Sermon on the Mount 10

September 779 in the year of the Romans-10

Excerpts from the Sermon on the Mount in authorial form

Knowledge, faith and true understanding

A man should always strive to know as much as possible, to acquire all knowledge, and, as far as he is able, always to seek out further knowledge from his own; he should also not reject foreign knowledge from the outset, without knowing it and its foundations, or even ridicule and scorn it. For all knowledge contains truth and good, or falsehood and evil, corresponds to the factual or contradicts itself, is firmly founded in itself or merely an erring belief anchored in false assumptions, and should therefore not be immediately accepted or rejected, but always first examined and rightly recognized.

The greater and more manifold a man's knowledge is, the greater the advantages, but unfortunately also and often the greater the disadvantages, because as a spiritual faculty and soulful treasure, it acts as a force, partly creating a soulful-spiritual attitude corresponding to its values, guiding a preconceived and existing one in other directions or even abolishing it, but in any case, also allowing the currently existing soulful-spiritual attitude to have an outward effect; and this effect is a fruit that unmistakably marks the tree that bears it.

Of knowledge, there are quantities that fill the spaces of infinity and the times of eternity. Above all knowledge of any cognitive spirit stands infinitely sublime the eternal truth – God!

To the holy being of God alone belongs an eternal spirit, whose power is truth, and He by the power of this His spirit is Himself the eternal truth, in this all-knowing, by the power of His spirit omnipresent and by the power of His being almighty.

Omnipotence, omnipresence and omniscience are powers that from the outset preclude anything that even remotely resembles searching, researching, examining, considering and believing. But they do not make God most perfect, but it is the power of truth in which God as the living being of eternal truth Himself is most perfect, almighty, omniscient and omnipresent.

Much, very much do men know; more do human souls of bright worlds of the hereafter know, still more the inhabitants of the kingdom of God – but God knows all.

To omniscience alone is faith distant, all other knowledge builds on faith and can never be separated from it so that, like omniscience, it could stand distant from faith, because all other knowledge is imperfect and cannot at all dispense with faith; for if it would even want to lay aside faith in itself, it would also collapse in itself.

It is faith that confirms any knowledge and even any mere assumption, but it is not itself the fruit of assumption or knowledge, but the fruit of the soulful-spiritual attitude that seeks to strengthen and confirm the preconceived faith by the search for corresponding assumptions or knowledge.

If the soulful being of the cognitive spirit and this itself are so disposed that it willingly distinguishes good and evil quite equally, to whomever one of the two may encounter, meet and apply, its attitude, the faith arising from this and the search for knowledge confirming this attitude and faith are always good and the better the greater its knowledge in all things is; for it recognizes them as good or evil, will cherish the good things, avoid the evil things and remain itself good and true.

If, on the other hand, the soulful-spiritual attitude of another soul of cognitive spirit is such that it is willing to distinguish good and evil as good or evil only when it encounters, meets and applies to itself, but otherwise, when it concerns others, calls evil good, good evil, accordingly also adjusts its faith and seeks assumptions and knowledge that are to strengthen and confirm such a faith, such a soulful-spiritual attitude, such a faith and the knowledge confirming it are always bad; and they are the worse the greater the knowledge of such a spirit is, for it will, by rejecting the best knowledge, cherish only evil and remain itself false-evil.

There is no living soul of cognitive spirit that would not be able to distinguish good from evil quite exactly; for that it is able to distinguish quite exactly between good and evil, it confirms unmistakably clearly as soon as it is exposed to the effect, and especially the effect of evil on itself, though it may have hitherto called good all evil that encounters others or is inflicted on them, it cries out and fears as soon as the same evil even only apparently turns against itself.

An exception to this are few people of a contaminated, poisoned or violently disfigured earthly body, which hinders the soul and spirit from proper effect, as well as the possessed, who, despite the addiction of lightless souls of the hereafter to further look around in the earthly through a foreign human body – since God in Christ Himself was on earth – occur only very rarely and very isolated.

All these poor people have indeed the same cognitive spirit as any other soul of cognitive spirit, but are hindered by the mentioned circumstances for a time, some even for the duration of their earthly existence, in cognitive ability to the extent that the evil that has befallen them or that they have brought upon themselves is smaller or greater, and are also not responsible, because they do not have a free will and cannot deliberate freely.

One hears objections that a living soul of cognitive spirit, which in the earthly is every human being, cannot distinguish good and evil and therefore calls good the evil that befalls others and that it inflicts on others, because it was born as a human being in an environment and grew up among people who cultivate the same soulful-spiritual attitude from their own and through their outward effect only create and practice evil.

