part of the oxen on the mountain appear only as very small cute burlesques! No, this is not bad at all, such a tender conversation I would like to ask for again soon! She smears me so just like that in the most innocent way of the world, the most beautiful rudeness in the face, as if she had printed it and would have really been paid for it!
[24] And so that the whole story would be crowned at the end, she spits at the end of such a conversation, so to speak, in your face. Most obedient servant, she could have me very strangely gladly then! My dear W., with and through such entertaining rarities, falling in love from my sharply polished side will have its well-worn ways, and there will be not anything remaining for me to do than to ask you politely for the future, to want to spare me such extremely suggestive conversations a little lovingly and kindly. But for this time farewell. Amen.’
[25] Behold, then you wanted to go again. But it happened as before, that you stayed again and very slowly sat down again at the table and began to address the following words to W. as your apology: ‘Wilhelmine! But now be quiet and listen to me, for, if you harbor conjectures in yourself against me, formed in such a way that I must obviously see from them that you have reported yourself in your heart quite fundamentally wrong, it is now nothing more than a brotherly duty on my part to faithfully correct you in your tremendous error. Look at my face, yes, look into my open, healthy eye, and ask yourself if I'm as thick as a fist behind the ears! Do you think then that I look at you with contempt because you are currently doing something in a certain way that, at least for the time being, out of pure love for the Lord, cannot even well be united with my principles? Oh look into my open eye, is there really something so contemptible looking out? If you had my eyes, you would certainly feel quite strange, if you saw your brothers and sisters walking blindfolded over incalculable abysses and chasms, from which it is very difficult for the unfortunate blind man who has fallen down there to think any more of redemption!
[26] If you saw someone grab a cup of poison and drink it down to the last drop of death, how would you feel, especially if you already noticed some traces of the deadly effect through the drinker's veins! Well, what do you think would be the effects on your mind? Or if you see with these my eyes someone romping himself around on the ice of a frozen stream without any worries, while the floods under the ice begin to grow and the ice sheet begins to burst here and there, and the man, because of his deafness and blindness, would hear neither your voice nor the crack of the ice, yes, and if you also noticed from afar high tides were already billowing over the frozen mountains! Ask yourself how you would feel and what you would like to do to save the cheerful deaf and blind. Would you not wish and pray most ardently that the person would only approach the shore, that you
could grab him and pull him away from such danger, which with every minute and second becomes more and more threatening and impending!
[27] But what are all these shallow examples in all their horror against the slightest thought that whispers to me: Behold, your brother or sister has now entered a path that leads away from God and leads to the world of death, yes, eternal death! Of course, you said that your heart and life are not as attached to it as I might think. But I ask you: Why then did the Lord not only command the apostles to flee the world and it’s ways, but He told them: If you enter a city and are not received, do not stay there, but since you have stepped in, return right away, take your peace with you and shake the dust from your feet before the gate"
[28] But if the Lord commanded the apostles to shake off the quite innocent-seeming dust that stuck to their feet when they entered such a city in His name as His messengers full of the Holy Spirit, what do you think, dear W., the Lord will say about the dust that sticks to the feet of a dancer that is created in the riding school of Satan?! Or does not nature itself already teach us that a portion of poison, however small, is sufficient to take a man's life, while in all of nature there is not known to us a remedy that possesses just as great a healing power to make the sick person just as quickly healthy as a gran of poison kills the healthy person? And of a means to make the dead alive again, however, all nature is silent, while it possesses innumerable deadly ones in incalculable quantity.
[29] And you see, as the Lord teaches us already through nature, so He once taught the apostles and teaches His lovers, still speaking aloud in the Spirit at this very hour, still calling out the same holy words to us constantly: Listen, you dark people of this world, I alone am the way and the life, walk in My way! No-one can reach the Father anywhere else but through Me; for I alone am the right way and the door to the heart of the Father – and am the heart or the Eternal Love of the Father Himself."
[30] You see, but from this it emerges supernaturally clear that there is therefore for eternal life only one way and only one means, because the Lord, who alone is only the Way and the means of life, is only one Lord, only one Father, one Christ, and one and the same Holy Spirit of all power and strength and Love and of all life – while there are countless and infinite multitudes of Satans and devils as lords of damnation or eternal death, each of whom has his own cunning ways leading to death.
[31] But if this eternally incontrovertible truth is now so rightly considered, it will certainly not be difficult thereafter to understand why the most loving Lord of life warned the apostles against dust, and why every man who is supposed to be Christian should guard himself infinitely more against that dust, which is stamped so unbelievably deadly in Satan's riding school out of the dried mud of all fornication and harlotry and in such an unbelievable endless amount with the most contemptible feet of all hypocrisy, all deceit and all imaginable seduction!
