#3337 – Sex, Fornication and the Lust oft he Flesh – Great Gospel of John
#3337
Sex, Fornication & the Lust of the Flesh.
This group of subjects comes up in various volumes of the Great Gospel of John.
It is treated in discussions between Jesus and a group of His disciples e.g. in volume 03 and briefly in vol. 08. The subject starts with a question of disciple Jurah concentrating on the Law of Moses. Here in vol. 3, chapter 214, disciple Jurah mentions the command of Moses banning unchastity. He is asking Jesus:
[Great Gospel of John, vol.03_214,06] (Jurah:) Therefore give us, most eminent Lord and Master, the truth clearly and openly, so that in future any approach by Satan towards man will be barred by the strong wall of the most unchangeable truth.
[03_214,07] I want to mention as an example just that Law of Moses, through which he forbids unchastity as a sin. What actually is unchastity then? Does this only consist of sleeping with a woman with an unwashed body and then not washing again after the act? Or does it mean the desirous lasciviousness and sleeping with a woman, a virgin, a whore, a concubine or a young widow?
[03_214,08] Does blind fornication belong in this category, or even the mute, sodomite sin, or even if one has something with the very desirous wife of another husband? Should one, in order to be fully chaste, totally suppress this most powerful of all natural impulses? But if that is so, then the marriage bed certainly is nothing other than a workplace for unchastity which is accepted in society; for who can guarantee us that the man does not sleep with his lush wife more often than is necessary to create a fruit?!
[03_214,09] I have seen and known people who one could call true people of gold as far as goodness, love, patience, kindness and compassion is concerned; but in the vexed question of chastity they were and remain weak. They did everything, it is true, to become stronger in this area, but it was not in their nature, not even when the natural, full impotence fell on them; a lush virgin still made the same lustful impression on them.
[03_214,10] And on the other hand I have seen and known people who remained as cold as a stone at the greatest female beauty, true examples of chastity, but otherwise in their lives they were insensitive to everything! Nothing moved them! Affliction and misery of the poor were laughable things for them, tears of suffering were tricks to wake sympathy; a woman was contemptible to them and very easy to do without, something which had no other purpose in the world than a field for the sowing of any kind of grain. They found marriage to be one of the most laughable institutions in human society. In their opinion all healthy women should be locked up in a great building and let strong men well capable of producing heirs sleep with them so that only beautiful, healthy and strong people would be created; but the ugly and weak women should be weeded out or used for the lowest jobs like cattle and work until they perish! Those are facts that I have experienced!
[GGJ.03_214,11] Now I ask whether people who are weak in chastity do not have a very great advantage over the ice-cold heathens of chastity in the eyes of every man! As far as I am concerned, they do! Well, I do not know how things stand for You, most eminent Lord and Master, and nor can I know. In order to come into a sort of order in these points which are forbidden by Moses as a consequence, in order not to be in the constant fear of having sinned before God with such an act, and if the act is always a sin, then You, oh Lord and Master, will certainly know some medicine against it through which one can drive out the desire and the pressure like a cold! For there is nothing more miserable for an honest person than to be dragged by the hair to sin by a certain side; nature forces the flesh with an irresistible power, and if one falls through the free air as a normal body, then one has also committed a deadly sin! That is then a little too strict, particularly for a person who for the sake of God has carried his head and heart always in the right place as far as possible. Therefore, Lord and Master, I would like to have a clear explanation about this from You! For that seems to me to be at least one of the prickliest points!”
Chapter 215
[03_215,01] I say, “If the life of a person is no flirting joke, but instead a very holy earnest, the act of creation can also be no flirtation, but also only a very sacred seriousness. Understand the reason, and you will soon within you clearly comprehend all of it.
[03_215,02] The pleasant sensations of the act itself should not be the motive for the action, but alone that a human being is conceived!
[03_215,03] If you grasp this, you will soon find that the pleasant sensations are only accompaniments which facilitate the begetting of man in the nature of the flesh. If you are urged on by the main reason, then go and act and you will commit no sin. But there are nevertheless some points to be properly considered.
[03_215,04] This act must not happen outside the sphere of true love for one’s neighbor; but a main reason for true love for one’s neighbor is this: Do to your neighbors what you would have them do unto you!
[03_215,05] Well, suppose you had a blossoming daughter who is a joy to your fatherly heart. You will care for nothing more than for the true happiness of your most beloved daughter. Your daughter may be mature and, therefore, capable of conception, but how would you feel if an otherwise healthy man came, driven by the urge to beget a child with a virgin, and by force begot a fruit with your daughter?