These also oppress, threaten and fight every other, foreign, better and good soulful-spiritual attitude, because they worship and adore a God or deities to whom they impute the same will and striving, or as you see and hear it from the Hebrew elders: these call even the most base, shameless, insidious and reprehensible evils, crimes and lies uniquely true, good and even holy, because their God relentlessly commands them to believe and practice so under the most obscene curses and threats of terrible revenge; and they strive, full of his spirit, to satisfy even the most devilish desire of such a God, and must themselves call his satanic boundless and nameless blood and revenge lust good, holy and thrice holy.

All these, such and all similar objections confirm unmistakably the own bad and evil soulful-spiritual attitude of all those who hold such objections against any better and good knowledge only because they themselves take pleasure in shameless, base and evil, but their hypocritical falsehood, not knowing what is evil and what is a lie, is immediately convicted as soon as these even only appear to turn against themselves and to befall themselves.

The soulful-spiritual attitude is therefore that force that promotes, hinders or even destroys any other knowledge; but because it too is the fruit of the will of any cognitive spirit, it is and remains not it, but the will that is decisive. The soulful-spiritual attitude shows in all its effect inwardly as well as outwardly unmistakably and unmistakably not so itself, but rather the will of the cognitive spirit that cherishes and cultivates it, as quite clearly also whether this will is good or evil.

It must never be overlooked, that much evil is not the fruit of the will of whole hosts of cognitive spirits, but often the fruit of ignorance, false belief, and those false views, inventions, and teachings of those who, being of a greater spirit than the hosts they lead and guide, stand at the fore as learned and wise, as mighty and ruling, and instill or even impose their will, their wisdom, and all the fruit of their learning upon the hosts from childhood.

Though the cognitive spirit of the hosts may be held in ignorance, misled, and poisoned by all this, and even to an infinitely greater degree: as soon as the hosts are taught of the better, the good, and the true, each one among them soon or even immediately shows whether he is of good or evil will.

It is not to be said by these My words that all the learned, wise, ruling, and great are without exception of evil will and evil men, for the works of many a ruling great one testify to his good will, just as the teachings of many a learned wise one. But if it is a fact that the lust for power of the great has not yet made any people truly happy and satisfied, it is an even greater fact that the learning of even the wisest of the wise in earthly matters has never brought even a single man a step closer to the knowledge of eternal truth.

And I say to you that through the earthly wisdoms of the future learned, mankind will be given many and various kinds of useful as well as useless, right as well as wrong, wise as well as ridiculous, and good as well as evil knowledge, belief, and opinion, but precisely thereby it will be alienated even more from the knowledge of eternal truth than it is now.

All the effect, activity, and fruit of the cognitive spirit of men, as you now see, hear, and feel it, has been there repeatedly in the course of times of earthly human existence, temporally and locally of such greatness and goodness that the present cannot be compared with it in any way. For if the spirit of mankind and those who led it was not greater than it is today, it was temporally and locally, besides its greatness, truly and good, the senses of its earthly covering not exclusively directed to earthly things, but also to itself and into eternity, not only turned to earthly life, but also to eternal life.

Except for the elders, foremost, and leaders of this circumcised people, all other peoples still turn their soulful-spiritual-living self to eternal life, but this consideration is waning more and more in the face of the ignorance, the errors, the false assumptions, and the self-contradictory teachings of the learned wise, turning more and more only to earthly things; and this will become ever worse, although the time is already here that the Hebrews in particular simply pass over the cursing, the threats of death and revenge, as well as the prohibition of their God to take from the tree of life and live eternally. By pushing aside the cherubim guarding the way to the tree of eternal life with flaming swords, they secretly seek out prophets or secretly keep such themselves, in order to gain insight into the life which their God denies them from the dead and through them.

Already the Pharisees and many scribes advocate life even after earthly death, already they advocate, albeit in a completely wrong sense, the resurrection of the body. But asked from where and from whom they have that which is unknown to their God, who according to the documents of his spirit knows no eternal life other than his own, but has nothing but the curse of death and the dark pit left for all others, they cry out like possessed and swear the same revenge as their God.

They too have become learned of the Chaldean, Persian, Roman, and Greek schools, like the Sadducees; these, however, in the overwhelming majority only delving into things of the earthly, mock and scoff at eternal life, the resurrection – and are the first to fully agree with Jahweh regarding death and the dark pit.

But the learned and wise of the other peoples have also divided and quarreled, and they too speak and teach against each other, all together far from even partially approaching true knowledge. A part of them turns all their striving to the exploration of the origin and being of earthly things.

By delving only into these things and imagining themselves to be full of wisdom, they give long speeches and counter-speeches about how and why copper is hard and red, while lead is gray and soft, why and wherefore one snake lays eggs, whereas the other brings forth living young, what kind of causes hinder the production of gold from cheap things, why man does not have the sense of smell of the bloodhound, the eyesight and wings of an eagle, how and why all things are constituted just so and not otherwise; it would be much and often much better if they had created it, or could at least change it according to their wisdom and will.