[32] Oh you see now, dear friend, whoever sees with the inner vision of the spirit through these conditions, does not need to be in love, in order to silently and often pitifully look at the deadly dust on the feet of his brothers and sisters with his head bowed down, to ignore many a question from a sister who is secretly already quite dusty! But what you have reproached me somewhat sharply from tolerably being in love, it would probably be very weak for me if I should therefore make to you justifying objections or refute things of which I am an enemy in others because of their nefarious wrongness, and should tolerate them in myself to my own ruin, since I would then soon lose everything through my own blind folly.
[33] But there is a heavenly high difference between love and the despicable being in love: the first is commanded to us by God, as the second, under the name of harlotry, is forbidden to us in the most terribly strict way. Now you see, if I were so, how would I have to present myself as a called servant under the eyes of the great Lord?
[34] Now you see again how very powerful a blow you have made against me in the blue, annoying yourself!
[35] But if I have often assured you of my love, as I have also assured every other worthy brother and every honorable sister, who by virtue of their inner nature are closer to me than many other human larvae that forget God and all morality, then, for the time being, I have done nothing else but what I am guilty of as a Christian man, especially to underage mankind, whose inner eye is still far from being opened to look into the heart of the brother or sister, whether there in earnest a truly Christian love is to be discovered there, wage-burdened and working.
[36] And secondly, I sought to draw you a little higher up to my heart because I saw that the receptivity to worldly vanities is far more predominant with you than the receptivity to spiritual grandeur. For I saw and still see the monument of God finely described with His most holy will in your heart.
[37] You see, but if somebody had set some worldly monument and had put a stone in it, there would be on it many beautiful and praiseworthy things from Him to whom the monument is dedicated; however, in time, this stone would fall from the monument by some small earthquake, so that it would otherwise come to stand undamaged on the ground with the writing facing outwards. If, however, the stone is not placed high enough on the existing monument by a friend, say yourself, what might it have there with the beautiful, smooth, described stones at once for a sad explanation, if the malicious, gloating and destruction-happy world would see him lying on the ground? Won't they rush over immediately and start scribbling on him all kinds of shameful things, so that soon nothing more will be seen of the glorious inscription, and thus this dignified table of life and mark of noble deeds will finally resemble every raw, meaningless stone and in the end will even be smashed and completely destroyed and annihilated.
[38] You see, I have often seen your divine monument devoid of this wonderful stone, it then lying on the dirty ground of worldly passion germs. But to reunite this stone with the monument of your heart and to unite with it, I did what I did as a true friend by a special grace from above, but not that you should call shame upon my face for it!
[39] And what and how I was before, so I will be forever. But be careful of the dust you are aware of and that the tablet in question does not suffer any damage. For even if you were from whence the children of God are, then you should remember all the more that you are now in the poisonous world, which is surrounded with a lot of deadly, stuffy air – up to the small place, where the well of Jacob breaches the air of life around itself. Amen.’
[40] And behold, when you had finished this speech, which I had also given you in your dream, the little daughter Julie came into the room, followed by the two boys, as the boy P. incited a small black dog at the door against her, so that the puppy almost bit J. in the foot, so you got up and woke up the still sleeping comrade H., who then came over immediately and grabbed the boy P. by the hair with two fingers and shook him a little punitively. But the hair he had grasped, remained in his hand. But when he looked at it, they were very similar to the hair of a donkey, about which H. began to smile and said: Well, that's what I call pulling stupidity out of the head of an irrepressible student! Ah, I must keep this hair. Soon after, everyone came along, but you woke up.
[41] Behold, your dream is faithfully described to you as a free gift to enrich My grace in you and to all those who will raise it up high in their hearts fruitfully like the said stone, that through this, they will then even easily recognize themselves and the world in themselves, which just now is all the more necessary, since My seventh and last arrival is just before the door. Just look only at the fig tree, and you will find that it is so!
[42] Whosoever therefore still loves the world, and Me beside it, verily, verily, he shall not be taken up from the two in the field, in the mill, and in bed.
[43] Therefore keep your feet from the dust of the world, so that the gates of My kingdom are not soon closed before you forever. For if you are already delicate with the freshly washed floors of your chambers, since you are full of dirt outside and inside, how much more will it be with My holy city! Consider this well, you who are dusty of the world, and who is He who speaks such things, Amen; for I, the Beginning and the eternal Omega Myself am It, Amen, Amen, Amen.