Reflections on Esaias Stiefel's Booklet: On the Threefold State of Man and His New Birth

But a hard thunder will awaken you, for you have fallen asleep much too firmly; there is no waking up, God may call as He will, yet Adam, the old man, sleeps in his lust.

104. That the author also reports that this fleshly Babel confusion/the fallen world system will fall, and a spring will rise in Zion the spiritual kingdom of God out of the true Jerusalem the heavenly city, this is so, and the time is already born for that to break which has grown of itself without Divine order. For it has reached its age and its goal; the beginning has found the end; the middle shall be revealed; no fighting or resisting helps against this. But because the child of sin and perdition rages so against it, it must break itself in its own raging.

105. If it would enter into the beginning, it would remain standing and its miracle would only appear; but because it has grown in pride, spirit, envy, and all sorts of malice and knavery, to what purpose is the evil beast? It is not fit for an offering to God, nor will it convert, so that it might receive a human heart.

106. Therefore God lets it be proclaimed that His children shall go out from it; for the Lord will frighten the earth and overturn Babel, and a river will flow out of Zion, so that the thirsty soul may be refreshed. For the miserable shall be refreshed and eat in His pasture.

107. The driver will break, then you will rejoice for a little while, for you are wicked from your youth and seek only the goal in the miracle. As your beginning was, so is your end; whoever is blind will not see this, but sleep until the day breaks.

108. Christ said: When the Son of Man comes, do you think he will find faith on earth? Therefore, the time of the end is a wicked basic soup and will not be purely Zion except in the sanctified children of Christ. For the beginning and the end are strictly equal to one another.

109. The miracles with the high tongue were manifest in the beginning, and the signature the outward manifestation of inner essence was highly recognized. This comes again at the end. But we also understand thereby a good and evil time, where the gates of all principles shall stand open, as we see this in the beginning with Cain and Abel. Therefore, let everyone look to what he says, teaches, and writes, for everything will be tested by the highest tongue.