And I need not tell you, for you know yourselves, that among these and such learned thinkers and wise men there are not a few who ponder and bitterly feel it as a great lack of creation and nature that they cannot call the venomous tooth of the viper, the venomous sting of the scorpion, and other such things their own bodily possessions, and precisely because they are not in possession of such things, they devise worse things that not only inflict deadly bites and stings on the individual, but also tear apart and carry off whole hosts.

Such learned and wise men were and are there, but I tell you that worse ones are yet to come, devise worse things, and deepen the swamp of spiritual darkness so much that the whole earth will be a single reflection of hell – and if by then a large part of mankind did not attain the knowledge of truth and hold up the light of truth, even those who are of no dark spirit and not of evil will would fall into the swamp of this hell.

Besides those mentioned, there are thinkers, learned, and wise who dedicate their striving not to earthly things, but to the exploration of the essence of the soul, the spirit, and life, but diligently overlooking and passing over themselves, they cannot grasp either the essence of the soul or that of the spirit and life, because they stand estranged from themselves and are so misled by their own earthly-bodily that true self-knowledge is infinitely distant from them and makes the knowledge of truth impossible for them.

God the Lord repeatedly explained to His own:

Man cannot perceive the essence of the soul, the spirit, and the life of the inhabitants of My kingdom, nor the essence of the soul, the spirit, and the life of those who inhabit the abyss of darkness, nor the essence of the soul, the spirit, and the life of those who have not yet reached the earth to become earthly. However, he can perceive the essence of the soul, the spirit, and the life of the inhabitants of the hereafter, into which the soul enters with its living spirit after it has detached itself from the earthly body, only under special circumstances. For the essence of the soul, the spirit, and the life that forms man in the earthly depends on the senses of the earthly body created in the earthly, and through these senses can generally perceive only the earthly-material. This is, however, fully sufficient for the essence of the soul, the spirit, and the life to recognize truth as well as falsehood, and good as well as evil, and to choose between them according to one's own will and accordingly to act.

There are good and there are evil men; many good men can easily become malicious, and many evil men persist and harden in their malice and possibly become even worse if they do not know why they are so. They have the knowledge of good and evil. But where it comes from, why it is there, why it comes to effect, and what consequences it bears for eternity was and is hidden from many, because they lack the knowledge of eternal truth, of true God-knowledge, as well as true self-knowledge, and do not want to attain such.

There have been individual few men, there are individual such, and there will be individual few, whose earthly body cannot so perfectly and firmly enclose and encompass the essence of their own soul, spirit, and life, that is, the living whole being, as is the case with almost all other men. Because a certain amount of the essential-soulful, despite its inseparability from the whole, is unable to accept earthly things like this, it is thereby forced, though in the most intimate connection with the whole being of the soul, to remain partly outside the earthly body and therefore also outside the bodily senses – as if it were placed in front.

That in these cases the essence of the soul, the spirit, and the life of other realms and other worlds becomes perceptible to such people – or rather, can become perceptible under given circumstances –, that their inhabitants can approach, reveal themselves to, and influence humans quite differently than other humans who are not so constituted, is the very simplest consequence of such a constitution. The other, equally simple consequence is that such people feel, see, or hear what remains fully hidden from others.

All seers and prophet-mediators, whether good or evil, all "questioners of the dead," "truth-sayers," and those who, according to the scripture, have the "spirit of Python," and all other mediators of the otherworldly spirit from spirit to spirit – if they do not, out of greed or other reasons, pose as prophet-mediators without truly being so, but to deceive – were and are men whose essence of soul, spirit, life, and earthly body is thus constituted.

Depending on how great the amount of the unenclosed soulful body is, and depending on which of the senses of man it is placed before, or which of the senses the will of one's own spirit, sometimes also the will of a foreign otherworldly spirit, makes or can make more serviceable, such a man is more capable of perceptions and also as a mediator of that which others from the hereafter can never receive so directly. Through the mediation – that is, through the prophetic nature of such men – much good has been given, but also the most terrible has occurred, because the evil spirit has used dark mediators among them, and since these themselves were evil, he could easily bring them to elevate him, Satan, to their "god."

But because the wickedness of those who have taken over and accepted the evil spirit of hellish darkness from equally dark bringers and givers is just as great as the darkness and wickedness of the prophet-mediators, and because they always carry on the Satan spirit of their "god" and seek to impose it on others, therefore I Myself have come.

Thereby, in My being, in My spirit, through My word and My works, the eternal truth, God, as He is from eternity, is to be recognized, so that every good will can make a comparison between the spirit of eternal truth, between Me and between the spirit of lies and wickedness, Satan, and can fully recognize Me by My spirit and by My being, My word, and My works.

