The Household of God
Volume 1
The early history of mankind
- Chapter 85 -
ASMAHAEL SPEAKS ABOUT THE LAW
Having heard this, Seth soon realized that his intention had been somewhat foolish and he became once more a free man and glorified and praised Me exceedingly in his now newly animated heart. He now looked forward to Asmahael's speech that, at Enoch's bidding, began to speak about the silence of the children of the evening. What he spoke was out of Me through the spirit of Abel, and his speech was concise and flowed like a little brook which peacefully rushes and bubbles over small pebbles and layers of sand and then, smiling, flows into a stream that receives the darling with open arms and carries it on its broad shoulders into the calm sea.
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And Asmahael's speech, which became most famous, ran as follows:
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"O fathers of the earth's fathers! My eye beholds tearfully the pining crowd of glorious children of the earth's fathers. They are lying there mute and as if dead like stones at the bottom of the seas and other waters.
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"Commandments, oh, for the harsh and hard commandments! O men, you hard and loveless men, where will you lead the brothers and what will you make out of innocent children through all the useless commandments,
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each of which must need be followed by a host of quite new ones!
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"Oh ask yourselves, fathers of the earth's fathers, how many commandments the Lord has in His mercy and wisdom demanded of you to keep!
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"I know it and must tell you: None other but to recognize the eternal freedom in all the boundless love of the eternal, holy Father.
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"Were we created in order to carry exceedingly heavy burdens through all the commandments? Is then God a weak God that He must give men commandments to keep a tight rein on them to enforce good order?
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"O fathers, how foolish it would be to think thus of an almighty, eternal, infinite and holy God Whose slightest breath could destroy all the countless worlds and endless hosts of spirits.
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"And such an immensely mighty God should oppress men through unbearable burdens of dead commandments, of stony laws even He Himself may not mitigate notwithstanding all His powers? For if He opened up a single one of these spiritual enclosures of life, must he not fear to be captured by His created beings and Himself become a slave to His creatures who compared to Him are not even like a mote of the sun!
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"O fathers of the earth's fathers, you could not imagine a greater absurdity! The Father, the eternal, holy Father full of love, the mighty, free and infinite God should create beings in order to then cruelly destroy them under the hardest pressure of exceedingly harsh commandments?
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"Truly, I would find it much easier to grasp that I and my cruel carrier constituted a single being full of darkness and full of light in the center of the earth, than that our God, our mighty, eternal, free and holy God, could call into existence a single being to oppress it through commandments and at the same time force it to move freely, which would be even more impossible than if the freest, holy Father and Creator made Himself through brazen chains a slave of the slaves of Lamech's lowlands!
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"O fathers of the earth's fathers, how come that you as the sole children of the eternal, holy Father full of love are ignorant of His wisest, most magnificent and freest order? You preach love for the Father to each other and, as I now clearly see, do not know this eternal, holy fundamental element to any greater extent than that you speak of it with empty sounding words.
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"Oh hear, it is love, the mighty, holy love of the eternal Father that is the eternal and freest order in God. According to this eternal, holy order all the endless hosts of spirits, all the worlds and you, His sole children, have gone forth from Him, as free as He Himself.
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"But in order to teach you that you are to feel as free as He is, He gave you, His children, from the innermost depth of the Father's love - I do not wish to call it commandment - only a most wise, well-meant advice not to lean on anything or touch anything that might impede your freedom. However, you, fully aware of the divine freedom and abundance of power, disregarded the loving Father's advice and grasped at all the things that became impediments to your not yet consolidated freedom and life. This act was contrary to love's eternal order, and now the holy Father had to transform the endless creation in order to set you anew into the freedom of life.
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"Now you find yourselves in this loving state as children of the holy Father; you are free, full of life and grace from above. How could you be so blind as to ban the children of the same holy Father for no obvious reason to different regions under the threat of a dark commandment which does not give them life and joy, but deadens them in body and spirit?
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Therefore, remove the old, rusty bonds of the dead law from their tortured feet and allow them to till the soil wherever it pleases them, as long as they keep away from the dark lowlands. Then they will live again, praise, glorify and love God and acknowledge you as honest fathers and mighty children of the Lord. Hear it, amen; hear it, amen, hear it, amen!"