[03_215,06] You see, that would fill you with a fearful rage against such an offender, and you would never again let him out of your sight without the sharpest possible chastisement!
[03_215,07] And nonetheless this person would have committed no sin against decency because he was seriously urged not to sow his seed outside a good vessel, whereby a possibility of conceiving a person would be cut off. But the act is nonetheless sinful, on the other hand, because true neighborly love was grossly violated!
[03_215,08] Imagine that a serious desire meets you abroad, you met a woman there on a field, and you persuaded her through money and words to give in to your desire, and the woman agreed, you would have not committed a sin against decency, nor adultery, even if the person was the proper wife of a man. But if you had thought about what great and highly dismal embarrassment and prosecutions the woman would suffer if her husband said to her: Woman, speak truly, who laid this seed in you, since I have not touched you since this or that time? You see that you have destroyed the domestic peace between the married couple; that is a crude sin against love for one’s neighbor! For you should have been able to save yourself for a more decent opportunity even if your desire was serious and not mere lustful passion.
[03_215,09] You can see from this that a man, at such an otherwise very correct act not contradicting true chastity, must consider all other human side circumstances, if he does not want to sin against some law.
[03_215,10] But a man can commit unchastity as well with his wife as with a whore and even worse. For with a whore there is nothing left to ruin, because everything has already been ruined anyway; but a wife can become overexcited and thereby run into a passionate desire, whereby she then can become a much greater whore than a single woman.
[03_215,11] Whoever lies with a single woman sins against chastity because his act only served - and had to serve - the gratification of mere lust but not the begetting of a human being, as pure reason must tell him that one does not sow wheat on the highways.
[03_215,12] Beside the sin against chastity, the one who lies with a whore violates his and the whore's human nature because he thereby easily does great damage to his nature and hardens the blind whore, making her more incorrigible, which again is a sin against the neighborly love.
[03_215,13] But whoever lies with a woman who has been made a whore sins in the same way twofold and fourfold if he is himself a husband, because thereby he also commits adultery.
[03_215,14] As you are a pure-thinking man, I think now that this little is enough for you, all the more so since a man like you anyway knows what is befitting for a man who is decent in every respect.”
[03_215,15] Jurah says, “Yes, Lord and Master, now everything is clear to me, and I also know now where the many bad species of unchastity must lead! Yes, now everything is clear! In all things there is only one truth valid before God, which is founded in the eternal order – everything less, more and besides is of evil!”
[03_215,16] I say, “Yes, that’s how it is and how it will also eternally remain. But now the sailors that were sent out are coming back with their dead people, My servant (Raphael) must now go there and help them to lay the corpses in the correct way, otherwise their healing tomorrow will be made more difficult!”
[03_215,17] Raphael quickly hurries over and establishes everywhere the best order. The sailors however only then head to their evening meal.
Chapter 66
[03_066,01] (The Lord) “You see, the conception of a person is a peculiar thing! In order to produce a correct and healthy fruit, two mature people, namely a man and a woman, must have a correct kinship of souls between one another, without which they will achieve with difficulty or often even not at all a fruit through the familiar act of reproduction.
[03_066,02] Now if a man and a woman are of a similar nature in their hearts and in their souls, they should then take part in this act of reproduction, wedded and according to the order that is easy to find in nature, in order to achieve a living fruit in their image; more than is necessary for this goes against the order of God and of nature and therefore is an evil and a sin, which is not much better than those of Sodom and Gomorrah!
[03_066,03] If a man has a lot of semen, well, he should put them in another field, according to the decent way of the old fathers and patriarchs, and he will not sin. But if he goes out secretly in order to satisfy his desire with maids who sell themselves and in this way to enjoy himself without the creation of a fruit, he commits quite certainly a crudely sodomite sin against the divine order and against the order of nature!
[03_066,04] Only a young, fertile man, if he is seized too much by the sex appeal of a girl so that he is hardly master over his own senses, can sleep with a virgin, with or without conception; but after the act he must then do what Moses decreed for this case. And if a fruit is conceived from such a conception of need, he must provide the virgin ten to one hundredfold of what he would owe according to Moses if no fruit had been conceived; for a virgin brings such a person a great sacrifice of life and death! If a man can marry such a virgin, he should not fail to do so; for as I said, she has brought him a great sacrifice and freed him of a numbing burden.