But because no seer, no prophet, and no mediator could see the eternal truth of My being, My spirit, and My life in the true perfection of God's power, and therefore could never mediate or reveal Me as I am in the true essence of My power, therefore I Myself have come as a man like you!

I am born of woman; but no one, no man, is My father! I am the son of a mother; but to Myself I am a father of My own from eternity. No one could form or beget Me there on earth, for I was, am, and will be in being, spirit, and life eternally; for eternity too is only through Me.

Many have come and have thus asked Me before your ears:

Master, Lord! We see that You do wonders that neither our God nor the gods of the heathen can do; for Adonai-Jahweh has not yet raised one who has lain in the grave for days and led him out healthy.

Yet You are born and a man! Say: Could You not have come as a spirit or in another form in splendor and glory, or could You not at least have come unborn and prove that You appeared thus suddenly in our midst, without first becoming a child, then a boy, and then a man?

And at that time I saw that some among the disciples approved these questions, although you yourselves said nothing to them. But what should I have answered these poor in soul and spirit?

I had to tell them that they did not know what they were asking; or would even one of them have believed that I had not been born if I had come to them as I am, and had I come as a spirit, could they have perceived Me when they can see none of the legions of spirits that are there, that live and work, if they are not seers?

And when I called upon them to tell Me themselves in what other form I should have appeared so that, according to their opinion, every doubt would be excluded, they were silent, and only the heathen mercenary Arnas spoke:

Lord! Master! You should have come in the form as God is, for others! To me You are holy as You are! And I know it: You alone are the eternal truth, God, because You say so!

To the eleven Apostles before His Self-Sacrifice (beginning 783 d. R.)

I will send you the Spirit of Truth, because I Myself come to you, and the Spirit will testify of Me, because it will take of Mine and proclaim itself through you.

I have often told you who I am, and because I speak to you as a man, some people already call Me "God's Son"; but truly I say to you: This Son is His own Father through the Spirit of Truth, and He has become man to bring you the Spirit of Truth and Himself, that you may know God!

No man has seen God to this day; they speak of God and Father, but do not know Him, because they do not want to know Me! Because I have become a man to bring you the truth Myself, they see a man in Me and hate Me because I do works that only God can do, but even more so because I tell them the truth, that I alone am the eternal truth!

And if you cannot yet understand, I tell you that the Father Himself has become Son, a man of His being and spirit, without prejudice to His power and His being, in which I remain unchangeably the same eternally; thus I am in the Father, He in Me, and of the same One being and spirit we are One from eternity, because I alone am the eternal truth!

There are many worlds, many realms of the spirit, and innumerable beings; but God is only One, and He has become a man by the power of His truth, goodness, love, mercy, forgiveness, and justice, so that all may recognize Him and His Spirit, and through the recognition of His self-sacrifice may also be saved if they wish to follow Him and His Spirit. Therefore God Himself has come, and therefore I am here, but not "that a scripture might be fulfilled," which, although it also speaks of Me, blasphemes and reviles the true God and His Spirit of eternal truth as severely as has never been since the beginning.

The father of lies and creator of hellish darkness, who has not stood in the truth of My being, spirit, and kingdom, who was once a soul-murderer and after the beginning of this world a man-murderer, has understood how to bring many to walk according to his evil desires.

Blood, blood, and ever again blood of all living things, that he too may enjoy the power of life that has bound the earthly to the soulful of every being here! For even if his thirst for life and his spirit are greater than the spirit of many men, he cannot appear in an earthly body like a man, however much he may desire it; and therefore he urges and beguiles men to serve him, that they may fall to the realm of darkness of the spirit, whose prince he is, and remain slaves of his wickedness and lies in all future.

He has understood how to bring many to worship him as their god, to bring him blood sacrifices and burnt offerings without ceasing from childhood, and to walk according to his evil desires. I have come to tell them and to testify; but they hate and persecute Me as one who blasphemes their god, because I truly say of him: He is Satan!

I have formerly let this My commandment be revealed to these people by day; but already the first who received this My commandment hid it at the bottom – and placed on top of it a law that Moses wrote in the dark under the pressure of the bloodthirsty father of lies, and he ordered it to be kept "eternally."

I Myself have come that all this may be revealed; and they do not know Me because they do not want to know God and the holy spirit of eternal truth; they do not want to desist from the desires of their father, and if I do not sacrifice Myself, I have come in vain!

Their lustful father demands blood for blood and everything for himself. And they will also demand My blood for him through his law. But truly I say to you: I give My blood; but their father has nothing in Me! I give My blood that many through My sacrifice may come to the knowledge of who I am in the eternal truth of My being, spirit, and life, and that I have come not to judge but to make this world blessed, that whoever believes in Me and follows My spirit may not walk in the darkness of wickedness, but live with Me in the light of eternal truth eternally!

God is the eternal truth, and the eternal truth am I!

End of Part 10