NEUOFFENBARUNGA Parable
Jakob Lorber
Received from the Lord through Jakob Lorber on .
This parable introduces Earth and Moon. Translated into British English from the German project text, based on the reprint of the fourth edition of Erde und Mond (Lorber-Verlag, 2000).
Deutscher Text · German reference edition
[Er.01_000,01] In a city of those days, a duke had a magnificent clock installed high on a tower. As the tower was octagonal, he had a dial made for each of the eight faces between its corners, so that anyone, wherever they stood, could see the time of day to the hour, minute and second.
[Er.01_000,02] Besides marking the time with the greatest precision down to the second, the clock showed the day of the month, the positions of the Moon and the other planets, the length of daylight from sunrise to sunset, and the four seasons. These special astronomical details were shown, of course, on separate dials mounted below the main clock face.
[Er.01_000,03] Besides everything it showed on its dials, the clock had an excellent mechanism for striking the hours and quarters and a carillon of the purest tone. A single driving weight powered this entire, exceedingly intricate mechanism. In short, nowhere in the whole civilised world could this clock find its equal!
[Er.01_000,04] Yet that is beside the point, as is the fact that it performed such a variety of tasks with such accuracy. The true wonder of this clock was that one and the same driving weight set all these very different mechanisms in motion, each to serve its purpose.
[Er.01_000,05] When a stranger came to the city, the prominent clock was the first thing to catch his eye. He asked the first person he met how many driving springs and weights the clock might have. When he was told, ‘Only one!’, he was astonished and incredulous. ‘That's impossible! So many different things to do and only one source of power? No, no, it cannot be done. It is impossible!’
[Er.01_000,06] Another visitor came and looked at the clock. He was utterly astonished when he was told all that it did. He supposed that each dial must have a mechanism of its own, so that the tower would naturally have to be packed with different clocks. But when he was told that a single mechanism moved all the hands, he grew quite indignant. He thought people were merely making fun of his ignorance, so he went away and asked nothing further about the clockwork.
[Er.01_000,07] Yet another visitor came from abroad and admired the clock. When he asked about its maker, he was told, ‘The master who made this clock was a very simple countryman, and it is not certain whether he could read and write.’
[Er.01_000,08] This truthful answer threw the stranger into such a rage that he said nothing and soon left. He had not come, he thought, to be called a stupid fool in so clumsy a fashion.
[Er.01_000,09] Many others came and asked the same questions as the first visitors. When people offered to show them more of the secrets of this work of art, they all grew annoyed and said, ‘Until we have seen it with our own eyes, we cannot believe it!’
[Er.01_000,10] And see, they were taken into the tower. When they saw the almost countless wheels, the many levers, cylinders, hooks and rods, and a thousand other mechanical devices and connections, they were beside themselves. They cried out, ‘Who can make sense of this work and understand it? No human being could have made it! It would take a hundred lifetimes just to count the parts, let alone make them!’ And all these strangers went away quite beside themselves.
[Er.01_000,11] Only a few were willing to learn how the work was accomplished, although even for those few the master craftsman's simplicity and lack of formal learning remained, in some measure, a stumbling block.
[Er.01_000,12] What does this picture teach? What is its inward, hidden meaning? Let each person give it some thought and so practise seeking out inward truths, discovering as much as they can until, in due time, the full answer is given. Amen.