[03_066,05] But as a consequence such a fertile man should take a proper wife immediately and if need be also a concubine, with the permission of the legal wife, so that no discord or discontentment arises; but if such a man can abstain, he will be partake in a higher spiritual mercy in his inner life sooner than another person.
[03_066,06] But how one should take a legal wife, this has already been decreed by Moses according to the order from heaven, and must remain in the future until the end of the world.
[03_066,07] But you will easily see from what has already been said what fornication means and why it has been forbidden by Moses as a great sin; for everything has been decreed by God according to the divine order. Whoever remains in such an order will also reap the fruits of the blessings from above; but whoever acts against such an order will reap the fruit of the curse.
[03_066,08] If any fiery passionate man cannot succeed in any natural quenching of the fire that tortures him, no matter what he does, I advise him to bath diligently in cold water and to pray whole-heartedly for the lessening of this torment, and this torment will be soon taken away from him; but any other way to quench it comes from evil and creates evil, but the evil is a sin and creates more sins.
[03_066,09] At the same time all parents should be very concerned with not presenting their adult children with the dangers of attraction! For a flammable material can easily catch fire; but once the flames attack from all sides, the fire can often no longer be stopped, and there is no flame that does not claim a victim! When it is put out the damage that it has caused is soon seen.
[03_066,10] Therefore particularly the virgins should be well dressed but never dressed to attract, and the young men should not give in to idleness; for idleness is always the producer of all vices and sins.
[03_066,11] But whoever has taken a proper wife is bound to her until death, and Moses’ letter of separation does not cancel out adultery before the order of God, if such a man then married another wife; but if the divorced wife marries, she also commits adultery. In brief, whoever marries again after a divorce is an adulterer, but whoever does not marry is not an adulterer.
[03_066,12] But if the marriage is spiritually broken by him who sees a woman who is already married and harbors in his heart the plan to lead her to adultery through all sorts of tricks, even if the act is not actually carried out.
[03_066,13] But if you see the attraction of your neighbor’s wife and let yourself be affected, you have committed adultery; for in this way you have made your neighbor’s wife into a whore and have whored yourself. And it is a great and crude sin before God and before mankind, even if you have produced fruit with the other wife. But naturally the evil is much greater if you have casually whored with your neighbor’s wife for the sake of blind and mute lust. Such sinners will only with difficulty partake in heaven.”
Chapter 67
[03_067,01] (The Lord) “But if your neighbor’s wife, for example, cannot conceive any fruit from her lawful husband but she has a great longing for the awakening of a fruit within her and desires you, contact her husband! If he agrees, you can comply with such a desire without sin. If the woman becomes pregnant and after the pregnancy she again has a desire and her man agrees, you may once again show the woman your kindness, if you are single. But if you yourself are the husband of a fertile woman, you should not deprive your strength of your wife; for Moses allows you in this case to take one or more concubines as necessary besides a legal wife, particularly if the woman is infertile, but always with the permission of the legal wife. But if she becomes very sad about it, then it is time to get rid of the concubines, just as Abraham sent away Hagar, whom he had taken because of the long infertility of his wife, Sarah.
[03_067,02] But if a woman has run away from her right husband into a foreign land to someone as a single woman concealing that she is already a man’s wife, then he who takes her to be his wife has no sin, even if he finds out afterwards that she is already a man’s wife, but secretly left him because of his harshness and infertility; for when he took the foreigner to be his wife he didn’t know that she was already a man’s wife, and when he discovered this she was already his wife, from whom he now cannot be separated, without committing adultery, by anything but death.
[03_067,03] But in such situations there have happened often very cruel cases. The new husband, if he was under the Law of Moses, then tried to rid himself from the foreign wife if she became annoying by secretly going to her first husband and betraying the unfaithful and adulterous wife. The consequence was that such a wife was then stoned and both men could legally court again. That should no longer happen!
[03_067,04] And I say to you: In this case a single man should not marry a foreigner before he has investigated all her previous circumstances! If he hasn’t found out anything and he feels very attracted to the foreign wife, he should then take her to be his wife; and if he discovers later only accidentally the previous circumstances, he should not be a traitor to his wife, but should keep her in the good faith that he took her. But the wife can atone for her previous sin through great faithfulness towards her new spouse; for God is no unjust judge and knows how to weigh up the weaknesses of the human flesh and to take account of them. But a man who beats his wife to death is worse than an adulterous wife!