The Great Gospel of John
Volume 8
Jesus' Precepts and Deeds through His Three Years of Teaching
The Lord and His adversaries
- Chapter 13 -
The ideas of Agricola about the future of the teaching of the Lord.
On this, Agricola said: "Lord and Master. You have revealed to me again a new and extremely important truth, and I can clearly see that it has to be like that. But how is the situation with the education of man from his childhood on? One does not even know how and where he has to start and end with the education of children.
2
For instance, rich parents have a child. They have a true ape-love for it and allow it everything whatever they are reading in its eyes, and they pamper it often in an intolerable way. They do not dare to punish such a child themselves for its many wrongdoings. Not even with a few serious words. And if later a teacher would perhaps do that, then he has made the child and the parents as his enemies and persecutors. Already the old Romans said: 'He who is hated by the gods will be made a teacher by them'. Well then, the parents are blind fools, and the teacher must be foolish if he wants to live. Then how can children receive a proper education?
3
With a kind of education as is generally the case now in the world of the great lords, every person and the whole human race must become so powerless that there is no way to know how the real true human being must look like and how he must be. And I must openly declare that on this Earth still a lot of storms have to blow over the fields and seas before humanity will return to the great and true situation from which it came forth in the very beginning.
4
Good schools should be set up, not only for children but also for the blind parents, in which they all should learn the great truths that everybody must know in order to act according to it and so to become a true human being.
5
But from where can we have the right teachers for so many people? You, Lord and Master, have indeed formed a large group of disciples who know what is needed to become a true human being according to Your order, but what is their number compared to the nearly endless great number of people on the whole Earth? And on top of it, there is the entire degeneration of people and nations on Earth and the hardness with which they are rooted in their morals and habits, and also their different languages.
6
How then can man fight against all these enormous obstructions and how can he overcome them? Surely You are the Lord Himself and everything obeys Your will, and nevertheless You Yourself are bumping here in these civilized countries against insurmountable obstacles. Then against which obstacles will the few disciples bump?
7
Yes, it would be good if we could lay Your godly teaching in one night in the heart of all the people, together with the zeal to act accordingly. But this is not Your intention because every human being must make it as its own, only by the teaching from outside. And further he must take up the serious will to act accordingly. But in this way, mankind will surely progress very slowly, and it is totally unpredictable how long it will take until all men on Earth will know Your teaching. And thus, Your teaching will always be the property of only a few people, and one can even ask himself how long all this will remain pure.
8
Because as long as the people will not be fully absorbed by the truth of Your teaching, they will besides that still hold on to their worldly pleasures, be it more or less, which is actually the same. By means of many additions they soon will make of Your teaching an earthly source of income, and then it will look in no way better with Your later disciples than now with the many Jews and gentiles. And the true blessing and the living fruit of Your teaching will be far away from the people. Although I am not a prophet, but it is my rather clear ability to evaluate things, which I have received thanks to my many experiences, and I believe that in this matter I have spoken out a true evaluation."